CiV at PAX East, let's wait!

[the343danny]

I doubt the problem was just graphical. What was the point of doing advanced planning and road pillaging with paratroopers and sorts if all the AI will do is just take another one of their ten million road networks? That kinda ruined late game land wars for me, units popping out from all sides.

 

[bonafide11]

Something else that hasn't been mentioned yet: now that all units will be able to move at least two spaces, it may not be as necessary to have roads everywhere since units will be able to travel easier to areas without roads.

 

[grant2004]

Having fewer roads will improve the strategic nature of warfare, even if roads aren't important for unit movement, it will be easier to disconnect resources and cities from each other when roads don't exist on every tile.

 

[Will9]

^But roads in civ aren't supposed to be just any small roads. They're supposed to represent the major roads.

These are all major roads:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Map_of_current_Interstates.svg

That is probably more crowded than road spaghetti in Civ 4

 

[Arkangelus]

You know, the most I hear about this game, the more excited I get. I'd never even considered roads to be a problem at all, but now this has been mentioned, it sounds fantastic. 'Supply routes' have been vital over history for trade and warfare alike, and it sounds like this will mean that they're properly implemented. As has been mentioned, cutting off main routes will give an extra strategic dimention to warfare as well as make it much easier to do things like cut off resources to a seiged city and the like. Plus, even on a simple, basic level, it gives a tiny extra reward for a tiny extra bit of micromanagement - assuming its -1 -1 , running your road through farmland can just add the tiniest little bit of extra to plan for when youre building up your city. It probably shouldnt count as a positive, but it appeals to my OCDish tendancies

 

[oddeyes]

Warlord Sam, thank you for nice info. I shall get to like to make road with minimum yield loss. And I can accept invisible diplomacy modifier concept. Maybe UBs are unnecessary...they didn't specialize civilizations in civ4 as much as UUs, I guess.

 

[sputnik323]

This will also bring an added benefit for civs to reach out and build roads to their neighbors instead of just building to connect their own land.

Now we need a similar feature for the sea, where we have 'trade routes' maybe shown by arrows. And then have the ability to blockade the routes of opponents in 'trade wars' or in the use of diplomacy. "Close your borders to X civ or we will maintain this blockade" - then have wars start over it.

-Sounds like we also know there is a beta version now.

 

[Tamed]

I think this is more of an attempt to tackle the spaghetti roads problem that plagues the modern era.

A city needs to have road access to other key cities, but you only want the bare minimum to avoid problems. It also sounds like it would encourage you to build roads on baron ground and leave high yield tiles for other improvements.

I think the number 1 driving force behind this is aesthetic.

Great info guys - keep it coming!

This is sort of off-topic but are you signed up on another forum with that same avatar but named Chalky? Seems super familiar.

As for the PAX panel, it was all covered before, super short.

Did get to see Greece, France, and Russia in the game though. They had teal, navy blue and maroon borders respectively if that matters to anyone.

 

[frekk]

I've been thinking about this alot lately and kinda hoping they might do something about road sprawl. Few points I'd like to make.

1. Graphics changes cannot fix road sprawl. You could have minor roads fade into the background and just have arteries between cities being prominently visible, but the problem there is you'll have to squint to see which tiles have roads when you aren't on the major arteries. That's unacceptable. There simply isn't any way to have sprawl that is both useful and good-looking. You can only have one or the other.

2. It isn't totally aesthetic, but it is a subjective preference. Having only a few roads will make roads more strategic and allow paratroopers, bombing runs, sabotage, and so on more interesting. You'll have to think more about where you build them. Some people will find this adds depth to the game; others will find it a burden and a headache. They'll be annoyed that their units don't move about as efficiently over long distances, they'll resent having to do more planning of their infrastructure.

3. Whether it's less or more realistic is sort of ... whatever way you want to look at it. Depends on the abstract sense of scale. That map of the interstates is indeed spaghetti-like but if the game map were just the US, there would really only be connections between cities, not in every tile. At that scale there is alot of space that wouldn't have interstate highway running through it. If it were global scale, then yes, it would be sprawl. You could argue either way on the realism aspect, but sprawl probably has a slight edge - at least in the modern age, anyway.

I'm kinda glad about it. I hate sprawl. Both for aesthetic and gameplay reasons. But I can see why lots of people don't see it as a problem.

As far as what I gather from the solution they seem to be applying, it doesn't seem that roadbuilding is truly penalized unless you are excessive. There are apparently costs depending on how much road you build, which is a penalty, but you also get "economic benefits" from linking cities by road, so I imagine if you are sparing, the net result is likely profitable rather than an expense. I would guess that you only lose money if you go crazy building roads.

As far as the reduction in bonuses for going through a resource tile, I imagine you still need to connect the resources. Maybe you want to go beside the resource rather than right through it . . . this makes sense - you might run an interstate somewhere in the general vicinity of an important oilfield or coal belt, but probably not right through it. Smaller roads can be assumed to connect it to the main route.

 

[Michigamer]

in regards to roads. All the road spam never bothered me too much I guess, and these changes seem painful.

Though minimal roads should fit in nicely with the new focus on tactical combat.

On another note [rampant speculation]:

Is it possible that roads will no longer speed up unit movement; that a unit can move just as quickly across empty plains as along a road? Because when it says "roads are primarily an economic bonus," I say that roads have always been very important for mobilizing your army quickly to get them to the action. Think about this: with 1-unit-per-tile, there would still be incentive to spam roads all over in border regions to keep a large number of units all moving quickly. But making roads no longer speed up movement would remove that incentive.

 

[vidion]

Is it possible that roads will no longer speed up unit movement; that a unit can move just as quickly across empty plains as along a road? Because when it says "roads are primarily an economic bonus," I say that roads have always been very important for mobilizing your army quickly to get them to the action. Think about this: with 1-unit-per-tile, there would still be incentive to spam roads all over in border regions to keep a large number of units all moving quickly. But making roads no longer speed up movement would remove that incentive.

Well if they want 1UPT and reduce road clutter this is pretty much a forgone conclusion. This means more micromanagement I guess. That's a pity. It's not a good idea to automate workers anymore.

 

[oddeyes]

acceleration for units isn't essential feature of road, I guess.
In later era, you fill the land with roads eventually and units always receive speed bonus. It's not tactical, though there are 'cut road' tactics on rare. Well, I want some tweaks about movement and transport. (ex. railroad and airport)

 

[Thyrwyn]

we don't even know if there will BE workers. or if they'll be able to build roads. Wouldn't that be a change. . . .

 

[Dale]

we don't even know if there will BE workers. or if they'll be able to build roads. Wouldn't that be a change. . . .

We've seen workers in screenshots.

 

[Thyrwyn]

I know, I was just trying to point out that we have no idea what they will do. Besides, was it ever a good idea to automate workers? I never found it to be so.

 

[Chalks]

This is sort of off-topic but are you signed up on another forum with that same avatar but named Chalky? Seems super familiar.

Yep, I'm a senior moderator on Aion Source, Mod for TERAfans and I've moderated several small lesser known MMO sites in the past. Also use the same avatar/name on GW2Guru, Stargate Worlds and probably a bunch of other places I forget about.

The only reason I'm not called "Chalky" on here is that some evil impersonator has already taken it.

(sorry for the derailment)

 

[funat]

i think there is a much broader issue with all the roads in previous civs. it's war tactics for example. in warfare you almost always have a push through main roads, and if you want to make a flanking, it is going to cost you.

when you have roads that connect cities - you will have to block them for defense. through those roads will probably flow some kind of logistics for an advancing army. if it's blocked - it could cause problems and reduce hitpoints.

 

[Kid R]

I like the sound of less roads. In Civ 4 the choice of where to build them can make for one or two interesting decisions near the start of the game when worker turns are super-scarce (e.g. connect copper vs connect gold vs road to next city site). But after that it's just "off you go workers, build roads everywhere please". It messes up the map and all it adds to gameplay is an advantage for defending troops which could be achieved numerous other ways. Probably contributes to the engine lag as well, calculating all the trade routes.

 

[funat]

Well if they want 1UPT and reduce road clutter this is pretty much a forgone conclusion. This means more micromanagement I guess. That's a pity. It's not a good idea to automate workers anymore.

look into PG for an answer. it's all there - main roads and 1UPT.

 

[Warlord Sam]

"Do you mean that they werent explained to you at PAX or that it wont be explained in the game?"
-Just that it wasn't explained to me, I got the impression that they weren't done yet. An example given was that some leaders will be a lot more aggressive and if see that you're starting beside one of them, then you'll immediately focus on producing some defensive units.

That reminds me, one of the examples shown and talked about during the demo was how powerful units are in Civ 5, especially if backed up. A strong defender on a hill blocking a chokepoint and backed up my archers was able to survive for a long time, blocking off an attacking army, a la 300.

This looked pretty cool and I'm excited about the actual strategic possibilities in Civ 5. Another thing mentioned was how we can garrison a unit in a city (singular, sounded like he literally meant only one at a time) and they would help defend, but overall they wanted to take the combat out of the cities.

"Assuming you can remove and move roads at will (and more importantly, assuming that worker AI is able to do all this pissing about to build optimal roads for you automatically) hopefully it won't cause any problems."
-They specifically mentioned that one coder's only job was to make sure the workers would intuitively build roads without boning up your tile yields / making spaghetti etc.

"Is it possible that roads will no longer speed up unit movement; that a unit can move just as quickly across empty plains as along a road?"
-I also got the impression that the roads didn't increase unit movement, but the pace was such that I was swept along well past remembering to ask about that by the time questions were open. I'm pretty sure not every session was able to ask questions, though, just depending on their timing.

More news if I happen to remember or luck into it, gents. Last day of PAX East, I gotta get a move on.