Tendo City

http://www.civilization5.com/
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Awesome... hexes make strategy games more complex and deeper, so it'll be pretty interesting to see them in Civilization. Could be awesome...

In a new post because of how big they are.

Looks outstanding ,doesn't it? :)

The only question is, can it actually match the perfection of Civilization II... maybe not, but if it's as good as it looks it should be an exceptional game even so!

ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT PERSIANS

Not sure yet whether I like the hex map. It'll definitely require mastering a new method of navigation.

One thing I would definitely like to see is an updated production system. The actual combat is tweaked with every new entry, but the idea that a city of two hundred thousand people can only build one catapult every ten years is silly and outdated. I would love to see a system which allows construction of multiple items at once (balanced, of course, by allowing focused construction to take place faster).

I'm not sure about the hexes, it's really throwing one of the only remaining standards of classic Civ away.

That's not to say I'm against change. I mean, Civ III can go to hell, but it at least gave us cultural boundaries. Man I hated having my own continent and having the fucking Russians swoop in and plop down 10 1-pop cities in the middle of my infrastructure.

I just hope the change is more like Civ 1 to Civ 2 than Civ 2 to Civ 3.

Hexes are more "serious", you know? More complex, deeper strategy games like wargames use hexes. Simpler ones use squares. So what going to hexes does is makes things more complex, in some ways, because of all the additional movement options and strategies it opens up. I like hexes, so in theory it's a pretty interesting and probably good change... we'll see how it works out, but in theory it's definitely interesting. :)

Weltall Wrote:Not sure yet whether I like the hex map. It'll definitely require mastering a new method of navigation.

Yeah, the one concern I do have is movement... I guess it'll have to be mouse only? Civ II was far, far faster and better with the numeric keypad than mouse... but with hexes that won't work so well. Losing that will be too bad, but oh well.

EdenMaster Wrote:I'm not sure about the hexes, it's really throwing one of the only remaining standards of classic Civ away.

What, Civ III didn't do that? ;)

EdenMaster Wrote:That's not to say I'm against change. I mean, Civ III can go to hell, but it at least gave us cultural boundaries. Man I hated having my own continent and having the fucking Russians swoop in and plop down 10 1-pop cities in the middle of my infrastructure.

You're right about that though, one of the only things that III actually improved on was that it actually showed national borders on the map, and the culture system that let you expand them was interesting.

And yeah, that was annoying about Civ II wasn't it. Still, best turn-based game ever.

Weltall Wrote:ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT PERSIANS

Civ has always had square-sized units, but it does get a bit sillier looking as the graphics get better, doesn't it, I guess... :)

Why does everyone hate III? I love III. :(

Quote:More complex, deeper strategy games like wargames use hexes. Simpler ones use squares.

Yeah. Of course, Civilization is a simple strategy game, in which war is only dealt with in a very basic fashion.

Quote:Yeah. Of course, Civilization is a simple strategy game, in which war is only dealt with in a very basic fashion.

True, but the strategy options added by going to hexes do add to the game I think.

Quote:Why does everyone hate III? I love III.

Because it was really disappointing, that's why. :)

Civ II was pretty much the perfect game, in my opinion. It has flaws, but they don't matter at all. Then came Alpha Centauri, which matched its quality while being different. But then Brian Reynolds (the lead designer of both of those games) and some other people left Firaxis, and I was really worried about Civ III... and indeed, it disappointed be badly compared to Civ II.

Some of the bad changes compared to Civ II:
-Removal of wonder movies
-No video high council
-Nowhere near as great music
-Game looks nice, but it just doesn't match the simple perfection of Civ II...
-Siege weapons can't kill enemy units. Seriously, what the heck? That was one of the stupidest moves ever...
-No irrigation from tiles near the sea, only from rivers. MAJOR, MAJOR flaw! You'd better hope you start near a river, because otherwise you're in big, big trouble... and it's even worse if you start surrounded only by mountains and sea, then you're just stuck until you can make another city somewhere else. What in the world were they thinking? Awful!
-Interface may have been fullscreen, but wasn't better.
etc. I don't know if I even ever finished a game, it just did not make me want to play it at all. It just made me want to go play something better again, such as Civ II.

Some of the bad changes compared to Civ II:
-Removal of wonder movies
> Eh. I always turn them off even in Civ II.
-No video high council
> Same as above.
-Nowhere near as great music
> True, but I listen to my own music while playing anyway.
-Game looks nice, but it just doesn't match the simple perfection of Civ II...
> Subjective.
-Siege weapons can't kill enemy units. Seriously, what the heck? That was one of the stupidest moves ever...
> Okay, here I agree. Air units also became mostly useless in III.
-No irrigation from tiles near the sea, only from rivers. MAJOR, MAJOR flaw! You'd better hope you start near a river, because otherwise you're in big, big trouble... and it's even worse if you start surrounded only by mountains and sea, then you're just stuck until you can make another city somewhere else. What in the world were they thinking? Awful!
> This is realism! You can't irrigate seawater in real life and expect to grow crops!

I love Civ II's wonder movies, the videos look cool and it's really great to get a reward for all the work that went into building them. I never turn off the videos except for when I'm playing a scenario and they wouldn't fit anyway.

I liked the somewhat cheesy live-action-video high council, too. Yeah, I can see why they dropped it, FMV was out of style by the time Civ III came out, but couldn't they have at least had a CG rendered council and wonder movies? But no, it's all just static images or minimal animation. Civ II does it better.


Similarly, with music, I always play games with their own soundtrack, not something else, and pretty much never mute game soundtracks for nothing or something of my own... I don't know, that's the music that's supposed to be there, so that's what I listen to with it.

But besides, even if I didn't do that, Civ II has a really, really good soundtrack. It's in three parts though, eight songs each from the original game, the first expansion (Conflicts in Civilization), and the second expansion (Fantastic Worlds). There are two songs in all versions, the Ode to Joy and Funeral March. The original game has the 8 base songs. Conflicts in Civilization has the base and CiC songs. Fantastric Worlds has the base, CiC, and FW songs. Civ II Gold Multiplayer Edition, however, despite containing all the game content from both expansions plus the new multiplayer mode and being Win95 native instead of Win3.1, has ONLY the Fantastic World music, Ode to Joy, and Funeral March. Nothing else. And that's why I never use that disc for playing the game, despite that being the version I have installed -- it's missing two thirds of the music, including many of the best songs! I always play with the Fantastic Worlds CD, of course. Yes, you can play Civ II GME with any previous Civ II CD, you don't need to play it with the GME CD. It doesn't send you into FW-only mode or something just because you're using that disc. :)

Quote:> Subjective.

Civ II and Alpha Centauri scored higher than Civ III, so perhaps, but not entirely. :)

Alpha Centauri got a 98% from PC Gamer (US) at the time, which is the highest number they have ever given... they've only given 98%s a couple of times since. Half-Life 2, perhaps Half-Life 1, not sure about anything else.

Quote:> Okay, here I agree. Air units also became mostly useless in III.

Making a lot of the better units useless really hurts the game you know...

Quote:> This is realism! You can't irrigate seawater in real life and expect to grow crops!

Well I always assumed that the idea was that small rivers and such would be more likely near the coast, or something... I don't know, makes sense to me well enough.

But anyway, just because something might be more realistic doesn't mean that it makes for better gameplay, that's for sure. This is most definitely one of those cases. That was an awful design change, it burned me several times I believe... but really, as I said, I don't think it's really that much more realistic either.

Perhaps it should be based both on water AND terrain type? That is, if it's a desert by an ocean no, but if it's the best type of grasslands, well, they're getting their water from somewhere... or perhaps some kind of 'water' tile that isn't a full river, but notes that this square can support irrigation base? I don't know, there are solutions that would have both "realism" and reduce the degree of the problem.

Really though, all that was really needed was a way to ensure that your starting city cannot be blocked off from irrigating just based on the random luck of the draw of your start location. After that you should be able to tell where you're putting cities, but you really don't get that choice with your first one, not if you want to start setting up your civilization.


Oh yeah, and I remember them saying that they were improving the diplomacy system, but they didn't really. It's kind of silly that now diplomacy is always head-to-head -- that is you always just see the head of state's picture. It was better in Civ II where you negotiate with a herald, with the ruler's picture in the background. More realistic. :) Plus the diplomacy system itself really wasn't better. It was a little different, but not better.


Also, on that note, the removal of the Caravan/Freight and Diplomat/Spy units was really unfortunate, and is another major strike against the game. Civilization is not better with those as automated systems in menus. They should be units.

Oh yeah, I also hated Civ III's health system. Civ II did it perfectly with its health bar. Why did Civ III devolve to having just three hit points? It was stupid and made the game less fun and combat much less varied. This is particularly true because Veteran, etc. status actually gave the unit an extra hit point, and then a second one... okay, but still, the whole hit points idea was a terrible one. Give me back health bars!

Well I know when I play Civ4, it almost always starts me out near a river or freshwater lake. I think it starts all civs out that way. Besides, you don't need your first city irrigated to thrive. Plop down right where you are on 4000 BC and get to work. The time you're wasting looking for a spot is time you could be using to produce. If your city isn't near water, build your next city near it. Deck it out with mines and become a production center more than a population center. Not starting near water is not a first-turn death sentence for your Civilization.

In Civ III once I started in a small but flat area with the sea on one side and mountains on the other sides. No rivers, not many mountains either. Yeah, that stunk.

If Civ IV usually starts you near water that isn't the ocean, that's good, and perhaps how they fixed the issue?

Quote:Also, on that note, the removal of the Caravan/Freight and Diplomat/Spy units was really unfortunate, and is another major strike against the game. Civilization is not better with those as automated systems in menus. They should be units.

Totally disagree. As units, they enabled cheap, game-breaking tactics, but were useless for anything legitimate except stealing technologies and investigating cities--both of which are possible in III.

No way, having to use a diplomat before you'd have diplomatic relations with a country was a good thing. Just having it automatically and stuff is lame. And what, exactly, is wrong with the Spy unit? They were pretty cool to have around... it's not game-breaking, they don't always succeed or anything.

As for still having it in III, without the unit it's just not the same at all...

Also, I guess you never used traderoutes, or you don't like having to actually get the caravan to the place in order to set them up or something? It was better that way.

I never used traderoutes because they were rarely worth the effort. The only real purpose for Caravans is to rush-build Wonders. And, you could totally destroy the game with DiploSpy units by bribing enemy cities.

It's not the same without the units. I think it's better. I'd rather produce useful things.

One gameplay element in III that I adore is the concept of strategic resources. It alters, entirely, the entire concept of in-game geopolitics. I think IV improved on this by introducing other resources that weren't strictly necessary but of great value to control anyway.

This is all well and good, but I have one question...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYhodCCUyBs

Quote:It's not the same without the units. I think it's better. I'd rather produce useful things.

Um, so any non-military unit is "useless"? No, I'd never agree to that. What, should Settlers be automated functions too? I like having non-military aspects of the game, Civilization isn't supposed to just be a wargame. That's a big part of it, but that should not be the entire game. Having trade units as units adds to the non-military part of the game, and finding trade routes can be interesting. There's a definite benefit to doing it because of the added resources it gets those cities. And I already said how good Diplomats and Spies are, and that I totally disagree that they're game-breaking in any way.

It is kind of silly that for instance you can't bribe a unit from a Democracy, but whatever, every game has some odd balance issues. [/quote]

I'm quite certain that I never categorized all non-military units as 'useless'. Strategic deployment of settlers and workers is absolutely vital to the game's success. Hell, there's a lot of military units that are pretty useless, for that matter (raise your hand if you've ever built a Crusader unit except by accident, or a Marine unit on any non-archipelago map).

I simply don't believe that the diplomatic and trade units add anything significant by being units. I hardly ever used them when they were available, and I sure as hell don't miss them now that they're gone.

Quote:... On that note, CORRUPTION! I almost completely forgot, but Civ III COMPLETELY BROKE the corruption system! Corruption is so hideously bad in Civ III that cities far away from your capital are completely useless unless you're in the least-corruption kind of government... but it's just one of the many examples of how bad Civ III was.

This is actually a valid point. When I play Civ III, I always run it through the editor and reduce the corruption level to what I've determined to be more reasonable. I still view it as a minor flaw in an otherwise-fantastic game.

Quote:It's yet another luck-of-the-draw-and-you-suffer element... "interest" perhaps, but it's really cruel if you draw the short stick... I don't know if it's a good or bad element though, it is both interesting and annoying.

I sometimes like the challenge of 'suffering' the loss. That makes me have to consider 1: placing cities close to where I hope I'll get at least some of the good stuff and 2: what to do if a rival has it and I don't. Do I work out a trade, or do I invade?

Uh . . . what I did above was completely by mistake. Sorry. :/

Previews, information, etc. on the game:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1075587p1.html
Good long 3-page preview. Read it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355763

Quote:1. Tech trading is abolished.
2. Alliances give special boni (per example the possibility for a quicker research of a technology)
3. Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed
4. Cities can grow bigger than in former versions of the civ series as they there are 3 tiles for a city in every direction to be worked on.
5. New leader Wu Zeitan ( approximately for China)
6. New "Civilisation tree": This tree has a lot of astles, called "Social Policies". These astles contain certain paths, one of them is the path of "Tradition". Each of these astles gives a civ a certain advantage (per example special units). A civ can follow one of these paths strictly and make a deep progress in that tree on that path, but the civ can also follow parallel several different paths but doesn´t make such a deep progress in each of these paths.
7. New battle system one unit per tile confirmed:

a) New troops must leave a city at once, as there is only one unit per tile
b) Distance fighters (archers, artillery and so on) can shoot over the front units, lakes and other tiles
c) One philosophy is to form front lines for battles far away from the cities.

8. City States confirmed.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355764

Quote:The March-edition of Swedish PC Gamer has a 6-pages preview of Civilization 5. I suspect that most of the info has already been presented on this forum, but since several here have asked me to summarize the article, I will try to give an overview. I guess hearing the same information with some new words may easen your Civ 5-addiction...

About Civ 5:

About 50 persons are currently working on the game, which has been in development for over two years, but is now reaching the final phases.

About Sid Meier:

PC Gamer talks a little with Sid Meier. He said: "It is always a challenge trying to find new ways to improve Civilization and at the same time keeping what made the game addictive and fun in the first place. It has always been our philosophy to listen to the players and follow what happens in the modding community and then merge them with our own ideas and even if we are working on console- and Facebook-versions of the Civilization-franchise so has always Civilization 5 been a return to the heart and soul of the franchise."

Hexagons:

The game has a new engine composed of a hexagons. Jon Shafer thinks this change is good, since it gives you lesser options of movement but each option is therefore more important. It also means that for example mountains and forests can have a more natural pattern.

Graphics:

The graphics will have a completely new style- Art-deco, inspired by games like Grim Fandango. It is designed by Russel Vaccaro. The environments, like forests and oceans, will be a lot more animated than in Civ 4.

Sound:

The game will have an advanced sound-engine, which will change sounds depending on if you are in the hills, the forests or on the ocean. It will also have a large soundtrack.

Panzer General:

The new hexagonal change is specifically useful in the new, improved combat system. Now you may only have a maximum of one unit in a hexagon. This includes the cities. Shafer says that Panzer General was the main inspiration for this change into a more tactical battlefield. The new system forces your units out of the cities and out into the terrain, forming natural frontlines and taking advantage of good defensive positions.

Bombardment:

Some units may attack other units more than one hex away, for example archers.

Terrain:

Hills give defensive advantages. Your units can see and shoot farther there.

Leaders:

You will now see leaders in full view. They alsp talk in their native language. Firaxis has resurrected the extinct language of quechua (used by Inca). However, all leaders will have their lines subtitled in English.

City states:

These are small, AI-controlled civilizations. They never grow big and doesn´t desire to win. The player must choose if he is to be friendly, indifferent or hostile towards a city state. The attitude you has towards a particular city state will have a big effect on diplomacy. If for example your units is approaching a city state that have friendly relations with another civilization, he will warn you, and if you ignore them, there will be consequences.

Barbarians:

The barbarians originate from a barbarian city and will get more advanced units later in the game. You need to wipe out all barbarian cities to get rid of the barbarian hordes.

City expansion:

Borders does no longer expand in large areas, but one hex at a time. Remote hexes like marshes, forests and mountains will be harder to acquire.

Economy:

You can invest money in your neighboring hexagons, for example trying to acquire an important resource before your opponent.

Research:

You can also sign a research-deal with another civilization. This way, both civs will cooperate to reach the new technology and both will gain it when the discovery is made. This was included to encourage cooperation between civilizations.

Diplomacy:

The civilizations will have an all-new advanced AI. All opponents will have fixed characteristics. Based on this unique personality, every AI-player will have their own agenda, which the AI will use to plan how to best play to win the game. But there will also be a certain randomness to avoid having the AI be too easy to predict.

Conclusions:

PC Gamer was impressed with what they saw. They think the new graphics was a real facelift for the franchise, and the interface is greatly improved. They also thought the soundtrack was brilliant. They conclude:

"Judging from the gameplay-sequences we saw, Civilization 5 will make no fan of the franchise disappointed."

So what do I think? Hmm... with so many significant changes that so fundamentally change the way the game plays, it'll be very interesting to see what the results are like. This isn't the Civilization we knew... but that isn't necesarially a bad thing. I don't know if it'll be a better game than Civ II or Alpha Centauri, but it does sound like it'll be pretty interesting and different, and certainly very much worth playing. And while they are changing a lot of things, it's clearly still Civilization.

Sounds pretty awesome so far.

Quote:"Judging from the gameplay-sequences we saw, Civilization 5 will make no fan of the franchise disappointed."

Judging by this comment, they are apparently unaware of how fanbases exist in the real world.

Wait, are they keeping religions or removing them? The quote isn't clear. I loved snapping up all the religions and having the world diplomacy wrapped around my finger.

Religions are gone.

Quote:3. Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed

I hope this means that they're going to come up with a new method of introducing religion into the game. Religion has been a vital driving force of world events throughout human history. It deserves better than the "pacification building" treatment it got in the first three games, but I thought Civilization IV implemented it poorly.

The challenge they have is implementing religion in a way that won't offend people. As sad as that is, it's a big concern for the developer.

I would like to see religion done as an organic thing. Instead of "discovering" Hinduism with your scientists (a concept which is, frankly, absurd), make it so that you develop Religion over time, and its aspects reflect (and influence) your style of gameplay. For instance, if your civ is strongly-unified, your religion will tend to the monotheistic, whereas a geographically far-flung and disconnected empire will tend towards a more populated pantheon. If your early game involves a lot of combat, your religion will develop aggressive dogma whereas a peaceful early game will develop more of a philosophical dogma. This can therefore influence scientific development (in which a nation worshiping warrior gods will gain militaristic advances quicker but take longer when researching economic advances).

Another thing to factor would be that two nations which share large borders for long periods of time will have religious effects bleed over into one another even if their religions develop along fundamentally different levels for a long time, or create a situation like Christianity (and later, Islam) which take a similar religion and drive it in a radical new direction.

You can therefore lead into a situation as in Civilization IV where nations with similar religions enjoy stronger diplomatic ties, and a situation in which one nation will be considered the center of a particular strain of religion and enjoy an advantage, or end up creating schism and lead to religious strife.

And, atop all of this, make it so that the religions can become very similar to those we know, without expressly identifying them by real names.

Implementing stuff like that would be really interesting, Weltall, I agree... really interesting, but really hard to implement.

I mean, they haven't even really managed to do national borders right yet. I understand that in the past things did not used to really be like they are now, with every country having specifically marked boundaries and the whole earth being covered with countries, but still, in any civilization things were more formal than they are in the games I think... in Civ I and II the only "borders" you have are the spaces within your cities' zones, which don't include a lot of space that should be considered to be part of your "country" really. Of course determining these lines is really hard, as any study of history would show... borders are an incredibly difficult thing to define, groups of people constantly shift and move and get displaced and merge, and more. A game like Civilization really cannot model that. So, what do you do? I'm not sure...

I know that Civ III started trying to model borders more, with the culturally-influenced borders system, but it's far from perfect, that's for sure.

http://ve3d.ign.com/images/game/62125/PC...creenshots

A bunch of screenshots... looking nice.