cIV E3 stuff

[Krill]

Barry Caudill: Yes, culture is alive and well in Civilization 4 but it has been tweaked a bit. One of the ways is somewhat mechanical in nature. In Civilization 3, you were always guaranteed a minimum level of cultural expansion when you planted a new city. That is not the case in Civilization 4.

[Spiffor]

Littler factoid: have you noticed the Russian flag? It will bve orange with the two eagles of te Czarist flag

[Spiffor]

Oh and

We will definitely have the usual major powers like France, Germany, England, America, China, Japan, etc. We will also be including many Civs that are either new or usually saved for expansions like the Incas or the Aztecs or the totally new Mali

YAAAAY! I wanted to play with the Mali for a long time now. This is great!

[Solver]

It's not two eagles. It's one Chernobyl eagle.

[The diplomat]

I am really curious about combat. The interview says that attack and defense are replaced with a single power value and that armies are also out. That sounds kinda weird. On the plus side, I am glad that units will get promotions and special bonuses.

Overall, it sounds like combat will be 1-1 unit fighting just with special bonuses to make the results better.

[Zoid]

Excellent! This looks really good

IGNPC: One aspect of the cultural game in Civilization 3 that really aggravated players was the lack of respect the AI showed for your borders. Are you planning to address this issue at all?

Barry Caudill: In Civilization 4, the AI will have to respect your borders or declare war but you will be able to negotiate Open Borders to allow travel.

This really annoys the hell out of me in Civ 3...

IGNPC: How does the overall combat system work? Will it still just be a one-on-one, winner take all affair? We hear that the individual units will have more specific uses. Can you explain?

Barry Caudill: Units will have strengths and weaknesses against other types of units. For instance, pikemen will have a decided advantage over mounted units and axemen will be especially good against melee units. We have also removed the idea of separate attack and defense values and replaced them with a single Power rating.

Nice

IGNPC: Maybe I'm sick but I really miss being able to poison a rival city's water supply. Are you going to be including new options for espionage and its more "honorable" cousin diplomacy?

Barry Caudill: We will not be including any espionage options that are terrorism related. You will, however, create spy units and move them around as you did in previous versions of Civilization. In diplomacy, you will be able to broker peace between two warring Civs or ask a Civ to go to war with another even if you are not currently at war with that Civ.

PC tw@ts!

[wertyguy]

Does anybody know what the darker terrain is? tundra? Also did anyone catch that on the 2kgames feature list is mentions culturally unique units.

"Civ IV comes to life! - Beautiful 3D world with dozens of fully animated units (including culturally unique units), and totally customizable armies. Cities and wonders will appear on the map. Wonder movies are back! "

[Trifna]

Ohhhhh myyy Gooooooddd!! And such an Halloween bag! A ROUND planet!
/me cries of joy bit, wipes his tears

This is the best end-of-exams gift they could give ME, I am truly moved

[Gen. Atkinson]

I really love the look of this. Ijust wish my PC would be able to run it. My PC is old.

[Gen. Atkinson]

Just read the interview, and I am now certain my computer will not run this game..... I cry now.

On the flipside, I can't wait. It looks and sounds great. I've always wanted to establish my own government type.

[Fosse]

The round map is great. I hope we get a more zoomed out picture soon that shows the whole sphere. Right now it looks like an oval, but I love it!

What I'm curious about is cities. In Novgorod in the first screen I don't see anything, just the name. In St. Petersburg we just have the city walls and some sort of odd shadow. I know it's intended that cities should be WSIWYG in the sense that improvments and wonders are shown on the map, so perhaps Novgorod just hasn't built anything yet?

I'd like to see houses and other little urban graphics on cities, so that viewing the map with city names and displays turned off doesn't leave out little outposts without anything built in them yet.

[Alex]

In Civilization 4, the AI will have to respect your borders or declare war but you will be able to negotiate Open Borders to allow travel.

Actually, this is how it works now.

Units will have strengths and weaknesses against other types of units. For instance, pikemen will have a decided advantage over mounted units and axemen will be especially good against melee units. We have also removed the idea of separate attack and defense values and replaced them with a single Power rating.

This is very RTS, the old rock-paper-scissor kind of thing. I can only hope it ends up being good.

[FrostyBoy]

Great great stuff.

It'll be out by October.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Alex

This is very RTS, the old rock-paper-scissor kind of thing. I can only hope it ends up being good.

It also worked that way in SMAC: certain units had certain bonuses against certain other units. And SMAC has imo the best combat in the whole Civ series.

Great sig btw! I just bought the Peel sessions cd. It features the best version of 24 hours.

[Nostromo]

Any word yet on the persistent world MP? Its very intriguing...