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The big 4X thread (also unofficial patches + mods, also questions about these)

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,944
Sword of the stars 1 mods and stuff:

[...]


Sword of the stars 2:

While you're on topic, are there any mods that you personally recommend above the others, and why?

And also, is SotS 2 good now? As I recall, there was a great outcry about how broken and unplayable it was when it came out. What's the deal today?

For 1,bastard mod is a personal recommendation.
It is pretty much the only true mod still being developed.
For 2 it is a tossup between reforged and leviathan.Probably reforged gets the edge.
When you game is fucked adding more features can make it somewhat interesting and both of these mods do that.

2 is still a clusterfuck but with the saveourots mod the ai can at least play the game now and not bankrupt itself to death.
But late game turn times are still a nightmare.
And as mentioned,the ui is a disaster.
 

Maxie

Guest
So I've invested the contents of my Steam wallet into something reportedly quite decent this time - Civilization IV (four) Complete Edition
Imagine my surprise when no less than four (IV) different games got installed on my drive, rather than a single game with expansion sets, like, y'know, fuckin HoMM or Warcraft or whatever
I'd appreciate if someone half-competent informed me what's the difference between the four releases of Civilization IV without the customary "play X and ignore the rest" sorta crap
 

The Great ThunThun*

How DARE you!?
Patron
Joined
Mar 8, 2018
Messages
583
Pathfinder: Wrath
So I've invested the contents of my Steam wallet into something reportedly quite decent this time - Civilization IV (four) Complete Edition
Imagine my surprise when no less than four (IV) different games got installed on my drive, rather than a single game with expansion sets, like, y'know, fuckin HoMM or Warcraft or whatever
I'd appreciate if someone half-competent informed me what's the difference between the four releases of Civilization IV without the customary "play X and ignore the rest" sorta crap

Congrats.

Now you know why these games are called 4 (four) x (ex) games (games).
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,944
So I've invested the contents of my Steam wallet into something reportedly quite decent this time - Civilization IV (four) Complete Edition
Imagine my surprise when no less than four (IV) different games got installed on my drive, rather than a single game with expansion sets, like, y'know, fuckin HoMM or Warcraft or whatever
I'd appreciate if someone half-competent informed me what's the difference between the four releases of Civilization IV without the customary "play X and ignore the rest" sorta crap

Play beyond the sword and ignore the rest.
No seriously,what do you expect?
They are all the same game(minus colonization) but with more features.So play the game and if you really hate corporations,play only warlords.If you really hate vassals and corporations then play vanilla.
Most mods require beyond the sword anyway.

Colonization is a remake of the older colonization game in civ 4 engine that focuses only on the colonization of the new world and plays by its own rules compared to other civ games.
 

commie

The Last Marxist
Patron
Joined
May 12, 2010
Messages
1,865,249
Location
Where one can weep in peace
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
So I've invested the contents of my Steam wallet into something reportedly quite decent this time - Civilization IV (four) Complete Edition
Imagine my surprise when no less than four (IV) different games got installed on my drive, rather than a single game with expansion sets, like, y'know, fuckin HoMM or Warcraft or whatever
I'd appreciate if someone half-competent informed me what's the difference between the four releases of Civilization IV without the customary "play X and ignore the rest" sorta crap

It's like that so that it caters for certain mods that run on certain versions without in game switching between versions and for quick launching into versions with more or less content I think. After all, even here there are those that play SMAC and not SMAX, so it's not always that people want all the expansions to mess up a 'pure' experience.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
So I've invested the contents of my Steam wallet into something reportedly quite decent this time - Civilization IV (four) Complete Edition
Imagine my surprise when no less than four (IV) different games got installed on my drive, rather than a single game with expansion sets, like, y'know, fuckin HoMM or Warcraft or whatever
I'd appreciate if someone half-competent informed me what's the difference between the four releases of Civilization IV without the customary "play X and ignore the rest" sorta crap

It's like that so that it caters for certain mods that run on certain versions without in game switching between versions and for quick launching into versions with more or less content I think. After all, even here there are those that play SMAC and not SMAX, so it's not always that people want all the expansions to mess up a 'pure' experience.

Yeah I dunno about that.

Rome Total War and Medieval 2 Total War also have expansions and they are only one program in Steam. When I click "Launch" it gives me a dialogue window where I can choose between "Launch Rome Total War" or "Launch Barbarian Invasion", so launching different expansions through just one library item is easily possible. Launching mods this way is also no problem at all because when I edit the command line in Steam's options (right click on the game, click properties, and add a command line order like "-mod:rtrvii") it applies whatever is written in there to the version of the game I launch.

For Civ 4, I only have BtS installed because that's the one that got the most mods. Don't bother with vanilla or Warlords.
 

commie

The Last Marxist
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Messages
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Where one can weep in peace
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
So I've invested the contents of my Steam wallet into something reportedly quite decent this time - Civilization IV (four) Complete Edition
Imagine my surprise when no less than four (IV) different games got installed on my drive, rather than a single game with expansion sets, like, y'know, fuckin HoMM or Warcraft or whatever
I'd appreciate if someone half-competent informed me what's the difference between the four releases of Civilization IV without the customary "play X and ignore the rest" sorta crap

It's like that so that it caters for certain mods that run on certain versions without in game switching between versions and for quick launching into versions with more or less content I think. After all, even here there are those that play SMAC and not SMAX, so it's not always that people want all the expansions to mess up a 'pure' experience.

Yeah I dunno about that.

Rome Total War and Medieval 2 Total War also have expansions and they are only one program in Steam. When I click "Launch" it gives me a dialogue window where I can choose between "Launch Rome Total War" or "Launch Barbarian Invasion", so launching different expansions through just one library item is easily possible. Launching mods this way is also no problem at all because when I edit the command line in Steam's options (right click on the game, click properties, and add a command line order like "-mod:rtrvii") it applies whatever is written in there to the version of the game I launch.

For Civ 4, I only have BtS installed because that's the one that got the most mods. Don't bother with vanilla or Warlords.

Maybe for some regions. I had Medieval 2 and Rome TW and they had separate launchers on Steam. Only now they rebadged the Medieval 2 as 'Definitive' and have just the one launcher now. Rome still has a separate thing for Alexander.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Maybe for some regions. I had Medieval 2 and Rome TW and they had separate launchers on Steam. Only now they rebadged the Medieval 2 as 'Definitive' and have just the one launcher now. Rome still has a separate thing for Alexander.

Yeah Rome Alexander is separate for some reason.

Maybe the ability to launch multiple exes from the same library entry has been introduced after the release of Civ 4 on Steam? That might explain it.
 

AgentFransis

Cipher
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Joined
Jun 4, 2014
Messages
979
Interesting talk on the issue of dumb AI and how devs should tackle it for a better 4X SP experience:

Made it through half the video before dying of boredom. Guy just drones on endlessly about popamole mechanics of nu-civ games and makes very few points of any kind.

bonus:
My first 4x game was Civilization Revolution for the x-box
My favorite games are Civ 5 and Endless Legend
Normally I would close the tab after such statements.
 

BlackAdderBG

Arcane
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3,045
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Little Vienna
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Some random shit that come to my mind.

Civ 4 was coded so you can mod most of the game with text editor. Also the AI could do naval invasions with transports. Stacks of doom are noob myth and late game occurrence with few exceptions of keshik mongolian spam or horse archers rush (that was the most common example of SoD, if mongolians were your neighbor you HAD to start building units). Any decent player would destroy the AI if it was stacking all his units and vice versa. Not to mention they are more realistic and immersive than bowmen shooting across the La Manche. SoD were not a "problem" until Civ V release and the horde of retards that recycled direct marketing quotes, biggest proof is no big mod for Civ IV before V release was changing the stacking limit.
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,944
Some random shit that come to my mind.

Civ 4 was coded so you can mod most of the game with text editor. Also the AI could do naval invasions with transports. Stacks of doom are noob myth and late game occurrence with few exceptions of keshik mongolian spam or horse archers rush (that was the most common example of SoD, if mongolians were your neighbor you HAD to start building units). Any decent player would destroy the AI if it was stacking all his units and vice versa. Not to mention they are more realistic and immersive than bowmen shooting across the La Manche. SoD were not a "problem" until Civ V release and the horde of retards that recycled direct marketing quotes, biggest proof is no big mod for Civ IV before V release was changing the stacking limit.

Do you know what stacks of doom are called in real world?
Armies.
Do you know what carpets of archers as far as you can see are called?
Firaxis marketing.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,346
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Some random shit that come to my mind.

Civ 4 was coded so you can mod most of the game with text editor. Also the AI could do naval invasions with transports. Stacks of doom are noob myth and late game occurrence with few exceptions of keshik mongolian spam or horse archers rush (that was the most common example of SoD, if mongolians were your neighbor you HAD to start building units). Any decent player would destroy the AI if it was stacking all his units and vice versa. Not to mention they are more realistic and immersive than bowmen shooting across the La Manche. SoD were not a "problem" until Civ V release and the horde of retards that recycled direct marketing quotes, biggest proof is no big mod for Civ IV before V release was changing the stacking limit.

Do you know what stacks of doom are called in real world?
Armies.
Do you know what carpets of archers as far as you can see are called?
Firaxis marketing.
Stack of doom don't work in the real world, though. They only did until napoleonic times or so.
Trying to do that with modern armies just leads to something like the French army of 1940, cut off from its supply bases and command.
However, 1UPT is not the good right solution. Supply and encirclement, like in Shadow Empire is.
 
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downwardspiral

Learned
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
131
Stack of doom don't work in the real world, though. They only did until napoleonic times or so.
Trying to do that with modern armies just leads to something like the French army of 1940, cut off from its supply bases and command.
However, 1UPT is not the good right solution. Supply and encirclement, like in Shadow Empire is.


The problem is the scale, army structure and how the battle is fought.
Also what do people want to play in those games.
In the past the distinction between battles and grand tactics is not as important as it is in the modern time.
Civ is a game that try to cover entire human history with one chess-like battle system.
I don't think majority who play civ really care about how real war is fought in civ. If one care too much, Civ's battle system will only make them headache.
One can't tell the scale of the unit, everything is abstract in Civ.
Is that infantry man represent one division or one corps? why do the player need to give order to a machine gun unit when we are playing as the supreme leader of our nation?

The doom stack is good in that it simply represent the total military strength of your faction in a pure abstract and streamlined way. A very mass market tabletop game design, which is what Civ is.
One can't even tell what exactly one hex mean in Civ.
is it a solid space of land? for example 5km^2? or is it just an abstract idea of space?


1UPT system is for people who want to play civ but also want to have a chess like tactical aspect to it.
It is the sin of most 4X game, they are not proper wargame. Because audience tend to be difference.

doomstack is less of a sin because at least the game is completely focus on strategy and 4X aspect.
Where 1UPT is making the mistake of adding unnecessary tactical details into an abstract strategy game in the wrong scale.
Not to mention the whole AI thing.

Morever, a larger scale strategy/operation game tend to be more like GO instead of chess. Where unit is more uniform without much chess-like hard counter that force you go for a 1 or 0 binary situation.
But most 4x ofc can't do that in the late game, people want tacticool and unit diversity.
Most people want to play tactics such as placing pikeman in a place to counter cavalry and archer kiting tactics on a strategic scale map. Thus 1UPT is almost a guarantee for popular title like Civ.
 
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Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,933
Freecol reached 1.0: https://sourceforge.net/projects/freecol/files/freecol/freecol-1.0.0/
The big moment has arrived guys! After all these years FreeCol has just delivered it's big version 1.0.0 release!
Here's what lead dev Stian had to say about it:
"On this very day, 20 years ago, we made the first public release of FreeCol. Our releases have until now been marked as alpha/beta even though the number of downloads for our game has long been counted in the millions. We are extremely proud to finally announce FreeCol 1.0.0!"

There's been a huge amount of changes since the last stable release which people can check out a list of on the FreeCol Sourceforge page here:
sourceforge.net/projects/freecol/files/freecol/freecol-1.0.0/
And of course people can download the new release from here:
www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/downloads/freecol-100-windows-installer-02-jan-2023
FreeCol 1.0.0 Windows Installer (02-Jan-2023)
https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/news/freecol-v100-full-release-is-here

 

Victor1234

Educated
Joined
Dec 17, 2022
Messages
255
Freecol reached 1.0: https://sourceforge.net/projects/freecol/files/freecol/freecol-1.0.0/
The big moment has arrived guys! After all these years FreeCol has just delivered it's big version 1.0.0 release!
Here's what lead dev Stian had to say about it:
"On this very day, 20 years ago, we made the first public release of FreeCol. Our releases have until now been marked as alpha/beta even though the number of downloads for our game has long been counted in the millions. We are extremely proud to finally announce FreeCol 1.0.0!"

There's been a huge amount of changes since the last stable release which people can check out a list of on the FreeCol Sourceforge page here:
sourceforge.net/projects/freecol/files/freecol/freecol-1.0.0/
And of course people can download the new release from here:
www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/downloads/freecol-100-windows-installer-02-jan-2023
FreeCol 1.0.0 Windows Installer (02-Jan-2023)
https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol/news/freecol-v100-full-release-is-here


Nice, my last game was at 0.11.6. Crazy how they had more progress this past year than in the past 5 put together.
 

Demo.Graph

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 17, 2018
Messages
990
This seems to be a thread for random thoughts on 4Xs?

tl;dr It occurred to me that DLC shoveling in 4Xs is not a result of development deficiencies, but rather a marketing strategy.
I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere.

I find it amusing that everyone is okay with Paradox (and other devs) releasing what amounts to beta versions of their games and "polishing" them for years via patches and DLCs. This's not a random thing or a problem of a specific dev team, but rather a production model, since it gets repeated across titles and devs. In my eyes Paradox are the main practitioner of it, but the same can be said about many others.

Usually this publishing model is explained as a consequence of a complexity, capital intensity and a long development time of modern games. The producer can't possibly manage to finish their game in 2-3 years, so it's forced to ship half-assed products and keep developing them after release.

It occurred to me that there might be another explanation.

This publishing model could be thought about as a "MMO-like development" applied to strategy games.
The main problem for a modern business is sales, a struggle for consumer attention and its conversion into a cashflow. The gradual development process is a model that should maximize consumer attention to game via several instruments. It goes approximately like the following.
The release of the game serves as a media event that should hook the target audience. Then begins a process of gradual improvement of the game - patch/DLC shoveling that is basically an open beta test. It also has many marketing bonuses for the publisher.
The flow of releases maintains a constant stream of media events that should keep audience interested.
The flow of releases allows devs to test mechanics via a short dev cycle, receiving feedback from interested players almost instantly.
Testers pay for the privilege of participation.
The game in its unfinished state obviously has a potential for improvement. Players receive a small chance to affect the development of the game via their feedback in social media. An opportunity appears to mobilize them into a process of game development. This also should help with customer retention, since customers get an illusion of engaging with the dev.
The sense of complicity can be further strengthened via modding or a practice of absorbing the best mods into a game proper.
The gradual changing of the game creates a sense of freshness and progress.
There's a higher chance that consumers, who got interested in the game and had already spent some money and time on it, would spend even more time and money due to sunk cost fallacy. There's also less possibility that they would switch to competing products.

The development of the game becomes a process. What "traditional games", like WOW or SC, had achieved via expansions, modern games achieve via a stream of patches and DLCs.
In early 2000s it was acceptable to release 1-3 expansions for a title (e.g. BW for SC, HoMM3 had 2 expansions and a few mission packs).
In 2010s a number of expansions had increased to half a dozen or dozen (e.g. Sims 3).
After ~2015 it became a widespread practice to bombard consumers with small updates, especially since digital distribution platforms had gathered steam.

It's as if one had paid for the privilege to help a milkman make a yoghurt.
This model should be pretty great for sales, actually. That is, until everyone do it.
 

Louis_Cypher

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2016
Messages
1,519
I remember a ground-based, 4X, fantasy game, from the post-3D era (so probably last 20 years), where units looked relatively 'old school fantasy' (i.e. like Ultima's artwork below) as opposed to modern MTG/WoW 'glowing veins n spikes' artwork.

DP1Guhz.png


Anyone know what I might be thinking of?

Or just any fantasy 4X suggestions if you like.
 

Dyspaire

Cipher
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
280
Location
Relative
I remember a ground-based, 4X, fantasy game, from the post-3D era (so probably last 20 years), where units looked relatively 'old school fantasy' (i.e. like Ultima's artwork below) as opposed to modern MTG/WoW 'glowing veins n spikes' artwork.

DP1Guhz.png


Anyone know what I might be thinking of?

Or just any fantasy 4X suggestions if you like.


Was it Disciples?
 

Louis_Cypher

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2016
Messages
1,519
I remember a ground-based, 4X, fantasy game, from the post-3D era (so probably last 20 years), where units looked relatively 'old school fantasy' (i.e. like Ultima's artwork below) as opposed to modern MTG/WoW 'glowing veins n spikes' artwork.

Anyone know what I might be thinking of?


Was it Disciples?
Disciples looks quite interesting, but I remember the engine was polygonal/3D models rather than sprites.

From what I remember, the monsters were quite old school, so maybe Dragons, Minotaurs, Lizardmen, Beastmen....

EDIT: Maybe I'm just thinking of Fallen Enchantress.
 
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Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
By the way, can I assume you all play these games in Ironman / with no savescum?

Or you're all faggots that should be banned immediately?

Edit: Oops wrong thread.
 
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