Arioch's Analyst Thread

Some image analysis from the trailer. This is all based on my eyesight and the numbers in particular are very sketchy (and subject to change). Anything I can't make out is replaced by a -----.

Settler:
Cost: 90 hammers
Movement: 2
The growth of the city is stopped(?) while this unit is being bult
And also seems to say something about insufficient citizens(all I can make out is that the unit is unbuildable and that red message with the light blue pop symbol)

Worker:

Cost: 70 hammers
Movement: 2
Improves food, production and gold by improving tiles outside of cities

Lighthouse:
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+1 food from water tiles
Gold:
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Gold is ------ to the national treasury, where it may be used to expand your territory, purchase items in cities, and to ---- influence with other civilizations. (possible use of gold to bribe city-states/civs?)
Pottery:

Allows your cities to build granaries, which ------(provide?) food, helping your cities to grow larger.
Civil Service:

Farms next to rivers and lakes produce +1 food, an extremely useful bonus. ---- alllows you to build the pikeman, ----- deadly against mounted units like the horseman and knight.
Chichen itza:

Worker improvement speed boosted by 50%: +1 culture, +1 great engineer points
Notre Dame:

+? happiness
+1 culture, +1 great ----- points
National Epic:

+20% great people generation, +1 culture
Must have built a monument in all cities
Social Policies:
Tradition:

Tradition is best for small empires, with many policies that ----- the capitol city. Adopting tradition will immediately provide a bonus of +3(?) food ----- ----- in the capitol.
Oligarchy:

+20%(?) combat strength for military units fighting within the empire's borders
Legalism:

Reduces unhappiness from population in capital by 50%
Liberty:

yields more rapid expansion?
Adopting liberty speeds building of settlers by 20%(?).
Honor:

Improves the effectiveness of units in a variety of ways:
Adopting gives +20% combat vs barbarians, and ---- ---- will be populated whenever Barbarian Camps ------ -------
Autocracy:

Unlocks at industrial era. Mutually exclusive with freedom (Mentioned in video).
Freedom:

Best for small, ---- empires. Provides bonuses for culture and ----?
Upon adopting, ----- population in cities produce half the normal amount of unhappiness.
Free speech:

reduces culture cost of future policies by 30%(?)
That's it for part 1 of the video. I'll work on part 2 once my eyes have healed.
 
That's it for part 1 of the video. I'll work on part 2 once my eyes have healed.

Do your eyes have an 'enlarge and enhance' feature?
That is impressive Sir.

And someone mentioned on page 4 (i forget who sorry, and forgot to multi) about English Frigates attacking a city, shouldn't they be English Ship of the Lines? I thought the ship of the line was a UU replacement for the frigate?
 
"Food per turn" sounds interesting, as it's the first time that food from one city is going to another. Hopefully, we might be able to ship food between cities finally (at appropriate tech level, etc.), which could be nice when founding a new city and would make it even more important to connect the city to the capitol ASAP. Plus, it'd fit with the trend of global culture and global happiness.

Interesting thing is though, DalekDavros (love the name btw ;) ), is that from everything we've heard, Commerce is no longer in the game. If this is the case, & if trade routes are still in the game, then they'll need to provide something *other* than commerce. Obviously Gold is the most obvious thing, but I'm also hoping that trade routes will provide a host of other things-like culture, science, food or hammers-depending on the type of city the route originates from. Will be interesting to see if that will happen!

Aussie.
 
And someone mentioned on page 4 (i forget who sorry, and forgot to multi) about English Frigates attacking a city, shouldn't they be English Ship of the Lines? I thought the ship of the line was a UU replacement for the frigate?
Actually it was Roman frigates attacking an English frigate and then bombarding the city, but yeah, it was an English frigate, and not a Ship of the Line. Many of the unique units don't seem to be in the game yet (or at least weren't at the time the videos were made). I've only seen images of three UU's -- the Samurai, Musketeer and Jaguar.

edit: Correction... in the trailer videos, it's an English frigate, but in the closed E3 demo video, it is actually a Ship of the Line. It doesn't look much different from the frigate.
 
Chichen itza:

Worker improvement speed boosted by 50%: +1 culture, +1 great engineer points
Notre Dame:

+? happiness
+1 culture, +1 great ----- points

My emphasis on bold...

Did we had great people confirmed? If not, now we have! :goodjob:

And I suppose these are the point that get accumulated to give Golden Ages!
 
My emphasis on bold...

Did we had great people confirmed? If not, now we have! :goodjob:

And I suppose these are the point that get accumulated to give Golden Ages!

That's all well & good, but I hope you can still generate *actual* Great People-like in Civ4. Great Artists (who can boost your culture-which will now be useful for obtaining extra tiles & buying Social Policies). Great Engineers (who let you rush production). Great Merchants (who allow you to do a trade mission). Great Scientists (who allow you to build an Academy). Great Prophets (this is the only one I can no longer think of a mission for anymore). Perhaps the Great People can also be used to grab a relevant Tech/Social Policy for Free (or cheap). Like Great Prophets might allow you to grab a Piety/Tradition Social Policy, Artists might allow you to grab a Patronage/Freedom Social Policy, Great Merchants might allow you to grab a Commerce/Liberty Social Policy. Great Scientists & Great Engineers would allow you to grab techs as per Civ4.

Just a thought!

Aussie.
 
A few thoughts on social policies:

I'm very sure we'll accumulate "SP points" to unlock SPs, since 30 unlocks a victory condition, players who won't focus on culture probably won't earn more than 15-25 in a game.

There are some reasons I doubt we will pay for unlocking SPs directly with culture (meaning all SPs would have a "price tag" of let's say 1200 culture). The most important is, that we'd unlock SPs faster and faster the bigger our culture output is, which would be in contrast to the usual way in games (e.g. leveling in RPGs) where you can choose a lot of "skills" early to lay a foundation, and further specialisation comes at a slower pace.
So I strongly believe we'll "level" like in a RPG, and unlock the first level (=Point to spend on one of the 50 SPs) at e.g. 100 culture, the next at 150, then 250, then 400 and so on.
I also believe that the SPs positioned higher up on the 10 trees cost the same as the "lower" SPs, namely 1 "SP-point". Everything else would just be too complicated, and the fact that the 10 trees are so small (having only 2 or 3 "tiers") also point to an equal cost of 1 "SP-point" for every social policy.
Increasing culture points cost of every "level" or "SP-point" (with quite cheap initial "levels")also allows warmongers to still reach some level of culture later in the game, but a culture-focused player will unlock SPs earlier and more of them.

Everything understandable so far? ;)



Now about switching between trees/social policies/goernment styles:

The first question we have to answer is: Is it desirable, from the devs point of view, to implement a "reskill" system (a RPG term you surely know). Will we be able to change governments?

Pro Reskill:

+ Changing governments/SPs is realistic, thousands of examples in history
+ It was traditionally possible in civ games
+ No one ever criticized the fact that you can change your Gv. in a revolution
+ Players would find it strange not being able to switch ("Dumbed down")
+ Switching Civics/SPs was a nice gameplay mechanic allowing to adapt to situations

Contra Reskill:

- More effort to develop
- More complicated
- Possibly problems with cultural victory (see below)
- It could be some philosophical decision I wouldn't understand :D

All together, I do believe the devs would have reasons enough to allow changing SPs, but let's check the effort and complicatedness I mentioned:


We know some trees cannot be unlocked at the same time as another. Let's take "autocracy" and "freedom" (or was it liberty? :confused: :D) as example. If we would be able to switch trees, would it be viable to loose all invested culture?

The cultural victory requires us to reach "level" 30, unlocking 30 SPs (6 full trees). Loosing all the culture invested would be a huge hit, so in this case culturemongers wouldn't want to switch even a single time. Seems like bad game design to me, opinions?

Let's look at alternatives: What "punishment" for switching SPs could there be if we keep our "level" (number of SP-points)? In Civ4, we had anarchy, what about that?
Actually, I find that very possible. For every invested SP-Point you "delete" to put it somewhere else, you could have a turn of anarchy. Is this realistic? Yes, because e.g. Germany did not loose it's culture permanently during Hitlers time, they didn't forget the HRR or Prussian history (although some books were burned and records deleted, but most of this was not destroyed worldwide). A nation achieves a level of culture, and thoughts that once were there cannot be undone (Napoleon also didn't destroy the democratic heritage of France).

So, ok, we may well be able to delete SP Trees. But what happens to the points? I doubt they would autoassign the points to the opposite tree (not allowing you to choose). But if you can freely put them everywhere, you would also have to recover points from the trees that have no opposite (Or at least it would be strange if you couldn't).
Oh, and one more thing: I doubt we'll have anarchy when we advance up in the trees for the first time, because it would be no revolutionary, but evolutionary progress. So you would "earn" anarchy turns when deleting, not when assigning SP points.

SUMMARY:

SP Trees might work like skill trees in RPGs, culture unlocks levels, reassignment of points should be possible.


So, after half an hour of work, woe betide you if you don't discuss my post as deserved! :lol:
 
A few thoughts on social policies:

SUMMARY:

SP Trees might work like skill trees in RPGs, culture unlocks levels, reassignment of points should be possible.


So, after half an hour of work, woe betide you if you don't discuss my post as deserved! :lol:

One reason the designers might not want to let you reassign social policies is that it takes away from some of the strategic decision-making you have to do. I remember hearing in one of the videos that you might have to choose between grabbing honor policies that benefit you now, or saving up for the commerce policies you'd only unlock later. If you can just reassign your points later, anarchy or not, that's no longer as difficult a decision.

I think the RPG comparison isn't exactly perfect, because most RPGs aren't intended to be replayed as many times as Civ is, and strategy doesn't have the same focus. What's more, most of the RPGs I've played don't allow me to reskill anyway (I kind of wish they would actually, for the reasons mentioned).

Other than that I agree 100% with what you said about how the policies will be acquired. Boxes filling up with diminishing returns is how almost everything works in Civ.
 
I really like this idea, which prevent the warmongers from getting all the 'cheap' policies in the first tier of each tree.

However, I don't think a few turns of a anarchy is enough to make the switch a more strategic decision. How about this? When the player decides to switch from one tree to another, all the SP points you spent in the old tree will be lost, and your 'level' remain the same so you still accumulate SP slower than the previous point, thus your advance in the new tree will be (much?) slower than in the old tree.
 
As far as I understood it, social politics are "bought" with culture. If you want to switch out of one, you have to throw away your points. At least, thats the way I would do it, but I dont know IF that is really the way it is. Maybe you can't really switch out of "Autocracy" once you are in it. But I would find that rather repressing since it rules out "Freedom" for all time.

edit: hk2717.. you were faster *g*
 
In case it helps, I downloaded the 2 bootleg vids before they were pulled down. I won't be hosting them anywhere but if you need anything confirmed from them and can't find them, let me know.

I expect someone else has them anyway, or there is yet another site hosting them.
 
I think culture costs are cumulative for sp's which iswhat you were talking about. (but they are paid in culture, off of a total culture not wierd sp points)

have to check vid to be sure
 
Heres some blurry screens from the video:

Hiawatha


Rome


Napoleon on his high horse


Buying a tile or two (Very blurry)


Declaring war on the English



Finishing off the remaining defending units outside the English city, Gloucester.
 
It has been specifically said in several interviews that Social Policies are bought direcly with Culture points (like a currency), and one of the Freedom policies (Free Speech) "reduces the Culture cost of future policies by x%". In the closed demo video, the presenter points out that even if you're a warmongering civilization, you don't want to completely neglect your Culture for specifically this reason, because there are useful military bonuses to unlock. So, there are no Social Policy "talent points" that you earn as you "level," just Culture.

It does seem that each step in a tree is progressively more expensive to purchase, however.

(oops, I'll post this in the other thread)
 
Here comes some images and notes about combat from the second part.
Combat:
It appears that each unit has 10 hit points, with the relative strengths determining how much damage is inflicted.
Example 1:

Cavalry attacks cannon with no terrain bonuses, you can see that the green bar has been completely replaced with red, and the cavalry 'approx damage inflicted' is 10, while the cavalry has only a small portion of their bar red. Thus the cavalry only lose 1 unit, while the cannon is destroyed.
Example 2:

Riflemen attack riflemen that are across a river, and on a hill. You can see modifiers applied for attacking across river, terrain, and what looks like a flanking bonus (it has a friendly rifleman next to it). The riflemen appear to deal twice as much damage as they are dealt (4 to 8), and it looks like modifiers applied first to the attacker's/defender's strength separately, then the strengths are compared.
Example 3: Ranged attack
The cannon is shooting the rifleman, comparing its ranged attack (26), to the modified strength of the rifleman (25 + 25% from the hill), which makes the approx damage 3.
Example 4:

Roman cavalry attack the twice-attacked rifleman, it appears that strength does not change based on how damaged a unit is (the rifleman's strength is 31.25 due to the terrain bonus), and this further confirms that the % bonuses do not 'interact' like they did in civ 4 (Where they would cancel each other out). Also, the cavalry do not seem to take a penalty for attacking across the river, while elizabeth's cannon does not seem to give the 'flanking bonus' to the defending rifleman.
 
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