[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Civ4 impressions

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Per Inge Mathisen wrote on Nov 20, 11:20 (+0000):

> The good:
>  - Very cool tribal title music.

:-)

>  - Units have lots of "vs unit type" abilities (like pikemen & horses).

Too much of this and nobody knows the strength of his units any more.

>  - Units do not have separate attack and defense values, only one value. I
> was skeptical of this when I read it, but I played it, I found that I
> never missed it.

Make a ruleset for it..

>  - Unit promotions was an interesting concept.

What is this?

>  - No units cost population, not even settlers. Even so, there are so many
> different important choices even in the early game that it becomes a real
> choice what you should build, and settlers is not always the best.

I like the workers as a big improvement, and I use them in the beginning,
too. Pop cost for settlers is important you know, to counter weight ICS.

>  - Smallpox is not a very good strategy. City range expands as the city
> accumulates more culture.

Interesting.

>  - Tiny tax setting buttons in the upper left corner of the screen, not a
> separate dialog.

Good! I don't like the dialog.

>  - Lots of information in tooltips which are easily available.

Something we can enhence. Do you think we can combine this with the map, so
that just hovering the mouse over a (non-empty) tile gives some information?
Think this helps newcomers too.

>  - Player dialog a transparent window in the lower right corner of the
> screen, the separate dialog never needed. Shows score, name, civics and
> religion (civics and religion as tiny icons). Tooltip for self shows score
> breakdown of score. Tooltip for others show diplomatic attitude,
> diplomatic effects and helptext for war and trade. Very neat.
>  - Barbarians develop cities of their own eventually.
>  - Courthouse gives -50% maintenance bonus.
>  - Rivers are between tiles, attacking across rivers give penalty.

>  - All progress bars have a solid part (done) and a translucent part (will
> be done next turn), which show speed of progress.

Good.

>  - Unit command 'Gift' which gives a unit to another player whose borders
> your unit is within.
>  - Settlers and workers have 2 MP.

Not necessary IMHO.

>  - Timeout is dynamic with Snail -> Blazing speed settings (as I have
> suggested for Freeciv before).

>  - 'Fortify until healed' unit command.

Nice. Our concept needs a bit tuning.

> The interesting:
>  - Their default 3D view is top-down, not a tilted isometric one.

I never play iso, for a reason.

>  - Only "Blitz" units like the Tank can attack multiple times a turn.

The current behaviour is not bad.

>  - Bombardment reduces city defences a little bit each turn, making siege
> a possibility.

Funny. What do you think about a percent chance for city walls to reduce
population?

>  - Civics. Pretty much SMAC style government in five categories. While a
> great approach, I did not like the options offered a whole lot.
> 
> The bad:
>  - The game was S L O W, even on my somewhat fast PC, especially in the
> late game.

Uh, well I don't want to complain, but we have some speed buglets too in
HEAD. :-/

>  - The graphics were well drawn, but quickly got annoying. In the late
> game, the map is so cluttered with fine drawn terrain improvements that my
> eyes began to glaze over the map, not finding anywhere to focus.

Freeciv graphics is a good compromise between nice looking and clear.

>  - Terrain improvements. There are a ton of them, and you will want a ton
> of workers to make them. Very complex, a lot of micromanagement. Got
> annoying quick.

>  - Diplomacy was very interactive the first years, but got very stale
> after the first third of the game, as the AIs did nothing interesting.

>  - "Open borders" pact is essential to good terms and trade with AIs,
> which allow them to move military units into your borders. They will do so
> with great enthusiams, and march around with their explorers, causing more
> clutter and angst over AI military units around my cities.

Not a good idea.

>  - The in-game music was enervating
>  - Lots of "filler" buildings like Grocer, Market and Supermarket that did
> little. The building list got huge later in the game.
>  - Great People was a pointless concept.
>  - Lots of specialists in addition to working city tiles. Limits on how
> many specialists of various types based on buildings. Even more
> micromanagement here than in any previous version, almost felt like
> Colonization. Luckily, you could just ignore it all and let the computer
> deal with it (probably less optimal, though).
>  - The ending was extremely dull.
>  - Overly complicated tech tree.
> 
> In short, there was much to be inspired by, but overall not something I
> think will last long.

Thank you.

One thing to learn: more complexity give not a better game. Rather improve
on usability.

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke            * * *            http://cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.