Civilization 5 Announced

[dsplaisted]

Interesting tidbit from Sid Meier's PDC presentation:

Players would also complain about losing two 2-to-1 battles back to back, so Civilization games now take into account past battles

So now if you lose a battle at 50% odds, you are more likely to win the next 50% battle?

[Krill]

Once that gets figured out it is going to get massively abused. Take a 50/50 where the outcome doesn't matter, figure out which way the game is leaning, and then adjust your tactics to fit. It will destroy the balance in warfare. Uber bad idea from Sid there IMO.

[Sullla]

The example he was using was from Civ: Revolutions, where certain civs have an ability where they automatically win all battles if the odds are high enough (like 5:1 or something like that). I actually don't think this example has anything to do with the development of Civ5. Could be wrong of course.

Most of Sid's game development advice is very good, as one would expect. That article is worth a read.

[Krill]

The example he was using was from Civ: Revolutions, where certain civs have an ability where they automatically win all battles if the odds are high enough (like 5:1 or something like that). I actually don't think this example has anything to do with the development of Civ5. Could be wrong of course.

Most of Sid's game development advice is very good, as one would expect. That article is worth a read.

ooh, that would a nice ability I like that.

[Cyneheard]

According to CFC, here's how the Civ Rev combat model works:

Battles where the odds are 7 to 1 or greater are automatically won, reducing the unrealistic scenarios where lone units make miraculous successes, while still providing for the element of luck and chance.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civrev/info

So it's not for a single leader, it's a game-design decision. Having not played CivRev, I'd assume this is implemented like the free barb wins on Prince and lower: down to just your last hit. For the Aztec, who automatically heal upon victory, it doesn't matter.

I don't like the idea of mean-reversion in combat odds. Each battle should be a separate roll of the die; you can't legislate out bad streaks properly. Play the hand you're dealt.

Now, if they created a Luckless option (the unit with higher power wins with the expected value of their hit points), that would be different, and interesting. Might have to have roll ties for true 50-50 battles, or have both units die, or the defender wins those battles with 1HP.

[LKendter]

I am in wait and see mode. My gut feeling is I won't have the hardware to handle it. My laptop is from 2005, and desktop from 2004.

With the current trashed economy I don't see my computers being upgraded to handle the game.

In addition, I know I need time to recover from Civ burnout. Been ages since I even read this forum.

[Yazilliclick]

hmm somehow missed this before, CFC is keeping a nice list of changes at:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355156

As well as links to articles where stuff is confirmed.

I don't know if somebody mentioned it in this thread yet but the following was interesting to me:

nother big change is the combat system. Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle, which means that civs can spend much more resources on maintaining their armies as opposed to cranking out new units. The combat that we saw took place completely outside of a city, and positioning and terrain are much more important. "In the past, combat revolved around stacks [of units], which our fans affectionately call 'stacks of doom,'" Shirk said. "We wanted to pull combat out of the cities, and make every unit important." No two units can occupy the same tile, even friendly ones, so positioning on the battlefield becomes very important. Ranged units, like archers, are used to soften up the front lines from up to two hexes away, but they are vulnerable to attacks from melee units. The result is an emphasis on battlefield tactics instead of most Civ games which favored the civ that was able to crank out the most units.

The resource system supports that concept. In Civ3 and 4, once your civilization gained access to Iron, each of your cities could pump out swordsmen and there was no limit to how many you could make. In CivV, gaining access to one source of Iron allows you to make one swordsman and that's it. You can't make another swordsman unit unless that one died or you gained access to another Iron source.

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh goodness. The combat system is starting to sound more and more like Advance Wars. I would rather that CiV wars not degenerate into slowly advancing lines of ranged units protected by walls of cheap cannon fodder up front.

[scooter]

Oh goodness. The combat system is starting to sound more and more like Advance Wars. I would rather that CiV wars not degenerate into slowly advancing lines of ranged units protected by walls of cheap cannon fodder up front.

I was thinking the same thing. It is way too easy to manipulate that kind of warfare...

[mostly_harmless]

Hmmm, so now it would be possible to prevent settlers from reaching a certain spot with just a few units, right? That is, if there are still settlers in this game.

mh