Modern era pic from GameStar

[FXS Zach Wilson]

perhaps

not modern roads but railroads.

[MarkG]

Re: perhaps

Originally posted by FXS Zach Wilson
not modern roads but railroads.

see? posting guesses all the time eventually causes the Firaxian-posts bot to wake up


welcome on Apolyton Zach!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by MarkG
these are probably test pictures guys, most probably with lots of help from cheats/editor. it's not something taken from an actual game....

Well, I don´t see a single evidence that this picture is not taken from an actual game.

An hour ago I browsed the magazine that contains this picture. Some pieces of info that may be new:

- There are six ways to win (I guess no. 6 is the 'histograph' victory, i.e. a refined highscore).

- On another screenshot, a city is producing a 'modern armor'.

- The AI has been 'improved conspicuously in comparison with SMAC'.

[kaminwx]

I really wish Firaxis would ridge some of those individual mountains together and replace the flooding irrigation look with farmland.

[Steve Clark]

The Pimple Mountains are still there (I hope some of my modpack friends would make replacing the mountain terrain a high priority).

You say that this is from a Modern Age. Apart from the battleship in the bottom and the production, I don't see any units on the map. Am I not looking at it close enough? I mean, when a game gets to the modern age, there would numerous modern units scattered over the map, esp. taking up defensive or fortified positions.

[KrazyHorse]

There are modern units (APCs, I think) stationed in the cities.

[Ralf]

Why must irrigated tiles look like watersick mosquito-infested quagmires? Why so few forest-tiles? At least 20% should be forrest - if not available naturally, so at least planted. Variation = good looks.

Also, look at the 19-point city named Ginger. How is it possible to grow to 19 points without cultivate the surrounding grasslands? Why isnt the hills mined? It seems to me that the cities grows very large anyway, regardless lack of terrain-cultivation, wich is bad. They should add upper growth limits, if not enough indevidual tiles are food-produktive enough. Please, change this.

As for the "dense spiderweb roads/RR" phenomenon: well, thats to be expected as long as roads/RR:s are ONLY beneficial, instead of a mixed blessing, like it should be. Road/RR:s through irrigated tiles (where is the farmland-upgrades?) should always boost trade, but it should also halve the irrigation-bonus. Or something similar - just make roads/RR:s more of a mixed blessing, one way or the other.

No desolate non-populated chunks of landareas in the mini-map, like it often was in Civ-2. Good.

[Steve Clark]

Now I vaguely see the APCs. They do blend in nicely with the buildings.

[Steve Clark]

Ralf: Could it be that this was not a game screenshot but a customized one, as alluded to earlier? If you would want to test a modern age feature, they would probably set up a bunch of cities at a set population (and production level) and then start the game from there. That way you can control the testing without having to take the time to play up to that point and perhaps have it adversely affect conditions once you get into the modern age.

[Urban Ranger]

What I am curious about, is the upside down pentagon attached to the description of the city in the middle.

Nothing to do with devil worshipping, I hope

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by MarkG
i should note that i've passed the image through the "auto-levels" fuction in photoshop, that's why it looks more blue-ish....

firaxis or photoshop? whose colors are best?

PHOTOSHOP PHOTOSHOP PHOTOSHOP!!!

I was amazed that they changed the color pof the sea sooo much... I wish they had...

But we will surely not be disturbewd by the green oceans, since it seem this will be a great game.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
Ralf: Could it be that this was not a game screenshot but a customized one, as alluded to earlier? If you would want to test a modern age feature, they would probably set up a bunch of cities at a set population (and production level) and then start the game from there. That way you can control the testing without having to take the time to play up to that point and perhaps have it adversely affect conditions once you get into the modern age.

Sounds reasonable. They have probably a bunch of pre-setup playtest-scenarios available in order to test -> adjust -> retest this or that feature, or AI-behaviour. Lets hope that above is a playtesting "work-sketch" only. If it isnt, then Im worried. An official comment here would be nice.

[jsw363]

Is anyone else bothered by teh fact that the roads still seem to just plow through the mountains. No contours, curves, nothing. I personally think that having all these roads spread across the map looks horrible. Can't they make roads less essential to gameplay?

I don't mean to complain, but the ocean still bothers me. If you look on the map there are only two true oceans in the game (dark blue) and it's easy to navigate around them. So it doesn't seem to me like there's any advantage to progress beyond caravels early in the game. If I have access to the enitre planet, but by a more roundabout route it seems too easy. I was expecting the different levels of ocean (shoreline, sea and ocean) to have a greater impact on the game. Now it seems like this feature won't mean very much.

[Sabre2th]

I like the Photoshop colors a lot more than the colors from the original shot.

[tniem]

The thing I have noticed in all the screens is that in the cities you see the units that are defending. Is everyone going to get to see the defending units. If so that seems like a good idea or is it just that tanks were built in every city in that image?