Civilization III: Koreans caught spying on China

Civilization III is much better than Civilization VII in spite of it being almost 25 years old at this point and it shows clearly in the interface.

China Catches a Korean Spy.

I was playing a stream of Civilization III on Twitch and it is simply a much better game when navigating through the game. When you look at the above screenshot, you can clearly see everything that is happening on the map. The map is clean and understandable. There are not as many bells and whistles as in the later games, but it is functional and stylish. This is what many developers seem to forget about today, they are only able to create beautiful games not functional games that actually you want to enjoy.

The interface in every Civilization game is telling a story in a game that is all about the macro perspective. There is no first-person perspective to show you how the cities look so the Civilization games rely heavily on the interface in the game to tell you what is happening.

The meat and potatoes of games is just as important as the garnish or seasoning. Instead of focusing on what works, the people behind Civilization VII spent their time on myopic questions such as whether people are completing their games.

Civilization games are sandboxes, and we should let some people have some bruises.

Overoptimizing every game is why Civilization VII is behind in player counts and not considered to be a game that people want to play or even talk about.

Civilization III shows that aged wine is sometimes better than the new stuff out of the vinery and when it comes to software, that is even more likely in this age.

Battlefield Six: The Siege of Cairo promises Urban Chaos

The Inclusion of Cairo in Battlefield 6 is going to show how the series is starting to use real life locations now.

Unlike in the previous games after Battlefield Vietnam, the series tended to shy away from having any real-life locations in the game. Most were inspired not the actual locations themselves. Strike at Karkland, the famous Battlefield 2 map was based on Arabic or Muslim cities. It was a map filled with people throwing grenades and close quarters combat, unlike most maps in the game. It was one of the top maps and I remember it dominating all the server browsers. The close quarters maps were always more popular in Battlefield games; my preference is towards bigger maps but many players do not like back tracking across huge maps. Smaller maps keeps it concise and not too big that players do not retain their interest.

In Battlefield 6, I have a feeling that the game’s most popular map will be the Siege of Cairo.

There are some questions that still remain about the appearance of Cairo in the game.

One of the main questions we still have is: Will we be able to enter the Pyramids or will they on the map?

The Siege of Cairo in Battlefield 6 game.

In my opinion, the Cairo that we see on the Abbasid map shows how the franchise has changed so much since the beginning of the modern warfare part of the games when it began in 2005. There is so much density to the buildings and to the debris everywhere.

In the videos that I was watching on the Abbasid map, it was clear that the developers wanted to have a game that will be more realistic. Cairo is definitely a great city to place some great close quarter combat. Hopefully, the game will balance the maps so that it isn’t just Cairo that has all the players. Battlefield 2 had many great maps that were slow but more strategic in their gameplay. I hope that they are able to make sure that all the maps get their time in the sun.

Battlefield 6 looks great but one has to be cautious.

What Civilization VII was missing: The Demographics Screen

Civilization III Demographics and Top Cities

The screenshot above showcases the demographic screen in Civilization III.

In the early 2000s, developers were not afraid to put out some statistics on a screen. It was a nice practical way of showing on how the world in your Civilization game was changing and who was on top in the battle for civilizational supremacy.

In Civilization VII, we get three mini games as a replacement for it.

Civilization VII was a game that burned brightly before being surpassed by both Civilization VI and V. I have already stated why I think that the game is one of the worsts mainline entries other than maybe Beyond Earth.

There are many reasons that I have gone into about why I do not like this game. However, one of the most important reasons why I had issues with it was that the change from a game with macro view of history to a game with micro views.

The game simply does not like you think about the people in the empire. It is a board game where you just move units around it. Civilization in a way has always been this way. However, with Civilization V, the game has been moving away from a balance of the macro and micro. Now we barely get macro. Micro is rather shallow and uninteresting.

The citizen’s faces are not there now. They are simply nameless, opaque icons to move on the screen. Nationality in Civilization III was also very important, and it gave a sense of character to the game.

Civilization VII’s developers need to keep the spirits up and think that there are no big issues with the game. However, the game is not garnering much attention. No matter how many updates that they make, the game is simply not going to be well remembered by gamers.

It was the Dark Age of the Civilization Series. The next game, Civilization VIII is going to made more quickly vs the time gap between Civilization VI and VII.

Civilization VII takes away all the nerdy aspects and shows what happens when you become too mainstream and forget your origins. This is a common problem throughout the industry now. There is no soul to the games only the smell of money hiding behind the corner of every pixel you see.

Civilization VIII needs to return to what made the games great and memorable even among people who barely even played video games.

I think that Civilization VIII will be a much better game and it will start the prosess of repairing the franchise but we are going to have wait and see.