The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: CortJstr on December 08, 2005, 05:10:18 pm
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Is anybody else playing this? It's completely screwed up all the strategies I learned in I and III. If the Colossus expires with the advent of Astronomy then how the hell am I supposed to make my Super Science City? Hell, Copernicus's Observatory appears to be missing entirely.
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My girlfriend plays it. For 10 hour stretches. On my computer.
I. can. only. take. so. much. Leonard. Nimoy. so. help. me. God.
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You know you can turn him off, right?
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What would be the point then?
Speaking of Sid, I have a certain fondness for Pirates. I was the fanciest lad in the New World, you should have seen my hip grooves and jams to seduce the ladies. True.
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Personally Alpha Centauri is my favorite of these games.
I started on Civ II, and it's still a favorite. Working on Civ III now. As far as I can tell, 3 incorporated some of the best features of SMAC and punched up the graphics. One of my favorite things about SMAC is the weapons workshop. You aren't limited to preset weapons -- if you want to make a drop colony pod on a tank chassis with neutronium armor, you can do it. The national boundaries also shows up first in SMAC.
What frustrates me about all these games is how the AI flat out cheats. The higher the level you play, the more the damn game cheats.
So, what are the differences between 3 and 4. Are there gameplay differences or are they primarily graphic improvements. Because I don't really give a shit about better graphics, especially in a game like Civ.
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I loved Civ III but the main reason I'm not playing Civ IV is because I don't have the friggin 10 hours in a row it probably takes to play one full game!
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So, what are the differences between 3 and 4. Are there gameplay differences or are they primarily graphic improvements. Because I don't really give a shit about better graphics, especially in a game like Civ.
They pretty much admitted that Civ 2 was the same as 1 but with better graphics. But 4 has some fairly important changes over 3 and some minor ones.
- No pollution!
- Unhappy cities don't revolt, they just slow production.
- Micromanaging now backfires (ie, turning research waaay down on the last turn before a discovery to avoid overflow).
- Some civs have 2 leaders with different traits. France has Louis XIV (Creative and Organized; favors Hereditary Rule) and Napoleon (Aggressive & Industrious; favors Representation)
- Instead of one gov't option there are several smaller Civics. Last night I was a Representative, Emacipated, Socialist State with Freedom of Speech and Religion
- Religions are included. Each has prophets, temples, and missionaries which can add to your cash or screw life up if they oppose your State Religion.
- Other leaders will react to your Civics and State Religion and will pressure you to change to theirs.
- Barbarians also research and advance as time passes (they can also be turned off)
- Wild animals will attack outside cultural borders
- Borders are totally impassable without declaring war or Open Borders treaty
- Your units can occupy the same space as others civs if you aren't at war. You can even walk right through one of their cities w/ Open Borders
- Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) aka Settler Factories no longer work. They totally reworked how corruption is handled and it's now an increase in maintenance costs instead of a production loss.
- The Stack of Doom (SOD) is less valuable due to barrage units.
- Common sense unit abilities are factored in (Pikemen get a bonus against mounted units, a Warrior won't kill a healthy Mech. Infantry)
- Units get RPG-style EXP promotions allowing further specialization
- The tech tree no longer has "ages." Some techs have OR prerequesites while others have ANDs.
- You can zoom w/ the wheel and use the Civ 1 top down view or the Civ 3 angled view.
There's more, obviously, but those are some of the major points.
Also, I managed to get through a Standard game on Chieftan last night in 2:45. Mainly just to get a look at the new stuff.
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Those are significant and fascinating differences. Maybe in two years when the price drops I'll pick up a copy.
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Those are significant and fascinating differences. Maybe in two years when the price drops I'll pick up a copy.
W/ Civ 3 I waited for the Game of the Year Edition. I only got 4 so quickly because it was a Christmas present. Otherwise I would've waited for it to come down from $40 myself.
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You know you can turn him off, right?
But then I will never hear him say "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
so you can see the conflict.
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Personal Spocklopedia favorite: Railroads. I can't tell if he's really trying to inflect or really trying not to inflect.
This game has owned my soul for the past month or so. I actually enjoy it more than CivII, which is damned near the highest praise any game will ever get from me. I'm actually playing it right now on the other computer.
In a sense, it's like a better version of Civ3 or Call to Power: it's clear that the goals were to take the base of CivII and make it more fun, but it succeeds in ways that neither of those did. It's more fun, as deep or deeper, but never tedious.
Take Resources as an example. Elephants, copper, corn, whales, oil - they're all there, all distributed on the map with some geographical sense (Fur only occurs in arctic areas, rice nearer the equator, bananas in jungles, etc), but there's actual meaning to them past the bonus you'd get if you put a city next to it. When you develop the Resource and connect it to the trade network, every city gets the utility of it, even if it isn't actually in the "work" area of a city (it must be in your borders, though). Each new food item (Corn, rice, sheep, pigs, cows, etc) increases health in your cities. Each new luxury (gems, gold, fur, ivory) increases happiness. Industrial resources (copper, iron, stone, uranium) determine what you can build, or give bonuses to building certain Wonders. The game's set up so that you'll have access to a limited variety of resources, so trading them is actually useful now. Later on in the game you can even trade Hit Singles for resources (if you've built Rock 'n' Roll).
A new addition is Great People - each turn, every city adds points to a Great Person "pool," and when that pool fills up a Great Person is born. It can be a Prophet, Engineer, Scientist, Merchant, or Entertainer. You can choose to have them join a city as a citizen, which will give a permanent bonus to some combination of production, science, commerce, or culture. Alternately, they can be "used up" to give one-time bonuses. They can research a new technology (which tech depends on their type), or complete a Great Work in a city (also depends on type). Two Great People of any type can trigger a Golden Age. Which type of person you get depends on what type of points go into that city's pool, which in turn depends on what Wonders are there and what type of Specialists you have. If you don't pay attention they're a nice bonus, but if you really work the system (build all wonders that create Merchants in one city, etc) you get a big advantage.
Borders depend on the Culture output of your cities not just their proximity, and the really cool part is that if your culture is more influential on another nation's border city than their own culture, it can "flip" to your side. Have a Great Artist create a great work in a border town and watch your influence spread!
There are a thousand subtle differences (Settlers can't join cities to boost population! Decomissioning a unit in a city doesn't give new production!) but the game still feels right. You just have to abandon the old strategies a bit and work from first principles.
okayIshouldstoptypingnowbecauseIcouldbe playingkkbye
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In 3 I'd never trade resources. Because I'd be like, "screw you, Hannibal. I want your people to be unhappy so no Wines for you." In fact I'd turn on Culture Flipping and Elimination Mode and put a bunch of my cities all up in the other civ's grill and just wait for their city to flip so I could watch their entire empire dissolve before my eyes.
I'm just dumbfounded on what I need now. In 1 and 3 you needed the Colossus and C.'s Observatory in the same city. And in 1 it was basically a flat-out race to get Railroads before 1AD and everything else was gravy. Now that's all out the window.
I also don't like the new editor. 3's was moderately usable and didn't require launching the whole game or getting into XML. 4's requires the cheat code (chipotle) to do much.
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so. it is still 40 bucks. And I really want it. A lot. A guy on my hall bought it, and I mean... it looks amazing. civilization II was the first game I really became obsessed with.
all the guys on my hall play AOEIII and stuff against each other. This one girl brought her n64 and SNES, so we've been playing through the old Mario games and donkey kong and such.
loverly.
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This one girl brought her n64 and SNES, so we've been playing through the old Mario games and donkey kong and such.
Now that girl has Potential, I'd say.
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so. it is still 40 bucks. And I really want it. A lot. A guy on my hall bought it, and I mean... it looks amazing. civilization II was the first game I really became obsessed with.
all the guys on my hall play AOEIII and stuff against each other. This one girl brought her n64 and SNES, so we've been playing through the old Mario games and donkey kong and such.
loverly.
The Warlords expansion came out recently. You could always wait like another year for the game+expansion bundle. Or spend the extra $29.99 and get Civ Chronicles (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000IU1PQA)
I'm mainly mad that the SDK that they released is too comprehensive. Basically if you didn't major in Computer Science in the last 2 years don't even bother downloading the SDK. This sucks because your options for editing Civ 4 are Muck About in XML Files with WordPad and Muck About with Uncompiled Code You Can't Possibly Understand.
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so. it is still 40 bucks. And I really want it. A lot.
I got Civ III for $5 at the $5-or-less store.
Of course, I've played it maybe a total of four hours. I'd like to play more video and computer games, they sure look like fun! But who has the time?
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yeah, I downloaded FreeCiv and I am losing at it pretty consistently.
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I stilll play Civ 1 on SNES occasionally. Of course I have to keep it on Chieftan and play on Earth due to a congenital defact known as sucking. I could barely stay alive at all before I read about the Copernicus's Observatory + Colussus trick.
For Civ 3 I'll sometimes play a hyper-powerful mod just to see how quickly I can get a Domination victory.
Playing these games according to the rules and not losing painfully is basically something that I cannot do.
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yeah. no matter what I do, they start sending Musketeers my way really early on. Like, wow. My main problem, i think, is thinking about things in a realistic way. Apparently what I am supposed to do is expand as fast as is humanly possible, micro-manage every single city every single turn, and research straight to gunpowder. Even when I try to do these things, the computer still whups my ass on the easiest difficulty setting.
the thing that bothers me: I remember not-sucking at Civ II back in the day. I mean, maybe I never actually won, but I could at least hold my own for a pretty long game. I remember the game ending because it reached the year 2000 plenty of times.
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I love Civ II, but for the love of God I have serious trouble expanding with any kind of effectiveness. Normally I inadvertently end up in the latter stages of the game with 5 AWESOME cities, while the Sioux invariably have about 100 merely good cities. Understandably, I am wiped out.
I think the computer has a bit too much ease holding empires together in Civ II. I'd prefer civil wars sprouting up in large empires. But it's an old game, so who cares. Maybe they've already made those changes in the new ones.
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I love Civ II, but for the love of God I have serious trouble expanding with any kind of effectiveness. Normally I inadvertently end up in the latter stages of the game with 5 AWESOME cities, while the Sioux invariably have about 100 merely good cities. Understandably, I am wiped out.
I think the computer has a bit too much ease holding empires together in Civ II. I'd prefer civil wars sprouting up in large empires. But it's an old game, so who cares. Maybe they've already made those changes in the new ones.
IV actually encourages you to go the 5 city route in most cases. And there's an "Always Peace" option when you start a game if you want to focus on tech and other forms of diplomacy. Oh, and the expansion pack adds Vassalage as an option, which is kind of neat.
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I have so many issues managing my cities.
also, freeciv does not have the "next city" button, so I end up going through the cities list, missing some, etc.
bullshit.
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I've never played any Civ games, but is it one of those games like the Sims or The Movies where you can build stuff and then the game gives you lots of chores to do?
If I want to do chores I can do my laundry or clean my apartment. At least that way something will get done, too. I don't need a video game to pile on busy work - if I'm going to spend the time on a game it had damn well better be fun.
I mean, I really liked Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which gave you some chores to do (have to eat, work out, spray paint 100 things, take 50 photos, etc.) but they were added on to a richer game experience, not the point of the game.
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I've never played any Civ games, but is it one of those games like the Sims or The Movies where you can build stuff and then the game gives you lots of chores to do?
You start with 1 settler on an unknown ladscape. You start a city, add buildings, and spread to new cities in an effort to become the dominant civilization on the planet. There's 2 violent ways to win, 1 purely peacefull, 1 passive aggressive, and a couple neutral ways. Depending on what civ you play as and your own personality.
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I've never played any Civ games, but is it one of those games like the Sims or The Movies where you can build stuff and then the game gives you lots of chores to do?
No, not really. I'm with you on the Sims. Played it for a while -- I can somewhat understand the appeal, but it wore off pretty quick. Deciding when to poop and when to wash the dishes is something I get to do in real life, so the simulation aspect seems a little wasted.
But the Civ games are very different. There's a huge element of strategy (and on a grand scale). Also tactics and resource management. In a nutshell, you are the dictator of an ancient culture at the dawn of civilization (I play the Chinese and the Persians a lot...) You're given a map of your surroundings, which you gradually uncover as you explore. There are various resources (food, minerals, money) on the map along with bonus resources and "special" resources (iron, gunpowder). You build cities in order to best exploit these resources.
You have to decide how to best manage your nation to compete (and eventually dominate) the other nations out there developing at the same time you are. You can use different strategies (Rapid population growth, militarism, financial domination, scientific research, etc) by choosing what each of your cities devotes its resources to building.
It's really a hell of a game. The variations I've enjoyed most have been Civ II and Alpha Centauri. Stay away from Civ Call to Power.
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I just fuck*ng love the different choices you have on Civ 2 (I have not played any others but really would like Civ 3 or 4). Often I try to win the money race by focusing on trade and running Republican or Democratic societies, which limits your military options because of a Senate. However, increased happiness and trade are not to be sniffed at when you've built up your infrastructure a bit.
However, it's just as much fun to run a Fundamentalist nation, putting all my output into military production while my zealous population starves happily.
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I just fuck*ng love the different choices you have on Civ 2 (I have not played any others but really would like Civ 3 or 4). Often I try to win the money race by focusing on trade and running Republican or Democratic societies, which limits your military options because of a Senate. However, increased happiness and trade are not to be sniffed at when you've built up your infrastructure a bit.
However, it's just as much fun to run a Fundamentalist nation, putting all my output into military production while my zealous population starves happily.
After Civ 2 they basically removed Fundamentalist for being too powerful. Personally I like building a city right up next to a rival city then rushing all of the culture buildings I can afford. Then the other city sees how great my civ is and revolts. This is even more fun with Elimination Mode turned on.
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man. Fuck Civ. Yesterday about 20 guys on my floor simultaneously realized that we own AOE II.
Good lord, that was fantastic. We all packed into these two rooms, because one guy had a wireless network set up... played for 3 hours straight, 2 teams of 4... our RA was amazing, as was this one other kid. I held my own pretty well, I think... I got 3rd place on my team/in the game, mostly because I didn't attack until too late in the game.
The best was this one kid who just built huge walls around his little island, and cussed up a storm whenever we attacked and broke through.
a resounding "hell yes!" to having 2 days until my last exam, which is "Introduction to Film."
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man. Fuck Civ. Yesterday about 20 guys on my floor simultaneously realized that we own AOE II.
Good lord, that was fantastic. We all packed into these two rooms, because one guy had a wireless network set up... played for 3 hours straight, 2 teams of 4... our RA was amazing, as was this one other kid. I held my own pretty well, I think... I got 3rd place on my team/in the game, mostly because I didn't attack until too late in the game.
The best was this one kid who just built huge walls around his little island, and cussed up a storm whenever we attacked and broke through.
a resounding "hell yes!" to having 2 days until my last exam, which is "Introduction to Film."
This sounds like the Hotseat games of Worms 2 and Worms: Armageddon when I was in school. I actually had to import the british version of W:A because would coudn't wait for it to be released here.