WAY off topic from this forum normally discusses, but I saw in an earlier thread you guys mentioned civ games and were pretty knowledgable about them. Seeing as how you’re some of the most insightful people I’ve ever read, I’d like to know your opinion of Civ5.
Myself, I hate it. It’s a step backwards and I returned it. Everything is broken and the new “great” combat system is a joke.
I’m a big fan of Civ IV, although the political options are pretty much a joke and definitely do not hold up to Austrian analysis, it’s still a fun and addictive game. The critiques of the some of the game options that I saw on the forums here were great, love the application of AE to games and pop culture. I got Civ V as a gift but have yet to play it due to lack of free time, my non-Austrian friends liked it but I wouldn’t say it had the same addictive qualities of the previous game. I really wish Sid Meier would learn something about economics, his whole team seems oblivious to how economic systems actually function.
I know what you mean, one of the random events in Civ4 is “creation of central bank” and causes 50% reduction in inflation. I laughed so hard. I think you have to accept it with a grain of salt though, because in order for the game to work there has to be government, so I don’t worry about it.
You wanna tell me about why Civ4 is better than Civ5? I never tried any of the Civ games until part 5. I decided to play one long game on the “world” map, and it was fun and addictive. Until I got to the very end where there seemed like there was nothing left to upgrade…I felt that well…I didn’t want to do that all over again.
Instead of Civilization, it should be called Regulation. Or maybe Dictatorship.
The Civ games are basically a monarchy simulation.
I love both Civ III and Civ IV. I never get very far though, cause I keep my people in a state of anarchy for ideological reasons, and apparently people stop working and starve…
One time I got very far though, and the research window popped up saying ‘‘Communism - recommended (economy)’’. I followed their advice, and guess what happened. The Aztecs invaded and killed everyone. So Civ can teach valuable lessons.
Civ IV wasn’t as fun as Civ IV: Colonization. Civ V is funner than Civ IV, but not as fun as Civ IV: Colonization, which allowed me to pay the native americans for their land. Can’t wait till Civ V: Colonization comes out.
I don’t know, Daniel, Civilization IV has a wider range of mods and custom maps available simply by virtue of being an older game, while Civilization V just has an overly simplistic Genghis Khan scenario in the vanilla box and not much range of good mods released yet.
Mods are a big deal, because one wants to experiment much beyond the limited vanilla game quickly. Actually, there were some pretty good in-the-box vanilla mods in Civilization IV as it was, because it had the American Revolution and the North African theater of WWII. In the latter, I played the Lebanon/Syria as under French rule and then conquered Turkey, then Greece, then parts of Italy.
Nah, you have to run the economy with an iron fist, whereas a monarch could opt for extensive privatization (which would lead one only with a tax and army command tab).
As for the topic I agree that Civ V was a step backward form IV. I still can’t believe that they did away with the terrific wonder vids form IV.
I find Sid Meier games very unmemorable. I guess they somehow appeal to the simple-minded en masse. The good sort of game like “Free Enterprise” went the way of the dodo. Obviously too much thinking required there. The entire game industry since the 1990’s has been reskinned clones of Masters of Orion, Command and Conquer and Wolfenstein. Virtually no functional improvement has been made.
The forum is frequented by quite a few software developers - complain in details, and your wish may be granted. Are you complaining about some obvious functional improvements not being implemented, or about lack of imagination in game designers who just cannot come up with great ideas (but you have no specific suggestions yourself)?
I blame the demographic more than the devs. It’s the same with everything. After anything becomes popular it gets dumbed down.
I don’t think an austrian-flavored civilization-like game would be very fun to play. Can you imagine a tagline like “Sit back and watch your civilization self organize!”
Can you imagine a tagline like “Sit back and watch your civilization self organize!”
You could still subject the population to disasters when you get sick of their happiness. Here, take some tornado! No, better a cental bank!
Really?
As far as 4X turn-based games go, have you looked at the improvements in the independent gaming scene?
As far as RTS games go, they were never a sophisticated genre, so it is like asking for functional improvement in smoking or pornography.
As far as FPS games go, a German/Hungarian developer, Crytek, has pushed the boundaries with Crysis - a game in which trees can be fired on in order to have them fall on enemies and in which explosives can be planted on vehicles that you drive, jump out of, and detonate as you fall of in order to kill the enemies into whom you drive.
I few of the problems I have with Civ5 are
-The terrible new diplomacy. You can’t build long lasting friendships and the AI is very schizophrenic and you don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re now also programmed to gang up on you if you start winning, effectively making diplomacy worthless. Why bother if you’re trying to win and they’re going to turn on you?
-The AI can’t fight, at all. First game I played I think I had a 1 to 37 kill ratio. Absolutely horrible.
-Roads cost money. The designers only did this because they didn’t like the way past games looked with roads every where.
-Buildings, once again, cost money.
-Each game has a way to slow down your growth, in civ 1 and 2 it was corruption. In 4, it was the money you were charged to maintain cities. Civ4 was really the only effective system because if you expanded too quickly your economy was sunk and you would fall behind. In civ5 they do empire unhappiness which is similar to corruption. It’s always better to make a city and expand because it increases your production even if it makes your empire slightly more unhappy.
I’ll write more as I think of them.
I’m going to have to beat civ 2 on deity. It’s something I promised myself I’d do back in 1997. After that, AC, then the newer civs, all on the hardest difficulty.
Fun games.
The economic system of this game just confuses the hell out of me:
-Socialism makes building maintenance go down.
-Communism gives +5 production.
-Planned Economy reduces unhappiness caused by the number of cities by 50%.
It just makes no sense to me. It seems like they just wanted to have a bunch of random bonuses and perks you could get for your civ and then just assigned the names of random economic systems to them. The funny thing is that the Civilopedia entries for some of these aren’t that bad. For the Planned Economy, they even say it’s often “laughably inefficient” in practice.
Overall Civ V was a mized bag for me.
I actually liked the combat system in Civ V. It actually forces you to gasp use strategy. In CIv IV I used to just stack up a dozen or so units and march right through my enemy’s cities. Now thanks to no-stacking and self-defending cities(which I’v long throught should have been in the game), I cant do that. I do wish they’d do something about the crappy AI though.
However I didnt like how they ‘dumbed down’ most of the domestic stuff. Although the policy tree has some potental. Also why the hell did they get rid of religion.
And yea, the economics of the series is a joke. But the whole point of the series is that you are playing as a giant, immortal, nearly omnipotent central planner. If the game used real economic analys, you’d do best but not doing anything. Which would seem to take all the fun out of it.