Apolyton Civ4 PREVIEW (By Solver) - Part 1 online

[sabrewolf]

first of all: solver, great preview!
while mark's was a great help in regards to UI, yours shows much more details in other parts. i'm really looking forward to the next 2/3

i have a question about religions:
if every religion has it's own temple and cathedral (or whatever the equivalents are), was happens in following situation:
your neighbor "invents" buddhism which influences your first cities. you chose buddism as your state religion and build some buddhist temples. then some thousand years later you found the christian religion which rapidly spreads around your nation and you adopt christian state religion.

A) do your buddhist temples lose their effect? cultural and elsewise?
* A1) if yes: do you have to build christian temples?
* A2) if no: will aditional christian temples double whatever effect it had.
B) or do they automatically convert into the christian temples?
C) something different?

another question would be whether the AI hates you if he sees you throwing missionaries at his cities like mad (unless they are his state religion. will this impact his attitude towards you ("-4 stop trying to convert my people to worshipping your false gods")

same goes for culture: if you culture bomb me, i'd be pretty pissed and sure as hell would consider "removing" that city. will the AI also dislike this way of peaceful domination and conquest?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Solver, before I forget... what system were you playing with, and how smoothly did it run?

[Solver]

Temples and cathedrals work diffently. There are temples for each religion, and they're all buildable at the same time, if you want.

In your example, your cities would be able to build both Buddhist and Chrisitan temples. Any temple gives +1 happy and +1 culture - that is one of the reasons I like having two religions, as the extra Temples provide a benefit.

Cathedrals are also buildable for each religion, but their happiness bonus depends on whether that religion is your state religion. If you build a Buddhist Stupa when Buddhism is your state religion, you'll get a good happy bonus. If you build it when you're Christian, you'll not get that great a happy bonus, but it's still worth it.

AI doesn't hate you for sending missionaries, and I don't see why they should. The AIs that don't want you to spread their religion will run the Theocracy civic, which prevents the spread of non-state religion. Finally, even if you spread your state religion to AI cities, that doesn't mean that the AI will convert.

If you press your borders vs. the AI borders quite a lot, that will strain your relations. One of the relation modifiers is for close borders, and culture bombing seems to have an effect there.

[Solver]

Imran, I won't give you a fair assesment of performance - most of the time was spent on builds that performed way poorer than the final game does.

I was mostly playing on a 1.8 GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM, GeForce FX 5700 with 256 MB VRAM, and the game runs very smoothly with the current build. No stuttering, no slowdowns, no problems like that.

[Boris Godunov]

Wow, that's great to know. I could probably have run it on this computer, then. So the new one should make it heavenly.

[Xmudder]

Originally posted by Solver
Temples and cathedrals work diffently. There are temples for each religion, and they're all buildable at the same time, if you want.

In your example, your cities would be able to build both Buddhist and Chrisitan temples. Any temple gives +1 happy and +1 culture - that is one of the reasons I like having two religions, as the extra Temples provide a benefit.

Sounds like Spiritual civs will make out nicely with their double production of temples.

I do have a question about rushing. The game doubles production of a temple, it doesn't halve the price. Does that mean rushing temples in spiritual civs is just as expensive as it is in non-religious civs? Same Q for Granaries, barracks, Theaters, etc.

edit: Do non state religions casue unhappiness? There have been several posts snf previewd implying that, but nothing solid. If so, are temples needed to undo that?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Solver
Imran, I won't give you a fair assesment of performance - most of the time was spent on builds that performed way poorer than the final game does.

I was mostly playing on a 1.8 GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM, GeForce FX 5700 with 256 MB VRAM, and the game runs very smoothly with the current build. No stuttering, no slowdowns, no problems like that.

Were you playing with large maps and if so, how's the the late game turn time? Is it any shorter than Civ 3, which sometimes took forever to work through all the AI movements etc.?

[Solver]

I haven't played on Huge maps at all, and only twice on Large maps, but the turn times there were very acceptable on my machine.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Willem


Were you playing with large maps and if so, how's the the late game turn time? Is it any shorter than Civ 3, which sometimes took forever to work through all the AI movements etc.?

I dabbled with large maps on a P4 2.4 (or so) with a Radeon 9600 and 1G of RAM. It performed OK for the most part.

[ajbera]

Back to siege equipment and bombardment for a sec...

1) Is there a bombardment range greater than 1? I'm sure a catapult would only be able to bombard an adjacent tile, maybe cannons too, but does artillery have a greater bombardment range?

2) In the example you gave, you said you sacrificed 3 catapults to attack Monty's stack. So, say I had a cannon in a fort, with musketeers & other good defensive units, and I use my cannon to attack a stack of warriors adjacent to the fort, after I deal some collateral damage to the stack, the warriors will directly counterattack my cannon, and probably destroy it?

I understand this is necessary to prevent attacks of just siege equipment (I would have better off attacking the stack of warriors with my musketeers, or waiting if they attacked me & defended), but it seems odd.

Thanks for being so patient and forthcoming, by the way. We really appreciate it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Solver
Imran, I won't give you a fair assesment of performance - most of the time was spent on builds that performed way poorer than the final game does.

I was mostly playing on a 1.8 GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM, GeForce FX 5700 with 256 MB VRAM, and the game runs very smoothly with the current build. No stuttering, no slowdowns, no problems like that.

Hmmm... good to know, I have the same processor and RAM specs.... I wonder if it'll run as well, though, with a GeForceGo 440 with 32 MB VRAM .

Well, I guess I'll find out .

[GeoModder]

Guess it's single-unit graphics for poor us, Imran.

[kolpo]

Originally posted by Solver
Cathedrals are also buildable for each religion, but their happiness bonus depends on whether that religion is your state religion. If you build a Buddhist Stupa when Buddhism is your state religion, you'll get a good happy bonus. If you build it when you're Christian, you'll not get that great a happy bonus, but it's still worth it.

Ah so that's one of the downsides of freedom of religion: no more happyness bonus from cathedrals nor from state religion. Thought this civic has a happiness and science bonus to compensate. It seems like civics are well balanced

[Solver]

Is there a bombardment range greater than 1? I'm sure a catapult would only be able to bombard an adjacent tile, maybe cannons too, but does artillery have a greater bombardment range?

Only air units bombard from a range.

In the example you gave, you said you sacrificed 3 catapults to attack Monty's stack. So, say I had a cannon in a fort, with musketeers & other good defensive units, and I use my cannon to attack a stack of warriors adjacent to the fort, after I deal some collateral damage to the stack, the warriors will directly counterattack my cannon, and probably destroy it?

A Cannon has much better strength than Warriors. You would deal collateral damage to the whole stack plus wipe out the defending warrior.

[Boris Godunov]

Do Air units get to bombard units in the field, or do they attack in the normal manner, like the artillery now does?