Why Bother With AI's - Page 4

Ming · December 6, 2002, 05:44

Hey Doc... I know your timing doesn't work for setting up games... but please register for the Civ II MP Civ group... it's a matter of spam, I mean pride

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 05:47

I will compromise my ugly icon principles for the sake of spam.

Done

Ming · December 6, 2002, 05:58

Thanks... that makes 52. Much appreciated

Alexander's Horse · December 6, 2002, 06:01

If you register does it add to your post count?

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 06:03

Now I see your motives.

I have never even heard of some of those 'players' though.

Ming · December 6, 2002, 06:04

No... it doesn't. But it does mean that I'm less likely to nail you for spam for posting in a forum that you really have no business posting in

Alexander's Horse · December 6, 2002, 06:08

Hey, the truth is I'm dying to buy civ 3 and really really sad it don't work.

Remember all those countless posts we made on ideas for civ 3

Ming · December 6, 2002, 06:16

The problem is... they listened to TOO many of them. They have made a game that has taken to much of the fun out of it. Many of the complaints can be tracked directly to people saying such and such is too easy. Unfortunately, they went overboard... every time somebody posted a way to win, they killed it with the next patch. Bummer!

Alexander's Horse · December 6, 2002, 06:30

I think that's quite true

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 06:37

You know, civ3 isn't a bad game......in fact it's quite good.....just not as good as it could have been.

I have always been sceptical about MP though.....the game seems less suited to it than civ2 (though that was probably serendipitous). I think it is symptomatic of the general problem of getting designers to think a bit more about MP, when SP is overwhelmingly the main market.

Ming · December 6, 2002, 06:37

We whined way to much... and now we have a game where they have taken all the fun out of it. The corruption model is a joke... and their attempts to remove ISCing were worse than the cure. Maybe after a few more patches it will be ok, but for now, Civ II is still the best alernative.

Hydey · December 6, 2002, 06:57

Quote:

Originally posted by deity
then it's drinks all round.... on Hydey usually...

I think the person coming last in our current 4 way should buy the first round.

Pot of VB for me thanks Dad

Flatlander Fox · December 6, 2002, 13:09

I think MP is the main market Doc, since every game these days has some kind of support for it...

The reason they're catching hell for this latest upgrade is because most of it could have been released as a patch, with the extras (New Civs and MP support) getting released towards the end of this month.

Another month working with gamespy(ware) and tweaking the MP would have been a great deal more important to the average player than the "wait for the next patch" fiasco we have going now.

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 13:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Flatlander Fox
I think MP is the main market Doc, since every game these days has some kind of support for it...

This is flat wrong. For the vast majority of games the SP market is much bigger than the MP market....sure many games come with MP, but ultimately most games are designed with the SP market in mind. Civ 3 is a good example.

There are games where MP is as important as SP......things like AOM, or Warcraft 3, various FPS, but most games just don't have the MP interest to make the developers pay that much attention to MP.

CapTVK · December 6, 2002, 13:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Ming
The problem is... they listened to TOO many of them. They have made a game that has taken to much of the fun out of it. Many of the complaints can be tracked directly to people saying such and such is too easy. Unfortunately, they went overboard... every time somebody posted a way to win, they killed it with the next patch. Bummer!

Cheer up Ming, We've also got Freeciv. Which stands alot closer to the original Civ1/2 model then Civ3 turned out to be.

I only wish more people would give it a try. With more people the alpha/beta/test-cycle would go far quicker. Oh well...maybe the SDL client wil help out.

Flatlander Fox · December 6, 2002, 13:21

Quote:

Originally posted by DrSpike

This is flat wrong. For the vast majority of games the SP market is much bigger than the MP market....sure many games come with MP, but ultimately most games are designed with the SP market in mind. Civ 3 is a good example.

There are games where MP is as important as SP......things like AOM, or Warcraft 3, various FPS, but most games just don't have the MP interest to make the developers pay that much attention to MP.

So why then does EVERYGAME that comes out have MP support?

Or website devoted to MP play?

Even the monstrous EU was marketed quite a bit with the idea that MP was a big part of the deal. I think that SP is important, but by no means dwarfs what the MP fans of the game get either.

I guess we are looking at it from two different ends of the spectrum. Sure, having good SP play is vital to having a good MP game. But I think alot of resources go into MP support, which is sometimes damning for the game itself at the end of the day.

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 13:33

Most games have MP, as I said. It is expected. That doesn't change the fact that the amount of people that will play MP is often not yet sufficient for companies to think that much about MP when designing a game. Sometimes they may not conflict, and all is well, but other times they undeniably do.

My statement was that SP is the main market....this is overwhelmingly true, with the few notable exceptions I mentioned. For instance I play Medieval Total War a bit......this game is relatively popular MP, but still only has players registering in the 100s worldwide, compared with many thousands playing SP worldwide. Do you think the unit stats were more suitable for SP or MP? And did the first patch focus on SP or MP bugs? I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

As more people get broadband things will undoubtedly change.....but the SP market still dominates designer's thinking for the moment.

War4ever · December 6, 2002, 14:27

DEPENDING ON THE GAME, I WOULD SAY ITS A GENRE BASED THING, IE STARCRAFT IS BETTER ONLINE, CIV2 IS BETTER FOR SP MODE...THOUGH I PREFER MP...

FPS LIKE COUNTERSTRIKE..WAY BETTER IN MP....

I THINK SP MODE MAY HAVE BEEN THE RAGE AT ONE TIME, BUT I THINK INTERACTING WITH HUMANS IS THE THE PRESENT AND FUTURE, MANY GAMES ARE LEANING TOWARDS THIS..

THE PROBLEM IS THE GAMING CO'S WANT TO CASH IN TWICE

CapTVK · December 6, 2002, 15:34

Quote:

Originally posted by War4ever
DEPENDING ON THE GAME, I WOULD SAY ITS A GENRE BASED THING, IE STARCRAFT IS BETTER ONLINE, CIV2 IS BETTER FOR SP MODE...THOUGH I PREFER MP...

FPS LIKE COUNTERSTRIKE..WAY BETTER IN MP....

I THINK SP MODE MAY HAVE BEEN THE RAGE AT ONE TIME, BUT I THINK INTERACTING WITH HUMANS IS THE THE PRESENT AND FUTURE, MANY GAMES ARE LEANING TOWARDS THIS..

THE PROBLEM IS THE GAMING CO'S WANT TO CASH IN TWICE

Well, they're not forcing you to buy it now are they?

rah · December 6, 2002, 16:07

For civ, if you read the threads in the CIVIII forums, you'd have seen that the majority of players could have given a rat's ass about MP. We were definately in the minority. Bastards

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 16:10

Quite, Rah

And it shows with all games outside of a few genres, such as FPS and some RTS.

But never fear, our time will come.

CapTVK · December 6, 2002, 16:13

Quote:

Originally posted by rah
For civ, if you read the threads in the CIVIII forums, you'd have seen that the majority of players could have given a rat's ass about MP. We were definately in the minority. Bastards

Yup, despite the problems in MP the majority don't seem to give a hoot.

Democracy just doesn't work

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 16:16

Democracy works fine in theory. We just need to make everyone agree with me on all issues.

War4ever · December 6, 2002, 17:15

civ wasnt' really built for mp, and the games that sell the most these days, and a likely trend to continue are the fps and rts genre.....

MP is here to stay, but it should come stock and barrel with any game that plans to be played in MP forml.

charging twice just so i can play online isn't fair, and they wonder why i pirate haha.....

not that pirating is fair for anyone...lets not open that can of worms

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 17:18

Aye aye, cap'n.

War4ever · December 6, 2002, 17:32

you forgot to make the parrot sound afterward

forget again and its the plank for you

DrSpike · December 6, 2002, 17:35

Shut it, or tis a lick o' the cat for ya.

War4ever · December 6, 2002, 18:55

HEHE.... THAT CHRISTMAS SMILEY LOOKS GOOD WITH THE CAP....

...

HEY CAPTVK...HOW IS FREE CIV COMING, I PLAYED WITH 32 CIVS AND RAN INTO FOUR SETTLERS IN THREE TURNS

HAVE THINGS IMPROVED SINCE THEN?

CapTVK · December 6, 2002, 19:12

War,

Inching it's way towards 1.14 as we speak. I was expecting january but.... IT MIGHT EVEN BE IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!!! (LOOK I'M SHOUTING NOW, JUST LIKE WAR DOES BUT THAT'S BECAUSE HE FORGOT THE CAPS LOCK KEY)

As for playing with 32 civs and running into four settlers, what did you expect? On normal map settings with the standard gen map things tend to be very tight (with 32 civs moving about that is). That's because civs will start out on the main landmasses and not islands. No wonder you bump into them. Try increasing the map size, the landmass and experiment with the map gen for better results. Or try playing with a lower number of civs

CapTVK · December 6, 2002, 19:29

And because we're dealing with MP afficiados here's a nice feature in 1.14 that hasn't gotten much attention yet: the new TEAM function.

Quote:

A team is a group of players that start out allied, with shared vision and embassies, and fight together to achieve team victory with averaged individual scores. Team are controlled via the new server command "team". Teams can't change after the game has started.

Yes, in theory you can also do this with AI civs.