Civilization-like Ara blurs lines between hot-seat and play-by-mail multiplayer
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Specifically online multiplayer runs in the cloud, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
During the podcast, Meyer shared details about how multiplayer will work, and that promises some improvements over Civilization as well. The game runs in the cloud, and is persistently going on whether you're logged in or not
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No shout out for Old World?
It's the best Civ knock off I've played. It's made by the Civ 4 designer Soren Johnson. It fixes a lot of problems with the genre and also mixes in Crusader Kings style family events.
It's the best Civ knock off I've played. It's made by the Civ 4 designer Soren Johnson. It fixes a lot of problems with the genre and also mixes in Crusader Kings style family events.
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This is a big quality of life improvement to not have to have a friend host or pass around save files. Kinda surprising Civilization didn't do it already.
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I hope players would have the option to set a window of time for players to submit actions (aka not everyone has to be online simultaneously), so folks can play even when timezones would otherwise prevent it
E: My apologies, this is actually in TFA and I managed to misread it.
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I'd be interested in hearing more about that non-linear tech tree. What does that mean, exactly? Can I skip inventing fire and jump straight to electricity? I'm just struggling to envision how non-linearity is compatible with prerequisites.
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Isn't that how the game Diplomacy works? If so, this system can work quite well when designed properly.
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In other words, it's a WEGO game. those have been done before but sadly underrepresented. In almost any reasonably realistic (with or without plasma guns) tactical game it's superior to turn based with those awkward opportunity fire rules trying to duct tape the not-turn-based world logic into a turn-based game. Make actors move simultaneously and that goes away, e.g. a guy running across a doorway is now a hard target.
I guess on operational or strategic scale the turns become even more egregious with millions of actors waiting their turn.. Especially if you've got long range artillery, air force and the like. But large-scale strategy has almost always been done on table-top board game logic. Only ones I can think of out of hand are simulation-oriented games like CMO of the Harpoon legacy.
Here's RPS article about how difficult it's been to devs to make it work properly in strategy level. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ho...ghtmare-of-making-a-simultaneous-turn-4x-game
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I've been burned by promises about virtual lives and organic simulations that turned out to not be true more than once (most famously: Spore).
As to the "everyone submits over a time window then all happens simultaneously". I think the first time I recall that was Empyrion Conquest (hopefully I recall that name correctly) around 1989.
As to the "everyone submits over a time window then all happens simultaneously". I think the first time I recall that was Empyrion Conquest (hopefully I recall that name correctly) around 1989.
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Ahh, play-by-mail. I tried one back in the 80's and thought it was a really cool idea, but I was poor and only played a couple turns. This article said it was $1.50/turn, but I thought it was just $1.00 (i.e. $100 adjusted for childhood finances 
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en.wikipedia.org
It's a Crime (play-by-mail game) - Wikipedia
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Lots of board games have simple straightforward solutions to the design issue of taking turns. I’m baffled that Civ6 multiplayer and this game ignores them all.
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This was the finishing portion of the quote regarding gameplay...
Said Meyer: "You can take your turn when you have time and wait until it gets submitted. If your friend decides he doesn't want to play anymore, an AI can come in and take over for him, it doesn't mean the end of your entire world if you're playing online and you don't want to do that, you can stop, and you don't have to worry about destroying the game for everyone else who's playing."
I do miss playing chess via email with a guy from my fraternity.
Said Meyer: "You can take your turn when you have time and wait until it gets submitted. If your friend decides he doesn't want to play anymore, an AI can come in and take over for him, it doesn't mean the end of your entire world if you're playing online and you don't want to do that, you can stop, and you don't have to worry about destroying the game for everyone else who's playing."
I do miss playing chess via email with a guy from my fraternity.
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Reminds me of the 16-player Stars! match I played back in 1995-1996 (yes, it lasted for 6 glorious months). I loved the concept of basically setting up all my planet build orders and fleet vectors/speeds/actions then submitting and seeing what happened. The game had a cool news-type digest for everything that happened when you got your next turn file emailed to you: "The Minion fleet of 96 Buttmunchers shredded your fleet of 24 Gigantaurs orbiting planet Oho for 20000 damage."
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J.C. Helios
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I hope the A.I. improvements pan out. Firaxis has never bothered to make a smart A.I. for the Civ games, so they're ripe to get overthrown.
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Huh... Thanks for bringing this one up, I had lost track of Soren Johnson after offworld trading company (which didnt click for me, but Old World sounds right up my alley)
Another game-soul lost to the Epic game store, I guess.
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This I'm actually interested in, since it seems they focused a lot in the AI, unlike Civ 5 & 6.
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Ah, Spore - the game that made me think Peter Molyneux was not extraordinarily overpromising on his next game
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Yes, it has been done before, and it has been done well before (at least in boardgames)
Its hard to do well if you try to cram it back into a video game where it was not part of the original design and it throws off the game balance.
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I'm also intrigued by the move away from hex tiles to regions defined by topography. That should help cities and empires grow more organically, rather than being blobs with little awareness of the surrounding terrain.
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What are the odds on the headlines this time next year being something along the lines of "Studio behind Ara: History Untold being shut down as Microsoft's Xbox division looks to refocus on becoming more profitable."?
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You could very well be right, but how I read this paragraph is more like: All games run in the cloud and will be going on whether you’re logged in or not. As such multiplayer will also run in the cloud.
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I hope they will be generous enough to allow their (potential) customers to choose where to host games, anyway. A game of this type absolutely does not need to be tied so the attention span of some corporation, tied to shareholder value or some BS like that.
It is just a game, I can certainly ignore their product and do something else.
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I always think of it as "Spore: the game where DRM finally became so odious it caused me to abandon PC gaming for a decade", but that's not Molyneux's fault. I always chuckle in hindsight at the number of lost sales that ham-fisted attempt to "protect" sales cost EA.
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It was terribly in my opinion. They gave advantages to attackers, and made the whole thing a matter of checkers because first attacks always won massively, so you had to play super aggresively with timing of attacks mattering more than anything else. Add to that the win mechanic of winning one you are double the size of the second biggest opponent, and it becomes a waiting game, beating the biggest enemy at checkers and absorbing their whole empire and winning the game :/
I found Millenia and Humankind more interesting. At least they changed things in a way that didnt make a joke out of combat.
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Mr.Mumbles
Ars Centurion
Until the publisher decides to shut down the servers, and then you just have a useless digital game brick. Yeeeeeah... No, thanks. You say QoL, I say shit-sandwich DRM scheme.
Simultaneous turns sounds good in theory, but I've yet to see an actual good implementation of such in any strategy video game.
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Gandhi doesn't threaten. He reminds you gently that his words are backed up by a higher power.
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Dr Zambo Jicky
Smack-Fu Master, in training
I believe you are thinking of Will Wright. Molyneux was the Fable, Black & White, Goddus guy
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“In the cloud” just means the company runs the online servers, just like a great many multiplayer computer games. It means the multiplayer has a lifespan, those servers will be shut down at some point and multiplayer will stop working. Normally this is no big deal since people get bored if the game and stop playing after a couple of years, but Civilization games have legs. There is still a community of active Civ IV players for example.
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It's a pretty big negative assumption that it won't also have a server-less online mode. I suppose we will see.
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The military does become, just attack first as the most important strat. I think units have a little too much movement but that balances with the Order system. So your military becomes an economics games of how many units can you produce and how many Orders can you produce to actually get them to the front line and attack.
I was never big on the strategic combat optimizations in civ and enjoyed the econ side more anyway.
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enlightened.doggo
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Yeah the win conditions and balancing are why I haven't played more than a few playthroughs of Old World. Game has solid mechanics. It was actually pretty easy to win on the standard difficulty by just prioritizing taking city sites and building wonders. World domination is not the way to win that game as you will reach the end of the tech tree before coming close to accomplishing that. The game doesn't feel like it has a lot of replayability, due to most warring taking place with tribes and the short tech tree. I did enjoy what was there though.
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