quote: Originally posted by Snapcase on 05-17-2001 09:54 AM GameSpy preview including two new screenshots!

There are three new screnshots

quote: Originally posted by Henrik on 05-17-2001 10:13 AM There are three new screnshots

Ah, Henrik, you beat me to it!

Seeing the 'culture' borders at work with several civs jostled together I am worried that it will result in a mess whenever two nations collide. Each will build new cities in available spots unhindered by the borders because of poor culture. Then the borders slowly grow into place leaving isolated pockets potentially cutting each other off from their capital. If you built a road away from your capital and founded a city at the end of it, you would consider both the city and the road as part of your domain even if the new city did not have the influence to push your culture further outward. I'm reminded of games like Disciples and Starcraft where you slowly change the terrain around your buildings to indicate your control. Your influence should flow outward along roads a lot further than across undeveloped tiles. Almost as if your cultural influence got the movement bonus I.e:

XXX
XXXXXXXXX
XXC~~~~~~C
XXXXXXXXX
XXX

Did you folks see the city screen? We can see the number of food/shields/luxuries each tile is contributing. It looks good.
I finally see what they meant by the city screen is on the map.
You will notice that the game just darkens the rest of the world and superimposing the city info on the map. This will avoid having to flip through screens. I see what Firaxis meant by keeping the player on the same map as much as possible.

Ralf: I remember that we discussed a lot about the city screen. What do you think of how civ3 shows the food/shield/luxury of each worked tile? it looks like the icons are little bigger. The amount of ressources that each tile is producing is a lot more obvious than before. I like it.

Civ3 is smokin' hot, people!

"We've completely animated all of the units in the
game," says Briggs, "that has been a real time killer. There are over 15,000 frames of animation
in the game.""

Now I like cool animations as much as the next man but I really would have preferred them to spend massive amounts of time on AI or gameplay rather than unit animations.

Civilization III
There really isn't much more to say about this than the title. Apparently, Sid Meier has come out of retirement to make one final game that will essentially make all other computer games obsolete. I mean computer strategy games. I doubt Civ3 could make KISS: Psycho Circus obsolete. But when it comes to all other strategy games, all King Sid really has to day is "tech tree" and people everywhere run for cover. One of the things I hear Firaxis is doing to make the game great is making the units be in 3D. I'm going to drop by and see if they're going to be doing any other things.

Master of Orion 3
I actually like the Master of Orion series more than Civilization. The criticism of space 4x games in the past has been that there isn't the familiar hook in terms of historical background that makes games like Civilization, Civilization, and even the Call to Power series (ok, maybe not the Call to Power series) so compelling. This was one of the theories put forward to explain why Call to Power outsold Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. With MOO3, Quicksilver is aiming to vastly expand the game universe in terms of such things as politics, all the while trying to make up for the absence of Steve Barcia, who is now developing games for the upcoming Nintendo Gamecube and doesn't want to have anything to do with you peons. In his place, the MOO3 team is being headed up by Alan Emrich, who used to do a lot of boardgaming, so this game should be all set.

quote: Seeing the 'culture' borders at work with several civs jostled together I am worried that it will result in a mess whenever two nations collide. Each will build new cities in available spots unhindered by the borders because of poor culture. Then the borders slowly grow into place leaving isolated pockets potentially cutting each other off from their capital.

I don't think that will happen because of the ability of culture to take over cities. Why would you or your enemy build too close to each other when you know that when the older cities get more culture they are going to take over your new cities? Another thing is that I think this is an extreme example. You are looking at at least 3 civilizations all clumped together in a very small space, but it could actually be more than that originally. It looks like the Americans took over one of the Native American civs. Look at the tribal warrior at the bottom of the screen. It also looks like Salamanca may have gotten taken by some other non-Spanish civ.

quote: If you built a road away from your capital and founded a city at the end of it, you would consider both the city and the road as part of your domain even if the new city did not have the influence to push your culture further outward. I'm reminded of games like Disciples and Starcraft where you slowly change the terrain around your buildings to indicate your control. Your influence should flow outward along roads a lot further than across undeveloped tiles. Almost as if your cultural influence got the movement bonus I.e:

How do you know that isn't the way it works in some respect. If you are attached by road to the capital city maybe you do start off with some culture in new cities as long as the capital city has a certain amount of it's own. But you shouldn't get lots of culture with a new city because of the chances of ICS.

That all-inportant visible city-area tile feedback, has NOT been "streamlined away" after all, as it was in CTP-2. Click on the blue link and check it out. I guess I suspected that all along - but its really nice and reassuring to get 100% confirming screenshot anyway. Great!!

Two extra-important milestones left to go:

1: Artificall Intelligence

I like the diplomacy screen, although I was hoping the leader picture would take up half the screen like it did in Civ1. I /really/ liked that look. The little tiny boxed leader is less impressive, although it'll probably be a different story with animation and civilization appropriate music. I can understand why they had to shrink the leader to allow all the different options, but maybe they could be twice that size? So much more atmospheric the Civ1 way.... mmmm....

Twelve population icons are shown; one is an entertainer. Twelve squares are being worked, so I conclude that the "free" city square is still alive and well.

Although the city contains twelve citizens, the food box size is only 40. Does this mean the food box is constant in size? Yet another anti-ICS measure?

EVERY square is generating at least one dollar sign (trade arrows from Civ2). Although the total is shown as 19, the trade breakdown shows 13 arrows going into the treasure chest and 9 arrows into the beaker. Maybe there's a marketplace improvement that isn't shown?

The temple is shown with one smiley face; luxuries are shown generating six smiley faces. Maybe temples, luxuries, and entertainers will work in the same way to make people happy now?

The cyan triangle above the (rather strangely pictured) colosseum project probably opens the build queue.

The barracks is the only building shown with a support cost (red $ next to it in the list).

City population is being calculated by a different algorithm than Civ 2, which would put a 12 citizen city at 660,000.

Those appear to be desert squares next to the river that are generating three food (and no shields) each. Has the production of desert squares changed?

Notes:
*I can see they use the same icon for civil disorder as in SMAC.

*The colosseum in the city screen looks like a mayan temple...

*A new unit: Privateer

*The city semms to grow out of its square

*The "red" is now a civ(look at the city screen)

*The map looks better than before(forests, roads). There you can see, the ones that didn't like that; it DID change!

quote: Originally posted by DaveV on 05-17-2001 02:28 PM The rules on irrigation seem to have changed. I don't think any of the irrigated squares to the east of the city has access to a river or an ocean square, and the single irrigated square to the south definitely doesn't. So none of those squares could be irrigated in Civ 2.

Check out the city "Hippur" in the background: they also have tiles that couldnt be irrigated with Civ-2 irrigation-rules. I hope they havent chanced the old rules - only irrigating tiles next to river/sea/ocean/irrigated tile seemed sensible. Perhaps thet have done it anyway in order to make it easier on the AI.

quote: Originally posted by vgriph on 05-17-2001 02:53 PM The picture of the production doesn't seem to be a Colosseum to me. I guess it's a temple. The Cityscreen has changed a lot since the Baltimore screenshot, and that icon isn't probably working jet. Still I think that the graphics and numbers that showed production in the Baltimore Screenshot looked better.

well, it STANDS "Colosseum" under the picture. Therefor I really think it must be that. Don't you?

If there are any Firaxis people reading these boards for reactions, one suggestion: the improvements section shows only 4 improvements at once, which is not enough. There's gonna be a ton of scolling up and down that menu if you keep it that way. That sucks- I want to see everything I need in one glance. I assume the space next to it is gonna be used for wonders, once the city starts having some. But if you reduce the spacing around the words "Improvements", "Garrison" and "Pollution" like you do with "Production", and reduce empty space below Garrison, narrow the width of Pollution (so more units in Garrison before you have to scoll), you'd be able to fit 6 instead of four Improvements and Wonders before needing to scroll. I assume the unit pics next to each improvement are placeholder graphics for where little graphics of improvements will be. Maybe have a graphical option not to include those little graphics, in which case the words that could fit would double, and scrolling would be very rare.

I also second the notion mentioned above that roads (or possibly fortresses) create border effects of their own. Maybe this too could be related to culture: only civs with strong cultures get roads and borders outside their city limits to have borders. At first just the squares they're on, later the squares next to them as well. Cos as mentioned above also, culture and political control does flow much more along roads and controlled points than in a perfect circle out of a city.

Perhaps, rather than simply huge leaps from having borders of 1, then 2, then 3, if you give effects to roads and/or forts, you could have more gradients of the culture effect. For instance, at first you get borders on roads or forts within two squares of existing borders, but later within 4, and so forth. These could be intermediate steps between making the big leaps between radiuses around your cities.

Yeah and the shore line looks nice

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-17-2001 05:04 PM If there are any Firaxis people reading these boards for reactions, one suggestion: the improvements section shows only 4 improvements at once, which is not enough. There's gonna be a ton of scolling up and down that menu if you keep it that way.

Agree! Firaxis, please minimize scrolling/clicking as much as possible.

quote: I assume the space next to it is gonna be used for wonders, once the city starts having some.

For Wonders? Is that likely? A single city have (at most) 3-4 Wonders and most cities dont have any Wonders at all. I say DONT split the city CI:s/Wonders information into two seperate scroll-sections. Its too inefficient. I want to see at least 8 improvements at once, before I am forced to scroll.

quote: Oh yeah, one more thought. The graphic for Irrigation sucks. These look more like chicken scratches than anything.

In image20 the civ is red and the units have red armour and the like on them! (Has anyone else seen this?)

In imaage18, the Americans are a light blue civ...notice how their units have light blue colours on them?

quote: Originally posted by aCa on 05-17-2001 06:00 PM In Gamespy img 18 I was wondering one small thing. Why is there no line around the city Bactra. I know u get no border when setteling a new city, BUT the city Onnontare have a no border, BUT have a line around. What do this mean?

What the borders tell us is how many culture points those cities are generating. Bactra (apparently) has no culture rating, which probably means they have only produced military units and have no luxury items or inprovements that creates culture. As for Onnontare, it probably just built an improvement of some sort so it finally has a border, but just around the main city, but since cultural improvements create more culture with time, this city's border will eventually grow larger.

Maybe the problem with the irrigation is there's no hint there are any actual farms or crops there. Just a bunch of lines.