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Civilization IV Discussed As GDC Slides Released
Thanks to Evil Avatar for pointing to a CivFanatics news post discussing new information about Civilization IV from this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Jose, recently released online as a PowerPoint slideshow. Apparently, the in-development Firaxis PC strategy sequel, not yet officially revealed, features "Continuous, immersive 3D world (what-you-see-is-what-you-get)... Drop unfun legacy (pollution, rioting, maintenance, corruption/waste)... New killer features (religion, civics)... RPG elements (unit upgrades/experience)... Coding from scratch (multiplayer, mod-friendly)", with the important note from lead designer Soren Johnson: "Can still take over the world!" There are also a host of other GDC slides/lecture notes now available on the official site, including "Winning the Race Against Pirates And Crackers: Next Generation Copy Protection" by Erik Simon (PDF), and "Managing the Hydra: Successfully Running Multiple Projects in a Videogame Studio" by Dr. Greg Zeschuk of BioWare (DOC, PPT including some fascinating graphs.)
No pollution, rioting, maintenance or corruption/waste? If they're ditching classic elements like those they'd damn well better be ditching the crappy new "resource" system they came up with for Civ III. I don't want to hunt the world for a "silkworm square" before the game lets me build a musketeer, or whatever the hell it tried to make me do.
Resources were the best idea the Civ series has come up with in a long time. All of a sudden instead of invading neighbors to invade boredom, you have real reasons pusing you - they have resources you need.
And just like in real life, if your empire was blessed with an abundance of resources, you become powerful. If there are any problems with the resource system and its fundamental lack of "fairness", its that it made the game that much more an approximation of the lack of fairness that real nations encounter.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri fits all of those requirements... sure, it is older than Civ 3, but in my opinion it is vastly superior.
Yeah, I have both, and I like SMAC a lot better than Civ3 too. Its just frustrating that I was expecting Civ3 to be well actually better than SMAC. (How hard would it have been for them to use the SMAC engine for CIV3?) I'd expect Civ4 to be better still. I'm not holding my breath.
I also MOO3. After being burnt on both the MOO and the CIV games, I haven't bought any new game of that catagory.
I too liked Alpha Centauri more than Civ3. I think the reason that Civ3 might have been "better" for some was that it was easier to connect with and a little more accessible to your average Joe.
In Alpha Centauri you would research stuff like "Pre-Sentient Algorithms". Well, WTF does THAT do? Only after playing the game a few times do you understand what it does, what it leads to, and why you should research it. In Civ 3 on the other hand you had stuff like "Horseback Riding". You instantly have an idea of what this does because you already know what a horse is.
With that said I hope that the nations in Civ 4 have thier own personality and style like the factions in Alpha Centauri. Each one had thier own bonuses and flaws for it. CEO Morgan was the corporate guy. The faction for getting money, but was limited to really small cities early on. There was also the tech-head, the hippy, the religious zealot, etc each playing out to thier style. I really missed this kind of stuff in Civ 3.
Erik Simon is one of the guys behind one of my favourite Atari ST games, Dragonflight. It's copy protection was so good that it's one of the few games that I cannot seem to locate on an abandonwarez site.
Erik brings up a surprisingly relevant point - IMHO, much more relevant than some news about CIV4. Copy protection seems to be something that most companies just don't care about. Games get cracked in no time - and fear of litigation seems to do nothing to deter crackers. I have a feeling that Erik's point about time may be right - the games industry, as a whole, would do a lot better if they'd manage to keep the games from being cracked in the first couple of weeks.
BTW, IIRC, some of Thalion were active members of the demo scene, and had some connections to the other 'scene'.
Agreed. I suddenly had to start wars because I needed saltpeter or horses, or I had to have some spice so I could trade for iron. It gives wars purpose.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
> I think the beauty of all the Civ games is the realism that the pollution, rioting, anarchy, etc. presents.
Realism? Posh. They're game elements with realistic names. Reality is a LOT more complex than that. First off, unless you literally just sit back and do NOTHING, your civilization can never fragment, it's all yours to micromanage as you see fit. There is never open revolt in Civ, just cities you can lose through gross negligence. Compare to the real world, where despite your best efforts -- or perhaps BECAUSE of them, you have splinter groups, seccessionists, autonomous regions, etc etc etc. Civ is simply a very fun abstract game with an empire-building "skin".