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Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

polygon.com

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Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#141

Post by touristtam »

enraged_camel wrote: post #20

I love the Civilization series, but I'll be honest: it really bothers me that certain companies have one or two franchises and they keep churning out new iterations of them every year or every other year. It just feels like a money grab after a while (especially with franchises like Call of Duty or Madden, which, from my perspective, don't improve appreciably in between iterations). I'd like to see them taking some r…

I suggest you read these two articles that gives you some of the reason behind the yearly release of franchises: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/115152/Analysis_Koticks_R...

http://www.wired.com/2007/12/call-of-duty-gu/

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#142

Post by jug »

asimuvPR wrote: post #25
tomashertus wrote: post #8

And I'm still sitting here and waiting for Age of Empires 4 :/

You and me, friend. Whatever happened to the MS division that published those games?

Microsoft Studios is still active, however, Ensemble Studios who developed Age of Empires was closed in 2009. Then you have Skybox Labs who built "HD" versions of some of their games.

Some guys from Ensemble has since formed Robot Entertainment, released e.g. AoE Online, and is supposedly (?) using Microsoft as publisher once again but I don't think they're part of Microsoft Studios anymore. AoE Online was shut down in 2014 though. :/

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#143

Post by throwaway7767 »

mdemare wrote: post #104
tpeo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMAC also had 10/10 flavor text and setting overall. It's a game that has a lot of character.

Any of you fellow SMAC fans play Beyond Earth? Is it a spiritual successor?

Unlike other commenters here, I didn't dislike BE. It's a fun game, and it's worth checking out (especially with the Rising Tide expansion).

It's very much trying to be a spiritual successor, but I'm not sure it really achieves the goal. The setting isn't as convincing (it's mostly Civ 5 in space, with orbital units). The factions all pretty much play the same, just with some bonuses. The biggest problem (though I suppose this has been a problem for all civ games to some extent) is that the AI is bad. It can do tactical decisions, but strategic big-picture it seems to have no clear goal.

It's worth checking out, but it's only partly the spiritual successor to SMAC it tries to be. I see a lot of people here recommending Stellaris, I haven't tried it but now I think I should.

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#144

Post by lazylizard »

peteretep wrote: post #118
hackuser wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's also hardly black and white No, I think it's clear. The Russians invaded another country, conquered Ukranian land and kidnapped Ukrainian people. EDIT: Fixed the ambiguous pronouns

> Their military invaded "Their" being Russian here... > conquered their land and kidnapped their people By 'their', you mean the people of Crimea, of which over 50% identify as Russians?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#145

Post by vlehto »

tcoppi wrote: post #15
vinceguidry wrote: post #10

I would love to see a game that accurately reflects modern geopolitics. It would generate a world and run a history up to a certain point, at which you'd take control as head of state of a particular nation and conduct national affairs. Ideally, the game would be able to make conducting the affairs of a large global hegemon like the United States as interesting as playing a small kingdom beset on all sides. Sort of l…

> The real interesting part of the game in my view is that conquest is no longer an option Isn't it though? Russia seemed to do OK with the conquest of Crimea. Anyway the suggestion of Europa Universalis is probably the closest you will get right now. If Paradox made a post-cold war sim I'd play the hell out of it, but I think it would be hard to do right and be interesting precisely because without real conquest and…

You could view Crimea just as minor oscillation in the wake of collapse of Soviet Union.

Conquest of strategic locations is just as important as before. Suez, Panama, Gibraltar and Singapore are pretty carefully looked after. But there has been significant decoupling between ownership of arable land and economic power. So you don't see same kind of land grabs that marked most of middle ages and lasted until WWII.

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#146

Post by DanAndersen »

philwelch wrote: post #105
civilian wrote: post #57

I've bought every Civilization game except the very first one. They're good games, but the one I really love is Alpha Centauri. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing--- I got SMAC when I was in middle school. But the faction design was phenomenal, and it was great how you actually had to play the factions differently, and knowing the other factions meant you handled them differently. I started playing University of Planet and…

Here's a blog (that I found from an HN comment, interestingly!) where someone goes through and analyzes all the SMAC flavor text and writes about how well-done it was. It was interesting for me because there's a lot more depth than I realized when I first played SMAC, and the different factions all seemed to me more like caricatures than real philosophical viewpoints: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com

Thank you for sharing this! That link does a very good job of exploring just what it was about various concepts in SMAC that made it so compelling.

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#147

Post by dbalbright »

vinceguidry wrote: post #10

I would love to see a game that accurately reflects modern geopolitics. It would generate a world and run a history up to a certain point, at which you'd take control as head of state of a particular nation and conduct national affairs. Ideally, the game would be able to make conducting the affairs of a large global hegemon like the United States as interesting as playing a small kingdom beset on all sides. Sort of l…

It doesn't support a procedurally generated world like you are asking but there was a game for Sega CD called Third World War that I loved to play that had a good balance of diplomacy, trade, and war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_World_War_(video_gam...

There's a Paradox game I played a few years ago called Supreme Ruler that I got excited about thinking it was similar but it tends to get bogged down in the military in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_World_War_(video_gam...

I haven't played Victoria II but know it also fits this mold. It is set in the colonial time frame so not quite modern but close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_II

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#148

Post by VT_Drew »

mwfunk wrote: post #92
VT_Drew wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was kind of disappointed in the "AI" in Civ V. The first time I played and an country denounced me I obliterated them off the map and thought to myself, no one else will be foolish enough to denounce me now. Wrong, if you take over nation completely then everyone starts to denounce you, that is the way the "AI" is programed to think.

I dunno, makes sense to me. Annexing one nation will make all the others fear and hate you even more, of course they'll denounce you. A big part of the game is figuring out how to walk the line between expansion and alienating the other civs.

They can fear and hate me, as long as they are too scared to do anything about it.

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#149

Post by jharger »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #95
KON_Air wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Civilization game that doesn't involve rushing to remove Gandhi from the game before he starts piling up nukes is not a Civilization game. At least that's where I draw the line.

This explains a lot: http://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civilizat...

That is about the best thing I've read in a while.

Re: Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes

#150

Post by CydeWeys »

civilian wrote: post #57

I've bought every Civilization game except the very first one. They're good games, but the one I really love is Alpha Centauri. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing--- I got SMAC when I was in middle school. But the faction design was phenomenal, and it was great how you actually had to play the factions differently, and knowing the other factions meant you handled them differently. I started playing University of Planet and…

I played SMAC at a similar age and similarly have great nostalgia for it. I went back to it more recently and it held up. The setting is out of this world (heh), and the unit customization options were awesome, and added a layer of depth that MOO and others have but Civ does not. That's what really did it for me.

PC Gamer ranked SMAC as the best game of all time for quite some time, and deservedly so. That is not an accolade they hand out lightly.

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