PolyCast Episode 41: "The Evil Empire"

[DanQ]

PolyCast, an official podcast of Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS), has reached the forty-one episode mark. "The Evil Empire" now netcasting features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, Makahlua and Imran Siddiqui joined by first-time guest co-hosts Robert "CyberShy" Plomp and Samo "Heraclitus" Burja. It runs for 44m59s.

PC is a bi-weekly one-hour audio production of ACS is an ongoing effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice on game strategy; its sibling show ModCast focuses on Civ modding. ACS is the only known website to produce its own Civ podcasts.

[DanQ]

Summary of Topics

- 03m50s | News
  Take-Two Interactive asking shareholders not to sell to Electronic Arts, the official Civilization: Revolution website has been launched and patterns of videogame use with survey.
- 22m59s | Research Lab
  In a detailed follow-up from a related discussion on the show previously, whether to extend the Medieval period in Civilization and if so how.
- 30m21s | Senate
  Defending against amphibious attack in Civ IV and specialist use: before or after full population?

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
  The Civ IV trait you miss the most when you don't have it. Then, things you just can't resist in the game. Good or bad, an unbelievable start location in Civ IV.

[Lancer]

If they do the 'dark' ages suggestion I wonder how difficult it would be, in other words could they put it in the patch or will we have to wait for V?

Enjoyed the show even though I don't speak much Dutch.



I love the German rationalism. "I only use one specialist, the scientist" "I agree, I hate the priests"

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Lancer
If they do the 'dark' ages suggestion I wonder how difficult it would be, in other words could they put it in the patch or will we have to wait for V?

I believe it would depend on the particulars of how Firaxis would implement the suggestion, if they were indeed to do so as you preface.

I suspect it would have to wait for a CivV to be officially present but perhaps there is one or more modders out there who would be willing and able to constitute something for IV (whether that would require BtS or not). Heck, there may already be something like it and none of us were/are aware of it.

Enjoyed the show

Excellent.

even though I don't speak much Dutch.

"I only use one specialist, the scientist" "I agree, I hate the priests"

Those aren't direct quotes.

[Heraclitus]

A nice episode.


to the regular polycast team, I had fun making the episode, sorry I had to go so abruptly, RL can be annoying sometimes.

I hate my voice! I sound horrible! Not only this but, I keep saying "uhh" and "ooh". I hadn't noticed that while we were recording. Someone could have said: "Hey, Samo stop doing that you sound like Dee Dee!"

Editing is ok, it sounds a bit more choppy than I am used to. But considering how it sounded when we were making it…. You're a miracle worker Dan!

Anyway, I think the reason I noticed it more than usual is because I was on the show. I had fun making the polycast, like I said, if I sound a bit off this is because of RL issues at the time. I can say the polycast team are great guys, hope chatting to me wasn’t a bore. If it wasn’t I would love to return to polycast sometime in the future.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Lancer
If they do the 'dark' ages suggestion I wonder how difficult it would be, in other words could they put it in the patch or will we have to wait for V?

A “Dark Age” random event that slowed down the top civs at some point, could be done in a patch or as DanQ said in a mod. It would be realy great if they could add it in the patch. A simple way to do a Dark Age is to make a period when the most advance’s civs city maintenance skyrockets. That way if you are small and advanced you aren’t hurt that bad, but if you are big and advanced, if you are basically ruining away with the game, then it would be a challenge. Actually this could prompt you to split your empire in two, to make it more manageable, like the Romans really did.

You could couple this time with a higher probability of the event which makes barbarian armies appear.

Anything beyond this would only be possible in Civ 5.

[Fierabras]

EA is "The Evil Empire"? Really? Isn't that comparison getting a bit old?

I really feel you missed a change here to highlight some recent developments like John Riccitiello's february speech and the fact that EA (uncharacteristically?) have postponed Will Wright's Spore to ensure a quality release.

Call me an optimist... and I call you a pessimist

[Heraclitus]

Sporecast!

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
to the regular polycast team, I had fun making the episode,

sorry I had to go so abruptly, RL can be annoying sometimes.

No worries.

Editing is ok, it sounds a bit more choppy than I am used to. But considering how it sounded when we were making it…. You're a miracle worker Dan!

Anyway, I think the reason I noticed it more than usual is because I was on the show.

Makes sense.

I had fun making the polycast, like I said, if I sound a bit off this is because of RL issues at the time. I can say the polycast team are great guy, hope chatting to me wasn’t a bore. If it wasn’t I would love to return to polycast sometime in the future.

, and you weren't a bore at all.

Originally posted by Fierabras
EA is "The Evil Empire"? Really? Isn't that comparison getting a bit old?

I really feel you missed a change here to highlight some recent developments like John Riccitiello's february speech and the fact that EA (uncharacteristically?) have postponed Will Wright's Spore to ensure a quality release.

Call me an optimist... and I call you a pessimist

I can see the argument that the EA/"Evil" comparison is 'tired' (I didn't use it myself personally), but I don't regard it as 'expired' though.

We'll see what comes of such talk from EA in practical terms in the months and perhaps years ahead.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


A “Dark Age” random event that slowed down the top civs at some point, could be done in a patch or as DanQ said in a mod. It would be realy great if they could add it in the patch. A simple way to do a Dark Age is to make a period when the most advance’s civs city maintenance skyrockets. That way if you are small and advanced you aren’t hurt that bad, but if you are big and advanced, if you are basically ruining away with the game, then it would be a challenge. Actually this could prompt you to split your empire in two, to make it more manageable, like the Romans really did.

You could couple this time with a higher probability of the event which makes barbarian armies appear.

Anything beyond this would only be possible in Civ 5.

Regarding the splitting or decline of empires, or simply the return of cities to a conquered country and it's rehabilitation, it would be about time. In the current game Germany after WWII would remain only as parts of the nations that divided them, not reemerge as a civ. In the case of republics or democracies conquered cities should not become part of their nation for long. A serious downside, the negative aspects of non representative governments could be easily enhanced.

I like the idea of slowing a civ way out in the lead whether its human or AI.

[Beta]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
A nice episode.


to the regular polycast team, I had fun making the episode, sorry I had to go so abruptly, RL can be annoying sometimes.

I hate my voice! I sound horrible! Not only this but, I keep saying "uhh" and "ooh". I hadn't noticed that while we were recording. Someone could have said: "Hey, Samo stop doing that you sound like Dee Dee!"

Editing is ok, it sounds a bit more choppy than I am used to. But considering how it sounded when we were making it…. You're a miracle worker Dan!

Anyway, I think the reason I noticed it more than usual is because I was on the show. I had fun making the polycast, like I said, if I sound a bit off this is because of RL issues at the time. I can say the polycast team are great guys, hope chatting to me wasn’t a bore. If it wasn’t I would love to return to polycast sometime in the future.

As a guest co-host for this week, thanks for the tips. I will watch my 'uhhs' and 'ooh's.

[Grey Fox]

Saladin actually was the Sultan of Egypt, so maybe his placement isn't that wrong.

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Beta
As a guest co-host for this week, thanks for the tips. I will watch my 'uhhs' and 'ooh's.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Grey Fox
Saladin actually was the Sultan of Egypt, so maybe his placement isn't that wrong.

Egypt != Sudan

[Locutus]

Next time you talk about stock prices and take-overs, you may want to consider having someone on the show that actually knows anything about the topic -- I by no means claim to know much about it myself but even I was embarrassed by your ignorance Sure, T2's stock price is ~$25 now, but what do you think will happen if the EA merger doesn't go through? ~$15 is the real value of T2 stock, so as soon as this merger thing blows over (which it won't, but hypothetically speaking) the stock will immediately drop back down to that level. It's called artificial inflation.

Micheal Pachter happens to be one of the biggest financial experts on the video game industry (and an avid gamer of both console and PC games ) and he's quite right that $26/share is an extremely good price for T2. They've been struggling for years to make a profit (remember the whole board debacle of last year?) and no one else is gonna buy them anytime soon, certainly not at that price. GTA4 might give their stock a boost for a while, but it's not like T2 has anything else on the horizon to follow that up with (that we know about), eventually their stock will drop back down again to somewhere near that ~$15 line. So for the shareholders this really is a very good deal. (If it is for gamers or developers is another matter entirely but, as Imran points out, as a publicly traded company the T2 board is legally required to maximise profits for their shareholders, regardless of just about any other concerns.) EA really needs to get this deal done before GTA4 comes out and T2 is using that ticking clock to bully them into sweetening the pot even more (no pun intended), but there's no doubt $26/share is a very sweet deal as it is...

Also, GTA is possibly the biggest and after WoW the most profitable franchise in gaming, nothing else T2 owns even remotely comes close in terms of monetary value, not even Bioshock or Civ (which was sold for only $22m last time it was on the market while GTA is estimated to be worth over a billion) and certainly not the 2K Sports line-up: the only reason EA would be interested in the latter is to put them out of business -- EA has its own very strong sports brand and 2K is the only company competing with them in this field, they might raid them for the best developers but otherwise they'll most likely just cut the entire brand. So yes, it makes perfect sense that people aren't talking about Civ and other 2K franchises nearly as much as they are about GTA. For all intents and purposes, T2 is GTA.


Fierabras is also quite right in that EA isn't nearly as evil anymore as it used to be, which is fairly widely known in the games industry but of course here at Apolyton we tend to be a little behind on the facts They're quite good about how they treat their developers now, they no longer shallow them whole and destroy any cultural distinctiveness to add it to their own, Borg-style. They realised some time ago that this is quite counter-productive and now make a big deal out of giving a high degree of autonomy to developers, just ask Will Wright. Riccitiello's DICE speech that Fierabras refers to is a case in point here, and people like Ken Levine and even Sid Meier have recently come out of the woodworks to say they wouldn't mind at all if EA bought up T2, Sid in fact even said he's looking forward to it IIRC (but that might just be because he wants to make SMAC2 )

EA still does some things that are quite questionable from a gamer's point of view, like charging for weapons as DLC in Battlefield and hugely inflating the European retail price of Rock Band, but in this they're no more evil than say Activision or T2 (horse armour anyone? ) Many people would've agreed with the 'Evil Empire' analogy a few years ago, but now they're really no more evil than any other major corporation -- I think 'somewhat evil' or 'necessary evil' would be a better description

Other than that, good show