Your Worst Fear for Civ 4 (The Negativity Post)

[Darkstar]

How is cIV going to have personality? SMAC had so much personality because it only had the seven factions. That allowed Firaxis to do a lot of customization, which is what gives the game so much of the personality. Having the Voice Actors doing a lot of the voice overs in the Tech Advances and Project Movies, for instance, really help give you a good bit of flavor. Having Yang give you a call and ask you to join him in an alliance to crush that crazed Gian who spends most of her time running naked in the park and randomly hugging trees really spark up the flavor of the game.

How many civilizations will cIV include? Think about it. Firaxis will not be able to even approach that level of immersion and character that SMAC had. Remove all that SMAC personalition from SMAC, and you just end up with standard Civ diplomacy. "Wage War on the Purple!" "Let's trade my tech X for your tech Y" "How about exchanging world maps?" yadda yadda blah.

Civ's personality comes from you getting involved in what you are doing in the game (being a unit pusher and tech/city planner). Don't expect anything more then that from the actual game play.

Of course, the advisors and reward structure (throne room/castle/etc) will be spots that we can get some actual personality. But it won't be like SMAC.

That doesn't mean cIV will suck. But it be a lot more like Empire Earth and very little like SMAC in flavor and personality. That's the nature of Civ itself.

[Freddz]

DS,

Exactly my point. Too much work with so many civs. Too bad. But I hope Firaxis hasn't adopted your pessimistic view though - you probably think it's the only a realistic view - as that view would certainly spell doom for diplomacy and personalities. It's all a matter of spending time with it I guess, and with so many civs it's bound to limit the efferts some.
But are factions soooo much different from nations? Yes, you could go a little bit more nuts with the personalities in SMAC, but that doesn't mean you could do a whole lot with Civ IV and find fun and interesting nuances. I guess I'm just hoping they've done something so you'd get some feel of them, with some funny/mood-giving comments.



Hey, The_Aussie_Lurker, that sounds very nice!

[Darkstar]

How are they going to do more in Diplomacy then what they've already done? Other then maybe you trading boundry/tiles, anyways? There's serious possibilities in the Civ3 game. Just not the high flavor of SMAC.

The game should have lots of diplomatic possibilities. But it just won't have flavor. If they drop all those civs to just 8 only, then Firaxis could spend time tailoring the game to give you some serious flavor. But with what? 32? 64? Not going to happen.

That doesn't mean that you will have just AI 1-32. You will know that the Zulus are complete war addicts, while the English only war when they run out of land. So you'll have a touch of it. Just a tiny sprinkly (because the AI itself acts slightly differently). Now, if all AI play identically (no more Pacifist versus Warlike mods), then the game would be completely tasteless.

[AoA]

For me, there will never be another immersive gaming experience like SMAC. It's been out how many years and yet I still play nearly every day and never play C3C.

Even Civ1 stirred up stronger emotions than Civ3.
Damn those White's!!! (Romans and Russians) Stop attacking me! There will be peace in our time...after I crush you!

My biggest fear....Firaxis will spend all its time and energy making worthless 3-D units (when 2-D would serve just as well) fight on a fake 3-D map (that's still has no polar region) and forget about programming in any fun or useful strategy.

Oh and yeah, NO MORE DUMBING DOWN like in Civ3

[Freddz]

AoA,

I totally agree. I loved it when the russians were attacked me all the time in civ 1. I t was very stressing because they very soon roamed over the entire map. They were very aggressive.
I just picked up SMAC again on my old computer and am having great fun. It's a bit tedious toward the end game because of all the units, and we're only three civs left (small map).
It's me, Mirjam and LAL.
What strikes me is also how aggressive the Diplomacy is with the AI. They make sure to point out whenever you do something or have a government they don't like, making the game a bit more stressful even when you're friends with them, as they're implying they have to show patience with you. Fun. Fun.
But a bit tedious towards the end as i said. Always thought that. Playing the Gaians makes it less tedious as I go for the worms a lot (so making units is not truly time consuming)

DS,

Well, I guess we have pretty much the same view about things.

Freddz out

[Addled Platypus]

the more I read on religon the more I am getting to dislike it.

Hope there is a way to keep missionaires out

Then there is the culture bombing, why build a great person to go into suicide mode. If you are powerfull enough to build one, there are better avenues to persue

[Adagio]

AFAIK you don't "build" great people, you earn them

[Addled Platypus]

buy "building" certain items

sorry for the general term

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

To be fair though, Platypus, you need to do a lot of city specialisation and wonder/improvement building in order to create a Great Artist (the only people capable of doing a 'culture bomb'.) So I doubt such a tactic can be done very often-especially when you consider the fact that GA can also be important for initiating Golden Ages, as well as being attached to a city for a long-term benefit. This means that a player will really have to think long and hard about how he makes use of Great People such as Great Artists-sacrifice for a short-term gain, or retain him/her for a longer-term benefit. Its all Swings and Roundabouts Platypus.
As for religion and missionaries, I think the fact that converted cities gain money for the nation controlling said Holy City is one of the best ways for smaller nations to achieve economic strength. Also, we already know that closed borders can keep out missionaries (and spies, I believe). Lastly, I would say that the benefits you recieve from your religion will depend on what civic you have chosen-and the greatest benefits will probably be outweighed by detriments in other areas. Hope that helps to ease some of your concerns.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Jaybe]

In a short MP game using a GPerson for short-term gain is a no-brainer, as portrayed in the recent MP game reviews. Not that that will concern ME -- I'm SP only.

[Dinner]

Greatest fears:

- One on one unit combat instead of grouped and combined arms style combat like we saw in CTP2. That alone would releave much of the tediousness and micromangement from the game. Of course because it makes so much sense they likely won't do it.

- A dumbed down game designed to attract 9 year olds so that people of average intelligence become bored after the first game.

- promised features don't get delivered.

- A buggy and under developed MP which is unstable and crashes all the time.

- An AI which really isn't all that good. It would have to be significantly better then Civ3's simplistic "AI gains up on human" AI.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Well, Oerdin, I doubt very much that you have anything to fear regarding the last 2 points at least. They have, after all, had Multiplayer up and running almost since the very start of development, and the previews we have read on MP certainly put paid to any fears I might have had (in fact, I am considering doing MP for the first time ever!!) Also, they have been using MP experiences as a guide for developing the AI-meaning that many AI strategies may well be based on-or be a response to-some of the most seasoned human Civ players around.

As for the other stuff, well I can 'wait and see' with those.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Lucidor]

My worst fears are those of an incompetent Sp AI. It would make it a worse time-waster for me.

Is it true that combat is redone with only one combat value? I've always wanted that - it felt weird that a phalanx is such a useless attacker, while a potent defender (especially in field battles, where I believe even the defender has to maneuver some)

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Well, to answer your question specifically-YES there is a single Combat value for units now. However, some units will get a bonus/penalty to this value based on the unit they are attacking/defending against and/or the terrain in which they are fighting.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Spiffor
My worst fear is with diplomacy.

From the diplomatic screens we saw, it seems that you can "trade anything for anything" like you could in SMAC or Civ3. When the demo showed a tech-trade being initiated, you could only haggle with techs and cash. When the demo switched to a resource-trade, you could only haggle with resources and cash.

I really hope it was a glitch in the demo, and not a feature. The diplomatic complexity was one of the best thing in SMAC and Civ3, and I really don't want a step back to Civ1&2

This would be a sing that the AI sucks so they're trying to limit trades to prevent people from taking advantage of the weak AI.