Civilization V : City States

September 24, 2010

City States are one of the major additions to Civilization V, and during my initial playthrough I found them to be slightly more than gimmicks used to ‘populate’ the world. In my current game they are invaluable, and really add a huge new element to the game. They also fit well with how Civ V truly splits economy, culture, and science, rather than having them all interdependent like in previous games.

I’ll start with my first game. In that game I played Civ V like I played Civ IV, focusing on getting ahead in technology in order to get better units to eventually crush my enemies. In Civ IV that meant keeping your science slider as close to 100% as possible, and your bank account at a constant minimum. This resulted in everything gold-related being minimized, at least for the most part. You could still do goofy stuff like, for just a few turns, go 100% income and get a massive amount of gold, then immediately switch back to science.

So in my first Civ V game, I had very limited gold, which meant I could not give the various city states gifts to keep them friendly or allied. And when I finally did have the 250 gold needed, I would only be able to bump one city state to friendly for a few turns before it went back to neutral, which seemed rather pointless to me. After all, I could just conquer the city if I wanted its land and resources. So in that game city states were just blobs of ‘useless’ terrain, or something for my enemies to use as an additional source of trouble. They never heavily factored into anything I was doing directly (this was on Prince difficulty), and I never noticed them being major factors between the other AI-controlled civilizations.

In my current game (King difficulty), I set out to better control the economic side of things, which meant only getting the buildings I truly needed in each city, not going crazy with infrastructure, and focusing more on trading posts to generate extra gold per hex, all to keep the gold flowing. In this game I’ve managed to have a steady income of around 40 gold per turn, which made paying the 250 gold to get on good terms with a city state much easier. I also more actively completed various missions for them, the result of which sometimes put me at 150+ favor with them, meaning they would stay allied for a long, long time without further investment.

The current result is that I occasionally get free military units from some city states, get increased food production in my cities (especially the capital, which is huge for my Roman civ), and my culture rate is increasing much faster than in the previous game, allowing me to pick up civics earlier (and by spending some of those points in the Piety tree, I get even better results from city states). It’s a very rewarding snowball effect overall, plus seeing my allied city states join in against my enemies is a nice bonus, and at times very helpful to the overall war effort.

City States highlight the fundamental shift in Civ V, that although on the surface it’s a ‘simpler’ game, the actual decisions you make are not only more profound, but lead to a wide variety of strategies. It’s perfectly viable to ignore City States, just like it’s perfectly viable to focus on them and propel your civilization through them. I get the feeling the same can be said for focusing on economy, science, or culture. I’ve yet to try it, but I also suspect that growing the absolute biggest empire is also no longer the only viable strategy, as a smaller, hyper-focused empire could work thanks to the various systems and civics.

The funny thing about Civ V is that although the real core of the game is similar to Civ IV, enough has been changed to really make it a completely different game in terms of the decisions you make, and that ultimately is what makes it brilliant.

Chuck-o-the-day: Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.

6 Comments | Civilization Series | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Civilization V Review

September 23, 2010

Is the sun up already? And what day is it…

This review is based on having played 800 or so turns over roughly 12-15 hours. In other words, a lifetime++ in EuroGamer years. In that time I’ve finished one game to 2050AD and taken a few others into various stages. The 2050AD game was with Japan (randomed), but I’ve also played as the Romans and the Greeks.

Civilization V is the best version of Civ yet. That alone should make it an instant buy for basically anyone who has every enjoyed or believe they might enjoy a turn based game, but as that would make for a short review, I’ll keep going.

The move to hexes is one of those things that initially feels a little odd, but after about an hour or so it becomes tough to imagine what the game is like without them. Same goes for only being able to have one combat unit on a hex; at first I was making countless mistakes in positioning and movement, but again after about an hour it not only feels ‘right’, it adds an amazing level of depth and strategy.

Speaking of depth, on the surface Civ V seems like a simplified version of IV, with many of the more complex systems (pollution, city-based unrest, religion, fewer techs overall) gone. Yet again you soon realize that it’s not about the number of systems, but how they are implemented and what decisions they force you to make. Take resources for example: in IV once you had iron, you could pump out as many iron-based units as you wanted. In V, one source of iron will only allow you to make a limited number of iron-based units or buildings. That’s huge in a number of ways. For starters, it means even if you DO have the resources, your military is still likely to include a variety of units due to resource limits. Secondly, it means that even if you have access to an iron resource, you can still trade for more, or provide someone else with yours even if they also already have some. Finally, cutting off an enemies resource means they not only lose the ability to make those units, their current units get a huge combat penalty until they regain it. And that’s just one example of the changes, but as you can see, it’s a little change that has a huge impact, while also feeling ‘natural’ in many ways. It was completely unrealistic before that one single iron mine could supple an entire nation, and Civ V ‘fixes’ that issue.

Graphically the game is stunning. Not in a Crysis “zomg look at the fog!1!” kind of way, but more in the “hey it all just looks right” style. Everything fits, looks very polished, and small details abound that not only look good, but provide information as well. For the first time, a unit of spearmen is finally a unit of 10 soldiers, and as they ‘take damage’, some of them die and the unit gets smaller. You still have a health bar, but a quick glance at the actual graphic will show you what you are looking for. This change also means combat looks a lot better, as a 10 vs 10 battle between spearmen and swordsman is a lot cooler looking than a single spearmen icon moving over a single swordsman icon (or the simplified combat animations in Civ IV). By far the coolest combat animation? The most powerful unit, the giant death robot, with its swarm of missile and laser fire. It just has that “yea, you can’t stop me” thing going for it (and actually looks a lot cooler in-game than in that picture).

Combat itself is a lot more entertaining in Civ V as well, and not only from the hex and single-unit-per-spot changes. If two units are somewhat evenly matched, the result will most likely leave both damaged but not defeated, which is a huge change from the one-and-done style of previous games. Ranged combat is also a new addition that adds an important layer of strategy, as finally you actually have to protect weaker units and use the terrain for more than just a single defense bonus, and units like archers are valuable not because they are outright stronger than warriors (they lose to them in melee), but thanks to the ranged fire they provide. Other changes I’m really enjoying include naval combat being a much slower exchange of fire rather than one-and-done ‘melee’ style, and that ships and planes can actually kill units rather than just weaken them like in IV. This makes having a strong navy and things like aircraft carriers not just a nice-to-have, but critical when attempting to make landfall on an enemy island or continent.

I’ll wrap things up here for now, but expect some more Civ V related posts in the near future, most likely breaking down certain systems and the game design theory behind them. As I said at the start though, if you are even a remote fan of strategy games, Civ V is about as good as it gets.

12 Comments | Civilization Series, Combat Systems | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Civilization V is out!

September 21, 2010

A full (non-EG) review should be up either Thursday or Friday. Until then I’ll be in the command center for the next 48hrs+.

Chuck-o-the-day: Chuck has already beaten Civ V on Deity.

11 Comments | Civilization Series, Site update | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Darkfall: The expansion, ever closer

September 17, 2010

Tasos posted an update regarding the recent connection issues, the upcoming expansion, and beyond. From the tone of the update it sounds like things are finally picking back up and the final touches are being put on the long-delayed expansion, which will no doubt give the game a nice jolt and set things up for year-end and early 2011 updates.

I’ve personally been waiting for this upcoming expansion to get back into Darkfall, as I figure it will bring a large number of people back and create a good environment to get back into the swing of things. It sounds like in addition to the visual and audio updates, there should be a significant amount of PvE content to keep busy with between the PvP downtime. I must say I do miss playing an MMO, because as entertaining as League of Legends is, it does not scratch the same itch that Darkfall does, so it will be good to have that back into my gaming rotation.

With LoL, Civ V, and DF, I’ll be one happy gamer this Fall/Winter.

Chuck-o-the-day: When the going gets tough, the going is channeling Chuck Norris.

(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)

3 Comments | Civilization Series, Darkfall Online, League of Legends, Site update | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Well this is awkward

September 16, 2010

In order to pre-load Civilization V, Direct2Drive sends you to Steam. Ouch.

(But the D2D deal is still, IMO, better, since you get the first DLC pack included, which is better than the map you get from Steam)

8 Comments | Civilization Series | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Pre-loading Civilization V now

September 16, 2010

Mmmm, so close I can almost taste the turn-based goodness.

Chuck-o-the-day: There has never been a hurricane Chuck because that would just be redundant.

3 Comments | Civilization Series | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

League of Legends update

September 1, 2010

League of Legends continues to dominate my gaming time, and my account is now midway through level 25 while Aria is at 15. Her current two favorite champions are Garren and Blitzcrank, while I tend to favor Amumu, Katarina, Poppy, and Master Yi (for 3v3 matches only).

There is just nothing quite as satisfying as having Aria pull someone into tower range with Blitz, pop them up, and as they come down I stun-tackle them against a wall with Poppy, delivering a Devastating Blow to finish them off. Short of using Flash to escape, its death for any champion early on, and that combo has lead to many a first-bloods or ‘surprise’ kills. The other nice thing about the combo is that Blitz continues to be a great initiator throughout the game, and with a few items Poppy becomes a single-target wrecking machine with good survivability.

I just recently picked up Master Yi, and while his performance is just average at best in a 5v5 game, he can be a real monster in 3v3. He is a total snowball character and just gets silly with the right item build and a solid start. Critting for 1000+ every other swing, swinging multiple times per second, and lifestealing 50% of the damage you deal is just great, and watching enemy champions melt in seconds never gets old. On the other hand if things don’t go well, he brings next to nothing to a team, and the fact that he is so fragile can make for some frustrating moments, especially since I generally play ‘tougher’ champions like Amumu and Poppy.

Most nights we are playing arranged team games with 4-5 people from Inquisition, and once everyone caps out at level 30, the ranked game madness will begin. I’m really looking forward to the draft selection mode used in ranked play, as it’s just another twist on an already fairly complex game to spice things up. Until then, there are still plenty of champions to learn and team strategies to master.

Civilization 5 is just weeks away, but given how steady and entertaining League of Legends has been for everyone since we started playing, I’m guessing even Civ 5 will only put a dent into how often we log on and play. With Riot (the devs) updating the game weekly with balance patches and new champions/skins, the game is rapidly expanding and improving, and so it’s no surprise that the total amount of people playing continues to increase weekly.

Chuck-o-the-day: Chuck Norris invented ice skates after he realized not everyone is born with blades attached to their feet.

8 Comments | Civilization Series, League of Legends, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

MMO blog not about MMOs?

August 9, 2010

Current blogging dilemma: Basically all of my gaming time has been non-MMO since returning from my honeymoon, nothing really interesting is happening in MMO land that I care to really write about (other than the upcoming Darkfall expansion), and something tells me the people who read this blog won’t find a post breaking down the Risk 2110 boardgame (which is awesome btw) or how I play Amumu and Katarina in League of Legends all that interesting. Let me know if I’m off on the last two.

I keep saying it, but damnit one of these nights it is going to happen and I will start getting myself back into Darkfall, but it might honestly take the expansion to trigger the return. A little time away never hurts though, and the break should make getting back into things that much better. Hopefully we have seen the last delay in regards to the expansion, as I know I’m not the only one banking on it as a catalyst to either return or to increase activity.

The thing I’m most excited about in terms of gaming right now is Civilization 5. I’d be more than happy to drop $50 on a Blizzard-does-SC2 upgrade to Civ 4, but from reading some previews I’m really looking forward to the new things they’ve added, and overall it sounds like the game has really expanded beyond its military focus. I’m sure Inquisition will have more than a few epic multiplayer games going that will have us collectively staying up far longer than we intended. How Civ 5 will be balanced into all other gaming is always a question of course, as Civ 4 more or less put everything else on hold when it was released.

Oh and a special thank you to my iPhone, which cleared my Shining Force save. I’m psyched to replay those four hours again…

Chuck-o-the-day: Chuck Norris likes his meat so rare he only eats unicorns.

20 Comments | Civilization Series, Darkfall Online, Inquisition Clan, iPhone, Random, Site update | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

It’s been three years already?

August 2, 2010

And this blog turns 3!

Actually it turned 3 years old a few weeks ago, but that whole getting married thing prevented a timely update, so this one is a little late. 3 years is a rather crazy length of time when I think about it. It’s more time than I’ve played any one MMO, it’s longer than all but one of my RL relationships, and it will shortly be longer than any one job I’ve ever held. I think that says more about me actually than anything else, but regardless, 3 years is a long time in SynCaine land. Anyway, on to the numbers, in similar fashion to last years update.

Blog Stats as of 8/2/2010

Total views: 692,972

Busiest day: 11,852 — Thursday, September 6, 2007

Posts: 843

Comments: 11,790

Blog Stats 2009

Total views: 335,842

Busiest day: 11,852 — Thursday, September 6, 2007

Posts: 523

Comments: 5,393

Blog Stats 2008

Total views: 104,123

Busiest day: 11,852 – Thursday, September 6, 2007

Posts: 253

Comments: 1,658

What the numbers mean: While the rate of growth has slowed, things are still chugging along here, and considering the blog has been heavily niche-title (Darkfall) focused for a good year now, that’s not too shabby, although I’ve still yet to conquer that BBC-linked post for one-day traffic. Some day BBC, some day. Comments, the best part about blogging, have continued to come in at a very healthy rate. Thanks to everyone who has dropped a line here, and especially to those who comment frequently, you help keep me motivated to write and rant. The next few months should be fun, as both the 1 million views and 1000 posts milestones will be reached.

Top Posts for all days ending 2010-08-02

The love and hate game, WoW style. – 17,626

iPhone MMO, Field Runners, and a slow Friday – 10,564

EQ2, trial of the neverending download. – 9,796

Aion end-game, way ahead of WoW and WAR. – 7,701

Blizzard’s new focus for WoW, just as soon as Mythic finished it- 7,488

Level 4 missions in EVE, and my silly Rohk – 7,130

Warhammer’s major problem, the players. – 5,694

Dragon Age review – 5,378

DarkFall: 3 month review – 4,624

Screen shot comparison. – 4,260

Top Posts for all days ending 2009-06-22

The love and hate game, WoW style. -17,285

iPhone MMO, Field Runners, and a slow Friday – 9,437

Blizzard’s new focus for WoW, just as soon as Mythic finishes it – 7,259

EQ2, trial of the neverending download. – 5,982

Warhammer’s major problem, the players. – 4,767

Screen shot comparison. – 3,848

Level 4 missions in EVE, and my silly Rohk – 3,314

Burned out on WotLK already. – 2,902

Looking in the mirror; the sickness that was WoW raiding – 2,773

Help coming for low population servers in Warhammer Online – 2,526

The top two spots remain unchanged, with the BBC-linked post still holding a very comfortable edge over everything else, with no real contender in sight now that the Field Runners post has slowed its Google-fueled charge. The number three post is rather humorous, because after all these years, people are STILL searching for answers on when their damn download will actually finish. I don’t doubt EQ2 going SOE-flavor F2P might drive a little more traffic over as well.

The forth post shows just how much hype Aion had generated pre-release, along with just how many people are Blizzard trained to think end-game first, everything else last. Down to number five is one of my favorite posts, and as you can see from last year the post itself is not a favorite when it comes to random Google traffic. The post about running missions in EVE, at number 6, shows the steady interest EVE generates, and how year to year, new pilots are still trying to tackle the same challenges as pilots before them. That speaks highly to the design of EVE; that instead of having to reinvent itself every expansion, the game simply continues to add layers, and those early layers are just as important today as they were in the past.

At number 7 is another WAR-related post. Like Aion after it, WAR went live with a lot of hype and hope from the MMO community, and like Aion, it’s sad/frustrating that it did not come close to living up to expectations. Spots 8 and 9 are review posts; people seem to like those, especially if you make them just days after (or even better, before) the game in question is released. Finally last years number 6 rounds out this year’s top 10.

Referrers for all days ending 2010-08-02

virginworlds.com/home.php- 21,138

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/defaul… – 11,015

google.com/reader/view/ – 8,833

tobolds.blogspot.com/ – 4,704

killtenrats.com/ – 3,649

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/defaul… – 3,159

wowinsider.com/ – 2,914

keenandgraev.com/ – 2,701

tagn.wordpress.com/ – 2,529

biobreak.wordpress.com/ – 2,388

Referrers for all days ending 2009-06-22

virginworlds.com/home.php – 11,315

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/defaul… – 11,015

google.com/reader/view – 4,346

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/defaul… – 3,159

wowinsider.com – 2,914

keenandgraev.com – 2,701

tobolds.blogspot.com – 2,598

killtenrats.com – 2,097

bdadv.blogspot.com – 1,386

massively.com – 1,338

Virgin Worlds, just narrowly edging out the BBC last year, reigns supreme a year later, almost doubling the number two spot. The rest of the list is largely unchanged from a year ago, with some minor shuffling and the addition of Biobreak, which pushes the main page of Massively out of the top ten (of course, a lot of Massively traffic comes from individualized pages, so their overall traffic is much higher than what the above list might suggest). Out of all MMO blogs, Tobold had the biggest increase; guess a little dramalama will do that eh? I think next year I’ll break these out to show just the previous year, as this will better reflect the year that was rather than show a total accumulation, and give a more accurate view on who recently sent people over.

Search Terms for all days ending 2010-08-02

hardcore casual – 6,772

syncaine – 3,466

darkfall review – 3,275

field runners – 3,149

dragon age review – 2,439

darkfall reviews – 1,097

aion endgame – 1,038

wotlk – 1,000

darkfall account – 913

wheel of time mmo – 773

Search Terms for all days ending 2009-06-22

field runners – 3,106

hardcore casual – 2,011

syncaine – 1,117

wotlk – 998

darkfall account – 762

warhammer online server population – 749

warhammer online collectors edition – 711

field runners for pc – 670

wheel of time mmo – 583

sandbox mmo – 536

I win! Fighting off Field Runners, the name of this blog and its author return to their rightful Google places as number 1 and number 2. Fitting that Darkfall comes in at number 3, just ahead of last year’s champion. As mentioned above, people love reviews, and Dragon Age made quite a splash when it released, so no surprise with number 5, followed by people looking for even more Darkfall reviews, with others looking for information about Aion’s endgame. Cute that wotlk shows up with exactly 1000 searches, ahead of getting a Darkfall account and the long suspected and hoped-for WoT MMO.

That’s it for the numbers; now let’s talk a little about what actually happened this past year here. I mentioned in my last yearly review that Darkfall was a pleasant surprise, and perhaps the surprise for this year is that I’m still at it a year later. Blood has all but officially gone inactive, and a re-return for Inq is not in the plans atm, but I fully intend to find a new clan to play with and continue on with Darkfall to feed the MMO need. With one expansion set to drop soon, and a massive update coming at the end of the year (or so), I see Darkfall keeping me entertained MMO-wise for some time. I’m sure the release of Civilization 5 is going to cut (deeply) into everything else come September however.

It’s funny that last year I was hoping for a third faction to be added to WAR, because a year later the hope is the same, if somewhat diminished due to how poorly the game has held up overall and with all the staff reductions over at Mythic/EA/Bioware/whatever. This plus the fact that WAR never did become that fun casual PvP game for me, and little attention has been paid to that game around here, which is a major change from a year ago.

“RMT is the future” update: This one is interesting, because the ‘traditional’ F2P model has still not produced a major MMO hit in the US/EU, while at the same time it seems each week another subscription MMO is announcing some F2P-ish account options. My captain obvious prediction? Soon the ‘standard’ for MMO pricing will be a hybrid of the sub and F2P model, and more than one games future will be determined by just HOW they mix the two. As usual, I expect SOE to set the standard on how NOT to do things, someone else to set the baseline for how to do it well (Turbine?) and Blizzard to come in later and ‘polish’ that idea to set a new industry standard, for better or worse. That said, I expect F2P will be very popular (and profitable) if executed in a manner similar to how Riot is doing things with League of Legends. When the model is win/win for the players AND for the company, you know things are good.

So that’s 3 years, damn. Hopefully everyone has enjoyed it (or enjoyed hating it) as much as I have, and fear not, things will continue. Be it a new Friday Blog war, another ‘out of the blue’ MMO surprise, or a second year of ganking in Darkfall, I’ll be writing about it, and hopefully you will be here reading and commenting. Happy gaming everyone, and thanks again for dropping by!

11 Comments | Aion, Blogroll, Civilization Series, Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, Random, Site update, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

One too many gaming options

June 22, 2010

Having too many games to play might seem like a silly thing to stress over (it is), but man can it be annoying/frustrating/great all at the same time. Between Darkfall being about as exciting as its ever been (with an expansion right around the corner as well), Eschalon coming out of nowhere to enthrall me, Battle of Wesnoth being multiplayer TBS gold, Guild Wars all of a sudden getting good, Age of Conan and Wizard101 being interesting rather than terrible in the one hour I’ve played them, and EVE always looking at me from the desktop, I just feel swamped right now. Not to mention gaming’s Armageddon, Civilization 5, is coming to steal 100% of my life away in new hex-based glory.

Can you feel my pain?

I need to do a proper post about Eschalon book one, but I’ll just say here that it was 20ish hours of classic RPG gaming greatness, and book two so far has been an overall improvement on the whole thing. I still don’t get how something that looks so simple on the surface can be this good, other than the old adage that gameplay is indeed king.

Battle of Wesnoth also needs its own post (see, I’m even swamped with potential blog posts here!), but I’ll just say this: if you are playing a strategy game and the very first turn is not critical and always interesting, you are doing it wrong. There is just something amazing about being able to play a complete game in 10-15 turns and feel like you just executed/failed a master strategy, with all of the tiny make-or-break details of a massive multi-hour gaming session. Oh and the maps? Possibly the greatest multiplayer maps of all time, no joke. The game is crazy good, both offline and on, and it’s a crime that it’s free.

Guild Wars: As readers will remember, GW somewhat failed to keep Aria interested, and I was 50/50 on it. Not being a quitter, I decided to press on a bit more with my Dervish, and I must say things really picked up after level 10, including a nice set of missions (with cutscenes), and the overall progression of the story/setting. I had a feeling we quit right before things got better, and at least so far, I was right. Now to get Aria to catch up…

Not much to say about AoC/Wizard101 other than I’m interested in playing them a bit more. So far both games have made a solid first impression (for very different reasons), and if not for the avalanche of options, I’d likely be putting in some serious time into one or both. I’d say hopefully things clear up soon, but I don’t see that happening. The good news is that since neither game is going anywhere, and if anything only improving with time, no worries on the delay to really play them. Same deal for EVE really, just too many options to fully jump back into EVE, so beyond a few missions, some market work, and just talking to old Corp mates, nothing to really write about.

Finally Civilization 5: when Civ 4 was released, I don’t remember how long I played it without playing anything else, but it was a good chunk of time. Civ is just one of those games that demands you keep playing it, and once you start you don’t really stop until you at least finish your current game. Problem is, when the game is still new and fresh, as soon as one game ends you have about a million other things you want to try, so starting another game is inevitable. It’s a great problem to have of course, and I can’t wait for the game to get released, but hopefully I can wrap up Eschalon book two, get enough Wesnoth, and somehow balance Darkfall time come this fall.

Busy gaming season, it’s serious yo.

Chuck-o-the-day: A sequel to 300 is currently being filled staring Chuck Norris. It will be called 1.

7 Comments | Age of Conan, Civilization Series, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Random, Site update, Wizard101 | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

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