Patch News!

[Charles 22]

To make horses "invisible" before husbandry is, well, sorta dumb.

BUT, to make you unable to HARVEST them before husbandry is, well, not.

So, the best solution would have been to make them visible, but not harvestable before animal husbandry...

Venger

And they need to move chariots to a later tech too, for it's dumb to have them with the wheel and you can't even use them.

 

[Zertez]

That's the way it is now and it needs to change to make MP meaningful. In a small 2 player game if I see that I have horses and you don't, I research AH ASAP and attack you with chariots guaranteed. You have a 50-50 chance of being able to put up a fight at all (if you immediately go for bronze working and have some copper close enough to hook up - if not you lose). The key is that half the time you lose out of the chute. I will have the initiative of knowing that I can attack you. I will also likely (read this as guaranteed) build my city right on the horse so that I can start cranking them the second the tech is available

Archers are very easy to get up as well as spearmen, that will put a damper on chariots rushing to the city. Unless the cities are literary on top of one another, you should be able to get a couple of spearman up. Archery is less than Animal Husbandry to research. Even a couple warriors with a few promotions can put a fight with chariots, a mixture of experienced warriors and archers can hold their own. I dont see how it is overpowering as there is counters to it.

 

[Charles 22]

That's the way it is now and it needs to change to make MP meaningful. In a small 2 player game if I see that I have horses and you don't, I research AH ASAP and attack you with chariots guaranteed. You have a 50-50 chance of being able to put up a fight at all (if you immediately go for bronze working and have some copper close enough to hook up - if not you lose). The key is that half the time you lose out of the chute. I will have the initiative of knowing that I can attack you. I will also likely (read this as guaranteed) build my city right on the horse so that I can start cranking them the second the tech is available.

If it's invisible I don't know that I have horses so I might not choose AH, I might choose Bronze or even play defensive and go arrows (not likely in a MP game). Since neither of us know what the other guy (or ourselves) has immediately, we are on equal footing.

Note, this is somewhat simplified in that it doesn't take early UUs into account.

Bronze seems overly dramatic to me. All you need is archery to defend against chariots anyway. For those who don't want to defend themselves and concurrently are running up against those who would gladly bum rush them like that, this stops very little, because though you know not whether you'll have horseys, it doesn't slow you down to teching for them. At most, should you have horses in the city radius, this delays their allegedly overpowering attack 10 turns (two hexes to road 'maybe' and one hex to pasture [if it's four turns that is. It's four or six]). Of course if the civ with the horses gets two or more workers on the job they could half that delay.

 

[Goosse]

Exactly. Oil was also known in the ancient near east but nobody though it to be very useful (except marginal use in oil lamps) until combustion engines were invented.

I hope this patch fixes the crashes. Today I got kicked out five times in three hours and got two blue screens! But I can't help it, I reload and continue...just...one...more...turn. What's this site called again?

From what I see, it looks like horse provide nothing until improved with a pasture. Corn will provide +1 food when worked, even without improving the site with a farm. Oil will provide +1 production after Scientific Method provides the knowledge and then with Plastics you can build an offshore platform for a +2 production and +1 commerce. Or with Combustion you can build a well for the +2 production and +1 commerce.

If you can get some value without special knowledge, then you should be able to see it for what it is. If you have no knowledge of its usefulness, then it should not affect your decisions until you gain the knowledge.

 

[Charles 22]

As another viewpoint in the horses vs. elephants/cows/sheep visibility debate, don't forget that there's little value in killing a horse; their utility comes purely from using them for labor. Cows and sheep you can kill and eat, or use their hide/wool to make clothing; elephants you can eat too or use the ivory for tools, maybe even the hide as well. Not to mention that it's easier to kill them than horses, since these animals all pretty slow (well, maybe not the elephant necessarily, but the payoff is worth it! They must have looked like the mother lode to ancient man).

Now, you can imagine your primative people, lacking much experience or knowledge of the real world and exclusively concentrating on survival; food to eat and tools to use are what they care most about. So then someone has the idea "Well, we use the cow and the sheep for food and clothing, wouldn't it be a good idea to try to get them all together so that we can slaughter them at our leisure, instead of having to roam around hunting them?" And thus, animal husbandry. A similar thing with elephants, though you can use those for labor as well.

Now, once you have the idea to herd your food animals, you might have the idea to try to do this with other animals as well. You see this fast horse creature that has eluded your hunting efforts, or gave little incentive to spend the time hunting them instead of the much easier livestock. Maybe you can use them to get places faster. Why not try to tame them as well? Now that you see a use for those plentiful animals by the river, you can see them on the map. Time to ride them or use them to carry/pull heavy loads.

So that's why you can see cows and sheep and elephants and pigs, etc. to start with; because they're useful even untamed, and horses aren't really. Your ancestors already know what to do with the former; they probably consider the latter to be a pest to chase away (they do eat some plants that humans might want to eat, like oats!). Unless you think the game should show other concentrations of animals that aren't really very useful to ancient man (for some reason, eels come to mind first).

Dun Malg's idea isn't a bad one, but it should be pretty obvious which kind are useful as a food/resource animal, and which kind would have no discernable use. Your ancestors have had thousands of years to figure out what kinds of animals benefited them with their available knowledge and resources.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now, what this also leads to is some other possibilities for things that should be hidden. Like furs until you get hunting (fur animals tend not to be so great for eating IIRC), maybe fish until you get fishing and whales until sailing. Dyes also seem like they'd at least require some tech, but perhaps the art of dyeing is older than I think. And it's not like you can use them for ages anyway, until you can build plantations. Gameplay concerns are what dictated the hiding of strategic resources, but who's to say it needs to be that way exclusively?

There's one problem with your perspective here. This game starts with the dawn of time, hence the "in the beginning" script. As such, you obviously don't know which animals are more suitable for eating "at all", so that you have to at least capture an animal of every breed to find out. You don't automatically know that cows are more suited for eating. In such a case all the animals should be visible since they all have the same potential. And since it really is, in the beginning, or so I think, then you also don't know right off the bat which ones are easier to capture or which ones will eat you alive. I mean a wolf is just a nice doggy, right? Elephants are too fat too overrun you, etc.

 

[Goosse]

Yes but they didn't know settling near a huge rock outcropping would be useful for building a giant pyramid, did they?

Stone provides +1 production when worked right from the beginning. It was used by the earliest known civilizations. After Masonry, putting a Quarry on it, working it will give +2 Production, and +1 Commerce, and will cut the cost of some wonders.

 

[Goosse]

I'm pretty sure that the delay when your map expands is caused by the need to re-render the 3d map in the main game screen (which involves copying a lot of information either from the HDD or main memory into the graphics card memory.) It seems like they to not render the whole map at level load, for whatever reason.

This delay, at least, doesn't indicate a memory leak. If there is a memory leak, you can tell by watching the memory as you play. Start a game with one city, do not explore, and watch the memory as reported by the Windows Task Manager. If it climbs and climbs and climbs until it fills up the main memory and the page file, then you have a memory leak. If it climbs a bit then levels off, then you probably don't have a memory leak.

Planescape Torment had a memory leak at release. The memory usage would steadily climb until it filled the available space and your game crashed. I don't think that Civ IV does - or, if it does, it only affects certain people (not me.)

I also don’t believe that there is a major memory leak. But if there was a memory leak, your method might not reveal it. Memory leaks occur when code allocates memory and then fails to release it when done. If you never use the function that leaks memory, then you will never see it.

Your test will show a memory leak in something like the animation or other routines that are constantly in use without specific action on your part.

 

[Goosse]

With this patch, it sounds like the game will ALMOST be where it should have been prior to release by Take2. I really doubt this will incorporate the subtle changes in play-balancing that another month of testing would have provided. It's a good game, but it was released about a month too early. And I say this as someone who was dying to see it released in time for my birthday (Nov 1). It was a somewhat disappointing present, since it felt about 95% finished -- playable and enjoyable but with a few really obvious bugs and playbalance issues that another month of tweaking would have resolved. Look forward to more of this in future Firaxis releases, now that Take2 has acquired the studio.

I disagree. I think the release time was appropriate. Yes there were problems. But what percentage of the user base experienced them? I went looking for solutions to a very minor problem that I was having. Otherwise it would have been another month or two before I went looking for strategy ideas. And before Civ 3, I played many games without every seeing a forum. I found a Civ 3 forum until I did a web search to find a problem fix and ran across a forum. If it hadn’t been for the problem, I wouldn’t have found the forums.

So again, what percent of the user base is experience problems?

 

[Goosse]

all nice and true...

too bad that since everything you and others said does NOT apply to Elephants and Cattle, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, even from a strategic point of view, since Elephants can be put at the same level of Horses in this regard.

Elephants were hunted for their ivory tusks before they were domesticated. Thus they provide +1 Production when worked and with camp, working provides +1 Production and +1 Commerce as well as being a strategic resource.

 

[FraggyFragbait]

Im just happy the patch is coming out...not that i have any problems with my game (runs bug free from what i can see) but because so many people are and i feel bad for them as they cant get the enjoyment out of such a great game.

 

[onedreamer]

Why? Because they are overpowering in MP. If you see that your city has horses from the first turn you can steer your research to exploit this and get chariots on your neighbor right away. You can't do this with the metal line. In that path you may research bronze only to find that you have none. in a tiny two player duel the player withthe horses will almost always win because they will choose the correct tech path.

this is a big joke:

1) from my experience a player is more likely to find copper or iron in his territory than horses
2) the same of horses applies to Elephants but they are not being changed
3) animal husbandry is a must ANYWAYS to research among the first techs, because you will 99% have a cattle or sheep tile in your capital range, and not exploiting them is pure stupidity. It's not like knowing that you have horses before you research animal husbandry will favor you in any way that can be considered decisive. In you example, if on a very small map 1v1 a player has easy access to horses and the other one doesn't, the second will have an hard time in the beginning no matter if horses appear immediatly or with animal husbandry.
4) Hiding horses will be the first step in a race to hide early resources which I don't like because of several good reasons that IMO are more important than the one given by the "hide horses" supporters. The two most important being that your starting city is assigned some early resources that will help you grow decently, if they are hidden you can't take advantage from them; and the second the fact that the AI seems to know anyways where are the resources even if it can't see them (this already from Civ3).
5) last but not least, a chariot vs an archer placed strategically is dead meat.

 

[onedreamer]

Elephants were hunted for their ivory tusks before they were domesticated. Thus they provide +1 Production when worked and with camp, working provides +1 Production and +1 Commerce as well as being a strategic resource.

com'on the hiding of horses is not a move done for realism but for apparent game balance. Talks about the history of hunting of horses or elephants are totally pointless here. The point is that some whiners who lost a coupla MP matches complained well enough to get it changed.

 

[onedreamer]

There's one problem with your perspective here. This game starts with the dawn of time, hence the "in the beginning" script. As such, you obviously don't know which animals are more suitable for eating "at all", so that you have to at least capture an animal of every breed to find out. You don't automatically know that cows are more suited for eating. In such a case all the animals should be visible since they all have the same potential. And since it really is, in the beginning, or so I think, then you also don't know right off the bat which ones are easier to capture or which ones will eat you alive. I mean a wolf is just a nice doggy, right? Elephants are too fat too overrun you, etc.

Actually there's a problem with your persepective here. The introduction is very clear and the game in no way starts with the dawn of (human) time, but with the dawn of civilizations, which is way, WAY different. By the time the game starts (what is it, 4000 BC ?) you can trust me that human beings knew exactly which animals to hunt for food.

 

[Charles 22]

Actually there's a problem with your persepective here. The introduction is very clear and the game in no way starts with the dawn of (human) time, but with the dawn of civilizations, which is way, WAY different. By the time the game starts (what is it, 4000 BC ?) you can trust me that human beings knew exactly which animals to hunt for food.

Well, maybe, but I see no other point to including "in the beginning" if not for that. Besides, be they right or not, there's a lot of historians that for some reason like to pin human civilization starting at 4000BC (I didn't bother asking them if that meant they knew which animals to eat straight away). Maybe you're right though, as if this game were entirely consistent, because though you start out very meagre, not even having a village to call your own, you do have in many cases a warrior. Why else the warrior if prior experience didn't teach you to expect rival civs to attack you? If there were no warrior, just ignoring the "in the beginning" theme for a moment, I would on that factor alone conclude that it were backing up that idea.

To be more consistent again though, despite some civs having this tech, if all civs supposedly know which animals are friendly, and which to hunt, then why the hunting tech? Doesn't that say they don't know hunting in a sense? If they knew which to kill, as you propose, then wouldn't they know fishing techniques too? Nah, I'm shading more towards my viewpoint on this the more I think about it. I guess it really doesn't matter though, huh.

 

[onedreamer]

yeah in the end it doesn't matter what is realistic or not (we are agreed that the hunting tech is totally out of place), for the simple fact that Civ is a game
The problem of horses showing or not showing is of game balance and definitely not of realism. So the discussion should focus on this. I don't think that hiding horses 1 or 2 techs at worse away from start will balance what some players believe is unbalancing, while instead it creates more unbalances by "robbering" a player of one of its initial resources.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Well, isn't is kinda odd that with current ruleset you can get Chariots, pulled by horses, without having Animal Husbandry.

What's that, wild horse chariot racing?

 

[onedreamer]

???
AFAIK chariots need horses to be built, and to have horses you need a pasture, to make a pasture you need animal husbandry.

 

[Luhh]

The problem I see with ancient era units is:

Chariots being useful at all, the same with elefants. They were little more than show and not even close to effective units. If they were to be kept in the game, they could just make the chariot UU, and skip elefants all together, because really... Also, elefants being a counter to cavalry? Also, horse archers are the first horseback unit. Okay? It took a great deal of training and excellent riding skills to be able to fight effectively from horseback like that. This also seems more like a UU.

Also, axemen are a bit odd in the sense that they are the counter to a unit that comes later as well as the contemporary spearman. I don't think axemen did very well against spearmen honestly.

I just don't know what they were thinking. Some units also get obsolete before they are ever being put to use (musketman).

Also, riflemen getting a bonus against cavalry? Aren't cavalry supposed to be used against them?

Also, musketmen were probably not more effective than longbowmen on the battlefield, but they were easier to train, and advancement in technology is a reason unto itself why they were used instead. Not because they were more effective, but because they were the latest thing I think. Also, modern 1800/1900th cavalry was probably a LOT less effective than knights against medivial melee units, but in the game they are a lot stronger. They were used against... riflemen, muskets.

There are just so many holes in their reasoning and unit bonuses and counters I can't help but wonder what they're thinking. If they are gonna have unit bonuses, make them reasonable and balanced and not just used because...

 

[forgotten fans]

There's one problem with your perspective here. This game starts with the dawn of time, hence the "in the beginning" script. As such, you obviously don't know which animals are more suitable for eating "at all", so that you have to at least capture an animal of every breed to find out. You don't automatically know that cows are more suited for eating. In such a case all the animals should be visible since they all have the same potential. And since it really is, in the beginning, or so I think, then you also don't know right off the bat which ones are easier to capture or which ones will eat you alive. I mean a wolf is just a nice doggy, right? Elephants are too fat too overrun you, etc.

This is getting philosophical. The overwhelming odds are that humans evolved from other primates so we already had a pretty good innate idea of what was and wasn't edible/dangerous/etc..

 

[Venger]

That's the way it is now

Good - nice to know they got it right.

and it needs to change to make MP meaningful. In a small 2 player game if I see that I have horses and you don't, I research AH ASAP and attack you with chariots guaranteed. You have a 50-50 chance of being able to put up a fight at all (if you immediately go for bronze working and have some copper close enough to hook up - if not you lose). The key is that half the time you lose out of the chute. I will have the initiative of knowing that I can attack you. I will also likely (read this as guaranteed) build my city right on the horse so that I can start cranking them the second the tech is available.

Um, even if this is so, you have all the time to research the tech, crank out the worker, build the road, build the pasture, deal with barbs, and crank out enough chariots to go and attack your opponent, wherever he is - are you playing two people on a tiny map or something? Seems to me you have at least 20 turns before you can even think about cranking your first chariot, if not closer to 30. In that time you have found your enemy on the map and just how to strike him?

Venger