New warlords preview at IGN

[gunkulator]

Protective seems to be useful only in the early game, which is often a time of expansion and attack, not defensive. Cheap walls and castles? Meh. Once gunpowder and cavalry comes around, Protective doesn't seem to offer much. Drill promotions on cannons don't help against city garrisoned riflemen.

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by gunkulator
Protective seems to be useful only in the early game, which is often a time of expansion and attack, not defensive. Cheap walls and castles? Meh. Once gunpowder and cavalry comes around, Protective doesn't seem to offer much. Drill promotions on cannons don't help against city garrisoned riflemen.

Perhaps Protective also increases the number of units that get free support as long as they stay within your cultural influence.

[MikeH]

3 traits and 10 leaders! WOO!!!


Sounds great.

[MikeH]

I want it!!!

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by gunkulator
Protective seems to be useful only in the early game, which is often a time of expansion and attack, not defensive. Cheap walls and castles? Meh. Once gunpowder and cavalry comes around, Protective doesn't seem to offer much. Drill promotions on cannons don't help against city garrisoned riflemen.

Drill promotions on siege units certainly do help, though I don't think that's going to be the biggest benefit of the Protective trait. It's going to be all those Drill 2+ gunpowder units the player is going to have once they upgrade their archers and longbowmen. It also makes the higher drill promotions easier to get, which can be pretty strong, and I think there's a promotion or two that you can get off of a Drill prerequisite that will be a lot easier, can't remember which one it is though (Formation?).

[Imran Siddiqui]

Great Wall seems fun. Though I wonder what other attributes it'll have... simply keeping out barbarians doesn't seem enough.

I will say that it'll be interesting to have a Great Wall bisect your empire as well in modern ages .

[Imran Siddiqui]

Btw, the scenario information is awesome!

In addition to learning all about the new additions to the game, we also had the chance to check out some of the new scenarios. Given the focus of the game, it's no surprise that each scenario is very heavily focused on military conquest. Rather than just incorporating new units and map layouts, the scenarios offer entirely new gameplay mechanics.

In Alexander the Great, for instance, players will have control over the Alexander Warlord unit and a massive army of Macedonian forces as they push east into Persia. Since Alexander is the focus of the scenario, he won't actually die if defeated in battle. Instead, he'll simply be 'wounded' at which point he disappears for a few turns. The time frame for the scenario is a bit compressed so Alexander will only have access to a handful of military technologies, each of which provides a new benefit to your forces in the field. Recruitment allows moving units to heal as if they were stationary while Army Servants improves the movement rate of all your military units.

One cool new feature of the Alexander campaign is that one of the civics has been replaced with a series of titles, from Alexander the Upstart all the way up to Alexander the Great. These titles will be awarded automatically as you advance throughout the scenario and will make further conquests easier by reducing war weariness, maintenance and corruption.

We also managed to sneak a look at the new Genghis Khan scenario. This one is less about building up a massive empire than it is about tearing down the empires of your 15 rivals. To that end, Genghis will be able to employ a Camp unit. This is sort of a mobile city that you'll want to keep just behind your advancing forces. Once a camp has stayed in one spot for a few turns, it starts pumping out units according to the type of terrain it's on and the types of technologies you've obtained.

Unlike the more traditional tech trees of the core game, the Mongol tech tree has no branches. Instead you'll just have a wide variety of techs that can only be obtained by conquering enemy cities. Conquer enough cities and you might learn how to make one of the new trebuchets that are found in the game.

There aren't really any additions to the multiplayer side of the game but there are more than enough toys here for the core game to reinvigorate your interest in the online matches.

VERY cool! So the scenarios simply won't be vanilla CivIV with different starting positions.

[Ijuin]

Originally posted by korn469
I hope that the one time experience boost provided by warlords work is a permanent boost as long as the unit is close by the warlord (either the same tile or even an adjacent one), and it's not an SMAC like obelisk boost like Unimatrix11 described.

I think it is more like how Alexander and his Generals worked in the CTP2 Alexander scenario, where all units stacked with such a unit get temporary veteran status. By analogy, then, I would guess that units in the same square as your Warlord would act like they have the next level higher Combat promotion.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Common Sensei

I bet Victoria gets Expansive changed to Imperialistic, among other changes in some of the current leaders.

Which will make Victoria the REX Queen.

[LordShiva]

Alexander CTP2 scenario was my favourite ever! Hope this one is as good or better...

[Illuminatus]

You can sacrifice a Great General to create a new military academy or to grant additional experience to units created from that city.

Has the military academy been reworked? There will be multiple military academies or can general simply build the national wonder?

[Solver]

What, there's no Military Academy wonder in vanilla Civ4 .

[LordShiva]

Military academies

Wonder what Augustus' traits are.

Praetorian + Military Academy + Great Generals = Uber Warlord :drool: :drool: :drool: :wettingmypants: :drool:

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by Martinus

Which will make Victoria the REX Queen.

Actually, I think whoever gets the Charismatic and Imperialistic combo (if anyone does) will be the REX Queen/King, as the happiness bonus means you can (literally) whip up settlers faster than anyone without worrying about the happiness hit, and all cities will have a higher happiness cap to boot.

[Lorizael]

There's not quite enough information on this vassal state thing. Sounds very interesting though.