Apolyton CIVILIZATION IV PREVIEW (by MarkG)

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Sava
Markos, what do you mean when you say Civ4 is an upgrade instead of an update?

Not speaking for Markos here but usually an 'upgrade' means something is vastly improved. If you were talking automobiles, you might say you now have a 8 valve engine instead of a 4 valve. Maybe your PC was "upgraded" to a P4 from a P2, etc.

An "update" is essentially what Civ2 was to Civ1; better graphics, more options but nothing really changed fundamentally. Companies that roll out the same game with updated graphics and/or sound and do litle to improve gameplay, features, etc, would be considered an 'update'.

[zeit]

Originally posted by MarkG
all your units are placed outside his borders

I sense a trap here,
I don't like it when units are teleported to another spot, no matter the reason, as the distance from this to an exploit could be short indeed...

Not to mention teleportation is highly unrealistic (in my eyes me far more so than the hotly debated unlimited RR movement issue). Anyhow, I'm sure there are other more elegant ways to stop players and AI alike from stationing units inside a future opponent's territory and cities to use them in a future war, without teleportation...

I thought of one solution, though a bit drastic, I find it quite logical:

Any unit that's sharing a tile with units of another civ in that civ's territory, is automatically destroyed when declaring war- this is quite realistic, and represents the fact that in a foreign land any such a unit is probably close guarded, and in any case isn't "battle-ready" (e.g. you could imagine that the U.S. troops stationed in southern England before the invasion to Normandy in WW2 would have surrendered to the british right away in the unlikely event of a war between the two nations, even though they were quite numerous and well equipped).

Any military unit crossing an open border for that matter, and is sharing a tile with a "friendly" unit, is considered to be in a non-combat formation, and is totally dependent on the other civ for supplies, communication etc. This would mean that even open borders do not allow a civ to move military units freely through them- they can still do so, but it is more of "transporting" the units through, and is obviously done at a great risk, and means you'll have to think twice before you send your forces to the other side of the border.

Again, more strategical decisions, which put the invading side at risk (as it should be)- all this at the obvious cost of making the game more complex and giving the AI one more game mechanic to handle...

[clausewitz]

Hm. I don't agree 100% with what zeit just proposed about declaring war with open borders. To give a historic example from the same time: when Italy swapped sides in 43 German troops did not surrender to Italy - even deep in Italy they did not. And they were quite fine with their supplies at least for a while.

Maybe a solution would be something similar to the partisans in Civ2. Every unit gets moved into mountains, a bit away from railways and cities... maybe they get a bit weekened because they might have lost some heavy arms and supplies and suffer from communication problems... I think in respect of gameplay it would be fun to fight these troops out in a private-ryan-like manner

[Verenti]

I don't agree either. Like in Ancient China, 3rd Century. A man named Zhou Yu planned on moving troops through territory owned by an Imperial Uncle (Liu Bei) that Zhou Yu thought his Lord was due, so he made a plan to travel to the Lands of Shu (owned by Liu Zhang) and give those lands to Liu Bei in exchange for Jingzhou (The land Liu Bei was based in).

This was a trick, he was going to stop for Supplies in Liu Bei's capital and attack him in the middle of the night and capture his force in one quick blow. This was historically thwarted by Liu Bei's genius advisor.

I doubt when Sun Quan's forces commenced hostilities in a sneak attack they'd, despite being in enemy territory, have surrendered.

Maybe if there are troops in the vacinety and they declared war you could have them surrender.

[sophist]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
well that would not be IN the city but in the outskirts... london isn't at the sea either, but has one of the bigger docks not too far out..

Well, the Thames is still an estuary at that point, which could arguably be considered part of the coast in a game where a single tile is many tens of miles across.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
An exploit is called exploit, because you exploit the weaknesses of your counterpart. If it works both ways, i.e. your counterpart does not suffer a weakness in that respect and is able to act in the same way, it can't be an exploit but simply abiding by game rules.

Suppose you are on one continent in Civ3. You see another continent across a body of water, but you can't reach it. Luckily, you're in another civ's territory, and the nearest neutral territory on the same continent is much further away. You wait for them to demand your withdrawal and your unit gets teleported across the water to a new continent. That's an exploit. Anyone can use it. It doesn't take advantage of the opponent's weakness; it takes advantage of a flaw in the design of the game engine, in the rules and behaviors that determine what any player can do.

Originally posted by zeit
I sense a trap here,
I don't like it when units are teleported to another spot, no matter the reason, as the distance from this to an exploit could be short indeed...

I concur.

Originally posted by zeit
Any unit that's sharing a tile with units of another civ in that civ's territory, is automatically destroyed when declaring war-

Automatic destruction doesn't sound any better than automatic teleportation.

Originally posted by zeit
this is quite realistic, and represents the fact that in a foreign land any such a unit is probably close guarded

That doesn't make sense. Why would you let foreign troops onto your soil in the first place if you felt they were a danger to you?

I think you're on the right track, but that's not quite right.

If the treaty changes and your units are on a tile without any enemy units on it, they should stay where they are unmolested. You should be able to be a vile backstabber. If your units share a tile with one of the now-enemy's units, there should be an immediate battle between the two. Of course, that might still be too powerful, but the optimal solution to that would be to implement supply lines.

[Boris Godunov]

I'm all in favor of the shared tiles. It will make the player far more careful about the open border policies, and the sharing tiles with allies is HUGE.

[Boris Godunov]

The autodestruction would be a huge exploit. You could just wait until another civ has a lot of units in your territory, then declare war and BOOM he loses a good portion of his army instantly.

Still, I don't like the teleporting. What about sneak attacks?

[snoopy369]

Backstabbery is not the main point of civ, and thus shouldn't be actively encouraged. I have no problem with the teleportation requirement. To a large extent it enforces a rule most of us PBEMers, at least, follow anyway.

[Boris Godunov]

Whether or not it is cool isn't the issue, as it's certainly realistic. I would like the option to conduct such sneak attacks, especially in SP.

[korn469]

Well if I could change the teleportation rules (and it's possible that we can mod this) I would replace it with the following.

1) All units in what had been previously friendly terrority would lose their movement for that turn.

2) Any mixed stack of units would automatically trigger combat. However, I would throw in either a negative combat modifier to the foreign units, or a first strike or two (I'm not exactly sure how the mechanics of a first strike work yet) to the native units.

Having said that, I am still in favor of having nonhostile units sharing a tile.

[Navyman]

In Civ3, one of the most annoying events would be when one of my big border cities would be over run and instantaneously be razed to the ground. Here I had a city that was a outlying mil factory and sort of a lynchpin that allowed me to hold onto territory far out with a pop of 12 suddenly razed to the ground. Or worse yet, an enemy getting a jump on one or more of my core cities and razing it. Nothing more irritating....

Will Civ4 still have razing as an option?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
The autodestruction would be a huge exploit. You could just wait until another civ has a lot of units in your territory, then declare war and BOOM he loses a good portion of his army instantly.

Still, I don't like the teleporting. What about sneak attacks?

Sneak attacks shouldn't be done in open borders. Honestly it's unrealistic, in a sense that's bad for the game; the main problem is, we don't have decent espionage options available (since we can't spy the source of the decisions, IE the player's mind, no matter what Civ gives us as options). In RL, open borders would be closed well before a sneak attack of the size of Civ attacks could be pulled off - the spies would figure SOMETHING out, and at least close the borders. That gives an unreasonably substantial incentive to the backstabber; basically there's nothing to be done AGAINST backstabbery/sneak attacks, so EVERYONE basically has to do them.

Check the Civ3-Conquests Demo Game if you need more evidence of that ... one team essentially out of six decides backstabbery is the way to go, and that screws the really honest teams and forces some other normally honest teams into backstabbery of their own ... There are plenty of backstabbing options available in Civ already, and no need to add one more incentive to do it.

Espionage, on the other hand, should be possible with open borders, even BAD espionage (planting bombs, etc., civ2 style).

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Whether or not it is cool isn't the issue, as it's certainly realistic. I would like the option to conduct such sneak attacks, especially in SP.

Who cares about realistic Sneak attacks unbalance the game beyond which it should be unbalanced. You need some incentive to behave in a game like this, or to what is the point of diplomacy

[korn469]

What about my solution? It would allow sneak attacks and backstabbing, without making it overwhelming.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by korn469
What about my solution? It would allow sneak attacks and backstabbing, without making it overwhelming.

I don't think allowing sneak attacks with open borders is the right thing to do, regardless of details Your solution would probably not work well, however - as who'd want to have their units frozen for a turn in enemy territory - unless they had overwhelming forces, such as in the case of one ally sending their entire military away and the other ally jumping into their cities, which is the whole thing that i'm suggesting is a problem anyway