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It sucks that all the Civ competitors seemed to have failed so far. The genre really needs some innovation.
by CSMastermind 2y ago
It sucks that all the Civ competitors seemed to have failed so far. The genre really needs some innovation.
- zevets 2y agoOld World, made by some ex-civ people, is really quite excellent
- acdha 2y agoI especially like that they’re still making substantial improvements. It’s quite the contrast to Civ V having game-breaking bugs which were never patched.
- loganc2342 2y agoNot to discount your experience, but I’ve played for thousands of hours and never had any problems like this so YMMV
- acdha 2y agoYeah, I know it’s a complex game but we had a big multiplayer game deadlock a couple hundred turns in and that kind of soured everyone on the franchise.
- lelandfe 2y agoI heard this from so many people that I bought it, and ultimately sought a refund. I had similar problems with its UI that I did with Civ VII. The row of 15 unlabeled icons, a parade of numbers. Font pairings that do not work together. It was hard to see the likely good game underneath. I wish Humankind was a better game because its presentation is so good.
- marticode 2y agoI am playing this right now and love it, though the learning curve is steep even for a Civilization veteran. This is what Civ VI or VII could be if they didn't try to dumb down the game to increase the audience.
- buzzardbait 2y agoI would recommend everyone play their first OW game on the easiest difficulty, regardless of their experience with Civ. It is a fair bit more complex and Civ skills do not directly translate well to OW even though the two games look graphically similar.
- buzzardbait 2y agoSpecifically by Soren Johnson, lead designer of Civ 4, so naturally OW has Civ 4 vibes. I will say that Civ 6 and OW seem to appeal to different audiences, so if you absolutely loved Civ 6 plays then OW might not be to your liking.
- uncletaco 2y agoParadox Interactive is right there and thriving? They’re like the next step into the 4x rabbit hole and their fanbase is pretty loyal.
- mcmoor 2y agoIt also sucks that all the Paradox competitors seemed to have failed so far. The genre really needs some innovation.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoYep and paradox 4x games honestly take a brute force approach by adding too many limits of various kinds to ensure you don’t break the game. Eg. fleet cap, star base cap, empire size, new systems requires spending influence that ticks over slowly, leader caps, etc. Yes there’s ways you can increase things like influence 25% faster but that means you’re only 25% larger in size (and you’ll then be hit by the empire cap). In general I just don’t think paradox makes great 4x games compared to what I’ve played in the past. There must be a smarter way to have a fun 4x without resorting to a ton of different types of caps to stop you getting too far ahead. I will definitely +1 that the genre needs a shakeup.
- bee_rider 2y agoCrusader Kings and Stellaris always felt more like… story-generation games than strategy games, to me. Sorta like Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld at a different scale.
- izacus 2y agoYep, which makes them so amazing after Civ decided to abandon that approach and heavily push into trying to be a static boardgame.
- dragonwriter 2y agoHow could Civ abandon that? Civ never was a story-generation game (arguably, VII is a very slight move toward that, but Civ I was pretty much Empire with a tech tree, more varied terrain, a more detailed (terrain-based) production system, and founding/growing cities replacing conquering independents.
- labster 2y agoI’d hardly call Paradox a failure. Europa Universalis in particular is the most 4X game from PDX, even if grand strategy game is a better description.
- Freedom2 2y ago> failed What is success meant to look like? Many play and enjoy other Civ-style games, as they offer varied experiences and alternative styles of play. If success is just about becoming the biggest game, then that's a fairly narrow view of what entertainment is supposed to be.
- Apocryphon 2y agoAmplitude Studios’ Endless Space and Endless Legend series. Age of Wonder. Zephon. Terra Invicta.
- coryrc 2y agoTheir AI is atrocious though. F.ex. Endless Space has a mechanic that to take over a planet, you to have to put this bomb upgrade into a ship. The AI just... doesn't. Their fleet meta sucks, their individual ship designs suck. All harder difficulties do is generate larger piss-poor clumps of ships which attack without any strategy.
- Maken 2y agoDo not forget Humankind, from which a lot of ideas in Civ VII seems to come from. The others are borrowed from Millenia.
- mr_00ff00 2y agoCiv VII I actually think has a lot of new ideas. The game has civilizations transform into other ones. Ever since Civ VI they have made it so you need to spread improvements across tiles instead of building tall. Civ does seem to change a good amount each game. Although I also will say, I’m pretty happy with Civ VII, and I think popular opinion is 50-50 right now
- colechristensen 2y agoI’m Sid Meier’s memoir he mentions how intentionally this certain amount of change each game is done.
- personjerry 2y agoI would argue the bulk of Civ VII's ideas were actually taken from Humankind
- nottorp 2y agoExactly. And what both Humankind and this latest Civ seem to have done is make the game more a puzzle than a sandbox. I'm skipping VII. Or maybe getting it when it's on sale for $10 with all addons included. <Looks sadly at his collector's edition of VI, which is mostly unplayed.> They're going downhill...
- Elohahs 2y agoIsn't it funny how a puzzle test your capabilities,but a sandbox is just a giant kity litter?
- Maken 2y agoThey forgot to copy the UI.
- Elohahs 2y agoIt's U "and" I.LMAO.
- smeeger 2y agociv started with an idea based on nerding out over history… it needs more history and less game. half the reason anyone likes civ v is because of the narration of the tech tree. it makes you feel like you are voyaging across history. now the history is simply a two dimensional backdrop for the game which is not even very good
- 01100011 2y agoEh, the problem is that god games like this always have to focus on a few angles or risk making a tedious game no one will ever play outside of a few nerds. I liked Civ(1, 2, uh.. 3 and 4 I think)because it felt like a good balance of strategy, discovery, and turn-based action. Actually I was hooked by Civ I because it was like nothing I'd ever played before, having missed out on Empire. The closest thing to it I'd played at the time was Dan(i) Bunton's Modem Wars on c64/128.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wellthisisgreat 2y agoold Wolrd is absolutely incredible as a CIV replacement
- EugeneOZ 2y agoTry “HUMANKIND” by Amplitude Studios.
- muzani 2y agoI've been a big fan of Humankind and haven't played Civ since I got it.
- somenameforme 2y agoIf you're cool with a more fantasy setting Endless Legend is amazing and definitely has not failed, similarly for Endless Space for a space setting. And Endless Legend 2 was recently announced. Avoid "Humankind" though...
- izacus 2y agoWhat a strange take, there's plenty of successful Civ competitiors. Amplitude's Endless series, Old World, Age of Wonders, heck even Paradox series managed to capture a lot of what made Civ good.
- ramesh31 2y ago>It sucks that all the Civ competitors seemed to have failed so far. The genre really needs some innovation. They failed because they were not the full "civ experience", which is to say attention to detail with character design, artwork, music, voice acting, etc. etc. They were mostly just attempts at innovating on the gameplay mechanics and treating the historical aspect as an afterthought, rather than a main focus. Indie devs can make great games with great mechanics, but this video from the OP kinda demonstrates the difference between indie and AAA dev. No matter how good of a game you can make, you simply will never have the resources for the level of polish required to truly compete against something like Civ. Short of another AAA studio taking up the mantle, I doubt anyone will ever outdo them.
- buzzardbait 2y agoI've already said this in another thread, but check out Old World (free demo).