New gamespot article proves they are putting graphics over gameplay

[MeteorPunch]

# "The game is balanced now to have not as many cities. You can still spread your influence over a broad area, but not have as many cities, necessarily." - Barry Caudill [Senior Producer]
# "In Civ IV, we have this sort of maintenance system that slowly pushes some pressure on civilizations that expand a little bit faster than what might be good for them at that time." - Soren Johnson
The focus in Civ IV is on fewer, but more specialized, cities.
This is something that the artificial intelligence will recognize, too, as computer-controlled civilizations won't spam you anymore with settlers, and if they try, they won't be able to cross your empire's borders anymore without your permission.

These quotes prove that the graphics engine is weak, and gameplay is being limited by the engine. The team is designing the core gameplay around this inherrent flaw. You have to be glad there is smoke coming out of chimney's in favor of gameplay.[/sarcasm]

It's funny how they blame the problem on expansionism and big empires when really the problem is micromanagement. Now there will be even more micromanagement as you lose shields for production switches and will have to be more sure every city is building the right thing.

The next thing they'll say is that, "There's a limit on how many units you can have, but each one is more balanced/specialized/powerful/better/etc."

First the graphics, then the religion, now the gameplay... :shakehead

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Boy, I think someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today . Personally, I think that making expansion harder-and allowing smaller, more specialised cities a decent chance at victory-is a massive step forward for the game. I personally believe that you are only upset about this change-and the change to hammer/shield carryover-because it means you can no longer exploit the game the way you used to (or that it will take you a long while to figure out new exploits). I mean, Jeeze, if you hate change that much, why not go back and play Civ3 from now on or-better yet-why not go back to civ2 or civ1.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Lillefix]

Your loss, my gain. When I had big empires in civ3 I always concentrated on my core cities, and more or less ignoring the rest. I can't understand that anyone would want to control hundreds of cities. It's no doubt epic, but I would't cosider it fun.

 

[MeteorPunch]

The thing is I do play civ3 a lot and I want civ 4 to be better. When the evidence of it being worse, yet different keeps piling up, I can come to no other conclusion.

If it sounds like I was in a bad mood when I wrote that, it's just a summary of the latest thing wrong with the game. There are lots of things I like - they just aren't listed. At the moment though, it doesn't look like it will be as good as Civ 3, nor will it be anywhere near as good as it could have been.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Your loss, my gain. When I had big empires in civ3 I always concentrated on my core cities, and more or less ignoring the rest. I can't understand that anyone would want to control hundreds of cities. It's no doubt epic, but I would't cosider it fun.

Right then, you missed my point. If they fixed the micromanagement problem, big empires are no problem.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

You know, you're right MeteorPunch, this game probably won't be as good as Civ3. IMHO, it is gonna be VASTLY SUPERIOR . One of my biggest complaints about the series was how you could be England, but never win by being England -historically, I mean. This has been overcome, by the sounds of it, by a system of maintainance which is a darned sight better than the crap corruption model. Also, note that at no point did they say that you couldn't build an expansive empire-any more than you can't build lots of units-its simply that they are saying that this route will now impose greater costs, particularly if you do it too fast. Combined with the new health system, it sounds like they have managed to simultaneously put paid to 'The Snowball Effect', the 'Stack of Doom' effect, 'The RoP Rape' and 'The Modern Age Malaise', and all without adding a lot of cumbersom micromanagement. For this, I already tip my hat to them, but will wait until I play the game before rushing to further judgement.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[MeteorPunch]

It's hard to say whether it will be better than civ 3. I agree with what you're saying because there are a lot of improvements that needed to be made and will make those aspects of the game better. At the very least it will have a entirely different feel to it that will make it worth playing.

The thing is, the Civilization series has a monopoly on one of the best game concepts to exist: the world building/strategy/historical game. I just have greater expectations because the technology and ideas are out there to make a better game than what will be released. Of course I'll buy it, but my point still stands.

 

[Symphony D.]

Combined with the new health system, it sounds like they have managed to simultaneously put paid to [...] the 'Stack of Doom' effect [...] all without adding a lot of cumbersom micromanagement.

Not to derail this topic, but I must agree. It seems like the only unit you'll really need to build now is whatever form of artillery is available to you.

I honestly couldn't believe how happy the preview sounded at the strengthening of artillery. As if it already isn't the most crushing unit in the game. Now you'll just need less of it! I wonder if nukes had their blast radii increased to 3 or 4 tiles from 2 to keep up.

That said I rather liked the news it was designed as a multiplayer game first and foremost.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The balancing element of artillery though, Symphony, is that they are very susceptible to attack by cavalry. What seems to be coming across-time and again-is that for every benefit a unit has, there is always another unit which can fairly easily overwhelm it-thus further reinforcing combined arms over stacks of doom (plus, I believe that siege weapons now attack as normal units again-but don't know if they can actually kill units!)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[MeteorPunch]

It will also make a big difference that the AI will actually use artillary.

I expect multiple stack fighting to become the norm, with humans taking slightly better terrain positions during wars.

 

[Symphony D.]

For them to be "susceptible" to attack they must have been given power values (eg: attack and defense - or at least defense) comparable to those of other units or else any given unit could kill them equally as well, as in Civ III.

So does that mean Infantry aren't as good at killing Artillery? That's just beautiful, they're self-defending now!

The counter to Cavalry is just to stick some good defensive units (Infantry - which have a bonus against Cavalry) in and move them around keeping good defensive terrain, and voila, instant stack-or-anything killer. From the power that they seem to be indicating artillery have, the only way to kill a stack of artillery would be a stack of artillery, depending on how many defenders you allocate to the stack and whether artillery can lethally bombard each other out of existence or at all.

It really just sounds like Artillery is going to be as powerful as in Civ III, or more powerful based on this information. I fully predict every high-level or PvP game to boil down to an Artillery arms-race. Here's hoping they can teach the AI to use it decently this time, or it's going to be a slaughter.

The really stupid part of all this was the primary purpose of SoDs in Civ III, in my experience, was to defend Artillery to begin with. Then they went and made it more powerful. Utterly bizarre.

[EDIT] I'd just like to make it clear I've actually liked most of what I've heard about cIV other than this artillery issue, and the incredibly weaksauce approach to religion. The former concerns me and the latter makes me wonder why they even bothered with it.

 

[sav]

To me Civ4 sounds awesome all the way, so far. Bring it on. And please, make it at least playable on a non-souped up 2.4GHZ

 

[frekk]

Symphony, SoDs may not work in Civ4 for all we know. It's not an inherent feature of all three civs so far to have stacks work that way, so it won't necessarily be a part of Civ4 (in fact I'm pretty sure that it won't judging from the statements made about combat). It could be disadvantageous to stack (as it was in civ1) or it could be something entirely different (like whole-stack combats, wherein you will probably want a good mix of different elements).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Look, the way I see it is that they have spent more time playtesting this game than any of the other previous iterations. Given that, I doubt that they would leave artillery as some kind of uber -unit in the game. What you really have to remember, Symphony, is that attack/defense ratings have been replaced with a single strength rating (a rating which also determines the damage they dish out), and that artillery are limited in the amount of collateral damage they can dish out. The way I envisage things is that artillery will be good for initial barrages, but will be quickly destroyed by a concerted attack-unless they are backed up by other units. My overarching point-I guess-is that one unit will be good against another-but crap against a 3rd one. Given this, I think true stack-killers will be a pipe-dream at best.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Symphony D.]

I think you're all really missing my point. The thing about only building Artillery was a joke. My point is the primary reason SoDs and stacks exist in the first place is to escort artillery around so it can waltz up to cities and pound them into the dust. Making Artillery the stack-killer when Artillery is the point of stacks to begin with is a very strange solution to the problem. I am not assuming just a huge stack of Artillery wandering around all on its lonesome because that would be, in a word, dumb.

"You can actually stack up a bunch of units and send them someplace and give them an attack command. And if you're using combined arms...so you have some defensive-type units and you have a tank. The game will automatically look at who you're attacking, who their defenders are, and say, 'We should attack with this guy first. This is what the AI would do.'"
[...]
To counter the killer-stack problem, Firaxis has upped the effect of siege weapons, such as cannons, catapults, and artillery, by modifying them into stack killers. "They have a collateral damage effect, [so] that when you attack a stack, you will also hurt up to six other units in the stack. So you can build stacks if you want, but the correct counter for that will be, 'OK, I'll build a bunch of catapults and cannons, and I'll attack your stack. And all your guys will be hurt, and you'll be in my territory, and you won't be able to heal, and I'll just mop you up.'"

Stacking is in, and you can have it attack en masse if you want. I am incredibly suspicious of any feature that would have your units "do what the AI would do" however. If it's anything like governors, no thanks.

So as we can discern from the quote, artillery beat stacks, and that's all well and good. What if you stack artillery? Then the biggest artillery stack wins. What if Artillery is disadvantaged against Cavalry? Then you toss in Infantry, which beat Cavalry. In a triangular advantage system (Infantry beat Cavalry, Cavalry beat Artillery, Artillery beat Infantry), you only need two elements (Infantry and Artillery) to beat three (Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery).

And so what if combined-arms is superior? Toss in a few Cavalry to your stack to pick off stragglers. Ta-da! You've still got superior firepower.

To put it very simply: the only way to beat artillery is single units (likely cavalry), because artillery decimates stacks. But if you've got a stack of artillery, you can still beat single and stacks very easily. Thus to beat a stack of artillery, one needs a stack of artillery to wear down the defenders and attackers in the opposing stack to get at the artillery itself. The supporting units are tangential unless artillery has been wholly reworked - it's the fact that you need massed Artillery to beat massed Artillery that is disconcerting

Basically they've made Artillery more powerful than it already is because you will need less of it to achieve the same job. While a good Artillery stack in Civ III was made 10 - 30 pieces (depending on tech and enemy troop levels) with the ability to hit up to 6 units and do collateral damage that number will drop, and you can thus afford to focus more on the defensive entourage to escort the Artillery around.

Summary: it really sounds like Artillery is the base unit around which you structure your forces, because it can kill anything (stacks or single units), and just needs to be defended properly to do so. The only way I really don't see this working is if other unit types are given the opportunity to attack during a bombardment.

Napoleon would be proud.

 

[eaglefox]

all huge nations in the world today became so on the back of their military. noone actually set-up 100's of cities, even in US, Russia etc. so i think this is a plus. having said that, still nothing on the ai itself. these news updates aren't going in the right direction.

 

[The_Architect]

You can expand if you want to - graphics engine does not limit it. But expanding would be more difficult. I think it's a change for the good. May be we can have countries like Japan and England in civ now, which are small yet wealthy and powerful.

However, the largest map size available would be a little less in size then those available in civ 3 - this is where graphics engine is affecting, but that's it.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think your problem, Symphony D, is that you are still locked in a Civ3 frame of mind. The point is that there are no longer perfect defenders, as their are no perfect attackers-a distinction which was arbitrary. I doubt that artillery will be great stack killers for the simple reason that-collateral damage aside-they will probably do less damage, per unit, than a unit doing a direct attack. I also wouldn't be suprised if artillery were no good at actually killing units outright. Lastly, though it can do collateral damage to multiple units, I get a distinct impression that the number of units-and the damage inflicted-will prove to be quite variable. This means that stacks of artillery will ensure only one thing-and that is certain defeat, IMHO. Even if you bring artillery and/or infantry to bear, I feel certain that there will be a unit which will carve both cavalry and infantry 'a new one'-so to speak. What you also need to remember is that units can have up to 100 hit points, and until we know how much damage artillery do per hit, we simply don't know how powerful they are. For instance, an artillery unit might do 10 points of damage to its main target, but only 2 points each in collateral damage-see what I mean? Ultimately, the point is, though this system will probably not be perfect, it is a damned site better than the automatic stack death of Civ2 or the Stacks of Doom of Civ3.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Symphony D.]

I think your problem, Symphony D, is that you are still locked in a Civ3 frame of mind.

I don't think even in their "change stuff" mentality that Firaxis can change much about Artillery bombardments from "Click B, Mouseover Target, Left Click", in which case my logic applies, power stats changes and stack tactics changes be damned. It's a basic principle. "I'm going to fire all my artillery at you, then attack once you're critically weakened."

The point is that there are no longer perfect defenders, as their are no perfect attackers-a distinction which was arbitrary.

Irrelevent. Build a large number of defenders to defend the artillery. Add a small number of attackers to pick off units weakened by the artillery. Problem solved. I fail to see what bearing vs-unit abilities have on a stack with multiple unit types in it - you can toss in whatever additional units you want and vs-unit abilities get cancelled out. Make a 2-1-1 ratio stack of Artillery / Defenders / Attackers. You're proof against attackers of all shapes and sizes except something equally sized, and it only has the advantage if it gets to go first.

I doubt that artillery will be great stack killers for the simple reason that-collateral damage aside-they will probably do less damage, per unit, than a unit doing a direct attack.

Despite the fact Firaxis has said that's exactly what they're supposed to do?

Firaxis has upped the effect of siege weapons, such as cannons, catapults, and artillery, by modifying them into stack killers.

That also doesn't change the fact that even if they do less damage, they do it to more units. Solution? Build more artillery. Problem solved.

I also wouldn't be suprised if artillery were no good at actually killing units outright. Lastly, though it can do collateral damage to multiple units, I get a distinct impression that the number of units-and the damage inflicted-will prove to be quite variable. This means that stacks of artillery will ensure only one thing-and that is certain defeat, IMHO.

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Nobody uses 1 Catapult and expects much in the way of results. You build 10, 15, or 20. Have you tried this tactic in Civ III, Aussie? I mean no insult but your attitude towards it leaves me with the distinct impression you have not. I am not talking about individual artillery units, which will miss, or do little damage. I am talking about large numbers of them guarded by plenty of units, in which case minimal damage done to a large number of units will add up big time.

The distribution of damage over a large number of units or the lowering of overall damage does not diminish the fact that a sufficiently large stack of artillery will inflict massive damage in the least.

Lets say you're right, and artillery does 10 damage to the initial unit, and 2 for every other unit, as absurdly low as that seems. Lets say you have 30 Artillery pieces and you're fighting a city guarded by 10 Spearmen, and lets also say you hit 6 units every time (so, one unit for 10, 5 for 2). 30 * 10 + (30 * 5 * 2) = 600 points of damage. So against 10 Spearmen, which is abnormally high for a city, you're going to inflict 60% net damage on the entire stack.

Now imagine if Artillery does 25 to 50 damage, and does 5, 10, or 15 for every other unit. Early units like Catapults won't surely be so powerful. But what about Cannons and Artillery?

A sufficiently large stack of artillery, guarded by a sufficient number of units, in a stack, will be able to decimate anything else short of a large group of Artillery, which will also require a sufficent number of units to guard it. What you wind up with is stacks of artillery roving the map guarded by large numbers of other unit types and engaging in titanic battles, just like MeteorPunch describes, which sounds, frankly, fairly boring.

Even if you bring artillery and/or infantry to bear, I feel certain that there will be a unit which will carve both cavalry and infantry 'a new one'-so to speak.

AKA Tank. Solution: include a few in the stack just like you do Infantry or Cavalry. Problem solved.

If Artillery is strong at all, all it needs is to be massed, and allocated a sufficiently well-rounded force of units to guard it, and to attack what it fires upon, and it will be virtually unstoppable unless confronted by its equivilent, unless Firaxis has implemented sweeping changes to the way artillery bombardment works.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, I guess thats the difference between you and me, Symphony. I have always played with a combined arms style-and avoided SoD's, even when it probably denied me victory. Why? Because I prefer the challenge of trying to play an a historical fashion, rather than just exploiting a weak AI. This is why I also refuse to do Corruption calculations or RoP rapes or REXing or any of the many exploits I hear about at sites like this. I am sure I will mass artillery together in Civ4, but I doubt I will go absolutely nuts about it-because I prefer a challenge. I also have some faith that, with all the play balancing they have done, they have found a way to limit the impacts of massed artillery barrages to bring them in line with good gameplay. Guess we will just have to wait and see what that is. Until that time, I really have nothing more to say on this issue, because it is clear that your views are firmly fixed.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.