for Civ4

[Jon Shafer]

The scout would be the only reason to play an Expansionist Civ. Without it, the trait would be utterly useless. Why would you want to render a trait pointless like that? The early 2 movement is designed to give them that advantage.

[annoyed]

How could they fix this? Well, aside from a larger map, I'm not really sure.
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Am I the only one who likes the attrition idea. Or am I the only one who has played EU. To me attrition makes sense not only historically but is as easily implemented in a turn-based game as in a real-time game. Also that would keep civ games from turning into almost purely a wargame in order to win at regent or above.

[annoyed]

In response to Cybershy:

Some suggestions should either be included in optional rules or should the game should allow the editor to change things more extensively. We(I) are not blasting the game(although I admit I did when it first came out), there are just different tastes people bring to a civ game, and when a topic as broad as Civilization itself is the subject of a game, more steps need to be taken to allow a variety of grand strategies(not tactics-I have read and been impressed by the multivarious tactics invented that I would never have thought of in a million years) to be used. That's all.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by annoyed
How could they fix this? Well, aside from a larger map, I'm not really sure.
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Am I the only one who likes the attrition idea. Or am I the only one who has played EU. To me attrition makes sense not only historically but is as easily implemented in a turn-based game as in a real-time game. Also that would keep civ games from turning into almost purely a wargame in order to win at regent or above.

Not a bad idea...
Say, 'teams' of scouts can only go so far before having to return to 'base' or els ethey lose HP every so often. Good idea, I like it.

Too bad it won't happen.

[annoyed]

Keep in mind, though, that the rapid expansion at the beginning of the game isn't exactly that fast when compared with the timescale. The early turns are anywhere between 50-20 years at a pop; plenty of time to send settlers out, overcome obstacles and disease, and found a new city (to get a settler from one city to a city site about 6 tiles away takes over 200 game years on average).
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Dude, the whole frigging world is usually completely civilized by the time Christ was born. That is not even close to being in the realm of historical fiction, much less real live history itself. Now uncivilized communities dotted the world for millenia until the present day. I am thinking instead of just roving tribes, static tribes that are not involved in the race to supremacy could be set and some could spring up randomnly.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Trip
The scout would be the only reason to play an Expansionist Civ. Without it, the trait would be utterly useless. Why would you want to render a trait pointless like that? The early 2 movement is designed to give them that advantage.

The scout's 2 movement points are nice, but I would argue that the true value of the expansionist civ is the ability to to pop goody huts and never get barbarians -- the worst you'll ever get is "abandoned hut" whether you pop a hut with a scout or a warrior.

My beef with the expansionist trait is that it is so dependent on map generation / choice -- for those who play random settings, an archipelago map renders the expansionist trait much less valuable; a pangea makes it more worthwhile - unless of course your random barbarian setting produced no barbarians, in which case the trait is once again much less valuable. None of the other five traits has a value that is so variable dependent on map settings.

Catt

[Falconius]

I agree with annoyed. I'm somewhat annoyed myself over this settler diarhea problem.

What I find MOST annoying about it is that all the AI civs do it, no matter who they are. There's no variety to the AI's gameplay aside from military aggression levels and the use of UUs. In Civ I and II, the different Civs had different priorities. Some were expansionists (cranking out settlers), some were militarists (cranking out military units), some were perfectionists (cranking out city improvements). In Civ III, they are all expansionists, which has effectively killed the variety of the gameplay.

Now I know this was done so that the human players who used the ICS strategy would be countered. But what about the rest of us who preferred to use a variety of other tactics? Now we are forced to play the way the ICS players always played, and the way the AI plays now. Sorry, but this has become tiresome, especially on larger maps. On a large map, you spend endless hours churning out settlers just to keep up with the number of cities being built by the AI civs. Is this supposed to be fun?

One possible solution: Give us an adjuster in the editor to set the "settler diarhea" levels of each civ (but with a better name like ICS or REX, or whatever). This, coupled with the Aggression Level adjuster, would enable players to decide what kind of civs to play against: expansionists, militarists, or perfectionists. Firaxis, are you listening?

DEATH TO THE EXPANSIONISTS!

[NeoStar]

Videos.

Those wonder movies were the best touch - even though you stopped watching them eventually I sometimes let the good ones roll.

And victory/defeat movies...

[TacticalGrace]

Wilderness conservation

I think that the barbarians should be made more powerful. If they had more powerful units, either by giving them regulars and vets later in the ame or by giving them more advanced units like swordsman, and they cam in increasing numbers, then the advance of the ultra-setters would be slowed down.

At the moment you have to play with barbs on the highest setting for them to have any impact, and still they are the soft touch and are used for an easy upgrade.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by NeoStar
And victory/defeat movies...

Well, CivIII does have that one Space Race win video. The trouble is, it's so good it just makes you sad that there aren't any others....

[Ksim3000]

Re: Wilderness conservation

[QUOTE] Originally posted by TacticalGrace
I think that the barbarians should be made more powerful. If they had more powerful units, either by giving them regulars and vets later in the ame or by giving them more advanced units like swordsman, and they cam in increasing numbers


I would rather have the Barbarians like what they are at the moment. If they were made any stronger and had larger numbers, It would be such a pain especially while sending Settlers out to find new resources.

[HazieDaVampire]

I'd like to find my self in a Europe of the game, and after a while to go over seas and find a pritty none technological advanced nations, like the Native Americans and the Zulus, that would be cool!

[Coracle]

Originally posted by HazieDaVampire
I'd like to find my self in a Europe of the game, and after a while to go over seas and find a pritty none technological advanced nations, like the Native Americans and the Zulus, that would be cool!

I agree!

Months ago someone did a mod on a real world map with actual start positions. They put the Aztecs, Zulus, and Iroquois in also BUT WITHOUT the ability to create certain improvements. So, when the other civs got there these were relatively backwards people, although they had a lot of towns. I forget the name of it, but hopefully now with scenarios someone can do an even better job.

It made for an interesting game.

[HazieDaVampire]

where you get it?

[annoyed]

Months ago someone did a mod on a real world map with actual start positions. They put the Aztecs, Zulus, and Iroquois in also BUT WITHOUT the ability to create certain improvements. So, when the other civs got there these were relatively backwards people, although they had a lot of towns. I forget the name of it, but hopefully now with scenarios someone can do an even better job.

that is how the game should be. I want competition from other civs, i just do not want to fight to settle every friggin' corner of the earth a 1/3 thru the game, and then end up with a repititious game of war, build-up,war, build-up. Exploration is probably the funnest part of the game, and is taken away to damn soon.