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Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

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Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#121

Post by [deleted] »

deciplex wrote: post #59
mikeash wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be remiss to mention Civilization and Gandhi on a tech site without discussing why he was such a crazy warmonger. In the original Civilization, Gandhi's "aggression" rating was set to 1 to make him a pacifist. Except that when a civilization adopted the Democracy form of government, this reduced the leader's aggression rating by 2. The ratings were unsigned, so this wrapped around and gave Gandhi an "aggress…

It's also worth pointing out that apparently in some later editions of the game they have reimplemented this bug as a joke. (Not a very good joke, IMO.)

[deleted]

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#122

Post by baldfat »

yen223 wrote: post #61
phillco wrote: post #36

My favorite thing about Civ is that its creator has kept control over it, and continues to evolve it. We'll probably be enjoying a new Civ in 2026. The charm is that it's the same game in many respects — parts evolve, but the core remains. This seems unusual; I can point to several popular 90's games that peaked there and never recovered (Roller Coaster Tycoon, Age of Empires II, and arguably SimCity 4 if you include…

Strategy games in general seem to have hit a slump for some reason.

Check out the podcast "Three Moves Ahead" it focuses 100% on strategy games. I think there are amazing games out there but they are from independent studios. Endless Legend is the big one but I also love Conquest of Elysium 3 (Forgive me a 'Roguelike' 4X game).

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#123

Post by technofiend »

Civ is hella fun but it doesn't scale well - massive games become untenable due to app slowness and memory footprint.

I think this is in part due to Civ's design of each player gets all their moves consecutively, rather than in parallel. Although it would change gameplay Civ could take advantage of multi cpu by either staging decision trees based on likely actions taken by the player and other civilizations or creating multiple rounds of actions in each turn which are executed in parallel.

This would have the added advantage - if "they" chose to code it this way - for hardcore civ players to offload compute to AWS or other services. I would love to crank up a world domination Civ game with 50+ entities that doesn't take minutes per turn.

Wishful thinking for Civ VI but there you go.

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#124

Post by mfukar »

lackbeard wrote: post #44
zem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure if it's just because I'm older and less into gaming, but civ5 seems markedly less fun as a game than civ1 and civ2 were. I just couldn't get into it, and I used to spend entire nights on the older games.

Did you ever play 4? Was the best one, IMO.

Most "expert-level" players seem to think so, as well. That said, the rest of the series are not at all bad games.

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#125

Post by jld89 »

kinghajj wrote: post #39

Nobody else has mentioned this, but something Civ has taught me is how to appreciate realpolitik. Nothing makes it more clear than when you catch yourself having thoughts like: - "Washington spawned too close for comfort; they're a threat to my peoples' long term security. Annihilate them first." - "Hmm, the Mayans have some strategically valuable territory..." - "Hey, the Persians are way back in the Renaissance, wh…

You should totally try Europa Universalis IV for some realPolitik. "The Spanish empire's colonies are profiting from my policing in the caribbean sea, let's make a trade embargo to make them pay."

CKII is really good as well, both are different dishes. I've dumped at least 500 h on each.

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#126

Post by beau26 »

lackbeard wrote: post #44
zem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure if it's just because I'm older and less into gaming, but civ5 seems markedly less fun as a game than civ1 and civ2 were. I just couldn't get into it, and I used to spend entire nights on the older games.

Did you ever play 4? Was the best one, IMO.

4 was by far the best 'classic' Civ experience. That being said, I think the one unit per tile change in Civ5 was needed and added a lot of strategy to actually fighting. My hope in Civ6 is that tiles are smaller and that cities and other features can take up multiple tiles.

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#127

Post by manyxcxi »

lackbeard wrote: post #44
zem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure if it's just because I'm older and less into gaming, but civ5 seems markedly less fun as a game than civ1 and civ2 were. I just couldn't get into it, and I used to spend entire nights on the older games.

Did you ever play 4? Was the best one, IMO.

I agree. I like 5, in all the ways that it's different- but I always feel like 5 has a long expanse of seemingly meaningless turns until all of a sudden things get good. Then it will have another long lull between interesting events.

Maybe in a way, the team finally got their model of Civilization true to real life? :)

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#128

Post by ascagnel_ »

chongli wrote: post #73
zem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure if it's just because I'm older and less into gaming, but civ5 seems markedly less fun as a game than civ1 and civ2 were. I just couldn't get into it, and I used to spend entire nights on the older games.

It's not your age; tons of people don't like Civ V. The game has a serious problem when it comes to the marginal utility of individual moves. There's way, way more things to do in the game but most of those are obvious moves in the execution of your larger strategy. This is not a good recipe for fun! Alpha Centauri was always my favourite game in the series but these days I find myself playing a lot of Master of Magi…

Civ V completely redid movement. The prior games would allow you to stack units, so you'd end up with a 1-tile "stack of doom"; later-game fights would be reduced to these stacks of doom wearing each other out instead of tactical play. Additionally, making a unified front was difficult because of square tiles (a unit could move in 8 directions).

Civ V changed it so that only a single unit of a given type (military vs utility) could occupy a tile, and switched from a square grid to a hex grid. Individual moves may matter less, but the combat game benefitted greatly.

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#129

Post by nicolas_t »

brandnewlow wrote: post #16

I've played 1-5 extensively and Civ III is the most fun by far. Anyone know how I can get Civ III on a Mac? It's been "not available" here forever: http://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meiers-civilization-iii-compl... I've tried playing the Windows version via Parallels but it fails out during load.

Go here http://paulthetall.com/civilization-3-mac/ and follow the instructions. It's a wine wrapper that's already configured specifically for Civ III

Re: Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

#130

Post by ascagnel_ »

frik wrote: post #70
yen223 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strategy games in general seem to have hit a slump for some reason.

Yeah sadly. More game developers changed to "console first" or "mobile first". Streamlined casual gameplay pay to win / free to play and the lack of a precise input device (mouse) on consoles almost killed the former very popular PC strategy games segment. Civ, SC and Anno barely survived that trend in some streamlined form or another. I am still playing old perls from Age of Empires, Roller Coaster Tycoon, SimCity,…

There are hopeful signs that this is starting to change. The 2012 XCOM title has a more console-friendly interface (it plays better with a controller) and has a great mobile port (the iOS version is mechanically identical to the PC game, and is only missing a few maps and graphical flair). Yes, that title is streamlined, but that streamlining sanded off the rougher edges of the 1990s games (especially in the tactical mode, where managing time units was a constant pain).
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