SlashDot Civilization 5 Review

We’ll do our own. Won’t be for a while though. Exciting new sci-fi related writing project to announce soon.

Meanwhile…

Review Civilization V

“…Sid Meier and the Firaxis crew realized that they had a solid foundation, and poured their efforts into refining everything that worked, and revamping everything that didn’t. Civilization V reflects not just a few years of direct development after the launch of Civ 4, but also nearly two decades of continually evolving game design.”

Dreamlords Resurrection: Paradox Interactive’s first FTP online title

Paradox Interactive announces its first Free-to-Play (FtP) title, Dreamlords of Resurrection, a fantasy theme that will, hints the release, include long term strategic planning. (Press release: Paradox Interactive unveils Dreamlords Resurrection – Paradox Interactive.)  This and future FtP titles will be released under the Paradox Connect brand. Dreamlords is an MMORTS game (Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy) that has been around for a few years independently.

400-turn Civilization 5 action report

A report of some pre-release play of the new Civilization V. In sum: graphics improved, of course. And a new city growth system exploits the new map hexes nicely, which is good to hear.  Elimination of unit stacks brings the games into the realm of strategic, army-level war games. Long overdue. As the reviewer mentions, encirclement becomes a viable ground strategic goal, instead of the wars of attrition, with single-square stacks of units hammering each other until one or the other is eliminated. Additionally units now have hit points, which will make combat a bit more interesting than the winner-take-all affairs they’ve been up to now. Also discussed are city states, a totally new concept, and a revamped social policy aspect. No mention of the supposed ranged combat feature. Perhaps it was dropped. Archers firing at targets two or three hexes away at this scale would squander all the benefits of what sounds like an improved strategic combat system. Come September! Yes. We have come around.

UPDATE: Article author Stephen Totillo in an e-mail reports that ranged combat is still present, but that it works well. Not a deal breaker. We’ll see.

Wall Street Journal notices wargames

A nice little capsule review of the history of wargames by the Wall Street Journal, Boys, Men and the War-Strategy Game.

Yes the hobby does fill a need but then I heard an ad on the radio today promoting a math-only tutoring franchise. So the schools have a gap there too. Just what is it the public school actually do?

Anyway, my interest started when a high school history teacher used Diplomacy as a class activity so I guess I was lucky.  But toy soldiers and Sgt Rock/Sgt. Fury comics had interests too so I may have been fated to be a grognard.

The article doesn’t dwell too much on any sociological thesis of boys, men, war and wargames (which are often labeled, somewhat prissilly, as “conflict simulations” so as not to offend any nearby peaceniks.)

However playing a wargame doesn’t make you a warmonger. In fact, as any soldier will tell you. Peace is preferred. But if war is the enemy then the first rule of warfare is…know your enemy.

Civ 5 will allow conversion of Civ 4 maps

This new Civilization version 5, due out in the fall,  may be growing on me. I know I mentioned perhaps not even getting it but the self-doubts on that began immediately after writing it in a previous post. I’ll probably end up getting it, since we’ve gotten every version since the original, and Civ 4 with the Warlords and Beyond the Sword add-ons is the best iteration since then.

Not that I have a lot of saved maps  but this conversion feature will please many players, especially modders. The World Builder in 5 will allow conversion of your existing maps.

Still not on board with the ranged attacks. At these scales, archers firing more than one hex away seems to us like being able to shoot arrows from Miami to Havana. But I may be willing to live with that.

Note: I haven’t played Civ 4 in a few weeks, and so no tip posts lately. We have a few things in the works.  More later.

Civ 5 Preview at E3

Gamespot reports on the near complete new  fifth major version of the Civilization franchise at the E3 conference. Hexes, yes! I’m not too sure about the ranged combat at that scale, though.

Due out in September.

Civ IV Tip #2: Check the Cultural Points on the Victory Screen

From your Medieval period on, be sure to check the Victory Conditions screen often, especially for the cultural point leader among your opponents. Number one reason is that the screen will list the opponent most likely to win a cultural victory over you.

Once a Civ gets three cities with Legendary status (50,000 culture points) the game ends.Whether you are going for a cultural victory yourself or not, while planning your own victory, a secondary task would be to prepare for a war against that cultural leading opponent, perhaps centuries down the line. If they look like they’re getting close to a cultural victory, attack. 

Secondarily, since there are only three cities that count toward a cultural victoy, you can check this list for your own three leading cities. This would be so that you can concentrate your cultural efforts in those cities alone. Build the cultural wonders there. Don’t even bother building culture-contributing improvements in any other cities for the purpose of contributing culture, unless the improvement gives something the city needs to maintain order, productivity or something that contributes to your entire Civ (knowledge or gold.) For instance, a Theatre contributes culture only to the city where it’s built (and one Great Person point .) You ‘ll not want to use resources or time building them in cities that are not candidates for cultural bringing cultural victory. Except you will have to build enough (five) to qualify for the Globe Theatre national wonder.

$1 Million Perfect Game Prize won in first 90 minutes

A 24-year old XBox Live player from Mobile, Alabama wins the 2K Sports Pitch a Perfect Game Challenge, and a million bucks, while hardly even trying.

Strategy Game Review: East India Company, Designer’s Cut

Channeling the great prestidigitator, film director, raconteur, wine pitchman and professional living-legend (now deceased) Orson Welles, InfinityBound will post no strategy game review before its time. So for you late-comers and you long-tail riders, here’s a much-belated look at a pretty good game that meshes a simpler trading type strategy mode a la Patrician II with real-time ship-to-ship Age of Sail tactics, make for a visually engaging and playable hybrid.

East India Company (EIC) is Paradox Interactive’s early-Age of Sail commerce/naval combat simulation that puts you in control of one of the semi-private 17th/18th-century enterprises that established, organized and exploited trade in parts of Africa and Central Asia for their respective crowns and countries.

One of the reasons we were so determined to review it is that it meets the criteria for open-ended strategy game that InfinityBound so favors. We had hoped to review EIC when we first installed it on our own PC last year, since it looked like we met the minimum system requirements. Then we saw how badly the game ran.  Jerky and draggy, it was also non-reactive, requiring you to click on commands two, three times or more. A most unpleasant gaming experience. The NVIDIA GeForce 6150 on the motherboard of my off-the-shelf desktop PC just didn’t make the grade. And it’s an unfortunate indicator of what we can expect from games to come. Graphics RAM is where the rubber meets the road in games these days and the exact requirement of 128 meg, which my machine met, wasn’t enough, even with the preferences dialed down. 

When we got temporary access to son Leo’s graphically blazing home-built HD outfit we immediately installed EIC.  What a difference 500 megabytes of graphics RAM can make. The game ran like a charm, and best of all you only had to click on stuff once.

So since getting the game there have been some add-ons, including: Trafalgar, Pirate Bay and Privateer. The version we ended up reviewing here is the Designer’s Cut, which adds islands to the tactical maps and various other improvements to the visuals and to the multiplayer experience.

In the strategic game you make all major decisions for an East India Company operating out of one of the major European maritime trading powers, starting in the 17th Century. You build ships and add them to fleets of up to five boats each, then send them around the Cape of Africa to India and environs for silk, tea, spices or other goods. Or they can trade closer in for diamonds and ivory, among other things, on the coast of Africa and its offshore islands. You’ll be competing against the  other companies of the sort, those from England, the Netherlands, Spain , Portugal and France. Even the Holy Roman Empire (the loosely organized German states) can engage in trade, even through they weren’t quite a maritime power.

The trading is straightforward on a beautifully rendered strategic map. You’ll know which ports will earn you a  profit for which commodities, unlike many trading games where you have to guess or keep notes. This is only right, since the operatives in such companies made it their business to know where the best trades would likely be. Along the way you’ll have to cope with pirates and other random events, like ports closing suddenly due to disease and/or your ships being quarantined. And goods aren’t limitless, so even though you know you can turn a profit somewhere, you may show up to find they are fresh out of their main trading item.

The scenario you choose will also pose challenges, divided into primary and secondary goals: import a number of tons of some good, or conquer a city or destroy enemy ships of a certain number by a certain year and you’ll be rewarded by the crown. Missing the mission will end the game, but as long as you meet the goals you’re free to pursue any other strategy. The advantages gained by the goals will accrue to your benefit in any case.

You’ll build ships of the expected types:  various merchantmen and galleons and, of course, the ship that gave the name to a category, the East Indiaman, as well as frigates and ships-of-the-line. They’ll come assigned with a captain, but you can dismiss him and assign another. You’ll have complete control over who commands the fleets and will be able to shuffle ships from fleet to fleet depending on your needs of the moment. Captains and crews gain experience over time and through encounters, and captains can earn special skills.

Ground combat to take cities are abstracted. The software will match your strength against the enemy’s, factored in that number and quality of marines and sailors, strength of fortifications and of ships present. You’ll either take the city of not, and losses will be applied accordingly. It is possible to lose ships in city assaults.

When your units encounter an enemy ship or fleet at sea you’ll be taken to the tactical game. Your fleet and the enemy’s will see each other at the horizon. The encounters can be at any time of day or night and many different sea and atmospheric conditions. Sometimes you’ll wish to avoid contact with a stronger enemy but the speed of the fleet’s slowest ship dictates so there may be times when you cannot. Once on the tactical map, depending on the wind direction, you may be able to flee, or close with the enemy if you feel like you have the advantage. The sky and sea vistas in the tactical game here are another beautifully executed aspect of the game.

The  tactical game has two modes: RTS (Real Time Strategy) and Direct Command. In RTS you control your ships from above — although you can zoom in fairly close – using simple point-and-click, as well as commands for organizing the fleets into groups as per other games of the type. The sail controls, unfortunately, are no more detailed than other games in the genre, with three settings: no sails, combat sail and full sail. One feature the game has that most others do not, though, is crew. The decks of your ships have men scurrying about, a welcome touch.

In Direct Command mode you can get right down on deck with the gun crews (in a frigate or other type with an open gun deck.) The TAB key lets you change your view and the WSAD key combination will steer the ship left-right and change the sails. From here you can give the order to fire the great guns, and from close-in you’ll experience the virtual sound-and-fury and the sometimes startling battle effects. The damage model is particularly excellent, once eliciting an audible gasp from your reviewer when a ball burst through a sail and the sail behaved as you’d imagine a slack sail would, first a sudden radical unslackening then puncturing, leaving a hole.

Left-click the slide show for full-screen mode.

We have minor quibbles with some interface awkwardness in the homeport screen and we came across a consistently reproducable crash in the  loot screen (after a victory, when trying to add a surrendered ship to a full fleet) but other than that the design is solid. 

Many decisions similar to establishing and maintaining the real far-flung trade seem to be reproduced (tip: try to make Cape Town yours) and so the game succeeds as a strategic simulation.  You can set your trade routes and let the traders go about their business, while monitoring your progress toward achieving the goals of the current mission, while also perhaps simultaneously taking command of a combat fleet to cruise around the map keeping the trade routes safe, looking for likely enemy targets or pirate fleets. It’ll be your own choice to emphasize the strategic or tactical game, where EIC is at least equal to any of the pure sailing titles out there and better than some.

And yes, it is moddable.

Summary: East India Company is a beautiful and playable strategic/tactrical hybrid, but make sure you have plenty of graphics RAM.

M.U.L.E.: A classic returns

The game that put PC multi-player gaming on the map back in the early 80s, M.U.L.E, has been revived online by Blue Systems. A 36 megabyte download for Windows, about 16 mb for Mac and Linux. If you’ve never played or if you were weren’t around during the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 era, check the instructional video or the how-to-play page. Forward a port to host games yourself, play games hosted by others, and/or engage other players in the chat lobby mediated by the Planet M.U.L.E. server.

Our username? KITEthenovel, or course. See you there.