Arioch's Analyst Thread

Interesting question about switching social trees. There are gameplay complications both ways.

IIRC, the non-compatible policy pairs are Piety-Rationalism, Commerce-Patronage, Liberty-Autocracy and possibly Freedom-Tradition (btw, which desinger thought it was a good idea to have both Liberty and Freedom as policy names, they're pretty much synonyms)

They aren't synonyms, though. The word 'liberty' was used by American revolutionaries to mean only a specific type of freedom -- freedom from tyranny. The most important thing to them was that people had representation in their own governments, and weren't ruled by some outside power. Their concept of liberty didn't extend to promoting freedom in social policies or economic policies. ie. free trade is about freedom, but not about liberty. ie. liberal abortion laws are about freedom, but not about liberty.

I'd guess thats the distinction thats being made in the game also. "Freedom" means a society with little enforced rules or conventions, while "liberty" only refers to whether there's self-rule.

Anyway, I don't see Piety and Rationalism as opposites.. you had both existing side by side in the Renaissance Era, which led to things like great engineers work on Church projects. A better opposite to Rationalism would be Mysticism.

I'm also wondering if you can learn social policies from a different culture.
 
You start with access to Tradition, Liberty and Honor.

Oh right, it's freedom-autocracy that are mutually exclusive, not liberty-autocracy. They really should have picked something more distinctive -.-
 
Oh right, it's freedom-autocracy that are mutually exclusive, not liberty-autocracy. They really should have picked something more distinctive -.-

Freedom being mutually exclusive with autocracy contradicts the post above yours, although the two posts together nicely confirms the idea that it is just really bad naming. Would be interesting to see what names are used in other language editions of Civ5.
 
Freedom being mutually exclusive with autocracy contradicts the post above yours, although the two posts together nicely confirms the idea that it is just really bad naming. Would be interesting to see what names are used in other language editions of Civ5.

I think a lot of the confusion about the naming is just in our political culture today the words are used interchangeably and assumed to be the same thing... but liberty in a historical context has always meant a specific thing.

And despite the confusion it still makes sense to modern usage. A govt regulating its commercial sector isnt really infringing the liberty of its citizens unless it goes over certain lines. But businesses are still less free to do things, hence a loss of freedom.
 
I'd look at the Freedom/Liberty question from a chronological perspective. Liberty probably represents the kind of things you'd see in a Greek democracy or Roman republic, whereas Freedom represents more modern concepts like free speech, universal suffrage, etc.

Anyway, great site, Arioch. :goodjob:
 
Regarding City-States: there are appear to be several options on how to deal with them. If you choose to be friendly, there is an influence rating that you can improve by giving them gold and gifts, and doing missions for them. Greater influence means greater benefits, which are by type:

Cultured: culture per turn.
Maritime: food per turn.
Militaristic: the presenter said "there just might be Unique Units."

Geneva is a "Cultured" city-state.
 
Thanks for the closed spoilers, only my borther got to watch it in time on youtube but now I will too,

I half expect greg to come here shouting "SPOILER ALERT!!!" :p.

Still now your website will truely be the most up-to-date reference point ;)
 
Here's a composite of the available tech tree images (such as they are):
Very nice!

I'm sure there's some measure of satisfaction knowing that you have probably the most ciV information on the internet - and anywhere in the entire world outside the Firaxis offices! Well done!
 
This is some awesome stuff Arioch. Well done on putting it all together :)!

Aussie.
 
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.

.........

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.

...........

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.

...........

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 :p

..........

Single Player Menu

-Play Now
-Setup Game
-Load Game
-Tutorial

-Back

...........


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.

..........

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 :p.

The border now appears to be dotted to make you more aware instaneously that it is a city state I guess.

..........

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 :p.
- 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.
 
- 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.


Like Arioch said it's not on a tile, it's just on display since the city built it. However, I actually love that idea of having to protect wonders and such. I think that's great.

Also, forgive me Arioch as I mentioned it earlier, but did you take a look at the second icon in the Construction tech? It really looks to me like The Great Wall, from the point of view of standing on it and watching it stretch across some hills in the distance.
 
Also, forgive me Arioch as I mentioned it earlier, but did you take a look at the second icon in the Construction tech? It really looks to me like The Great Wall, from the point of view of standing on it and watching it stretch across some hills in the distance.
It does look like the Great Wall, but it also could be something else, like an aqueduct. It's really hard to identify these tiny icons without matching them to something we already know is in the game.
 
Stonehenge isn't on a hex, it's on the border between hexes. Just like the Pyramid and Chichen Itza.

Ok so purely on the map for astetic purposes then, I was looking forward to some added "PROTECT THE WONDER BOYS" strategy :(.

.........

Where do we get the video's?
Another user posted the links for us, but the moderator edited them out.

Sorry you don't get to watch it.

........

Also something else to note on,

We have been talking for a little bit or atleast I have about whether or not we will see more future techs, from the video we do see a very blurry tech tree, however they don't move it further than the Reinssance Era,( next comes Industrial and then Modern I assume) Anyway, the slider bar appears to only be half way across the screen containing, Ancient/Classical(verysmall)/Medieval/Reinassance, so unless we still have a very large list of industrial/morden techs, then it looks promising that thier might be some future tech era. I'm quitely hopeful :D, If we get stuck with the last few techs as something only just on the verge of future tech I will be disapointed slightly.
 
"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.
 
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