Arioch's Analyst Thread

[PawelS]

Desert isn't 0 food and 1 hammer though, I believe it will either be 1 food as standard or it may even be 2 food as standard (the same as grass land)

I will check for validity a bit later and post here.

I can't believe it

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, I strongly doubt that'll be the case.

 

[12agnar0k]

What on earth possesses you think that desert might ever have the same basic yield as grassland?

I actually think its 1 less food, but its possible that was because of an irrigation difference though unlikely, and what did posses me to think this was the confirmation of this through screen shot/video analysis, I didn't just think it up, I'm actually surprised no one noticed the yields.
I could be wrong, I did say I would check.

..................

Edit:/ Just saw a tile with desert + incense and all it gave was +2 gold.

So yeah I was wrong, Desert gives 0 as standard, I thought it would be 1 food I probably came to this after seeing a desert tile with a farm with 3 food knowing farms gave only +2 food, when actually they give 2-4.

Anyway there you go. Flood plains give 2 food just like grassland though, so at least they are worth their weight in food.

Still the fact you can farm desert tiles doesn't make them useless any more, where as tundra that only gives 1 food can't be farmed so where as with a desert you can get 2+ food, tundra will only ever give +1.

....

However one bit of new information maybe, Incense gives +2 gold as standard.
& +1 Gold when a plantation is built. Giving a +3 Gold total.

.....

P.s I would still rate Desert above tundra, as it can be farmed for 2 food early on and more with tech upgrades. Tundra will only ever give 1 food, making it horrible terrain to settle on.

As for snow, I expect it will be 0 to start off with too, but I believe it was already confirmed to be able to be farmed, or am I imagining this.

 

[YoHo]

Previous versions of the game had desert at 1 food, so I don't see why its so unbelievable.

I forget have we seen if Resources can be placed on Desert? What about mines. Desert could be a salt resource and thus a salt mine would be valid.

 

[AriochIV]

Mines can only be placed on Hills, or on a mine-able resource. I don't recall whether I've seen a resource such as Iron on desert tiles, but I wouldn't be surprised. And there are still Flood Plains and Oases on deserts, though they aren't as productive as they were in Civ IV.

 

[SuperSmash5]

Tile yields are not "fundamental" to 99% of people who will buy the game. How many people will base their decision to buy the game on whether a grassland forest is better than a plains forest? The reason that we know 'so little' about it is probably because there are 1001 more interesting things to say about the game. And surely we can put together a pretty good idea of the tile yields from all the gameplay videos and pictures???

The fact that there's been such a detailed discussion about forests shows how desperate we all are for more info. Greg? Anything?

This is interesting to me and it should be interesting to everyone here, so the fact that no one has even bothered to make a serious investigation into how the tile yields work until now is a very surprising. It's not that the reviewers should be acting like it's a big deal, it's that WE should be acting like a big deal because IT IS. Both this site and Arioch's have misinformation on the most fundamental part of the game.

I think the new system for basic resourcing makes sense and can't see how it will make any real difference.

A forest's output is the same no matter the underlying terrain. The main resouce are the un-forested trees and the eco-system that it supports. I accept that the fringes of certain forests might be les productive, but this is true of forest bordering any desert, or swamp, not just tundra.

Hills are seen as valuable as subsistance pasture and a source of mining non-featured commodities that are similarly only marginally dependant on the soil quality.

The truth is that by making the terrain more homogeonous, it makes what you build on the land more important than the land itself. The Civ 4 model makes the citing of cities and the terrain you are dealt very important, but the decision of what to built on the land is pretty much made for you by the site of your city. The only decision I found myself really agonizing over was farm or cottage.

Now, in Civ5, the choices seem more difficult IMO. Mine or farm a hill. Trading post, or farm a grassland, Chop a forest/jungle or not. Where to build a GP building. Choose wisely my liege!

I disagree that improvements are more important than the land itself. Grassland is still good. Floodplains are still good. Plains are still bad. Coast is still bad. Hills are only good with grassland/floodplains.

Then again, I'd need to know what exactly the improvements do.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Grassland is still good. Floodplains are still good. Plains are still bad.

It's not clear to me that this is true.

In Civ IV, for most of the game the hammer improvement (mine) adds 2 of them, and the food improvement (farm) adds 1. The result is you want your tiles to have base food, because adding the hammers in improvements is twice as efficient as adding additional food.

In Civ V by contrast, mines (and lumbermills) are only +1 hammer, while starting at Civil Service (pretty early), fresh water farms are +2 food! I expect this makes base hammer values (hills/plains) better. You can build the more effective improvement (farms) and still have production.

Adding on to this, growing your city costs way more food (mostly because there is no early granary ability which doubles food surplus) which means each individual unit of food has less of a benefit. (It's worth a smaller fraction of a population.) And on top of that, there is no method (whipping) of converting food to hammers at all, let alone at an absurdly favorable rate.

I'm not going to claim that plains are actually BETTER than grass/FP, I just want to point out you shouldn't assume plains still suck. I suspect having a mix will be nice. What's really important is having freshwater tiles. (+1 gold next to a river, +1 food with a farm! Seriously, that's better than a dry wheat once you have Civil Service.)

 

[SuperSmash5]

It's not clear to me that this is true.

In Civ IV, for most of the game the hammer improvement (mine) adds 2 of them, and the food improvement (farm) adds 1. The result is you want your tiles to have base food, because adding the hammers in improvements is twice as efficient as adding additional food.

In Civ V by contrast, mines (and lumbermills) are only +1 hammer, while starting at Civil Service (pretty early), fresh water farms are +2 food! I expect this makes base hammer values (hills/plains) better. You can build the more effective improvement (farms) and still have production.

Adding on to this, growing your city costs way more food (mostly because there is no early granary ability which doubles food surplus) which means each individual unit of food has less of a benefit. (It's worth a smaller fraction of a population.) And on top of that, there is no method (whipping) of converting food to hammers at all, let alone at an absurdly favorable rate.

I'm not going to claim that plains are actually BETTER than grass/FP, I just want to point out you shouldn't assume plains still suck. I suspect having a mix will be nice. What's really important is having freshwater tiles. (+1 gold next to a river, +1 food with a farm! Seriously, that's better than a dry wheat once you have Civil Service.)

That conclusion is based on the idea that you've got a fair amount of riverside land. Riverside plains are certainly better than non-riverside grassland, but that doesn't make plains any better. It just makes riverside tiles very powerful.

Also, it's based on the idea that the main purpose for food is to augment production, yet most production cities are kept small not because of lack of food but because of, again, the wasted turns spend on growth and buildings needed to maintain a higher population. I am also glad to see the slavery economy go, but there are other benefits to food. Specialists is the obvious answer but now science too.

Maybe it's just my luck, but I never can count on having rivers. I prefer to look at things from the perspective that rivers won't be a major factor in minor production cities and would be better in one giant size 30 city that would generate lots of science, culture, and GPP.

 

[SevenSpirits]

That conclusion is based on the idea that you've got a fair amount of riverside land. Riverside plains are certainly better than non-riverside grassland, but that doesn't make plains any better.

Did you miss my argument? There were some facts and some logic which led to the conclusion that "you shouldn't assume plains still suck". You're welcome to find my mistake but just saying it's wrong isn't productive, to put it plainly.

Also, it's based on the idea that the main purpose for food is to augment production,

Huh? The premise was simply that both food and production are at all desirable. The rest of the argument used known facts and (I believe) correct logic to prove that at least one factor (relative effectiveness of base terrain and improvements) has improved the value of plains relative to grassland.

Maybe it's just my luck, but I never can count on having rivers.

Good news: forget about rivers!

The same argument works if you compare 1 food farms and 1 hammer mines vs Civ IV's 1 food farms and 2 hammer mines.

 

[Scramble]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art.../reviews/previews/8100-Preview-Civilization-V

New video. about 6 minutes of gameplay footage. dunno how old the build is, but I know it is a never before seen vid.
Probably has some good info in it somewhere for all you analysts out there.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Great Video!!!

They had Mohawk Warriors. 2Moves 11Strength. Same as Swordsmen
It looked like it had some sort of promotion on it too, maybe it came with it.

Also several wonder screens were shown.

 

[Ogrelord]

He had to choose between Hanoi or Seoul city-states. He chosen Seoul because they were most like the Iroquois? haha.

I like the part where he tried to block Suleiman army from attacking Rio de Janeiro with the 1upt without breaking the treaty till the 11th hour.

 

[Scramble]

I find it extremely awesome that Rio caused an open armed conflict. Tiny city state... huge effect on the game.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art.../reviews/previews/8100-Preview-Civilization-V

New video. about 6 minutes of gameplay footage. dunno how old the build is, but I know it is a never before seen vid.
Probably has some good info in it somewhere for all you analysts out there.

I *really* loved this guys narration style-*very* entertaining !

Aussie.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

Eiffel Tower
--------------------
+4 Happiness
+1 Culture
+3 Great Merchant point

Stonehenge
--------------------
+8 Culture
+1 Great Enginner point

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Eiffel Tower
--------------------
+4 Happiness
+1 Culture
+2 Great Merchant point

Sucks. The Hanging Gardens and Notre Dame also increase happiness. How many wonders with the alost same effect do we need ? And + 4 is even less than a luxury resource.

Stonehenge
--------------------
+4 Culture
+1 Great Enginner point

The resolution on the vid was low and the numbers hard to see, but I think I saw +8 culture from Stonehenge.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Sucks. The Hanging Gardens and Notre Dame also increase happiness. How many wonders with the alost same effect do we need ? And + 4 is even less than a luxury resource.

No kidding! Hopefully some get changed in the final version. It shouldn't be that hard to give them all different abilities.

The resolution on the vid was low and the numbers hard to see, but I think I saw +8 culture from Stonehenge.

Sounds more likely. The build we've been seeing also had Stonehenge as +8 culture, +1 engineer point.

 

[logarithm64]

The Hanging Gardens also gives +1 population in each city, and it is likely that the happiness bonus is there so that the population unhappiness does not exceed the happy cap (similar to the global health bonus it gave in Civ 4)

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The Hanging Gardens also gives +1 population in each city, and it is likely that the happiness bonus is there so that the population unhappiness does not exceed the happy cap (similar to the global health bonus it gave in Civ 4)

Which proves to me (a) that Health shouldn't have been removed from the game & (b), that it should therefore produce +1 happiness per city-to improve the chances of the Wonder not being a detriment to your empire.

I am also concerned about Eiffel Tower being so weak though. I'm pretty certain its effects in Civ4 were more impressive than that!

Aussie.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

Sucks. The Hanging Gardens and Notre Dame also increase happiness. How many wonders with the alost same effect do we need ? And + 4 is even less than a luxury resource.




The resolution on the vid was low and the numbers hard to see, but I think I saw +8 culture from Stonehenge.

My bad ! I think both are +8 now I looked more carefully. I apologize for my poor sight at first.
And, for sure, 3 great merchant point for ET.