Quoting: grenadecx

Quoting: Mountain ManI'm still of the opinion that this whole VR craze is going to be another short-lived novelty like 3D televisions and motion controls (other than the Nintendo Wii) once people realize that it doesn't meaningfully enhance their gaming experience. Professional applications, yes, but entertainment? I don't see it.

Okay so, please stop comparing it to 3D or the Wiimotes...

Why? It's a perfect analogy. I see VR as a solution in search of a problem. Once the novelty wears off, you're going to see a lot of VR headsets collecting dust on people's shelves.

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I'm still of the opinion that this whole VR craze is going to be another short-lived novelty like 3D televisions and motion controls (other than the Nintendo Wii) once people realize that it doesn't meaningfully enhance their gaming experience. Professional applications, yes, but entertainment? I don't see it.

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I've had the ForceFullCompositionPipeline command in my xorg.conf file for years, first with KDE (Kubuntu) and now with Xfce (Xubuntu). My solution whenever I lost sync through a resolution change was to reboot X, but running a simple command script is more elegant and less disruptive.

If you're curious why I went from Kubuntu to Xubuntu, I saw a noticeable performance increase when running Xfce. KDE is pretty, but it's quite à resource hog.

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Quoting: lucifertdarkThey announce Civ VI & I realised I haven't even played Civ III yet, it's the Tropico games all over again for me, I have them all & played none of them.

It's not like you have to play them in order or anything.

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Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: wvstolzingThere's quite a bit of the designers' own political leanings informing the design...

Yes, but which political leanings are those? I've heard gamers accuse Firaxis of using the Civilization series to promote both liberalism and conservatism.

I think their political conservatism is pretty blatant. (How else would they stomach that G.W. Bush quote for the Future Techs? :P )

Conservatives can consider it a tribute. Liberals can consider it mockery. :D

At any rate, if Firaxis' last few Civ games (Civ 4, Civ 5, and Beyond Earth) are any indication, Civ 6 won't be worth buying until at least the first expansion.

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Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: Mountain ManI think by the end of the game, I had a small, 3 or 4 city empire but was a technological powerhouse and went on to secure the tech victory.

What was the difficulty level though? That kind of scenario is really possible only on Chieftain. Anything higher, and the 'AI' (?!) starts cheating like mad (not subject to any of your happiness etc. penalties, and enjoying a slew of bonuses); and their diplomacy is totally unpredictable. A thousand-year long alliance can be dissolved in a moment (only 'coinciding', of course, with your weakest moment).

Good point. Now that you mention it, it was probably one of the lower difficulty levels, but I can't remember exactly which.

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Quoting: wvstolzingThere's quite a bit of the designers' own political leanings informing the design...

Yes, but which political leanings are those? I've heard gamers accuse Firaxis of using the Civilization series to promote both liberalism and conservatism.

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Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: KimyrielleI am however, genuinely curious what can still done to Civ to improve it.

It's hardly an immaculate concept -- from the ground up, there's so much to improve, to make it worthy of the name 'civilization', as it were. Sure, the core design has to 'gameify' a huge range of social-political dynamics; nevertheless it takes a bit too much for granted.

To begin with, you assume a godlike dictatorship of a nation-state back in 4000BC. Money pretty much has its 20th century significance from the start.

There's quite a bit of the designers' own political leanings informing the design -- in one of the past Civs, the stock exchange increased overall happiness in a city, for instance. And unless you're building an expansionist empire, you can't really aspire to any of the victory types.

You can argue for sure that the game glorifies both capitalism and imperialism with some of its designs. And yes, to make your civilization able to prosper you need to expand. But tbh, size DOES matter in real life international relations. The US is powerful, Switzerland isn't. For the simple reason that one country is large and the other isn't. Power in real life has nothing to do with how "great" a nation is. It's just a function of size. Translating this simple truth into a game where you compete against other nations to become the most powerful one, it makes sense that expansion is needed, no? They sure could relax the ultimate goal to be the "best" nation, but what would the new victory conditions be, then? What would be the goal in Civ for a nation like Switzerland?

I do agree with it being silly that the stock exchange creates happiness. It should create wealth and that's all.

That's why Civ games have things other than a simple conquest victory. One of my most interesting games of Civ 5 was as Japan. I was able to maintain a game-long alliance with a militarily powerful neighbor which allowed me to focus my resources elsewhere. I think by the end of the game, I had a small, 3 or 4 city empire but was a technological powerhouse and went on to secure the tech victory.

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Maybe when they said "PC" they really meant PC!

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Quoting: neowiz73just picked up Stellaris Nova Edition from the Games Republic store, plus I got the Anomoly Warzone Earth for free as well. that's a pretty good deal :)

Except the Anomaly games don't seem to work in Linux, and the developer apparently can't be bothered to fix them.

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