Apolyton Civ4 PREVIEW (By Solver) - Part 2 online

[Solver]

Originally posted by TheDarkside
Hey that's interesting. On the first screen shot it shows solver has 16 theatres. So unless cottages/towns/villages can have improvements that means he has at least 16 cities... that's actually alot of cities ! I considered 16 cities a big empire in the early Civs...

Yes, I had 16 or so cities there... but that was when I had totally conquered two civs! That's an average of 5 cities per the tree civs (two conquered and me).

[alva]

So...?? When is part three going up? Should I start a request thread already?

Good work Solver.

[korn469]

In total, there are six types of specialists: Scientists, Priests, Engineers, Merchants, Artists and Citizens.

So Civ4 doesn't have entertainers? Also let me see if i have this right...

Scientist -> Science beakers
Preist -> happiness? converts a city?
Engineers -> Shields/Hammers
Merchants -> Trade/Gold
Artists -> Culture
Citizens -> a bit of everything?

EDIT: also can you give us a few more details of specialist limits?

[Solver]

These specialists are somewhat like Civ3 specialists, each produces their thing, plus those Great Person points.

Scienist -> Breakers.
Priest -> Shield and coin, IIRC. But little of that.
Engineers -> Shields.
Merchants -> Gold
Artists -> Culture
Citizens -> 1 shield.

Citizens are usually best avoided. Also, some of the other specialists produce something else in addition to their main thing. IIRC, an Artist also gives one breaker, or something like that. I honestly don't remember those specialist yields.

[Xmudder]

Cottages only produce commerce? I thot they also produced a hammer (2 hammers, in a town with Universal Sufferage).

And they need to be built by workers, right?

edit: no specialist produces happiness?

[ml_4da3]

16 cities a lot?? no way, > 100 cities would be a lot

[Solver]

Limits? Well, in the beggining, you can only use Citizens, no other specialists. If you build a Temple, you can assign 1 Priest. If you build a Library, you can assign 2 Scientists.

[korn469]

thanks for the info solver!

[Solver]

Xmudder - cottages are commerce only, although the highest evolution of them (Towns) do give a hammer under Universal Suffrage. Yes, they're (Cottages) built by Workers as any terrain improvement.

[TheDarkside]

Wow, I REALLY like what they did with specialists! I would think that it would be the killer of the old gripe I have with the civ series where every city is a carbon copy of the next but then I remembered that buildings don't have maintenance costs. So what I initially thought would be a bad idea to build many varying types of specialist buildings in one city since you will be dilluting your pool of available specialists while paying major maintenance costs for all these things is actually not bad at all, since buildings are free... still sounds really cool though

edit: but then again, some wonders improve the effectiveness of certain specialists so in those cities you'll want to maximize their output by having as many of them as possible - hence a specialized city- Nice

[Stuie]

Considering I almost completely ignored specialists in Civ3, I think that's going to be the change that causes me the most re-thinking of how to play Civ.

Sounds like fun! Bring it on!!

[Lorizael]

Priests. Hm. It seems as if the only reason one would have Priests is to produce Great Prophets?

[Xmudder]

Only 4 golden ages?

Originally posted by Solver
Xmudder - cottages are commerce only, although the highest evolution of them (Towns) do give a hammer under Universal Suffrage. Yes, they're (Cottages) built by Workers as any terrain improvement.

Can you explain why so many screenshots have tiles with cottages producing hammers? Older builds?

If it takes 2 or more great people of different types to start a golden age, then the game is capped at 4 golden ages (one of each specialist). Is this right?

[ml_4da3]

Sooo, solver, when will we see part 3? It would be really nice to know a date

[TheDarkside]

Ahh, Great People. These guys are really interesting and significant. The basics are simple: each of your cities has a Great People meter with points accumulating as time goes on. When enough points are in the meter, it drops back to zero and gives you a Great Person. The amount of points required for the next Great Person goes up each time you get one

Can you tell us if that scale for great people goes up in a regular interval ? Like let's say a great artist costs 50 great artist points in your city. So once you get to 50 and produce a great artist and your number of great artist pts drop back to 0, do you need another 50 pts for the next one or is the number higher? I ask because if the number gets higher then that might be bad news in terms of specialized cities. It would be more cost effective to switch over to a new city and make a great artist there since it requires less great artist pts, right? Then this city which produced an artist switches over to another great person type it did not build yet...

Edit: Unless...

The second action is settling in a city. That essentially gives the city a "super specialist" who has the effect of several normal specialists and is thus a considerable boost to that city.

Does that "super specialist" also produce extra "great people points" for his field as well? Then it would make sense that the pts required for next great person increases by an increasing amount