41–50 of 172 posts
Any one remember the Global Warming mechanic, which was removed in some of the subsequent games if I'm remembering correctly?.
The second expansion for Civ 6 -- Gathering Storm, has a global warming mechanic built in. Civ 5 did not have it, but Civ 4, 3 and 2 definitely did in one form or another. I don't remember if it was a thing in Civ 1.
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I'm really no expert on game designers but from the top of my head I can think of at least one that I would describe as genius, namely Chris Sawyer who made Transport Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon almost single-handedly. If that's not genius, I don't know what is.
He coded those games single-handedly AND in x86 assembly. Yep, that's a good example of a genius, right there.
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Claims that Alpha Centauri or Civilization II were best games are over exaggerated - I have never understood why people had to make such controversial claims and why they have to continue to do so. IMO, they were unappealing games slapped on top of a very simple concept of first Civilization, that had unique component among all the strategy games - digital encyclopedia - long long time before wikipedia. That was one…
Civilization games to me looks be like a software representation of board games. They are not simulations, and they are very gamified. It certainly feels good to play them, but after sometime with it, one might get a feeling that these are really board games with overcomplicated rules, and really nothing ambitious about them (I am speaking of games Civ 3 and upwards, the ones before are technologically remarkable con…
What I'd love to play is a game like XCOM, but where the tech tree is broader than you can cover in a single game, and where options have tradeoffs - so e.g. it could make sense to have a squad where one soldier is carrying a plasma weapon, and everyone else carries regular rifles, because tactical considerations make it a better option.
(Also one implication of this I didn't like in terms of role-playing: firearms are our weapons, laser weapons are our weapons made from reversing some basic science off alien tech, and plasma weapons are just their guns modified so humans can handle them. I always felt there should be a way to make lasers ultimately better than plasmas, based of my favorite trope of humans beating alien invaders with smarts and sheer force of will.)
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[0] - I never played the old ones, but from what I hear, it's the same, except much more difficult.
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> the timer that spawned Doom's speedrunning culture Could you elaborate on that? I'm aware of speedrunning (it's fun to watch!) but I don't know anything about "the timer".
Doom was one of the first games that showed how long you'd spent to complete a level at the end of each level. This made it easy (and obvious) to compare times and compete with others.
>A growing pile of video-game histories [...] suggest that the medium has always had collective effort at its heart, from its academic beginnings to its ascent into everyday life. In Meier’s memoir, we discover that he was a good game-maker when he fought this essential fact, but that he became great when he learned to embrace it. >The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived…
For example, I think Lukas Pope is a good modern example of single author creating really unique and novel games. Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri on the other hand are more like good examples of fresh ideas being injected into a series under new leadership.
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> It does seem like games, of all things, would have the potential to be at their greatest under the vision of a single author, but history has shown the opposite I have to disagree with you here. Both Civ II and Alpha Centauri were headed by a strong single author. As were both the original Civ and Civ IV which I and many others would see as the best manifestation of the game. We can also see this outside of the Civ…
>Popoulous, Doom/Quacke These examples, at least (the others are a bit outside of my knowledge), fit the pattern outlined above of having worse successor projects headed by a former team-member.
Civ 4 was the last true Civ to have a gameplay similar to the the originals. Civ 5 and 6 introduced unit stacking constraints that completely change the way the game is played. If WW2 happened in Civ 5 or 6, the Normandy landings would not have been possible because you would not be able to stack large number of units in one tile. Those landings were "a death stack". But even if every large battle in history could be…
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the game's developers)
>A growing pile of video-game histories [...] suggest that the medium has always had collective effort at its heart, from its academic beginnings to its ascent into everyday life. In Meier’s memoir, we discover that he was a good game-maker when he fought this essential fact, but that he became great when he learned to embrace it. >The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived…
I don't think I'd agree, the best games in terms of concept and fun (as opposed to polish like Witcher 3) are those with essentially one or two people making the fundamental game. Things like Slay the Spire, factorio and Rimworld had 1 or 2 people making the game what it is, with some later folk adding some polish.
If it was part of a book or movie you’d roll your eyes.
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Claims that Alpha Centauri or Civilization II were best games are over exaggerated - I have never understood why people had to make such controversial claims and why they have to continue to do so. IMO, they were unappealing games slapped on top of a very simple concept of first Civilization, that had unique component among all the strategy games - digital encyclopedia - long long time before wikipedia. That was one…
Civilization games to me looks be like a software representation of board games. They are not simulations, and they are very gamified. It certainly feels good to play them, but after sometime with it, one might get a feeling that these are really board games with overcomplicated rules, and really nothing ambitious about them (I am speaking of games Civ 3 and upwards, the ones before are technologically remarkable con…
>>One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
Hmm, this is interesting observation, but I have excatly the same feelings towards Civilization games that you are describing about XCOM games, because I felt that XCOM games did not offer very deep game and were very repetitive to the same grind. But then, I also have a dislike for any doom scenarious of future and probably that was one of the reasons why I was not impressed by XCOM games and also Civilization II with free range of scenarious as the first thing that map makers did was creation of doomsday scenarios and the ones that weren't doomsday scenarios were not as fun as other games.
>>In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
Well, I feel that some of the "hate" or claims about greatness of some games in past is more on the meme level that over time have developed in myths, that some now are taking too seriously - even religiously... :))
It also has to be taken into the account, that any author that is riding the wave on someones else success has to praise object of the topic even more and that makes self fuelling cycle, but I would not go so far as to claim, that Civilization was not a great game. It stood test of time - my memories of first Civilization are of those times, when other very popular option was Wolfstein 3D and then Doom and Doom II and I still played first Civilization when I got bored of Civilization II. Of course I played later Civilizations as well and had fun, but my ground base memories are not about them all so there will be a bias about some of them.