IncendiaryDevice
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2014
- Messages
- 7,407
That's why I quoted it.I actually talked about that in the post you quoted...
And completely ignored it by then stating mild spice as somehow "game is full of"...
That's why I quoted it.I actually talked about that in the post you quoted...
I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.And completely ignored it by then stating mild spice as somehow "game is full of"...That's why I quoted it.I actually talked about that in the post you quoted...
I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.
That's another fundamental aspect. They are not mutually exclusive.I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.
No it's not, the fundamental aspect is the exact opposite, the ability to forge your own destiny by micro-managing your empire... figuring that out is a no-brainer, surely...
That's another fundamental aspect. They are not mutually exclusive.I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.
No it's not, the fundamental aspect is the exact opposite, the ability to forge your own destiny by micro-managing your empire... figuring that out is a no-brainer, surely...
That's another fundamental aspect. They are not mutually exclusive.I didn't ignore it. I contradicted it. You are wrong. Randomness is a fundamental part of the 4X genre.
No it's not, the fundamental aspect is the exact opposite, the ability to forge your own destiny by micro-managing your empire... figuring that out is a no-brainer, surely...
Of course not, that's why civ-likes only have flavour random and not rogue-like random. You don't "make civ-likes great again" by concentrating all your thoughts into ways to introduce more random.
Whether you spawn near special resources or not isn't "flavour random", it's actually random and affects gameplay. Sometimes you spawn next to a useful resource, sometimes you need to wage war against a civ on the other side of the map to get it. And a lot of the politics, if it isn't pure dice rolls, is dependent on things happening in parts of the map you haven't explored and/or have no control over, so it might as well be random.
Nice try, but maybe find a mechanic that didn't even start until the third entry of the franchise.
The map is random, your starting location is random, what you get from villages is random, the AI goes to war at random, barbarians appear at random, and in the earlier games it got wonders at random.
It's a fact. Randomness is a part of Civ games.
You can spawn on an island that is too isolated even for triremes and have to research sails while some aggressive AI eats three other civs and takes over a continent.
Villages and barbarians are small but have significant knock on effects if they happen early. Sometimes you get free cavalry, sometimes you get murdered by barbs, sometimes you eliminate the Zulus early by entering a nearby village that spawns barbs.
Random wars. Should not need an explanation.
The AI gets wonders at random. It doesn't build them, it just randomly gets them for free.
Climate worsen in Civ means that land somewhere is being changed to less productive lands. Not something you can do anything about.
Barbarian horde suddenly invading your land when you are busy with other civs is tantamount to "good game". In Civ4, I have seen event spawn barbarians wipe out entire AI civs. That is BAD.
SMAC tiles were static once the game starts (unless you trigger one of the global warming/cooling things or YOU chose to raise/lower the terrain) and that is the point. It doesn't randomly mutate into another type of tile simply because the computer rolled badly that turn.Climate worsen in Civ means that land somewhere is being changed to less productive lands. Not something you can do anything about.
Only in Virgin Civ rather than the Chad SMAC.
Oh yeah, let's segue into something else that could make civ-likes better - dynamic climate/terrain.
Yes, its another episode of "Why SMAC is the best 4X and more games should take lessons from it".
Go play with the SMAC map/scenario editor, start making terrain - observe that as you make more land, make land levels higher or lower, everything around it changes in fertility. You can do this in the game with terraforming, too. SMAC also has no "mountains" tile, every single tile in the game has its own elevation level.
It reproduces some very real-world behavior - like huge "fat" continents being full of deserts in the middle, mountains blocking rainfal.
Now, SMAC's implementation is relatively simple, because Chiron is not Terra - Chiron is a warm planet with its own mild greenhouse effect. There is no snow in-game, and SMAC also lacks huge mountains, Hymalaia/Alps/Andes-style (we DO need a mountain tile for very high terrain). You cannot also make "high coasts" without beaches and it really lacks impassable tiles.
Did SMAC even tiles? My memory tells me that SMAC's map terrain was dynamically generated voxels, wans't it? SMAC buffs help me here.
A more advanced version of what SMAC did could handle a global climate system.
Not a comfort when YOU are the one the barbs wiped out before they turn into a new civ.Barbarian horde suddenly invading your land when you are busy with other civs is tantamount to "good game". In Civ4, I have seen event spawn barbarians wipe out entire AI civs. That is BAD.
Not if you are playing with a good mod, in which Barbarians can eventually turn into a new Civilization. Don't remember the name of the mod that did that, tho.
SMAC tiles were static once the game starts (unless you trigger one of the global warming/cooling things or YOU chose to raise/lower the terrain) and that is the point. It doesn't randomly mutate into another type of tile simply because the computer rolled badly that turn.
Once again, you dodge the point being brought up: It dilutes player decisions in that it occurs randomly and the player has to scramble to adapt. Having to go around build more farms elsewhere because Libya dried up is no fun for someone who is fighting a war somewhere else at the time.But it doesn't have to be.
The tiles are static because SMAC has pretty simple climate models, and they are only as "static" as the player is. You can use Condensers to turn arid soil into good soil, or raise mountains that block humidity and rainfall, turning tiles deserted. The point here is that the entire thing is generated dynamically, rather than set. Go make a SMAC map now, there is no such thing as a "make this tile rainy/arid" button, except if you use landmarks to do it.
Climate is dynamic and changes.
- Did you know that what we call Lybia nowdays, used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire? Now its a shadow of what it was.
- Did you know there was a time the Sahara was green?
- Did you know the Brazilian southeast gets rain from a complex system that involves large amounts of airbone water mass going into the Amazon Forest, and from there being sent southwards? If the Amazon disappeared now, the weather would be fucked up.
- Did you know Greenland used to be far less of a cold hellish place than it is now, during the Medieval Warm Period?
- Did you know there was a mini-ice age in the 18th century?
The Romans were not killed by a random dice roll. No civilization in history was killed by a random dice roll.
Once again, you dodge the point being brought up: It dilutes player decisions in that it occurs randomly and the player has to scramble to adapt. Having to go around build more farms elsewhere because Libya dried up is no fun for someone who is fighting a war somewhere else at the time.
You think it is a good idea, but the same argument could be made of changing climatic conditions forcing you to disband cities because they are no longer productive. That has also happened in real life. THAT IS A STUPID THING TO HAVE IN A CIV-LIKE.
Adding more random 'realities' to the game wont "make them great again", because those random realities were never there in the first place other than as minor spice.
Adding more random 'realities' to the game wont "make them great again", because those random realities were never there in the first place other than as minor spice.
Global warming was in the original game, with the strange quirk that you could cause it by using nuclear weapons:
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Global_warming_(Civ1)
The game where I hate this dissonance the most is the Total War series, and it's why so many people end-up just auto resolving battles. If you knew that that one BIG battle was make or break, then the battle would be meaningful and barely anyone would auto resolve, however, if, after you've just defeated a 2,000 stack the AI just immediately produces another 2,000 stack in 4 or 5 turns, then, meh, it's just a grind-fest and one's hand instinctively starts to hover over the auto-resolve button, the brain knowing it's all just bullshit anyway, etc.