Arioch's Analyst Thread

[Mercade]

As found by SnipperRabbit, the French Gaming magazine Canard PC has posted its July issue on-line. Click on "telecharger le version numérique" to download the 132 page magazine (81 MB).

The magazine contains a 5 page article on Civilization (in French). For the convenience of the user who doesn't wish to download 132 pages, I've cut the article of 5 pages in its original native PDF format, but at the request of J I'm not posting that link here (you know who to PM if you want to read it).

Thebes with Pyramids, Stonehenge, Hagia Sofia (better image), Palace (new) and Ankor Wat (new).
Also includes the Manufactory (unobscured).

Spoiler :

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

I have done so, as well !

 

[Wolle68]

Spoiler :

Egyptian UA: Can build wonders on rivers.

 

[Sciguy001]

Anyone else find it weird (in above screenshot) that the Stonehedge is significantly bigger than the Hagia Sofia and Angkor Wat? I see that they want it to be visual when looking at the city, but making each of the stones as big as a building looks just a bit silly

 

[Senethro]

Anyone else find it weird (in above screenshot) that the Stonehedge is significantly bigger than the Hagia Sofia and Angkor Wat? I see that they want it to be visual when looking at the city, but making each of the stones as big as a building looks just a bit silly

Anyone else find it weird that men are taller than buildings on the civ map?

 

[EmpireOfCats]

This is funny (Google translation):

I have burnt countless hamburgers and fish fingers since I played. It's the same thing, we think that we have five minutes hanging around until it cooks, so we set off small and Ottoman Civilization, time seems to say, forget the contingencies of the outdoor life be caught up by reality, 30 minutes later, smelling the burning smell emanating from the kitchen where the meal has become a bit of coal.

This is why I have a rice cooker. If you forget it, it just stays on heat. Anyway, not sure if this is new (my emphasis):

Note also that we must henceforth least two citizens to begin to produce Pioneers able to create new cities.

I assume with "pioneers" they mean "settlers" (citoyens). Not sure if we had that number before. Oh, and this doesn't sound good:

What we sent Firaxis is a beta rather bugged. To be honest, the game crashes on 90% of the backups I make, and allows a return to the Windows desktop every two or three hours on average. It was impossible for me Reach-ing in these conditions during the most advanced game, my record being about 250 rounds of play without crashing - roughly enough to reach the Renaissance period - before the wild-Backups become unusable.

Sounds more like alpha to me than beta, but maybe I'm spoiled by Ubuntu and Google betas.

(A note to any French teachers who happen to be reading: I know you can't give your students the real motivation to learn the language, like "If you learn French, you can read Story of O in the original". But game reviews like this might be second best. If I remember the boring crap we had to study, a review of Civ would have been heaven.)

 

[SevenSpirits]

Those two things will make a lot of people here very happy I think, probably even deserve their own thread, especially the SP thing as there has been a lot of speculation about it.

How can you switch back? Can you do it anytime or do you have to wait until your culture is high enough to be able to choose a new SP and then instead of choosing a new one you switch back to your old SP tree?

That's a good question. I realized when I posted about it that I hadn't checked that. I might get to check again Sunday, otherwise you'll have to hear it from someone else. In either case, I don't think it will matter much because I highly doubt that switching back is a good strategy 99.99% of the time. Switching once already seems borderline wasteful, and you not only lose abilities but you get an anarchy turn.

 

[AriochIV]

@Arioch, since you're here, did you notice the three hammer action button that was with Morton GE ?

The what?

Thebes with Pyramids, Stonehenge, Hagia Sofia (better image), Palace (new) and Ankor Wat (new). Also includes the Manufactory (unobscured).

I don't see a Palace there. If you're referring to the pinkish E-shaped building at the bottom, I believe that's the Great Library.

 

[marioflag]

That's a good question. I realized when I posted about it that I hadn't checked that. I might get to check again Sunday, otherwise you'll have to hear it from someone else. In either case, I don't think it will matter much because I highly doubt that switching back is a good strategy 99.99% of the time. Switching once already seems borderline wasteful, and you not only lose abilities but you get an anarchy turn.

What do you mean by losing abilities?
Is there just a turn of anarchy like in Civ4 to prevent SP switching?

 

[SevenSpirits]

What do you mean by losing abilities?
Is there just a turn of anarchy like in Civ4 to prevent SP switching?

Rationalism and Piety, for example, can't both be active at once. If you have Piety policies but switch to Rationalism, your Piety policies' continuous abilities are deactivated.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

The what?

HERE !

 

[playshogi]

Rationalism and Piety, for example, can't both be active at once. If you have Piety policies but switch to Rationalism, your Piety policies' continuous abilities are deactivated.

You could adopt Piety and not lose too much by switching to Rationalism.
Adopt Piety => +2 happy
Adopt Mandate of heaven => 1/2 extra happiness converted to culture
and Free Religion

Free Religion gives 2 free social policies, so you get MoH and FR free, while with MoH might earn you enough extra culture to pay for adopting Piety in the first place.

So, the only cost to adopt Piety is the opportunity cost of adopting something else and 1 turn of anarchy.

 

[SevenSpirits]

You could adopt Piety and not lose too much by switching to Rationalism.
Adopt Piety => +2 happy
Adopt Mandate of heaven => 1/2 extra happiness converted to culture
and Free Religion

Free Religion gives 2 free social policies, so you get MoH and FR free, while with MoH might earn you enough extra culture to pay for adopting Piety in the first place.

So, the only cost to adopt Piety is the opportunity cost of adopting something else and 1 turn of anarchy.

Yup, this might be worth it. What I doubt would be worth it is switching back to piety after switching to rationalism.

 

[Ddude97]

There's an ad for civ 5 in the october issue of pop mechanics, has a screenshot of a couple of spaceship parts, couldn't find it on the site thought. Otherwise I saw nothing new.

 

[Mercade]

I don't see a Palace there. If you're referring to the pinkish E-shaped building at the bottom, I believe that's the Great Library.

Hmm.. Could be. I thought it looked like the Palace icon that you have on your site, but could be the Great Library too.

There's an ad for civ 5 in the october issue of pop mechanics, has a screenshot of a couple of spaceship parts, couldn't find it on the site thought. Otherwise I saw nothing new.

Got a website for that?

 

[Ddude97]

Not on the website, sorry (www.popularmechanics.com) if you want to check)
I found it in the magazine and was still looking for it when I posted

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

You could adopt Piety and not lose too much by switching to Rationalism.
Adopt Piety => +2 happy
Adopt Mandate of heaven => 1/2 extra happiness converted to culture
and Free Religion

Free Religion gives 2 free social policies, so you get MoH and FR free, while with MoH might earn you enough extra culture to pay for adopting Piety in the first place.

So, the only cost to adopt Piety is the opportunity cost of adopting something else and 1 turn of anarchy.

Well, the branch is pretty much completed when you get to FR. It may be better spent on an entire new branch !

 

[Mercade]

Here's a spaceship part being transported to the capital ...

Spoiler :

At least, that's what it looks like to me.

There's what looks like mobile sam in the image too. I think the icon for rocket artillery is the inverse.

It's from an article on intel's work on Civ5's graphics.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

It's from an article on intel's work on Civ5's graphics.

Nice catch. Actually, I found the technical bits about how they are doing the parallelism more interesting:

"We have a large amount of latitude to adjust the presence of the game on lowend systems. By using [Intel] GPA, we were able to look at the new [Intel®] Core™ i3 and [Intel®] Core™ i5 [processors] and I said, OK, let's actually see if we can run on this."

"It turned out that, yes, we could. We are confident that we can make the game run at 30 fps on these mainstream parts that are just everywhere. That is just huge for us because our fans can be confident that if they go out and buy a machine that they are going to be able to run our game.

Keep in mind this is an Intel ad to get you to use GPA, but still. Nice to know. There is also a cool flowchart with arrows and boxes and stuff that I don't understand but looks really impressive .

I actually have an i5-520M which I am very, very happy with - in my MacBook Pro. Which it looks more and more like I won't be able to use natively for this game. Argh. One of the first things I am going to have to test is how well the demo runs with VirtualBox.

 

[Ogrelord]

Do you guys want someone to translate the French article? or at least pinpoint bits of new information?