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All along I've said that I just wanted to see gameplay videos before I made up my mind on the game. Well, this was a "pre-alpha" which I think is just their way of saying that the code is a couple of months old compared to what they are working on currently. Still, it looked SOOOOOOO good in DX11, my favorite tile being a water hex with fish which showed a school of fish swimming around in seemingly random patterns with amazing detail for one little hex.
The leader screens are very cool, and the attention to detail in their facial expressions and use of ancient languages is really a perfect fit. Oda for example actually speaks an old dialect of Japanese that is true to the times he lived in. Our demo also ended by showing off how expressive the different leaders are in their own way -- after declaring war on Oda, they tried to ask for peace and he basically clenched his jaw and looked away like "I can't even look at you right now, you idiot" before turning back and angrily denying your request.
There was a little time at the end, so I asked two questions but neither really got answered. I wanted to know if they had any idea on multiplayer yet (especially if it would still include PitBoss) and he said just expect it to be a lot like Civ 4, and that they couldn't confirm anything this early in the development cycle. Also I asked if other victory conditions would be changed to be like the Civ:Rev ones (since the PR demo guy specifically mentioned the Domination Victory changed to win by taking all enemy capitals), and he basically said there were still multiple victory conditions, but didn't really comment on whether they would work like the Civ 4 ones or closer to Civ:Rev. I didn't seriously expect either to be answered, but those are the two things I'm most interested in. I want to play Civ 5 PitBoss with Shackers since the current one has gotten me totally hooked on that, and I really like the change in Domination from Civ 4's annoying version.
The UI was very minimal, with shit like the delete button on your settler hidden under a "More Options" button so you don't accidentally hit it. I loved the way they handle new research and new production needed, just little bubbles instead of jumping to a city and filling up your screen and breaking the game, you can just click them whenever you want and do it. Any major event involving one of your units also gives you a bubble in the corner of the UI which you can scroll to and click, and being able to click on and view EVERY event rather than watching text fly by is an awesome and long overdue feature.
Apparently the newbie stuff is pretty much automated stuff that an experienced player would never see: they turned off fog of war and scrolled across the map, showing off different terrain features in the new engine, and eventually an advisor came up explaining how settlers worked and that it should found a city since the settler had been idle for awhile.
My demo didn't show any city management, I assume that's still being hammered out. They did show a city being attacked, and it was cool watching it defend itself (sort of shooting out arrows and stuff at the attacker). However, they stopped short of taking a city even though they could have, so I assume that taking control of other cities was probably not completely implemented in this build.
In my demo, the PR guy specifically mentioned that the lead designer is constantly playing Panzer General and is a huge fan of that series. He was also apparently big in the Civ 4 modding scene. I can see elements of both in what we saw, as the combat was obviously more tactical. The new combat options just seem like they will actually make the military route a game of who plays more tactically rather than who has the most troops and production.
They showed two units fighting across a river with no apparent upgrades, and the battle actually ended with each unit taking losses (damage to units is still shown with individual guys dying, but instead of 2-3 guys there are formations of 10 or so now), but neither side actually got completely wiped out. The PR dude said that, in general, more evenly matched combats lead to this sort of outcome so that your units (which you'll have fewer of now, obv) have a better chance of surviving for long periods of time if you take care of them.
I would be shocked if range combat was always 2 hexes (no more squares lol, I keep saying that myself), since stuff like Modern Artillery should be at least 3-4 IMO.
The PR demo guy sort of obliquely mentioned units from older tech periods still being useful when they showed a Battle of Thermopylae type setup with a fortfied Spearman guarding a mountain pass with the support of an adjacent Archer on a hill. They didn't have any units outside of the ancient era in the demo, but he specifically talked about less advanced units still being useful with the proper use of tactics and terrain. So yeah, I imagine it will still work the way it always does, even if it doesn't make the most real world sense at times.
I've been waiting to see it in motion to decide for myself, and it just looks perfect... they were showing the "European" terrain tileset, but there are at least African and American themed ones also.
Overall, this is an instant pre-order / day 1 purchase for me, and it should easily be the best Civilization game yet!
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