Civ4: Omega Expansion

[LordShiva]

But the game is called "Civilization," not "Tribes."

[Son of David]

Having a 'noble savage' existence is not the same as being a civilization. In fact it's dangerously close to being barbarian.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Alexander01
My opinion on Locutus' choices:

Maya - yes
Khmer - yes
Sumer - or Assyria
...
Portuguese - maybe, I really don't care either way
Olmec - no, not well known enough
Zimbabwe - no, probably not
Austria-Hungary - no, they weren't even good enough to be playable in Civ3
Poland - maybe, if you want a pushover
...

OK, let me get this straight: Khmer you want in but Olemic is not well known? As opposed to the billions of people that know where the heck Khmer is?!?!?

And... Austria-Hungary?!?!?!?

I can't ... I... I can't have this argument if you are not going to be serious.

Tom P.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Locutus


Firaxis is not your average software developer. Anyone who knows the company will tell you they're a far, far cry from being say EA.

Money is money. Anybody that owns a company will tell you that. Idolize them for their game design all you want, if the head cheese thinks he's gonna lose money, someone's loosing a job.

I don't mean to intimate that they will fire someone as a matter of course. I'm saying that they will fire someone rather than pretend to have something for them to do.

If there's no work, they won't make up something. They'll put the rather valuable resources to work on something else that will make money, like Railroads.

EDIT: Or is it your contention that Firaxis would never fire anyone? Hmm, interesting.

One of a number of avenues to communicate with their customers -- and probably the most direct and practical one at that?

Not to mention they are also members of the community that enjoy coming here to play, read and talk about the games, just like the rest of us...

"A member of the community" I can buy. But, we're either a valid communication route to the fanbase or we're fringe. You can't be a fringe communication route to a majority anything.

I'll play by your rules, but you gotta pick one set. Either we're too fringe to have an impact; in which case we are too fringe to be a worthwile communications network, or we are substantial in which case we have an impact on the final product.

Since I've seen people from here have an impact, as a matter of fact I've seen people from here hired by Firaxis and mods included in the final product, I'm inclined to think we might have an impact on the final product.

But that's just me.

A few that aren't in Civ4 yet: Maya, Khmer, Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, Ethiopia, Nubia, Dutch, PortugueseCouple of others you could argue about and depend a bit on personal preference: Olmec, Zimbabwe, Austria-Hungary, Poland, Hittites, Byzantines, Hebrew, Harrapans, Thai. Might be one or two more but that should be most of them. Combine that with the 24 already in Civ, subtract the Zulu and you have 33 definites plus 9 debatable ones = 42 total. I said 30-40, not 40+ -- but including the debatable ones that should make DrSpike happy

Khmer? Olemic? Really?

Nubia, Zimbabwe AND Zulu? You're not reaching a little?

Hittites, Hebrew, AND Harrapans? Again, reaching.

You would really qualify those guys on the same footing as the Egyptian or German or English?

And mine would be the fifth to post: Austria-Hungary?

I think there's more than nine in there that are arguable, but you are a fan of that aspect, feel free to pine away for the loss of the Thai empire.

I'm not a fan of the amount of civs. I for one would really like the xpacks to come in two flavors: civ and non-civ.

And, as a professional tester I do indeed know what happens when you add a piece of core functionality. I also know what happens when you add a piece of fringe functionality. I also know what happens when you add a new developer or have one switch roles. They all mean testing. 200,000+ function point tests were nothing to my crew. We expected it and knew it going in. But you would rather they leave in the bugs they have now? Or are you trying to postulate that they have no bugs in the core code?

Hmm, interesting notion: perfect code. I'll have to mull that one over.

Bugs and testing are a part of developer life. "Because then we'd have to test" is the lamest excuse there is for feature reduction. Pushing an estimate passed a deadline is one thing but "because we'd have to test" is not a real excuse. Or, at least, not one I've seen accepted by compitent Team Leaders and PMs.

Tom P.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by padillah


OK, let me get this straight: Khmer you want in but Olemic is not well known? As opposed to the billions of people that know where the heck Khmer is?!?!?

Well, I think Civ needs more east Asian representation and in my opinion, the Khmer are the next viable option. We have a Khmer wonder in Civ already (Angkor Wat). As for the Olmecs, I think they are less viable because the Mayans have the place of preeminence. If they put the Olmecs in, I wouldn't object, (as long as the Mayans come first) but we don't really know that much about their culture, as opposed to the Khmer, for whom we actually have a history.

Originally posted by padillah
And... Austria-Hungary?!?!?!?
I can't ... I... I can't have this argument if you are not going to be serious.
Tom P.

I did say that I didn't think Austria should be playable. You don't actually want them, do you?

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by monkspider
Don't forget the Iroquois or Lakota which Locutus left out of his list. In general, I think there are enough quality civs out there for a third XP down the road.

I'm not a big proponent of the North American tribes, but I wouldn't object as long as they don't come at the cost of say, Babylon.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by padillah
Money is money. Anybody that owns a company will tell you that. Idolize them for their game design all you want, if the head cheese thinks he's gonna lose money, someone's loosing a job.

I'm not idolising them for their game design, quite the contrary, I'm typically quite critical of their products. I'm idolising them for their corporate philosophy, particularly the way they treat their employees (although idolising is a very strong word). I've been around, money is not money, at least not to everyone. On the one end you have companies to whom employees are just another resource, like hardware: easy to hire and fire, make them work until they drop and if they cause trouble fire their asses, they're easy to replace anyway. On the other end of the spectrum are businesses that think employees are what makes the company tick, their motivation determines the company's success in the long run; the higher-ups will within reason go out of their way to look after their employees' best interests, so that they will return the favour -- might cost some money in the short run but pays off long-term. In both extremes it's about making money in the end, but they have very different ways of doing so. I've seen both extremes first-hand and a lot of variants in between. Even if in my experience most companies are more oriented towards the former approach, Firaxis is a lot closer to the latter.

The issue raised was never about losing money, it was about making a choice of (to simplify and hypothesize beyond ridiculousness) firing your entire art staff to hire some new designers and make a complete change of direction in your design philosophy, or keeping your current staff and make the XP in the same spirit as your other products. I know some companies that would do the former almost on a whim, but Firaxis is not one of them -- that was my whole point.

"A member of the community" I can buy. But, we're either a valid communication route to the fanbase or we're fringe. You can't be a fringe communication route to a majority anything.

The world is not black or white, it's not one or the other. Fan forums are one valid means to communicate, but not the only one. Forum users aren't necessarily representative of all your customers: it takes a specific type of person to log on to a forum almost every day of your life and discuss all the ins and outs of every aspect of a game in ridiculous detail. Most people just aren't into that: most of my RL friends play Civ and they think it's very cool that I help test and to an extent design the game, but they're not really interested in doing the same themselves or even to log on to Apolyton and discuss the game with strangers (something I think a lot of people here can't imagine).

While there is definitely some overlap in the wishes for what fans on forums and fans elsewhere want to see in the next product (they're all fans after all), there are some differences as well (they're different types of people after all). If you don't listen to forum users, you will have very little direct contact with your fans and might lose touch, but if you treat their word as holy scripture you risk losing the other 99.9% of your customer base. Firaxis listens to our wishes (obviously), but they do their own market research and have other tools to figure out what to put in the next game as well.

Our wishes have somewhat of an impact on the final product, but there are other very important factors as well. In my observations Firaxis relies on us forum users mostly for the details of everything (especially game balance -- as hardcore players we know the game better than anyone), but for larger, more conceptual decisions (such as graphical fluff vs gameplay content, what major new concepts to introduce, what new sexy features like civs and wonders to include, etc) our impact is much more limited.

Khmer? Olemic? Really?

Nubia, Zimbabwe AND Zulu? You're not reaching a little?

Hittites, Hebrew, AND Harrapans? Again, reaching.

You would really qualify those guys on the same footing as the Egyptian or German or English?

Not a response to you specifically but to all: I picked those civs based on their historic impact, civs that are worthy of a place in Civ, not civs that are sexy or well-known. If your knowledge of history isn't sufficient to fully appreciate their significance (frankly, most people's isn't), that's not my problem...

I'm not gonna discuss every civ in detail -- I have better things to do -- but one example I'll give is Ethiopia. They were one of the most important empires of the ancient world (an important historian of late classical times listed them as 4th empire of the world, after the Romans, Persians and Chinese), the educated people from England to China knew who they were and directly or indirectly used their produce or services. Yet most people today aren't aware Ethiopia existed as an independent nation even a hundred years ago, let alone 2000...

One more example, the Khmer's building skills are second to none but modern society. Angkor Wat was neither the largest nor the most important structure they built (e.g. Angkor Thom is 10 times its size in terms of surface area and the outer walls are twice as high), yet it's even today still one of the largest buildings in the world -- you could probably build all three Giza pyramids with the building materials used for Angkor Wat alone (and unlike in those pyramids every nook and cranny in Angkor is richly decorated). But that's only the beginning, the Khmer built countless other temples and monestaries like it (hundreds of them can be found in the Angkor region alone and countless more in the rest of SE Asia) as well as countless other structures like palaces, forts, hospitals, universities, etc. Their road and irrigation networks are as elaborate and complex as many modern systems and still in use today. Especially considering the inhospitable environment in which they built their empire, the Romans could learn a thing or two from them in this regard. Angkor housed up to more than a million inhabitants and the largest of their other cities ranged into the hundreds of thousands as well, in a time when cities like London and Paris had less than 30,000 inhabitants. They were no Roman Empire, but their territory was still roughly the size of the empire of Charlemagne. And yet again, most modern people have no clue about who they were, as witnessed by this very thread (and I don't know about the rest of the world but here in the Netherlands the man on the street doesn't even know what Angkor Wat is).

Personally I think Egypt, Rome, Persia and China and the are in a class of their own as civilizations, mostly due to their longevity, and a few others like the Greeks, Arabs and Indians (the problem with India is that it was never really one civilization) are also something special, but the Ethiopians and Khmer are not in any way inferior to the other European civilizations and IMO superior to quite a few others featured in Civ (Mongols, Korea, Japan, Incas, Mayas, America, Zulu).

We expected it and knew it going in. But you would rather they leave in the bugs they have now? Or are you trying to postulate that they have no bugs in the core code?

There's a HUGE difference between bug testing and balance testing. A minor change can cause a big upset to game balance. E.g. what if we made it possible to plant forests as in Civ3? A very minor change that would cause few if any bugs, but it would completely change the game.

In my view (having experience with both), software design is an engineering skill, game design if a craft. While there's a lot of overlap, you can't really compare the two.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I think that's a valiant effort, but am sure that those that prefer arguing about civs to playing Civ might have some comments.

I love being right.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Alexander01
Austria-Hungary - no, they weren't even good enough to be playable in Civ3

IIRC, they weren't playable because BreakAway (C3C's developer) realised too late that Civ3's engine didn't allow 32 playable civs plus barbarians.

But no, Austria shouldn't be in.

[Footie Mad]

My guess would be this, it will have a defined theme as Warlords had. It will either be a focus on building/trade/diplomacy, with an addition of more builder civs, or on multiplayer.

[Prussia]

Eh, what did Austria ever do for Firaxis?

[Nugog]

Originally posted by Prussia
Eh, what did Austria ever do for Firaxis?

Aren't they the same as Germans ?

[padillah]

@Locutus: (I'm not quoting that post, that's too much like work. Hat's off, by the way)

Per the Firaxis issue: Point taken. I never meant to attack Firaxis.


Per the Testing issue: Valid point. But I still believe "because we would have to test" to be one of the lamest excuses ever used for controlling function creep. Also, they have proven that they will make changes that affect ballance, I'm pretty sure they ballance-tested Vassal States before putting them in (although you'd know more than I). So they will do it. They will make game play changes.

Per the civ issue: Knock yourself out man. Have 75 civs that no one but you and other history buffs have heard of. I've already said, it doesn't impress me (the knowlege does, the extra civs don't). I'm not trying to say they are better, worse, or the same as any other civ. I'm saying they are relitivly obscure and won't attract nearly the attention that a few others would nor, for me alone, would they have the same impact as upgrading the UN with more proposals and allowing civs to break them and so forth.

You talk about us on the boards being such a small minority but so far you and Alexander01 are the only ones that know who Khmer is so how small a minority is that? So for you two they should put in Khmer, but the forum community as a whole is too small to influence the final product (reality proving differently aside)? You do realise if they add an entire civ they will have to balance test it, right? But that's different than balance testing a game mechanic change (which they've also shown they will do)?

I guess I'm missing something. Adding civs will effect them same systems as adding a game mechanic but they'll justify testing a civ but not a game mechanic change?

Umm... OK.

Tom P.

[LordShiva]

Actually, I know who the Khmer were, and consider them one of the few from Locutus' list that are worth having in Civ

[monkspider]

I think most people here are famillar with the Khmer. They are pretty famous. Great Zimbabwe is probably more obscure, but they were still one of my favorites on the list.

The only ones I would definitely say no to on Locutus' list was Phonecia, Harrapans, and Olmec. The latter simply because we know virtually nothing abou them. Toltecs might be easier to pull off.