Apolyton Civ4 PREVIEW (By Solver) - Part 1 online

[Imran Siddiqui]

As Sid says, when fun conflicts with realism, fun should win (paraphrasing). The whole population point for military unit sound VERY unfun. I'd HATE a game like that, frankly. It'd annoy the Hell out of me.

War is already somewhat reduced in the game. We have to realize that most of human history has had warfare. Reducing it to 0 because the costs were that great would be not very fun... and probably less than realistic (even though the means to the unrealistic end was realistic).

[Lorizael]

There is also a reason to protect your units in Civ IV. You can't build a replacement for a leveled unit. You want to be careful with the units that have promotions.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You see, that is why I would never advocate such a change for the vanilla game-just as a mod for 'die-hard' realists. Also, given the time frame of the game, I think it would be a lot fairer to make certain units (large infantry-style units) work like settlers and workers, and merely prevent city growth whilst you're building them. This is where drafting would become such a useful strategy, IMO!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Dinner]

I'm not sure about the death of ICS. I recall people making similiar claims about Civ3 only to find the claims of ICS's death were greatly exagerated.

[kolpo]

Originally posted by MarkG
no
you send your missionary, if he spreads the religion that's that. a second missionary wont be able to do anything in the city

Thanks, but because you get bonuses anyway, even if there are other religions isn't that a problem. Having many cities with multiply religions, would actually make you more flexible in your choice of state religion, so if a strong neighbour demands that you change state religion, could you then do that without losing too many bonuses

[realpolitic]

Sounds like cottages are a good way to go, but war is better. Aggressiveness is improved from civ3, and the benes start early. I normally made 1 (occasionally 2) gvt switches in civ (7 turns of anarchy[in civ3] is substantial overhead, especially as I'm starting to dominate) I wanna learn the civics aspect, so I'll start spiritual too. Don't know if spiritual will look good a year from now, but it might be good for newbies.

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by GeoModder
Yes, makes sense to me too. Just noticed that you had a hell of a lot of conquered cities and thought that nothing really stopped a player from going on a world conquest without some drawbacks financially.
Nice to see that warring isn't that easy.

Btw, does a player 'plunders' an amount of gold when he takes a city from another civ? 't Could still be that by taking cities you can afford the upkeep forthem a few turns.

If there's no difference in maintence between a conquered size 4 city and a newborn size 1 city, it makes some conquest look good, at least for a while.

[truepurple]

. . . Look, both suggestions are meant to add to both game fun & realism.

. . . Game fun is top on my list, hell, often I get people who criticise my suggestion for a funner game because its not realistic enough, (as though civ was anything close to realistic) the other half of the time they give me grief for my ideas being too realistic! Make up your bloody minds!

. . . I want a game where I protect and lead my population. With something along my ideas of growth and military populations one can feel like your leading and protecting your people. Not just messing with sliders and moving about disposable packages of shields.

. . . What I don't care for is a ton of realism at the cost of game play, not that civ has ever really cared for realism anyways.

. . . My ideas/suggestions mean less ICS, would mean a game geared less then just for war as well. While civ talks about different ways to win the game, most of those ways end up being accomplished through military anyways.

. . . So military units use/consist of some population, whats so damn hard about that? It makes war a more serious thing to get into thus the game more balanced, realistic, and fun. As civ is mostly a war game, population in troops would make other approaches more feasible.

. . . And the promotion thing is just gimmicky by the sound of it. One more thing to hassle with. Nor does it make unpromoted units any less disposable then they were before.

. . . Please "verbally" demonstrate/detail the veracity of your claims of less fun Imran

. . . GRRRR I didn't want to get into this discussion in this thread, I just wanted to know, how does civ 4's growth system work?? Some of you have gotten to try it early right? Realpolitic, you have from the sound of it? So please spill. A picture of city view and of growth would help.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
As Sid says, when fun conflicts with realism, fun should win (paraphrasing). The whole population point for military unit sound VERY unfun. I'd HATE a game like that, frankly. It'd annoy the Hell out of me.

Ok. So that particular way of using population to build military units is no good, but that doesn't mean that the overall idea is fundamentally bad. Yes, sometimes there's no way to implement a realistic idea in a way that's good gameplay, but people (not necessarily you) are far too quick to assume that, because one way is bad gameplay, there's no way to do it.

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Also, given the time frame of the game, I think it would be a lot fairer to make certain units (large infantry-style units) work like settlers and workers, and merely prevent city growth whilst you're building them.

Exactly the type of thing I'm talking about above. Ok, using a whole population point is bad, but arresting the city's growth for some period of time is different. Reusing that mechanism is nice and neat. Maybe you don't want to stall the city's growth for the whole time your Tank is under construction, but then you can say that the growth is stopped for 3 turns of the total build, or something similar. Different types of units could have different manpower requirements. There are several different ways to fine-tune this.

[GeoModder]

Since in part 1 of the preview combat was covered:

Solver, can you tell us more about that "Grenadier" unit? Is it for instance used to instantly bomb walls of a city or something?

[truepurple]

@sophist
. . . What particular way is bad? I wish people weren't so very vague.

. . . I could say tanks in civ is a bad idea, one shouldn't be realistic at the cost of fun, the price is too high! But that would be as vague and undefined as Imran's feedback.

. . . Also, its not about implementing a realistic system thats also fun. Its about adding fun and depth that also happens to add a little more realism.

. . . So that people know what I'm actually suggesting, I suppose I could try boil it down to something short enough for people to bother to try to read and understand but detailed enough not to be misconstrued, in a new post.

AFTER someone please tells me how population growth in civ 4 works

[MrFun]

Originally posted by truepurple

. . . So military units use/consist of some population, whats so damn hard about that? It makes war a more serious thing to get into thus the game more balanced, realistic, and fun. As civ is mostly a war game, population in troops would make other approaches more feasible.

You're crazy to actually want this.

[truepurple]

Wow, what a convincing point. Gosh, the very definition of a well thought out arguement [/sarcasm]

I know I'm crazy for wanting civ 4 to be more fun and deep but.. got anything better then that MF?

[kolpo]

Originally posted by truepurple

AFTER someone please tells me how population growth in civ 4 works

My impression: as long as your city has as much(or more) health then unhealth shall cities grown like in previous civ games: meaning you need a certain amount of food to grown to next size, to get that do you need a food surplus, how more food surplus you have, how faster it growns, as long as your health is not below your unhealth.

[truepurple]

Thats unfortunate to hear, but also confusing on exactly how health influences growth. I thought different food types were suppose to increase growth rates through health.

Your impression, where did you get it? You haven't actually played civ4 right?