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Post by markweston on Jan 27, 2006 8:29:40 GMT -5
Actually, the main problem with the five timer speeds is that they're too different to each other. With the result that only Blazing and Fast (and the occassional Medium as a blessed relief for us slower players) get played. If, out of five choices, only two (or two and a half) are being used, then something's wrong.
So rather than somehow trying to create a Fast speed that would suit all players in all situations, what I think Firaxis need to do is to reduce the graduations between the different options so that all of them become useful.
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Post by markweston on Jan 24, 2006 21:45:01 GMT -5
Ladder is supposed to be an elitist society, not something any noob can join in literally 60 seconds. Says who? If the ladder really had a mission-statement that said that, I'd be out of here.
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Post by markweston on Jan 22, 2006 7:42:59 GMT -5
I agree with RP.
CIV is a game. The best people to play with are the ones who have the sense of perspective to treat it as just a game. People who may well see a 48-hour application/vetting period as a bit too much hassle to be bothered with just for the right to play a game.
I just think it will create a barrier to entry that will lose us a lot of potential players. If the admins are willing to take on the work of screening every applicant's e-mail/IP, can't that be done after joining? So a multiple-accounter or serial non-reporter might escape the long arm of the admin for a day or two with each registration. But if he keeps getting shut down soon after, he's probably going to get the message and move on/get bored, isn't he?
On the other hand, I'm all for U2s get-tough stance. You joined the ladder, you've been given the rules. You shouldn't get a dozen second chances before you lose your privilages.
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Post by markweston on Jan 20, 2006 9:59:49 GMT -5
Argh! I can't help myself anymore! Sidhe, if you are going to post the same argument about no-city-razing for another million times, could you at least spell it right? Grrrr!
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Post by markweston on Jan 20, 2006 10:37:51 GMT -5
This is a marketplace full of (literally) immature customers and their atitudes. Firaxis will get flack whatever they do. That's no reason to punish the silent majority of their customers for the behaviour of the noisy minority. (And my bet, backed up by no evidence whatsoever, is that instead of Take2 support gettting lots of phone-calls about "why didn't the patch fix my problem like you promised", they will now be getting lots of phone-calls about "when the hell is there going to be a patch and what problems will it fix")
And Firaxis were quite happy to publicly advertise features that they then couldn't deliver (e.g. Pitboss) when it came to attracting my money.
Please don't mistake this for an anti-Firaxis or anti-CIV rant. I just find this particular policy stupid and annoying.
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Post by markweston on Jan 20, 2006 9:55:00 GMT -5
I really think this obsession with secrecy is daft. Reassuring players - otherwise known as paying customers - that their problems are being addressed and giving useful detail as to how is exactly the sort of sensible and helpful thing that Firaxis should do.
Whereas they set a policy that treats the changelog for the latest beta patch as somehow important confidential information. God forbid we might know in advance the contents of the latest patch. What terrible mischief we might cause!
(Disclaimer: this is a criticism of Firaxis, not Fried, who has to play by their rules)
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Post by markweston on Jan 11, 2006 7:09:01 GMT -5
No, no, the tournament was completed (though there was a bit of arguing along the way). Tutor and cpukilla stormed to final victory, trampling over the smoking ruins of my once-proud - though incompetently defended - civilisation.
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Post by markweston on Jan 10, 2006 22:53:30 GMT -5
What a pleasant attitude I hope at least most ladder members remember they too were noobs a few weeks or months ago.
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Post by markweston on Jan 9, 2006 5:01:55 GMT -5
<snip> Also this seting is not visible in SP games only in MP... Very intereseting... And if i play SP i dnt need this seting. You're mistaken Lestat. If you create a custom game in SP you'll find No Cheating at the bottom of the list of options just like you do in MP. It is apparently supposed to stop you using mods on any savegame created with the no cheating option. And some SP players do find this setting useful, when running competitive SP games using pre-created saves (check out realmsbeyond.net/civ/civ4-tournamentgamelist.html). However (my understanding is that) MP has always been designed to block modded versions of the game. And the problem is that the "no cheating" option seems to be generating "false positives", detecting mods that don't exist, both for SP and MP players. SP players are finding themselves unable to load saves and join in games, and MP players have been unable to rejoin games (presumably because, in the background, this also involves loading a savegame transferred from one of the peer PCs). If I host I'm leaving this off, and I'm asking hosts I play with to do the same.
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Post by markweston on Jan 9, 2006 14:04:41 GMT -5
<snip> Here's the math; 4 archers with defence 1 and fortified in a city with 50% bonus, let's say you pop rushed walls as a desperate survival ploy and 25% def bonus. Thats 100% bonus giving you 6 vs 6. <snip> And when you remember an axeman's base strength is actually five, the arithmatic looks even better!
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Post by markweston on Jan 9, 2006 5:36:05 GMT -5
Come on now.
Archers do a fine job defending a city against axes. In fact three warriors (two with some luck - depending on whether he's got aggressive?) ought to be enough to stop this one axeman charge. But very occassionally circumstances will conspire to allow someone to accidentally plant on copper, AND get enough money huts to pay for an axeman upgrade, AND move their new axeman undetected to your city border. stuff happens. Learn any lessons you can learn and start another game.
It doesn't seem realistic to demand a change in the game to cover every possible circumstance which might be unbalanced, no matter how unlikely.
Sidhe's 5-turn kill is similar. It is, occassionally, possible. But I find it fairly rare that I don't have a 2-hammer tile within my city border. That's a warrior in 4 turns; 3 turns if my city's on a hill.
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Post by markweston on Jan 4, 2006 22:04:21 GMT -5
My experience has been a massive increase in failures to get into games (stuck on "contacting peer..." etc), and also an increase in the number of games that freeze or go OOS directly after launch. I remember the night I first installed 1.52 being particularly bad. Impossible to tell from my anecdotal experiences whether this is a patch problem or GS server load problem, but the timing seemed very precisely coincidental to me.
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Post by markweston on Jan 2, 2006 13:32:20 GMT -5
I'm with you U2
As long as I have some resources to call on, and options to try, and small victories to win (even if ultimate game victory is out of reach) then I enjoy playing losing situations. And I've seen a team in a 3v3 go one player down in the first third of the game and still go on to win.
Mind you, I was in the opposing team in the game that U2 mentioned, and it occurs to me that you weren't very assertive in saying you wanted to play on. If I'd read it as anything more than a vague preference for playing on, I'd have spoken up in favour of continuing the game. (Maybe you said more in team-chat, but obviously I wouldn't have seen that.)
It seems to me a good default position is that Ladder Players Don't Quit. If your team-mate wants to play on, you should play on too; with good grace, and without trying to pressure them to concede. It's the polite thing to do, and it's in the rules.
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