Overall, is CTP2 much better than CTP1?

[hander]

Is it so good as it should be?

Om the screenshots I've seen it look much the same as CTP1.

/hander

[Mad-Kat]

It's much better out of the box than the original.

[Fluffygreycat]

CTP2 is a distinct improvement over CTP1.

Itemized reasons:

1. Superior AI. Don't even bother playing the game on Medium. I opened the box, started a medium game, played for a while, and ultimately used the cheat mode to adjust the difficulty level. The AI is ANGRY on the higher difficulty levels. It can conduct a war against you with reasonable effectiveness, and - here's the shocker - when he fulfills his military alliance obligations he ACTUALLY TRIES TO DO SOMETHING USEFUL. [Sorry to shout, but it was a huge surprise.]

2. Borders Rock. The political borders feature actually imposes some order on your landgrabs [and everybody else's]. Port cities don't grab as much land as inland cities, and you are forced to invest a little in the continental interiors as a result. Fortresses can be used in lieu of cities to extend borders and fill in annoying little control holes [finally, a use for fortresses]. The AI won't settle anything that's already in another empire's control [I don't even think it's possible], so maneuvering to box the other guy in with cities and bases actually has some value in this game; instead of the chaos of CTP 1, you end up facing your opponents down like the British in Kipling's Afghanistan.

3. Balance shifts away from the sea. I know the previews claim that sea units gain dramatically in importance, but so far it seems like some game imbalances from CTP 1 that favored the sea have been adjusted. I don't have the post-modern units in my game yet, so maybe this will change later. So far, though, we have a situation where the ability of ironclads and Ships of the Line [SOTL] to bombard land units seems to have been taken away. This eliminates the human player's ability to just build a lot of SOTL's and sail around bombarding the #$^% out of the AI's coastal cities and any units that show their faces. You actually have to land units and take the ground - a big strategic change. In addition to the "borders" issue from above [port cities claim ocean as territory, and the AI just ignores it], it seems like land tiles and improvements have been made more productive relative to sea titles than they were in un-modified CTP 1. There's just more to do with land tiles, now.

4. Impossible to mis-direct your units. The new movement UI is a big improvement, once you get used to it. The UI in general is vastly improved, but the movement system deserves top billing.

5. Game Balance in Wonders. Since London Exchange is no longer a ticket to automatic victory, I will need to think up a new early-industrial strategy. The impact of most of the "killer" wonders has been scaled down.

6. Game Balance in Tech Tree. Even when you are kicking butt in Science, the road from Gunpowder to Tank Warfare is long. No more will I be able to jump from muskets to tanks in a century, if I am in the Science lead.

Now, one or two negatives:

On the largest map setting, when you zoom all the way out it seems like the cursor and the individual units, cities, and map sections get "misaligned". Mouse commands fail, and it seems like the individual map squares are just "too small for the cursor". Weird. The easy way to fix this is just to not play on max-zoom-out, but that's the way I like to play...:-(.

There's no "close" button or "X" on the screen containing the wonder movies. It becomes a little dicey when you go to close them, especially if [like me] you've seen the "Gutenberg Bible" movie 100 times and don't want to let it play all the way through. I had to load the autosave once when a Wonder movie wouldn't stop.

Well, OK, 3 negatives: the balance achieved in the tech tree comes at the expense of some non-sequiturs, like Fascism being a prerequisite for Democracy. [Maybe they consider the pre-universal-suffrage expansionist British and American democracies, and the plebiscite Bonapartist France, to be "fascist"? That seems to be the only way that discovery order makes sense.]

[Chronus]

AAARRGGHH! I liked sailing around in my Ship of the Lines (or other ships) bombarding land units!

I still have hope . . . I thought I saw a (coastal)battle screen that had ships and land units fighting together. Can ships play a fighting role against land units on the battle screen or was I seeing things? Was it only the SOTL that can no longer bombard?

I guess my bottom line question is this ... can ships fight land units (either by bombardment or some other means)?

[lago]

About the Wonder movies:

Click once to stop it. Double-click to close the window.

Took me a while to remember that.

[violent]

Chronus,
naval units can attack land units...the emphasis on the game is placed more on land units than naval.

[PrinceBimz]

Chronus, yes naval units can bombard land units. I know for a fact Battleships can because in the great library it says so. Actually it does not place more emphasis on land combat, in fact in CTP2 there are more naval units then what was in CTP. The difference now is that although naval units can bombard, some are restricted to only bombarding other naval units. Others, such as Battleships can bombard both land and naval units. I feel this is a more realistic addition because any light naval vessel should not be able to bombard land targets from a distance and if so it should be very minimal effectiveness.

[Solver]

I was considering now whether it is worth to get CTP2, but this thread made me sure about it. I will get it ASAP, means as soon as it comes to my country. Also, as a PBEM Ladder Administraor, I have to own the most recent version of the game, I think.
Being a player of AoE2, where the battle management is excellent, I think I'll like this more. And yes, I agree that in CTP clue to winning on ocean map was: Creating SOTLs, with 3 units each and building London ASAP, what means lots of gold and science, and a superior power in navy. In SMAC, I liked the civ borders, and you can only pass your ally's borders, otherwise it's a conflict. Actually, I started think about an idea of borders even when playing Civ1, so now finally this is into life in the civ series - pleasure for me, Civilization game series veteran (more or less).
Several words regarding AI: I can't beat CTP Deity, so it's good enough for me, but I know what a really bad AI means (AoE2, that's why all agers play multiplayer only), but now this will be way more fun. Guess I'll have to play my first game on easiest level. And, please, can someone now post, what are the levels in CTP2, how many are there? This will be important for Multiplayer ranking system.

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Solver - http://www.aok.20m.com

[John-SJ]

A couple of things to recommend the AI.

First, Since I got the game I've been playing with Mayors turned on and so far I haven't caught them doing anything stupid. When I want to grow a city the Mayor makes the choices I would make, when I want to build an army, mayors are right there pumping out units. No complaints so far. As a contrast, I remember with SMAC I played with Governors for about 2-3 hours and never turned them on again. Oh, with CtP2 even the handling of public works is done intelligently, can anyone make that claim of SMACs auto-formers?

Second, in my current game I have all of my established cities mayors set to "Science" so I can build up a tech lead. So far the Mayors have only started one Wonder, and it just happens to be a wonder that gives an empire wide +20% to science (a wise choice) and it is building it at the city with the highest production (another wise choice). Again, I can't help comparing to SMACs governors, constantly asking to build just about every secret project there is at any city at all, regardless of the fact that the city has squat for production and the universe would likely end before it finished.

I didn't have to play this game long to know I liked it (I hated Civ CtP), and the more I play the more I find to like about it!

Activision, you've done a GOOD JOB this time around!

John-SJ

[John Markenham]

Ok I have a question: what can't you do with your city that you could in CTP. Can you choose where to place workers, I am sure you can at least choose what specialists you want, and also this is stupid, but I haven't been told otherwise, but can you atually pick what to build, I have heard that you can't?

[Cyrius]

Well, Its better and worse.
Worse:
1. Space is gone. I thought this was one of the best origianl features in CTP1, and I'm really sorry to see it go.
2. City management has changed; you can't place workers anymore which is frustrating when you consider tile improvements and specialists (to that earlier post, you can build things in cities of course ;-) ).
3. As far as I know, there is no feature to give you a warning when you attack allies/peace treaty people. Had to load a few auto-saves due this annoying bug which was fixed in a patch for CTP1 but apparently forgotten in CTP2.
4. Civs haven't been fixed from the first. Silly civs like Nicuraguans and Canadians are still present, while important ones like Aztecs and Italians aren't present.
5. City models haven't been changed at all from the first CTP. Incans have a middle-eastren architecture. This is really stupid considering they could have just incorporated the mod that was made to change the city models for the first CTP.

Better:
1. Borders are nice. I had no idea forts would expand the border. Wow. That would be nice since throughout histroy securing land was the primary purpose of forts/castles. I'll have to try that and see if it works. However, borders haven't done me any good yet. Other nations still wander all over my borders. I'll have to do some more checking though. Peace treaties will keep people out. Remove troop treaties seem to keep them from sending more troops into ur borders but don't do much to the ones already there. I haven't seen for sure that borders keep settlers out, but I guess its possible. If thats true, I like borders even more.
2. Graphics somewhat better. Some unit models/sounds have been totaly mangled, like the warrior and plasma tanks. I haven't seen any animated goods yet, thats sad. Maybe I missed a way to turn them on, but I don't think so. (by animated I mean animating ones standing still, not goods floating across the landscape). The mini-map looks worse, despite the new features.
3. Well, combat system is still there! And it seems more bizzare/complicated. Heres a few tidbits:
a. Terrain supposedly affects both attack and defender (so says manual), though even when both armies are in same terrain, battle screen will report the terrain bonus.
b. Cities seem far easier to take with the right army. Attacked a city of (fortified) 2 hoplites & 1 archer with 2 warriors & 3 archers and won with one or two casualties. Keep in mind, the city had ballista towers and city walls! I guess ranged combat is even more crucial than before (that or city defense imps are worthless!).
c. Flankers have been introduced (like the knights/tanks needed to be any stronger), which basically gives knights/tanks free psuedo-ranged attacks. I'm not sure if this was an intelligent addition or not, need more experience with it.
d? I'm not sure if Activision has fixed the problem with jets and such being killed by pikemen/hoplites.
e. So, ships cannot bombard land anymore? hmm. Good and bad. No ship would bombard troops marching through the landscape, but any ship could certainly bombard a costal city. Right? Anyone actually tested battleships and see if they can bombard land?
f? Does anyone know if Activision made naval units more valued/used by AI players? In CTP1, the computer couldn't field a navy to save it's life.
g. One interesting thing I read is that ships that can't detect subs can't fire at them, unless they are stacked with a sub detector. Very interesting change. Probably appropriate.
2. Diplomacy is much better. Enough has been said about this already.
[This message has been edited by Cyrius (edited November 19, 2000).]

[DarkOrder]

If the sea unit can bombard land units and it is whithin 1 square of tsaid unit, it will bombard. City and land units can be bombarded. Stealth units are invisible unless you run into them (they are on the square that you have qued your unit to move onto) or you have the appropriate detection method. To see subs you need a PT boat. Naval units are used by AI. You will have a tough time if they beat you to bombarding naval units. Flankers are in between a ranged unit and an attacking unit. They are strong, but can be destroyed if you have the right army or defense. The best army is one that has all 3 unit types.

Smooshies

[Azmel2]

quote: Originally posted by John-SJ on 11-19-2000 01:03 PM A couple of things to recommend the AI. First, Since I got the game I've been playing with Mayors turned on and so far I haven't caught them doing anything stupid. When I want to grow a city the Mayor makes the choices I would make, when I want to build an army, mayors are right there pumping out units. No complaints so far. As a contrast, I remember with SMAC I played with Governors for about 2-3 hours and never turned them on again. Oh, with CtP2 even the handling of public works is done intelligently, can anyone make that claim of SMACs auto-formers? Second, in my current game I have all of my established cities mayors set to "Science" so I can build up a tech lead. So far the Mayors have only started one Wonder, and it just happens to be a wonder that gives an empire wide +20% to science (a wise choice) and it is building it at the city with the highest production (another wise choice). Again, I can't help comparing to SMACs governors, constantly asking to build just about every secret project there is at any city at all, regardless of the fact that the city has squat for production and the universe would likely end before it finished. I didn't have to play this game long to know I liked it (I hated Civ CtP), and the more I play the more I find to like about it! Activision, you've done a GOOD JOB this time around! John-SJ

Thanks for the nice comments John. I worked closely with the design team to try and make the mayors intelligent. An experienced human player will always do better on their own if they micro-manage, but the mayors should be as good as an average player. The AI uses the mayors to control it's own cities too. You can also completely control what each mayor builds by tweaking the text files. It'll be interesting to see what mod makers out there come up with.

Best wishes,

-- Richard

[John Markenham]

Well thanks Cyrius, you answered my question and then some.

[Solver]

Space is one of the things I really loved in CTP. As for the diplomatic model, agreed, snapshots I've seen are really nice. AI is now even more clever, while I also considered CTP1 AI being good (at least for me it is).
Borders are excellent - I know this because of SMAC, but I think here they have to be even better. And, I have also turned the Governors off in SMAC, as they seem stupid. When I set them to Conquer, they produced good miltary, but for the non-military choices they sucked. Mayors again sound tempting to try.
You say I can't place workers as I wish? I can't believe in it, you probably missed something. When I want to make a city grow, I will put workers to food squares. At least in CTP1, new workers were automatically placed on a square with most food. But, sometimes I want to remove a worker from plains and put him to work Hills. This situation means I will have to wait for size 20 cities to come, to have it all the best way.
Uncoventional warfare - again what I love. In AoE2, the battles are only with "normal" unit, but Monks, who convert enemy units. It's nice that we yet retain the Spies and others.
I think it's good that ships no longer bombard: I use to play water based maps, and there as soon as I was able to build some Ships of The Line, putting units in each, I was already a winner. Hope the Wonders are more balanced, as London's Exchange was the ultimate trumpcard: giving an amazing boost in science, I could on Prince and Warlord melt everyone even before they get Machine Gunners - I avoid the robotics, so it was Fusion Tanks vs. Cannons.
Ranged warfare more important - nice again. Some battle things of CTP1 ceratinly need to be improved, especially the Phalanx-vs-a-Tank problem. In Civ1 this was even more painful, however.
I like that advisors are back and the army management. naming armies is fun, though I don't think it will always be useful, but sometimes I want to give my stacks names like CannonMusk1, MusketSlaver1, CannonMusk2, and so on. Advice of were to send your troops is good, if I forget to do that.
Food trading is a revolution, IMO, as cities will no longer starve so much - when I find ruins in a land of deserts and Tundra, and that ruins turn out to be a city, this is a bad one. Now you'll be able to get new possibilities.
And, finally, new units like Kraken - always new thing to do and tasks to manage.
So, my final words are: I want it!!! .

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Solver - http://www.aok.20m.com