Beta 0.870 now out! (The Giant Revision)

[Misery]

I haven't played this game for like a month.  Sounds like I'm in for an interesting experience...

I'm actually really glad to have you gone and then back in that way, since it sounds like it wasn't grabbing you before.  Hopefully with a lot of distance and enough of a reset here, it will have a different effect this time.  We'll see!

Yeah, I have been in and out too, and not played at all for at least 2 weeks. Should I hop back in on this version, or should I wait for a few of those unfinished details you mentioned?

Starting in a jungle kinda seems really bad.... EVERYTHING takes many, many turns to make, and there appears to be nothing that can be done about it (particularly as it didn't exactly give me much choice about where to put the main base...); that part may be just a tad way beyond my limited patience, I might mess with it a little but then restart until it doesnt do that.  So that could be a pretty big issue.  Heck, the number is so exaggerated it almost seems like a guaranteed lose-the-game situation, due to the very dramatic slowness at which you'll proceed. 

Ouch, yeah, that does suck.  For next one:

* The construction complexity added by forest and jungles is now vastly less.

I think a decent penalty on certain terrain is a good thing, then terrain actually matters and cities will follow natural geographic lines. If you start in a jungle, expand out in the direction to get out of it as quickly as possible.

As long as every terrain is good for something/someone, then it is interesting. Like from civ5, if you start in tundra you are more motivated to spread to warmer climates faster, but at the middle/end of the game the tundra has oil and was useful.

That's the thing though:  You have to be ABLE to expand.   

The worldgen, it turns out, hadnt actually changed much (thus me reverting to my original complaint about it), as the area I started in turned out to be a fluke; most of the surrounding landscape was the same oversized blank biomes as before.... as was the jungle I was in.  Which meant that the slowdown at the start would have kept me there for quite awhile.  As it is, even at turn 100, I cant get out of that area yet.  Granted, I also dont really know HOW to do that, but since the numbers went all wonky it probably doesnt matter with that particular save.

At the same time though.... outside of the jungle thing, I have no reason to try to expand past that area.  Alot of scouting was done, but absolutely all of it was useless.  It was done simply for the sake of doing it.  All it actually accomplished was that I saw some explosions from the others in the small corner of their area I could see.  Other than that, I ignored it, as all there is to see is the same stuff everywhere.

[x4000]

I'm not sure what sort of rapid shifts you're expecting to see in biomes.  I think that shifting too frequently would look pretty odd.  And you're saying that in all your scouting you found not a single resource or natural wonder?

[Aklyon]

So after 100 turns so far (as fenyn, not zenith):
New building placement: Greatly great.
Had some pollution-crime, not too bad, accidentally almost killed my city after forgetting to build a cemetary and people killing each other over the terrible smell of dead fenyn or something, which snowballed. Recovered.
Islands map seems to have very little nearby me at all. A few wonders, a couple resources, hardly any non-plains tiles. As far as I've scouted so far the evucks may or maynot have stolen all the desert mountains and forest bits for themselves off to the NW.
New tech organization seems better than before, especially for resource mining buildings.

[x4000]

Nice.

[nas1m]

New building placement: Greatly great.
New tech organization seems better than before, especially for resource mining buildings.

I want to wholeheartedly second this.
The city building part definitely feels much improved - much more thought involved now on how to reap all those nifty bonusses. In my new game on Mars the new Logging Camps actually made me attack the Fenyn just to get my Krolin Logging Camps set up in their profitable jungle - first time I feel an inclination to advance on somebody in the game .

Good job!

The tech tree also feels improved, although putting Teleporters under Formalized Diplomacy really makes no sense to me - at all - in terms of the caption of that tech. Might be it harmonizes well with the rest of the stuff unlocked, but I definitely think a dedicated "Explorative Teleportation" tech would make much more sense...

[jerith]

I've started six games with 0.870 so far (terrestrial map) and I've been dumped in the middle of a large jungle in all of them. Maybe it would be worth trying to seed the player starting location on a biome boundary or something?

[crazyroosterman]

I've started six games with 0.870 so far (terrestrial map) and I've been dumped in the middle of a large jungle in all of them. Maybe it would be worth trying to seed the player starting location on a biome boundary or something?

if Chris sticks with what he's said and decreases the turn increase from the forests then further changes might not be nesascery should probably wait and see though before assuming anything really. ps I personally haven't really had a problem with my forest game really granted though that might just be because I like to take games very slowly

[jerith]

I saw the build complexity changes in 0.871. I was thinking more about providing a more interesting variety of landscape, which would affect early citybuilding and might make Misery a little less miserable.

[tadrinth]

I started a new game as the Skylaxians in this version and wound up plopped on something like six resources and two natural wonders.

I wound up rushing Guildhalls because that's what almost all the resources required. 

Holy crap are science labs hard to get now.  I'll probably end up housing my entire population in condos now as Skylaxians.

[Aklyon]

Science labs are significantly harder to get now, yeah. But I was already using mostly condos anyway, because many things seemed to not accept dense housing.

[Mick]

I do keep seeing jungle when I generate terrestrial maps. Is that intended or is something wonky with the seeding?

[crazyroosterman]

in the phase 2 patch notes it says there's going to be a toltips added to the city grid detailing .how many saucers are owned by this city. does that mean were going to get to use our own saucers in the patch?. ps or does it just mean how many saucers owned by the city of the ai your looking over I don't know why toltips like that are being added for a part of the city grid your not even meant to have access to unless I'm missing something

[crazyroosterman]

also I'm a little sad that your going to be able to see the leaders of other races when you meet them now but I guess you could figure it out just as easily by their behaviour and the way that they reacted to your first meeting that and attack bounty's I really like the idea of having a race on my pay to beat down any race that upset me I don't blame Chris for getting rid of it though in games like civ 5 I would have to basically hope that the ai actually tries instead of just pretending to murder them and take my money.

[Misery]

I'm not sure what sort of rapid shifts you're expecting to see in biomes.  I think that shifting too frequently would look pretty odd.  And you're saying that in all your scouting you found not a single resource or natural wonder?

There are some.... er.... I think.... but they do seem very, very sparse.  Even after letting the scouting happen for quite awhile, there really wasnt many of them; most of the map remains featureless (not counting other cities that is).


Looking at the save though I started near two wonders (as in, both were inside of my city boundaries from the start, because RNG!) but other than that I havent seen any.   And of course there's the occaisional tile that has some sort of resource on them, provided that the Skylaxians arent currently sucking those up.  There's the occaisional couple of "rocky ground" tiles or mountains, but that's about it.  And water of course.


In all honesty, I think this is still going to be a problem with the presentation; the landscape itself just isnt very interesting visually.  And you know how people are about that, it's all about teh grafx after all    It's just very... featureless, particularly early on, but even when zoomed out it still feels that way.   Now, once some stuff is happening, and you've got some buildings up, and there's other cities to view and stuff as well, it looks much better, but yeah, the landscape itself still just looks very stark to me and I find it hard to care much about most of it, and early on, it's all you see. 

At least for now anyway... these are still early impressions from this new version.    Which I will indeed be starting over when I fire it up later due to the jungle problem and some of the confusion.

[ptarth]

Something is off with worldgen on Terrestrial maps. Forest and Jungle are much too prevalent. Also, if I recall correctly, resources are generated based on terrain type, so that would also explain the absence of resources making the maps so barren.