#CIV 4 CAVEMAN TO COSMOS HOW TO#

And I like the unique twist on diplomacy, how specific treaties between factions have tangible effects on the game. Satellites are also cool, if a bit underdeveloped. I like the concept of affinities and how they affect the units and your culture as you go. But from a design perspective, the BE aliens are more varied and creative, and more interesting to fight against. From a scientific perspective, the AC psychofungus is the more 'alien' alien, and the more interesting and inspired adversary. I had like x10 times their troops but the swamp front is narrow so it didn't matter anyway.Д¬lick to expand.I think Beyond Earth has some interesting ideas, and some things can be considered improvements over AC. *I remember when I tried to invade Britain and got my ass beat by independents, because the Bretons had their own heavy infantry unit which had bonuses for swamp and marsh combat, and much of the land was swamp and march. Something like it would be perfect for a civ-style game. Sometimes it was better to Doomstack, but sometimes it was better to have smaller armies. Knowing when to siege cities and when to assault themДЄlso due to the way supply and frontlines worked, Doomstacking only did so much. A good combination of infantry, ranged units and cavalry There's strategy in making sure you have a good army: The auto combat in it is pretty good and serviceable. For this reason, I had some hope for the hexes and 1upt in Civ5, but I never managed to love that game.Д¬lick to expand.Another good system would be the one used by Field of Glory: Empires. What I liked about Civ 4 was it tried to break off from the 'carpet everything with cities of your color' gameplay and combat actually started to make some kind of sense (never forget, phalanx killing bombers in Civ1, or a lone spearman killing off a horde of barbarian horsemen by healing himself through veterancy, as seen in civ 3). The first was of course the most primitive, but each civ afterwards has something that I look back at rather fondly (the built-in copy protection in Civ 1, the tax distribution sliders limited by government, the throne room and the palace from civ 3, etc.) and something I was less than enthusiastic about. Other than this, it's hard for me to trace a definite trajectory for decline/incline in civ games.

#CIV 4 CAVEMAN TO COSMOS HOW TO#

IIRC there was some work to mod it into Civ4, but the biggest problem was always in teaching the AI how to work it. There was some overlap with a few decent ideas getting into Civ3, but the biggest loss is in the terraformable map and unit editor. When it comes to the dumbing down of Civ, I think the biggest missed opportunity (not necessarily dumbing down) can be seen when you compare it to Alpha Centauri. The AI is still rather dumb, but seems to handle itself better than with 1UPT. It's far from perfect, but allows stacks to cooperate through reinforcements, and deployment of larger stacks an be limited by landscape, line of sight can be a factor, and battles can be fought over more than one turn. For all its flaws, GenderNonspecificPersonkind(tm) actually proposes an interesting middle ground here by stacking units into groups of 4-8, then having the battle play out on a designated field. Of course, 1 unit per turn brought its iwb share of problems. Probably the best thing about it is that it's very easy to teach the AI how to work with this: declare war, park your doomstacks on the other side of the border, There won't ever be any clever outmaneuvering, cavalry will be of limited use, and terrain doesn't matter as much as it should.ДЄll the counter mechanics, like bombardment, collateral damage, changing target priority, nukes always felt ham-fisted to me.

War begins, you dump your stack into the enemy territory, and it boils down to who has a bigger one. Click to expand.There's no tactics or finesse with a doomstack.

Civ 4 caveman to cosmos