Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

GalCiv comes up on these forums once and a while, it has a few fans who like both for the different reasons you mentioned.

Now, I played it back in the OS/2 days, and really enjoyed it back then. But when Stardock came out with the shipsyards expansion pack, I was really excited -- it allowed you to design ships, instead of accepting the prefab ships the game came with. They didn't remove that function for the latest Version, did they? At any rate, color me too interested in ship design to get bored -- yes, its repetitious at times, but that just means you have to vary the design, even if it seems useless. You may discover an improved design you hadn't thought of.

The diplomacy model in the new GalCiv is much better than SE4. But I remember, in the old days, how you could just barely appease the AI, then whenever you wanted, quickly ramp up production for the kill. SE4's "suddenly mad at you for no reason" model at least keeps you on your toes.

[ June 28, 2004, 12:33: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Here is hoping SE5 stays true to form without getting over commercialised and underpeforming like MOO3 and GalCIV.

Looking foward to it when it does come out.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Me too! SE5 is gonna kick ***.

I was so pissed when I read the reviews of MOO3. I love that series, and was eagerly awaiting it. Not to go way off-topic here, but is it just the AI that's broken? Or is it a horrible game thru-in-thru?

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Oh yes, there are quite a few threads on MOO3 and how it sucks. It was just bad through and through. And don't get Attrocities started either!

Gal Civ is not as bad as MOO3, but I won't be playing it again that's for sure.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

*smacks forehead*

duh! Of course there would be MOO3 threads here. Hell, I probably read them when the game first came out. My brain is swiss cheese today.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

While GalCiv seems to be a "stragegy light" game, MOO 3 is not a strategy game at all. You can move a few sliders, make a few adjustments, but mostly you keep pressing the TURN button and watch the AI build your empire while you are unable to prevent it building research centers on farm planets and farms on mineral rich planets. But, the AI you play against is as dumb as the AI you are forced to play with, and it is no problem to win a game by setting it up and placing a book on the keyboard that makes sure the TURN button is pressed continuously. Start in the evening, come back at morning to see your victory screen.

If you like SimCity, this is probably for you. But it is not MOO3, it is a bad over-complexed form of SimGalaxy.

[ June 29, 2004, 17:26: Message edited by: Roanon ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

For me, the ship design and combat are the main reasons for playing SE4. The value of the rest of it is mainly to give the ship designs and battles a consistent context for the fleets to maneuver around. Galciv demphasizes to nonexistance ship design and tactics, so it is not really the same kind of game to me, and has little interest. Also although I have gotten hooked playing Civ and Civ II a couple of times, I don't particularly like those games. There are many many design decisions I would do very differently. Mainly it's just addictive because there is so much stuff in the tree, and they give you a steady stream of new toys. That gets people, even me, to play compulsively for a while, but shortly I stop and don't go back to finish even a single game, because I realize that I don't like the implementation of most of it. Heaps of game design choices that I find blah. Too much aimed at the casual audience, for me - I'm not the casual audience.

As for Roanon's comments about not liking complex mechanics and opaque results... well I actually do like games that have those, when they're done well. The real world is so complex that you never can just calculate to figure out complex things like the production of a nation. But there are some cause and effects which can be figured out an applied. I have no confidence however that GalCiv's "complex" mechanics would interest me very much, though, since the Civ game mechanics have generally disappointed me.

But not having detailed ship combat stuff makes GalCiv a genre I'm not particularly interested in.

PvK

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree. Therefore, I do NOT want to have this in a game, I already have it in life http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . Call me a spreadsheet fanatic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

Ok, serious, I can live with a black box somewhere, but cause and effect have to be clear. And this rarely is the case; most of the game desingers are too sloppy to reveal their logic. And it is also much easier to hide otherwise obvious flaws in that logic if everything is hidden.

Yes, there is much complexity in the real world, and every designer has his own - more or less weird - opinons on how it works. If you are able to think along the same lines, a given game may be excellent for you. And if you do not agree or expect that this newly built Big Machine of Happiness (or whatever) increases the migration rate but expect a production increase, then the game just sucks for you.

I, personally, am tired of games that have to be played several times just to find out how wierd the game designers brain worked. Either give me clear rules, or trash it - if I want a no-brainer game without rules, I'll play Unreal or Counterstrike. Don't misunderstand me: I don't think GalCiv is that bad. But it is somewhere in the middle between real strategy game and black box, too much in the middle for me.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Sure. Wanting to know the exact rules is a thing some players really want, and others don't care as much about. And yes, it is lame when a game does things in a way a player doesn't agree with yet it takes players a long time to learn that it doesn't work well for them.

Myself, with decades of game experience and specific tastes, I can often tell just by looking at screenshots or some seconds of gameplay, the kinds of things that are and are not going on, and decide not to bother with a game. I can usually figure out the gameplay is going to have have no real interest to me in less than a minute of scrutiny, and this turns out to be the case for perhaps 98% of the stuff I see. Of course, I'm a definite exception.

Even so, there can be games that seem to do things to taste, but then turn out to have major things that aren't to taste. It's a matter of specifics (and sometimes, attitude) whether such games are thus "fun for a while, until you figure out that they do some things badly", or "broken once you figure it out."

PvK

[ June 29, 2004, 20:21: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Why play GalCiv if you already have SEIV http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif