4th Official Top Games Poll

[MrBaggins]

Incorrect.

Abstract camels rule... with visible routes to pillage and fight over.

[lord of the mark]

wait a minute - console games are included?? then how about board games, or forum games???

[MrBaggins]

my thoughts exactly...

I was going to put in a Arcade game (centipede or maybe gauntlet... which I sunk thousands into) but I thought they were excluded.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Incorrect.

Abstract camels rule... with visible routes to pillage and fight over.

Mr Baggins, its always a pleasure talking with one of the Holbytla, but your protected life in the Shire has simply not informed of the realities we Men must face in the wider world. Once i sent a trading expedition from Rohan across the Anduin, to make contact with the Variags of Khand (who were not yet complelty subservient to the lord of the Dark Tower) I had no "trade routes" in place. I had no relations with Khand, and had no idea how they would react to the expedition. I didnt even know what the terrain they passed through would be like (indeed that was partial motivation for sending the expedition) I could not send along a large party Riders with them, as that would have provoked Khand. So i sent merchants only, "armed" with the goods of the West (including a considerable amount of South Farthing Leaf, I might add)

I hope this helps.

[Gilgamensch]

a large party Riders

SO how does it match up with the unarmed camels?

[MrBaggins]

Uh sure... I'm a hobbit. Right.

As for your argument... once a camel route is created it's perpetual? Abstract trade routes can be contested... and you also have diplomatic embargos, and trade alliances in CTP2.

and then you have the dichotomy of map movement... a human player can typically... always get a unit where he wants it to go. An AI simply can't...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MrBaggins


Uh sure... I'm a hobbit. Right.

As for your argument... once a camel route is created it's perpetual? Abstract trade routes can be contested... and you also have diplomatic embargos, and trade alliances in CTP2.

and then you have the dichotomy of map movement... a human player can typically... always get a unit where he wants it to go. An AI simply can't...

geez, im LOTM talking to Mr. Baggins, I thought id have some fun with it. Sorry if it bugged you.

Perpetual routes - well yeah, that IS a problem. Ok so the Civ2 system aint perfect.

AI - I havent followed exactly how well the AI does in delivering caravans you may be right. But you could argue as well for automating combat - thats as much of a human advantage over the AI as camel delivery - Just that to lots of civers the unrealistic detailed combat is "fun" and so must be included, realism and balance be damned. Well i happen to find camel movement and delivery "fun"

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch


SO how does it match up with the unarmed camels?

You send a few armed Men, to fend off bandits, but not a large military unit (in reality - in game terms, this would account for why a weak unit can sometimes die when attacking a camel)

[J Bytheway]

After searching through the old polls to find my previous vote in this vein I can hope to be at least marginally consistent, and will go for:

1. Doom (I'm also assuming the various subtly different versions of Doom go together).
2. CTP
3. Starcraft
4. Baldur's Gate 2
5. CTP2
6. Nibbles (A heavily rewritten version of the MS-DOS QBasic example program)
7. Civ 2
8. Master of Magic
9. Aliens versus Predator
10. Space Empires 3

That's pretty much in order of how much time I have spent upon them. It's quite frightening when I think how much time I've spent on all these put together...

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
geez, im LOTM talking to Mr. Baggins, I thought id have some fun with it. Sorry if it bugged you.

Its fine You can't always tell good natured irony from a jab in text...

*SNIP*
AI - I havent followed exactly how well the AI does in delivering caravans you may be right. But you could argue as well for automating combat - thats as much of a human advantage over the AI as camel delivery - Just that to lots of civers the unrealistic detailed combat is "fun" and so must be included, realism and balance be damned. Well i happen to find camel movement and delivery "fun"

One of the issues of camel delivery is that they are basically undefended. For an AI to reliably deliver them, they'd need to be escorted... but then they become a war party.

Military units are by definition force projection and are meant to be contested and contest other forces. Thats why they need to be "real" rather than abstract.

As for fun... I'd say that the vibrant trade... and associated diplomatic deals involved, by improving the quantity and quality of trading by the AI, far outweighs the fun of moving a caravan unit into place. You could be moving a military unit instead... plus having quicker turns... and for my money thats a whole lot more fun.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
Personally, I think that all the series games should be counted as one entity. I know this is like signing my death warrant, but I like all three civ games equally. All of them ate the same amount of my time....well maybe civ 1 did more, cuz at the time, there was nothing like it.

And I can't believe that I forgot about X-com.

I don't know.......Civ2 SMAC and Civ3 are very distinct. I'd count Civ1 and Civ2 as the same, though that would mean making a judgment call on each series so Skanky probably wanted to avoid it.

It is hard this way........I left my vote Quake/Quake3 since I didn't know whether people would vote for 1 or 3 to represent to series. With GK2 it was clearly the best game in the series, but I would quite happily have voted for the series not the game.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MrBaggins


Military units are by definition force projection and are meant to be contested and contest other forces. Thats why they need to be "real" rather than abstract.

I fail to see this - in the Paradox games isnt the combat at least partially abstracted? - yes military units move from province to province, but not this unit attacks that unit, etc Civ style. Tactical military combat - cavalry charging infantry, ZOC's etc simply isnt realistic on the scale of a civ game, especially in early times.

Really the combat is there for "fun". Which is OK, but then we can see that there are different kinds of "fun"

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MrBaggins

As for fun... I'd say that the vibrant trade... and associated diplomatic deals involved, by improving the quantity and quality of trading by the AI, far outweighs the fun of moving a caravan unit into place. You could be moving a military unit instead... plus having quicker turns... and for my money thats a whole lot more fun.

In the early game i dont have many military units (since i tend to play peaceful perfectionist) and my turns arent that long.

I agree with you that caravans are a pain in the LATE game.

[MrBaggins]

Paradox games have dealt with different abstraction... they've abstracted tiles into regions... and thats Risk, not Civ... per se.

We could indeed go another direction with Civ... but if you're sticking with tiles... then you have to have "real*" military units.

* or as real as units can be in Civ.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Paradox games have dealt with different abstraction... they've abstracted tiles into regions... and thats Risk, not Civ... per se.

We could indeed go another direction with Civ... but if you're sticking with tiles... then you have to have "real*" military units.

* or as real as units can be in Civ.

Im not sure you couldnt come up with a more abstract combat system even with tile (i must go and check the civ future discussions again at some point) for example you could have one generic ancient army unit, assumed to be a combined arms unit, rather than having seperate infantry, cavalry, sige engine, etc. And have so few units that you essentially must have your whole army in one tile. Does having a battle spread across several tiles in ancient time make sense, given the scale of a civ tile, and the size of an ancient army? Of course the battles in such a system would be BORING, and so its not really a serious idea.

Granted taking camels away doesnt transform the game into something else as much as radically changing the combat system would.