Will you be dumb enough to buy Beyond The Sword?

[Blake]

Heheh the desert rivers haven't been fixed because sometimes life should be a little cruel.

[LDiCesare]

Well, they should be fixed because if your early scout finds a desert river with no flood plains, you know there's a capital up there and can start rushing being 100% certain to reach an opponent's capital when there is no reason why you should know where it is.
Maybe you told the ai to do that?

[Solver]

The annoying part about chess AIs is that modern computers almost can play well even without a decent algorithm to reduce search space. Imagine running a chess program on one of those prototype 32-core chips. Chess is very much suited to parallel computing, and with such computing power, it'd play well even if your search-space reduction algorithm was far from optimal.

But indeed, anyone who knows the basics of AI programming and relevant search patterns can write a chess AI that will beat non-pro players. Heck, I imagine I could probably do it, and that's saying something, given my lack of knowledge in AI programming

[Mr. President]

Re: Re: Re: Will you be dumb enough to buy Beyond The Sword?

Originally posted by Ming


He actually believes what he says. As an MP player, he does raise some valid points. And I have no intention of moving this thread. I'm interested in seeing what some of the people that never go to the on topic forums have to say about the game.

So why do we even bother having the on topic forums any more?

[DinoDoc]

I know. I've decided to open up a franchise in Civ 4 General.

[ColdWizard]

I demand a poll option of "Civ3 LE killed civ for me, so I did not even consider buying Civ4, let alone any expansions they may have created/be creating".

[Elok]

Originally posted by AAHZ
*edited to protect Kuci's delicate eyes*

pieceâ„¢

BTW, DBZ still sucks.

EDIT: There, is that better?

[Kuciwalker]

Quoting defeats the ignore feature - FACT.

Otherwise, I agree with you.

[ZEE]

get a life

[Impaler[WrG]]

I recommend everyone BUY, its atleast three times the content as Warlords and we will see a rapid move of all fan mods (themselves nearly a comparable value) into the new code base, my own mods included.

[Elok]

Originally posted by AAHZ
get a life

You watch DBZ, you're in no position to tell me that.

EDIT: Loinburger incident? Do you mean the time Loin and I spent a couple of pages laughing at your "chat war" posturing? I'm not really PO'ed about that, it was funny in a bizarre way. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen, that's for sure.

Oh, and on topic as per request: I wish my computer was powerful enough to even RUN Civ 4. I'm a terrible player, so I wouldn't care about Horribly Simple Strategy. I'm with GePap in that I play for the simple pleasure of raising a civilization from cave-dwellers to the space age. It's relaxing. The military aspect is rather secondary to my POV. That's also why I'm such a terrible player; I get in the habit of building up my civ and ignoring the outside world, so when the Babylonians, Zulus etc. attack I get swamped.

[ZEE]

meh. youre still pissed at me about the "Loinburger Incident." You know what i mean. Laurentius' last thread about the PS2.

and dont try to play stupid, either, Elok.

pieceâ„¢

[Ming]

Discuss the topic folks...

[Zinegata]

Well, personally, the main reason why I wouldnt' get BTS immediately is because the first release usually, frankly, sucks. I'd wait for the first, maybe even second patch before I ever install anything from Firaxis again :P.

(And yes, I'm still mad at how I wasn't able to play Civ IV out of the box. I'm that vindictive ).

As for the specific gameplay design criticisms by EON - I think they're not exactly warranted. As Vel once said, Civ is a good empire-building game, but it tends to suck at a wargame. And that's fine. In Civ, you're a world leader. Not all world leaders actually take an active role in planning every little detail of their military actions. Those that try (Hitler being one of them) often end up being overwhelmed.

(In fact, it's been noted in some books that while Hitler understood quite well how a regiment or division operated, he never could grasp how to command the entire armed forces of the Nazi state - in stark contrast to the Allies whose main leaders avoided dabbling in regimental-level matters and simply directed national policy, while leaving professional generals and staff planners to work out the details).

There is a set limit as to what the human mind can process, no matter how brillant, intelligent, or mature the individual. Limiting the complexity of the game is often good design.

I do agree to being peeved about the constant "nerfing" however, although for different reasons. All of the rules changes made by the patches (i.e. changing what Castles do, changing how much shields you get by chopping) is confusing the hell out of me and making it hard for me to play the game.

It's kinda annoying to be playing the game, expecting to do something, only to find that they changed something in the last patch. And frankly, this seems to be done too often, and often it seems to be an unnecessary change. Most classic games (i.e. Chess) almost never change the rules of the game, and even ever-evolving games (i.e. Magic: The Gathering) have a strict schedule regarding when changes to the game can be made. Firaxis on the other hand doesn't seem to mind confusing their players by making many gameplay changes willy-nilly in every patch.

(To be fair, many other games are now suffering from this "willy-nilly" gameplay changing, but frankly I think people have to start saying "Enough is enough! I'm not even playing Civ IV anymore!")

[Aeson]

No. (Poll.)

Because someone mentioned my name here, and the search function works when I visit every other month or so. (You know the question. Thx 4 HOF BTW.)