re: new screenshots, "Make more culture"

Zanzin · July 14, 2001, 21:56

There is two things very wrong with this statement by the cultural advisor in the screenshot.

i) Firaxis said the advisors would be intelligent and provide information that was actually useful. Does anyone else get the feeling that the statement "Make more culture" isn't exactly useful or intelligent.

ii) In the spirit of the whole empire thing....is culture something you can just make? Like in a factory? The statement from the advisor makes me feel as if I can just order x units of culture to expand my influence. Now I know in the game that, yes, culture does have to be built in the form of libraries and temples and what not....but do they have to be quite so blunt about it? "Make more culture" just feels so heartless and pathetic.
Culture is concept about how enlightened and great ones civilization is....i.e. number of libraries and temples and universities will add to the culture. But to represent the culture in terms of numbers.....culture isn't a tangible thing you can just build - not in real life anyway.

I'd like to see not numbers for how much culture you have, but rather a scale from "Our civilization has little in the way of culture" through to "We are the most enlightened and art deco loving civilization on the planet."

Also from the advisor, instead of "Make more culture", could we have something a bit more refined like "Our civilizations culture would benifit by the construction of more temples sir".

Ofcourse, what we're seeing may just be "placeholders"....but we thought the original graphics were just placeholders as well - how wrong we were.

ancient · July 14, 2001, 22:45

i will agree with you on this...

i thought she looks very stupid and saying "Make more Clture" isnt helpfull at all...

what is art? is it some thing that you can build?
or is it something that occurs when your city has a high culture and it increases you culture more? or is it a unit, that cant attack but can be destroyed.. (and cant move)

July 14, 2001, 22:57

Wow, it says that? That's disgusting, it's stuff like this that killed CTP.

Art is definetly culture. It's the entire blueprints of culture, so I understand why art is in there. But what effect it has I don't know, I'm hoping it will define the look of your cities, etc.

Firaxis: Look, you're just going to end up producing another Activision game. If I was you right now, I would stop what you're doing, take a step back, and look at it again. Listen to us, we're the players, we're the ones who are going to decide if its worth playing or not. If it doesn't please us, then you're not going to get far either.

I'm sure we all understand that you want to make the game fun, and thats great, but making it childish is not our type of fun. We don't watch Barney and Tellietubbies for fun.

Alex 14 · July 14, 2001, 23:21

This better be a test picture. It's not a major crisis, because we can edit the text files, but still i would like to know what Firaxis are thinking.

Inverse Icarus · July 15, 2001, 00:32

art is the "uneeded but often helpful" technologies.

like, to advance out of ancient times you do not need literacy, but it allows the great library.

and yes, that advisor was moronic.

JamesJKirk · July 15, 2001, 01:24

Cmon, it's obviously just a placeholder, as is most of the text we see? I also hope none of you thought that "Cinnamon" and "Pepper" were really going to appear as American cities

tniem · July 15, 2001, 03:05

Or what if Make more culture was just the summary of what she is going to tell you. Then some where in the box she goes on and says how she thinks you should go about it (i.e. build a temple in Athens, allow Sparta to build the Hanging Gardens, invest more in the arts in Corinth).

But it probably/hopefully is simply place holding text.

Zanzin · July 15, 2001, 03:53

like I said, lets hope the text is just placeholding at the moment for something better and more indepth.

My biggest gripe though is the culture points. In the screenshot it was 6000 odd. Well, that's great but.....its not!! What, do you walk up to your rival Civilization and say "Guess what, my civs got 7500 culture points!!! We completely rock over your civs measly 3000!!" No, you don't.

What you would do is walk over to the other civ and say "We have the richest culture on Earth due to our extensive chain of Libraries and temples." The other civ would say, "It's true, it's true. We only have 3 temples. How could our people possibly feel enlightened compared to your people?"

MarkG · July 15, 2001, 05:08

i dont know if you noticed, but there are still using the "people" from civ2

http://www.gamesdomain.com/news/images/civ06.jpg

we've got a loooong way ahead of us

DrFell · July 15, 2001, 10:33

Yeah, I'd say there's a 99% chance this is just placeholder graphics/text. The programmers main concern is to actually get the code working, not the graphics or text etc, that can be added in later. So I wouldn't start worrying about this yet.

Nemo · July 15, 2001, 11:00

what got me, is the advisor head ofn the left is not the same as the advisor in th etop right. This could get confusing/fustrating in the beginning of playing, and act as a deturant.

Solver · July 15, 2001, 11:54

I think you're missing the fact that Civ 3 isn't completed yet. If it was, it would be available for sale now. I really hope they will change the text (and we know they browse Apolyton forums every day

.

Grumbold · July 15, 2001, 12:43

I think the culture concept has got a long way to go before it is completely finished. Both the text and the ability to rank city culture into thousands is jarring. Hopefully once they've decided exactly how it is going to work they can make the concept more presentable

tniem · July 15, 2001, 12:56

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkG
i dont know if you noticed, but there are still using the "people" from civ2

http://www.gamesdomain.com/news/images/civ06.jpg

we've got a loooong way ahead of us

Good catch Markos, I hadn't noticed and it certainly reassures me that at least quite a bit of what we are seeing is still just place holder - concept art. Hopefully that means we will see some changes to the map landscape tiles.

Alex 14 · July 15, 2001, 18:24

And i thought they were actually going to use the people from civ 2...

splangy · July 15, 2001, 21:05

ummm i don't think this art is new, i think firaxis gave them some old ****ty screens. why?? becouse we have already seen screens with new people, art, an advisor saying " the french are weak. lets attack them with paper airplanes" or somthing, and they didn't say that it took 9999 turns to build somthing. i think they are gona get the game right unlike EVERYONE keeps saying. god these forums are depressing, i like civ fanatics center more becouse they dont ***** and moan.

. have they ever made a COMPLETE fluke??? no? so stop whining!

Zanzin · July 15, 2001, 22:14

oh well, if you don't like it here, take a hike!

Its not our fault we're negative....yin made us this way - its hard not to share his infectuous negativity and inherant loathing of Firaxis!!

And it wouldn't suprise me if they used the civ2 graphics for the little people......after all, we're getting essentially the same combat engine as civ2...gripe gripe....

splangy · July 16, 2001, 01:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Zanzin
oh well, if you don't like it here, take a hike!

im just curius when said that i didn't like it here? i just said that some places are more positive than here.

yin, in my beleif, is actually dan M trying to bring down expectations so that when they release the game we all praise them, then there egos are completly fed.

do i have any proof? notice that the less he posts the more dan does and vise verse?

Zanzin · July 16, 2001, 04:50

Quote:

Originally posted by splangy

yin, in my beleif, is actually dan M trying to bring down expectations so that when they release the game we all praise them, then there egos are completly fed.

do i have any proof? notice that the less he posts the more dan does and vise verse?

lol, it wouldn't suprise me!!

splangy · July 16, 2001, 20:49

im serius! Dan hasent said a word since yin started talking again.

i hope dan isn't scared of yin! if he did than

Zanzin · July 16, 2001, 21:56

I take it you're a bit angry.....

Provost Harrison · July 17, 2001, 06:36

OK, from what I can tell from one of the screenshots, the two are linked, but certainly not the same. Culture is 'emitted' from certain city improvements or factors of society or wonders, and determines the rate of expansion and position of your borders. I think I know what art is as well from one of the city view screenshots. Art=luxuries (in civ2 context). As luxuries are now commodities traded on the map, the concept of donating a certain proportion of your tax to make people 'happy' or quell discontent is now known as art. You are not buying luxuries with that money, but investing in the arts. Same thing, different name. I twigged this because the screenshot showed what was coming from the city, and it showed tax, science and art...so it seemed quite intuitive...

Trdi · July 17, 2001, 08:08

They can write the advice 2 days before the release, why are you making problems?

tniem · July 17, 2001, 13:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Trdi
They can write the advice 2 days before the release, why are you making problems?

Two days before release? I know you must be overexagerating or talking about going gold, otherwise my post would solely be about how long it will take to burn a 100,000 disks with updated advice.

However, I must disagree that advice can be written so late in game developement. The game testers need to see if the advice that is being given is in the appropriate place. I.E. you don't want the game to give the advice of building space ships before that technology has been researched. Or you don't want advice to build more cities being given when Firaxis' implemented anti-ICS ideas are about to go into effect.

Game testers must also see if the advice being given is even good advice. It might not necessarily be good advice for you to build an adequate in a city to allow it to grow if an enemey's army is aproaching.

All of these things must be tested. Giving good advice is not an easy thing. So if the game was going to be ready by the end of the year, Firaxis better have at least begun testing advice.

Zanzin · July 17, 2001, 21:55

For the above reasons that tniem stated, I do hope that Firaxis don't rush the game. If they're putting in all this placeholder stuff now, and leaving it till the last minute to put in the real stuff.....could be a lot of problems.

However...we don't know how old these screenshots are that we're seeing...could by 2 weeks, 6 months, who knows. Firaxis are too secretive!

N35t0r · July 18, 2001, 01:53

OK...

Let's try to find a solution to all our problems....

Who is in to try and hack into Firaxis' servers, and get a copy of how the game is so far?

tniem · July 18, 2001, 02:04

UberKruX found a bug from Civ II that never was fixed that proves why you cannot just write advice late in game developement. Take a look at it http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...67#post378367.