>I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was my favorite, especially since it had the best music.
>Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late game.
You may be interested to know that the lead designer of Civilization 4, Soren Johnson, is directly attacking that problem in his most recent game. The TLDR is you have a fixed number of actions you can do each turn which you choose to spend to move a unit, rather than each unit having one action every turn no matter what. So turn times do not increase exponentially like in Civ games.
"Perhaps the most interesting resource in the pool, and the one which makes Old World stand out most from the 4X genre as a whole, is Orders. In most expand ‘em ups, you move each unit once each turn, and that’s that. In Old World, you have a pool of orders (replenished at a variable rate each turn depending on parameters such as your ruler’s legitimacy, the technologies in play, and dozens more), which you can split at will between your units. You might choose to blurt all your orders to a single scout, moving them three or four moves across the landscape until they hit their fatigue limit, or you might focus your whole order pool on a few military units fighting war, or you might go hard on workers building improvements. It’s a novel way of breaking a tradition, and offers flexibility while keeping turn times relatively snappy."
The game is playable now in Early Access, if anyone is interested.
How funny. I have always hated the "orders" mechanic in war games and other board games. How does it make sense as a mechanic? Ok, I can't move this infantry unit because two other infantry units already moved this turn. It's such a strange restriction. There's plenty of constraints in battle, but this limit is so strange.
even today communication isn't instant and isn't free; the limited order per turn mechanic is maybe to much of an abstraction but think for example doing a synchronized turn at the Jutland battle:
from the admiral giving the order to his own ship flaggers to communicate to the next in line takes time, then the order gets flagged to the next in line ship, which has to rely to the ship behind etc. then the acknowledgement signal has to travel back and after that you can execute a coordinated turn
it all takes quite a while, and meanwhile you're best off not changing idea; even just cancelling the order introduce the risk to confuse and disarray your battle line
now, is it the order per turn the best system? probably not. Fields of fire had an interesting system that represent well modern era army organisation and disorganisation from units moving independently, but then again it's a very specific application, while strategy system or civilization games have much more ground to cover
>Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late game.
You may be interested to know that the lead designer of Civilization 4, Soren Johnson, is directly attacking that problem in his most recent game. The TLDR is you have a fixed number of actions you can do each turn which you choose to spend to move a unit, rather than each unit having one action every turn no matter what. So turn times do not increase exponentially like in Civ games.
"Perhaps the most interesting resource in the pool, and the one which makes Old World stand out most from the 4X genre as a whole, is Orders. In most expand ‘em ups, you move each unit once each turn, and that’s that. In Old World, you have a pool of orders (replenished at a variable rate each turn depending on parameters such as your ruler’s legitimacy, the technologies in play, and dozens more), which you can split at will between your units. You might choose to blurt all your orders to a single scout, moving them three or four moves across the landscape until they hit their fatigue limit, or you might focus your whole order pool on a few military units fighting war, or you might go hard on workers building improvements. It’s a novel way of breaking a tradition, and offers flexibility while keeping turn times relatively snappy."
The game is playable now in Early Access, if anyone is interested.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/14/preview-shape-na...