Apolyton Civ4 PREVIEW (By Solver) - Part 1 online

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

It means that, if you go to war, or otherwise seek to expand, make sure you have the economy to do so first-or you could end up completely bankrupt. Remember also that their are Civic choices and Improvements which can reduce your overall maintainance costs (city and unit) thus leaving you with more cash to pursue your expansionist goals (if need be). Additionally, if you pick your settlement points well AND develop them properly, then the money they make can fuel future expansion down the track!
What it means, though, is that there is now a true balance between small, peaceful 'perfectionist' civilizations and mad-keen war-monger expansionist civilizations. This means more options for victory-which is a good thing!!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[FrostyBoy]

SA-WEET!

[Joseph]

If you play Civ 3 with the Rar mod, he did the same with worker that Firaxis has. The only thing a worker could do in the first 10 to 20 min of play was build roads. Then after you made the right discovery, you then could irrigate. Then after another discovery you then could remove forest. You could not remove jungle until some time in the 2nd age.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by sophist
Huh? It's not a cap of any sort.

Hence my use of the term similar... Similar in that the end result is the same for both setups in CTP and civ4. The larger you get, the greater the potential strain you can have in your empire, if your cities are not set up to handle it.

Bottom line: The end result of civ4 looks to be more like the end result of the CTP system than the civ3 system.

In classic ICS, numerous small cities are a good thing. In fact, the more you have, the better...In civ3, if you placed your cities tightly, you would be ICSing. And you had the Forbidden Palace to extend that strat. The AI was programmed to do the same (but since it was an AI, it was somewhat idiotic about it)

The problem in civ3 was that there was no penalty for an ICS strat. Sure you had corruption, but it was not the type of effect that would put you behind the 8-ball. You could never go too large in civ3.

But you can in CTP - in that you could pay a heavy cost to your overall economy if you exceed the number of cities allowed in you government, especially if you were not set up for it. If you had a lot of small cities, keeping them out of a riot state was hard if you went over the cap. And a riot state in CTP is more drastic and crippling than corruption in civ3.

Please read my post - it is the end result that I am driving at.

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As you get larger, you end up paying a greater maintenance cost for those cities. This is not too much different from exceeding city caps in CTP. Do so and your cities lose a great deal to crime. It's really the same effect in the end.
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A hard cap puts a great strain on your empire if you go slightly over the cap. A soft cap allows for a very gradual strain, and allows for a great deal of wriggle room if you have a well-run empire that can absorb the strain. What it means is that a large empire can follow an ICS strat in a soft cap situation, and I'm asking if the same end effect is happing in civ4.

Solver knows what I'm talking about. That is why I posted the questions that I did...

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Without having access to the game myself, I think I can point to two reasons why ICS won't be a good mid-late game strategy either:

1) Just because you can afford to ICS-in terms of time and money-doesn't mean it will be a successful strategy. Money lost to ICS is money not spent on science and/or culture, and shields/food lost to building settlers is food/shields not being used to grow your population (for more income, specialists, workers etc) and vital city improvements/wonders. i.e. it sounds like too much loss for too little gain.

2) Great People-aside from producing Golden ages (which become successively harder to achieve each time), it sounds like Great People can often achieve in 1-turn what it might take 10-15 turns (at least) to achieve normally. Yet, unless I am mistaken, building settlers actually reduces the chance of that city generating a new Great Person. So, once again, any benefits gained from producing hundreds of little cities actually comes at an ever increasing cost-in potential great people-at a time when you need them most!!

As I said, though, that is simply how I read it!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[ml_4da3]

Thanks!

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph

A pretty radical change to how Settlers (and Workers, too) are built does a lot to put ICS in its grave. Now, your cities produce Settlers with both shields and food. That is, a city that has 5 food per turn and 3 shields will be producing a Settler at 8 shields per turn. At the same time, the city will not be growing as all excess food goes towards the Settler. Thus, you are either growing or building a Settler but not both at the same time.

Settlers cost 2 population points and 30 shields in Civ3 already. So you couldn't both grow and build a settler there either, except for very rare cases of high food cities. This feature does absolutely nothing to make settler building harder. At the countrary, it eases it. However it is a good thing nonetheless, because the AI was very ineffective in Civ3 to balance population growth and shield building and mostly had finished one, while the other was still in the making and hence, wasted resources. With the new system it won't waste them anymore.

However in Civ3 you could still have your city grow by 3-4 pop by the time it built its settler, so in the end you were 2 populations ahead in total. In Civ4 during the time you build the settler, your city does not grow at all.

[Martinus]

2) Great People-aside from producing Golden ages (which become successively harder to achieve each time), it sounds like Great People can often achieve in 1-turn what it might take 10-15 turns (at least) to achieve normally. Yet, unless I am mistaken, building settlers actually reduces the chance of that city generating a new Great Person. So, once again, any benefits gained from producing hundreds of little cities actually comes at an ever increasing cost-in potential great people-at a time when you need them most!!

Good point. As I understand it, in order to get Great People you need big cities to spawn them, so halting your growth means no Great People, or at least having them later than the rest.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Martinus
However in Civ3 you could still have your city grow by 3-4 pop by the time it built its settler, so in the end you were 2 populations ahead in total. In Civ4 during the time you build the settler, your city does not grow at all.

This is true only up to a limit and in cities with a food resource, which is by far not the rule.

It could be also true in far away cities with a lot of corruption, however these hardly matter, as they are unproductive anyway and besides, who would build a city far away only because it produces a settler in 30 turns and can grow during this from size 1 to size 4, i.e. if subtracting the 2 pop for the settler, gains a whopping citizen, who however does not produce anything?

Lets assume it is your capital (that's where all starts) and it has a granary. Let it start at pop 1 with an empty food box (but filled granary). Lets further assume, that it has enough 1-shield tiles (unmined bonus grassland, mined non-bonus grassland or irrigated plains) for all your population.

The city takes 5 turns to grow, and hence 10 turns to grow twice. During the first four turns it produces 2 shields (1 from the center tile, one from your citizen), makes 8. In turn 5-9 it produces 3 shields, makes 15, results in 23. Next turn grows to size 3, it takes 2 more 4-shield turns to complete the settler. The city size is reduced back to 1, but we now have 2 food in the box.

It takes several more of these cycles (everyone of which is worth ten turns), and the city will reach size 4 in the end, i.e. have 2 population when starting the settler. Let's see how it plays out now:

During the first four turns it produces 3 shields (1 from the center tile, 2 from your citizens), makes 12. In turn 5-9 it produces 4 shields, makes 20, results in 32. Your settler is ready shield-wise, but your city still has only 3 citizens. Hence it falls back to size 1 with 8 excess food in the box.

It's growth has come to a standstill at only size 3.

This limit will be reached even earlier if you don't have a granary or mine 1-2 bonus grasslands.

If you add a food resource, this growth limit will be reached later, however it will be reached inevitably, because at some size the balance between food and shields produced will be reached.

The same is true for cities with a bit corruption/waste. They waste shields and can grow up to a limit, where the described balance is reached anyway. Besides, in this city more population does not mean the same than in your capital or tier-1 cities, because they are much less productive.

So it does not look good for your "1-2 pop growth per settler" assertion, unless you can prove how this can be reached, how common your constructed case is and how the extra population matters (hint: corruption)

[Robert]

That's what I call a lot of news!
Thanks Solver!

The anti ICS stuff looks really like the end of ICS.
It's the end of how I play civ games as well, I guess I have to re invent myself again as well. Which may be good, though I have to get used to it

I like the stuff you mentioned about the combat as well. STrategy is more then just building a lot of units.

[Harovan]

The combat system looks really, really good. It is simple and complex at the same time. Sending huge stacks is just as bad as sending single units only. I hope the AI can handle it reasonnable well in both attack and defense.

One question arose, when I attacked a stack in Civ3, the attacking unit faced the unit with the best defense/hitpoint combination. This was not necessarily the same unit in multiple attacks as it could lose hitpoints and another unit steps on its place. Which unit does the attacker face in Civ4?

[Drakan]

Thanks Solver

[tuckson]

Great preview solver, thanks.

However, Still some questions remain.

1) Have you experienced some of the "where the heck are all those enemy units coming from?" feeling during the games (even if the enemy time after time seems to run out of gold? )?

2) could you post some screens from the naval units?

3) As for the ics solution (a bit was answered on GeoModder's question) , how is it going to work when one captures enemy cities? In civ3 a question was raised whehter you want to erase the city or install a governor. I guess installing governors everywhere is a bad idea here, but is demolishing all the cities having effects on the world's attitude against you?

[MarkG]

a naval shot will be in the 2nd part

there isnt a global negative diplomatic effect due to razing cities. such a thing only exists for nuking...

[tuckson]

Originally posted by MarkG
a naval shot will be in the 2nd part

there isnt a global negative diplomatic effect due to razing cities. such a thing only exists for nuking...

OK, sounds good. The only drawback then seems to me that, especially in the later era's you create empty area's which will attract settlers like bees to a honeypot. Is there a way to secure those areas you've conquered but razed?