"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the Infinite"
Games are infinity generators.
Mark Zuckerberg and Sid Meier are superficial heros. They just stand around with their 6 inch chimp brains staring at that Infinity they have seeded, trying to take credit for what works and hide behind good intentions for what fails. They and their behavior distracts, and should be filtered out of any discussion of Games as infinity generators.
Don't take any single point of view as Canon gospel, sure. But just completely dismissing them would call into question whether anyone's view is actually relevant.
I read the superficial as they both are propped up by experienced people to attract similar talent acoording to the article. Its a great marketing and hiring strategy. And that has probably more to do with the success of the game than the individual game designers.
>A growing pile of video-game histories [...] suggest that the medium has always had collective effort at its heart, from its academic beginnings to its ascent into everyday life. In Meier’s memoir, we discover that he was a good game-maker when he fought this essential fact, but that he became great when he learned to embrace it.
>The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived.
Oddly, the best games to bear his imprimatur, Civ II, and (by far) Alpha Centauri, were not headed by Meier. It does seem like games, of all things, would have the potential to be at their greatest under the vision of a single author, but history has shown the opposite (many times, after designers of successful games go on to head their own projects with total control, the results fall short of their predecessors). Part of this might have to do with the possibility space of game states (far too great for a single person to test, explore, or even conceive of), and also the complexity involved in programming a complete game. However, another explanation is that it is still possible to achieve greatness via that approach, and we merely have not had any genius game designers so far.
I think that's just like the fact that John Lennon did his best work in The Beatles, or that George Lucas's best films are the ones where he was challenged by collaborators. Once art requires a certain amount of diverse techniques in order to be produced, the chances that a single individual will excel in all of them fall dramatically.
I don't even think there needs to be more than one "technique" - think of all the authors that are worse without an editor. It's about not having any pushback, and missing your blind spots or getting high on your own supply.
Makes me think about Gene Roddenberry, too. The more I learn about history of Star Trek, the more it seems that Roddenberry was a bit over-the-top with his ideas. If he got his way with everything, the show would be quite cheesy (the way Andromeda is). Star Trek's golden era (TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT) is the result of other producers pushing back on Roddenberry's influence, and after his death, increasingly subverting some of his ideas.
(Of course over time things strayed too far from the original vision, and the result is the post-ENT crapfest that carries the official "Star Trek" name, but is otherwise a generic action movie franchise. A strange situation, in which the only work still sticking to the deep and hopeful vision of the future is the little animated show that everyone thought will be a joke.)
Basically it seems like having a strong inventor with a good original idea, then mixing it with other peoples influences even AGAISNT that original inventor’s intent, is a good way to get cool stuff.
Lower Decks is good, it is done by people that really liked the old ST series. Sometimes, I am not sure if it is mocking some of the ST tropes, like the two-hand punch, space anomalies and so on. Still light years better then Discovery (which is totally not cannon in my mind).
I love Lower Decks. It's definitely mocking and lampshading plenty of Star Trek tropes, but it does that in a playful and positive way. It laughs, but doesn't trivialize - and unlike the other new shows (Discovery, Picard), it doesn't paint the future as grimdark and everyone as untrustworthy and bloodthirsty.
Picard wasn't too bad actually, I think. Maybe a tad to gritty / realistic when compared to TNG. It did offer a plausible universe development so, incl. Picard sacrificing his career for principle.
Picard was aimed at people who were teenagers or twentysomethings at the time of TNG, and 30 years later are now disillusioned adults. It had to be "all grown up and shit". I found it pretty good, if occasionally predictable.
I guess I'm not the target audience then - I was a kid when TNG was created, and on the lower end of teenage years when it aired in my country. I bought the optimism wholesale - hook, line and sinker. It had significant influence on my development as a person. As much as I'm disillusioned about the real world, TNG is in my heart a reminder that we could do better. And I feel the first step to do better is for the idea to be out there.
So here's me hoping that in 5-10 years time, I'll fall into their "target audience" window and they'll make an inspiring, positive show for people like me.
I am also a Star Wars fan, and Battletech. Star Wars wise, I loved TIE Fighter. So I guess I always had a leaning towards darker, less otimistic SiFi. Still watch TNG, DS9 and ENT so. Even VOY from time to time. Not sure I'll do that with PIC once I've seen the episodes once. Not sure if that is due to the episodic story telling of the former or nostalgia.
I feel DS9 pulled off realism better - Picard seems to me to fly past realism and straight into dystopian stereotypes. And there was too much meaningless killing.
I'm also pissed about the Borg subplot - in the trailer and initial episodes, they set up the scene for some amazing drama and deep storytelling, and then they just literally crashed it into a planet and discarded like space trash. It was a huge letdown to me.
I honestly believed that the AI-gods were the creators / origin if the Borg. DS9 is quite a high bar to be measured against, so. Just shy of Babylon 5 for that period in my mind.
> Picard seems to me to fly past realism and straight into dystopian stereotypes
The “dystopian stereotypes” in Picard seem to me to be classic Trek with a very slight change of focus (largely in dwelling in aspects of the setting and social contexts which were indicated in other parts of the franchise but only briefly or tangentially interacted with.)
Kind of like what Lower Decks does, but in a different direction (and played for drama rather than laughs.)
My pet theory is that they went over the top with comedy aspects in S1 only to establish The Orville as a parody, to avoid being accused of IP misuse/plagiarism. S2 toned down the jokes a lot, and it feels more like a lighter TNG, which I believe was the goal all along.
Yeah, I got the same impression -- they really wanted to make Star Trek, and were like, "Exactly how much parody do we need to include to make a lawsuit unprofitable?".
This discussion is just silly. Claiming anything about art in general is gone be wrong.
Sometimes a singular vision leads to something great. Something it doesn't. Sometimes a single vision contained by bureaucracy leads to something great. Sometimes a vision helped along by others creates great things. Sometimes nobody has any vision and they somehow end up with something amazing. Sometimes you have a bad vision and others turn the core of your idea into something awesome.
There are literally tons of examples for all of these. We have 10k+ years of human history of art.
> It does seem like games, of all things, would have the potential to be at their greatest under the vision of a single author, but history has shown the opposite
I have to disagree with you here.
Both Civ II and Alpha Centauri were headed by a strong single author. As were both the original Civ and Civ IV which I and many others would see as the best manifestation of the game.
We can also see this outside of the Civ franchise. Think of Super Mario, Popoulous, Doom/Quacke, Sim City, Elite – just to name a few.
Great games were made by great Designers, yes, single authors. Very much akin to big movies or fantasy novels.
These examples, at least (the others are a bit outside of my knowledge), fit the pattern outlined above of having worse successor projects headed by a former team-member.
Doom was a tense collaboration between Carmack and Romero. Carmack was geniusing out the engine, while Romero was pulling hard on the game atmosphere, music, level design and details like the timer that spawned Doom's speedrunning culture.
Quake, which was Romero-less, was a technical masterpiece, but not a very memorable game. There was the brown level, the other brown level, and the brown level again but different. Its modding potential plus competent network code really made it a big hit.
Doom was one of the first games that showed how long you'd spent to complete a level at the end of each level. This made it easy (and obvious) to compare times and compete with others.
The artist of doom is a forgotten hero apart from Romero/Carmack. He had a background with nasty medical images, so the hellish deformed people were a good fit.
Without it's art, doom would be a very different game.
That's Adrian Carmack (no relation to John). He made most of the characters you see in the game out of clay before they were pixelated.
Can't recommend Masters of Doom enough, the book that talks about the history of id Software. That all these guys came together in the same place is a miracle in itself.
One of the strangest buildings I've ever seen. I wonder if it wasn't a street-level stall market or something first because now it's basically a parking lot with an unfortunate building packed under it.
At least on the story front, Alpha Centauri seems to owe much more to Brian Reynolds than to Sid Meier, according to [1]. Unless you mean he was the "strong single author" there (instead of Sid Meier), I'd argue there were at least 2 strong authors.
I'm really no expert on game designers but from the top of my head I can think of at least one that I would describe as genius, namely Chris Sawyer who made Transport Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon almost single-handedly.
Noclip did a documentary[1] on RCT and successor games, and tried to interview Chris. The response passed through his representative is stated in the 2nd to last segment (The Legacy of RCT at 30m55) in the video.
Not to dismiss his achievement, but, why do people always think programming in assembly is ultra hard? This was just how we wrote games back in the day. I still know people using Assembly for a wide range of development, it's not particularly harder than any other programming. A bit tedious, yes, but with FASM and Fresh it's a lot better.
Claims that Alpha Centauri or Civilization II were best games are over exaggerated - I have never understood why people had to make such controversial claims and why they have to continue to do so. IMO, they were unappealing games slapped on top of a very simple concept of first Civilization, that had unique component among all the strategy games - digital encyclopedia - long long time before wikipedia. That was one of the reasons why I started to learn English.
As for Civilization II - it sucked hard and if anyone feels insulted about this claim, then they really have to sit down and shake their brain box to remember if that Windows monstrosity of Civilization II was really that great. Sure, videos of advisers was new technological advance, which very quickly became nuisance and then were turned off. Music was initially great, but after a while I had to play Civilization II without it, unlike Heroes of Might and Magic II, which had the greatest music and was proper full screen game for Windows(and DOS!!!). Not to mention, that there was great strategy game of Master of Orion 2: Battle of Antaris. And then there was a Civilization clone - Master of Magic - with had a very successful following as Age of Wonders.
Anyway, I can still enjoy first Civilization(even with that nasty bug, that glitches Earth map in late game), because of Genius simplicity of a game, but can't say the same for Civilization II even if I had fun when I played it, because usage of Windows GUI in Civilization II will feel outdated and very unappealing, which only later Civilization titles fixed.
As for Alpha Centauri - it was not as widely available as Civilization II and technical specifications were ahead of most of PCs, when most of them were not powered by latest Pentiums. That sucked, as I really wanted to play that game(hence the discussion about greatness is more limited, unlike about first Civilization), but by the time I was able to get a hold on it, it was already outdated(and unplayable due to Windows compatibility and color paletting issues!!!), compared to other games that were released at that time.
Civilization games to me looks be like a software representation of board games. They are not simulations, and they are very gamified. It certainly feels good to play them, but after sometime with it, one might get a feeling that these are really board games with overcomplicated rules, and really nothing ambitious about them (I am speaking of games Civ 3 and upwards, the ones before are technologically remarkable considering the era in which they were made).
One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
I'd almost agree, but the new XCOM games[0] get quickly boring to me because of their linear tech tree progression aspect. That is, all the weapons you unlock over time are strict improvements over predecessors they replace. There's no increase to the number of options or tactics - you unlock laser weapons, there's no reason to ever bring in regular firearms to the fight. You unlock plasma weapons, there's no reason to ever use lasers again. Etc.
What I'd love to play is a game like XCOM, but where the tech tree is broader than you can cover in a single game, and where options have tradeoffs - so e.g. it could make sense to have a squad where one soldier is carrying a plasma weapon, and everyone else carries regular rifles, because tactical considerations make it a better option.
(Also one implication of this I didn't like in terms of role-playing: firearms are our weapons, laser weapons are our weapons made from reversing some basic science off alien tech, and plasma weapons are just their guns modified so humans can handle them. I always felt there should be a way to make lasers ultimately better than plasmas, based of my favorite trope of humans beating alien invaders with smarts and sheer force of will.)
--
[0] - I never played the old ones, but from what I hear, it's the same, except much more difficult.
Civilization 3 had to do what Civilization 2 was not able to do and break into 3D world of strategy maps. I was more impresssed by Age of Wonders games that offered better terrain strategy and eventually they replaced my interest in Civilization games. That along with more pleasing fantasy visuals and music was something that took over up till Crusader Kings II came along(though it had a dark side of using toxic and not very deep enough interpretations of history).
>>One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
Hmm, this is interesting observation, but I have excatly the same feelings towards Civilization games that you are describing about XCOM games, because I felt that XCOM games did not offer very deep game and were very repetitive to the same grind. But then, I also have a dislike for any doom scenarious of future and probably that was one of the reasons why I was not impressed by XCOM games and also Civilization II with free range of scenarious as the first thing that map makers did was creation of doomsday scenarios and the ones that weren't doomsday scenarios were not as fun as other games.
>>In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
Well, I feel that some of the "hate" or claims about greatness of some games in past is more on the meme level that over time have developed in myths, that some now are taking too seriously - even religiously... :))
It also has to be taken into the account, that any author that is riding the wave on someones else success has to praise object of the topic even more and that makes self fuelling cycle, but I would not go so far as to claim, that Civilization was not a great game. It stood test of time - my memories of first Civilization are of those times, when other very popular option was Wolfstein 3D and then Doom and Doom II and I still played first Civilization when I got bored of Civilization II. Of course I played later Civilizations as well and had fun, but my ground base memories are not about them all so there will be a bias about some of them.
I don't think I'd agree, the best games in terms of concept and fun (as opposed to polish like Witcher 3) are those with essentially one or two people making the fundamental game. Things like Slay the Spire, factorio and Rimworld had 1 or 2 people making the game what it is, with some later folk adding some polish.
Don’t forget that the most popular game of all time, far outperforming billion-dollar studios, was written in about a year, in Java, by a single dude. There’s something very beautiful about that.
If it was part of a book or movie you’d roll your eyes.
I think it matters whether or not you look at games that are a single "work" or games that are part of a series.
For example, I think Lukas Pope is a good modern example of single author creating really unique and novel games. Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri on the other hand are more like good examples of fresh ideas being injected into a series under new leadership.
Well, for example the terrain-manipulation mechanics are much more fleshed out, due to it aiming to be a "hard sci-fi" game with terraforming and xeno-biology. It even has a simple terrain-based weather model where (for example) the shadow-side of mountains have less rainfall, influencing fertility.
There was the ability to do unit customization (which actually could get a bit overwhelming to teenage me), which came from other 4X gamee set in space I guess.
Another thing is that Civ 1/2 didn't really have very strong differences between nations gameplay wise (if you played as them, enemy AI is a different story). That really started with Alpha Centauri and its ideological factions being partially represented by their gameplay strengths and weaknesses. The way it balances an implied a grander sci-fi narrative through these ideological factions and quotes from their leaders on the one hand, and gameplay mechanics affecting how these factions evolve with the development of new technologies on the other was novel and hasn't really been equalled since imo.
I love Civilization, but I think the most singular thing Sid Meier ever did was Pirates. It's weird that there are so few attempts to modernize/rip-off that concept out there.
Railway Empire has a lot of the same mechanics as Railroads! but with much better graphics a little added complexity. I don't that many video games these days, but Railway Empire is one I find myself going back to play again and again.
Would be nice to see someone do the same for Pirates!
Civ 3 caused me to go out and buy a hard drive to put windows on it so I could play it, it was that good.
I played the Americans in one game, and as time progressed oil appears. I had a large empire, but no oil. My peaceful neighbouring empire however did, so I had no choice but to invade.
I still remember my "great iron wars of the North" between the Japanese (me) and the Celts (AI) in Civ 4(?). The went on for around 100 years or so and decided the dominance of the continent. Still among the best games I ever had, despite hundreds of hours in Civ 6 since then. Side note, the japanese-celt wars ended in a nuclear exchange later on.
I have Civ III through Good Old Games, but sadly, they only provide it with the expansions included.
They do provide a readme that tells you you can play previous versions of the game by navigating to the install directory and running the particular executable you want, but they only ship the one executable. Not sure why they went to the trouble of removing the other executables.
Civ 4 was the last true Civ to have a gameplay similar to the the originals.
Civ 5 and 6 introduced unit stacking constraints that completely change the way the game is played.
If WW2 happened in Civ 5 or 6, the Normandy landings would not have been possible because you would not be able to stack large number of units in one tile. Those landings were "a death stack".
But even if every large battle in history could be represented as a "death stack", Civ 5 and 6 players do not like them.
Then, the hex tiles do not create a good keyboard experience.
Civ 6 is actually rather good, especially with Gathering storm and Rise and Fall. I have to agree so, Civ 4 is better. At least in memory, but that is propably biased due to some really great games under Civ 4. And those games are rare, regardless of version.
As far as death stacks and etc goes, it makes better civilization gameplay imo.
If i want wargame i will play wargame specifically, you could try paradox games or jump straight into slitherine/matrix wargames. To me there is huge difference between the 2 genres.
Any way that's my personal opinion. My overall favorite civ was 2 for what it's worth.
To anyone who enjoyed Civ4 especially, I would strongly recommend Old World, a classical antiquity period game that in many ways feels like a sequel to Civ4, and does a far better job with 1UPT than Civ5 or Civ6 did. Old World is designed by Soren Johnson, and multiple people on the team are straight from Civ4 days.
Looks interesting! Also, I like how the RPS review[1] ends with "it actually doesn't have a strong one-more-turn factor, and maybe that's a good thing", because that is actually what has been keeping me away from these games for years now
I personally think Old World does have the "one more turn" effect at its best, as in the game is interesting and you always want to see what will happen the next turn. But it's less of a time sink than Civ. Just as Old World focuses on a specific era of history, it also shortens the game length - the max is 200 turns, but you will often find the games last in the 100-120 turn range. And then there's a "double victory" condition that gives you a victory once you're so far ahead that the outcome is decided.
Oh don't get me wrong, that sounds great, but for me, the "one more turn" effect is practically equivalent with "compulsively playing and being a slave to the gameplay loop even when I genuinely want to go to bed". It's a real, serious addiction risk, and I almost exclusively have it with 4x games (some RPGs also, especially if they're Baldur's Gate style isometric ones).
So when the review says "it's a fun game but you kind of spontaneously take a break after an hour or two", that is a relief for me!
Not officially right now (the game's sold on Epic, which has no Linux support) but the game works perfectly with Proton, it's easiest to just run it with Lutris or the Heroic Launcher.
I'm the Linux nerd on the team and try to keep an eye out on Linux-specific issues, and maintain a native Linux build as well, which isn't too hard because the game is built on Unity anyway, it has good cross-platform support.
Call me strange, but I actually really enjoyed the minutiae of managing unit deployments across the map, engulfing an enemy city, in Civ 5. It felt more like an actual assault than the stacks of doom in Civ 4.
Civ 2 had pollution and rising sea levels due to melting ice caps. The most interesting unintended gameplay that came out of that must have been the Eternal War savefile:
Civ 1 had global warming as well, triggered by pollution (which can be a result of industry/city-size, but also as a result of using nuclear weapons). In my very first civ1 game, I eventually took over the Earth with nkues, in the 2500s, but it caused terrible global warming turning the whole world into swamp and desert, which in turn shrunk nearly all the cities down to size 1 due to famine.
The second expansion for Civ 6 -- Gathering Storm, has a global warming mechanic built in. Civ 5 did not have it, but Civ 4, 3 and 2 definitely did in one form or another. I don't remember if it was a thing in Civ 1.
Neat, I did not know civ2 had implemented the global warming mechanic.
Anyone who wants a game thats in the same vein, i can somewhat recommend Humankind. But it doesn't really have climate change mechanics, more like 'IPCC naming and shaming' since factions will hate on factions that pollute, even in the medieval era..
I would have appreciated that global warming was a thing that needs to be researched, since the phenomenon has only been discovered relatively late (in terms of the entire span of human civilization).
> I would have appreciated that global warming was a thing that needs to be researched, since the phenomenon has only been discovered relatively late (in terms of the entire span of human civilization).
In terms of the entire span of human civilization, yes. But in terms of the age of our modern, industrial societies not so much. It was discussed by Fourier in the 1820, the greenhouse effect was well described by Tyndall in the 1860s (he knew about the effect of methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapour), and its increase due to human activity was explored by Arrhenius in the 1890s.
Just a reminder that we did know about global warming. We've been knowing for a long time.
>Just a reminder that we did know about global warming. We've been knowing for a long time.
That is not really correct and very nitpicky. We also know, that volcanic activity that releases those greenhouse gases were actually cooling down planet with catastrophic consequences to humanity that halted economic development. Not to mention, that there is also observation, that cities have higher temperature than in countryside(on average 2 degrees higher in north - 4-5 degrees hotter in south), where cows are generating methane gas. The scourge of 21st century is that human infested urban environment that has constantly hotter temperature than environment around it finally have reached significant enough coverage, so that it is now affecting rest of the planet.
Also, it is worth mention that there is a theory of Nuclear Winter, which is completely avoided in Civilization games.
All the greatest scientists in late 1970s were talking about coming of a new Ice Age. All the science fiction from that era is full of Ice age related stories. So, at the moment global warming is complete bonkers theory, that will fly out of the window as soon as there will be a sufficient volcanic activity level. So far there is also observation, that volanic activity has been going down while global warming has gone up.
The current theory of Global warming is very politicized. The data that lead to this theory was fabricated and opponents to this theory were silenced. And constructive criticism about reasons why there is a global warming is not possible. It is not as much as a theory, as it is a religion with belief system for something that has different natural causes. Besides there is some belief, that there will be high temperatures in equator, that render those regions void of life, while the reality is that highest rise of temperature is going to be around poles and that in turn will improve living conditions to people that are living there now.
The main reason why there exist theory about global warming is because it was a reaction to actions of Arabic Gulf countries in 1980s that halted economy of USA by creating fuel shortage. Suddenly Ice Age theory became defunct overnight...
Though, there are of couse good side effects to this new religion - fuel powered cars are cause for lead poisoning and ending usage of them will be better to health along with other enviromental changes.
When Sid Meyer was making his game, it was not yet known, that lands that are now under ice, would be rebounding and main body of that water will flow to equator(because of planets rotation and shape) to flood things more around equator than lands that are near poles. I did not knew about that either, but I always wanted to build some city on that Earth map in first Civilization, that was turning ocean tiles into land tiles in northern pole because of a bug.
> All the greatest scientists in late 1970s were talking about coming of a new Ice Age.
Careful — what was reported in general news was (and is) different from the work of the actual scientists. This is even true when the the news is reporting on a specific scientific report.
> All the science fiction from that era is full of Ice age related stories. So, at the moment global warming is complete bonkers theory, that will fly out of the window as soon as there will be a sufficient volcanic activity level.
You can’t use sci-fi to draw conclusions about anything except the culture in which it rises.
Climate research explicitly includes “what do volcanoes do?” as well as other, mostly larger, sources of aerosol cooling. Indeed, this is a subset of “can we do geo-engineering to mitigate the effects?” research.
> The current theory of Global warming is very politicized.
It has indeed been politicised, but in the opposite way you claim: the scientific consensus is basically “totes real”, the reporting makes average Jo think it is “scientists disagree”.
> The data that lead to this theory was fabricated and opponents to this theory were silenced.
Explain.
> And constructive criticism about reasons why there is a global warming is not possible. It is not as much as a theory, as it is a religion with belief system for something that has different natural causes.
Anyone paying attention knows 90%-ish of it is natural, because of the temperature difference between us and the moon. The other 10% is the problem.
> Besides there is some belief, that there will be high temperatures in equator, that render those regions void of life, while the reality is that highest rise of temperature is going to be around poles and that in turn will improve living conditions to people that are living there now.
It does indeed appear to be mostly around the poles. Where the ice is. Which is indeed great if you live in what’s currently an icy wasteland, not so much if you live on the coast literally anywhere else. Will also mess with the thermo-haline circulation, I don’t know the current consensus on how much it will mess with it, but that’s the thing keeping Western Europe warmer than Newfoundland-Nova Scotia right now.
Let me repeat my words: "All the greatest scientists in late 1970s were talking about coming of a new Ice Age."
Different theories of global warming at that time were only theories and not that significant and are not even comparable to that heavy weight of the whale what is understood under "Global warming" today.
>You can’t use sci-fi to draw conclusions about anything except the culture in which it rises.
I can draw conclusion about culture of that age - just like I can draw conclusions of my own on this culture of modern era, which sure will also raise questions to future generations. However my conclusions about human behaviours has nothing to do with the volcanic activity, that will prove theory of Global warming wrong.
My main point here is that Sid Meyer during the creation of his game probably had no idea about those early global warming papers and "research" that you are so eager to point in that publication from earlier times - including earlier centuries, but clearly the idea about global warming was in the air in 1980s for completelly different reasons. Since I did not live in US, I can't recollect any talks about global warming in 1980s - this really exploded in my region only in 2000s(not much after it became a thing in US), when effects of global warming could be seen and when Al Gore was pioneering the usage of this question to gain political power.
>Explain.
The wiki part is not that interesting as background story of childish - even Hitler Nazi behaviour of scientists, where the one who provided that chart(without any proof) and who later could not admit that he was wrong about calculations(that this whole model was based upon) and who caused grief to anyone else who opposeed him.
Rounding up millions and forcing them into slave labour camps and working them to death in weapons factories in a futile effort to conquer the Soviet Union?
No?
Then have you considered the possibility that it’s the “it’s not real” campaigners who are politicising this?
> However my conclusions about human behaviours has nothing to do with the volcanic activity, that will prove theory of Global warming wrong.
Volcanic activity is already accounted for. Human activity vastly exceeds its effects.
> Providing numbers like these are what I call a religious belief.
What would you consider “not religious”?
I’m basing 90%-ish on the size of change we are concerned with preventing versus the magnitude of the difference between the earth and the moon:
Though frankly, as you’ve already gone for argument by reductio-nazi-absurdum, I’m honestly expecting you to dispute the temperature of the moon at this point.
Nazis and Soviets had ability to destroy lives of people even without sending them to labor camps. Not sure what you had in mind, but people in British weapon factories also were worked and driven to death.
>Volcanic activity is already accounted for. Human activity vastly exceeds its effects.
Be real. That is neither possible according to modern human technological advances, nor is true.
>What would you consider “not religious”?
Anything that is not based on belief.
>I’m basing 90%-ish on the size of change we are concerned with preventing versus the magnitude of the difference between the earth and the moon
Well, that is interesting and unique take upon the global warming, but somehow without dipping into this deeper I don't think, that this approach is effective to describe global warming or is even taken into account. This only reflects, that you are a human being and have independent thinking, but I would not waste that on something that is waste of time... unless you are serious on making career on this.
>Though frankly, as you’ve already gone for argument by reductio-nazi-absurdum, I’m honestly expecting you to dispute the temperature of the moon at this point.
Are you ok? You decided to be white knight because I responded to someones else comment that he was picking out and declaring, that we knew about global warming forever, which is not so. People in northern hemisphere would specifically ignore memories about gradual warming or warmer periods and remember about cold winters and tell about them for other generations - it is just how it happened, and they would not tell about something good, that gave them slightly better tan, but they would tell about those winters that killed their cattle and how they survived through it.
Dude, just calm down - arguing is one thing, but I do not deserve your personal attack on me - only because I have my own opinion about this scam and also about the people who use it to gain personal benefits out of it.
Of course Sun sunspot maximum is coming closer and there is also link to that people get crazy during that period... anyway - this is way off the topic of Sid Meyers Civilization, when people were not as batshit crazy about nothing as now.
It's only really possible to move the needle on global warming with an industrial-scale society. The medieval era could just about manage deforestation, but to achieve climate change the sheer volume of coal to move is huge.
It was also in Civ 1. Industries and nuclear war would create pollution on the map. Would appear as a black cloud over a tile. You could send out a settler unit to clean up the pollution but it was a slow process. If the map accumulated too much pollution, global warming would happen. A random plains tile would be changed to desert. Or a coastal tile would become a swamp.
It wasn't too difficult to stay ahead of the pollution curve in the late game as long as you didn't have a war. But there was one memorable game where I had a massive nuclear exchange with Gandhi. Created too much pollution. The world become a wasteland because I couldn't clean it up in time. And the AI didn't clean anything on its own, iirc. I won the game, but it was such a Pyrrhic victory.
This was probably 29 years ago. Playing obsessively on my old Mac LC. Still remember it because it was the saddest game session I've ever had. I won, but there wasn't much left at the end. Broken cities and the earth was dead.
Alpha Centauri has a very active mechanic built into it that uses both global warming (on an alien planet, granted) and also the planet itself being sentient enough to attack with its native lifeforms the factions that pollute it the most.
If you want to build a world, try model railroading on for size. Admittedly it can be a bit light on the analytical side, but maybe just maybe that part of your brain needs a break. As things are now, cool stuff like track signaling is very expensive, but there's all-digital engine & accessory control out there, and I'm hoping that 3D printing (and dedicated Raspberry Pi controllers) will help out with the pricier bits.
Absolutely loved this series, but never acclimated to the 3D maps they switched to after Civ 3.
You couldn't see as much of the world at once, and units and terrain became more difficult to discern.
I wound up playing in the strategic overlay, with mods that relieved some of the claustrophobia, but it never felt as slick as the earlier 2D / isomorphic view.
Other classic strategy games from that era followed the trend, favoring to showcase gorgeously detailed models enabled by their new 3D engines, over equipping you with a clever and efficient UI to conquer the world.
Anyone care to recommend a favorite turn-based strategy game with a pleasant interface which you think I might enjoy?
A lot of the game moved to bonus calculation. Playing a spread sheet so to speak. What happened with units and the map was secondary.
The Civilization board game was similarly boring. Most of the time there were no wars, and everybody was just trading and dealing with disasters and barbarians.
To add to it, Civ 1 graphics are actually quite beautiful in a pixel art way. With Civ 3, you could use for example a watercolor art pack for the terrain, which was great. And still very legible.
The 3d art just looks like a console game aesthetic - it's extremely kitschy - I guess I'm just not in the target demographic.
Maybe there could be a "Civ for adults". With just way less content, shorter games and a more mature art style.
Civ 1 didn't have: culture, religion, great persons, great works, armies, ranged units, luxuries, strategic resources, building placement, unit xp/promotion. Civ 1 didn't even have an improvement for forest tiles.
Civ 1 did have as extra: home city for units. Marine units had to be transported by ship - but that added an interesting mechanic, you had to protect your super important transport loaded with 7 very expensive units. Terrain improvements took a really long time so you had to have multiple settlers work on the same tile. Some superfluous things like fortresses. Small city spam ruined Civ 1.
Yeah maybe that's what rulers have actually spent their time on. Ie very little energy is left over for actual territory expansion attempts. Most of the time you're putting out fires.
Which one? There are at least two different ones, with the same name, based on the computer game franchise. (And, of course, the Avalon Hill game predating the computer game, but that doesn’t seem relevant.)
As is the the Total War series in general, even if I don't like naval battles that much, but hey that's what superior numbers and auto battles are there for.
Total War is a technical miracle. I've yet to see any other games have so many animated units on screen in a battle at once. Other games don't even come close. It creates an amazing atmosphere.
Yes and no. I followed the first Total War game (Shogun) from before it's release and it was just sprites on a 3d board. When it went full-3D it just used batching. True, they always slightly pushed what graphics were capable of but not necessarily to the same degree as the FPS or RPG genres.
But thousands of animated characters on screen is pushing the graphics. You can't really do the same in a standard way with an off-the-shelf engine. You put 500 animated characters on screen in UE4 and everything is going to crawl to a halt.
RTS games even today limit players to ~200 pop each.
Wesnoth is tactical, not strategy. Its a good game (albeit too luck based IMO... Just get used to the "luck swings" of battle), but a totally different genre than 4X / Strategy.
Civilization is on the easier / simpler end of 4X / Strategy... and believe me, this is a good thing!! Things get really complicated. Paradox games (Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universialis) are the "complicated" games, technically realtime but the underlying simulations "feel" turnbased. (Hearts of Iron progresses the simulation in 1-hour increments. They're "realtime" only because it'd be too boring to hit "next turn" so often, but you can hit the pause button and really think about a situation at say: September 1st 1939 @ 1pm if something terrible is going on)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also a strategy game: war, tactics, resources, diplomacy, etc. etc. The elements you'd expect.
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"Tactics" games that focus on a singular battle as the core gameplay loop. Fire Emblem, Wesnoth, Wargroove, Advance Wars, Heroes of Might and Magic, Panzer General, Starcraft, Age of Empires.
"Strategy" games approximate the battles and focus on larger scale elements.
A good rule of thumb is that Strategy Games have an element of siege and supply lines, while Tactics games often just "teleport" the resources where needed. Tactics are about maneuvering your troops to get an advantage, Strategy is about finding / securing resources (ex: placing your defensive Pikeman on the enemy's mine in Civ2, or in their districts in Civ6)
Civ leans towards the simpler/tactics side, but is just barely enough "Strategy" that I'd group it in the strategy side of things.
Haven’t thought of it like that before. Thanks so much for the breakdown. What is your favorite? Or what would you suggest to someone that likes the tactics side more than the strategy side with my two faves actually mentioned by you: Héroes of Might and Magic and Starcraft.
If you've never tried Advance Wars-style tactics, I suggest Wargroove, which has been my favorite tactics-game for the past couple of years.
Wargroove's AI is a bit dumb compared to Adv. War's Days of Ruin however. The game really shines as a competitive player-vs-player setting. But if you're not used to the mechanics of Adv. Wars, you probably need the easier AI to learn how quirks of Adv. Wars style / Wargroove style play.
Nintendo is remaking Advance Wars 1 and Advance Wars 2 ("Reboot Camp") for the Switch. I'll be revisiting these originals-remakes as they come out in a few months. I remember the CO-powers being incredibly overpowering (while Wargroove's special "grooves" are quite powerful as they are, they are no where on the level of CO-powers or CO-superpowers of the original).
> Civ leans towards the simpler/tactics side, but is just barely enough "Strategy" that I'd group it in the strategy side of things.
Civ I’d say (while relatively simple in most versions) is very much on the strategy side. While maneuvering units in the battle theater matters, wars are mostly won or lost by the tech and economics and diplomatic situation going in, and the timing of the decisions to start and end the war.
Civ5 and Civ6 has moved more tactical. I'm spending more and more time thinking about where to place units, because they no longer "stack up" with each other. Collision detection for the human means that I need to put more effort into deciding where to move and place my units.
Yeah yeah yeah, people were confused about "stack kills" in Civ1/2/3, and without stack-kills, Civ4 combat grew dull. So maybe removing stacks all together was a solution (the current direction for Civ5 and Civ6).
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Somewhere along the line, combat was no longer a guaranteed killer. (Civ1/2 was definitely a "win you live, lose you die" for every combat). Civ6, now I'm thinking about movement points, where to retreat to, how to save up HP again and recover, whether or not I can cutoff the opponent's retreat. These are more tactical elements.
I feel like Civ6 has pushed "strategy" through its government card system, which is pretty abstract (Oh, you just got a new government card! Time for a new war! I'm going to equip +100% pillage bonus and +4 Strength bonus). A lot of Civ6 is about abusing the multiplicative bonuses of these cards at the right timing.
Why does the author keep referring to the player as 'her'?
This neither seems in line with the traditional use of 'he/him' in English texts, or even the neutrality of 'he/him and or she/her'. It reads more like a stunted attempt to virtue signal. I'm quite confident that Civilization games skew to male players, rather than female.
What a great way to alienate readers. More so when gender was not a central feature of the article at all.
Sorry, why do you care? Why does it matter? "He/she" is simply unwieldy in writing text meant to be read by other people. Pick whatever pronoun you want to use. It. Does. Not. Matter. What I don't understand is complaining about how somebody else is not using your preferred generic pronoun.
Some languages use the form also used for masculine as generic - officially, as part of their grammar, long before the political matter about what is appropriate exploded. To find that the English language does not follow this rule ("he" as generic) leaves some confused, and even unconvinced: 'she' looks like a modification of 'he', so 'he' looks generic.
In fact, their "close" relation is just apparent: it seems that 'he' comes from variations from the demonstrative 'ki' ("this/here"), but 'she', while still coming from a demonstrative, comes from a different demonstrative, 'so' (feminine 'seo') - the source of 'the' -, which came into use to disambiguate as original feminine 'heo' collapsed into 'he' in spoken language.
Referring to abstract actors as "she" and "her" only alienates a very specific kind of reader. Consciously using female pronouns in these contexts is a very small way of pushing against the norm of everything being male, which is commendable. You'll see it more and more in CS papers nowadays. I cannot possibly imagine being upset by this.
> You may not fall into either of those two camps, but let me assure you, it's a lot of people.
I think thou'st meant "Thou may not fall into either of those two camps, but let me assure thee, it's a lot of people."
The commenter thou art replying to is a singular person, not a group, and as we know, while other words may come and go, the use of pronouns in a language does not change over time.
> pushing against the norm of everything being male
The perception some have is instead that of inserting gender where it was irrelevant. (Those "some" do not associate 'he' and masculine, probably also for cultural reasons as expressed nearby.)
I've always enjoyed 4x games and some of the Civs have been the best among them. It's ultimately a minor gripe and sort of needed for the game to function, but I don't like how they represent history as a linear progression from the Neolithic to the present in the sense that technology A necessarily proceeds to technology C via tech B. The history of technology, as I understand it, has not normally progressed in such a simple way. Technologies are lost and regained and lost (look at the Maya or the Rappa-Nui) again in what seems like a some random movement towards an unknowable and not necessarily pleasant future. It's the one simplification in the game that irks me because some people really do believe, contrary to the evidence, in humanity's direct, unstoppable progression towards a utopian future. I find that degree of optimism dangerously blind to the threats that could be posed by innovation.
I absolutely adore Civ V, it's one of my top played games of all time (behind SC1, SC2, and now Dominion the card game). I play an Earth style map, large size, with 10-15 other Civs, and just go to town on Science/Industry. I love to play as Babylon, Korea, Egypt, and Poland, and I love to play on Emperor (Difficulty 6). I've tried playing other Civs and on Other difficulties, but this set-up of "strong civ" on level 6 is a nice mixture of ease/challenge. I also love the raging barbarian and random personality settings, they really add an element of chaos and unpredictability to the AI's and the early-mid game expansion and wars.
One of my all-time favorite starts was as Poland with 4 salt resources next to Warsaw. Salt is such a baller resource because it's a luxury good, but it also allows the creation of a mine which boosts production, and production is super key in Civ. I could blast out wonders and the cutting-edge buildings in 5-10 turns, and my tech lead meant almost none of the wonders were unavailable. Don't you just love having 20 wonders in your capital by the end?
I'm just starting to get serious with Civ V (have logged 100+ hours in the past couple of months). My favourite is smaller map (the AI turns take too long on larger maps), and large islands. The islands make war more fun, as you can sail to most enemy cities with your fleet and don't have to crawl through the landmass. Also, once Frigates are available, the land units become largely irrelevant, but the AI doesn't really comprehend that, which gives you a big advantage.
I play as Phoenicians, as they get nice bonuses for a water world.
Ooooh boy, the islands set-up is super fun! England is mega OP on that scenario, and if you get Great Lighthouse? My god, so broken :)
One thing with the speed of AI turns, you may be able to go into the advanced settings and turn on "quick combat" and "quick movement" settings. These take away the combat movement animations and help speed up the game a little bit (sorry, I didn't run the benchmarks, haha).
A lot of things in my life have changed in the last thirty years, but one thing that has not is late nights and lost sleep (and angry/confused roommates, girlfriends and wife) due to a Civ obsession.
I've played every version on the Mac, and VI is my favorite so far except for some of the cheezy quotes that accompany tech discoveries. And it's horribly buggy and slow.
Nevertheless, here I am thinking about the game I started last week but paused reluctantly to participate in real world civilization.
Now that I have kids I rarely find the time to play Civ. But my favourite pre-pandemic guilty pleasure when faced with a long flight was to start up Civ 6 immediately after takeoff and play until landing. An eight hour flight would feel like two hours.
Only downside, related to the slowness, is that it's an utter CPU hog, so my Macbook's fans would be straining within ten minutes. Not so comfortable to have on your lap.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadGames are infinity generators.
Mark Zuckerberg and Sid Meier are superficial heros. They just stand around with their 6 inch chimp brains staring at that Infinity they have seeded, trying to take credit for what works and hide behind good intentions for what fails. They and their behavior distracts, and should be filtered out of any discussion of Games as infinity generators.
Don't take any single point of view as Canon gospel, sure. But just completely dismissing them would call into question whether anyone's view is actually relevant.
What nihilistic nonsense.
>The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived.
Oddly, the best games to bear his imprimatur, Civ II, and (by far) Alpha Centauri, were not headed by Meier. It does seem like games, of all things, would have the potential to be at their greatest under the vision of a single author, but history has shown the opposite (many times, after designers of successful games go on to head their own projects with total control, the results fall short of their predecessors). Part of this might have to do with the possibility space of game states (far too great for a single person to test, explore, or even conceive of), and also the complexity involved in programming a complete game. However, another explanation is that it is still possible to achieve greatness via that approach, and we merely have not had any genius game designers so far.
(Of course over time things strayed too far from the original vision, and the result is the post-ENT crapfest that carries the official "Star Trek" name, but is otherwise a generic action movie franchise. A strange situation, in which the only work still sticking to the deep and hopeful vision of the future is the little animated show that everyone thought will be a joke.)
So here's me hoping that in 5-10 years time, I'll fall into their "target audience" window and they'll make an inspiring, positive show for people like me.
I'm also pissed about the Borg subplot - in the trailer and initial episodes, they set up the scene for some amazing drama and deep storytelling, and then they just literally crashed it into a planet and discarded like space trash. It was a huge letdown to me.
The “dystopian stereotypes” in Picard seem to me to be classic Trek with a very slight change of focus (largely in dwelling in aspects of the setting and social contexts which were indicated in other parts of the franchise but only briefly or tangentially interacted with.)
Kind of like what Lower Decks does, but in a different direction (and played for drama rather than laughs.)
It tries to be a comedy, a parody, but you can also tell it's a love-letter to old-school Star Trek.
Sometimes a singular vision leads to something great. Something it doesn't. Sometimes a single vision contained by bureaucracy leads to something great. Sometimes a vision helped along by others creates great things. Sometimes nobody has any vision and they somehow end up with something amazing. Sometimes you have a bad vision and others turn the core of your idea into something awesome.
There are literally tons of examples for all of these. We have 10k+ years of human history of art.
I have to disagree with you here.
Both Civ II and Alpha Centauri were headed by a strong single author. As were both the original Civ and Civ IV which I and many others would see as the best manifestation of the game.
We can also see this outside of the Civ franchise. Think of Super Mario, Popoulous, Doom/Quacke, Sim City, Elite – just to name a few.
Great games were made by great Designers, yes, single authors. Very much akin to big movies or fantasy novels.
These examples, at least (the others are a bit outside of my knowledge), fit the pattern outlined above of having worse successor projects headed by a former team-member.
Doom was a tense collaboration between Carmack and Romero. Carmack was geniusing out the engine, while Romero was pulling hard on the game atmosphere, music, level design and details like the timer that spawned Doom's speedrunning culture.
Quake, which was Romero-less, was a technical masterpiece, but not a very memorable game. There was the brown level, the other brown level, and the brown level again but different. Its modding potential plus competent network code really made it a big hit.
Could you elaborate on that? I'm aware of speedrunning (it's fun to watch!) but I don't know anything about "the timer".
Without it's art, doom would be a very different game.
Can't recommend Masters of Doom enough, the book that talks about the history of id Software. That all these guys came together in the same place is a miracle in itself.
[1] https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/
If that's not genius, I don't know what is.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts4BD8AqD9g
Most games written in assembly were not at the scale of Transport Tycoon, though.
As for Civilization II - it sucked hard and if anyone feels insulted about this claim, then they really have to sit down and shake their brain box to remember if that Windows monstrosity of Civilization II was really that great. Sure, videos of advisers was new technological advance, which very quickly became nuisance and then were turned off. Music was initially great, but after a while I had to play Civilization II without it, unlike Heroes of Might and Magic II, which had the greatest music and was proper full screen game for Windows(and DOS!!!). Not to mention, that there was great strategy game of Master of Orion 2: Battle of Antaris. And then there was a Civilization clone - Master of Magic - with had a very successful following as Age of Wonders. Anyway, I can still enjoy first Civilization(even with that nasty bug, that glitches Earth map in late game), because of Genius simplicity of a game, but can't say the same for Civilization II even if I had fun when I played it, because usage of Windows GUI in Civilization II will feel outdated and very unappealing, which only later Civilization titles fixed.
As for Alpha Centauri - it was not as widely available as Civilization II and technical specifications were ahead of most of PCs, when most of them were not powered by latest Pentiums. That sucked, as I really wanted to play that game(hence the discussion about greatness is more limited, unlike about first Civilization), but by the time I was able to get a hold on it, it was already outdated(and unplayable due to Windows compatibility and color paletting issues!!!), compared to other games that were released at that time.
One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
What I'd love to play is a game like XCOM, but where the tech tree is broader than you can cover in a single game, and where options have tradeoffs - so e.g. it could make sense to have a squad where one soldier is carrying a plasma weapon, and everyone else carries regular rifles, because tactical considerations make it a better option.
(Also one implication of this I didn't like in terms of role-playing: firearms are our weapons, laser weapons are our weapons made from reversing some basic science off alien tech, and plasma weapons are just their guns modified so humans can handle them. I always felt there should be a way to make lasers ultimately better than plasmas, based of my favorite trope of humans beating alien invaders with smarts and sheer force of will.)
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[0] - I never played the old ones, but from what I hear, it's the same, except much more difficult.
>>One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
Hmm, this is interesting observation, but I have excatly the same feelings towards Civilization games that you are describing about XCOM games, because I felt that XCOM games did not offer very deep game and were very repetitive to the same grind. But then, I also have a dislike for any doom scenarious of future and probably that was one of the reasons why I was not impressed by XCOM games and also Civilization II with free range of scenarious as the first thing that map makers did was creation of doomsday scenarios and the ones that weren't doomsday scenarios were not as fun as other games.
>>In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
Well, I feel that some of the "hate" or claims about greatness of some games in past is more on the meme level that over time have developed in myths, that some now are taking too seriously - even religiously... :))
It also has to be taken into the account, that any author that is riding the wave on someones else success has to praise object of the topic even more and that makes self fuelling cycle, but I would not go so far as to claim, that Civilization was not a great game. It stood test of time - my memories of first Civilization are of those times, when other very popular option was Wolfstein 3D and then Doom and Doom II and I still played first Civilization when I got bored of Civilization II. Of course I played later Civilizations as well and had fun, but my ground base memories are not about them all so there will be a bias about some of them.
If it was part of a book or movie you’d roll your eyes.
For example, I think Lukas Pope is a good modern example of single author creating really unique and novel games. Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri on the other hand are more like good examples of fresh ideas being injected into a series under new leadership.
However, my definition of what can be considered a game is also quite broad, and Obra Dinn clearly has an interactive game loop so I think it counts.
I didn't play civ2, but what fresh ideas did alpha centauri bring?
There was the ability to do unit customization (which actually could get a bit overwhelming to teenage me), which came from other 4X gamee set in space I guess.
Another thing is that Civ 1/2 didn't really have very strong differences between nations gameplay wise (if you played as them, enemy AI is a different story). That really started with Alpha Centauri and its ideological factions being partially represented by their gameplay strengths and weaknesses. The way it balances an implied a grander sci-fi narrative through these ideological factions and quotes from their leaders on the one hand, and gameplay mechanics affecting how these factions evolve with the development of new technologies on the other was novel and hasn't really been equalled since imo.
Railway Empire has a lot of the same mechanics as Railroads! but with much better graphics a little added complexity. I don't that many video games these days, but Railway Empire is one I find myself going back to play again and again.
Would be nice to see someone do the same for Pirates!
I played the Americans in one game, and as time progressed oil appears. I had a large empire, but no oil. My peaceful neighbouring empire however did, so I had no choice but to invade.
20 years. Great times.
They do provide a readme that tells you you can play previous versions of the game by navigating to the install directory and running the particular executable you want, but they only ship the one executable. Not sure why they went to the trouble of removing the other executables.
Civ 5 and 6 introduced unit stacking constraints that completely change the way the game is played.
If WW2 happened in Civ 5 or 6, the Normandy landings would not have been possible because you would not be able to stack large number of units in one tile. Those landings were "a death stack".
But even if every large battle in history could be represented as a "death stack", Civ 5 and 6 players do not like them.
Then, the hex tiles do not create a good keyboard experience.
As far as death stacks and etc goes, it makes better civilization gameplay imo.
If i want wargame i will play wargame specifically, you could try paradox games or jump straight into slitherine/matrix wargames. To me there is huge difference between the 2 genres.
Any way that's my personal opinion. My overall favorite civ was 2 for what it's worth.
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the game's developers)
[0] https://mohawkgames.com/oldworld/
[1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/old-world-is-almost-the-per...
So when the review says "it's a fun game but you kind of spontaneously take a break after an hour or two", that is a relief for me!
I'm the Linux nerd on the team and try to keep an eye out on Linux-specific issues, and maintain a native Linux build as well, which isn't too hard because the game is built on Unity anyway, it has good cross-platform support.
Unfortunately Old World has only antiquity and classical eras.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Eternal_War_(Civ2)
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Global_warming_(Civ1)
Anyone who wants a game thats in the same vein, i can somewhat recommend Humankind. But it doesn't really have climate change mechanics, more like 'IPCC naming and shaming' since factions will hate on factions that pollute, even in the medieval era..
I would have appreciated that global warming was a thing that needs to be researched, since the phenomenon has only been discovered relatively late (in terms of the entire span of human civilization).
In terms of the entire span of human civilization, yes. But in terms of the age of our modern, industrial societies not so much. It was discussed by Fourier in the 1820, the greenhouse effect was well described by Tyndall in the 1860s (he knew about the effect of methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapour), and its increase due to human activity was explored by Arrhenius in the 1890s.
Just a reminder that we did know about global warming. We've been knowing for a long time.
That is not really correct and very nitpicky. We also know, that volcanic activity that releases those greenhouse gases were actually cooling down planet with catastrophic consequences to humanity that halted economic development. Not to mention, that there is also observation, that cities have higher temperature than in countryside(on average 2 degrees higher in north - 4-5 degrees hotter in south), where cows are generating methane gas. The scourge of 21st century is that human infested urban environment that has constantly hotter temperature than environment around it finally have reached significant enough coverage, so that it is now affecting rest of the planet.
Also, it is worth mention that there is a theory of Nuclear Winter, which is completely avoided in Civilization games.
All the greatest scientists in late 1970s were talking about coming of a new Ice Age. All the science fiction from that era is full of Ice age related stories. So, at the moment global warming is complete bonkers theory, that will fly out of the window as soon as there will be a sufficient volcanic activity level. So far there is also observation, that volanic activity has been going down while global warming has gone up.
The current theory of Global warming is very politicized. The data that lead to this theory was fabricated and opponents to this theory were silenced. And constructive criticism about reasons why there is a global warming is not possible. It is not as much as a theory, as it is a religion with belief system for something that has different natural causes. Besides there is some belief, that there will be high temperatures in equator, that render those regions void of life, while the reality is that highest rise of temperature is going to be around poles and that in turn will improve living conditions to people that are living there now.
The main reason why there exist theory about global warming is because it was a reaction to actions of Arabic Gulf countries in 1980s that halted economy of USA by creating fuel shortage. Suddenly Ice Age theory became defunct overnight...
Though, there are of couse good side effects to this new religion - fuel powered cars are cause for lead poisoning and ending usage of them will be better to health along with other enviromental changes.
When Sid Meyer was making his game, it was not yet known, that lands that are now under ice, would be rebounding and main body of that water will flow to equator(because of planets rotation and shape) to flood things more around equator than lands that are near poles. I did not knew about that either, but I always wanted to build some city on that Earth map in first Civilization, that was turning ocean tiles into land tiles in northern pole because of a bug.
Careful — what was reported in general news was (and is) different from the work of the actual scientists. This is even true when the the news is reporting on a specific scientific report.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...
> All the science fiction from that era is full of Ice age related stories. So, at the moment global warming is complete bonkers theory, that will fly out of the window as soon as there will be a sufficient volcanic activity level.
You can’t use sci-fi to draw conclusions about anything except the culture in which it rises.
Climate research explicitly includes “what do volcanoes do?” as well as other, mostly larger, sources of aerosol cooling. Indeed, this is a subset of “can we do geo-engineering to mitigate the effects?” research.
> The current theory of Global warming is very politicized.
It has indeed been politicised, but in the opposite way you claim: the scientific consensus is basically “totes real”, the reporting makes average Jo think it is “scientists disagree”.
> The data that lead to this theory was fabricated and opponents to this theory were silenced.
Explain.
> And constructive criticism about reasons why there is a global warming is not possible. It is not as much as a theory, as it is a religion with belief system for something that has different natural causes.
Anyone paying attention knows 90%-ish of it is natural, because of the temperature difference between us and the moon. The other 10% is the problem.
> Besides there is some belief, that there will be high temperatures in equator, that render those regions void of life, while the reality is that highest rise of temperature is going to be around poles and that in turn will improve living conditions to people that are living there now.
It does indeed appear to be mostly around the poles. Where the ice is. Which is indeed great if you live in what’s currently an icy wasteland, not so much if you live on the coast literally anywhere else. Will also mess with the thermo-haline circulation, I don’t know the current consensus on how much it will mess with it, but that’s the thing keeping Western Europe warmer than Newfoundland-Nova Scotia right now.
>You can’t use sci-fi to draw conclusions about anything except the culture in which it rises.
I can draw conclusion about culture of that age - just like I can draw conclusions of my own on this culture of modern era, which sure will also raise questions to future generations. However my conclusions about human behaviours has nothing to do with the volcanic activity, that will prove theory of Global warming wrong.
My main point here is that Sid Meyer during the creation of his game probably had no idea about those early global warming papers and "research" that you are so eager to point in that publication from earlier times - including earlier centuries, but clearly the idea about global warming was in the air in 1980s for completelly different reasons. Since I did not live in US, I can't recollect any talks about global warming in 1980s - this really exploded in my region only in 2000s(not much after it became a thing in US), when effects of global warming could be seen and when Al Gore was pioneering the usage of this question to gain political power.
>Explain.
The wiki part is not that interesting as background story of childish - even Hitler Nazi behaviour of scientists, where the one who provided that chart(without any proof) and who later could not admit that he was wrong about calculations(that this whole model was based upon) and who caused grief to anyone else who opposeed him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph
>The other 10% is the problem.
Providing numbers like these are what I call a religious belief.
Rounding up millions and forcing them into slave labour camps and working them to death in weapons factories in a futile effort to conquer the Soviet Union?
No?
Then have you considered the possibility that it’s the “it’s not real” campaigners who are politicising this?
> However my conclusions about human behaviours has nothing to do with the volcanic activity, that will prove theory of Global warming wrong.
Volcanic activity is already accounted for. Human activity vastly exceeds its effects.
> Providing numbers like these are what I call a religious belief.
What would you consider “not religious”?
I’m basing 90%-ish on the size of change we are concerned with preventing versus the magnitude of the difference between the earth and the moon:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Average%20temperature%2...
Though frankly, as you’ve already gone for argument by reductio-nazi-absurdum, I’m honestly expecting you to dispute the temperature of the moon at this point.
>Volcanic activity is already accounted for. Human activity vastly exceeds its effects.
Be real. That is neither possible according to modern human technological advances, nor is true.
>What would you consider “not religious”?
Anything that is not based on belief.
>I’m basing 90%-ish on the size of change we are concerned with preventing versus the magnitude of the difference between the earth and the moon
Well, that is interesting and unique take upon the global warming, but somehow without dipping into this deeper I don't think, that this approach is effective to describe global warming or is even taken into account. This only reflects, that you are a human being and have independent thinking, but I would not waste that on something that is waste of time... unless you are serious on making career on this.
>Though frankly, as you’ve already gone for argument by reductio-nazi-absurdum, I’m honestly expecting you to dispute the temperature of the moon at this point.
Are you ok? You decided to be white knight because I responded to someones else comment that he was picking out and declaring, that we knew about global warming forever, which is not so. People in northern hemisphere would specifically ignore memories about gradual warming or warmer periods and remember about cold winters and tell about them for other generations - it is just how it happened, and they would not tell about something good, that gave them slightly better tan, but they would tell about those winters that killed their cattle and how they survived through it.
Dude, just calm down - arguing is one thing, but I do not deserve your personal attack on me - only because I have my own opinion about this scam and also about the people who use it to gain personal benefits out of it.
Of course Sun sunspot maximum is coming closer and there is also link to that people get crazy during that period... anyway - this is way off the topic of Sid Meyers Civilization, when people were not as batshit crazy about nothing as now.
Edit: wow, it spawned an entire subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/
It wasn't too difficult to stay ahead of the pollution curve in the late game as long as you didn't have a war. But there was one memorable game where I had a massive nuclear exchange with Gandhi. Created too much pollution. The world become a wasteland because I couldn't clean it up in time. And the AI didn't clean anything on its own, iirc. I won the game, but it was such a Pyrrhic victory.
This was probably 29 years ago. Playing obsessively on my old Mac LC. Still remember it because it was the saddest game session I've ever had. I won, but there wasn't much left at the end. Broken cities and the earth was dead.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Global_warming_(Civ1)
Don't remember if there was nuclear winter as well.
Global warming resulted from not cleaning up pollution. Then the tiles would change irreversibly.
But today I learned I've never really played Civ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3s
They mention Empire as an influence, and there's a really nice modern implementation of Empire available for Windows and iOS.
http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/mother.html
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mother-of-all-battles/id425160...
You couldn't see as much of the world at once, and units and terrain became more difficult to discern.
I wound up playing in the strategic overlay, with mods that relieved some of the claustrophobia, but it never felt as slick as the earlier 2D / isomorphic view.
Other classic strategy games from that era followed the trend, favoring to showcase gorgeously detailed models enabled by their new 3D engines, over equipping you with a clever and efficient UI to conquer the world.
Anyone care to recommend a favorite turn-based strategy game with a pleasant interface which you think I might enjoy?
The Civilization board game was similarly boring. Most of the time there were no wars, and everybody was just trading and dealing with disasters and barbarians.
The 3d art just looks like a console game aesthetic - it's extremely kitschy - I guess I'm just not in the target demographic.
Maybe there could be a "Civ for adults". With just way less content, shorter games and a more mature art style.
Civ 1 didn't have: culture, religion, great persons, great works, armies, ranged units, luxuries, strategic resources, building placement, unit xp/promotion. Civ 1 didn't even have an improvement for forest tiles.
Civ 1 did have as extra: home city for units. Marine units had to be transported by ship - but that added an interesting mechanic, you had to protect your super important transport loaded with 7 very expensive units. Terrain improvements took a really long time so you had to have multiple settlers work on the same tile. Some superfluous things like fortresses. Small city spam ruined Civ 1.
However, if you want, you can play very war like, or avoid war quite well. Snowballing early with a push is a viable strategy.
Rushing tech to get the first cannon and pushing then as well.
It depends on what civilization and what special units and buildings you have.
Which one? There are at least two different ones, with the same name, based on the computer game franchise. (And, of course, the Avalon Hill game predating the computer game, but that doesn’t seem relevant.)
RTS games even today limit players to ~200 pop each.
You are still playing with low 1000s of units, and this has been the case for a decade. The AI is also not really much better.
Even on strategy map level it has been simplified.
Civilization is on the easier / simpler end of 4X / Strategy... and believe me, this is a good thing!! Things get really complicated. Paradox games (Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universialis) are the "complicated" games, technically realtime but the underlying simulations "feel" turnbased. (Hearts of Iron progresses the simulation in 1-hour increments. They're "realtime" only because it'd be too boring to hit "next turn" so often, but you can hit the pause button and really think about a situation at say: September 1st 1939 @ 1pm if something terrible is going on)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also a strategy game: war, tactics, resources, diplomacy, etc. etc. The elements you'd expect.
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"Tactics" games that focus on a singular battle as the core gameplay loop. Fire Emblem, Wesnoth, Wargroove, Advance Wars, Heroes of Might and Magic, Panzer General, Starcraft, Age of Empires.
"Strategy" games approximate the battles and focus on larger scale elements.
A good rule of thumb is that Strategy Games have an element of siege and supply lines, while Tactics games often just "teleport" the resources where needed. Tactics are about maneuvering your troops to get an advantage, Strategy is about finding / securing resources (ex: placing your defensive Pikeman on the enemy's mine in Civ2, or in their districts in Civ6)
Civ leans towards the simpler/tactics side, but is just barely enough "Strategy" that I'd group it in the strategy side of things.
Wargroove's AI is a bit dumb compared to Adv. War's Days of Ruin however. The game really shines as a competitive player-vs-player setting. But if you're not used to the mechanics of Adv. Wars, you probably need the easier AI to learn how quirks of Adv. Wars style / Wargroove style play.
Nintendo is remaking Advance Wars 1 and Advance Wars 2 ("Reboot Camp") for the Switch. I'll be revisiting these originals-remakes as they come out in a few months. I remember the CO-powers being incredibly overpowering (while Wargroove's special "grooves" are quite powerful as they are, they are no where on the level of CO-powers or CO-superpowers of the original).
Civ I’d say (while relatively simple in most versions) is very much on the strategy side. While maneuvering units in the battle theater matters, wars are mostly won or lost by the tech and economics and diplomatic situation going in, and the timing of the decisions to start and end the war.
Civ5 and Civ6 has moved more tactical. I'm spending more and more time thinking about where to place units, because they no longer "stack up" with each other. Collision detection for the human means that I need to put more effort into deciding where to move and place my units.
Yeah yeah yeah, people were confused about "stack kills" in Civ1/2/3, and without stack-kills, Civ4 combat grew dull. So maybe removing stacks all together was a solution (the current direction for Civ5 and Civ6).
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Somewhere along the line, combat was no longer a guaranteed killer. (Civ1/2 was definitely a "win you live, lose you die" for every combat). Civ6, now I'm thinking about movement points, where to retreat to, how to save up HP again and recover, whether or not I can cutoff the opponent's retreat. These are more tactical elements.
I feel like Civ6 has pushed "strategy" through its government card system, which is pretty abstract (Oh, you just got a new government card! Time for a new war! I'm going to equip +100% pillage bonus and +4 Strength bonus). A lot of Civ6 is about abusing the multiplicative bonuses of these cards at the right timing.
This neither seems in line with the traditional use of 'he/him' in English texts, or even the neutrality of 'he/him and or she/her'. It reads more like a stunted attempt to virtue signal. I'm quite confident that Civilization games skew to male players, rather than female.
What a great way to alienate readers. More so when gender was not a central feature of the article at all.
In fact, their "close" relation is just apparent: it seems that 'he' comes from variations from the demonstrative 'ki' ("this/here"), but 'she', while still coming from a demonstrative, comes from a different demonstrative, 'so' (feminine 'seo') - the source of 'the' -, which came into use to disambiguate as original feminine 'heo' collapsed into 'he' in spoken language.
You may not fall into either of those two camps, but let me assure you, it's a lot of people.
For reference, the gender-neutral singular in English is "they/them/their"
they /T͟Hā/ pronoun
2. used to refer to a person of unspecified gender.
I think thou'st meant "Thou may not fall into either of those two camps, but let me assure thee, it's a lot of people."
The commenter thou art replying to is a singular person, not a group, and as we know, while other words may come and go, the use of pronouns in a language does not change over time.
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/200700
https://www.etymonline.com/word/thee#etymonline_v_10720
Let me also assure you that "they" hasn't always been (and still isn't to many) accepted as a singular pronoun. Crazy how things change.
The perception some have is instead that of inserting gender where it was irrelevant. (Those "some" do not associate 'he' and masculine, probably also for cultural reasons as expressed nearby.)
Although less common, this is nothing new. I've seen texts that use "her" as the primary pronoun since the 90's.
(And yes, people have been pointlessly complaining for that long).
One of my all-time favorite starts was as Poland with 4 salt resources next to Warsaw. Salt is such a baller resource because it's a luxury good, but it also allows the creation of a mine which boosts production, and production is super key in Civ. I could blast out wonders and the cutting-edge buildings in 5-10 turns, and my tech lead meant almost none of the wonders were unavailable. Don't you just love having 20 wonders in your capital by the end?
I play as Phoenicians, as they get nice bonuses for a water world.
One thing with the speed of AI turns, you may be able to go into the advanced settings and turn on "quick combat" and "quick movement" settings. These take away the combat movement animations and help speed up the game a little bit (sorry, I didn't run the benchmarks, haha).
Enjoy your naval victories, admiral!
I've played every version on the Mac, and VI is my favorite so far except for some of the cheezy quotes that accompany tech discoveries. And it's horribly buggy and slow.
Nevertheless, here I am thinking about the game I started last week but paused reluctantly to participate in real world civilization.
Only downside, related to the slowness, is that it's an utter CPU hog, so my Macbook's fans would be straining within ten minutes. Not so comfortable to have on your lap.
Man, does putting the person's name before the game name sour it. So antipathic.