Biggest Disappointments With Game Engine?

[Geoff the Medio]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Biggest Disappointments With Game Engine?

Originally posted by Dominae
... exploration and expansion must come to an end sometime, right? The problem is that these two fun things are not really replaced with anything, just more troop movement and improvement construction. ...

I've always hated how map trading removes most of the excitement and necessity of exploration. I seem to go from a little bit of my local area to a my whole continent suddenly when I meet neighbours. Later, if ocean crossing reveals a new set of civs preveiously unmet, there's no need to explore this new exciting landmass, since the whole map can be bought for a few old techs.

If the ability to trade maps was delayed until much later, perhaps around the time of navigation, the early game fun would be significantly increased and extended, I think...

I realize I could just not accept maps in trade... but if I could just buy a map, it seems pointless to manually explore...

[Dominae]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Biggest Disappointments With Game Engine?

Originally posted by Geoff the Medio
If the ability to trade maps was delayed until much later, perhaps around the time of navigation, the early game fun would be significantly increased and extended, I think...

This is a great idea, and one that I would love to try out in a mod sometime...


Dominae

[alva]

And the ability to sell Worldmap - Territorymap, especially for MP games...

[WarpStorm]

Delaying map trading is an easy mod and a lot of fun (I tied it to Navigation). While you're at it delay contact trading also.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

My major disappointment is that the AI seems too scripted. I've seiged cities for turns that had catapults/cannons/artillery in them and not once did they fire on the seiging units. I modded settlers to remove 3 population, and the AI cities will build a settler first even tho it will finish production long before that city has the needed population thus wasting many many turns of production. Another example is tile improvements. The AI does not determine the needs of the city when it is building tile improvements. I allow forests to be mined, and now the AI plants/mines every plains tile even if that causes the city to stop growing without using all these modified tiles. City production frequently makes no sense. many times I've seen an AI losing a land war, yet their cities are either building cultural buildings or naval units, neither of which helps them from being wiped out by land forces. I also wished the AI understood massed formations. I rarely see SODs since I got PTW, and many AI offensives are easily destroyed because their units are so scattered that they are picked off piecemeal

All these said, it is still an enjoyable game, but there are huge improvements that could be made to make it a great game instead of just an enjoyable one.

[Konquest02]

Originally posted by ALPHA WOLF 64
I modded settlers to remove 3 population, and the AI cities will build a settler first even tho it will finish production long before that city has the needed population thus wasting many many turns of production.

This way you really disadvantage the AI. It already had tendancies to build settlers even though its cities didn't have the correct population. With you modification, it will lose a couple of crucial turns in the early game waiting for its first settler to be built...

Re No trading maps before navigation: This is a great idea, which we should try in a mod one day...

--Kon--

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Konquest02
This way you really disadvantage the AI. It already had tendancies to build settlers even though its cities didn't have the correct population. With you modification, it will lose a couple of crucial turns in the early game waiting for its first settler to be built...

Not all cities are handicapped because I also raised the cost of settlers. My goal was to prevent the world from being fully settled by 500ad. Since the AI gets a free unit every time it founds a city, this seemed a fair tradeoff. But that doesnt change the fact that its fairly simple for the AI to determine whether it should start a unit/building that isnt useful instead of being hard coded to automatically build a settler. As many programmers are fond of saying "hard coding is bad", thus gualifies as a game engine disappointment.

[Jaybe]

What we really need is to be able to separate bombard units from bombard city/terrain capabilities. An expansion of the Lethal Bombard Sea and Lethal Bombard Land options.

Then we could make archer/longbow units a bombard unit with 1 defense point.

[Master Zen]

Returning to the Battlefield Medicine discussion

"Healing" in Civ is taken as a generic term for both physical human healing as well as machine repair. For non-mechanical units this would of course wound healing and attrition replacement. For machine units it would also mean vehicle replacement and repair.

The problem with the game is in the logistics system, or lack thereof which would effectively make battlefield medicine a difference in "healing" or "supply". Still, this would actually seem to much as even most wargames fail to differentiate from these two things.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by ALPHA WOLF 64


Not all cities are handicapped because I also raised the cost of settlers. My goal was to prevent the world from being fully settled by 500ad. Since the AI gets a free unit every time it founds a city, this seemed a fair tradeoff. But that doesnt change the fact that its fairly simple for the AI to determine whether it should start a unit/building that isnt useful instead of being hard coded to automatically build a settler. As many programmers are fond of saying "hard coding is bad", thus gualifies as a game engine disappointment.

The AI has a nasty habit of stopping expansion after a certain point. I made a custom map, 24 civs, with huge continents available to Russia, Britain, the US and Germany. The Russians were the only civ among these to constanty colonize their continents fully. Even up to 1800 huge parts of the US and British continents were uninhabited except for one or two coastal cities by other civs.

I tried going around this by modding them to produce many Settlers but I haven't played on the map yet to see the results.

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Delaying map trading is an easy mod and a lot of fun (I tied it to Navigation). While you're at it delay contact trading also.

Hmm -- then push Explorers back to Map Making, and maybe, just maybe, they'll finally have a role to play . Expansionist civs would still get an early advantage with the availability of Scouts, it just wouldn't last particularly long.

I'll have to try that one out. Wonder if the AI could cope?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Master Zen
The AI has a nasty habit of stopping expansion after a certain point.

This is because it is able to avoid the effects of Corruption due to number of cities. It definitely expands less aggressively once it reaches or surpasses the OCN. This was a smart move on the designers' part, but with the annoying side-effect that the AI has a tough time winning by Domination, when it clearly should (see AU203).


Dominae

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

i doubled the number of cities since I dont like how corruption is handled, so in my games, the AIs never stop expanding. Its not uncommon for AI cities in the 1800s to contain 1 or more sleeping settlers. This also goes back to the fact that AI production is scripted and not as needed. An AI that builds what it needs would be a substantially more challenging opponent, instead of just giving the AIs freebie units and other cheats.

[Sava]

There are too many to list... I start with combat though. Trip, you did a good job summing up what sucks about it. Firaxis seemed more interested in remaking old Civ games and giving them some new things instead of making an entirely new game. And with the former, they released a severely-retarded, buggy version.

[Verto]

My biggest disappointment: There is a limit to the amount of ego enlarging praise that can be showered upon me.

And the lack of genuine creativity shown by the designers.