Author Topic: Calming the shakes  (Read 15232 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Steve Walmsley

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20349 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #15 on: November 14, 2019, 12:16:56 PM »
ever look back at a game and say "huh, i could have gotten a PhD in the amount of time i spent on that?"

yeah, me neither.  *shakes fist at Sid Meier*

I have 3000+ hours on Civ V. For some reason I just couldn't get into Civ VI though.
 

Offline Bremen

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • B
  • Posts: 743
  • Thanked: 150 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #16 on: November 14, 2019, 12:29:35 PM »
I've recently bought Elite Dangerous, so playing that while waiting for C# Aurora :)

That's not how it's supposed to work!  ;)
 
The following users thanked this post: AlStar, Mastik, serger, Agoelia

Offline misanthropope

  • Lt. Commander
  • ********
  • m
  • Posts: 273
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #17 on: November 14, 2019, 02:34:09 PM »
all my hours are on civ1.  i honestly could have died.  got to the point where my civ ritual was to drink a couple cups of coffee before i started playing.  my bladder tearing me away from the computer was how i would work up the initiative to turn the damn thing off.  friends from that era still kid me about "the bladder" as a unit of time.
 

Offline Hazard

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • H
  • Posts: 643
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #18 on: November 14, 2019, 02:43:52 PM »
Put a fair bit of time into the Civilization series, but most of it into Civ IV and Alpha Centauri. Not sure why Civ V and VI just aren't working for me.
 

Offline Tikigod

  • Lieutenant
  • *******
  • Posts: 195
  • Thanked: 55 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #19 on: November 14, 2019, 02:49:02 PM »
Put a fair bit of time into the Civilization series, but most of it into Civ IV and Alpha Centauri. Not sure why Civ V and VI just aren't working for me.

Because Firaxis have been dragging the series into a cesspit since Civ IV.

On the bright side, Amplitude are working on their own Civilization-like game now and if their attention to detail from their series of 'Endless' games carries over into that project, then it's going to be something real special. After that hits hopefully Firaxis will stop half-assing future Civ games and finally make their first decent Civ game in over a decade.
The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist.  Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart, in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say "It cannot be done. "

- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, University Commencement
 

Offline boggo2300

  • Registered
  • Rear Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 895
  • Thanked: 16 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #20 on: November 14, 2019, 03:11:28 PM »
I've recently bought Elite Dangerous, so playing that while waiting for C# Aurora :)

Recently?  I'm so disappointed in you Steve!

(ps don't waste time trading or fighting, get an Asp explorer load it with sensors and fuel, engineer it's jump drive for maximum distance and go exploring!  so much cash when you cum back! enough to buy a whole bunch of other ships for fighting, trading, or passengering when the mood takes you (unless you're like me and never return to habituated space for more than a few minutes to sell data)
The boggosity of the universe tends towards maximum.
 

Offline Nori

  • Bug Moderators
  • Lt. Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 234
  • Thanked: 42 times
  • Discord Username: Nori Silverrage
  • Bronze Supporter Bronze Supporter : Support the forums with a Bronze subscription
    2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #21 on: November 14, 2019, 03:57:23 PM »
I really really liked Civ5... Except for it's horrid performance. Turn time in mid game became so long I could go get a cup of coffee, read the newspaper (ha) and come back just in time for it to finish. I wasn't even playing the biggest maps either.

Because of that experience, I've not purchased any Fixaris product since (except Xcom2)..
 

Offline Deutschbag

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • Posts: 109
  • Thanked: 17 times
  • Discord Username: Pwnzerfaust
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #22 on: November 14, 2019, 05:09:33 PM »
Put a fair bit of time into the Civilization series, but most of it into Civ IV and Alpha Centauri. Not sure why Civ V and VI just aren't working for me.

Same. Civ V and VI are just too... streamlined and accessible for my tastes. I like depth and complexity, even with the tradeoffs. If there was a Civ IV with hex tiles and perhaps some kind of (soft?) limit on units per tile, plus the unit designer of Alpha Centauri but taken up a few notches, I'd be in heaven.
 
The following users thanked this post: Agoelia

Offline Scandinavian

  • Lieutenant
  • *******
  • S
  • Posts: 158
  • Thanked: 55 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #23 on: November 14, 2019, 07:14:56 PM »
Put a fair bit of time into the Civilization series, but most of it into Civ IV and Alpha Centauri. Not sure why Civ V and VI just aren't working for me.

Same. Civ V and VI are just too... streamlined and accessible for my tastes. I like depth and complexity, even with the tradeoffs. If there was a Civ IV with hex tiles and perhaps some kind of (soft?) limit on units per tile, plus the unit designer of Alpha Centauri but taken up a few notches, I'd be in heaven.
That's pretty much Call to Power 2.

(Especially with the mod that lifts the player count cap; playing 64 faction maps makes you have to actually worry about things like two front wars.)
 

Offline Deutschbag

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • Posts: 109
  • Thanked: 17 times
  • Discord Username: Pwnzerfaust
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #24 on: November 15, 2019, 02:55:46 PM »
Hmm, I think I played that game before. It has a square grid, doesn't it?
 

Offline Hazard

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • H
  • Posts: 643
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #25 on: November 15, 2019, 05:34:09 PM »
Yup. Also pretty old; think it's a mid 2000's game.

Has a few interesting mechanics though, and it wasn't afraid to go past the modern era into some truly speculative future technology, or take on some distasteful subjects like slavery right on the chin.
 

Offline xenoscepter

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 1154
  • Thanked: 317 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #26 on: November 15, 2019, 09:59:21 PM »
My biggest gripe with the Civilization series is the fact that the AI will NOT respect borders. In Civilization: Revolution on the Nintendo DS and in Civilization III for PC, the AI thinks absolutely nothing of crapping out a city right next to yours... unless their is a Cultural Border... which is dumb. Irritates me to no end. It's MY continent dammit all!
 

Offline Tikigod

  • Lieutenant
  • *******
  • Posts: 195
  • Thanked: 55 times
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #27 on: November 16, 2019, 09:15:13 PM »
My biggest gripe with the Civilization series is the fact that the AI will NOT respect borders. In Civilization: Revolution on the Nintendo DS and in Civilization III for PC, the AI thinks absolutely nothing of crapping out a city right next to yours... unless their is a Cultural Border... which is dumb. Irritates me to no end. It's MY continent dammit all!

Since Civ V Firaxis haven't really bothered with opponent AI with the series. They don't even make the AI able to understand the game rules, instead they just have the AI ignore how game mechanics work and the underlining rules of the game to give some false illusion of challenge but it all falls apart very easily because the AI isn't aware how anything actually works.

Take for example things like unit maintenance, the AI ignores it completely and has the ability to keep spawning units as it decides it wants running their empires at extreme economy deficits with zero repercussion because those rules of the game simply don't apply to the AI.

Civ IV had a lot of rule bending with the AI handling, as do most other games. But the level of shoddiness in how they've implemented it in the games since Civ 5 takes it to a whole other level to the point where it's absolutely laughable that a company is shipping something of that low quality and charging £45-£50 for the game (Even 3 years after release) and £20-£30 for expansions that just throw in more mechanics they never bothered to make the AI understand only making the issue even worse.

When they released the 'Rise and Fall' expansion for Civ 6 they introduced a Loyalty system for cities where unloyal cities could rebel and side with another power. Firaxis made no effort to make sure the AI understood Loyalty was a thing, and so the AI would send settlers over to your borders, plonk down a new city that would instantly be in a state of becoming disloyal, then a dozen turns later would rebel and easily become part of your empire... then the AI would keep repeating it again and again with another settler on your or other empire borders. Spawning magical settlers from the ether and then founding distant cities that could never be kept loyal due to distance, just pumping out free cities for their opponents.

The same goes for unit movement, as long as the units are not observable by a human player then the AI is capable of mini-warping units around the place outside of the players vision.... something Firaxis also tried to implement in XCOM and XCOM2 with mixed results. It worked better in XCOM2, but in their first XCOM attempt it led to all sorts of weird bugs and behaviour such as Aliens teleporting into locations you know they couldn't have come from and in some cases the behaviour transporting aliens mid-mission into locations that are right in front of one of your units if they had a tiny blind spot that the system picked up as "Fog of War", even if you'd have other units go through that spot just a few turns back.

Firaxis have simply become lazy in many areas of their games.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2019, 09:25:15 PM by Tikigod »
The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist.  Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart, in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say "It cannot be done. "

- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, University Commencement
 
The following users thanked this post: Deutschbag

Offline Nori

  • Bug Moderators
  • Lt. Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 234
  • Thanked: 42 times
  • Discord Username: Nori Silverrage
  • Bronze Supporter Bronze Supporter : Support the forums with a Bronze subscription
    2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #28 on: November 17, 2019, 09:08:26 AM »
While I wasn't aware of the AI specifics you talk about, the overall shoddy work pretty much sums up the newer Civ series. Performance in V was so bad (despite otherwise being reasonably fun) and yeah their difficulties are really just how much the "ai" cheats.
 

Offline sloanjh

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral of the Fleet
  • *****
  • Posts: 2805
  • Thanked: 112 times
  • 2020 Supporter 2020 Supporter : Donate for 2020
    2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
Re: Calming the shakes
« Reply #29 on: November 17, 2019, 09:08:40 AM »
I've recently bought Elite Dangerous, so playing that while waiting for C# Aurora :)

Is it a successor to Elite?  How does it compare to Elite/OOlite?

John

PS - Please take care in your response, as it could lead to the loss of untold hours of productivity :)