I would definitely recommend downloading and watching the closed demo, it gives out nearly as much additional information as we have recieved to date!
Some thing I picked up upon, and noted down for you.
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Note's.
Look's A-
ing-mazing, Coast ripples of waves, lots of shiny effects. No wonder the guy recording it on his video camera was shaking about like he had arthetis, who could stay still with that video playing, I was jumping up and down in my seat giggling like a little scool girl.
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May be worth noting something that hasn't even been looked at, what options do you have ingame on the menu.
Not sure how "worthy" this information is but we can see this on the menu list.
-Quick Save
-Save Game
-Load Game
-Save Map ( Interesting new option? If you like a particular randomly generated map, save it and play it again
)
-Options
-Exit to Main Menu
-Exit to Windows
-Return to game
Nothing to new to note there.
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Main Menu
-Single Player
-Multi Player
-Mods
-Options
-Other
-Exit
Not sure if this is useful buts it's a never seen before menu system unless you watched the closed demo so meh
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Single Player Menu
-Play Now
-Setup Game
-Load Game
-Tutorial
-Back
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In the city screen they hold the mouse over things like food/citizens/science/production, its blurry so I cant see what comes up information wise, but as it was correctly predicted, the city screen is not "simplified" as some believe it to be, their are indeed tools tips that come up when holding your mouse over the bits of generalised information you want specifics on, all I can say is BOOYA! I TOLD YOU SO.
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Here is a screen shot of the city state geneova,
I didnt bother taking a screen shot of the option menu that comes up becauses its too blurry to make out, but a few things were confirmed.
-Culutural City States give a culture bonus,
-Maritime City States give a food bonus,
-Military City States give a UU bonus, maybe other things too.
The amount bonus will depend on your relation with them, the more things you do for them, the higher your reputation with them the higher bonus you reap.
If a city state is captured, and you capture it off and enemy and liberate it so its free, it will be your friend till the end of the game and vote for you in the election. I guess liberation is highly valued
.
The border now appears to be dotted to make you more aware instaneously that it is a city state I guess.
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Here is a screen shot of Elizabeths town Newcastle.
A few things to point out.
- The border look on this version is slightly different, with the civ's colour as an outline and with a secondary colouring on the inside. White in this case, but I guess it leaves open lots more civ possibilities on the map with 2 colours because then you can see Stalin clearly with a red outside and white inside, and Dutch Von-WhatisName who have a red/orange outside but say a blue inside. Again speeding up noticing who is who. I do note niether of those civ's will be in the game on release though
.
- Their is a wonder on a hex, Stonehenge. It is probably still built inside the city, its listed as a building in the city atleast, we saw chichten itza in romes city screen, with it lying on a hex near rome too.
What the purpose of this is, I don't know, perhaps it is vunerable to tile razing, this would add strategy to protecting tile improvements where normally they are ignored in war, it doesn't seem to give a bonus to the tile, the chiten itza was built near rome, and the tile had a farm and it gave 3 food 1 prod 1 gold, so if it does improve tile income... it doesnt do so by much.
- The tiel improvement to the north-east of Newcastle seen better in screen shots from official HD video previews is indeed a Trading post, the person giving the demo says as much. So this is confirmed.
- He also goes on to say "hes trying to persuade Elizabeth to give him the city", he started by saying he was trying to persuade newcastle to join him, but elizabeth noticed and wasn't giving in so easily, and he is going to attempt to buy newcastle with gold out right."
- So buying cities of other civilisations is actually possible, in Civ4 they would never sell a city, it looks like the leaders are greedy enough to accept selling a city for gold this time around... excellent.
He is a rather humerous bloke, he offered elizabeth the exotic offer of 2 gold for Newcastle, to which she says "I beg your pardon", being so insulted at this refusal of his generous offer he declared war on her,
hah!
He then goes on to declare war on her, showing you various benefits of ranged combat, naval supremecy, (they can bombard cities and drop thier health, mayeb even capture them outright, neglect your navy at your own risk
), benefits of intelligently placing units, for example Elizabeth had 1 rifleman on a hill behind a river, it took 1 cannon bomardment, a rifleman attack that resulted in a draw and then finally a cavalry charge that destroyed the unit and left the calavry severly damaged. Suffice to say, positioning will allow you to hold off strong assaults. All of this isn't particularily news. It was fun to watch the little battle though.