Well I am taking issue with your use of the word competent. I think it unnecessarily divides the gaming community, and it has nothing to do with anything. People play the difficulty level that provides them the most entertainment value. That's not always based on skill. As for Civ IV, it's the only game that I can say I played for 5 years straight and thoroughly enjoyed. I certainly don't require other people to enjoy it if they don't, but I will use it a benchmark for myself.

cIV wasn't perfect but it was damn good. Sure it had its flaws but it was still extremely fun. Combined with the mods like Fall from Heaven, it was by far the best game in the series.The immersion was excellent and the re playability was off the scale.

I am aware that there are Civ fans that don't care for it. I personally find that strange but I accept that there are different playing styles and different preferences. I disliked Civ III and perhaps that's why I dislike ciV so much since it reminds me of Civ III so much.

I hope in the future that Elemental is as good as cIV. We should be so lucky. Well, at least as fun as Fall from Heaven II anyway since that's the fantasy version.

Then call it skilled, experienced, whatever you want. I just meant that somebody who had played a game a few times (any Civ game) really wouldn't have a hard time figuring out how to counter AI moves. At higher levels, a player might get overwhelmed, that was more a matter of being drowned in AI cheats than anything else.

Thormodr

You and I are looking at the Civ series from almost exact opposite corners. We will never agree about it. So I will let your prejudice slide, this time...

Oh believe me scratch, i certainly take issue with the AI making a beeline for the only city that isn't heavily defended that it never had a chance to scout too. Civ IV's AI cheats in many ways like that, and I was hoping that Elemental would be a game in the genre that does't do that because it doesn't need to. Brad talked about having the AI play the game like a player, but since all the updates talk about how much the AI sucks... the cheating seems here to stay for now. Maybe tge original idea will show up with Elemental. If it does, well we will both be happy it seems.

It's all good. Very few games have competent AI anyway. The Civilization series never did but I found that to not be the point. I enjoyed the immersion and setting goals for myself on how I wanted to have fun.

Anyway, my two favourite games of all time aren't Civilization anyway and they both had bad AI and aren't exactly challenging. I still absolutely adore Age of Wonders I and II and Master of Magic to this day. So don't you dare criticize them or them's fighting words.   Hee hee...

I wouldn't dare*

* Never had a chance to play them.

You never played AoW... shame on you.... LOL

It is most certainly a failure in design.  Look at the way the patch attempts to address it; by limiting the happiness one specific city can produce!  This is a step back towards per city happiness management.  It's impossible to properly balance global happiness to accommodate both large and small empires fairly.  It's the primary mechanic for limiting empire growth, that's where the real inherent problems lie.  Where's the mod to address is?  It can't be made because it requires the SDK to be released because it requires a rewrite of core mechanics that can't be accomplished through modifying scripts.

I agree with you here.

The "fix" for the AI in Civ5 was to take it in the same direction as Civ4.  The launch idea of having this mysterious and clever AI was a failure and they are backpedaling on it, for good reason.  The player requires feedback because the AI will never be able to emulate a real person.  It was an ambitious idea that panned out badly.  You are correct, this only needs to be tweaked more, fixing the problems with the AI and the way it determines things like "you settled near me and I hate you now" when they are the ones infringing on your territory.

Yup.  Not Jons fault specifically.  Nor can the entire disaster of Civ5 be pinned on him, I understand the pressure applied by the publisher and the limits because of that.  At the same time, you cannot blame the publisher for gameplay decisions.  Do you think the 2k corporate board took a vote on how gameplay mechanics like happiness would work?  

The problem isn't just the combat though, its the way it affects all other facets of the game.  I am in favor of adding the tactical element of 1upt.  You do a good job of breaking down the different solutions, but "carpet of doom" is something I've personally experienced.  Have you ever tried to orchestrate a naval invasion in the mid-to-late game?  1upt works fine early game with the unit limits, but mid-to-late game is adds so much pain.  This could be addressed by tweaks;  the ability, for example, to give advanced orders and have them take into consideration where other units will be so that I don't have to needlessly spend every turn microing each of my 20 units.

The difference between implementation and design problem here really depend on what you feel the real solution is.  In my mind, 1upt isn't viable on maps the scale of Civs.  And this is entirely excluding the AI issues with it.

 

 

I eagerly await your mod that makes Civ5 playable.
 

Shafer was the lead designer and said himself on numerous occasions that as such it put him in the unique position of lending his vision to the project.  He was directly responsible for the gameplay coding, according to his own words.  I don't think he should be crucified.  I never said he shouldn't be given another chance.  However, part of personal growth is seeing your failures for what they are and growing from them.

I know you want to lump me in with the "shafers head must roll" crowd upset over the shitacular release of Civ5.  However, to completely absolve the LEAD DESIGNER and principle gameplay coder of all responsibility for bad design AND bad implementation is ludicrous; you can't pin it all on the much maligned 2k.  Did they fuck him and his team?  They sure did, but that doesn't mean that some huge mistakes weren't made.

I hope he does great things for elemental, but more importantly, I hope he learned a few things from the mistakes he oversaw on Civ5.

It's not too late.

Domicron, I'm curious, where is that last quote from?

2kgames has arguably some of the industry's best talent with brilliant studios working for them.  But for years they've played Russian Roulette with their books and the SEC.  I can't help but wonder what this does to the franchises that aren't their core business.

You can get both versions of Age of Wonders from GOG.com. Super cheap and both still very enjoyable. Some very well thought out design and a lot of good ideas in the tactical combat that Elemental could utilitize.

I was a playtester for Firaxis since Civ3, and know a couple (now laid off) members of the team, so I got some level of insight into their development team, and basically I think Soren fucked them by quitting, and left them lacking in real experienced staff. 2k then denied them any real resources to hire anyone with development experience, so they were force to promote an intern to lead developer.

The truth of the matter is that Civ5 was developed by a very talented team of graphics and UI devs, but the core programming and game design team was about on the level of a well though-out indie game. That's not to say it's bad by any means, but they simply made a lot of mistakes in the development that could have been avoided if there was any real experience on the team.

It's entirely possible that they could have learned from these mistakes and put the necessary polish into the game to fix things, because they are honestly smart and talented people, but 2k double-fucked them by then laying off most of the staff and basically the entire QA department several months before release.

This makes sense from a financial standpoint, as the game was "good enough" to release and impress reviewers, while only falling short on levels that the hard-core civ community (who make up a very small percentage of sales) would care about.

The game is ok, it just has huge shortcomings that I have no faith in what little remaining development resources they have left can fix. To put things into perspective, Firaxis hired several people after Civ4 was released, whereas even before the release of Civ5 there were mass layoffs. Our only hope is that they will cobble together an SDK so that the community can then pick up the scraps and put together the game that should have been.

Great quote.

It's like I figured. Jon Shafer did the best he could with the resources he had.

2K Games screwed Firaxis big time.

Thankfully, Jon Shafer will have a lot more support here at Stardock.

That pisses me off.   Why do the QA people always get the shaft?   You want to know why games suck...it's because the QA people are constantly treated second fiddle to the developers.  It's a people problem.   Lay off the developers who suck--not the QA who found them out.

Well maybe someone can address the problems with Civ 5 here now that Jon is here lets give him a chance to defend

End game Replays - In the Civ series since civ and a great end game recap made winning fun gone in Civ 5 let's just start there, no that major right? and tack on wonder movies, tile animation, and poor victory u win screens/movies.

ICS (Infinite City spam) - A core gameplay/design problem that started somewhat to be remedied in civ 3 and was basically fixed in 4 made a Tremendous comeback in Civ 5.

Social policies -  lets not get too much into religion being gone but at least address this horrible replacement that basically shoehorned you into a static strategy once you made a decision as opposed to civics which you could change based upon what was happening.

Buildings - which due to balancing and cost were something you actually avoided building even if you needed them because they destroyed your finances

Thats just the starting list of issues with Civ5. This wasnt an oh it was released early, wasnt tested kind of thing this was there were core gameplay issues. Ehich is one of the same problems I am having with Elemental that despite the technical problems the gameplay isnt working to make a fun strategic game with interesting choices. With Civ 5 you could get into the AI being terrible, multiplayer essentially worthless, and lack of  well coded threading and tweaking making turns take 5 minutes to process on high end rigs in late game etc but in the end there are central game design problem with both Civ 5 and Elemental regardless of technical problems.

I'll reserve final judgement for when you guys say your satisfied with Elemental, Demigod wasnt your design and Elemental is your first big ball drop. But my initial judgements of Elemental and Civ 5 is that they are very poor designed GAMES regardless of any and all technical issues. If Jon is to be exhonerated then I personally want to know what his role was in gameplay design specifically in the area's I mentioned because from what I remember he wasn't just the lead programmer he was the lead game designer and it was a poorly designed game with technical problems that could be fixed. If you guys are having him do design work and if I am right about his hands in the design of Civ 5 then this is extremly bad news for you guys.

 Go out and hire some board game designers or something. Think outside the box. This whole inside the industry beltway mentality in the games industry might actually kill it. How many python programmers do I know who are really good? Lots. Ones that you would hire? Probably not any of them because they don't have "industry experience". You'd see 25 years of Unix admin work and think nah but they would probably run circles around whatever you threw at them. The way you framed that statement that no one could do what he can for you using python almost sounded a bit like a cult of personality.

Your right we don't know the story but if your unwilling to tell us one then well you only have yourselves to blame for us having a story contructed from what information we can get off forums, podcasts, etc. Tell us the story.

On second thought, NDAs mean that this won't be adressed. I really don't care to get involved in this debate.

I'm sure Jon Shafer has a NDA. It may sound like a cheap cop out but you aren't going to get much discussion on why Civilization 5 went wrong.

I apportion a lion's share of the blame to 2K Games for the whole fiasco.

So you know for a fact that Jon is still under contract with Firaxis? Or is this just stabbing in the dark?

They'd have to be giving him a check. It's more understandable that he nor stardock doesn't want to defame Firaxis for purely understandable political industry reasons but if there's no contract and they can talk about it then they can find a way to get th story out and be politically careful.

I would wager $1000 that Schafer signed an NDA as part of his leaving Firaxis. I think that Brad said as much. Not that it's not fun speculation, but really, when it comes down to it, who knows, right? Let's judge the guy on what he does here.

*EDIT* And I still think that this complaint is on the wrong forum. Again, let's judge him on what he does here, huh?

I mean Brad and stardock can't frame this debate and not have any comment on it at the very least they can tell us whether he's bound by contract or if they dont want to talk about it. And if they don't want to talk about then they just have to deal with all the crud that comes from a community not having accurate information, that not our fault that's their own fault.

I would bet he isn't you really think they want to payout a second salary just to keep an ex-employee from airing grievances? Activision canned two of the largest names in the industry cause they didn't want to pay them bonuses (albeit rather large ones). That mentality is like 10 years old, companies don't just sign contracts with people who don't work for them to "keep quiet". And even if they did its probably not for very long.

Thormodr & Diardiamond

I've heard good things of those games.

Thanks for the tip.

By signing an NDA, the person agrees to not disclose what is stipulated by the NDA. If they sign one and then blab, it's possible they could be sued, but I'm not up on the legal aspects of NDAs. At the very least, other companies might blacklist hiring them, so blabbing is a bad career move.

Of course. My pleasure. They are two classic games.

It's the reason I became so interested in Elemental.

Here's hoping that one day Elemental will be considered up there with the best fantasy tbs games of all time.

Once again, where is that quote from?  Who said that?  I spoke with 2kgames (and of course I took their info with a grain of salt) and they were adamant the Summer layoffs were planned a year in advance and had no impact whatsoever on on the quality nor depth of the game.  There was nothing left for them to do.

And for a light tactical game, Civ V was fine on release.  It's just the depth and immersion wore off once you dove into the meat of the game a few times and started noticing things that were necessary but missing. If Firaxis needed more financial support from 2Kgames, it would be nice if we could yell at 2K to not be such Scrooges.  But for all anyone can surmise this could be the exact result Sid was thrilled with.  Sid's tastes have changed over the years - whereas we still want a 24-hour crack addictions that cause us to neglect food, bathrooms, and hygiene.  Despite Sid's 1-more-turn commercials, I don't think he's an advocate of that anymore.  He'd like to see people play shorter, less intense games.  Something he and his kids can enjoy in an evening.  That's the design philosophy behind Railroads, especially the fact you practically couldn't lose.  We wanted a hard-core financial and transit sim.  In a perfect world, maybe Sid would see you can design the game with the complexity the hard-core fans desire, and when that's done, then create the options to strip it down so people can play with the light mechanics he prefers. 

But designing for the low end, then adding a few things to try and appease the long-term fans is not the right way to go.

<edited for terrible grammar and typos>