IGN Interview With Sid Meier

[eddie_verdde]

right he means faster for all players... not just ai

Precisely...if it's fast for the human player I don't like it because that means less time spent in classical age and middle age, and more time spent in the modern age (because modern age has no end, no further technological developments occur and there's no more technological race)


My problem is that, for instance, you can discover gunpowder and start building musketeers but you never really use them because all of a sudden you can already build riflemen and so on...in CIV3 there are few thresholds in technological developments, it's always improve, improve and improve and you don't really "play" some of the epochs of history.

For instance: compare the number of turns in which you use riflemens with the number of turns in which you use musketeers.

 

[Sub]

Hmm, Jessie said Religion still allows for Line of Sight into enemy cities...I thought this was taken out?

I'm really loving the sound of teams in multiplayer though.

The impression I got from it was that religion still gives you line of site, but just not as much. Say for instance you have the holy city of christianity. You'll get line of site in all of the cities of that religion, but you won't be able to tell certain things, like for instance maybe you'll see how large the city is, what buildings it has, but you won't be able to see what the city is building and what units are in the city. It'll probably be something limited like that.

Thats just the impression I got though. I could be wrong.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

We just have to find the best feature set not based on how much we can cram into the computer but on what makes the game the most fun and accessible. We fine tune things like the importance of the military, diplomacy, economy, religion system, etc. We're not trying to put as much as we can into the game. It's more the right things that make the game fun to play.

This is the part that I wish more people would pay attention to.

 

[Carver]

That won't stop people from roading/railroading everywhere. It just might be the last thing your workers would do.

Well, no Firaxians have yet mentioned upkeep costs for roads and/or rails, but that would certainly do the job of keeping them down to a minimum (as posters here have oft noted).

 

[Sickman]

This is the part that I wish more people would pay attention to.

"Fun and Accessible" and "Right things" mean different things to different people.
Some find hope from what he said, some find it scary.

 

[Carver]

Jesse did say that you'll be able to go into your allies' territory and help defend their cities. He didn't explicitly say you could stack your units with your allies' units but I dearly hope they're going in that direction - it's the only good way of being sure an allied city isn't captured.

 

[Quentin]

If Great Artists(GArts?) only contribute 1000 culture using great works and the borders expanded that much (about 5:50 mins into the video), does this mean that borders in general would be much wider now?

 

[Meleager]

I noticed that too. It seems boarders spread much furthur than in civ 3. After seeing that i can see how great leaders may also help to make other stratagies viable.

 

[HourlyDaily]

Eddie Verdde,

I couldn't agree with you more. Well said!
I usually set high tech cost in my games for this reason.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Sickman, true. But I've tended to have more fun with Sid's choices than with other peoples' choices. If more people worked at it as hard as Sid does, I'd enjoy games more. I recognize that might not necessarily mean more enjoyment for everyone else.

 

[rickb]

If Great Artists(GArts?) only contribute 1000 culture using great works and the borders expanded that much (about 5:50 mins into the video), does this mean that borders in general would be much wider now?

Also did you notice that the other civ's units appear to "run away" when the borders expanded to stay outside them?

 

[Meleager]

Yes i noticed that. I thought that was cool.

 

[Colonel]

Did anyone notice that scene in the video interview the Cultrual Rape, they just replaced RoP rape with that. I sense the ai is going to do that crap on mass. Think about it, you get a bunch of great people collected then rape the border the outer cities surronded by you, take em, then pull great people to the new cities, rape the border, move in take the surrounded cities, and so on. Its a new form of rape.

 

[Philips beard]

Pllleeeeaaaaase, give me Colonization II, as quick as possible! God damn, what a great game it was!

 

[mitsho]

@colonel ARe you sure this is going to work that way? I got the impression that - like in civ3 - once you used your great people, they cannot be used again! but for eye-candy, they remain in the city meaning that you can see the people still..

mitsho

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

From all the interviews I have seen, the 'Great Work' is a one off Sacrifice of your Great Artist to get 1000 Culture points. The difficult decision for a player is-do I sacrifice my artist for a big-one time-benefit? Or do I join him to the city to get a much smaller-but permanent-culture bonus for that city? If it helps to put things into perspective, its like in Vanilla civ where you had to choose between sacrificing your MGL to build an Army, or Sacrificing him to Rush a Wonder. Of course, in Civ4, you will have the added agonising choice of: 'Do I sacrifice my Artist for either of the above? Or do I hold on to him so that I can use him-and another Great Person-to bring on a Golden Age for the nation. Plus, we don't know yet how likely these Great People are to appear, but we do know that it will take some serious specialisation of at least one of your cities in the area you want the Great Person to be (in this case, a cultural powerhouse).
Doesn't sound like much of an exploit to me!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Jouda]

Precisely...if it's fast for the human player I don't like it because that means less time spent in classical age and middle age, and more time spent in the modern age (because modern age has no end, no further technological developments occur and there's no more technological race)


My problem is that, for instance, you can discover gunpowder and start building musketeers but you never really use them because all of a sudden you can already build riflemen and so on...in CIV3 there are few thresholds in technological developments, it's always improve, improve and improve and you don't really "play" some of the epochs of history.

For instance: compare the number of turns in which you use riflemens with the number of turns in which you use musketeers.

You are absolutely right. Why are there hundreds of units in the game when you use just a couple of them? I'd really love to use all units available and "taste and feel" differences between certain eras. I never got the point why 1 turn in modern era equals 2 or 1 years compared to 50 in the very beginning of the game.

 

[TheBB]

Precisely...if it's fast for the human player I don't like it because that means less time spent in classical age and middle age, and more time spent in the modern age (because modern age has no end, no further technological developments occur and there's no more technological race)


My problem is that, for instance, you can discover gunpowder and start building musketeers but you never really use them because all of a sudden you can already build riflemen and so on...in CIV3 there are few thresholds in technological developments, it's always improve, improve and improve and you don't really "play" some of the epochs of history.

For instance: compare the number of turns in which you use riflemens with the number of turns in which you use musketeers.

*Sigh*

You CANNOT justify that it's bad to quicken the game by comparing with Civ3 standards. In Civ4 the tech tree will be different, and for all we know the "middle ages" (there ARE no ages anyway) are really huge and take lots of turns to get through. For all we know there may be a HUGE gap between musketmen and riflemen. How can you say changing one variable is bad when you have no idea whatsoever how the many other variables change??

In either way you have the epic game speed which plays slower than Civ3 anyway, so if you somehow find you don't get to enjoy medieval life enough, just play epic games instead!

 

[Jouda]

*Sigh*

You CANNOT justify that it's bad to quicken the game by comparing with Civ3 standards. In Civ4 the tech tree will be different, and for all we know the "middle ages" (there ARE no ages anyway) are really huge and take lots of turns to get through. For all we know there may be a HUGE gap between musketmen and riflemen. How can you say changing one variable is bad when you have no idea whatsoever how the many other variables change??

In either way you have the epic game speed which plays slower than Civ3 anyway, so if you somehow find you don't get to enjoy medieval life enough, just play epic games instead!

Sid Meier: "...As with all of our Civ games, we give you a lot of options but I think this game is oriented to move a little faster and take you through the centuries a little more quickly..."

I don't think this is about just one variable. In fact, it's the very opposite of what I wanted to hear. But hope you're right about the epic games.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, though the # of turns are less in a Short Game (as opposed to the Standard or Epic games) we also know that tech rate and production times are accelerated. However, from what we have heard, we know it is also possible to accelerate production-but not tech rates-and vice versa-or simply to have a game with fewer rounds, but where tech rates and production times are the same as in a standard game. It will also be possible to have a Standard or Epic game where the Tech Rates and/or Production rates are accelerated. Heck, I wouldn't be suprised if you could even cut the tech and/or production rates to less than that of a standard game. I also wouldn't be suprised if the total number of turns available-and how many years each represents-is totally editable, as it was in Civ3.
What I am getting at is that it sounds to me like the player will have total control over the type of game he wants-in terms of how quickly they want to reach the end, and/or how quickly they want to progress within the time available. It certainly sounds like game speeds will be 100% more flexible in this regard than any of its predecessors.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.