Arioch's Analyst Thread

craig123 said:

But on that basis you could say that everything is fundamental. How can I speculate about strategies if I don't know the exact cost of every building, wonder and unit? What about each unit's strength and movement points? What about the effect of every technology, social policy and wonder? How on earth can we speculate about strategy if we don't know every minute detail about the game? I can't believe how bad 2K are at giving us this "fundamental information"! Without it, how am I suppose to decide whether the game is worth buying?

I don't mean to sound arsey but I really don't think it's as important as you make out. Sure, it would be nice to know, but I'd rather hear more about the diplomacy options or see what some unique units/buildings do. How much strategy speculation are you planning to do? If you were told a grassland forest was the same as a plains forest, would that fundamentally change your plans? To me that sounds like something you can adapt to within 5 minutes of playing the game.

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It just seems silly. I can't believe you actually don't agree with me on this because it seems obvious. Maybe it's because I only ever played Civ4, but tile yields were extremely important in that game and when I heard they changed, I kinda went OSNAP because it would change the flow of the game in a way that hexes, 1upt, and even SPs couldn't. That being said, I don't blame 2K, it's just weird that no one else here seems to care.

And yes, the distinction between plains forests and grassland forests was significant in Civ4. Grasslands you chop first and eventually clear away. Plains you wait or leave them be. The plains forest were good for providing extra production in a city with excess food and not many hills (a common situation for a capital city).

In fact, by looking at the tile yields, production as a whole would seem to be nerfed. Before, I thought production would be strong like it was in Civ4 and that early rushes would be just as useful (I was also a production whoar in that game). Now, it seems like the main strategy is more likely to be a "gold economy" where excess gold is used to augment production and science (and culture to some extent with city states). This is different than the specialist economy I had predicted before where science and culture would be the main focus of core cities surrounded by a protective wall of production cities in rougher terrain and filled by gold cities working coastal tiles.

Maybe I'm just a little sore because my visionary empire got blown up by this new information, but hey. This is interesting stuff. You can speculate a lot more by examining what raw numbers are available than you can by knowing a few quirky features. I'm a competitive Civ player. That's what I do.

craig123 said:

No offense, but if you're not buying the game why do need to make such detailed plans in the first place?

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It's BECAUSE I'm not buying the game that I make detailed plans. If I can't do it in the game, I'll do it in my head.

You can liberate capitals. Confirmed on a screen at 8:07 in part 2

SuperSmash5 said:

In fact, by looking at the tile yields, production as a whole would seem to be nerfed. Before, I thought production would be strong like it was in Civ4 and that early rushes would be just as useful (I was also a production whoar in that game). Now, it seems like the main strategy is more likely to be a "gold economy" where excess gold is used to augment production and science (and culture to some extent with city states).

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Could you explain your reasoning here? I'm really confused.

The only relevant fact from tile yields is that mines are +1 production vs trading posts' +2 gold.

If you combine this with the likely ratio of buying cost vs producing cost (I don't remember exactly, but I think it's in the 3-5x range) mines are way more efficient. (Obviously, this is the most unsurprising thing in the world, since gold is more flexible and Civ V was not designed by a gopher.)

So why do you think production is "nerfed"? If anything I think the removal of slavery (which actually is often more efficient than mines in civ IV) makes production more valuable, since to bypass it you need to spend gold inefficiently.

Not sure if mentioned/confirmed but giving a unit a promotion does NOT heal them at all; only when you use the special healing promotion does the unit heal (gameplay part 1, roughly 48 minute mark)

Contrary to the commentary around this time the barbarian Brute and Warrior have the same 6 Strength; but it is unknown whether the Brute can be promoted to a spearman like a warrior can.

Spearman is only 7 strength and so is only marginally better than a warrior (strength 6) against barbarians since barbs, as seen so far, do not have mounted units.

Garett20 said:

You can liberate capitals. Confirmed on a screen at 8:07 in part 2

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he said he liberated a city state.

Schuesseled said:

he said he liberated a city state.

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Its not what Greg said but rather what the screen shows. The victory conditions screen shows 2 "liberated" columns; one with the city-state icon (and a 1 for the city-state Japan liberated) and one with the "Capital (star)" icon, with all civs showing zero.

yeah i see it now, far right column.

From the gameplay stream we also got (at least) Order (+25% production when working on buildings) Communism (+5 production per city) Fascism (strategic resources quantity increased by 100%) and Patronage has been changed to -25% influence degradation as opposed to half.
There's probably more SPs in there that he hovered by with the mouse too quickly for me to read that I'm sure somebody could decipher.

Social Policy: Fascism

Quantity of strategic resources produced by the empire increased by 100%.

Seen during the live gameplay demo though not specifically mentioned.

Wow, welcome to Fascist Russia and Arabia.

I hadn't seen this earlier; units use up all their movement when crossing a river.

This makes rivers *massively* more significant.

Either defend behind them for defensive bonus, or defend even further back, to get an extra bombardment on any units coming for you (and making them end turn on flat ground where they get the movement penalty).

Very cool.

I wonder whether cities (still) get a bonus from being next to a river. Otherwise, it might be better to build it one tile removed from the river, so that the charge screeches to a halt right at the borders of your city.

Ahriman said:

I hadn't seen this earlier; units use up all their movement when crossing a river.

This makes rivers *massively* more significant.

Either defend behind them for defensive bonus, or defend even further back, to get an extra bombardment on any units coming for you (and making them end turn on flat ground where they get the movement penalty).

Very cool.

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Agreed.

The new combat system looks extremely cool in conjuction with many of the new (or changed) systems.

iop said:

I wonder whether cities (still) get a bonus from being next to a river. Otherwise, it might be better to build it one tile removed from the river, so that the charge screeches to a halt right at the borders of your city.

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I had wondered the exact same thing. But if the bonus isn't massive, I'd be willing to sacrifice it in most cases to make sure my city was that much more on the defensive. It would only be more awesome if you could do that with a city in between two rivers. Like a natural moat.

SevenSpirits said:

Could you explain your reasoning here? I'm really confused.

The only relevant fact from tile yields is that mines are +1 production vs trading posts' +2 gold.

If you combine this with the likely ratio of buying cost vs producing cost (I don't remember exactly, but I think it's in the 3-5x range) mines are way more efficient. (Obviously, this is the most unsurprising thing in the world, since gold is more flexible and Civ V was not designed by a gopher.)

So why do you think production is "nerfed"? If anything I think the removal of slavery (which actually is often more efficient than mines in civ IV) makes production more valuable, since to bypass it you need to spend gold inefficiently.

Click to expand...

I measured production capability as the ability to get a sizable army up and running(that's usually how production manifests itself unless you're building wonders), not the value of each individual hammer. With nerfed mines, hills, and forests, hammers/turn will be lower. The elimination of whippng and the difficulty of rushing also limit production.

I'm not saying that it's better to convert gold into hammers than just work hammers, but I think that there are more reasons to focus on gold rather than hammers. Production has been nerfed. Specialist cities require a lot of buildings as well as rivers. That leaves gold as a very powerful city type to prioritize. And since coastal gold cities aren't viable, they will need to dominate the prime grassland area.

SuperSmash5 said:

I measured production capability as the ability to get a sizable army up and running(that's usually how production manifests itself unless you're building wonders), not the value of each individual hammer. With nerfed mines, hills, and forests, hammers/turn will be lower. The elimination of whippng and the difficulty of rushing also limit production.

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This is basic economics - scarcity makes things more valuable, not less valuable.

Fin said:

I had wondered the exact same thing. But if the bonus isn't massive, I'd be willing to sacrifice it in most cases to make sure my city was that much more on the defensive. It would only be more awesome if you could do that with a city in between two rivers. Like a natural moat.

Click to expand...

Well the health bonus is gone of course, but you need to be on a river to build a Watermill building in the city.. not sure if there is any other bonus, extra gold on the city tile? Also maybe hydroplant? edit: coal plant needs a coal resource that you could use for ironclad or something and nuke plant requires uranium that you could use for nukes/gdr, this is assuming that they all give the same amount of production bonus

edit: and roads cost maint so river trade routes could save a few gpt?

SuperSmash5 said:

It just seems silly. I can't believe you actually don't agree with me on this because it seems obvious. Maybe it's because I only ever played Civ4, but tile yields were extremely important in that game and when I heard they changed, I kinda went OSNAP because it would change the flow of the game in a way that hexes, 1upt, and even SPs couldn't. That being said, I don't blame 2K, it's just weird that no one else here seems to care.

And yes, the distinction between plains forests and grassland forests was significant in Civ4. Grasslands you chop first and eventually clear away. Plains you wait or leave them be. The plains forest were good for providing extra production in a city with excess food and not many hills (a common situation for a capital city).

In fact, by looking at the tile yields, production as a whole would seem to be nerfed. Before, I thought production would be strong like it was in Civ4 and that early rushes would be just as useful (I was also a production whoar in that game). Now, it seems like the main strategy is more likely to be a "gold economy" where excess gold is used to augment production and science (and culture to some extent with city states). This is different than the specialist economy I had predicted before where science and culture would be the main focus of core cities surrounded by a protective wall of production cities in rougher terrain and filled by gold cities working coastal tiles.

Maybe I'm just a little sore because my visionary empire got blown up by this new information, but hey. This is interesting stuff. You can speculate a lot more by examining what raw numbers are available than you can by knowing a few quirky features. I'm a competitive Civ player. That's what I do.

Click to expand...

I agree with you that tile yields are important when playing the game, but it is not fundamental information prior to release. Like I said before, I would be interested to read what they were if someone managed to put a list together, but it is not a big deal to me. For example, in the demo last night (yesterday) I was not looking at the tile yields when Greg moused-over them; I was concentrating on other, more interesting, things. To me it seems like something I will pick up very quickly once I play the game - detailed planning would be a waste of time, just like trying to plan the best order to progress through the tech tree would be. I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

SuperSmash5 said:

It's BECAUSE I'm not buying the game that I make detailed plans. If I can't do it in the game, I'll do it in my head.

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Each to their own, I guess.

SEAPORT
--------------------
Cost = 140
Maintenance = 2
-------------------
+2 prod from sea resources worked by this city

city must have at least one sea resource with fishing boats nearby

snipperrabbit!! said:

SEAPORT
--------------------
Cost = 140
Maintenance = 2
-------------------
+2 prod from sea resources worked by this city

city must have at least one sea resource with fishing boats nearby

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That's a really useful building! Finally, I wished so often something like this had been available in Civ4, to make small islands usable.

I strongly believe that if you want an outpost somewhere, be it only as a defensive position, you can have it now. It won't get big, maybe it will be an economic loss, but you will be able to have the city grow strong enough to defend itself.

There was no word yet on maintainance through city distance, was it? I'm just thinking about settling on small islands somewhere to have a pearl-harbor style military base - nice!