[Ghost of V]

Well the AI is dumb as bricks, the combat sucks, and it takes forever to play a fucking match. Is it supposed to be fun? Because I'm not having any.

Isn't starcraft just won buy whoever clicks the fastest?

Don't they measure star craft skill in clicks?

Yes, and click location. No skill at all.
Most PC games come down to this and that's why they're all pretty much terrible.

[beardo]

Starcraft is won by whoever uses the dirtiest tactics the fastest. This is why I never play online, because people only care about winning, and not about actually playing a fun game. It's all about winning as quickly as possible.

[Vongeo]

Well the AI is dumb as bricks, the combat sucks, and it takes forever to play a fucking match. Is it supposed to be fun? Because I'm not having any.

Isn't starcraft just won buy whoever clicks the fastest?

Don't they measure star craft skill in clicks?

Yes, and click location. No skill at all.
Most PC games come down to this and that's why they're all pretty much terrible.

Not Minecraft building games.

[Ghost of V]

Well the AI is dumb as bricks, the combat sucks, and it takes forever to play a fucking match. Is it supposed to be fun? Because I'm not having any.

Isn't starcraft just won buy whoever clicks the fastest?

Don't they measure star craft skill in clicks?

Yes, and click location. No skill at all.
Most PC games come down to this and that's why they're all pretty much terrible.

Not Minecraft building games.

Only if you're playing the console version. If you're using mouse click controls then it's a terrible game. No exceptions besides DOOM 2.

[Vindictus]

Barely any PC games come down to 'who can click the fastest'.

[Saddam Hussein]

You could boil down any strategy game to "move your units towards the enemy and attack." This includes the most popular strategy game in the world, Chess, and the most popular RTS video game, Starcraft. If you're implying there is no further thinking required then you're dumb.

There was no further thinking required in the specific game I played.  Like I said, it was dumbed-down.  A PC elitist like yourself should be diving on this as yet another example of PC gaming's inherent superiority over console gaming.

[Rushy]

There was no further thinking required in the specific game I played.  Like I said, it was dumbed-down.  A PC elitist like yourself should be diving on this as yet another example of PC gaming's inherent superiority over console gaming.

Stop agreeing with me dammit.

Barely any PC games come down to 'who can click the fastest'.

They're just doing some kind of pedant trolling "hurr durr you have to use a mouse for most pc games, therefore you just click your way to victory!"

[Vongeo]

Barely any PC games come down to 'who can click the fastest'.

not cookie clicker starcraft

[Saddam Hussein]

Console games are about button-pressing and control stick-wiggling your way to victory.

[Vongeo]

Not trolling, starcraft is decided by which Korean can click fastest.

[Pete Svarrior]

Well the AI is dumb as bricks

Play on a higher difficulty. Most of the complaints here become invalid once you reach Emperor. The problem with that is that it requires you to actually be decent at the game.

the combat sucks

Eh.

and it takes forever to play a fucking match

Right. Well, if you don't enjoy a game you can get invested in, you won't enjoy Civ. Fair enough. Some people like long books that take weeks or months to churn through, others prefer short pieces of writing (and others, like myself, simply don't enjoy reading). That's not a "deep rooted flaw", it's your preference.

Is it supposed to be fun? Because I'm not having any.

Why not play a match or two with us? Shit's pretty hilarious. When we played with beardo we just kept making fun of how retarded he was (e.g. when he accidentally declared war on Parsifal, somehow). It was just like FES all over again.

[Thork]

Well the AI is dumb as bricks

Play on a higher difficulty. Most of the complaints here become invalid once you reach Emperor.

I always used to play on emperor. :-D
I used to win about 30% of the time so I knew I'd always have a good game, but it'd be very rewarding when I did win.

If I was playing epic, I'd put it up to Immortal because suddenly war becomes very profitable.

This was always the thing that annoyed me about Civ. You don't want to be in a long war ... ever. You come out of it as dumb as a hammer. But a fast war lets you get more land without haemorrhaging cash for hundreds of years.

If you play quick, wow. Warfare is a twat. And on Epic its the only thing you should be planning. And its just because you can always move one square per turn. On epic, you get 8 moves in the same time frame as one on quick. So instead of it taking 40 years to march to the nearest city (I mean really, that's a fucking long walk), instead you'd do it in 5. Take the city, move on.

I never really found a way to balance game speed. I actually preferred quick as you could have a whole game in an evening, but a single AI declaring war when you aren't ready to blitzkrieg the shit out of them will often mean you aint going to win no space race and your horseys are gonna get pooned by some tanks.

[Pete Svarrior]

I generally play on normal (or standard or whatever it is they call it). Not for any particular strategic reason, but just because that's the pace that feels "right" to me. It's long enough that I can really get a good feel of my civilisation and the region I'm in and form a long-term strategy, but short enough for me not to get bored. With that speed, I find that war can be very profitable even if it's long, but only if you make sure it's not your sole focus.

Make sure you're defensive enough that you can hold out if things take a turn for the worse, advance slowly and steadily taking care not to make any losses, occasionally build up units, but generally try to carry on playing as usual and developing in other areas. It won't always work, but that's why you've got good defences to begin with. If it ends up not working, you can just outlast the enemy and peace out when they get tired. Usually, you'll find yourself winning anyway.

[Rushy]

I'm with Thork on this one. Unless I play on Epic or Marathon, war is a frustrating money sink (maybe that's how it should be?).

The key is an obnoxious amount of long range units (especially artillery, after dynamite is researched). If you position them on hills, they can decimate the enemy before they get too close (unless you're fighting Japan, that annoying 100% strength even if unit is damaged means you'll end up losing the artillery to them if they get close). After that, you move in on the cities and besiege them in a war of attrition. Once or two melee units is all that's needed to move in and take the city. Easiest way to quickly take cities while simultaneously minimizing losses.

[Pete Svarrior]

This just in:



Shit was kinda brutal. Ended up in a space race with 2 other nations. Nuked their shit because that's how I roll :^)

[Thork]

I love winning a cultural victory. I would tech like crazy to Democracy, turn off the science and get people making art. You can wrap up a culture victory by 1600ish. I've never been able to space race faster than about the 1850s.

[beardo]

Warmongering is bad.

[Rushy]

Domination victories are the only real way to win. The other victory types are at worst, nonsensical, and at best, cheap. For example, the diplomatic victory is the single most nonsensical victory option there is. So you paid off a bunch of city states to vote for you in the UN, so what? Who gives a shit? I doubt if the UN voted Sweden "emperor of earth" that any major world superpower would care, especially if those given powers were already at war with you.

Cultural victories too. You made a bunch of cultural changes, even if they were the most deep, intuitive, philosophical changes the world has ever seen, most countries would give zero fucks and they're certainly not going to stop murdering you for being just so cultured.

Space race makes sort of sense if the mission was, I don't know, space. If you were the first country to space, it would make sense. You're in space now and can launch orbital nukes. That's some scary shit. But no, all other countries have already been to space, and the space race is supposedly a mission to Alpha Centauri. So? Are we supposed to care you managed to send maybe a hundred people to another star? (no telling how big that rocket is, Civ's scaling has always been shit. The tanks are bigger than skyscrapers). No country is going to stop murdering you because you built big fancy rockets.

Domination only. If you get locked into a forever war, you all lose.

[Ghost Spaghetti]

The game isn't called 'country' it's called 'Civilisation'

If you launch the spaceship first your civ becomes the first culture to become interplanetary, the genesis of a space-bound empire, every mission which follows will, in some respects, mirror your own. You set the pace.

In a cultural victory, it doesn't matter if your country is wiped from the planet, your culture has permeated or supplanted everyone else's, in some respects your civilisation will win even if the originator is gone.

The diplomatic victory has always suggested to me that the Earth has united under a one-world-government of some kind and your civilisation has produced its first leader, the one to unite the peoples of Earth. That's a victory.

[Thork]

Domination victories are the only real way to win. The other victory types are at worst, nonsensical, and at best, cheap. For example, the diplomatic victory is the single most nonsensical victory option there is. So you paid off a bunch of city states to vote for you in the UN, so what? Who gives a shit? I doubt if the UN voted Sweden "emperor of earth" that any major world superpower would care, especially if those given powers were already at war with you.

Cultural victories too. You made a bunch of cultural changes, even if they were the most deep, intuitive, philosophical changes the world has ever seen, most countries would give zero fucks and they're certainly not going to stop murdering you for being just so cultured.

Space race makes sort of sense if the mission was, I don't know, space. If you were the first country to space, it would make sense. You're in space now and can launch orbital nukes. That's some scary shit. But no, all other countries have already been to space, and the space race is supposedly a mission to Alpha Centauri. So? Are we supposed to care you managed to send maybe a hundred people to another star? (no telling how big that rocket is, Civ's scaling has always been shit. The tanks are bigger than skyscrapers). No country is going to stop murdering you because you built big fancy rockets.

Domination only. If you get locked into a forever war, you all lose.

I like to play on the huge maps with 14 civs. Its not possible to get a domination on emperor with a map that size. At least I don't think it is. I've never even managed it on Prince. Just way too many cities to cover. (I only play civ IV - not sure about this on civ 5)