First Impressions (screenshots, etc.)

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Solver
Yin, don't stick to just one map type . Pangaea is also fun for an all-land game, Terra is an awesome map for those who have the RAM. Continents makes for some interesting games (and naval invasions), and Archipelago simply is very different.

1mb or 2mb for terra?
please tell me it is not 2 mb
is the game really that resourceful, or is it a memory leak? i mean, 1gb handles massive rtw battles in great detail...

[yin26]

Unless I'm wrong, though, is there a way to do a completely random map?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

So Yin, just in the time you have been playing the game, how is your overall 'Civ4 experience', and do you think that ICS-even if not dead-is certainly not the brain-dead sure route to victory it once was? It may sound wierd, but your opinion on this really does matter to me (well, kinda, as I already have the game myself !) I am very interested to hear your views on the overall game experience, though.
I personally spent over 2 and a half hours just playing the tutorial-would have been longer except I had work the next day !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[yin26]

Aussie_Lurker:

I think you just love ANY feedback Civ4-related!

My biggest complaint in previous games was that spamming cities required little to no thought. I think I can say with confidence that even though you can make city production a priority, it requires you to think carefully, for example, about how to cover your science production, how to defend against barbs, how to use Great People to make up for some of the sacrifices you've made, etc. To me, that's strategy! It's too early, of course, to say if one of these lines is going to surface as the killer strategy, but it's often true in games like this that a week later somebody will have the killer counter.

So I'll sum up for now with this: I do think that, to use the Sid quote, there are a lot of "interesting decisions" to be made in Civ 4. Some are quite simple but profound: Culture bomb or immediate gold? Others are more long-range: Do I convert his cities so he likes me more or do I convince his neighbor to attack? Then there's the fact that Wonders go obsolete only on a civ-by-civ basis, which means the running up the tech tree can actually take away some of your wonder benefits but wouldn't stop a civ that's behind in tech from having that same wonder and doing more with it. Or that each city can only hold two wonders, which is a bit of a counter to the idea of "fewer cities but bigger." And if your wonders are more spead out, they are more vulnerable to attack, too.

I could go on and on, but there seems to be a geniune complexity here born of several very simple elements. Finally, I like that the kind of game you will have depends greatly on luck of the draw. It's quite possible given geography and religion, for example, that you'll either be protected from war or involved in it very early. It sorta just makes sense.

[Solver]

LaRusso: Terra maps are bigger than any other map type, that's why they take a lot of memory.

Yin: at this point, would you yourself say that you should eat the box ?

[yin26]

Originally posted by Solver
Yin: at this point, would you yourself say that you should eat the box ?

It's looking that way at least on the ICS issue. On combat, though, I'm not so sure. Need more time.

[Xmudder]

Originally posted by yin26

It's looking that way at least on the ICS issue. On combat, though, I'm not so sure. Need more time.

Read your pm's, Yin.

[Solver]

Woo hoo, Cardboard Pizza

[Nikolai]

So yin, if you find that both ICS and combat is pizza material, do you eat something extra then?

[Metaliturtle]

more box + manual + EXTREME VIDEO FOOTAGE captured simultaneously from many angles at the same time so we can have Yin eating the box matrix-style.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

As I have already said, just to hear Yin say how much he is enjoying Civ4 is enough for me, so I personally don't need him eat a cardboard box. Thats just me, though !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Harovan]

Well said.

[Sirian]

I'd almost rather eat the cardboard (itself) than to eat what people really mean with the phrase "cardboard pizza". (You have NO IDEA how particular I am about my pizza!)

- Sirian

[Fidel]

so yin, still having fun?
we want...hell, I WANT more reports did you get trashed? did you trash them? who was a major pain in the butt? switching to high-fibre food? cmoncmon, its weekend, we all know you are playing

[Barnabas]

is there an everybody starts in their own island option in civ IV?