Civ Revolution = Civ for dummies.

Reason why Civilization: Revolution does absolutely nothing for me.

“…its injection of pace makes for a more exciting - if marginally less cerebral - strategy game.” - X360 Magazine UK

As I wrote a while ago, it’s basically a kid’s gloves version for the console crowd, which is both insulting and self-defeating. Insulting because it assumes all console fans want ADD-fueled gameplay requiring minimal thought, and self-defeating because Civ is all about the cerebral. The more automated you make it, the more it becomes a slideshow rather than a challenging game.

Yes Civ games have a steep learning curve, at least in terms of understanding all the game mechanics. Almost anyone can actually win a game on the lower difficulty levels, even if you don’t know half of what is going on behind the scenes. The beauty of the game is that as you learn more, you up the difficulty level, which in turn forces you to dig deeper and deeper into the behind the scenes strategy aspects. By removing the underlying mechanics and making them all automated, you gain a slight reduction in the initial shock, and completely discard the entire ‘end game’ of the higher difficulty levels.

All that said, it might work for the ‘pick up and space out’ console crowd, but then if that is your target, why market a turn based strategy game in the first place?

100k views, plus some rambling.

100,000 views, ding!

At some point over the weekend that ‘milestone’ was reached, just before the one year anniversary of the blog. I think that’s a lot… is it? I mean I know major sites get like millions of views a day, and I know Tobold gets half the internet to swing by daily, but still, I think 100,000 in a year for a new blog is decent enough. More overall thoughts on my blog will be made during the wrap-up post, so I won’t go into it here.

Moving on from patting myself on the back, the weekend was overall quality in terms of gaming. Played a bit more Civ4 multiplayer with my buddy Nick. We found out the ‘unofficial’ 3.13 patch, which fixes a ton of really silly errors that the official 3.13 BTS patch introduced (no culture displayed when viewing a building, wtf?) does not work for multiplayer. That whole ‘create a backup file before patching’ is good advice, I wish I had followed it. Instead I had to re-install BTS, which luckily was quick due to the file still being in my downloads folder when I got it off Direct2Drive. So while silly, the whole ordeal was not terribly painful. Shame on Firaxis for not patching Civ4 more though, especially with such obvious bugs. Hopefully the rumor that a patch IS coming are true, Civ4 is way too good to be left in such a bugged state.

In EVE news, I did actually log in and fly around a bit, although most of the time was spent getting my mining pilot organized and a bit up-to-date. He had a ton of ammo scattered all over from his buy orders, and it took a decent amount of time to round it all up and get it in one station. I set a more aggressive sell price on it all, and due to the last patch making Ghesis a bit more populated, hopefully it all sells quickly. I need a solid chunk of game time to figure out what I’m going to do with my combat pilot and factional warfare, and that has yet to happen.

Focus = Fun?

Lately my MMO gaming time has been down a bit, mostly due to DoTA, but also from the fact that currently I’m only actively playing LoTRO, and that’s with Aria, so we don’t log in a ton of hours each week. LoTRO is a great game to take at a casual pace, as there is always something to do, and even in short bursts of an hour or so you can make significant progress.

The down time has got me thinking how much game time has an effect on game enjoyment. All my best memories of games, be they MMO or not, are from games I was heavily invested in. The peak of WoW for me was raiding MC and BWL, making progress each week on new encounters. Both UO and AC peaked around the time my guilds were most active and involved in heavy PvP. My overall gaming highlight was being ranked #1 in Myth 2. In all situations, I was playing those games a rather stupid amount of time, generally around 6 hours or more each day, 7 days a week. You have a lot of free time as a student. Having graduated, that’s just not possible right now, and even if it was, I don’t think I would want to spend my life devoting so much time to gaming, not to mention Aria would kill me.

Maybe it’s just an odd coincidence, maybe it’s me just getting old, but I just don’t have that ‘pull’ with games these days as I did before. Yes LoTRO is fun, but it’s not ‘must play now’ fun. Same with the Wii, all fun games, but not anything like getting Final Fantasy 7 and playing it till your eyes bleed, taking a break, and going right back. And I think it might have something to do with consistence; the more you play a game, even if it’s just in smallish amounts but daily, the more you get ‘into’ that game and want to finish. Part of that is overall I just have less gaming time, but another factor is choice. I have more choices now than ever in what to play, and I can bounce around from one game to another at will. It’s fun from a diversity standpoint, but not so good for actually getting into a game and finishing it, hence The Witcher remaining unfinished despite being a great game.

So I think in order to get more out of the gaming time I do have, I’ll need to focus a bit more. Non-MMO games make this a bit easier because they actually have an end, so once you finish, you move on. MMO’s and open ended games like DoTA or Civilization are a bit trickier, since they never end, but at the same time don’t require quite as much time to really get into. DoTA you get into it for the length of a match, and as long as your skills stay sharp, it works. Same with Civ, but even less, since its turn based and you just need to remember strategy, not quick combos and twitchy gameplay.

WAR crafting prediction, and Civ4 multiplayer.

Warhammer released a bit of info about their crafting system. It sounds like all other crafting systems from un-released games: awesome, new and useful. Odds are good that come release it will be like all other crafting systems: boring, old, and worthless.

Clearly I’m not a fan of crafting, with only two games featuring crafting that I thought were something a bit beyond tacked on, those games being EVE and UO. Both games feature destructible items. Hmmm…

Back before the announcement that WAR would have crafting, I had hoped Mythic’s solution to crafting would be to just go without it and focus resources on more useful gameplay systems, but ah well. At least it sounds like we won’t see random nodes dotting the landscape, and since gear is less important in WAR than other games, it means crafting is that much more irrelevant. Win in my book.

In totally unrelated news, Civ4 multiplayer works amazingly well. Having played a few games with a buddy (I know, a little late to the Civ4 multiplayer party), the simultaneous turn style works better than I thought it would, and playing with another player only slows the normal pace of Civ by a small amount. Granted one game still takes 2-3 long sittings, but that’s not entirely unreasonable, and being able to chat on Vent while playing is a huge plus.

Holding Pattern.

Dear snow, thanks for that four hour drive yesterday. Nothing like leaving work early, at 2pm, and finally getting home at 6pm. That was awesome…

On to a happy topic, gaming, I find myself in somewhat of a standstill. Currently I play EVE, WoW, and a bit of Puzzle Quest and online Poker. I have PotBS on my computer, but little draw to play it. NWN2 MotB is there, but I’m waiting for the 9000 series of graphics cards to come out from Nvidia before I return to that game. Same delay issue for getting The Witcher, or returning to LoTRO. I’m a bit burned out on Civilization 4, done with EQ2, done with Sword of the New World. Mythos is still there, but I just never find myself loading it up, and when I do, I find after about 30 minutes I’m done with it once again. Due to the 180 many people are pulling with Tabula Rasa, my interest has been raised, but I think I’ll wait a bit more before jumping in. Some people report boredom setting in after level 15ish. I have little interest in Hellgate:London, not sure why, but it just does not seem that appealing right now. Still waiting for WAR, and maybe AoC.

I think that about covers it. I know I’ll be playing Fire Emblem after Christmas on the Wii, but who knows for how long. I only play WoW about 5 hours a week, and EVE 4-10 depending on what’s going on. Basically I’m waiting for something to come along and really grab me, to make me look forward to loading it up regularly and being entertained each time. Hopefully WAR is that game, but with all the crazy stuff happening in the gaming world, I’m not betting the farm on that one. Anyone else find themselves jumping from game to game is small spurts, just stuck in a holding pattern?

Beyond the Expansion.

EVE Online was down just long enough last night for me to give in and buy the new Civilization expansion, Beyond the Sword. This was made possible by the site Direct2Drive, basically letting you download any game you want, no hassle. The site is fast, the layout is nice, and the prices are very fair, plus for an impulse buyer like me, it works well (other than the hit to the credit card, but eh). 

The interesting thing about Civ expansions is that when you play the Epic game, it’s still basically the same game. Each expansion adds on to the Epic game, how much depends on the expansion, but the overall basics remain the same. You still start with a settler; you still build cities using the same basic logic, combat is overall still the same. Compare that to Warcraft 3 and its expansion, with a new campaign, new units, new terrain, etc. It’s easy to be initially disappointed by a Civ expansion; it feels like you just paid $30 for some minor changes. 

This of course is not exactly true. Those ‘minor’ changes have a great impact on how the game unfolds, and your strategy options. Even one new unit can change the entire feel of warfare in a given time period. One new technology in the tree can alter a tech build, shuffle what a player feels is a ‘must’ at a given time.  

Then there is the effect on the mod community, who now have new tools and game mechanics to play with. In time you will see great mods that further expand Civ in new and interesting way, extending the life of the game far beyond what you got in the original box.

Weekend without gaming, shocker!

No big post for today, as the weekend was relatively gaming-free due to a Poker trip to Cape Cod. I did get in some more time with EVE Online, and while I still don’t totally understand it, I think I’m a bit more familiar with the basics now. Hopefully in the next few days I can actually get off my starter ship and go hunt down some pirates.

 

The next Civilization expansion is out this week, so you might be seeing a post or two about that. Hopefully it lives up to the hype of “biggest Civ xpac ever”. I’ll be happy if the main game is changed enough to make it feel fresh without destroying the balance; I never really cared too much about the scenarios.

Console gamers: “no tough concepts please”.

Aside from MMOs, I really enjoy playing the Civilization series of games, notably Civ 4 at the moment. While looking for a mod pack, I ran across this news piece over at Gamespot. At first glance I thought it was basically Civ 5, but after reading a bit it seems to be a Civ 4 port to consoles, and a very watered down port at that.

 

They changed up the graphics to a greatly exaggerated cartoon style, remove the ‘tough, less fun’ concepts such as pollution, corruption etc, and made it more about the “action”. News flash, the Civ series is not an action series. Watching grass grow has more action than a turn in Civ. Story at 11, fans of Civ don’t want more ‘action’. All those ‘tough’ concepts that are in the game currently are what separates Civ from the rest of the pack and gives it such incredible replay value. Why else would there be so many mods out that add and expand those concepts?

 

While I’m a VERY casual console fan, I still don’t understand why developers continue to dumb down ports. With the success of the Wii, and its target market of younger players (although I would argue the target is ‘casual’ players, not an age group) it will be interesting to see how Sony and Microsoft change course and attempt to hit that demographic. My guess is we will be seeing a lot more cartoons shortly.