StarDestroyer.Net BBS

What the title says. Any recommendations for interesting or helpful or improvements upon the default civilization 4 (with the expansion)? Improvements to final frontier in particular are appreciated.

Additionally does anyone have any idea how civilization 5 will work out? I know what features are included, but my inner Stark cynic tells me it is good to be civilization 4, but with better graphics and a few new gimmics.

Civfanatics.com is the place to go for these questions. I have seen multiple Final Frontier mods there. From what the previews suggest, Civ5 is not going to be anything like 4 aside from the basic Civ trappings. Completely different combat system, grid, AI, and diplomacy.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Civfanatics.com is the place to go for these questions. I have seen multiple Final Frontier mods there. From what the previews suggest, Civ5 is not going to be anything like 4 aside from the basic Civ trappings. Completely different combat system, grid, AI, and diplomacy.

This is funny because they've had a perfectly adequate combat system since Civ 2, and yet they keep fucking it up, so I guess they decided to make a new one from scratch now?

Heh

PeZook wrote:

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Civfanatics.com is the place to go for these questions. I have seen multiple Final Frontier mods there. From what the previews suggest, Civ5 is not going to be anything like 4 aside from the basic Civ trappings. Completely different combat system, grid, AI, and diplomacy.

This is funny because they've had a perfectly adequate combat system since Civ 2, and yet they keep fucking it up, so I guess they decided to make a new one from scratch now?

Heh

Adequate? You think stacks of doom where I've seen literally over 500 units of tanks artillery and mech infantry in one spot attack a city, or worse, see one unit go right past such a stack without any interception as adequate?

Edit: And let's not even go into that old Civ stereotype of spearmen taking out modern armor.

Edit 2: Aaaand before anyone goes "one unit on the map means one unit period"... no. They're representations. As an example, contrast the actual number of units to your military size in the Civ demographics screen. As you can see, you'll have a much larger army then the unit numbers indiciate.

Civ is a good game, but its combat has some glaring holes in it. Made worse by somewhat crappy AI.

As for mods, if you like fantasy and have the expansions defin. get Fall from Heaven 2. It completely changes the game into something different. Since getting it I hardly play any other mod. It's had a lot of history and a lot of work done to make it run as smooth as possible.

The final frontier mods are ok, but the entire mod itself suffers from slowdown due to the XML process they use to create the map. Expect large turn change times if you use it.

AMT wrote: Adequate? You think stacks of doom where I've seen literally over 500 units of tanks artillery and mech infantry in one spot attack a city, or worse, see one unit go right past such a stack without any interception as adequate?

Obviously Civ 2's system is obsolete today: your complaints are what I meant by "keep fucking it up". Civ 3 was a massive step backwards from Civ 2, then Civ 4 stepped in and revamped the system so that it's even more of a broken mess. Now they want to change it again for Civ 5, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's not going to be any better

I'm not too fond of Civ 5's hexagonal grid style. Makes it look too much like a board game.
I'm an old fashioned Civver here, give me my square grid!

Also now they're ransoming whole fucking civs as preorder items, i.e. buy through Steam and get the Babylonians.
I hate modern gaming sometimes.

Regarding mods for Civ4: if you have Beyond the Sword there is the Dune Wars mod, which does a pretty good total conversion of Civ4 to be set in the Dune universe where the major powers are fighting for dominance on the surface of Arrakis. It has some pretty novel Dune themed features such as spice harvesting, sand worms, off-world trade or reinforcements and terraforming (provides more useful land but reduces spice production) so it's worth a look; the only downside is there is still quite a lot of place-holder art in there.

Give me stacks of doom any day. Those maps are supposed to represent hundreds of square kilometres per square. It's an abstraction. You should be able to stack many units into one 'square', how do real life armies fit on the battlefield? You don't see one 'unit' of archers sitting by itself and a 'unit' of knights or whatever over in the 'next square'.

And yeah, not a fan of the hexes. Ultimately though what matters is whether its broken or fun to play. We won't know that until it comes out. As for Civ4, I enjoyed it a lot.

If you want mods for it, there was one I downloaded which turned the game into a fantasy civilisations game: Fall from Heaven 2.

From previews and interviews with the lead designer, Civ 5's hex grid and the gist of the combat system was inspired by Panzer General. Personally, it sounds leaps and bounds better than Civ 4's POS system. If they pull it off right, it will feel a lot larger and more expansive, movement, positioning, and terrain will actually matter, and the combined arms will be much more intricate. From the screenshots, each "unit" shows up graphically as about 12 guys, so it shouldn't appear ridiculous to have one unit per hex. Also, no more snaking diaganolly past defenders thanks to the hex grid and the spread-out armies. This was one of the more annoying aspects of Civ 4. Honestly, if you're going to have a square grid, a zone of control system like in Civ 2 is a must.

"Rise of Mankind" is a decent mod that doesn't change the gameplay much and isn't a total conversion, but just adds more resources, technologies, units, etc. Be warned, it does seem to make the memory problems of the stock game even worse, and it might be unplayable with the biggest map and maximum number of civilizations.

Varietas Delecat is a good mod, there a bunch of add-on civs and additional leaders for existing civs that you can plug in. Hungarians, Poles, additional American tribes, Asian and African additional civs. Also it has new models for a bunch of units to give everyone their own unique feel for common units.

LOL

People still hate hexes, even though a) you can turn off the grid and b) it makes the game mechanically superior?

Games of this type being square based has always sucked. It blows me away that a Civ game is leading the change in this area, but it's good news.

PeZook wrote:

AMT wrote: Adequate? You think stacks of doom where I've seen literally over 500 units of tanks artillery and mech infantry in one spot attack a city, or worse, see one unit go right past such a stack without any interception as adequate?

Obviously Civ 2's system is obsolete today: your complaints are what I meant by "keep fucking it up". Civ 3 was a massive step backwards from Civ 2, then Civ 4 stepped in and revamped the system so that it's even more of a broken mess. Now they want to change it again for Civ 5, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's not going to be any better

Interesting. Most people's opinion's seem to be that of Civ 4 being the best in the series.

What are you talking about? Alpha Centauri was the best civilization game. It had its flaws, but all the features that civ 4 does well were in that game.

Also now they're ransoming whole fucking civs as preorder items, i.e. buy through Steam and get the Babylonians.

How different are civilizations from each other? All civilization 4 has is a unique unit/building with the rest tied to the leader.

Edit 2: Aaaand before anyone goes "one unit on the map means one unit period"... no. They're representations. As an example, contrast the actual number of units to your military size in the Civ demographics screen. As you can see, you'll have a much larger army then the unit numbers indiciate.

You can have a massive military reported in the demographics screen while having no military. The worst is life expectancy- starts in the 70s and you can drop it to the 40s.

I have a feeling the civs are all going to be added by modders within two weeks anyway. you can't make a Civ game and not make it mod friendly, and within a couple of weeks people were already coming up with add-ons to Civ 4.

ArmorPierce wrote:Interesting. Most people's opinion's seem to be that of Civ 4 being the best in the series.

The game needed so many fucking patches to work that I decided to wait out half a year before buying.

My wait was actually rewarding.

That aside, the combat system has become so ridiculous that I am resigned to saving everytime I send a troop to fight.

Samuel wrote:What the title says. Any recommendations for interesting or helpful or improvements upon the default civilization 4 (with the expansion)? Improvements to final frontier in particular are appreciated.

Additionally does anyone have any idea how civilization 5 will work out? I know what features are included, but my inner Stark cynic tells me it is good to be civilization 4, but with better graphics and a few new gimmics.

Civ 4, just got it, so I can't comment too much on it, but the Ultimate Edition does come with a lot of mods. I rarely deal with outside mods because I've had too many problems with them working properly in the past, so I usually create my own limited mods or use those "officially" approved ones. As for Civ 5, see below.

PeZook wrote:

AMT wrote: Adequate? You think stacks of doom where I've seen literally over 500 units of tanks artillery and mech infantry in one spot attack a city, or worse, see one unit go right past such a stack without any interception as adequate?

Obviously Civ 2's system is obsolete today: your complaints are what I meant by "keep fucking it up". Civ 3 was a massive step backwards from Civ 2, then Civ 4 stepped in and revamped the system so that it's even more of a broken mess. Now they want to change it again for Civ 5, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's not going to be any better

What I liked about Civ 2's combat system (and by extension Call to Power), was that you could easily modify it to get results that made more sense. Once I found the right combat calculator, I could do the same with Civ 3, not to mention modify a whole lot more of the game. While Civ 4s combat system seems to look good on paper (and via the combat calculator I've found), I haven't played it enough yet to determine if that's the case. What does bother me is that while its supposed to be more mod friendly, you need to really know what your doing compared to Civ 3 in order to make even minor changes to the game.

Stark wrote:LOL

People still hate hexes, even though a) you can turn off the grid and b) it makes the game mechanically superior?

Games of this type being square based has always sucked. It blows me away that a Civ game is leading the change in this area, but it's good news.

Agreed. As a former player of board games, I've always preferred hexes. Why it took so long to adapt to Civ (and other games) I have know idea, but it can only be an improvement.

Stark wrote:People still hate hexes, even though a) you can turn off the grid and b) it makes the game mechanically superior?

People are more used to square grids than hex grids, and people are scared of things that are different. Some people are still weirded out by non-six-sided dice.

Personally I am a big fan of the Civilization series starting from CIV3 and going down to CIV2, Alpha Centaury and Civ4. I also agree that Alpha Centaury or as we like to call it SMAC is the best of them all.

As was said before, if you want some good mods check out CivFanatics.com.

My recommendations thou would be: Fall From Heaven 2 with all its mod-mods. These are modifications made for FFH2 just like FFH2 is a modification for civ. They are Orbis, Wild Mana, Rise from Erebus and my personal favorite (and the first one out there) Fall Further.
You will also want to check out the minor modifications located here.

If you are not into the whole fantasy setting, there is a mod that simulates Sid Meyers Alpha Centaury to be found here: Planetfall Mod.

On the other hand, if you want to stick to what is proven. So far as I know Beyond the Sword comes with a version of a mod called Rhye's and Fall of Civilization. You should get the newest version and check out the pure Asian and pure European versions under construction now.

This, and many, many more you can find in the moders favorite section: Project & Mod Development.

From a present Fanatic to a possible future one. Have fun.

How can you spell the name of a game you love wrong so consistently?

Oskuro, when people over at Elemental talked about vexes, it was obvious people have no real reason for disliking it. All the reasons are stupid, abd the huge benefits are ignored. People are dumb who knew etc. I may actually play Civ5 since it's clear it's not a mindless, worthless clone of itself.

Heh, I've had players reject using hexes for d20 games claiming they made thigns "more complex", and then had them whinning at the workaround mechanics for diagonal movement (or when I told them their character could definitely not move through a wall even if diagonal movement allowed it).

As for Civ 5, I'm not very up to date on the Civ games, though, on one hand, I think mixing things a little is a good way of improving, yet, on the other, the risk of ruining the parts that work is there too (*cough* Command & Conquer *cough*).

If they are altering the gameplay, they could've gone for an spin-off of sorts (Similar to Call to power, even if that was under a different motivation), wich would've allowed them to also restart the numbering. Keeping a big fat 5 in the title sounds like an appeal to fandom, and those don't usually accept changes to their cherished franchises.

But what do I know? I liked the Call to Power games enough to never bother with regular Civ games ever again.

It's still Civ, so it's unlikely they're going to be too original. If they steal features that work to fix the horribleness of Civ it'll be good (especially regading AI, dip and UI).

The main reason why some people (me included) are highly skeptical about CIV5 is not the hexes. Its the fear that they are trying to make CIV into a war simulator like Panzer General.

When things like "single unit per tile" and "supply lines" get thrown around and than you ad hexes to the mix this becomes a real scare.

During the time since it came out, there have been many lame and unfounded complains about the CIV4 combat system. These have come from people who see combat as the core of CIV. But nothing could be farther than the truth. CIV is about building an empire, expanding, world wonders, culture, espionage and many other things. And the whole "stack of doom" mechanic served perfectly to abstract war to the point where it was fun, easy to manage and not too time consuming. Once you get to the late game when turns can last 5 minutes without war I do not want to be forced to micromanage all my units individually.


And some people (me included) fear that they will push the game into the other direction by abstracting important stuff like building and expanding in favor of micromanaging wars.

Don't get us wrong, there is nothing inherently bad about Panzer General. But if we wanted to play PG we would play PG and not CIV.


Also, any complaints about my spelling are to be directed to: http://www.iespell.com/

Purple wrote:During the time since it came out, there have been many lame and unfounded complains about the CIV4 combat system. These have come from people who see combat as the core of CIV. But nothing could be farther than the truth. CIV is about building an empire, expanding, world wonders, culture, espionage and many other things. And the whole "stack of doom" mechanic served perfectly to abstract war to the point where it was fun, easy to manage and not too time consuming. Once you get to the late game when turns can last 5 minutes without war I do not want to be forced to micromanage all my units individually.

Of course, war and conquest are a significant element of many of those activities, so having a system for doing them that works well is still a desirable thing for a game of this type. Civ's combat system hasn't worked terribly well for a long while, especially in highly technologically asymmetric conflicts.

People talk about combat this and building that, all I really want for a new Civ is for a nuclear war to actually be as devastating as it would be in real life.
Yeah Civ 4 got better with you actually being able to launch missiles from your home cities instead of moving the missile unit to the enemy but I want to see devastated cities and such, not "Hey the city loses 8 population and 4 tiles are covered in easily cleanable fallout".