You pick up the phone, dial the number, and you goddamn be ready to talk about something. That’s the way it works. You have no business dialing if you don’t have anything to say.
ring ring
Me: “Hello?”
You: “Hello.”
Me: “Hey.”
You: “Hi!”
Me: “So..”
You: “Hm?”
Me: “Uh..”
You: “What?”
Don’t do that to me. I say hello and then you have something to talk about, right away. You don’t transfer the burden of having something to say onto the person you just called. You don’t wait for me to bring it up for you. I don’t know what you wanted to talk about, because two seconds ago when you were picking up your phone to call me I was playing motherfucking Colonization for Windows and almost definitely not thinking about why you were about to call me.
That’s not how phones work. This is how phones work:
ring ring
Me: “Hello?”
You: “Hey! It’s me! Do you want to go out tonight, get crunk like fuck and bro out?”
Me: “No.”
Princeps
January 22, 2011The original Colonization or the shitty remake?
Dink
January 22, 2011The one that is called Colonization for Windows. But the Civ IV version wasn’t that bad.
As I recall the mechanics of it were nearly identical, but I kind of prefer the simple little icons of the original to the animated, graphical approach. Being essentially a board game, all the fancy new-fangled hoodads are just distracting. The pixel art style of the old one will hold up better anyway.
The only new thing I can really think of that it inherited from Civ IV was the ability to upgrade units, which was pretty cool. I never had enough time to build an army and wreck some shit though until I put it on Marathon mode, and I don’t think I’m willing to deal with how aptly named Marathon mode is. I couldn’t find a balance between economy and military.
Also, playing the Western Hemisphere map, three out of four civs started in South America, for some reason I can’t comprehend, and they obviously were not related to where those nations historically founded their first settlements in the new world. I wanted to play as the Dutch and land in New York, and that’s all I wanted, but I would always start off the coast of Brazil.
Fuck that. I would like to retract my statement that the remake wasn’t that bad.
Sugna
January 22, 2011Civ 5 anyone?
Princeps
January 22, 2011The Dutch owned Brazil for a period of about 30 years.
Honestly, I was kinda hoping they’d have stuck ALL the colonizing civs in. Portugal, Russia… if you REALLY want to be technical, Denmark would qualify as well (they had the Virgin Islands and Greenland) and so would Sweden (they were the first in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before the Dutch conquered them).
That, and fixed the broken economic system so that the economy doesn’t crash the moment you become good at making stuff.
Dink
January 23, 2011I seem to have had absolutely no excitement for or interest in Civ V. Even though I’ve heard it changes the game more than the reskinnings of yore, and is totally the most awesome ever, and even though they took out religion just to make me smile, I seem not very interested. From what I’ve heard about it they basically made every change I have ever longed for.
If at least Princeps and Joey have or get it, I’m buying it on the promise of one arduous and painful night of waiting through turns. I remember playing Civ 2 Multiplayer Gold Edition with Joey, Holy and a bunch of guys back in the day, and it was always way more fun than I thought it was going to be.
Also, Princeps, no matter who the player chooses to play they start off the coast of Brazil. The French start off the coast of Brazil, and the English start off the coast of Brazil, when the player controls them. Sure, they have all held land in that region at one time or another, but I don’t think the developers had the Guianas in mind when they decided that players would always spawn there. When I play the Dutch, English or French and I start off the coast of Brazil, I am unhappy.
As I arrive at the end of my comment my interest in buying Civ V has gone from my ankles to about my collar bone. I need to find out if Biggles has it yet. I will ask him in WoW, where he plays on the wrong server and is a fuck.
Princeps
January 24, 2011I might get Civ V, we’ll see. I’m a bit wary of the changes. I’m not sure whether Civ III or IV was the best game in the series, but they both have their selling points. III’s diplomatic system is the best in the series, and it’s the most customizable for dudes who don’t know Python (sup). IV’s the most customizable overall, which leads to awesome mods like Rhye’s And Fall of Civilization (which I can’t get to play on my computer for some reason) but the vanilla game has a much poorer AI system and there’s less gameplay detail because of the graphics upgrades. For what it’s worth, I’m still building scenarios in III.
Civ V could be awesome for all I know, but removing religions seems like a step back. From a historical perspective, religions have had a huge influence on international relations and trade, and should’ve been kept for that reason alone. I like the fact that they made units more expensive and they did away with unit stacks, and they made cities have wider radii and gave us a hex grid. A couple of the civ choices are questionable (Iroquois instead of the Inca? No Mongols or Spanish in vanilla? Really?) but it’s Civ and I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until I’ve played it.
Princeps
January 24, 2011One other thing: Civ II Multiplayer Gold is fun as shit. It’s got a single overpowering development strategy (go all-out to Republic, Luxury your people until they breed like rabbits, kill everything ever) and the AI sucks but playing it against other humans is great. I built a Civil War scenario in Civ II for a college class, and playtested it with another student and the Confederacy won, and wrote a paper about it. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had doing homework.
Dink
January 24, 2011I’m partial to Civ III.
Since the advent of borders, I can’t go back to the older games. I tried a game of Civ II and found it infuriating that I couldn’t keep dudes out of my territory. I like to chain a few cities together early now and cut other Civs off from entering my half of the continent.
Religion took a bit of a dump on IV for me. I would try to found them all, then I’d pick my favorite and make it the national religion, at which point some random Civ would adopt another one I had stockpiled for no reason. It always felt super awkward. Maybe if each Civ had a preset religion baked in and then tried to spread it throughout the world, or something along those lines.
Princeps
January 25, 2011Yeah, they definitely handled religion badly. It could have been a great concept.
For one, the holy cities were clearly way too broken. They brought in too much money-something Rhye’s fixed. While I could see that for something like Islam, where one of the main tenets of the faith is to travel to a particular place once in your life, it didn’t make sense for the rest. Also, most faiths don’t have just one holy city-Islam has at least three, Christianity has several, etc. Holy cities should be developable somehow in another way-like maybe you have to have a cathedral-level building there and then use a Great Prophet or somesuch.
Also, it should either be more randomized as to what civ/city gets holy city status at the discovery of a new tech, or for Earth maps should be set at a particular place every time. One civ founding all religions is clearly untenable when just about every society on Earth has created religious forms.
The diplomatic use of religion was pretty good for the most part, and would only have been improved by making some civs more predisposed to certain religions. One other thing that would’ve been cool to see would be the establishment of “denominations”-it could’ve even been linked to the foundation of minor holy cities. You build a new minor Christianity holy city and suddenly all Christian civs have to choose whether to be Orthodox or Catholic, for example. Same with Sunni, Shia and Sufi Islam, Orthodox and Reform Judaism, etc. The religious mechanics of Civ IV don’t allow for all the wars that have been fought between rival denominations.
Oh yeah-and the inclusion of two more religious options would’ve been nice. Atheism (where the government is avowedly atheist, instead of just permitting the free exercise of religion) would have been a good one to include. In Civ IV civics terms, the Soviet Union would probably have been an atheist Theocracy for most of its existence.
Also, paganism would’ve been fun to have in a more developed form. Most civs are screwed culturally and Great Person-wise until a religion spreads in their lands. However, it’s not like nothing culturally important happened in Europe until Judaism and Christianity showed up-the Greco-Roman pantheons continue to inform Western civilization to the modern day, and are pretty absent from Civ IV’s main game. Of course, most pagan systems are pretty specific to a particular civ, so I would’ve had there be a “Roman paganism” a “Chinese paganism” an “Egyptian paganism” so forth and so on. Pagan religions would be able to build temples, but no cathedrals, holy cities or missionaries. Their faith would automatically exist in a newly-founded city of that civ from the very beginning, until some other faith became a majority religion in the country-in which case that other religion would be spread upon founding. Conquered cities would continue to have the pagan faith of the previous civ, but it would gradually fade over time.
Basically I agree with your critiques of the religion system, but I think there was a lot of potential there, potential that could yet be reclaimed if a future Civ VI decides to revisit the system.
Princeps
January 25, 2011Hory shet I just wrote an essay about religion in vidyagames. I clearly need to get laid more often.
Sugna
January 26, 2011I agree with all the above statements.
Joey Michaels
January 28, 2011BEST FUCKING COMMENT THREAD IN THE HISTORY OF EVER.
I don’t think I’m allowed near any Civilization game ever. I can take or leave WoW. I can’t leave Civ.
Memo Juez
January 29, 2011@Princeps: it was a great dissertation on the role of Religion in the developing world.