Enoch

It doesn't mean much, it's basically so that each unit looks like there is more than one person. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You can also turn that option off and it gives you the 1 man unit. It saves a bit in performance.

FYI: the author is adding more to that demo game daily. By next week there will be 7 total installments bringing that game right up to a modern victory. Moving on, Civ4 Specs: Compared to past Civs, which have always run well on sub-standard gaming rigs, this is pretty demanding, and is has caused some consternation since there are a lot of Civ fans who aren't otherwise avid gamers. Stability-wise, so far, the biggest problem over at the CivFanatics Forums is with (stop me if you've heard this before) drivers for ATI cards. As for myself, I got it to run okay on my desktop (with recommended specs in everything except my ancient 64MB GeForce 3) with a just little skipping in the intro video. (Thankfully, the in-game movies work fine.) After about 4 hours of playing, I'm impressed. The only real negative so far is that the Civilopedia has taken a major step back from Civ3. It's not searchable, and everything (techs, buildings, wonders, etc.) is indexed by the in-game symbol rather than the name.

Rail movement has been limited to 10 for all units. That is, regardless of your unit's normal move rate, it will move 10 squares on the railroad.

More Beta-tester goodness: A walkthrough of the early game. Some good bits on early research strategy, unit promotions, religions, build order, and the controversial wild animals.

This type of occurrence is always going to be a problem in Civ, because, however illogical, it is far more fair than the alternative. Civ deals with the progression of technology over the course of all of human history. The problem is that each incremental step has to be balanced. If you weight the advancement such that modern units always beat pre-modern ones, you've got to either apply an 'untouchable' variable at some point (so that even the most damaged raw recruit will always defeat the most decorated pre-modern units) or increase the factor by which unit power increases with advancements. The first is unrealistic and arbitrary, and the second magnifies the importance of every jump in military tech, which gives an increasing advantage to players who go on a military tech rush (already a very potent strategy). Anyhow, one incident of (veteran, fortified) Knight over (badly damaged) Gunship doesn't prove anything to me. We'll see how the balance really works out when the game hits the streets this week.

If you watch the gameplay video, you can tell that the reviewer had a rather depleted helicopter attacking a well-promoted knight who was fortified on a hill. It looks as if he was fishing for an 'ancient defeats modern' victory to talk about. Also, I think that the Gunship unit (the helicopter) is something of a specialty: good against tanks, but not so good against everything else.

I personally have no problem with logistics being behind the scenes in a game where the quickest turn takes a full year. (IIRC, they are considered in Civ4 in that unit upkeep increases for units on enemy territory.) As for military organization, you could mod stuff like that in as new technologies or civics choices (e.g., give experience bonuses to units when you move away from civic choices like "caste system" and "hereditary rule"). But the bottom line is, if all you're interested in is a strategic military simulation, then there are lots of games better than Civilization.

I didn't find that review particularly useful or informative. They covered the basics pretty lightly-- anyone who has been following the game (or even who has read IGN's earlier previews) would know most of that already. The only bit the review adds is the score. (And who really trusts game site scores, anyway?) The fansite review by a beta tester that I cited above (here it is again) had far more information and coverage of how the new game concepts actually work.

By the way, to answer the initial poster's question, it has been confirmed that the game went gold yesterday and will ship to North American stores on the 25th. I think Europe gets it a week later.

Earlier I mentioned Beta testers and their commentary on the game's combat system without a link. Here's the example I was thinking of. Of particular interest to thousands of frustrated Civ fans over the past 15 (or so) years: "Using a program that simulates CivIV combat, I ran fifteen thousand Tank vs. Spearman fights and the Tank won them all." :D (Note also that the links at the top of the screen go to the author's take on other aspects of Civ 4.)

Upon further investigation, that is the case. Here is a fan-made tech tree with all pre-requisites mapped. A bit cluttered, but it does make it clear that you cannot research Constitutional Government without first discovering Code of Laws, or Artillery without first knowing how to make Steel.

The game has been beta tested by a hundred or so of the hardest-core Civilization fans. Their reviews are starting to hit fansites, and they seem to like the combat system much more than previous Civs. The advantage of the single-prerequisite system is that now there are lots of different research paths. You don't get the Civ3 problem where every Civ on the planet is always researching in unison (and the tech trading rate has, I believe, been toned down). You make your own unique technological path rather than follow the same path in every game like in previous Civs. There's a reason that Victoria doesn't look so good:

Chicken-thigh Chili (very approximate measurements) Start with about a pound and a half of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Saute them in some light oil until they're cooked through. Break them apart a bit with a wooden spoon. Put aside. Chop up about 2 cups each of onion and green bell pepper. Also chop up a cup of celery, a couple of jalapenos (remove seeds for milder chili, keep em for hot), and a few cloves of garlic. Get out your big ol' chili pot, and get it hot over medium to med-hi heat. Put a little olive oil in the bottom, and toss in the veggies and chicken. Add some salt and pepper. Stir occasionally to break the chicken apart. Once the veggies are cooked (when the onions are translucent), add your wet ingredients and seasonings. I go with 3-4 16 oz. cans (drained and rinsed) of kidney beans (and maybe a can of garbazos too, for variety), about 3 cans of diced or whole (break apart with wooden spoon) tomatoes, and 1 8 oz. can of tomato paste. For spices, start with 2-3 tbs. of chili powder, and throw in another couple of teaspoons of salt. Everything else is optional. Add some cumin, oregano, hot sauce, extra chili powder, or anything else you think would go well. Stir, reduce heat, and let simmer until it achieves the consistency you want (can take an hour or two). You can do this with ground meat (brown it in chili pot, drain, then add veggies; all the rest is the same), but that would be boring.

The #1 hit was an astrological chart. Apparantly, someone has designed an astrological system based on the Book of Enoch. The #2 hit, oddly enough, is something that I would get in trouble for posting or linking here .

I'm fairly anti-exploration in RPGs. Exploring isn't interesting unless there is something there worth finding. I don't just mean treasure or experience; rather, some interesting gameplay. I found the BG1 exploration really boring. I would dutifully clean all the 'black' off of the map, kill a few dozen xvarts, and grumble about what a complete waste of time that was. But the uncertainty kept me hooked-- I had to keep exploring everywhere, because there might be something good out there! I'd get frustrated for all the wasted time and angry at myself for meta-gaming, which made the game a lot less fun. I think that developers have a conundrum. They either go all out for free exploration, and end up with Morrowind, or they design interesting areas in out-of-the-way corners that most players are going to miss (e.g., the Modron Cube in PS:T). I'd rather see all the best design on the main track of the story than have it hidden where I'll never find it, and why put an area in if you're not going to design it well?

I'm not so worried about the combat balance. I think that'll be the most rigorously tested portion of the game; they won't put a game out where effective conquest or defense is too difficult. I understand the concern that armies will become 'monochromatic' as civs simply turn out their highest-power option over and over. Even so, I think that the division between melee units, mounted units, archery units, and artillery units should create considerable diversity. And the different types of promotions add to that. From what I've read they'll be pretty common. For example, barracks + feudalism civic = 3 promotions at unit creation. These can be used to improve specific aspects of the unit's performance (e.g., city raider, city garrison, guerilla).

Everything you need to know about Civ 4 may be found here. I think the streamlining mostly refers to: 1) Better worker automation. The AI workers in Civ 3 were so awful, you had no choice but to run them yourself. If this is improved, it will cut down on the tedium considerably. 2) Better advice for newbs. From what I've read, most decisions will come with suggestions from 2 advisors with different opinions. 3) More intuitive unit movement (left-click on unit, right-click on destination), and more ease of unit stacking & grouping. 4) More information on the main map screen, which means less clicking in and out of the city interface, the diplomatic interface, etc. EDIT: 5) The game will also supposedly be easier to mod. I know jack about this kind of thing, but they boast about XML and Python support (?).

Something like that. You got a little frame that you could place over the map that came with the game. You were asked to place one corner at a particular coordinate and count how many stars of a particular class (color) were visible in the frame. Since this was before color copiers were commonplace, it theoretically prevented easy copying. I recall the wheel device primarily from the original Pool or Radiance, and the Fool's Errand.

By the way, the AI valuation is the same for strategic resources. It values the resource based on how many cities will benefit from the resource's availability. So don't expect to get Coal for Rubber straight up from a civilization that's half your size.

Isn't there a way to levy a direct threat of war in a political context by threatening to revoke the implicit peace treaty between your nations? I think in that case the AI players do take better account of the relative power of the two nations, although I think you take a hit in international politics (since you're a nasty warlord). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There is an "Accept or We Attack" option in diplomacy, but, IIRC, it disappears as soon as you place something on the table. Thus, you can demand that the AI give you Furs, but you can't demand that they let you buy them for a reduced price.

This phenomenon takes place with regularity because the AI values luxuries by the number of happy faces they can produce in your nation (and assumes you do the same). Thus, if you have 20 cities, and they only have 10, you're getting twice as much benefit out of the deal that they are. In such a situation, they will demand a 2-1 trade. Marketplaces exacerbate this: If the luxury you want is your empires 6th, and all your cities have marketplaces, that creates a lot of happy faces, which means that those gems ain't gonna come cheap. Conversely, if you keep your empire really small (try winning a 1 city cultural victory by never building a settler or conquering a city!), luxuries are really cheap. It's counter-intuitive, yes, but it prevents you from fixing all your civil disorder problems too cheaply.

I'll back Fishboot up-- the AI does not 'magically' produce units in Civ3 (the expansions don't change this either). They do get a production bonus at higher levels (e.g., a 20% discount on all costs of production & research at emperor level), but smart play like controlling your workers manually can easily mitigate this advantage. The area where it feels like the AI is cheating most to me is in the technology race. The rate of AI cooperation (tech-trading) is way too high. On any difficulty above Warlord (unless you have a large lead in population/commerce), your best option is to set your research at 0 or 10% and trade for your techs. And checking every turn to see if any of your rivals have discovered Magnetism yet isn't a whole lot of fun. Other than that, the aggressiveness of the AI in the land-grab portion of the game took quite a bit of getting used to. The strategic resource system (a good idea in itself, if a bit inflexible) made owning a large land base far too valuable, and they tried to fix this with the huge corruption increases as your empire grew. I can see the logic, but it was far from an optimal system.

Anyone else read the title and think it was going to be about a mash-up between U2's most recent album and their first?

I'd rather have Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim adapting a work of William Shakespeare than Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, and Richard Stilgoe adapting a work of Gaston Leroux any day of the week. I think the weight of critical opinion is with me on this one. Charles Mingus: Pithecanthropus Erectus

Did they not get the memo from NWC when they bought the franchise? M&M games have been in 1st person since about 1985. Anyhow, FPSs don't interest me.