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Civilization IV Q&A

by Maarten Goldstein, Jul 19, 2005 3:54pm PDT

GameSpot has a new Civilization IV preview posted, offering an overview of all the game's new features. New media, including a developer video interview, is up as well.


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6 Threads | 14 Comments
  • #14
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    By: Solar Jetman x
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    "In Civ I and Civ II there was this crazy rule where if you attacked a stack and it lost, the stack was entirely wiped out, and it'd be like, 'Wow, that's crazy.' So we got rid of that in Civ III, but, of course, the natural side effect of that was, 'Well, I'll just build this gigantic stack.'" To counter the killer-stack problem, Firaxis has upped the effect of siege weapons, such as cannons, catapults, and artillery, by modifying them into stack killers. "They have a collateral damage effect, [so] that when you attack a stack, you will also hurt up to six other units in the stack. So you can build stacks if you want, but the correct counter for that will be, 'OK, I'll build a bunch of catapults and cannons, and I'll attack your stack. And all your guys will be hurt, and you'll be in my territory, and you won't be able to heal, and I'll just mop you up.'"

    This is sort of how it works in SMAC, though the effect isn't really strong enough - and if you attack the stack with regular units there's collateral damage too.

    "Basically, it's a build-your-own-government," Briggs said. "We've broken down government aspects into a bunch of subcategories. There are five different categories and five or six possibilities in each category. And you pick one from column A, one from column B, one from column C.

    Again, SMAC. But 5x5 instead of 4x3? Sign me up! Of course, the libertarian in me laughs at this:

    You can have a communist government that has freedom of the press

    but that sort of thing is a good sacrifice of realism for gameplay.

    For Civ IV, Firaxis went ahead and designed a multiplayer game first, which has paid off dividends for the single-player game. "We got all the rules set using the multiplayer engine, and then by using that, we learned what players would do. And that helped us write the AI," Briggs said.

    oh hello

    Basically, the pit boss will let you play a game of Civ online like normal. However, when someone has to leave (and usually someone has to leave over the course of a 10-hour game of Civ), the pit boss will save the state of the game. Then you can log in every now and then to see if your turn has come up. If it does, you can make your moves and save the progress to the server for the next player. This will keep a multiplayer game going, sort of like play-by-email. And when everyone is back online at the same time, you can resume the game at full speed.

    OH HELLO
    Jul 20, 2005 7:54am PDT