Civilization World becomes boring towards later part of the game

After writing my last blog post about Civilization World, I had completed 2 CivWorld games, and is currently playing another 2. For one of the games, I had been one of the top 10 players.

Before I can come up with a strategy guide, I start to get dull with the game.

It is a big problem with the game design, that the game become dead slow towards the end.

One of the reason that the game gets dull is the lack of building type. Each attribute can be boost by some building - population by granary, production by lumber mill, stone masonary, iron smelt and factory, science by library and university, culture by theater and museum, wealth by bank and market. And that's all! In the original Civilization there are so many building with more effectiveness when you advance your science, like sewage system, stock market, coleseum, etc. and etc. and you can boost up your growth with all these new bulidings and science advancement. However in Civilization World there is no more new building after industrialization (factory is latest building you can get), and the boost is not effective even if you building another building of the same type. For instance, I had tried to build 4 granaries in a row, and found that population growth just increase to double.

So, with requirement to advance a technology increase exponentially at later part (something like 500,000 science to research communism, for example), while the science gain for each harvest is around 80, it takes more than 1 week to research one technology at later era of the game. The case is similar if you want to win with culture or wealth victory.

Therefore it becomes dead boring once you get through after industrialization, and everyday there is not much advancement in the game.

And the game usually ends later than 3000 AD (my last game ends at 3160 AD), which is quite ridiculous to me.

I hope 2K Games can make some improvement on this.

Google Games has launched!

Earlier we have guessing whether Google+ games will be coming very soon in our post Will Google Games coming very soon? blog post. Now the conjecture is confirmed. Now when you log in to your Google+ account, you will see a "Games" stream appear at your top menu:

When you click to the "Games" button, you will be brought to the Google+ "Games" stream.

Currently you will only have some common selections: Angry Birds, City of Wonders, Bejeweled Blitz etc. and most of them already has a Facebook counterpart.

When you click into one of the game and select "Play", you will be confirmed with a message that these games need to access your Google+ profile. If you have no concern on this, then you will be brought to the actual game page, very much similar to Facebook games. Very nice!

With Google's effort, I think there will be much more games added to the repertoire very soon. I am looking forward to see this new game platform become bigger.

Tycoon World New Round Starts Today

A new round of Tycoon World will start today at CEST 12:05 (UTC+8).

If you are interested to start trying out this strategic industry simulation game, it is a good time to do it today~

Happy gaming!

A First Look At Civilization World

Civilization World is a Facebook based browser game developed by the original developer of Sid Meier's Civilization. It was launched on 6th July, 2011. After some messy time of server congestion, now it becomes stable for playing as an open beta.

When you go into Civilization World, you must choose a game to join. There are several ongoing game to be joint. You can look at the game year, which indicates how long the game had started. It is recommended that you join an earlier game.

Once you have chosen a game to be played, you will be directed to your city view. You will be in this game until the game round ended. In your city view, you can start building your city. A tutorial will be guiding you what can you do in your city. What you must start to do is to build houses for your citizens to live.

There are several occupations for your citizens: - Farmers, Workers, Scientists, Merchants and Artists, each of the occupations corresponds to one important aspect of your city. Farmers are for collecting food, which is for the growth of your population; Workers are for the collection of productions, which are used for building your city; Scientists are collecting science, which is for your civilization advancement; Merchants collecting gold, which is for your wealth; and finally Artists collecting culture, which are for producing great persons for you and in turn is for building wonders.

Besides that, there are three important mini-games for you to collect extra resources. A maze is for increasing your science. If you collect enough science points, there will be maze steps for you to advance your maze, and once you success, you can collect extra science points. A puzzle is for culture, in the same way, once you complete parts of the puzzle, you can increase culture points. A road connection game is for collecting extra gold.

Once you understand what can you do in your city, you should start considering joining a civilization. Civilization World is a game that you cannot play alone, at least you cannot win alone. You must join other players to form civilizations. Players in the same civilization share technology and great persons to build wonders. A wonder must be completed by having great persons from different players in the same civilization.

This is a social game which you can win. The game is divided into ages - stone ages, bronze ages, dark ages etc. which can be won by a civilization as a whole by several ways:- winning enough battles, research of a certain technology, complete a certain amount of wonders or accumulation of certain amount of gold, which all are counted in your civilization as a whole.

This is quite an easy game when compared with the original Sid Meier's Civilization, while still contains the main ingredients. I like this game in a sense that this is a special kind of social game, which involves co-operation within a civilization and competition between civilizations, which has found a perfect balance between co-operation and competition.

It is a must-play no matter you are a civilization fans or a social game fans.

I give this game 4 out of 5 stars.

CivWorld goes open beta with server jam!

The long awaited Facebook browser game Sid Meier's Civilization World (CivWorld) had started its beta on 8th July. The feedback is huge and there are large amount of players trying to get into the server in a short period of time.

I am one of them :-)

I think 2K Games had not anticipated the enthusiastic feedback of the public, or maybe they are lack of the experience to handle browser games, the hosting server had soon go to its limit, and many of the waiting people are not able to get into the server.

Well, I am one of them too... :-(

I still have not a chance to try this out yet, but I anticipate that this would be a great game. I have been a long time fans of Sid Meier's Civilization series ;-)

I will give a review on this once I have a chance to get into the server and try this out. Stay tuned!

For more information, please go to the official Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/civworld?sk=wall

Will Google Games coming very soon?

Google+ has entered into the testing stage, for which a small group of Google users, which join by receiving invitation either from Google directly or from friends, becomes a group of tester to help testing Google+ out. So we expect Google+ will be opened to public very soon.

Google+ is a Facebook rival from Google, which allow users to share news, photo, video and links to "circle" of people, which users creates and add friends to. This is very much similar to Facebook, though quite preliminary, with the addition of the idea of "Circles", which allow you to divide your friends into circles of people which you can share particular information to particular group of target people.

To really compete with Facebook, it cannot do without social games. So here comes the conjecture whether Google will add games to Google+.

I believe the answer is positive, this can be seen from Google's earlier investment in social games, and some evidence by examining the source code of Google+.

In that case, will this open a new era to social and browser gaming? Let's keep an open eye for it! ;-)