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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

#181

Post by scrumper »

eru wrote: post #18
pella wrote: post #10

free & opensource version: http://www.freeciv.org/ web version: https://play.freeciv.org/

You should also check out the first Master of Orion. The origin of the 4X name, and still one of the best examples of the genre. (There are fan-made patches available. Make sure to get them.)

Since we're doing alternatives for Civ-lovers, I really, really enjoyed Galactic Civilizations II. It had the right mix of massive scale, diverse strategy, politics, and an interesting combat mechanic with user-designed units. Endgame is sometimes a bit weak, when it's obvious you've won and have to grind through a multi-hour campaign of genocide, but it's the only game that's come close to that feeling of depth and complexity I got as a teenager from the Civ series.

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

#182

Post by Rayearth »

vacri wrote: post #49
mattzito wrote: post #24

I started playing civilization when I was 12 or 13 (Civilization 1), and still, to this day, the closest thing I have to meditation is playing Civ V. I travel a decent amount, and one of my great joys is being on a plane without wifi but with inseat power (Civ V on the mac is a ridiculous power hog), and knowing that I've got X hours of civilization to play with no one to bother me. My strategy isn't great, I have ev…

I really do not understand the appeal of 5, though clearly it has appeal as it has tons of players active on Steam. 4 was the pinnacle for me - exploring and finding "that amazing city site". 5 for me... all cities are 'balanced' to be identical, and don't even vary that much if you turn them off. Every game kinda plays out the same. I have to uninstall 4 because I see the dawn light appearing through the window. 5 j…

Indeed, I feel like a combination of the "amazing city sites" being already occupied by city-states as well as how terrain bonuses seemed weaker, especially production bonus terrain, made exploration in 5 less exciting.

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

#183

Post by chongli »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #128
chongli wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I was really excited about the changes to movement and combat back when Civ V was first announced. After playing the game, my enthusiasm disappeared completely. The AI completely sucks at positioning its units correctly. The widespread simplifications to the economic model (global happiness) dumb down the city building to a large degree. The vast majority of the decisions you make in the game have now become dull, trite, obvious.

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

#184

Post by chongli »

listic wrote: post #154
chongli wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! And get the Caster of Magic fan-made patch[0]. It fixes a ton of bugs and rebalances the game in some dramatic ways. The author has had to severely tone down the bonuses the AI gets at higher difficulty levels and it still feels way more difficult than the original game! I've got several of my friends hooked on this new version, we just can't seem to get enough! [0] http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?…

From the description, it's a pretty severe revamp of the game. Do you think it is justified? Also, I wonder, how did he go about improving the AI: it's a closed source game, after all.

Do you think it is justified?

After playing a lot of it, the answer is: totally! The original game has some pretty severe balance problems: tons of spells are so underpowered that you never cast them and generally avoid researching them. Most of the units in the original game have so much resistance that nearly all of the unit curse spells have little or no effect on them. The disparity between the realms of magic was also way too high on the original game.

Also, I wonder, how did he go about improving the AI

With a hex editor. A bunch of the AI code in the original game is decently well written. The problem is that the game has tables of hard-coded priorities for things like spells, units, buffs, etc. that are way out of whack. His detailed changelogs go over the hundreds of adjustments he's made to these priority values.

He also just fixed a whole bunch of straight bugs with the AI. Some examples: it would cast spells without a valid target (wasting mana and spellcasting skill), build and disband units repeatedly, miscalculate combat odds and then carry out an attack that had no chance of succeeding, etc.

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

#185

Post by chongli »

sevensor wrote: post #159
chongli wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! And get the Caster of Magic fan-made patch[0]. It fixes a ton of bugs and rebalances the game in some dramatic ways. The author has had to severely tone down the bonuses the AI gets at higher difficulty levels and it still feels way more difficult than the original game! I've got several of my friends hooked on this new version, we just can't seem to get enough! [0] http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?…

Thank you for this! I love MoM but I'm constantly saddened by the crashing bugs, the units with negative hit points, and so on. I'll have to try it out!

Definitely try it out. It fixes tons of bugs. Quite a few entire spells that used to corrupt the game state are now fixed and working perfectly.

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

#186

Post by cableshaft »

mattzito wrote: post #34
zyxley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still haven't really been able to make the jump from Civ 5 to Civ:BE. BE's civ and tech choices somehow manage to feel painfully samey and confusingly unorganized all at the same time.

I weirdly haven't even tried BE. It's like I'm worried I'm going to break the spell.

I was super excited for it, but I couldn't get into the future tech tree.

It was hard to determine what tech to reasearch and if I needed "whatever" what tech to research, since I didn't have any historical reference to draw from.

Also one of the new victory conditions was difficult to keep track of and kept sneaking up on me multiple times.

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

#187

Post by ekianjo »

douche wrote: post #171
ekianjo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the indentured servant class of colonist Actually this has nothing to do with slavery. Indentured servants were a real thing back in the days, with poor people accepting to work for x years to pay for their passage to the New World, and after that they were usually granted their freedom (not 100% always the case, I know). Slaves were, for the most part, never able to gain their Freedom back, and were slaves fo…

Oh, I'm well aware - my family tree traces back to an indentured servant that bailed on his master before his term was up and ran away from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to live in the wilds of Vermont. And some of the first Africans were brought to the colonies under terms of indentured servitude, and became free the same as the poor whites after some years.

Yup. And there are cases of indentured servants who were abused into slavery because of their illiteracy too.

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

#188

Post by ekianjo »

tlo wrote: post #168
ekianjo wrote: post #43

I highly prefer Colonization to all the Civilization episodes I have played. Colonization feels more focused, more tangible, and yet still manages to be a great management game with credible threats with multiple parties: natives trying to fight back for their land, other European powers trying to establish successful colonies on their own, and ultimately the royal power you will fight against to secure your Freedom.…

I recommend FreeCol which developed quite nice over the years: http://www.freecol.org/

Still far from being as enjoyable as the original.

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

#189

Post by freehunter »

GurnB wrote: post #177
freehunter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I waited for years to get Age of Empires 2 on digital distribution as my computer hasn't had a CD drive since... shoot, 2009? And right after it was released on Steam, my PC broke down and I bought a Mac. And AoE2 doesn't work on a Mac. Boo.

I just played AoE II (HD) on my MacBook Pro this weekend while stranded in a Hotel. What am I missing?

Huh, Steam doesn't list it as available on Mac for me. Do you have a non-Steam version?

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

#190

Post by dinosaurs »

The Civ series has always been on my radar as they seem to be quite interesting games. I remember going through the tutorials of either 4 or 5 but I never really got hooked. Not for a lack of trying, but I just didn't know what to do in the games. I always felt like I needed more guidance or something. Are there guides out there to help learn how to play these games? I might try 5 again after reading this!
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