Plans for new XP or Civ5?

[DrSpike]

Well we can certainly hope.

[Solver]

Yeah, some more optimism would do you no harm .

[zeace]

I hope that the patch will be similar to how Alien Crossfire affected SMAC. Initally it appeared that it added a whole bunch of new factions including Aliens who were super powerful but bad diplomats. And there were the pirates, and a new victory condition.

In the end though all of those things were horribly broken and easily abused by any competent human player. But the best feature of SMAX was the "play original 7 factions" button.

This meant you got to play with a few new techs which were cleverly added to the side of the tech tree and weren't overpowering, without playing with the broken factions. I've probably played 3x as many SMAX games with the original factions as with any others.

So firaxis, go ahead and add something cool that looks good in trailers and will sell a lot of boxes. But if deep down it's horribly broken, leave us an easy and standard way to turn it off so we can just use the good bits of the expansion.

[Solver]

Civ4 is very easy to tweak, I'm sure you can disable most of whatever is added. Warlords provides an in-game option to disable vassal states and Great Generals are easily disabled through XML, for example.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by DrSpike

Maquiladora rarely agrees with me so what I said must be true.

I had to take a shower afterwards.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Solver
Yeah, some more optimism would do you no harm .

And you could do with taking the rose tinted glasses off once in a while.

[Jaybe]

Well, come ON you two, is the glass half-empty or half-full!

Personally, I like rose-colored tints.

[dacole]

Originally posted by alms66
It's funny. Everyone who hates civ3 says that the corruption model was broken. Those who like civ3 say it was fine.

I am one of those who liked civ3 - especially after the Conquests expansion. It added/changes/fixed so much to the single player game, plus many scenarios for those who like that sort of thing - I don't. But IMO, they fixed the corruption model there. It wasn't very realistic I know (why would a far-flung city be more corrupt that any other?), but what it did to my empire was realistic and I liked that. It kept me from getting too large. Beyond 20 or so cities, it was pointless to get more - again, not realistic, but the effect was, and I liked the fact that there was no plausible reason to conquer the world other than sheer madness.

Civ3 also lacked the modability of civ4 - and that sucked, but it was easy to mod what was available. I never understood the complaints that the editor was hard to use, I just assumed those people weren't computer literate. There were only two really good mods for civ3 but I haven't seen a really good mod for civ4 yet either (The Lopez will probably be the first with his all-inclusive mod he's working on), even with all the extra modding ability (and yes I do realize that's all based on personal preference).

My biggest gripes on civ4 (in no particular order):
1. No Isometric - civ3 still looks better and I feel it's because of the lack of this perspective, plus, besides the fact that you can rotate to any angle, which I could care less about, 3d graphics don't compare to 2d graphics in aesthetic quality. I know I can tilt the view to appear isometric, but playing like that in civ4 isn't worth it due to the other distortions that come with it.

2. Less Civs - I've been waiting for a 48 or 64 civ capable game since CtP made 32 civs possible - What was that, like 10 years ago?!? Civ 4 can barely do 32.

3. City Maint. - This is far more restrictive than corruption ever was, and I don't like restrictions. If I want to do nothing but pump out settlers and defensive units, let me do it damnit! Don't artificially limit me, just make the downside of doing it make it not worth doing it - like a lack of developed culture, science, and defense. Eventually, my empire should get divided up from it's inferiority. And for those who will say it's way better than the corruption model, it's basically the same thing, just instead of the single city being useless, if you build too many cities, your entire empire becomes useless.

_Edit_Opps... forgot the worse offender of all...

4. Specialized Cities - Yes, there are commercial, cultural and political hubs and there always have been cities like this. However, the effect is so grossly - and I mean grossly - exaggerated in civ4, it really makes me want to puke. Enough said.

These are all the things that were wrong with civ 3 and alpha centauri to win especially in multiplayer it became a quest to see who could pump out the most units and the most cities. Placement and different stratiges for diferent situations didn't happen. Game got boring very quickly. Civ IV had none of these problems the fact that it is more restrictive is a GOOD thing.

[Solver]

Originally posted by DrSpike


And you could do with taking the rose tinted glasses off once in a while.

If I recall correctly, you were more satisfied with Warlords than me, so if anything, you're more optimistic than me .

[Kuciwalker]

Doesn't follow. Expectations determine optimism.

[Solver]

Shut up, wisecrack .

[Kuciwalker]

Go read Sava's thread. Yes, I'm talking to you, Solver

[DrSpike]

And it's also not true anyway. I consider Warlords average, and actually think your earlier review was pretty accurate. We seem quite close in terms of Warlords quality.

I also (in line with my other points) look at the position some months after release and even though some improvements have been made that ideally I would like to see incorporated into vanilla I think we are not yet back to 1.61 in terms of balance. I'll grant though that I am more sensitive to this than almost anyone which maybe doesn't make me representative - other people may consider whizzy new stuff more than compensates.

Naturally there is scope to re-achieve a finer balance and have some of the new Warlords additions in terms of traits etc. The question is how long it will take (and for future x-packs whether it will take place at all) and this is where we differ as I am more pessimistic.

[Harovan]

Warlords is ok. It did not make Civ4 better, however. It just made it different. Blakes changes made it better.

[Solver]

Hmm, I honestly think 2.08. is more balanced than 1.61. 1.61 was pretty well balanced, but there have been a few good balance tweaks since then. I can get quite worked up over balance issues, but I can't imagine any significant ones in Warlords right now.

I got to say, I almost consider the 2.08 patch better than the expansion itself. Warlords added a bunch of stuff, 2.08 improved the AI, which I like a lot. Blake, of course, improved it even further since then.