FYI - New Expansion Info

[darrelljs]

[Atlas]

where did that screenshot come from?

And any chance of scaling it down?

Edit: Nevermind I found where it came from (here), I think that is a settled great Artist.

[sooooo]

Yeah there are more examples of random events in that article too. The image gallery is here. Looks like many give the opportunity to pay gold for a benefit, so it will probably be wise to keep gold in the treasury. Probably there is not the opportunity to sell something to get the gold before you can accept the offer. Most of the benefits seem to be a bargain for the gold you pay.

[BWardly]

I'd have to play to see, but my initial inclinations after reading today's IGN article on various features:
- Corporations: love it
- Espionage: I don't like spending commerce on that. Is that whole thing necessary?
- Colonies - Turning THAT off.
- Apostolic Palace: As long as it is extremely difficult/unlikely to get a diplomatic victory from this, I like it.
- Random Events: Sounds like you have to have lots of gold sitting around at all times just in case you get to chance to, say, buy a great person for cheap, or get a diplomatic relations boost or something. It is interesting, but I suspect I'll end up playing with this off most of the time.

But I like all the new civs and units and changes to air combat and whatnot...and considering that I don't have warlords, this purchase seems more than worth it even if I don't use a lot of the wackier new features.

[Imhotep]

Nice! And smart choice to spend more on the GPU than the CPU if you're going to be primarily gaming.

2.13ghz means you have a 6400 or 6420, right? Either way, overclock that beast. With even decent aftermarket cooling, you should blow past 3.0ghz.

Aside from that - how about playing some turns of RBW2? We could use some folks with high-end PCs.

@Sooooo - I agree about the Native Americans being difficult to attack - I forsee players deliberately avoiding attacking them early more than any other civ. I also think Firaxis will have to tune down that Hippodrome. Otherwise the Babylonians will be THE civ for always war games.

As for Christ the Redeemer statue, doesn't it just allow easy civic swaps? Although it does basically give someone the Spiritual trait, to me it seems hardly essential for late-game waring....what am I missing?

@sunrise089:

As for overclocking I'm not going to do this. It's losing the warranty, and I don't want that with a $ 1400 machine...

I thought about playing RBW2 - but I have no Better AI mod installed...

Imhotep

[sooooo]

Well I was going to say that the espionage looks pretty cool. While at first I thought another slider was a bit weird, I realised that's just an easier way of doing what we were doing with spies before: turning both sliders to zero, saving up money, and spending on spy missions. The slider does exactly this in a sleeker way and without having to change the gold slider as many times. From the screenshots it looks to work by converting commerce into espionage points, which you spend on what/who you want. Obviously the range of espionage options have expanded a lot - I think spending gold to see what other civs are researching or where their units are will be useful.

Apostolic palace does not look good to me. I don't like my control being taken away from me, like being forced to open borders with everyone. Also it still gives power from population, so early in the game this means less slavery (yuck!) and more early wars to take cities. Though I appreciate giving more influence to religion.

Random events look ... pretty cool I guess.

Colonies I hope are made optional - they look suspiciously like vassals. Main problem in warlords is that the interface to "control" a team member, PA member or vassal is terrible. So I hope this is improved.

Corporations, err I'm not sure. Will have to wait to play with them.

[uberfish]

"The Aluminum Co can only be founded in a city that has access to coal..."

[scooter]

Since everyone else is making a list I'll make my own right now:

Corporations: I think I like it, I just don't like the idea of being able to just magically get uranium, oil, or aluminum, I like the randomness of when oil pops and you notice that you don't have it, but your neighbor who hates you has one source right on your border... Other than that, I like it.

Espionage- Great idea, and from the 4 page IGN preview it looks like its implemented pretty well... the only thing I wonder about is does the AI know how to use it too... if they can, its a great addition

Colonies- if you read the IGN preview, in BTS they are adding additional upkeep costs for cities that are not on the same continent as your capital, so it costs more to colonize a terra map for example. So what happens is you can make those cities a colony, which assigns it a new civilization and leader, and makes it your vassal (on friendly relations). Sounds like a bad idea to me, I didn't mind Vassal states in Warlords, but it just had too many irritating loopholes for me, so I'll probably turn this off

Apostolic Palace- echoing what BWardly said, as long as you can't win diplomatically easily its a good idea. There was an interview with Alex and he said that it is theoretically possible to do it, but it's never been done, so that's a good sign.

Random Events- most likely turning that off (after I play a few games w/ it to make sure). I just hate winning a game (not just civ, any sort of game) and feeling like it was luck that won it and not something I did... Popping resources is bad enough, this takes it too far IMO, but I'll wait and see.

Overall I think I'm more excited than skeptical at this point, but we'll just have to wait and see when it comes out, I'll probably buy it either when the reviews are good, or when the first patch comes out...

[Kylearan]

Hi,

While at first I thought another slider was a bit weird, I realised that's just an easier way of doing what we were doing with spies before: turning both sliders to zero, saving up money, and spending on spy missions. [...] From the screenshots it looks to work by converting commerce into espionage points, which you spend on what/who you want.

I like this system, and it very much reminds me of how espionage works in MoO. I wonder if Sirian had his hand in this design?

Edit: Nevermind, that was written a bit hasty before looking at the actual screenshots and realizing that you still need to build spies and send them to their destination, which in my opinion is a bit too much micromanagement than needed (-> MoO).

-Kylearan

[scooter]

Edit: Nevermind, that was written a bit hasty before looking at the actual screenshots and realizing that you still need to build spies and send them to their destination, which in my opinion is a bit too much micromanagement than needed (-> MoO).

If I understood it right, most of the new stuff you actually don't need to send out spies (like the gradual increase of intelligence like being able to view their demographics, what they're researching, etc) to get that info.