Insights from the Civ3 demo at GenCon

[Quarthinos]

I just found this site, so pardon for not posting earlier. When I went to GenCon, there was a demo being run in a closed room in the dealer room. It was at the Infogrames booth, and you had to wait for the previous demo to end to see it. They ran a half-hour each, alternating with MoO 3.

On to the demo. They started by showing the opening screen, and then loaded a prepared saved game. I don't remember him actually creating a world, so not much insight into game setup.

The first thing he did was go over some things they had "fixed" from Civ 2. The main thing is that since trade is now covered in the diplomacy screen, there are no more caravans, so no more 'cheating' (his words) on wonders using caravans. He also said that if I put the Great Wall on Rome's building queue, then the Great Wall is not available in any other build queue. This of course prevents you building the same wonder at three cities so that you can start the Wonders from new technologies early.

Strategic resources for technologies you don't have yet (uranium, for example) won't show up on the map until you get the technology. This might also apply to luxuries..

Showed a city revolting for lack of culture, and if you don't want it for some reason, I think it went to a different culture, maybe you could even suggest which culture, but I'm not sure.

There are cheat codes, but they made the game unstable, and will probably be commented out of the final release, anyway.

Showed a worker, and how to build a colony.

Said that you have to pay units with GOLD, not just use shields for them (is this the way CTP worked? Never played it.)

Used the cheat codes to make a nuke show up so he could destroy some Russain city. After the nuke hit, there was an odd green goo around the city. I don't remember if he said that was standard pollution, or radioactive pollution.

The tanks were VERY big graphically, but that might not have been final art.

Said that the culture radius is how far out you're able to send population units to work, so if you don't have a lot of culture, you're size 30 city will have a LOT of elvis.

Oh, yes, something very important. Catapults, battleships, etc, do NOT fight in regular stacks. You use them for bombardment like in SMAC, and that's it (or that was my impression).

He never showed any real big maps, but did say you could get bigger than Civ 2. The machine that was running it was a P3 700 or so, so no clue as to how it runs on lower end systems.

Also had a short showing of the culture editor, but it didn't look like a very finished product, but I remember seeing an ability to have AI cultures build no wonders, only small wonders, only big wonders, or both.

I also remember him talking about CIA HQ, a small wonder. I think he said no spies are allowed without it.

Have Fun, and keep discussing!

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Nice,

So is culture is closely tied with happiness? It seems to be...


was there anything about the barbarrians?

[campmajor!]

This all sounds like it will going to be a real good game!

But those cheatcodes, are you sure they will delete those out of the final release? Otherwise MP will be a problem....

[Quarthinos]

No barbarians, sorry. I think he hit the end turn button all of three times. He mostly loaded saved games, said a few words, and then went on. No randomness, except when it crashed after he used some of the cheat codes...

[Quarthinos]

I think multiplay will be done like SMAC. As to cheat codes, I have no doubt there'll be a cheat menu like in Civ 2, but the codes he was using seemed to be of the "hold down ctrl+alt, type IAMGOD, and then let go". The quake type of cheat code. Not what I want in the final product at all.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Quarthinos
Used the cheat codes to make a nuke show up so he could destroy some Russain city. After the nuke hit, there was an odd green goo around the city. I don't remember if he said that was standard pollution, or radioactive pollution.

Can you remember more about effect (gaphical and game related) of the nuke hit?

Example:
How does it look the explosion/mushroom?
(Probably green around the city stand for radioactive glooming pollution - my guess)

Do you have seen any effects on game population, military units inside/near town, terrain improvement (roads/irrigated fields), etc.?

Thanks for info (some where already knew, but any confirmation is welcome)

[Quarthinos]

Nuke effects? It was right near the end. Similiar graphical effect to CIv 2. Mushroom, smoke, etc. It was an enemy city he nuked, so it wasn't possible to do a before-and-after comparison, and he really did it because someone had asked about diplomatic effects, which were great (several (all?) agreements went away). As to what happened to the city, nothing struck me as too different from Civ2. Population loss for sure. Maybe loss of units. No idea about irrigation/roads, because the surrounding squares were covered in green goo, radius of one.

Also, he implied you can have several seperate luxury networks, if you haven't connected (for example if a civ on a different contintent gives you a city, or you found a new cirty on a different continent), but airports work. Don't recall him mentioning ports, though. He did say you had to have a capital to capital connection, but I think some other place I've read implied that you'll be able to trade whatever is connected to his capital.

[Rhysie]

Maybe these separate networks mean that you can have 'provincal capitals' in the isolated areas of your empire... That would be quite cool and realistic as well - Representing the settlement in that area where the administration of the area is dealt with from (For example, although it isn't isolated, Cardiff would be the provincal capital of Wales in a British Empire - Assuming the national assembly is in cardiff, I don't know for certain)

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Quarthinos
He also said that if I put the Great Wall on Rome's building queue, then the Great Wall is not available in any other build queue. This of course prevents you building the same wonder at three cities so that you can start the Wonders from new technologies early.

A very common cheat. Unrealistic in real life and inflationary & HP-exploitable in Civ-2/SMAC. And now this cheat have been fixed in Civ-3? Good!

Said that the culture radius is how far out you're able to send population units to work, so if you don't have a lot of culture, you're size 30 city will have a LOT of elvis.

This is an misunderstanding. The empire obviously must be able to send workers and settlers beyond its current culture-radius. Otherwise it wouldnt be any need for colonies (disappears once engulfed by culture-radius). Also, the player had to wait "forever" before you would be allowed to found a second city (the capital starting-city would have to expand its culture-radius first, by building cultural city-improvements).

If you by "population units" means the fixed 21-square food/trade/shield city-area allocation, then this city-area is fixed and non-expandable in Civ-3, as well. The ONLY border that expand itself is your cultural borders (= national border). And you cannot harvest food/trade/shield outside your fixed 21-square city-areas.
The ONLY thing you can harvest outside the 21-square city-area, is special resources, bonus resources and luxuries. Within your culture-borders these resources must be road-connected with your city. Beyond your culture-borders you must build road-connected colonies.

...battleships, etc, do NOT fight in regular stacks. You use them for bombardment like in SMAC, and that's it (or that was my impression).

Against cities, yes. But a battleship can obviously join a fleet and completely destroy other sea-units. As in real life.

Also had a short showing of the culture editor, but it didn't look like a very finished product, but I remember seeing an ability to have AI cultures build no wonders, only small wonders, only big wonders, or both.

Interesting! Editors that help you tweak emphasize- and build-patterns of any AI-civ. I hope I can spoonfeed the AI-civs with general "blindread instrucktions" for building city-improvements and units as well (and the emphasize-correlation between them). Also, other strategically important choices and principal decisions should be possible to tweak.

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Quarthinos
Said that the culture radius is how far out you're able to send population units to work, so if you don't have a lot of culture, you're size 30 city will have a LOT of elvis.

Did they actually show Elvis pop points? Were they placeholder art or new Elvis pics? Did they use the "Elvis" wording or is it just a generic entertainer?

[Quarthinos]

They did show the new elvis picture, but I cannot really remember what they looked like as it was Sunday.. He originally called them entertainers, which is probably what the manual and help files call them, but started used elvis when it became obvious that all of the audience called them that.

He did make a general disclaimer when he started that in was a late alpha, and that the art was subject to change, but I saw no obvious placeholder art.


Ralf, I understood him to mean that you could only gather food/shields, etc. from the area inside your culture radius, but didn't actually ask the question.

As to the editors, I think he had different shortcuts for units, cultures, and maybe technologies (big maybe.. I think there was three, but I really don't remember the third one), as if each was a separate program. He did say the editor was one of the thnigs that was more of a work in progress than others. We only saw culture editor.

There was at least a list for city improvements, but I think it looked more do/do not build, rather than an ordered queue. I think there was a similar one for units, maybe wonders, too. Maybe radio buttons or checkboxes for agressive, expansionist, etc, or maybe just for the culture bonuses.

Ask more questions and it might jog my memory more...

[korn469]

Quarthinos

i have a question...

what was the size of the city that got nuked? how big was it after it got nuked? was the green goo on every single square surrounding the city? are you POSITIVE that the city wasn't destroyed, just damaged? you didn't happen to see how big the blast radius was did you (not the green goo but how many squares the mushroom cloud touched)? did he specify if it was a tactical nuke or an ICBM? did it fire like a normal nuke (he created it beside of the city then he moved it onto the city, or did he launch it in another way? thanks for any answers you can provide

[monkspider]

YES! Elvis is back! I think we can all sleep a little easier now.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Quarthinos
There was at least a list for city improvements, but I think it looked more do/do not build, rather than an ordered queue. I think there was a similar one for units, maybe wonders, too. Maybe radio buttons or checkboxes for agressive, expansionist, etc, or maybe just for the culture bonuses.

So the player can actually use editors in order to spoonfeed what units, city-improvements and wonders (and perhaps also prefered gov-choices and terrain-improvement emphasizes) each of the main-game AI-civs (and scenario AI-civs) should prioritize and emphasize? And even more perhaps...

Great! Now I can finally design adapted "perfect AI-enemys", especially targeted to exploit the archilles-heels of my very own particular playing-style. Sounds like fun...

[Quarthinos]

Korn469: There was an option for a tac nuke, but I'm almost positive he made and ICBM. He made it appear in an empty terrain square, so I don't know how it is normally "launched". What he did made it look like a nuke from Civ2, tho. He moved it to the city (which was less than 10, more than 4), and it went boom! To me, all the units looked too big, and explosion looked to be on the same scale (i.e. too big). The graphic was from a 3/4 perspective, so I couldn't tell you how far the damage would have gone to units outside the city. The city DID survive, but was smaller. I don't recall that the squares further than one from the city were damaged in any way. I think all the immediately adjacent squares were slimed.

Monkspider: All the happy/content/sad/etc pictures I saw were merely faces, so as to the elvis with guitar from the original, I don't know. Again, the art MIGHT have been placeholder, but what was there looked "polished" to me.

Ralf: The editor wasn't up for more than two minutes. In that time I though it was more of a yes/no kind of thing, but the presenter didn't say, and all I know for sure is a list of city improvements (and I can't name any. I know they were city improvements from having played the other civs, but didn't have time to check for new ones in the five or so showing.), so maybe it was for prioritization.

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Quarthinos
They did show the new elvis picture, but I cannot really remember what they looked like as it was Sunday.. He originally called them entertainers, which is probably what the manual and help files call them, but started used elvis when it became obvious that all of the audience called them that.

He did make a general disclaimer when he started that in was a late alpha, and that the art was subject to change, but I saw no obvious placeholder art.

My prayers, pleadings, and beggings have been answered. Now I know that Civ3 WILL be an awesome game.

Now another point for debate...Fat Elvis or Thin Elvis ?