Arioch's Analyst Thread

[Semmel]

Hmm... I just found something interesting. I think people who fear the word accessible, equals it to dumped down and in general thinks that civ5 will be dumped down should listen to the 1:30-2:20 part of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=GbYRs6b4DQI&feature=related

I kinda found it funny with all that worrying about civ5 not being civ4. Maybe I'm the only one who finds it funny.

Thats a really fun video, thanks! I get the impression that civ 1..3 must have been real crapy hard to play since Civ4 is "so much more accessible" than the older 3 and we here the same argument again, civ5 is so much more accessible than civ 4.. civ 1..3 must have been a pain in the ass! Also, did you notice how he says that the interfaace is so much better because it displays so much more information... and for civ5 we hear the exact oppiste argument, it displays so much less info so its much better! *g* I really enjoy it somehow!

 

[AriochIV]

Any time there is a new sequel in a series, there will always be some people who fear it will be too different from the previous games, and some who fear it won't be different enough. That just comes with the territory.

I think the fear of oversimplification comes largely from the recent release of Civ Revolution, which really was "dumbed down", though for understandable reasons given the target audience. Civ IV had greatly increased "accessibility" over Civ III, but that was due to a much improved interface, and not from simplifying or condensing features. Civ IV was significantly more complex than Civ III - religions, great people, city health, civics, and unit promotions were all new features in Civ IV. When people see that the list of features in Civ V appears shorter, it's easy to see why they get nervous.

There is no "correct" number of features in a game, and more features doesn't always mean better gameplay, but less features doesn't always mean better gameplay either. It all comes down to how well the chosen mix plays together, and there's no way we can tell whether the mix works or not until we play it.

 

[Teodosio]

I set up a Civilization V Analyst site so that I could post collections of screenshot- and video-culled data and analysis of it. The site has other stuff there too, but the images are the main thrust of the site.

Your website is great, I check it every day, it has become my main source of news about Civ V!
Small tip: why don't you move "Last updated: date" at the top of each page?

 

[AriochIV]

Your website is great, I check it every day, it has become my main source of news about Civ V!
Small tip: why don't you move "Last updated: date" at the top of each page?

Thanks. That's a good idea.

 

[ThERat]

As an avid AW (Always War) player, I had already taken a bad beating in Civ 4 as there was no option to completely prevent war weariness (Not to mention other features that made AW quite a bad variant).

I hope that Civ 5 will give us the AW enjoyment back as playing C3C for AW becomes a little stale after almost a decade.

However, what will happen to the happiness factor as the essence of an AW game is to conquer enemy cities and rule the world. That was always the feature we war mongers loved the most in the Civ series. Are we going to be penalized via empire wide unhappiness? It would be great to hear how the game plays for warmongers that go and conquer the planet (and you know, domination was just a bad substitute for us who wanted to conquer the whole planet).

 

[PieceOfMind]

I've been saying for years the interface is one of the most critical parts of the game, but it usually avoids attention in civfanatics discussions because it's not gameplay mechanics.

I tried the demo of EVE Online recently but within 2 or 3 minutes or so of playing the game I got sick of their stupidly small font. Playing the tutorial was like constantly reading fine print. The point is, that's a big enough failure, that it doesn't matter how good the game is - it's not worth playing.

Civ4 did indeed make some big interface improvements (the tile yield display was one of my favourites, and I always play with that turned on now), but there are still more it can do. But the interface improvements it made are the reason I can't stand to play earlier games in the series. When I try civ1, 2 or 3 I find myself wanting to use shortcuts or interface features that just didn't exist with those games.

One thing I would love to see in a civ game, but which I doubt will be in civ5, is a zoom to cursor feature. I'm sure it's in a lot of games by now, but the first game I saw do it was Supreme Commander. Instead of using the keyboard arrows or moving the mouse to the edge of the screen to scroll (though they both worked as well), you could just quickly zoom out and zoom in again to a different spot on the map using the mouse wheel and the positioning of the mouse cursor. It worked brilliantly for an RTS where quickly zipping the camera around the map was essential. In civ it's tedious to have to rely on the clumsy minimap to relocate the camera.

 

[Semmel]

One thing I would love to see in a civ game, but which I doubt will be in civ5, is a zoom to cursor feature. I'm sure it's in a lot of games by now, but the first game I saw do it was Supreme Commander. Instead of using the keyboard arrows or moving the mouse to the edge of the screen to scroll (though they both worked as well), you could just quickly zoom out and zoom in again to a different spot on the map using the mouse wheel and the positioning of the mouse cursor. It worked brilliantly for an RTS where quickly zipping the camera around the map was essential. In civ it's tedious to have to rely on the clumsy minimap to relocate the camera.

Aes, that would be brilliant! I played SC for a while and afterwards, I had to get used to civs crappy way of doing the scrolling. Clicking on the map.. thats maybe the worst way of doing it. If you click, you want to interact. But I have to give civ4 some credit here, the zoom function works very smoothly. Lets see how it works in Civ5..

 

[Hamil]

Is it possible, that trade post can only be placed on road tiles? At least i got that impression from the gamestar video.

 

[AriochIV]

The majority of trade posts in the video are not on road tiles. Although the trade post graphic itself has features that look like roads.

 

[Wezqu]

No - not at all meant that way. I'm just adding another example of invasions like Paris, the British in Washington DC, etc. And if you're more Russian than Finnish then I'm more Finnish than you at 50%! Sisu!

Ou are you half finnish and half english or something else. Funny combo in my opinion. I don't think Finland anymore even wants Karelia back.

 

[Gedemo]

These red flowers have been seen in forest and jungle terrain. My initial guess was Spices.

I think it's poppy, like it was in Civ:Call to power II, that represents drugs.


Maybe we'll have an Opium War scenario?


Edit:

According to the 2K forums, it's a reference to the opium trade in the civilopedia:
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=937456&postcount=14

 

[Grey2ham]

In the modern units page at the bottom their is an unknown ship. I'm certain this is a dreadnought, here is a link to a page with HMS Dreadnought the first of it's kind, see what you think.

http://factoidz.com/causes-of-world-war-i/

It was a ship that filled the gap between wood and steel. It introduced turrets but unlike the iron clad it could venture away from coast.

The unidentified ship you refer to definitely isn't a dreadnought. It has what appears to be side-paddles which places it more then half a century before the original HMS Dreadnought was constructed. And there's only a open gun on the stern part of the graphic. No turrets at all.

Personally I'm pretty convinced its a modern era transport probably based around ww1/ww2 designs such as the 'liberty ships' (ww2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_class, or conventional cargo designs.

In gameplay terms I struggle to see the logic of having a dreadnaught unit before a battleship unit, as its generally considered the first of the modern era battleships.
I don't think this is an ironclad either, and believe those paddles are lifeboats. However it better fits a paddle-steamer than an ironclad.
Next time I'm in London (2 weeks) I'll go look at the models in the Science museum. (Although there may be some in Bristol museum that I can stare at, if anyone cares.

To be picky, dreadnaughts only have 1 mast and 2 funnels.
The 2 masts shown in the picture appear to be placed to allow the loading and unloading of supplies.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Ou are you half finnish and half english or something else. Funny combo in my opinion. I don't think Finland anymore even wants Karelia back.

There are some unreasonable people, but they're in minority... It's more of a joke now, like "Karjala takaisin!" shouts from adequately drunk fellas.

 

[Louis XXIV]

As an avid AW (Always War) player, I had already taken a bad beating in Civ 4 as there was no option to completely prevent war weariness (Not to mention other features that made AW quite a bad variant).

I hope that Civ 5 will give us the AW enjoyment back as playing C3C for AW becomes a little stale after almost a decade.

However, what will happen to the happiness factor as the essence of an AW game is to conquer enemy cities and rule the world. That was always the feature we war mongers loved the most in the Civ series. Are we going to be penalized via empire wide unhappiness? It would be great to hear how the game plays for warmongers that go and conquer the planet (and you know, domination was just a bad substitute for us who wanted to conquer the whole planet).

It definitely seems you'll have to be careful this time around. Annexing cities will make you unhappy (because you add their unhappiness for being conquered to your total unhappy count). What you'll have to do is only annex until you come close to that number and then create puppet states after that. You can always annex puppets later, but that might be a good way to keep at always war. The point being, you can't push war until you win, you have to rebuild and consolidate as well.

 

[GeoModder]

Personally I'm pretty convinced its a modern era transport probably based around ww1/ww2 designs such as the 'liberty ships' (ww2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_class, or conventional cargo designs.

In gameplay terms I struggle to see the logic of having a dreadnaught unit before a battleship unit, as its generally considered the first of the modern era battleships.
I don't think this is an ironclad either, and believe those paddles are lifeboats. However it better fits a paddle-steamer than an ironclad.
Next time I'm in London (2 weeks) I'll go look at the models in the Science museum. (Although there may be some in Bristol museum that I can stare at, if anyone cares.

This unidentified model has a bowsprite, a waterline volume larger then the deck volume and a sort of "ram" bow. These were all hallmarks of ships constructed in the early/mid steam era.

It's not so much that Dreadnoughts are a separate class of unit, but more of the concept of the time of a ship armed only with one calibre of heavy guns. Both ships of the line before the 1900's and the dreadnoughts themselves were battleships in function.

 

[arkammler]

I added a new section to the Units page on Unit Actions.

Here is an image with some interesting things going on:

1. The sword icon appears to be the Landsknecht unique unit (I suppose representing the Zweihänder two-handed sword).

2. It's just a nice image of troop buildup on the border.

3. Notice that the French capital of Paris has fallen to the Germans, but the French have installed a new capital at Orleans and continue to exist.

It has been said that the new Domination victory only requires the capture of all enemy capitals, but some folks have assumed that meant that the capture of a capital destroys that civilization; this does not appear to be the case. There is a sequence in the video where the capture of the Aztec capital results in a message from Montezuma admitting defeat, but it appears in that case that the capital also happened to be the last remaining Aztec city.

Did you see double ax on the image?


Also, could you put i links to next age of units on bottom of eagh page?

 

[AriochIV]

If we can't poke a little fun at our good friends, who can we poke fun at?

Let's not derail the thread with a political correctness debate.

I think it's poppy, like it was in Civ:Call to power II, that represents drugs. Maybe we'll have an Opium War scenario?

I'd be very surprised. Civilization has been very timid in the past when it comes to potentially controversial subjects.

Did you see double ax on the image?

Yes, that's the Warrior.

The unidentified ship is confusing, because it has a dreadnought-style bow, but doesn't have enough armament to look like a dreadnought or an ironclad. I still think it's probably a transport.

 

[GeoModder]

Did you see double ax on the image?

Perhaps the warrior symbol?

EDIT: just checked on Arioch's site (unit section/ancient units) and there's a screenshot of a warrior unit with this axe near it.

 

[Gedemo]

I'd be very surprised. Civilization has been very timid in the past when it comes to potentially controversial subjects.

QUOTE]

Look at this big poppy flower, it really looks like the little ones in your jungle

 

[strollen]

It's just that we've got a double-dose of simplification here: not only is Happiness now global instead of per-city, but also Happiness now takes on the additional roles that health and corruption did, of limiting not just the size of cities but the size of your empire. So what you get are some very artificial effects: like when conquering a city, the occupied population seems fine with it (they will get to work right away as soon as the resistance is over, with no penalties compared to the rest of your cities), yet your whole empire suffers unhappiness.

I was really happy in Civ IV when they removed the "civil disorder" mechanic, because that was a pain in the butt, but it was still good that you might have unhappy cities, but it was localized: it was a city that you had let grow too big without the appropriate buildings, or had mixed ethnic groups, or had recently been conquered. There was nothing overwhelming about managing individual cities' happiness, and it added to the feel of how things were going differently in different parts of the empire.

I agree. I am fine with making health disappear, other than rare circumstances it didn't generally have much of an impact on the game play. Ya you might have to thing twice before building a factory in low hammer city because you knew you also had to build an aqueduct etc, but in generally I didn't build many health improvements.
So I think merging health and happiness into one quality of life factor is a reasonable simplification.

I am also fine with making nationwide GPP points since Civ 4 system frankly was pain at time, have to manipulate the number of specialist so I that I could get a GP from a city other than my capital/GPP Farm.

However, I certainly don't understand the benefits of global unhappiness. One of the realities in both real life and Civ is that conquering cities is never as beneficial as you think. In addition to fighting an expensive war, you generally end up with a large city filled with people who hate you and the war typically has destroyed the infrastructure of the city. This means you have to devote lots of troops for garrison and than spend many years/turns and $ rebuilding the infrastructure before it is productive. For example look at the trouble the Russia/Soviet Union has had trying to get productive work from the area in the Crimea or early in the Baltic states. On the other hand I don't see the folk in Berlin being upset when Paris was conquered.

What is even more puzzling is that buildings and roads??? are going to have maintenance cost. I am sure I don't automate my workers enough as it is and have wasted countless hours moving the manually. But there is no way I am going to tell me workers build a road network if costs me gold every turn. So I find it very puzzling that "reduced" micromanagement with a global happiness system while increased with maintenance costs.