Article: Civilization 4 Review by "Yin26" (Part 3/3)

[yin26]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
As a builder, it's essential for me to know what my enemy has so I can prepare a defence force with the correct counters. So it works both ways, doesn't it. The ease of attacking my cities is countered by my ability to build an appropriate counter force.

Maybe we've found a use for the seemingly useless forts then!

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
As a builder, it's essential for me to know what my enemy has so I can prepare a defence force with the correct counters. So it works both ways, doesn't it. The ease of attacking my cities is countered by my ability to build an appropriate counter force.

Read my post again...
I'm not against making that knowledge available to the player. What I am against is the ease that knowledge is currently obtained.

You want inside info??? - create a spy and send it in - and there is a reputation risk if that spy is caught. If at war, you bring along a cadre of spies to scope out cities, then decide if the city is takable - if not, you move on to another target.

[ugignadl]

Originally posted by hexagonian

Read my post again...
I'm not against making that knowledge available to the player. What I am against is the ease that knowledge is currently obtained.

You want inside info??? - create a spy and send it in - and there is a reputation risk if that spy is caught. If at war, you bring along a cadre of spies to scope out cities, then decide if the city is takable - if not, you move on to another target.

Read his post again: that is useless tedium.

[DanQ]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
The first image on page 4/5 looks like a bad link by the way.

Thanks for the heads-up -- I corrected this earlier today.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Jeje2]

Originally posted by yin26
P.S. One thing I would like to note is that by this time after release of a game I would find myself pretty bored and/or looking for a radical strategy to try. Not so with Civ 4. I feel that I have just begun to understand all the new gameplay, and am finding that it's going to be engaging for a LONG time to come. With the likely performance tweaks and hopefully a few tweaks to tech pacing, etc., Civ 4 is a "must buy" game in my view.

WTF
Am I now despite all forced to a hastened reneval of my PC?

[Zoid]

Jeje2, yes indeed. My new comp cost me an arm and a leg but it´s worth it!

Yin, nice review. It seems you can already feel the taste of cardboard in the back of your throat

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by ugignadl
Read his post again: that is useless tedium.

And read my post again...how can the creation and the use of a a few spy units be considered useless tedium? You are looking at a few seconds of actual gametime play needed to get information that does not have to be done on a turn-by-turn basis either. With the inclusion of a spy unit in the game that has an actual tactical purpose if you choose to ignore that aspect of the game you could pay actual consequenses - don't come back crying when that city you chose to attack had 30 units in it and you couldn't be bothered to create a spy because you were all hung up over the fact that the game forced you to play a few more seconds that turn.

It adds a layer of thinking and preplanning - something that should be second nature to a builder-type player anyhow.

Think about it - you do not have to do this every turn of the game - you do it when you are thinking about going to war. Send in a spy to get a general feel of the rival's forces. Then when you attack, you do it as you get close to your target city. That is a small price to pay for being at war, and it is not overly tedious.

Tedium is something you have to do every turn, no matter what. The above is not in that category.

You want info, you should have to pay for it via creation of a unit whose purpose is getting information, as well as a change that unit will fail. It has already been done effectively in civ too as well as real life.

It's call recon...
and is a valid military tactic to boot, given that history is full of accounts of military forces that grossly underestimated their opponent because of a lack of effective recon or their recon was wiped out by the enemy.

Recon in civ4 - walk up next to the force and you see everthing in it without fail with no cost or risk involved to the player.

How easy is that??????

[Cort Haus]

Hex, you're only seeing one side of this. As things stand the AI can buzz around my civ seeing what I've got without having to budget for it or build special units, then decide what to build accordingly. That's cool, and it works because it's easy for the AI.

Now, we know the AI can have a tough time with recon, and in Civ 3 it had to use a full map hack to be able to function at all. While evidence has been presented of the Civ 4 AI knowing things it shouldn't about the map, the understanding is that this is by error rather than by design.

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that unit visibility is part of the AI model which would get disrupted by such a change.

Even apart from the AI's ability to manage recon, I'd still find it tedious to have to take build & send spies and check every city regularly at a risk of a diplo hit, just to see what units I need to defend myself.

I understand that you want to have to bring one more unit type to the battlefield, and that's fine for you, but the negative implications for the AI and other playstyles should not be dismissed.

ISTR that CTP had numerous stealth type units and maaaan that was tedium. I had to park about 3 different stealth units in every other border city just to check on the AI spies.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Hex, you're only seeing one side of this. As things stand the AI can buzz around my civ seeing what I've got without having to budget for it or build special units, then decide what to build accordingly. That's cool, and it works because it's easy for the AI.

But what is easy for the AI becomes incredibly easy to the player.

I now have no-risk wars because I know exactly what I am going to fight - in fact I can base all offensive war decisions on exact info even before I decide to cross the borders.

And even if I do not have open borders, then I know exactly what is in each city and can automatically change targets on the fly. Last night I was invading Japan and I had 2 cities left to take...which one to hit???? One was fully loaded and the other had scant protection of 2 units. Bingo, I had my target and it did not cost me a single unit, nor did I have to waste any time. Furthermore, since I knew exactly what I was up against, I knew what I needed to bring to that last city.

I ended up with a war without risk

If I had incomplete knowledge, I might have taken heavy casulties on the wrong choice. And I can live with that in a game.

That is the nature of warfare and how it should be portrayed in a game. There has to be FOW on the local level as well as the global level, and that was even more the case as you move back into history - they did not have air recon and satellites like we have today. Civ4 has reduced warfare to a no-risk proposition for the warmongor.

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Now, we know the AI can have a tough time with recon, and in Civ 3 it had to use a full map hack to be able to function at all. While evidence has been presented of the Civ 4 AI knowing things it shouldn't about the map, the understanding is that this is by error rather than by design.

I actually do not have a huge problem with a map hack for the AI, and the AI in CTP2 AOM does a good job of playing the board without a map hack.

It is possible to make a good game without the AI knowing the entire map...

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Even apart from the AI's ability to manage recon, I'd still find it tedious to have to take build & send spies and check every city regularly at a risk of a diplo hit, just to see what units I need to defend myself.

You are assuming that the spies I propose in civ4 would have the exact features of spies in CTP. I am proposing spy (a better word might be recon or scout) units that merely see troop deployment, which if you are doing in warfare, would not incur any additional diplo hit because you are already at war, and that is merely one of the acts of war.

If you choose to be paranoid and do it during peacetime, then tensions should be raised (cold war anyone???) Or close your borders...

[Shogun Gunner]

Yin, I appreciate your viewpoint about stacked combat of CtP -- I would agree with that. If that could be combined with the promotions concept, it would be a step forward.

[ugignadl]

CIV does not sport no-risk wars for the human players. You can see the units in any tile you can see through any means. That's not the extent of the whole civ however. You may take an easy border city and then fall to the might of the rest of the AI's army (and perhaps their friends).

Should we remove the demographics screen as well? No risk wars! Just be number 1 in the soldiers category.

[Cort Haus]

There's nothing paranoid about having Monty or Alex as a neighbour. It's not if, it's when.

[Addled Platypus]

when is the thread "See yin26 eating cardboard"

[DanQ]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
when is the thread "See yin26 eating cardboard"

Viola:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=146254

As of now please confine discussion of this subject within the thread referenced above.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Eric_Chan]

Great stuff!