Thorton_AP

Why do I think the focus has changed? Lets see compared to civ 4: removed - religion, tech trading ,health simplified - improvements, happiness added - hexes, ranged attacks, strategic resource use, city states I do have a problem with this change as some of the most interesting civ games I had contained very little fighting. But the real problem is in how warfare works. I think that since adding things like giant death robots was necessary things might not turn out too good. Happiness hasn't been simplified. It's been wholistically changed to something different. It's arguably more complicated now because in games prior, each city had it's own happiness rating that was very easy to manage on a city-to-state basis (i.e. get luxury resources and build happiness buildings), now it is civilization wide and influenced by factors such as the total population of your civilization, as well as the number of cities that you have. Religion in Civ 4 was neat, but ultimately not something particularly interesting because they did the (understandably) safe route of their implementation. Given the new social policy progressions, I suspect Civ 5 will be as combat focused as my Civ 4 games were. Never mind that there are severe happiness penalties if you start to warmonger in an aggressive manner. You can go and annex cities or create puppets if you'd like to go Napoleon, but it's going to be a nightmare to your new global happiness rating. Which has effects such as slowing your population growth, as well as slowing/stopping any progression to a natural golden age for your civilization. Tech trading is a wash for me. I often played games that prevented you from trading techs you didn't research yourself simply to stymie it. Especially with the AI going trade happy. There is, however, the diplomatic option of initiating research pacts with other civilizations in order to improve your research capabilities has now been added. What I will probably miss is espionage though. 100% disagree with the "problem" of how warfare works. Individual units have become more valuable, and it's no longer a "one side MUST die" for each combat. Combat actually appears interesting now. As for adding stuff like giant death robots.... I don't know how you could conclude it was "necessary." Seems to me to be something that was added for fun more than anything.

Not sure where you get the idea that the whole game focus shifted to warfare. They greatly changed warfare (which is a good thing), but the other aspects of the game are still very much present.

What buggered up world do you live in that Civ 5 looks like an Indie-production?

I have already alerted my friends and family that if they have any important requests on my time, it's best to get them in today

I disagree that Metacritic is worthless, but that's neither here nor there. But watching a fair bit of video footage I am super stoked! http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/16/civiliza...kthrough-video/ http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-h...zation-v/704829 I'm a fan of Panzer General so the new combat has me excited! I'm also a Civaoholic

Bump due to impending awesomeness. Metacritic score so far is 95 too!

YAAAAAAAAY??????????????????????????

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My favourite way to bug some Warhammer friends is to talk about how Warhammer ripped off Starcraft

HAHAHAHA

I think the idea is that for all of the criticism places like this, and NMA and so forth, toss at Bethesda, they do seem to be giving gamers what they want in a game.

Where do you read that games like Eve only make enough to cover their costs?

Hmmm, she might. I don't know as I didn't play through it that way. My guess would be: Probably

Hurlshot was being sarcastic.

She actually isn't mandatory. You can tell her to pike off early in the game if you wish.

Core RPG values indeed...

I'm sure the BG games are great for creating and setting up persistent worlds too!!

I put Deus Ex and SS2 a bit above Deus Ex is prolly my fav game evar! :D

Even in a wasteland there is some meteorological effect, fog, dust, or at least something more than a clear yellow sky I'm okay with big open spaces but usually there is something to enrich them. Maybe it's not finished, i'm willing to give it the benefit of doubt but the screenshots do no favors to my already growing discontent with DA2. There is a haze in the screenshots. The sky is most definitely not clear. You can see that the sun is hazed out in the background. The sky is a hazy blue, with clouds that have a hint of red in them due to the hazy sunrise. The yellow you see in the sky is definitely clouds. You can see the breaks behind them. They are yellow due to the sun being so low in the sky. Closer to the horizon is a blue haze, except towards the as the sun illuminates some of the haze itself. Here's some actual real life photographs that I think are somewhat similar: (I like this one because it even shows bluer sky below the yellower sky created by the clouds and haze. Heck, after finding these pictures I'll rescind my previous statement that the DA2 screenshots probably aren't from a desert.

Well, AP bombed too. So, not that good an argument. I remember the sales figures being 83,000 for Vampire Bloodlines after a few months. I believe that Alpha Protocol, while not the financial success that Sega (and we all) wanted it to be, trounced Bloodlines in first run sales. The comparison was my comparison. It's a favorable one for both games.

I suspect it's the same screenshots from the playable demos and so forth. Makes sense for those areas to be done first since people will be playing them. I called it a wasteland too. Likely been scorched due to the blight. It's not a flat desert with intense heat that's going to cause mirages though.

Don't we need to wait for Volo's response before it is complete?

Please don't compare AP to VTMB. Ever. VTMB: 9/10 AP: 6.5/10 Stop it. I'll happily compare two games. Especially when I find the style of said games remind me very much of each other. And this is a compliment to both games. Sorry AP is not your cup of tea. Too bad for all of us that Bloodlines was a giant bomb financially. Shows what those review scores mean I guess.

Which screenshots show a desert? What I'm seeing is aftermath of the blight. I couldn't definitively state what the region is supposed to look like under normal circumstances. Besides, the land they are on is clearly uneven. Look at the third picture (the one with the smoke in the background) at the Game Banshee site here. Furthermore, even if this were a desert, it doesn't appear to be a very warm period of the day (i.e. the sky looks more like dusk or dawn than midday, especially since the sun is not at all high in the sky), meaning you're likely not going to be getting the temperature gradients necessary to have a suitable mirage. The land isn't appropriately shaped, unless you're expecting the mirages to be on the little plateau the fighting is taking place on. Maybe part of the problem with the graphics is that you think they are something else than they actually are. The images are not what your imagination is telling you they are. None of the in game imagery shown on the game banshee site shows me places where mirages would be suitable. Same goes for the glare factor. It's early/late in the day, and the sun has a haze through it. Which is probably indicative of the the area going more scorched earth which the blight seems to result in. The PC is from Lothering isn't he? That's probably it burning in the background and this wasteland is the wake of where the blight passed at one point.

THere's burned out trees in several of the screenshots. It seems like where they are fighting is some sort of wasteland. As for the color palette, I'm just happy it's not generic LOTR style stuff anymore. Given my impressions for what the location is supposed to look like, I have no real beef with the palette though. It looks like a wasteland. Aren't they running from the blight or something? I wouldn't be surprised if this was an area the darkspawn ripped through already. There's some large fire in the background. Are they fleeing a town? I don't mind the hurlocks, though some variation is sorely needed. I find that the armor edges are sharp, but think that the base character models (like the faces) look pretty good. Especially Flemeth.