New IGN preview

[Zoid]

There are also a range of artillery promotions. Three levels of Accuracy promotions give you a better chance of damaging enemies and three levels of Barrage give you better collateral damage. In a throwback to Civilization 2, artillery units now also attack directly, just like regular units but they have the added advantage of attacking all units in a stack simultaneously. Since artillery can attack all the units in a square at once, it makes them ideal for city assaults. It also discourages the massive stacks that seem to roam about the world in previous versions of the game.

Yes!!

[Adagio]

Of course he should also fix some bugs/add some features in that patch

Of course I would complain about having to download a 100 mb large patch to fix the bug where you get 1 gold too few for each deal being made

[Modo44]

The thing about massive stacks is not their defensive, but the offensive ability. I mean, who cares how many Tanks I have to stack up, as long as I can capture the city on the first turn of the war, and move on, leaving the whole stack safe behind my lines...

[AeonOfTime]

Of course he should also fix some bugs/add some features in that patch

"Maybe" there will be no need for a patch this time

[GeoModder]

Of course not, there will be a polite message from Firaxis stating that the game was be made highly moddable for a reason.
DO YOUR OWN!

[Spiffor]

I'd love to hear that there is a serious effort about music. I always use the original's game music, and until now it does always get old after some time. If they include a very broad repertoire, that will renew the music one listens as one plays, and it's really old good IMO

[The diplomat]

I think music is important because it can add a lot to the atmosphere of the game. But I hope that civ4 will use good music. If we just get midi tribal rythms, I'll be pissed. We need some nice orchestral music.

[Last Conformist]

Couldn't care less about music and wonder movies ...

I hope the promotions would require too much fiddling with individual units. Imagine attacking with 100 units and a fifth of them receiving promotions, each of which causes a popup promting you to chose whether they should get higher strength or quicker healing.

The tech system sounds like it invites to extreme beelining. Is that a good thing?

[Jaybe]

Good orchestral music would be great! Wonder movies would be good the first time, then would be a waste of time afterwards. The Rise of Nations soundtrack (especially with its T&P expansion) really added to the game -- actually, it's the BEST part of the game. I hope civ can do comparable quality of music.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Good orchestral music would be great! Wonder movies would be good the first time, then would be a waste of time afterwards. The Rise of Nations soundtrack (especially with its T&P expansion) really added to the game -- actually, it's the BEST part of the game. I hope civ can do comparable quality of music.

From the preview

Not only will the game include many of Jeff's original compositions, it will also include licensed performances of pieces by the old greats (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and company) as well as contemporary greats like John Adams and soon-to-be greats like Christopher Tin.

Good enough for ya?

Here's the link for Christopher Tin's Civ 4 music. It sounds a bit "Disney" in the first part, then gets better in the middle. Ah, well... its just a game.

http://www.christophertin.com/samples.html

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
The tech system sounds like it invites to extreme beelining. Is that a good thing?

I think it can be a good thing. Players will have to make more decisions about what techs to research. Do I research "horizontally" to get a little bit of everything or do I beeline to get better military techs at the expense of economic techs? Do I pursue military techs, economic techs or maybe religious techs? In previous versions of civ, this was not really an issue because you had to research everything, the only issue was in waht order. It looks like in civ4, players will really have to choose what kind of civ they want. By what they research, players will be able to specialize their civ, and be an economic superpower or a military superpower or a religious superpower.

It will also encourage tech trade. For example, if I beeline down a military path, I'll get some military techs that maybe my neighbor does not have. However, my neighbor beelined down an economic path and therefore has some economic techs that I don't have. I can trade my military techs for his economic techs.

Extreme beelining will sill have disadvantages. If I completely ignore economic techs to get military techs, I will have a better military but my economy will suffer.

But I am sure that Firaxis will balance the prerequisites in such a way that players cannot completely ignore certain techs. So beelining will only go so far.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by nostromo
From the preview

Not only will the game include many of Jeff's original compositions, it will also include licensed performances of pieces by the old greats (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and company) as well as contemporary greats like John Adams and soon-to-be greats like Christopher Tin.

Good enough for ya?

Good references are very nice, but it will be good enough for me IF it is "music to my ears!"

I am confident that the game will be a great experience. Hopefully I will be playing its music along with it. With luck, I'll CONTINUE to play its music anytime I play the game, months and years later.

[Solver]

The music will probably be alright out of the box . However, the good thing is that you can also always listen to your own music.

[Alex]

Well, it is good to know that the game is so much in a finished state that they can spend some time with music creation.

Each religion will have specific structures and "mini" wonders associated with it but you'll find their benefit still applies even if the city where they're housed switches to a new religion.

Won't this nullify the possible disadvantages of changing to a particular religion? I mean, if you still get benefits from structures you built while you had one religion even after you change to another one, won't this encourage players to "religion hopping" in order to be able to build every possible religion structure and get the benefits of them all? Combined with the "Freedom of Religion" civic option, this could be too powerful a feature...

[Solver]

The preview said, if a city switches, and not if you switch your state religion. Besides, I'd imagine the happiness penalty from switching a state religion later in the game would be severe.