Civ IV: whenever it comes, what do we want in it?

[Beam]

According to CFC work on Civ IV has started, whatever that means. There also is a subforum with suggestions at CFC cluttered with the usual nittywitty junk.

Therefore a seperate thread here to collect our thoughts how a succesor to Civ III can improve the PBEM / MP gameplay we enjoy so much even more.

Imo there are a couple of areas, some technical like having a turn exchange mechanism being better supported and functional areas like Diplomacy, multiple goals, smarter AI but also looking at concepts like SMAC, MoO etc. or even previous Civ versions.

As an example, I really enjoyed the Spies in Civ2 much more than the current Espionage implementation in Civ3, although Spies in Civ2 were way to powerfull, including the silly thing that it was cheaper to convert a city from the side furthest away from the cap. So I'd like to see unit based spying back but not as powerfull as in Civ2, unless the AI knows how to handle it as well.

Although the AI has become better and better there is a lot of room for improvement there as well but my gut feel is that unless their is a mechanism that enables the game to "learn" from Human Play the best achievable AI play is equal to the best human player at Firaxis at best.

Some thoughts, feel free to comment and / or contribute!

[Socrates]

We know that Civ4 is rewritten from zero, which is a very good thing. I hope the results will be a lot better, and also feel quite different.

First thing to have : a damn better AI !!! It's so important in my eyes, and even in 1v1 PBEMs it could be good. Some strategy games already seem to have AIs which don't get any bonus like they have in Civ3. I hope they will be able to get to that point or approach it fairly : the hardest level AI shouldn't cheat at all, and lower levels AIs should get some anti-bonuses and play worse. This is by far the thing I want most with this new version of my favourite game.

To answer Beam, I prefer spy missions and trade the way they are handled in Civ3, I found that diplomats and spies in Civ2 were too powerful and not civ-scaled. Though I'm sure Civ4 could do a lot better in such a way.

[Socrates]

Another thing I wanna add here : language compatibility !!! [rant] Civ3 did an awful job of this. I'd like Civ4 to be 100% compatible for the whole world (at least the Western world). I don't think it's hard to achieve BTW. And yes it can be good for PBEMs because... imagine 2 people want to play a PBEM using a mod, but one has a US version, the other one has a French version : they can't play because it will end up in errors when loading the mod (unless it is well translated).

Firaxis, this is important. If this isn't made properly, I'll just skip the game. If the game is too good in other sides... I'll just get a crack. [sad]

[Shabbaman]

What I want from civ4:

- a decently tested program: less patches, less bugs!
- multiplayer: no more add-ons!
- all civs that are currently in civ3: no more add-ons!

To summarize: I don't want to get ripped off by paying for PTW2, and having to wait for C3C2 (or C4C) to get the options that came with PTW2 to work.

[Col.Tarleton]

I hope that civ 4 will be an entirely new game based on Sid Meiers civilisation.I don't know if Sid still works for Firaxis but he's the games brains of the outfit.The programmers are important but without the games genius of 'ol uncle Sid it will merely be tweaks on civ3+ PTW + conquests.We'll just have to wait and see.

[Shabbaman]

Plus 3d, of course [rolleyes]

[Swingue]

What would be an interesting option for me is to play with more people in one team in one civ. Especially when playing real time you can have teams fighting each other where players are dealing with various items in the game, eg. military, trade, exploring, etc.
To make this work there must be even more detail in the game.

[Shabbaman]

You mean like "governors"? That's an interesting idea.

[Swingue]

I don't exactly know how but I like the idea that you work as a team together and play civ.

I really enjoy the ISDG and games PP and me play against the AI.

It could be that you need more governors so you have to work as a team.

[Banzai]

I think it would be cool if you can find or capture artifacts in the game.
If you find one and bring it to a city it will provide additional culture, gold or happiness.. something like that.
It is like a great wonder that can not be build. It has to be found on the map or captured from another civilization.

Banzai!

[Beam]

From CFC. A great Powerpoint presentation by Soren about the future of Civ and why. Not only great because of the content, where else do you find this typical internal presentation on the net?

The best read is thru Powerpoint itself, not just the reader because you can read the "Speaker Notes" as well. For those not familiar with speaker notes, in RL these act both as post-its for the presentator AND as hidden messages for those taking the time to read the full presentation.

Imo Soren understands both the business aspects (how many copies can we sell) and the game aspects pretty well and my personal favorite is the "simplify, simplify" message he gives a number of times. Most likely there were some marketing types in the audience looking for more features. ;)

I first read the presentation thru the reader and found it look like a Firaxis person defending the road for Civ IV. Then I read it with the speaker notes and found the key message on slide 45. This is Sorens presentation as the Lead Designer for Civ IV!

On the technical side: XML is a good choice for keeping game parameters if Firaxis can put a solid security container around it. ;)

http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2004/johnson_soren.zip

[Socrates]

I read that yesterday, and must say that I'm confident in Civ again. ;) I really don't know what I'm speaking of (!!!) but I feel Soren is the right guy for Civ4 : he learnt a lot from Civ3's weaknesses, and I think he was too much restrained in his role for Civ3. The presentation clearly indicates that he has the right tools for such a responsability.

Religion and civics in Civ : yeah ! [cool] I can't wait. And it will probably be mutliplayer from scratch, and mods will be more flexible. [goodjob] And I trust in that because I carefully watched his analysis on the Age and 'craft series, and it made sense. Just : why didn't he talk about RoN ? :D

So we know Civ4 won't be that different from the other Civ's. "Killer features" and some new stuff will enhance the game greatly once again, but I think that grasslands will still give 2 food and no shield, and that you'll still need an aqueduct to let your city grow (all I want to say is that it won't change a la CtP). In my opinion (I hope !) the coding from scratch will be the good whip this series desperately needs, the thing that will let Civ4 be really excellent (where Civ3 was just very good).

[Markstar]

One thing that I'd really like to see is a slightly different 'army' system where you can form armies right from the beginning, without additional leaders (I hear you can do that in CTP, but I've never actually played it) - it could even have a little RPG aspect to spice it up: [shoot]
If you produce a unit, you could combine it with other units (and rearrange them again), just like an army in Civ3, but in addition to that each unit could have a "unit leader" with the 'rank' of the status of the unit (like reg, vet, etc).
Now, when you combine several units (like a vet and an elite), the highest ranking unit leader (in this case the elite) will become the leader of the army, maybe even with certain bonuses for each level (for example: a veteran unit leader gives +1 on def, an elite gives +1 on def & att, higher chance of promotion for lower ranks, etc). And when you have an elite unit leader, there is a chance to create a real leader (like we have now, or maybe a UU with additional bonuses, of even something completely new).
This would be only a small change but could imho dramatically enhance the strategy aspect of the game and also make you take care of (/identify yourself with) your troops more.

Also, I'd like the supermarket and highways back. Two useful improvements so that you didn't HAVE to put railroads everywhere (alright, alright, you did it anyways to get your troops there, but still...). However, this goes against the simplify rule... (see below)

One last thing (I have, of course, many, many more, but simply not the time to write them all down, plus I don't think anybody cares ...[sleep]... ): while I kinda like the new espionage system, I do miss the ability to get units to defect. This was a nice aspect (or simply another strategy in the game) and gave you a (different) chance even if you weren't very militaristic.

But I'm just a guy dreaming, let's get real - they won't listen to us (me), especially now that they already started coding. Too bad, I really think the unit-system could have worked very well...

In respect to the GDC convention; what I thought was unsaid but hinted in the slides from Soren Johnson ("Simplify, simplify, simplify", changing the audience) was that the market situation has changed in the past 15 years. When Civ came out, the (gaming) industry looked a LOT different and, most importantly, there was a much higher percentage of 'geeks' playing computers back then (now really everybody has computer/console). So in order to sell a lot of copies, you better make a straightforward game (Diablo, FPS, RTS). Civ is just too complicated (don't want to sound arrogant, but I mean it takes a lot of time to get familiar with the game and learn most of the 'twists') for most players out there. It's not 'cool' to sit in front of the computer (alone) for hours, without (apparently) any action going on. But the newest sport game/ sim / fps with cool graphics and sounds playable over LAN or Internet attracts much more attention (especially among younger kids) and is most likely also easier to develop (there are still arguments about that here, I know, but the fact that it looks like we are never going to see a bug-free Civ3 is evidence enough for me, at the very least they are easier to port to other platforms).
I fear games like Civ will die out on the long run, life cycles of products (not only in the computer industry!) just get shorter and shorter with no room (or at least not as large margins/market share) for these 'hard core' strategy games.

All in all, I love Civ and think Civ3 could have really been "it" WITHOUT the bugs and WITH a working MP-system. Now I fear it will be the last version with that depth of strategy, but who knows ... I definitely hope that I'm totally wrong here. ;)

[akots]

quote:Originally posted by Beam

... A great Powerpoint presentation by Soren about the future of Civ and why. ...

Very interesting. I'm still wondering how they make the AI stronger.

[col]

Woo woo. There is a Civ4 playest group getting assembled. Scripting and modding capapbility are being built in from the ground up.

[Beam]

quote:Originally posted by col

Woo woo. There is a Civ4 playest group getting assembled. Scripting and modding capapbility are being built in from the ground up.

Already? Amazes me cause normally one would have to build the game engine first. Can we help?

[Socrates]

What I want in Civ4 ? Many things.

What I don't want ? A feature called auto-raze ! [cry] I've hated it since my 1st Civ3 game ; I feel it is a stupid feature as for the gameplay and the historical background. Period.

[Stapel]

Colonisation style commodities!

Having read the PPT, that is very unlikely. According to the simplify rule, their should be automated 'spread' of luxuries and strategic resources. With luxuries I agree, but most certainly not with resources.

It would be very cool if a horseman costs 30 shields and 1 horse. IT would also be cool when a temple costs 60 shields and two marble. A tank would cost 100 shields, one steel (you need to make steel out of iron) and 2 oil.

It can be compared with the ore/tools/muskets in colonosation. I always liked the idea of bring your stuff from one place to another. An advanced trading game would be cool.

I do relaise I'd better wait for colonisation II.....

[digger760]

I would like

#Oil not needed to build tanks...but you need oil to move tanks

#Oil units are consumed with mobile units (tanks ect) movement

#Resources are stockpile (like gold is) and are consumed as you build stuff...ie an iron source produces X iron per turn and is put to a stock pile...and building a sword uses up the iron stockpile.

#Stockpiled resouces are automatically spread via trade routes

#trade allows X units of a resouce in a single transaction (or spread over X turns) to the trading partners iron stockpile

#The requirement of oil to move tanks..encourgaes the need to maintain a supply route to your army...cut of a tanks trade route to oil means the tanks can't move ala Stanlingrad :)

#strategic bombing allows attacking of stockpiles...ie to allow bombing of an oil stockpile[devil2]

#Smart AI to handle all of the above

digger760

[Markstar]

Interesting idea, Digger, though I doubt the developers would give it a chance since it makes the game more complex and sadly, they appear to go in the other direction. [mad]

[Sir Eric]

My 2 cents:
- I would like the maps to be a lot more diverse. Why not have a mixture of Panea/Archipealgo, Cont/Pangea/Archipeago etc? I get a bit bored of the same old horizontal V shaped continets so some variety would be nice.
- Civ specific tech trees and civ specific units like in C3C, but more indepth.
- Barbs to be a bit more involved. Make it so that they can create a basic warrior unit/horsemen if they capture a city. Or if the city should be razed then the population would be converted into slave warrior units.
- More Natural disasters like Hurricanes, Tsunami's, Metorites, Lighting strikes that would hit iron resources etc.
- AI that strategises it's attacks a bit more then sending out either a hideously large SoD or sending out 2 or 3 units at a time.
- AI that work as a team and co-ordinate attacks on different fronts at the same time.