Sid Meier's Civilization

[ToroidalBoat]

I don't mind the idea of having stuff in specific eras to do/pursue that are unique to that era

In the brief period I played 7 before refunding it, that was one of the worst parts.

I like how in Civ 1 and 2, one can learn Railroad -- centuries before 19th century -- while delaying Industrialization to discover Gunpowder. As the Babylonians. I also like how non-linear the tech tree is in II. The only age-related thing with techs being a tech being "Modern Applied" or "Renaissance Economic" or "Ancient Academic" or the like.

BTW, there is only one Modern Economic tech in Civ 2, and that's Refrigeration. It's the only tech that has that icon of credit cards. Pic for it is of the breakroom fridge.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I still recall the first time I played a Civ vidya. It was the original Civ, I played as the Egyptians on that "EARTH" map (I think at "Chieftain" difficulty), and the first foreigners I encountered were the Babylonians. I didn't know what irrigation was in the vidya then, so I wondered what all that complicated-looking stuff around Babylon was.

 

[TheMonkeyMan]

When I first saw irrigation in Civ 1 I thought I had run into the Great Wall. Also, I would build eight units around my cities because I didn't understand that they could stack.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

Lol there are youtubers that are still coping over this disaster.

The middle Civ YouTuber VanBradley is a Canuck from Vancouver. He used to? have a job working at an off-the-grid children's summer camp where he'd disappear for most of the week.

He's also predictably woke as shit. One of those "bigots BTFO" types.

I can't really think of a Civ youtuber (not that I've watched one in a decade plus) who isn't either apolitical or a progressive mouthpiece, so any cultural backlash is invariably reliant on the playerbase to maintain.

Another great breakdown of why civ 7 sucks.

CivLifer from @Rome's rightful successor 's post is probably the most based Civ YouTuber I'm aware of.

In the latter half of Civ6's run, he was invited to some independent YouTuber tournament when he was quite small to play against Potato McWhiskey and The Saxy Gamer (who became a Nuclear Physicist worker IIRC) who were more established.

It was pretty obvious that CivLifer was the odd man out in the live groupchat in that he was making lots of dirty jokes with a CoD mindset.

He's somewhat of a motormouth and uncouth in his solo videos.

I also believe he's brown (sand nigger IIRC, not jeet/ wetback).

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Also, I would build eight units around my cities because I didn't understand that they could stack.

And in Civ 5 and 6 they can't, at least outside of cities.

 

[Ashkenazi Porn Actress]

Sort of mirroring how some peoples like the Mayans or the Dorset peoples just sort of vanished one day.

But these people didn't just vanish. The Dorset were almost certainly displaced by the Thule people and went extinct in their highly marginal enviroment while the Mayans are still around to this very day. Yes, their civilization collapsed and became less complex and monumental but they also managed to resist the Spanish conquest right until the cusp of the 18th century.

IMHO Civ-like games in general suffer from their board game roots and attempt to emulate history by tacking special systems and rules onto certain entities/civs instead of even attempting to build bottom-up systems that could recreate these circumstances in the first place.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Being a vidya from the early '90s, the original Master of Orion can feel rather '80s.

like in this screencap:

(yes that is a full-size cap)

I also like how if an alien colony is out of scanning range, the report will say "Last Reported As A [Name$] Colony"... seems other "Civilization in Space" '90s vidya do not have that feature. Like in Master of Orion 2 one can see alien colonies in explored systems as they are currently: there's no "fog of war" like there is in the original MoO.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

With civ 6 some were disappointed with the art style and some of the female leader choices. The game still have a lot of good qualities so some were more forgiving.

With civ 7 the culture war stuff was icing on the cake on top of the civ switch era reset system utterly breaking the game to the point it no longer feels like civ but a rip off of civ. The leaders being disconnected with the civ meant that firaxis chose even worse leaders. Just about everything about it is awful and a far step away from what people like about civ.

To expand on this I'll break civ 7 it down one final time.

1.) Imagine your making sand castles on the beach and a kid knocks it down not just once but twice and tells you to build something different each time. The era reset civ switching system is exactly that. Worse is that the whole point of the franchise up to this point was building a civilization to stand the test of time, that is the goal and the reason people play civ. The era reset breaks the game into 3 barely connected minigames and forces the player to play how the devs want. In theory this was supposed to make the game feel more snadboxy but in practice it restricts the player. All to "improve" on the concept from a failed intimidator game. Civ used to lead the pact and be copied by others, now the devs use it to chase failed trends.

2.) The UI sucks

3.) Firaxis got especially greedy. The game became a combination of everything wrong with strategy video games since the past 15 years. Game is overpriced. Not only did the devs intentionally released the game at an unfinished state and used their dwindling paypigs fanbase to for updates, they released day 1 dlc and announced the first update before the official release of the game with content that could have easily been in the release version. Games as a service season pass.
$70 base game. $!00 season pass that wont pay for all the DLC. $128 total but don't worry we're not done just yet.
"Game is bad now but don't worry it will be fix in an update or a dlc"
"But... but.. Firaxis has done that in the past why are you upset with that now?"
Gamers got sick and tired of this long ago. Firaxis could have lead the pact and made a good on release civ game and move the industry away from it's worst tendencies but choose not to.

So there's assigned tasks in 7? Lame. I like how in Civ I and II, it is rather open, with none of that "ages" system.

4.)The devs only want you to play in specific ways more than ever. Drastically reducing the sandbox appeal the series has had. We don't play civ games for events and missions, we play Paradox games for stuff like that. We play Civ because we want to construct and that is fun. The game is presented as so randomness but is infact more restricted than the previous ones.

5.) What happened to the scenarios mode? Sure, not everyone played it or was a fan of it but itwas a staple of every game starting from Civ II up to this point. Reenacting Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire was fun in civ 6, Colonizing the Americas in Civ 5 and doing a recreated version of the Mongolian Conquest of Asia was part of the fun of the games even if it was just a side mode of the main game.

6.)

 

[ToroidalBoat]

play how the devs want

Sounds like the "woke" overall: they are wannabe tyrants. And like I said in an earlier post on this page, I like how open Civ 1 & 2 are. Especially 2 with Fantastic Worlds.

dlc

DLC is supreme BS. Civ 1 was done with the original release. And while Civ 2 may have the addons like Scenarios and Fantastic Worlds, at least the plain game is a full game.

 

[Kane Lives]

"Game is bad now but don't worry it will be fix in an update or a dlc"

Niggercattle who excuse Civ 7 with this are absolutely why the industry in this dire state to begin with. Since when it was acceptable to release broken games at release? Fucking Bethestards and their "mods will fix the game" excuse also contributed.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Since when it was acceptable to release broken games at release?

Maybe since "smartphones" with "social media" went huge?

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

The middle Civ YouTuber VanBradley is a Canuck from Vancouver. He used to? have a job working at an off-the-grid children's summer camp where he'd disappear for most of the week.

I wonder if in a year or two time a kid will point the police to a offsite cabin where VanBradley and another disappeared kid was hidden to for sometime.

It was pretty obvious that CivLifer was the odd man out in the live groupchat in that he was making lots of dirty jokes with a CoD mindset.

He's somewhat of a motormouth and uncouth in his solo videos.

Sounds like my kind of youtuber.

 

[Computer God Autism]

"But... but.. Firaxis has done that in the past why are you upset with that now?"

I would like to point out the traditional model, since Civ 3, has been two major expansions and done. The first game to break from this was Civ 6 where they kept milking it to death post second-dlc and the only people actively playing Civ 6 by that point were bottomfeeding mouthbreathers who didn't know you could mod 4 and 5.

 

[Slap47]

Civ 6 had some really good scenarios.

The Black Plague, Australia colonization, and Viking scenarios gave you alot of options on how to actually win. You had to be good at the game to beat them on Deity as they had alot of random elements. The Poland scenario worked really well as a combat tutorial that was also pretty fun. Playing the game normally most people probably go into Emperor/Immortal/Diety difficulty with little experience with war.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

scenarios

Speaking of, when I was younger I liked this one alien invasion scenario with that Scenarios addon of Civ 2. The aliens -- known as "Hodads" -- invade and then the Earthling nations can unite to stop them. The Hodads build cities with surfing-themed names for some reason, and they have very powerful alien units. Oh yeah, and the way the scenario is set up, if one cheats and gets Industrialization, the Hodad cities change from looking alien to generic 19th century Industrial Revolution cities (the sprites for Hodad's cities are among those for ancient cities, which turn more modern with certain techs). Oh yeah, Earthlings can get the FRAAG (Final Response Agianst Alien Aggression) units.

I also like the Mars scenario that comes with the Fantastic Worlds addon. Starts with around current tech, can end way later with terraforming the planet and artificial sea.

Also, yeah addons were sorta like DLC, but at least they came on CD.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

5.) What happened to the scenarios mode? Sure, not everyone played it or was a fan of it but itwas a staple of every game starting from Civ II up to this point.

Scenarios went out the window about halfway through Civ6's lifecycle.

Firaxis and the devs/community liaison team claimed around COVID time and the release of the New Frontier Pass DLC that they were planning to work on new scenarios but the community told them that they preferred modular Games Modes instead. Like the Zombie, Heroes & Secret Society modes that eventually emerged with their bimonthly DLC content drops in the post-COVID era.

The problem is that:

a) These modular Game Mode DLCs were very superficial. They were half-baked, had awful QA, the AI couldn't use most of them. It's nice to be able to turn them on/off, but this also comes at the price of no deep integration with base game systems or expansion pack/DLC synergy.

b) It conditioned casual Civ fans to the dripfeed, small paid DLC model as opposed to the total overhaul expansion packs years later that were characteristic of the Civ franchise up til this point

c) It made the devs lazy, Scenarios involve lots of work to make total overhaul type playable historical scenarios.

With the last Leaders Pass DLC to placate Civ6 fans while Civ VII was further delayed and not yet announced, they dropped something like 18 new leaders but reused old art assets and leader abilities. With the final DLC, they let the B squad develop it, without any new interactions with base game systems like new unique units, tile improvements, districts, buildings, Wonders, etc.

Just sloppy new reskinned leaders that again don't require any deep integration with existing systems.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Remember PocketCiv? Turns out there's some vidya of it, with the graphics sorta reminding me of Civ VI. But one can play PocketCiv using a whiteboard, or even a spreadsheet.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

"Master of Orion Classic | Trailer [GOG]"

The opening vid whenever one launches MoO. As MoO was released in '93 -- some time before CD-ROM went mainstream -- a vid like this could be heavy on system resources at the time. The vidya shipped on 4 floppy disks, and IIRC the total install size was less than 15 MB, with 54 files if one used all 6 save slots. Oh yeah, and all that happened in that opening movie can be done in a battle in the vidya: attacking a colony, the colony defending with missile base (which for some reason are rather expensive somehow), and attacking ship retreating into warp... although the battle screen itself is really just static and almost "8-bit"-looking 2D sprites -- with 2D movements -- on a small grid.

(an actual ingame battle screen)

 

[Slap47]

a) These modular Game Mode DLCs were very superficial. They were half-baked, had awful QA, the AI couldn't use most of them. It's nice to be able to turn them on/off, but this also comes at the price of no deep integration with base game systems or expansion pack/DLC synergy.

I personally appreciated Firaxis experimenting alot with all of the Frontier Pass stuff.

The New leaders either fixed badly made leaders or introduced completely new leaders. Nearly all of them being really interesting to use.

Most of the modes to come out of it were also fun to try and one of them even was just great enough to be in every game I play. Barbarians being raidable and able to turn into cities added alot more depth to the game. More balancing the short term and long term.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

I personally appreciated Firaxis experimenting alot with all of the Frontier Pass stuff.

I think the New Frontier Pass DLC was in general well received. As you mentioned, a lot of the new civs/leaders were unique and well done (although I believe they already started reusing art assets from Amanitore/Nubia for Lady Six Sky/Mayans)

But the game modes, while fun, were superficial with awful QA

- the Monopolies and Corporations mode had a game breaking bug where the AI wouldn't improve luxury tiles that was left unpatched for years (while modders had a hotfix within days. But fuck consoles, right?)
- they made a Heroes mode with super-powered legendary Heroes units where the AI couldn't actually use the Hero abilities against the player, causing insane imbalances
- I can't think of any Apocalypse Mode bugs, but it was generally a mode that doesn't get played unless someone wants to meme on meteors destroying entire cities late game
- the Raging Barbarians mode is a great addition. But still had QA stuff where converted City States from Barb Clans won't recognize or fight existing Barbs and vice versa.
- Tech & Civic Shuffle Mode was well done and improves replayability
- Secret Societies mode was popular but also unbalanced. The AI can't handle the mode, building and filling up the screen with useless Cultists for one.
- Zombies mode in general was hated for how superficial and unfun it was as well. Zombies ignore Settlers and Builders, so they can be gamed by building human civilian shield walls. The new traps and fence tile improvements were generally useless because you 1) lose tile yields and 2) Zombies still spawn randomly behind your defensive line, making your barriers useless. The Turn Undead City Projects also create endless positive feedback loops where converting zombies counts as zombie kills, so recruiting zombies is pointless because it just creates stronger and infinite spawning enemy ones.