|
Locutus
|
|
ACS CTP1/2 Manager & Civ4 Co-Manager
|
 |
Hengelo, The Netherlands
Nov 1999
time: 06:20
|
|
For ease of reference (and for those who can't get that interview to work or whatever), here's a transcript:
Interviewer: Aaaand here we are. I'm here with my friend Soren. Soren, what's going on?
Soren: Hey, hello!
Interviewer: You work for Firaxis Games. You are the lead designer for a little game called Civilization 4.
Soren: Civilization 4. Yeah, that's right. It's a very exciting product.
Interviewer: What's it all about? This game, the first one came out when?
Soren: It came out in '91.
Interviewer: And I've played it all the way prior to '97.
Soren: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Interviewer: Phenominal game.
Soren: Yeah.
Interviewer: Civ2, Civ3 and now we're at Civ4.
Soren: We're at Civ4.
Interviewer: Look at this gorgeous game!
Soren: Yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful game. You see the globe view here, which lets you look at the entire world. You can spin around, look at your empire, look at empires to conquer, empires to make friends with. It's a very, it's a very HUGE view from space and then there's also -- you know, this is continuous zoom from all the way out all the way down to your civilization.
Interviewer: Ooooooohhhh! Nice! Now, from what I remember about Civ, or Civilization, basically is, you start from scratch, you build all your...
Soren: Build a Settler, build a city, build another Settler...
Interviewer: You send your Phalanxes out, you get Musketeers, you use your Musketeers against other people's Phalanxes. I'm guessing since I've played Civ, you guys have changed a lot.
Soren: Yes, there's a lot of new units, a lot of new buildings, a lot of new improvements. One thing that's expanded a great amount is what you can do with your territory. You build Wineries now and Plantations and Windmills and Watermills -- all sorts of cool stuff. Another thing is, you can see buildings now on the map. It's very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get, you know. You got the Pyramids here, and I think I got Stonehenge in another city here, you know...
Interviewer: And that's an Obelisk right there.
Soren: There's an Obelisk, that's right. And here's you city grow[?] and Horses and there's some Dye over there and, you know, beautiful rivers...
Interviewer: This is gorgeous
Soren: Yeah, it's a really beautiful game. And let me zoom out here a little bit. And it's fully 3D, so you have control over the camera. If you want the old-school, you know, isometric view, you can do that.
Interviewer: Nice.
Soren: If you want the REALLY old-school Civ1 view...
Interviewer: Oh no, you can't!
Soren: Yeah, that's right.
Interviewer: Ooooh!
Soren: You can take the top-down view, which is pretty cool. So you know, it's up to you, however you want to do it. Let me jump over to another civilization here. I'm switched to Rome.
Interviewer: Okay.
Soren: Let me show off a little combat. There are my Legionaires, which are the, sort of the Roman special units. And I got a little Barbarian incursion here to the north, so I'm gonna try to beat them back.
Interviewer: Oh no. You can tell they're evil because they have skulls in their banners.
Soren: They have skulls, they're black. You know, it's...
Interviewer: Yeah...
Soren: They're the bad guys. And as you notice there's three units now in these little groups. And basically each one of those guys represents a hit-point now.
Interviewer: Alright.
Soren: So instead of a health bar, now we just, you know, we show you the guys.
Interviewer: Oh, Okay. Oh, take him down! Oh no!
Soren: Hehe. Yeah, the combat can swing back and forth. We're trying to treat the combats as like these cool little cut-scenes.
Interviewer: Right, that's great. Cool.
Soren: So, if I take... The units have special abilities now. They aren't just, you know, one number or another number. Like, Spearmen for example have a bonus against Horses, so that's why I took this guy down.
Interviewer: Right. Handgranates[?]
Soren: Archers are good at defending cities, that type of thing. Cool.
Interviewer: I like all the different kinds of terrain, do those have any effect on the battle as well? Or is that...
Soren: Yeah, if you're in Forest you'll get a defensive bonus, if you're attacking from a Hill you'll get a bonus, and eh...
Interviewer: I love that when a game like this thinks of every single thing like that.
Soren: Oh yeah, it's a very detailed game. Let me show you some of the new stuff that's never been in any Civ game before.
Interviewer: Alright.
Soren: Religion is one of the big new things that we've never touched before.
Interviewer: We got a little shiny guy over there so I can see that's where we're going.
Soren: Yeah, this is [...] That's a Great Prophet, and what he does is... you can use him to -- excuse me a second, there we go -- you can use him to... There's Great People in the game, there's Great Artists, Great Scientists, like Michealangelo and Einstein and Newton will show up.
Interviewer: Nice.
Soren: This is Mahavira, he's a Great Prophet, so I can use him to, you know, get a free technology, start a Golden Age...
Interviewer: Aaaahhh...
Soren: ... build a special Dao Shrine. So I'll do that. And as you see here, you see a little yin-yang symbols that are above the Roman cities?
Interviewer: Okay.
Soren: That lets me know that Daoism has spread to those civilizations.
Interviewer: Weird.
Soren: That's sort of like my religion.
Interviewer: Sure.
There's Hinduism, there's Christianity, there's Judaism. And I got a Missionary here. So, you know, in the early part of the game, it's good to use your Missionary to spread your religion. They're almost like spies early in the game, because, you know, if I spread Daosim to this city here, you know... So I'll convert it. Now it's Daoist. If you take a look at... you see, I can actually see the city. It gives me line of sight there, basically.
Interviewer: Aaahh.
Soren: So, that's pretty cool. So let me show you off the diplomacy a little bit here. Let me call up Gandhi, he's my adjacent neighbour. We have these cool animated leaderheads of... we got 26 leaders in the game...
Interviewer: Nice.
Soren: We got Elizabeth and we got Washington and Napoleon...
Interviewer: And you say we can recognize all of them, if we payed attention in high school?
Soren: Oh yeah, there are all sorts of, you know... All the guys you slept through in history class, right? And...
Interviewer: (laughs)
Soren: So let me try to pull off a little deal with him here. See if he'll give me Alphabet for Metal Casting.
Interviewer: You need the Alphabet.
Soren: Oh, no, he didn't like that one. Gandhi drives a hard bargain. He seems like a nice guy, but really, he's a cruel negotiator. Wow, he still won't take it. Well, let me try something else here. Maybe I'll try Corn... do a little resource trading... Here we go!
Interviewer: Here you go.
Soren: He's a little happy with me here. Let me show you off some of the other leaders we've got here. Here's Hatshepsut, she's Egyptian. We got...
Interviewer: Louis XIV!
Soren: Louis XIV. He's aristocratic, he's always looking down his nose at you.
Interviewer: (laughs) His rather large nose.
Soren: That's right. Here's the Chinese Emperor, Qin Shi Huang.
Interviewer: Aaahhh. We did not cover him in history.
Soren: No, no, he's one of the probably more obscure... Here's a more... well, the other guy for China, this is Mao Zedong.
Interviewer: There we go, yeah.
Soren: And as you see, a lot of civilizations now actually have two leaders, so you can choose. If you're France, you can be either Napoleon or you can be Louis XIV.
Interviewer: Okay.
Soren: Which, you know, affects gameplay. If you're Napoleon you get better military units and if you're Louis you get free culture.
Interviewer: Nice.
Soren: So...
Interviewer: Yeah, you look very cultured. How many civilization are we talking?
Soren: There's 18 civs in the game and 26 leaders.
Interviewer: So not every civ has two leaders then, I'm guessing?
Soren: Not every civ, that's right.
Interviewer: I did... I stayed up awake in math.
Soren: Some of the civilizations it's a little harder to pick them for. Let me see what else to show. Let me show off the tech tree. This is sort of the backbone of the game. And it's one giant continuous dynamic tech tree.
Interviewer: Nice.
Soren: So here we're starting off, we're going through the Middle Ages here, you got Feudalism and Theology, we're gonna get to the Englightenment soon... Astronomy, Scientific Method...
Interviewer: And that's showing off all the ones you have to earn beforehand before you can...
Soren: That's right, all the arrows show you the... they're prerequisites. Up to Electricity and then you get all the way up to, you know, Superconductor and Genetics.
Interviewer: There's Future Technology, that was my favourite part!
Soren: Future technology, that's right.
Interviewer: Future technology 6.
Soren: And you just keep... And each... Actually, each time you get a Future Technology you get a bonus, you get extra happiness and health. And one... the one big thing that, you know... once people start playing the game they'll realise that things have really changed about the tech tree is that there's multiple tech paths. You see Gunpowder here? You can get to it either from Guilds or Education.
Interviewer: All right.
Soren: It's no longer, you no longer require both. So you can basically pick your own way through the tech tree, which has become really interesting. It's, you know, it's alternative history, it's the reason people play Civ, you know, they want things to be different.
Interviewer: So what else have we got going on in the world right now?
Soren: Well, you know... I'm Rome. You know, let me pass the turn here, see if the Barbarians attack me a little bit.
Interviewer: It's three on one. you got no chance.
Soren: Eeh... Oh, the Swordsman is tough. Ooow! Didn't quite make it. Alright.
Interviewer: So what kind of natural resources are we looking at right here?
Soren: Well, there's 30 resources in the game. We got Deer over here, we got Wheat over here and we got Wine here. You see there, there's actually... Like a lot of the improvements match up with the resources, you know. This is Wine for the Winery, of course. Another new thing we have is promotions for units. My... I just fought the Barbarians, a lot of my guys won and as they win they build up experience points. And once they get, you know, more experienced, it's kind of an RPG thing, they go up in levels. And each level they go up they are able to pick up special abilities, like for instance, you know, they can have a bonus versus archery, or a bonus versus mounted units, or amphibious, or, you know, special defense in Jungle and Forest. So what you're able to do, you're able to really specialise and differentiate your units, it's no longer, you know, this giant mass where all your guys are basically the same, you know. We're really trying to have, you know, fewer units, because you know, the game really bogs down if it's too many units, but each specific unit becomes much more interesting.
Interviewer: How many different units?
Soren: How many different types of units are in the game? Well, let me jump to the Civilopedia here.
Interviewer: Wow!
Soren: Well, there's some stuff missing here, but this will get you a sense of how many units there are. I think that there are, I think there's about 80 or so, you know. This is how many different types of buildings there are... Resources, all the technologies. This is to show you all the promotions. You know, there's 40 different types of promotions basically that, you know, you can pick for your units, you know, such as Hill defense or, you know, faster movement, or you can use enemy roads, all sorts of, you know, cool interesting stuff.
Interviewer: Great. Feel like taking some questions why I...
Soren: Yeah, sure, definitely. Absolutely.
Interviewer: Geek[?] from Canada wants to know, is Civ4 going to be online?
Soren: Well, yeah. Civ4 is supporting Multiplayer, absolutely. We have a bunch of different game-modes for that. On one end we have simultaneous turns, which, you know, allows people to move at the same time for a much quicker mode. And then on the far end of that there's Play-By-Email and there's actually there's a persistent turn-based server, which allows for games to be played over many, many months. Another thing that's turned out to be really fun for Multiplayer is Team Game, Co-op. Which allows, you know, you got six people together they wanna play Civ, now it's 3-on-3, you know. They have different alliances going up against each other. You know, they share line of sight, they share technologies, share wonders.
Interviewer: Cool! Alright, let's find some more questions, shall we? ... If you wanna keep... So I'm gonna guess the vineyards and the different natural resources obviously only occur in distinct climates?
Soren: Right, that's right. If you're...
Interviewer: You're not gonna find a Vineyard if you're in Antartica or...
Soren: Yeah, if you're in the equator area you'll get Bananas, you know, you get Pigs, and when you're up far north you'll get Whales.
Interviewer: Nice. So that... Is that fishing we see going on there?
Soren: Yeah, this is a Fishing Net, you know, when you got some Fish resources. Basically every resource in the game has a special improvement that matches up with it, that basically accesses that.
Interviewer: Aahhhh...
Soren: Another new thing is that every resource is tradeable. There's sort of a whole new class of resources, food resources, that you trade with each other, makes your cities more healthy, so, you know, it's good to, you know, trade your Corn for someone else's Wheat, you know, really emphasises the diplomatic part.
Interviewer: Andy, an east-Killride[?} scholar, wants to know: will there be space travel?
Soren: Will there be space travel? Well, that's one of the victory conditions.
Interviewer: Right.
Soren: The Space Ship Victory, you know, that's all the way at the far end of the tech tree, build your space ship.
Interviewer: Exactly, future technologies all over the place.
Soren: That's all volentary, Absolutely.
Interviewer: How, what are the other ways you can win the game? I know if you wipe out everyone you win, right?
Soren: Well, yeah, that's, that'll never gonna go away, that's Conquest Victory. There's Domination Victory, you know, if you have a certain percentage of the world that, you know, kind of determines the game's over, so you end up winning. There's Cultural Victory. There's Diplomatic Victory, you know, if you can get everyone to like you and you know, get behind you, you know, let you control the world.
Interviewer: Nice.
Soren: And then there is also Alliance Victory, where... This is a new one for Civ4, for Civ basically, in that you can have you can have, you can eventually form these permanent alliances with other civilizations where you can win the game with them.
Interviewer: Aahhhh... Nice.
Soren: So you can get kind of those, you know, axis versus allies situations.
Interviewer: Nice, and vote everyone off the island and...
Soren: Yeah.
Interviewer: James Hargess[?] from Portland, Oregon: how many Wonders are there in the game?
Soren: How many Wonders? Ah, I think there are 28 Wonders, I think.
Interviewer: Wow!
Soren: And there's about 12 small Wonders too, so there's...
Interviewer: Right. Now, what counts as a small wonder besides having a little sister for an android?
Soren: Heh. Well, a small Wonder means every civilization can build it basically, and everyone sort of just gets one. So that would be like the Forbidden Palace, and Oxford University and Wallstreet. Stuff like that.
Interviewer: Oh, okay. Sure, why not? Okay, let's see, let's find some more questions here. Nope, we already did that one. Alright... I'm getting there. This game looks really nice, by the way [...]
Soren: Thank you. Here, let me go out to the globe view over here.
Interviewer: Can you show that world view again? I think people will want to see that.
Soren: You see, you can sort of filter different things, you can see your culture or you can show resources on the world view or see where your luxuries are. Let me go out to...
Interviewer: Nate from Canada wants to know, do the different leaders have different emotions, are they like, do they behave different depending on who they are?
Soren: Yes! Absolutely, the personalities are very different. Genghis Khan can treat you very different from Gandhi, you know. Some leaders you can trust, some you can't.
Interviewer: Right.
Soren: Some you can trust to attack you, hehe.
Interviewer: But Gandhi, he doesn't seem too trustworthy...
Soren: Yeah, he's tricky, everyone... We always try to get Gandhi nice but for some reason he always gets ornery in the game, it's just one of those things.
Interviewer: We have a question from Finland: does the game include any map, nation, scenario editors?
Soren: Ah, yes. There are four different editing levels. There's a map editor that lets you like , you know, make, lets you build a map, build a Civil War map or whatever. All the game data is in XML, which if people have an XML editor is basically like a spreadsheet, they can change the numbers. Python allows people to create scripts, and then we're also releasing the game/AI SDK, which is basically the game and the AI code that people can use to compile a seperate DLL to, you know, change the game.
Interviewer: You know what I love about this interview is that every single question that our users came up with or that I asked, the answer was yes. That shows how deep this game is, it looks great.
Soren: (laughs) Great.
Interviewer: When is this game coming out?
Soren: This game is coming out holliday 2005.
Interviewer: Really?
Soren: Yep.
Interviewer: That's great. Thanks a lot man!
Soren: Alright, thank you.
Interviewer: congratulations, thanks for stopping by.
Soren: Absolutely.
Last edited by Locutus on 19-05-2005 at 20:58
|
19-05-2005 05:29
)
|
|