Comments on: In Praise Of: Civilization’s City View.

By: Miguel Baptista

Miguel Baptista — Thu, 02 May 2019 06:15:15 +0000

Got around to playing Civ 5 today ( its amazing to think its already 9 years old!) and you hit the nail in the head.

By: Civilization Through The Ages: Civilization | The Scientific Gamer

Civilization Through The Ages: Civilization | The Scientific Gamer — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 11:01:23 +0000

[…] of showing you everything you’ve accomplished on that turn in minute detail. I’ve spoken of my love for Civilization’s City View before, and for good reason: it’s tremendously effective at making those single colour squares […]

By: aosher

aosher — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:02:57 +0000

Civ 3 > Civ 4

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:35:08 +0000

I will never understand the human race’s innate desire to rank things in lists. I mean, god, each of them does certain things very very well and stands on its own merits. You could make a case for liking any of them best.

(Except for Civ III ¬_¬)

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:30:47 +0000

Elemental looked interesting while it was in development, but the subsequent car-crash of the launch and general skeeviness at Stardock put me off it and any future games they make. Anyway they’re making Age of Wonders 3 now, so I can get my Master of Magic fix elsewhere soon.

By: aosher

aosher — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:20:28 +0000

Hahaha it's like Kotaku hired me or something

By: aosher

aosher — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:13:55 +0000

like hidden diplomacy factors

Naughty; bad puppy ^_^

As you say, Firaxis demonstrated that his basic design decisions were essentially workable, and his lack of faith in his own design – and, more importantly, his unwillingness to stick with a mechanic that isn’t quite working properly, fine-tuning and iterating – is worrying.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:11:04 +0000

I loved Civ IV but I agree that to just go back to the way things worked there would be a poor regression. Firaxis have done a great job patching up Civ V so that it more-or-less functions okay, and there’s now a solid base to build on for a sequel. Some of the design changes were fundamentally bad (like hidden diplomacy factors) but they were easily fixed, and I honestly think that stuff like one unit per tile works quite well in its current state. The solution certainly isn’t to throw it all out or change things wholesale just because you can.

I was expecting Shafer to make a slightly more robust defence of his design decisions than he did. Repudiating basically the entire game as a mistake with the benefit of hindsight doesn’t do a great deal to inspire faith in his future design decisions; what if in three years he ends up writing a similar screed about At The Gates?

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:58:56 +0000

One of the expansions for Civ IV (probably Beyond the Sword) adds a few culture-specific looks for certain units like axemen and spearmen — German spearmen will have wooden shields and dull armour, while Greek spearmen are proper hoplites. It also (I think) added culture specific tile improvement appearances, so you could cover the land in Chinese pagodas. It was great for marking out civilizations as being broadly different past the specific differences of unique units and buildings, and it’s more atmospheric going to war with a civ that has an obviously different appearance rather than fielding identical riflemen who are blue instead of red. It’s not a major game feature or anything, but it did matter.

By: aosher

aosher — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:58:23 +0000

Yes to everything you say here. It’s like, he understands that Civ V was a bit broken at launch, but has decided that the only way to fix it is to undo everything and pretend it never happened.