Why did they never put in the throne room feature after the original?
Dejin
3798
IIRC the first one actually you built a palace. I think Civ2 was the one with a Throne Room. Either way I definitely miss this feature.
Or putting the slightest bit of effort into the wonder movies. I never skipped the ones in Alpha Centauri.
It would be such a minimal effort to include it too. And why not since they’ve been pushing the series towards casual gloss anyway? Might as well make it gloss the old players actually like too.
What’s wrong with Civ6 animated construction? It’s very similar to Civ4 videos. Alpha Centauri had used videos as a narrative device and Civ doesn’t need that as much.
However with how bad tech quotes are Civ6 would benefit from something more inspiring.
dgallina
3803
I think SMACX was a high point for the writing & speech-work in the Civ franchise. I don’t mute the game / skip the dialog in SMACX whereas it’s mostly forgettable in most of the other games.
Diego
Like how much could it possibly cost to hire some starving grad student to write little tech quotes like that for each specific background field?
Right? I know so many who would do it for the publication credit alone! It’s not academic or peer reviewed, but it still takes up a line on a CV.
Alternatively, they could reuse quotes from previous versions. Few of those ever struck my ears as wrong or misplaced.
Spock
3806
Yeah, or make more use of literary references, as Civ IV did. I still think back to Leonard Nimoy intoning “All the world’s a stage…”
And yes, I’ve never understood why the devs abandoned the throne room so many editions ago.
I can understand how they could ship the game with all the UI problems. But those tech quotes are all from edgy teen Facebook groups. They are all oh so clever and wink-winky. Civ 4 & 5 had those too, of course. But it was more subtle. Like Nietzhe quote about overcoming resistance for Superconductors. But here it’s just a constant flow of bad jokes. Like Construction: “The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.” Dave Barry. What does it tell me about anything? Can you really not find anyone saying anything interesting about ancient monuments?
And for some reason you can’t turn off the sound for those quotes. It’s telling that some of the most thoughtful quotes come from Terry Pratchett, humorous fantasy writer.
“The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do.” I can remember a bunch of his Civ IV lines, and even that he got the stress wrong in the Camara quote about feeding the poor. He added a lot of welcome gravitas. The only tech quote I can remember from VI is Jane Austen’s “Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?” (Which was, admittedly, genius.)
Oh god I had totally forgotten that someone higher up on the dev team actually thought that Dave Barry was an acceptable source of satirical wisdom.
I remember a teenager back in 1996 calling Dave Barry outdated…
Here’s Vice (huh) article on the matter.
Also as some other people have noted there are a lot of quotes from lesser known Americans. I suspect they’re comics or politicians. When I’ve played Civ4 the only person I didn’t recognize (or at least later regretted not knowing) was Dan Quayle and this was his point as I understand. I don’t know Dave Barry or Nancy Bond (“As it turns out, Mount Kilimanjaro is not wi-fi enabled, so I had to spend two weeks in Tanzania talking to the people on my trip.”). Even if those quotes were good and interesting then you’d still have a problem: what used to represent a variety of ideas and cultures of history now looks like retelling history of the world through sarcastic tweets. And they mostly chose bad unfunny tweets. Meanwhile the music, the art, the game mechanics even tell you an uplifting story of humanity march of progress. You may not like the way they idealize march of progress, but those sarcastic quotes just clash in tone with the narrative instead of providing a different perspective.
There’s even a mod to replace quotes:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1226909609
From what I see on screenshots it still uses funny quotes but for self-explanatory stuff, like Replaceable Parts has Coco Chanel quote “To be irreplaceable you have to be different”. Even if the quote is not great it comes from a historical figure, not some American blogger.
Because then you get the deeply bland tech descriptions from the incredibly disappointing Beyond Earth.
Waypoint (the gaming-specific Vice subsite this was originally on) had some of the best game writing on the internet for a while.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer bland tech descriptions of Beyond Earth,
or to take arms against a cringeworthy unfunny Dave Barry.
And by opposing, end the franchise: to die, to sleep.
Anyone playing this on the console? Tempted to pick it up for the XBO but at $110 I’m hesitating. Is that Red Death mode available on consoles as well?
LeeAbe
3815
It’s still that much for all of it?!
Aspyr just released Gathering Storm on iPad, but it’s just too much money for all of it. The base game is only $5, but the two DLC are $55. I already have it on all on PC and didn’t play it much, so I can’t justify it. I would like to support Aspyr and it would be great for my commute though…
I finally ended up getting the expansions. I’ve played a couple of game Rise and Fall. I love rampaging across the map in all iterations of Civ so with Genghis Khan available, of course I chose him and totally ravaged China (and the rest of the world). The loyalty mechanic was interesting but ultimately just a road bump on my way to world domination. I didn’t really care for the golden age / dark age thing. I played another R&F game as France and was in essentially in a permanent golden age after the first era because of the amount of wonder building.
As a citizen of Canuckistan, my first game of Gathering Storm was as Wilfred Laurier going for a diplomatic victory. Wow it is a tough slog getting diplomatic victory points . It’s a long wait between World Congresses and I was not eligible for several of the emergencies. The changes introduced with the GS expansion are much more substantial that the R&F one. The changes to diplomacy with grievances is a distinct improvement over the old warmongering penalties. I also like the changes made to strategic resources. The active climate and climate change are nice addition. After a couple of games of GS, I’m quite liking what they have done with this expansion.
