Civilization characteristics

[Loppan Torkel]

The leaders for the different civs will have different flavors. The way I interpret it is that this means the AI will differ between the leaders - some will favor research, some expansion or naval power.
If there's no other difference than that, there won't be any difference for you playing the Aztecs instead of the English in this aspect. There could be benefits and penalties for social policies or government types, etc, but I don't think they will be tied to the flavors if there are.

There will probably be unique units and possibly unique buildings which will differentiate the civs.


Should there be other aspects that differentiate the actual civs, in your opinion? // Edit: These characteristics would be tied to the civs and known from the start... Pick the Germans and you know that you'll receive certain bonuses and possible penalties for selecting this civ.

Has anything been said in this matter?

[Ahriman]

They've already announced that each civ will have a unique "trait".

Flavors are just AI preferences, the "trait" will be some knid of particular faction bonuses.

Flavors have no impact on a human player playing a faction, the faction "trait" will.

[Loppan Torkel]

Originally Posted by Ahriman

They've already announced that each civ will have a unique "trait".

I had a hunch they had said something about it, but I didn't see it in the "confirmed features thread"... Do you have a source?

Flavors are just AI preferences, the "trait" will be some knid of particular faction bonuses.

Flavors have no impact on a human player playing a faction, the faction "trait" will.

That's more or less what I wrote, but I'm not sure what the traits are, if they are confirmed, or what they are tied to.. the civ or the leader, or something else - will it be obtained after some prerequisite has been reached?


Edit:
What I've found - "There are mixed reports about whether flavors are also replacing leadership traits for players. Some websites treat flavors and traits as one in the same, and others don’t. According to IGN, “The grab bag of leader traits from the previous Civilization games is gone now in favor of traits that are entirely unique to each leader.”" - www.explicitgamer.com. It continues "We weren't told what any of the new ones are, but we do know that one of the rejected ideas was to have one civ treat forests as roads. It ultimately ended up being much too powerful, but it should indicate the direction that the team is taking with the new traits."

Still, they mention that the traits are unique to the the leaders, this rather than the civs...

[Ahriman]

For example:

The grab bag of leader traits from the previous Civilization games is gone now in favor of traits that are entirely unique to each leader. We weren't told what any of the new ones are, but we do know that one of the rejected ideas was to have one civ treat forests as roads. It ultimately ended up being much too powerful, but it should indicate the direction that the team is taking with the new traits.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1075587p2.html

There is only 1 leader per civ, so the question of being tied to leader vs faction is somewhat academic. We don't know anything about any activation pre-requisites, I imagine it would depend on the ability. I could imagine for example a hypothetical Viking ability (if they were in) to involve loadnig/unloading from transport form faster, and/or their transports having some military strength; this wouldn't need an activation or pre-requisite as such, but you wouldn't be able to use it until you had the tech for transports.

[Loppan Torkel]

Originally Posted by Ahriman

There is only 1 leader per civ, so the question of being tied to leader vs faction is somewhat academic.

It is if they manage to have faction leaders that correlate with the appropriate trait for the faction. Most of the time it probably would be difficult to see who the traits belong to anyway.

It seems they're going for more unique civs than before at least...

[Ahriman]

It is if they manage to have faction leaders that correlate with the appropriate trait for the faction.

It doesn't seem like they are; there was some talk from one source of Washington's trait being something scientific. Which can make sense for the late 19th and 20th century USA, but not for George Washington or revolutionary-era USA.

[Loppan Torkel]

Originally Posted by Ahriman

It doesn't seem like they are; there was some talk from one source of Washington's trait being something scientific. Which can make sense for the late 19th and 20th century USA, but not for George Washington or revolutionary-era USA.

I interpreted that as one of the flavors of Washington.. An area where he ranks high, as in what the specific AI prefers to focus on.

[awesome]

Originally Posted by Loppan Torkel

Still, they mention that the traits are unique to the the leaders, this rather than the civs...

with one leader per civ, that's pretty much the same thing.

[Set]

I bet washington's trait(not flavor) will be his cities have more resistors than other people's either that or he gets a small number of partisans around cities that are captured. These might be to pwerful though.

[Hail]

Originally Posted by Set

I bet washington's trait(not flavor) will be his cities have more resistors than other people's either that or he gets a small number of partisans around cities that are captured. These might be to pwerful though.

civs will have traits (one unique trait per civ)
ai leaders will each have one flavor (the specialization (navy, army, etc.) associated with the dominating(biggest) weight in the set of weights for each specialization)

as has been mentioned by Mr. Shafer himself, the weights will be adjusted by +/- 2 at the start of every game. therefore if the dominating specialization has a weight not distinct (e.g. 3, 3, 4, 3) enough, some of the games the ai leader will pursue another spec.

[bonafide11]

Originally Posted by Hail

civs will have traits (one unique trait per civ)

Where did you see they will only have one trait per civ? I've seen no such thing, I highly doubt that is true. I imagine it'll be more like Civ Revolution where they have four or five unique bonuses (let's use bonuses rather than traits for Civ V) for each civ.

[Ahriman]

Where did you see they will only have one trait per civ? I've seen no such thing, I highly doubt that is true. I imagine it'll be more like Civ Revolution where they have four or five unique bonuses (let's use bonuses rather than traits for Civ V) for each civ.

I think we're talking cross purposes somewhat; we can say each civ will have one "trait", but this trait might or might not grant a number of different bonuses. Eg we could imagine a Conqueror trait that gave bonus gold from razing cities, reduced unrest duration from conquering cities and bonus gold from pillaging (totally hypothetical).

We just don't know yet.

[Loppan Torkel]

Originally Posted by Hail

civs will have traits (one unique trait per civ)
ai leaders will each have one flavor (the specialization (navy, army, etc.) associated with the dominating(biggest) weight in the set of weights for each specialization)

as has been mentioned by Mr. Shafer himself, the weights will be adjusted by +/- 2 at the start of every game. therefore if the dominating specialization has a weight not distinct (e.g. 3, 3, 4, 3) enough, some of the games the ai leader will pursue another spec.

I didn't realize that only one flavor would be chosen at the start. It sounded like Elizabeth prefers Naval Power but if that's not suitable for the map she'd go for another strategy. I thought she'd rely more on some other flavor she'd have for disposal. Is it evident that this is not the case?

[Ahriman]

I didn't realize that only one flavor would be chosen at the start.

Its not clear to me that this is the case. The flavors are a big set of different AI priorities. We could easily imagine that leaders might have non-zero parameter values for several different flavors. And that these will vary from game to game based on that random faction.

Eg: We could imagine Elizabeth having Naval = 6, Exploration = 3, Expansion = 4. These could vary +/- 2 from game to game, and the AI could end up pursuing a secondary flavor if the first flavor is infeasible (eg landlocked -> pursue expansion techs, rather than nautical techs).

I'm guessing that, like in Civ4, flavors are probably at least partly about choosing tech priorities, and maybe some other behavior priorities.

[Churchill's Hat]

Great...speculation on something that's almost certainly going to be in not being in...do you really think they're going to make every multiplayer leader the same?

[Loppan Torkel]

Originally Posted by Churchill's Hat

Great...speculation on something that's almost certainly going to be in not being in...do you really think they're going to make every multiplayer leader the same?

It's a possibility. I can't see the harm in asking a question and having some discussion about civ-specific traits. It's not like there's much certainty in the info that's been given.

Although I think the poll question came out a bit wrong because of the limitation in number of characters.

[Aussie_Lurker]

Although I never played it, I think that the recent Colonization game had a good idea-attribute 1 special ability to the leader, & a 2nd special ability to the Civilization they lead. This 2nd attribute-coupled with the UU & UB-will give each civ its own unique flavor separate from its leader-with the leader adding the extra "spice".

Aussie.