PolyCast Episode 17: "A Little Bit More Coherent" Transcript

[DanQ]

The seventeenth episode of PolyCast, the official Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS) podcast, is the first in the series to be transcribed. PolyCast is a bi-weekly, one-hour production in an effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice, those who would prefer to read the content of the show -- in whole or in part -- can now do so with this inaugural effort. ACS user AAHZ volunteered his time to compile this written account and has committed to continuing to do so with future episodes.

For easier readability, each segment/topic is contained within its own post within the thread it is presented in. For discussion on the content of the episode itself, please go to its official thread. Transcribing earlier episodes in reverse chronological order is being considered.

[DanQ]

INTRO

(theme)

Locutus: Welcome to episode 17 of PolyCast, the official Podcast of Apolyton Civilization Site. I am Wouter, known as Locutus on the forums, and I’m here with Dan.

DanQ: (singing) I know a bot, her name is Anna. Anna is her name, hi, she can ban you. Ban you so hard.

Locutus: Ooooooo-Kay

snoopy369: OK

Makaluha: Don’t quit your day job...

Locutus: (laughing) Moving along. With us here is also of course Maki.

Makaluha: Hello.

Locutus: and Imran is not here because we silenced him.

Provost Harrison: Not for full time.

Locutus: Yeah.

DanQ: Not permanently though -- nobody call the authorities

Locutus: Not yet. Well get there (laughing). We'll get there. Besides we have two guests hosts for this week: the first one is Provost Harrison:...

Provost Harrison: Hello there.

Locutus: ... and snoopy369.

snoopy369: Hello.

DanQ: I’m assuming everybody knows everybody here, but that could be wrong.

Locutus: I think I know everybody here. (laugh)

DanQ: I wasn’t talking to you!

Makaluha: Ohhh...

Locutus: As well as I'd like to.

DanQ: I like lists... Maki will note this very well.

Makaluha: Mm-hmm.

DanQ: Maki’s thinking “uh-oh”.

Makaluha: Uh-huh.

DanQ: Twists on Civ4 quotes, where you are to twist the quotes of any leader or saying in Civ4 to suit a Civ series purpose. From Lancoo: “when I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they tell me its because were building a worker”

(laughter)

DanQ: GaiusOctavius: “Never trust an Aztec you can't throw out a window”.

Provost Harrison: (laughing)

DanQ: So true...

Makaluha: Truly!

DanQ: MilesJL, he started this thread: “Beep beep beep you.” That’s not nice...

Provost Harrison: ?

Makaluha: Who put a recorder in the room when I was playing Civ?

DanQ: from Nightowl: ”What gunpowder did for war, Blake did to the AI.”

Provost Harrison: (laughing)

Makaluha: Oooh. True.

DanQ: from Weasel77066: “the master is greater than the sum of his vassals.”

snoopy369: Hahaha. That's a good one.

DanQ: And here’s a great username -- WooleyWoolWine83, say that 3 times fast -- “never bring a sword to a gunfight, but always bring a gun to a swordfight.”

Makaluha: We’re unofficially changing the name of the Modcast for the next couple of months to 'Beyond The Sword Cast'.

Locutus: Ahh yes...

Provost Harrison: A lot to go through this time.

DanQ: Wait for episode 18, and maybe we’ll have a quiet week.

Makaluha: Not until after Beyond the Sword.

DanQ: And then maybe we’ll run out of Civ stuff to talk about... Maki.

Makaluha: It could happen...

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

SUMMARY

Locutus: In the news we talk about more Beyond the Sword news. Alex Mantzaris was interviewed again. And we have news on the scenario that shipped with the game. We also have some Civ3 news, the Canada Mod was released...

DanQ: Whoo-hoo!

Locutus: ... and Dan is going on and on and on and on and on about-

Provost Harrison: on and on and on. Then I woke up again. Then I fell back to sleep again...

Locutus: Yeah. And we have a quick news item about a mod-making competition for Xiv4 and Warlords. And guess who’s gonna do the Modcast?

(laughter)

Makaluha: In this week's Modcast, we talked about is Beyond the Sword a betrayal of Soren's original vision of the game? What other things might bother you about Civ4? On resources we talked about what’s most and least important resources and...

DanQ: that last segment leads us into our latest Research Lab segment, “the question of quantitative resources.”

snoopy369: “This week in the Senate we talked about what to do with those Great Generals you generate; with some of out worst starts ever, particularly starts where you don’t have any room/you start next to somebody else. How to win a cultural victory…

DanQ: ... plus what type of victory we typically go for and why...

snoopy369: ... and what’s a very good city and specialized or not specialized.

DanQ: I just found it interesting that you would compare Warlords with Play the World.

snoopy369: I never bought Play the World. There was nothing meaningful that I liked that it added, whereas when Conquests came out then I liked it quite a lot. I mean Warlords added particularly interesting new stuff that Play the World, other than adding Multiplayer, I dunno... I don’t think the comparisons are there at all.

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

NEWS (1/4)

(News Theme)

DanQ: PlayTM Sam Gibson interviews Alex Mantzaris. He’s the Lead Designer and Programmer on this Civilization 4 expansion Beyond the Sword, in case anybody didn’t know. The byline of this write-up talks about Gibson probing Firaxis but we really shouldn’t say that here since this is a family-friendly show. So what did we find out?

Locutus: Well, I guess it confirmed how Warlords will tie in with Beyond the Sword, and the scenarios from Warlords will not be there but the core functionality. So the Great Generals and stuff like that will be in Beyond the Sword. A lot of people were wondering about that. So I guess that’s good news.

DanQ: Yeah. I guess that’s not really surprising. We had kind of a precedent set with Civilization 3 Conquests and Play the World.

Locutus: That’s true. Still a lot of people were wondering about that. So good to see it confirmed.

Provost Harrison: I remember having this discussion on the bulletin board and it seemed an odd point. I mean I remember as even as far back as Civ3 where they added the previous functionality. They don’t give you all the bells and whistles but in terms of the core changes all those go through.

Makaluha: Yeah – it would have been very strange if they hadn’t done that.

Locutus: Yeah, it wasn’t really that hard to develop that. Somehow make it work both for Warlords and for the regular game only.

Provost Harrison: Assuming for the corporations as well and some idea of how they work. But I’ve seen a few hints into Warlords as to what goes on with these things before. I’m just curious to what it means by a maintenance fee. How expensive are they to have?

DanQ: we discussed corporations in Episode 16 a little bit, although I don’t think we talked about the maintenance aspect.

Provost Harrison: Yes, I think that’s the only new thing I can recognize that it says there

DanQ: Mercantilism blocking foreign corporations… I don’t know about anybody else but I really had no use for Mercantilism at any time before though. I suppose if you believe you are going to be isolated from other civs for an extended period of time you might want to give it a try, but now perhaps with the blocking of foreign corporations they may come into greater use.

Makaluha: Yes, it’ll keep them from spying on you and getting money from you while building up your armies to go take them out.

snoopy369: Yeah, there were a decent number of single player games I had that I used Mercantilism just because there was no reason not to… because nobody else would trade with me anyway so I made them all mad.

Provost Harrison: You love killing people, have you? Here’s the only time I use it. If you've got some very lucrative trade routes you don’t want to shut them all down.

snoopy369: Right.

Makaluha: Yeah, but if the trade routes can get with other civilizations aren’t as good as what you can get from within your own empire then its great.

Provost Harrison: Very true. I’ve never seen that happen before though mind you.

Makaluha: Well, every once and a while. Or in the case of going to war and you are about to lose the trade routes anyway.

snoopy369: Right.

DanQ: So, no new resources. The foreign advisory screen is getting an overhaul.

Provost Harrison: I would presume… well, some of the overhaul could come as a result of espionage.

Makaluha: You can get your espionage details on the same screen... that would make sense.

Provost Harrison: Yep.

DanQ: Added considerable content to the modern era. New modern technologies. Lasers. Superconductors. Stealth.

Makaluha: Yeah, there were some new buildings names. Things like levees.

DanQ: Public transportation. Industrial parks. New modern units. Mobile S.A.M. Mobile artillery. Tactical nuke. Attack submarine. Missile cruiser. And stealth destroyer. Oooo.

Provost Harrison: That sounds dangerous, doesn’t it.

DanQ: It sure does.

Provost Harrison: And the Cristo Redento Wonder allows you to switch civics without anarchy... this has been interesting because that means you would act like the or at least the most interesting part of the Spiritual trait.

DanQ: Yeah, that really doesn’t interest me but I really play with the Spiritual trait that much. So…

Provost Harrison: Oh, you must.

Makaluha: He doesn’t need it on Dan level...

Provost Harrison: And now you got to get your spaceship to Alpha Centauri rather than just send it there.

Makaluha: If the AI launches before you than you can catch up to them. And I noticed you can also can customize it too. I mean, appearance.

Locutus: Oooo. Make it more shiny.

(laughter)

DanQ: Yeah. I guess the AI has gotten considerably better at its previous major weaknesses which was conducting military operations especially naval invasions. Really?

Makaluha: I'll believe it when I see it.

(laughter)

Locutus: Yeah, they do say that every time.

DanQ: It is even stronger at managing its economy and it also knows how to use all the new features that were added. Well, there goes my new strategy... And speaking of shiny the graphics are more polished.

Provost Harrison: Should be interesting to see what that involves. What exactly are they gonna change about the graphics. It’ll probably be very subtle.

DanQ: I guess there’ll be new world types and some new game options such as the option to play as any leader/civilization combination which we talked about before, and it's optional. The option to trade away technology only if you have researched it yourself.

snoopy369: That’s going to make a lot of the people that play DiploGames happy -- I know they play with it voluntarily.

Locutus: Yeah, this was clearly aimed at them.

DanQ: And the option to actually choose the religion you found when you discover technology. All right!

Makaluha: Oooo, finally...

Provost Harrison: That’s quite interesting there. At least you won't always get Judaism or Hinduism dominating; you may choose to get Islam which tends to be banished to a distant Corner of the world.

DanQ: Yeah, and Taoism too.

(agreement)

DanQ: I guess for those who play multiplayer, whatever that is,… in multiplayer all players on the same team can take their turn simultaneously.

snoopy369: The problem with simultaneous turns, especially for those of us that play PTBS or pitboss games... Because the simultaneous turns leads to a lot of abuses when someone at the end of the turn then takes another turn. So we’d rather play with synchronous turns but then of course the game just takes forever. So I guess that sounds sort of like a compromise?

DanQ: And in Hot Seat, some people still play Hot Seat, what? You see the movement of any AI that take their turn between the last human player and you.

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

NEWS (2/4)

DanQ: So yes, I got the scenario list in from of me. Some of these we’ve talked about before. Do we need to talk about Final Frontier? Probably not...

Makaluha: Nope. It sounds interesting... I just don’t know how it's actually going to play out in the game. A Divided Russia… heh, its either purchase military units from the U.S. or upgrades from the Chinese black market. Or just blow everything up. Oh, are they including Fall From Heaven and Rise and Fall?

Locutus: Yup... there’s two fan mods in there. Fall From Heaven, a fantasy Mod by Kael or however you are supposed to pronounce that name. Yhat’s probably the most popular Mod for Civ4 out there. So no surprise really that those guys got included in Beyond the Sword. And Rise and Fall of Civilizations is also a pretty popular Mod.

snoopy369: Rise and Fall is hard. I played the warlords one, I don’t know, 3 or 4 times and I cant get anywhere near winning in it...

Locutus: Well, that sounds good to me.

(laughter)

Locutus: Most of the scenarios that shipped with Warlords and the regular game are way to easy to win. So it would be nice for something that is actually a challenge for a change.

DanQ: Gods of Old create a legion of religious zealots by demonstrating your greatness or by forcing your religion down everyone throat. Isn’t that a strategy?

Makaluha: Yeah, I think that’s how most people play?

Locutus: Yeah. Nothing new there. We have Next War: build clone armies and mechanized units and futuristic scenarios set in the 2050’s.

DanQ: Giant Death Robots?

Locutus: You beat me to it!

Makaluha: That’s probably what we saw at the front of the box...

Locutus: Yep. Oh, there’s another scenario that sounds pretty exciting to me: Crossroads of the World. Carve your fortune from the riches of 14th century Africa, Arabia, and Persia as you trade, betray, and battle your way towards ruling the crossroads of the world. That sounds like a pretty exciting and pretty interesting topic.

Makaluha: Always like something different.

Locutus: It's not something that’s been covered before. So any one in particular you’re looking forward to?

DanQ: (whisphering) Which one's the easiest?

(laughter)

Makaluha: The World Builder one...

Locutus: yeah.

Provost Harrison: The one with Giant Death Robots appeals to me more than anything.

DanQ: I guess I look at the list and the only one that really doesn’t excite me terribly is the WW2 one simply because we have quite a few World War themed scenarios. Not anything against, it but I like the variety we are getting here.

Locutus: Yeah that’s true. I personally prefer historic scenarios. All the futuristic stuff and the fantasy stuff is not really for me but there’s something for everyone here so that’s good.

Makaluha: Yeah... I think I said last time I already was looking forward to final frontier. I know, I’m a space addict.

DanQ: Maki, you’re into sci-fi too? Dreamy.

(laughter)

Makaluha: Oh dear... (sigh)

Locutus: Oooooo-KAY.

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

NEWS (3/4)

snoopy369: So what about this historical Canada thing?

Provost Harrison: Historical Canada?

Locutus: Oh, Dan.

Makaluha: Dan. Dan. Dan.

DanQ: (laughing)

snoopy369: We have a few Canadians on the forums I’m sure. One or two of them might still have Civ3 installed.

Locutus: I highly doubt it.

Makaluha: Nooo....

Locutus: Didn’t everyone burn the CD the day Civ4 came out?

DanQ: So this is Episode 1: The New World. Canada. It's supposed to be the first of three episodes over...

Provost Harrison: What sort of history in Canada to fill up all three?

(laughter)

Locutus: Is there enough history to fill up even one?

DanQ: This first episode here, again, HistoryCanada.com. It’s a 89 megabyte download. You need Civilization 3 complete, or Civilization 3 Conquests with the 1.22 patch. The timeframe is New France, 1525-1763. I’ve never heard of this company before, this media gaming company BitCasters. Development for this ModPack was sponsored by the Canadian government and Canada’s two national history foundations. Covers 400 years of Canadian history, original soundtrack, and hundreds of original art assets. They spent 2 years in development on this specifically and a million dollars.

Locutus: 2 years? They could’ve made it for Civ4 then. Why on earth did they pick civ3?

DanQ: The reason they went with Civilization 3 as opposed to Civilization 4, since this is geared towards history teachers and students of history in high schools, is considering what the computers can run. Arts Technica, one of the articles I found that talks about this, linked through Google News, talking about how this has been 10 years in the making. The person who wrote this article said that in this case the 10 year development period includes the conceptualization and planning of the project, not just for educational purposes and not just the straight development of the game extension itself.

Locutus: OK, that makes sense. Although its kind of sad that school computers can't even run Civ4. At least at the lowest settings it should be possible.

Makaluha: It depends on where. A not as affluent school district... they're not gonna have up to the date computers. And even in places like where I grew up they were still a year or two behind what I might have at home.

DanQ: 2k games has also said that they are donating 100,000 copies of Civilization 3 to go with the ModPack, and perhaps that was an easier arrangement to make then to get a 100,000 of Civ4.

Locutus: Yeah... they just want to get rid of their stock.

Provost Harrison: (laughing)

Makaluha: And it's great P.R. for them.

Locutus: Yup.

DanQ: What's gonna happen with these 100,000 copies is 20,000 are gonna be sent directly to high schools, quote “where teachers will be able to use them in extra credit assignments and otherwise experiment with the game in the classroom.” Yes, so any consideration of including it the curriculum of which there is a different history curriculum in every province of this country. And then the remaining 80,000 copies will be distributed, this is interesting, directly to 12-18 year old students through mail or retail outlets likely by a massive yet undetermined sponsor.

snoopy369: They mention the undetermined sponsor elsewhere. Where someone asks about one of the other two volumes coming out and they say well not until we find this yet undetermined business partner.

DanQ: So there were some earlier versions of the game that included the Iroquois, they’ve been replaced by the Mohawk. And someone asked, I kid you not, “desert is impassible so there’s no way for an attack to occur against an Old World city.” The response was “yes, that is correct... we did that to make sure that the Old World was not destroyed rather than attempting to settle the New World.” Who would do that?

(laughter)

Makaluha: I would...

DanQ: On the Mac version there just aren't the resources to produce a tested Mac version themselves but Call Burgess has kind of put out an open call. If someone gets a Mac version working, please let them know and they’ll make it publicly available.

snoopy369: So they have a million dollars spent on this Mod.

Locutus: Yeah.

snoopy369: Well, a million dollars spent on more than any other Mod anywhere and yet they can't convert it for Mac.

Locutus: Yeah.

DanQ: Yeah, I was kind of surprised by that. Somebody do it for free! (laugh) It does work for the downloadable version of Civ3 from Steam. And as I [was getting at earlier,] the two other versions taking players to the year 1896 through Confederation and the expansion of the West that’s in to the early 20th century.

Locutus: So these people got paid a million dollars to make a Mod. I must be doing something wrong...

(laughter)

Makaluha: Yeah, where can we get that gig?

Provost Harrison: Yeah, but it's Canadian money so it's 20 euros I think.

Locutus: That’s true, that’s true.

(laughter)

snoopy369: Now, wasn’t there a thread in the Off-Topic where Canadian money and U.S. dollars-

Locutus: Yeah, so that’s about 20 euros then.

(laughter)

DanQ: Although at the time this was in development the exchange rate was not so favorable.

Makaluha: So that’s 21 Euros?

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

NEWS (4/4)

snoopy369: The next topic is the Game Flood Mod and Map Contest.

DanQ: So I guess the first thing we need to tell Game Flood is that Civilization is a Turn-Based Strategy game. Did you know that? Since they said they are going to place Civilization 4 and the Warlords expansion, listed separately, under the Real-Time Strategy category. Just rename it Strategy... come on now.

Locutus: Most people don’t understand the difference anyway. Only nerds like us.

DanQ: So I guess you can win up to $25,000 in cash. Well, I’m gonna rephrase that. There’s $25,000 in cash and **** keyboards.

snoopy369: Keyboards.

DanQ: Yeah, interesting combination...

Makaluha: That’s a lot of keyboards.

DanQ: There’s a First-Person Shooter and Role-Playing Game category. There’s some older RTS titles on this list of 15 I noticed. Wow. Like Starcraft.

Locutus: There’s... a list?

DanQ: There’s a list, yes. (laughing)

Makaluha: Can you link that for us? Pleasekaythx?

snoopy369: Yeah, I suspect that more people who play Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War right now than who play many of the other games on that list.

DanQ: Yeah, and there’s also another older game Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Wow, both 20th Century games. Other notable strategy titles: Age of Empires III: Warchiefs and Warcraft 3. Definitely the First-Person category is the largest with 21 titles including HalfLife 2 and Doom 3. The RPG is the smallest category with only 4 eligible titles. They’re looking for people to submit and to nominate and recommend their favorite mods and maps, although it should be noted that if for example you are the creator of a map or mod and it is nominated you can request that you not be included in the competition. Although I don’t know why you would do that necessarily...

snoopy369: M'eh. Some people have too much money.

DanQ: Yes, if I won $3,000 I would go in the next highest income bracket and that’s more taxes for me-

Provost Harrison: ... and all the keyboards you could ever want.

(laughter)

DanQ: All the more to throw out the window when your computer stops working.

Provost Harrison: Absolutely. Mine's taken a bit of abuse... oh I’ve broken this one, I’m gonna get another one. It's usually when Montezuma declares war. GAHHH!

(laughter)

DanQ: Or Isabella stops returning your contact requests. Talk to me!

Makaluha: She’s gunna talk to you. Gunna talk to you with some Conquistadors.

DanQ: Community voting is from the 2nd to the 16th of July so it doesn’t say actually when nominations are closed, at least I didn’t catch it, so obviously before the 2nd to the 16th of July I would assume, but you know... First phase of the judging where game member’s downloads and approval ratings will provide the basis of the evaluation. And on the 27th of July we will find out who won.

Locutus: 27th you said?

DanQ: Yup.

Locutus: so pretty much when Beyond the Sword comes out. Good, we’ll have a lot of attention for that. Won't be occupied at all...

Makaluha: Nope. Dude, what contest? Where?

DanQ: Only content released or updated since January 2006 is eligible.

Locutus: I guess if you have Starcraft in the list of eligible games. That’s at least 1965 or something like that?

DanQ: (laughing)

Makaluha: Oh no, no, no.

[DanQ]

MODCAST (1/3)

(Modcast Theme/Intro)

snoopy369: MonkSpider had that post in the Civ4 General forum where basically suggesting that a lot of features that Beyond the Sword has been announced to add. Anyhow, is not consistent to Soren's original vision of Civ4 which Soren's original vision, for those of you who are not familiar with this, originally designed most of Civ3. He stepped in after the first Civ3 team basically all left and ended up not making really the game he wanted largely because he didn’t know as much about Civ as he thought he did. There was a lot of interviews with is talking about the designing of Civ4 where he describes this.

And then basically after Civ3 was finished and he realized you know this isn’t really exactly what I wanted, he sat down and made a much simpler and more streamlined game in Civ4, which had a lot of stuff in Civ3 that made it sort of a little more messy like the corruption model and the pollution and things like that, a lot of that stuff he basically just said OK were gonna start out and make this a whole lot simpler. And MonkSpider here suggests that basically Beyond the Sword adds in a lot of that stuff that he took out and makes it a whole lot more complicated again. Whether you agree with that or not that’s sort of his point. A lot of units that Civ4 had a lot more simper units. He’s suggesting that corporations allow you to run around to avoid the whole resource scarcity problem, which honestly I always thought that Civ4 did not have that bad of a resource scarcity as Civ3 did but...

DanQ: Oh, I agree there.

snoopy369: Yeah. I remember a different implementation of Conquests. Anyhow I guess I really don’t agree with that. I tend to think that Soren's vision was a lot more complex that just a simpler game. If you want that simpler game you can always play it – that’s what Civ4 Vanilla is. Civ4 vanilla is a very nicely organized concrete game. So the whole point of expansion packs is to add more. That’s why there is also Civ4 PTBS' that are forming.

And that’s great and there’s gonna be a lot of people that like Civ4 vanilla but then you add Beyond the Sword and with Warlords you add more stuff for the people who like that more stuff. And there’s a lot more people if you remember back in the Civ3 days, there’s a lot of people that played, I don’t remember the name of the mod, but there was the mod that basically tripled the amount of stuff that was in Civ3 which already was a whole lot. That’s sort of the point of the mod. That’s sort of the point of the expansion packs was to add that more stuff for the people who like it. People who want a more complicated whatever, espionage, whatever you know. You don’t like it, don’t play it.

Locutus: Yeah.

Makaluha: I always had the impression that he simplified it down, also at the same time you could build certain select things back up into the game and make it more complex. But not necessarily the overkill that you kind of got with Civ3 with some mods.

Locutus: Exactly... I think that’s really the point here. MonkSpider explains about espionage that was something that Soren never intended, but that’s simply not true. He always did intend to have a more complex espionage system. Maybe not as overpowered as in Civ2, but he always did intend to have a more complicated system and of being in the game, but you know as in pretty much any game eventually you run out of time and you have to make some decision and just never got around to making a truly, truly good espionage system, and that’s what’s being added in Beyond the Sword. Or in theory anyway, we have to know how it works out.

The late game is tending to becoming a bit top-heavy, if it's really overboard I don’t know, but he has a little bit of point. Rhere is a lot of new units, a lot of new stuff in the late game. MonkSpider might have a little bit of a point there but for the most part I agree with Snoopy. Soren's vision was a lot more than just simplifying the game... it's more making it easier to play and get rid of annoying things like pollution whack-a-mole stuff from Civ2, and well,other unpleasant concepts.

snoopy369: I really honestly don’t understand the complaint about too many units just because you don’t have to build them – it's not like you are just building units you don’t have to build. You don’t have to build paratroopers and more options are always better. Where like Sid said strategy game is only a strategy game if you have a choice, if there is only one right way to play it then it's not strategy anymore.

Locutus: Yeah, but there’s choice and there’s just too much choice at some point it just becomes trivial. It's about interesting decisions. Interesting choices. If you have 20 units to choose from that’s not really an interesting choice, its much more interesting to have 3 or 4 units to choose from. Now I don’t think Beyond the Sword really pushes the limit, it goes beyond the limit, but it's getting near there. I don’t thing a 3rd expansion that adds a lot of stuff would really work.

snoopy369: Yeah, we typically have not had that many expansions but I don’t know. Having more units I think particularly because there are so many different ways to play Civ. In the late-game you have people who play very naval games and you build a lot of marines and things like that.

You have people who play a lot of just massive land invasions and I think that having all these different ways of playing means that you just don’t have just 3 or 4 units to choose form you hafta have that 20 or so different units to choose from so all those different play styles can all have a couple of interesting ways to play instead of he only way to play a water invasion is just to have marines, that’s not really a strategic decision. The decision was to make a marine invasion but having a couple different units you can use on that means it’s a little more interesting.

Locutus: Yeah.

Provost Harrison: Well in my opinion the proof will be in the pudding and I mean it depends on what they do. If they look more like they’re more designed to make the later age a little bit more exciting add some of the tweaks later on in the game which I don’t think sounds like a problem to me. The late game can be pretty slow.

Makaluha: Yeah. There’s that zone there where I'd hafta get into industrial before I start hitting the modern age; you’re kinda like, bored now.

Provost Harrison: Exactly. that’s exactly it. Kind of fleshing out that era a bit more, that's fine I think that’s quite a good idea.

DanQ: Oh come on... there’s plenty to do in the late game. You build the United Nations, and then you get the global nominations for adopting the civics, and then even after is passes the first time you propose it again just to see how the votes change... that’s interesting.

(laughter)

Makaluha: For Dan maybe...

snoopy369: Or you find the guy who built the U.N. and then raise his cities?

(laughing)

Makaluha: There’s always that option...

snoopy369: Or my preference, I don’t know. Stupid... anti-nuclear... proliferation...

DanQ: (laughing)

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

MODCAST (2/3)

DanQ: So maybe that kind of plays into the next topic. What bothers you about Civ4?

snoopy369: Yeah, reading that post and I don’t know. I don’t know how much this guy plays this game but I don’t know, he has culture mongers and Ironmongers. I don’t know how often I’ve ever played Great Merchant strategy, but it certainly wouldn’t go along with using Great Merchants to get techs. I mean his thing about specialist lightbulbing technologies being a problem, there’s a couple strategies that involve going for a specific tech specifically ignoring certain techs and Warlords sticks to that in some extent, but don’t really do that all the time way behind.

Provost Harrison: What this thread suggested to me is that some people they know their history – they know how history works – but sometimes they fail to remember that if you try and be too historically accurate and manage everything to historical precision, it ends up being a pretty crap game usually. And nothing really needs to be released other than artistic license there. If you do everything like history then you end up pretty rubbish.

snoopy369: Yeah. A lot of their questions if you wanna go for something that’s better for game play or do you wanna go for something that’s more historically accurate?

Provost Harrison: Exactly.

snoopy369: And I don’t know about you but I want something that plays better.

Makaluha: yeah, Civ is more about alternate history not strict history by the way it happened. Although I hafta agree with the person that said why can't caravels carry settlers?

DanQ: I was just going to say that.

Provost Harrison: It's balanc,e isn’t it?

snoopy369: If caravels carried settlers then that would make it very very big balance issue. Yeah, there’s no way because anybody who plays on archipelago maps where there’s not galley contacts available, that’s the whole point. The whole point of the terra game, the terra map which not really very many people play with I don’t think, but the whole point of that is that you have this whole other continent where you can go build in once you get to Astronomy but you have to get Astronomy first. You have to actually build galleons in order to get over there. If you make caravels able to carry settlers then...

Provost Harrison: Rubbish as well having two very separated areas where you can't trade between one and the other unless you change the pre-requisite technology to optics.

snoopy369: Yeah

DanQ: Don’t worry Maki... we'll find a modder where we are appreciated...

(laughter)

snoopy369: I can mod that for you guys very easily if you want but, anyhow, I have to say a lot of the posts in this thread look to me like they’re just balance issues. Like why is there a limit on the number of spies and missionaries? Well, because, otherwise there would be you could have some serious balance issues where it ends up making religion way too powerful or it ends up making, well I actually can't get out of my mouth the words that espionage is too powerful, but I imagine having a spy sitting in every single city just you know what everyone else is doing that would take away the whole point of spreading your religion around. A lot of these issues are just balance issues and that’s exactly why it is that way.

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

MODCAST (3/3)

DanQ: Which are the most and least important Civilization 4 resources of them all.

Provost Harrison: It depends on when. It depends on the year, it depends on what you want to do, it's so subjective.

Makaluha: It depends on whether its multiplayer or not.

snoopy369: Yeah. I'll read his list off real fast – his number 1 was Iron. Number 2 Oil, Number 3 Dtone, and his number 4 is the major food resources Rice, Wheat, Sheep, Corn, Pig, which I guess is 4,5,6,7,8?

DanQ: (laughing)

snoopy369: Number 5 is Marble, silver, Fur, gold, which I don’t, I’ll comment on them later. His number 6 is Horse, number 7 is crabs, number 8 is Ivory, and then the plantation stuff so Sugar and bananas and stuff like that. And then Aluminum and then Uranium, and then Whale. Copper not being on there sort of surprised me but to me number 1 and 1a, so number 1 and 2 are probably Iron and Copper and number 3 is Horses. His Horses are essentially number 9 or something I don’t see it being that low. To me if you got Horses you can do a lot of stuff and honestly Iron and Copper and Horses, if you got one of those 3 then you’re fine. If you have none of those 3 then you’re toast.

Probably after that it would be Cow and then Corn I definitely don’t see Cow being lower than Corn because Cow gives you a 4/2, on grassland. It is a 4/2 tile which is really good. It is much better than a 5/0 tile so it’s a lot more versatile. And then probably after that it would be Stone and Marble either one of those are quite useful, gives you that flexibility to build some wonders. And then after that to me would be the Silver/Fur/Gold and sort of the generic happiness resources, after that probably some other food resources. Probably want 2 or 3 other food resources eventually. Probably have Ivory about where he does. It's sort of nice but I'd rather have a stack of catapults than a stack of elephants any day, and then probably Aluminum and Oil after that. I consider Aluminum and Oil, I’m gonna get no matter what because they’re gonna be somewhere on the map and I don’t care if they’re in my particular area but if I see Aluminum and Oil if I don’t have them then I’m gonna go find them and the same with Coal. Coal is probably more important than any other one because then I can build railroads at least.

(laughter)

Provost Harrison: The elusive Whale...

snoopy369: definitely Whale is on the bottom. I don’t ever think I use the Whale. It takes you long to be allowed to use the Whale...

Makaluha: By the time you get it, it hits a very short window.

snoopy369: More so than anything else. Hafta have like Optics right? That said I do like the little abysmal little tundra town but I get enough of those in normal games.

Provost Harrison: Ooo, now Bronze and Iron is an interesting one. Bronze is very good I think if you get it early. But if you don’t have it and you have Iron I don’t find Bronze of that much use, if you’ve got Iron. But it's great if you get Bronze on Bronze Working and working it quickly.

Makaluha: And I think he’s undervaluing Horses a bit because we all know that chariot rushes can do a lot of damage.

snoopy369: Especially chariots now with Warlords making chariots having a bonus against axemen. I think that was the problem before. It was a problem in vanilla where Horses weren’t that useful because if you didn’t have Copper or Iron someone would just axemen rush you every time and just destroy you.

Makaluha: Yeah... they finally have a proper counter for the axes.

Provost Harrison: I do like Stone and Marble; they come in handy by building wonders I’m sure everyone agrees on that.

DanQ: Yep.

Provost Harrison: And on the other end of course there’s Whales. I’ve got nothing against Whales... you just never bloody see them. I mean “oh, what’s that?!?”

Makaluha: Or it's not worth it moving your city one tile over just to get the Whale.

Provost Harrison: Or I could build a city in the middle of the arctic to pick up a Whale. Wonderful. For 1 or 2 happiness which you don’t need by that point anyway usually, so...

snoopy369: Yeah.

Makaluha: So I’m thinking he must be playing on lower levels to not value the plantation and stuff as much, because there are some maps where you have health problems and you really need the bananas and the Spices and the Sugar and everything else.

Provost Harrison: and then there’s Incense if you’ve got multiple cathedrals as well. Incense can generate one hell of a lot of happiness.

DanQ: I find that actually the most useful, and I actually broke it up to the most useful and the least useful. But yeah Iron and Copper I was really surprised as well as everyone else not to see Copper on the list, because that is a decent Iron substitute. So if were not needing Iron offensively for the Swordsman and Pikemen for defense I would rank those two pretty well evenly.

After that number 3 GoldGems/Silver as you want to help prevent an early economic collapse. I can see the Dye and the Incense and then the Silk/Spices/and Sugars, and you were saying on certain map types with the health considerations but with the Gold, Gems and the Silver there’s no need to wait to cultivate them. Oil I put at number 4 just as a later game lifesaver, although Iron and Copper have got to be the early game lifesaver because if you don’t have those then who cares about the later game. But Oil you would be in considerable trouble in defense of your skies and softening up defenders in the later game and going on the offensive.

I would place Uranium here but particularly in a water heavier or heaviest maps. This original poster here thinks Uranium is too easily countered, but like Mango I think he’s focusing too much on ICBMs being knocked out because Uranium is a substitute for Oil and being able to build modern naval units.

Provost Harrison: Which is quite interesting because you can even use it before you’ve discovered Fission.

Makaluha: We like to play with glowy rocks...

DanQ: I was about to say it's also very shiny! I'd put Stone a just kind of half level below that in the ranking. Or Marble. Again as I’ve already been saying the builder resource consideration, and yeah, I would agree with everyone, I was really surprised on how low he put Horses. The OP says “you either love or don’t care for this resource.” Especially on larger maps but not even necessarily, once you hit knights in particular cavalry, I don’t think any land unit is matched let alone bested in both strength and speed, best combination, until the tank, but also Horses are great pillagers.

snoopy369: Just send a cavalry stack in and just pillage and by that point you’ll get towns presumably.

Makaluha: You’ll seriously cripple his economy

snoopy369: He’s done for the game pretty much at that point, yeah.

DanQ: Number 7 coal. Ironclads, blah, but railroads, oh yeah. I put Aluminum at number 8.

Makaluha: Hello... spaceship.

DanQ: (laughing) Number 9 Pigs and Fish, just for the food yield. And they’re also known at the outset of the game cultivatable early on, and then at number 10 I put, almost all of these start with the c, Clam/Corn/Cow/Crabs/Sheep, also known at the outset of the game, cultivatable early on but just not as high a food yield.

As for the least useful, hmm, guess what number 1 on my list is? Whale. Surprise. Banana at number 5. And Sugar at number 4, but again part of that is dependent on the map type, especially with the Sugar... I’m a Stonehenge person and then Oracle. I put Incense at number 3. Is it true that incense is only in deserts? I’ve only ever seen it in deserts.

snoopy369: I think so.

DanQ: I put Furs at number 2 in terms of being the least useful as those are only near polar regions and they also go obsolete right now, but with Incense being number 3 I would have almost combined Fur and Incense except that being in deserts, desert is more likely to be surrounded by more useful terrain and it also doesn’t become obsolete.

snoopy369: Flood plains anyone? I have to say Incense is more useful than that in harder games. In an Emperor game or even a Monarch game you hafta have that Incense and you have 2 or 3 cathedrals, that plus 4 or whatever happiness you get from it is really quite useful.

DanQ: I guess one of the final interesting points, and I hadn’t even considered this in the consideration of the most and least useful resources, is StevetheNobel brings up the Hit musicals, Movies and Singles and – Joe --- you kind of alluded to those when we were talking about getting Mass Media and Radio. Except StevetheNoble poo-poos these and he put them essentially on his least favorite list.

I wouldn’t put them on either list as either a least useful or most useful despite needing a Great Wonder to obtain and therefore you restrict the availability. If you’re on the larger maps it appears in the later game, I think you’d be really maximized, you can export it, the extras to other civs for considerable GPT or perhaps by that point they’ve got some later game resources that you don’t have.

Makaluha: Or happiness resources that you didn’t get.

DanQ: Exactly. I think they would even consider trading to you even if they did for something exuberant.

snoopy369: Right.

[DanQ]

RESEARCH LAB (1/1)

(Research Lab Theme/Intro)

snoopy369: So moving on from resources, our next topic is quantitative resources.

Makaluha: Yeah, and when I read into this topic I went, “oh headache of micromanagement.”

DanQ: I was about to say, “did everybody like the long posts in this one?”

snoopy369: Yeah, and definitely this is one of those Soren things that goes back to that Soren's vision. Soren's vision was that this a headache of micromanagement. That was the number one point of the vision. Quantity resources, you know, they’re realistic and they’re certainly some strategy games that use them, but I don’t know I think it would be nice to have some benefit from them but I don think for having every Iron you have that’s an extra surge, not only does that discourage people from trading the resources away, which you know that’s a good part of the economy in Civ4 is that trading resources, and if you have a reason not to do it, there’s already enough reason not to do it which is you don’t want other people building swordsman.

You know adding yet that other reason, you know and just unbalancing factor. Can you imagine if I have 10 Iron in the game and there’s 7 players and I start with 4 of them, I can build my swordsman that much faster and also there’s my neighbor next to me who doesn’t have any Iron? That’s just massive unbalancing factor that Iron already is freaking unbalancing factor you know. Making it even worse is not just a good idea.

Provost Harrison: Are these people asking for a game where they have resources which are quantitative so they can produce X amount of this resource per turn maybe have a plant that can create 50% extra of a refined resource and sit on it and use it? There’s already a game called Colonization which does that anyway. If people want to go down that route of that micromanagement there’s a game for them.

Makaluha: Yeah, and a resource management like that its starting to sound like Starcraft at the same time too or Warcraft.

DanQ: Yeah, indeed the person who started this thread, 'Gaius Octavius' says a model similar to what’s in Colonization is probably the way to go. So he says.

Makaluha: I can see it being interesting for a scenario if you wanted to have something like set in Ancient World and you managed to get some Iron first that kind of a thing? But for the base game, no. it sounds like too much of a micromanagement headache.

snoopy369: The other issue with it from the balance point of view is of you are gonna have this advantage from having several resources, you’re gonna have to have more resources. How often do you really have two Iron or two Horses? You really don’t even have them all that often. So it would sort of make it this minor feature that just if someone just happens to luckily get a couple of one resource they get a huge advantage and win the game easily. You know you’d have to have a whole lot of Horses and a whole lot of Iron so that everybody had 2 or 3 or 4.

At which point it starts becoming, well, OK you cant really have a significant tile advantage from a tile with Iron or Horses anymore. You start going into all those balance issues where you hafta have a bunch of Horses but then the Horses cant give you 2 or 3 extra hammers they only give you 1 extra hammer or something like that. The balance issues would just be insane I think.

Makaluha: However, if these guys want to make a Colonization mod we’d be happy to see it.

DanQ: (laughing) This is from 'verwynir', the bottom like is he thinks this a great idea and is desperately needed but keep it simple and don’t be afraid to use broad-brush strokes the rest of the game does and it works beautifully as a result. One of the biggest things that seemed to come out of it, is some person raised the concern there almost 40 different resources in Civ4. As it stands now the player has to keep track of their treasury, their research rate; imagine the kind of player who would enjoy keeping track [of 40 resources]. Ooh, maybe we can get a little bit of spreadsheet action going on there. (laughs).

User 'ww2commander' said perhaps the best thing is to have a hybrid system where quantities resources only applies to strategic resources, not food or luxuries. If you are going to implement this hybrid system just how are you going to do that? And I guess the other big consideration is will the AI know how to use this system. Obviously if you’re mostly a multiplayer person you don’t care but-

Makaluha: Yeah, I don’t know. Try to teach the AI to do that… I’m not seeing good results.

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

SENATE (1/4)

(Senate Theme/Intro)

DanQ: Welcome to the Senate. In this section we talk about game strategy.

snoopy369: So Great Generals...

DanQ: Two threads on this. One back in April where user 'SMBakerEsq' asked what other Civ4 players had been doing with their Great Generals. And then late last month, Grandpa Troll asked the same similar question. So what does everyone do with their GGs?

snoopy369: I pretty much make them Instructors unless I’m in need of having a level 3 or level 4 unit. But most of the time by the time I get a Great General I probably already got a level 3 or level 4 unit to get the Heroic Epic. But I mostly just try to make an instructor my first couple because I tend to go for the more unit spam type. I usually have plenty of money so I just build lots and lots of units and having those 5 extra XP for units to start out with…

Makaluha: Yeah, it's usually a lot easier with me. I'll use that first one on a unit and I'll use him to get up to the higher levels you need for West Point and The Pentagon. So I can have that later.

Provost Harrison: One of the things I try and get as well is if you have a stack that’s knocking down all their cities is to have a Medic 3 with them. If all the units take a lot of damage it would recover them very quickly and start moving on again.

Locutus: Yeah, the best thing to do is to use them for experience for new units but I usually use the first couple to attach to the units just because it's fun.

Makaluha: Well, how do you think I get that guy up to the level where I can get the Pentagon? It's what the first guy does.

Locutus: Yeah. Maybe one is good to have as to attach to a unit for experience, but beyond the first one you don’t really need Great Generals but they are a lot of fun to play with so that’s usually what I do.

Provost Harrison: Yes, there have been some threads in the past where people have had units with staggering amounts of experience. Hundreds upon hundreds of points. Looks as if the entire unit itself had conducted several wars and probably a few reloads as well I strongly suspect.

Locutus: Yeah. Kind of really sucks if you have a 200 XP unit and you actually lose it.

Provost Harrison: Exactly, so how do you get these stupid amounts of experience? Must have started out as a chariot long in the distant past. And now they’re a helicopter.

snoopy369: Usually you lose a Great General and then I guess you do reloads but even at a 95% rate when you have 20 combats you’re still gonna lose one. But i'ts just silly to only use your Great General in 99 plus percent of your combats because what’s the point of having them in the first place? What’s a 99% chance of my warlord or regular to win most of the time anyway?

Provost Harrison: Well that’s it. I generally have one unit like that that’s there to heal rather than do much fighting

snoopy369: Well, yeah.

DanQ: I myself have never used a GG to upgrade a unit to a warlord. I pretty well go for a Military Academies earlier on in the game for the +25% bonus to military unit production, although if I get a Great General later on in the game I might be interested to have them join the city as a Great Military Instructor. But before then if I want the +2 unit experience points I'd just beeline for Feudalism for the Vassalage legal civic.

snoopy369: I’ve actually never built an academy because just 25% isn’t worth it when you’re compared to all the others; I mean it's not cumulative, it's not multiple-cumulative, it's just an additive. So if you’re running Bureaucracy and you got a Heroic Epic out there, and you got a Forge and whatnot, it's like 3 extra hammers. That’s not really that much when I’m producing 30 or 40 hammers. The +2 exp to me is worth a lot more and not having to run Vassalage; I mean, I never run Vassalage simply because I'd be running... I don’t know what id be running, but I'd rather be running something more useful than Vassalage. Because that’s all it does, its not really that useful unless you’re having money problems.

DanQ: Yeah; after the availability of Factories and power plants the allure of Military Academies diminishes enough for me that ill switch to having them join as a Great Military Instructor. Also if I only fail to build the Pentagon Wonder. That’s always nice.

Provost Harrison: Comes in handy. And the other interesting this about Military Instructors built into your city are you get the benefits of Representation and of the Sistine Chapel as well. It’s a little, thing but it’s a little incentive to build them in.

(intermezzo)

DanQ: The next one is: nowhere to run in the early game?

Provost Harrison: I don’t think anybody ever saw this thread by 'Dauphin' which he posted a few weeks ago where he automatically positioned within a few squares of another neighbor, but he moved up and was on a peninsula blocked off by a mountain. He could only build one city.

Locutus: Yeah. I saw that, yeah.

Makaluha: I’ve seen it in MP.

snoopy369 Yeah, that’s happened in 'rah'’s Saturday night game a couple of times.

Makaluha: Who was it... was it DD that got it last time I think? Where he was Persia but he was blocked off?

snoopy369: Yeah. But that usually happens because the map only has a certain number of starting points. And it has spaces that it considers an acceptable spot for a starting point. If you only have 5 of them on that map and you have 6 players, well, that’s gonna happen where one of the players are gonna get stuck next to another one.

Makaluha: It also tends to happen when you have a smaller map. You set it to a high sea level so you have a very small land mass.

snoopy369: Ieah, right. It also happens a lot on Pangaea I’ve noticed as opposed to if you play something like Ring or Inland Sea or things like that. There’s a lot of really good map types out there. The different map designers spent a lot of time making some very interesting map types.

DanQ: Like Oasis.

Provost Harrison: (laughs) I’ve got a contemptuous, hmm. Oasis, eh?

(laughter)

DanQ: 'courdillion' asks if there any other stories where the start really has left nowhere to expand? Do a custom game, dual size map, 18 civs. Aww yeah!

(laughter)

Makaluha: That’s ridiculous.

snoopy369: That’s a game where you better pick a civ that has a Warrior to start out with. If you’re one of those Scout civs you’re toast.

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

SENATE (2/4)

DanQ: The next is tips for Culture Victory. Although again I have to reiterate what I said in the last episode: who wins a Culture Victory? What?

snoopy369: I like Cultural Victories sometimes. It's actually a very hard one if you’re playing an appropriate difficulty level its actually fairly hard. Anything on Monarch or above its very difficult to get. But its quite a good challenge especially when you know you’re not gonna win by space. As long as you can beeline for Radio, that’s the big one. Beeline to the Radio and the Mass Media. Getting those 3 wonders, and the Eiffel Tower in particular, is really important for that I think. The keys to me I think are 1- build as many religions as possible. Either get them yourself or get other people to give them to you because you really need 6 or 7 religions in your cities. 9 cities is fine because your 3 core cities all need to have Cathedrals in them for as many different religions as possible.

If you can get 6 or 7 Cathedrals in your cities that’s an insane amount of culture right there. Plus each one of the cities, that means your capitol has enough culture by itself. The other 2 cities should have the Hollywood and whatnot. They have to be reasonably productive cities because by the end when you’re at 30,000 culture. 20 or 30,000 culture, you’re really just gonna be running just culture 100%. And producing culture also instead of your hammers.

Locutus: That usually helps me over the top.

snoopy369: Yeah, you can get 800-900-1,000 plus/turn easily.

Provost Harrison: That’s quite a bit.

snoopy369: Great Artists. A lot of people try to use great artists for the 4,000 or depending on what map size or speed your playing on culture. But actually, unless you’re very, very late in the game make sure and don’t do that. Instead settle them because when its multiplied by that, you know, 400-500%. Multiplication actually gives you quite a bit more in the long run unless you’re in the last 20 or 30 turns or so.

Makaluha: Yeah, I’ve got that going in a PBEM right now where its too late in the game for me to settle them, because I get less than the 4,000 I would get just for using them to create the great worker.

DanQ: There was 'KMadCandy' in the thread and he’s holding on to a number of his Great Artists for a later game culture bomb. He says, quote, “I’m refusing to even learn Chemistry so the Parthenon doesn’t go obsolete.” Wow.

snoopy369: That’s not an entirely uncommon strategy. I’ve seen a few people in other games who were refusing to learn Chemistry for that very reason. They’re really going after the Great-whatever’s. Though by reasonably late in the game you ought to get enough other multipliers, but its not that big of a deal.

DanQ: What’s that? I don’t recognize your tanks... I have the Parthenon. Uh-oh...

(laughter)

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

SENATE (3/4)

DanQ: What type of victory, assuming you win...

(laughter)

DanQ: ... do most people usually either end up going for or end up getting?

snoopy369: It depends a lot on the start. Culture victory you sort of have to decide fairly early on, but its fairly easy to see the kind of start that need a couple religions and you need 3 pretty good solid cities. If you got those 3 pretty good solid cities, and you’ve got a couple early religions, then absolutely. That a no-brainer for me. But space race is sort of when you’re in the late game, and you’re ahead of the AI a little bit in tech, then usually you can get that pretty easily. As long as, again, you’ve got a decent size nation and domination is sort of the default for me I guess. Instead of nothing else, when I’m not gonna get culture and I’m not gonna get space race, and I don’t have enough vassals to win the diplomacy race, I’m sort of, “well OK, I’m gonna get a bunch of tanks and go”...

Makaluha: It's also what you do when you’re stuck in that little corner of tundra or plains. There’s no good cities around you, time for conquest.

snoopy369: Of course. (laughs) Well, that’s when you just build a bunch of chariots and chariot rush whoever’s nearest early on.

Makaluha: Dominae.

snoopy369: Yeah. (laughs)

Provost Harrison: Usually end up going for the space race myself. Just usually the fact that I’m a bit of a science whore so to speak. So I like to accumulate technology to get myself ahead of the game.

DanQ: I’m usually Diplomatic or secondarily in Score in time. All tying into my typical builder strategy.

snoopy369: Now with Warlords and with vassals, Diplomatic really doesn’t happen very often for me. Just because if I’m gonna get Diplomatic, I essentially need a bunch of vassals because I tend to go for an early religion and tend to make people a little bit upset about that. And unless you get a whole bunch of people with [your] religion, the only way you’re going to get it is by having a bunch of vassals at which point you might as well go for Domination anyway.

Provost Harrison: Yes. No one ever likes me enough to go for a Diplomatic victory. I have an elite core of people who absolutely worshiped the ground I walk on whereas the others go “pfft, not him”, so I’ve never had a Diplomatic victory.

DanQ: Awwwww...

Provost Harrison: No one likes me. (laughs)

DanQ: I'll let you share one of mine.

(laughter)

(intermezzo)

[DanQ]

SENATE (4/4)

snoopy369: So what’s a good city? Hmm?

Makaluha: Hmm…

(laughter)

snoopy369: I'd have to say a good city for me usually is one with a whole bunch of floodplains. I’m definitely a floodplains guy; I mean when I chose civs I always pick a Financial one. Well I love floodplains because not only can you get the great tech cities which is usually what you do with them. But that one Great Person generating city. If you have 4 or 5 flood plains then you just farm those and then you basically have as many Great People as you can possibly generate as quickly as possible. Especially if you can manage to get one or two plains, hills or something that will give you enough hammers to get a couple wonders.

Makaluha: Yes, floodplains are very versatile. You can farm them to make a bunch of food and have that Great Person city, or you can put the cottages on them for a lot of gold. Or even both in the same city depending on how many you have. Flood plains and nice hills. Grasslands on a river are also nice.

Locutus: Yeah

snoopy369: I’m actually realizing, and I never really played with Workshops before, but a plains with a workshop on it once you pass Guilds, becomes a plains/hill. You get that 0/4. Because I always sort of assumed I would not want to give up that food.

Locutus: Yeah, I made the same discovery this week as well. Incidentally.

Makaluha: Yeah, I noticed that especially before Biology it's a lot more useful that way. Especially if you have a bunch of grassland on the other side or something.

snoopy369: Yeah.

Provost Harrison: I think the other issue with that has got to be the health consequence of having quite a few Workshops. They do alright for health, I don’t see why it’s a big deal, but-

snoopy369: Yeah, I got plenty of health. It's not usually a problem.

Makaluha: Well I very rarely had health problems. So I guess a good city is a versatile city.

Provost Harrison: I don’t know, there tends to be a lot of specialization in cities. Some cities pumping out wonders, some cities having a Great leader, some of em for science. Well end up with one that is a military specialty for example...

(agreement)

DanQ: But don’t put your Wonder city on the border...

Makaluha: No. that’s just plain bait.