Jon himself later acknowledged many of the same issues with Civ V.
I often wonder whether there are any strategy games that truly hit all the right targets, across the board. We tend to look back on certain games with rose-colored glasses, but when I go and replay some of the games that get trotted out as exemplars, the experience is rarely as wonderful as the rhetoric.
I think that perhaps our expectations for strategy games are unrealistic, too often. I also suspect that if a game ever does come out that is deemed “perfect” by the hard-core strategy crowd, the universe will implode.
Sure, still doesn’t make it easy to read others saying it. I am not saying whether peoples complaints are justified or not. All I am saying is it’s got to be hard for someone in the industry to post on a forum like this.
I hear what you’re saying. I think if it really were an issue for Jon, the easy solution is just to mute an individual thread, which is easy to do. I think he stopped posting around the time when he started running into personal issues and probably has wanted to stay focused on completing the project since.
I’ve become very disillusioned with strategy games. I keep mentioning it, but @tomchick’s frickin’ parabola is everywhere: you learn the mechanics, you get good at the game, and then it disappoints you because the AI can’t keep up. The only strategy games I consider really good nowadays are those that are either
a) Easy enough for AI to play, such as X-Com (though I’m sure there are exploits there as well).
b) Asymmetric enough that the AI is playing a different, possibly far more predictable game (e.g. Invisible Inc and possibly Crusader Kings 2).
c) Can realistically be played against other people in a reasonable amount of time, my current favorite being Chaos Reborn.
I’m currently learning EU4, but I’m afraid of what I’m going to find, and wondering if my effort is worth it.
#humblebrag
I agree with Bluddy.
But, contrary to the Chick Parabola, I suspect that for most of us, we DON’T actually learn how to play most overly-complicated strategy games. I don’t think the human mind is capable of holding all the rules of a Civ game at once. We just learn enough rules to win reliably on a certain difficulty level, and stay on that level. (Or, if you have a different personality type, you learn enough rules to lose reliably on the next level up, and stay there.)
There’s a reason why the most complicated board game is less complicated than even a “simple” computer strategy game. The reason is that a human brain needs to understand how to play a board game. But as long as you can click a mouse, you can feel like you’re playing Civ, regardless of how many of its rules you’ve learned.
Indeed, Civ V and VI seem to have embraced “click the mouse to play the game” as their overarching design principle.
I think I’m probably far more inept than most, because I tend to lose more than I win with most strategy games. What I’m looking for is an enjoyable experience, which for me generally involves a game that rewards good (in context) decision making and punishes poor decisions. I’m not that concerned about the AI winning or losing (I usually lose, as I said, or get bored long before the end game slog as in many Civ-type games), but more interested in the AI doing things that make sense, particularly in response to things I do.
So, if I foolishly leave a force unsupported out in East Bumble, I expect it to be destroyed. If I properly support it and have a good supply chain for it, I’m happy if I roflstomp the AI out there, because the decision loop is logical. I tend to dislike games where I can get away with being really dumb, or where the AI does stuff that is fundamentally weird or illogical (to me). As long as the AI does pretty much what I’d expect or want to do if I was actually paying attention, I’m generally pretty happy.
What I really hated though was the type of game where the AI never played by the same rules. You’d have all these cool “chrome” rules that the player had to abide by, while the AI pretty much ignored them. That felt off, regardless of who “won” the game.
I think this is true. And yet, despite what should be a terrible disadvantage - playing a game without even knowing all the rules! - that level at which most of us can reliably win is one where the AI is receiving pretty significant bonuses.
I think this speaks to both strategy game design and strategy game AI, that this woeful state of affairs is so common.
I’m lucky in that I’m strategically challenged, so every AI threatens me and I always have fun with these kinds of games. And by the time that isn’t really true any longer, I’ve racked up over a hundred hours and still play the best games (like Age of Wonders 3 for an easy example) on and off for years.
The end-game is always a tricky thing though. The last act of a strategy game is where all the coolest toys tend to be, but by the time you get there you either stomped the AI or … well, or you probably aren’t getting to the end game. I just played a game of Gladius with @ShivaX and realized as we were overcoming and unavoidably destroying the AI that I’d never get to try out Terminators or the other high end tech, because I didn’t even need them - we were already winning. Kind of a bummer.
Can discussions about AI and general strategy gaming take place in a different thread?
Sure, but these late-game/AI discussions are relevant to this discussion/game and honestly, until it drops or someone that’s been playing it can talk more about At the Gates, it would just be this thread vanishing down the list until someone has something more on topic to say.
Here’s an on-topic post: when do we get the Kickstarter keys?
Considering it is my favorite game of all time, my most played, and the one that forever ruined the absolute piss poor diplomatic systems in most other strategy games for me*, I’d say yes.
*the Civ series is unplayable for me now, because their diplomacy is so inferior and I hate that.
I’m hoping the strength disparity between you and the many AIs, as well as the simplicity of a province-based map, allows the AI to do well enough to keep my illusion going.
According to Jon’s Twitter feed the game releases tomorrow at 22:00 CET. He’s getting lots of affirmation, including well wishes from developers at Unity of Command and Burden of Command.
And the wiki is up.
I tried to get into the best civ again, (civ 4) but more than anything I was sick of the gameplay loop. I just don’t want to do the ‘move a settler, choose a unit to construct, choose which square to irrigate, build another city’ dance anymore. I’ve done enough of that in my life, and I feel I’m done with it.
A comment on the Kickstarter page stated that someone asked on the steam forum and the reply was that keys will go out tomorrow via a Humble email. Not sure it’s all true but that’s all I’ve got :-)
Edit: Here’s the post
I’m surprised by the comments about the weaker endgame in At the Gates because I thought one of its compelling features was going to be that it makes the endgame dramatic for the winner rather than a mop-up, with a resource crunch that could swing badly for the lead. Is that out of the game now, or does it just not work as well as intended?
We will not really know until it releases, I think. It’ll be more telling to see what the average gamer says about it than strategy mavens, perhaps.