An interesting flashback

[Jolly Joker]

What was so wonderful about it? The fact that he quoted an irrelevant wikipedia thing that even DL claimed so? The fact that he doesn't believe a quote that he cannot verify? The fact that he is full of a praise for a game which "changelogs of each of the patches for GalCiv is bigger than the list of new features HoMM V has over it’s predecessors" when two or three days ago the same people who find so much in his post agreed that, as DL said "if I wanted to play a different game each month I would buy one"? Or is it the fact that he's complaining about Nival not correcting the small "bugs"? Then you may have forgotten all the people who complained about Nival exactly doing that instead of squashing the big ones and delivering the editor sooner. You maybe agree with him that GalCiv II is marvellously complex. It isn't. Not in terms of cause/result relation which makes it rather easy. If you give heroes a pre-determined development path, things become a lot easier, but in Heroes this were cheating, GC II it was not.
Shame on me? For him quoting out of connection, warping things, innuendo, all kinds of polemics? For the fact that he blames Nival for the manual (as basically for everything) ...
Let me phrase it this way. I have seen small paragraph posts on this board that had more real content. The fact that people like you fall for it does show again that form is more important than content and people believe everything if it sounds good and fits into what they are thinking anyway.
Shame on me, yes. For being a stupid idiot to even post here.

[asandir]

the last line was the one i liked best JJ .... but only for a chuckle, I don't mind that you like to defend what you think is right, it's that it seems to me that when you are questioned to a degree that may actually challenge what you are saying you seem to either attack the poster, dismiss the post, or focus on the bits of the post you can comment on, rather than the whole that has merit ....

in any case, it doesn't really matter, I thought Naskoni's post was excellent, I still do, your reply IMO was not so excellent

[DaemianLucifer]

Damn!You are a pest!Just when I thought you couldnt provoke me,you do it again!

What was so wonderful about it? The fact that he quoted an irrelevant wikipedia thing that even DL claimed so? The fact that he doesn't believe a quote that he cannot verify?

If this wasnt so stupid,it would be an extremely funny quote.

The fact that he is full of a praise for a game which "changelogs of each of the patches for GalCiv is bigger than the list of new features HoMM V has over it’s predecessors" when two or three days ago the same people who find so much in his post agreed that, as DL said "if I wanted to play a different game each month I would buy one"?

+ New Option: No tech trading.

+ New Option: Blind exploration (players can't see the spheres of influence on the mini map)

+ New Option: Random intelligence (Players select a general difficulty level and the game can randomize the indvidiaul intelligences of each player.

+ New Option: Random number of players (Players can elect to have the game decide how many players they're going up against)

+ New Option: Random opponents (Players can elect to have the game choose which players they are up against)

+ New OPtion: Random galaxy size (Players can elect to have the game randomly pick a galaxy size)

+ Computer AI *significantly* enhanced.

+ Computer AI updated to work together with other players (including human player) to thwart a common foe.

+ New Alien dialog: (ex: Drengin: "You complete me." ack!). Another Ex: Computer players grovel dialog more satisfying.

+ Fleet Manager Screen added to manage stacks of ships and fleets that are on the same tile more easily

+ Rally points can be moved

+ Lots of UI tweaks

+ Game will tell you when someone else is paying off, manipulating things behind the scenes to go to war with you (but won't tell you precisely who is doing it).

+ Players can choose to upgrade ships and either have the functional components removed by default or have them stay.

+ Unused Social Production now transferred automatically to military production rather than "wasted".

+ Economic System overhauled to be more transparent and intuitive.

+ Production that is the result of abililities is only charged at 50%. (that is, if player is getting 10 more industrial units of production per turn because of starbases, player abilities, etc. they only have to pay for 5 of it).

+ Population growth revamped to put more emphasis on population growth ability and morale.

+ Lots of new hot keys.

+ Metaverse Scoring revamped.

+ Ship Designer revamped to be easier to use, more powerful.

+ Ship Designer now allows players to rotate ship pieces on the fly.

+ Ship Destination markers also display how many weeks until ship arrives there.

+ Selected ship displays an animated line showing where its destination is.

+ Constructors will display what area of effect a starbase would have it one were built in the constructor's current position.

+ Lots of new balancing of technologies, planetary improvements, starbase modules, etc. based on the feedback from players.

+ Lots of new options added to the options screen

+ Better support for modding (full-blown mod UI coming in v1.2).

+ New Music playing

+ Lots of tweaks to improve pacing, balance, etc.

+ Removed a lot of player discovered "exploits"

+ Performance and memory optimizations

+ New hot keys

+ Lots of bug and glitch fixes

Now tell me,which one of theese actually makes it into a new game?Which one of these rebalances the factions completelly so that every single strategy you knew before is worthless?Oh,and let me point out one extremly interesting feature:

+ Computer AI *significantly* enhanced.

AI enhanced.Thats right.It was great before,now its even better.Now thats real evolution.You want more similar?How about:

+ Fleet Manager Screen added to manage stacks of ships and fleets that are on the same tile more easily

+ Rally points can be moved

+ Lots of UI tweaks

So interface got improved even more.What was improved in HV?Oh,thats right:A button for exiting the battle was added AFTER there was a mod that added both save/load and exit buttons to the battle.

Or is it the fact that he's complaining about Nival not correcting the small "bugs"? Then you may have forgotten all the people who complained about Nival exactly doing that instead of squashing the big ones and delivering the editor sooner.

And what major bugs did they fix?The crashes?The ones that prevented you to finish a campaign(I still see those on the list)?They fixed maybe half of all the bugs,both major and minor,in THREE patches.The rest of their work went on redesigning mages cape,or witches heels,or complete rebalance of resources for all the factions.

Here,go to the changelog for galciv and take a look.Improvements,bug fixes,enhancment of menus and AI,but not a single complete rebalance that destroyes all of the tactics.I even had some mods when I instaled the patch.And you know what?They all worked like a charm.All of my saves too.Not a single glitch,let alone crash.

You maybe agree with him that GalCiv II is marvellously complex. It isn't. Not in terms of cause/result relation which makes it rather easy. If you give heroes a pre-determined development path, things become a lot easier, but in Heroes this were cheating, GC II it was not.

Linear?You took a glance at the tech tree and said it was linear?Thats really one of the dumbest thing you ever said(and you said a lot of dumb things)!How come you dont consider town building in heroes linear and fixed?How come you dont consider map expansions as fixed,because those maps dont change,and galcivs maps do(rmg straight from the box).

Shame on me, yes. For being a stupid idiot to even post here.

Indeed.Save me some nerves and move your idiotic statements elswhere

[Jolly Joker]

+ Lots of tweaks to improve pacing, balance, etc.

THAT'S ALREADY ENOUGH. WITH NIVAL THIS WOULD BE CALLED "NON-DOCUMENTED CHANGES"! You disregard the fact that changing the game from the not-copy-protected version significantly is business policy there. If it would be Nival you would say, look, they sold a little more than a beta-version allegedly without copy protection, but if you want to upgrade to full game you have to register. It's a only pow.

You maybe agree with him that GalCiv II is marvellously complex. It isn't. Not in terms of cause/result relation which makes it rather easy. If you give heroes a pre-determined development path, things become a lot easier, but in Heroes this were cheating, GC II it was not.

Linear?You took a glance at the tech tree and said it was linear?Thats really one of the dumbest thing you ever said(and you said a lot of dumb things)!How come you dont consider town building in heroes linear and fixed?How come you dont consider map expansions as fixed,because those maps dont change,and galcivs maps do(rmg straight from the box).

WHO IS THE IDIOT? DO YOU SEE THE WORD LINEAR SOMEWHERE IN THAT QUOTE? LEARN READING. How do you get "player personalities in games like GalCiv 2 (no secret; in Civ and all other games of this it's basically the same)? To achieve a certain effect you will let personalities explore certain paths on the research tree. So a Warrior personality will research warfare technologies, build fleets and so on. I hope this is not too high for you.
If you wanted to do this for Heroes you would have to predetermine the HERO development path. You'd "construct" Hero types and setting each level: Necrohero 1: Level 2 Skel Arch, Level 3 Bas Offense, Level 4 Frenzy, level 5 Adv Necro, level 6 expert Necro, level 7 Archery, level 8 Death Scream level 9 Dark Magic... this would SIGNIFICANTLY enhance the AI (because you'd always have very good and coherent heroes... but in Heroes it would be cheating because you cannot pick from all available options.

Shame on me, yes. For being a stupid idiot to even post here.

Indeed.Save me some nerves and move your idiotic statements elswhere

They seem to be still not idiotic enough for some people to understand them.

[Sir_Toejam]

ooh, looks like ders gonna be a shootout!

somebody's gonna get the smackdown if they aren't careful.

[Gaidal Cain]

LEARN READING.

You need to learn quoting, without having to shout.

And both of you need to learn to discuss without resorting to name-calling.

[asandir]

yeah, the shouting is a bit much, but i think that this situation repeats enough that it is fair to say that there will be no convincing on either side .... so lets go our separate ways perhaps??

[DaemianLucifer]

+ Lots of tweaks to improve pacing, balance, etc.

THAT'S ALREADY ENOUGH. WITH NIVAL THIS WOULD BE CALLED "NON-DOCUMENTED CHANGES"! You disregard the fact that changing the game from the not-copy-protected version significantly is business policy there. If it would be Nival you would say, look, they sold a little more than a beta-version allegedly without copy protection, but if you want to upgrade to full game you have to register. It's a only pow.

Significantly?You call a tweak of maybe 10 in the cost of a single tech a significant change?Or is it maybe lowering the damage of a single weapon by 1(which would be like decreasing attack of a single creature from 30 to lets say 25)?Oh yes,very significant.Not to mention that most of those tweaks were on AI,and what techs it produces,what ships it builds,etc.

So what if it has no copy protection?It was playable straight from the box,and I had not a single crash with it.Plus I finished the campaign without a single problem.And of the hundreds of bugs fixed,I dont know if I expirienced 10 in total.And none were major.Yet I did expirience loads of heroes bugs,including crashing,scenario skipping and profile corruption.

WHO IS THE IDIOT? DO YOU SEE THE WORD LINEAR SOMEWHERE IN THAT QUOTE? LEARN READING. How do you get "player personalities in games like GalCiv 2 (no secret; in Civ and all other games of this it's basically the same)? To achieve a certain effect you will let personalities explore certain paths on the research tree. So a Warrior personality will research warfare technologies, build fleets and so on. I hope this is not too high for you.
If you wanted to do this for Heroes you would have to predetermine the HERO development path. You'd "construct" Hero types and setting each level: Necrohero 1: Level 2 Skel Arch, Level 3 Bas Offense, Level 4 Frenzy, level 5 Adv Necro, level 6 expert Necro, level 7 Archery, level 8 Death Scream level 9 Dark Magic... this would SIGNIFICANTLY enhance the AI (because you'd always have very good and coherent heroes... but in Heroes it would be cheating because you cannot pick from all available options.

Linear or fixed,big deal.Its just semantics.And you neglact:

A)Planetary bonuses,which change your initial start very much.
B)Surrounding systems and planets,which again influence your expansion.
C)Your neighbours and diplomacy with them.
D)Random events that effect not just all of the above,but also the aligment that can be changed during the game.

You just take a look at the tech tree.First of all,no AI uses the same tech tree path,it has chances for taking one path,and chances for taking another.The fact that both paths are available at the start doesnt mean that it will always use the same one.Yet you take in acount the random seed for heroes levelup.The difference is that the first one is randomized by the AI itself,the second is that it is randomized by a separate algorithm.

Oh,end lets not forget that HV has the same fixed number and type of buildings in each town,while the planets in galciv have different number of usable spaces every time.

And diplomacy in galcivv plays a major part because there wont always be just war as the only interaction between factions,as in heroes.

[Jolly Joker]

As a try to simply leave it at that, a simple question, not to argue just out of interest.
You mention MOO was one, if not the favorite game of yours of all time. Strange coincidence, because MOO probably IS mine (with 1830 from the same developer - Simtex - being probably the best board game conversion ever for pc and MOM a very well known thing). I've GC II as well, played it a lot for a time, but I feel about it in comparison with MOO the same way (probably) as you with H II and H V. I find it a bit boring, to tell the truth. Unneccessarily blown, if you want to. Not so "to the point" like MOO was (even though the AI cheated). I'm missing something in all these screens of information and options and tech trees and buildings, basically the same I missed in Stars! (if you know that one). The ease of play, the beer-and-pretzel effect.
How's it with you?

[DaemianLucifer]

True it does lack simplicity.But what I miss most is the different planet types.However,this will be introduced in the expansion,and will be judged after that.Though I prefer ascendancy over both MOO and galciv.Maybe because it is the closest to supremacy,which was my first strategy ever.I am pleased with galciv overal.Also,it has a feature that most(if not all)other similar TBS lack:You can build both units and buildings at the same time...

[Jolly Joker]

Ascendancy, yes, I played that as well. Still have it somewhere.
Btw, do you know about the Dosbox program? I've recently played MOO again; hooked again immediately.
All in all I'm pleased with GalCiv 2 as well, although last I played it I wasn't too pleased with the Interface, which may have changed meanwhile; I'm not uptodate since I'm in over my head with Heroes localizing testings.

[okrane]

What's the point to all this talking and bringing forward other games...
We agree that we disagree... So we should just try to do something constructive... if it can be done...

[DaemianLucifer]

Check this and this then.Others here enjoy classics too

As for dosbox,I think I used it once or twice.Not sure though.Many oldies are suprisingly compatible with XP.I didnt play MOO1 though.Just the 2 and 3(although the 3 was a very brief check).

What's the point to all this talking and bringing forward other games...
We agree that we disagree... So we should just try to do something constructive... if it can be done...

Its called cooling off

[Jolly Joker]

DL, since you seem to visit the Stardock pages more than I recently...
Any news about the rumor that Stardock has bought the Master of Magic license and will work on Master of Magic II? THAT could be a real interesting thing considering the board we are cooling off on
Ah, you can find the original MOO here: http://www.abandonia.com/index2.php
In case you want to give it a look.

[DaemianLucifer]

I dont frequent stardock that often.Actually I just visit the galciv site because of the patches.But if they did,I doubt they will cancel their work on galciv to start MoMII.Maybe later,but sure not any time soon.

[Killroyan]

Back on topic, I voted yes. At first I thought no it doesn't have the same feeling, but I have a better feeling with this game and a better challenge so far then almost all other Homm games I have played. No more mass slow/mass haste castings but a little more indepth skill building and more concentration on the spells. I am starting to like the game more and more.

It still hasn't the hommII feeling but I didn't get that with III or IV either. II is still the best in the whole series and I still enjoy playing both campaigns of that series.

Now one thing has to be said in V, the campaigns are long. You have to fight a lot and it takes a long while to complete a map but I don't get to see a score anywhere. You can drag the game as long as you want. Right now I only want to finish the map as fast as possible since it already took long enough to complete after all. I would have loved some smaller faster maps.

[Caradoc]

To return to the original topic for a moment, I'd like to say that I do find Heroes V to be as addicting as its ancestors. Until I ran out of maps to play, the CD was in my drive almost constantly and I found myself playing every day. The magic is there -- I just ran out of ingredients.

On the question of whether 1.3 unfairly shifts the balance of the game, I am just starting to see the effect, but I am not particularly bothered by it. There is a bit more of the surprise factor I enjoyed when the game first came out. Shifting balance is not such a bad thing in any event, since I am free to choose whatever faction I like. If my favorite has gotten a bit weaker, then I'll just need to learn to play it better. I suppose part of the fun is figuring out new ways to get the edge.

(And finally, I seldom make personal comments, but I'd like to say that despite the brouha he causes, I greatly appreciate the information and insights that Jolly Joker provides. But I do wish he'd tell a joke every so often.)

[Idleness2]

yeah hey man, i dont care about story, i never did the campaign and i didnt in the other heros games either, but the strategy is what matters for me and imo H5 has way more to offer here than the older heros games did. U know, like there was so much you COULD do, in the other games, but u were stupid if u did...the optimum strategy was rather easy to figure out for each faction, and there were no options, the rest was luck. I find h5 to be a little more difficult to fully analyze in this respect, and the strategic part with hero development and all leaves much to creativity, and working with what u got, and all, so its really pretty intellectually intriging to me, and thats all i really look for in a strategy game.

I did do some of the campaign out of boredom in H5 tho, never finished, and markal is hilarious, i love that guy.

[DaemianLucifer]

yeah hey man, i dont care about story, i never did the campaign and i didnt in the other heros games either, but the strategy is what matters for me and imo H5 has way more to offer here than the older heros games did. U know, like there was so much you COULD do, in the other games, but u were stupid if u did...the optimum strategy was rather easy to figure out for each faction, and there were no options, the rest was luck. I find h5 to be a little more difficult to fully analyze in this respect, and the strategic part with hero development and all leaves much to creativity, and working with what u got, and all, so its really pretty intellectually intriging to me, and thats all i really look for in a strategy game.

Luck?HV has far more luck involved than any of the previous sequels.Luck in the tactics phase,luck with mine guardians,lucky shots for creatures,and even lucky spells.Too much luck for it to be very strategic.

[theLuckyDragon]

H5 currently doesn't attract me as much as 3 and 4 did, but I'm quite sure it's because my system can't run it smoothly enough; it was the same when I started playing H4. Sadly, an upgrade of my PC isn't in the forseeable future... Maybe I should write Santa Claus a little letter...