Review by "Yin26" (Part 2/3)

[DanQ]

"Yin26", a long-time "on" and "off" poster on Apolyton Civilization Site`s (ACS) forums and strategy gamer, has completed his review of Civilization IV exclusively for ACS. He received his copy of the game thanks to funds raised through an effort in ACS` Civ community earlier this year.

Yin26`s ~11,000 word review has been broken up into three parts. Part 1 was published last week [see related story], and Part 2 has been published today. It is entitled "CivIV According to Soren". "Another rarely used method of reviewing a game is to judge it against the developer’s stated goals. Perhaps this is hard in many cases because developer’s goals aren’t always there in anything more than marketing hype. Soren, however, wrote one of the best Afterwords I have read in a gaming manual, and I think his view of [the game] deserves some discussion".

More commonly referred to as just "Yin", the third and final part of "Yin26"`s review is scheduled to be published on December 20th. Notably vocal and critical in the past of Alpha Centauri, Civilization: Call to Power and more recently Civilization III, the 34-year-old lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife and two young daughters.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Aeson]

First, I'll just qualify my entire post... I think it's perfectly alright to want PW over Workers, stacked combat, more historic representations, ect.

Also, workers do little more, in my view, than add needless micromanagement and drag to the game.

And in my view they are integral to the Civilization series, and the most enjoyable and thought provoking aspect of CIV. (Unit improving terrain... regardless of what it's called.)

Finally, because cities eventually have nothing very useful to build at certain points (or perhaps there are times you actually want to STOP city growth), these workers become generators of free tile improvements. It's a no brainer to spam these guys like crazy.

Spamming Workers like crazy is a horrible idea from an efficiency standpoint. Maybe this is why you end up with:

By the late game, I have a dozen or more of these guys sitting idle or cluttering the map, slowing down performance.

If you do end up with more Workers than you need (I find capturing them to give me too many) they make nice gifts for your allies, potentially for your enemies too, and in any case can be disbanded. You are paying support costs for those Workers, so don't keep unnecessary ones around.

Eliminating them will, I believe, encourage players to think more carefully about how to place tile improvements (and these improvements should actually cost gold or nearby city production points!), all the while speeding up the C[entral] P[rocessing] U[unit (CPU)] performance and limiting map clutter.

Workers cost gold to support. They cost Food and Production to produce. Terrain improvements are the result of that investment. What you are asking for (so far) already exists.

Thinking about how to improve your tiles is already encouraged by efficiency. Having to tell a Worker to improve the tile is really no different then telling a city to improve the tile, except as you noted with the tactical nature of protecting/capturing Workers, and a little extra thought involved in determining optimal improvement queues to best use movement.

However, you say yourself that “it did put a lot of workers out of a job, though.” Indeed, which argues further for taking workers out of the game!

It doesn't argue for taking Workers out of the game at all. It argues for taking pollution out of the game, as it was deemed an unnecessary tedium, and that without pollution, there will be less overal tasks for Workers to perform. That has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the other Worker tasks are to be deemed an unnecessary tedium. Regardless of what that determination is.

Golden Ages often come too late in the game to have a real impact, but the city specialization scheme tied to strategic placement of cities by resources is excellent.

GAs can occur as soon as you choose them too and can get 2 GP. I've used them as early as Construction... and then continuously from then on until Domination was triggered.

GAs can have real impact on the game when used correctly.

However, please consider a harsher cap on the number of cities you can reasonably hold, because by the end game you can hold dozens and dozens of cities with no penalty (other than tedium).

Big empires are a lot of the fun of Civ for me and many others. CIV doesn't force you to run a big empire to compete (except for Domination and generally Conquest), so if you don't like running them... don't! Please leave the ability to run more than a Mom and Pop shop for those of us who actually like Domination.

If you want more difficulty in obtaining and holding cities in the late game, move up some difficulty levels. That's what they are there for.

Also, it seems like many of the civic choices lose any allure once you discover choices deeper down the tree, which seems to mean that all players (human and A[rtificial] I[ntelligence (AI)) will tend toward similar choices (or chose wrong paths foolishly). True, the fact that you can mix and match these to fit a certain strategy is a move in the right direction, but I think civics needs more work. Part of the problem, really, is that economies of scale begin to make most choices rather meaningless by the end game.

No way am I choosing the same Civics as the AI. I vary my Civic choices to fit the situation, which is really what the SPI trait is all about in fact. If you always just sit in the same Civics, you're missing out on a lot of potential.

As for the late game not mattering in your experience, again move to a more difficult level. It just sounds like you're beating Noble/Prince (or whatever you're playing) too easily, and blaming game mechanics for not being fun because they don't matter when the game is already over. So play in a setting where the game won't be over until it's actually over.

Here's a brain teaser for you, though: If I get a -4 relationship hit with a Christian Civ just because my state religion is Muslim, how come my cities have Christians and Muslims in them but suffer no loss in production or rise in unhappiness?

If you go to war with the Christian civ, your Christian population will be unhappy with you.

The relationship modifiers are Leader personality. I think you're reading too much into them. They apply to the Leader, not necessarily members of the Religion that Leader belongs too.

Also, as long as units can heal for free, the idea of collateral damage as a stack killer is effectively neutered.

This is only true for those who don't know how to use collateral damage and follow up on it properly. Collateral damage rips apart stacks when used right.

Admittedly, the lower difficulty AI doesn't use collateral damage very well, because it doesn't generally have enough units to follow up and finish off the stack once it's injured. But that's part of why it's "lower".

Many, many times I have simply waited to let my units in a huge stack heal before pressing my attack again. Often there were fresh units also being sent as reinforcements as well. Given that there is no added cost for me to heal (even in enemy territory, which I find odd), sieges become too easy, and only the most careless player would abuse his stack against area splash units to such a degree that it decides that battle against the AI. Charging the player some g.p. for healing units, however, would really change this dynamic!

You are already losing gold by spending time healing, especially in enemy territory. You are paying support costs for units. You are paying supply costs for units out of your territory. Charging gold for healing would just require swapping out supply costs and replacing it with healing costs. If actually changing the economics, then the game would simply need to be rebalanced around it, and the end result would be the same, just with a different label.

There are other indirect tradeoffs to waiting around too. The main one is you are simply losing time. It may be necessary to lose that time, but it's still losing time. There are a plethora of ways this can come back to bite you. Healing in enemy territory is especially slow, so by healing in enemy territory, you are exacerbating this effect.

If you want more challenge step up some difficulty levels. That's what they are there for.

[Robert Plomp]

yin, you make technical reviews, you have some good points, and sometimes you have a good points while it's just that there are more good points to chose from.

Anyway, I think your review lacks a soul. There's no emtion, it's like you're reviewing a game like you would review an application. Perhaps the soul will come in the 3rd parth though

One question to you, are you a good civ player?
When I'm reading your review I get the impression that you're just a casual civ-player, not a veteran who played lots of games and knows all the ins and outs, not just of cIV but of the enire civ-series. (civ1-4)

[yin26]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Aeson
First, I'll just qualify my entire post... I think it's perfectly alright to want PW over Workers, stacked combat, more historic representations, ect. And in my view they are integral to the Civilization series, and the most enjoyable and thought provoking aspect of CIV. (Unit improving terrain... regardless of what it's called.)[/q]

Likewise, I understand your views and thank you for taking the time to reply!

If you do end up with more Workers than you need (I find capturing them to give me too many) they make nice gifts for your allies, potentially for your enemies too, and in any case can be disbanded. You are paying support costs for those Workers, so don't keep unnecessary ones around.

Those are good points. I only spam these guys when I can afford them, though, and I still see from pure efficiency that having them on the screen at all represents a drag on the game. But this is a matter of preference, and I think most Civ players think the way you do about it, so I'm in the minority.

Workers cost gold to support. They cost Food and Production to produce. Terrain improvements are the result of that investment. What you are asking for (so far) already exists.

But what about when the coffers are overflowing and there's nothing (important) left to build in your cities? That is an end game question. I also think, though, that the bang for the buck with workers gets too high starting from the mid game. The early game, though, is great all around, including the workers. This is why I think maybe a hybrid system (switching to PW upon discovering a mid-late game tech would be great).

Thinking about how to improve your tiles is already encouraged by efficiency. Having to tell a Worker to improve the tile is really no different then telling a city to improve the tile, except as you noted with the tactical nature of protecting/capturing Workers, and a little extra thought involved in determining optimal improvement queues to best use movement.

To some degree, as the automation of workers no doubt will improve, I'm generally happy from the mid game onward just automating them. Frankly, though, I'd like to go a step further and have a "hide workers unless they are threatened" option, just to clear up the map and shave off a little processing power.

It doesn't argue for taking Workers out of the game at all. It argues for taking pollution out of the game, as it was deemed an unnecessary tedium, and that without pollution, there will be less overal tasks for Workers to perform. That has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the other Worker tasks are to be deemed an unnecessary tedium. Regardless of what that determination is.

I see your point. I also think, though, this argues that perhaps many more of the tile micromanagement tasks could be automated/streamlined and we can just be done with it. But we've covered this ground!

GAs can occur as soon as you choose them too and can get 2 GP. I've used them as early as Construction... and then continuously from then on until Domination was triggered.

Yes, if you beeline for a GA, you are right. Generally, though, I just don't see that GA's have much effect on the game. They don't last long, for one, and the overall bonus, while nice, doesn't jolt me. Still, I imagine in the right circumstances they can make a bigger difference than I have yet to experience.

Big empires are a lot of the fun of Civ for me and many others. CIV doesn't force you to run a big empire to compete (except for Domination and generally Conquest), so if you don't like running them... don't! Please leave the ability to run more than a Mom and Pop shop for those of us who actually like Domination.

That's fair. We just differ on this point as well. I think the end game in Civ gets mired in city-based tedium. I'd much rather, for instance, have cities get grouped into "states" that can produce just as many units but become, in effect, 4 or 5 (however many cities would make a state) building queues / production centers all under one roof. Yes, those individual cities could no longer specialize, but the states themselves could. For me, this is a more interesting way of handling the economy of scale issue common to all games like this.

Again, cities are great for me from the early to mid game. But I would love to see the dynamic change toward the end game.

If you want more difficulty in obtaining and holding cities in the late game, move up some difficulty levels. That's what they are there for.

Part 3 of the review talks about difficulty levels, and you are right to a point. But once you effectively start the steamrolling process, the same issues are left. Running out of the tech tree, for example, isn't going to be solved on a higher difficulty level. Delayed, sure. A bigger issue, though, that I didn't have time to get to is how the AI wages its late game. For example, it uses seige effectively on city defense at times but *not* as the super effective city destroyer system that the human often employs. So I see a lot of room for making the end game more interesting at all difficulty levels, though I am sure the beta testers are working hard on this.

No way am I choosing the same Civics as the AI. I vary my Civic choices to fit the situation, which is really what the SPI trait is all about in fact. If you always just sit in the same Civics, you're missing out on a lot of potential.

I postulated that the AI should copy *your* civics choices. Again, from early to mid game, these are fine and sometimes present some interesting choices. At a certain point toward the late game, though, I just see that too many of the Civics are no longer useful. You are right, of course, that in specific situations switching some of the civics around is a very nice option to have and handily beats the generic government approach used previously.

As for the late game not mattering in your experience, again move to a more difficult level. It just sounds like you're beating Noble/Prince (or whatever you're playing) too easily, and blaming game mechanics for not being fun because they don't matter when the game is already over. So play in a setting where the game won't be over until it's actually over.

Again, Part 3 gets at this, and there is a lot to what you are saying. Clearly, though, there is room to improve the end game, and we all as fans of the series should do our best to give Firaxis some ideas on this.

If you go to war with the Christian civ, your Christian population will be unhappy with you. The relationship modifiers are Leader personality. I think you're reading too much into them. They apply to the Leader, not necessarily members of the Religion that Leader belongs too.

Don't get me wrong: I think that the religion mechanic is a step in the right direction. It seemed to be handled with too much caution, though. Perhaps this element can be refined in the X-pack to make religion a much more interesting mechanic.

This is only true for those who don't know how to use collateral damage and follow up on it properly. Collateral damage rips apart stacks when used right. Admittedly, the lower difficulty AI doesn't use collateral damage very well, because it doesn't generally have enough units to follow up and finish off the stack once it's injured. But that's part of why it's "lower".

I'd be happy if it were *impossible* to heal your units in enemy territory without a supply wagon. This would be a great first step. I also would add on top of the built-in support costs an added cost for healing units. This only makes sense and would, I think, make waging war a more interesting prospect.

You are already losing gold by spending time healing, especially in enemy territory. You are paying support costs for units. You are paying supply costs for units out of your territory. Charging gold for healing would just require swapping out supply costs and replacing it with healing costs. If actually changing the economics, then the game would simply need to be rebalanced around it, and the end result would be the same, just with a different label.

Again, I would have healing cost you on top of your support cost, not swapping the two. While there might have to be some changes to the overall economic model to allow warmongers their day, I think it would make waging war require a lot more skill. Nothing wrong with that.

There are other indirect tradeoffs to waiting around too. The main one is you are simply losing time. It may be necessary to lose that time, but it's still losing time. There are a plethora of ways this can come back to bite you. Healing in enemy territory is especially slow, so by healing in enemy territory, you are exacerbating this effect.

It's slow but still possible and, despite support costs, free. I think we are on the same page of wanting a harder endgame, however! I love Domination Victory except for the areas that I think can be tweaked. I hope the fans and Firaxis can find ways to improve the system without breaking it.

Thanks again for the reply. Let's see how the game develops.

[yin26]

Originally posted by CyberShy
yin, you make technical reviews, you have some good points, and sometimes you have a good points while it's just that there are more good points to chose from.

Sure there is more to say! I think 11,000 words was already pushing it from me, though. You should share your review with Poly. I bet it would be a fun read.

Anyway, I think your review lacks a soul. There's no emtion, it's like you're reviewing a game like you would review an application. Perhaps the soul will come in the 3rd parth though

I specifically tried to cut out emotion, so you are right on that point. Also tried to review the game like an application -- because that's what it is to me. If you allow emotion to cloud what the actual application mechanics are, then you miss opportunities for improving things. I understand you take an emotional approach to Civ, so my style of reviewing isn't going to please you all that much. Part 3, while taking an entirely different approach, is still devoid of emotion and looks at some dry game mechanic issues. I do offer some ideas for Civ 4, however, and maybe some of those will interest you.

One question to you, are you a good civ player?
When I'm reading your review I get the impression that you're just a casual civ-player, not a veteran who played lots of games and knows all the ins and outs, not just of cIV but of the enire civ-series. (civ1-4)

You have used that question on me before, and I think you confuse "good player" with "tons of games played." I play a good game of Civ, but I am NOT playing it all the time like many others are. To some degree, I think this actually gives me some needed distance when reviewing the game. It is not a part of my life that I rely on.

By the same token, I am by no means an expert in Civ trivia. I all but skipped Civ 3 so come to Civ 4 a bit rusty and unclear about the series history to some extent. Again, though, I think this adds value to my review because most of the target audience will not know "all the ins and outs" of the game. They will likely choose Noble setting and see what happens. Thus my review focused on that.

I'll just say, too, that I felt an obligation to complete my review in a timely manner. I would come home sometimes late at night from work and, despite being quite tired, work through as much Civ 4 as I could before losing focus. I'd take good notes on impressions as they hit me. Part 3 has 41 screenshots, too. More like stream of consciouness, which I think is important for Firaxis and potential buyers to consider.

Obviously I have learned a lot more about the game since the review was finished several weeks ago. But this is the nature of the review process: It's a snapshot in time, not the Bible. If you want a true Civ fanatic to review the game, you should prod your favorite candidate. It would be a completely different kind of review -- more useful to some, less useful to others.

[Stuie]

I wholeheartedly agree with Yin on the religion comments. As is, there's no real "choice" involved, you can beeline for every religion with little consequence. If some sort of friction were introduced at the city level, the player would be forced to decide if it was safe to go after a second religion (or a third... or run the table). It would also give Theocracy more meaning - keeping the spread of foreign religions out becomes more important. And finally, it's that much more reason to spread multiple religions in enemy Civ's cities. Also, if each religion provided some sort of unique benefits, then the player would need to think about whether to go after Buddism or Hinduism, depending on the benefits confered.

I know Firaxis was trying to stay "safe" with religion, but I think they went a little too far, thus resulting in a slightly bland game mechanic.

[Cort Haus]

Workers

I get the odd moment of 'worker-tedium-blues' in Civ 4 but not as much as in Civ 3 where I was forever pushing hundreds of the little buggers about. By speeding up many tasks (jungle, mining) you don't need a swarm of them now to get the job done. I didn't mind Public Works in CTP, and I take the point about map-clutter, but workers in the early game are definitely part of the fun.

I never find there's nothing to build but workers, but I agree that some of the automation needs improving. Chopping is mentioned a lot but knocking down towns for farms is tragic. 2 workers on auto once did did more economic pillage damage to me in a few turns than thousands of years of invaders.

Golden Ages

These are definitely toned down in power from Civ 3, which was probably needed, but their main source (Great People) is something of an art form to optimise. Personally I'm not skilled enough yet to make enough of these without hurting other aspects of my game. ('must ... master ... GP pumps' ) I have noticed though how experienced players claim strong results from GA's.

Civics

Like Great People, Civics take some mastering. As was said above, SPI civs can do amazing things with Civics, and are a great way for players to learn what they can do. Quibbles about their 'realism' are not too important, IMV. I don't think there's a convergance, though obviously some older civics are less appropriate to the end-game.

OR-gates

I think these are one of the best features in Civ 4. They offer strategic alternatives to tech choices that we haven't had before, and help avoid the 'recipie' approach to strategy. You should check out the discussions on the Strategy Forum sometime, Yin, and you'll see how many ways there are to play this game.

Religion

Calls to make the religion 'more realistic' are understandable I suppose but I reckon doing that would only open up a can of IWS (Infinite Whining Spam) on the forums that would completely overshadow whatever was trying to be achieved.

Stacked Combat

Now that would be revolutionary for the Sid Meier franchise. I quite liked it on CTP, and I did like HOMM combat, but I don't know if the HOMM-style 'chessboard' is too low-level for an empire-builder game. Civ 4 promotions are OK, and fun, though the fact that I've never had a unit with more than about 17HP says much about my playstyle, I guess.

[Cort Haus]

On Religion again, if Saladin should not be allowed to be Jewish, then should Montezuma be allowed to exist in the later eras, or should the USA Civ be allowed in the game at 4000BC? How can the French build the Pyramids?

So, it doesn't make sense to demand religious realism in the context of a gaming system that never pretends that realism is more important than playability. Having religious traits might be one way to go, but it doesn't appeal to me, and I think we've had enough religion introduced without elaborating on it. I'd rather see some sophistication added to the economic model - allowing production of commodities from raw materials, for example, like Colonization.

[Jeje2]

To me this approach is a huge

Very interesting to compare the result to what was the goals - If you only inted to build a house don't judge by the whole city.

My only question is that has Yin (Yin:I do trust you ... ... ... NOOT ) included all the major elements from design part? (As I don't have the game / haven't palyed - I would like to hear by someone, else than Yin, that this was all the major parts...) So that some "not favorable opinions to Yin's review just isn't quietly hussed away)

[yin26]

Cort Haus:

You should check out the discussions on the Strategy Forum sometime, Yin, and you'll see how many ways there are to play this game.

Oh, my argument isn't that there is a lack of ways to play the game (certainly this is a strength of Civ 4) but by making something like the tech tree more fluid and ahistorical, you might be encouraging running turbo to particular techs while diminishing some of the historical lessons.

As for religion, my point isn't about "realism" but that there is a logical game mechanic to be played with here that perhaps is missing. Again, if differing religion gives a -4 hit in relations, why can I have those same two religions in the same city with no problems? There should be more cost-benefit mechanisms for religion as a game mechanic. I am not interested in whether or not Saladin could be Jewish, etc.

Thanks for your comments overall. Very interesting.

Jeje2

Thanks! I'll just answer as much as I can about that question: My review will necessarily have lots of blind spots and my own slant on everthing. For you, CyberShy and everybody else, I wish more players would take the time to do reviews.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by yin26
To some degree, as the automation of workers no doubt will improve, I'm generally happy from the mid game onward just automating them. Frankly, though, I'd like to go a step further and have a "hide workers unless they are threatened" option, just to clear up the map and shave off a little processing power.

That's a nifty idea actually. Should be easy enough to add too.

That's fair. We just differ on this point as well. I think the end game in Civ gets mired in city-based tedium. I'd much rather, for instance, have cities get grouped into "states" that can produce just as many units but become, in effect, 4 or 5 (however many cities would make a state) building queues / production centers all under one roof. Yes, those individual cities could no longer specialize, but the states themselves could. For me, this is a more interesting way of handling the economy of scale issue common to all games like this.

Another good idea that could be added as an option. I'd still want to control each individual city (at least on most maps).

Part 3 of the review talks about difficulty levels, and you are right to a point. But once you effectively start the steamrolling process, the same issues are left.

It's really just a matter of preference and approach to the game.

If you approach the game to have active competition, then once that competition has been beaten the game is over, even if the game doesn't recognize the win until later once a specific event has occurred. If you approach the game for relaxation, difficulty can have the opposite effect. Which is why the difficulty level approach is necessary. Choose the level of competition that closest matches what you are looking for from it.

If you approach the game simply to enjoy the gameplay, anything is possible. Allowing options is the best approach, not simply trading one player's preference for another. In mutually exclusive situations there may not be any right answer, just another one of those "ways" Soren is talking about.

I postulated that the AI should copy *your* civics choices. Again, from early to mid game, these are fine and sometimes present some interesting choices. At a certain point toward the late game, though, I just see that too many of the Civics are no longer useful. You are right, of course, that in specific situations switching some of the civics around is a very nice option to have and handily beats the generic government approach used previously.

So which approach should the AI copy? I've found uses for virtually every combination of Civics so far.

To me the late game is where the Civics shine. Non-SPI Leaders have to make difficult decisions about which way to focus their empire, and if/when Anarchy is worthwhile to deal with. SPI Leaders get to swap Civics almost at will, being able to pick up a lot of the value of each whenever it's deemed important.

Of course all this is irrellevent if you are playing in a situation that will not lead to anything interesting happening late-game.

Again, Part 3 gets at this, and there is a lot to what you are saying. Clearly, though, there is room to improve the end game, and we all as fans of the series should do our best to give Firaxis some ideas on this.

I think the late game is vastly improved by enabling (or rather not disabling) the Spaceship and Diplomatic victory conditions.

Don't get me wrong: I think that the religion mechanic is a step in the right direction. It seemed to be handled with too much caution, though. Perhaps this element can be refined in the X-pack to make religion a much more interesting mechanic.

The point I was making is that using the Leader's religious (in)tolerance doesn't actually have anything to do with the population's religious (in)tolerance. (In-game, and in reality. They can correspond, they don't have to.)

I'd be happy if it were *impossible* to heal your units in enemy territory without a supply wagon. This would be a great first step. I also would add on top of the built-in support costs an added cost for healing units. This only makes sense and would, I think, make waging war a more interesting prospect.

It's MM, which obviously has been targetted for elimination in many respects.

I'd prefer supply wagons myself, as I think in general Civ is at it's best when a unit (or other "marker" type) is responsible for enabling game mechanics, rather than game mechanics being abstracted. (Thus my position on Workers as well.)

The game balance itself, the system of tradeoffs, is not reliant on whether it is abstract or not. It can be balanced exactly the same regardless of the way it is represented in the game. To me the overriding concern is the game balance. I can live with an abstract support/supply model so long as it's effectively the same impact on gameplay as a less abstract model.

Again, I would have healing cost you on top of your support cost, not swapping the two. While there might have to be some changes to the overall economic model to allow warmongers their day, I think it would make waging war require a lot more skill. Nothing wrong with that.

And the end result of that will be making commerce a little more available, to balance out the extra commerce necessary. Or changing the balance, which could be done through either model.

If it did increase skill necessary*, it would always favor the player, as the player should be more skilled. The AI would need additional bonuses to compensate. Otherwise it would actually make warfare easier for the player overall, because the additional tactical overhead would impact the AI far more than the player.

*Which I don't necessarily agree with. Depending on the actual implementation it could be either way

It's slow but still possible and, despite support costs, free.

Healing is not free. You may not agree that the model is the right one to use, but at least admit the model encompasses costs for healing at an abstract level. Time, gold support, gold supply. Those are costs.

I often do not stop to heal up when invading, because while it strengthens my units, it's giving the opponent time to strengthen their own. Since I try to attack at critical junctures where I have an advantage to press, I want to press it as much as possible in that window of opportunity.

[Robert Plomp]

Originally posted by yin26
Cort Haus:
For you, CyberShy and everybody else, I wish more players would take the time to do reviews.

You do quiet a good job, you raise some points that are valid and would be raised as well in any review by me. (late game flies by too quick, ie.)

The thing you lack, like I said, is a soul. You more or less address the concepts one by one, you miss to address the bigger frame. The feel of the game. Like I said before. If I would make a review it would be flawed. I'm a fan. I can't review this game. Like factually you can't review it either. Well, we both can, but we're not able to review it fair. We have our ideas and presumptions and it's impossible to take a fair look at the game.

I can't read your review without having "yin wrote it, and he writes this because blablabla and he says things like that because of blablablabla"

That doesn't mean that it isn't fun and entertaining to read 'reviews' by fellow apolytoners though
I'm looking out for part 3. And you know, like you're firaxis worst critic, I'm yours

[Jaybe]

I'd prefer supply wagons myself, as I think in general Civ is at it's best when a unit (or other "marker" type) is responsible for enabling game mechanics, rather than game mechanics being abstracted.

Supply Wagons are represented by the medic promotion, obviously.

Medic I-or-II-promoted units could conceivably cost more in Supply Costs (e.g., count as 3 to 6 units each instead of 1), but the AI would obviously get discounts on it, as they do in many other financial aspects of the game. Sort of comes out in the wash.

REQUIRING medics to heal AT ALL in enemy territory would be just another player advantage, even if their supply costs were multiplied 10x. (IF or when such a thing became known or documented).

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by yin26

Oh, my argument isn't that there is a lack of ways to play the game (certainly this is a strength of Civ 4) but by making something like the tech tree more fluid and ahistorical, you might be encouraging running turbo to particular techs while diminishing some of the historical lessons.

Yes, running turbo to key techs is one way to play it, but there's only so far you can go. Beeliners face the risks of being exposed in other areas. Having the option of dashing for an economic improvement or free tech, rather than cautiously researching the next defender is what makes a good Civ game.

I'm not sure if there are serious 'historical lessons' to be learned from Civ, but even so I don't think too much damage will be done by permitting the idea that rocketry could follow from artillery rather than flight.

I suppose that a casual player wanting a stroll through history might expect things to happen in the 'right order'. The hardcore civver though, wants variety and options for replayability.

As for religion, my point isn't about "realism" but that there is a logical game mechanic to be played with here that perhaps is missing. Again, if differing religion gives a -4 hit in relations, why can I have those same two religions in the same city with no problems? There should be more cost-benefit mechanisms for religion as a game mechanic. I am not interested in whether or not Saladin could be Jewish, etc.

Would the 'ethnic tension' model within a city be fun? Players would have to spend the game either keeping their cities religiously pure (run theocracy) or suffer unhappiness from multiple religions. Maybe we could build Multifaith Counselling units that 'heal' troubled cities. No thanks. It also affects the game dynamic of Free Religion Civic (welcome diplomatic relief), and multiple holy buildings for happiness and culture - part of the culture victory, and general game balance.

So all this disruption to the game balance is proposed, and for what? The supposed realism of modelling ethnic tensions in cities? Of course the AI has to be programmed to deal with all this as well.

{EDIT - if not realism then logical consistency with inter-state religious tensions as you might put it}

So this is partly why I'm against going further down the religious road. I don't think more religious functionality is the best way to go, though tweaks might be possible, I'd rather the time was spent consolidating the gains - eg: teaching the AI to use the slider for cash to upgrade it's troops rather than a generous AI discount.

The AI does a good job with specialists and GP's - a lot better than me, at any rate. I reckon it could get stronger in other areas too, and a better AI is always preferable to me than marketable functionality add-ons, as far as XP development goes.

----

On another subject, Yin, your macro-management idea is interesting, but I can't see it applied to a Civ franchise game without being tested in another title first. If there were more TBS games about (ie more TBS players) there might be room for experimenting really new concepts like that without the risk of 'blowing the franchise'.

Like with workers, cities are fun at first, and some players are happy managing big empires, but there are those who might appreciate the interface moving up a level in abstraction at a certain point, so from worker & city management to provincial policy management. It might be interesting, but it wouldn't be Civ as we know it.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I haven't had enough time to check through ALL of the posts so far, so apologies if I repeat someone elses suggests. From what I understand, the problem with workers isn't whether to have them in the game or not, but how they are applied. I fully support having workers in the game, but do feel that having to manually move them around is just uneccessary MM. Instead, a hybrid system of CtP Public works and Civ3/4 workers might be best. i.e. you build the workers, but they remain attached to a given city (but can be moved between cities). From their they can be assigned to terrain improvements chosen-and paid for-in your public works screen, within a given range of the home city. The purpose of the workers would be to reduce the build time of a PW project, whilst still leaving them vulnerable to capture by enemy units-yet not having to physically manage them on a turn-by-turn basis.
That said, I am happy with the fact that at least they have made workers more interesting by giving players more strategic options in regards to what workers build. Even the CtP PW system, for all its positives, still ended up being mostly a choice between farms or mines-which was kinda boring .

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Cort Haus]

I wouldn't like workers to be tied to a local city. Forcing every city to build its own worker doesn't sound right. If you want a road, you need workers that can move.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You have misunderstood what I said. I never said that each city MUST have its own workers-or even that a worker would be 'tied to its city'. I simply meant that, unless 'rebased' to a new city, a worker would be considered to return to its 'home city' upon completion of a terraforming project. By the same token, though, any worker-in any city-can theoretically take part in any terroforming activity.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[yin26]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
On another subject, Yin, your macro-management idea is interesting, but I can't see it applied to a Civ franchise game without being tested in another title first. If there were more TBS games about (ie more TBS players) there might be room for experimenting really new concepts like that without the risk of 'blowing the franchise'.

Like with workers, cities are fun at first, and some players are happy managing big empires, but there are those who might appreciate the interface moving up a level in abstraction at a certain point, so from worker & city management to provincial policy management. It might be interesting, but it wouldn't be Civ as we know it.

You are right, of course. I imagine it's too big a departure for the franchise, but I think a game that figures out an approach like this would really bring some new life to the genre!

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
You have misunderstood what I said. I never said that each city MUST have its own workers-or even that a worker would be 'tied to its city'. I simply meant that, unless 'rebased' to a new city, a worker would be considered to return to its 'home city' upon completion of a terraforming project. By the same token, though, any worker-in any city-can theoretically take part in any terroforming activity.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

OK, I think I understand now. Once a worker had 'based' itself in a city, terraforming could be carried out PW-style without moving the worker around. For building roads towards an enemy, workers could be 'free-range'.

[alveolus]

Looong Lurker
First Post

I agree with the worker tedium and the system drag.

Thos solution could be points

Each worker has 2 points (3 for the fast worker)

Each improvement is worth so many points.

Than its just a function of allocation.

Automation could be by priority of points allocation

1. Maximum points to link
2. If all links, then .....

You could adjust the priority sequence as you see it.


The downside is that an AI could not capture a worker. There could be ways around this.

1. In war and foreign troops in your territory, always a percentage chance that yopu will loose some "worker points"
2. You could allocate points to specific parts of the map or to cities.


On a different note - Yin - the first part of the review pays homage to the Bayseian mathematical approach ro decision making.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Nope, in my model any plot you are terraforming is assumed to have as many workers as you assigned to it in the first place. This means that-if the plot is overrun by an enemy unit-there is a % chance of each unit getting either killed or captured in the process. Also, any plot which is blocked by an enemy unit will obviously not be accessible by certain workers based in certain cities-if that makes sense?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Robert Plomp]

A solution could be that you can assign some workers to a city and tell which tile improvements you want in that city, including a priority for each tile improvement.

These workers are still vulnarable for attacks from enemies. You can control them if you want. In fact it's a form of better automated worker-use.
You can keep some workers 'free' from automation, and move them yourself. and once in a while you can manage the tiles around a city. A pop-up could occur when all improvements have been made. "4 workers have finished all scheduled improvements for Rome, what do you want them to do next?"

Other nice things to implement is something like resting. Tired workers work slower. Say 100% workers work 100%, every turn they're busy they lose like 4% and every turn they rest they gain 6%. Working in groups may give them a 20% bonus for every additional worker. It must be possible to group them. And it should be possible to include armies for protection, so you get something like a worker-army, not for war-purproses though. You can move them as one unit, untill you de-group them.

It could be that workers work faster for their home-city as well. And if they're better protected. Maybe it should even be possible to specialize workers. Some are better at making roads, others are good at removing jungle, etc. In example, every time a worker finishes a road-tile, it gets a +5% road building specialiation. Same with chopping forests, building farms, etc. etc.

Something totally different could even be that you assign hammers (shields) from a city to the workers working the land around it, to speed the workers up.Ie. every hammer speeds one worker up by 50% This comes at the top of the already available bonusses.

Workers are cool. they're non-war units, it's great that these units are available. civ is not a war-game. There should be more civil units.

[Robert Plomp]

And the good thing is that we should be able to mod this all in

[LDiCesare]

I agree with almost every point Yin makes. I wish I had public works and stacked combat. I also agree with many of Aeson's comments, though, when he says "just get to a higher difficulty level". I think I may have to learn more of the game to make good use of civics and, maybe, Golden Ages.
The thing I would really like is stacked combat, like CtP2 or Dominions II (give orders to your troops before the battle, and see how they implement orders without being able to actually affect the game - this is great for TBS games, particularly with simultaneous moves).
I think that diplomacy hasn't been spoken much of in the review, though. How do you evaluate it, yin?

[kittenOFchaos]

Rubbish review.

Ignores vast swaths of the game that are positive developments and concentrates too much on "performance issues" which didn't even affect him.

Reading that review you'd think very little has changed and that the game is completely miserable and does not work on most machines.

A good review gives a concise overview of the game, what you get to do, if a sequel it introduces the main new changes and then evaluates. A good review will then put the game in perspective against the past games and the competition and suggests what could have been done better. I also should throw in jokes about beards and such to be amusing.


The review was not interesting to read, present the game in any way shape of form in a concise and simple to understand manner that someone new to the genre or just CivIV could take in and had no beard jokes.

Pathetic!

Part III better be good

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by yin26
I wish more players would take the time to do reviews.

I intend to write a review soon from a mainly Civ 3 players perspective, with a focus on gameplay and mechanics.

The areas I'd like to cover include leader traits, technology, build mechanics, terrain development, combat, economic model, specialists, religion, city specialisation, civics, national wonders, AI behaviour and diplomacy.

That's 13 subjects for starters, and there are probably a few more. So Yin is right to say that there's a lot of work needed to cover all bases, but that is itself is a function of the amount of change introduced in this version. It would be a shame for anyone to read a review which left them with the impression that not much has really changed, when it evidently has changed a lot.

[Jeje2]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
It would be a shame for anyone to read a review which left them with the impression that not much has really changed, when it evidently has changed a lot.

[joke]
New coach on his first pressconference
The previous coach lead this team to the edge of a high cliff, but rest assured under my command we have already taken a huge step forward [/joke]

So saying that much has changed doesn't conclude a lot... maybe it's even better to say nothing

[Jeje2]

Yin or somebody: two questions
(A friend showed me Civ4 for five minutes today - first time IRL seen)

1. Is it possible to get the GRID visible? (I want the grid I WANT I WANT!!!)
2. Tech three: How is it, from steal you can research railroad, but is steam engine compulsory or NOT? (Steam engine is in the railroad tech box top right corner)

[Jaybe]

Grid is toggled with Ctrl-T (for tiles)
Railroad requires both steel & steam engine. Techs in the top-right corner are requirements, then you need at least one of the linked lines.

[Jeje2]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Grid is toggled with Ctrl-T (for tiles)

Are you sure - we tried that one imediately with no success.

Railroad requires both steel & steam engine. Techs in the top-right corner are requirements, then you need at least one of the linked lines.

OK - now I get it