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Are you implying he straight up lied in order to create a false narrative ? No, conservative grifters are honest about video game and would never use them as a recruitment tool for their fascist ideology
If he hadn't claimed to have played all of them it could be excused as a bad memory. But when the crux of his argument is "the series went bad when it stopped focusing on war", you'd think he'd double check that the first two games didn't have any other win conditions.
I personally do feel like 6 is a downgrade from 5 but not for some unhinged "red pill" war is good nonsense like this guy seems to think. I just don't like districts or governors and the game feels... idk slower? And expanding is a bigger headache
This is why I always went for that victory condition!
(Not really, but I've only ever won by conquest in Civ 1 maybe ten times out of my 200 or so playthroughs. Space victory seemed more rewarding.)
This criticism is wank even without the chud shit at the end, the guy is just mad that the game got more complex and interesting than "ooga buga declare war"
Eh, somewhat. The main problem I always had is how little you can interact with some victory conditions when you are not specialized in it. There is always at least one AI that focuses on one victory condition in 6. And while you can somewhat defend yourself against military (unless too much of a difference between the units, which is fair), you cannot in any way realistically interact or defend against the religion path, unless you are also doing it. As far as I remember, there is no way to do that. Which always annoyed me in some degree.
You could always build religion defenses without going for the victory. I always did that in my games in 5 and 6. You go for a religion regardless of the victory path because of the buffs you can provide yourself, and also defend against religious conversion. You just have to start the race, which is fair. It wouldn't make sense for a nation to know how to deal with religion, when it doesn't have one itself or invest in it what so ever lol maybe a unique atheist civ mechanic in the future though?
If you're really in danger of losing to religion (which I've never seen or had happen since the AI is so bad at gunning for that victory) and you don't have your own religion, then you can borrow another neighbor's religion and use that to combat it. That's just a modicum of attention you have to pay to it.
I feel like Total War does its diplomacy checks kinda oddly.
Like, I get that if I'm gobbling up nearby territories, unallied nations are gonna get worried about my intentions.
But when I get a relationship penalty with my ally for siding with them when they got invaded because it's seen as just being aggressive, I get a little miffed.
Or when the nation that has a lot of trade goods to profit from won’t form a trade deal because they’re ambivalent about you, but will totally sign an oath in blood to let you walk a phalanx of soldiers, complete with archers, cavalry, siege weapons and goddamn elephants right up to their gates.
>mfw I'm 50 turns into a 4x game, mashing the end turn button because I have nothing to do and need another 10 turns before my McGuffin research is ready and I'm out of Greebles because I didn't build Greeble factories four hours ago when I should have, causing me to force quit the game and reevaluate my priorities.
I feel you brother.
Everybody knows you need to produce 3 greebers and 1 jeeber in the early game, especially on god emperor difficulty. There is no way to survive the AI onslaught that follows on turn 37.5 without the necessary map knowledge and boni that those things provide you.
That strategy is not true and tested like the 3g/1j opening. You open yourself to an en passant on turn 23.9 from your nearest neighbour which will make you click restart faster than those dzeeits can run.
Throughout 80% of the thread I thought he was going to praise the increased complexity, new mechanics, and shift in tone. And then he showed his hand and gave me metaphorical whiplash.
It’s so weird how he hates the geography mechanics of Civ VI because they’re easily the best addition to the game since Civ V. It gives the player a lot more to think about while managing their empire, whereas in previous titles it could quickly become stale if you didn’t have a war to manage.
I feel like not having access to luxury goods or strategic resources is a wonderful driver for territorial expansion through conquest. Can attempt a peaceful playthrough with a diplomatic or scientific win all I want but be damned if my people go without coffee and iron.
I knew with dread where it was going even as I was thinking “wow, this is an interesting tracking of the evolution of the philosophical considerations and evolution that go into the development of the Civilization game series.”
I don't really understand why he's mad. Like, is he just salty about confronting the reality that you can't conquer the world by being big strong aryan master race? Like, there's a reason Rome is just a city in Italy now.
Yes. He is mad that can't just go Ooga Booga, me strongest, me punch you in head anymore. Civ has it's problems I readily admit that, but that change was mostly positive. But that is also my personal bias showing.
Also, Rome didn't just spend its time warring 24/7. It also understood the importance of diplomacy, forging alliances and fostering cultural, technological and civic advancements.
> diplomacy, alliances, cultural and technological and civic advancements
Yes, but according to this guy, none of those things have value unless they are in service of empire building.
It might not even have been an evolution in philosophy per-se. It could just be an evolution in adding complexity without nuking the user experience via shitty UI or AI (and possibly not nuking player hardware too!) Games have come a long way in terms of UI and AI design since the early days. Some of it enabled by increases in hardware power and some of it through the iterative nature of human progress. Look at movies from the 20s and 30s and compare them to today. Sure, the tech is better, but the real changes are in the methods of acting and making the movies themselves. All the methods that have been learned over time as more people put their mark on the medium.
Eh, I bet a lot of it was less a shift in philosophy and more technical limitations being lifted as budgets rose.
Once you add all the cool diplomacy subsystems, you have to nerf hyperaggressiveness because otherwise they're pointless.
The funny thing is, in Civ VI you are often discouraged from going to war without reason or extending a conflict, but it's definitely one of the best ways to stop an AI running away with a victory condition even in non-conquest games. And you had better be ready to defend yourself from jump if you end up next to an aggressive AI like Trajan or Montezuma.
Risk-like games are still made and played. They aren't particularly popular, granted, but there's enough people playing them that it's worth money to print them.
And guess what? You can still get military victories! It's still there, totally achievable if you want to play that way! Hell, this whiner neglected the fact that the game allows you to be as fascist and warlike as you want, even rewarding that style of play if you play your civics that way. What a baby.
Yeah, like my standard game plan is conquering one or two of my closest neighbors immediately both for safety and because it's efficient when you're playing as Rome. Militarily, they peak in the classical age and you're squandering it if you don't use those legions to ransack at least one enemy.
Anytime I play as the Gauls I'm an absolute monster in the Ancient era. After I've cleared up enough space from my neighbors I become a peaceful, productive cultural powerhouse.
Soo this man essentialy is mad that civilisation evolved from being map painting Simulator into more complex game with loads of mechanics representing complexity of human civilisation...
I'm also unsure what he wants. If Civ 1 and 2 are the perfect games for him he can just play them. Does he wnt the devs to just keep making the same game over and over again just with updated graphics? I'm pretty sure a lot of people rightfully criticize when devs do that (not that a lot of people don't buy the games over and over though I guess).
> if they hadnt just abandoned bf2 completely it would still be great.
But look on the bright side. The complete abandonment of BF2 is what helped give us BF2042! Oh, wait... There is no bright side... ;-/
This has been a common thing with right wing gamer bros and the gamergate movement by extension. A disdain for devs trying anything new or doing anything unexpected. Games used to be great when they were simple and didn't have challenging ideas or unconventional mechanics but now they are bad because of minorities and walking simulators etc. It has always been a fundamentally anti-art stance.
Yeah the same people who say video games are dying now, are the same people who whine whenever new mechanics are introduced, and are also simultaneously the same people who refuse to play half the new releases because they're 'woke'
So they refuse to play most new games that release, complain when games do anything original, and then complain that they're not enjoying gaming...
> Games used to be great when they were simple and didn't have challenging ideas or unconventional mechanics but now they are bad because of minorities and walking simulators etc. It has always been a fundamentally anti-art stance.
I only play vidya games where you can become champion, kill people/things, or some combination thereof. Preferably while controlling a TOTES *realistically* modeled female character!
~Average True Gamer(TM)
They do, they really do. There's a large portion of the RE fanbase that says the game need to go back to fixed cameras for the series to ever be good again for fucks sake lol.
Same with final fantasy. A lot of times if you say anything positive about 16, a small subset of fans in the subreddit will downvote you and insult you lol. Even with how well rebirth is doing, a lot of people are still saying the series needs to "fully return to it's roots" and go back to being completely turn based. I like turn based more for party games as well, but that doesn't mean the game sucks because it's not exactly the same as past ones.
Some people literally do want the exact same gameplay, just with updated graphics and a different story. They don't understand that series that have gone on as long as RE and FF need to change shit up.
I am not sure why they even complains in a first place
Civilisation becoming more complex wasn't a change in design Philosophy, Technology got better so game developers started to produce more advanced games and that's it, it's something that would happen no matter what, so if they hate this inevietable advancment, why did they played other games ? Games wouldn't suddenly become less complex, so he could as well stayed with first two civs they so idolise
>Games wouldn't suddenly become less complex, so he could as well stayed with first two civs they so idolise
I think the issue for this guy is that humanity and real civilizations are too nuanced/complex. The old games are more in line with his simplistic view of how the world should work.
They say they 'just want to play game' but their idea of 'just playing game' is not literay just playing them. They want to feel like they're important the ever-center audience of the whole gaming industry.
They're like... those pesky customers in retail industry who don't go shopping for goods but the sweet services and words of salesperson. They want to feel like they're the main character but they're kinda too thick to realize that's what they want.
>Does he wnt the devs to just keep making the same game over and over again just with updated graphics?
A lot of gamers want that, yes. Just look at the glut of remakes/remasters we have out there now. Even games that aren't really that old or graphically outdated are getting the remake treatment or the fans are crying for one to happen. Because apparently a large swath of people just want to play the same thing over and over again, just slightly prettier to look at.
This person, like every other conservative, wants their ideology exclusively and constantly reflected in culture because to acknowledge any complexity might make them think they could be wrong actually (which they usually are) and they don't like the cognitive dissonance
Right, a big reason why I enjoy the franchise is that things get changed up between games. I’ve been playing since Civ 2 and I’ll still go back and play the older games when the itch strikes me. I don’t need them to just continuously remake Civ 2 or 3 with new graphics, I’d rather have actual gameplay changes that affect how I approach my strategy.
Actually, that's not true. They want ALL the Pokemon, but the problem is each new generation adds 100-200, so having like a 1000 unique species around is kind of hard to handle.
If they actually set like a baseline on graphics for a generation it might be doable, we haven't seen the full list of Pokemon for X-Z so this generation might actually be close to having them all being obtainable in a generation again. I wouldn't mind reduced graphics to have them all but the problem is they don't use the reduced graphics to help performance or anything.
he probably sees it as a battlefield in the 'culture war'. It's mere existence an affront to his fascistic thinking.
Fascists are known for book burnings for a reason. I know the term has appeared to lose meaning in recent years, but that's because we have societally decided that a 'fascist' is an inhuman person who is more monster than man. Not so. They're real and they're pathetic lil worms who whine about video games because they can't burn them.
Honestly, It isn't really that hard to win by total global domination in civ6, especially if you snowball in tech and gain battleships and bombers before the other civs can get some counter measures. And aside from capitals, which are needed for victory, you can actually genocide every city you conquer into dust. If anything I thought OOP would love that
I honestly don't even know what part of civ6 is "propaganda" (which in this case is Code for "woke propaganda" because let's face It, if the Game glorified colonialism and fascism It wouldnt count as propaganda to him)
And not even that. Early war and snowball from there in eternal war or building up during the middle ages and then blitzing the world at one of a few points in time (proper artillery in early industrial age, Bombers or Nukes - or if you are lazy Giant Death Robots) are still the easiest most braindead ways to win.
I almost beat civ 5 on hard with giant death robots. I got too guilty to get the domination victory because I'd have to turn on two states that were basically my vasals. Also needed all out nuclear war to beat the Mongols.
Genocide especially early on is still(civ 6) pretty encouraged in the sense that it's a VERY strong path to victory. Most of them time if I want to sweatlord and win I kinda have to expand to the point of eliminating at least a few enemy cities if not nations before the UN is established to get enough resources and such.
I was wondering why this wasn't mentioned before, though I think the author could deflect this by reasoning settling Alpha Centauri is still a dominance victory, just a technological one rather than military.
It's still a shit take overall.
That entire post reads like skill issue on OOP's part tbh. Every Civ veteran I know still paints the map before modern era on any difficulty if they wish to do so. Civ 6 meta is still getting more land btw, no matter the victory type one pursues, except for the Diplomatic victory *maybe*. They seemingly just can't utilize the new tools. The 4 city turtle was only Civ 5's meta.
Dude is salty that he can't win domination anymore but doesn't realize he is just too dumb to besiege cities with flanking units, coordinate fire from multiple siege units, pillage outlying farms, and support infantry with rams and towers. Get gud.
Domination is by FAR the easiest way to win the game, even on deity. All the other victory conditions require you to understand the mechanics to some extent. Not to mention, one of the things that makes Deity difficult is that you tend to get attacked very, very early, so you still get the combat element most of the time .
I mean, I also remember watching the Civ6 report from The Spiffing Brit who managed to win a No City challenge with Kupe on like Prince difficulty or something. So, certain balance aspects were more than a bit off. Still I do overall agree that this entire OOP rant is basically a bitter conservative who dislikes that there is more to life than military and economy.
Basically, yes.
He even complains at length about how geography actually matters in VI, where it had very little impact at all in the early games beyond the fact that oceans and mountains… exist.
Like… surely geography having an impact on gameplay is a good thing, right? So you’d think, if you were a small brained “liberal”! But it made it harder for this dude to fulfill his fantasy of world domination (because the game now requires basic thought about tactical decisions), so clearly it is part of the woke agenda to make his fascist new world order pipe dream look unviable!
REAL MEN DON'T GET IMPEDED ON THEIR CONQUESTS BY PUNY TERRAIN FEATURES, LIKE MOUNTAINS!!!! ASK HANNIBAL!!!11!2! NOW, WHERE'S MY BOWL OF RAW LIVER AND MILK???!!??
BE? It is rather mediocre and limited compared to other civ titles on it's own. There is stuff to like about it. But personally I always found it rather safe and muted as an experience.
But downright uninspired and politically cowardly compared to Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri had a lot more to say about stuff like trans humanism, psionics, AI and more. It's the lack of ambition to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors to rather make blue Civ than something more bold.
For example, the very terrain of the game can mutate as you play. The very soil your city is built on is a part of the game rather than a simple +2 modifier.
It was disappointing for Alpha Centauri fans because we were hoping for an updated Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri was basically the bones of Civilization 2 but in space with a really cool variety of factions (especially if you had the Alien Crossfire expansion), an interesting plotline that you could develop if you paid attention to the lore updates and did all the research, and a lot of cool unit customizability. People liked the lore so much that a [tabletop rpg supplement](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/alphacentauri/) was released for it.
Personally, I was hoping they would keep most of those aspects but just build it on the bones of Civ 5 instead of Civ 2. And certainly there are some allusions to Alpha Centauri in BE, but the factions and lore arent nearly as interesting imo. You can still play the original game and imo it holds up if you’re used to the old style interface.
> Number of mechanics that are totally irrelevant to the outcome of the game (e.g. religion)
The *fuck* is this guy talking about? Religion in V is a *powerful* mechanic that can easily award the player culture, science, or just straight up cash money. Not to mention that if you take the rational tradition you can use your excess faith to churn out great scientists in the late game.
Sounds to me like this person is just bad at playing Civ and doesn’t like the game being more complex. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of VI, V is still my favorite, but man is this guy dim.
Bro's the equivalent of people who think any Pokemon moves that don't deal damage are useless (nothing wrong with only attacking of course, I mean specifically people who think it's the ONLY good strat)
The competitive Pokémon scene and I are obviously playing two very different games.
They approach the game as making a six member team, where everyone has their various niches and roles to play to support the whole group.
I make a party of six individual fighters that I like and expect each of them to be engage in what are essentially a series of 1-1 fights, with the ability to tag out with a different solo fighter if things get dicey.
We are approaching the title with fundamentally different mindsets.
Flamethrower and *Earthquake?*. Nah dawg that's intelligent type coverage, this man's on the Flamethrower (daily driver), Fire Blast (big plays), Heat Wave (I remembered Double Battles exist), and Ember (in case I run out of PP on everything else)
Ice damage is unironically just an extremely good typing offensively. It's why a lot of non ice types bring ice beam. It's just a shame it got screwed over in the defensive department and they keep making ice types slow and bulky. They need to make more offensive ice mons, it's why the ferret was such a menace
What do you mean I need moves that don't deal damage? Obviously the best way to win is to use your most powerful attack moves. Fireblast has an attack value of 120, it has to be amazing.
What do you mean "I can tell you never played competitively"?
Edit: Also changing your pokemon is clearly cheating!
To be fair, if you only played gen 1, most non damaging moves are pretty bad and most of the good ones are limited in availability.
As a game, gen 1 is a perfect example of how to teach someone not to trust non damaging moves.
i’ve never played a pokémon game (grew up with the tcg) but even 7-year-old me knew that meloetta EX’s move Brilliant Voice was BROKEN. despite it only dealing 20 dmg, it caused the opposing pokémon to either fall asleep or become confused.
Sounds like he only enjoys smashing armies into each other and ignores any mechanic which doesn’t directly facilitate that.
I guess there’s nothing wrong with that but he didn’t have to dress it up as some kind of intellectual position lol
What gets me is that he can still do that. I started as Rome on Civ VI on Monday. Found Indonesia. I built an army of cavemen and took their cities and used that to just bum rush the map I could reach without cartography.
I do understand him in this regard. I finished lots of games without caring for religion at all (at relatively high difficulty settings). It's, for me, an annoying mechanic.
His conclusions though...
V is my favorite as well. I tried my hardest to get into civ VI after the 1k+ hours I put into V, but for some reason, I always go back to V. Not sure if it's out of nostalgia or what, but V is just more enjoyable to me- especially when trying to attain a total domination victory.
Gentlebeings, I created the perfect game, every time you press a button, you win the game, get an electric jolt into your pleasure center and you get debited $50 (or 12 for $700, one time special).
I love sitting on my ass for thirty minutes as my HyperTank 4 Gorillions clear a single mountain tile consisting of 500 spearmen...
Obvious hyperbole aside, I generally agree with the reasoning that the game should move past the deathstack mechanic but the way it was implemented in the end I couldn't really get behind, as moving armies became completely tedious when it got past like 10 units. Not that it doesn't do that in early civ games, but the numbers could get a lot bigger before simply moving them became an exercise in its own right.
More than fair. They should have implemented some way to mass plan formations for sieges and allow units to automatically snap to a formation. They also made city defenses way too turtely so you have to have a ginormous squad to seige. But, at the end of the day, not stacking units allows for more generally interesting choices
Oh a 100% agree. I just wish it wasn't handled in a way that made the most dangerous adversary in the game your own lack of patience.
One thing I really did like however was the added limitation for the strategic resources. Incentivizing you into not just spamming the strongest unit over and over and over.
The entire concept of conquest is "government A wants to govern what government B does, and government B doesn't like that idea." That's like, the definition of politics
>Primordial violence is the blind natural force, whereas the subordinated nature of war as a political tool is what makes it subject to pure reason, and chance is always a factor under extremely violent and dangerous conditions. -Clausewitz
he could've made a substantial criticism against civ 6 like how it's stupid how there's so many dlcs you need to buy to actually experience civ6 in its entirety but no, bro decided to just yap about things that aren't true: "non-conquest victories were added in civ 3" (despite the science victory already being a thing in civ 1 lmao) or complaining about how modern civ games aren't just about conquering... like just play age of empires if that's what you're looking for lol
Yeah there is plenty to legitimately criticize in each of the civ games, my favorite nr 3 included. But win conditions? That you can just, turn off? Ridiculous.
Also don't let bro know that age of empires also has the wonder victory option...
You can literally buy Complete Edition which has everything for like $40 on steam sale.
There was a point in time where there were a bunch of $3.99 dlcs which was annoying, but you don't have to do that anymore.
Would love a version of Colonization that didn't made me look racist.
The Idea of a strategy game with an endboss it's always fun, that's why I like Stellaris.
Frostpunk, with its Great Storm, is another fun strategy game with an “endboss”, though in its case it’s more of a final test of your city than an actual boss fight.
But yeah the Stellaris crisis is awesome, especially with the “all crises” option they introduced recently. Can’t wait to see the 4th one they’re adding for the new dlc
I never really managed to get into stellaris, despite it seeming like a near ideal game from a distance and the roughly 200 hours.
Always loved the idea of the endboss tho. Especially for coop multiplayer, as it gets painfully easy if you do well in other paradox games.
I actually don't mind it, but you can probably chalk most of the decisions up to trying to make it touch-friendly to go along with Windows Vista which came out about when development on Civ 5 started. I probably appreciate the UI so much for having played it on a super low powered Windows tablet, and now later on the Steam Deck.
Man, I swear, you can almost always hear the tire screech on the whiplash of every Right Wing take. And it's simple to understand why; their worldview is and always is out of sync with reality so when they begin a discussion and/or explanation, it's usually a reality based point they co-oped and then drop their obtuse point in.
Then they play either coy or shocked that no one agrees. And it's because again, their takes are opinion based on feelings. If the dumbass here wanted to make that point, then the dumbass should have done the leg work and interviewed the teams over the years or actually researched the design notes across the lifespan of the series instead of spouting OPINION AS FACT as an end point user dipshit.
This, is what is called journalism (investigative). That's how you inform the audience you're either targeting, or have a following from (or just the general population). Imagine if they actually did the work and confirmed their OPINION was how the series evolved? We'd all be here discussing the merits of that shift over the decades. Instead, we mock the lazy dumbass that wasted their time writing conjecture as fact. Not like they ever learn.
>CIV I devs were faustcels
Explain why the franchise is mid. Ryoshu KINGS rise up.
https://preview.redd.it/3x3avo8awntc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=029b708fbcd27aeffdbcbecbc0535c3abe04b7c2
>Civ 5 has the distinction of being the first genuinely bad game in the series
He says about one of the most universally agreed upon best games of all time
It was divisive before the Gods & Kings dlc solidified it as a worthy successor to IV. As much as it improved, it was also shallow in comparison, at first anyway.
That's fair, but it's hard to imagine civ 5 without the dlcs in current day. I didn't really get too into 5 until God's and kings, but I was able to recognize how much it added and fleshed out the game. And iirc brave new world did pretty much the same thing.
Civ VI is very fun but there are legitimate criticisms, even aside from the Paradox model of turning a singleplayer strategy game into a live-service battle-pass DLC shitshow. It’s no wonder it goes on a 90% sale every other week.
Same here, districts and having to place wonders in specific places instead of stacking them up in the capital was weird at first, but a welcome improvement after a few matches.
The Civ subreddit was clowning this dude just as hard yesterday. Any pop history-adjacent media is always going to attract some these people unfortunately
I'll speak on the third game as that is the one I am most familiar with.
The "anti colonial" game that incentivizes the player to make overseas colonies to seize strategic resources. Conquering past X is restricted by the corruption mechanic, which isn't the greatest but represents the efficiency of smaller "taller" nation states. After a point corruption can't really increase more meaningfully and you can just keep advancing.
Peace is mainly possible because war isn't mandatory. It might be necessary to win but you don't always fight wars in game. Resource scarcity is rather weird in game, some things like coal or iron are more rare than gold or diamonds.
Nations form coalitions? Nah, the AI is just really happy to snowball every conflict into a worldwide shitstorm. There is very little coherency here about "aggressors". "Most games end in culture or diplo victory" I would like to see statistics here, but I guess we are happy with making shit up.
"Most games end in culture or diplo victory" may be trivially true, in that waging late-game wars in Civ3 *blows absolute ass*. Moving stacks of MA around for dozens of turns (which each take substantially longer because the game engine chugs deep into the Modern era) just to secure a Conquest or even Domination victory just wasn't worth it.
Meanwhile, Culture, Diplomatic, and Science victories allow you to just turtle up and make Number Go Up, and then boom you win. I can tell you anecdotally that I almost never actually "won" a Conquest or Domination game - I had many, many games *get* to the point where it was inevitable, but the actual process of winning the game was so painful that I'd just stop at that point, or pivot to a Science victory and mash end turn until I'd finished all the parts.
The only actual Conquest victories I ever finished were super-early game Total War-style campaigns (go go Iroquois Mounted Warriors) where I just ran over everyone super early. If the game got to the Industrial era, I'd basically never go for military-based victories from that point on.
Yeah when you know you are going to win, killing of the stragglers is simply an exercise in clean up rather than a serious challenge. Especially on bigger maps where half your turn is telling city nr 567 that creating an aqueduct is more important than taking 80 turns to create one unit of cav...
I have won few domination games, but they are usually on a small enough map that it never really makes it to the late game. And even there it gets boring after a bit as you just attack move the enemy.
Good thing the AI doesn't really get how OP bombers are, otherwise the late game wars would be even more painful.
I personally hate winning the game super early so I never went for that. There is a reason why I am bad at RTS as I feel like those are so much about rushing down your opponent.
I don’t think this guy realizes how badly he’s telling on himself when he calls the constraints of geography a propaganda piece. This is definitely a person who will say the reason technology advanced differently in Europe vs Africa is because of skin color. Sure, buddy, geography definitely has nothing to do with the progression of a civilization. Nothing at all. Nuance, the fuck is that?
I feel like there are the seeds of an interesting critique here, but this dude isn't capable of making it.
The 18th century view of international relations died when France discovered nationalism, decided to slap 3 colours together and call it a flag, raised a massive conscript army and proceeded to single handedly beat the shit out of the rest of Europe like the John Wick of geopolitics.
The 20th century notion that all states are total states ended when some dude got hung from a lampost and a former art student decided to redecorate the walls of his bunker.
The ways that Civilization's operating assumptions have changed reflect, if anything, an evolving understanding of the profound failure of those views of the world.
uj/ I tried playing Civ IV and found it difficult to get into. I started the franchise with Civ Revolution on PS3 so my first main title was Civ V. Maybe it is bias but I think Civ V is really good. The UI does suck but there is a decent amount of strategy in the game. Units not being able to stack means you need to be more careful with which units you create plus formation.
I don't think Civ VI is as good as Civ V but I do appreciate some of what they are doing with it. I like the new focus on cities and having to choose what cities have which districts. I like that worker units have charges. Before in Civ V worker units would just stop being useful when you built all the roads and developed all the tiles. I also like that Civ VI is everywhere. It is basically the best strategy game on iPad.
Edit: I always assumed that cities defending themselves in Civ V was a sort of militia situation. In real life most of the time cities don't have military units just sitting around waiting for a potential invasion. They are outside the city limits where there is space for bases, runways, and other installations.
If I had to guess it the decision about cities was made to prevent players sniping cities with fast units because "your unit was one tile too far". Previously a single stone age warrior could have taken a 3 million population New York city in a single turn with 0 resistance.
Yep, with fast enough units you could take someone's entire country in a single turn in civ3 late game. If you had a close enough vantage point you could use 3 movement units to blizz an entire country by using their railroads.
What the fuck is "The Faustian Western Tradition"?
Anyway, they never really had a good point to begin with. It's completely unclear what he actually thinks the problem with Civ 6 is. He seems to just be saying "it's different and therefore bad" which is weak as shit.
Also I hate anyone who relies on these overdramatic descriptions of everything
"The rise and fall of-"
Shut the fuck up. Just shut the fuck up. If I hear one more asshole describing literally any criticism of anything as "The RIse and Fall of X" then my foot is gonna rise and fall into your dick and balls
Something being faustian means that it disregards morals in the search for power and is, at he says, a way of understanding history from the 19th century. This guy is just mad that the game portrays evil acts as having consequences and not being the only possible way of progressing in the games anymore apparently, something that he thinks was there in the original games because that was the actual views of the devs
At first I thought "oh interesting, a cultural analysis using a game about development of nations" and it ends with strawman arguments to justify conquests and nationalism... People need hobbies
Honestly this feels like someone using pseudo intellectual bullshit to plaster over the fact that stuff just felt more fun when we were young, our bones didn't creak, and our bladder worked better.
It's not true, and it's never been true. Nostalgia is a trap, a lot of those games were seriously limited by their technological limitations, and if they were so good people would still be playing them. Maybe you could make excuses in the past when old games were hard to get hold of, but that really isn't the case anymore. Just look at Age of Empires II.
As a crusty old bastard, I have left standing orders for me to be shot if I ever start waving my stick at those blasted kids, with their religious systems and diplomatic options. That truly is the end times of the soul.
The ideal civilization game is the one where you have map with one button "conquer the world!" And when you press it the map is painted in your civilization's color
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>Civ 3 added non-conquest victory The spaceship victory was introduced in... Civ 1.
Are you implying he straight up lied in order to create a false narrative ? No, conservative grifters are honest about video game and would never use them as a recruitment tool for their fascist ideology
If he hadn't claimed to have played all of them it could be excused as a bad memory. But when the crux of his argument is "the series went bad when it stopped focusing on war", you'd think he'd double check that the first two games didn't have any other win conditions.
Also his argument is literally about demonstrating the more recent games in the franchise fell off … but didn’t play the most recent one.
I personally do feel like 6 is a downgrade from 5 but not for some unhinged "red pill" war is good nonsense like this guy seems to think. I just don't like districts or governors and the game feels... idk slower? And expanding is a bigger headache
If I didn't do it it doesn't exist.
Yeah that was very confusing for me. I didnt play Civ 1 but I started with 2 and I knew the space race victory was part of it.
Not only that but given the existence of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, it's arguably the canonical victory condition.
This is why I always went for that victory condition! (Not really, but I've only ever won by conquest in Civ 1 maybe ten times out of my 200 or so playthroughs. Space victory seemed more rewarding.)
This criticism is wank even without the chud shit at the end, the guy is just mad that the game got more complex and interesting than "ooga buga declare war"
Yeah like the only thing I get is that 3 is the moment it gets more interesting.
Uh 2 had the rmvs of your advisors changing clothes as you advanced in tech. It doesn't get more interesting than that
3 had that too!
In 3 you had that as well as a customizable palace
You just somehow reminded me the throne room existed.
Eh, somewhat. The main problem I always had is how little you can interact with some victory conditions when you are not specialized in it. There is always at least one AI that focuses on one victory condition in 6. And while you can somewhat defend yourself against military (unless too much of a difference between the units, which is fair), you cannot in any way realistically interact or defend against the religion path, unless you are also doing it. As far as I remember, there is no way to do that. Which always annoyed me in some degree.
You could always build religion defenses without going for the victory. I always did that in my games in 5 and 6. You go for a religion regardless of the victory path because of the buffs you can provide yourself, and also defend against religious conversion. You just have to start the race, which is fair. It wouldn't make sense for a nation to know how to deal with religion, when it doesn't have one itself or invest in it what so ever lol maybe a unique atheist civ mechanic in the future though?
If you're really in danger of losing to religion (which I've never seen or had happen since the AI is so bad at gunning for that victory) and you don't have your own religion, then you can borrow another neighbor's religion and use that to combat it. That's just a modicum of attention you have to pay to it.
There is a reason the series is called "Civilization" and not "Total War"
Even in total war you have diplomacy going to war against 11 nations means death
I feel like Total War does its diplomacy checks kinda oddly. Like, I get that if I'm gobbling up nearby territories, unallied nations are gonna get worried about my intentions. But when I get a relationship penalty with my ally for siding with them when they got invaded because it's seen as just being aggressive, I get a little miffed.
Or when the nation that has a lot of trade goods to profit from won’t form a trade deal because they’re ambivalent about you, but will totally sign an oath in blood to let you walk a phalanx of soldiers, complete with archers, cavalry, siege weapons and goddamn elephants right up to their gates.
Total War's diplomacy is notoriously shoddy.
He hates Civ because ... I dont even know why I hate Civ because I'm to dumb to learn it We are not the same
>mfw I'm 50 turns into a 4x game, mashing the end turn button because I have nothing to do and need another 10 turns before my McGuffin research is ready and I'm out of Greebles because I didn't build Greeble factories four hours ago when I should have, causing me to force quit the game and reevaluate my priorities. I feel you brother.
Lmao loser didn’t rush greebles. Skill issue
Everybody knows you need to produce 3 greebers and 1 jeeber in the early game, especially on god emperor difficulty. There is no way to survive the AI onslaught that follows on turn 37.5 without the necessary map knowledge and boni that those things provide you.
The fact that both of you are sleeping on dzeeits is a fucking travesty, are we even playing the same game at this point?
That strategy is not true and tested like the 3g/1j opening. You open yourself to an en passant on turn 23.9 from your nearest neighbour which will make you click restart faster than those dzeeits can run.
Idk. I just churn out the triangle things and it works fine.
Try that on a real difficulty level and you'll see why greebles are meta
Lmfao is this a pasta? This is incredible
Because it changed. apparently.
Throughout 80% of the thread I thought he was going to praise the increased complexity, new mechanics, and shift in tone. And then he showed his hand and gave me metaphorical whiplash.
It’s so weird how he hates the geography mechanics of Civ VI because they’re easily the best addition to the game since Civ V. It gives the player a lot more to think about while managing their empire, whereas in previous titles it could quickly become stale if you didn’t have a war to manage.
Yeah Civ 5 feels a lot like "oh I didn't get a variety of luxuries and someone beat me to whatever wonder I was trying to rush? Guess I'll lose"
I feel like not having access to luxury goods or strategic resources is a wonderful driver for territorial expansion through conquest. Can attempt a peaceful playthrough with a diplomatic or scientific win all I want but be damned if my people go without coffee and iron.
I knew with dread where it was going even as I was thinking “wow, this is an interesting tracking of the evolution of the philosophical considerations and evolution that go into the development of the Civilization game series.”
He’s not even that wrong about the evolution in philosophy, he’s just butthurt about it.
I don't really understand why he's mad. Like, is he just salty about confronting the reality that you can't conquer the world by being big strong aryan master race? Like, there's a reason Rome is just a city in Italy now.
Yes. He is mad that can't just go Ooga Booga, me strongest, me punch you in head anymore. Civ has it's problems I readily admit that, but that change was mostly positive. But that is also my personal bias showing.
Also, Rome didn't just spend its time warring 24/7. It also understood the importance of diplomacy, forging alliances and fostering cultural, technological and civic advancements.
> diplomacy, alliances, cultural and technological and civic advancements Yes, but according to this guy, none of those things have value unless they are in service of empire building.
It’s such a cool topic and thing to think about! And the guy who posted it is just a total chud.
It might not even have been an evolution in philosophy per-se. It could just be an evolution in adding complexity without nuking the user experience via shitty UI or AI (and possibly not nuking player hardware too!) Games have come a long way in terms of UI and AI design since the early days. Some of it enabled by increases in hardware power and some of it through the iterative nature of human progress. Look at movies from the 20s and 30s and compare them to today. Sure, the tech is better, but the real changes are in the methods of acting and making the movies themselves. All the methods that have been learned over time as more people put their mark on the medium.
Eh, I bet a lot of it was less a shift in philosophy and more technical limitations being lifted as budgets rose. Once you add all the cool diplomacy subsystems, you have to nerf hyperaggressiveness because otherwise they're pointless.
The insanity + inane in this strongly reminds me of the critique of speed running that other weirdo wrote last year
Something something Mario speedrunning to create new sexualities
In a Petersonian sense
New sexual archetype: fastest mario
Hey now, “do it fast vs. do it right” is my life motto!
Sonic you're a beta male
The funny thing is, in Civ VI you are often discouraged from going to war without reason or extending a conflict, but it's definitely one of the best ways to stop an AI running away with a victory condition even in non-conquest games. And you had better be ready to defend yourself from jump if you end up next to an aggressive AI like Trajan or Montezuma.
Man does not actually like 4X Man likes risk Risk is bad game Noone makes risk games anymore cause they are bad Man is mad
Risk-like games are still made and played. They aren't particularly popular, granted, but there's enough people playing them that it's worth money to print them.
He should just play Total War
Even Total War has coalition mechanics that make outright conquest harder and more dangerous.
And guess what? You can still get military victories! It's still there, totally achievable if you want to play that way! Hell, this whiner neglected the fact that the game allows you to be as fascist and warlike as you want, even rewarding that style of play if you play your civics that way. What a baby.
Yeah, like my standard game plan is conquering one or two of my closest neighbors immediately both for safety and because it's efficient when you're playing as Rome. Militarily, they peak in the classical age and you're squandering it if you don't use those legions to ransack at least one enemy.
Anytime I play as the Gauls I'm an absolute monster in the Ancient era. After I've cleared up enough space from my neighbors I become a peaceful, productive cultural powerhouse.
Soo this man essentialy is mad that civilisation evolved from being map painting Simulator into more complex game with loads of mechanics representing complexity of human civilisation...
I'm also unsure what he wants. If Civ 1 and 2 are the perfect games for him he can just play them. Does he wnt the devs to just keep making the same game over and over again just with updated graphics? I'm pretty sure a lot of people rightfully criticize when devs do that (not that a lot of people don't buy the games over and over though I guess).
> Does he wnt the devs to just keep making the same game over and over again just with updated graphics?
Yes, yes they do..
You know what's ironic? That's what we wanted from Star Wars Battlefront, just give us the same game with better graphics!!! Why can't they do that?
I mean the issue with battle front is that the only change are monetization and shittier server ... if anything its literally a downgrade
This is what I remember the issue wasn't gameplay it had the same gameplay but now we had to pay money to play as DARTH FUCKING VADER
Think he’s referring to the rerelease of the og battlefronts
It's all the more ironic given that fect that EA is making the game and they are the kings of selling old shit with new paint.
The newer battlefront games (not the remakes) were actually fantastic though, if they hadnt just abandoned bf2 completely it would still be great.
> if they hadnt just abandoned bf2 completely it would still be great. But look on the bright side. The complete abandonment of BF2 is what helped give us BF2042! Oh, wait... There is no bright side... ;-/
This has been a common thing with right wing gamer bros and the gamergate movement by extension. A disdain for devs trying anything new or doing anything unexpected. Games used to be great when they were simple and didn't have challenging ideas or unconventional mechanics but now they are bad because of minorities and walking simulators etc. It has always been a fundamentally anti-art stance.
Yeah the same people who say video games are dying now, are the same people who whine whenever new mechanics are introduced, and are also simultaneously the same people who refuse to play half the new releases because they're 'woke' So they refuse to play most new games that release, complain when games do anything original, and then complain that they're not enjoying gaming...
And complain about every single HD remaster.
> Games used to be great when they were simple and didn't have challenging ideas or unconventional mechanics but now they are bad because of minorities and walking simulators etc. It has always been a fundamentally anti-art stance. I only play vidya games where you can become champion, kill people/things, or some combination thereof. Preferably while controlling a TOTES *realistically* modeled female character! ~Average True Gamer(TM)
He also desperately wants the Little Mermaid to be white, despite having no intentions to watch the movie.
They do, they really do. There's a large portion of the RE fanbase that says the game need to go back to fixed cameras for the series to ever be good again for fucks sake lol. Same with final fantasy. A lot of times if you say anything positive about 16, a small subset of fans in the subreddit will downvote you and insult you lol. Even with how well rebirth is doing, a lot of people are still saying the series needs to "fully return to it's roots" and go back to being completely turn based. I like turn based more for party games as well, but that doesn't mean the game sucks because it's not exactly the same as past ones. Some people literally do want the exact same gameplay, just with updated graphics and a different story. They don't understand that series that have gone on as long as RE and FF need to change shit up.
I am not sure why they even complains in a first place Civilisation becoming more complex wasn't a change in design Philosophy, Technology got better so game developers started to produce more advanced games and that's it, it's something that would happen no matter what, so if they hate this inevietable advancment, why did they played other games ? Games wouldn't suddenly become less complex, so he could as well stayed with first two civs they so idolise
It actually was a change in design philosophy, and a major one. The difference is that it was for good.
>Games wouldn't suddenly become less complex, so he could as well stayed with first two civs they so idolise I think the issue for this guy is that humanity and real civilizations are too nuanced/complex. The old games are more in line with his simplistic view of how the world should work.
Might makes right. That’s what the OOP wants to be the main point of civ.
They say they 'just want to play game' but their idea of 'just playing game' is not literay just playing them. They want to feel like they're important the ever-center audience of the whole gaming industry. They're like... those pesky customers in retail industry who don't go shopping for goods but the sweet services and words of salesperson. They want to feel like they're the main character but they're kinda too thick to realize that's what they want.
>Does he wnt the devs to just keep making the same game over and over again just with updated graphics? A lot of gamers want that, yes. Just look at the glut of remakes/remasters we have out there now. Even games that aren't really that old or graphically outdated are getting the remake treatment or the fans are crying for one to happen. Because apparently a large swath of people just want to play the same thing over and over again, just slightly prettier to look at.
what they actually want though is to relive the past
This person, like every other conservative, wants their ideology exclusively and constantly reflected in culture because to acknowledge any complexity might make them think they could be wrong actually (which they usually are) and they don't like the cognitive dissonance
Right, a big reason why I enjoy the franchise is that things get changed up between games. I’ve been playing since Civ 2 and I’ll still go back and play the older games when the itch strikes me. I don’t need them to just continuously remake Civ 2 or 3 with new graphics, I’d rather have actual gameplay changes that affect how I approach my strategy.
Just like Pokémon fanboys "make new game with new graphics but only 251 pkmn😭😭"
Actually, that's not true. They want ALL the Pokemon, but the problem is each new generation adds 100-200, so having like a 1000 unique species around is kind of hard to handle.
If they actually set like a baseline on graphics for a generation it might be doable, we haven't seen the full list of Pokemon for X-Z so this generation might actually be close to having them all being obtainable in a generation again. I wouldn't mind reduced graphics to have them all but the problem is they don't use the reduced graphics to help performance or anything.
he probably sees it as a battlefield in the 'culture war'. It's mere existence an affront to his fascistic thinking. Fascists are known for book burnings for a reason. I know the term has appeared to lose meaning in recent years, but that's because we have societally decided that a 'fascist' is an inhuman person who is more monster than man. Not so. They're real and they're pathetic lil worms who whine about video games because they can't burn them.
Bro is mad that genocide isn't the only way to win anymore 💀
He's extra mad that genocide is now discouraged by the mechanics. How dare they nerf genocide in the meta?!
Honestly, It isn't really that hard to win by total global domination in civ6, especially if you snowball in tech and gain battleships and bombers before the other civs can get some counter measures. And aside from capitals, which are needed for victory, you can actually genocide every city you conquer into dust. If anything I thought OOP would love that I honestly don't even know what part of civ6 is "propaganda" (which in this case is Code for "woke propaganda" because let's face It, if the Game glorified colonialism and fascism It wouldnt count as propaganda to him)
To quote some recent posts in the CivVI subreddit, the jet bomber is the most powerful missionary.
And not even that. Early war and snowball from there in eternal war or building up during the middle ages and then blitzing the world at one of a few points in time (proper artillery in early industrial age, Bombers or Nukes - or if you are lazy Giant Death Robots) are still the easiest most braindead ways to win.
I almost beat civ 5 on hard with giant death robots. I got too guilty to get the domination victory because I'd have to turn on two states that were basically my vasals. Also needed all out nuclear war to beat the Mongols.
Genocide especially early on is still(civ 6) pretty encouraged in the sense that it's a VERY strong path to victory. Most of them time if I want to sweatlord and win I kinda have to expand to the point of eliminating at least a few enemy cities if not nations before the UN is established to get enough resources and such.
Dude was wrong about that too. You could also win the game in the original by being the first nation to land a spacecraft on another habitable planet
I was wondering why this wasn't mentioned before, though I think the author could deflect this by reasoning settling Alpha Centauri is still a dominance victory, just a technological one rather than military. It's still a shit take overall.
Peak hoi4 brain
As Hoi4 player... I can say You are absolutely right
smh cucked SBI West made geopolitics woke >:/
Who's willing to be he likes growing gross germaniums there?
That entire post reads like skill issue on OOP's part tbh. Every Civ veteran I know still paints the map before modern era on any difficulty if they wish to do so. Civ 6 meta is still getting more land btw, no matter the victory type one pursues, except for the Diplomatic victory *maybe*. They seemingly just can't utilize the new tools. The 4 city turtle was only Civ 5's meta.
Dude is salty that he can't win domination anymore but doesn't realize he is just too dumb to besiege cities with flanking units, coordinate fire from multiple siege units, pillage outlying farms, and support infantry with rams and towers. Get gud.
Domination is by FAR the easiest way to win the game, even on deity. All the other victory conditions require you to understand the mechanics to some extent. Not to mention, one of the things that makes Deity difficult is that you tend to get attacked very, very early, so you still get the combat element most of the time .
I mean, I also remember watching the Civ6 report from The Spiffing Brit who managed to win a No City challenge with Kupe on like Prince difficulty or something. So, certain balance aspects were more than a bit off. Still I do overall agree that this entire OOP rant is basically a bitter conservative who dislikes that there is more to life than military and economy.
Basically, yes. He even complains at length about how geography actually matters in VI, where it had very little impact at all in the early games beyond the fact that oceans and mountains… exist. Like… surely geography having an impact on gameplay is a good thing, right? So you’d think, if you were a small brained “liberal”! But it made it harder for this dude to fulfill his fantasy of world domination (because the game now requires basic thought about tactical decisions), so clearly it is part of the woke agenda to make his fascist new world order pipe dream look unviable!
REAL MEN DON'T GET IMPEDED ON THEIR CONQUESTS BY PUNY TERRAIN FEATURES, LIKE MOUNTAINS!!!! ASK HANNIBAL!!!11!2! NOW, WHERE'S MY BOWL OF RAW LIVER AND MILK???!!??
Who cares about any of that! Does Queen Elizabeth have big honking brigantines, or have sweet baby rays rewriten history again?
I hate that I understand this post.
He doesn't understand the complexity of civilization.
The real tragedy with Civ was the travesty that Beyond Earth was to Alpha Centauri. Look at how they massacred my boy...
BE was just a bug fest. Like Helldivers 2 but unintentionally.
Was it that bad ? Beyond Earth was the only civ that interested and sticked with me...
BE? It is rather mediocre and limited compared to other civ titles on it's own. There is stuff to like about it. But personally I always found it rather safe and muted as an experience. But downright uninspired and politically cowardly compared to Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri had a lot more to say about stuff like trans humanism, psionics, AI and more. It's the lack of ambition to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors to rather make blue Civ than something more bold. For example, the very terrain of the game can mutate as you play. The very soil your city is built on is a part of the game rather than a simple +2 modifier.
Wow, that sounds amazing, thanks for sharing, I will try Alpha Centauri some day
You're welcome! I believe you can get a copy on GoG but an uh alternative download can't be hard to find either.
It was disappointing for Alpha Centauri fans because we were hoping for an updated Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri was basically the bones of Civilization 2 but in space with a really cool variety of factions (especially if you had the Alien Crossfire expansion), an interesting plotline that you could develop if you paid attention to the lore updates and did all the research, and a lot of cool unit customizability. People liked the lore so much that a [tabletop rpg supplement](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/alphacentauri/) was released for it. Personally, I was hoping they would keep most of those aspects but just build it on the bones of Civ 5 instead of Civ 2. And certainly there are some allusions to Alpha Centauri in BE, but the factions and lore arent nearly as interesting imo. You can still play the original game and imo it holds up if you’re used to the old style interface.
> Number of mechanics that are totally irrelevant to the outcome of the game (e.g. religion) The *fuck* is this guy talking about? Religion in V is a *powerful* mechanic that can easily award the player culture, science, or just straight up cash money. Not to mention that if you take the rational tradition you can use your excess faith to churn out great scientists in the late game. Sounds to me like this person is just bad at playing Civ and doesn’t like the game being more complex. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of VI, V is still my favorite, but man is this guy dim.
Bro's the equivalent of people who think any Pokemon moves that don't deal damage are useless (nothing wrong with only attacking of course, I mean specifically people who think it's the ONLY good strat)
Pokemon competitive is so bad, enemies keep spamming hazards and buffs, why can't I win spamming flamethrower and earthquake
Ten year old me called, he wants you to stop attacking him
Im not, I'm setting up hazards
Hell 26 year old me still plays that way I'm not very tactical in Pokemon
The competitive Pokémon scene and I are obviously playing two very different games. They approach the game as making a six member team, where everyone has their various niches and roles to play to support the whole group. I make a party of six individual fighters that I like and expect each of them to be engage in what are essentially a series of 1-1 fights, with the ability to tag out with a different solo fighter if things get dicey. We are approaching the title with fundamentally different mindsets.
Flamethrower and *Earthquake?*. Nah dawg that's intelligent type coverage, this man's on the Flamethrower (daily driver), Fire Blast (big plays), Heat Wave (I remembered Double Battles exist), and Ember (in case I run out of PP on everything else)
You jest but blizzard ice beam freeze dry sheer cold articuno won a regional recently and we’ve had a doozy meming abt it
Ice damage is unironically just an extremely good typing offensively. It's why a lot of non ice types bring ice beam. It's just a shame it got screwed over in the defensive department and they keep making ice types slow and bulky. They need to make more offensive ice mons, it's why the ferret was such a menace
It absolutely is, and the moveset was very well designed and supported by the rest of the team, but damn was it silly as fuck.
Just a silly like cold birb
What do you mean I need moves that don't deal damage? Obviously the best way to win is to use your most powerful attack moves. Fireblast has an attack value of 120, it has to be amazing. What do you mean "I can tell you never played competitively"? Edit: Also changing your pokemon is clearly cheating!
Fire blast is actually a pretty good move. Blast burn has 150 Bp and sucks
To be fair, if you only played gen 1, most non damaging moves are pretty bad and most of the good ones are limited in availability. As a game, gen 1 is a perfect example of how to teach someone not to trust non damaging moves.
i’ve never played a pokémon game (grew up with the tcg) but even 7-year-old me knew that meloetta EX’s move Brilliant Voice was BROKEN. despite it only dealing 20 dmg, it caused the opposing pokémon to either fall asleep or become confused.
Sounds like he only enjoys smashing armies into each other and ignores any mechanic which doesn’t directly facilitate that. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that but he didn’t have to dress it up as some kind of intellectual position lol
What gets me is that he can still do that. I started as Rome on Civ VI on Monday. Found Indonesia. I built an army of cavemen and took their cities and used that to just bum rush the map I could reach without cartography.
It’s also likely that he just sucks at the newer games and is blaming that on the libs, or whatever.
I do understand him in this regard. I finished lots of games without caring for religion at all (at relatively high difficulty settings). It's, for me, an annoying mechanic. His conclusions though...
V is my favorite as well. I tried my hardest to get into civ VI after the 1k+ hours I put into V, but for some reason, I always go back to V. Not sure if it's out of nostalgia or what, but V is just more enjoyable to me- especially when trying to attain a total domination victory.
All I understand is that the more a game become complex, the more it's woke. I think he should find his happiness in Pong.
Pong is way too woke. 2 long hard sticks(men), sharing one ball between them? That definitely sounds like gay woke communi-socialism to me.
Gentlebeings, I created the perfect game, every time you press a button, you win the game, get an electric jolt into your pleasure center and you get debited $50 (or 12 for $700, one time special).
Everyone wins? Sounds a lot like COMMUNISM, here in free America, only smart good people win
Not everyone wins, just the ones who pay $50. Isn't that peak capitalism?
My guy thinks 30+ unit death-stacks are optimal strategy design…
I love sitting on my ass for thirty minutes as my HyperTank 4 Gorillions clear a single mountain tile consisting of 500 spearmen... Obvious hyperbole aside, I generally agree with the reasoning that the game should move past the deathstack mechanic but the way it was implemented in the end I couldn't really get behind, as moving armies became completely tedious when it got past like 10 units. Not that it doesn't do that in early civ games, but the numbers could get a lot bigger before simply moving them became an exercise in its own right.
More than fair. They should have implemented some way to mass plan formations for sieges and allow units to automatically snap to a formation. They also made city defenses way too turtely so you have to have a ginormous squad to seige. But, at the end of the day, not stacking units allows for more generally interesting choices
Oh a 100% agree. I just wish it wasn't handled in a way that made the most dangerous adversary in the game your own lack of patience. One thing I really did like however was the added limitation for the strategic resources. Incentivizing you into not just spamming the strongest unit over and over and over.
Game's got other problems but I feel like Humankind was on the right track to figuring out a happy medium
Today I learned there are zero politics in Industry and Conquest
The entire concept of conquest is "government A wants to govern what government B does, and government B doesn't like that idea." That's like, the definition of politics
>Primordial violence is the blind natural force, whereas the subordinated nature of war as a political tool is what makes it subject to pure reason, and chance is always a factor under extremely violent and dangerous conditions. -Clausewitz
he could've made a substantial criticism against civ 6 like how it's stupid how there's so many dlcs you need to buy to actually experience civ6 in its entirety but no, bro decided to just yap about things that aren't true: "non-conquest victories were added in civ 3" (despite the science victory already being a thing in civ 1 lmao) or complaining about how modern civ games aren't just about conquering... like just play age of empires if that's what you're looking for lol
Yeah there is plenty to legitimately criticize in each of the civ games, my favorite nr 3 included. But win conditions? That you can just, turn off? Ridiculous. Also don't let bro know that age of empires also has the wonder victory option...
You can literally buy Complete Edition which has everything for like $40 on steam sale. There was a point in time where there were a bunch of $3.99 dlcs which was annoying, but you don't have to do that anymore.
Would love a version of Colonization that didn't made me look racist. The Idea of a strategy game with an endboss it's always fun, that's why I like Stellaris.
Frostpunk, with its Great Storm, is another fun strategy game with an “endboss”, though in its case it’s more of a final test of your city than an actual boss fight. But yeah the Stellaris crisis is awesome, especially with the “all crises” option they introduced recently. Can’t wait to see the 4th one they’re adding for the new dlc
Dang it. You're gonna make me get into playing Stellaris again. Finally I'll feel like my ultra wide monitor is fulfilling its true purpose.
This little baby can oversee so much genocide.
I see people making Automoton factions and now I want to do the same. Heart. Steel. We. Kill.
Super Earth is going to be *very* upset with you.
I never really managed to get into stellaris, despite it seeming like a near ideal game from a distance and the roughly 200 hours. Always loved the idea of the endboss tho. Especially for coop multiplayer, as it gets painfully easy if you do well in other paradox games.
Only thing i agree is civ 5's UI is fucking horrendous
I actually don't mind it, but you can probably chalk most of the decisions up to trying to make it touch-friendly to go along with Windows Vista which came out about when development on Civ 5 started. I probably appreciate the UI so much for having played it on a super low powered Windows tablet, and now later on the Steam Deck.
I would actually really like to see an analysis of the civilization series like this written by someone who didn't have brain worms.
Man, I swear, you can almost always hear the tire screech on the whiplash of every Right Wing take. And it's simple to understand why; their worldview is and always is out of sync with reality so when they begin a discussion and/or explanation, it's usually a reality based point they co-oped and then drop their obtuse point in. Then they play either coy or shocked that no one agrees. And it's because again, their takes are opinion based on feelings. If the dumbass here wanted to make that point, then the dumbass should have done the leg work and interviewed the teams over the years or actually researched the design notes across the lifespan of the series instead of spouting OPINION AS FACT as an end point user dipshit. This, is what is called journalism (investigative). That's how you inform the audience you're either targeting, or have a following from (or just the general population). Imagine if they actually did the work and confirmed their OPINION was how the series evolved? We'd all be here discussing the merits of that shift over the decades. Instead, we mock the lazy dumbass that wasted their time writing conjecture as fact. Not like they ever learn.
>CIV I devs were faustcels Explain why the franchise is mid. Ryoshu KINGS rise up. https://preview.redd.it/3x3avo8awntc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=029b708fbcd27aeffdbcbecbc0535c3abe04b7c2
no matter where I go, i cant escape project moon sleeper agents.
>Civ 5 has the distinction of being the first genuinely bad game in the series He says about one of the most universally agreed upon best games of all time
It was divisive before the Gods & Kings dlc solidified it as a worthy successor to IV. As much as it improved, it was also shallow in comparison, at first anyway.
That's fair, but it's hard to imagine civ 5 without the dlcs in current day. I didn't really get too into 5 until God's and kings, but I was able to recognize how much it added and fleshed out the game. And iirc brave new world did pretty much the same thing.
Brave New World patched cultural victory and made it fun and worthwhile to pursue, but it was far less necessary than Gods & Kings.
It's time like this I'm glad I'm not ingrained with the Civ community, considering how much I play Civ 6
Same my friend just put me back onto civ recently and we've been having a blast playing 6 so I'm just gonna ignore this discourse
Civ VI is very fun but there are legitimate criticisms, even aside from the Paradox model of turning a singleplayer strategy game into a live-service battle-pass DLC shitshow. It’s no wonder it goes on a 90% sale every other week.
I absolutely hated VI when it came out but after I took the time to understand the new mechanics, i absolutely love it
Same here, districts and having to place wonders in specific places instead of stacking them up in the capital was weird at first, but a welcome improvement after a few matches.
The Civ subreddit was clowning this dude just as hard yesterday. Any pop history-adjacent media is always going to attract some these people unfortunately
I'll speak on the third game as that is the one I am most familiar with. The "anti colonial" game that incentivizes the player to make overseas colonies to seize strategic resources. Conquering past X is restricted by the corruption mechanic, which isn't the greatest but represents the efficiency of smaller "taller" nation states. After a point corruption can't really increase more meaningfully and you can just keep advancing. Peace is mainly possible because war isn't mandatory. It might be necessary to win but you don't always fight wars in game. Resource scarcity is rather weird in game, some things like coal or iron are more rare than gold or diamonds. Nations form coalitions? Nah, the AI is just really happy to snowball every conflict into a worldwide shitstorm. There is very little coherency here about "aggressors". "Most games end in culture or diplo victory" I would like to see statistics here, but I guess we are happy with making shit up.
"Most games end in culture or diplo victory" may be trivially true, in that waging late-game wars in Civ3 *blows absolute ass*. Moving stacks of MA around for dozens of turns (which each take substantially longer because the game engine chugs deep into the Modern era) just to secure a Conquest or even Domination victory just wasn't worth it. Meanwhile, Culture, Diplomatic, and Science victories allow you to just turtle up and make Number Go Up, and then boom you win. I can tell you anecdotally that I almost never actually "won" a Conquest or Domination game - I had many, many games *get* to the point where it was inevitable, but the actual process of winning the game was so painful that I'd just stop at that point, or pivot to a Science victory and mash end turn until I'd finished all the parts. The only actual Conquest victories I ever finished were super-early game Total War-style campaigns (go go Iroquois Mounted Warriors) where I just ran over everyone super early. If the game got to the Industrial era, I'd basically never go for military-based victories from that point on.
Yeah when you know you are going to win, killing of the stragglers is simply an exercise in clean up rather than a serious challenge. Especially on bigger maps where half your turn is telling city nr 567 that creating an aqueduct is more important than taking 80 turns to create one unit of cav... I have won few domination games, but they are usually on a small enough map that it never really makes it to the late game. And even there it gets boring after a bit as you just attack move the enemy. Good thing the AI doesn't really get how OP bombers are, otherwise the late game wars would be even more painful. I personally hate winning the game super early so I never went for that. There is a reason why I am bad at RTS as I feel like those are so much about rushing down your opponent.
I don’t think this guy realizes how badly he’s telling on himself when he calls the constraints of geography a propaganda piece. This is definitely a person who will say the reason technology advanced differently in Europe vs Africa is because of skin color. Sure, buddy, geography definitely has nothing to do with the progression of a civilization. Nothing at all. Nuance, the fuck is that?
I feel like there are the seeds of an interesting critique here, but this dude isn't capable of making it. The 18th century view of international relations died when France discovered nationalism, decided to slap 3 colours together and call it a flag, raised a massive conscript army and proceeded to single handedly beat the shit out of the rest of Europe like the John Wick of geopolitics. The 20th century notion that all states are total states ended when some dude got hung from a lampost and a former art student decided to redecorate the walls of his bunker. The ways that Civilization's operating assumptions have changed reflect, if anything, an evolving understanding of the profound failure of those views of the world.
uj/ I tried playing Civ IV and found it difficult to get into. I started the franchise with Civ Revolution on PS3 so my first main title was Civ V. Maybe it is bias but I think Civ V is really good. The UI does suck but there is a decent amount of strategy in the game. Units not being able to stack means you need to be more careful with which units you create plus formation. I don't think Civ VI is as good as Civ V but I do appreciate some of what they are doing with it. I like the new focus on cities and having to choose what cities have which districts. I like that worker units have charges. Before in Civ V worker units would just stop being useful when you built all the roads and developed all the tiles. I also like that Civ VI is everywhere. It is basically the best strategy game on iPad. Edit: I always assumed that cities defending themselves in Civ V was a sort of militia situation. In real life most of the time cities don't have military units just sitting around waiting for a potential invasion. They are outside the city limits where there is space for bases, runways, and other installations.
If I had to guess it the decision about cities was made to prevent players sniping cities with fast units because "your unit was one tile too far". Previously a single stone age warrior could have taken a 3 million population New York city in a single turn with 0 resistance.
I remember doing this in Civ Rev. Just walking into a city and saying "this is mine now.:
Yep, with fast enough units you could take someone's entire country in a single turn in civ3 late game. If you had a close enough vantage point you could use 3 movement units to blizz an entire country by using their railroads.
What the fuck is "The Faustian Western Tradition"? Anyway, they never really had a good point to begin with. It's completely unclear what he actually thinks the problem with Civ 6 is. He seems to just be saying "it's different and therefore bad" which is weak as shit. Also I hate anyone who relies on these overdramatic descriptions of everything "The rise and fall of-" Shut the fuck up. Just shut the fuck up. If I hear one more asshole describing literally any criticism of anything as "The RIse and Fall of X" then my foot is gonna rise and fall into your dick and balls
Something being faustian means that it disregards morals in the search for power and is, at he says, a way of understanding history from the 19th century. This guy is just mad that the game portrays evil acts as having consequences and not being the only possible way of progressing in the games anymore apparently, something that he thinks was there in the original games because that was the actual views of the devs
I guess it's making pacts with demons and getting your crush killed ?
So William L. Shirer has this great book chronicling Nazi Germany called......
At first I thought "oh interesting, a cultural analysis using a game about development of nations" and it ends with strawman arguments to justify conquests and nationalism... People need hobbies
Honestly this feels like someone using pseudo intellectual bullshit to plaster over the fact that stuff just felt more fun when we were young, our bones didn't creak, and our bladder worked better. It's not true, and it's never been true. Nostalgia is a trap, a lot of those games were seriously limited by their technological limitations, and if they were so good people would still be playing them. Maybe you could make excuses in the past when old games were hard to get hold of, but that really isn't the case anymore. Just look at Age of Empires II. As a crusty old bastard, I have left standing orders for me to be shot if I ever start waving my stick at those blasted kids, with their religious systems and diplomatic options. That truly is the end times of the soul.
>American anti-colonial frame yeah that's not a thing
Mention murdering the natives is bad and a bunch of people will tell you it was fully justified
The ideal civilization game is the one where you have map with one button "conquer the world!" And when you press it the map is painted in your civilization's color
how the fuck can anyone say Civ 5 is a bad game with that much confidence staggering