Civilization 5 Announced

[MJW (ya that one)]

I was not thinking of jews when I made that comment. I was just trying to say why that guy kind of looked like jon to some people while that is not really the case. I have a big nose to.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

The way I see it, is you want to do some sort of ICS-like thing for armies (where multiple small armiss are more favorable than a single SOD). For me this would be a flat bonus like 5% strength is spread over all units in a stack (20 units = .5% bonus per unit in the stack). This is increased via techs like writing(written orders) or music (military drill) or something. Thus smaller stacks are more hammer efficient than a single big one but must remain spread out to get the maximum bonus to every unit.

The 1 upt Civ5 approach has issues that other games in the genre haven't really figured out like the absolute traffic jam/stupidity of choke points. You want choke points to be abuseable but not in a complete cluster attrition fail jam thing.

Well, the main reason we stack is so we can protect damaged units at the end of the queue, behind fresh units. I don't mind getting rid of that dynamic, you should always have the option of focusing down a crucial enemy unit, even if it takes some kind of efficiency trade-off. A bonus to spread out stacks doesn't get rid of that core advantage.

Maybe a simpler thing to do is that you can still stack, but only a limited number of units in that stack can defend it. Lose them and you lose your defenceless units as well. That still lets you shuffle around troops before an engagement, before entering a proper battle stance.

Could that work? Maybe, it would take some good QA.

[Brian Shanahan]

Just re-reading Sullla's report of the Apolyton demogame (again; it's a good read), and I think I finally figured out what audience Shafer was aiming at with Civ 5:




The Templars!

His idea of small empires competing better than big ones; perfect for their strategy of faffing around with wonders and religion.
His nerfing of production and yields; perfect for their no worker strategy.
His 1UPT; perfect for their inability to build a proper army, allows them to get away by forcing everybody else into the same inability.
And I don't think the synergies end there.

[Thoth]

[Nicolae Carpathia]

That's a genuinely numerous point of view. I can't count how many times I've read posts on other forums, with some variation of "How dare someone else win by outexpanding me? They only won because they spammed a ton of units!"

No, they won because the fact they could balance expansion with economy and military such that their investment into expansion paid off and let them roll everyone else. They could do that because they are better players.

I think there are two mindsets for strategy gamers. The first is essentially "I have all the time in the world, I just need to get an optimal configuration and then attack", which is a mindset fostered by single player RTS campaigns and RPGs like Diablo. In those games, your opponent never tries to improve their own situation, they don't attempt to pull off their own economic snowball and rush while you're in the middle of preparation. Instead, it's about playing at your own pace, with your own customised squad of the best dudes you can afford.

The second, is the "race" mindset, where you feel like you have a limited amount of time and want to pack in as many optimal decisions as fast as possible. These are the guys the particularly whiny members of the former complain about. I used to be the former, and now want to be as much of the latter as possible.

[Cyneheard]

Well, the main reason we stack is so we can protect damaged units at the end of the queue, behind fresh units. I don't mind getting rid of that dynamic, you should always have the option of focusing down a crucial enemy unit, even if it takes some kind of efficiency trade-off. A bonus to spread out stacks doesn't get rid of that core advantage.

Maybe a simpler thing to do is that you can still stack, but only a limited number of units in that stack can defend it. Lose them and you lose your defenceless units as well. That still lets you shuffle around troops before an engagement, before entering a proper battle stance.

Could that work? Maybe, it would take some good QA.

I wonder if having some Marksmen-type units (or that as an available promotion) would help? In FFH, because Casters are so weak (Balz. excepted), it's a HUGE deal. But, to use Civ 4 #s, if at Guilds you could also build a Lancer, who's 8 Str, 2 Move, has the FFH Marksmen attack, and Blitz, well, that unit would see quite a bit of use as a stack-finisher. I think both collateral and a way to chew through a wounded stack are key to limiting the power of SODs. Also, the Great General being able to hang in the backfield goes away once Marksmen units show up. Multiple attacks with Marksmen is an incredibly efficient way to do that, but there are some options.



I'd also like to see equal-tech attacking be easier than in BTS.

FFH in particular shows the power of having mobility when attacking: in BTS, it's usually the case that the defender really only needs to cover one or two spots to be able to hold. That, and the ability to manage a stack in one's favor, means that BTS is a relatively defensive game in a military sense. Because economics allows for massive military edges, that is often moot, but equal tech wars usually end badly for the attacker. But Raiders and many-MP units means that in FFH you're much more open to assault from multiple directions/locations. I'm still torn on whether or not ideal FFH play should be primarily stack-based, as magic tends to effect an entire tile's set of units equally, regardless of their #s.

EDIT: I thought this was ASM's theorycrafting thread for some reason. It kinda works here. Sorry.

[Sullla]

Just re-reading Sullla's report of the Apolyton demogame (again; it's a good read), and I think I finally figured out what audience Shafer was aiming at with Civ 5:

The Templars!

I know that this was intended as a joke, but you're more accurate than you realize. There were a couple of Templar players who really were in the testing group for Civ5. I saw a lot of long-time Apolyton forum goers who were part of that same group of people: Dale, danthrax, jobe, Locutus, Solver, etc. Again, really nice and friendly people, but probably not the best choices for stress-testing a game in development.

[Brian Shanahan]

I know that this was intended as a joke, but you're more accurate than you realize. There were a couple of Templar players who really were in the testing group for Civ5. I saw a lot of long-time Apolyton forum goers who were part of that same group of people: Dale, danthrax, jobe, Locutus, Solver, etc. Again, really nice and friendly people, but probably not the best choices for stress-testing a game in development.

I know I was joking, but I was also being somewhat serious. The parallels are there as well.

As regards some of the testers, I got into a bit of an arguement with Dale over on CFC, mainly because he claimed you were talking BS in one of your early Civ5 reviews, before even reading it. He'd seen a post by someone else who'd deliberately misquoted your review to make it look bad and simply jumped on the bandwagon. The fact that me and other people who'd pointed this out, and not Dale who actually caused the offense got censured was one of the main points of me leaving that site.

[MJW (ya that one)]

On sites like CFC it is not what you do that matters it is how you do it.

The realse version of Civ5 was so imbalanced that it is pretty obivous that the devlopers ran out of time due to the GeForce thing or they smoked massive and ignored certain testing. This is very plasible due to the major negtive feedback from x-testers. There was some decent testers on that list and you only need a few.

[antisocialmunky]

...or they smoked massive and ignored certain testing.

"Barbary Corsairs: 50% chance of converting barbarian naval unit to your side and earning 25 gold."

I was looking at civic ideas for my civ clone and wondered where this came from.