Civ IV

[metadigital]

You're shrewd Meta, I'll give you that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

:D

Thanks.

:cool:

[SteveThaiBinh]

Are we going to see a Tide of History or domino effect in Civ IV? It's been a factor in history that when one country changes - from Monarchy to Republic/Democracy in America, or to Communism in Russia, there's popular pressure - sometimes violent - to go the same way in other countries, and sometimes a wave of transitions across the world.

 

It will be interesting in this age of the decline of the state whether Civ IV incorporates non-state actors such as terrorists and multi-national corporations. I also liked GalCiv's approach in which trade also gave you income, making it very important to form stable alliances and defend your allies when they are threatened.

 

More espionage options would be good. Again from GalCiv, there's the idea that a foreign population has an opinion of your country, which you can discover through espionage and is affected by your relative social development, type of political system, and history of wars, alliances or trade links. Public opinion has always been a factor in wars and diplomacy, and in modern democracies it's arguably becoming the dominant factor.

[EnderAndrew]

Tide of History seems to suggest a super-power affecting smaller countries to an extent. Civ is about a small number of super-powers on a map with no real smaller countries.

[Darth_Schmarth]

Turbulence when changing governments is represented by Anarchy, and the attitude from civs with other governments. Anything can be improved, but it does okay at that. I personally see more urgent needs for improvement, such as the flawed RR situation discussed above.

[metadigital]

All true.

 

The Carthaginians were just a bunch of bankers, who paid mercenaries to fight all their battles for them. They were a respectable world power whislt Romulus and Remus were still suckling on their wolf-mother's teet. it took the brutal single-mindedness of the Romans and warfare, and three Punic wars, to finally topple their mediterranean trading empire; the Romans borrowed more than a few of their ideas (plumbing, economies of scale for farming, etc) before they obliterated their empire and paved their capital city and made up propaganda about their culture to try to remove them from history (He he).

 

Trade has never been well represented in Civ; I really liked the way Rome: Total War handled trade (where a sea port drastically improved trading ability and income).

 

I guess that ties in with the comments about improving sea vehicular speed and range, whilst de-emphasizing the railroads (a bit).

[SteveThaiBinh]

Tide of History seems to suggest a super-power affecting smaller countries to an extent.  Civ is about a small number of super-powers on a map with no real smaller countries.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's often the case, but not always. The French Revolution lead to political unrest in the UK, I think, and the Russian Revolution led to increased power of, and unrest by, Communists across the Europe in countries that were the Great Powers of the time. The so-called Third Wave of democratisation we've recently experienced didn't start with the fall of communism in Russia - arguably it started in Portugal.

[alanschu]

I am pretty sure they said there'll be nothing like Terrorism in the game.

 

Given the retar- I mean activists in the general public, I can understand this stance.

[metadigital]

I'm not sure what you're advocating, Steve. Are you suggesting that political discoveries are freebies across civs, so that when one civ discovers communism, say, anyone can change to it?

[SteveThaiBinh]

I'm not sure what you're advocating, Steve. Are you suggesting that political discoveries are freebies across civs, so that when one civ discovers communism, say, anyone can change to it?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why not? Political systems have always spread like wildfire. And not just that you can change to it, but that for a while, your population (especially if already not too happy) will be even more unhappy if you don't change to it.

[EnderAndrew]

I don't think they spread like wildfire. France elped us (Lafayette) gain our democracy, and we helped France gain theirs. France didn't randomly become democratic because we did.

 

Civ represents this where two Civs can cooperate and share discoveries.

 

I am also under the impression that tech trees and discoveries work completely diferent than before. You can completely skip prereqs, and there are no ages now.

[alanschu]

Yeah, no ages...and you only need one prereq (if it has more than one).

[metadigital]

I think Steve has a point, though, about government: it is a special case.

 

Firstly, any jack-the-insurrectionist will use whatever the current flavour-of-the-month is to achieve his goal of supplanting the exiting power structure with him at the top.

 

Secondly, it's not like you can keep a government system secret.

[Darth_Schmarth]

Secondly, it's not like you can keep a government system secret.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is another one of those things that Civ needs to improve on. Goverments are a very good example, but there's more. It's always taken too long in Civ to catch up in technology, as first-hand experience of a neighbour's or enemy's superior discoveries doesn't give any bonus in research.

 

Then there is the matter of upgrading your units. In Civ3, the AI sucks at this. They'll still have hordes of pikemen in the modern era, using up maintenance slots badly needed for infantry and tanks. It should be handled automatically to a certain extent, and/or a unit being obsolete should actually mean it's obsolete, so we get rid of the spearman-kills-tank syndrome. No one in their right mind would use a spear for defense when there are machine guns around, and no one would tell you to either.

[metadigital]

Wasn't there some auto-upgrading of exisiting units? (I.e. in the golden age?) Or am I thinking of some other game ... like Warcraft III

[alanschu]

Secondly, it's not like you can keep a government system secret.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is another one of those things that Civ needs to improve on. Goverments are a very good example, but there's more. It's always taken too long in Civ to catch up in technology, as first-hand experience of a neighbour's or enemy's superior discoveries doesn't give any bonus in research.

 

In Civ3, every additional nation that has a tech, grants bonuses to other nations researching that tech. Only the first nation to research a tech has to actually pay full research price.

 

Then there is the matter of upgrading your units. In Civ3, the AI sucks at this. They'll still have hordes of pikemen in the modern era, using up maintenance slots badly needed for infantry and tanks. It should be handled automatically to a certain extent, and/or a unit being obsolete should actually mean it's obsolete, so we get rid of the spearman-kills-tank syndrome. No one in their right mind would use a spear for defense when there are machine guns around, and no one would tell you to either.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I never had a problem with this. I always fought the latest infantry since I've reinstalled.

 

Is your game patched?

[Guest GroinOfDespair]

I want to simulate the inherent entropy in all societies and watch every single Empire fall, only to have a new one cannibalistically rise from the devoured remains of the previous one.

 

Why can't I do that?

 

I find it insulting that only 7 civs make it from the beginning of time to the end of time, and they are the same 7 civs, including Americans?

 

Where are the Druids?

[SteveThaiBinh]

I find it insulting that only 7 civs make it from the beginning of time to the end of time, and they are the same 7 civs, including Americans?

 

Where are the Druids?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you have expansion packs, you get the Celts. They're green, too.

 

It's not the same 7 civs all the time. Have you actually played this game?

[Deraldin]

I find it insulting that only 7 civs make it from the beginning of time to the end of time, and they are the same 7 civs, including Americans?

 

Where are the Druids?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you have expansion packs, you get the Celts. They're green, too.

 

It's not the same 7 civs all the time. Have you actually played this game?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah! You can get up to 16 at a time IIRC. "

[metadigital]

You can just keep cycling through them all, if you kill 'em fast enough and have the configuration set appropriately ...

[Darth_Schmarth]

Secondly, it's not like you can keep a government system secret.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is another one of those things that Civ needs to improve on. Goverments are a very good example, but there's more. It's always taken too long in Civ to catch up in technology, as first-hand experience of a neighbour's or enemy's superior discoveries doesn't give any bonus in research.

 

In Civ3, every additional nation that has a tech, grants bonuses to other nations researching that tech. Only the first nation to research a tech has to actually pay full research price.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This I know. The difference is still too big.

 

Then there is the matter of upgrading your units. In Civ3, the AI sucks at this. They'll still have hordes of pikemen in the modern era, using up maintenance slots badly needed for infantry and tanks. It should be handled automatically to a certain extent, and/or a unit being obsolete should actually mean it's obsolete, so we get rid of the spearman-kills-tank syndrome. No one in their right mind would use a spear for defense when there are machine guns around, and no one would tell you to either.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I never had a problem with this. I always fought the latest infantry since I've reinstalled.

 

Is your game patched?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This I envy. Haven't played in a year or so, so unless the patch you refer to were around by then I may not have been patched up enough.

[Calax]

I have never had the comps update their units. It's just not what they do, so my army of Panzers is always running into Spearmen or :shivers: Hoplites.

[Darth_Schmarth]

In fact you mostly do your AI enemy a favour by putting all those spearmen and pikemen out of their misery, so he can fill that troop quota back up with modern armour instead.

[alanschu]

I still meet the odd out of date unit. But that's usually because he doesn't actually have the other tech, or he's loooooow on money.

 

 

I thought you could tweak the "tech bonus" for other nations having a technology....but I can't seem to find it.

 

Could just be wishful thinking.

[metadigital]

Hoplites are cool, daddio. They're the dudes that the 300 Spartans are based on ...

[Darth_Schmarth]

Yeah, Hoplites would go into my cool book as well. Very handy defensive units early on.