For those thinking of getting Warlords

[Jaybe]

That's what it means in the King's English, TE.

[asleepathewheel]

Re: For those thinking of getting Warlords

Originally posted by mkorin


No real change to how the game is played. Conquest changed CivIII to the point where you almost had to relearn how to play. Warlords has almost no rule or gameplay changes.

What gameplay do you think should have changed?

Frankly, I hate when games do this, they are after all called expansions, not revisions. I can live with the occassional tweak, like rebalancing units or redistributing traits, but things like changing the corruption code for each release or patch is just disastrous., ala c3c.

[mkorin]

Re: Re: For those thinking of getting Warlords

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


What gameplay do you think should have changed?

Modify water travel/war so it means something

Make some way to get tech from advanced countries.

Spies that actually are worth having (earlier in the game for that matter)

More ini codes so we can do a better job of customizing our style of play. If I've seen 1 post on the barbarians, I've seen 100.

Improve Aircrafts. They are meaningless in CivIV.

There have beend 100s of posts with gameplay thoughts and ideas. Many of which were in older Civs, but got taken out of CIV IV.

These are my pet ideas off the top of my head. There are others some are good some are bad. I don't think just my favorites should have been included, but something should have been done to address some of these issues. That would be an expansion. Adding scenerios, more leaders etc is an update.

Granted the UBs and Vassel system are gameplay elements. However, the vassel system doesn't work as Yin and others have repeatedly said, and I think the UBs should have been an obvious addition for the vanilla.

Mike

[mkorin]

The writer who neglects spelling and punctuation is quite arrogantly dumping a lot of avoidable work onto the reader, who deserves to be treated with more respect. - Jaybe

Great guote, yur own or is it somone famus?

That is assuming you're not famous.

[Proteus_MST]

Re: Re: Re: For those thinking of getting Warlords

Originally posted by mkorin

Improve Aircrafts. They are meaningless in CivIV.

Why do you think they´re meaningless?

My strategies always incorporate lots of bombers.
They´re great for bombarding stacks and city defendes down to 50% strength, without the risk of retaliation as long as they aren´t defended by Fighters on CAP or SAM units.

Even the Fighters are useful (aside from CAP), as you can use them for recon purposes (they clear a large area from fog of war, without the enemy having a chance to hurt them)

[yin26]

Re: Re: Re: For those thinking of getting Warlords

Originally posted by mkorin
However, the vassel system doesn't work as Yin and others have repeatedly said, and I think the UBs should have been an obvious addition for the vanilla.

Fundamental attribution error. If others are reporting it, are we just lying? Perhaps you've been unlucky? Perhaps some of us have been lucky? But I've had pretty consistent 'good luck' as described. What settings are you using? What's your style of play?

Indeed, the mechanism still has room for improvement, but your statement is too broad.

[mkorin]

Originally posted by yin26
There are clearly some vassal issues to work out, but I've been pretty vocal about how much I think it adds to the game. I posted something about that on Gamespot, too. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...html?id=343812

I don't say anything you haven't already heard at Poly, but if you're reading this wondering about Warlords, it might worth a read.

I was refering to this statement and others both in this post and others.

[yin26]

Right. Everything I've said happens in my games consistently.

[smbakeresq]

The Great Wall Graphic,

Yaga posted an answer: Go into the would builder, use the city editor, and under buildings click the great wall off and then back on, it will redraw to your current borders.

[asleepathewheel]

Re: Re: Re: For those thinking of getting Warlords

Originally posted by mkorin
Modify water travel/war so it means something

how would you modify this? What do you think is lacking?

Originally posted by mkorin
More ini codes so we can do a better job of customizing our style of play. If I've seen 1 post on the barbarians, I've seen 100.

ini codes such as what? Things you can't do in the custom game menu? Things you would otherwise have to create an entire mod for?

Originally posted by mkorin
Improve Aircrafts. They are meaningless in CivIV.

Actually, if anything, they are overpowered, imho, esp since the AI doesn't do a great jobdefending against them and doesn't run out the bombers like the human can. I used to be of the mindset that I would just bash in cities using tanks, but I've seen that adding a handful of bombers really reduces the numbers needed for an offensive. Combined arms is very helpful, if you aren't lazy about things (which I was)

Originally posted by mkorin
Granted the UBs and Vassel system are gameplay elements. However, the vassel system doesn't work as Yin and others have repeatedly said.

chalk me up as someone else who the vassal system works as advertised for. Sure there are some kinks in it and occassional oddball results, but by and large it works as intended for me. And I've run a lot of warlords games.

Originally posted by mkorin
Adding scenerios, more leaders etc is an update. ...I think the UBs should have been an obvious addition for the vanilla.

I take it this is your first experience with the Civ series, because this expansion is pretty much on par with past ones, introducing a few new features, a few new civs and scenarios, some gameplay tweaks and bug fixes. Actually, I would rate warlords above either of the civ3 expansions (not that that is hard, none of the new features are broken out of the box, thank the heavy testing for that)

[Prussia]

What everyone has to realize about the scenarios is:

A) These are not average mods you could download and play from some random John who knows how to read Python; they are complicated and elaborate game additions that only an experienced game programmer or someone with alot of knowledge about CODE (Not just Python or XML) could make.

They obviously took a long time to create, and they are as professional as can be, they are balanced, fair, and time occupying. They and the other additions in my mind are totally worth the money. (Even though they could have made the UUs a bit more exciting, like for once actually give them more attack then their originals.)

You get me one person who could create a scenario like the barbarian one which changes the gameplay utterly and completely.

B) They are fun scenarios. Sure, some people can make Mods about World War 2, or some mods that will make tweaks to the game, but they don't have them all in one place. IMO, they are enjoyable add-ons which are fun to go back to and play every so often, much better than the mods that came included with the vanilla.

[mkorin]

I've been playing Civ since the early days of II. The conquest expansion added so much you almost had to relearn to play it.

Sea Travel/Warfare worked as it should in SMAC. Boats warfare made sense and was logical. You didn't have boats randomly going back and forth making the AIs turn take forever. Also, Boats should be able to attack cites, not bombard but attack, especially empty cities. The boat does have a crew for gosh sakes. When a city is captured, a % of boats should be captured with it. Not everything can be burned by those retreating.

Aircraft - They worked correctly in III, why make them less useful. I have not built a plane since my 2nd game and never missed them. The bombers should be able to hurt units in the open, destory improvements and hurt/destroy units in cities.
Maybe the patches improved them. Tell me that and I'll try them again.

INI code suggestions would be to have % of barbarians rather than just on/off/raging. I would also like ini codes for all customizable features so I can just have a one button game start with my random features. An ini code for random maps, including the partials like ring etc.

The vassel system has been discussed in many posts, so I will not rehash them except to say when you take a vassel through capitulation, you should get the techs and any resources you wish. When I've got capitulation the techs I do not have are red so I can't even ask for them. SMAC did vassels right. Yet again Firaxis broke something that was fixed.

Speaking of asking for things. What happened to trading anything for anything. If someone wants to give me 20 gold a turn for 20 turns for an obsolete tech, it should ast least be an option.

How about engineers that can radically change land types. IE worker upgrades. I really miss being able to make land bridges over water, or artificial lakes. This is available tech today. It was in SMAC, it should be in CIV IV.


Every one of the gameplay elements I have mentioned in this post or this thread were in previous games and removed. As I said before there have been countless posts listing gameplay improvements. None of them were put into Warlords. Forget just my favorites, but fix at least some of them. I'll stick with IV for the graphics and it does run better, but IMO Firaxis did a bad job with this expansion.

How about using the final techs. I play on Prince and win 85% of the time. I never get to the final techs. either I have won a dom game, the space ship has launced or time runs out. This is on Epic. I'll probably move up to Monarch always shortly. I win on that about 40% of the time, with the great Wall, I can do better. I have literally played 100s of games of IV and I don't think I've ever made a water production plant or the other high end buildings. In fact, they usually are not available.

Last but not least, animals do not need the adj. of barbarians.

Having ranted for this length (and I could go on). I'll admit that CIV IV is the only game I play regularly as it gives me a constently changing challenge.

Mike

[mkorin]

Originally posted by Prussia
What everyone has to realize about the scenarios is:

A) These are not average mods you could download and play from some random John who knows how to read Python; they are complicated and elaborate game additions that only an experienced game programmer or someone with alot of knowledge about CODE (Not just Python or XML) could make.

They obviously took a long time to create, and they are as professional as can be, they are balanced, fair, and time occupying. They and the other additions in my mind are totally worth the money. (Even though they could have made the UUs a bit more exciting, like for once actually give them more attack then their originals.)

You get me one person who could create a scenario like the barbarian one which changes the gameplay utterly and completely.

B) They are fun scenarios. Sure, some people can make Mods about World War 2, or some mods that will make tweaks to the game, but they don't have them all in one place. IMO, they are enjoyable add-ons which are fun to go back to and play every so often, much better than the mods that came included with the vanilla.

Fine, then sell the scenerios as mods as some games do. I don't play them and no one I personally know plays them. I'm glad you like them, but too me they are learn the trick for this mod and it can be beat every time.

As too making them. I'm a CIO with a tremendous amount of programming experience. I know many people who could make good scenerios if they wanted to take the time. Again, I am not detracting from the Firaxis programmers who did a good job, but the scenerios are not rocket science. Do not sell me an expansion pack based on scenerios.

Mike

[mkorin]

The Great Wall graphic fix does work as described, but then I can see all the resources around me. You can't help but notice the uranium right next to where your cursor was. Maybe I'll try and do it with my eyes closed.

[Dis]

boats attacking cities.