What is your greatest wish for Civ 4?

[Toby Rowe]

Yep mate,

I've never seen random events to be productive, challenging or interesting, the longer you play a game, the more annoying they become for me.

They only seem to be put into serious games, whose type of customer is most likely to be annoyed by them in the first place.

I actually think it's a throwback to signing your work, whether an artist in painting or us builders writing in the plaster in the eaves of a building in older days.

Techwins,

Sad to hear that it's just a version of Civ 3- I'm currently trying to work out how to eliminate the population sizze pollution model in the editor, but really getting bored of it, as a different game, it did did sound OK, but using Civ 3, then of course not- what a pity.

Generally due to the arrogance of them- We are a captive market and companies know it.

Every new computer game since 2000 has the unwritten proviso that you must have an internet connection in order to download the patch the game needs later on, it's now getting to the point that some games are released before they are finished, once they determine sale levels they then decide whether or not to to provide a "patch".

"Railroad Pioneer" from JoWood is a good example of this, the game isn't finished, eats your memory and then crashes once your computer is devoid of it, which for my old one was quickly. My £35/$60 paid for two hours gaming, after which it refused to load again- ever.

Anyway, I've been musing over a game I've had about settlement in the US for a while, alongside another one about the Civil War in the US- dunno why but US history seems tailored to games of it!

So,
Any programmers that are interested in turning an idea I have into shareware or freeware please let me know! I have 3 programming tasks to test on the game to see if it might work, and of course you will own the work, and maybe the programme fullstop.

Toby

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Toby Rowe
Every new computer game since 2000 has the unwritten proviso that you must have an internet connection in order to download the patch the game needs later on, it's now getting to the point that some games are released before they are finished, once they determine sale levels they then decide whether or not to to provide a "patch".

That is one of the signs why the Internet is evil

Before the Internet connection was avaliable for everybody most games was actually finished before shipped out

[DrSpike]

And the bugs that remained (not always small) had precious little chance of ever being fixed.

Don't blame the internet - it is a tool for good. It's greedy and lazy companies that are to blame.

[Adagio]

Software companies are just not ready for a great invention like the Internet... yet

[TechWins]

Toby, it's actually Call to Power 2 since it allows for scripting. That's how, from what I've read and seen, almost a completely new game.


If you have any radical ideas on games that five year olds might like (Connect Four, Mazes) I could entertain/program your ideas.

[monolith94]

1. Make the graphics of the map easier on the eyes - civ 3's interface had more pixels, but I couldn't look at it for long before becoming annoyed. the simplistic elegance of civilization 2 made it easy and fun to play for 24-hour increments.

2. a cooler palace, or a cooler throne room. the palace from civ 1 is still better than both civ 2 and civ 3s goodies.

3. have stalin give me a great big smile when we sign a peace treaty.

4. little screams when I use nukes

[Toby Rowe]

TechWins,

Heh!

Unfortunately Tetris has the market for that age group, failing that Pacman! You simply can't beat 'em :-) Or can you? ;-)

I dunno all, I'm disapointed with how the PC market is heading- companies that patch unfinished games after initial sales will eventually make the consumer choose a console over a PC for gaming, unfortunately consoles aim for the teen market only I feel.

About 2-ish years ago a console game was released that actually had a bug and it made the evening news in the UK (I'm not kidding)

Until developers force the Graphics card industry (the cause of so many bugs) to set a common standard I feel they are ultimately contributing to their own demise.

Still, PC gamers, following that full circle, if it does happen, will once again start to produce Freeware and Shareware (the latter is better!), including the hackers that occupy themselves currently by trying to break the protection instead of making their own games. What a waste of potential talent.

People that choose a PC over a console generally do so because the console market doesn't generally supply the type of games they tend to buy, yet PC games like the Sims and Hidden and dangerous led the market in breaking new ground the consoles were then forced to release?

Toby :-(

[spartak]

I'd like it to be like SMAX but without bugs and with a better AI. At the very least it needs the same depth and extended gameplay.

[Panda]

I'd just like add another vote for customisation. Whatever in-game functions and bonuses the programmers have for the vanilla game, I want to be transparent in the game files and easy to change.

[Zoid]

What is my greatest wish? I´m thinking of something else... Namely I hope they make the game fun all the way through. Once the game hits modern age (or even before that, really) I´ve lost interest. There´s nothing to do but race towards the finish line, or race...it´s more like crawling excruciatingly slow I must have started like a 100 games, but I´m not sure I´ve actually finished more than, say 5... Now it may be that I suffer from some mild form of ADD, but I don´t really think so.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by spartak
I'd like it to be like SMAX but without bugs and with a better AI. At the very least it needs the same depth and extended gameplay.

SMAC was never boring IIRC.

[Nikolai]

Well, while SMAC/X was a great game, one of the better civ style games really, it was not much to do after you got those flying mind worms than mopping up the map. If you didn't want to restrain yourself and go for trancedence that is.

[Zoid]

Trancendence

[Nikolai]

Yeah, pointwise and storywise, it was the best victory condition.

[Zoetrope]

What I wish for Civilization 4 is Master of Magic 2: MoM was the only member of the civilization series to have immersive combat.

About King Arthur: he wasn't Cornish in the sense of dwelling in Cornwall, he was Welsh (sorry, Cumbrian), that is British, in the sense of being a native of Britain. My understanding is that he lived near the East coast, at Camulodonum (near Cambridge rather than Oxford).

In case it hasn't occurred to anyone else yet, Arthur is supposed to have reigned _before_ the Anglo-Saxons invaded, and the ancient Britons occupied the _whole_ of southern Britain before the AS arrived.

Also, the AS first landed on the EAST coast, so that's where the early battles occurred. Arthur wasn't fighting a rear-guard action, he was trying to prevent the AS from settling Britain at all.

It took the AS centuries to push the "Welsh" (ironically, the AS word for "foreigner") front to the mountains of Wales; for that matter, most of the population of West England are of Welsh descent even now, just as most of the modern people of East Scotland are Angles. (Hint: "Edinburgh" and "Stuart" are not Celtic names.)

The recent movie seemed to place Merlin, Marion and most of the action in Scotland! As mentioned, the Angles did settle up north, but would a south-eastern military leader like Arthur have travelled so far for a fight?

Incidentally, Arthur _preceded_ the Dark Age. He lived around AD 400, whereas the Dark Age began in AD 535, the first "year without the sun".

Indeed, the early medieval "Dark Age" wasn't dark for lack of learning: it was a heyday of Byzantium and Eastern Europe, and it has to be remembered that Paris ("the City of Lights") never fell to the barbarians but instead reunified most of the West before by the late 400's and held it together in some form of political association (centralised or federated) right into the 800's and beyond.

The times were Dark for a while in England, thanks to the English and their relatives the Vikings but even they learnt the value of scholarship - from the "Welsh" and the Irish. Perhaps it would have been better for England and France had the Scandinavians not become so educated, for when they did they became the pompous Normans.