new gamespot article

[Drakan]

- No prebuilds allowed ... wow big step !
- Less micromanagement and more decision-making. Aussie Lurker and others will be VERY happy. They'll broaden the base of civ fans for sure.
- 20 options to terraform land !!
- Game not geared towards expansionism as in CivIII !
- Players ranked in mp games according to statistics so you know If you want to pit yourself against a civ pro !!
- 18 simulataneous players, that's awesome If they finally do it.
- What about Elvis ? Can't play a proper civ game without the king.

Brilliant article by Jason Ocampo and Gamespot. Reveals many new features.

 

[grumbler]

Oh, extra point, can anyone get a snapshot of that diplomacy screen featuring Cyrus? If so, it would be great to blow it up and see what kind of diplomatic options are available (given that this is the area that they have most kept us in the dark on!)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Here you go:

 

[ThERat]

well well well...no prebuilds.. that will affect the way we are playing games a lot. and I am not taking about cheating and exploits, since I do not like blatant exploits like RoP etc.

but for game variants like 'no research', 'AW' and playing on higher difficulty levels, a way to overcome all those bonuses the AI got, was to prebuild wonders etc.
I hope the AI difficulty is then not done via giving them huge production and growth bonuses, else there is no way to ever get a wonder on higher levels.
A nice thing though is to never see the wonder cascades that suddenly made your nicely planned GL void. but, if I think about it, the only way, we all went for the GL was to prebuild it via a palace. This will have a huge impact now, even 20k games will be that much harder. We don't know whether that is good or bad.

About MM, I was never against MM and more cities could be milked for specialsts to improve tech speed. We use that tactic in AW a lot. We shall all see what it will mean to game play. It's too hard to tell still. Wish I could lay my hands on it and play NOW!!!

 

[Belcarius]

Best part of this is how you can finally grow powerful without having a large collection of cities. This should really allow people to expand the ways in which they play the game.

It's nigh time they got rid of switching production - that always seemed unrealistic. It will clearly redefine what it means to begin a wonder - as you are now commiting to that wonder and not a wonder.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I feel around 95-96% certain that this will prove the case ThERat. Why do I feel this way? Well, they said that they wanted to avoid making religions non-generic because of the fear that someone might firebomb their offices. Well, no religious fundamentalist is as dangerous to their property as a Civfanatic who won't be able to build wonders first at higher difficulty levels!!! It will be literally 'Molotov Cocktails away' !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Lucky The Fox]

Looks like one of those pics grumbler posted reveals us who those mystery leaders are. <something> Capac and Kublai Khan.

 

[Symphony D.]

Looks to be Huayna Capac.

 

[Slax]

We keep hearing about multiplayer features, but still no mention of replay of previous turn events for PBEM. If it existed, I'd think we'd hear about it by now.

 

[apatheist]

I think the statement 'Good for them at the time ' is actually a very telling statement, as it suggests to me that it is indeed a flexible thing-probably tied to tech level, civics choices and certain improvements and wonders. My theory, for what its worth, is that it will be based around the idea of distance and OCN, but that both of these factors will be more flexible-within each game-than in previous iterations, if that makes sense.

I think that any external concept of OCN would be artificially constraining by its very nature. Unless the game is shallow. It would be a bad thing to have any calculation that only kicks in when you have a certain number of cities. Any difficulties that larger empires have should be a natural consequence of the calculations that apply to all empires no matter their size.

 

[tcjsavannah]

[*]The bigger your city gets, the unhealthier it becomes. And that can take a toll on the population, as the city will eventually begin to starve. You can combat this by building certain types of buildings, such as aqueducts and hospitals, but what will really help is if you can secure access to the seven different types of food resources, which represent nutritional variety.

It's the Civ IV food pyramid!! Any idea if Slim Goodbody will make an appearance as your Nutritional Advisor?

 

[IroquoisPlisken]

Judging from grumblers pictures (good job, btw), it looks like you'll be able to switch from talking to one leader to someone else without leaving the Diplomacy window! Awesome!

Also, it says Gold Per Turn (4), so I guess we will be able to know how much money the AI are taking in each turn.

Can anyone tell what it says below that?

 

[V. Soma]

Judging from grumblers pictures (good job, btw), it looks like you'll be able to switch from talking to one leader to someone else without leaving the Diplomacy window! Awesome!

Also, it says Gold Per Turn (4), so I guess we will be able to know how much money the AI are taking in each turn.

Can anyone tell what it says below that?

I guess it says Feudalism...
Which is kind of strange, IMHO, will not be a submenu of Technologies?

 

[apatheist]

I note that the player in that screenshot can trade 1 each of deer, pig, cow, and corn. Does that mean that food resources are infinite like strategic resources? That would be a weird conflict ideas with plain old food...

 

[eaglefox]

i like the overall picture i got from the article about the game no longer going for expansionism, and that the production of one item cannot be transferred to another (makes sense), and the combat changes. but one thing i did not like was the equal distribution of the important resourses. i mean com'on. that's just like throwing away one of the major reasons people wage war. now the only reason is see for making war is basically expansion - which is not the point of this version.

 

[joethreeblah]

Hey guys, has anyone looked at the video yet?

If not-or if you have-a couple of things I noticed were:

(a) how graphically beautiful the more developed cities look in this game now (time index 0:33 and 0:43).

(b) couldn't help but notice the two blue circles on the map at time index 1:03. Anyone care to speculate on what this might mean?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

A) Yes, I thought that opening in the city that went to the ocean looked particularly neat. But I noticed that the other city just before (right about 0:33) seemed to have the same structure....?

Maybe Tanks will roll out of this when they are ready?

B) A littler later on it looks maybe like the blue was where you sent someone. I think armies may be on the way to those spots. Perhaps the dudes that were still busy fighting a little southworthy.

 

[eaglefox]

they haven't said anything about resources being quantitave, so that's gonna be a major drag yet again. someone ought to tell 'em that one mine/well of anything cannot supply the entire nation. nor can one cow feed the whole country.

 

[joethreeblah]

Sounds like you can pause and resume construction. That's better than multiple build queues, which was a recent thread. That's another welcome change.

Part of the article said that you could, for example, switch away from a settler to a spearman, and return later to the settler already in progress. I assume the primary reason for not being able to do that with a wonder is that you can never go back to it.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to take a gamble at coming up with exploit #1, which is to build a bunch of crap that cost maintanence 99% of the way, and then finish them all rapidly at some convenient time. Thank you, hold your applaus

That's a very loaded statement. How do you defined what's good for a civ at any given time? Is that a hack like Optimal City Number or is it an organic, flexible thing that depends on numerous factors like government, infrastructure, happiness, etc.?

They seem to not be relying on magic numbers and invisible factors that cause RCP's and all that, and it sounds like he's saying that due to some sort of maintanence cost. Probably it costs a little money to build a farm or you have to pipe in food from somewhere else for a while.

I think basically that it is possible to overextend yourself - IE 3 citizens in 1 city <> 2 cities.

 

[joethreeblah]

well well well...no prebuilds.. that will affect the way we are playing games a lot. and I am not taking about cheating and exploits, since I do not like blatant exploits like RoP etc.

<Sniper>
I hope the AI difficulty is then not done via giving them huge production and growth bonuses, else there is no way to ever get a wonder on higher levels.

My bet is that they would have noticed this problem

 

[joethreeblah]

they haven't said anything about resources being quantitave, so that's gonna be a major drag yet again. someone ought to tell 'em that one mine/well of anything cannot supply the entire nation. nor can one cow feed the whole country.

Yea!

What about horses? What if you run out of horses?
Maybe it would be cool if World War 0 causes the extinction of horses.

I think it would be lame for someone to sell you 3 horses or two cows or enough barrels of oil for 3 tanks, etc.

At this point I think we would basically have to be managing a restaraunt and a stable and an assembly line

 

[Brain]

I love a lot of the things I read in this article. More focus on building rather than military was my biggest wish and I'm very happy about it. I'm also happy to see that small empires will be viable. I do have a few remarks though.

- One possible exploit: You're still able to "pre-build", but it just works differently. You can build a military unit in all your cities and switch to something else just before it completes. Later, you can switch production back to the military unit and get it on the next turn. By extension, you could do this simultaneously for all your possible unit types in all your cities and finish building your entire army in one turn. Effectively, you'll be able to save maintenace costs for your whole army during a military build-up phase.

- Something that I noticed at the bottom of one screenshot, but not mentioned in the article, is that trading is up front and straightforward. That means you can't repeatedly adjust your deal until the AI accepts it. I love this change. It could add a whole new element of strategy during negotiations.

- The "pressure on large civilizations" is very unclear. If it's something like corruption then I won't like it, but it's way too early to complain yet.

- Firaxis needs to understand that the reason why resources in Civ3 didn't work well was because they were unlimited and just exhausted randomly. Resources need not only to be varied, but they need to be limited. A large empire necessarily consumes larger amounts of food, and an empire that makes extensive use of a strategic resource should need a larger supply of that ressource. That would make the game more focused on the geopolitics of trade and add a whole new dimension.

Great work Firaxis!