Civilization World: How do you feel about it?

[SquirrelPants]

For those who don't know: Civilization World is a Facebook Civ game. It doesn't really play like the hardcore PC titles, and it more aimed at the casual audience.

Here are some thoughts on it:

I started up on the CivWorld beta the day before yesterday, and while the mechanics were fairly heavy-handed and hard to get ahold of for the first little while, I found it to be quite a bit of fun. I love the cooperation of the players(as cities) within the civilization at large, and the minigames are decent and rather fun. It's a nice game to play for a few minutes at a time every few hours, and really satisfying.

However, I think the aspect of the strategy-at-large which is necessary to be competitive as a civilization is really going to be lost on the Facebook crowd; the kind of people who don't really know what it's like to play a "proper" Civ game nor what the effects of their cities on the empire really are. Maybe I'm wrong, but as a person who has been playing Civ for a few years it seems like it would be a rocky start for the more casual players.

 

[Little Duck]

Loving it atm. Problem with it is most people jump on the big nation band wagon too easily. Although my 4 man nation just took on a defeated the 40 man monolith of tech, culture and military might that was the British commonwealth. So yeah. Really enjoying.

 

[shootdown]

It's not another one of those where you have an amount of 'energy' that recharges a certain amount every hour is it?

 

[Akihiko]

It also isn't another one where you have to mess around inviting people on your friendslist to join your 'clan'(In this case, nation I guess?) is it?

 

[veloper]

It's not for me.

I want to be able to walk away from a game for a month and then simply reload my last save game. I don't want to be bullied into checking in often.

 

[brunothepig]

You'd be surprised. There was a Travian rip off a while back (still is, I stopped caring though) that did have plenty of people who knew what they were doing. Of course, there was those expecting something friendly and simple like farmville, who quickly got destroyed or left, but I think the community will do fine. As for my opinion, I agree it seems pretty good. Unfortunately the whole beta thing killed my experience, far too many bugs for me including not being able to join a civilisation. My friend said he's had only minor problems, so maybe I'm just unlucky. I'll likely return in a few weeks when it's more stable.

 

[Wicky_42]

I've been playing the last few days and I'm liking it. Me and a few other decently active players have built the Roman Empire up to be a military juggernaut, good times being had. No-one else I've seen has built up their civ population like I have, or got as high rates of income as I, but some people seem to make insane amounts of gold despite that; there's enough levels of complexity to let people play in a good variety of ways and be successful, so that's good.

Having the Era milestones in development and having a definite end to a game is a really nice touch and kinda makes it seem to have more of a point. The direct competition between nations in culture, gold, wonders, tech and military to win each era gives you goals to aim for and keeps things interesting - we lost the first few eras to economic nations, but then the requirements get higher and wonder-stealing takes a big toll on economies and, having won one of the continuous in-game competitions, our civ is both the richest and most heavily armed, so we've started to win Eras now

Bug-wise, the only thing I've been suffering through has been the chat's inability to list the correct name (apparently I'm labelled as Batman... >.>), but fortunately I've avoided any game-breakers as of yet. Still, you'd have thought names in chat was easy - every other game has got that right at least, lol.

Not sure how long I'll stay interested though - I have a tendency to play the crap out of FB games then completely drop them, and this one's not supportive of taking times out, really - but the game play's much better than any FB game I've hit on yet.

 

[andar815]

I was disappointed early on because when I heard "Civilization Facebook game," I expected a game more like the main civ series. What it is is more along the lines of every other facebook game.
It grew on me though because I got some friends playing and we formed a nation that we defended with fierce nationalism. Building a nation cooperatively with your comrades and seeing that work turn into a mediocre nation that gets taken over by strangers who joined latter on and made the nation better is a unique experience.
I liked building my single city to help the entire civilization. I like that the game has an ending where someone wins or loses instead of going on endlessly. I like the stock market thingy. I enjoyed the mini games like Caravans, Painting, and tech mazes.
Then I got bored and stopped playing it. It was fun for a time. I always ended up wanting to just go play Civ V. So I did.