(P)REVIEWS - Civilization IV Preview by MarkG
Hands-On Civilization 4 Preview: Part 2
Le Grande Religion of Workers
Warning: You shouldn't take the following part of this feature as a thorough look at Civ4's gameplay. Read Solver's lengthy feature in a few days for that ;)
Anyway, if you're still reading here goes: Great People are great. They
add a whole new level of options and thus possible strategies and new
paths to victory. It is also one of the ways ICS becomes less
successful as you need big cities to spawn these guys.
Religion is fun as well. You need to discover certain techs first, in
order to found each religion and then you get (happiness and culture
increasing) buildings and the missionary unit to expand it. If a
civilization adapts your religion as the state (official) one, their
leader will like you. If he has a different religion he will hate you.
Yes, you can have an atheist civilization ' just don't select any
religion as the state one. More things to consider' Two things seem to
be missing: being able to name your own religion ("Apolytonism!" :))
and having more info on the percentages of each religion in cities with
more than one faith.
A great new feature in Civ4 is that you can automate
workers (ok, so it's not so new ;)). The difference is that automation
works much better now. This is quite crucial as resources don't just
have to be connected to your road network. They also have to be
gathered by building specific terrain improvements on them.
War and Diplomacy
On the issue of unit promotions through combat victories, I have a
statement to make: I'm a (shameless) casual player, I never
micromanaged each and every city's working tiles in Civilization II
and I almost always had (have) my workers automated in Civ3(4).
Similarly, I'd like not to have to deal with unit promotions. But wait,
that's been dealt with ' there is an 'auto promotions' option. Beyond
that, unit promotions allow you to evolve your units, partially
customize them and' be more careful with them, for two reasons. First,
it's hard to get many promotions on a unit and second, all units are
upgradeable. You can have a unit built in 2000BC and through upgrades,
keep the unit with promotions until 2000AD!
After SMAC (which had the advantage of having a 'UN' from turn 1) Civ3
seemed like a step back for diplomacy. Civ4 improves things with the
Artificial Intelligence (AI) being more active, suggesting treaties,
declaring war when it sees you're weak, asking for tech trading, asking
for help against enemies, etc. etc. Not only that, but at last you have
more information on how the other civs feel. Various things (good trade
relations, close borders, different or same religion or civic choices
etc.) affect each AI's stance towards you negatively or positively, and
at all times you have exact feedback on that. One thing missing in the
diplomacy department is SMAC's surrender option, but just wait: Apolyton Mod Bounties are coming soon to a browser near you ;).
Another influence from SMAC is the Civics model, which
replaces governments. In specific cases you will really find yourself
trying to speed science advances towards a certain civic-enabling tech.
Tons of combinations are of course available, but some popular ones
will certainly come up sooner or later after the release.
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