Huge New CIV Update, Largest to Date

[mastertyguy]

Originally Posted by Praetorian

p.s. Molson Canadian is the best

It proves QUEBEC is the best. WE created Molson beer!

[Chinese American]

we demand u let us search your breweries or we declare war on you. we've waged war on less important things like wmds and oil. we'll send ahnold if we have to.

[oldStatesman]

Originally Posted by Mungaf

That, and the continuing religion debate, and the post about the fatwa, gave me the hilarious mental image of some wacky ayatollah and his followers angrily burning copies of Civ4 and portraits of Sid Meier as a fatwa is declared on him. Thanks.

Even more hilarious to imagine Fundamentalist Christian Ministers in the US holding Civ4 Cd burning parties at the same time and declaring their boycott...Civ4 as the Great Uniter of Faiths!

[NHJ BV]

Originally Posted by searcheagle

What about: What IF an American Civ started at the begining of time?

They did; they are called the Iroquois and others, as he said.

[Kosez]

Originally Posted by Chinese American

we demand u let us search your breweries or we declare war on you. we've waged war on less important things like wmds and oil. we'll send ahnold if we have to.

You can steal Canadian beer, but you'll never get Austrian Gösser (Ahnold is afraid of his homeland)!

[oldStatesman]

Originally Posted by NHJ BV

They did; they are called the Iroquois and others, as he said.

Kinda off topic but if you want to read a good treatise on how American Indian mores and culture have been integrated into Western American culture try 'Lila' by Robert Persig. (Sequal/Expansion to 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence'.)

Too bad it may be too complicated to have Civs change Leaderheads/Civ/Culture/Religion Names as the ages pass to reflect changes in characteristics. I.e America could start out as Iroquios, Mohawk, whatever, change to Colonial america as European or Asian or South American cultures pervade/invade then become Modern America after enough change has occured. Same with England, France, Italy, Byzantine/Turk, Southeast Asia etc. But then we'd have to deal somehow with the ageless civs such as Japan, China and India throughout a lot of their history - extremely zenophobic/isolationist so they did not have as much assimilation due to influxes of Nomadic tribes like the Eurasian and South-North American and African Civs did.

[Esckey]

Of the stuff I hope they put I really want some of the old stuff put back in. Such as that page you could pull up that listed all of your losses and to what civ you lost them to too. Think that was in Civ 2.

I also hope they fix that bug that prevents the end game replay to play if you where on a scenario....I hope that end game replay is in Civ4 too.

Theres alot of little things like that that I hardly noticed in the various Civ games that had them, and now with Civ3 many are gone or broken and I wish they weren't



Also hope there is no city limit, a very high unit limit(If there wasn't the AI would go over board), a bigger map(Never liked how Europe was always just enough room for cities), on the world creation screen I hope they have more options like one that allows you to pick the amount of rivers on the map

[mastertyguy]

Originally Posted by Chinese American

we demand u let us search your breweries or we declare war on you. we've waged war on less important things like wmds and oil. we'll send ahnold if we have to.

OK, OK, what about wines+250 gold+23 gpt for peace+world map+aluminium+embargo vs Ottomans

[AndrewH]

sounds good.

[Symphony D.]

Originally Posted by Oda Nobunaga

18 up from Vanilla Civ III, but 6 down from C3C (PTW added 10, C3C added 14 - not counting king units et al, but counting UUs).

Of course, of the 89 units in C3C, 31 are UUs, whereas at most 19 are in C4 (hopefully), which means we're still up 6 generic units from C3C with Civ 4 - IF there are still UUs.

Here's hoping the bulk of those are in the Modern Age. If there was one thing that really irritated me about Civ3 in generally it was how poorly the Modern Age was fleshed out. As technology increases exponentially, so should unit advances - your first tank shouldn't be a Sherman, and you shouldn't immediately jump from a Sherman to an Abrams. There need to be some steps - at least 3, preferably 4 (eg: Mustang > F-86 Sabre > F-4 Phantom > F-22 Raptor for planes, or something, not some Spitfire > Mig-29/F-15 nonsense).

And you have Jet Fighters but no Jet Bombers?... and so on. It'd really showcase the need for a good economy in the Modern Age to keep a cutting-edge military if you had to upgrade a given unit field (tanks, planes, ships, etc.) every few techs.

A lot of people would argue most games never get that far or are already won, but hey, you should go out with a bang. Here's hoping, at least.

Civilization Leaders: There are 28 leaders for the 19 civilizations, including Ghandi, Cyrus, Montezuma, Roosevelt, Washington, and Bismark.

Too bad they probably mean FDR instead of Teddy.

"Militaristic, and... Militaristic. It's not 'Big Stick' diplomacy for nothing you know."

[AndrewH]

sounds good.

[Horus Kol]

Seems to me that this religion model may be an extension of "culture" in CivIII - an outlying city of your empire may adopt the religion of a bordering nation... it might work, and before I really comment on it, I will wait until I see the game and not just some game mag hack's idea of how it works...


As for the leader's approval system - if you could influence it, say with propaganda (issue out radios to each household, printed leaflets and rallies - probably lumped under one single socio-economic rating like tax and entertainment).

And what's wrong with the Senate? Surely if you are a Republic or a Democracy, then you have to expect the people (or their representatives) to be against you at least some of the time. and even under Monarchies you have the danger of rebellion or revolt.


As for schism/split - anyone remember how in Civ I when you captured an enemy capital, you could split their Civ into two halves?

Again, if you have a far-flung empire, and are not entirely democratic, or ruling with an iron fist, then there should be the possibility that some cities will secede - especially if you go against the wish of your senate/government (a la 1860).


I just have one last thing to add - for all those "fix the victory conditions" posters - I have no idea how you could rate a victory outside of the 5 we already have, and I'm pretty sure none of you do too, because you haven't suggested it when you've been busy criticising the developers.
(being an application developer myself I hate nothing more than a generic statement of "it's crap" - it's much nicer for us to hear "could you do this instead?")

[Furius]

On the senate- - While it is admitedly rather realistic (In some ways) and it is no problem to have parts of your civ against you, it is a question of degree. It just isn't fun to start a war only to have this 'senate' over which you have no control, instantaneously declare peace again.

[OzzyKP]

I second searcheagle's thoughts on America. Lots of civs we think about today weren't around since 4000 BC, or even 1 AD. They are amalgamations of other cultures, just like the US is.

Most of European nations today are combinations of various nomadic tribes and Romans. Russians are just Vikings. French are Gauls and Romans, etc etc.

So quit whining.

[King Squanto]

I also think the senates a cool idea, but to limit its power, it would be really cool if there was a miltary state over ride- like if you had a big enough army, you could over ride the senate and declare war anyway- a la Napolean- at risk of sounding nerdy, I say that would be awesome. Give democracy a big kick in the pants and forge a military dictatorship- I think it would be a very good gameplay trick, because its realistic, and also it could have negative results, such as political resentment (but a more controlled populace.) After choosing this, your country would go into anarchy for a turn and then you'd be a military dicator (with the new system, I guess your politic civil level would drop to the lowest level)

[Justy]

Overall I am happy with the changes that we have become aware about. I am still holding out hope that there will be changes to diplomacy and trade. I agree with a few other posters who piped up about the need to make diplomacy and trade more realistic. I'm guessing that we haven't heard much about it because its still being fleshed out.

As for religion I'm glad that they've implemented in the fashion that they have and not have it just be stereotypical interpretations. I do hope that the religions have more influence than a mere happiness point. That seems way too watered down. As for converting that should not just change over night. I'd rather see it spread out from its founding city over a period of time. Giving that founding city some importance in the game.

I like the ability to choose leaders for your civ, if I am interpreting it correctly. Any civ can have any leader??? Am I selecting a leader and a civ each with their own advantages? So if you want to be a warmongering civ you don't choose Ghandi as your leader. You would go with someone else. However if you want a specific leaders advantages you'd choose that leader. King Ghandi of the English, that would be funny. Queen Victoria of the Mongols, umm... hmmm.

There is one point that I haven't really seen raised, to my knowledge. The ramifications for using nukes. The issue of nukes never really seems to raise any anxiety in the game. Ho hum my city got whacked by nuke. Let's go send some workers to clean up the mess and repopulate. There needs to more addressed to this point in the game. In the roughly 60 years of their existence in the world only 2 were dropped in aggression, then the rest of the time there was much diplomacy and brinkmanship because of them existing.

Just a few thoughts.

[Furius]

@ King Squanto: I suspect that this new 'civics' allows us to do exactly what you propose.
@Justy: The fact that they have dropped the number of civs so that there are now exactly twice as many leaders as civs seems to suggest that there are two leaders for each civ and that you get a choice between the two. I wonder... Since there are now two leaderheads, is this going to allow civil wars? Will you be able to switch leaderhead (Elections, maybe)?

Thus far, I have never had any real problems with the way the game looks, but, some of the new stuff (Are we allowed to talk about new stuff here?) shows the map. I don't know why they switched to squares as oppose todiamons, but it is looking slightly unsightly. All those straight lines... I fear maps are going to become significantly less realistic...
Also, can we continue to call this thread, "Huge New CIV Update, Largest to Date," now that there have been larger ones?

[player1 fanatic]

They were always squares. It's just that from one point of view that look as diamonds. And as far as I've seen screenshots, you can chnage view from diamond looking to square looking at any time (benefits of 3D map).

[Furius]

Yes, you can change the view. But, it dosen't change the fact that the map itself is now a square composed of squares, as opposed to a square composed of diamonds. In my (Admitedly rather limited) experience at making maps in civ, I found that the isometric view made the continents shape look much more real. The continents in the new screenshots are coming to look like Civ I continents, rather blocky. The thing is, I suspect that even with increased moddibility, it would still be incredibly difficult to isometricise the map itself. I'm not sure, though. Perhaps, with more blending between tiles (especially corner tiles) it will look natural.

I love the way the random maps in Civ III and even Civ II look so natural and real. The Civ IV ones though (especially the part seen in the movie south of the romans) has a lot of straight lines which look wrong.

But, I suppose I should be fair. Firaxis is producing this game and they have every right and duty to make it the way they wish to.