Which is why you have several moderators to enforce the rules, if you don't do it yourself, no? Seeing as the policy appears to be the enforcement of the grammar and spelling rule(s) at all costs, even if just a single letter, should not a more thorough watch be kept?
Which is why you have several moderators to enforce the rules, if you don't do it yourself, no?
By several moderators you mean just me, right? Yes, of course you did.
Seeing as the policy appears to be the enforcement of the grammar and spelling rule(s) at all costs, even if just a single letter, should not a more thorough watch be kept?
There are several mitigating factors, but mostly it's due to laziness, at least on my part. Most mistakes are made in earnest by people who otherwise write really well, so they don't really warrant the effort. However, I do try to make a point to correct new users or gratuitous errors. In any case, I guess all I have to say is fucking deal with it.
Most mistakes are made in earnest by people who otherwise write really well, so they don't really warrant the effort.
This was mostly why I was pointing out Rym wasting his time correcting that single missing letter. I mean, he doesn't have the time for that, right? RIGHT? Or is he in the poorhouse?
I though Rym would like this comment on why this guy believes Civ 5 is dividing the fan base.
"I think I've finally put my finger on why Civ V is dividing the fan base... and it's nothing to do with old-timers vs noobs, consoles vs PC or fear of change. What I think it's actually all about is this:
** Civ V has been created from the ground-up using board-game design principles, but Civs 1 to 4 were designed using god game design principles **
I really think it's the totally different game design ideals of each game type (and the extent to which players agree/disagree with those ideals) that is fueling 99% of disputes between players.
God game design principles:
* In god games, designers aim to create a believable miniature living world for us to play with. * The playability/enjoyment for the player is in finding and tweaking the details and watching cause and effect principles in action. In other words, it's about letting the player experiment and 'play' with this alternative world to see what happens. * The rules of god games are adapted to fit around the constraints imposed by real-world considerations and the setting of the game world (historical in this case). So the immersiveness of the game world comes first, the 'game' (what you need to achieve in order to win) comes second. * The fun of god games comes from the "what-if's" and the seemingly unlimited possibilities for developing new strategies to achieve a better result next time. It stems from god-games creating an environment where it's not totally clear exactly how to win. Put another way, it's more about competing with yourself - the satisfaction of progressively optimising your performance in order to win better/smarter.
This is how the Civ series has been designed until now. This has been the expectation and accepted 'Civ way' of doing things. The design team were all about adding little touches to create more immersion and believability in the miniature world they created. They wanted everything to feel alive and somewhat unpredicatable - and for us to have access to play with every little aspect in order to win the game in a very organic way.
...So look at this list and think about Civs 1,2,3 and 4. It should be clear that Civs 1 to 4 were designed by people from the God-game school of design.
Now compare that to the principles of board game design...
Board game design principles:
* Board games have no interest in recreating/simulating any form of reality - it's all about creating a FUN GAME based on an abstracted theme. * Board game designers are experts in distilling complex themes down into a few hard but logical rules that act as nicely defined limits of the game. * In board games, LESS IS MORE. The best board games are those where the theme can be nicely represented by, and abstracted into as few rules as possible - but still allow huge scope for alternative strategies to be employed within them. * The fun/challenge of playing board games is developing strategies to master these limited rules and compete against others. * Board games are not about experimentation and what-if's as much as applying the rules to achieve a definite victory over competitors.
Civ V was designed by Jon Shafer - who I would strongly suggest comes from the board-game school of design.
So I don't think this was some evil plot to destroy Civ - but just the result of somebody being put in charge of design who had a totally different set of gaming values to those who came before.
The end result is a VERY different Civ game to what a lot of people expected. What we're seeing on this very forum are the two different camps: those with 'board game brains' vs those with 'god game brains'. The 'board gamers' think it's an improvement because, to them, less is more and the whole concept has been made far cleaner, more defined and focussed. The God gamers, on the other hand, are just seeing destruction and a reduction in their choices. They are wondering where all the details and experimentation options have gone, see the changes as making the game less realistic and less like the miniature living world they wanted to play with.
Whether this was right for Civ remains to be seen. Was this just an experiment - or the start of a different string of Civ games?
Personally, I really hope Civ V was a one-off and that Firaxis return to the god-game school of design for Civ IV. Board games are great - but PCs are capable of creating worlds with far less restrictions.
For those of us who love god-games, the magic of Civ WAS the immersion in the details of the world, the experimentation and deliberate vagueness of the rules. The game felt bigger than us. We loved it because it was so flexible, so alive and so huge, giving us the ability to try things, make mistakes and so learn what works.
I do like board games too, however - and when I now play Civ V as a board game, I suddenly see the changes as being less malevolent and the game changes as a whole making sense - from that design perspective.
So now I've rationalised the design of the new Civ in my mind, I'm no longer angry. I think it was a design mistake, yes - but certainly not an act of vandalism - or an industry-wide "dumbing-down" in gaming as I (like many Civ fans) initially thought.
I'm interested to know what others think about my theory."
Keep in mind that these are just the first batch of changes that will go in to the first major patch. We're planning more improvements (such as the much-asked-for Hotseat and Pitboss) that will be coming in a later patch.
UI Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn. Aircraft banner corrections – now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it. Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads. Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear. Added option to disable auto-unit cycling. Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the “open†side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction. Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues. Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen. Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc. Auto-populate save menu with save file name Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen
MODDING Category list now displays correctly
GAMEPLAY Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don’t change what you decide was best for a plot). Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip. Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more. Economy – Increased city wealth setting to 25% Economy – Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized. Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game). Trade – Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply. City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states. Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units. Military – Fix for Minuteman movement. Military – Correct promotions for “archer-like†units (horse archers, chariots). Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less. Balance - Engineers +1 hammer
AI Military – Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.) . Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often Military – Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces Diplomacy – AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents. Diplomacy – Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc). City – City specialization and city focus improvements. City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected Workers – Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements Workers – Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.
MULTIPLAYER Exploit – Fix for gifting unit exploit Chat – Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window. Deals – Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed
MISC Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech Save/Load – Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game. Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems. Map – Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the “glowing red orbs†seen on the map are an indicator of this). Map – Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations) Strategic View – Crash fix for units rendering in background. Strategic View – Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot. Eyefinity – Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays. Tutorials – Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments. Multiple crash fixes.
Genghis Khan has been released for free DLC with the powers of "Mongol Terror", which means: "Combat strength +30% when fighting City-State units or attacking a City-State itself. All mounted units receive +1 movement points" The Mongols have two unique units; the well known Keshik and the Khan.
Genghis Khan has been released for free DLC with the powers of "Mongol Terror", which means: "Combat strength +30% when fighting City-State units or attacking a City-State itself. All mounted units receive +1 movement points" The Mongols have two unique units; the well known Keshik and the Khan.
A shit, yeah! Mongols are win for early conquering. I'm all over that.
Also, how do you get this DLC? I didn't see it on Steam.
Civilization Network coming in 2011. A facebook game version of Civ. Any chance this will break the mold of social network non-games pretending to be games?
Civilization Network coming in 2011. A facebook game version of Civ. Any chance this will break the mold of social network non-games pretending to be games?
lol that was quick. I'm assuming the same thing though. Details on the game are extremely sparse, so if they had something they were proud of they'd probably be touting it more.
I just played my first game of Civilization V. It's... Different. Everything you guys mentioned in Geeknights is true, but I haven't played multiplayer yet so I'll have to see about that.
I gotta get used to the hex grid. I played III and IV and got used to the square grid.
Well, I've been getting used to Civilization V, having had only slight experience with Civ IV and none with any prior games.
The last game I played was (India, Continents, Standard, Prince, Standard). Fortunately for my goals, I ended up being alone on a smallish continent. True to Gandhi, I was a pacifist the entire time, without going to war even once - my goal was a cultural victory. Admittedly, I allowed multiple allied city states to be conquered in the process; I felt sorry for them, but it wasn't worth the effort. I got away with building essentially no military units because an allied city state kept gifting me units, and I stayed on good terms with everyone but Catherine.
I built 4 cities, which at the end had 32, 25, 24 and 18 citizens, which apparently is too many for an easy culutral victory, since I only completed my Utopia Project in the year 2047. Interestingly enough, I found that even if I cancelled it, I could win in 2048 by a UN vote by gifting a large amount of gold to each city state beforehand. Had I hit 2050, I would have lost to the Iroquois, who had 1.5x my score. Whew. For testing purposes, I delayed my Utopia Project to finish in exactly the year 2050; this still counted as a victory.
I'm guessing that for an easier cultural victory on a standard size map you need to have at most 3 cities - 2 might be best. On a larger map it seems that the culture cost is reduced, though. Also, if the AI wasn't dumb, a cultural victory would be impossible, I think. On the other hand, it seems altogether too easy to win the game by having a solid income, building the UN, and essentially bribing all the city states to vote for you one turn before a vote.
EDIT: Ohhhhh. Puppeted cities don't count for the social policy cost increase. That would make things a lot easier.
On the other hand, it seems pretty altogether too easy to win the game by having a solid income, building the UN, and essentially bribing all the city states to vote for you one turn before a vote.
Yea the UN vote is pretty buggy and easy to exploit, you just need to make them allies the turn before a UN Vote so you just hoard money and buy the vote. (which is why I never do that win condition)
On the other hand, it seems pretty altogether too easy to win the game by having a solid income, building the UN, and essentially bribing all the city states to vote for you one turn before a vote.
Yea the UN vote is pretty buggy and easy to exploit, you just need to make them allies the turn before a UN Vote so you just hoard money and buy the vote. (which is why I never do that win condition)
But doesn't that seem to sum up the political situation in the US so well though?
I remember my first time playing Civilization V. I got real lucky with the ancient ruins and had a pikeman before anyone else had spearmen. No barbarian could handle me!
On the other hand, it seems pretty altogether too easy to win the game by having a solid income, building the UN, and essentially bribing all the city states to vote for you one turn before a vote.
Yea the UN vote is pretty buggy and easy to exploit, you just need to make them allies the turn before a UN Vote so you just hoard money and buy the vote. (which is why I never do that win condition)
Ah, but I think this might be less of a problem in a multiplayer game. I think a city state allies with whoever has the highest IP with them (unless they've been liberated), so if you wanted to stop a diplomatic victory you could just pay lots to a few city-states, or liberate some. That way you'd spend a lot less thwarting the diplomatic victory than it would cost to achieve it.
I got a spaceship launched towards Alpha Centauri in the year 1928 on King difficulty, which I thought was pretty good, although I know there was plenty of room for improvement. It would've been 1927 if an automated worker hadn't decided to walk onto my capital city before my spaceship part and stopped my part from getting in that year... I've taken quite a liking to Darius; I like to spend pretty much the entire late game in one straight golden age, which is what I did for that game.
I also got a cultural victory in 1983-ish in a different game (only on Prince difficulty too, although on a larger map), so I think the cultural victory is definitely a bitch to get comparatively.
Comments
I only fix things when I see them.
"I think I've finally put my finger on why Civ V is dividing the fan base... and it's nothing to do with old-timers vs noobs, consoles vs PC or fear of change. What I think it's actually all about is this:
** Civ V has been created from the ground-up using board-game design principles, but Civs 1 to 4 were designed using god game design principles **
I really think it's the totally different game design ideals of each game type (and the extent to which players agree/disagree with those ideals) that is fueling 99% of disputes between players.
God game design principles:
* In god games, designers aim to create a believable miniature living world for us to play with.
* The playability/enjoyment for the player is in finding and tweaking the details and watching cause and effect principles in action. In other words, it's about letting the player experiment and 'play' with this alternative world to see what happens.
* The rules of god games are adapted to fit around the constraints imposed by real-world considerations and the setting of the game world (historical in this case). So the immersiveness of the game world comes first, the 'game' (what you need to achieve in order to win) comes second.
* The fun of god games comes from the "what-if's" and the seemingly unlimited possibilities for developing new strategies to achieve a better result next time. It stems from god-games creating an environment where it's not totally clear exactly how to win. Put another way, it's more about competing with yourself - the satisfaction of progressively optimising your performance in order to win better/smarter.
This is how the Civ series has been designed until now. This has been the expectation and accepted 'Civ way' of doing things. The design team were all about adding little touches to create more immersion and believability in the miniature world they created. They wanted everything to feel alive and somewhat unpredicatable - and for us to have access to play with every little aspect in order to win the game in a very organic way.
...So look at this list and think about Civs 1,2,3 and 4. It should be clear that Civs 1 to 4 were designed by people from the God-game school of design.
Now compare that to the principles of board game design...
Board game design principles:
* Board games have no interest in recreating/simulating any form of reality - it's all about creating a FUN GAME based on an abstracted theme.
* Board game designers are experts in distilling complex themes down into a few hard but logical rules that act as nicely defined limits of the game.
* In board games, LESS IS MORE. The best board games are those where the theme can be nicely represented by, and abstracted into as few rules as possible - but still allow huge scope for alternative strategies to be employed within them.
* The fun/challenge of playing board games is developing strategies to master these limited rules and compete against others.
* Board games are not about experimentation and what-if's as much as applying the rules to achieve a definite victory over competitors.
Civ V was designed by Jon Shafer - who I would strongly suggest comes from the board-game school of design.
So I don't think this was some evil plot to destroy Civ - but just the result of somebody being put in charge of design who had a totally different set of gaming values to those who came before.
The end result is a VERY different Civ game to what a lot of people expected. What we're seeing on this very forum are the two different camps: those with 'board game brains' vs those with 'god game brains'. The 'board gamers' think it's an improvement because, to them, less is more and the whole concept has been made far cleaner, more defined and focussed. The God gamers, on the other hand, are just seeing destruction and a reduction in their choices. They are wondering where all the details and experimentation options have gone, see the changes as making the game less realistic and less like the miniature living world they wanted to play with.
Whether this was right for Civ remains to be seen. Was this just an experiment - or the start of a different string of Civ games?
Personally, I really hope Civ V was a one-off and that Firaxis return to the god-game school of design for Civ IV. Board games are great - but PCs are capable of creating worlds with far less restrictions.
For those of us who love god-games, the magic of Civ WAS the immersion in the details of the world, the experimentation and deliberate vagueness of the rules. The game felt bigger than us. We loved it because it was so flexible, so alive and so huge, giving us the ability to try things, make mistakes and so learn what works.
I do like board games too, however - and when I now play Civ V as a board game, I suddenly see the changes as being less malevolent and the game changes as a whole making sense - from that design perspective.
So now I've rationalised the design of the new Civ in my mind, I'm no longer angry. I think it was a design mistake, yes - but certainly not an act of vandalism - or an industry-wide "dumbing-down" in gaming as I (like many Civ fans) initially thought.
I'm interested to know what others think about my theory."
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94438
The Mongols have two unique units; the well known Keshik and the Khan.
Also, how do you get this DLC? I didn't see it on Steam.
Civilization Network coming in 2011. A facebook game version of Civ. Any chance this will break the mold of social network non-games pretending to be games?
I gotta get used to the hex grid. I played III and IV and got used to the square grid.
The last game I played was (India, Continents, Standard, Prince, Standard). Fortunately for my goals, I ended up being alone on a smallish continent. True to Gandhi, I was a pacifist the entire time, without going to war even once - my goal was a cultural victory. Admittedly, I allowed multiple allied city states to be conquered in the process; I felt sorry for them, but it wasn't worth the effort. I got away with building essentially no military units because an allied city state kept gifting me units, and I stayed on good terms with everyone but Catherine.
I built 4 cities, which at the end had 32, 25, 24 and 18 citizens, which apparently is too many for an easy culutral victory, since I only completed my Utopia Project in the year 2047. Interestingly enough, I found that even if I cancelled it, I could win in 2048 by a UN vote by gifting a large amount of gold to each city state beforehand. Had I hit 2050, I would have lost to the Iroquois, who had 1.5x my score. Whew. For testing purposes, I delayed my Utopia Project to finish in exactly the year 2050; this still counted as a victory.
I'm guessing that for an easier cultural victory on a standard size map you need to have at most 3 cities - 2 might be best. On a larger map it seems that the culture cost is reduced, though. Also, if the AI wasn't dumb, a cultural victory would be impossible, I think. On the other hand, it seems altogether too easy to win the game by having a solid income, building the UN, and essentially bribing all the city states to vote for you one turn before a vote.
EDIT: Ohhhhh. Puppeted cities don't count for the social policy cost increase. That would make things a lot easier.
I've taken quite a liking to Darius; I like to spend pretty much the entire late game in one straight golden age, which is what I did for that game.
I also got a cultural victory in 1983-ish in a different game (only on Prince difficulty too, although on a larger map), so I think the cultural victory is definitely a bitch to get comparatively.