21-05-2005 02:20									#271
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quote: Originally posted by Spiffor I don't understand your disappointment. These bonuses are probably not number-munching like they were in SMAC (actually, I expect most civic effects will be number-munching, and that they advertized the spiffiest), but they are valid bonuses nonetheless.

I agree. I just think they could affect more aspects of your civilization, increasing the # of strategic choices.

quote: Originally posted by The diplomat Good! I always thought "shields" was a stupid name for production. A shield is a defensive weapon, it has nothing to do with building stuff. How is a shield a measure of how fast you are building something? "Hammer" is much better because hammers are used to build stuff so it makes sense.

I just hope this means they also switch to a labour-focused production system, and not a material-focused production system.

(See here to know what I'm talking about.)

	21-05-2005 02:28									#272
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quote: Originally posted by Locutus - The multiplayer game is being reworked to support what Smith calls "Pit Boss" mode, whereby a separate server tracks your turns. You can hop on for a live session and then carry it over to a play-by-e-mail game based on your and your opponent's schedules.

This feature is most appealing! Civ4 is looking good so far.

	21-05-2005 03:09									#273
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Ok they can change it to hammers, but I'll still think of them as shields just as much as in SMAC I thought of minerals as shields.

quote: Originally posted by vovan Speaking of which, they are apparently not called shields any more, but hammers.

	21-05-2005 06:45									#274
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Ive seen in the 13 min. video that the enemy city conversion is just a 'send missionary and click' operation, the convertion is automatically!

WTF?

Last edited by GAZ082 on 21-05-2005 at 07:58

	21-05-2005 09:07									#275
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GAZ, they were referring to the RELIGION being converted, not the city changing sides (not a culture flip!). A city may have zero, one or more religions, and a civ may also have multiple religions.

	21-05-2005 09:16									#276
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quote: Originally posted by vovan Speaking of which, they are apparently not called shields any more, but hammers.

I'm having visions of the marching hammers in Pink Floyd's The Wall. Hammers do make more sense.

	21-05-2005 09:42									#277
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I read through this entire thread tonight and developed a couple questions....

First, will there be custom leaders for example they could use a generic leaderhead and you select your bonus? I'm pretty sure that I wont be able to have Mao lead the Americans to get the specific bonus he offers so it would make more sense to have custom leaders... But I'm not too hopefull because you could just play as that civ anyway.

The second is a tad more likely... Since there are what 26 leaders and 18 civs (I wonder who got dropped because there were 19) can I have two of a civ in a game with each leader? It seems as though you start diplomacy with the leader not the nation per say, if so it would make it like there were 26 civs in the game right from the start and they would all play differently. I don't see it being a problem either because they do it in RTS games.

	21-05-2005 10:24									#278
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Well, even though there are currently only around 28 leader heads in the game-as is-I reckon that this will be up to around 80 or more within around 6 months of its release ! For instance, it wouldn't be too hard to give England Henry V, Richard the Lionheart, Edward the Confessor, Winston Churchill or even Margaret Thatcher-which would give England over 7 total leaders-each with their own specific traits.
With Italy/Rome-aside from the Emporers (Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine etc), you also have almost a dozen Medieval and Renaissance leaders you could add. Same with America, Germany (both before and After unification) and the list goes on and on. All that is required is a good modding community-which I know from past experience this site has !\

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

	21-05-2005 13:57									#279
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quote: Originally posted by Vince278 I'm having visions of the marching hammers in Pink Floyd's The Wall. Hammers do make more sense.

and maybe cordless in the future

	21-05-2005 14:29									#280
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quote: Originally posted by Platypus Rex and maybe cordless in the future

All my hammers are cordless.

	21-05-2005 20:58									#281
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quote: Originally posted by Jaybe GAZ, they were referring to the RELIGION being converted, not the city changing sides (not a culture flip!). A city may have zero, one or more religions, and a civ may also have multiple religions.

Yes, i was t alking about Religion. But i did not figure out that the city in question did not have a religion.

	21-05-2005 22:07									#282
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Besides the new options of being able to ask a civ to go to war with someone you aren't at war with, and negotiating peace between 2 warring civs...

does anyone else feel that any in depth information or questioning about better diplomacy (which is kinda flat in civ3), was suspiciously ommitted from that IGN interview? and the GS one.

or did i miss something?

	22-05-2005 06:36									#283
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quote: Originally posted by Locutus In the real world of software development? Yes, of course. Any programmer, including yours truly, is intimitely familiar with them. In the gaming industry? No way. As I've said, I've seen it being used to refer to anything from litterally a map editor (in some obscure RTS game, don't remember the name) to the full source code of a game. In Freelancer for example, the SDK is a large collection of INI files.

That's not a fair comparison, since the Freelancer "SDK" was released by a third-party modder.

	22-05-2005 06:41									#284
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quote: Originally posted by alva quote: Men, that means 'source code'. In Python you cannot make dlls coz is an interpretative language (like BASIC) and you cannot compile a sh1t, no DLLs, no EXE no nothing! You need Python or a program that understands Python, having a kind of embebbed Python interpreter in CIV. If I'm not mistaken, you can compile Python too, though it was not the way it was intended to work.

Doesn't it only compile into bytecode like Java?

	23-05-2005 03:48									#285
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Java is another interpretative language. Needs the Java console to run it. Python is the same, need a Python interpreter. So yes, its kinda bytecode (bytecode is a Java term).

	23-05-2005 06:52									#286
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I meant, when you compile Python does it compile into an interpreted bytecode rather than an executable? I know what I Python and Java are.

	23-05-2005 07:40									#287
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Yes, interpreted bytecode!

	23-05-2005 19:53									#288
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quote: Originally posted by Locutus Combined arms is not in the game. When a group attacks/is attacked, the best unit from one group will fight with the best one from the other group, just 1-on-1 as in Civ1-3.

My one (main) hope has been unfulfilled, but that does not mean that I'm severely disappointed.

I'm still hoping for the means to group-stack and group-move units (and group stacking that is not only based on unit type) to reduce micromanagement. Put this in and I can live with single unit combat - given that there are ways to give units different bonus types that go a little deeper than the vet/elite format.

And perhaps there is still time (or it is already in the game) to have the means to select multiple units and then commit them to combat at one time instead of manually having to commit a single unit/run combat and then repeat over and over.

Artillery inflicting hits on all units in a stack???? Hopefully this will not prove to be overpowering. (but it is the means to cut down on the tedium of single-unit combat...)

Multiple types of tile improvements (and sea-based TIs to boot)

One thing is for sure...There is a lot to be optimistic about in what I see.

	23-05-2005 19:58									#289
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian Artillery inflicting hits on all units in a stack???? Hopefully this will not prove to be overpowering. (but it is the means to cut down on the tedium of single-unit combat...)

Since one of the beefs a lot of people had was with giant stacks of death, this should help a lot as it is sort of a soft cap on unit stacks. Who would want to stack 50 units if you know that you are multiplying the enemies firepower?

	23-05-2005 20:28									#290
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Agreed - and I do not have a huge problem with the idea of collateral damage, but it can be overpowering if it is automatic to all units in a stack. (if the arty hits one, it automatically hits all.) In that situation, certain artillery types could become unbalancing, and you could have a type of the race-to-tanks scenario that was in civ1/civ2.

It would help in reducing powerstacking on one tile, but it would not necessarily eliminate the concept of powerstacking on several tiles.

	23-05-2005 20:38									#291
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The arty fire will perhaps only take a slice of energy from one
unit in a stack, while almost killing another, in a random way.

As we have seen in the E3 clips, the units all have a strength
level that means a hit can be absorbed to a certain degree.

	23-05-2005 20:44									#292
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It seems to me that I've seen a comment about Civ4 that said something like "the spear defeats tank problem is fixed".

Any idea how that will work? I fixed it in my own mods by reworking the combat strengths so that it was virtually impossible. Since Civ4 units can be "beefed up", it looks as though a spearman may have a better chance to defeat a tank.

	23-05-2005 20:44									#293
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian I'm still hoping for the means to group-stack and group-move units (and group stacking that is not only based on unit type) to reduce micromanagement. Put this in and I can live with single unit combat - given that there are ways to give units different bonus types that go a little deeper than the vet/elite format.

Not sure what you mean with 'group-stack', but group-move certainly *is* in, and at least one preview claimed it has been improved compared to Civ3. We don't know yet if it's based on unit type or not -- but I think it's a fairly safe bet it isn't. Stacking in Civ3 was a last-minute hack, they've now have much more time to consider it (and first-hand experience with it), so I expect them to get it right.

Since there can be an infinite number of units in a tile in Civ, it would be nice if Firaxis implemented a variety of means to group units -- from manually picking the ones you want to automatically grouping all units, or all units of a type, or all units with MP left, etc...

quote: And perhaps there is still time (or it is already in the game) to have the means to select multiple units and then commit them to combat at one time instead of manually having to commit a single unit/run combat and then repeat over and over.

We don't know yet if that's in the game. I also hope they will implement that.

	23-05-2005 22:27									#294
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quote: Originally posted by Locutus Not sure what you mean with 'group-stack'

The idea to create a group of different units that would retain it's 'grouped' feature from turn to turn, so a player could easily select and move it. For instance, I may ultimately want to send 8 units to the north and 12 units to the east for a planned assault, but I am still in the process of assembling my units to a staging area from across the map. So I pregroup those units into a locked substack and then when I decide to move them, I can easily select that substack with one click and move it to where I want it to go.

Using the CTP model, think of two six-unit ministacks that occupy the same tile. They retain their locked status until the player decides to rearrange those substacks.

Related to this, I do hope that they also fix the autopathing feature that automatically cancelled itself when a unit was selected. Keep the path and allow the player to cancel it either via creating a new autopath or a 'cancel order' button/menu selection.

	23-05-2005 23:25									#295
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian Using the CTP model, think of two six-unit ministacks that occupy the same tile. They retain their locked status until the player decides to rearrange those substacks.

Ah, okay. Well, the previews aren't very specific about the issue but a German preview does specifically mention armies that can be formed, that does seem to indicate that this would be possible. But of course, that's speculation on my part.

quote: Related to this, I do hope that they also fix the autopathing feature that automatically cancelled itself when a unit was selected. Keep the path and allow the player to cancel it either via creating a new autopath or a 'cancel order' button/menu selection.

Yes, that would be very nice, I would be strongly in favour of that as well.

	24-05-2005 01:18									#296
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Woah!

I just realized that the videos I've been examining here aren't actually the same "HD Quality" ones from Gamespot, but rather those one level down in quality.

The highest quality ones look like this.

Attachment: hd_01.jpg
This has been downloaded 97 time(s).

	24-05-2005 01:21									#297
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And like this. Far, far less fuzzy.

Attachment: hd_02.jpg
This has been downloaded 97 time(s).

	24-05-2005 01:22									#298
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I want it!

	24-05-2005 01:33									#299
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quote: Originally posted by vovan And like this. Far, far less fuzzy.

Those first four units sure looks interesting

	24-05-2005 01:34									#300
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So where did you get those HD versions? I could certainly use those for my fact thread screencaps...