the "limited" amount of special recourses you get (ex iron) is so awesome, will add a whole new dynamic where you'll fight over a tile with iron just because it allows you to make two new iron units or whatever. so cool beats that whole "i have 1 iron, now i don't care" thing...
also love the maintenance costs changing, to be more like the ones in alpha centauri. alpha centauri is the perfect civ imo, so anything they do in that direction is fantastic
Damn, I wish they incorporated more things from AC. Like the blind tech option (you can't choose what you tech to), split tech trees (social sciences, military science etc.) and generally more advanced tt, a bit like in Free Orion:
That's a shot of just a very small portion of the tree, it is VAST (spanning multiple screens over several tabs). See all this arrows? They show which tech leads to/is required by what. There's a huge web of those.
The second half of this year is really awesome. Starcraft 2. Civ 5. WoW:Cataclysm. That new game from Stardock (Elemental) looks really promising as well.
How long has the development cycle been now? About three years?
JS: We started at the very beginning in the summer of 2007. That was back when it was just myself and our lead artist Dorian [Newcomb]. It was a very small team at the time.
We were making big design decisions and exploring the rough art style for the terrain in particular. It was a little while later until we had a full team. It's 52 people now.
Dustin Browder, the lead designer of StarCraft II, told me they instituted the rule, "Every time we add a unit, we take a unit out," to keep the complexity from ballooning relative to StarCraft I. With all your new features, do you have that kind of balance in mind?
JS: Yeah. We felt comfortable with the level of complexity that Civ IV had, and we didn't want to change that dramatically, either more or less. It's been one of our goals to kind of keep it at the same level. Obviously, not all the features are going to be the same, but we wanted it to be the same amount of depth. We didn't have the literal "one for one" rule, but that's the idea.
Gee wiz, I hope we can see cities retaining their old historical cores (like old European and Asian cities with their fortresses and legacy buildings), so we'd see more realistic cities for really old towns.
You know what would be amazing if Civ 5 brought in the ultra large scale battle mechanics of the Total War series. I loved Total War because of that but when it came to things like cultural and economic development it was shallow. And that's what I loved about Civ of course but I always thought the battle system of Civ was weak. If only these two things came together it was be a superior strategy game to even sc2 imo.
On August 14 2010 14:41 Warrior Madness wrote: You know what would be amazing if Civ 5 brought in the ultra large scale battle mechanics of the Total War series. I loved Total War because of that but when it came to things like cultural and economic development it was shallow. And that's what I loved about Civ of course but I always thought the battle system of Civ was weak. If only these two things came together it was be a superior strategy game to even sc2 imo.
I don't think so.
The reason the Total War series's strategic mechanics were more simplified than those of Civilization was because the player is expected to be spending a lot of time in battles. In Civ, a battle takes maybe 10 seconds, if it's a large stack of units.
In TW, battles can take 30+ minutes to execute. They require lots of intricate strategies: picking the right terrain to fight on, keeping units in formation, etc. By the time you've finished the fight, you'll have forgotten what most of your civilization was busy doing. It'd be like starting from a save game of Civ every time you have a fight.
And of course, in a Civ game, there are a lot more battles. There are also a lot of times when there are no battles, when you're just expanding into new territory.
In short, if you had Civ mated to Total War, you'd have a game that took forever to play, with ultimately less enjoyment overall. There is such a thing as having too much game, and what you're describing would be it.
On August 14 2010 14:41 Warrior Madness wrote: You know what would be amazing if Civ 5 brought in the ultra large scale battle mechanics of the Total War series. I loved Total War because of that but when it came to things like cultural and economic development it was shallow. And that's what I loved about Civ of course but I always thought the battle system of Civ was weak. If only these two things came together it was be a superior strategy game to even sc2 imo.
I don't think so.
The reason the Total War series's strategic mechanics were more simplified than those of Civilization was because the player is expected to be spending a lot of time in battles. In Civ, a battle takes maybe 10 seconds, if it's a large stack of units.
In TW, battles can take 30+ minutes to execute. They require lots of intricate strategies: picking the right terrain to fight on, keeping units in formation, etc. By the time you've finished the fight, you'll have forgotten what most of your civilization was busy doing. It'd be like starting from a save game of Civ every time you have a fight.
And of course, in a Civ game, there are a lot more battles. There are also a lot of times when there are no battles, when you're just expanding into new territory.
Yeah exactly!!! The game would be so deep and rich and long that it would be the most epic game EVER. If they added multiplayer functionality to it it would be head explodingly orgasmic.
I don't think game length is a factor nowadays. How many WoW players rack up 20 hours of play time a week? Probably a lot. I played 1000+ SC2 games during the beta, and I got the beta around patch 16. I didn't play BW on ICCUP at all. I'm just saying that when a game is THAT engrossing then time ceases to matter.
I think I'm more excited about that happening, even though it's probably just a little fantasy of mine that will never happen, then I was of sc2 coming out. lol.
On August 14 2010 14:41 Warrior Madness wrote: You know what would be amazing if Civ 5 brought in the ultra large scale battle mechanics of the Total War series. I loved Total War because of that but when it came to things like cultural and economic development it was shallow. And that's what I loved about Civ of course but I always thought the battle system of Civ was weak. If only these two things came together it was be a superior strategy game to even sc2 imo.
I don't think so.
The reason the Total War series's strategic mechanics were more simplified than those of Civilization was because the player is expected to be spending a lot of time in battles. In Civ, a battle takes maybe 10 seconds, if it's a large stack of units.
In TW, battles can take 30+ minutes to execute. They require lots of intricate strategies: picking the right terrain to fight on, keeping units in formation, etc. By the time you've finished the fight, you'll have forgotten what most of your civilization was busy doing. It'd be like starting from a save game of Civ every time you have a fight.
And of course, in a Civ game, there are a lot more battles. There are also a lot of times when there are no battles, when you're just expanding into new territory.
Yeah exactly!!! The game would be so deep and rich and long that it would be the most epic game EVER. If they added multiplayer functionality to it it would be head explodingly orgasmic.
I don't think game length is a factor nowadays. How many WoW players rack up 20 hours of play time a week? Probably a lot. I played 1000+ SC2 games during the beta, and I got the beta around patch 16. I didn't play BW on ICCUP at all. I'm just saying that when a game is THAT engrossing then time ceases to matter.
I think I'm more excited about that happening, even though it's probably just a little fantasy of mine that will never happen, then I was of sc2 coming out. lol.
It's not just about the game being longer; it's about the focus of the game. A human only has so much brain. Both Civilization and TW are full games; they use up all of this. Adding more stuff to either one just makes the game overwhelming. That's why the Civ developers inherently understood Browders reasoning on exchanging units rather than adding more: because more isn't better.
There would be long periods where you're not actively playing the TW-style RTS. If you don't play it for long enough, you will not be as good at it. Likewise, when war is declared, there will be long periods where you are spending lots of time in combat. After every battle, you will have forgotten what your civilization looked like, so you'll have to reacquaint yourself with it.
It's just too much game for one game.
And multiplayer wouldn't work in TW at all. Even if everyone is a human, are you really going to want sit there for 30+ minutes doing nothing while two other people are playing out a battle?
I have to agree. While I have to say, I do hope the battle systems are more intricate in Civ 5 (They already said no stacking and ranged units can actually attack from range, so you actually will have large battlefield) I would never want to spend 6 hours with just one battle in Civ when I know that I can literally have 100s of instances of combat in one game. The difference between time I spend in Civ and in WoW is the social aspect. I can leave and come back and the same friends may or may not be around but thats fine for an RPG. If I do a multiplayer Civ game that has TW battle, I can guarantee the game won't make it to the Medieval stage because it would pretty much require everyone to have 2 days free to play straight on.
Latest system requirements show recommended settings as a quad core. WTF?
Minimum Requirements
Operating System: Windows® XP SP3/ Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7 Processor: Dual Core CPU Memory: 2GB RAM Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation Video: 256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card DirectX®: DirectX® version 9.0c
Recommended Requirements
Operating System: Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7 Processor: 1.8 GHz Quad Core CPU Memory: 4 GB RAM Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation Video: 512 MB ATI 4800 series or better, 512 MB nVidia 9800 series or better Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card DirectX®: DirectX® version 11
I've got the quad core, but I run an 8800, not a 9800 Used to run SLI 8800s which probably would have been fine, but one of them died. Should still be able to roll out on medium, I hope.