Civilization VII - coming February 11th

[Hellraiser]

The problem with BE is that people were expecting Alpha Centauri II, but got Civ 5 with a dull sci fi skin on instead.

If only we got Civ 5 with a dull sci fi skin, that would have been way better. Instead it felt like they made a team of all the college or high school student interns who helped with Civ 5 and just let those interns make a new game, somehow missing even the good stuff from Civ 5 despite being given the code on a platter. I mean for fucks sake, submarines came in the expansion pack and there's no great people. The wonders suck so fucking much. There's one fucking air unit type. It takes over 50 fucking turns to settle a second city. About the only new things they did right was the sponsor loadout customization with the starting bonuses, the hybrid alignements and the artifact/archeology in the expansion (despite the cringy attempts at humor in some "old earth" artifact descriptions). The creatively bankrupt setting/lore they developed out of combining together random sci fi cliches was then just diarrhea icing on the shitcake.

 

[Alienman]

It will only have one civ: Ukraine.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It will only have one civ: Ukraine.

Makes sense. No one else will have any money.

 

[Vic]

How are y'all playing the Civ games? Do you always go for Domination victory? Seems like the proper way to do it?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The Panzer Commander system

God, people still parroting this dumbass statement in 2023, just because one of the genius firaxis devs said PG was an inspiration. The fact that there are hexes and you can place one unit on each one does not make the utter shitstain that is nuciv combat a PG clone.

is great for this type of game

I see that you're the one to talk about fake news.

 

[JarlFrank]

If you like streamlined, lean design, you'll like Civ II-III better.

If you like more mechanics and depth, you'll like Civ IV better.

If you like watching slightly interactive cartoons played out on a map, you'll like Civ V-VI better (note: Yes, jeans really have become a resource in Civ 6....)

The Civ4 mod Caveman 2 Cosmos has even more resources like that!

And that's why I fucking love it! Maximalist kitchen sink design ftw

 

[Hellraiser]

How are y'all playing the Civ games? Do you always go for Domination victory? Seems like the proper way to do it?

SCIENCE!!!! usually for me, occasionally a domination/world conquest game, but I often conquer the annoying neighbours when doing science anyway. They are unsophisticated swine that need to be educated and integrated into my glorious utopia that is aiming for the stars.

Also another reason why Civ 6 sucks is because it got rid of the majestic colonization ship to Alpha Centauri and replaced it with a boring mars base That shit could have been a wonder or something, not the victory condition.

 

[Space Satan]

I still remember interview with Sid Meyer and his dead stare upon looking at what his game has become

 

[HeroMarine]

I wonder how much worse can they make this "sequel" compared to the originals.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

don't. because every time they find a way to surprise you.

 

[Modron]

I wonder how much worse can they make this "sequel" compared to the originals.

They sky isn't the limit.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I want to make use of this thread to ask your opinions on Alpha Centauri. I've bought it on GOG long time ago, haven't ever played it but from a review I've read in a pc magazine even longer ago, it seemed to be very good.

 

[Fedora Master]

I want to make use of this thread to ask your opinions on Alpha Centauri. I've bought it on GOG long time ago, haven't ever played it but from a review I've read in a pc magazine even longer ago, it seemed to be very good.

 

[The Wall]

It's being made in West. West is increasingly insane falling-apart shithole, where clowns rule. It will be shit. How can it be anything else?

 

[Dr1f7]

Brace for it, I've got some inside scoop on the new art direction.

Otto Von Bismarck: I cannot wait until ye grow even mightier. Therefore, prepare for war! (Declaration of War)

Purchase 'Casus Belli' for 5000 Civ-bucks?

 

[Norfleet]

How are y'all playing the Civ games? Do you always go for Domination victory? Seems like the proper way to do it?

All victories are domination victories. There's no realistic way you're achieving any of the victory conditions as anything other than a dominant force. It's not normal to pull the other victory conditions out of a hat while barely clinging to life on some desolate rock or facing imminent annihilation as the tanks close in.

 

[Vic]

How are y'all playing the Civ games? Do you always go for Domination victory? Seems like the proper way to do it?

All victories are domination victories. There's no realistic way you're achieving any of the victory conditions as anything other than a dominant force. It's not normal to pull the other victory conditions out of a hat while barely clinging to life on some desolate rock or facing imminent annihilation as the tanks close in.

then why are the other victories in the game?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

How are y'all playing the Civ games? Do you always go for Domination victory? Seems like the proper way to do it?

All victories are domination victories. There's no realistic way you're achieving any of the victory conditions as anything other than a dominant force. It's not normal to pull the other victory conditions out of a hat while barely clinging to life on some desolate rock or facing imminent annihilation as the tanks close in.

then why are the other victories in the game?

Science is there for the fun of having nuclear weaponry in the Middle Ages. Babylon can rush science so hard it's not even funny. Culture plays on its own, in fact, most of my victories are cultural ones because they are super easy to exploit. Diplomacy is there if you're so retarded you can't figure out how to beat the game otherwise.
But recent civs are making warfare more taxing for everyone involved, as we were saying before I think. I dunno, I don't think as civ as a military game. I actually tend to go with peaceful victories most of the times. I don't feel warfare is fun in contemporary civs and the presence or absence of doomstacks has nothing to do with it, actually.
The only thing I want is for Firaxis to ultimately ditch any pretense of tall gaming. Tall gaming sucks.

 

[Norfleet]

then why are the other victories in the game?

To add different ways of recognizing your domination, basically. Brute-force domination would require you to actually move all those units around the map. But the point at which you can afford the scientific superiority to produce the spaceship, PLUS the industrial capability to simply frivolously waste it building something that is expensive yet utterly useless in the rest of the game, essentially proves you are a dominating scientific and industrial power. So, it's a form of domination. Similarly, culture victory means that your culture push is so strong, meaning you own so many large cities that have that level of output, that the AI simply can't compete with your production anyway. All of these conditions essentially demonstrate you've achieved some level of overwhelming power: It's a domination victory by another name.

All of these are basically just domination conditions. Hell, even the domination victory is just a concession over the even older "Total Conquest" victory: Achieving the Domination condition is simply demonstrating that the opponent no longer has the ability to stop you from achieving total conquest and saving the player the trouble of the tedious mop-up. Pretty much none of these victories, will, under normal circumstances, be pulled out of left field by somebody who is otherwise losing the game. Because no one actually likes those kinds of victory conditions when the AI does it to you.

 

[civac2]

For MP you are right. In SP you can sit in a corner and do culture things behind a shield of diplomacy.

On really big maps Spaceship and Culture wins are viable in MP too because there can be several superpowers and killing one of those off is very difficult and dangerous even for the greater power. Much safer to make a spaceship and build units in your other 60 cities. Sheer strategic depth of that kind of empire makes it basically impossible to stop.

 

[whydoibother]

The problem with BE is that people were expecting Alpha Centauri II, but got Civ 5 with a dull sci fi skin on instead.

If only we got Civ 5 with a dull sci fi skin, that would have been way better. Instead it felt like they made a team of all the college or high school student interns who helped with Civ 5 and just let those interns make a new game, somehow missing even the good stuff from Civ 5 despite being given the code on a platter. I mean for fucks sake, submarines came in the expansion pack and there's no great people. The wonders suck so fucking much. There's one fucking air unit type. It takes over 50 fucking turns to settle a second city. About the only new things they did right was the sponsor loadout customization with the starting bonuses, the hybrid alignements and the artifact/archeology in the expansion (despite the cringy attempts at humor in some "old earth" artifact descriptions). The creatively bankrupt setting/lore they developed out of combining together random sci fi cliches was then just diarrhea icing on the shitcake.

I maintain that the single worst decision is to have a research WEB, already more complicated than the left-to-right research line of the Civilization games; and then to have made up bizarro words for the technologies.
As a player, you kinda know what The Wheel unlocks as a research. Chariots, ok. Masonry unlocks walls? Sure. I am going on the offense, so I pick Wheel over Masonry. Done. But when you have to choose between 6 technologies in the web, and they are called things like Cyberfabric Nanoparticle Atomizerfields, you have to just sit down and read. And then read what is unlocked after that. In a complicated web. And of course you won't remember that the Obscuratech Fizzlenator unlocks the Teslacharge Shieldpack for the Biomagma Roboslave, because these don't make sense.
In the end, the bored player picks whatever, and then just plays with whatever gets unlocked.

 

[whydoibother]

I want to make use of this thread to ask your opinions on Alpha Centauri. I've bought it on GOG long time ago, haven't ever played it but from a review I've read in a pc magazine even longer ago, it seemed to be very good.

Very dated, but very good. Definitely play it. Also after your first game, when you learn who acts how, try to roleplay too.

 

[BrotherFrank]

I am genuinely because i no longer care about civ and just want to see how much worst they can keep making the series.
Best case scenario they surprise me with a good game, worst case i get to laugh as i had no expectations, it is the only safe attitude to have nowadays.

 

[kris]

How are y'all playing the Civ games? Do you always go for Domination victory? Seems like the proper way to do it?

I havent completed a campaign in a Civ game in a decade. The exploration part is my favourite anyway, so no surprise that I always drop my playthrough and do a new one.

 

[whydoibother]

How are y'all playing the Civ games? Do you always go for Domination victory? Seems like the proper way to do it?

I havent completed a campaign in a Civ game in a decade. The exploration part is my favourite anyway, so no surprise that I always drop my playthrough and do a new one.

The 4X thing, eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate, breaks down in the middle of the campaign.
You are done exploring relatively quickly, depending on the map size and the game. You are done expanding usually 1/3 into the game. You are already exploiting all your resources about 1/2 into the game, and you are just left with exterminating others.
In a traditional game, you start with few game mechanics, and new are added over time (like unlocking a jet pack or whatever). With 4X games, usually game mechanics are removed from the game over time, as explained above. Civilization series has done damage control, introducing spying, ideologies, monopolies, aircraft, etc, over time to replace the stuff removed. But I doubt anyone will agree that the thrill of exploring and seeing what kind of world you are stuck in can be adequately replaced by a new unit type being unlocked.

You could have a map with 2 continents, all players starting on one and the other left for some mid-game exploration and expanding, which also mimics European colonization of the New world from a realist perspective. However, the minmaxing and ever optimizing player is there rushing to get there as soon as possible, and what should've felt like a mid game treat in practice becomes an early game chore, and then you are still left with no eXploring or eXpanding mid game.

Its actually very surprising the genre went mainstream and after Civ5 there were maybe 10-12 reasonable 4X games coming out close to each other, given this huge design flaw.

The Panzer Commander system

God, people still parroting this dumbass statement in 2023, just because one of the genius firaxis devs said PG was an inspiration. The fact that there are hexes and you can place one unit on each one does not make the utter shitstain that is nuciv combat a PG clone.

is great for this type of game

I see that you're the one to talk about fake news.

Its not just 1UPT and hexes, although these along made a significant improvement. Also took terrain bonuses, attacking over rivers, flanking bonuses, later support bonuses, the damage based on health, etc.
It is an exaggeration to say they copied it, but it is an exaggeration to dismiss its influence. You are being obtuse, and intentionally saying stuff you know is wrong, just to act a hipster. Don't do that.