Super IGN preview

[Martinus]

Wow, protective got a significant power boost.

(For those who didn't notice, check out the Churchill screen - Protective now gives free promotions to Archery AND Gunpowder units, not Archery AND Artillery - just think of those redcoats pouring down from Churchill's England).

[Dis]

Is protective that great? I guess for people who play a defensive game.

Charismatic doesn't seem that great at first, but maybe it will come in handy.

They didn't mess with Bismark, that's a good thing. Don't mess with a good thing.

edit: in response to the above edit. Wow, that does seem powerful. More powerful than aggressive me thinks. What's up with that? Not to mention the -25% exp needed for promotions (charismatic). He could be one of the bigger warmongers in the game.

[Blake]

I wouldn't put too much faith in this article being accurate in the details...

The addition of three new leader traits brings the total number of pairings up to 55. Since there are only 36 leaders, that leaves a lot of pairings that aren't used. The Industrial-Philosophical pairing still hasn't shown up but we are finally seeing a Creative-Industrious mix (like I dunno, Louie?). A few old favorites have been cut as well. The one-two Financial-Organized combo offered by Washington was always one of my favorites, as was Julius Caesar's Creative-Expansive (JC is Cre-Org?, that's news to me) mix.

To me it doesn't sound like a Russian Research Institute is a likely replacement for an Ancient Library built in the BC's. No. It's much more likely to replace the Laboratory or at much more of a stretch the Observatory (but +2 scientists sounds too powerful to be anything other than extremely late game).

edit:
Comedy Gold!

Any units that happen to be in the same tile when the Warlord is created, gain an additional twenty experience points.

I would hope they share the 20exp...

[Thedrin]

Some thoughts:

Changes to charismatic:

Only +1 happy face per city but the second happy face now comes with the monument so charismatic leaders will have a good reason to build them. Same bonus for the broadcast tower instead of double production speed. It may be a late game building but that still seems a considerable reduction in power considering that it can already be worth up to 3 happy faces. Building the Eiffel Tower now seems a much more viable strategy for charismatic leaders.

Changes to Protective:

Units do not recieve Drill I and Drill II. They recieve Drill I and City Garrison I. This reduces the considerable power of the protective trait - it remains excellent for defensive duties but Drill IV units now look a long way off. The offensiveness of the trait is further weakened by giving the bonuses to gunpowder units instead of artillery since
a) Many gunpowder units would recieve the bonuses anyway through upgrades,
b) Imagine giving the first strike promotions to a trebuchet which already has 100% city attack.

Stables: Anyone know what they do? The Mongols get 4 XP from theirs so it seems the common or garden stable won't do a great deal.

Civilizations:

Arabs are looking less useful for generic game play. Though very good for religion hoarding and cultural victories.

Aztec special building looks like a lot of fun.

China:

a) Cho-Ko-Nus will get the free protective promotions. I was opposed to this happening but the weakening of the protective trait makes them not as overpowered as they could have been.
b) The Pavilion is an odd one. It'll be very good for builders but might turn warmongers away from playing as the Chinease. The theatre is often used to give quick culture but the pavilion won't do that.
c) Overall China looks like a great civ for builders to play as - particularly Mao who loses the Organised trait but gains the Expansive trait.

The Egyptian obelisk looks amazing. Saladin may be good for getting religions and culture but both Egyptian leaders will be even better at it.

Damn. Victoria lost Expansive. Imperialistic does suit her very well but she was also one of the best suited leaders in the game for Expansive.

Germany:

a) The Assembly Plant is a moster. I do not want to be neighbouring Germany in the late game.
b) Frederick gets Mao's old traits. so I'll be giving him a go early on.

Genghis gets Imperialistic. Take that person at CivFanatics who insisted that Expansive was a perfect trait.

Rome:

a) Roman Forum: a market with 25% birth rate.
b) Augustus gets the trait combination I've wanted to try for ages.
Organised + Creative = strong early game.
Praetorians = strong early-middle game.
Forum = strong late-middle game (when combined with the added health and happiness coming in from newly opened trade routes, grocers and the forum itself).
The game's usually over by then.

Russia:

a) Got to agree that the Russian Research Institute almost certainly replaces the laboratory or maybe the observatory or university. Two free scientists with library can't be right.
b) I was never a fan of Catherine but she does get a very strong trait combination for the early game.

The Spanish may turn out to be a decent civilization if the research cost of engineering is reduced.

Units:

Glad to see an offensive early naval unit.

Trebuchet looks good initially but its low strength combined with the period in which it appears (Engineering) make it quite weak.

[Blake]

Forum isn't fantastic... this is because the GPP multipliers are so high, generally +100%... as such the +25% on the forum is really about equal to a +10% on mint/seowon, relative to other bonuses of the same kind.

Also rounding will have a huge effect...
From 1-3 gpp: +0 (+0%)
From 4-7 gpp: +1 (+25% - +14%)
From 8-11 gpp: +2 (+25% - +18%)

So often the Forum will give considerably less than +25%..
If there's one nice thing about it, it should be non-polluting GPP, unlike the National Epic...

[Thedrin]

Where does it say anything about great people in relation to the Roman Forum? I was under the assumption that "+25% birth rate" refered to generic city population growth.

If it is just a +25% boost to great people generation then it is - given the large number of methods for doing this already available - probably the weakest unique building in the game.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Thedrin
The offensiveness of the trait is further weakened by giving the bonuses to gunpowder units instead of artillery since
a) Many gunpowder units would recieve the bonuses anyway through upgrades,
b) Imagine giving the first strike promotions to a trebuchet which already has 100% city attack.

I can't help but disagree with you here.

On your first point, the fact that they receive these bonuses for free, means you can give them other bonuses off the bat, effectively saving the experience points.

On your second point, I believe a bonus to gunpowder unit is much more useful overall than to artillery units, since the former are produced much more often than the latter.

Also, re your comment about stable - the article says that the special buildings give their bonuses on top of any bonuses granted by the original building - so original stables may also grant 4xp, and the Mongol ones additional 4xp for the total of 8xp, for example.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Thedrin
b) The Pavilion is an odd one. It'll be very good for builders but might turn warmongers away from playing as the Chinease. The theatre is often used to give quick culture but the pavilion won't do that.

Why not? It will give the same culture as the old theatre, plus the added bonus for being the pavilion.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by Thedrin

Stables: Anyone know what they do? The Mongols get 4 XP from theirs so it seems the common or garden stable won't do a great deal.

I'm guessing but maybe +2 XP. Maybe Barracks won't give any XP to mounted units?

Aztec special building looks like a lot of fun.

Indeed. I'll be buying a bigger whip...

a) Roman Forum: a market with 25% birth rate.

The reviewer surely meant "+25 GP birth rate", which is a reasonable bonus.

The Spanish may turn out to be a decent civilization if the research cost of engineering is reduced.

The Citadel still seems a poor return on hammers invested: +1 happy (from the security) would have given good synergy with EXP: as is, barracks upgrades siege units better for less hammers, and city raider siege engines are a good alternative to bombard anyway.

[Thedrin]

Originally posted by Martinus

I can't help but disagree with you here.

On your first point, the fact that they receive these bonuses for free, means you can give them other bonuses off the bat, effectively saving the experience points.

On your second point, I believe a bonus to gunpowder unit is much more useful overall than to artillery units, since the former are produced much more often than the latter.

Also, re your comment about stable - the article says that the special buildings give their bonuses on top of any bonuses granted by the original building - so original stables may also grant 4xp, and the Mongol ones additional 4xp for the total of 8xp, for example.

I still say that Protective is a very strong defensive trait to have - in fact, a stronger defensive trait. However, it was a very good offensive trait before hand and my point was to merely highlight that.

Regarding Drill I:

Gunpowder units can't get the Drill promotions under ordinary circumstances. They will get the quite weak Drill I promotion here but will not be able to get the promotions that it leads to. On the other hand, artillery units can use Drill I to get Drill II and those beyond.

Regarding City Garrison:

Admittedly not useful for artillery. However, in my games the majority of my defencive forces are upgraded from archery units which already had the free promotions. The traits defensive strength is given a boost by giving it to newly trained gunpowder units but since City Garrison has minimal usefullness in offensive situations (holding newly captured cities) I believe.

Re: the stable:

So you would agree that the Korean university gives +60% research?

Maybe you do, but the article, as highlighted by Blake, seems to be full of errors.

Edit: Similiarly, I suspect that the pavilion gives the % culture boost instead of +2 culture.

Edit again: Just realised that the stock exchange is listed as +15% so it looks like the Korean university may be correctly labelled though +10% research still seems more likely.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Super IGN preview

Originally posted by Simplicity
Only two new non-civ specific units... Trebuchet and Trireme, apparently. That's unfortunate.

Triremes!

[Kuciwalker]

Roman
Roman Forum, replaces Market
+25% birth rate

Getting a little frisky in there

[Solver]

I'm not sure what I think about the Zulu building. Okay if you've got a big empire, but otherwise... eh.

The key art of the Zulu UB is that it replaces the Barracks. As Zulus, you're going to want Barracks anyway. You'll probably have it in every city - so a maintenance reduction on top of that is good.

Trebuchet looks good initially but its low strength combined with the period in which it appears (Engineering) make it quite weak.

Let's see if you still say the same after you get to use them .

[Saurus]

The expansion seems very promising indeed.

However, The biggest problem I have had so far with CIV 4 is the game engine that already give attacking player too big of an advantage.

*No SOC
*unlimited stack size (and only shows the 20 first units of the stack to the defender thus making it even more diffitult to counter against)
*no penalty damage caused to oversized stacks
(witch is the worst problem IMO - you can have 100 units in a stack and a catapult will still only manages damage 5 of them! - now THAT requires skill.
Obviously the cata should not be able to kill them all but the units beeing too thightly packed should more or less ALL take damage)
* no attrition damage to attackers.
*attacker can bombard defenders, defenders can NOT
bombard attackers. (another very serious issue!)

I had big hopes the expansion would balance issues a bit but the Trebuchet only gives more of an edge to the attackers - and this during the late middle age when the attackers in any case are extreamly overpovered as there is really no weapons against oversized stacks during that period. Sad, sad, sad!

Well, there is always the protectice trait, of course, but that does not really fix the problem.

[Solver]

Are you serious? Civ4 is the first Civ4 game in which the defender has an overall advantage. Attacking requires more planning, more tactics, and costs more. Let's see:

Significant city defense bonuses (from culture, walls). Getting rid of those takes the attacker a few turns, or makes him get significantly more siege units.

Units with an inherent city defense bonus - archers, longbowmen. Other units need promotions for city attack, but defenders have an automatic city defense bonus.

The attacker needs more units. The attacker has to sacrifice some siege or non-siege units. You fortify a city with Archers and Axemen, and an equally sized stack of Axemen & Swordsmen will NOT take the city. Definitely not.

The attacker gets more war weariness for having started the war. The attacker pays supply costs for units in enemy territory (these numbers can become large).

Because of culture, the attacker needs, in most cases, 2 turns to reach an enemy city and can only attack on the third turn. That's extra time for the defender to move more defenders into position.

2-3 catapults do wonders to a big attacking stack. It's about cost efficiency - Catapults are very cheap compared to a bigger attacking stack that can be significantly weakened by that siege.