What are the thoughts on the new tradepost graphic? Any idea why they changed it and do we like the new one? I suppose it does look more like an actual bazaar now, but I worry that they will look silly if there are a bunch sitting next to each other. Maybe they could be oriented in different directions to prevent a "cloned" look?
They changed it because people kept complaining about the old one, I believe.Originally Posted by stethnorun
What about them? The tents were a little strange, but the modern towns looked good. Better than the current modern trading posts, I would say.
Same opinion here. Well, difficult to please everyone... And maybe it could be modded back for the modern one...
The new trade post is way too big in my opinion. I think it would be prettier and less "in-your-face" if trade posts looked a little like the city graphics, and would tile seemlessly like the farms.
+1 to this in my experiences so far
Any other news on improvements to 3D art modding? I.e., fewer hoops to jump through to add units? The possibility to add other 3D asset types?
Wow, this is "our " biggest worry now, the design of the markeplace ? Look, I get it that people are bored, are waiting for the expansion, and don't know what to do, so they start complaining about all sorts of things. But this one ? This is your "biggest worry" ? It's ridiculous.What are the thoughts on the new tradepost graphic? Any idea why they changed it and do we like the new one? I suppose it does look more like an actual bazaar now, but I worry that they will look silly if there are a bunch sitting next to each other. Maybe they could be oriented in different directions to prevent a "cloned" look?
And btw I find the new design much better then the old one, it was really ugly and low poly. This one looks much more detailed, it's better on my opinion.
I miss the hamlet mechanic in Civ IV haha
Hey, ever since I got the update, my game would sometimes freeze when I ended my turn. It would load and load and load, but nothing would happen. I never had it actually crash, but it would stay this way for so long that I just had to kill it. The cursor would move like normal, and it would say that it's loading, but nothing!
Also, as the game went on, some of the 2D art would start to corrupt. The Next Turn (and all of its variants) and the names of units, cities, etc would start to get a whole bunch of white boxes all over them. the longer I played, the more boxes would appear, clouding over the buttons.
Note: it did not do any of this before the patch.
I haven't tried other part of 3D modding...
I've also the feelings the order of events calling may have been modified, need some test here...
The trading post graphics are a nice improvement. Though, as steth has said, they may look a bit repetitive with many adjacent to each other. At least there's no more ugly, broken-up road networks. They may even be "too" nice, because now they make the simple city graphics look outdated, haha. Nonetheless, a very nice change. (I still think they should've just renamed them, changed the tech, and turned them into static village/town/suburb/whatever graphics to represent the non-city dwellers in the world. Perhaps, they also would be able to blend adjacent ones together easier, similar to how farms behave, so that areas of them look like one sprawling arrangement of smaller structures. oh well...)
What do you guys think about the loading screen backgrounds? I don't think I really fancy them. I think they're a little too abstract for a full screen display (And I usually LIKE abstractness, alongside minimalism, lol). On my 27" LED monitor, the lack of detail is very pronounced and really contrasts the sharp Civ logo and loading text (would be nice if it blinked too). I also think the ones I've seen are pretty dull and lacking vibrance... there's just something about them that doesn't "fit". It also really contrasts the next sharp, clean, vibrant background screen (of Rockefeller Center) that appears, which I think is quite beautiful.
I also would personally like less modern themes and more ancient/natural ones and from eras before the industrial period. Or maybe focus on only nice art of cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. since the expansion is religiously themed after all; not people picnicking with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
(EDIT: yeah... about the loading screen images... I actually like them now, lol. I only saw a few of them during that beta patch since I didn't play it much at all. After seeing more of them, they're actually very nice and there's a lot of them from earlier times in history.)
I'm sure these images could be easily modded, so no big deal.
Also, yes, I've noticed slightly longer turn times compared to games before the patch. Nothing drastic though. Also, there's a few bugs here and there. One is how barbarians (maybe other units as well, haven't experienced it yet) killed by a city bombardment just vanish away quietly instead of showing death animations and sounds.
Also, one game I generated within the future era to observe the world generation really bugged-out. Graphical artifacts were present in some areas and no resources were placed except for some near my starting area. One artifact was a black blob over an entire hill tile, never seen something like that before. No natural wonders were discovered either. It's as if nothing was placed.
This was also added to the ends of the Ice Age and Small Continents LUA code:
Interesting. Maybe they'll expand a little better on these maps. These two maps seem to be the only ones which were modified in my folder and have "modified" dates equal to when I installed the patch.Code:-- tell the AI that we should treat this as a naval expansion map Map.ChangeAIMapHint(1);
All in all, it's only a beta patch and it should have bugs and things. Who knows how early this was created compared to the latest content to be released. Plus, this beta patch was primarily released for modders to use to try out the new interface. It's not really about the quality of the game content. I'm sure the released version will be nicely polished. In the mean time, I think I'll go back to the latest released patch again.
To others who haven't installed the beta patch and aren't modders (and not following the other steps in Greg's instructions), in my opinion, don't bother with it.
Last edited by jpbar81; 06-21-2012 at 12:47 PM.
Why don't you calm your britches down there, boy-o. I was just wondering if people were thinking the same thing as me, and the reasons for the change. I have no problem with them changing it (or ANYTHING in the game), but I like to know the reasoning and I don't like to change to something that's not quite as good.
It's not my biggest worry, by the way. My biggest concern is that MP animations work perfectly.
Regarding turn times and AI improvements:
I started a new game (Huge M. Continents+, 22 Civs, 28 CS, Deity). With increasing AI unit numbers turn times take _significantly_ (almost exponentially) longer.
I might accept this as a result of AI improvements.
Unfortunately, there are none. The AI is as dumb as ever, no improvements to naval combat at all etc.
In conclusion one can only hope that this is debug code at work and the announced AI improvements are at least part of G&C.
If the same behavior (longer turns, AI still incredibly dumb) can we observed with the expansion as well, well...
I didn't notice that the turns take much longer to complete.
Maybe so very little that isn't noticeable.
And, well, what do you expect from a 40 mega beta patch, miracles ? The tactical(including naval combat) and diplo AI improvements will be in the expansion, and maybe a final version of a bigger patch(but I doubt it).
From what I remember they said that this patch will be a big one, so this is definitely not the final thing.
If a patch was dedicated to the AI only, it really won't have to be bigger than that...
Wow, really ? Funny how everyone on this forums thinks how programming an AI works. How easy is to fix all these problems to some, but hey the guys at firaxis "don't know how to do it(but it's their job and they've released 5 civ games already)", or "don't want to do it". Yeah, riiight...If a patch was dedicated to the AI only, it really won't have to be bigger than that...
I think what Gedemon means is that it would be changes in the DLL and some XML - no changes to graphics or sound. Graphics and sound take up the lion's share of the space in modern games.
I didn't say that a small patch = small work.
AI programming for a game like Civilization is a lot of work, but as SamBC explained the resulting patch will have a small size, as it will change only the exe/DLL files and some text (XML) files.
still - 40 Mb is too small to be a believable 'patch' to vanilla that paves the way for GaK code.
Even if you assume 10% of the GaK code is purely vanilla changes (bug fixes/etc), that's much more than 40 Mb.
So likely this is just the new UI/modding section of vanilla for the intended reason - letting modders catch up with the Workshop.
From civ5 folders and subfolders :
Lua files = 3.82 MB
XML files = 18.2 MB
Exe and DLL : 21.7 MB
total : 43.72 MB
both Lua and XML are text file, could be compressed at high rate.
30 Mb could be enough to contain all Civ5 code.
I never say this patch include the code for G&K, I just say that the size of it is not a factor to judge that.
Effectively there are no major gameplay change in it, but there is a bit more than just the new UI/modding section, like a few bugfix and some new modding features too.
that wasn't my point either. I was just suggesting that if the GaK development went and fixed a number of vanilla issues, it wouldn't necessarily be just 40 Mb.
But then again, it depends on how much is back ported to vanilla.
It should be possible to change almost everything in CivV in less than 50Mb, so long as you don't touch any graphics, given the numbers Gedemon mentions above.
Voilà, that's my point.
I don't mean to bump this, but Civ5 is unplayable because of it! Any ideas? I'd like to finish the game I'm in!
Read, Beta patch. There will be bugs. If these bugs are impeding your game, you can opt out of the beta.
Anyone notice any bugs if you play MP with the beta against a non patched MP player?
CS
there might be issues. Apparently the saved game file is different, so there might be 'behind the scenes' changes that would trigger issues if the games aren't on the same code base.
Try disabling "Steam Community In-Game" - with it enabled my game runs like a three legged dog, with it disabled the game is pretty much like how it used to be.
Don't they have different version numbers? Wouldn't that break MP (it stops mismatched versions playing, I thought)?
Just to let the devs know, the beta patch still has massive out of sync bugs. Played a game till around turn 50 and then it OOS-ed. Tried to reload autosaves and everything, but no go. It was permanently lost.
Again, beta patch.
Which is why I'm reporting it. I'm beta testing it.
As long as you don't get angry at Firaxis / 2K for it, which I've seen some people do
You haven't been paying much attention, then. I'm usually defending Civ 5 against irrational people.
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