IGN Preview of CiV

chongli said:

Yes, but why can't you take out of your treasury and re-allocate it back into , or ? Does the gold somehow get transmuted into radioactive gold that scientists and entertainers and spies will no longer accept it for their wages?

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Well most of the time you can, by running at a deficit. The issue only arises if you are running a profit at 100% research.

I guess it does beg the question, why can we not assign more than a 100% of commerce with the deficit coming out of the treasury?

Of course, there are some obvious issues with how bonusses to gold income are counted, etc. But these could easily be overcome. I guess the biggest problem would be that such a feature sounds very exploitable. Binary research is already very exploity and I'd imagine such a mechanic makes it even worse.

That's a very good point cf_nz. Civ4 definitely moved diplomacy along a fantastic path by giving you *GOOD REASONS* for why a Civ felt the way they did. Religion, good treatment in trade deals, close borders, Civics choices-all of these things mattered. So rather than being attacked for no good reason, you could normally make a good guess at which nations would attack you-because maybe you're a bunch of "heathens" who routinely turn down reasonable requests for help, build cities close to their borders & routinely attack their friends !

If I had a problem with religion & its impact on diplomacy, it is simply the fact that the "different religion" penalty was so high to start with. The size of the penalty should depend more on in-game decisions relating to the relationship between these two religions, rather than a high, arbitrary penalty!

Aussie.

mrbee said:

Hey, this is Steve from IGN.

When I called religion arbitrary and exploitable, I meant that it was just another tool in the diplomacy bag. The only practical thing it really did was add one more love/hate flag to each of the civs. I think the new idea in Civ V is to let diplomatic relations evolve based more on the changing strategic situation. If you're building up cities along my borders and refusing trade, that should influence my reaction to you more than whether or not we share the same religion.

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This statement is demonstrably untrue, both as the the effect of religion on the game, and as to the effect of religion in the real world on diplomacy. Anyone who doesn't think so needs to do two things: play as someone like Isabella with a determination to maximize the effect of religion on such things as culture growth and happiness control, and review the history of the diplomacy of Central/Western Europe during the period 1500 to 1800.

mrbee said:

I agree it can be powerful and a fun way to play the game. One of the best things about Civ is that people can approach it from many different angles but, speaking just for me, religion's main function in supporting diplomacy is more significant in the big picture than the civics bonuses and unrest issues. If these other practical benefits of religion are more important to you, hopefully their absence will be redeemed by some other new feature.

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I think he understands

Thorburne said:

I've got to say, the more I am hearing about Civ V, the more dissappointed I am becoming. It seems like Civ V is shaping up to be Civilization: Panzer General and taking away everything that makes it Civilization!

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On the contrary! If they manage to meld the best of Civ and PG, they will have a really superlative game!

Also, from the infos we have to date, I don't see them 'taking away everything that makes it Civilization'. The uniqueness of Civ lies in building up a civilization - combat and war are an integral part of that, but the mechanics were always unsatisfactory. If they manage to meld the empire building and research of Civ with fun combat like PG, plus a better resource system - and this is what it looks like they are trying for - then this will be the best Civ game ever! I can see myself playing that for decades....

Cilpot said:

While I agree that "vanilla" religions were somewhat useless, they provided a good backbone for mods. Religions in Fall From Heaven, for example, have a much bigger impact. I'll be sad to see it gone

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True that. The problem with the religion system was that they were always afraid to give the religions unique benefits - much too 'hot' a topic, with all the fanatics around! I'm sure they had visions of boycotts and/or firebombings by fundamentalist Christians/Muslims/whatever if they put a foot wrong.
I'll be interested to see what the new system of blended civics and religions will be like.

No reason for doom-crying already, to some of you Cassandras! IMHO, each new incarnation of Civ has been, overall, better than the last - though individual features have been missed, like the funny advisors from Civ2 - and I'm optimistic that will be so with this one, too!

I only hope we won't have as many bugs and crashes as with Civ4 at the beginning - that would suck big time.

chongli said:

Yes, but why can't you take out of your treasury and re-allocate it back into , or ? Does the somehow get transmuted into that scientists and entertainers and spies will no longer accept it for their wages?

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I've already said why it's important: +50% is a very different thing to +50% when applied to a city as a multiplier.

Hypernova said:

I've already said why it's important: +50% is a very different thing to +50% when applied to a city as a multiplier.

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Yes, but I am questioning the entire approach. Real money is fungible, why is the money in Civ 4 non-fungible? Why can't you spend >100% of your income? Why can you only spend your income one way (on , , ) and your treasury another (rush-buying and giving to other civs)?

The entire approach is flawed and totally different from how real governments work. In the real world, all tax income goes into the treasury. All spending comes from the treasury. There is no special requirement that certain spending must only come from income and other spending must only come from the treasury.

chongli said:

The entire approach is flawed and totally different from how real governments work. In the real world, all tax income goes into the treasury. All spending comes from the treasury. There is no special requirement that certain spending must only come from income and other spending must only come from the treasury.

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Civilization, fortunately, has nothing to do with reality. It's a game and gameplay comes before realism. That approach, while probably not very "realistic", worked very well in Civ4.

Newcomer24 said:

Civilization, fortunately, has nothing to do with reality. It's a game and gameplay comes before realism. That approach, while probably not very "realistic", worked very well in Civ4.

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Yes, but a more realistic and more strategically flexible approach would not be any more difficult to implement.

It seems to me that the entire system and its flaws stem from the use of multiplication (that's all a % is, really) and the mathematical precedence (order of operations) problems that arise when you add percentages together.

This whole problem could be avoided by eliminating multiplication from the equation. One alternative is the approach used by Master of Orion 2, which features addition but not multiplication.

Lillefix said:

The fact that you could ignore it and still do reasonably well, shows imo that it was poorly implemented.

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Not really. People have gone games without building military units ), or without focusing on domestic improvements, or without fighting wars.

chongli said:

Yes, but I am questioning the entire approach. Real money is fungible, why is the money in Civ 4 non-fungible? Why can't you spend >100% of your income? Why can you only spend your income one way (on , , ) and your treasury another (rush-buying and giving to other civs)?

The entire approach is flawed and totally different from how real governments work. In the real world, all tax income goes into the treasury. All spending comes from the treasury. There is no special requirement that certain spending must only come from income and other spending must only come from the treasury.

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Oh I see what you mean - so you should always have large amounts of money entering your treasury, but also huge demands of science on your treasury.

Well originally, in Civ I, since there was no culture or espionage, there was no science rate - there was simply the "tax rate" and anything not taxed went to science (so that was your science rate).

Later, they kept the mechanics the same but the idea changed from a tax rate to various rates (mostly a science rate), but they never changed the mechanic so that it all went to your treasury first. Actually the idea of having a tax rate with science being constrained by higher taxes does seem to make more sense than a science rate, science has largely progressed as a result of private innovation, especially earlier in history. Though, actually, we don't know what the science rate in Civ IV is, it could simply represent the degree to which science isn't constrained by taxes, same with culture rate, in this case it would make sense that it doesn't come out of the treasury.