Some Questions

[hesford]

Hi, I'm thinking about buying civilization 4 and the expansion pack, but I need to know some stuff, so here goes.

1) Could someone list all the civilizations available for the original game and the expansion?

2) How much of the world does the game cover? Are there options to play only certain parts of the world?

3) How is the transformation of England to Great Britain done?

4) How easy is it to create new civilizations?

5) How is naval stuff played out?

6) What resources are there?

7) How are battles played out?

Cheers.

[LordShiva]

1) http://www.civilization.com/

3) It's not.

5) Not particularly well.

[Will9]

2) Could you be more specific?

4) It isn't easy.

6) http://civilization4.net/3/78/129/

7) http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...rt&om_clk=tabs Watch some of the gameplay vidoes

[Dis]

Re: Some Questions

Originally posted by hesford
Hi, I'm thinking about buying civilization 4 and the expansion pack, but I need to know some stuff, so here goes.

1) Could someone list all the civilizations available for the original game and the expansion?

2) How much of the world does the game cover? Are there options to play only certain parts of the world?

3) How is the transformation of England to Great Britain done?

4) How easy is it to create new civilizations?

5) How is naval stuff played out?

6) What resources are there?

7) How are battles played out?

Cheers.

2) maps are random but you can play earth maps. region specific maps can be downloaded here and at CFC (europe, east USA, etc). The scenarios also cover certain parts of the world (haven't played them yet, however

3) now sure what you mean. There are no transformations. There are no historical recreations. basically you create the history yourself. So all the civilizations start as is (even if it seems weird to have the United States in the year 4000 BC)

4) not sure, haven't done this

5) there are naval ships. Most of us feel naval combat could be better. There are tiremes, galleys, caravels, galleons, frigats, ironclads, destoryers, battleships, aircraft carriers, transports, and submarines. Ship battles are 1 on one affairs. Usually the stronger ship wins.

6). many resources. not sure I can get these off the top of my head. Strategic resources like copper, horses, iron, coal, oil, uranium. luxeries such as sugar, spices, dyes, ivory (though these can be used stratgeically to build war elephants), incense, and wines. And food/production resources like cattle, pigs, sheep, corn, wheat, rice, fish, clams, and crabs.

7) you seem like an RTS player. Battles are not like those. They are based on the relative strength of the units and are 1 on 1. There are no group formations or armies. Usually the unit with the higher strength wins, but there are many variables such as promotions (some units can be promoted to fight better in jungle, or hills, or just city defense) and the defensive terrain they are in affects combat as well. Units such as catapults, cannons, and artillery are used to soften up city defenses and inflict damage on defenders before the main units attack (makes it easier to succeed in conquering a city)

[rjmatsleepers]

As Will9 and LordShiva have said, creating a new civilization is not easy. But, it is fairly easy to modify an existing one. For example, you could rename the Viking civilization as West Saxon and rename the leader as Alfred the Great by simply changing a few lines of text.

If you want to be more ambitious, you can use copy and paste to make the West Saxons additional to the Vikings (although the would have the same leader animation).

Giving your new civ different starting techs and giving your leader different traits is also fairly straight forward - simple changes to a text file.

I believe it is slightly more difficult to give your new leader a non animated head of his or her own, but it's not rocket science. Similarly, I think you can give your civ a different flag, but it's not straight forward.

If you are willing for your civ to have the same graphics as another for their special units and buildings (even if the name and properties are different) you can modify the text files - once again not straight forward, but not rocket science.

The real difficulty is if you want your civ to have graphics that are completely new; that's not at all easy.

There are various tutorials (here and on the fanatics site) that help, but it's quite an ambitious project.

RJM

[Willem]

Re: Some Questions

Originally posted by hesford
2) How much of the world does the game cover? Are there options to play only certain parts of the world?

As mentioned, Civ 4 doesn't really deal with the world as you know it, unless you choose to play one of the scenarios. Each map is randomly generated, with each civ starting at different locations. That's one of the things that makes it a good game, lots of replayability.

5) How is naval stuff played out?

Navies aren't handled very well by the AI in the game. They'll make a bunch of ships but they don't really do much with them, or know how to use them effectively. I usually don't bother much with a navy until much later in the game, except to explore the continent. Pretty much all of the warfare is land based, except for the odd small landing by the AI, which are usually easily beaten.

7) How are battles played out?

Civ A has a unit on a map square. Civ B moves a unit onto that square and they have a battle, which only involves an animation of each unit. If the defender loses, it's destroyed. It's quite basic really, not like Rome: Total War or any game like that. Tactics aren't really that much of a consideration. It's not a strategy game in that sense. Your main concern is just in choosing which units you should have on that tile. they all have different strengths and abilities.