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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

#91

Post by dintech »

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…

It's not really even the same game any more. Like Trigger's Broom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUl6PooveJE

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

#92

Post by ionised »

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.

Agreed. Civ 4 with Beyond the Sword was the pinnacle of the series I think.

Thousands of hours I lost in that game.

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

#93

Post by exDM69 »

pella wrote: post #10

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

Should be mentioned that FreeCIV is roughly equivalent in rules to Civilization 2. Which is perfectly fine since some afficionados consider that to be the best installment.

But Civilization 5 is an entirely different game with different rules (and hexagon grid).

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

#94

Post by ionised »

yen223 wrote: post #60
vacri wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally, I prefer V's combat mechanics over IV's, and V sure looks prettier.

The one unit per stack thing really shows it's flaws when you have lots of large civs fighting across a landmass though. The land can become 'clogged' with units to the point where it can be hard to move around properly.

Couple that with Civ V having possibly the worst AI of any Civ game to date and it's a recipe for frustration in many cases. The AI civs would never use naval units properly and it made a large portion of the game easily expoitable.

Civ 4 was the other extreme, where with many large civs you would end up with the 'stacks of doom' on a single tile containing dozens of units. Obviously this wasn't ideal either.

Some sort of unit stacking limit would have worked I think. Some mods exist that allow you to stack between 2-5 units on a single tile in Civ 5 but I'm not sure how well they work or how the paltry AI copes with the change.

Still, I always felt like stacking by combined arms would have been better, like a stack of 5 units limited to 2 inantry units, a cavalry or vehicle unit, a ranged unit and a siege weapon.

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

#95

Post by creshal »

elthran wrote: post #90
jhanschoo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in realpolitik in games, I'd like to recommend the excellent Crusader Kings II game and its DLC. You play as a feudal ruler, and find your character plotting murders, marrying off daughters, and conspiring for claims to titles.

Then you'll end up trading those normal realpolitik thoughts for "I'll marry my heir off to my sister because she's a genius", "I'll just have these 5 children assassinated for their father's land". Choose your own poison.

Ideally you choose their poison, not your own.

Unless you want to commit suicide to be able to bring your strong, genius heir to power.

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

#96

Post by ekianjo »

georgiecasey wrote: post #63
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 preferred colonization because it was more real and based on real history. i learned loads playing that game. and i loved the business aspect of it

Yeah, and the manual was GREAT! It included a bunch of historical details about how the actual colonization of North America happened, it was a fascinating read and much more complete than anything I could find in pre-Internet era.

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

#97

Post by ekianjo »

siquick wrote: post #66
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.…

Been playing Colonization on and off for what must be 20 years, still amazing.

I have just played (and finished) a game from scratch just a few weeks ago and I can still attest this has not aged at all.

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

#98

Post by ekianjo »

afterburner wrote: post #72
yen223 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Check out Paradox's games.

Yes, but it's only Paradox recently. There used to be dozens of big publishers of Strategy games before (SSI for example) as well as many minor ones. The genre is clearly verging extinction apart from the big ones remaining.

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

#100

Post by animal531 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #14
dcw303 wrote: post #7

I came perilously close to failing several university assignments thanks to an unhealthy obsession with original Civ. And I loved every minute of it. I still play the newer versions now and then, but the original stands out as a paragon of game design. It was grid based, so unit movement was easy with keystrokes. That along with hot keys for everything meant that you could play a complete game without a mouse. This w…

1B hours played. Think about your experience with a couple hundred hours, and then multiply that by a few million similar instances - how much productivity has been lost? Or how much history has been learned, friendships built, and strategy developed? Similarly, how many billions of hours have been spent browsing Facebook, for better or worse? I think one of the most important ethical questions we can ask ourselves i…

It falls into the whole consumer vs producer idea. Very few people ever stack up on the producer side.
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