A pause for thought - What I've noticed about BTS

[MrWhereItsAt]

It arrived today, and apart from some of the mechanics of Spying and Corporations, I thought I'd read all that there was to this new expansion from people posting. Maybe I just missed those threads, but no, I've noticed several things worth noticing that I didn't know about before!

So, after a frantic 3 hours at home trying to get it to install (eventually I found how to get into Vista's hidden Super-Admin account and ALL my game install problems were solved, as well as a crash when trying to open Word/Excel files), I now feel I need to tell all about these small things I have noticed.

• Log notifications now appear in the middle of the screen, at the top, which I have found easier to see/notice whilst I'm busily getting on with my turn.
• Now hovering your mouse over the tech options you get tells you which type of Great Person can lightbulb that tech for you. AWESOME!
• There is now a neat little fade-in when you explore new land - the new visible land fades-in from the black.
• It seems to me that end-of-turns (even in the ancient age) are noticeably quicker. I'll post again on whether that seems to be the case later on as well. Units also seem to move more rapidly in response to your commands.
• This is more a clarification than something I specifically noticed. I read on CFC that State Property lost its boost to Workshops and Windmills, IMO effectively cutting in half its usefulness. However, in the Civic screen the only changes seem to be that it stops Corporations from working and now it gives you a 10% production boost in all your cities! It's even MORE powerful - and it still includes the extra food for Workshops and Windmills!
• One more clarification: when you have enough points to see the Demographic info about another civ, all that means is the line representing their score, GNP etc appears in the Graph part of the Demographics screen, whereas it doesn't if you don't have that info - pretty useless IMO until you want to see where the top civ's power took a nosedive once you turned on them. In the Demographics screen itself (your GNP, pop etc actual numbers vs the average, top and lowest), all numbers are visible as in Warlords and vanilla without you having the espionage intel for any civ.
• Oh, and one last thing. Although Spies may not be available until Writing, allocating your treasury to Espionage points is available right away. And necessary too - within a turn of discovering my first neighbour (Celts), Boudicca must have allocated some of her treasury to espionage on me, since she was outpacing my +4 Esp/turn that you get from your Palace!

More later, I suppose. And if anyone else has problems of crashing installers with BtS or any other game in Vista, let me know and I'll sniff out how you get to the SuperAdmin account that will let you install what you want without Vista deciding that it has more rights over your computer than you do.

[Robert]

- Hoover your mouse over a tile close to your border with a neighbour, it'll show both your and his cultural influence on that tile, instead of only the 'leading' culture! Especially usefull if more then 2 civs have influence on the tile!

[Todd Hawks]

I may be mistaken but I think the culture percentage on a tile has always been shown in Civ 4. At least I seem to remember using it waaaay back.

- What I think is really nice (and never seems to be mentioned) are the upgraded animations. Especially ship movement looks really great now, but all the other units move more naturally as well.

[Solver]

Percentage has always been shown for one civ only, now it can be shown for several.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Todd Hawks
I may be mistaken but I think the culture percentage on a tile has always been shown in Civ 4. At least I seem to remember using it waaaay back.

Pretty sure that's new. Before, you could see the percentage that the owner of the tile has, which was usually enough, but sometimes there are 3 civs that have cultural stake in a tile. It may not sound like much, but when you capture a city on your borders with 48% culture of the civ holding it and expect no troubles when you have it (assuming the other 52% is yours) - it can make a difference when you see that a 3rd civ has a 6% stake, leaving you with a minority share - and a city ready to rebel against you!

- What I think is really nice (and never seems to be mentioned) are the upgraded animations. Especially ship movement looks really great now, but all the other units move more naturally as well.

Yeah... haven't got to the ships yet, but troop movement is charging around in a sort of sweeping motion - not like before. I should have realised when I saw all those IGN videos, but it just didn't hit me (I think I was marvelling at the random events - none of which have happened to me yet, BTW).

Another new thing or two:

• holding the cursor over the icon for a resource on the tile it is on (eg over the Iron icon on a tile that has that resource - if you have turned the resource icons on) tells you how many of that resource you currently have. Good stuff there.
• Not sure if this is new, but if you zoom all the way out, the strategic (far left) options includes a "Enemies in Territory" option. Haven't seen it in action yet, but this will be great for mopping up those marauding units that don't pose a threat, but kill that town I had carefully cultivated for 5000 years.

[Todd Hawks]

Thanks for the clarification on the culture percentage, everyone! I'm getting old and my memory is fading, it seems.

[Jvstin]

Re: A pause for thought - What I've noticed about BTS

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
[*]This is more a clarification than something I specifically noticed. I read on CFC that State Property lost its boost to Workshops and Windmills, IMO effectively cutting in half its usefulness. However, in the Civic screen the only changes seem to be that it stops Corporations from working and now it gives you a 10% production boost in all your cities! It's even MORE powerful - and it still includes the extra food for Workshops and Windmills! .

That sounds like its balancing SP for not being able to use Corporations at all.

Solver, Cybershy, is this true?

[Solver]

Well, the bonus is there.

[Jvstin]

Well, that's some compensation for the lack of Corporations even if SP perhaps might not need it.

To really judge though, once I get BTS, I am going to have to play a few games without going for State Property, just to see if the potential of Corporations is greater, overall.

Thanks, Solver.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I've seen on CFC a post of a HUGE amount of maintenance resulting from Corporations spread in someone's cities, which really looks like it makes the whole thing not at all worthwhile for the bonus food, production etc. Although I haven't yet got to Corporations, so far it looks like SP is FAR better than them. Lower maintenance, food in workshop tiles AND now a 10% production increase?! Wow. Corporations give you a food or shield or two depending on the number of resources you have, cost a Great Person, and give your city higher maintenance. No contest, IMO.

Incidentally, I have noticed another facet of this smarter AI. It may not be news to anyone who has played Blake's Better AI before, but it is to me.

• AI civs no longer backfill techs just for the sake of it - all 4 civs I have contact with are researching Medieval techs - Theology 2x and Feudalism 2x, even though they're lacking techs like Metal Casting, Code of Laws, Literature, Aesthetics, Alphabet - and in one case Meditation and Priesthood as well as all of the above!

I suppose they sense the human getting ahead, and decide to keep up by getting Longbowmen first, despite the fact they can't trade techs yet. Either impressive, or a bit shortsighted, since I'm getting the nice Wonders they don't even have the tech for.

[Solver]

If you played Blake's Better AI, the BtS AI is still quite different. The BtS AI includes several months' worth of extra strategies, fixes and refinements. So the BtS AI is a good deal more solid than Better AI, too.

[Alexander I]

BtS is worlds ahead of Warlords. The two aren't even comparable. A lot of fans were disappointed with Warlords. Not so now. I'm betting that every Civ4 fan will absolutely love BtS.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Part of this is more of a question, I suppose...

• Privateers are great if you get to them before some civs have Caravels or Frigates. You just use the 5 or 6 movement rate (if you circumnavigated the world first) to sweep in and pillage all other civ's workboat areas, then park them just outside their cultural borders, in the ocean. Their Galleys and Triremes can't get to you, so when a ship comes out, kill it, gain the exp, retreat to heal. Or, if it's a workboat, wait until it reestablishes the fishing nets, then pillage again for a few more gold. Terrific. Even if they have Caravels or Galleons around, as long as you have the move rate advantage on them, just park them one tile further out than they can reach.
  
  In this way I've so far gained 2 Great Generals' worth of exp in this way (hello +4 XP to my 1-turn Riflemen units built in the city with the Moai Statues and Heroic Epic!), and got one that has exp 15 now, which finally let me build the Heroic Epic in this almost entirely peaceful world.
  
• I wondered what would happen if you stacked another ship with your Privateers - would the friendly AI attack, seeing the Privateer, and instead come up against the stronger unit, like in Civ3? Or would it prevent the AI from attacking at all? Neither, I'm happy to say - no exploits here. The AI can attack your Privateer, even if there is a stronger unit in that tile - in a sense the AI is only 'at war' with the Privateer unit.
• Not sure if this is documented, because I haven't read it anywhere yet. I was happily pillaging improvements for gold with my Privateers, when recently (having got Democracy and switched to Free Speech and Emancipation), I noticed that I stopped getting gold from these actions. Is it because of the tech, the civics, or is it a bug?
• Finally, I notice that create colony button - the Fist in the Domestic Advisor. It appeared when I founded two cities in a 2-city island far off from my homelands. However, the cities I can offer up as a colony are actually on my home continent - perhaps a bug there? They're more recent cities, sure, but my culture there is huge. And when I do click on that button, I only have the option of 'liberating' these cities to the Khmer, who recently voluntarily became my vassals. So perhaps you can't create a new colony civ if you already have a vassal?
  

I have Corporation now, and some saved GPs. I look forward to testing them out when I finally get a tech that enables a Corporation!

[Tiberius]

Thanks for the extra infos, MWIA Keep digging!

[Kekkonen]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt [*]I wondered what would happen if you stacked another ship with your Privateers - would the friendly AI attack, seeing the Privateer, and instead come up against the stronger unit, like in Civ3? Or would it prevent the AI from attacking at all? Neither, I'm happy to say - no exploits here. The AI can attack your Privateer, even if there is a stronger unit in that tile - in a sense the AI is only 'at war' with the Privateer unit.

Yeah, the Privateer is an outlaw who can only hide in cities. I was putting a couple of them on my water tiles to protect the workboats, but my good pal Asoka sailed in and blasted them to smithereens.