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Pyrkaige
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Some random thoughts about the additions from playing the single-player portion of the PTW expansion (all of these will apply to multi-player games as well, presumably, I just haven't been able to get into one yet):
* The new victory conditions make for a very interesting type of play. The main one I've played around with so far, elimination, naturally requires a strong defensive mode. The computer AI is pretty good about hanging around your cities and jumping in fast if you don't defend them well. The AI expands very slowly in this type of game, though, so you can usually out-build it and then just crank out enough units to overwhelm it unless you're playing on a high difficulty. One of the new tribes, the Carthaginians, eat this mode up with their Numidian Mercenary units (2.3.1); they give the best defense of the ancient era with a nice offense as well. The Celts are deadly with their Gallic Swordsmen as well.
* As mentioned elsewhere, the computer AI puts more of an emphasis on keeping higher levels of defensive units in its cities. It does this even in the non-elimination games, which is probably good overall compared to how it was. It splits up groups of units more for combat, as well, although there isn't a real noticable improvement in the overall attack methods. Barbarians, on the other hand, are incredibly wily instead of just aggressive all the time. They definitely run around and try to find undefended units/cities, as well as tearing up improvements more often.
* Winning is even more fun with the new graphics and dialogue at the end. It's worth going back and winning in each of the various regular ways, just to see it all.
* The scoring methods go kind of crazy when you win early with any of the new victory conditions. It isn't hard to get 20000+ points by wiping out everyone before you even get out of the Ancient era.
* The Middle Ages play a bit differently when everyone has Medieval Infantry (4.2.1) early on. Not having to rely on the weak defense of Longbowmen means you can project a lot of damage without getting wiped out as easily by fast moving horsemen/knights. Longbowmen are basically only for civs who are still without iron at this point.
* The Ottomans can take out anyone if you get to their Sipahi fast enough. At 8.3.3 it has double the offensive of the Musket Man, the best defensive unit at that point. You need some high producing cities to be able to crank them out quickly, but if you have them you can terrorize anyone around you. If you plow through the bottom row of techs fast enough you can often get to them before half the civs have even lined up saltpeter, which means you have an even stronger edge.
* With so many new UU having special abilities, the game needs more than ever an option to allow you to build your UU even after you've researched their successors. You might want to still build Keshiks, for example, even after you have the ability to build Cavalry.
* The new Espionage layout works fairly well, putting all the options together on one screen. Oddly enough it actually loses a bit of functionality from the old setup, because of how it lists the price for diplomatic jobs. I find it useful to use diplomats to look at opponents' cities on a regular basis to keep an eye on what they're building, whether they have resources linked to their entire civ, etc. This will be even more important in MP since you can't see via the Diplomacy screen what resources/luxuries other civs have. If you do this a lot you want to pick the cheapest city of the opposing civ, which used to be easy since it listed the price of all the cities next to their name. In the new setup it doesn't do that, so you have to hunt around and try to find the smallest/farthest away city, then go in and select it. It's a small thing, but somewhat annoying when you're running checks on a regular basis.
* All three of the new city improvements are a nice bonus, especially since they arrive in the Industrial Ages when cities are running out of things to build. The Stock Exchange is my favorite, since it gives yet another level of income, and makes the Stock Market a greater endeavor to obtain. Incidentally, this also makes Adam Smith's Trading Company worth even more, since (I think) it pays for the upkeep of Stock Markets as well as all the other commercial city improvements. The new Civil Defense makes late-game wars even harder to pull off, although I'm not sure how aggressively the AI builds them.
* Rally points work decently enough; for some odd reason, though, you have to reset them whenever you have the city build a non-unit. It doesn't seem like it should be that difficult for the computer to maintain them regardless of what you're building.
Overall, the additions to single-player games are alone worth the price of the game, imo. Hopefully after the next patch the expansion will live up to its name so everyone can actually, well, play the world. 
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03-11-2002 15:40
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