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Post by zzZhenon on Aug 12, 2007 18:12:57 GMT -5
Well my opinion is that you can't play on maps like Inland Sea or TBG where you only have 1 front. I always thought one front was for noobs anyway. I remember civ3 having multiple fronts and only 1 city elimination because all maps were pangaea.
So the solution to "can't kill" is to stop playing Inland Sea and TBG i.e. one-city-front maps. Donut is the way to go!!
Also I'd like to see unit maintenance treated as outside his borders when in a teammates land. This might help with 4 teammates defending one city.
Other than that, yeah it is easier to defend with spies.
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Post by Tony on Aug 12, 2007 19:32:49 GMT -5
Zhen TBG is the most open map out there, it has the most kills by far. How can a map be more open then everyone being on the front? If you make it start anywhere then its just crazy. All this being said i agree with you, we should try more maps, i try to avoid TBG these days, but it seems to be the most popular map, followed by donut. I would say about 80% of games are TBG or donut.
The nature of the game is very different to civ3, the maps are way smaller, often with 10 civs on the map. For example in civ3 you could easily get 10+ cites and 100 unit stacks in just 90 turns, in CIV4 you often run out of room after say 5. So my piont is with teammates starting together, the "front line" only has room for very few cites, on most maps this means 3. So the people on the back have to feed these 3 cites with units.
If you add artists to the mix, then the front line has less room for cites still.
In teamer situations when you can 3 or 4v1 someone, its often advisable to have just a single front city- Although in ancient you can get away with it if you have good infastrature, which makes the game somewhat predictable.
IMO for the game to become as you want it, the fundamental machanics will have to change - Which is probably a CIV5 wish rather then a CIV4 one.
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Post by astax on Aug 12, 2007 22:32:06 GMT -5
Hmmm the game sure has change. I don't know why people wouldn't go for construction still. Cat doesn't win battles alone but it will tip it in your favor. Anyway I'm sure it's harder to kill in games where players are of similar skill, as it seems you need more than 2x the opponent number in units. Plus the stupid spies make the old art of hiding your forces meaningless. I do feel a huge influence of SP on the game play in MP now. Honestly SP is huge build-fest. And when you read the civfanatics forum, you get the feeling that people playing SP have their heads up their rears. With ideas like making an Ind/Phi leader for a civ that gets a forge as it's UB and the forge gives you 1 free scientist, these people only paint themselves as morons. None of them are interested in a challenge or balance. The game they play is one where they always win, and they are the best at everything. And they only want to increase that margin of victory.
Although I did believe there was not enough penalty for slaving. Sure it may be a way for you to deal with bad land, but I know people used it regardless of if their land was good or bad. And when you look at the Aztec UB, no one used it for it's bonus. That alone should have been a tip-off that the penalty was poultry.
All I would say further is that it's harder for me to find a nice ancient teamer now a days.
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Post by icecube on Aug 19, 2007 11:13:31 GMT -5
hi so are you saying that your old strategy isnt working anymore ?? thats very good its time to learn some new ways of playing this game which is making you a noob, who will not feel angry ? i need to play and test this game more before i comment on anything new bad or good. i was always against slavery i never use it and i dont think ppl who use it allot should win a game !! good thing about rushers there is a solution for that too, native american uu vs impi rush - mayan uu vs chariot rush , so there is some balance and chance to survive early rushing. the firaxis did pretty good job its very hard to win the war and need more effort to achieve conquest victory or we should combine the war more often with diplomacy concept of the game changes 100% i believe wich is great !if you like just wars and conquest and teamers then go back to warlords. even the name say everything game for warlords im not against conquest, war or teamers but they are just part of the game just 1 option to win there is other victory options as well. bye
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Post by Atomation on Aug 19, 2007 14:04:44 GMT -5
The main problem with non war resolution is the games take a really long time and alot of people won't take the time to play those games sadly.
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Post by cryptococcus on Aug 19, 2007 15:08:53 GMT -5
Rupman almost died today
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Post by metallian on Aug 21, 2007 6:17:26 GMT -5
Well said Rupman...
Here a few things that are contributing to BTS being a buildfest.
1. Spies, get rid of them entirely. Either ban them entirely or make a mod that makes them 1 million hammers. Being able to setup efficient sentry nets was once a skill.
2. Catapults/siege being overnerfed. They are pretty weak now forcing players to have an overwhelming force to take one city or get lucky with a few two movers.
3. The slavery nerf kills players/teams who don't have a sufficient amount of luxuries or resources. You cannot make enough units to overcome crap land.
4. Resourceless units help in the defend players pretty easily. Holkans, Dogs, and Bowman help immensely in early game teamers.
5. The increase in settler cost in later eras, those who want to exp and out mfg their opponents can't anymore due to settler cost. The strategy is rush like hell and hope you get lucky with those first 3 units.
6. The ping button not working. Teams are not able to cooridinate effectively enough to actually kill someone.
7. Bad Civ players, out of 300 active ladder memebers maybe 30 can setup an successful attack against a good player/team. I am not taking about wining a 10% warrior on warrior but planning an attack with seige,one movers, and double movers. I blame this on the ladder community switching to noob teamers (aka shuffle and random civ teamers). Players have got lazy and want games to be over in under an hour.
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Post by civerdan on Aug 21, 2007 7:34:55 GMT -5
I am all for banning spies. Medi/Ren Inland is a pure stalemate now. Not only can you cat the stack as it moves in, but now you see which side the middle player is stacking his units. Turns any land attack into suicide. Turns the game mostly to a race to Astronomy. We have gone from Civ 3 where you have to place units in a sentry net to where you can build a unit and send it into opponents land.
Too Many Building at the start. I agree that takes some skill away as to when to build buildings as opposed to units/workers/settlers.
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Post by longhorn on Aug 21, 2007 8:56:23 GMT -5
Well said Rupman... Here a few things that are contributing to BTS being a buildfest. 1. Spies, get rid of them entirely. Either ban them entirely or make a mod that makes them 1 million hammers. Being able to setup efficient sentry nets was once a skill. 2. Catapults/siege being overnerfed. They are pretty weak now forcing players to have an overwhelming force to take one city or get lucky with a few two movers. 3. The slavery nerf kills players/teams who don't have a sufficient amount of luxuries or resources. You cannot make enough units to overcome crap land. 4. Resourceless units help in the defend players pretty easily. Holkans, Dogs, and Bowman help immensely in early game teamers. 5. The increase in settler cost in later eras, those who want to exp and out mfg their opponents can't anymore due to settler cost. The strategy is rush like hell and hope you get lucky with those first 3 units. 6. The ping button not working. Teams are not able to cooridinate effectively enough to actually kill someone. 7. Bad Civ players, out of 300 active ladder memebers maybe 30 can setup an successful attack against a good player/team. I am not taking about wining a 10% warrior on warrior but planning an attack with seige,one movers, and double movers. I blame this on the ladder community switching to noob teamers (aka shuffle and random civ teamers). Players have got lazy and want games to be over in under an hour. First of all- KUDOS to the developers for making a really good expansion- BTS is a lot of fun and is almost like a second game. While there is always room for improvement, 99% of the complaints being mentioned are not even serious issues or problems. PINGS- I think this was one of the BEST fixes ever. They are NOT broken and they DONT need to be fixed. If the complaints of people that do not even play this expansion matter so much, and you feel the need to repair what works perfectly-- consider allowing an OPTION to allow/disable audible pings. If at all possible, please add a fuction to send an electric shock to the PINGER if he pings anything stupid or pings anything more than once! Finally- your suggestions are (for lack of a better word) CRAP. There is already an expansion just like you describe, called WARLORDS. PLAY THAT> And stop trying to morph this fun expansion into what exists and is already out there. The sad fact is you just CAN'T adapt to this expansion. Its like the HS senior who has to start all over as a freshman in college and longs and pines for his glory days of the past. GET OVER IT!
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Post by Tony on Aug 21, 2007 9:17:04 GMT -5
cats needed 4 str. Simple - Nothing added nothing taken away.
I didnt really like cats being a unit in there own right, but they are so thats fine. But such a simple nerf was needed, reducing it to 4 str. Then it can only be used to fight stacks, pretty useless as a unit in its own right.
Getting a longbow into a city after the cats hit, in a hill city can be really devistating. A 13 str unit can kill lots of units but more importantly it saves the units which have been cat-ed to 1 str. Although this being said on certian maps you can still X v 1 so killing is still posible, but in ctons ... 4get about it ... just keep growing until your hearts content. But even in teamers, it very hard to choke and kill someone in a reasonable time, unless your teammate helps, which is fine but it reduces your options.
Spies .... Just toatly crazy no matter how to look at it.
I dont know what to make of the slavery nerf, on the one hand i didnt like people the mindlessly slaving, but on the other hand, its like playing ladder games on a higher difficulty level. Where those that the lux can slave as they did in the past, and those that dont fall behind. Stuff like gold, gems, ivory, etc are doubley nice now.
increased settler costs and a nuts load of improvments in your cites makes certian traits useless, and makes the game very simplistic. I can understand the game makers wanted to slow things down in later eras, but this would have been better achived by reducing the amount of stuff you started with. Personally i would like 1 worker, 1 settler 1 population, no improvments starts in all eras after ancient. Then all traits have a certian amount of power as do alot of civics. And you constantly asking yourself questions, shall i build units? or do i have enough time for an improvment?
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Post by penny on Aug 21, 2007 10:09:19 GMT -5
I haven't played much BTS, so I can't say much, but 2 things : - Why do you guys say Slaving has been nerfed ? because of -1 Happiness ? Well I don't see it as a nerf of slaving, rather a narrowing of techpath (Monarchy compulsory) - Spies : Not sure about it, but seems some combination of Map/era do not fit Spy use. I know for sure the HB Inland Médi is lame, would believe Inland médi aswell, mmm though one. Also, I was the one claiming that expansive should be nerfed, which happened, but has been replaced by imperialistic. I Once hoped that every event could have 10 different civ pick, Here it's all about Justinian, Gandhi, +whatever Imper. Too bad, there is like 30+ Leader now, And we gonna play with the usual, and the 8/9 Imperialistic. And when you look at the Aztec UB, no one used it for it's bonus. That alone should have been a tip-off that the penalty was poultry. This is untrue, Aztec UB was/is AMAZING, but wouldn't justify to pick Aztec, It's too far (techwise) in ancient, so iit is in classical, in médi, aztec in nuts. So that let us the aztec UB to be used in CTON, well, I have had a couple of CTON we're a used it like hell, but hé, CTON are random civ. I know I would pick Aztec in CTON if I had the choice, as I love the Spi trait in CTON. Maybe next CCC's Ironman, if we play it Unrestricted leader
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Post by levgree on Oct 30, 2007 20:59:23 GMT -5
Have you tried implementing smaller wars? Taking out one city? When you first attack is when any military edge you have will function at its best.
And one good city can make the difference between a win or loss in a game. Each war doesn't have to be total destruction. Wars haven't worked like that in real history. Often times it is just power shifts by gaining or losing territory.
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Post by lporiginalg on Nov 8, 2007 16:13:34 GMT -5
I think we should all go back to playing vanilla civ, I call gandhi!
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Post by deyreepher on Nov 12, 2007 3:06:48 GMT -5
I have to eat my words. People die in every game now. However, in ancient games, elephants are game breakers. I wish the developers would have made elephants a military resource rather than a luxury. Seriously, what is so luxurious about having an elephant? They are either beasts of burden or used as beasts of war.
Facing a stack of elephants/axemen is not much fun, even if you have catapults. You just simply don't have any sort of odds whatsoever unless you have elephants of your own.
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Post by Visium on Dec 1, 2007 9:51:15 GMT -5
It's always amusing to see these threads. To preface, I am not curently an active ladder player, though in Civ3 and before I was to the extreme. But don't make the foolish mistake of thinking that I dont regularly and actively play Civ4MP all versions and all styles (in its multiple forms, which absolutely includes but certainly goes beyond online simultaneous). Whether any version of Civ4 is a "boring buildfest" is relative to what you compare it to. IMO, they all are, but I compare against what CIV4 should have been. Even prior to Warlords and BTS, CIV4 made some fundamental decisions that influenced this fate. - High cost of city building and land improving units. (this cost results in the perceived need for stronger defense)
- High cost of rebuilding land improvements (especially cottage based)
- Extremely high defense modifiers 2-3X the attacker, including atually allowing culture to provide defense so it would be cared about, city walls, etc to the poitn of ridicule.
- Slow moving units. (especially nerfing of mounted units in city attack) Honestly, who ever heard of a war that took hundreds of years to build the fighting force, hundreds of years years to transport it, decades of siege. Or that a non mounted unit can move 2-3 tiles on a road, while an offensive mounted unit may only get 1-2 tiles. these are magic roads that discrimate based on person. Sure, troops could cut them, etc. But odd isnt it that the defender does nothing with no troops manning the roads, and yet gets road use vs not road use at the exact same and critical moment as the attacker? Where are the troops guarding these roads...oh yeah, in the cities. great sense. But heck, the horses only move about 3 feet per day, to make it in a 20 year turn, anyway. movement in civ has always been a mockery.
- The high cost of economically supporting a fighting force.
But these should all be no surprise, since it was early on and from what I see still is influenced 99% by the SP crowd. I once read a rebuttal to my comments by FriedrichPsitalon stating that sometimes "it was the tail (MP) wagging the dog (SP)". This statement is accurate and sums up everything about this game. It could have been an incredible, revolutinary, dazzling, mind-blowing MP game. But until MP is regarded as the dog, rather than the tail, you will have to settle for an an incredible, revolutionary, dazzling, mind-blowing SP game with enough MP accomodations to make it still very enjoyable and interesting to those who are willing to take time to figure out how to adapt it. That being said, go off and enjoy, since there is plenty to enjoy. But remember how i said it is all about perspective...I play and enjoy but I am still waiting for the incredible, revolutionary, dazzling, mind-blowing MP game. Compared to what it could of been this is still just a rather empty shell. Defense needed to decrease DRAMATICALLY - not increase. None of this 200% silliness. Fortifications dont take decades to breach. and once breached, you have a bottleneck, sure but nowhere near the residual defenses that fortifications still give in this game. Spies were right and would not have been a problem if defense were not so high. Movement needed to be extended for all units. Siege needed to be used but rethought. Honestly, how does a city survive when seiged for hundreds of years? People starve in far less time. It should be an element, but surprise, and other elements should play a greater factor than allowed to. rebuilding needed to be easier. These were also all done to fix the problems of the last game. SoD etc. Nobody every stopped to ask why SoD was a problem. (i.e. Civ3 had too high defense already). It resulted in very interesting rock paper scissors trade offs - which are neat and should be kept. But it missed the fundamental root cause of the problem. These are all things that some beta testers told them even from early on.....BUT NOBODY CARED. The game makers built what the game makers (BRUTALLY SP BIASED) wanted and really didnt give a rats' %^& about challenging their original assumptions, nor gave the beta testers near enough lattitude to make a difference with suggestions. Build a Mod, you say? Sure, uh, think about that a minute. Make a game with an Extremely high learning curve, need a mod that increases and differs from the standard even more so you need even more learning to participate. The words are easy to say, but the reality is that is cheap cop out of suggestion. There is a power to standards. Learning curve matters. Players who come in new, dont jump right into mods. Standards set the tone of the whole game. When it matures, sure a small group will experiment. But again, I make my case that the "standards" are based on SP environment. A mod will not solve the issue, namely that we play MP with a game built on SP standards, exactly because it is not a standard. That being said, I enjoy this game and adapt. You should too. With revolutions going to a higher mutliplay environment, one can hope they will do it right.....though I still bet SP will bias the #$%^% out of it. The beta testers do their best, and should be applauded. They are defensive of their work, and should be, they work hard. But the decision makers that made the game what it is though.....are not them. And the decision makers are cowardly, unwilling to take even the slightest risk to make MP what it should be. But they are ruled by dollars and a low risk tolerance....so if someone can step in and foot the bill for MP development (either by supplying code, or funding), you may get the game you dream of. SP nerds do this already, so why do think it is so easy for them to dictate to you what this game will be? Why do you think the game makers grab the low hanging, low cost fruit that they dangle in front of them This IS a SP game at heart. You (MP) are an afterthought, a well planned, well consulted, well beta tested afterthought. Sometimes (but only sometimes) you will wag the dog. But remember you are still the tail, and have to take what you get when you are at the rear. Live with it, adapt, and enjoy what you can. Change your perspective for now, but still hope for better.
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Post by DrShot on Dec 2, 2007 1:32:01 GMT -5
It's always amusing to see these threads. To preface, I am not curently an active ladder player, though in Civ3 and before I was to the extreme. But don't make the foolish mistake of thinking that I dont regularly and actively play Civ4MP all versions and all styles (in its multiple forms, which absolutely includes but certainly goes beyond online simultaneous). Whether any version of Civ4 is a "boring buildfest" is relative to what you compare it to. IMO, they all are, but I compare against what CIV4 should have been. Even prior to Warlords and BTS, CIV4 made some fundamental decisions that influenced this fate. - High cost of city building and land improving units. (this cost results in the perceived need for stronger defense)
- High cost of rebuilding land improvements (especially cottage based)
- Extremely high defense modifiers 2-3X the attacker, including atually allowing culture to provide defense so it would be cared about, city walls, etc to the poitn of ridicule.
- Slow moving units. (especially nerfing of mounted units in city attack) Honestly, who ever heard of a war that took hundreds of years to build the fighting force, hundreds of years years to transport it, decades of siege. Or that a non mounted unit can move 2-3 tiles on a road, while an offensive mounted unit may only get 1-2 tiles. these are magic roads that discrimate based on person. Sure, troops could cut them, etc. But odd isnt it that the defender does nothing with no troops manning the roads, and yet gets road use vs not road use at the exact same and critical moment as the attacker? Where are the troops guarding these roads...oh yeah, in the cities. great sense. But heck, the horses only move about 3 feet per day, to make it in a 20 year turn, anyway. movement in civ has always been a mockery.
- The high cost of economically supporting a fighting force.
But these should all be no surprise, since it was early on and from what I see still is influenced 99% by the SP crowd. I once read a rebuttal to my comments by FriedrichPsitalon stating that sometimes "it was the tail (MP) wagging the dog (SP)". This statement is accurate and sums up everything about this game. It could have been an incredible, revolutinary, dazzling, mind-blowing MP game. But until MP is regarded as the dog, rather than the tail, you will have to settle for an an incredible, revolutionary, dazzling, mind-blowing SP game with enough MP accomodations to make it still very enjoyable and interesting to those who are willing to take time to figure out how to adapt it. That being said, go off and enjoy, since there is plenty to enjoy. But remember how i said it is all about perspective...I play and enjoy but I am still waiting for the incredible, revolutionary, dazzling, mind-blowing MP game. Compared to what it could of been this is still just a rather empty shell. Defense needed to decrease DRAMATICALLY - not increase. None of this 200% silliness. Fortifications dont take decades to breach. and once breached, you have a bottleneck, sure but nowhere near the residual defenses that fortifications still give in this game. Spies were right and would not have been a problem if defense were not so high. Movement needed to be extended for all units. Siege needed to be used but rethought. Honestly, how does a city survive when seiged for hundreds of years? People starve in far less time. It should be an element, but surprise, and other elements should play a greater factor than allowed to. rebuilding needed to be easier. These were also all done to fix the problems of the last game. SoD etc. Nobody every stopped to ask why SoD was a problem. (i.e. Civ3 had too high defense already). It resulted in very interesting rock paper scissors trade offs - which are neat and should be kept. But it missed the fundamental root cause of the problem. These are all things that some beta testers told them even from early on.....BUT NOBODY CARED. The game makers built what the game makers (BRUTALLY SP BIASED) wanted and really didnt give a rats' %^& about challenging their original assumptions, nor gave the beta testers near enough lattitude to make a difference with suggestions. Build a Mod, you say? Sure, uh, think about that a minute. Make a game with an Extremely high learning curve, need a mod that increases and differs from the standard even more so you need even more learning to participate. The words are easy to say, but the reality is that is cheap cop out of suggestion. There is a power to standards. Learning curve matters. Players who come in new, dont jump right into mods. Standards set the tone of the whole game. When it matures, sure a small group will experiment. But again, I make my case that the "standards" are based on SP environment. A mod will not solve the issue, namely that we play MP with a game built on SP standards, exactly because it is not a standard. That being said, I enjoy this game and adapt. You should too. With revolutions going to a higher mutliplay environment, one can hope they will do it right.....though I still bet SP will bias the #$%^% out of it. The beta testers do their best, and should be applauded. They are defensive of their work, and should be, they work hard. But the decision makers that made the game what it is though.....are not them. And the decision makers are cowardly, unwilling to take even the slightest risk to make MP what it should be. But they are ruled by dollars and a low risk tolerance....so if someone can step in and foot the bill for MP development (either by supplying code, or funding), you may get the game you dream of. SP nerds do this already, so why do think it is so easy for them to dictate to you what this game will be? Why do you think the game makers grab the low hanging, low cost fruit that they dangle in front of them This IS a SP game at heart. You (MP) are an afterthought, a well planned, well consulted, well beta tested afterthought. Sometimes (but only sometimes) you will wag the dog. But remember you are still the tail, and have to take what you get when you are at the rear. Live with it, adapt, and enjoy what you can. Change your perspective for now, but still hope for better. Can someone read through this and let me know if it is worth reading, thx.
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Post by MMV on Dec 2, 2007 5:48:29 GMT -5
It's always amusing to see these threads Well, I got that part - and so far, I'd have to agree.
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Post by Magzi on Dec 2, 2007 7:21:18 GMT -5
Well, I thought he had some valid points...to sum....It's designed as a SP game. I agree with that.
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Post by whiplash on Dec 2, 2007 9:43:26 GMT -5
Here's the nugget:
This IS a SP game at heart. You (MP) are an afterthought, a well planned, well consulted, well beta tested afterthought. Sometimes (but only sometimes) you will wag the dog. But remember you are still the tail, and have to take what you get when you are at the rear.
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Post by Bantams on Dec 2, 2007 13:43:27 GMT -5
the mighty whip as spoken and its all true that said its still a pretty addictive game
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