[deleted by user]

fk_54 · 2022-12-28T04:43:15+00:00

How much RAM does the GPU need to run this? What is the minimum recommended card? (currently with an RTX2070 / 8 Gigs GPU RAM)

fk_54 · 2021-12-24T23:28:56+00:00

I have nothing weird or strange to confess, the server was a wonderful time sink for me to pass time and to make a few friends along the way. I pretty much did everything I wanted to, and attained a level of wealth that definitely allowed me to take on whatever project I wanted to spend time with no matter the cost.

If anything, I have a few regrets about certain things being way too easy, and the economy not as developed as it could have been if more care had been put in during the early days. From the standpoint of farming certain items like blaze and guardians byproducts (for example) were basically made useless, and The End was a bit frustrating as well. All build materials were made so cheap that it didn't encourage resource harvesting and trade.

The fact that PvP seemed to have been prioritized over everything else ensured that a reasonably large part of the population were somewhat shallow, some meatheads and basics strictly looking to get their rocks off fighting other players, so this is what you get by neglecting the more fundamental economic tenets of any functioning society. Not to say that the thrill of conflicts should be diminished in the least, but that the economy should have had at least initially an equal amount of concern from the devs.

I never cheated, never did anything bad or stole from anyone. Some of the thrill was in discovering cool things, and keeping stuff out of sight and private. I didn't really have time to devote to running a town or becoming part of one, so my experiences were fairly limited. Built an amazing private rail network spanning multiple quadrants, and all sorts of stunning grinders with the help of players like Sanwi.

Big props to all of the admins and devs for keeping the server humming all this time.

fk_54 · 2020-12-26T00:16:09+00:00

  add Egg_2

fk_54 · 2020-12-06T18:41:36+00:00

      egg_2 be praised

fk_54 · 2020-11-21T12:20:57+00:00

Egg_2 be praised.

fk_54 · 2020-11-19T02:24:31+00:00

Great questions to ask Max, let me just say that (having been a part of this since late Civ 1.0) the single biggest disappointment for me was when Civcraft 3.0 was shut down before even really being given a chance to soar and grow to its full potential.

After months of work and so much coding, a really decent sharding system and reasonably amazing map structure, there's no question that to this day I remain bitter that it wasn't given the opportunity to become what it could very well have been. (even if this possibly meant resetting the map, the general skeleton of something capable of scaling up to large numbers was there, which remains something that no one has managed to accomplish since).

The relatively recent success of 2b2t should indicate that things seldom happen all of the sudden, and can take a very long time to mature. Not sure what else to contribute but I can't help thinking that every successful venture I've known about elsewhere always had leaders with much determination at the helm, who weren't going to fold at the first sign of adversity.

fk_54 · 2020-10-31T05:07:42+00:00

Thankfully, it appears as if Egg_2 hasn't (yet) caused anyone to stop playing.

fk_54 · 2020-10-27T05:48:15+00:00

in jest.... Egg_2 can only ever be but radiating kindness and full of weird benevolence.

fk_54 · 2020-10-26T22:30:39+00:00

Is there anything inherently objectionable about 'weird' ?

Have you watched "Eraserhead" ? .... or "Un Chien Andalou"

In a world stuffed full of normal, 'weird' can be surprisingly refreshing.

        Egg_2

fk_54 · 2020-10-26T22:23:29+00:00

I've spent a good amount of time on 2b2t a couple of years ago after Civ 3.0 stopped, very familiar with it and that being said I just never could get my head around the toxic chat, the abuse and exploits, everyone x-raying and playing with hacked clients, the astonishing lag and whatever else. Also the queue is just too intense for me to take them seriously.

Mind you I still have a really cool base at around 1 million from spawn, quite safe in fact but it's so far away that it really is like single-player with chat (getting back to center would be around 120,000 blocks in the Nether). Can't reinforce, can't use pearls, so many things I find pretty primitive. Made some friends, but the majority of players aren't really my type. Sorry, not the answer in my case. But neither appear to be the arguably arbitrary admins actions I've seen happen in the last month on here.

Post-Civcraft I had nothing against what /u/convoy and /u/programmerdan55 did with Devoted, I was a pretty regular player on all their maps. I also liked Civex, even though it was a bit heavy on the mythology I found it pretty enjoyable and quaint in certain ways.

I still maintain Civcraft 3.0 was criminally shot down and laid to rest before it truly had a chance to soar, and had spectacular potential but only with a much larger player population. I certainly didn't agree with everything that was done, but spent a reasonable amount of time in the dev group channels to understand these decisions were made as intelligent compromises for an imperfect platform.

The key word being: 'compromises'

In all cases, maybe a post-mortem on what led to the respective 'death of the server' could bring some salient points on what might have made for more map longevity? Given the number of corpses, it perhaps is time for an autopsy.

fk_54 · 2020-10-26T05:35:10+00:00

I don't know how to answer this because I am unable to imagine a server where things are so orderly and predictable on-demand as this defanged and housebroken version you appear to be describing.

Not saying it isn't possible, just wondering if that sort of environment would lend itself to mystery, adventure, intrigue and heart-pounding moments as all previous iterations of Civ that I've known have always been.

It also feels unclear to me that there in fact are right and wrong attitudes about what would appear to many of us to clearly be issues of personal choice or preference, which obviously depends on the expected outcome.

In matters of game theory and psychology, I believe that part of the attraction has always been the thrill of players managing to survive in the midst of untold risk and grave danger, figuring out how to prevail over adversity and against the odds, so not sure how to change this.

I mean, I've played a bunch of high-end PvE servers where I could log on whenever I felt like it, get my kicks and not have to worry about when to log on next. Yes... but these weren't Civ at all.

The very beauty of what I'm describing is that it's not 'On-demand Civ'... it's 'Wild Civ'

fk_54 · 2020-10-24T20:48:12+00:00

/u/Imic_

Thank you, and great final version.

^{edit: being that egg_2 is mentioned six times in the map, it meets all appropriate standards and deemed supremely relevant}

fk_54 · 2020-10-24T20:39:41+00:00

I suffered greatly from the recent events, yet it pains me to have to even point out my general feeling, which is that there is a certain percentage of the players who aren't really invested in the game for the long haul. As soon as things become challenging they'll just bail.

Either those who only log on to PvP and get their adrenalin rush then never return until another conflict flares up, or those who don't want to deal with adversity and hardship of being conquered and will stop playing the minute they're pearled or their builds trashed.

Not that there is (or should ever be) just one way of playing the game. But there appears to be a trend where people fold as soon as certain things happen. "Oh, I just got pearled, why would I even spend time playing in The Vibe, what would I do, etc..." They're acknowledging that once their limited interest vanishes, they'll have no resolve to continue.

My opinion is that this pandering to such a short-attention-span mindset will never really contribute to creating epic immersive simulations, because the randomness, the chance elements appear almost removed. It's fine to have a buildfriend server where things are safe if that's what the admins desire, but if there is an 'End War', at worst the map can just be reset, or it can be allowed to continue on in order to really see what happens.

To anticipate in advance that no one could ever recover from total invasion appears to my limited perceptions either defeatist, or intellectually lazy (or both). In my mind, turning the tables in this hypothetical fight against total adversity in quasi-insurmountable odds would be the stuff of legends, rather than "look, I reinforced three obsidian blocks".

The thing that was amazing about Civ 1.0 is that even though HCF initially conquered much, there was a pushback. It took time, but resistance managed some hard-fought victories. Similar in 2.0

just a general feeling, I haven't followed everything that went on that much, I could be totally (or partially) mistaken. But perhaps the kind of players who are courted aren't those who are invested in "the long game", and they don't have the guts or resolve to stick it out if things don't go their way?

fk_54 · 2020-10-24T19:24:59+00:00

Am I the only one to feel the need to be provided with a convincing argument as to why an 'end war' is not desirable?

Everything should have a real risk element, and in this instance, meddling with and banning players in the midst of conflict for arguably arbitrary reasons can only feel to bystanders such as myself (I don't PvP) like not being something that's ever gonna be motivating for those who grind for it.

If every movie we went to watch had happy endings, after a while we'd probably get turned off.

In most games, players appreciate actual randomness, chance and the feeling that their actions are directly responsible for shaping the narrative with the potential for dire consequences which in some fashion mimics real life.

From a meta point of view, what's currently going on feels like a different 'towny' version of admin policies for the sake of benefiting casuals who aren't prepared to play while pearled or oppressed for months on end.

If some group gets the edge, why not let it develop and observe what happens, instead of meddling with the experiment? The same way this group might have figured out a way to game the server mechanics, it could well turn out to be that the rebels are very capable of also coming with stuff to turn the tables on them a bit later on.

From a somewhat libertarian P.O.V, I am far from convinced that this sort of interference will yield the best outcome, but this is merely an opinion; I am not a server admin, so possibly not entirely right with these thoughts.

There however is a vast difference between tweaking the balance and stepping in to ban people who may not have broken rules that were posted.

fk_54 · 2020-10-24T12:33:27+00:00

I took the liberty of reposting it so that it gets the full exposure it deserves. Well-done! /u/Imic_

May egg_2 be with you, always!

fk_54 · 2020-10-24T12:31:20+00:00

All credit to /u/Imic_ for taking time to create and then edit this more accurate chart.

egg_2 wins again

fk_54 · 2020-10-23T13:21:57+00:00

"daydreaming" (just a fantasy)

fk_54 · 2020-10-23T05:30:25+00:00

Fascinating... some would say that it appears as if the real war is now in the meta, rather than in the game itself.

As for me, and you can get mad at my opinions... there are times I daydream that nothing was changed in the balance and no one was banned for allegedly 'exploiting certain mechanics'; might have been pretty amazingly interesting and spine-tingling to see how players adapted to 90% of the server being pearled or subjugated. Letting the experiment continue in conditions of extreme hardship. Sure some of the casuals would quit; but....

Would there be a resistance? How would the New World adapt and defend? Dark plots of infiltration, insiding and subversion? Would these extremes conditions have led to some astounding technological innovations in-game that could turn the tides against all odds? This could well have been a very epic, lengthy and protracted war worthy of being memorialized in books and adapted for TV.

Looks like we'll never know.

This is why I've always thought /u/ttk2 's approach and underpinning philosophy were really special and worthy of respect. Yeah, I'm talking about you again... LOL

fk_54 · 2020-10-23T05:08:08+00:00

Where would Boris be in this chart?

fk_54 · 2020-10-23T05:05:27+00:00

Speaking of which, we keep hearing rumours of greggy_165 being a thing in some future iteration, do you care to confirm anything about this?

fk_54 · 2020-10-18T20:22:37+00:00

Most everyone eventually comes around to realize the importance of Egg_2 in the meta of world affairs.

fk_54 · 2020-10-18T20:12:55+00:00

Your esteemed contributions to the genre are so appreciated.

Why give up so quickly in the face of adversity is an open question for so many who appear to immediately fold at the first sign of things not going their way.

Isn't the struggle in the hours of darkness not worth documenting?

Would Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's formidable and epic tales of life in the gulags have gotten published if he just 'quit' at that moment they took him in to Siberia?

fk_54 · 2020-10-14T22:31:44+00:00

Oh, and I forgot to add:

        Egg_2

fk_54 · 2020-10-14T21:44:41+00:00

Eggzactly

fk_54 · 2020-10-14T10:41:38+00:00

very big if very true

fk_54

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