Apolytoners: What's your take on the closed beta so far?

[Donegeal]

Tell Apolyton (and any Firaxiains that are listening) what you think of Civ World Beta?
What do you like about it?
What don't you like about it?
Any suggestions on how to improve what you liked?
How would change the things you didn't like?
What would you add or take away?

[LzPrst]

I have by some stroke of bad luck ended up in a game by myself. My current civ consisting of random players does not have any form of strong cohesion or overall plan. This means that nothing is done in a very good way, making the social aspect which is a major part of the game quite meaningless. It seems to me that the idea behind it is for friends or teams to form civs together and cooperate and plan through their social interaction for the benefit of their civ. For single players this game is pointless.

There is another issue I don't like in my current game and that is that while most civs have a handful of players 5-10, one civ has 28 and one particular civ has over 50. Making the last mentioned civ superior to the others in every respect and I believe that civ has won every era because of it. There seems to be no balancing towards making a big civ a less effective civ meaning that a player advantage is a game advantage. With a huge player advantage such as in my game, the winner is already determined.

Minigames: I see that the minigames are quite cutesy and interesting at first, but after playing them a dozen times each they quickly become dreary. I suppose the hardcore players would continue to play them to gain the benefits and for culture and science the effort actually pays off, though the merchant minigame seems mostly to be a waste of time.

Another dislike is the availability of an easily readable tooltip for most things.
Making queuing of tech paths a possibility would also be nice.
Explaining how civs can and should work together in a good way could also be nice (e.g. explaining how 2 players in the same civ researching the same thing contribute and showing clearly which and how much such other players contribute with. )

Another item would be to be able to remove soldiers you have invested into a battle, at least up to a few minutes after contributing them, in order to be able to regret misclicks or changing your mind after seeing the effect of your forces.

[LzPrst]

also, at the fast rate which all beta games are played, the game progresses both too fast and too slow to be intrigueing. I will try to explain what I mean. When actually playing the game there is relatively little to do. You could collect the 1-4 resources that your citizens occasionally pop and rearrange houses for min-maxing for ever, but the actual benefit is not great enough to warrant the effort. At the current pace I take a peek at my civ for 5-10 minutes, then go do something else for 8 hours. In other words, when you are in the game there is little to do. The minigames are quickly exhausted and the amusement of looking at your workers work is limited. The harvest-turns progress at 1 per hour. I am uncertain at what pace the eras pass as it is not written anywhere in plain sight.

When I am away for a few hours I tend to come back to the game to see whole eras having passed, yet my workers have produced disappointingly small amounts of resources (compared to what needs done, for example in tech). Furthermore I have little to spend my resources on. Expanding the population becomes extremely expensive around 8-9, making further growth more of a money sink than a reward, I have not done the math on that, but I suppose it is true, especially as they all have to be housed and given well developed granaries/mills/museums/libraries to work in.

In effect, if the game had a queue system for science, then some civs would just build farmers until 8-9 pops, then make them allscientists and ignore the game until won. not ideal for interaction.

[Jonny]

A couple of quick thoughts after a few days of gameplay (only 2 games, so perhaps the trends I'm seeing aren't happening everywhere):

1) The general rule seems to be that the Civ with the most players is the most successful, while the smallest are very far from competitive. When a player joins a game at the beginning, he usually just picks a Civ randomly (unless he knows other people) -- and it's a crapshoot whether that Civ will end up having 5 or 50 players. Those joining later seem to typically join the largest Civ they can, in order to put themselves in the best position. (See game 151, where Japan has 50ish players, 2 Civs are in the 20s, one has 15, and the rest are size 10 or less.) Sure, other people can move around, but it seems likely that one Civ will run away with the game. Possible solution: lower the cap on Civ size to (max # of players / max # of civs).

2) Having some of your citizens be merchants seems silly, since they appear to produce at the same base rate as other citizens, but 100 food or production will often trade for somewhere between 500-800 gold (and 100 science for 200-300 gold). Possible solution: increase the base production rate for merchants.

3) The puzzle mini-game seems much more bountiful than the others, particularly the maze game. Possible solution: increase the base reward for the maze (kind of ties in with the above, since gold seems worth less than other resources).

4) I've found the game wiki to be much more helpful than the in-game help.

[Jon Miller]

I need to be able to cancel queued buildings.

Some mention should be made about how important it is to join a nation/empire. I didn't till quite late. Wow!

Playing independently, it is very important to get the extra bonuses. This can easily give you many times what you get from harvests... but is boring and ... yeah.

Yeah, merchants seem really silly. Do commodities every become useful?

JM

[Donegeal]

So far, I'm enjoying the game as just a game. It's is kinda entertaining and it has Sid's name on it, so I'm gunna play it. However, it doesn't feel like Civilization. There is no 'one more turn'.

I do like the minigames, as it gives you something to do inbetween watching the market and popping bonus resourses; but even they get dull.

Last night, I was finally in a war. Completely nerfed. There is virtually no point to war in this game. The best thing to do with troops is to use them as another comodity to buy and sell on the market. The entire game is based on the market. Should be called Civ Market.

I'll keep playing, but at this point, I'm dissapointed.

[Jon Miller]

Yeah, war should really have a minigame too.

I was at war once, with barbarians, we slaughtered...

JM

[joncha]

I'm not impressed so far.

No exploration, not turn-based, almost pointless combat, mini-games that dominate game play.

Even though you're playing with people from all over, it feels more like Civ City than Civ World, and the overall feel is more like Farmville or (at best) Travian than any Civ game I've ever played.

[wodan11]

There needs to be more of boardgame design theory used. By that I mean there are some fundamental ways to design a good boardgame, and a Facebook game has MUCH more in common with a boardgame than it does a computer game or anything else, really.

For example:

1) Come-from-behind mechanisms. If a player feels that there is no way to improve his/her standing compared to those in the lead (let alone actually catch them and rise higher in ranking), then the player is demotivated, rather than motivated.

These mechanisms can be overt or hidden. Overt is an actual feature, hidden is simply that some of the features simply work better if you're lower (or worse if you're higher).

Consider Mario Kart. Overt things such as weapons that only work against people in front of you. Hidden is a slight increase in acceleration, handling, or top speed depending on how much you're behind the leaders.

2) Needs Annoyance factor. One of the key components of a good boardgame is the ability of a player to screw with another. This itself is player interaction, which by definition is good and is one of the prime goals of a social game. But furthermore it begets additional interaction, as the player in the lead is then motivated to "get back" at the upstart, maybe by invading or something else. Which is further interaction and again more of a good thing. Plus, it sidetracks the player in the lead from pursuing the lead, diverting resources and allowing those in behind more of an opportunity to catch up.

Right now SimWorld has a strong focus on team interactions but very little where one player or one team can sabotage or even simply "mess with" another player or team.

This can also be combined with #1, where a smaller or lower ranked player or team can mess with a higher one, but not vice versa. (Maybe there's simply a cost for the higher ranked, whereas the lower ranked can do it for free; this cost could be scalable by the difference in rank so it could be significant for a player quite a bit higher ranked).

===============

I could go on, but that's the idea. My suggestion would be for the designers to bring in some boardgame design experts to analyze and offer some suggestions. Back when I worked for a game company we were very much into boardgames and design theory. I've been to the world boardgame championships many times. Would be quite easy (and inexpensive) for CivWorld to bring in someone to offer some suggestions.

[Jon Miller]

We got steam rolled by a larger civ. There was literally nothing we could do... but I don't think we lost much. In fact, we probably lost more by building a military to defend then by losing the one wonder they stole?

Battles having a 10 hour lead time and being low interacting is a miss.

Don't get me wrong, it is a lot more engaging than farmville/etc. But those aren't really 'games'.

JM

[Donegeal]

Here is another though... have the four commodities (Incense, Marble, Oxen and Silk) do something for your civ. Like if you have one oxen for each population working as workers or Farmers, you gain +1% (ie: pop 6 city with 1 farmer 3 workers and 2 scientist would require 4 oxen to gain a +1% to food and production and would then require 8 for a 2%).

Or if you have 1 silk or incense per population point, you gain +1 happiness.

[joncha]

Some more thoughts:

I've been trying out the market more, and it makes the game somewhat more enjoyable.

It sucks that completed games just disappear after a few hours. It would be nice to have an archive or at least a permanent record/hall of fame kept.

I want more control over games. Hopefully it's the way it is because of the beta, but it sucks that they dump you into random games instead of letting you start in the lobby and then start/join the games you want (with the players you want!).

Clicking (sorry, "hovering") on the little guys to get a few extra resources is fiddly and annoying micromanagement. I hates it.

In fact, I hate all the aspects that move away from turn-based play and into real-time strategy. It's a big reason why I love the Civilization series and hate Age of Empires.

Also, is there a way to go directly to the build screen from the marketplace (and vice-versa)? Or a way to place the same improvement twice without having to go back the build screen? I find the civilipedia/wiki to be fairly unhelpful most of the time.

[Jon Miller]

The way things end really sucks. Basically, you are playing and you go to sleep and suddenly it is over the next day. Or suddenly everything is changed.

For people who want to play once or two a day... how is this enjoyable at all?

They need to have set times when there is a victory possible for the age (maybe once or twice a day). Score points as follows:
1. Y points for every X gold
2. Y points for first to tech X
3. Y points for having tech X
4. Y points for each victory against a XX% Civ
6. Y points for each wonder

Then you still have several paths, and probably want to focus on a path, but you can play for a little bit a couple times a day to work towards something instead of having what you are doing completely change...

Sometimes I log in 5 hours later and 5 era's have progressed. Other times 0. It is very easy to get set up so you just sprint, I think. For example, military victories give you wonders so it is easy to make ages change for both by just focusing on military.

JM

[Jon Miller]

BTW

I invited a friend, who enjoyed it. But he also had a problem with how it ended/etc, and said he would play until they had fixed it.

JM

[LzPrst]

I am gonna say that this is a bust. There is nothing "Civ" in CivWorld. as people mentioned, it is more farmville+simcity than civ. In other words, it does not appeal to civers and for the rest it is just another silly casual facebook game. Sid screwed up/us.