9th mystery leader who could go anywhere
I'm cautiously optimistic about the whole expansion pack. I really hope they would improve the AI, but having read this earlier interview with Strenger, I don't really know what to expect ( http://gameaxis.com/interviews/interview-civilization-vi-snr-gameplay-designer-anton-strenger/ ). E.g. about the AI and settler stealing:
"Um, yeah. It was kind of something that we tried as an experiment. The reason, I believe, that settlers became builders in Civ V was that it was seen as too powerful to capture another player’s settler. But the A.I. in VI has improved quite a bit and it’s kind of frustrating if someone catches your settler and it turns into a builder, but then you can’t get back your settler."
30€ is basically nothing, but I'd still like to have a great game.
Considering the debate about wide vs. tall and realism in the last few pages, who is going to win in real life? We don't really need any more population, be it wide or tall.
http://scientistswarning.forestry.o.../files/Warning_article_with_supp_11-13-17.pdf
(World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice)
Considering the debate about wide vs. tall and realism in the last few pages, who is going to win in real life? We don't really need any more population, be it wide or tall.
http://scientistswarning.forestry.o.../files/Warning_article_with_supp_11-13-17.pdf
(World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice)
i don't think it's a theme for the screenshots... at least I hope it's not, i onestly don't like the theme park as a wonder because it looks completely generic, yet the persian looking building would be the only wonder that doesn't look "fancy" if you know what i mean, it looks like a very generic building aswell, could be everything in the middle east or central asia
Life quality improved a lot, industrialization progressed a lot there. They didn't suffer from the Great Depression. Army professionalism went up (just in time). If the communists didn't took over the USSR, they wouldn't have been able to defend against Hitler, and now they were able to (including the purges). Russia must be thankful for their communist age, because it did set them on the world map, and they transitioned from a non-relevant power that was breaking up (like Ottoman Empire) intoo the second most powerful state that even achieved a lot (space age), and was arguably even more advanced than the USA on science.
Dang...
These are very difficult assertions to support given the absence of an alternate history in which there was no Russian revolution, so it's not at all clear how much of this would have happened anyway. Russia was no feudal backwater before the revolution - it was at most a couple of decades behind Western Europe economically and less industrially, and while Alexander III and Nicholas II were socially regressive monarchs there's no telling whether their successors would have developed along the Western constitutional lines Alexander II had intended before his assassination. The country was already a major power - powerful enough to contest the remnants of the Ottoman Empire with Britain and France in an industrialised war (Russia lost, certainly, but it was against arguably the two most advanced militaries in the world), and powerful enough to be an early aggressor in WWI before the Prussians mounted an effective defence.
Communism was a big driver in Hitler's rise to power and in the overall instability of the Weimar Republic - had it not taken root in Russia and been seen as a threat as a result there may have been no Hitler and no WWII, let alone a need to defend against him. The lack of a need to prove ideological superiority would probably have slowed progress on the space race, but that would be true in America as well - and without the German rocketry advances of WWII to act as a foundation for both space programmes, it may never have happened at all.
It seems likely that if communism hadn't taken root in Russia, whatever that would mean for internal social progress it probably wouldn't have drastically affected Russia's development trajectory.
On Emperor+ - yes, it's challenge. Not best one, but still. Anyway, as I said, tweaking difficulty level has little to do with AI programming.
Europe did rapidly enact reforms after the establishment of a communist state in USSR, because they were afraid that the revolution would have spread. Also, if communism was created at that POV, it would certainly.
The main driver in the Rise of Hitler is the economic depression and the Treaty of Versailles. Communism played a role, but i don't think it was a deciding factor, and I doubt the German Communist Party would be less popular without a USSR, let alone, that the political climate wouldn't have polarized without the USSR.
Those tsars were indeed socially regressive, and there is also no point in assuming that their successors would have done that. It was in fact already too late, since we know what happened in history. Russia would certainly not have advanced that much if it wasn't communist, since it would have been behind, and wouldn't have taken a leader's role. The space race would have been delayed or as you said not have been happened. Technologic progress in general would have been delayed. Social progress in western countries would have been delayed, and certainly if WW2 would not have happened, as you point out. The evolution of the world would have delayed by much, and there would be much less freedom in the western world, i believe.
Yes, progress across the West as a whole as well as Russia would have stalled; my point is that in relative terms Russia would likely have kept pace, much as Saudi Arabia has kept pace with economic and industrial development alongside a model of government that was abandoned in most countries nearly three hundred years ago.
While we can posit that the tsars would have retained the same form of absolute monarchy that had (often violently) fallen out of fashion elsewhere in Europe, there were multiple attempts - both top-down and bottom-up - to change the system and Russia had faced multiple crises as a result of uprisings or populist movements over the preceding century. Sooner or later the tsars would have been forced to adapt or die. We know of tsars, the last of which was Alexander II, who aspired to become constitutional monarchs, so I'm not suggesting an implausible change that hadn't already been considered by Russian leadership.
As for Hitler, he came second in the election in 1933 and was installed as chancellor only as an emergency measure. It would have taken very little for this not to have happened - if communist sentiment were a little weaker the Weimar Republic may have been strong enough to resist him, or he might have lost a small but decisive portion of the vote, enough to make Hindenberg the clear winner. That might have halted his ascendance or at least delayed it until after the Spanish Civil War (which the communists might have won without German backing for the fascists, so re-igniting anti-communist fervor in neighbouring countries). If none of that had happened, at the very least Russia may not have been one of his targets as his conflict with Russia was both ideological and based on personal dislike of Stalin.
Here are some screenshots from the blog post on the official website:
There is still some debate over these two. I personally don't believe them to be wonders but rather improvements, or Governor bonuses. But I would agree in saying that these are based on Santa Monica Pier and Washington Square.Santa Monica Pier, Washington Square
I would love Pamukkale as a Turkish wonder too, but Cappadocia seems like a good catch. I've mentioned Pinatubo before. Funny that you see it too, but it doesn't look exactly the same. If we will see Gran Colombia in the game, i think they will just name it Colombia with Simon Bolivar as leader. If your 9 civilizations are right, we would lack severely pre-Columbian civilizations in the game, but it seems like this is the way to go, and colonial nations are more likely to be in the game now. I wouldn't mind Colombia actually (but for a second or third expansion), as i'm a Latin-Americanophile (one of the reasons why i'm hoping for Inca's or Maya's, or in a future expansion Muisca, Cuba, Mexico, Taino), but Inca's and Maya's are the most important ones obviously.
There is still some debate over these two. I personally don't believe them to be wonders but rather improvements, or Governor bonuses. But I would agree in saying that these are based on Santa Monica Pier and Washington Square.