Some more details about Civ Revolutions

[Schuesseled]

But the people have spoken, and they want Persians in the game.
And I find the assertion that people play the civ corresponding to their nationality wrong. I know its not the case for me, and its been shown by the players themselves that it doesn't represent them. In fact people are usually lured to the exotic.

I don't want anyone to think that I am concentrating solely on Persia's side; but the fact is that Persia has been wronged here, hence why its getting attention. If the Romans were missing then I would definitely be campaigning for their presence.

I don't think it should have come down to "lets flip between Persian and CivB", because the fate of Persia, Roman, Brits and a few others should have been decided early into the game - in any case, one of the Ottoman/Persian/Babylonian/Assyrian should have been there to represent the subculture.

You see what I always loved about the Civilization series has been its ability to detach itself from current day politics: In civ4 state property had very nice bonuses, regardless of the political bias against communism, with the same applying to religion and fascism. It would be a sad day when Objectivity is lost in Firaxis because its one of their Civ traits


I did also say that the American bonus is half price purchase [which is my way of saying rush buying]. The idea of half price everything didn't even occur to me as that would be incomprehensible. But I do know that in Civ4, The Kremlin which provides -33% cost for only 1 era [modern] was so incredibly powerful that an entire economy based on the idea of rush-buying was developed and the costs of rush buying was soon patched to tone down the strength of this.

-50% for free for everything in all eras is the equivalent of doubling the strength of something however I think that the development of Civ4 should mean you earnt enough trust that I give it a chance before I criticize You did such a good job with Civ4 that you deserve it.


Im sorry if I came off as rude, often passion for a subject [in this case Civilizations future] leads to such an illusion

*I stand corrected!*

It isn't often when I hope I'm proved wrong, here I really do.

The american civ isn't stupidly imblanced.

Rushing is very expesnive and destroys your chance at an economic victory, so being able to do this at 50% cost, isn't going to make a large amount of difference

3x factory production, useful but factories are very expensive to build, and the 3x bonus doesn't mean 3x production speed, it means 3 times the produtcion bonus, which could only be as little as 5 or 10 extra hammers per tun.

all the cioves have powerful bonuses, egypt gets a free wonder and food from desert, mogols get free cities and have kick arse horses.

 

[Thrallia]

and looking through the other announced civ bonuses, I think India, Mongolia, Egypt, Japan, and Russia all get bonuses as good or better than America's.

 

[homan1983]

The american civ isn't stupidly imblanced.

Rushing is very expesnive and destroys your chance at an economic victory, so being able to do this at 50% cost, isn't going to make a large amount of difference

3x factory production, useful but factories are very expensive to build, and the 3x bonus doesn't mean 3x production speed, it means 3 times the produtcion bonus, which could only be as little as 5 or 10 extra hammers per tun.

all the cioves have powerful bonuses, egypt gets a free wonder and food from desert, mogols get free cities and have kick arse horses.

I have no idea how rush buying works in CivRev, but assuming its even close to Civ3-4 then a -50% is a significant bonus.

3x factory bonus IS HUGE no matter how you look at it, of course its not gonna triple a town production, but then if it did that it would be plain broken, even tripling the bonus is a LOT imo.

You yourself state 1-2 good traits from every civ, but that just confirms what I say, the thing is imo all of America's bonuses are top notch.

In any case I look at civs like china and I despair at how big a discrepancy there is between the civ bonuses.
There are 1-2 civs that prolly are barely competitive with America.

In any case its been stated here that the civs have been tightly balanced so I'm assuming that where I see a weak or strong trait, its due to me applying it to civ4 mechanics rather than up and coming CivRev ones - Wait and see I guess [i did place an order for xbox version on amazon yesterday]

 

[KrikkitTwo]

- Units will be produced into massive numbers since there is no wasted production: if you city generates 20 production per turn and you build a unit that only requires 10, it will generate 2 of these units per turn O_o

Not Quite, Production IS wasted

If you produce 25 per turn, then you can build 2 (10 cost) units per turn... the extra 5 is lost
or if you produce 19 per turn, then you can build 1 (10 cost) unit per turn... the extra 9 is lost

unfortunately, this means Civ Rev will open up old micromanagement issues.

 

[Ikael]

About the civilizations:

They ARE balanced. Have you look at the bonuses of the other civs besides America? +50% to gold (in addition to another plethora of bonuses), +50% to the defense of the units in the motherland, automatic wonders in the ancient times... they balance each other, everyone is "ultra powerful" and I love that approach of balancing since it rewards way more a focused style of playing (say, if you are the Spanish you will have to explore a lot to reap the benefits of their bonuses, if you are the Americans you will have to focus on the end game, etc).

The whinning about the American bonus for factories is stupid. It is a very, very late game bonus and applied to a concrete building. Chances are that it is going to be extremely rare to see that ultra powerful bonus being used.

However, I agree that the goverments are... well, crap. I mean, I love the new approach of a "balls to the wall civ" were every bonus is so awesome that they compensate each other.... so why the hell now they come up with such minor bonuses for the goverments? The Monarchy and republic ones are laughable, democracy and communism´s gets severely crippled because of the contras, and fundamentalism is only useful on the begginging of the game, when 1 extra combat point can make a difference, which latter will get dilluted. I can think right now in one bajillion of better ways to balance them.

About the exclusion of Persia: Some of my favourite civs didn´t make it either, and they were as much, if not more influent than the Persians (Babylon, Portugal, Carthage, the turks, etc).

 

[dshirk]

I think you're underestimating Fundamentalism and Monarchy.

Fundamentalism adds a single point to the BASE value of a unit, meaning that every multiplier that gets applied to that unit is also multiplying that extra point per unit. (50% veteran, 100% elite, 50% general, wonder bonus's etc.)

Monarchy gives your capital city +100% of culture output, which is HUGE if that's where you're focusing your wonder building efforts. Add that to temple and cathedral bonuses and your culture output can go through the roof, prompting great people to spawn much more quickly (which are part of the cultural victory conditions).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

A few points
1. Fundamentalism, value of 1 extra point depends on how the combat system works... if its 3 v. 2 has a 60%/40% chance of winning, and 9 v. 11 has a 45%/55% chance of winning.. then I agree
but say the Odds on combat are
3 to 2
3=2^3, 2=2^3
so the Odds are 8 to 4 (66%/33%)
and
9 to 11 is
9=2^9, 11=2^11
so the odds are 512 to 2048 (20%/80%)

This
1. means better numbers increase your chances significantly
2. means that +1 is the same increase in combat value whether it is 100->101 or 1->2

2. Monarchy... I have a feeling Culture might be Very important in this game... it seems like it may be the primary way of getting Great People, (even if you don't flip cities)** crossposted with Firaxis **

3. Representation, I agree this is bad, but if population grows really slowly, and this is available early, Representation may be necessary for REXing without conquest. (otherwise each new city costs your empire 1 ?or is it 2? net population units)

I do agree that these are definite Possible Balance Issues, but it depends on the actual game mechanics

 

[homan1983]

The whinning about the American bonus for factories is stupid. It is a very, very late game bonus and applied to a concrete building. Chances are that it is going to be extremely rare to see that ultra powerful bonus being used.

Thats such a bad statement to make that I don't know what you're thinking. Every other civ has a modern trait as well, yet they dont have an out of this world bonus with the explanation: "well you get it late game so its ok". Every other civs' bonus is pretty average except America.
This isn't like age4 where America only gets their civ bonus lategame whilst other civs have a better start, America also gets some pretty good bonuses in early-mid game.

However neither me nor you know how the balance is so I think wait and see is the best approach, although your reasoning will never fly as logical.

I have 2 questions for dshirk though if you wouldn't mind answering:

Monarchy gives your capital city +100% of culture output, which is HUGE if that's where you're focusing your wonder building efforts. Add that to temple and cathedral bonuses and your culture output can go through the roof, prompting great people to spawn much more quickly

Does this mean that culture is linked to the rate of Great People growth?

Fundamentalism adds a single point to the BASE value of a unit, meaning that every multiplier that gets applied to that unit is also multiplying that extra point per unit. (50% veteran, 100% elite, 50% general, wonder bonus's etc.)

I play pretty competitively in Age of Empires 3 and number crunching is familiar to me as I am required to do it often. The thing here is that whilst its true that the % bonuses apply after this bonus, it doesnt make an actual difference - i.e. in proportion the strength would be the same.

Let me make an example:

A rifleman has 10str vs Tank 15
With Fundamentalism its 11 vs 15 so the chance of rifle is 11/26
Now if both units were elite, it would be 22 vs 30, which is still 11/26 in terms off odds. The rifleman is still 10% stronger, whether regular, veteran or elite.

However what IS important is what sort of numbers we'll be seeing around the time fundamentalism comes about (which I'm assuming is modern?).
Are modern units values around 5? 10? 15? or somewhere like 20-40 as in civ4.

Appreciate your help in advance.

 

[dshirk]

The amount of culture you're putting out has a direct correlation to spawning great people. The same can be said for science, gold, etc. The type of great person spawned depends on many different variables, including techs researched, who's still available, etc. If you're concentrating on Culture techs, the chances are much higher that the great person that spawns will be cultural.

As for fundamentalism, there are many other customized bonuses that elites get as well, making the margins open up a bit more as you upgrade them. Unit values are also much more constrained than in Civ IV. For example, a Tank is 10 attack/6 defense, making the +1 bonus an extremely worthwhile addition, especially when compounded by other bonuses. Throughout the middle of the game is where it really shines, where individual offensive units average around 4 attack/2 defense.

 

[Ikael]

I think you're underestimating Fundamentalism and Monarchy.

Fundamentalism adds a single point to the BASE value of a unit, meaning that every multiplier that gets applied to that unit is also multiplying that extra point per unit. (50% veteran, 100% elite, 50% general, wonder bonus's etc.)

Even with that, if late era units gets status are around 20 points as it happened in past civs, the bonus becames pointless as it only represent a very small fraction of the total power, not to mention that the other enemy units also have the same bonuses due to experience, as homan explained.

EDIT: Ouch, just readed that you already answered to that. Well, now it does seem that the +1 bonus it IS useful. But still, libraries AND universities being shutted down? isn´t that a bit tad extreme? A science penalty would be more bearable me thinks (not to mention more realistic: iran and another modern theocracies have libraries and universities).

Monarchy gives your capital city +100% of culture output, which is HUGE if that's where you're focusing your wonder building efforts. Add that to temple and cathedral bonuses and your culture output can go through the roof, prompting great people to spawn much more quickly (which are part of the cultural victory conditions).

Well, it seems that since there are certain aspects of the game that we do not know yet (like the great people birthrate attached to the culture output), some goverment effects cannot be judged properly. But still... monarchy a goverment for culture - building civs? republic offering a bonus for emigration? what the hell? where is the logic on that? Heck, it would be even more logical to be reversed (capital culture bonus in republic, settler bonus for early expansion for the monarchy). And then you have the severe drawbacks of communism, fundamentalism and democracy. The only one whose positive effects seems to outweight its cons is communism, but still. Democracy nullifies one big aspect of the game altogether (war), while I really doubt that anyone would be willing to rennounce to such a huge science bonus just for a measly +1 combat. Seriously, you guys needs to rebalance the goverments effects extensively and try to apply to the goverments the same design philosophy that has been applied to the rest of the game.

Thats such a bad statement to make that I don't know what you're thinking. Every other civ has a modern trait as well, yet they dont have an out of this world bonus with the explanation: "well you get it late game so its ok". Every other civs' bonus is pretty average except America.
This isn't like age4 where America only gets their civ bonus lategame whilst other civs have a better start, America also gets some pretty good bonuses in early-mid game.

Thing is, in this civ (as in the previous one), the earlier the bonus, the more turns you can reap its benefits. Let´s say, a +50% gold since the ancient ages is way more powerful than a +50% gold at the modern age. Also, America has some quite discrete bonuses during the middle ages, and since we do not know the specific effects of the great people we also do not know how much good is their starting bonus. And as people have pointed out, there are another civs with huge bonuses as well (no unhappiness for the chinese, +50% gold for the Spanish, +1 food for plains for the Russians and since ancient times, etc, etc).

 

[homan1983]

The amount of culture you're putting out has a direct correlation to spawning great people. The same can be said for science, gold, etc. The type of great person spawned depends on many different variables, including techs researched, who's still available, etc. If you're concentrating on Culture techs, the chances are much higher that the great person that spawns will be cultural.

As for fundamentalism, there are many other customized bonuses that elites get as well, making the margins open up a bit more as you upgrade them. Unit values are also much more constrained than in Civ IV. For example, a Tank is 10 attack/6 defense, making the +1 bonus an extremely worthwhile addition, especially when compounded by other bonuses. Throughout the middle of the game is where it really shines, where individual offensive units average around 4 attack/2 defense.

Wow, first let me say than kyou for responding.
I really like the direction being taken with culture. Since its first presense in civ3, it has come a LONG way.
By civ4, culture was quite a bit more powerful, but still it felt like after a certain amount of time that culture's effect was diminished to the point of near nil. This led to culture always being an afterthought, a by product from buildings you build for other purposes. Unlike other aspects of the game, there was nothing one could do about culture short of destroying the city itself.

This new mechanic seems really exciting.

As for a tank having 10a6d - thats again very good news. In civ4 a tank had 26 str or so [somewhere between 20 and 30 as far as i remember] and moder armor had 40.
So worst case scenario for tank its an improvement of 10%.

But I can also imagine how big a boost it would be for units that typically have less base strength.



I'd like to ask you one last question:

What do you think are the differences in terms of roles between Fundamentalism and Communism?

It seems that both are geared towards a more firm fisted civilization.
Would I be correct in saying that both are good for war civs, with each having a slight niche?

Communism: Has good production overall that can be levereged towards both civil and military construction. Has a more balanced approach, still allowin good research. Happiness and culture suffer under communism

Fundamentalism: All out war civilization with greatly improved units, but science is effectively stalled. Very focused government. Still keeps religious buildings however.

Is that about the jist of it?

 

[homan1983]

Thing is, in this civ (as in the previous one), the earlier the bonus, the more turns you can reap its benefits. Let´s say, a +50% gold since the ancient ages is way more powerful than a +50% gold at the modern age.

But I have already explained this line of thought. Of course +50% over 3 ages is better than +50% over 1 age, as was the case in Civ4. In such case, the Unique building and UU for America was very strong to make up for its late arrival and that was fine - in fact it was argued that it was still too little too late.

The point is that America DOES have bonuses in all ages; top tier ones in fact, so if the argument is used that a modern age trait needs to be exceptionally strong because of its late arrival, then it should apply to all late age traits.

In any case it seems like we're going around in circles and if you hadn't understood my explanation the first time then the 3rd or 4th probably won't make a difference. So lets agree than I'm right or if you insist agree to disagree (although I strongle prefer the former )

 

[AutomatedTeller]

It's an open question whether the US won WWII or not - you can make an argument that Russia was already beating Germany when the US came in, and that most of the best divisions were on the eastern front.

Japan was a different story - there, the US took the brunt of the fighting. I think you could easily say that, without Russia, the Axis would have won WWII. Or without Hitler, who made several large mistakes.

Moderator Action: Discuss this elsewhere! This is not the thread for it!
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[AbbieRevo]

As far as the Persia debate goes.

It seems to me that Persia is about equal with Mongolia as far as it's rights to be included in the game go. Both had large short-lived empires. Persia's had a longer half-life (farsi was a universal trade language throughout the orient for a very long time), but Mongolia's was bigger.

But looking at the list of civs, Mongolia and Japan are the only ones that I think could conceivably be cut in favor of Persia, and both of them could make strong cases for being kept in (actually thinking more and more about it, Japan really hasn't been all that important until the last hundred and fifty years or so, same could be said of America, but America is much more dominant than Japan)

 

[dennis580]

and looking through the other announced civ bonuses, I think India, Mongolia, Egypt, Japan, and Russia all get bonuses as good or better than America's.

Egypt's bonuses sucks accept for the starting bonus. Certainly they are far weaker from there orginal bonus of +50 wonder production. Had they kept that bonus, and been the only Civ to have that bonus they they would have rocked. As it stands now they are certainly one of the weaker Civs.

 

[dennis580]

Rushing is very expesnive and destroys your chance at an economic victory, so being able to do this at 50% cost, isn't going to make a large amount of difference

Who gives a rats a$$ about economic victory. I know I sure as heck am not going to let my gold set around and do nothing hoping to get a economic victory.

If I am playing as the US I sure as heck will invest most of my gold in rushing out half price buildings, and infrastructure.

 

[reverend oats]

My 2 cents om Persia is that it at the very least was far, far more important than Zululand.

 

[homan1983]

As far as the Persia debate goes.

It seems to me that Persia is about equal with Mongolia as far as it's rights to be included in the game go. Both had large short-lived empires. Persia's had a longer half-life (farsi was a universal trade language throughout the orient for a very long time), but Mongolia's was bigger.

But looking at the list of civs, Mongolia and Japan are the only ones that I think could conceivably be cut in favor of Persia, and both of them could make strong cases for being kept in (actually thinking more and more about it, Japan really hasn't been all that important until the last hundred and fifty years or so, same could be said of America, but America is much more dominant than Japan)

The role of Persia (Iran) in history is highly significant; In fact, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel considered the ancient Persians to be the first historic people and stated thus: "In Persia first arises that light which shines itself and illuminates what is around...The principle of development begins with the history of Persia; this constitutes therefore the beginning of history"

And Richard Nelson Frye further verifies:
"Few nations in the world present more of a justification for the study of history than Iran."

The Persian empire had many faces and a lot of different eras. The exact dates from wiki:
Median Empire 728 BC – 549 BC
Achaemenid Empire (550 BC–330 BC)
Hellenistic Persia (330 BC–250 BC)
Parthians (250 BC–AD 226)
Sassanid Empire (226–651)
Safavid Persian Dynasty (1500–1722)
In fact the main Persian empire came to an end when Russia decided to take dominance of the important central asia, the didn't even do it alone, accompanying them to Isfahan was the ottomans.
Persia was carved into Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Georgia and Uzbekistan amongst others [wiki]

If you add all those dates up, you'd see that Persia is one of, if not THE longest spanning Empire[Civilization] in the entire history of the world.
Persia was at the very least on par with the Romans and British - one reason I think people don't realize this is that they have a great deal of knowledge of the european civs.

Now you say that mongol could have been cut out for Persia but I would say that the Mongols were another iconic civilization.

I would definately rate Mongols higher than Russia, Spain, Zulu, Aztecs, India and a few others that aren't coming to mind. [Possibly America and Japs]

 

[Thrallia]

Egypt's bonuses sucks accept for the starting bonus. Certainly they are far weaker from there orginal bonus of +50 wonder production. Had they kept that bonus, and been the only Civ to have that bonus they they would have rocked. As it stands now they are certainly one of the weaker Civs.

Alright, let's see you say that when Egypt starts out with the wonder that allows them you use any government they want, from the very beginning of the game.

Rushing is very expesnive and destroys your chance at an economic victory, so being able to do this at 50% cost, isn't going to make a large amount of difference

Who gives a rats a$$ about economic victory. I know I sure as heck am not going to let my gold set around and do nothing hoping to get a economic victory.

If I am playing as the US I sure as heck will invest most of my gold in rushing out half price buildings, and infrastructure.

I look forward to crushing you in multiplayer then

The role of Persia (Iran) in history is highly significant; In fact, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel considered the ancient Persians to be the first historic people and stated thus: "In Persia first arises that light which shines itself and illuminates what is around...The principle of development begins with the history of Persia; this constitutes therefore the beginning of history"

And Richard Nelson Frye further verifies:
"Few nations in the world present more of a justification for the study of history than Iran."

So you picked a crackpot anarchist from the 1700s(and early 1800s), and a historian who focuses specifically on Persia as the people you wanted to support you? Hegel was a crackpot who had very bizarre ideas and an anarchist who considered laws to be unnecessary. And Frye focuses only on Persia in his studies, so of course he's going to say that Iran has the most to offer historians(note he says Iran, not Persia...he thinks Persia is dead and gone as well)

The Persian empire had many faces and a lot of different eras. The exact dates from wiki:
Median Empire 728 BC – 549 BC
Achaemenid Empire (550 BC–330 BC)
Hellenistic Persia (330 BC–250 BC)
Parthians (250 BC–AD 226)
Sassanid Empire (226–651)
Safavid Persian Dynasty (1500–1722)
In fact the main Persian empire came to an end when Russia decided to take dominance of the important central asia, the didn't even do it alone, accompanying them to Isfahan was the ottomans.
Persia was carved into Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Georgia and Uzbekistan amongst others [wiki]

mmkay, Hellenistic Persia is not Persia...is it Persia ruled by Greece. After that, those empires are considered Iranian in nature, not Persian(oh, and the Safavid Persian Dynasty is a ridiculous attempt to recover whatever persian culture was left after 1000 of muslim eradication of other native cultures)

So if I add together those years...I get around 300-400 years...just like last time

If you add all those dates up, you'd see that Persia is one of, if not THE longest spanning Empire[Civilization] in the entire history of the world.
Persia was at the very least on par with the Romans and British - one reason I think people don't realize this is that they have a great deal of knowledge of the european civs.

I agree that most people have more knowledge of European history than world history(or middle east history), but I don't agree with your dates, as those empires were no more persian than the portuguese empire is still spanish.

Now you say that mongol could have been cut out for Persia but I would say that the Mongols were another iconic civilization.

I would definately rate Mongols higher than Russia, Spain, Zulu, Aztecs, India and a few others that aren't coming to mind. [Possibly America and Japs]

I think the Mongols are the only possible civ that could have been cut to make room for the Persians, but that they win out because they held a MUCH larger amount of territory at their height than the persians did.

 

[reverend oats]

Well, I really don't think anyone can argue that the Zulu were more important than the Persians; however, they are in in order to give "geographic diversity."