My review of the livecast

[kaltorak]

I was one of the players who posted more often about his fears that it would be a very simplified civ, in the direction of civrev. Several reviewers said it wasn't the case, but you never know if they really like civ4 over civrev, or even if they just want to make the company happy.

But after the live cast yesterday I musst finally say I was pretty happy to see lots of stats, info, numbers and such.

We get the diplomacy screen we wanted, the pre-fight info is full of data, there are lots of small info screens, which you can turn into advanced info and then see lots of more numbers... I musst say I'm really happy and I think my stats hunger is going to be satisfied.

About the rest, I think I liked everything so far. The combat looked so much cool with 1upt, but that was no surprise. That chokepoint where all the action took place was awesome. AI didn't impress me so much though, since it kept fighting at gregs chokepoint loosing units, instead of embarking them 4 tiles more south and just destroying him.

The city states addition to gameplay that was shown yesterday was also great. Greg was beeing owned and there was a city state (monaco?) at his enemies frontier. So he payed to become allies and then all the units the state had lying around marched to attack napoleon, gregs enemy. Too bad he was too advanced for the city state (and for greg).

Another small negative detail wich I really don't care about, but which surprised me, was the rivers. In his first gameplay, there was a river near Berlin. I musst say it looked aweful.

The pedia looks quite better, more complete and with a search option!

It looked like you can't decide where your city borders expand with culture. You can buy the tile you want with gold, but the culture expansion won't let you chose tile. It tells you what tile is going to be the next, but if you can change it they didn't say yesterday.

Although greg didn't say anything, I think I heard elli on the back confirm we can switch policies.

The startegic view seemed incredibly useful to me. Not for playing the game, like greg does, but because of all the layers it has. First, you see all the info on it. But with filters you can see many things you would otherwise not notice, even in civ4. For example, the improvement view lets you see your city borders clearly, and what tiles are improved, and it was awesome to see where you missed improvements. There are many filters like resources, units, but also type of units (ranged, mele), and many others.

The start of the game looks like a race to discover ruins, natural wonders and barbarian camps. Scouts are much more useful therefor, and it looks starting with a scout instead of a worker will be the way to go. The city radius expands SLOW, so there won't be much to improve, and we won't fill everything with roads either. So I don't see so many workers beeing trained.

I liked the diplomacy options pact of secrecy and "cooperation pact" or something like that. The first one lets you work against another AI, without declaring war. Just saying, we do not like him so lets work against him without declaring yet. The second one is like a pact to improve relations.

The alerts on the right which replace the blocking civ4 windows were a good idea and looked very comfortable.

A thing I didn't like is you don't look like a country in the map. Since we have much smaller frontiers now, we look like several cities instead of a country.

Ah yes almost forgot. He was playing on an earth map. He said the earth map can be played at any map size, since it is generated. He was playing on large, the second biggest and it looked pretty big. Only africa was revealed though. They said huge will be for 12 civs and large for 10, but they didn't seem quite sure about the numbers.

This is all I can think of right now. I'm sorry if it's a bit of a mess with no order, but I just said the things that were comming to my mind.

I want to say I had lots of fun watching it, and laughed several times. Thanks all 3 of you!

 

[VikingMaekel]

You used the bold font well enough to make the important things clear

On the combat, Greg 2K said that Nappy had tried that, but that he was able to shoot the transports with his ranged units (he had 2 archers as well, you can see that at the very beginning of the Japan gameplay) and that they wounded those embarked units enough so that he was able to easily finish them off with samurai.

 

[kaltorak]

Ah cool viking, I didn't hear that. That's cool then. I was wondering why napoleon didn't go that way. But yes, shooting at ships looks powerful enough to prevent exploiting embarking all the time to avoid chokepoints.

 

[Gismo]

First of all, thanks for the review, I totally missed the stream yesterday evening due to a civ4-multiplayer-match

A thing I didn't like is you don't look like a country in the map. Since we have much smaller frontiers now, we look like several cities instead of a country.

That is something I also realized on all screenshots I've seen so far. I don't like this either - in civ4 I always tried to get a "united" country. Also, the "open border" agreement seems to loose some of it's importance because of this. You don't have one clear frontier to another state anymore. I'm curious how this will impact the gameplay...

 

[Tomice]

You don't have one clear frontier to another state anymore. I'm curious how this will impact the gameplay...

Actually, it will be way more realistic: in ancient times, all up to the medieval era, there will be unclaimed territory, no-mans land even in fertile areas: Historically, this was accurate. There simply wasn't enough population to control every rough tile.

But later, when all tiles are claimed through culture, we'll have permanent borders, except for war and rare occasions like culture bombs.

 

[VikingMaekel]

Ah cool viking, I didn't hear that. That's cool then. I was wondering why napoleon didn't go that way. But yes, shooting at ships looks powerful enough to prevent exploiting embarking all the time to avoid chokepoints.

No problem, he didn't say it

He wrote that in the "So you want to see gameplay?" thread
And the number of archers I get from the military overview that he showed at the start of Japanese gameplay.

 

[LegionSteve]

Another small negative detail wich I really don't care about, but which surprised me, was the rivers. In his first gameplay, there was a river near Berlin. I musst say it looked aweful.

The river estuary looked like poop. A big light blue blob sticking out into the sea. Apart from that everything looked beautiful.

 

[sghiminini]

Strategic view looks perfect to make dotted maps....

 

[Sheng-ji]

A thing I didn't like is you don't look like a country in the map. Since we have much smaller frontiers now, we look like several cities instead of a country.

This was something I didn't like either, however, his cities were very spaced out, I wonder if he had settled a few cities across a large landmass creating that stringy effect?

 

[alpaca]

Two things that were news to me concerning unit movement are: Units can move through a friendly unit's tile to an unoccupied tile, and units can switch places without additional space.

You can't switch policies as far as I know, at least not in the way I understand the term. Policies cannot be unchosen. At the most, they will become inactive when you choose a conflicting area.

As for the alerts: Yes, one of the nice things from Total War games that Civ finally adopted. When France killed Siam in the second game, the system showed a slightly annoying weakness, though: A ton of alerts displayed when one would have sufficed. It said stuff like "Siam lost its capital, your agreements with Siam were cancelled, Siam was destroyed", all in all five or six items when a simple "Siam was destroyed" would have done the trick.

I have a bad feeling about how linear Germany seems to be. Their unique ability means you want to go ultra-aggressive warmonger or waste it. It also looks like it's much of a gambit: If you're lucky, this can generate a huge advantage. If not, it's a complete waste. Also, Greg screwed up by building scouts... what the hell? With Germany you want to whack barbs over the head, not run around them.

 

[Scaramanga]

A thing I didn't like is you don't look like a country in the map. Since we have much smaller frontiers now, we look like several cities instead of a country.

This will also make for a stringy Great Wall!

 

[kaltorak]

You can't switch policies as far as I know, at least not in the way I understand the term. Policies cannot be unchosen. At the most, they will become inactive when you choose a conflicting area.

When I heard eli say we can switch, they were talking about one policy restricting another. So maby it's like you say and the switch is only between 2 you adquired and which can't be active at the same time

Also, Greg screwed up by building scouts... what the hell? With Germany you want to whack barbs over the head, not run around them.

He said scouts were pretty good at fighting barbs

 

[LegionSteve]

He said scouts were pretty good at fighting barbs

He did say that, but in practice he failed with the scout, even when the barb was already damaged.

 

[Schuesseled]

we couldn't see much of napoleons land, but he seemed to have more of a proper border, i think this effect is mostly because gtreg wasn't doing so well.

 

[kaltorak]

He did say that, but in practice he failed with the scout, even when the barb was already damaged.

Because he was overconfident and attacked crossing a river.

And he wouldn't have discovered so many natural wonders with a warrior instead of a scout, and thats a permanent bonus through all the game.

Thing is, scouts give you natural wonders, ruins and still a fair chance to beat barbs. As far as it looks, I haven't played ofc /cry

 

[LegionSteve]

Ah yeah of course, I forgot about the river.

 

[alpaca]

No, what he said was "scouts can defeat barbarians if you get lucky", not that they were good against them. The scout is cheaper and doesn't stop in rough terrain but a lot worse in combat, so I think it was just plain wrong to build it. But Greg was probably a bit overwhelmed by multi-tasking and never played Germany before, so I reckon he just did what he usually did without thinking about it.

And he found the wonders with his Spearman, not a scout. The scout only found one ruin before being mauled by barbs.

 

[Schuesseled]

the only bonus a scout has over a warrior is that it can move across rough terrain faster, which isn't much of a bonus, as you can walk on open and then stop in rough every turn.

 

[alpaca]

the only bonus a scout has over a warrior is that it can move across rough terrain faster, which isn't much of a bonus, as you can walk on open and then stop in rough every turn.

That's not true, it's a lot cheaper. According to Aurioch's site, a warrior is 35 hammers and a scout 25.

Speaking of which, I'm still concerned about the icons in the game. In the city screen, the hammer yield and gold yield icons for the tiles look almost identical.

 

[Polobo]

the only bonus a scout has over a warrior is that it can move across rough terrain faster, which isn't much of a bonus, as you can walk on open and then stop in rough every turn.

And it does not get stopped by crossing a river.