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> On the other hand, a game like Europa Universalis, which boasts many more variables than Civilization, has remained even more niche because it is too realisti
by vacri 10y ago
> On the other hand, a game like Europa Universalis, which boasts many more variables than Civilization, has remained even more niche because it is too realistic. It is too constrained by history (or at least history as imagined by the game’s designers) and the innumerable details needed to render such an exhaustive vision of the past.
EUIV is more niche than Civilization because it's got a steeper learning curve, not because it's too constrained by history.
The article also makes the odd claim of Civ being so mutable, because most games of Civ run very similarly to each other, whereas you can actually do quite different gameplays in EUIV.
Civ was a revolutionary game, but the last couple of refreshes have been pretty ho-hum. I'm clearly in the minority, though - Civ was one of the most-played games in terms of live user count on Steam.
- emp_zealoth 10y agoYes, the changes were more or less cosmetic. Funny thing is that latest, more pronounced changes came from Endless Legend (multi tile cities are the most visible to me) I wish they would get off their asses in the AI department. It is pretty lacking and playing with humans is obviously a massive drag (difference of skill levels, sheer amount of time for a single game) I play on prince and usually steamroll everything. When I try king the AI cheats so hard at the start it's just a massive turnoff for me...
- ryandrake 10y ago> I play on prince and usually steamroll everything. When I try king the AI cheats so hard at the start it's just a massive turnoff for me... A lot of games do that cop-out for level difficulty, though. Higher difficulty doesn't make the AI smarter or more cunning, it just lets them break the rules progressively more or gives them a score multiplier. More like a handicap system then "levels of difficulty". It's probably easier to program.
- schoen 10y agoThat's a pretty useful analogy; it made me think of a chess game where the author isn't sure of how to write a strong AI, so the higher difficulty still has you play against a relatively weak AI but you have to give up some of your pawns or pieces.
- vacri 10y agoI have the exact same experience with prince/king on Civ V.