First Impressions
Well, it's a Demo game, basically... Or is it more like what we were hoping Realpolitik would be, minus all the theoretical backstabbing?
I'm concerned about how exploration is handled (building guard towers) and how wars are condensed to one battle that can not end in a stalemate. If you lose a defensive battle, your civilization is gone, and you are part of the invading civilization. Can't help feeling that this is a bit too simplistic.
Also concerned about people paying money, but that was already brought up in a different post.
I am really looking forward to it.
I'm concerned about how exploration is handled (building guard towers) and how wars are condensed to one battle that can not end in a stalemate. If you lose a defensive battle, your civilization is gone, and you are part of the invading civilization. Can't help feeling that this is a bit too simplistic.
Also concerned about people paying money, but that was already brought up in a different post.
I am really looking forward to it.
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The main thing that concerns me at the moment is that it seems like anyone can join and leave any civ arbitrarily at any time, and as I understand it it sounds like there's one Facebook-wide game of CivWorld that everyone's involved in. (I'm still not sure how long the games are supposed to last for, either... weeks, months? And how does it work with people joining halfway through?)
Anyway, combined with the fact that there are only 10 civ banners to join under, it seems like it might be impossible to compete either solely with your friends, or with only your friends under a single civ banner. In other words, I can't see how the game as I presently understand it will enable you to compete exclusively (or semi-exclusively) within a group of friends. That would be a shame if it's the case. However, maybe I'm misunderstanding something.
That seems a bit weird, but I actually don't see it as being a major problem... guess we'll see.
From the sounds of things though, wars will be quite spread-out over time, taking quite a few turns/movements/days to resolve. And the defender winning is kind of the same as a stalemate, really. They get the attacker's gold in that case, but not the territory.
It is a bit simplistic, I agree. But I do think it's a good idea not to eliminate the players' cities (which would be fun-killing) and simply switch control to a different "banner". Though actually, from what I've read, it sounds like losing your civilization will almost be too trivial - hardly mattering in the slightest game-wise. Sure you're stuck with a low rank in the new civ for a little bit, but you can always work your way up again... or you can just leave that civ altogether and join another... or (maybe?) leave and form a new civ.
Not too sure how the details will work, but it seems like civilizations are going to be weirdly fluid in this game, not to mention rather weak. But I'm just basing this off guesswork, having not played the game at all. So I might be completely wrong.
Indeed...
Me too, can't wait to actually play the game rather than just reading about it.
However, there's still the issue that smaller civs won't be able to compete militarily with larger civs, and so they're pretty much doomed to be absorbed into one big snowball eventually. Even if the number of units on the field is limited at any one time, much bigger civs have the ability to reinforce for longer, so will eventually win regardless. Hmm. (There's another side matter there, which is if the game gets really big, you could easily forsee a "logjam" scenario where some players can never add their own units to an army despite wanting to.)
Actually, putting that matter aside, I'm still not sure of how the game's supposed to work with regards to civs being "absorbed". When a civ is absorbed, does that remove it from play entirely... in which case the list of ten civs will quickly thin down to one or two and make the game rather monotonous (no wars or only stalemate wars)? Or does the civ become re-available for picking... in which case what's to stop the group of players who were absorbed by the attacking civ from leaving that civ and restarting their old civ? It all seems a bit confusing to me right now.
Pretty sure that I read that once a civ is abandoned, anyone can restart it. Maybe obliteration will be handled differently, but I think they want the game to be open to new players even in mid- or end-game.
Also, the only thing I saw that would stop an Imperial Snowball civ is the fact that neutral nations can provide defenders to another Civ. You can't help out the attacker. Theoretically, if one Civ starts to look like it has intentions of hegemony, all of the mercenaries are going to be sent to help stop the little Napoleons.
I don't think you'll get that much fame for being a peon on the winner of the last (of twenty) eras. You don't have to win the last era to have the highest fame.
Heh, Sid's starting to look younger than me...
I'm now ranked 31st. Don't think I'll ever be ranked this high again.
Someone solved the Culture puzzle, and it did not reset.
Can't build a second house. I can only move the first one. (Kind of a huge deal.)
And it's already down for scheduled maintainence.
I got a great builder as a reward for looking at the Help file. I just don't know how to apply him to a wonder yet.
Also, I'm not sure how to join/found a civilization.
I think it went down for maintainence only a couple of minutes after I got in, because the banner at the top of the screen said "Network Timeout", though I know that there were other testers active in the game, as comments and milestones were still being listed.
By the way, does anyone know if there's some place where we're supposed to be able to talk to Firaxis about problems? Some testers' chat room, or CivWorld private forum? I'm still unsure on exactly how we're supposed to talk with them.
I did figure out how to build further houses. When you town goes up in population, there will be additional greyed out men in the bottom right corner of the game area. If you click on one of the greyed out persons, it will then give you the option to build a house for them.
Yeah, I eventually figured out the house thing myself. Not at all obvious though - you wonder why they didn't put in the option in the build menu.
I was also thinking that the pace wasa strange. Usually facebook games are designed to be things that you check every few hours and do one or two things, right? not games that you can sit at and play all day? I don't know. The only Facebook game I've played before is Scrabble.
Battles are the main thing that concern me at the moment. If this is the intended pacing, then it does seem way too fast. I haven't calculated it exactly, but it seems like at the current pace you could go to bed for the night, or go to work for the day, and come back to find another civ having started, finished and won a battle that destroyed your civ before you had a chance to react. That doesn't seem quite right.
Maybe I'm just mistaken... but it certainly seems that the game feels rather fast right now.
Which is why I have four houses now (for two pop). Also, you can't move or recycle uninhabited houses. (Maybe if I hit the move/recycle button in the build menu??) Also, my second (buy one, get one free, I guess) guard tower managed to stick around once the game stabilized, but is in a very bad location (right next to my palace) which I cannot correct.
It's up, and you need to register:
http://www.2kgames.com/civworld/forums/index.php
I think you should be able to deconstruct buildings if you choose though, for a certain hammer fraction? At least that's what the wiki said.
Registered, still waiting to get in though. I have about 1.5 hours before they go home I think (presuming west coast time), so I hope I get in before the day's up.
Aside from that, not bad. It's a basic facebook timewaster game. It doesn't seem dramatically different from, say, mafia wars, just a lot more colorful. It seems like something to be involved in several times a day for a bit longer periods, though. Not sure how it would play as a once a day thing.
Being near people of the same type
Being near water
Being near forests
I wish this was documented a bit better.
Presume better documentation will come in time... it is indeed a bit cryptic right now.
Ah, good to know, thanks. Hmm, and if you chain together multiple double-matches, does that give even more points?