Interview with Alex Mantzaris about BTS

[Swiss Pauli]

the timeline is, on february 28th take2 released their financials, including a line saying that a new Civ game release is planned for "2008 fiscal year (which begins Nov. 1 2007)". then just four weeks later, they announced BtS, to be released in July 2007.

The way I read the original news, is that Civ5 is the new game, and BTS isn't a new game as such as it's an expansion to CIV.

But switching back to the balance discussions, does anyone think the below goal is realistic with BTS:

The real solution is again a paradigm change, the problem is not the early rush, but "Bigger is too much Better", a bigger empire should have stagnated research such that it MUST overpower more nimble foes on the basis of production alone.

[scooter]

Is this right? I find I still have to do a tour of my cities every couple of turns in the early game to make sure I'm not about to pop a new citizen that's going to break the happy limit. This is one of my biggest moans about the game.

I take it you never played any of the other Civ games? If not, in those games if you went over the happy limit (health is new in Civ4), your ENTIRE city would go into "Civil Disorder" meaning the entire city behaved like anarchy, it produced nothing, it didn't grow, it didn't give beakers, didn't pay taxes, etc. Plus with Civ4 is if you have unhappy population, just whip it away and problem is solved...

[LKendter]

Combat system. A simple attack/defense value system is replaced by promotions. Sounds great in theory, but if e.g you attack a city with a lot of units, the constant checking on which promoted units gives highest odds burns you out in a matter of minutes. Less units were introduced to streamline combat but this was offset due to the multitude of promotions. Introducing yet more units in BtS won't help in this respect unless the whole combat system gets an overhaul.

This sums up my biggest headache with Civ4. If I get quite builder turns I can play a lot more turns at once. The war turns are the exact point at which I find myself taking a lot of breaks. Even better AI landings come with a tradeoff of watching all the coasts.

[Chacal]

Call me a wuss, but it would still be nice to have an (optional) 1-turn-warning popup that told you that the next turn would see City X pop an unhappy citizen. Two buttons: 'That's fine, I'm just wetting the whips', and 'Take me to the city screen'.

I know, I know; it couldn't do this 100% reliably because you might get or lose access to a food resource during the turn, or something obscure. It would be a help though.

[uberfish]

I like the promotion system, it really adds a lot to the military aspect of the game in terms of decision making. The real reason wars get tedious is there are just too many units running around (I suspect both humans and high level AIs are building a lot more than the original design intent) and the interface for controlling large stacks in vanilla is horrible. Warlords improved this a bit, but it's still too slow to respond.

WW is irritating but actually managing it isn't that bad, it's usually just a matter of whipping a couple of cities earlier than you would have otherwise and pushing the culture slider up a notch when you see too many cities in the red.

I have to agree with TheRat the GP system involves way more micromanagement than it's worth to pop the right GP at the right time. Especially with the city governor assigning unwanted specialists. I would rather have an empire-wide system like they did with the great generals.

[scooter]

Call me a wuss, but it would still be nice to have an (optional) 1-turn-warning popup that told you that the next turn would see City X pop an unhappy citizen. Two buttons: 'That's fine, I'm just wetting the whips', and 'Take me to the city screen'.

I know, I know; it couldn't do this 100% reliably because you might get or lose access to a food resource during the turn, or something obscure. It would be a help though.

You can get this with CFC's HOF mod (I think Ruff_hi's modpack can do this too). Granted, they're not approved for RB events but they don't change the game itself so for personal games (and SG's) they're quite handy.

[Chacal]

Thanks scooter. I'll check those out.

[Gyathaar]

You can get this with CFC's HOF mod (I think Ruff_hi's modpack can do this too). Granted, they're not approved for RB events but they don't change the game itself so for personal games (and SG's) they're quite handy.

Not quite true that HOF mod dont change the game.. it contains bugfixes for all known bugs (that can be fixed from the DLL), and adds some of the Warlords changes to Vanilla code.. so it may play slightly different from normal game.

[Atlas]

I'm trying not to think about all the HAs that have been senselessly thrown against spears etc. Not only that, but ThERat is right; selecting the right unit is a nightmare! I'm going for a lie-down.

You could easily test it in the World builder, make a barbarian city with 5 archers in it. Then give your self 5 units of varying type/promotion then stack and attack.

As for the catapult bombard stack problem I just keep catapults group into 2 groups bombarders and kamikazis.

[Atlas]

Negative:
GP management is MM galore, trying to pop the right GP at the right time is a nightmare, no fun whatsoever. Thinking about which wonder to avoid and to build so that the right GP points are gained...what fun is that? (it's almost a must to build a library, employ 2 scientists to be able to pop philo with a GS)

Combat system. A simple attack/defense value system is replaced by promotions. Sounds great in theory, but if e.g you attack a city with a lot of units, the constant checking on which promoted units gives highest odds burns you out in a matter of minutes. Less units were introduced to streamline combat but this was offset due to the multitude of promotions. Introducing yet more units in BtS won't help in this respect unless the whole combat system gets an overhaul.

The GP system does require some micro, but the alternative is what precisely? The GP system and combat system both put MORE control in the players hands, I think this is almost always a good thing. The GP system for Civ3 sucked- totally a RNG prayer everytime (and using 5 health units to "farm" weakend units in the hopes of getting a great person was a total pain in the a$$). I don't know my stacks don't vary (promotion wise) I will generally have a few anti-horse units to protect the stack, a few anti-melee units to protect the stack, and then a bunch city raider units. I almost always know which unit is going to be the top defender and best city attacker.

Though I do think the promotion system was only a partial success, my understanding is that it was implemented to vary combat and prevent a player from just setting all cities to build cavalry and having all the units be unique (to a degree). I think the promotion system does vary combat, but I still find my self setting a number of cities to alt+ build tanks/artillery.

The combat and great person systems put more control in the player's hands. This control comes at the cost of more player attention. Has the task of MM not always separated difficulty levels in Civ? I mean who needs to pop Philo with a scientist on Prince?