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Ask The Civ IV Dev Team
On Monday, we asked you for questions for industry legend Sid Meier. Today, we're asking for question to put to the folks behind the technology of Civilization IV. Besides the actual coding and development that went into the game itself, the team has made Civilization IV infinitely moddable through technologies such as XML, Python, and a fully developed SDK. Led by lead designer Soren Johnson, the team will answer your questions about the creation of the fourth chapter in one of the most influential game series out there. So, fire away with your questions. One per comment, please, and keep them topical. We'll pass the ten best questions to Johnson and the team, and the answers will be posted as soon as we have them in our hands.
If so, how?
As a player, I almost always find the key to really taking control of a game is to react well to the overall shape of things. Nuances with the terrain, the way cities are arranged in respect to each other, grabbing some resources at the expense of others -- this all provides opportunities for the human player that I wouldn't think an AI could easily pick up on. How can you get the AI to "consider the map", so to speak, rather than simply reacting to the stimulus around it and carrying out a set of predetermined functions (which, at least in my estimation, is the limitation that prevents it from competing fairly at high difficulty levels in the previous Civ games).
Or does the AI find its effectiveness in, say, it's ability to reexamine every city every turn? Or will it, you know, just continue to cheat to compete at advanced levels?
Thanks!
PS: My wife's traveling on business most weekends over the next couple of months. If you wanted to, you know, mail me an advanced copy... Just tossing that out there.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Will there be a Mac version and will it be released at the same time as the Windows version?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Is there any chance we'll get to see some of the Civ titles moved to portables? I think the game would play wonderfully on the DS.
Will the game ship with a Linux installer? If not, will an installer be made available?
Will the game support Internet as well as LAN play? How extensive is the multiplayer going to be (if any)?
By making such a good game, do you think you are culpable of the effects of the game _at all_ and are you thinking about putting in counter measures to allow people to better set limits for themselves within the game?
Will there be any limitations on the moddablity of the units in the game? This ranges from the textures (the way they look), the abilities (can new ones be added), and stats (A/D/B). Or to rephrase the question, what do you expect modders will look forward to the most when it comes to modding the units in the game?
I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so...you're stuck with this.
...since I'll probably be too busy playing it once it comes out... Can I have my life back?
In regards to adding units with custom/new graphics to the game..
In civ2 adding units was very simple. Cut/Paste an image, add a line to a single text file. In civ3 this was a serious PITA, we needed to use external software to render in hundreads of animation frames, hope things were on scale and lined up correctly, then edit no less than three config files just to add a single unit. Can you give me, any hope that adding custom graphics for a unit to civ4 will be easier in the vein of civ2 and less like the crosspatched swamp that was civ3?
-GenTimJS
My question is, do the developers suffer from the same Civilization Disease as the players? What I mean is telling yourself, "Just one more turn..." and the next thing you know, the sun is out again, the dog's starved to death, and your cloth is back in fashion again. I really hope not because I can't wait that long for Civ IV.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
With Civilization IV being so flexible and moddable, do you see a Civilization V in the future? Or do you see IV becoming a platform where new content become expansion pack, just like The Sims franchise?
Growing up, playing games with the family meant getting out classic boardgames like Monopoly, Risk, etc. The Civilization games seem like a prime candidate for breaking into the family-game-playing field. What, if any, steps has your team taken to bring your game(s) to the level of "game night with the kids?" What technologies, such as display and control, need to be developed before such an environment is realized?
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
How much will CiV4 use political shifts in countries as a cyclical change in approaches (e.g. new democratic leader with a different political alignment will form different alliances).
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It seems like every sequel that comes out Sid is less and less involved in the product. How much is Sid involved in 4? Does he help code? Help design? Help produce? Or stamp his name on the finished product?
No bad vibes, meant to the Gaming God... just curious how involved he is with the 5th (counting "Alpha Centauri") cantation of his classic...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
What was done wrong or poorly in Civilization and its numerous sequels and expansion packs that is being addressed now and provide a compelling reason to purchase Civilization 4?
behold
In Civ III there were unmanageable time delays in between each turn at the mid-late stages of the game. If you played on a large or huge world, it could take five minutes or more for the AI to complete its turn. And you couldnt just go and eat a sandwitch, because there would be prompts along the way for diplomacy and such that you had to be ready to click on. Is this new version of Civilization going to run faster, even on non top of the line computers?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Or is it suited for single platform (Win OS) only?
Multiplatform development has been wildly successful for Blizzard, it would profit Civ IV.
AZspot
Civ3 was wonderfully customisable as long as you were sticking with a civ-type game, but even basic reaching beyond this ran into trouble, e.g. I found no way to get the map generator to have different weighting of tile types, or extend the number of varieties beyond the land/sea split. Have all these kind of limitations been removed? How possible is a total conversion? What about conversions to a different game type?
I am trolling
Will modders be able to create and modify the 3D models used in Civ4? If not, the modding will be somewhat limited (although the Python scripting and XML based configuration will be great). As I understand it, there are no open-source or free tools for modding the NIF 3D models used by the new version of Gamebryo, which Civ4 is using. With closed-source 3D models, no creating your own units or modding the look of existing ones. Maybe there's a tool in the SDK? What's in that SDK anyway?
Imagine a small country becoming a trading / banking power, sort of like the Dutch (minus the whole tulip fiasco), or Switzerland, countries that can buy their immunity and economically dominate other countries.
Just a thought...
As a long time Civ player, I would have to say that I really didn't understand why it moved to 3D graphics. The 3D rendered sprites weren't really comparable to the 2d artwork, and it didn't really feel like a needed addition. Will having the engine be entirely 3D actually add to the gameplay in any way, other than have objects occlude one another?
When I say 'add to the gameplay' I mean, add to the game experience in a way 2D sprites couldn't. For example: Physics, multipls views, wind, etc.. (I have only really seen the 3D globe, and like the idea)
As a 3D game developer, I have seen so many of my favorite games rehashed into 3D versions just because the developers thought that a 2D sprite-based game cannot make it in this market, and that annoys me. From Pirates! to Monkey Island, it seems developers would rather make a 3D game without any real need for 3D art or gameplay elements. Do you feel this pressure, or do you feel that a 3D game is inherently better because it has a new dimention? (Even if it still has the same locked off camera angle and usually poorer quality art assets)
My question: I have recently adopted Pastafarian and would like to know if Civ 4 will support it ?
Which user-requested features are you implementing?
One of the things I've wanted most is the ability to name geographical features (Commander Taco Mountain, The River Sid, etc.). This is helpful both aesthetically and practically. Any chance of such an improvement in Civ IV?
I hope that rivers make more sense generally -- i.e., movement by river should be faster than overland. The model in Civ III leads to explorers going from mountaintop to mountaintop, which is not at all historically accurate.
Oh, also -- any chance you'd be willing to pay for a new computer for me, so I can actually run the game?
And what would you do differently if you could go back and reverse that decision?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
As the Dev Team, how do you feel working with Sid? Did you play his games before you became a game developer? If so, do you feel intimidated working with an icon of the industry? Were you part of Sid's original team? If so, how has project management changed throughout the years on his projects?
Is there any plan for a short form game? It would be nice if i could sit down and finish an entire game in 1-2 hours instead of many many hours.
As many, I started with civ1, which was a nice game, for its time. I simply adored civ2, which I have played over and over again, and it continues - even today - to be a game I (re)play now and then. This may seem as no big deal, until one realises I have *never* felt an urge to repeatedly play a game several times; mostly I play it once through, and I'm rather bored by it, be it an RPG, a first-person-shooter, or a strategic oriented game - which usually I like the most and on average I play 3-4 times. After a while, *no* game can hold my interest I've noticed, the notable exeption being civ2.
Alas...when civ3 came out, it didn't do it for me. Despite the poor graphics compared to civ3, I still prefer civ2. It's not easy to put the finger on the the reason why, but I suspect it's because civ3 has become a bit *too* complex. It's all very nice to have borders of influence, and insurgents in cities, and elaborate negotiation...but, somehow, I find civ2 is just easier and more fun to play. Sometimes, one just wants to 'go for it', without all the extra complexity. Now, will it be possible to play Civ4 in a 'easy' mode, which makes it more simple and user-friendly according to the lines (and rules) of civ2? I really think such a 'easy' setting would be greatly appreciated by those who want less complexity, and more simple, user-friendly gameplay.
Alternatively, will you place the civ2 game (and engine) under the GPL or similar licence, so people might freely hack and expand on that?
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
After the Ubisoft PR department pretending to be the dev team:
;)
"Is this really the developer team answering these questions?"
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
On my Linux box, I have the Firaxis game 'Alpha Centauri', ported by Loki Games. (As far as I know, Alpha Centauri is the only Firaxis game that runs on any non-Microsoft platform.) While any game could eventually be ported to any platform, choosing to use traditional sockets for networks and OpenGL for graphics and so on will make such action significantly smoother, and I believe is a strong consideration in choosing games for the Linux porting houses. Is there any thought going into portable design, any plan to release on any operating system other than Windows, and in particular, any plan - or thought of - releasing on Linux?
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
With the extreme modability will we be able to get classic modes of play?
for example will I be able to play Civ 1,2 or 3, and not just their rules, but their units, tech trees and civilipedia?
Will this be provided or will it (if possible) have to be user add-ons?
If they are user add-ons will the team help a serious community effort to help them get the propper algorythems for combat resolution and what not (so our precious bomber can still be killed by the phalax that walks away undamaged)?
Is this one question? I think it counts as such.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
How, in constrast to how Masters of Orion 3, will the Civ team be addressing macro and micro management aspects of the game? RTS games are forced to place heavy consideration into managing in real time units and control and the scope of an RTS prevents a snowball effect. Turned based games become burdened by logistical considerations as a result of not having that same focus on micromanagment. Managing 55 workers in Civ3 along with 35 cities becomes a logistical nightmare when governor AI doesn't learn from your play style. Directing 22 to build 13 fortresses across a continent while running rail lines to each with production queues rallied to those location but only to a max of 25 units per fortress ares and having to manually intercept an invading force resultsed in a single turn while playing Civ3 that took 2 weeks to process (thats 2 weeks of play time. It actually took about 2 months to move to the next turn.) Additionally having a stack of 75 units attack a city is a rather dull event, even worse when the computer attacks.
Ken's Rule of Gaming: Complexity in feature should be inversly proportional to the amount of player control.
The more complex a process is in real life, the less direct control a person has, this is what MOO3 tried to resolve.
MOO3 was a real shock to many players but once you learned to let go of micromanagment the game becomes rather plesant and suprising. A good contrast is what Sim City is To Civilization as Civilization is to M003.
Which Direction is Civ4 taking?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
And Civ I still runs on through classic! Try http://mac.the-underdogs.org/ for a copy.
Come on it's a fun game, but if you need to get it intravenously, maybe you should seek help.
What tools do the developers use themselves, and what tools do they envision the mod community using to adapt Civ IV?
I like the idea of an AI reacting to the subtleties of the map.
But what I would like to see is an AI that reacts to how its opponent is playing.
For example, I would like an AI that evaluates how aggressive a player is. If a player is constantly attacking the AI, it should react by foregoing some research to build up a defensive army. If a player is defensive, on the other hand, the AI should patiently build up an overwhelming attack force, complete with research upgrades and such.
If a player shows a preference for attacking with one particular type of unit, the AI should "realize" it and start building counterunits. It would even be nice if the AI would do things like sacrifice some scouts to find out what its opponents are up to and compensate for it. Does the scout see some lots of planes in a city? Build some anti-aircraft missile batteries in surrounding areas. I've beaten lots of various players at various strategy games using these kinds of tactics. If an AI used them too, it would add a whole new dimension to player-vs.-computer strategy games.
Plus, it would be nice for developers to observe some really good players playing, make some notes, and ask the players why they do things that the developers don't understand. Are there any general rules that can be programmed that a human uses in making decisions like when he or she starts building military units, how those units are deployed, how much and what kind of research he or she conducts and when, and so on.
I think a cool AI feature of a game would be for the AI to "learn" how a player plays over the course of the player's games. If I beat the computer one way, it will know where it went wrong and play the next game differently, under the assumption that the player will still use some of the same tactics. Perhaps a game would even include some sort of profile manager so that if my brother plays the game, the computer will play against him differently. I've used that tactic several times in AoE2—record the games so I can go back later and study why my opponent did to spank me so badly. Next game I play against that opponent, he or she will be pwned by someone who has prepared for his or her tricks and strategies.
I think it would also be cool for the AI to try a few odd tactics now and then to see how a player reacts. Start building a wonder. What did the player do? Immediately start one of his or her own? Use that knowledge to make him or her waste resources that could otherwise be alloted to the military. Declare war on a player out of the blue and see what happens. Does the player start making concessions to re-establish peace? If so, that player can be bluffed. Send a lone military unit to camp close to another city. Does the player attack him immediately, though he's no threat? If so, do the same thing, but have a larger army waiting on the other side of the city to go in while it's not as heavily defended.
I guess what I'm saying is that if we could get to the point where computers are "thinking" like humans, I can finally shed the last vestiges of my need for friends to play with, and that can't be a bad thing, right? :-)
Do you remember Colonization? Why isn't there a sequel to that great game, it being even more addictive than Civ.
Fleur de Sel
Some of us see AC as the best in the whole (greater) Civilization series. Awesome game.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Will the images of cities as they appear on the world map accurately refelect the developments in the cities? That is, if you build a courthouse in a city, will you be able to see that courthouse when you're at the regular zoomed-out view of the world? I always thought this would be a visually neat, and actually useful addition to the game; useful, because it would remove the need to zoom into a city to see what you've built in them.
Civ III requires the installation CD be inserted every time you play, even though none of the content on the CD is used by the game after installation. This annoys your customers by making them juggle CDs, unnecessarily wear out their hardware, and shorten their battery life. Consequently, many of your customers install "No-CD Cracks" to fix this flaw in your software.
How do you feel about the existence and use of such cracks? Will you include this CD requirement in Civ IV even though it does not prevent copyright infringement but still inconveniences your customers?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Will anti-globalisation and corporate rebellion movements be realistically depicted for those civilizations that are in the corporate/globalist role and will we be able to have Heroes of Open Source or other such Influence characters like Linus et al who can become focal points in letting peaceful open pro-enviro civilizations crush the corporate war-mongering technocrats and instill the Religion of Open Souce worldwide in a low-impact lifestyle?
...
Or will this not be implemented instead?
As the guy behind the Ecotopian Guerrillas in Illuminati (yeah, my name had two hyphens then), I was kind of curious
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Rationalle: As an fan AI-coder for CRPG's (I worked with David Gaider on AI in the Ascention mod of Baldur's Gate 2), it's my experience that with no deadlines and lot of playing experience (very important), a community of modders are willing and able to write a much smarter AI than any game engineer. Nothing would more increase my willingness to replay the game than the promise that this time, a newly modded AI really will give me a run for my money. In my experience, it only took several solid weeks of playing and a few weeks of coding before I could make a computer-controlled magic-user in BG2 who could regularly kick the ass of an identically-able human controlled magic user, without cheating.
For Civ-specific AI issues, here are the features of what I take to be the holy grail of AI:
1. No omniscience: The input information available to each country's AI would be the same as what would be available to a player if she controlled that country. (No "seeing past your range of view".) 2. The AI is completely blind as to which rivals are human and which are AI. 3. There are several very good AI's that each favor different strategies, and a meta-AI that determines which strategy is the best fit for the situation. 4. Exactly the same rules apply to the AI civs as to the human-controlled civs (regarding science, production, trade, etc.).Do you have any plans to include other means of warfare, such as economic warfare and the use of interest rates, bonds, companies and good old fashioned money to conquer? It could add another layer of depth once players approach the modern age
I for one would like to see methods like the British used in the Falklands War, where they parasailed in units that counterfeited large quantities of Argentinian money, or the current economic supports the Saudis (or I guess technically the Saudi rebels - how you can call 99 percent of a country "rebels" is another matter) give to the Iraqi Resistance in the current Iraqi War, or what we did in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation - anyway, I would love to see this in the final version of Civ that comes out.
Reality is sometimes stranger than fiction, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper to research and develop simulations for.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We've all heard the horror stories coming out of companies like EA, with programmers working sweatshop hours and driven to burnout. How are the working conditions at Firaxis? Do you guys get time to stop and smell the roses? Or at least time to play other games?
The cake is a pie
Will the communication, on multi player games be designed so that
1. 3rd party clients, can play games against CIV 4 clients?
2. will CIV 4 Clients be able to connect to 3rd Party servers to play multiplayer games?
--meh--
Civilization I was a game that you could play through in a few hours.
Civilization II (still my favorite!) sometimes took two sittings, but it was manageable.
Alpha Centauri took a bit longer, but the "storyline" helped break things up.
Call to Power and Civilization III each seemed to take longer than the last. I bought Civ III, spent several nights playing the same game, and uninstalled it.
Skill with a game is acquired through repeated plays, but each version of Civ has taken longer and longer to play through a game. Is Civilization IV continuing this tradition, or are you making changes to keep a game from taking weeks of real time?
Are you going to include a real-time clock in the game so us lowly players know when to quit playing so as to be able to schedule the lower priority but still necessary activities such as sleep, studying and work into our lives?
http://www.firaxis.com/community/asksid.php
Second question down.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
I have enjoyed the Civilization series since the beginning, but with the third incarnation it was pointed out to me that it's rather disappointing that the game continues to be played on a tube rather than a globe. If Civilization IV is also on a strip, could you explain what difficulties the development team is having in implementing what seems to be such an obvious and simple detail?
take your sig and shove it
I've noticed many other games have engines based on lua. I believe the first two Warcraft series use lua extensively for level development and is what people wrote custom mods with if they didn't want to use the built in map editors.
.wad files?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of lua or anything. I've only done minor programming in it. My question is why did you choose the language that you did (python + xml files), what are the advantages to this approach, what are the disadvantages and finally, how much development time would you say is needed using your SDK would take vs attempting to design a mod for some of the other popular games (Quake3, Half-Life2, etc.)
Oh and I guess one more thing. How far have we come in modding games since Doom I
Sumit
that is a good idea. i have always been annoyed how the AI would cross into my area, find a single open tile where the influence of my towns convereged but didnt cover and build a city. it would be like me moving to france and starting a city in the country and considering that city part of the u.s.. i did use this against the other civs since my culture was often much stronger. so my question:
will the other cultures in civ 4 truly respect my borders and not build in the 'middle' of my 'country'?
always mosh clockwise
I know I want my own little Iran, and I sure would have more nukes than you could sheik a stick at :D
"It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?" - Gaff
Will the Mac version of the game have the same editors and customization options as the PC version? Or will we -- once again -- be left without any tools? It's a story that has gotten old, old and hurtful, in the Macintosh world.
On a different topic. . . I was disappointed to read that Civ4 will have lots of animation. Animation is cool when it corresponds with the user doing something. But simply staring at the map while it's "working alive" with units going through their little motions is awful. That only makes it hard to find your cursor. It's like camouflage.
I'm highly skeptical of all the religious stuff. Seems like something else I'll have to micro-manage in a game I thought should be made more streamlined, not more complicated. Just another complicating factor I have no interest in, that my enemies can use against me. (like culture. . . only worse?)
What I would really love to see in the game is an optional "Empire mode". It would be a simplified game mode where all the micro-management is bypassed, and the focus is just on fighting a war. Instead of having to spend hours and hours building up your civilization first, you could dive into military conflict quickly.
We hear a lot in general terms how testing and input from various sources influenced the game. Focusing on one game feature, how was it envisioned in the design document and what does it look like now?
Why don't you do a new version of Alpha Centauri? It was hands down better than any version of Civilization I've ever played. Civilization III was IMHO terrible. I recall some game ranking sight that still shows Alpha Centauri in the top 20 all time though it is ancient and hard to find now. If you could retain all the brilliance of the original, improve the AI's, add the ability to do mods, and get a new online community going it would return to being one of my favorite games to sink hours in to.
@de_machina
The old Civ II (on the Mac port, at least) was fantastic in its support for multiple monitors. Everything was implemented as its own individual window/palette- the main game screen was one window, the tool palette was another window, animations popped up in another window. This was spectacular for multiple monitors, since the main monitor was free to show the main game screen and only the main game screen, while all secondary activity could be displayed on the second monitor. Civ 3 destroyed this, and brought everything back into one single monolithic ueber-window, where any action brought up a dialog box/window which was drawn on top of the main game screen, obscuring game information. Will Civ 4 continue this approach and assume that everyone must have a single, solitary monitor, or will it go back to a floating palette approach, where those of us with multiple monitors can really take advantage of them? Thanks in advance for your time, -Natebrau
Alpha Centauri had excellent diplomacy, and the A.I. players could have many intelligent things to say, e.g. Gaians got pissed at me for polluting, or the Morganites wanted to share their maps and coordinate their attacks. It also had a planetary council were decisions pertaining to the whole planet were made, like doing something to decrease global warming or decreasing human rights. Compared to that, the Civ3 trade-o-matic-screen was quite pathetic.
Which kind of diplomacy will Civilization IV be having?
Do you use neural nets?
Do you do any game recording/playback?
Do you have the game play itself?
What kind of "tuning knobs" do you have?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
Will the screen resolution be artificially restricted??
:)
Civ III forced a resolution of 1024x768 or similar, which was extremely annoying given the small amount of map area visible (a big problem with the game IMO). The ability to zoom will somewhat alleviate this problem, but it would also be nice to use the full 1920x1200 resolution I have available. This is particularly relevant to a tactical game like Civ where you often need an overview of an area for strategic planning, and having to scroll back and forth to get this is detrimental to the playability of the game.
btw. FreeCiv allows any resolution (being window based), so if an Open source clone can do it there's no excuse for a commercial release
Will Civ IV support hexagonal grids, eithere built in or via modding??
The screen shots I have seen are all square grids. Hex grids make for a fairer movement system, as opposed to square grids where a diagonal move costs the same but takes you further than left/right/up/down moves. FreeCiv provides a hex grid/tileset that I find preferable to the 'classic' square style.
If there is no support for hexagonal grids, what has been done to resolve the issue with movement points and other problems resulting from the use of a square grid system?
Hi guys. Well, what can I say, all the info coming out about Civ4 is making me practically drool with anticipation ;)! This is looking like the best civ yet, and you should be congratulated.
OK, my question is a two parter, but both relate to city development. Firstly, what role do food units (bread) and health actually play in the new population growth system? Secondly, do city improvements and wonders come with any kind of per-turn maintainance cost, as they did in Civ2 and 3, or will this all be subsumed into the new city and civic maintainance cost?
Thanks for your time :)!
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Let's admit it, it's the most beautiful thing in all of the Civ series. Losing your cherry to a spearman (wow, what a pun!).
Any thought given to expanding guerilla tactics?