Civ5 - Preview from (Spanish) Meristation Juegos PC site

The Spanish site Meristation Juegos PC published a preview of Civ5 today,
you can read the Google-translated article here.

The interesting part is about the much debated combat system:

"The units may "pass through" squares occupied by friendly soldiers,
but they can not stay in the same area, or join forces.
Yes you can put in a box two units of various types,
eg. a military unit with a worker who is working in the same area, "but that's all."

Finally!
A Spanish review!

The two previews that were posted today, seem pretty odd. They seem informal somehow, like they're not true.

remake20 said:

The two previews that were posted today, seem pretty odd. They seem informal somehow, like they're not true.

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My bet is that they are based on the Pax East 2010 demo...

It just seems like the would so strongly say "And that's all!". It just seems odd to me.

remake20 said:

It just seems like the would so strongly say "And that's all!". It just seems odd to me.

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Remember that you are seeing a Google translation of the page and it is not likely to be perfect.

Neither is your paraphrasing of that translation precise for that matter. You replaced "but" with "and" and the full stop with an exclamation mark. Your changing the punctuation in particular is not kind to the author as exclamation marks are generally considered unprofessional in formal text.

Well this is moderately good news

Actually, is this a Spanish page or is this from Latin America? The German article was all about the negatives, and the Spanish one is kind of good news. I'll take it the German one wasn't from Austria and the Spanish one could be from Peru or Spain. (random guesses)

Google Translate's pretty good, I'm glad you didn't use BabelFish. Well, at least there's something new, and that's good. Plus another confirmation of the release date.

Meristation is the 'mainstream' Videogame e-newspaper from Spain.

But actually, this is not the first preview. Paper magazine MicroMania (the older CPU magazine, iirc), had already a "special report" on march. Not much interesting info besides hexes, archers and full-screen diplomacy, in any case.



With respect to the quoted text, the original spanish

Las unidades podrán "atravesar" casillas ocupadas por soldados amigos, pero no podrán quedarse en la misma zona ni juntar fuerzas. Sí se podrá situar en una casilla dos unidades de distinto tipo -por ejemplo, una unidad militar con un obrero que esté trabajando en esa misma zona-, pero eso será todo.

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Its better translated as

The units can "pass through" squares occupied by friendly soldiers, but they will not be able to stay in the same area, or join forces. What can be done is to place in a tile two units of a different kind -i.e. a military unit with a worker that is working in the same area-, but that is all.

- "Si se podra", without punctuation, has to be underestood as "This can be done", not as "Yes, you can": The phrase is much more informative than comparative.
- I won't give much interest to the "two" in the phrase. It is probably not given as a limit, and it is a usual way to say "more than one", while keeping a point in the fact each one has to have specific characteristics.

So i don't think it provides much more info than we already know: different types of units can be tiled, but that's all (this is, no units of the same type can be tiled whatsoever)

From a micromanagement point of view, I think this single piece of information is good news (as far as it goes), because it means that unit path-finding won't be disrupted if you have a unit between you & your final destination.
My hope is that you can still move all your units towards a single destination-simultaneously-& that the units will simply arrange themselves once they arrive at that destination.

Aussie.

Wait. So, friendly forces CAN pass through space occupied by my troops? See, that annoys me. I want to be able to wall of an area from friend and foe alike. If they're going to make tiles for single units only, then they need to friggin commit to it and make occupied tiles impassable.

So what you're basically saying "Madmage" is you want a return to the insanity of Civ2, when you couldn't move your units anywhere 'cause your dumb "ally" plonked units close to them. I say I'm *glad* friendly units can move through tiles occupied by you-& the only reason you'd want it otherwise is so you can exploit the AI.

Aussie.

Aussie_Lurker said:

So what you're basically saying "Madmage" is you want a return to the insanity of Civ2, when you couldn't move your units anywhere 'cause your dumb "ally" plonked units close to them. I say I'm *glad* friendly units can move through tiles occupied by you-& the only reason you'd want it otherwise is so you can exploit the AI.

Aussie.

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More like I'd like to be able to keep the AI out of my land. The AI in the past 2 CIV games has been pretty belligerent when it comes to unit and city placement. I recall the days of Civ3 having to yell at Civs multiple times because thier warrior kept wandering into my borders. Being able to keep even friendly AI at bay would be useful, to say the least - and I don't like having to resort to culture to do it.

But I see what you're saying. It does make sense, I'd just like a way to keep the AI from weasling settlers right onto my borders and then getting mad at me that we're on top of each other.

they can not stay in the same area, or join forces
a negative statement cannot continue with or. it can only continue with "nor" or "otherwise". am i wrong?

1) they can not stay in the same area otherwise they have to join forces, which means they can attack/defense together if they are in the same tile and if they are not allies, they cannot be in the same tile
2) they cannot stay in the same area, nor join forces

i think it meant the 1st one.

More like I'd like to be able to keep the AI out of my land. The AI in the past 2 CIV games has been pretty belligerent when it comes to unit and city placement. I recall the days of Civ3 having to yell at Civs multiple times because thier warrior kept wandering into my borders. Being able to keep even friendly AI at bay would be useful, to say the least - and I don't like having to resort to culture to do it.

But I see what you're saying. It does make sense, I'd just like a way to keep the AI from weasling settlers right onto my borders and then getting mad at me that we're on top of each other.

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Sounds so very familiar, and I have to admit that in Civ3 (or was that 2?) I put some cheap units on every somewhat blockable piece of land to ensure noone but me could grab all that empty land.
But truth be told, this was just cheap abuse of the game's rules... Instead of using 'friendly' units, in order to block borders, civilizations should either use diplomacy (no open borders and/or civ3's "leave my land immediately") or just declare war and block the land with your then non-friendly units...
I loved what they did in RoM (or did it come from that modmod, i forgot), where instead of an open borders agreement, you could have a right of passage agreement, which was more limitting than open borders, allowing only non-military units to pass (which also means no settlers since they're never unescorted)... An option like this would be very welcome in CiV, combined with the fact that you can buy culture expansion and 'aim' it, a border town could be pretty succesful in blocking borders...

Lol, bad translation. "This is where John comes in Shafer"

MadMage86 said:

Wait. So, friendly forces CAN pass through space occupied by my troops? See, that annoys me. I want to be able to wall of an area from friend and foe alike. If they're going to make tiles for single units only, then they need to friggin commit to it and make occupied tiles impassable.

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As much as we heard, units move 2 tiles in Civ5... So just put 2 units in a row, that should do the trick. I don't think units will be able to move faster just because the choke point is blocked by friendly units. If so, you could just build a "unit railroad" literally and move faster than the speed of sound.

kivanc said:

they can not stay in the same area, or join forces
a negative statement cannot continue with or. it can only continue with "nor" or "otherwise". am i wrong?

1) they can not stay in the same area otherwise they have to join forces, which means they can attack/defense together if they are in the same tile and if they are not allies, they cannot be in the same tile
2) they cannot stay in the same area, nor join forces

i think it meant the 1st one.

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No I'm pretty sure it means the 2nd one.

Aussie_Lurker said:

From a micromanagement point of view, I think this single piece of information is good news (as far as it goes), because it means that unit path-finding won't be disrupted if you have a unit between you & your final destination.

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Second thought: This is probably also good for the performance, because it means less path recalculation for the AI.

SickFak said:

As much as we heard, units move 2 tiles in Civ5... So just put 2 units in a row, that should do the trick. I don't think units will be able to move faster just because the choke point is blocked by friendly units. If so, you could just build a "unit railroad" literally and move faster than the speed of sound.

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this is something I also wonder about how they solved this potential problem. The units you really want to stop from going through your land is (in my experince) settlers, so perhaps settlers can go 3 or 4 tiles (they tend to be a bit more mobile than other units in earlier games anyway) and then there would have to be a pretty extreem map with a long passage that is just 1 tile wide for 4 tiles that you cant go around in a good way.

kivanc said:

they can not stay in the same area, or join forces
a negative statement cannot continue with or. it can only continue with "nor" or "otherwise". am i wrong?

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No, you are not. It is a grammar mistake in the translation: actually "ni" translates into nor, so option 2 is the correct meaning.