Gamespot Preview: MAJOR REVIEW ERRORS!

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 08:17

I don't know about all of you, but have you been noticing some inconsistancies with what Gamespot says about the game and what Firaxis has been reporting? Here is an example of an error... it's about combat:

Quote:

From the Gamespot CIV III preview, page 3 of 4 (click here to go to the article):
...Zones of control have been eliminated , so movement is much more fluid. Because rivers now run between squares instead of through them, it is possible to set up a defense behind a river line...

Zones of control have been eliminated? What the hell is that? That's not true.

Father Beast · October 19, 2001, 08:23

That can't be right. ZOCs have beeen a part of civ since.....

the last word I heard was, many ancient and medievil units have no ZOC, but most modern units do. HOWEVER, you could build a fortress to give an ancient unit stationed there a ZOC.

but that was months ago. they might have changed without telling us

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 08:31

No... I'm sure it's in. I think Gamespot made a hasty generalization or they just plain screwed that up.

But here's another one, that I know is a screw up because this was clarified by Firaxis recently:

Quote:

Gamespots preview, page 3 of 4 link:
...culture determines city boundaries as well as national boundaries...

Dan Magaha from Firaxis indicated recently that the workable city tiles are always the same and your citizens can always work the tiles that are 2 squares from the city centre. The only difference is that if your borders do not extend up to those 2 square, any enemy unit can occupy that boundary without any diplomatic reprecussions.

I find this Gamespot preview very inaccurate, and they obviously didn't do their homework.

They should have given me the job of previewing the game.

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 08:52

While I'm at it... here's another one, that may not actually be an error, but this detail may have been changed at the last minute:

Quote:

Gamespots preview, page 3 of 4: Link to the page, click here:

Each type of luxury item (incense, dye, wine, fur, spice, silk, ivory, and diamonds), when connected to a city by a road, makes one content citizen happy or one unhappy citizen content.

This may not be true. Akron noticed something very interesting about resources and how they affect your citizens:

Quote:

Akron's Extraordinary Observations: Link to his post about luxuries:
Unlike I had previously thought, they don't add a specific number of happy faces based on scarcity. Instead, the first 2 give you one happy face each, the third and fourth give you two happy faces each, the fifth and sixth give you three happy faces each, and finally the seventh and eighth give four happy faces each. That means if you get all of them, you can get 20 happy faces. Also, as you collect more and more of them, the rewards get bigger and bigger.

I sure hope that hasn't changed!

Stuie · October 19, 2001, 09:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Jason Beaudoin
Zones of control have been eliminated? What the hell is that? That's not true.

Sounds like they played a few turns and then wrote a review. Typical.

From what I recall, ZOC will be based on the movement ability of a unit, so a unit with a movement of "1" will have no ZOC. I wonder if it is designed such that ZOC can only be exerted on units of lesser movement value - so a move "2" unit exerts ZOC on a "1", but not on another "2", while a "3" exerts ZOC on "2" and "1" units. I'm I rambling? Hell yeah!

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 09:09

You're right Stuie! I wouldn't rely on anything Gamespot says. I can't believe the lack of professionalism being exhibited from that preview! It's completely unbelievable that they would make errors like that when they have the manual right in front of them. Isn't there any quality control messures over there?

Anyway, ya... ZOC have been eliminated for most units, but modern, mobile units have this ability, plus units in a fortress do have the capability to exhert a ZOC. That was confirmed by Jeff Morris of Firaxis, so I know that Gamespot is in error.

Boneheads!

Grumbold · October 19, 2001, 09:23

Probably because they didn't get the 235 page manual to read through in the press version, just some lame .pdf. Then they gave the game to an AoK/Diablo hack instead of a true Civ fan to review. Almost anything could happen

We know they're bound to not understand the fine points if they're given a day or two to crank out a review. It's read the press release claims, play a bit to see if they seem to be true, then get writing and screenshotting. Hence the miniscule information we've actually had so far about actually putting together an invasion, nukes, pollution etc etc.

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 09:33

Most disturbing is this quote:

Quote:

Gamespot preview, page 3 of 4:
If a unit has an attack factor of nine and attacks a unit with a defense factor of one, it has a 90 percent chance of inflicting a hit-point loss on it during that round.

I hope THAT is not true. That would mean that a warrior would have a 10% chance of winning a battle against a tank!

Unacceptable!

Bakunine · October 19, 2001, 09:51

Quote:

hope THAT is not true. That would mean that a warrior would have a 10% chance of winning a battle against a tank!

I suppose units have many hit points so it's not a 10% chance...

If they had 3 unit points the chance the warrior won would be 10%x10%x10%=0,1%

One in a thousand... Woudn't happen many times

KrazyHorse · October 19, 2001, 09:51

No it doesn't. It means that a warrior of regular (3HP) status and 1 attack status would have

*Does some statistics*

around 1/100 chance of winning against a tank also of 3HP status. This comes from the fact that the warrior has to win 3 rounds (at 9-1 odds) before the tank wins 3 rounds to win the actual battle.

EDIT: I posted before Bakunine's response showed up. Bakunine, it's ~1%, not .1% because we don't require the warrior to win all 3 rounds in a row.

Stuie · October 19, 2001, 09:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Jason Beaudoin
That would mean that a warrior would have a 10% chance of winning a battle against a tank!

Unacceptable!

Well, if the warrior has a pointy stick.... or a 16-ton weight suspended above the tank, it could happen!

That better not be the case! We'll be right back to the old Phalanx defeats Battleship scenario.

I wonder if the combat formulas will be included in the manual? Or is that just wishful thinking from an old wargamer....?

Zardos · October 19, 2001, 09:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Jason Beaudoin
Most disturbing is this quote:

I hope THAT is not true. That would mean that a warrior would have a 10% chance of winning a battle against a tank!

Unacceptable!

This may not be the case, although I don't think I've studied it as much as you all. If the tank, for instance, had (oh, for the sake of arguement cause I don't know) 10 "hit points" where a warrior had 1 "hit point" then the chances of a warrior beating a tank is .1*.1*.1*.1*.1*.1*.1*.1*.1*.1 = .0000000001 or .00000001%

That is assuming that they have assigned hit points to each unit, which would make sense from my understanding of the way that they have implemented SMAC.

BLackraven42 · October 19, 2001, 09:54

How could Firaxis be so naive to let these boneheads write such false reviews??

KrazyHorse · October 19, 2001, 09:54

*Sigh*

Read my post for demonstration that you don't simply raise the .1 probability to the number of HP the tank has. There are multiple possible combinations of round outcomes, all of which must be summed to get the final winning probability.

Veritech · October 19, 2001, 09:55

Quote:

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
No it doesn't. It means that a warrior of regular (3HP) status and 1 attack status would have

*Does some statistics*

around 1/100 chance of winning against a tank also of 3HP status. This comes from the fact that the warrior has to win 3 rounds (at 9-1 odds) before the tank wins 3 rounds to win the actual battle.

EDIT: I posted before Bakunine's response showed up. Bakunine, it's ~1%, not .1% because we don't require the warrior to win all 3 rounds in a row.

With 9-1 odds, a warrior has a chance of:

(1/9)^3=0.0014=0.14% chance of winning against a tank

Stuie · October 19, 2001, 09:58

Quote:

Originally posted by BLackraven42
How could Firaxis be so naive to let these boneheads write such false reviews??

It's out of Firaxis control; the publisher is calling the shots - so blame Infogrames. As for the reason:

$

Need I say more?

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 09:59

KrazyHorse: Show us your calculations. I'd like to see what you've done to come to your conclusion... not that I disagree or anything. I'm just curious.

So what would the calculations be with a Crossack (attacks with 6) and a fortified phalax (defense factor of 2 + 2 for fortification = 4) ?

KrazyHorse · October 19, 2001, 10:01

Quote:

With 9-1 odds, a warrior has a chance of:

(1/9)^3=0.0014=0.14% chance of winning against a tank

Nope. I can pretty much categorically state you're wrong here. The odds of the warrior winning are exactly:

(0.1^3)+3*0.9*(0.1^3)+6*(0.9^2)*(0.1^3) = 0.00856 = 0.856%

How do I get this? There are 10 distinct scenarios. I'll represent "tank wins round" by "1" and "warrior wins round" by "0". The probability of a tank winning a single round is .9 and the probability of a warrior winning a single round is .1

000 .1^3
1000 .9*(.1^3)
0100 .9*(.1^3)
0010 .9*(.1^3)
11000 (.9^2)*(.1^3)
10100 (.9^2)*(.1^3)
10010 (.9^2)*(.1^3)
01100 (.9^2)*(.1^3)
01010 (.9^2)*(.1^3)
00110 (.9^2)*(.1^3)

Stuie · October 19, 2001, 10:07

[Pointless rambling]
Damn - I always caught up on my sleep during my Probability and Statistics class. I was convinced it would never have any real world uses. Of course, that was when playing Hunt the Wumpus on a TRS-80 was a big deal.
[/Pointless rambling]

Anyway, given the above, there is the slightest chance that a warrior can slip his pointy stick into the tank treads and bring down the mighty beast. So I'm sure it will happen.

KrazyHorse · October 19, 2001, 10:09

Jason, for a Cossack, replace the ".9"s with ".6"s and the ".1"s with ".4"s. This will give you the prob of the phalanx winning.

As the HP goes up, the prob that the weaker unit will win drops. The calculations are slightly more involved the larger the HPs get.

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 10:10

KrazyHorse: I'm not a math person... so please forgive me for my ignorance, but does ^ mean "power"?... example: (3^2) meaning 3 to the power of 2?

KrazyHorse · October 19, 2001, 10:13

Yup. Ignorance, maybe, but only in the non-pejorative sense. Forgive my laziness for not inserting the proper tags to make it 0.1³ instead of 0.1^3, etc.

Gramphos · October 19, 2001, 10:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Jason Beaudoin
Dan Magaha from Firaxis indicated recently that the workable city tiles are always the same and your citizens can always work the tiles that are 2 squares from the city centre. The only difference is that if your borders do not extend up to those 2 square, any enemy unit can occupy that boundary without any diplomatic reprecussions.

I find this Gamespot preview very inaccurate, and they obviously didn't do their homework.

They should have given me the job of previewing the game.

From screenshots we have been able to make out that new cities just has the radius one, so I believe what they said to be true, but the borders expand faster then the workable area.

Note the white lines on the attached image.

I'll see if I can find the thread about this.

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 10:26

So then Krazyhorse... does your mad science indicate that a Crossack and a fortified phalax can be calculated like so? :

(0.4^3)+3*0.6*(0.4^3)+6*(0.6^2)*(0.4^3) = 0.1409 = 14.09%

Is that right?

If so, that would be an acceptable likely outcome.

Gramphos · October 19, 2001, 10:26

Found it!

The thread

This is Dan's post. My boldtype

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
The way it currently stands, your borders are seperate from your "workable city tiles". The number of city tiles you can work does increase as your city grows, but it doesn't expand nearly as far as your city borders do. Even if your city has only the beginning 1-square (no) border, you can work the requisite number of surrounding squares. But until those squares actually fall within your borders, the enemy can come onto them and do what he pleases. Once you've got borders around those squares, you can tell the other players to get out (and in most cases, they listen).

As for colonies, the resources go to whoever builds a colony and connects it with a road first. Consequently, colonies become key while your borders are expanding, and if you leave them unguarded or weakly guarded, you will pay the price. Also, since colonies need to be connected to a city with roads, an enemy can destroy your roads and sever the connection to that resource.

This can be disastrous, especially when you're relying on goods to pacify unhappy citizens. I had a game going this week and the CPU destroyed my roads at a key juncture and sent four cities into revolt.

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

KrazyHorse · October 19, 2001, 10:28

I noticed that in the screenshots and the reviews. Odd that something important like this would be changed this late in the game (Dan's info was from only a month ago or so).

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 10:30

Ya... that's what I said Gramphos. You're post quoting Dan supports what I'm saying. You can work the tiles around your city regardless of whether it falls in your borders.

Regardless... this preview from Gamespot is good for the garbage. The only usefull things they indicated was their reporting on the settlers and workers, and the new screenshots.

Jason Beaudoin · October 19, 2001, 10:31

I don't think it has been changed Krazyhorse! It think Gamespot didn't do their homework in analysing the game. They're reporting things that aren't true.

KrazyHorse · October 19, 2001, 10:46

I'm not sure. That thin white border which is visible under the dotted line of the national borders worries me.

Gramphos · October 19, 2001, 11:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Jason Beaudoin
Ya... that's what I said Gramphos. You're post quoting Dan supports what I'm saying. You can work the tiles around your city regardless of whether it falls in your borders.

Regardless... this preview from Gamespot is good for the garbage. The only usefull things they indicated was their reporting on the settlers and workers, and the new screenshots.

Read the boldtype!

Quote:

The number of city tiles you can work does increase as your city grows, but it doesn't expand nearly as far as your city borders do.

You can only work the radius one until you have 10 cp.