Shacknews E3 Preview

[V. Soma]

A nice piece from Shacknews.

I quote some pharagraphs:

"Cultural Victory is achieved by completing the Utopia Project, which is unlocked after completing 6 of 10 policy trees, which offer bonuses to different game systems and use culture as currency.
These policies serve to replace many systems not making a formal return from Civilization IV, namely the civics and religion systems. It is possible the espionage will also make a return here, but I was not able to freely browse all of the policies. Policies are broken down into 8 categories representing different ways of governing. Some will be incompatible with others, for example, "Freedom" and "Tyranny." Culture, which is generated by cities, will be used to purchase policies. One early policy, for example, grants a 33% boost in production for Wonders."


"players can now install a puppet government. By doing so, less unhappiness will be generated, but the player cannot control the city at all. You will gain gold, culture, and research, but the city will act upon its own best interest. If you're at war and are cranking units out for the war effort, this puppet city could be working on a granary if it needs it for its own development."

"On the infrastructure side of things, Civ V will bring custom maps and scenarios directly into the game with the Mod Repository. Now, content creators will have their work visible within the game and players can install new mods with a single click. This should help get mods out to the community at large without relying on external websites. Since Civilization V uses Steamworks, it will have access to your Steam friends list for game invites and more. On matchmaking, Firaxis is currently looking into whether or not this will be added, but it definitely won't be in by release. "

[CommanderZ]

What exactly do they mean by matchmaking here? Some sort of automatic system that picks a game for you? Thanks, not interested, good old server list will do fine. I encountered these systems in a few games lately and it rarely picks a game I would really like to play.

[Thyrwyn]

matchmaking helps you find available MP games - it doesn't pick the game for you.

[Krikkitone]

So 10 Trees but 8 Groups of Trees?

So...
7 groups have 1 Tree and 1 Group has 3 Trees... 4-6 "Groups" are necessary to reach Utopia
OR
6 Groups have 1 Tree and 2 Groups have 2 Trees.. 4-6 Groups are necessary to Reach Utopia UNLESS 2 the two 'large' groups are incompatible. (in which case you need at least 5 groups to Reach Utopia)

[V. Soma]

Originally Posted by Krikkitone

So 10 Trees but 8 Groups of Trees?

So...
7 groups have 1 Tree and 1 Group has 3 Trees... 4-6 "Groups" are necessary to reach Utopia
OR
6 Groups have 1 Tree and 2 Groups have 2 Trees.. 4-6 Groups are necessary to Reach Utopia UNLESS 2 the two 'large' groups are incompatible. (in which case you need at least 5 groups to Reach Utopia)

I think the article is misleading in wording, I think it wants to refer to the possibly 8 icons under the 10 different policies - whatever they mean...

[CommanderZ]

Originally Posted by Thyrwyn

matchmaking helps you find available MP games - it doesn't pick the game for you.

I hope not, because as they said, matchmaking won't be ready out of the box. So you wouldn't be able to find MP games...?

[Thyrwyn]

You'll just have to look for, and arrange them, on your own.

[Shurdus]

Originally Posted by Krikkitone

So 10 Trees but 8 Groups of Trees?

So...
7 groups have 1 Tree and 1 Group has 3 Trees... 4-6 "Groups" are necessary to reach Utopia
OR
6 Groups have 1 Tree and 2 Groups have 2 Trees.. 4-6 Groups are necessary to Reach Utopia UNLESS 2 the two 'large' groups are incompatible. (in which case you need at least 5 groups to Reach Utopia)

Meh, just do not even try to work things out like that. the wording is probably off anyway, and even if it is spot on you will probably still visualize things differently anyway. Besides, this is just a side issue of little value.

[kaltorak]

Maybe just each tree has policies of different categories. So there are 10 trees with policies. And each policy belongs to a category unrelated to the tree.

[Ahriman]

10 trees and 8 groups of trees would fit well with the possibility that Freedom/Autocracy and Piety/Rationalism are mutually exclusive trees.

[Aramel]

This is not the first time that a news outlet misidentified the number of social policy trees. I think it is far more likely they are just wrong than that there is some bizarre system of 8 subgroups we have never heard about until now.

[Ahriman]

We *have* heard from people who saw the E3 demo that these trees are mutually exclusive.

[Trias]

Originally Posted by Ahriman

10 trees and 8 groups of trees would fit well with the possibility that Freedom/Autocracy and Piety/Rationalism are mutually exclusive trees.

I would be disappointed if "freedom" and "autocracy" would be mutually exclusive, since that is utter non-sense (and smells like American propaganda from the cold war equating democracy with freedom). There should be some room for Enlightened Despotism or constitutional monarchy.

[Ahriman]

I would be disappointed if they were not exclusive.

See these threads, we don't need another one:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=368648
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=368842

Note that there seem to be separate Liberty and Freedom trees (unclear what the difference is) and that it is impossible to have both Despotism and Democracy.

[GoodSarmatian]

Originally Posted by Ahriman

Note that there seem to be separate Liberty and Freedom trees (unclear what the difference is) and that it is impossible to have both Despotism and Democracy.

Civil liberties vs political freedoms ?
In Athens people would vote if someone in the city was to be executed or exiled, while China today is on it's way to grant the citizens more and more rights and establish rule of law while still remaining a one-party state.

[Commander Bello]

Originally Posted by V. Soma

"On the infrastructure side of things, Civ V will bring custom maps and scenarios directly into the game with the Mod Repository. Now, content creators will have their work visible within the game and players can install new mods with a single click. This should help get mods out to the community at large without relying on external websites. Since Civilization V uses Steamworks, it will have access to your Steam friends list for game invites and more. On matchmaking, Firaxis is currently looking into whether or not this will be added, but it definitely won't be in by release. "

Two important sentences.

First, fanmade sites like CivFanatics shall be of less importance.
In other words: Independantly run sites, where people are more likely to articulate criticism, where independant communities have grown in the past, shall suffer.
Great idea...

Second, the incorporation of Steamworks shall not help mp games as much as expected and advertized by the Steam Sunshine Squad.
Since this is not a very logical move of the developers (I mean, if Steam really offers such things in an easy way, why aren't they making use of it????), to me this seems to be a strong indication of what some of the first DLCs will be: "You want to have the chance to get matchmaking? Glad to offer it to you for only $4.99 (if you're US citizen) or $7.99 (rest of the world) or $9.99 (special offer for Down Under).

[Zhahz]

First, fanmade sites like CivFanatics shall be of less importance

...for distribution of mods. IMO that's probably not so bad since it's less bandwidth and management for the sites. The discussion/creation mod forums will retain their importance as would the rest of the site function. I also think most of us would rather communicate thru sites like this than in IMs/small chats thru something like steam, at least for nonpersonal game stuff.

Second, the incorporation of Steamworks shall not help mp games as much as expected and advertized by the Steam Sunshine Squad.

Does seem odd when in one recent video they're talking about how MP is core to the civ experience (really...since when...). I have to wonder how many civvers actually do MP. I'm guessing it's a small number since MP is generally a low priority for them.

There are some nice videos out recently but they're generally rehashing the same tidbits. It'll be nice when some decent and concrete info comes out, or better yet some gameplay examples like with Civ IV.
I don't MP civ and never will, so meh, who cares?

One thing to keep in mind is that Steam and Steamworks are two completely different things. I'm not a fan of Steam but Steamworks does give them a lot of potential to do things that might appeal greatly to the MP crowd (along with other fluff some folks might like). So, even if they're not going full feature with it immediately the potential is there for patching/expansion with less dev hassle for them down the road.

[Aramel]

Originally Posted by Commander Bello

Two important sentences.

First, fanmade sites like CivFanatics shall be of less importance.
In other words: Independantly run sites, where people are more likely to articulate criticism, where independant communities have grown in the past, shall suffer.
Great idea...

Second, the incorporation of Steamworks shall not help mp games as much as expected and advertized by the Steam Sunshine Squad.
Since this is not a very logical move of the developers (I mean, if Steam really offers such things in an easy way, why aren't they making use of it????), to me this seems to be a strong indication of what some of the first DLCs will be: "You want to have the chance to get matchmaking? Glad to offer it to you for only $4.99 (if you're US citizen) or $7.99 (rest of the world) or $9.99 (special offer for Down Under).

Thank you for such a reasonable and well thought out post, sir. You give credit to this entire forum.

[Commander Bello]

Originally Posted by Aramel

Thank you for such a reasonable and well thought out post, sir. You give credit to this entire forum.

I know and you're welcome.

[CanuckSoldier]

Originally Posted by CommanderZ

What exactly do they mean by matchmaking here? Some sort of automatic system that picks a game for you? Thanks, not interested, good old server list will do fine. I encountered these systems in a few games lately and it rarely picks a game I would really like to play.

Yes this is a very vague statement by the writer, and he doesn't state his source for any of this info.

I'm hoping 2K Greg can clarify this statement. As no matchmaking can mean anything from no auto-matchmaking ala many console games, to a complete lack of time to integrate the entire Steamworks backend into the game. Meaning we would be back to the Civ2 MGE days of DirectIP only. If it is indeed actually going ship crippled like that it would be nice to know if we are going to have a chat lobby to organize our direct IP games with or if we are really being left to use our ingenuity........

2K Greg????


CS