Civilization 5 Announced

[sunrise089]

What I disagree with Sulla heavily is on the unsalvageability of Civ V. The basic framework is good. I mean graphics, sound and the basic idea of the game. The gameplay is mediocre. But you can change that.

I'm not disagreeing with you per se here, but is what you describe even a game? I mean compared to rebuilding any 4x game you can think of? Graphics and sound are fine I guess (though the game ran terribly at release which is a graphics issue), but were they a problem in Civ4?

Is there any justification for salvaging CivV instead of modding Civ4 (and therefore saving $$)?

EDIT: Comments between Archduke's post and mine say similar things. I guess I don't think having art instead of gameplay really means most of the work is done.

[Krill]

The reasons are probably limited in the main to hexes and the 1upt mechanics. Not the greatest reasons, but they do exist. I suppose if you could redesign the culture so that it was player controlled, that would be another reason. Admittedly CIV and FFH2 have given good basis to work from, it does decrease the reasons to creating an entirely new game from scratch, but as has been said previously in this thread, sometimes the design work is the goal in itself.

[sunrise089]

The reasons are probably limited in the main to hexes and the 1upt mechanics. Not the greatest reasons, but they do exist. I suppose if you could redesign the culture so that it was player controlled, that would be another reason. Admittedly CIV and FFH2 have given good basis to work from, it does decrease the reasons to creating an entirely new game from scratch, but as has been said previously in this thread, sometimes the design work is the goal in itself.

Very fair Krill. I'm more in favor of a new game from scratch (not that it's something I could do or even contribute to in a meaningful way) than trying to salvage a failed game though. And, you're right about hexes. I don't like them, but I know many do and they are a real improvement for those folks. Civ5 culture and 1UPT are bugs not features, but I concede on the hexes.

[Brian Shanahan]

I think TheArchduke's point was that you can change the game mechanics relatively easily, while stuff like graphics or the game engine are a lot more difficult to improve. So with heavy modding, Civ V could be a much better game- maybe even like CIV, except with hexes and better graphics and some different units, which is really what it should have been in the first place.

Shouldn't think graphics are harder to modify than game mechanics. All you have to do is get the right code to represent what you want seen in game, or alternatively base the game off one of the more widespread graphics engines around.
But with gameplay you have to check a) does it do what is intended, b) is it balanced, c) is there a way to use it in such a way to break the game and d) can you design an AI that can reasonably recreate a difficult challenge for the human player. Those four and probably a lot more I'm not aware of are surely far larger challenges than seeing if (given the proper resources on the user end) the game looks nice when played. Otherwise why would so many game studios be able to get the graphical side of things down pat but not be able to nail the gameplay involved in the style of game they're making?

[Bobchillingworth]

Most of the best-looking games out on the market also have at least decent gameplay. Many of the best PC games of all-time were also among the best looking games when they were released. Graphics alone don't make gameplay great, of course, but they do often indicate that a studio is investing substantial resources and talent in a title. People like to whine that developers invest too much time nowadays in graphics over gameplay, but I suspect that the number of titles with fantastic art assets and awful play can be counted on one hand.


Anyway, I think that graphics are a bit more difficult to create than just tapping out "the correct code". From what I've heard, the fundamentals of Civ 5 are okay, outside of game mechanics. The game doesn't have coding errors that make it unplayable, it looks good except for the crap river graphics, the engine works as well as any civ game. Those are the things which modders can't reliably improve, either- or at least not as easily. There are already mods for changing the lousy Civ 5 game mechanics, and it's not that hard to balance unit strengths or whatever if those are part of the problem. I don't have any interest in playing Civ 5, but I don't think that it's an utterly hopeless cause, if someone really dedicated decided to make it play more like an actual civ game, or wanted to totally retool it ala FFH.

[Sareln]

Shouldn't think graphics are harder to modify than game mechanics. All you have to do is get the right code to represent what you want seen in game, or alternatively base the game off one of the more widespread graphics engines around.
But with gameplay you have to check a) does it do what is intended, b) is it balanced, c) is there a way to use it in such a way to break the game and d) can you design an AI that can reasonably recreate a difficult challenge for the human player. Those four and probably a lot more I'm not aware of are surely far larger challenges than seeing if (given the proper resources on the user end) the game looks nice when played. Otherwise why would so many game studios be able to get the graphical side of things down pat but not be able to nail the gameplay involved in the style of game they're making?

Art is a skill like any other, but it's not one I possess in great quantity. What I do know how to do is write code . So when I look at platforms for my modding work, I really do favor things with the arts mostly done. More telling, I think, is that art takes a significantly longer amount of time to develop as a skill, so when a player without any industry skills looks at where they can mod things, they naturally gravitate to the code side of things, rather than the art asset side of things.

[MJW (ya that one)]

This video shows its still possible to go wide. http://www.youtube.com/user/Wainyciv#p/a...oG0zM5T5Cs

However, it still can not keep up with RA spam. The only edge this has it does not depend on luck as much. However, it still does because you can not live on Diety sometimes. So no-one really cares about this strat, unless its some weird challege to win 10 games in a row or something.

[Gaspar]

RPS profiled a mod for CIV V. Maybe I'll try that out sometime.

LINK

Out of extreme sleeplessness and the occasional nagging desire to get something out of the $50 or whatever I wasted on this atrocity, I installed the mod profiled here and played it for a bit. And when I say a bit, I mean like 50 turns.

I think they've tried to find a hybrid-balance between Civ 4 and Civ 5, and I respect that. There's clearly some thought put into it, though I think it falls victim to the typical mod disease of more more more. Normally, that's a disaster. With Civ 5, its to some degree necessary because the base game is so... small. Still, the idea that every tech has to have 3 things happening - either bonus, wonder, building or unit, combined with a tech tree far more like the Civ 4 version than the Civ 5 mini-tree means that there's serious bloat going on. I imagine if I could get past how unbelievably slow Civ 5 plays on my system, I might be able to get enough out the mod to enjoy it. But at the end of the day, Civ 5 is the only game I've ever played that completely stifles my computer, so 50 turns is all NiGHTS gets from me. Perhaps someone with a military grade supercomputer at home can give the mod a fairer whirl than I did.

[Caustic Soda]

Yeah, I tried Nights and for me it was a massive improvement over vanilla Civ V. Which makes it... about as enjoyable as vanilla Civ 3 Conquests. Really says something about how little I cared for standard Civ V. I agree with Gaspar, Civ V is one of the few Four X games I know of that can benefit from a "more, more, more" mentality.

[Tasunke]

Civ5 culture and 1UPT are bugs not features, but I concede on the hexes.

I agree.

on all three points (although I must say that I conceded on hexes months ago) :P


Its kind of sad that both Civ V and Elemental turned out as they did. Both potentially awesome 4x games, both relatively boring/unfun/broken for various reasons.

you have Civ V, with good graphics and bad AI ... while you have Elemental, with potential ... but ultimately bad gameplay, horrible UI, and an overall boring feel. (good art tho ... not as large an art budget as Civ V did, but clearly they made clearly good choices in the Art department ... just not at putting all the art assets together to make a great looking game. Elemental looks terrible ... it just has good art that fails when trying to be smashed together.

Ultimately ... I feel that while games in the past have suceeded with short development times ... that simply isn't possible for 4x games anymore. 4x developers simply need to be putting more development TIME into the whole process, which actually allows them to respond to their testers. No reason to have testers if your conclusions and the testers conclusions aren't even on the same planet. (I was not a tester for either game tho, I was simply, and foolishly, a fan of elemental before it ever thought of deserving fandom-> purely due to its potential I guess)


I didn't mean initially to get up on a soap-box, and I suppose some developers simply don't have enough money to increase the time spent on game development. If it is true that the time needed to develop a good game has exceeded the budgets allowable for such games ... then the future of good 4x games may be a dark world indeed.

I guess I was so excited about the possibilities of Elemental, and so dismayed at its bland, generic, horribleness ... that it shadows, to me, even Civ V's failures. At least the civilization series, as a whole, is awesome, more than salvageable it is proven; BTS and FFH2 are awesome. Im sure Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri were fun as well, but I started at Civ 3 so ... for me comparatively Civ IV is the best.

Yet Elemental ... I think more than anything it was too attached to reliving the MoM nostalgia, yet not copying MoM. I think this is because they started out wanting to create MoM2, but were rejected the rights to it.

Other than that, I think they saw the success of GalCiv2 and decided to make GalCiv2 for land ... namely fantasy world planet-side.

People expect space to be filled with emptiness ... that's part of the wonder. But look at a FFH2 bluemarble map, that isn't empty. Compare to a map on Elemental. Not saying that a cluttered Elemental would be good either, and as I said earlier, a lot of Elemental's artwork is great. I think they should have taken hints from HOMM art design, yet make it a 4x game instead of .....whatever HOMM is. (sometimes I love HOMM, sometimes I hate it ... I just wish it was much more 4x-like) ->btw, either HoMM or Disciples ripped the other one off ... I didn't wish to buy Disciples III just to get a HOMM with more "realistic" graphics >.>