Civilization 4
 

I just spent a few minutes at www.civ4.com, and also at the IGN Preview. I'm excited about what I've seen so far, particularly the government/religion options, and the less-restrictive tech tree. Here's a portion on an interview with the lead developer. I've underlined some things that jumped out at me:

i loved civilization 3 conquest.

i cant wait for civ 4 looks great so far. Big time improvements from civ3.


for more info check out.

http://www.civfanatics.com/

:D Awesome. This sounds like the sequel to Civ 2 that everyone wanted Civ 3 to be.

IGNPC: Finally, where's my Colonization 2? I mean, what have you guys been doing for the last ten years?

Barry Caudill: You're right, we have been slacking off. I mean, Firaxis has only shipped 10 titles in the last 9 years. Actually, we get lots of requests to make another Colonization. We don't have any plans to do it right now, but it's certainly something to consider for the future. Stay tuned...

-------------------------------

:(

I still pull Colonization out every so often.

i really hope they're dreaming up alpha centauri 2 right now

Is it multiplayer out of the box this time?

.

Yummy. Can't wait for this.

I'm not very keen on the idea of removing defense and attack ratings and replacing it with a single value, but the rest sounds good. Sort of more of the same but prettier and refined.

I just hope they're busy making sure nobody can patch the game to make all the soldiers naked.

Yeah. I would've liked that better than a Civ4.

crap! those in game shots are nice. I am going to have to get a new computer. :D

Wow, sounds awesome.

Agreed, I didn't like that at all.

i hope the combat fights are in 3d or an option to see combat battles in 3d.

Can't wait...drooling already!

I've read several previews (such as on Gamespot) and thought about posting them. This game has jumped up to the top of my most anticipated list. I can't wait to play some of you guys if the MP truly works well like it sounds it will.

one of the major deciding factor for me purchasing civ 4 is how smart the AI will be.

i want the Ai to make good decisions for trading, diplomacy, attacking, alliances, etc

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=123967

Yeah. I've never played an MP game of civ, but I'd love to.

mp was very boring for civ3 because it took so long for games to end and people quit if there behind.

FOFC Civ4 Conquer the World game, here we come.

I'd be surprised if they could streamline Civ4 enough to keep games from going on a really long time and players getting tired of playing. If I have 2 armies and am just scraping by on a small island while 2 other players are in a huge battle - each of them with 20 cities and a hundred units - why would I want to sit around and wait for them to play out every turn?

I'm hopeful that they will do this right, and make provisions for this sort of situation such as having AI take over.

MP was clearly tacked onto Civ 3, and the fact that they designed MP first for Civ 4 makes me hopeful.

Ahhh...rivers connecting cities. Holy cities. Now we're looking at civilization!

I can't believe this wasn't asked but a huge frustration about civ3 IMO was that the AI didn't get smarter as you moved up in levels. The AI just got extra "bonuses" like extra units when starting up a city. All the gaffs and traps the AI would fall for on the lowest level it would fall for on the highest level. Very, very, painful and something I really hope they address.

It works on XP?

I could never get it to work. Maybe it's because I have the DOS version.

I think I had to use DosBox to get it going.. eventually found a copy of the Windows version, I think on the underdogs, and that works.

Civilization threads....

Bucc's post count is going to increase 10 fold.

I just hope they fix the problem with resources. I finally broke my CDs in half when I kept getting into a winning position to start discovering endgame technologies and never getting any of the corresponding - and necessary - resources.

Game after game, I would not get plutonium, rubber and oil. Every single time. And they were virtually impossible to trade for. And without the resources themselves, I couldn't build the modern weapons necessary to capture those resources. It was always a Catch-22. Play for 3 or 4 hours only to lose becuase the game continually cheated.

I probably played 20 games. I think I wound up with oil twice, rubber 3 times and never got plutonium. It was a giant friggin' waste of time. I'd love to kick the guy in the nuts - repeatedly - who made that decision.

That and the "revolutions" that would overthrow freshly conquered cities. I'd have my army deep in someone elses' territory and *poof*, the captured city would revert back to its former owner. It wasn't enough that the city would magically revert back to its former owner, but that it would take all of my military units stationed in the city too!!! Like Bagdad would revolt and the USA Army units there would start fighting for Iraq against the USA. Ya, that's going to happen...

Civ 3 was abomonation and ranks in the top 3 of my most disappointing/annoying/send me on a fucking psycho 3 state killing spree rampage-type games of all time.

tehe

Just ran across another pretty good info site: www.civfanatics.com/civ4





Newest Updates

This is the section for looking up all the current new updates on the go from Wednesday, July 20th. They are not organized in any way, so it is highly recommended that you read through past this section and take a more in-depth look at the rest.

• Civilization IV is even more about strategy than ever. It will be more about decision making and less about the established motions that have built up over the years.
  
• No longer will you be able to transfer production from one project to another. This exploit has remained for a long time, and it has been addressed.
  
• An example of the above bullet point is that when you lose a wonder to another Civilization by a few turns, you will also lose all the production made on it, therefore you will no longer be able to transfer it to another project however you will be refunded a certain amount of gold. This rule is for units and other buildings as well. For example, if you switch production from a Settler to an Archer, the production will not shift to the Archer, however it will be saved for the Settler when you come back to it, and you will pick up from where you left off.
  
• The bigger your city gets, the unhealthier it becomes. And that can take a toll on the population, as the city will eventually begin to starve. You can combat this by building certain types of buildings, such as aqueducts and hospitals.
  
• Securing the seven types of food resources can also lead your cities to become more healthy, as they represent nutritional variety.
  
• Twenty types of improvements are available to improve the landscape.
  
• The game is more balanced towards not having as many cities. You will, however, still have a broad area. The focus is to have fewer but more specialized cities.
  
• The city maintenance cost puts pressure on rapidly expanding Civilizations, when rapid expansion might not be the best choice at the time. The AI will recognize this too, and they will not keep throwing settlers towards your boundaries.
  
• Civ4 will also have some features from Civilization III that let you to easily pick out a unit from a stack, to make it much easier than to repeat the picking out of a unit many different times over.
  
• Stack attack works by stacking a bunch of units and giving them the attack command. If you are using combined arms in that stack (a balance of defensive and offensive units), the game will automatically look at who you are attacking and who their defenders are.
  
• The amount of damage a unit does to another unit is now out of a scale of 100, even though that's more or less hidden from the user. The amount of damage a unit does is relative to its different strengths. So now when a spearman attacks a tank, he may hit three times, but that's only going to take off a quarter of the tank's hit points. Meanwhile, a tank hitting a spearman only has to hit him once or twice, and he's gone entirely.
  
• In Multiplayer, the server browser will include buddy list functionality to keep track of friends easier.
  
• Firaxis will cull all sorts of statistics from multiplayer matches, which will let it rank players, which is aimed to avoid some of the frustration when you find yourself in a multiplayer match with ruthless Civ pros.
  
• A number of pre-built scenarios will also be available with the game as it ships that also have different victory conditions. The World War II scenario, for example, will start you with all your cities and military units already built, and instead of conquering the whole world, you may have a more focused goal, such as taking or defending Paris.
  
• Cottages (new terrain improvement) with smoke coming out of their chimneys indicate which neighboring terrain squares are being worked.
  
• Other miscellaneous additions are Hospitals (along with aqueducts they can increase the health of cities). Two new units mentioned are also the Artillery and Cannon.
  
• The different speeds of the game (Quick, Norma, and Epic) will have their Technology costs, Unit production costs, and Building appropriately tuned for the appropriate speed of the game.
  
  

Civilization IV: Overview

Civilization IV is the latest installment in the award-winning Sid Meier's Civilization series. The game is currently being developed at Firaxis Games and is expected to be published by 2K Games in November 2005. Firaxis began working on the title about two years ago.

The most prominent change from previous civilization games is the graphics. The game world is now completely 3D. Rivers, resources, and terrain improvements (ex. windmills, mines) are all animated, making the map come alive like never before. You will also be able to smoothly zoom in from a rotating global view all the way down to the city level, as well as change the camera angle to a Civ2 style isometric view or a Civ1 style top-down view. All city improvements and wonders are now directly visible on the map, so if you build the Pyramid, it will appear within that city's radius. Fans who missed the Civ2 wonder movies will be happy to know that wonder movies are making a return in Civilization IV! There are about 45 movies total in Civ4.

Of course, graphics is not the only area that received an overhaul. Firaxis has built the game from the ground up and added lots of cool new features to make the game even more fun to play. Below we will briefly discuss some of the key features:

Health

Firaxis is replacing the unfun elements such as corruption, riots, and pollution in previous civ games with better systems. For instance, instead of pollution, Civilization IV will have a city health system. Some city improvements reduce the health of city, while some city improvements increase the health. Food resources such as wheat and fish also increase the health of your cities, and they are tradable just like the luxury and strategic resources in Civilization III. Building the city near a source of fresh water will also improve your city health.

Civics

The fixed governments are now replaced by a much more flexible Civics system, somewhat similar to the social engineering system in Alpha Centauri. The new system allows you to customize your government with various civics options that are classified into five categories: Government, Legal, Labor, Economy, and Religion. There are five options in each category. Players are free to choose any combination of civics. Some of the known civics are Free Market, Environmentalism, Slavery, Serfdom, Free Speech, Conscription, Emancipation, and Nationhood. Civics options are unlocked through research.

Religions

Religion is a brand new feature for a Civilization game. The game has seven real world religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, and Hinduism. The religions are associated with certain technologies and the first civilization to discover a technology attached with a religion founds the religion. Once found, the religions can spread slowly throughout the world from the holy cities. Players can make religions spread faster by building missionaries and send them to convert cities. All the religions are generic in abilities.

Religions impact the game in a few ways. At the city level, they can influence your citizens' happiness by allowing you to build religion-specific buildings such as temples, monasteries, and cathedrals. In diplomacy, civilizations with the same religions can get along better and sometimes a computer player may ask you to switch to his or her religion. If you control the holy city of your state religion, you will gain line of sight in all cities with your religion. The religious civics will also affect your cities in different ways, depending on your choice.

Unit Promotions

Another major Civ4 feature is the RPG style unit promotions. In previous civ games, units have only a few levels: conscript, regular, veteran, and elite. Now in Civ4, there are more than 40 promotions you can give to your units as they gain experience, enabling you to customize your units to make them more unique and more powerful. Some of the promotions give your units a strength bonus, some give your units a bonus against a certain unit type, some make your units better on certain terrain types, while some give your units special abilities such as use enemy roads, faster healing, amphibious attack, and city raider.

Civilizations

Civ-specific units and animated leaderheads are still in Civ4. In addition, some civilizations now have two leaders, each has different traits and distinct personality. For example, if you play France, you can choose between Louis XIV or Napoleon. Playing as Louis XIV gives you free culture while playing as Napoleon gives you military bonus. Units now also carry unique civilization banner to make them easier to identify on the map. There are a total of 18 civilizations and 26 leaders in Civilization IV.

Great People

The Great Leader concept in Civ3 is replaced by a more elaborate Great People system. There will be five categories: Great Artist, Great Merchant, Great Prophet, Great Engineer, and Great Scientists. Each great people type will have three to four benefits such as culture boost, academy construction, free tech, wonder construction, and trade mission. You will also be able to use a group of Great People to start a golden age and multiple golden ages are now possible. The Great People are automatically generated by cities and the type generated depends on the structures in the city.

Customization

Civilization IV will be the most customizable version of Civ yet! There are four levels of customization. In the first and easiest level, players can use the built-in World Builder to create new custom maps to play in single player and multiplayer games. In the second level, players can edit the game's XML data files using notepad or a XML editor to change the game parameters -- nothing in the game is hard-coded. In the third level, players can edit the game's python scripts to change map generation, the interface, game events, etc. Finally, at the fourth level, players with programming experience can even change the AI and all the game rules using the Civ4 Game/AI SDK (Software Developers Kit). In other words, you can pretty much change everything you want and even build a game based loosely on Civilization.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer has not been a strong point for Civilization games and Firaxis hopes to change that with Civilization IV. In addition to the standard internet, Hot Seat, and LAN multiplayer modes, Civ IV will be playable by email (PBEM) or on a persistent turn-based server (named Pitboss) out of the box. There is also a new Team Play option which allows players to form alliances with each other in multiplayer games. Players on the same team will pool their accomplishments together, join forces in combat and share all information, even line of sight, benefits of wonders, research, unit trading, and sharing of territory. Firaxis has been playing Civ4 multiplayer for well over a year.

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There are lots of other interesting additions and changes in Civilization IV: the tech tree is no longer divided into arbitrary eras and it's possible to reach a technology, such as Gunpowder, via a different path; barbarians can capture and operate cities and there are wandering wild animals on the map, making exploration more dangerous; a city's culture level now affects its defensive value; the ability to broker peace in diplomacy... etc. They are too much to mention here. For a comprehensive collection of all known Civilization IV information, you can visit the Pre-release Information page.

As you can see from this overview, there are lots of exciting new features to look forward to in Civilization IV. Be sure to check back often for our complete coverage of the game, before and after release!

Landscape Characteristics

To expand your empire, first you would need as much detail about the terrain as possible.

• There will be much more terrain improvements, and there will be a terrain improvement for each resource. More tile/terrain improvements will be included: Pastures, Wineries, Watermills, Windmills, Lumber Mills, Mines, Fishing Nets, Offshore Platforms, and Factories all represented in detail on the terrain. 20 Improvements in all are going to be included. Improvements being worked on with citizens will animate, which makes it convenient to see where your citizens are working, for example, if a Cottage is being worked on by a citizen, you will see smoke coming out of its chimney, same with mines. You will also be able to see workers pushing a Mine cart out of a Mine. It even helps you if an enemy is using a specific tile! Certain Technologies will make some improvements more productive as well.
  
• Roads and Rail-Roads will only provide a movement bonus to your units. This has been done so the player does not have Roads and Rail-Roads on every tile later on.
  
  

  Improvement	Other Benefit	Provides...
  Camp		Deer and Ivory
  Cottage
  Farm	+1 food	Corn and Wheat
  Fishing Net	Build on Fish	Clams, Crabs, and Fish
  Lumber Mill
  Mine		Copper, Gold, and Iron
  Offshore Platform	Build on Oil	Oil
  Plantation		Bananas, and Dye
  Quarry	Build on Marble and Stones	Marble, and Stone
  Railroad	Faster Movement and a Trade Network
  Pastures		Cattle, Horses, Pigs, and Sheep
  Road	Faster Movement and a Trade Network
  Watermill
  Whaling Boat	Build on Whales	Whales
  Windmill	+1 food, +2 gold	Wheat
  Winery	Build on Wine	Wine
  Workshop

• Civ IV will also have a better balance of strategic resources, meaning they will be distributed more evenly around the map. All Civilizations will start with strategic resources close by. The Civilization III dilemma where one faction gets more resources than anther seems to be gone.
  
• Securing the seven types of food resources can also lead your cities to become more healthy, as they represent nutritional variety.
  
• In addition to other terrain improvements, there will be many new resources. When you are zoomed out to a satellite's view, resources will be clearly marked for easy identification if you choose to mark them.
  
  

  Resource	Benefit (Food, Hammers, Gold)	Terrain	Required Improvement
  Strategic Resources
  Aluminum		Plain Hills
  Coal		Grassland Hills
  Copper	Building of certain types of units; 0 gold	Grassland, and Plains	Mine
  Horses		Grassland, and Plains	Pasture
  Iron	Building of certain types of units	Desert, Grassland Hills, and Plain Hills	Mine
  Marble	Sistine Chapel at Half Cost; 0 food, 2 hammers, 2 gold	Tundra Hills, and Plains	Quarry
  Oil		Coast, Desert, and Ocean	Offshore Platform
  Stone	Great Library at Half Cost	Desert, and Plains	Quarry
  Uranium		Plains
  Luxury Resources
  Dye		Grassland, Plains, and Jungles	Plantation
  Furs		Ice, Tundra Hills, and Tundra
  Jade
  Gold	7 gold	Desert Hills, Grassland Hills, and Plain Hills	Mine
  Incense
  Ivory		Grassland, Jungles, and Plains	Camp
  Silk		Forests
  Silver		Desert Hills, and Plain Hills
  Spices
  Wine		Plains	Winery
  Whales		Coast, and Ocean	Whaling Boat
  Food Resources
  Banana		Jungles	Plantation
  Cattle		Grassland, and Plains	Pastures
  Clam		Coast	Fishing Net
  Corn	4 food, 0 hammers, 1 gold	Desert, and Grassland	Farm
  Crabs		Coast	Fishing Net
  Deer		Plains, and Tundra	Camp
  Fish		Coast, and Ocean	Fishing Net
  Pigs		Grassland, Grassland Hills, and Jungles	Pastures
  Rice		Grassland, and Jungles	Farm
  Sheep		Grassland	Pastures
  Wheat		Plains	Farm

• Resources will no longer be as restrictive... Firaxis will probably give players something to synthesize Oil, and Gunpowder units no longer require saltpeter.
  
• All resources, including food ones will be tradable. Food resources will help your city's health status.
  
• Trading is established automatically when you make deals. Rivers are like roads in Civ IV, so if two cities are on one river, they are connected and no road is needed.
  
• Due to the expanded aspect of trading involving Rivers (making them like roads in terms of connectivity), City placement in Civilization IV will be made much more strategic. If a river connects to a lake, then a worker will be able to build a road to the lake and expand the Civilization's Trade Network.
  
• Defensive bonuses will now only be generated on Forests, Hills, and Jungles.
  
• Here is another chart of the known terrain types:
  
  

  Terrain	Characteristics (Food, Gold, Hammers, Health, & Defense)	Improvements Allowed
  Coast	1 food, 2 gold
  Desert		Road
  -Desert Hills		Road
  Floodplain	3 food, 1 gold	Road and Farm
  Forest	1 hammer, +50% Defense	Road
  Grassland	2 food	Road
  -Grassland Hills	25% defense	Road, Windmill and Mine
  Ice		Road
  -Ice Hills		Road
  Iceberg
  Jungle		Road
  Lake	+2 health
  Mountains
  Oasis
  Ocean
  Tundra	1 food	Road
  -Tundra Hills	1 hammer, +25% defense	Road, Windmill, and Mine
  Plains	1 food, 1 hammer	Road and Farm
  -Plain Hills	2 hammers, +25% Defense	Road, Windmill, and Mine
  River/Fresh Water	+2 health

Top

The 18 Civilizations

There will be a lot of opportunities in the game to form allies, and that is necessary to fend off enemies.

• 18 playable civilizations will be featured in Civilization IV
  
• There will be about 26 world leaders. One will also be able to choose with which leader to play out a game (for example, for America, you can choose either Franklin D. Roosevelt or George Washington). You can choose from two leaders from each Civilization however not every Civilization has two leaders.
  
• Unique Units for each Civilization are still in the game. Some of the known ones are listed in the table below.
  
• You will be able to see more of the leader’s bodies, unlike in Civ III, where one could not see them make hand and finger movements. An example of this can be seen when watching the "Game-Play Footage 2" video at GameSpot. Leader animations will also reflect their mood and natural personality.
  
• Just by simply watching a ruler's reactions on the diplomacy screen will clue you in to what their actual personality is. For example, an offer in the favor of Louis XIV or Hatshepsut will show animations of the leaders that suggest their happiness with the deal. They will simply act pleased. However some rulers are a bit more inscrutable. The only difference in personality you will see in the Chinese ruler, Qin Shi Haug is the elevation of his eyebrows... the same as the Mongol leader Genghis Khan. Rulers like Alexander the Great of the Greeks and Julius Caesar of the Romans are much more expressive in their emotions. Julius will give you a gladiatorial thumbs-up or thumbs-down in reaction to your proposal.
  
• Each Leader has two Traits. Each of these grants them a unique bonus and cuts the cost of two city improvements by half their original cost. Below is a table of these traits:
  
  

  Trait	Benefit
  Philosophical	100% of the Civilization's birthrate and half cost of Libraries and Universities.
  Spiritual	No anarchy when changing to a different government, and cheaper temples and monasteries.
  Creative	Gain a bonus to Civilizations' culture and half-priced theaters and broadcast towers.
  Organized	Civic Upkeep costs half the original cost and Labs and Courthouses are cheaper.
  Expansive	Healing units inside cities is much faster and Granaries and Grocers are cheaper.
  Aggressive	New units get the Combat I bonus for free. Barracks and Jail prices are cut by half as well.

• All the known Civilization properties have been listed below. Here are the statistics:
  
  

  Civilization	Cities	Leader 1 (Traits)	Leader 2 (Traits)	Unique Unit	Flag
  America	Washington	George Washington	Franklin D. Roosevelt
  Arabs	Mecca	Saladin (Philosophical and Spiritual)		Camel Archer
  Aztecs	Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Teotihuacan	Moctezuma
  China	Beijing, Canton, Shanghai, Tientsin, Tsingtao, Xinjian	Mao Zedong	Qin Shi Huang	Cho-Ku-Nu
  Egypt	Thebes, Memphis, Alexandria, Elephantine	Hatshepsut		War Chariot
  England	London, Hastings	Queen Victoria	Queen Elizabeth
  France	Paris, Orleans	Louis XIV (Creative and Organized)	Napoleon (Aggressive and Expansive)
  Germany	Berlin, Cologne, Munich
  Greece	Athens, Thermopylae	Alexander the Great		Hoplite
  Inca
  India	Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras	Mahatma Gandhi (Organized and Creative)	Ashoka
  Japan	Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Edo	Tokugawa Shogunate
  Mali	Timbuktu, Djenne, Gao, Kumbi Saleh, Niani, Tadmekka, Walata
  Mongolia		Genghis Khan (Aggressive and Expansive)	Kublai Khan (Aggressive and Creative)	Keshik
  Persia	Persepolis, Susa, Pasargadae, Arbela	Cyrus
  Rome	Rome, Antium, Cumae, Neapolis, Pisae	Julius Caesar		Praetorian
  Russia	Moscow, Novgorod, St. Petersburg			Cossack
  Spain	Madrid, Barcelona, Toledo, Salamanca, Santiago, Murcia, Cordoba, Seville			Conquistador
  Barbarians

• Barbarians in Civilization IV are not able to develop a full culture like the main 18 competing Civilizations, however you will see them forming independent cities and small militias. They are like a "mini-Civ" that can cause trouble at any time.
  
  

Artificial Intelligence

Perhaps a significant component of good game-play is a good AI. The AI will be much improved in the new game...

• Much time is also being spent on the AI (Artificial Intelligence). One goal is to have rulers with distinct personalities. Gandhi will be generous to weaker nations, while the Khan will shy away from any diplomacy at all. If you do not play by your Civilization's leaders, they might get upset with you. For example, if you play aggressively with Gandhi, he might get angry. They key is playing by their styles. Traits also depend on leaders, rather than Civilizations. Each leader will have unique traits and bonuses Ideological conflicts are a definite possibility as a result of the AI leader personalities and their ties to certain religions or civics.
  
• The City Governor AI will also be more improved to assist you better. And that is an important part, because it naturally allows you to micro-manage less. And another main goal of Firaxis is to kill player micro-management.
  
• During the Middle and Late games, the game will be sped up thanks to faster AI moves.
  
• Barbarians will pose a new threat. They will have animal attackers such as lions, bears, jaguars, and wolves. These Animal attackers will probably be present only early on.
  
  

International Affairs

Above, the AI and Diplomacy virtually go hand in hand. Both are also improved... which means a much more powerful system.

• In Civilization III AI's did not have to respect your border. Look back at any game and most players will see frustration of how the AI kept wondering around in your own border. That all has changed in Civilization IV. The AI must respect your border, or declare war.
  
• A strength in Civ III was the diplomacy system... even though lots of people suggested things like having more influence on other Civilizations. That has been achieved, along with some other improvements.
  
• If you have a Mutual Protection Pact (MPP) with someone, and they get attacked, you will have the option to back down and not get involved in that war. This will of course damage your reputation, but remember that in Civ III you absolutely had to get into a war.
  
• There is a new screen that explains what other Civilizations have to offer and what they want to trade for.
  
• Just like in Civ II, you will be able to build spy units. Religious Prophets are similar to a spy unit, and they are described in the section "A New Aspect: Religion".
  
• Other Civilizations have different favored Government and Religious settings, and they will try to pressure players into changing to their favored religion or government to suit their desires in return for better relations with your Civilization. They can even ask you to stop using a Civics option you have set.
  
• In diplomacy, it is now possible to negotiate peace between two Civilizations which are at war with each other. On the other hand, it is also possible to make two other Civs go to war, even if you do not wish to get involved at all.
  
  

Controlling Your People... by Decree

All the power is in your hands. What you do with it can lead to your Empire's victory or your utter demise.

• Just as culture was new in Civilization III, Civilization IV will have its own new aspects that will have fans relieved. World Religion, Civics and Great People are things many people have suggested be put into the game, Soren has described these as "killer" features. These will be in Civ IV, and they will have an influence on your whole empire. The factors which have a domestic affect are described below...
  
• Factors which are not fun in the game such as corruption/waste, rioting, pollution, and maintenance will be started from scratch or removed (this means that they will be replaced by a much better concept that maintains game balance better). Pollution is most affected. It will be dumped, although not completely removed. A more extensive health system is something new, although no details about it have surfaced yet. Annoying micromanagement tasks will also be decreasing dramatically, and more high-level control will be provided.
  
• The concept of corruption has been replaced with maintenance costs. This time instead of Courthouses being able to reduce corruption (since it is gone) they will actually lower maintenance costs.
  
• You will have to develop your culture or risk being enveloped by a larger neighbor (so a nation can be completely engulfed by another's borders).
  
• The luxury slider is now a culture slider. The more culture you give, the happier your people will be, as well as producing more culture for your entire civilization.
  
• Culture basically modifies your borders in relation to the culture of your neighbors, so you can overwhelm your neighbors with a superior culture.
  
• Culture now also increases a city’s defensive value, and it helps smaller cities with more culture feel safer. Since it restarts when you capture a city, your top priority will be to maximize culture in that city.
  
• There is no more Cultural Dominance in flipping Cities. Instead, as your nation expands, foreign cities will begin to become more and more in awe with your Civilization as a whole. This will cause the people in those foreign cities to get unhappy, and therefore their Civilization will have to spend money to keep them happy. As this burden gets heavier, that Civilization might just offer to give you their Cities via diplomacy.
  
• Health will be just as important as maintaining your treasury and the happiness of your people. Health will be tied to available food and resources to simulate Epidemics. However, if you have Fresh Water near you, it will give you a health benefit.
  
• Variety in food can improve your citizens’ moods – making them happier. Entertainers are also available, spending tax dollars to buy their happiness and city improvements.
  
• In total, there are 25 Civics options. There will be five categories and five options per each category. The five categories are: Government, Legal, Labor, Economy, and Religion. Some of the known Civics options are: Free Market, Environment, Slavery, Free Speech, Conscription, Emancipation, Religious Tolerance and the Nationhood (it magnifies culture accumulation). Below is a table of how you will see your Government system in the game:
  
  

  Government	Legal	Labor	Economy	Religion
  Despotism	Barbarism	Tribalism	Decentralization	Primitivism
  Hereditary Rule - Required Tech: Monarchy.	Vassalage - New units will receive 2 experience points.	Serfdom - Give Gold for Rushing of Buildings; +50% Worker Build Rate; Required Tech: Feudalism	Free Market	Pacifism
  Representation	Nationhood	Caste System	State Property	Freedom of Religion - Gives a bonus to Civilizations with a variety of religions.
  Universal Suffrage	Freedom of Speech	Emancipation - Gives Civs Without Emancipation Less Happiness	Environmentalism	Organized Religion - Can build Missionaries without a Monastery.
  Police State - Required Tech: Fascism	Bureaucracy	Slavery - Can Rush Buildings for Population	Communism	Theocracy - Required Tech: Theology

• There are no longer set governments. You may have a Theocratic Police State with Universal Suffrage or a Pacifist Slave State with Hereditary Rule.
  
• For your economy you can choose Free Market or State Property. And for your religion, you can choose Freedom of Religion or Theocracy. What you choose might affect other Civilizations as well. If you have already introduced Emancipation, it sometimes may lead to unhappiness and revolts within other nations without Emancipation, but to you, it does not give a direct benefit (so it provides a negative aspect to other Civs, if they don't have it). Also, if your civilization is the first to outlaw slavery, that will create discontent in societies that have slavery.
  
• Slavery will allow you to sacrifice population to speed up an improvement. In Serfdom, you will have to pay to speed up improvements, but Mines will be much easier to build.
  
  

A New Aspect: Religion

All religions in the game are equal. However they also have an impact on diplomacy. "It's like culture without borders," as Jesse Smith Puts it.

• Each civilization can declare a state religion as well. You can also switch this but you will go through a period of anarchy, just like when switching the state of your government. Declaring a State Religion means that all cities in the Civilization with the same religion get extra happiness and produce more gold.
  
• Religion will spread through your lands and offer myriad tools to control your people more effectively and keep them happier. When you convert to a Religion (that reflects your state religion), it offers +1 happiness, but one turn Anarchy as well. The first Civilization to discover a technology attached to the founding of a religion will establish a Holy City. When a Religion is established in a city, it will gradually spread from there.
  
• When a City has a religion which differs from the State Religion of the Civilization, the citizens in that city may become unhappy and eager to adapt the state religion.
  
• Since cities which are not in the Civilization's state religion do not share the happiness and commerce bonus, it is a good strategy for you to spread an unofficial religion. However, spreading too many religions to one Civilization is not always a wise tactic, The Freedom of Religion Civics option grants bonuses to civilizations which have many different religions.
  
• You can see which State Religion of another Civilization you have made contact with by checking the small leader board in the lower-Right corner of the game screen.
  
• Like what has already been mentioned before in prior updates, the first Civilization to discover a technology that enables a religion will be assigned a Holy City. Owning a Holy City gives you a line of sight (Note: Feature to be determined by Firaxis Games.) for all cities in the world that share that religion, and therefore encouraging you to spread to spread your faith even more around the world. In the Holy City you can also build Great Wonders that have the ability to improve the happiness of people throughout your empire. Holy Cities are assigned to the AI by random, but most likely near the center of the empire, or the capitol of the empire.
  
• Conquered people who have a different religion than your state religion will naturally be pretty unhappy. In later eras you can research technology to mitigate these effects, but religion now has to factor into your overall strategy.
  
  • There will be seven real-world religions which will be associated with certain technologies. Players may also be able to switch their state of religion. There is also a special unit just for Religions, the Missionary. Below is a helpful chart of the religions in the game, and their real-life significance:
    
    

    Religion		First to Discover	Buildings & Wonders
    Buddhism		Meditation	Buddhist Shrine
    Christianity		Theology	Christian Shrine
    Confucianism			Confucian Shrine
    Hinduism		Polytheism	Hindu Shrine
    Islam			Islamic Shrine
    Judaism			Jewish Shrine
    Taoism			Taoist Shrine

  • The Missionary may be sent out to try to convert other cities to your religion. Just like Civics, AIs will try to convert you to their religion the same way.
    
  • If you are successful in a city, you will also receive a line of sight bonus and if you capture or control the main holy city of each religion, you get line of sights in each city in the world that has that religion. (Note: Feature to be determined by Firaxis Games.)
    
  • To keep your civilization's religion strong, you must constantly be building religious buildings and pushing your own Missionaries to convert foreign cities. If you do not want foreign Missionaries to enter your lands, simply do not sign open borders. The only other time Missionaries can enter your borders are when a Civilization declares war on you.
    
  • While Closed Borders mean that other missionaries cannot enter your lands and spread their religion, it also means that you will not be able to trade with other Civilizations.
    
  • If you are successful at converting them to your religion, you might get along with that Civ better.
    
  • Religions will not have bonuses (most likely the developers like to keep everything perfectly balanced because it is a touchy subject), but they will impact diplomacy. If you ally yourself with a Civilization with the same religion as yours, it will “Enable you to curry favor with other like-minded peoples.” However, they come with a memory, if you suddenly switch to their religion, they will not be as inclined to cooperate with you. You will need to be in their religion for a significant amount of time (From PC Zone).
    

The Influence of Great People

Great People also add a great deal of variety to the game. Some offer extremely great benefits as we'll cover below...

• At some point you’ll be able to see Great Prophets to act as immortal icons to the devout. There will be five categories of : Artist, Tycoon/Great Merchantman, Prophet, Engineer, and Scientists. All of them have a movement of two, and are invisible to other units. These will probably be triggered by City performance, therefore, they cannot be built. Each will also have three to four benefits, including culture boost, academies, multiple Golden Ages, and free techs, as well as wonder construction and city output.
  
• Great People will be easier to get in Civ IV, and they will also be the only way a player can spark a Golden Age.
  
• A Golden Age means that you get a boost in production and happiness. Again, you can also have multiple Golden Ages, unlike in Civilization III, where you were allowed only one.
  
• You can get great leaders by specialized cities. You can customize each city to fit a specific purpose such as science or culture. Great engineers will allow you to rush production on a wonder, or other building and naturally, they may only be used once, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. Great merchant may let you establish an extremely lucrative trade deal, or a great scientist will significantly boost your research.
  
• Great People can be turned into "Super Citizens" where they can give a city an ongoing bonus, or they can be used to give your Civilization a large one-time bonus. Below is a detailed list of the Great People, how they can be used, and the historic figures they might represent:
  
  

  Great Person	Benefits	Historic Figures
  Great Artist (Emphasis on Culture)	Has the potential to trigger a Golden Age (or GA). Requires two Great People for a GA. Can produce a little culture each turn if settled in the city. Producing a "Great Work" grants the city 1000 culture points automatically They can discover a Cultural-Related Technology	Michelangelo Shakespeare
  Great Engineer (Emphasis on Production)	Has the potential to trigger a Golden Age. Requires two Great People for a GA. May rush the production of a project, like a Great Wonder. Can discover an Engineering-Related Technology
  Great Merchant (Emphasis on Wealth)	Has the potential to trigger a Golden Age. Requires two Great People for a GA. Can produce gold each turn for the city he is settled in. Can establish a one-time trade mission for 1000 gold. Can discover a Commercially-Related Technology	Aretas Pytheas
  Great Prophet (Emphasis on Religion)	Has the potential to trigger a Golden Age. Requires two Great People for a GA. You may get a free advance. May build one Shrine/per religion. Can discover a Religious-Related Technology	Mahavira
  Great Scientist (Emphasis on Science)	Has the potential to trigger a Golden Age. Requires two Great People for a GA. May create an Academy in a city. May give you a large Science Boost. Can discover a Scientific-Related Technology.	Einstein Newton Plato Xi Ling-Shi

City Essentials

Cities are like the many hearts of your Civilization. If you take care of them, they are bound to take care of you.

• Managing Cities well enough can also spawn a Golden Age where a City enters a Renaissance-Style bonus period.
  
• To get more culture, in addition to the slider already described, Entertainment Specialists also help with culture generation. Building still matter, but they will just serve as cultural multipliers than producers.
  
• In Civ IV you are not guaranteed the nine-square territory when you first build a city. You may find a city that owns only its base tile, and is completely engulfed in another Civilization's borders.
  
• Civilization IV will not have any City Limits. You can build as many as you wish, however keep in mind that if you do so, it will also increase the amount of Maintenance for buildings (this was already in Civ III).
  
• Cities on the outer-most fringe of your empire will still build relatively quickly (as there is no corruption anymore). However their maintenance cost will be higher to compensate for that.
  
• The game is more balanced towards not having as many cities. You will, however, still have a broad area. The focus is to have fewer but more specialized cities.
  
• The city maintenance cost puts pressure on rapidly expanding Civilizations, when rapid expansion might not be the best choice at the time. The AI will recognize this too, and they will not keep throwing settlers towards your boundaries.
  
• Along with the wonders displayed on the terrain in the city's square, civic improvements are shown off as well.
  
• Right-Clicking on a city will bring up contextual menus, which will show the player options such as build orders, and governor settings. Having said that, the city governor provides much more control over automation.
  
• Information in the city itself is much clearer as well, for the players who do wish to get a more detailed picture. Each improvement in the city has the specific benefits it offers to the city itself. Contentment and culture are also present in more detail. This means that the player will no longer have to keep looking through the Civilopedia for what certain buildings or aspects add to the gameplay.
  
• In order to simplify your building choice in cities, you will be able to Shift-Click on a city in order to select what you want it to build, this even without entering the main city interface. It will all be on the main interface. You will also be able to set Build Queue orders so you can select which things you want to build in a particular order (so if you select the Archer then Temple and then the Pyramids in this order, production will automatically switch each time a unit/building is done).
  
• Selecting multiple cities makes management even easier. Jesse Smith states in this Developer Interview at GameSpot that the goal is to make everything as easy for the player as possible. This allows the player to set the same building orders to a few cities at once. These features (the Build Queue and the city selection method) along with the flexibility of options from the City Governor make managing cities extremely easy.
  
• Setting common Rally Points to cities (or multiple cities via the Shift-Click method) is also possible. This allows units that have just been built to go to that selected spot automatically without the player's input.
  
• When entering the city menu itself, you will see that older-style text-based menus have all been replaced with graphical icons instead. Production, science Research, Culture, and Commerce information is displayed on the left side of the screen. Citizen information is displayed on the right side. On the right side of the screen, citizens (either regular citizens or specialists) will be assigned tasks which will include more options than were previously available. The bottom of the City Screen will show the player icons representing all of the available units and buildings for the production queue.
  
• No longer will you be able to transfer production from one project to another. This exploit has remained for a long time, and it has been addressed.
  
• An example of the above bullet point is that when you lose a wonder to another Civilization by a few turns, you will also lose all the production made on it, therefore you will no longer be able to transfer it to another project however you will be refunded a certain amount of gold. This rule is for units and other buildings as well. For example, if you switch production from a Settler to an Archer, the production will not shift to the Archer, however it will be saved for the Settler when you come back to it, and you will pick up from where you left off.
  
• Cities will no longer riot, but unhappy workers will not work. Until you address the problem, it will remain so.
  
• Instead of shields, you’ll see hammers. The more you have, the faster you build things.
  
• City names can also be changed by the player, as in Civ III.
  
• The bigger your city gets, the unhealthier it becomes. And that can take a toll on the population, as the city will eventually begin to starve. You can combat this by building certain types of buildings, such as aqueducts and hospitals. However improvements such as Factories tend to decrease the city's health status.
  
  

Bottom line, IF they pull all this off:


Klnx pls, k, thx.

what is battle like in Civ games? this is why the Total War series are my favorite of all time, since it has a great battle engine and great territory/city building aspects, the best of both worlds.

To each his own, I guess. I found the territory/city building aspects of Rome: Total War to be very, very lacking, and I basically simmed nearly every battle in R:TW. I wanted something more like Civ games, where battle is simulated, but city building is very, very detailed.

i will LOVE this game.....see....glad youre back SD!! CIV4 news, god I love you. WOAH, sorry.

After reading all that info, I must say that I just got an internet errection. Awesome.

So, does FOFC do giant multiplayer CIV games?

Me, Franklin, Tasan, and...someone else tried to do a PBEM a while back, but it died a painful death fairly early on...

Well, it has by far the best territory/ciy building aspects of any strategy game with that level of tactical battle management. That tactical battle management is, however, the heart of the game, so if you don't like that, that series is not for you.

yup. I've bitched about this before, but Civ 3's "all against one" mentality drove me nuts- and it seems as if the civilizations are going to act as individual entities, not as groups. The "trade a tech " to everyone if you trade to one rule had to be enforced - and was mindnumbing. I want the AI to recognize each civilization as having seperate, distinct goals and not blindly working together.

That was me. I'd be very interested in doing another one at some point.

Sorry, Cel.

I would totally be up for doing one again as well...

I would too, once I get the game.

if they pull all that posted above, it will be great.


but if the AI is not smart and not making good decisions it can ruin the game.

Same here. That would be fun.

I think many of us are going to be up for a MP game of this if the MP works alright. *keeping fingers crossed*

I've always been fond of the Civilization series, and I can pretty much be rest assured that Civilization 4 (whenever it's released, and whenever I pick it up) will be a good reason for me not getting enough sleep in the future.

Like a bunch have said -- I would love to get into an MP game with you all.

I would be in as well, though I am sure I will get my ass handed to me...

Another place to get info about the game:

http://civilization4.net/3/74/

The catagories (Gameplay and Non-Gameplay Concepts is where it is at):

Official

Gameplay Concepts

Non-Gameplay Concepts

Civilopedia

Sounds like it.

I remembered all that very well. You were actually the first, both here and at Apolyton, that said that the emperor had no clothes in regarding to gameplay and resources.

I, too, ended up hating Civ3 despite all of my posts about it. There were two game killers for me: static tech eras and a worse scenario development system than Civ2. I see that there will be no static eras in Civ4 (hallelujah!) and that there will be python-scripted events for scenarios. Those alone will make me more a fan of this game desipte all of the needless complexities they felt they had to add (which confused the AI even more).

I hope so (which would make up for the number of posts I had anticipated for Pirates!2).

This was another failure in Civ3: static nations (re: PREDICTABILITY). I hope, for the main game, that there is the ability to randomize nationality traits. If we are starting a new human history in 4000 bc, who is to say how a nation will develop. Pre-defined traits, attributes or whatever only belong in scenarios.

are you guys concern about how the AI will be in civ4?

hopefully they will be smart and make the correct decisions.

I'm sure you'll be able to randomize traits. Though I'm not sure, since I haven't read much about AI stuff (I like the fluff they've added, myself ;). Wonder movies are back and units will talk in the language of the civ when selected... stuff like that), but I believe they'd discussed it ad nauseum at the Apolyton Civ4 forums.

You still remember how to get there, right Bucc? ;)

Let me put it another way. The AI has even more variables to deal with and it has a much harder time than humans because we can easily discern what is important and what is not in making a short-term or long-term decision. We all know that the AI in Civ2 was laughable but except for certain battle elements, it was even worse in Civ3 in relation to the increased complexities it couldn't handle very well.

The mantra for Civ3 was to play it a certain way to get a game out of the AI because more was hard coded. I don't know if the AI is still anywhere close to making simple human deductions in adjusting to changing events or conditions - even with Soren in charge. This was why I react against static national traits (including the stupid golden ages), which not only does that make it easier for the humans to play against, but it forces the AI to cheat in order to be competitive. For a simplistic example, if we suddenly shift gears toward a different research tact (which was easy to do in Civ2, but impossible in Civ3), can the neighboring AI civ recognize that and keep up?

Imran, I think I shot my wad in the Civ3-General forum way back when. Who was that Korean living in LA (or was it the other way around) that I kept battling?

Now if the scenario developers get excited about Civ4, then I'll be there. It was sad to see the expectations and subsequent rejection of Civ3 by many of our old friends in the scenario community. The modders were always there but that's not what I'm talking about.

Yin? Yeah, he came back and wouldn't you know it, is talking about Civ4 is going to suck :rolleyes:. And he hadn't been around before all the news just came out.

I don't know what it is, but sometimes I have this sixth sense, and right now I'm getting a faint impression that SkyDog is quite looking forward to this game! :D

Figures. :)

"Guarded optimism" would be the best description at this point. I like the new features. It remains to be seen how they interact with one another and the AI, of course.

I could care less about MP Civ. I know right now I don't have enough time to dedicate to a CIV MP game.

So I hope they are working hard on the AI aspects. I'm with everybody else though, so far, CIV4 looks like it could be awesome.

I admit I was taken back a bit by the 3D graphics. How much development time did they spend on that???

I am encouraged that they may be able to shorten the length of turns later on. Waiting for the AI was always the biggest drag of playing (more so than cleaning up pollution all the time.)

Not nearly as much as it would seem. They licensed a graphics engine for Civ4 (Gamebryo I think). They still had to modify it it for what they needed, but still, they didn't build the graphics engine from the ground up so it wouldn't take them nearly as long as it would if they did (like Valve with HL2 or id with Doom 3).

Will this game have righty/lefty splits?

I really like Civ III when it came out, but it did become one dimensional after a while - I've been trying to keep my eye open on Civ IV developments, and to echo the thoughts of this thread, it does look good. Only downside is the eta of November :(

Btw, if you were playing as your home nation, and your sports rival city was the default name for your next city, was anyone else as sad as me and made sure it was never built? My hometown wasn't in the list as far as I could work out, so whenever Nottingham was to be built, it was immediately renamed Leicester - preventing the formation of Nottingham F*****t even before the birth of JC!

I always renamed cities to make sure that only my favorite cities made it into my nation :)

Whenever I felt I needed a city somewhere for strategic value (either geographically or for a resource) that didn't have a very good outlook from a purely city developing perspective, I'd name it Los Angeles :)

If you're talking about spitballs, probably not.

But if you are takling about distinct differences between Democracy and Socialism/Communism, of course it's already built in to the game. :)

Speaking of that... my favorite addition so far has been the social engineering model of SMAC is back in Civ4!

It was actually a harmless jab on the whole BB Mogul thread that Skydog started a few months ago. However, I have to give you credit...I think that was a split-fingered fastball on the outside corner of the plate, yet you still managed to hit that one in the seats :)

Although there is some question about which side of the foul pole it hit. :)

I remember getting a lot of shit for it over at Apolyton. So much so that I actually traded for a 2nd copy of the game after a few patches and tried to play again. It didn't go much better than the 1st round and the Collector's Edition went into the garbage.

NEW ARTICLE ON GREAT PEOPLE


Sid Meier's Civilization IVSid Meier


Throughout history, men and women have emerged to perform great deeds, thus having profound and lasting effects on the world around them. They are people whose genius, vision, and perseverance set them apart from the rest. The development team at Firaxis wanted to recognize the integral role these visionaries have played throughout history, so we added a new feature in Civilization IV called "Great People". There are five types of Great People in the game: Artists, Engineers, Merchants, Prophets, and Scientists. Each can have a profound impact on your Civilization, just as in real life.

Great People are created at the city level, as each city can generate "great people points" based on conditions and structures in the city. You can affect the amount of people points generated in several ways. One very dramatic way is through the creation of a great wonder. For instance, building the Pyramids will make it more likely the city will generate a Great Engineer, while building Stonehenge will make the city more likely to generate a Great Prophet. You can also generate more great people points by taking city population away from working the land and turning them into specialists. Certain Civics choices can work to make your specialists more productive and that can also have a positive effect on your great people point production.

All Great People share certain common abilities that differ somewhat based on the type of great person. All can be used to immediately research a new technology with the type of technology determined by the great person - Prophets would give you a religion technology like Priesthood, Artists may give you a technology like Literature, and Merchants would perhaps give Banking. All Great People can also settle in a city for a period of time and give a constant boost to that city's production, based on their type. Finally, all Great People can be used to trigger extra golden ages for your Civilization, with each subsequent golden age requiring more Great People. Each use of a great person consumes that unit and it is removed from the game.

In addition to their common abilities, all Great People can also do one "really big thing," for lack of a better term. Each Great Person type has a specific ability and their effects can make an indelible impact on the game. Great Artists can make a great work of art that automatically gives that city a huge culture boost. Great Engineers can "hurry" the production in a city, giving you the ability to build a Great Wonder in one turn perhaps. Great Merchants can conduct a trade mission to a far away city and give you a quick and sizeable boost to your treasury. Great Prophets can create a religious shrine, but only in the city in which the religion was founded. Finally, Great Scientists can construct an Academy, a building which boosts a city's scientific research and culture.

When Great People show up in the game, they are represented by a unit that is only visible to the player. For all but one (Great Prophet), there will be an ancient and a modern representation of the unit. To add flavor, each Great Person will be named after a great person of that type from history. So you may find yourself with the likes of: Shakespeare, Nichola Tesla, Leonardo da Vinci, Marco Polo, Marie Curie, J.S. Bach, or Chuang Tzu, to name but a few! The Firaxis team has been playing Civ IV for over two years now, and we're all really happy with the new level of depth the Great People feature brings to the game. We hope you'll like it too!

Written by: Barry Caudill, Senior Producer, Firaxis Games



NEW ARTICLE ON RELIGION

Religion has always played a critical part in human history. Through religion, man has sought to make sense of the universe around him and to determine his place in it. Religion has inspired, enlightened and ennobled man; in its name men have erected beautiful buildings, written books of great wisdom, and made music of surpassing beauty. In its name men have also murdered and enslaved their fellows. Given the importance of religion throughout history, it seemed fitting that we should try to address it in Civilization IV.

Through our tests, it was determined that the optimal number of religions for gameplay purposes was seven (a number that seems to come up quite often when designing versions of Civilization). We then set about making a list of seven important and recognizable religions. After a lot of deliberation and more testing, we narrowed the list down to these: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism.

If you are the first to discover the technology associated with a religion, the religion is founded in one of your cities. Religion can spread passively throughout your cities and even into neighboring cities belonging to your opponents. Establishing trade routes can help spread your religion faster and farther. Certain religious buildings can also help this passive spread but if you want to move the process along, you will want to create missionaries. Missionaries are units that you can move to another city (your own or an opponent’s) and attempt to directly convert that city to your religion.

In addition, having cities that have converted to your state religion can give you monetary and happiness bonuses. You can also get some line of sight benefits, and provide yet another interesting decision in a game already filled with interesting decisions.

Written by: Barry Caudill, Senior Producer, Firaxis Games


New Screenshots

I am still concerned that while such ideas sound great on paper, in actual gameplay, they might force the user into 'gamey' situations or into a predictable methodology. What I mean is that you have all of these factors like cultural boundaries, religion and their related events (as with Great People), in order for them to be viable in the game, you have to play a certain way. This probably becomes more of an issue with the AI which has a harder time reacting to multi-variate conditions. Again, I personally prefer something that plays more like a civilization-type game than something that attempts to recreate history. If I want a historical gameplay, I will choose a scenario.

it all sounds great.

only concern is still the AI.

Most Recent GameSpot Updates

date	type	description
08/19/05	Screens	5 new screens
08/19/05	Preview	Q&A--The Nitpicker's Q&A
08/19/05	Movie	Developer Interview 3

As you can probably tell from its name, Civilization IV is the fourth chapter in the landmark strategy game series that stretches back to 1991. It goes without saying that the Civ formula is one that has withstood the test of time quite well. That's not to say we don't have our issues with the game. We love Civ, but there are little nitpicks that have bugged us for years, like watching spearmen from the Stone Age defeating a modern-day main battle tank or, even worse, a battleship. So with Civ IV currently in testing and balancing for its November ship, we threw some questions at Barry Caudill, the game's senior producer, hoping to find out how Firaxis has improved the gameplay to eliminate those nits.




Build an empire to stand the test of time--but you knew that already.
GameSpot: The news that you've removed the ability to transfer production from one project to another caused a ruckus among Civ fans everywhere. What's the thinking behind that, and how much has it changed the game thus far in testing?

Barry Caudill: Being able to transfer all production from one thing to another (or from one research project to another) has traditionally been one of the big exploits in the series. It doesn't make much sense to be building something like the Colossus for many years and then have all of that simply transfer into a Great Library or an aqueduct. The good news is we understand how much players would hate it if all production or research spent simply went away--it doesn't. Let's say you are building a Buddhist temple and decide that you really need a better defender, so you switch to an archer. If you were to then switch back to the temple, you would find all of your previous production on that temple is still there.

The same would be true for research. If you are researching optics and feel the need to switch, you will still have that research available when you switch back to optics at a later time. This "banking" of resources or research is not infinite, however, as you will start to lose production or research slowly over time. In the case of wonders, where someone else can build it so you are unable to return to it, you will be paid a fair market value in gold for any lost production.

It really hasn't been a big balance issue in tests because everyone (the artificial intelligence included) is on a level playing field in this regard. Plus, you don't have the old "wonder domino" effect from previous versions, where you will see five wonders completed in the same turn as everyone scrambles to change production from the one that was just built.

GS: We've learned that expansionism, or squeezing in as many cities as you possibly can on a continent, is dead, or at least on life support, in Civ IV. What's the reasoning for this change, and what will happen if you try to build cities like mad?

BC: Another big exploit from previous versions was a strategy lovingly referred to as "settler spam." This tactic was based on the player making a settler in each city as soon as possible and then starting new cities. Lather, rinse, repeat. In Civ III, we added corruption to try to address this, but it wasn't so much a solution as an annoying speed bump. In Civ IV, cities require a maintenance amount that increases with each city. That means settler spammers will find themselves going broke, or with very little money left for research.

Of course, people like to play with lots of cities, and we certainly don't want to shut down their enjoyment of the game. Those people will be able to make very large civilizations with many cities, but they will have to do so in a more thoughtful and strategic manner. As cities grow, they are better able to sustain themselves without taxing the overall economy. Players will also be able to use diplomacy, religion, trade networks, and improvements to generate more income, thereby making them better able to handle the ever-increasing maintenance costs.

GS: The combat system has been overhauled, so the infamous "spearmen defeat ultramodern hi-tech main battle tank" problem shouldn't happen anymore. Right? Explain.

BC: The short answer is yes, and the long answer would be fodder for a whole article. The main change is that we brought back a system similar to firepower from Civ II. That system was a bit too complex and many people struggled to understand it; so, like many other things in Civ IV, we decided to streamline the process. Basically, two units of the same relative power will do about 20-percent damage per hit, so it would take five hits to kill another unit. When one unit is much more powerful than another (like in the case of the poor spearman, for instance), the more powerful unit does a higher percentage of damage than the less powerful unit. So if both managed to hit three times in this battle, the spearman would have only done about 40-percent damage to the tank, while the tank would have decimated the spearman.

In addition, there are many more calculations going on under the hood and that makes for fewer "lucky rolls" from the random number generator, and that helps balance it out even more. In the options screen, players can turn on an option that will let them see bars over the units, so you can easily judge your chances before entering into combat.




You can now see every improvement that you build in a city on the main screen, if you look hard enough.
GS: There are certain great wonders in Civ that are simply heads-and-shoulders better than the rest, such as Great Library, and if you got these wonders, you had a huge edge over the competition. How have you addressed this in Civ IV?

BC: We took a long, hard look at all of the wonders from previous games and changed or eliminated anything that was really unbalanced. In the case of the Great Library, we moved its former effect to the Internet wonder, which comes much later in the game, where the impact is less. The "new" Great Library gives the player the ability to have two free scientist specialists and makes the city more likely to generate a great scientist.


Say No to Settler Spam

GS: We've heard that roads no longer grant commerce. What's the reasoning for that? We assume this will cut down on the habit of planting roads and rails in every square inch of your empire. This created such an unseemly sight, as roads and rails littered every square.


Take advantage of the land wisely. Rivers grant defensive bonuses, and mountains are now completely impassable by all land units.
BC: Roads no longer grant commerce because we completely overhauled the trade system and it just didn't make sense, in light of the new rules, to also give roads/railroads a blanket bonus. The other problem with the old way was that there was really only one choice that made sense--you build a road any chance you get--and having only one real choice is not very fun. There are plenty of ways to generate trade in Civ IV and they are more strategic and fun than simply sprinkling roads everywhere. The fact that it will help prevent the "every tile has a road" phenomenon is a bonus.

GS: We know that resources are going to be more fairly distributed in Civ IV than they were in Civ III, but how so? And nothing hacked us off more than seeing our single, precious oil or iron deposit suddenly disappear, only to reappear in a rival's territory. Will we see an end to the migrating resource problem?

BC: There are really three questions here, so I will answer them in turn. Since we are using Python scripts to generate random maps, we have the ability to more easily tweak them, and that gives us much finer control over the placement of resources. The algorithm is fairly complicated, but Soren Johnson (Civ IV's lead designer) has the resources grouped together by what they do and when they are important, and he makes sure that a resource from the same group cannot be within a certain distance of another from that group. That makes similar resources spread out across the map more, and that helps ensure better overall coverage. Regarding resource migration, it will not happen anymore. The third question is implied (at least to me) and I think it is important to answer it: You talk about the "single, precious oil" and I wanted to point out that we have taken great pains to balance the tech tree, resources, and what you can produce in such a way that none of the resources is a "magic bullet" like oil was in Civ III. For instance, if you have no iron or horses early in the game, the new tech tree design makes it much easier for you to make a beeline for gunpowder, and salt peter is no longer required.

GS: What about the cutthroat, ruthless AI that came after you like you had insulted its mother and that knew everything about you, including the location of your every city and military unit? You'd have a huge lead, then suddenly, the AIs would gang up and come after you with a vengeance, even if you had been the most peaceful of neighbors. Have you addressed that in Civ IV?

BC: We have addressed this in several ways. We have given attributes to the leaders instead of to the civilization. That means that some are more warlike, peaceful, trustworthy, etc. than others. Leaders will appreciate other leaders that share their traits and civic or religious choices, and they will tend to form blocs. If you find leaders that share your tendencies, it will be possible to form lasting (even permanent) alliances. Of course, you won't be able to make everyone happy, so you will have to choose your friends wisely. In addition, our beta testers from the Civ community have been helping us balance things for quite a while now, and they are incredibly thorough in their game testing. Finally, Soren is now at the point where he is totally focused on tweaking the AI, and that's a good thing.

GS: We hate having to dicker with the AI when trying to arrange a trade. Instead of actually negotiating, all you do is adjust by one increment the amount of gold you're willing to part with to see if it will bite.

BC: Soren recently added a feature in which you can put a deal on the table and then ask the AI leader to fill in the blanks, no matter what combination is out there. You can also tell when a deal would never happen because the choices will show up in red on the list.

GS: Civ games tend to grind down in the latter stages of a game, because you simply have a ton of cities and units to manage. The result is that turns take longer and longer to resolve. Does Civ IV address this problem in any way?

BC: Well, yes and no. As you note, there will be tons of units and cities at the end of the game, and that has an effect no matter what. On the other hand, we are doing a lot to streamline various aspects of the game, and that will significantly improve the late-game experience. For instance, you will be able to easily group units and command them as one. You can also select multiple cities and give them all the same build orders at the same time. Workers can be grouped together, and then their actions within that group can be queued--so you can tell three workers to build a road to a certain point and not have to mess with them for several turns. Finally, we eliminated the elements that tended to slow down the late game, including pollution cleanup, city riots, and units disbanding because you have money issues. So, the late-game experience should be as much fun as the rest of the game.




Garrison your cities, or else someone will march in and take them from you.
GS: Finally, there are a gazillion other nitpicks out there, but what was your personal nitpick, and how did you address it in Civ IV?

BC: In Civ III, it made me a little crazy watching the AI tromp through my land with a settler/defender stack so they could plant a city on some open square on the other side of my empire. I couldn't get rid of them without starting a war because they would just come back in the next turn. I was left with the option of placing units in squares so they wouldn't think of them as open. In Civ IV, this is addressed two ways. First, the new city maintenance costs make this option less attractive to the AI (and other players in multiplayer), and second, they can't cross your land without declaring war unless you have established an open-borders treaty.

GS: Thanks a lot, Barry!

Thanks for posting that, it was very informative. I am still a little uneasy about "leader" traits in always being tied to the same civ. If it is random then that's cool and more than that, I would like to see so random that we may get up to 7 of the same type. This would help in the AI being more unpredictable when playing against as well as replayability.

I'm assuming, as was the case in Civ3, that you can turn these off if you don't want the predictability of the Mongols always being war-like, etc. I saw the Civ3 version as an improvement over Civ2, where the Babylonians were always science-oriented, the Mongols always warlike, etc. I'm further assuming that there will be options as in the Conquests expansion (which was very, very good, by the way) that would allow the player to choose any of five options from "very aggressive AI" to "very passive AI," and also to choose to play against Civs that are oriented a certain way.

Understood. I wonder if you couldn't have a clue ahead of time as to the traits of the leader/civ and you have to find out the hard way...and that such traits could unpredictably change without you knowing about it. Even through diplomacy, you wouldn't be able to accurately tell. The point is that this is how the AI sees us.

I'm looking at some screenshots right now, and one big things that i noticed is that cities are taking up multiple tiles now. Awesome! i'm happy they finally added that into the game.

So far this is looking excellent. The 3d engine, although i was very reserved about it at first, looks like it will really immerse me in the game more.

The religion and cultural improvements looks very strong, and the SMAC-style government changing is outstanding.

That was one of my biggest problems with CivIII. Good to see it taken care of.

Ditto. That was my biggest problem with CivIII.

Loving this game. I hope the MP works out well.

I hope they fixed the alliances as well. They weren't very good. One tribe would work have an alliance with me, and they would settle a treaty. Or an alliance would go to war together, then bring in another partner, and one of those guys would go to war with each other.

in response to several things throughout this thread

i get civ 3 to work no prob on win xp systems, all i needed was the newest patch, if you cant find it online, pm me, i could set up someway for you to download it from my webpage.

if there is a massive fofc MP game, count me in

and although i mirror everyone elses concerns about the AI, i really want the play balance to be improved. nothing was more annoying to me than when i would attack a city and have my army of 8 or 10 armored knights be beaten one at a time by a single spearman, or even better, when my tanks would lose to a pikeman conscript. the balance needs to be worked out alot more. i would also like to see transport units for ground troops that function on land. i hated having to leave behind mounted troops to secure cities because the foot soldiers were 5 turns behind since they could only move 1 square at a time.

You know, I was surprised to see the dreaded spearman beats tank issue so prominently mentioned. I don't recall that being much of any issue in Civ2 (because of FP?).

short of the 99 yard touchdown play for the cpu in madden 04, the spearman/tank issue is the most frustrating moment in video games, imo

I think the consolidation of A/D into a single Power rating really fixes that. Hopefully city walls won't be ridiculous, too....

http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=27859

Promotions In 'Civilization IV' - Screens

Posted on Tuesday, August 30 @ 16:56:46 PDT

The fourth game in the PC strategy series that has sold over five million copies, Sid Meier's Civilization IV is a bold step forward for the franchise, with spectacular new 3D graphics and all-new single and multiplayer content. Civilization IV will also set a new standard for user-modification, allowing gamers to create their own add-ons using the standard Python and XML scripting languages. Firaxis producer Barry Caudill tells us more about the new Civilization IV promotions feature. In Civ III, unit promotions involved rising in level from green to veteran to elite and each level added a hit point and a small combat bonus. For Civ IV, we decided to build on this system and make promotions much more intricate and customizable by allowing players to choose from over 20 different bonus types (many with multiple levels, for a total of over 40 available promotions). The numbers and types of available bonuses differ per unit type and only land and sea military units can acquire them (air units are different). Here’s how it works: Units can gain experience points in several ways. Successful combat is the primary means (note: you get more points from attacking than you do from defending) and the units must be victorious in a unit-to-unit combat, therefore there are no XPs (experience points) from bombarding fortifications or if the opposing unit withdraws. Units can also gain experience from a Barracks (land units), a Drydock (sea units) or a goody hut. In addition, some wonders, civic choices, and leader traits can give units extra experience or even certain promotions. As you might expect, the first promotion comes rather quickly, while each subsequent promotion requires more XP. The promotions take on many different forms. Some are simple like Combat (5 levels), which gives progressive strength bonuses with some extra healing at the top levels, or City Raider/City Garrison which gives the unit bonuses only when attacking/defending a city. Others give bonuses against a certain type of unit. For instance, Cover gives a bonus against Archery units and Formation gives a similar bonus against Mounted units, while Shock does the same against melee units. Some promotions give bonuses based on the type of terrain in which the unit resides. If your opponent has a lot of woods or jungle, you might choose Woodsman, or if your opponent is surrounded by hills you might choose Guerilla. All in all, the new promotion system in Civ IV offers players a plethora of interesting new decisions, excellent customization options, and an extra layer of strategy. That’s how we spell fun at Firaxis Games.

Going back, I'm hoping he's correct about the AI no longer forming the "All against one" blocs, but rather seperating into distinct, seperate groups. That was my biggest pet peeve in Civ3 - I wanted the AI's to act distinctly in their individiual interests, not as one big group. Galactic Civilizations has done this better than any of the other games.