Odd/Even Rule Starting to Emerge?

[wodan11]

In my current game the bloke that kept attacking me hates me, one person is 'afraid', everybody else loves me. I never declared war, not even on city states. No fun, if you're walking around with riflemen and the enemy has pikemen.

The obvious question is why haven't YOU declared war, then? You have an enemy and a significant military advantage. What's the problem?

The only answer I can think of is that you're role playing. You're the "good guys" and are not imperialistic. In which case, your goal in the game should be other than conquest, right? But then point of your military is a deterrent, and mission accomplished. You can now pursue your goal.

Alternately, you want to be imperialistic, but only when you get attacked. Make them pay for attacking you by absorbing them into your empire. Nice to have the moral high ground, but pretty illogical when you think about it.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

Well, yes, I didn't want to be imperialistic. I was aiming for a technology victory. That aim developed as I discovered that the map was bigger than I expected. Also, there was no point to conquest, as I had most luxury resources already, and expansion would only lead to unhappiness. Resolving that would lead to a dent in income, and only marginally aid science.

[Dinner]

I really wished I would grow to love SMAC. Hasn't happened yet, sadly.

I never got into it either.

[Purple]

I remember SMAC/X as the pinacle of Civ development, and you guys have convinced me to dig it out of the back of my software closet and see whether I'm just being nostalgic or it really was that good.

[chequita guevara]

I've only played Civ V for a couple of days, and I found it did not grab my attention. I never hated on III or IV, but this one leaves me luke warm. I might play it a few more times. Hopefully the expansions will make it interesting.

[Standup]

IV I found frustrating because of bugs and features not working (aircraft for a start). V I've just found boring. It seems to have less broken features than IV did on release but still doesn't grab me starting right at the beginning when city placement just doesn't really seem to matter that much. While a bad placement in 1 - 4 could mean game over for me I found that much more interesting.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

I never got into it either.

SMAC was wonderful. Custom units!!

[Addled Platypus]

Civ V's idea of diplomacy is "everybody will hate you eventually" no matter what you do. Granted, the City States can be bought, but that's not diplomacy.

too true Ming
even if you bow down to every request - I dont call that fun

[gdijedi7]

I've enjoyed all Civs, though 3 was the worst. Four was pretty good after a while.

I'm really liking 5, though.

Diplomacy's a bit whacked. Friends turn to enemies with astonishing regularity. And for some reason, it seems much easier than other Civs. I've moved up a level. Which made the Barbarians harder and I won the race for fewer Wonders, but not much else has changed.

[nbarclay]

Civ III was a polarizing game. Some people, myself included, loved it from the beginning in spite of some features that could be irritating. (When I got irritated with the corruption model, I consoled myself with the fact that it was a whole lot better than the Call to Power approach of arbitrarily limiting how many cities it's practical to have, or than not doing anything meaningful to curb the power of larger numbers of cities.) Others loathed the game. Conclusions that Civ III was a bad game are either personal opinions or results of people paying too much attention to the negative reactions and not enough to the positive reactions.

The most damning thing about Civ V is not the existence of strong negative reactions, but rather is the absence of strong positive reactions. When people play V instead of IV, their reason tends to be that it's something different, not that they regard it as a fundamentally better game. And when people defend Civ V, they do it mostly based on what they hope the game will be like after patches and expansion packs, not based on the idea that it's already a great game aside from some bugs. That lack of enthusiasm from the game's players and defenders speaks much more harshly than any amount of condemnation from its critics.

[Sava]

The most damning thing about Civ V is not the existence of strong negative reactions

I can confirm the existence of strong negative reactions to Civ 5. RIGHT HERE.

As time passes, I'm starting to be bothered by the rave reviews the game received by mainstream gaming publications like IGN. They gave the game a 9.0 and wrote things like "Combat is just one example of how Civilization V improves the franchise"... and "Civilization V is one of the best turn-based strategy games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing".

I'm sure the reviewer is not and/or was not a strategy gamer.

"Years of experience has helped developer Firaxis understand their audience more than ever, and they've included tools in Civilization V that are going to make the community aspect of it accessible to casual players."

I highlighted "casual players" because this is clearly the direction Firaxis wanted to go with the release of Civ 5. They didn't take much of anything into account with regards to the desires of the community and the direction the franchise should go. We got hexes. YAY! Uhmm. But the rest of the game is garbage.

They want to turn themselves into Activision. They want scores of casual fans buying their product because there is lots of hype but little substance. Once the game is bought, it doesn't matter if we play 5 years worth of Civ or 5 minutes worth of Civ. They have our money. If more people buy, they can afford to release inferior products.

All the better, from their perspective... so they don't need to listen to the incessant whining of hardcore fans like me who want a quality product.

Obviously, it's too much to ask.

It's sad that modders, who don't get paid, are able to create a richer, deeper experience and offer much more content.

When casual fans lose interest, and move on to the next stupid thing. Hardcore fans will still be here. But companies will have alienated their fan bases so much that they will be hard pressed to win back their support.

[Arrian]

Patched-up 1st expansion CivIII > current CivV, to me. CivIII was frustrating in part because it had a lot of promise. Many good ideas were introduced, but the execution wasn't good. The 2nd expansion re-broke some things. So yeah, I'm a wierdo who liked III.

We'll see how CivV ends up. I'm in the minority who hates 1UPT, and that's not going to change in some patch. I also don't much like the rather bland terrain situation, which was, like 1UPT, clearly a concious design choice.

I am fine with the social policies - those, I suppose, have some promise as a good system - possibly representing an improvement over the Civics in CivIV. Diplo is screwy. City-states are a neat idea (first appearing as minor civs in some CivIV modpacks) but I don't feel like they're done quite right (though I can't quite put my finger on how).

I'd like to second nbarclay's and Standup's posts.

-Arrian

[self biased]

[orginally posted by Bashiok on the battle.net forums]
There’s also a lot of different ideas about what “casual” means. It’s different for everyone.

Casual, in our minds, generally means that you can choose to jump into a game at any time, on any day, play for a relatively small amount of time, and make some kind of progress. Diablo II was a casual game, as is Diablo III. You can, of course, sit and play for 6 hours straight if you like, but the ability to jump in, kill some monsters, and get something out of it (drops, XP, story progression) makes it ‘casually approachable’. You won’t be able to keep up with the people that dedicate more time to it, of course, but you’ll still be able to make meaningful progress.

That’s what allows it to be casual, purely depending on the amount of time someone can put toward playing.

As far as accessible vs. easy, we attempt to instill all of our games with an easy to learn, difficult to master approach.

.