201–210 of 224 posts
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You won't find it on Steam. It's only $5 US on GOG though!
Hmm, I am pretty sure I have the space civilization game (felt like a mod for iv) in my library. I guess you guys are talking about the original
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Hmm, I am pretty sure I have the space civilization game (felt like a mod for iv) in my library. I guess you guys are talking about the original
You might be thinking of Beyond Earth, which was an attempt to create a successor to Alpha Centauri that a lot of people say fell short of the goal.
There are very, very few games out there that have something to say about philosophy. Alpha Centauri is a tour de force. It lets you explore many different philosophies of government and societal ethics. It continues the conversation that began with Plato's Republic, a multi-millennia-old debate about what constitutes an ideal society. It lets you experiment and build your own vision of utopia, while clashing with other visionary founders and their competing ideas.
It's absolutely fascinating and addictive stuff! I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys thinking about philosophy, as well as anyone who enjoys 4X games.
Civ needs to be moddable and they can get a little percentage of every mod sale. Then this franchise will be actually good rather than something people play for a week or two and forget about. I want an invention tree that's thousands of items long based on actual human history, not an invention tree that's optimized for what a 15 year old will find 'fun' within the first week of play. Civ is an unfortunate lost oppo…
Scrolling the tech tree of the Caveman 2 Cosmos mod for Civ4 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWxAn5gXb2A
(not sure what the exact count is these days, but it's on the order of a thousand techs)
Mod presentation : https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/caveman-2-cosmos.2885...
Latest major version released last month and Player's Guide : https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/caveman2cosmos-v43-pl...
Modding is kind of in tension with the concept of direct sales... for similar reasons that open source is in tension with it. It's even worse for games, since most games are closed source, and mods generally directly build up on them.
I could see total conversion mods perhaps separately selling their art assets like this (since the open source of the rest of the code already often is in tension with the level of ownership that artists tend to claim over them).
The closest we got to what you suggest is probably StarCraft 2's Arcade mode, and platforms like these are bad for reasons too obvious to state on HN.
But Civ4 is a great example in how you can create one of the biggest and longest lived modding communities out there : you just need to open up your game ! And this is something that dates to Brian Reynolds' Civ2 : https://www.filfre.net/2023/01/sequels-in-strategy-gaming-pa...
Sadly, Civ5 was a regression there, and looks like Civ6 even more so ?
Speaking of educational content, here too Civ4 seems to be unsurpassed in its Encarta-like Civilopedia, and mods have only improved on the depth and breadth (if maybe not accuracy) by often cribbing their descriptions from encyclopedias :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WveveonsHM&t=495s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WveveonsHM&t=1326s
https://youtu.be/-titvSZsurE?t=945
(this player ignores the historical descriptions, but spending minutes reading them is something that most viewers are not likely to be interested in)
Personally, the regression from Civ4 to Civ5 in their Civilopedias is for some reason what pained me the most...
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...what do you mean? Civ is very moddable.
I had to look it up. There are a bunch of mods, wow. I stand corrected, sort of. The UI to browse these mods is something out of a geocities website from the 1990s. I should've been more specific, I meant modding that enables creators to actually make money and gets promoted by the game developer - not a dark corner that hasn't been updated in 30 years where you can click an image but can't get to the next image with…
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I had to look it up. There are a bunch of mods, wow. I stand corrected, sort of. The UI to browse these mods is something out of a geocities website from the 1990s. I should've been more specific, I meant modding that enables creators to actually make money and gets promoted by the game developer - not a dark corner that hasn't been updated in 30 years where you can click an image but can't get to the next image with…
> The UI to browse these mods is something out of a geocities website from the 1990s. Is the Steam Workshop that bad for Civ?
The much more problematic DRM and other walled garden issues aside, Steam's interface seems to be designed to emphasize safety, which would be fitting for software aimed at pre-teens, but is actually harmful for the teenagers and older that are its target.
(Of course one reason Valve likely did it is because it makes the job of their moderators easier - compare with the old Steam phpBB forums - and company-paid moderators is also the easiest moderation system to set up and maybe more importantly, remain in control of.)
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> Civ series felt empty after a while Want to replay your favorite old map from Civ 7? Sorry, the servers have been turned off, back to Civ 17 and the Season 3 Persons Wonders and Specialists pack for $79.95... Not everything has to have "multiplayer elements". Keep great single player games offline.
Forgive me, I may not have worded that correctly. By empty, I simply meant that the game stopped being interesting after a while. The single player game was only so replay-able, and multi-player is a very different game that doesn't suit me. What Civ has is a great community, but that community had no way to experience content together . Hand crafted scenarios that people can play simultaneously and share their exper…
https://www.filfre.net/2023/01/sequels-in-strategy-gaming-pa...
(And leaderboards might be even older, dating back to Civ1, considering how Sid Meier with Civ (and his other games) emphasized roleplaying and surviving to the end of the game rather than «winning», whatever that means ?)
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My impression was there was a lot of research and competent results in StarCraft AI. And that was 10 or so years ago. Which is more constrained than your average 4X, but not fundamentally different (resource + research + movement + combat).
Not really. The AI was essentially "cheating" to play inhuman micro, its macro was apparently just as bad as typically expected.
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I had to look it up. There are a bunch of mods, wow. I stand corrected, sort of. The UI to browse these mods is something out of a geocities website from the 1990s. I should've been more specific, I meant modding that enables creators to actually make money and gets promoted by the game developer - not a dark corner that hasn't been updated in 30 years where you can click an image but can't get to the next image with…
That kind of modding, that's surely an utopia isn't it? Anywhere outside the Factorio utopia that this can happen?
After playing Europa Universalis, I don’t think Civ is doing it for me. Here are a few issues: - You can’t automate many tasks. This is especially true in Civ 6 where you have to re-select everything. I’m not certain who thought this is a good idea. - As you progress in the game, the turn time become ridiculously long. - For it to be reasonably fast, you are limited in term of map size and the number of opponents. -…
I think Paradox studio is the real underdog, and everyone loving Civ games should check them out. I love the 4x concept and tried almost all major games in this category, but left after one or two playtroughs because there was always something pushing me away. Usually its the need for mocromanaging everything on huge scales in longer games. Im hooked on Crusader Kings 3 for a year now, and want to get into Europa Uni…
To use a metaphor, in the «slow strategy video games» sector, Firaxis/TakeTwo are akin to the creators of Avatar for movies, while PDS/Paradox are Marvel/Disney.
(note, high funding & popular ≠ good)
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I hope they’re thinking more Alpha Centauri ;)
I can’t believe there hasn’t been a modern remake of that.
You can however hope that, just like with Civ1 (=> Civ2) => SMAC(X), someone will be inspired enough to take some of the best aspects of it in a somewhat different game :