sigh The last thing I need is another place where Civ can tempt me to waste my time ;) They already have me on PC & console. I've avoided iPhone thus far, but might not hold out forever.
Civ on the iPhone sucked away two weeks of my life. It's a great port and reminds me more of Civ2 than the newer ones. I'd recommend the download on your winter break ;)
In my opinion it's not terribly good - the are you can see it far too small to move units in an efficient way, now I have to scroll around all the time. Or have I missed how to zoom out?
[edit: I just started the game, and sure enough it's possible to zoom. slaps forehead for not trying it before]
For me the only really dangerous one is Civ IV, which I play until bedtime whenever I start a game, whenever I start a game. Thankfully I have enough willpower to avoid starting a game most days.
Civ IV is an incredibly well made game, just amazing.
I really enjoy the Beyond the Sword expansion. My only complaint about it is the AI tends to not be incredibly smart on certain issues; for example, if there's a choke point between my civ and a civ that's warring with me, and my city is sitting square on that choke point - they'll send armies of 4-5 units every ten or so turns, instead of building some galleys (or galleons if it's that far along) and circumventing. They also don't seem to like to build more than 4-5 catapults/trebuchets per army, and for a well-entrenched city you need more than that.
I can beat it pretty constantly on Noble, but as soon as I dial up to prince the computer player cheating gets out of hand. Maybe I'm just not good enough at finding efficient research paths.
I had the "just one more turn" last night / this morning until 4am. I've been playing on Prince and yes it's really difficult being behind in technology all the time. My early game land grab and war rush nets me a very large territory but from there it's attrition. I hold my own mid game fending off opponents with a large military force and tactics, but by the year "1900" the AI already has modern armor and I just discovered tanks. I'm so far behind that I lose because some other civ made it Alpha Centauri. I didn't have enough nukes to wipe that civ off the planet. My last game I had a surprising loss due to a cultural victory. Now I know to fly the nukes when I see "$City has achieved legendary status."
This Facebook is app is very very dangerous. And the iPhone app that I just heard about here is even more so.
Good. The biggest problem with most Facebook games is that there is little to no actual gameplay. Has anyone here actually played Mafia Wars? It's not a game.
Finally someone who agrees with me. I forced myself to play mafia wars for about an entire month, simply to find out what was there in the darned game and still I couldn't get myself to think of it as a game.
However, I don't think Civ would be a major success on Facebook. Most people on facebook like playing games that are simple and do not require you to think too much (ex: farmville). However, I'm still rooting for civ, simply because I'm also developng a turn based strategy game for facebook and it would be nice to see this category of games become popular on facebook.
I've been considering applying for a job at Zynga so I've also been playing Mafia Wars and Farmville. The latter is a little better. Both epitomize the idea of click/reward perfected by the Diablo series, but the end game of Mafia Wars is laughably boring, it's no different than the early and mid game. Actual PVP for domination of control points seems like a straightforward addition but I guess they don't need to mess with something so popular right now.
I believe Zynga has publicly acknowledged that in the long run their games will need to have more actual game play.
Country Story is more like Farmville would be if it had actual depth... but then it becomes blatently obvious that the idea is simply a rip-off of "Harvest Moon".
That's not to say Farmville isn't fun, it is, but I find Country Story a little deeper.
Most Zynga games appear to be rip-offs. Farmville was ripped from Farm Town, and he recent Cafe world is almost a frame by frame copy of Playfish's Restaurant City (in terms of general gameplay and graphics). Mafia Wars came from SGN and Pirates and the Space Genre games both share the same backend as Mafia Wars.
So, that's humanity finished then. And to think the 2012-ers were so very close, just 2 years out from 'all human productivity ceasing and mankind dying from starvation within 3 weeks'.
