Sid Meier's Civilization IV Prerelease Information

[Sirian]

Originally Posted by Trip

Well, considering you and Soren are good chums, and you are so important to the development of CIV I guess that is pretty obvious.

Oh, right, like you have any inside information either.

I keep watching you telling us that Soren said this and Soren said that. As far as I can tell, Soren hasn't said very much at all, but some folks are trying to read the tea leaves for us.

A few screens from a magazine preview start circulating, and folks gather to see what they can divine from the glimpse at grainy pictures before the lawyers swoop in and make everybody take down the pics. I'm sure Fiery Axis is pleased to know that fans are all hyped up, but since the game is still probably a year away, maybe we should try to pace ourselves.


- Sirian

[Jon Shafer]

All I'm going to say is .

[shortguy]

I never really understood why you couldn't travel on your enemies' roads. I mean, the road is there, why can't you use it? How are they going to stop you? Do they have peasants stationed on it every 5 miles saying, "get off! get off!"?

[Sirian]

Originally Posted by Trip

All I'm going to say is .

Oh, sure, laugh away. But there will be No Sheep For You.

While I've got you here, Jon, what is up with all that color in your signature area? Blue? Red? Gold? You've gone all Madison Avenue on me here. Where's the green? Surely my bland "plain text" signature looks wimpy and old school by contrast. Is that fair? Oh, and where the heck is the pink? Everybody knows where the real action is taking place.

There's your Civ4 "revelation" of the day. The Real Action(TM) is found at Pink Dot.

Now can we get back to something else, like, oh, I don't know, the AI or something. Diplomacy. Railroads. The proper color of the French.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

Originally Posted by shortguy

I never really understood why you couldn't travel on your enemies' roads. I mean, the road is there, why can't you use it? How are they going to stop you? Do they have peasants stationed on it every 5 miles saying, "get off! get off!"?

Fine, but how do you use enemy rails? And if the enemy has rails, can you not be able to use them but still be able to use the roads?

What is the purpose of even bothering to have cultural control over tiles if not to give the defenders some advantage? Would the gameplay be improved by going back to Civ2 style "rape the entire enemy nation in one turn by using their rails against them" style of gameplay? Not in my view.


- Sirian

[ainwood]

Originally Posted by Sirian

Fine, but how do you use enemy rails? And if the enemy has rails, can you not be able to use them but still be able to use the roads?

What is the purpose of even bothering to have cultural control over tiles if not to give the defenders some advantage? Would the gameplay be improved by going back to Civ2 style "rape the entire enemy nation in one turn by using their rails against them" style of gameplay? Not in my view.


- Sirian

Well, the enemy rails are a different story - for a start you'd need to regauge them all! (which is what the Germans did in Russia IIRC). And the infinite movement is a bit silly too.

But the roads should be used IMHO, for fairly obvious reasons.

Unrestricted use of the roads is slightly different. Would be quite interesting if there was something to simulate things like retreating armies blowing bridges and mining (landmines) roads to halt the enemy advance. Maybe this could be simulated by not getting the full road movement bonus of enemy roads?

[Smellincoffee]

I wonder how similar the new flag/morale factor will be related to the way it was done in Gettysburg/Antietam?

[Turner]

Moderator Action: Sirian, Trip...might want to watch your tone there.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally Posted by Sirian

Oh, sure, laugh away. But there will be No Sheep For You.

I think you may have me mixed up with someone else.

While I've got you here, Jon, what is up with all that color in your signature area? Blue? Red? Gold? You've gone all Madison Avenue on me here. Where's the green? Surely my bland "plain text" signature looks wimpy and old school by contrast. Is that fair? Oh, and where the heck is the pink? Everybody knows where the real action is taking place.

There's your Civ4 "revelation" of the day. The Real Action(TM) is found at Pink Dot.

Now can we get back to something else, like, oh, I don't know, the AI or something. Diplomacy. Railroads. The proper color of the French.

I dunno Bob, maybe your old age is catching up with you...

[Jon Shafer]

Originally Posted by Turner_727

Moderator Action: Sirian, Trip...might want to watch your tone there.

LOL

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, like I have said before, I DON'T mind enemy units being able to use my roads (but NOT my rail) so long as they have a limited range of action. That way, if they go too deep into my territory-and if I can cause them to be 'out of supply'-then they will be truly stuffed !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Sirian]

Originally Posted by Trip

I dunno Bob, maybe your old age is catching up with you...

Woops, the teacher caught us talking during class.

Sorry, Jon. My eyesight must be going, as I clearly missed the obvious green and pink that must have been there in your sig all along. For the record, you're not particularly upset by anything I might have said, right?


- Sirian

[Jon Shafer]

Originally Posted by Sirian

For the record, you're not particularly upset by anything I might have said, right?

That depends on whether or not you've changed your mind about my AI proposal...

[Civrules]

I've updated it to include the two new pieces of info from the magazine.
parts marked with "" are updates.

[shortguy]

I didn't say anything about rails; obviously, that's another matter. And, for the record, I never played Civ2, so I can't relate there.

[Sirian]

Civ2 allowed the player to use enemy roads and rails. 'Twas not a pretty picture. Players gained enormous advantage as a result.

In fact, in Civ2, more often than not, the player can stand against all the AIs combined, player vs the world, and triumph over them all. A large part of that is letting the player use the enemy's roads. In my view, it would be a mistake to go back to that.


- Sirian

[Jon Shafer]

There's a big difference between allowing use of enemy roads and use of enemy rails.

[Sirian]

Not if rails stop being infinite, as you have called for. Then rails are just faster roads, and that is true even if they are infinite.

Forget realism for a moment. How is it bad for gameplay to allow use of enemy rails but good for gameplay to allow use of enemy roads? That's like saying it's bad to allow someone to build longbows, but OK to let them build normal archers because those are only half as strong. I don't buy it.


- Sirian

[Jon Shafer]

The distances involved will still differentiate roads from rails. Moving along rail will, under most reasonable circumstances, allow at least 10 free tiles of movement. This is obviously unacceptable given the pattern of cities. This is not the case for roads.

I would prefer if the road movement bonus was dropped to 2x. Maybe you've heard it, maybe you haven't, but I'm a big fan of mobile warfare. I think that allowing units to use enemy roads is one way to "open up fronts." Right now, warfare in Civ is very very defensive oriented. In most circumstances, an attacker will march forward, have to weather a defender's first strike, and then if he has enough left over he can continue attacking. The only times when this mold is broken is when A) cities across a border are spaced 2 tiles apart, allowing fastmovers to break through a city's defenses with enough numbers, or B) the use of "Fort Cities" or "Settler Blitzing" to steal culture, and therefore, roads or rails, so that enemy cities can be reached in the manner mentioned in A. Obviously neither of these is realistic NOR particularly good for gameplay.

If you have any ideas on how to shift Civ away from a defensive feel, I'm all ears.

[warpstorm]

Up until relatively modern eras, warfare was a failry slow paced thing sometimes taking months or even years to resolve a seige (of course there are exceptions to this). I feel that the Civ3 approach was much better than the Civ2 approach.