BTS and the upcoming slavery nerf

[EyesOfNight]

its amusing to us though that your lack of tact in dealing with people online is the same reason you cant play anything but 1v1 games well.

we realize you dont care what anyone thinks, or that the idea of tactful discussion is a figment of the world's imagination, but that's not going to stop us from calling you out on it and pointing and laughing at your folly.

The reason I play mainly 1v1 games is because I don't feel like spending the time on a larger game. Ming's saturday night game takes 8 hours for example. I have enough trouble forcing myself to play a 1 hour 1v1, let alone an 8 hour game on terrible settings.

I would also recommend you find another word other than "tactful" and stop linking it to just about anything you can possibly think of.

There are only two people doing the pointing and laughing right now: Me at people like you for taking me so seriously, and Firaxis at me because they know they don't have to take me seriously. In the end I'll be pointing and laughing at Firaxis when Civ5 flops and the Civ franchise meets its long awaited end.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by EyesOfNight
What don't you seem to understand that I don't care about what you think?

Ming: Of what value is letting this farce continue if he has no intention of trying to build support for his ideas? The main purpose of this thread seems to be to puff EoN's ego about how good a player he is (a contention put into doubt by your brother's account of a game), how much sp sucks, and how only lamers play on different settings than him. At least inflict him on the On-Topic people.

[EyesOfNight]

Ming: Of what value is letting this farce continue if he has no intention of trying to build support for his ideas? The main purpose of this thread seems to be to puff EoN's ego about how good a player he is (a contention put into doubt by your brother's account of a game), how much sp sucks, and how only lamers play on different settings than him. At least inflict him on the On-Topic people.

It's not that I don't want to build support for my ideas, it's that the reality is they aren't going to listen anyway. They didn't listen to the beta testers and they certainly aren't going to listen to me. Also, last I checked, nobody is forcing you to read this thread. Feel free to go read another thread. Good luck.

[DinoDoc]

It's the double standard that grates me more than anything. Maybe I want to post about the issues of the day in the Civ 4 forum. Truth be told, I've barely read your posts.

[EyesOfNight]

Truth be told, Firaxis isn't reading them either. Either way, you're contributing to this thread by increasing the view count and post count. Here's to being useful.

[rah]

Originally posted by EyesOfNight
Look, I don't care if you like your settings. Just don't ****ing tell me that your settings are competitive settings that are a good judgement of skill. Your settings weren't in that category in Civ2, and they definitely aren't in Civ4.

You are having problems reading, or understanding. Take your choice.

IF the better player finishes near the top 80% of the time........Skill must play a part in it. Correct.

Ok, now stay with me. SO that must mean that how you finish 80% of the time is a real good judgement of skill. Even statistically.

SO now dispute this or stop repeating your nonsence.

Now I'll agree that we may be judging a slightly different skill set. BUT a skill set is still being judged.
And we can agree to disagree which is the most important skill set to judge to ourselves. And please don't repeat that your opinion on it is the universal truth.

[EyesOfNight]

Rah, I've argued this with you for years. You're a middle aged guy who is past his prime and hates to be called uncompetitive. I understand that, really, I do. At some point though you have to accept reality and stop living in that little dream world of yours. I'm not going to reply to you anymore because there is no getting through to you, and you're on the fringe anyway so I have that luxury. I'm taking a page out of Firaxis' play book on this one and just ignoring you.

[rah]

Typical, you don't answer my simple question.

[EyesOfNight]

I don't see any questions in that previous post up there.

[MJW]

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Ming
I think one of the primary problems is that like every other Civ game to date, IV was designed as a SP game. Considering that's the heart of the market, it's no surprise. It was not designed as an MP game. If it was, we might be having an entirely different discussion.

Actually... this is not strictly true. As mentioned during their presentation at Apolycon, Civ4 was designed as an MP game initially, with the AI coming later. The first several versions, iirc, were MP games. This is not to say that the SP game wasn't high on their list of considerations, I'm sure, and that SP isn't the majority of the players; but Soren has stated that it was designed as an MP game from the start.

EoN, Civ4 undoubtedly has some influence from RTS just as it has influences from any other game - and as there aren't that many major TBS games right now that's to be expected. However, it was not designed as an RTS. It was designed to be more accessible to RTS players but that does not mean it was designed to have RTS elements per se, and it certainly is not an RTS.

I think this is ultimately one of the things that separates the two major groups of Civ4 players. Some of us like playing it like an RTS - heavy on the combat, with the rest of the game supporting the combat - and some don't like that aspect at all, and want to play the other elements of the game, dominating the demographics instead of the power graph.

[EyesOfNight]

I think you're way off base and don't really know what you're talking about. I see you registered in 2004, and it looks like you're an SP player, so I guess I'm not really surprised at your response. You're an example of why I didn't post in the on-topic forum. Now kindly find your way back there.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by EyesOfNight


Actually they did want to add in RTS elements, and in fact on the original Civ4 box they describe it as such. Also, I was told by beta testers that they wanted to bring in more RTS players. So that statement is just simply not true. All you have to do is look at how they designed the game to see what they were going for. If you can't see that, there's not much left to say to you.
Also, it was clearly not too complex and unapproachable for new players as Civ2 sold millions. This idea of simplifying because people can't handle complexity is part of the reason for the decline in PC game sales. We aren't a bunch of drooling idiots.

You can say that all you want, but the designers have said in interviews that they wanted to make the game more approachable to new players. That, and it makes logical sense... a more approachable game means more new players.

Why are you talking about modding? Do I look like an SP player to you? Do you honestly believe modding is the key to MP? If you are trying to tell me to mod the game and then use it in MP I would appreciate you not post in this thread anymore as you are absolutely clueless of the effects of mods on MP communities. Also, increasing collateral damage is about the worst idea I have ever seen. In fact, the collateral damage idea was poorly thought out which is why you often end up with catapult wars that are a matter of who attacks first. I would completely remove collateral damage from the game, but I won't bother explaining to you how as you don't seem to understand the game very well.

EoN, modding is simply remaking Civ4 into what you want to play. If you mod the game into the Civ4 you want to play, others can also play it, multiplayer, with you... and I guarantee you that if you made a mod that was well made, balanced, and played MP better than the current game, many would play it with you.

Why are you asking me if I hate slavery? Where have I said I hate slavery? Have you read this thread at all? If you can't be bothered to read what we've been talking about then don't post. It's really that simple. Also, why would I increase the military cost of units? Again, you clearly don't understand what that would do. I'm not trying to hamper players and handicap them even more with an even more stringent maintinence system. I'm trying to make it so that economy fuels military and the players that grow and expand the fastest will be able to field the largest militaries. Your final point is just ridiculous in that you feel that losing a city should not result in losing units. Since they decreased the total number of cities, the importance of a city should be increased and that means the loss of units for the loss of a city.

I asked because you specifically mentioned addressing the problem of Slavery, rather than the actual problem.

You aren't reading my posts very well, sir, not the other way around... I specifically described how the effect you want could be simply and effectively accomplished by adjusting certain elements of the military unit costs. By increasing the non-free unit costs astronomically, you would effectively make it impossible for players to have military units beyond their free unit capacity; which would allow you to have a "population-supported" military, rather than a gold supported military. When your units cost 20gp each beyond the free ones (or 200, or 2000) you're not going to have many beyond the freebies.

My final point was related to balance. If you tie losing a city to losing units, that means a player who is losing will just lose more - which is simply not good for game balance. You want players to have a chance to win the game, or they won't keep playing... and so if you tie losing one city to losing a dozen or more military units, in a game where most players have at most a dozen cities and usually fewer, a player who loses one city might as well give up then.

Sometimes - in fact, usually - game balance must trump all other considerations, or you do not end up with a fun game at the end. That is something any game designer must understand.

I'm sorry, why are you talking about mods again? Did you bother to read the thread?



I'm sorry, what is so RTS about increasing the importance of buildings, increasing the complexity and options in stacks, and removing the simplicity of simply making a massive stack and moving it from point A to point B? Have you even played an RTS before? I have, and I was top 5 in the US for it.

I don't care what your ranking is, and have never cared about such things. However, you need to understand your own biases and rationales. You say in this post "increasing the importance of buildings", yet you describe in the earlier post not increasing their importance, but increasing their military value. You talk about increasing the options and complexity of stacks, and do not understand that the difference between a RTS and a TBS is the focus on tactics in the former.

In an RTS, you control a large army on a single battlefield. The "strategy" in an RTS is in the decisions made in building up the army (and it is certainly important); but ultimately the combat in an RTS is primarily about tactics. This is why i'm not particularly good at RTS (although I enjoy them quite a lot, I would never be competitive in them). I am not good at the tactical portion of the game, but excel at the strategic aspects. Hence why I am much better at TBS games than at RTS. Tactical decisions are much less valuable in a TBS. Most combats are decided from the outset - either the diplomacy leading to the war (leading to an imbalance of power) or the civ-building leads to a larger, more developed, or better equipped army on one side or another. I would say that over 90% of combats i've been in were decided from the outset, one way or the other. The only battle I've been in lately that was decided by tactics was three weeks ago, when I got MD's stack to chase me into his western city, and then stranded them there and headed with my faster stack east...

I'm pretty sure I said this is just one small part of what I would change. You haven't heard about the rest. Also, last I checked, in MP no one wins by simply building buildings and winning on score. This may come as a ground breaking surprise to you, but the MP players here make up like .01% of the total MP players playing on gamespy. The 99.9% of players on gamespy all play one way and that is very military focused.

Sure, most MP games are military focused. Not 99.9% - probably 70% at most - but still, most. However, most civ games are SP... and thus the game must be well playable by SP players.

Frankly, I wonder sometimes why some of the gamespy players play Civ. Many of them seem to enjoy playing RTS-style [which is precisely what your mirror-map, no barbs, etc. style is!] and I wonder why they don't just do that... Perhaps there is a market for a TBS/RTS hybrid, not like RoN or something, but for a true hybrid like what you describe. However, I'd not like to see Civ be that hybrid (unless it were a modded Civ).

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by EyesOfNight
I think you're way off base and don't really know what you're talking about. I see you registered in 2004, and it looks like you're an SP player, so I guess I'm not really surprised at your response. You're an example of why I didn't post in the on-topic forum. Now kindly find your way back there.

I've played about three times as many MP games as SP games in the last year, so ... I guess I'm an MP player

You need to get under your skull that CIV IS AN SP GAME ALSO, and that any suggestions you make about Civ must include SP players equally. Civ4 was made equally MP and SP, and thus has a lot of features for MP players - but ultimately there are far more people who play Civ SP than MP, and that is not going to change any time soon.

I would love to engage you in a discussion of the merits of Civ4 (or Civ in general), and am doing my best to do so. EoN, you need to engage that discussion also, and discuss the topic and my opinions, not simply swipe your hand at them and dismiss them as idiotic without giving them a thought. That is trolling, not discussing. Perhaps that is why the Civ4 forum members stopped talking to you?

[Maquiladora]

While Civ4 was built with MP in mind from the beginning, it was so it functioned smoothly right from the beginning (so no repeat civ3), not that it was designed as a MP game.