the wait for civiliza d4

[dexter4dxm]

after taking a short break upon completing demo 3b, progress continues on civiliza.

right now, i'm working on getting the resources system in the game. i'm doing my planning for all the new features for the next release as i go along here.

one major change i am considering is doing away with all the units, and replacing them with armies. with this new way, you will build entire armies from the city screen consisting of a set amount of different units. of course, you will have to have the required resources available to build the army (resources are stockpiled in this game). so instead of having 50+ individual units running around on the map, you will have a small number of armies instead. i'm not sure how i will handle combat with this new system.

he's a screen of the latest build:

[tishco]

yayy
i was wondering when someone wood try and beat civ3 with stuff before it came out!

[dexter4dxm]

i have to admit that some of my design is similar to Civ3, but there will definitally be changes. For example, getting the resources will probably be the same, but in my game you will be able to stockpile them, like in RTS games. As for the armies, in Civ3 it will be an option that will give a big boost to your units working together. In my game it won't be something you get from elite units or a wonder, it will in from the very beginning and it will be your only option. Combat will definitally be different. I'm still thinking of how to do combat. Here are a couple of ideas:

1) CTP-like, in a seperate screen with a square of tiles to manuever your troops around. The city walls could be included in this, making siege weapons even more necessary.

2) MoO2-like, in a seperate screen which controls all the combat by itself, and has little unit animations running across the bottom of the screen doing battle. I'm sure it will be a challenge, but it will look great if I can pull it off.

And then, there are lots of things which to be honest with you, I have no idea if they will be in Civ3. I hope they don't have the same nuke system in mind!

[tishco]

you havent got a tech tree yetand you're already thinking about nukes!
i would like them planet buster style or something really destructive and atrocios!

[dexter4dxm]

a lot of my best ideas are nuke related

there will be 3 stages of nukes in civiliza. the first stage will be early nukes that do average damage. these must be delived by bombers. the second stage of nukes does a lot more damage, and can be delivered by ICBM's, which get to their target anywhere on the map in a single turn. the third stage will come from a future tech (likely to be Anti-Matter), and the warheads will devestate the enemy as well as the planet. All the missile launches and interceptions will be animated on the main screen.
Btw, the nuke interceptors will come in three stages too, from a ground-to-air missile launcher that only hits half its targets to a futuristic network of laser-equipped satelites.

[tishco]

so like the smac planet buster!
this, along with civ 3 having 16 civs is the best news today

i know this is off topic but im a warlord already. and my proper joining date is on the side. i only joined in late august. and to be honest i'm still a civ2 warlord

[dexter4dxm]

screen shot time.

here's a shot of the main map, which takes up nearly the entire screen, the way it should be. no new original artwork here, but the terrain types are all in.

[dexter4dxm]

the new city window, which basically just centers the view on the city, and props up necessary information. here you can see food resources being harvested from the tiles surrounding the city.

[dexter4dxm]

and finally, a better way of selecting what unit you want to be built. each unit costs different resources, which are deducted from your stockpiles.


no comment on the blurred out text on the bottom right

[tishco]

woaw, advancin fast, but what is the red blurry thing? i know its not to be known but please diont do a firaxis. is t somehting to do with new stuff like armies, culture, nukes, tech or diplo. i guess nukes or global warming from nukes pollution or nukelear winter.
was there supposed to be no fog of war?

[dexter4dxm]

to answer your question, it's a nuke-related button.

regarding the current status of civiliza:
although i have been spending some time away from my project recently (god counter-strike is such an addictive game), much progress has been made. the basic population system is in the game. Population growth is not based on how much food is available like in Civ2. Population growth will be based on the current population in the city, what improvements the city has (like hospitals), what technologies the civilization has. Population growth can be halted by lack of food or biochemical weapons. I've been balancing out the population growth. It works pretty nicely though; small cities take awhile to grow, but this is okay because in the early game the years fly by. larger cities grow a whole lot faster, and as long as you have enough food you can make some pretty huge cities. the city size number can go up to 99, which is reperesentative of 9,900,000 people. i'm going to have to raise this number though.
I've also updated a bunch of the graphics, added city resource gathering management, and added the tech tree. that's right, the tech tree is in the game already and fully functional. The techs themselves dont do anything yet, but the tree is in there

It's going to be awhile until demo 4 is out, i will report on progress every once in awhile.

[dexter4dxm]

more work has been done on the population system and the managing of resources in the cities. the resources of the game have been finalized, and they are:

food - aquired from many different types of terrains. used for population cap. may one day be used to buy/maintain armies

wood - aquired from forrests and mountains. used for a few units and many structures

iron - aquired from hills and mountains. used for a few units and structures

gold - aquired from mountains. can be used for cash, but has other uses.

bronze - same as iron

oil - from desert, glacier, or sea tiles. oil is used for many modern-day units.

steel - converted from iron by blast furnaces in a steel plant. used in many modern day units and structures.

power - gathering from many different city improvements, power is used by other improvements and futuristic military units.

electronics - produced by manufacturing plants. used in moden/future military units

uranium - probably going to be hidden amongst the different terrain tiles. this is the rarest of the resources, and is used for nuclear fission/fussion power and their respective nuclear weapons.

there will be no other resources collected in the game. no spices, no luxuries, nothing. as i've said from the beginning, i want to keep complexity away.

[Dale]

dexter:

This is sounding really good.

[dexter4dxm]

thanks Dale.

in the state it's in right now, my program loads up a text file in the game directory, and gets all the data for the resources (this is also true for terrains, units, techs, and improvements). each turn, resources from the worked tiles in each city radius are added up and stockpiled. then you have deductions, like for city populations and military maintenence. then what's left is what you have to work with for unit/improvement/wonder construction. cities can use the stockpiled resources if they are connected to the capital city by roads. this applies to all resources the city needs, including food to help the city grow and ore to build units with.

here's the latest screen. notice how you can set the unit being built as well as the improvement being built (you can build your armies at the same time as building up your city). also you can tell that the backgrounds have been redrawn. i'm really starting to like how my game looks. cant wait till i have backgrounds for all the different eras....

[tishco]

i'm back after being unable to post. civiliza is looking very good, i look forward to its next version.
shame about civ3, i have to wait 2 weeks for it to be for sale.
when is the next civiliza coming out?