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

[GAZ082]

What about riots and breaking Civs... no news about it

[Locutus]

Blue Lion was kind enough to send me a full scan of the entire Bild article. I won't repost it here because that would be a gross copyright violation, but I can draw a few new and interesting conclusions from it:

- The leaders not only serve as AI personalities, they will be some kind of advisor for the human player as well. If Gandhi is your advisor and you play very aggressively, Gandhi will get annoyed.
- Zooming does indeed happen with the mouse wheel, as I suspected.
- Armies are indeed only for movement, not for combat. To translate from the article: "For combat with enemy troops, the computer will automatically select the best attacker -- because powerful cannons are not always better than simple soldiers."
- The article suggests that the direction of your research (e.g. a focus on cultural, scientific or economic advances) will have an impact on the kinds of Great People you get.
- Civics are divided in 5 categories and it seems that from each of these 5 categories you can pick one option (and since there are 25 civics in total there are presumably 5 options per category): for your economy you can choose a Free Market economy, but you can also choose State Property. As religious policy you can choose for example Freedom of Religion or Theocracy, etc. These choices will have an immediate and far-reaching impact on gameplay. To translate: "If you introduce Emancipation, then that will awaken desires and can even lead to unhappiness and riots in other nations without equal rights."
- Cities still have maintenance and building many cities will crank up the maintenance cost quickly. Sounds like they're trying to reduce the amount of ICSing a bit, a la CtP's city limit (though not quite as harshly, from the sound of it).
- The article claims Windmills appear to increase the food output of a tile, which seems odd considering Farms do the same... We'll have to wait to see what other sources have to say about that...
- The article concludes that the game is, compared to other new games, a bit behind the curve in terms of graphics, but more than makes up for that with great and authentic gameplay.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Huh? You could zoom all the way out.

Not exactly 'zoom', but you could see the world on a special map

Originally posted by Locutus
It's both in the first post and further up the page. Link.

Thx

[Solver]

- The leaders not only serve as AI personalities, they will be some kind of advisor for the human player as well. If Gandhi is your advisor and you play very aggressively, Gandhi will get annoyed.

I'm not sure I like this. At least I hope it doesn't mean you don't have complete control. Even if my advisor gets annoyed, I should still have control of everything.

- Zooming does indeed happen with the mouse wheel, as I suspected.

I hope it can be remapped. The wheel is much more useful at scrolling than zooming, at least if scrolling is as in previous Civ games.

- Civics are divided in 5 categories and it seems that from each of these 5 categories you can pick one option (and since there are 25 civics in total there are presumably 5 options per category): for your economy you can choose a Free Market economy, but you can also choose State Property. As religious policy you can choose for example Freedom of Religion or Theocracy, etc. These choices will have an immediate and far-reaching impact on gameplay. To translate: "If you introduce Emancipation, then that will awaken desires and can even lead to unhappiness and riots in other nations without equal rights."

That is great. SMAC SE enhanced. Hang on, if it's 5 civics in each of 5 categories, does that mean we get 3125 overall possible choices? Woo!

- The article concludes that the game is, compared to other new games, a bit behind the curve in terms of graphics, but more than makes up for that with great and authentic gameplay.

If it's behind the curve in terms of graphics, that translates to great news. That means that Civ4 won't be a resource hog and won't have exceedingly large amounts of eye candy. Like, I can't help but feel annoyed for EE2 for its system requirements and performance.

Overall, this is more good news .

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by Locutus
Basically it means that if play like a warmonger and conquer your neighbours, and two of the other civs on the map are Gandhi and Genghis, then Genghis will like you and be willing to ally with you

Sure about that? Remeber the Famous Last Words from a D&D game:
"They're Chaotic Evil? We're Chaotic Evil too, so we should get along with them!"
:-)

[Max Sinister]

I like the flags too. Way better than so many colors which only get confusing if you have more than a handful of civs in the game - and have nothing to do with the nations.

I wonder about the green flags from that one older screenshot. Maybe they were cultural flags (whatever that means)?

[curtsibling]

I hope you can over-ride the computer's 'automatic choice' on what attacker unit fights in the battles!

As we know, the computer can be a dodgy general at best!

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
I like the flags too. Way better than so many colors which only get confusing if you have more than a handful of civs in the game - and have nothing to do with the nations.

I wonder about the green flags from that one older screenshot. Maybe they were cultural flags (whatever that means)?

I think the cultural and nation flags will be a toggled choice.

The 'nation flags' will perhaps have recognisable national symbols,
while the 'cultural flags' might have an overall symbol
that denotes a general culture, with varied colours.

For example, America and Sioux have the American culture flag,
but with seperate colours...I see it as a graphic choice for
old-school players who want the classic civ colours...

[Odin]

So far, Civ4 looks awsome. SE at last, SE at last!

[Locutus]

The article does not mention flags AT ALL, so I don't know where that comment came from. Safe to say it's not true.

[Shogun Gunner]

I'm not so thrilled with the religion concept. I know it's too early to make a judgment about something I haven't seen yet, but I'm just not a fan of the subject. I was content with Civ3 lumping that in with "culture".

Perhaps I tire of the term "culture war" being used in the US news a lot recently as it tends to have a religious component to it.

[Nikolai]

"If you introduce Emancipation, then that will awaken desires and can even lead to unhappiness and riots in other nations without equal rights."

[GAZ082]

Dammit! I want governors rioting and splitting appart from their conqueror or tyrannic goverment!

Any news about it, afaik, there is nothing towards that direction.

[Singlewinger]

Has there been any talk about terrorism type tactics for Civ4. I know that cIII began with 'plant disease' as an option but it was scrapped. I would love to see terrorist actions as an option, maybe not a "plant disease option" but something, like assasination. That has surely happened in history and other events, such as bombings, where country A bombed country B and made it appear as though country C bombed country B and so country B attacked coutry C and so on.

Most everything else I have heard has been good, I especially like the "social engineering" feature, because at different times throughout the game option will probably be useful. I am also intriqued at the religion feature, even though we don't really know what that is going to be about, it has great potential.

[TechWins]

Originally posted by Singlewinger maybe not a "plant disease option" but something, like assasination. That has surely happened in history

It only caused that little thing called World War I, not important at all.


To clarify, I agree with you.