Civ IV

[metadigital]

Same engine as Pirates (2004), able to zoom in-to and out-of the terrain; shorter games (hours, like the original, rather than days, like the subsequent sequels):

 

gamespy p1

 

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... Religious beliefs have had just as much of an impact on history as political systems, but until now the Civilization games didn't tackle this topic. Civ IV is adding religion as a new gameplay angle. The designers are trying to avoid controversy by implementing it so that all religions function identically within the game -- they're just names -- but they'll have a big impact on the strategy.

 

Seven faiths are represented from around the world: Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Christian. Each faith is tied in with a certain technological advancement -- the first nation to discover that technology also discovers that religion, and has the option of making one of their cities the holy city for that faith. You can also choose a religion to be the official state religion of your nation.

 

Much like culture, religion helps to spread your influence beyond your political borders on the map. For instance, you can send out missionaries to try to convert citizens in other cities to your home religion. These converted citizens will not only send money to your empire, they'll be more likely to have favorable diplomatic relationships with you. ...

 

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... Of course, conquered people who have a different religion than your state religion will naturally be pretty unhappy. In later eras you can research technology to mitigate these effects, but religion now has to factor into your overall strategy. It adds another level of depth to the game, and hopefully won't ruffle too many feathers. ...

 

... Six victory conditions are available, so as with the earlier Civ games, there are plenty of avenues to explore. A "Domination" victory is achieved by simply controlling the majority of the planet, whereas a "Diplomatic" victory involves having the U.N. elect you as World Leader after you butter up the other leaders. A "Cultural" victory is available to whoever can get three cities that each have over 100,000 culture (build lots of theatres and monuments.) As before, you can also be the first to build a spaceship to colonize the Alpha Centauri system for the win.

 

One way to take over the world without slogging your way through years of combat is to form new, permanent alliances with other nations. This in effect joins two civs together, even to the point where they share line of sight and wonder bonuses. Choose your allies carefully: there are 26 different leaders available for the 18 different civilizations. It's the leader's personality that determines how a civilization behaves, not the civilization itself -- so if the French are being led by Louis the XIVth, your relationship with them will be considerably different than if Napoleon is in charge. ...

 

... Certain conditions might trigger off the appearance of a great scientist, a great engineer, a great merchant, a great holy man, or a great artist (who looks like Elvis, natch). Each has his or her own special abilities. You can have them hang out in a city to bestow long-term benefits. Or, you can use them up: a great engineer can be used, for instance, to instantly finish a city building project, while a scientist can instantly give you a new technology. Or, two great people can be combined to kick off a golden age for your nation. ...

[/i]

 

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(w00t)

[Walsingham]

"...as far as strategy goes, the military combat is both simplified and expanded on. Your units only have a single combat stat, so you don't have to worry about separate attack, defense, armor, or any of that. However, as an individual unit gains experience, you can train it with any number of upgrades. Some units can be taught to heal themselves and those around them. Or, you might opt to research the commando skill, which will eventually allow units to move through forests like they aren't there or use enemy railroads to slip behind the lines."

 

I don't like the sound of that. I think knicking the system from Panzer General would have been a good idea. Units entrench to varying degrees, and different terrain causes different types of combat to occur. Armour, even modern armour, would be harder pressed to winkle out infantry and guerrillas from cities and mountains. While infantry would be stuffed if they were caught in transit in open terrain by fast movers like tanks or cavalry. And so on.

 

I also think they missed the opportunity to involve logistics. It is supply of units that determines how they move on a map like that in Civ games, not their tactical speed. This would not just mean more work for the poor player, but give them more things to use, like natural lines of supply, such as the sea and great rivers. It would also add another element to research for warfare. So you are fighting with swords still, but have invented better oxcarts or the commisariat, or living off the land, and so you can out manoeuvre the opposition.

[metadigital]

I confess to being a little worried about the whole combat system, too. Then again, it is meant to be a turn-based strategy game, not real-time, and not a shooter, so I can conceivably overlook a "dumbed down" combat in order to maximize the strategy elements.

 

I would like to have the logistical tactics you identify incorporated into the strategem; perhaps this was a "realism" issue that caused more irritation and drew out the game too long for too little benefit?

 

I'm sure it was raised by the fanbase; after all those fans are amongst the most rabid of all ...

[Darque]

It's not Alpha Centauri 2... so... meh.

[metadigital]

But it's the original team. And they've added a lot of the stuff from Alpha Centuri, too.

[Darque]

meh.

 

I'm tired of Earth: Dawn of time forward.

[metadigital]

Oh well, not much scope for a civ game to please you, then.

 

Unless we assume that a global thermonuclear confrontation would reset the technology tree back to the stone-age, similar to the effect of Ceasar buring the Great Library two millennia ago ... then we could have Earth: from post-apocalyptic now forward!

[Guest Fishboot]

Did anyone else feel like Civilization 3 was a little too game-ish? I felt like the earlier two games had much more of a sense of emergent narrative, where you'd conquer the Earth as the Indians and you'd get a sense of, "What if this were how things turned out?" Whereas in Civ 3 many esoteric rules were introduced to combat the winning strategies that had been discovered in the earlier games (mainly early rapid expansion and creating an ultra-sprawl of cities) and the game seemed to lose a lot of its atmosphere in favor of strict strategic self-control and hard rules interactions. And past that, Firaxis had a nasty habit of patching out any imaginative strategies that players came up with, regardless of how much fun they were (Playing a "vassal state" strategy in the unpatched version of Civ 3 was great fun, if anyone was familiar with it). Combine that with the resource model which strongly favors gamisms like 2000 years of plundering an opponent's road to a horse square, and Civ 3 had too much game to it and not enough imagination.

 

On the other hand, I don't know how much of that is due only to the design of Civ 3 or if it's just that the basic Civilzation rules set has become too familiar.

[alanschu]

Units will still get defensive bonuses for being in easily defendable terrain.

 

However promotions can give you bonuses to fighting in these terrain types....which I'd imagine might make you a super defender if you had that sort of stuff as well.

 

 

I've heard that their new implementation is better for preventing such goofy things as "man with stick beats modern tank division" type stuff.

[Deraldin]

Units will still get defensive bonuses for being in easily defendable terrain.

 

However promotions can give you bonuses to fighting in these terrain types....which I'd imagine might make you a super defender if you had that sort of stuff as well.

 

 

I've heard that their new implementation is better for preventing such goofy things as "man with stick beats modern tank division" type stuff.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

If they get rid of that then the game will be a massive improvement over Civ 3. Nothing breaks immersion more than having a tank column stalled by a group of Legionaires.

[Darque]

Oh well, not much scope for a civ game to please you, then.

 

Unless we assume that a global thermonuclear confrontation would reset the technology tree back to the stone-age, similar to the effect of Ceasar buring the Great Library two millennia ago ... then we could have Earth: from post-apocalyptic now forward!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

My problem with "civ" is that it's old.

 

I played Civ v:1 on a friends comp waaaaaaaay back when.... well way back when for me.

 

I also played it as a rom on my comp a few years back.

 

I also played the living heck out of Civ 2.

 

Civ 3... was an abomination.

 

Between the "same ol' same ol'" factor and the fact they've lost their touch... I've no desire to buy a game I know will bore me. <_<

[Calax]

I think that Call to power had the most complexity. It actually became much too complex, I think that's why Civ3 was so simple in comparison. I think that it would be nice to live as an alliance and win the game. (Me and my friends usually do lan games and kick the crap out of 5 comps easy)

[Cantousent]

Now that you mention it, Fish, I thought civ 3 was a pain. Civs 1 and 2 were classics. Civ 3 was not.

[Reveilled]

Since it's not SMAC 2, I too will be hard to impress. But I'm willing to give the game a chance. It sounds interesting, but to be honest I'll be surprised if it lives up to this hype.

[alanschu]

Oh well, not much scope for a civ game to please you, then.

 

Unless we assume that a global thermonuclear confrontation would reset the technology tree back to the stone-age, similar to the effect of Ceasar buring the Great Library two millennia ago ... then we could have Earth: from post-apocalyptic now forward!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

My problem with "civ" is that it's old.

 

I played Civ v:1 on a friends comp waaaaaaaay back when.... well way back when for me.

 

I also played it as a rom on my comp a few years back.

 

I also played the living heck out of Civ 2.

 

Civ 3... was an abomination.

 

Between the "same ol' same ol'" factor and the fact they've lost their touch... I've no desire to buy a game I know will bore me. <_<

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

How is Alpha Centauri different?

 

I own and love Alpha Centauri, but the gameplay is essentially the same IMO. It's just on a different planet (with fungus!!!!)

[Reveilled]

Oh well, not much scope for a civ game to please you, then.

 

Unless we assume that a global thermonuclear confrontation would reset the technology tree back to the stone-age, similar to the effect of Ceasar buring the Great Library two millennia ago ... then we could have Earth: from post-apocalyptic now forward!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

My problem with "civ" is that it's old.

 

I played Civ v:1 on a friends comp waaaaaaaay back when.... well way back when for me.

 

I also played it as a rom on my comp a few years back.

 

I also played the living heck out of Civ 2.

 

Civ 3... was an abomination.

 

Between the "same ol' same ol'" factor and the fact they've lost their touch... I've no desire to buy a game I know will bore me. <_<

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

How is Alpha Centauri different?

 

I own and love Alpha Centauri, but the gameplay is essentially the same IMO. It's just on a different planet (with fungus!!!!)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

There was a unit workshop, technology voiceovers, a storyline, 3D terrain (this one, at least, is in Civ 4), and Social Engineering.

 

The gameplay itself was essentially the same, but there was a lot more to SMAC than just its gameplay.

[alanschu]

The "3D terrain" is meh IMO though. Did it actually have a tangible effect on the game? It was still a 2D grid that govered the game. Civ 4 truly has 3D terrain (although I'd imagine it's still tile based).

 

And the Social Engineering (which was great) is exactly what they are doing for Civ 4. No more set "Democracy, Communist" societies. You set the policies for personal freedoms, security, and whatnot, in virtually the exact same way as Alpha Centauri. I believe there's 5 different areas with 5 different choices each. One of them is even slavery, which has various bonuses for production. The neat thing is that Emancipation, while having no specific bonuses penalties to your state, creates unrest in all states that have slaves.

 

It kind of makes me wonder: have you actually looked into the game?

 

They are also (finally) having the AI fully respect your borders (since that was a huge complaint), and if you want, you can even shut your borders down if you want to be an isolationist. The only way they can enter your borders is by declaring war.

 

 

The unit workshop was neat, and I liked building planes that had colony modules on them, but for the most part it just let me build units of specific offensive/defensive values. I don't think this tangibly affects things in a large way over Civilization.

 

 

My favourite thing about Alpha Centauri was the United Nations stuff. Being able to vote on allowing disallowing certain things, setting up solar shades and whatnot was actually quite fun. And the social engineering

[Reveilled]

The "3D terrain" is meh IMO though.  Did it actually have a tangible effect on the game?  It was still a 2D grid that govered the game.  Civ 4 truly has 3D terrain (although I'd imagine it's still tile based).

 

And the Social Engineering (which was great) is exactly what they are doing for Civ 4.  No more set "Democracy, Communist" societies.  You set the policies for personal freedoms, security, and whatnot, in virtually the exact same way as Alpha Centauri.  I believe there's 5 different areas with 5 different choices each.  One of them is even slavery, which has various bonuses for production.  The neat thing is that Emancipation, while having no specific bonuses penalties to your state, creates unrest in all states that have slaves.

 

It kind of makes me wonder: have you actually looked into the game?

 

They are also (finally) having the AI fully respect your borders (since that was a huge complaint), and if you want, you can even shut your borders down if you want to be an isolationist.  The only way they can enter your borders is by declaring war.

 

 

The unit workshop was neat, and I liked building planes that had colony modules on them, but for the most part it just let me build units of specific offensive/defensive values.  I don't think this tangibly affects things in a large way over Civilization.

 

 

My favourite thing about Alpha Centauri was the United Nations stuff.  Being able to vote on allowing disallowing certain things, setting up solar shades and whatnot was actually quite fun.  And the social engineering 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I have looked at the game.

 

And the workshop maybe didn't affect things in a tangible way, but it was fun, and that's all that matters. The setting was also important. In that sense, Civilisation is the same old, same old. But by far, the things I liked most about SMAC were the voiceovers and the story. I can still quote word for word a hell of a lot of those technology lines, and my favourite part of the whole game was the voiceover for Retroviral Engineering.

[alanschu]

I have looked at the game.

How'd you miss the social engineering equivalents??? :D

 

I suppose there was a bit of charm with the voice overs for the technologies.

 

I like the idea Civ 4 has with making the Technologies less...required. If you want to research something that has two paths towards it, you only need one of the prereqs, so it won't end up with every civilization having the same technologies all the time. They possibilities of different leaders for some countries will affect how those counties are played. Louis XIV will play France differently than Napoleon.

 

And it sounds like they are adding a lot of individual flavour for the leaders, even of the same country. FDR has a very distinct and appropriate style of music, and it's individual to him. Plus, there's variations of it depending on the progress of your era, with it sounding more primitive in the early years, but having a more modern sound later in the game.

 

I guess they're also bringing back the Wonder videos too.

 

 

I also like what they're doing with the map. You can quickly tell what tiles are being worked on without having to go into the city map, as well as being able to tell what improvements, and especially wonders, exist in a city. I'm curious what the Great Wall would look like

 

Apparently, in an attempt to streamline the game, the early builds of the game didn't even have the city view window, with everything being done from the main map. Although the testers complained, and they added it in if that's your thing (I'll probably be in there a lot ).

 

I'm curious how they're going to work with religion, and I'm very interested in what they're "social engineering" equivalents are going to be.

 

 

Actually, the more I discuss it, the more I'm excited about this game. And since it's been in development since 2003, I'm optimistic about it being released by the end of the year.

 

 

On a final note, I've heard Sid himself is taking a more direct approach to the game. While not in any lead design positions (since he was Lead Designer/Programmer for Pirates!), it sounds like he's taking a much more proactive role in the game design now, much like he was when Firaxis was first formed (and Alpha Centauri hit the scene). Because of this, I'm confident the game will certainly be fun

[Reveilled]

I didn't miss the equivelants, I just forgot to mention them. And yes, all the things being talked about are interesting, but I remember the hype from before Civ 3, and I remember how disappointed I was, so I won't be holding my breath. If I'm wrong, so much the better.

 

The different leaders don't impress me too much, though, unless by 26 leaders for 18 different countries, they mean that the 18 countries have 26 leaders each. The AGCEEP mod for Europa Universallis 2 had AI files for almost 300 different leaders, all of whom would play differently. I hope it does mean 26 each, but I really, really doubt it.

[alanschu]

No it doesn't. It's 26 leaders in the game.

 

Try to have a unique flavour for 468 different leaders would be very expensive (and a waste of time IMO).

 

It sounds like something better suited for a mod (which the game is also being designed to be very moddable).

[Reveilled]

No it doesn't.  It's 26 leaders in the game.

 

Try to have a unique flavour for 468 different leaders would be very expensive (and a waste of time IMO).

 

It sounds like something better suited for a mod (which the game is also being designed to be very moddable).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I wouldn't consider it a waste of time, especially considering that 26 leaders for 18 countries clearly means that several countries are going to be less developed than others, which puts me in mind of an unfinished game. 468 leaders would be a great idea. One leader dies, and then his sucessor takes over, and so on, like an actual civilisation.

 

Why have five civs with only one leader?

[Darque]

How is Alpha Centauri different?

 

I own and love Alpha Centauri, but the gameplay is essentially the same IMO.  It's just on a different planet (with fungus!!!!)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I don't believe I said anything about "gameplay".

[Darque]

There was a unit workshop, technology voiceovers, a storyline, 3D terrain (this one, at least, is in Civ 4), and Social Engineering.

 

The gameplay itself was essentially the same, but there was a lot more to SMAC than just its gameplay.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ding! We have a winner!

[Child of Flame]

Can I end the world as we know it in a fiery apocalypse with my large armament of nuclear missiles? More importantly, will the other Civs retaliate and fire back? This is very important to me.