Post by Semi-Skilled Mink on Sept 8, 2008 21:58:05 GMT
The creature & Civ stages are quite fun....why is Space sooo Haaard?
Butilikeit.
;D
The main thing is the crazy addictiveness the game has on you. I really enjoy the 'friendship' development as you try and slowly coerce your neighbours into allying with you or donating their forces.
Although I will say that when you get to a 50/50% landmass rule with a bot in Civilization mode, it was a bit of a copout that the game automatically merges the teams! Maybe it's because I'm on easy mode, but I was preparing to fight the last country for the planet
There's an idea actually, I spotted my first Civ-mode planet from Space today, I might go and find it again just to flatten every city except 1 and then immediately start trading with them the moment they evolve!
Playing with the terraforming tools is fun, especially with that little habitability window you swap by the minimap. Watching the cursor slowly moving, and trying to put different types of plants in to fill the open eco slots before your terraforming machine conks out is really cool.
The creature mode is very cute, but it's strange that you never get to spend a long time there.
I was thinking - could this be marketed for kids? It seems like a U-rated game that children could learn to play, during the creature stage, but then as soon as it goes Tribal, the learning curve is devastatingly steep. And space is just ridiculously tricky once you start chaining colonies and trade routes.
But this game is so deep. I love how Maxis have realised that people are going to make giant cocks and copyright violations from films and mostly not worried about it. If you look carefully at the naming/looks/mechanics of certain objects, they are blatantly sci-film references!
And with the space, Maxis have actually paid a lot of attention (despite the obvious proportion and realism trade-offs) to make this semi-educational. There are moments when I played the space mode and my camera swooped past a close-by galaxy, where you could see 'gravitational lensing' had been put into the game.
Other things like habitable zones, and eco-systems have all been made extremely true-to-life.
It's a mammoth effort, and with a little bit of difficulty tweaking I'd expect that this game could be marketed to very young kids to help them learn while they play.
[Edit - no picture]
Butilikeit.
;D
The main thing is the crazy addictiveness the game has on you. I really enjoy the 'friendship' development as you try and slowly coerce your neighbours into allying with you or donating their forces.
Although I will say that when you get to a 50/50% landmass rule with a bot in Civilization mode, it was a bit of a copout that the game automatically merges the teams! Maybe it's because I'm on easy mode, but I was preparing to fight the last country for the planet
There's an idea actually, I spotted my first Civ-mode planet from Space today, I might go and find it again just to flatten every city except 1 and then immediately start trading with them the moment they evolve!
Playing with the terraforming tools is fun, especially with that little habitability window you swap by the minimap. Watching the cursor slowly moving, and trying to put different types of plants in to fill the open eco slots before your terraforming machine conks out is really cool.
The creature mode is very cute, but it's strange that you never get to spend a long time there.
I was thinking - could this be marketed for kids? It seems like a U-rated game that children could learn to play, during the creature stage, but then as soon as it goes Tribal, the learning curve is devastatingly steep. And space is just ridiculously tricky once you start chaining colonies and trade routes.
But this game is so deep. I love how Maxis have realised that people are going to make giant cocks and copyright violations from films and mostly not worried about it. If you look carefully at the naming/looks/mechanics of certain objects, they are blatantly sci-film references!
And with the space, Maxis have actually paid a lot of attention (despite the obvious proportion and realism trade-offs) to make this semi-educational. There are moments when I played the space mode and my camera swooped past a close-by galaxy, where you could see 'gravitational lensing' had been put into the game.
Other things like habitable zones, and eco-systems have all been made extremely true-to-life.
It's a mammoth effort, and with a little bit of difficulty tweaking I'd expect that this game could be marketed to very young kids to help them learn while they play.
[Edit - no picture]
