Gamespot Update

Updated Impressions(preview), 4 in game movies and a developer interview.

Check it out.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationiv/preview_6128088.html

All civilizations will start with strategic resources close by, so it sounds like the Civ III dilemma where one faction gets few resources while another faction gets a whole ton of them is now history.

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well, part of a good strategy was to ensure to get them through trade or expanasion. and that you would deprive others of it. Now, this could be a huge issue

In fact, Firaxis had originally removed the city management screen that's been a part of Civ from the beginning. However, the testers complained so much that it was brought back.

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testers, now we know how crucial they are

This also includes giving a onetime culture boost to a city of 1,000 points, which is a significant number.

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and culture victory needs 3 cities above 100000 culture???

At E3, we were told if you convert a city to your religion through the use of a missionary, you gain line-of-sight advantages in that city, letting you see what's going on in and around the city. However, that has been removed in the latest version of the game, as it was apparently too much of an advantage, although Smith said it could come back, depending on what further testing determines.

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interesting

but Firaxis is looking to bring that tactic to an end. The problem with the stack of doom is that it can be overwhelmingly difficult to bring to a halt, which doesn't make it much fun if you're on the receiving end of it.

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this will impact our gameplay a lot, but then again people will find a way to overcome this and have different approaches, I am sure


any comments?

and the link
gamespot review

never mind...

Something on your mind Minger?
I have to say, Minger, that with just two simple words you had me ROTFLMAO. I don't know many people who would devote a whole post to just saying 'never mind'

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Aussie Lurker, I don't know many people who ROTFL their AO over a "deleted" post

you can use religion to try to pacify your neighbors and enemies. However, Firaxis' gameplay testing indicated that players found religion to be too vague a concept, so the designers have been tweaking it recently.

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Hmmm, this is very interesting indeed. Perhaps someone has been picking up on my talk regarding the acquisition of traits for religions-and possible sectarianism. I doubt it, but it would be soooo cool if that were true. It would allow religions to be non-generic, but in a way which has no risk of offending people.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

It wasn't the deleted post that had me laughing, just the very simple 'never mind' left behind !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Part of the series' deep replayability comes from the fact that you can never play the same game twice, and this is partly thanks to the random map generator. Smith said that they've been focusing their efforts to make sure that the generated worlds make sense.

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Above paragraph is in direct opposition with the one below.

You'll probably be glad to know that the game will better balance resources, which was one of the frustrations with Civ III. All civilizations will start with strategic resources close by, so it sounds like the Civ III dilemma where one faction gets few resources while another faction gets a whole ton of them is now history.

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I'm certainly not glad if you even cannot have option to determine how far those resources are from players in overall. (There's of course chance it's one of parameters that can be said and at least true modding it could be solved)
What is the point of having "strategic resources" if they appear close to you? It would be same as having them not at all.
I thought just like it describes in the previous paragraph of the preview that Civ is famous of making the game replayable. Isn't this exactly the opposite?
If you have flexible tech lines and other things that are supposed to add to the fact that you have to come up for strategy for the particular game in question and not create simple "always sure" strategy that works from game to game.
How many of you consider this new element that means each have their resources "close by" instead of spreading them like they are in real world, fun?

ThERat said:

well, part of a good strategy was to ensure to get them through trade or expanasion. and that you would deprive others of it. Now, this could be a huge issue

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And ThERat you are right it's huge issue because isn't player supposed to gather these resources by trade, diplomacy, expansion and conquer?
Whole history of human civilization is full of examples were certain "civ" in certain area haven't had certain resources close by and have had to go get them from far away through different means.
If being true about the nature of spreading the resources, this issue should be corrected at ONCE.

Otherwise not much new info about the game even though it took my attention that people in Firaxis seem to take playtesting and it's commenting value seriously.

im sooooo glad the los atvantage for a city being your relgion has been removed!! it was just plane Unrealistic!

I think the point is that no player will end up with NO strategic resources. i.e. there will no longer be a situation where a civ can go an entire game with no resources nearby.
I think another thing is that we are still not certain how resources work this time around. Hopefully they have changed it such that a single strategic resource is no longer sufficient to fuel your entire nations needs (and, I hope, there will be different sizes of resources too!) That way, even if you have almost every strategic resource nearby, you will still have to trade to get more of it. My point is that I really can't see them doing something that will make diplomacy even more pointless than it was in CivIII. I could be wrong though, but would rather wait for more information.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Concerning open border agreements. I wonder if this just means more trade, goodwill and missionaries. But NOT military units. I really hope it will be possible to have different levels of this. I'd hate having foreign units roaming my territory just because I want more trade.

Definitely it'll change the challenge of the game. Would be good for some multi-player games, but would kind of be a SP cheat. I'd like to be able to turn it off as an option, and go for a totally random spread.

ThERat said:

well, part of a good strategy was to ensure to get them through trade or expanasion. and that you would deprive others of it. Now, this could be a huge issue

testers, now we know how crucial they are

and culture victory needs 3 cities above 100000 culture???

interesting

this will impact our gameplay a lot, but then again people will find a way to overcome this and have different approaches, I am sure


any comments?

and the link
gamespot review

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This sounds good, they're should be a risk to stacking units. Though anything strong with multiple attacks is good vs. a stack also (Cossacks/Panzers). Probably the blitz attack should be a generic unit improvement as well.

GAMESPOT: One of the thrills of Civ is when you get to move your giant stack of units (what Smith calls the "stack of doom") into an enemy's territory. That's pretty much been a staple of Civ games from the beginning, but Firaxis is looking to bring that tactic to an end. The problem with the stack of doom is that it can be overwhelmingly difficult to bring to a halt, which doesn't make it much fun if you're on the receiving end of it. So when an enemy stack enters your territory, you will be able to see how many units are in it by the number of medallions indicated on its flag. Then, if you have siege weapons, you can heap some devastating damage on it. As an example, Smith used catapults to attack a large stack headed toward one of his cities. The catapult not only damaged the target unit, but did collateral damage to other units in the stack. The number of units that can be damaged in total depends on the weapon, but this is certainly going to force players and AI factions to spread their units out more, which is the idea in Civ IV.

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Sounds a little that they're worried about making the game easy for the masses (2 easy, I'm thinking).

Sounded like every Civ will have all resources near them.

Personally, I think a better method is to make their proposed method an option. I still prefer random.

Aussie_Lurker said:

I think the point is that no player will end up with NO strategic resources. i.e. there will no longer be a situation where a civ can go an entire game with no resources nearby.
I think another thing is that we are still not certain how resources work this time around. Hopefully they have changed it such that a single strategic resource is no longer sufficient to fuel your entire nations needs (and, I hope, there will be different sizes of resources too!) That way, even if you have almost every strategic resource nearby, you will still have to trade to get more of it. My point is that I really can't see them doing something that will make diplomacy even more pointless than it was in CivIII. I could be wrong though, but would rather wait for more information.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

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If they're going to try to go mass mass market, they may just dumb it down last minute.

Aussie_Lurker said:

I think the point is that no player will end up with NO strategic resources. i.e. there will no longer be a situation where a civ can go an entire game with no resources nearby.

Click to expand...

I would still like to control it with set parameters.

Aussie_Lurker said:

I think another thing is that we are still not certain how resources work this time around. Hopefully they have changed it such that a single strategic resource is no longer sufficient to fuel your entire nations needs (and, I hope, there will be different sizes of resources too!)

Click to expand...

I would promote system were there are three sizes of all strategic resources (small (1), medium (2), large (3)/ small+small=medium / small+medium=large /small+small+small=large) and example units would require one of those sizes (amount of resource). Example if the nation has lesser amount (smaller size) of resource than required by unit then it would cost more turns/shields to produce the unit in contrast to the that you would have that resource the right amount. Of course it could be done also that if you have more that resource than required the unit would be produced in less turns/shields than normally.

Even though in this kind of system there wouldn't be actual stockpiling, if more than one unit that requires particular resource is produced in civilization the overall amount needed by units would be compared to the amount of resource in overall in Civilization and so all units would suffer penalties in turns/shields in order to be completed.

Aussie_Lurker said:

That way, even if you have almost every strategic resource nearby, you will still have to trade to get more of it. My point is that I really can't see them doing something that will make diplomacy even more pointless than it was in CivIII.

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I agree and what was said in the E3 show that all resources can be now traded so example trading different food resources will add to the health and making it so it is important to make trades with those rather not. And I would like to get some advantage of having more of certain strategic resource than just the chance to trade it.

I like their idea with the artillery damaging all units in the stack. In civ 3, artillery was almost useless.

Legionary37 said:

I like their idea with the artillery damaging all units in the stack. In civ 3, artillery was almost useless.

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What? Useless? They are the key to my winning. No games last much beyond me getting Arty. Methinks you are using them wrong.

i think missonarys shold be able to crose borders without the "open borders agreement".. if a few thousand mexicans can enter the us undeteted in modren times, how hard whold it be for a grope of 5 to 20 guys to sneak acrose the boarder and start preaching?? even with out missionarys or open boarders, trade, traveling ect shold spreed ur reilgon!

Legionary37 said:

I like their idea with the artillery damaging all units in the stack. In civ 3, artillery was almost useless.

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I just couldn't disagree more.

In Civ3, any kind of artillery made your day. Get some 5 - 10 catapults, and slash whoever dares to stand in your way...
Conquer the first town, and go for the second with 15 cats. Conquer that town, and move towards the third with 20 cats...
Have two independent stacks with 20 cats each and conquer different nations at different fronts....

No single type of unit in Civ3 was more powerful than the artillery-like unit types. You could conquer whatever your heart desired, even with completely lacking any horse. You could even survive until deep into the "saltpeter" era.

As cats seem to be in again, I have to express that they were (and will be again) one of the most decisive weapons.

I for sure like the use of artillery, but catapults as an early form of artillery just doesn't make any sense - at least not as movable units. It could be fine, though, if they were some kind of tile improvement which you were allowed to create in wartimes, especially in enemy territory.
Catapults never where used in the large scale as they are used in Civ3, nor were they ever very easy to "re-locate".

Vietcong said:

i think missonarys shold be able to crose borders without the "open borders agreement".. if a few thousand mexicans can enter the us undeteted in modren times, how hard whold it be for a grope of 5 to 20 guys to sneak acrose the boarder and start preaching?? even with out missionarys or open boarders, trade, traveling ect shold spreed ur reilgon!

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As I understood it, you can isolate yourself and thus no missionaries can get into your empire, but also no trade (money, resources, scientific advances, ...) just like 'medieval' Japan was like. And I think this is a pretty good trade-off.
So, at first, you can't enter enemy territory before having a open border agreement, which is also needed for trade. This sounds really fine to me...

(If I got this preview correct!)

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