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Civ II game a decade old

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Re: Civ II game a decade old

#101

Post by ralfd »

jonnathanson wrote: post #72
danielweber wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know Civ4's AI routines, but it might be such that after a certain year passes, it decides that the only way to stop the human player is total war. Before that it can be less aggressive. I have a game of Civ1 somewhere where it takes about a half-hour to get through each turn because each city demands attention. I'd love to modify the ROM to skip the animations.

"I don't know Civ4's AI routines, but it might be such that after a certain year passes, it decides that the only way to stop the human player is total war. Before that it can be less aggressive." What seems more likely, at least in my experience, is that the AI is always trying to pursue a single goal: beating everyone else. It will select whatever means it deems possible at any point in time. It will make calculati…

Gandhi and some other like Abraham Lincoln wont ever declare war if they are pleased. For all other leaders you have to go to the "friendly" relationship status. The exception is Catherine the Great of Russia. That bitch is the only one who can be bribed into war even if she is friendly with the victim.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#102

Post by mynameishere »

zem wrote: post #100
mynameishere wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is easy and boring in the end. He's purposely letting it go on and on.

read through the thread; it's anything but easy. he's hit the point where the ai civs have decided nuclear war is the way to go, and he's reaping the global penalties for it (radioactive wastelands, global warming) while simultaneously having to divert all his resources to maintaining the red queen race of building tanks and having them destroyed rather than cleaning up his farmlands to grow food.

I blew away an unfortunately portion of my youth playing this game. When everyone has all the techs, the human wins, very easily.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#103

Post by acheron »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #62
zokier wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave New World definately is a good pair for 1984. http://www.totalitariers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Brave... (yes, the message of that image is debatable, but i found it intresting anyways)

I've read these types of posts hundreds of times, and they never seem truthful, but here is mine: I just want to say thank you for that image. I would like to hear your thoughts on your note, why do you find the message is debatable, and if you know where the image is from? It says the text is from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which has just made it to #1 on my to-read list. I found the apt summary of Huxley's points…

_Amusing Ourselves to Death_ is very good. It was written in the early 1980s I believe, but if anything it feels more relevant now than ever. (Or it did when I read it in college 10 years ago.)

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#104

Post by acheron »

philwelch wrote: post #43
TrevorJ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The early Romans had some good success with temporary emergency dictatorships to cut through the deadlock in times of emergency. This didn't really stop working for them till they faced the threat of Hannibal, and appointed Fabius Maximus who spent a few years studiously avoiding direct conflict with Hannibal, and the Senate got impatient and wrested back control.

There was also that one guy, Julius something, who didn't want to give back control ;)

Well, it started with Sulla first; that's where Caesar learned it from.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#105

Post by rangibaby »

I really enjoyed Civ2; even once you've figured out how to game the AI (it's predictable hostility and cheating are actually it's biggest weaknesses), there are still challenges, such as limiting yourself to one city (!) or finishing before a certain year.

Just one thing set off my pedant alarm: Civ2 didn't come out until 1996. I still remember getting the collector's box with the huge strategy guide ;-)

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#106

Post by JackFr »

philwelch wrote: post #46
CharlieA wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take your point, in part, and I don't necessarily disagree with you, because by and large the system does work. But (to use your analogy) when it comes to the law-making branch of government we have this massive sprawling "codebase" and it doesn't necessarily need a lot of new code (laws) putting in place, but rather, there's a lot of cruft and old legacy stuff that maybe needs to be removed or updated, and the tim…

The use of representatives isn't just because direct democracy is unfeasible, it also provides a dampening effect, and hopefully provides a foothold for experts to weigh in alongside public opinion.

But it's even worse than that. Because it is seemingly unfeasible for the legislative body to write the specifics into laws, they create unelected bureaucracies to implement the specifics of broad reaching policy goals.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#107

Post by wtallis »

jonnathanson wrote: post #52

Fascinating, and wonderful to see others are out there who are weird like me, and who will actually attempt to extend Civilization games over extremely long periods. I have a Civ4 game that I've been playing for about 4 straight years now, and admittedly the file has gotten so big that it periodically taxes my system resources to their limits (Unfortunately, Civ4 suffers from poor memory management and is fairly leak…

I recently started playing Civ V, and was surprised at how the AI approached the first war I had started against me: the AI made a really lucrative offer in exchange for right of passage through my territory, then moved a bunch of units in and declared war on me. After losing the initial wave of units and the second invading wave without any territory changing hands, the AI asked for a cease-fire. When I declined, the AI came back in a few turns and sued for peace, offering me most of his treasury and a few other perks to get me to agree to the cease-fire. I wasn't too impressed by the initial decision to take me on, but the rest of the process seemed quite a bit more complex than anything from previous Civ games.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#108

Post by nl »

scarmig wrote: post #73
kristianc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Although I don't necessarily think it will be because of war, I can see a potential future where people/persons decide democracy is a less effective system" Its probably worth pointing out just how unlikely it is that it would be because of war. The democratic peace is probably the closest thing to a universal law of international relations that we have. So if democracy does have drawbacks in terms of speed of decis…

Eh. The democratic peace theory really just relies on a perpetual no-true-Scotsman approach. Either something's not really a democracy or not really a war. Native American tribes? Well, they had democratic societies, but they're very different from the liberal state that has come to predominate in contemporary times. Franco-Prussian conflict? Prussia's legislatures were dominated by a rich hereditary landowning class…

countries that are under the umbrella of the United States and have highly developed economies don't go to war against each other

Except in the case of the Falklands War. And the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor (Iraq was a US ally at the time). And the Turkish/Greek air battles over the Aegean Sea (eg, Turkish & Greek F-16's dogfighting and crashing into each other in 2006: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek%E2%80%93Turkish_relations...).

I agree with your general principle though.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#109

Post by zem »

mynameishere wrote: post #102
zem wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

read through the thread; it's anything but easy. he's hit the point where the ai civs have decided nuclear war is the way to go, and he's reaping the global penalties for it (radioactive wastelands, global warming) while simultaneously having to divert all his resources to maintaining the red queen race of building tanks and having them destroyed rather than cleaning up his farmlands to grow food.

I blew away an unfortunately portion of my youth playing this game. When everyone has all the techs, the human wins, very easily.

so did i, but i pretty much always eliminated everyone else early on, or went for the alpha centauri victory. never tried playing out the total war scenario with balanced empires and nuclear weapons. but from the op, the problem is not winning from a clean state, it's that he's gotten himself into a bad situation and needs to get out.

Re: Civ II game a decade old

#110

Post by anateus »

Aethaeryn wrote: post #79
jonnathanson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare." Agreed 100%. To me, it seems silly -- not to mention cynical and fatalistic -- that the sole purpose of diplomacy in Civilization games is to add a str…

> I suspect because there just isn't a big enough market for games > of that nature. Maybe there is a handful of us out there. Maybe a > relatively small handful, but one that's willing to pay a fair > amount for a really great, truly strategic global power game. I > dunno. Maybe it's worth organizing, or Kickstarting, or what have > you. If any game devs out there are reading this and are > interested, know that the…

You mean something like Planetarion or Orion's Belt?

To be clear, your phrasing seems to present this as a novel approach, though it is not. Regardless, it's all about the particular game design that makes or breaks a game so I wish you success, it just struck me that maybe you were not aware of this fairly large genre based on how your text sounded.

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