You know, you can do other stuff while tombs are being built. The monuments in CotN are analogous to the Wonders in Civ–they are a big deal, and are meant to take a long time to build, and it’s assumed that you’ll be doing other stuff during the building process.
My comment was intended to convey the sense that CotN, while fun, tends to be a bit slow. You certainly can do other stuff while the various monuments are being built but those things tend to be slow paced as well. It’s a little too realistic for me.
I sat there, quite happily watching my three (small, medium, large) pyramids being simultaneously constructed. It’s the attraction of citybuilders for me, actually watching the city being built. I see them as a more laid-back relaxing type of game when I don’t want to be stressed or challenged too much.
I like relaxing games too, and I don’t really mind the idea of watching things get built, but there was something just a little bit off about CotN for me. I felt it was a little to difficult to get everything tweaked right.
Here’s my list in order of fun-ness.
1503 A.D. - a bit heavy on the micromanagement but lots of fun, tons of charm
SimCity 2000 - classic!
Caesar III - great game but the walkers irked me
Zeus and Pharaoh - Fun games all in all. Fixed the walker issue IIRC, a little less charm than Caesar III
Stronghold I - good game, little low on replay value for some reason
Tropico - lots of charm, didn’t like the economic model
CotN - Too plodding, too difficult sometimes
Ill check it again. Maybe it did, although I am fairly sure it did not.
The actual tutorial with the voice doesn’t, but that thing is terrible and I turned it off right away. The butcher shops definitely ARE mentioned in the tab on the briefing that shows you all the new buildings for that mission. I think it’s the second tab down.
Yeah, it sucks when you can’t argue with numbers. It probably sucks even more when the devs pull the rug out from under you by implementing the balance changes suggested by the ‘numbers guy’ and in direct contradiction to your own arguments.
So…anyone figure out exactly how many X shops are supported by a Y farm? I like the game pretty well, despite some lack of polish and the embarassing graphics, but I could do with some more information. Right now I’m just assuming every farm can support three shops, and I have no idea if that’s right or not, or if different kinds of farms support different numbers of their shops (flax seems pretty slow for instance).
Also, is there a way to have the shops send their goods right to the warehouse/granary instead of keeping stock in? It seems more efficient to put the shops by the farms, then a granary and warehouse by the houses, but the game doesn’t seem to want me to do that since the shops don’t send their goods to the warehouse until they already have a bunch done.
I think there is no flat number. Also if there was, it would change with your research. If all farm to industry ratios are the same (ie: goat farms to butchers, olive farms to olive oil makers) I would guess its slightly over 2 industry to 1 farm.
However, the flax farm… I have no idea. I had 1 farm and like 4 shops and my warehouses were still filling up with cloth.
Has anyone completed both campeigns? Military and Economic? I have done a few military and they seem to be economic missions where you get attacked. They all have the same level of goals (get 8000 citizens, and get 8 upgraded houses, etc…).
I think they are a lot harder and a bit unfair then the economic mission. You start out with nothing, and have to make an army and not run out of money at the same time. Then you are prepetually attacked.
Anyway… Ill keep at them and see if I can figure them out.
So far, though, I am feeling this is a step backwards from the final impressions city builders. The gameplay seems to have much less depth, and certainly the cities seem a lot less alive. About the only thing I do not miss from the old school impressions games were the megga projects. I do not mind them as optional things you can do, but seriously, make a pyramid every scenrio that would take 2 hours with the game on full speed? Blah, that sucked.
I made the lighthouse wonder. Then I wondered why I did. There was no bonus to doing it. It was just there, and the ‘epic constuction’ amounted to deliver 50 bricks to it, and DING it was done.
I suppose what I expected in the next city builder game was an empire builder to go with it. After you make a city and move on to the next one, it continues to grow or decline on auto-piolet (as the story dictates), and you can still trade with your old cities. It would be even cooler to have empire wide projects that you needed speical cities to support. For example, you might want to settle a city near lots of marble and develop it into a major supplier of marble, then in other cities you would have to trade/buy it from that other city so you could build your colloseium or whatever.
For those that care, tips on how to unlock the camera/zoom level and such over at: www.civcityforums.com (this site was hard to find for some reason).
And if you haven’t done it, manually turn on your AA and Anisotropic filtering in the nVidia control panel or the ATI/whatever equivalent. Even at 1024x768 (to work around the mouse-click scaling bug until the patch), the graphics aren’t that bad. I’m not sure why everyone is so hard on them.
I personally found it fascinating that moving a building around to be nearer a resource, getting it, then moving it somewhere else was a legitimate tactic. Especially handy when you’ve just about to step up to the houses which can be placed on top of shops, allowing you to make the step and then maintain the step by lobbing it on top of one.
Incredible hulk as city planner.
Not exactly very credible.
KG
Realize that the house can still devolve though. It obviously can’t go back to a different footprint size, but it’ll change into ‘delapidated’. You lose all the benefits (taxes/whatever) while the building is in this state.
Yeah, but good for cheating on the level objectives.
(And in the case of the houses you can stack, good for getting them to the “You can stack” stage and then putting them on top of something else in the area where they can now maintain their status)
KG
What do people feel about this game now? My interest in it is nearly gone. I am still trying to play it, but every scenario seems to be the same thing over and over.
Its like this: Your objective is to do everything you did LAST TIME, only now people want fruit stands and Education.
Then you spend all your time making a new city to get where you were, then add a few more things that are ‘new’, finish, and then go to a new map where you start all over again.
Military and Economic missions are identical except that you have some guys who send raiding parties to your city like clockwork. It doesn’t add to the game, its just annoying.
This gameplay isn’t working for me. Does anything change or is this all that CivCity: Rome has to offer?
When is that next game coming out again?
I would definitely recommend that once you get the basics of the gameplay you switch to doing one of the open ended maps. I started the Britain map after about four of the tutorial/campaign scenarios.
Once you switch over to just doing an open ended map then things get more interesting. You can just build a cool city with all the available techs and buildings.
Last night I started a new city and built a cistern fairly early on. As soon as I placed it, all the shacks (ie the lowest end houses) within its throw range instantly upgraded.
Um, no. From the second FAQ in the readme file:
Q. Shacks and Cistern access?
A. The shack has no way to access running water from a cistern and must always be supplied with water from a well.
I got a good 15 hours out of the game and pretty much feel the same way. Even the open ended missions are pretty dull. I had tons of cash around by the time I hit 15,000 pop and ran out of room to build.
One thing I would have liked to see is some sort of “hall of fame” so you could have some incentive to replay missions.
I’m going to see what they do with the patch that fixes the resolution issue and see if they add anything else.
I’m just telling ya what I saw. Could have been coincidence, I suppose. I’ll run a test when I get home.
I wonder what the impressions games had that this one lacks. Off the top of my head I can’t think of anything substantial, yet I definitely found games like Caesar III and Pharaoh far more interesting to play. Aside from a much stronger imperial aspect, what new game-play elements can be added to the city builder?
There are definitely some minor things missing from CivCity Rome that bother me.
There is no Market Place. Granaries / Warehouses do not work very well. They are far to big and the range at which huts are willing to travel for services are far to small. A Market place would allow you to create a very small structure that serves as a supply depot for all food and goods needs. It would allow you to to have warehouses and granaries far away from population centers while allowing the prime real estate to have access to all the goods in the city.
There is no way to turn off a building. If my single wood chopper is filling up a warehouse, my only choice is to destroy the building.
There are no overlays for fire, water, desirability, etc…
Roads do not allow people to reach more distant destinations. If hut dwellers will only go 50 squares to get to a granary, shouldn’t a road that lets them travel 50% faster up their travel range to 75 squares?
There is no employment allocation system. You can’t adjust employment levels for various industries. If your city is low on workers, the industries that do not have any workers are random. You can’t put all labor on food if your running out of food, or you can’t pull people off fishing to unload docks.
You can’t adjust the tax rate. WTF?
Trade is unlimited. You can sell an infinite number of stone and buy an infinite number of wheat. I distinctly remember in the impressions city builders that your trading partners had an annual amount they were capped at. You could adjust these by completing objectives or via random events.
The game seems far less alive and vibrant then its predecessors.
There does not seem to be optional objectives. Maybe I have not gotten far enough, but so far, there haven’t been any bonus things you could do.
There are no mega projects. The wonders are ridiculously easy to make, take almost no time, and offer nearly no benefit. I will say that Pharaoh was a bit over the top with the pyramids, however, if you took the time to make one and scaled it back to about 20%, it would have been fine.
The final Impressions games allowed you to do all of this stuff. Now that I think about it, CivCity: Rome is down-right primitive. What a giant step backward it is.
No wonder I am finding it lacking. I already played much better games years ago.
What does this game offer the old Impressions game didn’t?
Hmm… You can rotate the map to any angle instead of just 90 degree clicks. You have a tech tree, that is actually a significant new mechanic. Hmm… Thats all I can think of.
How depressing. How many years until they equal the last impressions game? How many years until we get something definitely better?