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E3 2005: Civilization IV
Senior producer Barry Caudill provides us with our first look at the game.
by Steve Butts
May 17, 2005 - Long a favorite of turn-based strategy fans, Sid Meier's Civilization franchise has gone through quite a few incarnations since it was first released almost 15 years ago. Each new version of the game and each new expansion built upon the core premise of leading your civilization throughout history, from the founding of its first cities to its eventual colonization of other planets.
Though we've known about an upcoming sequel for some time now, the folks at Firaxis have been pretty tight with the information. Now, mostly because they're tired of me calling them every day and are probably worried about making me cry again, Firaxis's senior producer Barry Caudill finally consented to answer our questions about the game.
IGNPC: Sweet Civilization. You realize I have to quit my job once this game comes out, right?
Barry Caudill: Yes we do, that's why it's good we work here at Firaxis...or we'd all be on the dole J Oh...was that rhetorical?
IGNPC: Anyway, let's start with the big picture. Will the basic arc or premise of the game change much from previous versions? Are you extending further into the future, for instance?
Barry Caudill: At its most basic level, this is the same scope of Civilization people have come to know and love. That means we still cover the usual time period of 4000 BC to 2050 AD, but it's how we make the journey that will set this game apart.
IGNPC: Tell us about the new 3D engine. What's the overall visual presentation like? Will there be a bit more life and animation on the map? Can we expect a variety of perspectives here?
Barry Caudill: As with Sid Meier's Pirates!, we are using the Gamebryo engine and that allows us to really open up the visuals in Civilization 4. One of our main goals was to really bring the world to life. So you will see rivers flowing, resources like horses, cattle, or elephants animating, and different animations when those resources are being "worked", etc. In addition, unit movement and combat will be much more interesting and exciting than ever before. We are also shooting for a WYSIWYG approach where you will know what city a wonder is in because you can see it in the world, along with many other aspects previously relegated to menus and screens.
IGNPC: What else can you tell us about the basic interface? What types of information will the player be able to take in on the main game screen?
Barry Caudill: In addition to what was listed previously, we are also including tons of tool tips and pop-up help. We feel like you should be able to play the whole game from the main map view and you should only have to get into some of the screens if you are a true power user.
IGNPC: Tell us about some of the new civs. I imagine we'll have the usual suspects from the European and Mediterranean sets but are there other, less obvious choices in store? Will we be seeing a return of the civ traits?
Barry Caudill: 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. In all there will be 18 Civs in the shipped version of Civilization 4.
IGNPC: Culture was a pretty new concept when it was introduced in Civilization 3. Has that mechanic found its way into the sequel? Have there been any changes to it?
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. You will have to develop your culture or risk being enveloped by a larger neighbor. This leads to the interesting possibility of creating a Luxembourg or Switzerland completely engulfed by another Civ's borders. We also tweaked Civilization 3's luxury slider and turned it into a culture slider. Raising the culture level makes people happier and helps produce more culture for your entire Civ.
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.
IGNPC: The resources concept from Civilization 3 was also great addition to the series. Are you expanding this system at all? Are you using it in the same way?
Barry Caudill: The system has been greatly expanded with the addition of many more resources, all of which are tradable. Some of the new resources, like marble, help to increase wonder production, some are food resources (these help with the overall health of your cities), and some, such as iron or copper, allow you to build certain types of units.
IGNPC: I always seemed a bit miffed that you weren't able to trade food, even to your own cities. I mean it's not like the largest cities in the world are those that produce the most food, right? Are there considerations for trading and sharing food?
Barry Caudill: You will have the ability to trade food resources but these affect the overall health of your cities, not the growth potential.
IGNPC: While we're on the subject of the previous game, were there any features from the last game that you felt the need to scale down or eliminate altogether?
Barry Caudill: We no longer have static eras so it's more like versions of Civilization prior to Civilization 3 in that respect. We eliminated armies but created more customization and countering with the units. We also changed the way bombardment units work in the game so they are now like a hybrid of previous games.
IGNPC: How do governments work this time around?
Barry Caudill: There are no set governments anymore. In Civilization 4, you can choose from various civics and combine them to make the type of government you want. For example, you may have a Theocratic Police State that also has Universal Suffrage or you may have a Pacifist Slave State with Hereditary Rule. The Civics are divided into five major areas - Government, Legal, Labor, Economy, and Religion - and each of those has 5 possible choices depending on what you have researched. In addition, AI leaders will have certain favorite Civics and they may ask you to either switch to theirs or stop using the one that offends them.
IGNPC: What about the new religion system? That sounds really promising. How does it work in the game?
Barry Caudill: The first Civilization to discover a technology attached to the founding of a religion will establish a holy city for that religion and it will begin to spread, although slowly. To speed up the process, you can create missionaries and send them out to try to convert other cities. Also, just like the Civics, AI leaders may try to get you to convert to their religion.
IGNPC: With as much depth and accuracy as there is in the Civilization franchise, there are some other general historical themes -- things like slavery, civil wars, epidemics, ideological conflicts, etc. -- that either weren't present or were heavily abstracted. Naturally, you have to remain extremely sensitive on some of these issues but are you planning to incorporate mechanics to highlight previously neglected historical phenomena?
Barry Caudill: Well we aren't trying to alienate anyone out there but we are paying more attention to some of the more serious issues where it makes sense. As I mentioned, slavery is a Civics option but so is emancipation. Epidemics aren't directly modeled but the idea of tying a city's health to available food and resources helps to simulate this. Ideological conflicts are a definite possibility as a result of the AI leader personalities and their ties to certain religions or civics.
IGNPC: What can you tell us about great leaders?
Barry Caudill: We have expanded on this concept a great deal. Now, there are different types of great people like Great Prophets, Artists, and Scientists. When you get one, you will be able to use them for things like automatically researching a technology or helping to build a wonder.
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.
IGNPC: Are we going to see more units types this time around? What are some of the more notable additions?
Barry Caudill: During early prototyping, it was determined that more is not always better. In order to streamline the process as much as possible and to highlight the new promotion system, we decided to actually reduce the number of units some. Still, there are some units that haven't been part of previous versions like Grenadiers and Horse Archers and War Elephants that are not specific to only one Civ.
IGNPC: Players of Alpha Centauri enjoyed the ability to tailor units for specific tasks. Are the units in Civilization 4 going to be adjustable in any way?
Barry Caudill: I think the promotions will add this type of customization in a much more fluid manner since the units are upgraded "on the fly" (i.e. with each new promotion) and you don't have to have researched a certain tech to gain access to them all. Some of the promotions include: jungle or forest bonuses, city defense, city raider, flanking, or just simple power bonuses. You will be able to make units that are specialized without changing all of a certain type and you can change "paths" as your situation dictates.
IGNPC: How does the tech tree of the new game compare to that in previous versions? Are you sticking with specific trees for distinct eras? What are some of the new technologies or new technological considerations available?
Barry Caudill: There are two major changes from Civilization 3. First, there are no longer set eras and the player is free to choose any path whether it be all-military, all-science, balanced, etc. Second, you don't need all of the techs that lead to the one you want, you only need to connect to it. In previous versions you may have had to research two or three things to get access to the one they connect to.
IGNPC: Tell us a little about the trade and economy systems? Any surprises there?
Barry Caudill: In Civilization 4, you get automatic trade routes after you establish a trade agreement with a particular leader. Also, rivers work like roads so two cities on the same river are connected even if no roads have been built.
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.
IGNPC: Let's talk about the endgame. Are the victory conditions pretty much the same or have you created new goals for the players?
Barry Caudill: They are very similar to what you might expect. Of course, we have the usual Domination, Conquest, Diplomatic, and Space Race victories. We have also tweaked the Cultural victory to make it more exciting and interesting. Finally, we have added a new one: Alliance victory in which you can share the win with a partner.
IGNPC: There's no denying that the pace of Civilization slows down once you start to hit century or so, yet the early ancient age just seems to fly by. Are you doing anything to smooth out the overall pace of the game or give players the chance to chew off a more manageable bite?
Barry Caudill: Balancing is always high on our priority list and we are definitely working to even out the pace of the game. One new thing is that you can choose different game speeds depending on your preference and available time. You can choose Quick, Normal, or Epic. Normal would be like a standard game of Civilization in previous versions. Quick and Epic are scaled in every aspect to provide the full experience of Civilization in either a quicker or much longer format.
IGNPC: Though Civilization 3 was great, it lost some of the presentation that we loved in Civilization 2. While it might be naive to ask for a return to talking advisors and wonder videos, are you doing anything to add to the overall personality of the game?
Barry Caudill: We have definitely ramped up the production values in this version. The new 3D world and all that it brings will certainly up the ante over any previous version of the game, we're hiring voice talent for various parts, and I am happy to announce the return of wonder movies...we'll have over 45 spectacular movies in the game.
IGNPC: Are you planning to include multiplayer options out of the box? What types of things can we expect from the multiplayer game? We hear there's a cooperative mode? How does that work?
Barry Caudill: You bet! This game was designed to be multiplayer from the ground up and we have been playing MP games for a year and a half already. Players will be able to compete in traditional turn-based or simultaneous move games either on a network or via the Internet. We will be using Gamespy for Internet matchmaking. Other options include Hot Seat, Play by Email, and a persistent turn server we call Pitboss.
Coop will work in a similar fashion to what you would expect from an RTS like Age of Kings or Warcraft 3. Players on the same team will share line of site, the benefits of wonders, research (they can even research the same thing to try to get it faster), unit trading, and share territory. All of these additions deliver a plethora of new strategic and tactical options to the players.
IGNPC: The core game's great but Civilization's also done well thanks to massive community support. What types of tools and editors can players expect out of the box?
Barry Caudill: Civilization 4 will be the most moddable version of Civilization ever. Players can edit basic stats and attributes in XML files. On a higher level, much of the game will be exposed to Python so modders will be able to edit events and have more control over how the game works. On an even higher level, we are planning to provide an AI SDK to allow experienced programmers to dig very deep into customization.
IGNPC: How many people are working on this project? When did you start working and what stage is the game at now?
Barry Caudill: Internally, we have 38 on the team working directly on various aspects but we also have some work contracted out and several interns coming on board for the summer. We started working on the game about 2 years ago and expect to have it in stores for the holidays.
IGNPC: So what's left to be done at this point? Don't you think you'd be able to get the job done more quickly if you weren't busy answering my endless questions?
Barry Caudill: From a design standpoint, all major systems are in and Soren Johnson (our lead designer/programmer) is spending the majority of his time working on the AI. We have a lot that's looking great already but we still have some art and programming to go before we will be ready for full test this summer. Anything could be considered a distraction at this stage of the game, but we like you so there's no problem there.
IGNPC: Finally, where's my Colonization 2? I mean, what have you guys been doing for the last ten years?
Barry Caudill: You're right, we have been slacking off. I mean, Firaxis has only shipped 10 titles in the last 9 years. Actually, we get lots of requests to make another Colonization. We don't have any plans to do it right now, but it's certainly something to consider for the future. Stay tuned...
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