What's in Civ4. Just the facts, ma'am.

[rommelgain]

In order for a spherical globe map to work, the map would have to be fairly large. In prior Civ games, each city represents a very large geographical area. Actually, scale wise, the cities are much closer in scope to states or provinces. Now you could simply remove all data from the globe representation save for landmass, but this would be only for aesthetics. It would not serve any tactical, starategic or other purpose. It wouldn't even be that 'neat' because the cities would not be present. I would love to have a map large enough to display in a globe form, but Civ would have to be entirely re-worked from the ground up, with every system requiring major changes. I'm not opposed to that, either :-D Having a globe would solve the North/South movement problem...hmm...maybe I should retract my earlier statement. Zooming to a globe view for movement across the poles would take care of the incongruity of moving up a square and appearing many squares to the side, seemingly teleported from A to B. Perhaps there is a limited use for a globe. Just don't expect great detail.

As for day/night cycle...that would just be eye candy of course and again would be meaningless without a sufficiently large and detailed map. SimCity4 has a 24hr clock that is separate from its main game clock. It is purely aesthetic. Though it would be 'cool' to see all the cities glowing on the night side...there would be so many cities (remember they are much larger geographically than real cities) that it would just appear as a very low resolution black area with large white squares on it. Nothing amazing there.

[Brent]

Would there even be any scenarios with turns short enough for a daylight cycle to make sense?

[Shr3dZ]

Originally posted by Brent
Would there even be any scenarios with turns short enough for a daylight cycle to make sense?

You never know, maybe the turn system will be reworked so there is, maybe it will stay the 'civ' way. Either way is fine by me, but if theyre hoping to add something new to the game here are a couple of interesting ways to make it so.

I think a globe could work nicely, yea it would have to be very large, and maybe for it to make sence the 'squares' will have to be upgraded to 'octogons' or something...

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by lajzar
I agree. RPG elements such as unit experience aren't really relevant to civ. So what if the Queens Dragoon Guards won an epic battle of heroic proportions 300 years ago? All those soldiers are dead now, and their experience isn't really relevant anymore.

Perhaps we should say that any unit automatically loses a level of experience every 20 turns?

What about death of units that never get upgraded?
I have been known to forget a few, like having a warrior way into 1700's

What about retiring the leader, send him back home to teach, etc

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Brent
Would there even be any scenarios with turns short enough for a daylight cycle to make sense?

Later in the later years, 1 turn 1 year.
How could this work with the scale of turn cycles in the earlier years.

Who would play it based on hours per turn?


Thanks for list'n

[dexters]

Python and all that promised modding potential is just that. You can mod the hell outta the game and script like you're makin a phone book, but some things just have to be hard coded. This includes most really cool and innovative concepts. You won't be writing any scripts to add a whole new spying model with its own screen and interface that can add the depth you want and be usable by the AI. Adding units, governments, events, terrain etc., will only get you so far. Besides, are we buying a finished game or a construction set? I'm all for modding, but I just don't see it allowing any truly impressive features.

I cannot agree more.

One of my biggest concerns is that the developers, and fans of Civ IV will take any sort of criticism, suggestion and request into a
"talk to the hand" type of exercise where we're told to use the editor feature to make the game ourselves.


I'd like to remind everyone that not all of us have the time, capacity or even have the desire to work with tools. Short of giving us a very user friendly set of tools, any sort of editing program tends to require steep learning curves and lots of time investments.

Ultimately, I want a game and 'official' patches that gives me a game I can play right out of the box. I don't want player made or community designed 'psudo fixes'.

If its a scenario, a modded government, or some units that require a whole new set of AI routines, I can understand. But if Firaxis bungles the AI coding somewhere, we shouldn't be expected to fix it.

All of my games of Civ3 found the world completely infested before Jesus came on the scene. If one spot opened up, every fool on the planet sent settlers hoofin for that spot, no matter where it was. This is just silly. .... Frenzied expansion also favors the computer and makes the usual cheating it does even worse.

I disagree somewhat here. I feel Civ3 AI's core competency lies in how well it expands. I was genuinely surprised at how well it did in Chieftan vs. the type of Civ II games I played where AI expansion was often stunted and slow.

That said, what Soren forgot in Civ3 when he made the AI good at exapsnion was that the culture/border system tend to work against the very thing the AI became good at.

There are advantages to have one unified landmass, and most human players tend to expand from the center out. One-off colonies (as in single cities or small clump of cities) are there but the expansion is made rationally with strategic objectives in mind and they more often than not becone fortified citadels.

AI empires, tend to expand irrationally for the sake of growth. Paraphrasing another poster, the AI is good at growing big. But this comes at a price. Sprawling empires that have cities in little pockets, and as is often the case, jumbled multinational islands which were the result of a rush to settle isolated uninhabited islands, is often the result of AI expansion in Civ3. This is all well and good if the AI could recognize how their Empire are configured, but these isolated pockets of cities tend to be run as if they are part of a larger mass. The 'limbs' of these AI empires thus become easy targets in any war and make for good pickings by a human player seeking a beachhead in a region or area.

What is needed (and I've suggested this elsewhere) is a revised set of priorities in terms of the AI's diplomacy and threat assesment routines that will govern who to attack, who to watch out for, and indirectly, where best to expand for the benefit of the empire. I'm not sure how doable this is for Civ4, but that's on my wishlist. As big a leap the Civ3 AI was on expanding in 2001, Its now 2004 and its old news. I want to see something better.

[Brent]

PRex: we seem to agree.

Dexters: compared to Actually Playing the Game, would time really be a factor in using the Editor? The C3 Editor seems user friendly enough for me, but I wouldn't mind it being much more so. I do want plenty of scenarios playable right out of the box. And I don't think the Editor is a good excuse for basic flaws in the core of the game.

It is annoying to have those balkanized regions. All of that territory should be mine!

[dexters]

Dexters: compared to Actually Playing the Game, would time really be a factor in using the Editor? The C3 Editor seems user friendly enough for me, but I wouldn't mind it being much more so. I do want plenty of scenarios playable right out of the box. And I don't think the Editor is a good excuse for basic flaws in the core of the game.

The map editor is fine. Even then, the C3C editor aka the editor that should have been included in C3 vanilla already have a lot of things that require an experienced modder to understand, tweak and work on.

I can imagine what the Civ4 package migh look like if it allowed for even more customization.

The point though wasn't about the absolute reality of how much time you spend on the editor, but rather the idea that not everyone will want to spend the time to learn it.

The argument being made is basically that we don't want to have half a game released and have the developers, and the community who supports the developers fall back on "fix it yourself" whenever there is a bug with the AI or some problems that should be fixed.

I'm all for modding, new units, and patchable AI but those things should take the game beyond what is given to us out of the box, not to fix inadeqacies. In other words, I still expect patches to address gameplay issues, AI issues months after release.

I hope that's clear enough

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by dexters


I'm all for modding, new units, and patchable AI but those things should take the game beyond what is given to us out of the box, not to fix inadeqacies. In other words, I still expect patches to address gameplay issues, AI issues months after release.

I hope that's clear enough

That is another big thing to fix!

There ahould be no patch within 6 months of being released. I know where they can find beta testers!

[Jon Shafer]

When a game goes gold that is the version of the game sold in stores. However, there is usually 3-5 weeks which pass before the game actually gets to store shelves. That means during that time the company works on a patch and then puts it up for download before or just after release so that players will still have the most up-to-date version of the game.

[Jon Shafer]

Just accessed this page, and it's useful, so *bump*.

This thread really ought to be stickied...

[Excelsior84]

Originally posted by rommelgain
I think it is safe to say that everyone here reading the forums will be distinctly disappointed with Civ4. You are the 'hardcore' gamers they will not cater to. When you begin reading forums you cease being a casual gamer. Bet you didn't know that :-) The trend for these type games is to dumb them down, speed them up and generally make a piece of garbage. Actually this applies to all genres. Sad but true.

Alas, as much as I really wanted to be excited when I discovered that Civ4 s in the making, I have to agree with you. After MoO3 and Civ3, I'm not holding out great hope for Civ4... I hope I'm wrong, but after reading that power point presentation, it seems clear to me that, frankly, I am *not* the target audience. In fact, the *only* thing which excites me about Civ4 is the possibility of being able to mod the game using a real programming language (which means I could do something productive while wasting my time playing games...learning python!). The sad thing of it is, though, that I'll almost certainly buy this thing when it comes out, anyway.

Oh, well, at least Hearts of Iron 2 should be good, even if it's not an empire builder.

[conmcb25]

I actually like the sound of this.

Keep it fairly simple and very modd-able.

Sounds like something that maybe would not have a ton of bugs.

[Rommel2D]

But will it have enough rules?

[Odin]

I am hoping for a more realistic socio-economic model (as others said, it's not all about wealth and population, otherwise China would rule all ).