New Hands-On Gameplay Preview (Morocco/Indonesia, Tech Tree, & more)

[Ricardo_]

Airport?

Airlift was mentioned somewhere, this is probably the airport indeed.

 

[Giskler]

But the icon at radar also looks like an airport. It looks like an air control tower on the left and a terminal on the right.

 

[Lord Xavius]

Maybe one is an Airport and the other is an Airbase?

 

[kingchris20]

Interesting video!

Did you see that "swap great works"-page? I hadn't seen it before.

Are we to assume that you can just go in to this menu and swap with other civilizations at will? I thought there was some sort of trading involved?

Swapping this easily doesn't make sense to me

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

It's not easily, because it seems that you can't just pick what art work you gonna get, you have to see if the trading civ is going to put it up.

 

[Seek]

The AI doesn't use the Keshik especially well, but it will attack with it. The AI thinks the battering ram is a spearman - I've seen them used to protect settlers, to preferentially move through dense terrain instead of taking moves that can hit cities, and as defensive units. And the Mongols don't rely on the Keshik to anything like the extent the Huns rely on the ram.

Haha, good point, I forgot about how the AI misuses the BR so badly in some circumstances. Regardless I think my point (that the BR isn't a horrible unit in the AI's usage) stands when it comes to the AI using the unit for it's intended use.

I've definitely heard the reverse a lot, usually in connection with the AI's happiness bonus. Was it formerly the case but then changed? It's hard to tell whether the AI is in a golden age or not from the outside, of course - the Persian AI is strong but I always took that to be a consequence of its Immortals.

I have honestly never heard this postulated anywhere, it's a really strange assertion. Like Gucumatz said you can check the graphs at the end of the game to see that yes, the AI gets plenty of GAs.

Ah, I hadn't checked the specifics of the tower - I'd just heard it was a melee siege unit.

As for knowing to attack more advanced civs, this isn't a requirement as far as I can tell. The Assyrian UA as worded implies that you always get 1 tech when you capture a city, with no requirement for it to be a tech the defending civ possesses (unlike similar effects in previous Civ games). It's 1 city = 1 tech, much as Poland is 1 era = 1 policy.

But even with that bonus I'm not convinced about AI Assyria. On higher difficulties it's a typical pattern for the AI to have a large tech lead early, and to lose it during the late game. Assyria is designed around attacking early, so it will be getting mostly cheaper techs from conquests; without tweaking the AI more generally to be able to capitalise on this advantage as the game progresses, it may end up getting a very short-term lead.

I didn't even consider the possibility that the civ losing the city doesn't need to have a tech that Assyria doesn't have, it sounds so incredibly broken/OP. I think it's highly unlikely that's the case. We haven't even mentioned that their UB is a science building so the civ will have a strong science flavor. I'm willing to bet that Assyria is going to be one of the most feared AIs in BNW.

If the Morocco game is any guide AI Indonesia will tend to settle on its starting continent and so won't get the bonus anyway... Given the recognised AI issue with overseas colonisation, this may be a difficult UA to implement.

Can't help but agree with you here.

 

[PhilBowles]

I didn't even consider the possibility that the civ losing the city doesn't need to have a tech that Assyria doesn't have, it sounds so incredibly broken/OP.

It's consistent with the abstracted way Civ V works. It's not a case of looting a tech, it's a case of getting a tech as a reward by the game for achieving condition X (in this case capturing a city). I expect it will just be 'select a tech you could otherwise research' like most of these kinds of effect (vanilla Great Scientists etc.). And if it wasn't the case it would have been easy to word the UA to make that clear - most others have fairly precise wording.

I think it's highly unlikely that's the case. We haven't even mentioned that their UB is a science building so the civ will have a strong science flavor.

Because that UB is a Library, a default building that is always built anyway, and one that provides no science other and above the generic version. China isn't played by the AI as a science-flavoured civ despite having a unique Library. The unique bonus is a bonus to melee units, so it will I suspect just be used to bolster the warmonger flavour.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Unless I'm wrong, the Assyrian UA says "steal a technology", implying that it is one that the enemy civ has, not any tech. If it were any tech, the Assyrians would only need to take about 10 puny level 1 cities to have an indomitable lead.

 

[AriochIV]

It would be absurd if the Assyrian UA allowed you to steal technologies that the target civilization never had. Both in terms of realism and in terms of game balance.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I think steal is the key word (same word as with espionage). Otherwise, it would say "receives a free tech" instead.

 

[iRule]

Airlift was mentioned somewhere, this is probably the airport indeed.

Morocco/Portugal joint achievement on Steam mentions an airlift. So you must be right.