Predictability: good or bad?

[DrSpike]

Come on, you can't be telling me there is no better way (even under the restrictions you mentioned) of programming the artificially predictable factors under discussion?

[LDiCesare]

I mean that randomness is information and that the file for the map will have three times as much information in it, hence however you compress it it will still be three times as big.
Now, no computer program is random, so you always simulate randomness, and yes it could have been better done, but you would have had two kinds of patterns instead of one for instance, which is pain in the a** to code, and would still leave us unhappy because it wouldn't take that long to find out which pattern to choose.
And again, a game like MOM(edited, not MOO, but MOM, which is more like civ in terms of maps) had all the randomness you could want from its maps, huts and specials, so yes, it was feasible even at Civ2 time. I just wnat to stress it is not a question of being lazy, it is a question of designing things properly. So please blame the designers rather than the programmers here if you want to blame someone. Designers should get the programmers to do what they want, not the other way around - though don't tell people at Clash of Civs that I said that they would remind me of it when I don't want to code something -.

[solo]

How well a game is designed, makes a big difference. Sometimes predictability can spoil a game, when taking advantage of that predictability creates an insurmountable edge over the AI or human opponents. Games flawed in this way become boring and never last long.

Overall, Civ II's design is excellent, but in my opinion there are flaws, and I would agree that one of them was listing the continent # next to the grid coordinates that are displayed in the game. This allows black clicking, which does go against the spirit of the game, where the "unknown" should be left that way until actually explored by players. No ingenuity or skill was needed to notice or implement this piece of visible information.

On the other hand, I think a good design feature for a game is including little puzzles, which when unlocked, provide more predictability. This gives a game more complexity and depth and opens up the possibility for new or surprising strategies. One thing many of us have found lacking in Civ III, is the lack of depth and lack of hidden puzzles. For players like myself, and especially for Oedo and Samson, as much fun comes from the "eureka" moment of solving one of these puzzles, as comes from playing the game.

Many years ago, many chess players were complaining how the increase in knowledge was making that game too predictable, especially in the first part of the game, the "best" strategies were limited to a group of "standard openings". Some suggested switching the position of the some of the pieces in the set up, to give chess fresh start, i.e. lessen predictability and let pure skill prevail. But the design of the game and its depth prevailed. Some players started experimenting with "hypermodern" (well, it was to them) openings which ended up revolutionizing opening theory. Chess has such depth that players no longer lament important discoveries about the game. The more knowledge, the better.

Civ II does not have the depth of chess, but I do not think recent discoveries about the game have made it predictable enough to become boring. Instead, I think they have given the game new legs by opening up a whole new area of strategy. Although available to all, this new knowledge about trade will take some skill to implement well.

[LDiCesare]

I agree civ2's design is quite good, but the specials patterns could have been changed with little trouble, and is glaringly obvious. The trade part is non-random, but the formulas make sense. Well, they seem to. I think some random factors could have been added at the time and would have added to the fun. They were not either because the designers were too lazy to look at other games like MoM which used them or because programmers told them that would be too expensive to code, or because Sid likes bananas.

Anyway, the game IS good, even without much randomness, and the good point there is that you can use it both to make things simpler for you (cheap cheat), but also to make things more challenging (OCC), so it is a bit a double-edged sword. However, moddable randomness could even have been better (instead of no huts/huts, have no huts/regularly placed huts/randomly placed huts). This option would even cancel my arguments about save file size, as you could warn that some options will slow the game.

[solo]

I agree that really randomizing hut locations would have made Civ II a better game. Same goes for the location of specials and for revolution years. But I like being challenged by puzzles about such things as changing tech lists, key civs, and the complexities of the trading system.

[rah]

Or at least a pattern that was harder to visualize and had some variations.

[DrSpike]

It can't be hard to come up with a pattern that is to all practical intents and purposes indecipherable.

[Straybow]

Seeds & saves

Random (size, huts, specials, terrain)
…
Save game size tripled! Means you also will take three times as long to open/save games.

LDiC, the one reason why Civ is limited to 7 civs + barbs is map knowledge. With 8 total "players" you can use 8 bits/tile to keep track of who has explored what, right? But then you also have to keep track of who has seen terrain improvements, cities, and units as they change or move during the game. Oops, suddenly it isn't so simple; you've got 7 bits (or more) per tile feature to keep track of.

All considered, a couple extra bits per tile (which can be allocated in many efficient ways) dedicated to specials and huts will not appreciably change save file size or loading time.

If I could ever manage to get FreeCiv running I'd tell you how well their coding works, or not, as the case may be. I do know they have totally random special and hut locations.

[Scouse Gits]

I think I hold the middle ground here - I use Oedo, of course, but in SP (as opposed to Succession Games) ignore a lot of the 'pattern knowledge' that we now have - personally I hardly ever black click etc...

At the end of the day - this knowledge allows one to play even better, at the expense of much cerebration, this is only 'needed' when there are other humans involved.

Good or Bad - don't ask me - it just is

SG[1]

[Straybow]

I consult the Seers of Blackclick if I happen to be on a smallish continent and finding something within Trireme range is critical.

[rah]

Using no extra memory or counters they could have designed the special and hut pattern that could have been more unpredictable. Come on, add an overlapping pattern and it would take finding too many reference points (or at least considerable more) to figure out what pattern you were in. Besides think of building on a special and having another one in range. The possiblities are enless. You could get some real spectacular locations.

RAH

[DrSpike]

Yeah I think the guy saying it would make the game too big was full of ****, to be honest. It was lazy, nothing more. And I think (although all MPers agree you have to play the game as it is) most MPers would prefer to be able not to have black map clicking, triangulation, hut and special patterns. I know I would.

[LDiCesare]

Okay, performance were maybe not an issue in civ2 (although I think the code mimics civ1, in which it might have been). But I stick to the only point I wanted to make: It was lazy designing more than programming. Sure, it is easy to do some random stuff. They didn't want to because the DESIGNERS didn't want to. As I said, MoM was out between civ and civ2, so they could have done it if they had just looked at another game. Now, don't blame programmers please.It would have been easier for a designer to say "do the same as in mom" instead of "do the same as in civ1", so blame the designers who were too lazy to even look at other existing games (saying "do huts as in mom" for instance) instead of the programmers.

As for complicated patterns, the trade goods is quite complicated, but not undecipherable, and still not random. I think, however, this one has some merit not being random.

[DrSpike]

I must confess I don't understand the programmers/designers distinction. Wouldn't the programmers make the decision how to implement the 'random' hut pattern?

[LDiCesare]

In a first release (civ1) they would. In subsequent versions, unless told differently, they would stick with what theu used to do. So yes in civ1 they may have done better, but that was the first game of that kind, and you can't get it right all on the first time. Then, unless told otherwise, they would reuse the same concept exactly. I don't know how it works exactly at game companies, I know that when I applied to work for one of them, they clearly told me that, as a programmer, I wouldn't have any option to affect the design, (and so I don't work for them). That ment while designing such a game the people at that firm would have had the programmers either reuse existing code or develop one which did exactly the same thing (which is supposed to be way faster because you don't have effects on data structures etc.)...
Anyway, I think I agree with you on the fact that someone has been lazy. The who we can't know for sure, but that probably doesn't matter much.