No matter what version of Civilization I play... it is the same game. Ideas more or ideas less, but it is the same game. It is the same algorithm. Different companies and game periods and OSs... and it is the same algorithm. Or am I wrong? There are lots of variations, but results are always the same, the behaviour of the game is as if it was the same simulation once and again and again and again.... Civilization is obvious, but the same happens in other genres. Problem is, even considering companies use kernels and frameworks and engines, it does seem as if... there was only ONE COMPANY OVERALL IN GAMING. ONLY ONE. And the most underlying algorithms have been there unchanged since gaming started on PC at least. Or in Nintendo. Nintendo, for instance, seems to cut many games short of maximum fun... but it is in PC where it seems all games are indeed the same piece of code passed between companies and programmers to produce what is essentially the same game! Do you always have Barbarians attacking your first colony before you can stabilize it when it is most vulnerable? Yip. Have you ever won an advantage over the next civilization and produced three cities while exterminating their lone city? Yes! ONCE, in the very original Civilization for Windows version, the one no longer available ANYWHERE! Never again, not even in the Nintendo DS version nor on any other differently named game. And this is Civilization that I remember right now, but the same goes for other genres: cars will always chase you or defeat you the same way in races, spaceships will always ignore your last bullet the right moment to get your ship overwhelmed, creature designers are always limited the same way... and God modes or cheats or rule tweaking only make the game somewhat more boring... because the underlying game is the same one in its mechanic and algorithms!

Oh! AND THE MORE ADVANCED COMPUTERS ARE, THE MORE PROBLEMS YOU FIND IN ALL GAMES!!! I am getting some trouble in all games in this WIndows 10 computer, slight trouble, compared to 95 games in Windows 95 486s, or DOSBOX games in Windows 8 or better, all games in Win 3.1 in 386/486 computers that ran beautifully despite a few complete crashes at times! As I say: once is coincidence, twice is bad luck, but over thirty years on a row? Someone is implementing a pattern! I d truly LOVE to see the formula used to calculate city unrest in Civilization and some other grow variables! And see why they are like hidden, or maybe it is still an early spreadsheet model by Dornbush I considered incomplete then but someone else used and does not know HOW TO MODIFY IT? I d like to have something more solid than arguing, some direct experience of knowledge, though ALL THIS is easy to HIDE when there are very many people involved...

Huh...guess it's come to this, has it?
The jig is up, I suppose. We didn't think you'd get this far, but I guess this is how it'll have to be...
*retrieves syringe from briefcase*
Hold him steady boys...it'll all be over in a jiffy...

What the fuck are you even talking about?

=42
Solved

Uuuhhmmm... just taking a wild guess here, but the word "Civilization" in the title followed by an ordinal number is probably an indicator that it is based on the same "algorithm".

Still, you kind of have a point. No sequel has topped or even matched the beautiful simplicity of the original one.

Probably you're not completely right. It's a similar formula (not algorithm!) for many games but that doesn't make the games identical. There have been changes in background story, graphics, UI and also in game mechanics like additions, etc. ...

And you know why? Because it works. Because it's a great formula.

Just have a look at board games like chess or go! The same games for hundreds of years and still hugely popular. It's not a bad thing per se.

Or the whole lot of movies and TV series (either a romance, a comedy, a drama or a horror show). Why do we still watch them, if there are only like a dozen of possible templates? Games of Thrones for example should be boring because similar stories have been told already a zillion times. However, somehow it isn't.

Probably we like repetition. Variety is overrated.

Talking about formulas, beware of the tvtropes.org

It may end your life without you ever knowing.

Probably you're not completely right. It's a similar formula (not algorithm!) for many games but that doesn't make the games identical. There have been changes in background story, graphics, UI and also in game mechanics like additions, etc. ...

And you know why? Because it works. Because it's a great formula.

Just have a look at board games like chess or go! The same games for hundreds of years and still hugely popular. It's not a bad thing per se.

Or the whole lot of movies and TV series (either a romance, a comedy, a drama or a horror show). Why do we still watch them, if there are only like a dozen of possible templates? Games of Thrones for example should be boring because similar stories have been told already a zillion times. However, somehow it isn't.

Probably we like repetition. Variety is overrated.

Hehe, took me a moment to get the joke. Well-played.

Rouge One is better movie than Force Awakens.

check out Freeciv, an open source clone of Civ. Change whatever you want and rebuild, and then presto.

Anyone ever notice that all the James Bond movies use the same main character?

Oh sure, it's different actors from time to time, but that's just to try to fool us! It's still the same character!

You're wrong, Civ7:MeH will be a city builder FPS.

And luckly in 30 years Super Mario evolved from a 2D platformer to a 3D platformer!

...

Jokes aside, I can agree with some points, but obviously sequels will have to rely on the previous games.
It's hard to innovate a great "format" while remaining true to the original and without breaking everything.
Also, fans of a series will often expect something familiar.

About the bugs on modern systems, I guess it's a problem of:
- increased complexity of (good) games overall.
- decreased QA due to greed or lack of money.
- diminished compatibility, due to the need of innovation (or at least, what they they tried to do).

Did you know that the engines powering all these games were actually invented by a former US presidency candidate? He is playing the beat and the entire internet and all programs dance to it. It's all there, hiding in plain sight in the name: Al-Gore-Rhythm!

I know what you're trying to say, but honestly the character is hardly the same between extremely opposite actors. That is most obvious when Timothy Dalton took over from Roger Moore. Basically the character shares only the same name and gender, but everything else is like a 180 deg opposite.

Not that either of them is bad, Roger Moore is probably my favorite from the entertainment point of view, he's also a very funny man off-screen, I attended his interview/signing session and it was more than worth of time/money.

Timothy Dalton is probably the best Bond if compared with the novels, and just the way he looks like is like a real definition of the Bond character. I used to have a Timothy Dalton Bond poster next to my bed, but at some point it got replaced by a Star Trek poster (I still have that poster though, it's not paper, it's a real plastic fiber poster that they use in cinema advertising).

Pierce Brosnan was painful to look at, and this new guy and these new Bonds are just way too much to bear, I never got further than the first two movies.
Luckily I got the Blu-ray collection that I bought real cheap in Xmas sales (arrived in February...), so when I feel like rechecking my opinions, its literally within arm's reach.

Yeah, this is seriously off-topic maybe, if this thread has a real on-topic subject to begin with, I'm not sure.