[GS] Gathering Storm General Discussion Thread

[Martin_K]

It's not a weather system, it's a climate system. A very, very important difference that a lot of people (in the real world I mean) don't seem to get...



Except... they don't? They never said you can solve climate change with the future techs.

the article on their website ( https://civilization.com/news/entri...w-expansion-release-date-pc-february-14-2019/ ) ed beach talks about how they added storms. it's also in the feature list " (blizzards, sand storms, tornados, hurricanes) ". storms are weather effects. and short term effects that don't fit into a turn based game with year long turns, in my opinion.

also, from that same article:
"
21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES & CIVICS: A new era has been added to the Technology and Civics trees. Combat new environmental effects with speculative ideas such as relocating your population out to seasteads and developing technologies to recapture carbon emissions.
"

so yeah, nothing more to add, really.

they take the game in the wrong direction by adding stuff like that and i won't support that direction any longer. not that it really matters - i'm sure they'll survive the loss of one customer.

 

[Basileus Rhomaion]

...except the leak says both Ottomans and Hungary are in.

You missed this post of mine: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...iscussion-thread.638643/page-11#post-15273959

My speculation isn't simply that the Byzantines are in, it's that based on how the source gathered their info, they could have mixed Hungary with Byzantium from the leader model because of the crown.

 

[blackcatatonic]

In the context of a game, can't climate change be dangerous without being apocalyptic?

I don't think it's irresponsible to show climate change and its effects in the game while also providing ways to mitigate it. The alternative is either to exclude it altogether (which isn't very realistic) or have every game tailspin into a "sea levels rise, everyone drowns" scenario (which isn't very fun).

Historical early Civilizations never even considered climate change or that their actions could be contributing to it until very late in their history. With this game, players are aware of it from the beginning. We will be making decisions about whether to use coal and oil in the Industrial Era with information that our Industrial Era-ancestors were never party to. So to me it makes perfect sense that by the late game our imaginary Civs will have figured out how to either deal with an increasingly volatile environment or stop it getting that way in the first place - even if, sadly, real-life Civs have largely missed the opportunity to do much about it themselves.

Also: SEASTEADS! Why is no-one talking about this? Sounds straight out of Call to Power. I'm very excited to see more.

 

[blackcatatonic]

You missed this post of mine: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...iscussion-thread.638643/page-11#post-15273959

My speculation isn't simply that the Byzantines are in, it's that based on how the source gathered their info, they could have mixed Hungary with Byzantium from the leader model because of the crown.

Your speculation is interesting, but we've had two leaks (three if you count "AssemblingTyphoon" as separate from the YT/PlaceThatShallNotBeNamed leak) that both included Hungary. It's not quite a lock at this point, but that leak has been right about everything else so far.

I'd probably prefer Byzantium to Hungary, though!

(edit: spelling)

 

[oedali]

I have clocked in 1,800 hours in the game (almost 10k on civ5, and a scary number if you sum up the last 20+ years of my life) so consider myself a super fanatic. But I haven’t played for the last 3 months because as someone else pointed out, once you play with the new expansion features that excitement fades away quickly and what really matters is the A.I. as far as true game longevity/re playability. Of course I am buying the expansion - take my money no matter what - but the key question is whether they can make the A.I. competent enough so it feels like a challenge and the fate of the game isn’t always decided by turn 100. If it’s like R&F , I’ll likely play for another hundred hours and stop.

Any changes to religious victory? It is too easy right now because the A.I. isn’t good at tactical use of missionaries and apostles. If they disable RV I won’t complain.

I want to hear more about A.I. improvements. Please.

 

[Deggial]

We'll get 18 new units:

• 9 for the new leaders.
• 11 for the future age => hence at least 2 lines won't get future-era upgrades
  • 1 Melee
  • 1 Range
  • 1 Siege
    
  • 2 Cavalry (light & heavy)
  • 1 Recon
    
  • 2 Airborn (fighter & bomber)
  • 2 Ships (melee & range)
  • 1 Support

I don't think, we will get new intermediate units to flesh out the current unit progression this time.
Unless of course threre are more than the two "neccesary" unit lines without future upgrades.

 

[Leyrann]

the article on their website ( https://civilization.com/news/entri...w-expansion-release-date-pc-february-14-2019/ ) ed beach talks about how they added storms. it's also in the feature list " (blizzards, sand storms, tornados, hurricanes) ". storms are weather effects. and short term effects that don't fit into a turn based game with year long turns, in my opinion.

Yes. Storms. Disasters. Not weather. Volcanic eruptions also don't last a year (typically). Neither do floods. Neither do (most) droughts.

21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES & CIVICS: A new era has been added to the Technology and Civics trees. Combat new environmental effects with speculative ideas such as relocating your population out to seasteads and developing technologies to recapture carbon emissions.

So... Ideas that exist in real life? Sounds reasonable to me - we're doing what we can to implement such things in real life, and in a game you have the added problem that, if you can't do anything against a problem, it's just frustrating and nothing else, so you'll have to include something that you can use to mitigate climate change - at a cost, of course.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

As for Civs. I think the leaked list is legit. To much stuff leaked simultaneously is confirmed. We have almost 100% confirmation od Phoenicia/Carthage from Commercial Hub tooltip, we have very strong hints for Inca and Maori in cinematic. New features also are connected to some civs: Terrain engineering -> Inca, World Congress, and Diplomatic win -> Sweden, even Geothermal Fissure can be connected to Ottoman Hammam or Hungarian Frudo.
PS.
Revamped England with a new leader will give us actually 9 new Civs this expansion.

 

[Leyrann]

Any changes to religious victory? It is too easy right now because the A.I. isn’t good at tactical use of missionaries and apostles. If they disable RV I won’t complain.

Except, y'know, you can disable RV yourself. There's a reason there's an "advanced options" screen in the game; it allows you to tune various things in the game so that it's more to your liking.

 

[Basileus Rhomaion]

Your speculation is interesting, but we've had two leaks (three if you could "AssemblingTyphoon" as separate from the YT/PlaceThatShallNotBeNamed leak) that both included Hungary. It's not quite a lock at this point, but that leak has been right about everything else so far.

I'd probably prefer Byzantium to Hungary, though!

Which is why I called my speculation a "conspiracy theory". I know that the leak is probably true (as it has been thus far), but the cinematic trailer makes for a strong argument about the place of the Byzantines in the expansion, in which case there is no other civ that could have really been misinterpreted.

Another hypothesis I have is that Byzantium in the trailer is more akin to the winged hussars of the vanilla cinematic and might come as a DLC shortly after the expansion, but based on the other indications (Inca, Maori, Vesuvius as a natural wonder) and similar visual hints in the Rise and Fall expansion trailer, I remain hesitantly optimistic for now.

 

[blackcatatonic]

Which is why I called my speculation a "conspiracy theory". I know that the leak is probably true (as it has been thus far), but the cinematic trailer makes for a strong argument about the place of the Byzantines in the expansion, in which case there is no other civ that could have really been misinterpreted.

Another hypothesis I have is that Byzantium in the trailer is more akin to the winged hussars of the vanilla cinematic and might come as a DLC shortly after the expansion, but based on the other indications (Inca, Maori, Vesuvius as a natural wonder) and similar visual hints in the Rise and Fall expansion, I remain hesitantly optimistic for now.

If I'm not mistaken there were a few scenes from R&F that didn't pertain to any of the new Civs, so they don't all have to mean something. I think tbh the church scene was just showing earthquakes/natural disasters in general.

Side note: are earthquakes a thing? They probably should be if they are adding volcanoes...

 

[Basileus Rhomaion]

If I'm not mistaken there were a few scenes from R&F that didn't pertain to any of the new Civs, so they don't all have to mean something. I think tbh the church scene was just showing earthquakes/natural disasters in general.

The ones that didn't were either ambiguous (like the opening where Sean Bean drags a huge rock) or for existing civs (like the gladiator scene with Rome). And even some of the more subtle visual cues (like the defenders of the siege scene wearing traditional Georgian warrior attire) turned out to be valid hints. Showing a scene from a civ not yet added in such a blunt way makes me quite skeptical. But as I said, the leak's legitimacy still reigns supreme.

Side note: are earthquakes a thing? They probably should be if they are adding volcanoes...

There has been no word on them, but plate tectonics are a thing, so it's likely they are going to be added.

 

[Martin_K]

Yes. Storms. Disasters. Not weather. Volcanic eruptions also don't last a year (typically). Neither do floods. Neither do (most) droughts.

yeah that's my point. stuff like that doesn't fit the scale of the game. they had floods and storms as random events in civ4. that worked. turning it into a major game feature is just silly, imo.

So... Ideas that exist in real life? Sounds reasonable to me - we're doing what we can to implement such things in real life, and in a game you have the added problem that, if you can't do anything against a problem, it's just frustrating and nothing else, so you'll have to include something that you can use to mitigate climate change - at a cost, of course.

i disagree with the notion that you have to present a solution. they had climate change in other civ games, too. but they didn't present "speculative" solutions to it. i don't care about speculative tech. it's a game about history, not about some made up future.

the silly spaceship ending that became a staple of civ games is bad enough, but in older games i never had the impression that they were serious about it - it was pretty obvious that it was just an artificial way to end the game (i mean - send a spaceship to alpha centauri right after you researched the tech to land on the moon - that's pretty obvious)

 

[Leyrann]

they had climate change in other civ games, too.

Yeah and everyone hated it with a passion. Because you couldn't do anything about it. Saying it's okay because it was in past games would be saying that, for Civ VII, future techs would be okay because they're in Civ VI. Surely you're not saying that, are you?

 

[Victoria]

that original Pax B doesn’t fit.

The sad thing was Pax B never meant the real meaning. NOW, with world congress they could have reworked Pax B and made it what it should have been all along. But no.

Free trade routes will be fun

A sometimes single free trade route but unlikely to be more than one and often not even one.

I think it’s okay.

Having watched the video, the resources may be interesting, love the map names, like the idea of world congress and reworking of war weariness. Pax B has really annoyed me, the chance to make things right, to give them more voting rights during this period would have been a much better Pax B power than this off continent nonsense.

 

[blackcatatonic]

i disagree with the notion that you have to present a solution. they had climate change in other civ games, too. but they didn't present "speculative" solutions to it. i don't care about speculative tech. it's a game about history, not about some made up future.

Is Civ really about history, though? The basic framework is, sure, but when have you ever played a Civ game - outside of a scenario - that actually re-enacted history flawlessly?

It's all "made-up". As I said in my post above, the human player is going to be looking at climate change from the perspective of a 21st-century gamer, not an Industrial Era leader. It is a game, first and foremost, which means that there DO need to be solutions to the in-game problems, otherwise the player has no agency. Maybe in the real world we really ARE all doomed but doesn't mean a game can't hypothesise about a situation in which, with the proper information and planning, we could avert natural catastrophe.

 

[Proclo]

I agree that this expansion makes the game very complete, but there are always things they can add. They can improve religion, improve trade and add economic victory, improve the colonization system in other continents, improve the barbarians and separate them into different groups and even migratory movements. I really hope there is a third expansion to add the important civs missing.

I hope you are right man

 

[anandus]

So there's no consensus on which probable civ will get a unique advisor?
Or at least: It thought I heard/read that there would be a unique advisor?

 

[Siptah]

So there's no consensus on which probable civ will get a unique advisor?
Or at least: It thought I heard/read that there would be a unique advisor?

If it is one of the new civs: Sweden (Oxenstierna). But Egypt will need a new ability, since building on floodplains seems now possible for everyone - so Imhotep seems a possibility.

 

[blackcatatonic]

So there's no consensus on which probable civ will get a unique advisor?
Or at least: It thought I heard/read that there would be a unique advisor?

I think I saw someone suggesting Sweden, though I can't find the post now. This guy might be a good candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Oxenstierna

I'm intrigued about this as well. I wonder if they will replace another governor, or be an additional option? Hopefully the latter.