Some suggestions for PzC II

[Kirby]

Air Combat

It should be changed to work in a fashion similar to Civilization V, meaning aircraft don't move like other units but fly from base every turn.
- Airfields should be more important and should be 7-hexes large.
- Air units could be placed only on one of the 7 fields. Exact position would matter. Planes could be shuffled around the airfield.
- Each air unit could fly only one mission each turn.
- Multiple units on the airfield could be selected to fly a single mission (for example, two stukas escorted by a single fighter).
- The player selects the aircraft, then selects the target hex(es).
- if a single unit is sent, it attacks the target hex. If multiple units are sent, the whole sortie flies out, their exact positioning on the airfield reflecting at the target hexes. (as in previous example, two units are being bombed by stukas, one strafed by a fighter).
- AA units would be passive, covering 1 ring of hexes or more.
- Fighter cover missions would be similar to bombing missions, but a figher (or multiple) could be sent over friendly units instead. This effect would last through the opponents turn. Thus, the opponent would have to risk flying into fighter cover.

Logistics

Logistics (fuel and ammo) should be expanded.

- A new unit type, logistics units, should be created.
- These units would be received as auxiliary units at scenario start.
- There could be multiple types of logistics units (trucks, armored vehicles, ships).
- Aircraft logistics could be added to airports, as above, to provide fuel and ammo in a 1 hex ring around the target hex for a sortie.
- Land and sea logistics units would move like recon (broken up move).
- A logistics unit would have a limited amount of ammo or fuel to restock.
- A logistics unit would come adjacent to a friendly unit, "shoot at it" to restock it, and then could move further or back into cover.
- Logistics units could be destroyed like any other unit.
- New logistics units could be purchased for prestige, but would last only through the scenario (and would take some time to reach the front).
- Logistics units cannot restock themselves.

Transportation

- Friendly cities with road access should provide 0+ truck transports, much like rail or naval transports, except units could drive only along roads and disembark at any time. Upon disembarkation, the transport would be reset (i.e. the unit would loose it).
- Units should be able to disembark from rail at any railroad hex, but should loose significant amounts of ammo and fuel if disembarkation wasn't in a city.
- Bridge engineers, engineers and paratroopers should be able to blow up and repair bridges by standing on them and "shooting" them. A bridge engineer could repair the bridge by standing on it and "shooting at it" for a two turns. Bridge status could be represented by red, yellow and green icons, respectively.
- Bridges could be attacked by bombers, doing some (yellow) or complete (red) damage, depending on various factors.
- Marshes during muddy terrain should be as deadly and movement-limiting for armored units as standing on a river.
- Units standing on frozen lakes should be lost if the ice thaws.
- Some russian (armor) units should have lesser penalties for movement in frozen and muddy terrain.

Civilian units

A new type of units should be introduced - civilians.

- Civilians would initially occupy all city hexes (except if otherwise designed in a scenario).
- Civilian units could be captured by regular units (the same type that can capture cities) if there are no enemy units adjacent to them.
- Attacking uncaptured civilian units would cost the player prestige.
- Captured civilians automatically gain a free movement turn of 3 hexes.
- Civilian units could be "disbanded" by being "attacked" by logistics units for extra prestige, or they could be sent to any friendly/captured city with a rail connection or seaport for the same effect.
- A unit that surrenders would turn into a friendly civilian unit (POW) thus blocking the front (and making the surrender mechanism a bit trickier to exploit).

Research

A new form of currency, "Research", could be implemented.

- Research costs would be added for all Prestige purchases for newly designed models (for example, if the Tiger was just introduced, it would have a research cost added to its purchase/upgrade, along with the regular Prestige cost).
- Research points should be harder to come by than Prestige.
- Research would be gained by either destroying or capturing (forcing a surrender) enemy units.
- Newest models of enemy units would grant much more Research than "regular" ones.
- Destroying a unit would grant less Research than capturing it.
- Newly encountered unit types would grant more Research than subsequent destructions or captures (the first destroyed T-34 would grant much more Research than the 10th one).
- Research could be spent to buy new units - prototypes before their regular production time (for example, an early Tiger II) or to upgrade existing units to a newer model before it's introduced (for example, a Panzer IV F/2).
- Research could be also gained by alternate means, like capturing static map features (hangars? etc.).
- Research could be also spent in the final scenarios (USA?) to upgrade existing units to historically not available later versions of them (for example, much improved Tiger II and Maus tanks with stronger Maybach engines).
- Research would make players choose between "having all the best available units now" and "having one or two exceptional units now".

Naval Combat

- Battleships, Heavy and light cruisers should have a "switch" mode to be able to bombard land targets. This could be used to also change their range (shorter for land attacks).
- Subs should have a switch mode that disables the attack, but makes them invisible to all units except destroyers.
- Subs should have a lower chance of "evading" destroyer and gunboat attacks.
- Battleships, Heavy and Light cruisers should "protect" naval transports like artillery does against surface ships, while Destroyers should do the same against submarines.
- Sea mines should be introduced. These could be disarmed by gunboats and destroyers, making gunboats and destroyers more important.

Misc

- Units should be less visible if in rough terrain, especially infantry.

[Ennea]

Hi all, long time lurker and i have spent countless hours playing panzer corps along with other slitherine/matrix times(thanks guys btw for your passion in wargaming)
This topic actually made me register and post my 2 cents on the matter. While i will not get into details, my suggestions are a bit general and perhaps not even doable.But you never know...

- i would love a logistics system similar to Unity of Command in a combination with the current one.
- a RUSE like map not in such detail ofc but a in pseudo 3d perhaps.
- upgrade your core units like Germany at War, in combination the unit in tiles should appear like a group of tanks/soldiers etc. For e.g an armored division of pzIV when upgraded with AT(e.g stug) would appear with 3 pzIV and 1 stug. Ofc NATO symbols should exist also for those that prefer it.
-keep the core gameplay as it is, i will not get into balance stuff, pretty sure many will have great ideas.
- more historical, less what if ...
- options, options, options, get the game from a casual walk in the park difficulty setting to a hardcore player paradise.
-get it moddable as it gets. Many famous gaming titles got their reputation(and millions of cash) due to their ability to be modded to an amazing point. Total war series(the old titles ofc), the elder scrolls and many others.

Thanks for reading.

[HunterICX]

In my opinion this just changes too much to the core of the game that what makes it PzC.
The thing that makes PzC so great is that it stayed loyal and so similar to Panzer General and added only features that added to the gameplay but didn't change how the game was ment to be played.

It are nice suggestions for a turn based hexed strategy game but just not something for the PzC series.
again that's what I'm thinking.

[timek28]

To be honest, game is complex and cerebral as it is. I really think a lot about my moves while playing. Game emerses you. Especially in user crafted mods that incorporate huge number of units (GTPG). Maybe some of these suggested things could be implemented but most of them would just overcomplicate the game. Micromanagement is not my type of thing. Also I don't see the point in couple of dozen threads that suggest what to add to next PC series. There are no indications that there will be any new DLC (not game alone) in PC universe, so I think these suggestions cannot be all read by developers. Maybe when some new game is announced we should all come with individual suggestions in ONE thread but untill then I think we are just shooting in dark.

Edit: I know I made suggestion on group movement commands. But like this thread I think there is no point in my thread if it is not replied by a developers themselves.

[Kirby]

In my opinion this just changes too much to the core of the game that what makes it PzC.
The thing that makes PzC so great is that it stayed loyal and so similar to Panzer General and added only features that added to the gameplay but didn't change how the game was ment to be played.

It are nice suggestions for a turn based hexed strategy game but just not something for the PzC series.
again that's what I'm thinking.

I disagree. Civ5 is vastly different from Civ4, yet it manages to remain CIV still. And it's definitely the best civ to date. "Minigames" change, the essence remains the same. That's the reasoning behind my suggestions. If you look at my suggestions more closely, you'll notice that, with the exception of Air combat, the other suggestions as as "outlandish" as introducing Rail in PzC.

[boredatwork]

I disagree. Civ5 is vastly different from Civ4, yet it manages to remain CIV still. And it's definitely the best civ to date. "

In my opinion Civ5 was arguably one of the worst - not necessarily conceptually - but in implementation it was fairly horrible.

I always thought a game ***designed from the ground up*** to be a blend of Civ & PG would be an amazing experience. The problem with JS' Civ5 was he treated it like a mod - a lazy attempt to shoehorn in watered down mechanics into another system that was fundamentally incompatible without a major redesign. Why move to 1UPT without increasing the number of tiles? Why unnecessarily restrict workers to 1UPT? Why have archers have a 2 hex range? The result was a bland, badly watered down version of the PG mechanics grafted to a Civ game where the empire builder side was butchered in order to reduce the number of units.


The only reason I comment on Civ5 is, while I agree with you that PzC has room for improvement, just throwing random mechanics into the game isn't necessarily going to accomplish that goal for three reasons:

a) The rest of the game including the scenarios have to be designed around actually making a feature usefull/interesting.

b) The AI actually has to be remotely competent in the use of the feature.

c) The benefits of the feature must be weighed against the impact it has on the difficulty to balance the game.


Take rail movement for example: it's a neat movement option but it's essentially wasted because only a handful of scenarios (such as Orel) have the distance/deployment setup to make it worthwhile. How competent is the AI at using paratroops or railed units (or even truck mounted ones)?

Civilians *units*? This isn't civilization - unless you're evacuating Konigsberg I don't see how civilians would be at all relevant to an operational level wargame.

Logistics? Adding a logistic network *could* make for a more interesting game. But what you're proposing essentially amounts to a more tedious micro managed way to click the resupply button for the human player. For the AI however, who already has trouble keeping it's units resupplied as well as keeping a semblance of a front line to keep it's rear areas protected, logistics as you describe them would be a further crippling handicap - it would be difficult for it to have the foresight to start moving logistics units to where they're needed 2-3 turns in advance. The player would be able to exploit the AI's lax protection of it's logistics network. And the AI has issues with 1UPT movement already - clogging the map up with additional units will cripple it even further.

You would be better looking at an abstract logistics system - for example the amount of resupply a unit receives when the button is pressed is dependant upon distance to a friendly city/railroad.


Your research options - again it would be interesting but you're talking about duplicating and repurposing a flawed currency mechanic (the prestige system) which doesn't solve the major underlying flaw in the game: the snowball effect. If doing better in the game give you access to more advanced equipment it will make it easier for you to do better allowing you even more advanced equipment. (arguably the invasion of the US should be done with ***less*** advanced equipment - after all to get there you defeated Britain and the USSR - historically *winning* the battle of France did not spark the emergency wonder weapon programs.)

Here a fixed rate "talent" tree where every scenario would give you a fixed number of pts to spent on research would give much the same effect but without the possibility of snowballing.

[Kirby]

I disagree. Civ5 is vastly different from Civ4, yet it manages to remain CIV still. And it's definitely the best civ to date. "

In my opinion Civ5 was arguably one of the worst - not necessarily conceptually - but in implementation it was fairly horrible.

Your comments about Civ5 are terribly out of date. For the last two years the devs and us (I'm a memember of the Frankenstein Test Group) worked diligently to produce two of the best and most praised expansions so far. Today, Civ5 is the best member of the franchise, praised by hardcore old fans and critics alike.

As for my PzC suggestions, you're probably right. No need for additional micro. And this puts new light (at least for me) why SSI's PG2 took the direction that it did. Kudos to Rudankort, but PzC's AI is pretty simplistic. If not for the clever unit placement and scripting... Of turn-based games, HoMM3 had probably the best one till today.

[George_Parr]

Your comments about Civ5 are terribly out of date. For the last two years the devs and us (I'm a memember of the Frankenstein Test Group) worked diligently to produce two of the best and most praised expansions so far. Today, Civ5 is the best member of the franchise, praised by hardcore old fans and critics alike.

As for my PzC suggestions, you're probably right. No need for additional micro. And this puts new light (at least for me) why SSI's PG2 took the direction that it did. Kudos to Rudankort, but PzC's AI is pretty simplistic. If not for the clever unit placement and scripting... Of turn-based games, HoMM3 had probably the best one till today.

Is it?
They way I remember it, the fanbase is still decidedly split and many are not a big fan of Civ V, even with the second expansion. They managed to put a lot of very good things back into the game after the vanilla version was absolutely gutted and dumbed down for whatever reason. Doesn't change that it isn't nearly complex enough and that the AI isn't all that smart.

I'd say it's very much doubtful whether Civ V is considered the best of the series, I haven't really heard many people call it the best and I do read enough Civ-boards to not be entirely out of the loop

The funny thing about playing too many strategy games is that you can find so many different approaches that are interesting, that you sometimes wish you could put them all into one big game. Civ, PC, Hearts of Iron 3, and a few more, there is so much stuff in there. It would probably be a complete mess, but it sounds really nice in your mind

[borsook79]

Do we really want PzC2 at this point? I for one don't I'd like to see first recreations of Pacific front, maybe even Fantasy (I think Fantasy General was one of the best games in the series) and later PzC2.

PS. oh and Civ5 has been the best game in the series from day one.

[boredatwork]

Do we really want PzC2 at this point? I for one don't I'd like to see first recreations of Pacific front, maybe even Fantasy (I think Fantasy General was one of the best games in the series) and later PzC2.

The reason Fantasy general was one of the best games of the series was because they IMPROVED the underlying mechanics. In PzC Beta I was vocal about pushing for it, instead of PG to serve as the basis for this game (obviously unsuccessfully... but at least I got Recon movement and (eventually) reform units added ).

When I support the idea of PzC2 it's not that I literally want another German based WW2 game. What I want to see is a game for *future content* (be it Russian, Fantasy, Pacific, Modern or w/e) where the mechanics as a whole are open to the possibility of being redesigned to be improved, instead of simply pumping out glorified map packs with a handful of tweaks (which break existing content anyways).

PS. oh and Civ5 has been the best game in the series from day one.

Your comments about Civ5 are terribly out of date. For the last two years the devs and us (I'm a memember of the Frankenstein Test Group) worked diligently to produce two of the best and most praised expansions so far.

Civ5 failed from before day 1 because too much was sacrificed to improve the combat side which subsequently turned out to be a lemon anyways.

My post on Civ Fanatics 6 months BEFORE release: (bold added for emphasis)

I have no problem with 1UPT system - it worked great for PG and I can see it working great for the Civ series as well.

The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is the scale of the maps - PG worked because in general there was plenty of terrain in and around objectives to maximize maneuver. If it's true that infantry are being given the 2 hex movement range they need to make 1UPT work, (and presumably tanks and cav 4-5 hexes) I hope that means maps are increasing 1.5-2 times current dimensions for a given number of cities to give proper room to maneuver. (ie trading space for time, penetrating front lines to attack artillery from behind, cutting off wounded units path to escape, etc.)

Wow... what fundamental issues does 1UPT combat have in Civ5?

The map density is too high: units double in speed and increased considerably in number (compared to the number of *stacks*) and yet the average amount of terrain between cities has remained constant thus nullifying much of the potential tactical level decision making in the game. Ie there is very little space to maneuver or trade for time or room for deceptive feints. The AI has trouble shuffling it's units around such a congested battlefield and, because of the limited "front length" cannot, unlike PzC, at least fall back on the old AI standby of Zerging.

Today, Civ5 is the best member of the franchise, praised by hardcore old fans and critics alike.

Well you can cite anonymous "hardcore fans" and the same critics who were bribed into giving vanilla Civ5 glowing reviews the if you like.

I'll stick with quoting Civ5's ex-lead designer John Shafer (my bold)

Speaking of scale, another significant issue with 1UPT was that the maps wasn't really suited for it. The joy of Panzer General was pulling off clever maneuvers and secretly encircling your helpless enemies. Unfortunately, in Civ 5 nasty bottlenecks aren't uncommon and this tempers much of the natural value added by 1UPT. Ultimately, there just wasn't enough room to do the fun part.
...

Speculation aside, the reality was that the congestion caused by 1UPT also impacted other parts of the game...

So is there a way to make 1UPT really work in a Civ game? Perhaps. The key is the map. Is there enough of room to stash units freely and slide them around each other? If so, then yes, you can do it. For this to be possible, I'd think you would have to increase the maximum map size by at least four times. You'd probably also want to alter the map generation logic to make bottlenecks larger and less common. Of course, making the world that much bigger would introduce a whole new set of challenges!

P.S. From a **successful** innovation point of view IMO Alpha Centari was the best game in the series - from a nostalgia POV I'll say Civ2

[borsook79]

The map density is too high: units double in speed and increased considerably in number (compared to the number of *stacks*) and yet the average amount of terrain between cities has remained constant thus nullifying much of the potential tactical level decision making in the game. Ie there is very little space to maneuver or trade for time or room for deceptive feints. The AI has trouble shuffling it's units around such a congested battlefield and, because of the limited "front length" cannot, unlike PzC, at least fall back on the old AI standby of Zerging.

The beauty of Civ is that is configurable. Play on a large map with a low number of Civs and due to penalties that higher number of cities imposes you will see huge amount of terrain "empty" between them, where you can do all sorts of maneuvers. Also whatever are the problems of Civ5 combat, surely you don't say that Civ1-4 i.e. dump everything in one tile and hope you have more than the enemy was better? Even in tight space tactics work, you pick your targets, destroying siege engines etc. instead of having two super stacks playing at WW1 style combat. Oh, and maybe I don't remember Civ5 AI when it came out, but what we have now is really good, better than PzC AI, which still doesn't understand that it should use artillery before attacking with other units.

[HunterICX]

@CiV 5 AI: You mean the AI that does nothing but entrench themselves till they're healed when bombarded by barbarian archers which he could wipe out in a single battle or the AI that gives you a free town for a peace treaty everytime you just are at war with him (example you find yourself on the other side of the map and just joined a allied/befriended Civ's war against him and you do absolutely nothing to contribute to that war). Now I find myself in a game where yet after 260 turns none of the civs have declared war on me or each other. (Own Civ 5 + Both expansions)

Anyway PzC AI may have it's flaws but the Civ 5's AI ain't that much smarter but it doesn't bother me as the games still offer me a challenge.
Also I say if you want a competent opponent get a friend or other to play online with.

And as for CiV 4's Death stacks and square tiles...thank god CiV 5 improved over that which imo was the most stupidest game design ever of the series. I'm in no position to judge which Civ is better as it all comes down to personal preference but for those major improvements(hexes and no death stacks) in Civ 5 I personally like CiV 5 better especially online with friends.

[borsook79]

@CiV 5 AI: You mean the AI that does nothing but entrench themselves till they're healed when bombarded by barbarian archers which he could wipe out in a single battle or the AI that gives you a free town for a peace treaty everytime you just are at war with him (example you find yourself on the other side of the map and just joined a allied/befriended Civ's war against him and you do absolutely nothing to contribute to that war). Now I find myself in a game where yet after 260 turns none of the civs have declared war on me or each other. (Own Civ 5 + Both expansions)

Anyway PzC AI may have it's flaws but the Civ 5's AI ain't that much smarter but it doesn't bother me as the games still offer me a challenge.
Also I say if you want a competent opponent get a friend or other to play online with.

And as for CiV 4's Death stacks and square tiles...thank god CiV 5 improved over that which imo was the most stupidest game design ever of the series. I'm in no position to judge which Civ is better as it all comes down to personal preference but for those major improvements(hexes and no death stacks) in Civ 5 I personally like CiV 5 better especially online with friends.

Wow, what difficulty are you playing at? I've never seen a game of Civ5, and I played hundreds of them, when I got to turn 100 without a war. Also, never have I experienced getting a free town from the AI without reason. I seriously suggest playing on higher difficulty, AI tends to too soft in diplomacy when it doesn't have an advantage over you. As for the rest - my AI comment was referring to AI being able to shuffle troops and using formations, which I feel works quite decently.

[boredatwork]

The beauty of Civ is that is configurable. Play on a large map with a low number of Civs and due to penalties that higher number of cities imposes you will see huge amount of terrain "empty" between them, where you can do all sorts of maneuvers. Also whatever are the problems of Civ5 combat, surely you don't say that Civ1-4 i.e. dump everything in one tile and hope you have more than the enemy was better?

You're missing the point I made in my first post in this thread - it's not about whether 1UPT or Stacks of doom is a better mechanic - it's how the game as a whole was designed. I've played good stack games, good 1UPT games, good RTS games, good "battlemap" games etc etc. You could design a Civ game with XCom like tactical warfare and make it work. Or you can do the Civ thing and make combat lame regardless of which mechanic you use:

SoD have the advantage of focussing the game on the economic/production side of warfare while abstractly representing the tactical side which in a strategy game makes sense. The problem with Civ4s stacks was the actual mechanics used to resolve the clash were retarded - the attacking units would always face the defending unit most suited to defeat him which defeated the purpose of differentiating units to begin with: In a stack of 100 units my attacking cavalry are always going to charge directly at the lone pikeman. Again this is not an inherent problem of stacks - but rather Civ's implementation.

Civ5's combat system on the other hand, although inspired by PG, is in fact a very dumbed down bland version of the original, with numerous key features arbitrarily removed, such as supporting fire, suppression (morale), retreating, the CHOICE to fire before or after moving, entrenchment, initiative, supply. In addition the lack of space I reffered to above (I'm not talking about large neutral space between *CIVs* which would be the result of a game such as you describe) limits the additional tactical options. From a strategic PoV warfare was dumbed down - consider the economic costs of suffering casualties: In Civ4 you had to devote production capacity replacement of units within a stack. In Civ5 however units auto-heal for free. The result is the winner of a fight will be rewarded twice - once for winning the fight, and once for not having to devote resources to rebuild his forces making combat far too easy for human players who on average are better at unit preservation than any AI. Again this is not an inherent problem of 1UPT - in PzC or PG for example you had to devote prestige to replacements.

Given that combat is mediocre in both games, the difference is in Civ1-4 the 4Xs (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) were reasonably well balanced with each other so the lackluster combat was at least balanced with a wide range of decisions regarding political/diplomatic/production/expansion to keep the player engaged.

Civ5 on the other hand focussed too much on exterminate - losing many of the interesting choices that had been the staple of the series - unit production had to be scaled down so as not to cram the maps but they did it by scaling down global production as a result many turns were spent hitting "next turn" instead of making decisions about what to produce based upon requirements. That might not have been that bad if the pay off had been worth it. However Civ5 combat - regardless of whether or not it's better than previous Civ combat is still lackluster compared to a proper wargame like PzC.





Again I'm not saying the concept behind Civ5 wasn't great but even the game's designer agrees many of his choices fell short:

My intention with the global happiness mechanic was to make it possible for smaller empires to compete with much larger ones. The problem was that a global metric butts heads with the natural cadence of the entire genre. I mean, the second X in 4X stands for "expansion" for crying out loud! I lost sight of this as I pursued other objectives.

My removal of the research/commerce/culture sliders also came with positives and negatives. I've always found fiddling with sliders in strategy games to be boring busywork, and in that sense I don't miss them. But the sliders also had a hidden value that I didn't realize until later - they gave players the ability to shift directions at any time.

I've written at length about the importance of adaptation in strategy games. Unfortunately, once the sliders were gone players were basically permanently locked into their past economic choices. There was no way to sacrifice research in order to upgrade your army, for example. Rewarding long-term planning is certainly a worthy endeavor, but you still need to provide tools to allow players to change course when necessary.

I like both the Policies system featured in Civ 5 and the Civics system from Civ 4, which are simply two different takes on the same concept: the ability to shape the "character" of your empire. With Policies, I wanted it to feel like you were slowly accumulating this identity over time. After all, Japan and Germany changed significantly after World War 2, but they're still Japanese and German, and maintain that legacy of honor, hard work, etc.

By contrast, Civics allowed you to completely reforge your empire on a dime. Sure, there were costs associated with doing so, but it was very much possible to transform from a pious peace-loving people into the warmonger scourge from hell. This is kind of odd, but it has a huge gameplay benefit.
Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, but I now find the design of Civics more appealing, because of that capacity to make sudden and dramatic shifts.

One of the big changes I made to Civ 5 on the economic front was the shift from resources being "boolean" (where you either have them or you don't) to "quantified," where you can have zero of a single resource type, or two of it, or maybe eighteen. I still feel that making them quantified was a solid design decision, but for a variety of reasons the execution wasn't everything I wanted it to be.

...

In Civ 5, players ended up with easy access to a bit of every resource and there was almost no reason to trade. In the real world, swapping goods is worthwhile because of the effects of supply and demand. In Civ 5 there was almost no demand since you could be virtually self-sufficient.

...

My removal of the health system in Civ 5 also had repercussions elsewhere. This greatly reduced the value of non-strategic resources (like wheat), and in retrospect it's clear that I didn't manage to fill that void with something else.The map is absolutely vital in a 4X game, and that needs to be the case for everything on it as well. If you see something on a tile and think it's not a big deal, that is a flaw that needs to be fixed.

I came to realize that while diplomacy is a unique challenge, it's ultimately still just a gameplay system just like any other. Regardless of whether your enjoyment is derived from roleplaying or simply a game's core mechanics, if your opponents' goals and behavior aren't clear then you'll have absolutely no idea what’s going on or what to do.

In Civ 5, you might have been lifelong allies with a leader, but once you enter the late-game he has no qualms backstabbing you in order to win. With this being the case, what's the point of investing in relationships at all?

By no means should AI leaders be completely predictable. However, they do need a clear rhyme and reason behind their actions. The computer opponents in Civ 5 were completely enslaved to their gameplay situation, and as a result they appeared random and very little of their personalities shone through.

They were all crazy, and in the exact same way. In the months after the game was released I modified their behavior to be more predictable, but it was too late to completely change course. The biggest takeaway from this is that the only thing which matters in a game is the experience inside the player's head. It doesn't matter what your intentions are or what's going on under the hood if the end result just isn't fun.

[borsook79]

The beauty of Civ is that is configurable. Play on a large map with a low number of Civs and due to penalties that higher number of cities imposes you will see huge amount of terrain "empty" between them, where you can do all sorts of maneuvers. Also whatever are the problems of Civ5 combat, surely you don't say that Civ1-4 i.e. dump everything in one tile and hope you have more than the enemy was better?

You're missing the point I made in my first post in this thread - it's not about whether 1UPT or Stacks of doom is a better mechanic - it's how the game as a whole was designed. I've played good stack games, good 1UPT games, good RTS games, good "battlemap" games etc etc. You could design a Civ game with XCom like tactical warfare and make it work. Or you can do the Civ thing and make combat lame regardless of which mechanic you use:

SoD have the advantage of focussing the game on the economic/production side of warfare while abstractly representing the tactical side which in a strategy game makes sense. The problem with Civ4s stacks was the actual mechanics used to resolve the clash were retarded - the attacking units would always face the defending unit most suited to defeat him which defeated the purpose of differentiating units to begin with: In a stack of 100 units my attacking cavalry are always going to charge directly at the lone pikeman. Again this is not an inherent problem of stacks - but rather Civ's implementation.

Civ5's combat system on the other hand, although inspired by PG, is in fact a very dumbed down bland version of the original, with numerous key features arbitrarily removed, such as supporting fire, suppression (morale), retreating, the CHOICE to fire before or after moving, entrenchment, initiative, supply. In addition the lack of space I reffered to above (I'm not talking about large neutral space between *CIVs* which would be the result of a game such as you describe) limits the additional tactical options. From a strategic PoV warfare was dumbed down - consider the economic costs of suffering casualties: In Civ4 you had to devote production capacity replacement of units within a stack. In Civ5 however units auto-heal for free. The result is the winner of a fight will be rewarded twice - once for winning the fight, and once for not having to devote resources to rebuild his forces making combat far too easy for human players who on average are better at unit preservation than any AI. Again this is not an inherent problem of 1UPT - in PzC or PG for example you had to devote prestige to replacements.

Given that combat is mediocre in both games, the difference is in Civ1-4 the 4Xs (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) were reasonably well balanced with each other so the lackluster combat was at least balanced with a wide range of decisions regarding political/diplomatic/production/expansion to keep the player engaged.

Civ5 on the other hand focussed too much on exterminate - losing many of the interesting choices that had been the staple of the series - unit production had to be scaled down so as not to cram the maps but they did it by scaling down global production as a result many turns were spent hitting "next turn" instead of making decisions about what to produce based upon requirements. That might not have been that bad if the pay off had been worth it. However Civ5 combat - regardless of whether or not it's better than previous Civ combat is still lackluster compared to a proper wargame like PzC.





Again I'm not saying the concept behind Civ5 wasn't great but even the game's designer agrees many of his choices fell short:

My intention with the global happiness mechanic was to make it possible for smaller empires to compete with much larger ones. The problem was that a global metric butts heads with the natural cadence of the entire genre. I mean, the second X in 4X stands for "expansion" for crying out loud! I lost sight of this as I pursued other objectives.

My removal of the research/commerce/culture sliders also came with positives and negatives. I've always found fiddling with sliders in strategy games to be boring busywork, and in that sense I don't miss them. But the sliders also had a hidden value that I didn't realize until later - they gave players the ability to shift directions at any time.

I've written at length about the importance of adaptation in strategy games. Unfortunately, once the sliders were gone players were basically permanently locked into their past economic choices. There was no way to sacrifice research in order to upgrade your army, for example. Rewarding long-term planning is certainly a worthy endeavor, but you still need to provide tools to allow players to change course when necessary.

I like both the Policies system featured in Civ 5 and the Civics system from Civ 4, which are simply two different takes on the same concept: the ability to shape the "character" of your empire. With Policies, I wanted it to feel like you were slowly accumulating this identity over time. After all, Japan and Germany changed significantly after World War 2, but they're still Japanese and German, and maintain that legacy of honor, hard work, etc.

By contrast, Civics allowed you to completely reforge your empire on a dime. Sure, there were costs associated with doing so, but it was very much possible to transform from a pious peace-loving people into the warmonger scourge from hell. This is kind of odd, but it has a huge gameplay benefit.
Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, but I now find the design of Civics more appealing, because of that capacity to make sudden and dramatic shifts.

One of the big changes I made to Civ 5 on the economic front was the shift from resources being "boolean" (where you either have them or you don't) to "quantified," where you can have zero of a single resource type, or two of it, or maybe eighteen. I still feel that making them quantified was a solid design decision, but for a variety of reasons the execution wasn't everything I wanted it to be.

...

In Civ 5, players ended up with easy access to a bit of every resource and there was almost no reason to trade. In the real world, swapping goods is worthwhile because of the effects of supply and demand. In Civ 5 there was almost no demand since you could be virtually self-sufficient.

...

My removal of the health system in Civ 5 also had repercussions elsewhere. This greatly reduced the value of non-strategic resources (like wheat), and in retrospect it's clear that I didn't manage to fill that void with something else.The map is absolutely vital in a 4X game, and that needs to be the case for everything on it as well. If you see something on a tile and think it's not a big deal, that is a flaw that needs to be fixed.

I came to realize that while diplomacy is a unique challenge, it's ultimately still just a gameplay system just like any other. Regardless of whether your enjoyment is derived from roleplaying or simply a game's core mechanics, if your opponents' goals and behavior aren't clear then you'll have absolutely no idea what’s going on or what to do.

In Civ 5, you might have been lifelong allies with a leader, but once you enter the late-game he has no qualms backstabbing you in order to win. With this being the case, what's the point of investing in relationships at all?

By no means should AI leaders be completely predictable. However, they do need a clear rhyme and reason behind their actions. The computer opponents in Civ 5 were completely enslaved to their gameplay situation, and as a result they appeared random and very little of their personalities shone through.

They were all crazy, and in the exact same way. In the months after the game was released I modified their behavior to be more predictable, but it was too late to completely change course. The biggest takeaway from this is that the only thing which matters in a game is the experience inside the player's head. It doesn't matter what your intentions are or what's going on under the hood if the end result just isn't fun.

I understand your point, but I'm not comparing Civ5 implementation to some theoretical implementation, just saying it is better as far as combat goes than Civ 1-4. And that's good enough. As for the rest - I find that with the last expansion there are more possibilities of non combat gameplay (trade, tourism, art) than in previous incarnations of the game. As for backstabbing - I actually like it and would hate the game if they removed it. I don't perceive enemies as constant persons, but as countries, getting good relations with somebody gives you a period of alliance but doesn't mean that in 200 years there won't be a war. And it's good that AI starts wars when it can benefit from them instead of blind loyalty, everything that makes the AI behave like a player would is good.

Also, I don't really see why the discussion here started revolving around Civ5. Coming back to PzC II - my humble vote is expand this engine on further theatres before repeating the WW2 in Europe in PzC II

[Kirby]

Whoa, boredatwork, between your quotes and the current state of the game stands at least, among other things, roughly 30.000 hours of playtesting by the Frankenstein team. Don't derail this thread with obsolete quotes and rants, please. If you're really interested in empire building (what CIV is about; not a wargame), try to play the game first.

All civ games including SMAC and Colonization games fail in the combat section. The whole system, regardless of squares, hexes, 1UPH or stacks, is inherently flawed in all aspects because the unit types and numbers are tied to tech advances and empire types. In CIV, you fight pikemen with bombers. In comparison, WW2 was won by differences in caliber and armor thickness. What are we even talking about?

We pushed CIV5 to its limits regarding empire-building. In that aspect, it's the best "Sid 4x" game till date. Civ combat will never get better; changes required to do so in the general gameplay would distort the game so much that it wouldn't resemble CIV games in anything but name.

[boredatwork]

Whoa, boredatwork, between your quotes and the current state of the game stands at least, among other things, roughly 30.000 hours of playtesting by the Frankenstein team. Don't derail this thread with obsolete quotes and rants, please. If you're really interested in empire building (what CIV is about; not a wargame), try to play the game first.

Obsolete quotes? Did you not bother to READ my post? It was in response to Borsook's OPINION that Civ5 "has been the best game in the series from day one."

The current state of the game good or ill and your 30,000 hours of play testing is irrelevant to the discussion of Civ5 AT DAY ONE.

As for it's current state - why would I pay Firaxis to fix something that was broken on arrival? If you paid a contractor top dollar to build you a new house and he takes your money but doesn't bother to install a roof on it then offer to come back and "fix it" for an additional substantial payment what would your reaction be?

After over a decade of loyal purchasing Firaxis and the Civ Franchise have lost me as a customer. My civ addiction was cured 3 years ago.

[Kirby]

Regarding Jon Shafer, he's no Brian Raynolds, thats for sure. CIV5 at launch was far from being finished. His own gameplay video (the one in Africa, him defending against the french) already proved how little he knew about how his game is supposed to work. That said, many of the decisions for CIV5 eventually proved to be the best basis for improvement, considering all other civ games combined (excluding SMAC here).

I think you'll find my thoughts on Vanilla CIV quite amusing. :9
Here's a thread I started long ago
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400803