The game itself relies way to much on tweaking the player's main city, and it's not balanced for people who can only play for a few minutes a day.
I was honestly expecting to be playing a Civ game. Like: I was imagining Civ4 PTBS, except managed on Facebook, so that you'd get your turn reminders there, and log in with your facebook login. I knew the style would be simpler to fit into flash or something, but I was expecting it to be more like Revolution.
This game is nothing like Civ, it's more like all those other dumb facebook games, except it's worse because of its attempt to try to be a bit civ-ish in theme, making it more competetive, and less satisfying. At least those other games seem to understand that not every player can sit and manage their empire all damn day. In fact, many of those games are specifically designed so that you can't play more than a few minutes every few hours at most. Zynga games also manage to implement real money options in such a way that it does not detriment other players when you spend real money.
TL;DR: I was expecting Civ Revolution PTBS and instead got CivVille, except that it's not as well thought out or balanced as a Zynga game.
Perhaps when it's finally released, more of the kinks will be worked out, and it will be a little better balanced and paced, but it's still not really a civ game, and that's disappointing. Currently, I'm just checking in once in awhile out of a sense of obligation to participate, but I'm not really paying attention to what my Civ is doing.
Fair enough. I guess I never really expected it to be anything besides a simple facebook game and, right now, I'm really trying to procrastinate. My guess is, by the time this thing is stable, I will have lost interest. But right now, the competitive side in me is causing me to keep playing. I'm trying to prove that it's possible to have more than two good teams at once. If I'm proven wrong, then I'll stop playing because it'll be horribly unbalanced.
I stopped playing a while ago, although part of that was due to the big earthquake here which took priority over everything else for a few weeks. I think CB sums up a lot of my feelings towards the game quite well. I was also expecting some kind of pitboss-equivalent where a turn or two would roll every day, and instead found a game heavily geared towards Facebook addicts who play almost constantly every day. Add to that that the game hardly feels like Civ at all, and I really don't have much reason to play it anymore.
Like CB, I'll probably still check in every now and then out of some sense of obligation as a tester. But to be perfectly honest it's no longer particularly fun... it really feels more like a chore, something I "have to do" rather than "want to do". Shame, really... oh well. I rather think after the game's publicly released they're going to have quite a negative reaction from a lot of the old "core" civ fanbase (from the Civ1-4 games). The game just doesn't seem like it's made for them at all. It's not even particularly good as a Facebook game right now, let alone a Civ game. But maybe time will improve it a bit before release, who knows.
Comments
This game still seems to be dominated by those that get in first.
The game itself relies way to much on tweaking the player's main city, and it's not balanced for people who can only play for a few minutes a day.
I was honestly expecting to be playing a Civ game. Like: I was imagining Civ4 PTBS, except managed on Facebook, so that you'd get your turn reminders there, and log in with your facebook login. I knew the style would be simpler to fit into flash or something, but I was expecting it to be more like Revolution.
This game is nothing like Civ, it's more like all those other dumb facebook games, except it's worse because of its attempt to try to be a bit civ-ish in theme, making it more competetive, and less satisfying. At least those other games seem to understand that not every player can sit and manage their empire all damn day. In fact, many of those games are specifically designed so that you can't play more than a few minutes every few hours at most. Zynga games also manage to implement real money options in such a way that it does not detriment other players when you spend real money.
TL;DR: I was expecting Civ Revolution PTBS and instead got CivVille, except that it's not as well thought out or balanced as a Zynga game.
Perhaps when it's finally released, more of the kinks will be worked out, and it will be a little better balanced and paced, but it's still not really a civ game, and that's disappointing. Currently, I'm just checking in once in awhile out of a sense of obligation to participate, but I'm not really paying attention to what my Civ is doing.
Like CB, I'll probably still check in every now and then out of some sense of obligation as a tester. But to be perfectly honest it's no longer particularly fun... it really feels more like a chore, something I "have to do" rather than "want to do". Shame, really... oh well. I rather think after the game's publicly released they're going to have quite a negative reaction from a lot of the old "core" civ fanbase (from the Civ1-4 games). The game just doesn't seem like it's made for them at all. It's not even particularly good as a Facebook game right now, let alone a Civ game. But maybe time will improve it a bit before release, who knows.