Civ 4 preview - all about nukes

[Vault Dweller]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/preview/nukes.php

 

[DarkUnderlord]

An important difference from Civ3 nukes is that, in Civ4, all the tiles that would be affected by a nuclear explosion must be outside your national border and you also can't have any of your units on those tiles. So if you want to nuke a big stack of enemy units next to your own city, you will not be able to do that in Civilization IV. One time I had a spy unit lurking in an enemy city and when I tried to nuke the city, it wouldn't let me -- I had to move the spy out of harm's way first.

I think I'll stick to Civ 2 thanks.

 

[Crnobog]

Once built, they cannot be move out of the city they are built in. They have unlimited attack range and can target any enemy cities and lands.

Wonders, roads, and rails cannot be destroyed by nukes.

Gee, that makes sense

At least it seems the UN will work similar to SMAC planetary council which is a good thing, but I'd still rather play SMAC, kthxbye

 

[Chefe]

Sounds great. This, coupled with the shitty graphics and shitty interface will make for one hell of a game! Way to lower the bar, Sid!

I will also go play SMAC.

I never understood why it always goes by SMAC instead of just AC. Is there another game that goes by AC?

 

[Crnobog]

dunno, maybe it's just more convenient to say 'smack' instead of 'aycee'

 

[Sarvis]

Sounds great. This, coupled with the shitty graphics and shitty interface will make for one hell of a game! Way to lower the bar, Sid!

I will also go play SMAC.

I never understood why it always goes by SMAC instead of just AC. Is there another game that goes by AC?

Acheron's Call comes to mind.

What's SMAC?

 

[Chefe]

Alpha Centauri... or, more correctly, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

Yes, but smack was around before Acheron's Call.

And so was SMAC.

 

[bryce777]

Well, let's see. Civ I, groundbreaking game that had great gameplay and lots of good artwork for the time.

Civ II, best production values of any game I can think of, refinements on original system didn't really change gameplay except to close a few wonky cheats and fix some things that made little sense.

Civ III (which I preordered in the box set for 70 bucks), dramatic, sweeping, idiotic changes to gameplay...many of which made no sense whatsoever. Massive bugs on release. Shittiest graphics and interface imaginable, absolutely none of the great stuff such as the wonders videos. overall, not even nearly as good as alpha centauri, let alone the other civs.

Civ IV? Not even going to bother with it.

 

[obediah]

Reminds me of Old Man Murrays plan to raise money by allowing people to sponsor video games, so that your name alway appeared in front of it. So you could have Bob Smith's Sid Meir's Alpha Centauri.

It also ties into their Asheron's Call preview - which consisted of
stripping a male avatar down to underwear and a sailor hat and convincing other men to strip down to take an intimate screencap of them sittting together on the beach at sunset.

 

[NOVD]

Once built, they cannot be move out of the city they are built in. They have unlimited attack range and can target any enemy cities and lands.

Wonders, roads, and rails cannot be destroyed by nukes.

Gee, that makes sense

At least it seems the UN will work similar to SMAC planetary council which is a good thing, but I'd still rather play SMAC, kthxbye

I should note, neither roads nor city buildings (including wonders) were destroyed due to a nuclear attack in CIV II. In SMAC, the city was completely wiped out and the terrain lowered a level (with the fission bomb), which is just overboard.

If you read all the previews, the gameplay looks like it'll be much better than it was in CIV II. The development stepped up the good stuff from CIV III (tradable goods and resources, for instance), introduced some good things from SMAC (civics, aspects of diplomacy, multiple terrain enhancements), and created some new things which look cool (religion, unit promotions). The graphics aren't too good, but they're fine considering the gameplay will be better.

 

[bryce777]

Once built, they cannot be move out of the city they are built in. They have unlimited attack range and can target any enemy cities and lands.

Wonders, roads, and rails cannot be destroyed by nukes.

Gee, that makes sense

At least it seems the UN will work similar to SMAC planetary council which is a good thing, but I'd still rather play SMAC, kthxbye

I should note, neither roads nor city buildings (including wonders) were destroyed due to a nuclear attack in CIV II. In SMAC, the city was completely wiped out and the terrain lowered a level (with the fission bomb), which is just overboard.

If you read all the previews, the gameplay looks like it'll be much better than it was in CIV II. The development stepped up the good stuff from CIV III (tradable goods and resources, for instance), introduced some good things from SMAC (civics, aspects of diplomacy, multiple terrain enhancements), and created some new things which look cool (religion, unit promotions). The graphics aren't too good, but they're fine considering the gameplay will be better.

Civ 3 had lots of gameplay 'improvements' that all completely sucked balls, and also they had a lot of religious crap that was very annoying.

 

[NOVD]

Civ 3 had lots of gameplay 'improvements' that all completely sucked balls, and also they had a lot of religious crap that was very annoying.

I'll clarify then: Civ IV has a lot of good improvements, such as the ones listed in my last message.

Plus, Civ III didn't really have any more religious stuff than Civ II. The classification religious was used as a possible civilization classification, but that was the only addition of religion I can think of.

 

[bryce777]

How can you decided they are good by just reading their description? That is my point. The devil is in the details and i will believe it when i see it.

 

[NOVD]

How can you decided they are good by just reading their description? That is my point. The devil is in the details and i will believe it when i see it.

While the implementation is unclear, it's still, on a conceptual level, possible to decide if a particular change is an improvement or not. If the changes are cool, then the game is probably going to turn out cooler than the last. Plus, stupid stuff like not being able to nuke your own guys can probably be changed by player-made modifications. Rhys's Civ III mod, for example, managed to make Civ III a much better game.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

That's kinda gay about Nukes, cause when I use a nuke, I want to really do some major damage, even if my own troops are in harms way (which is often, as i have very little regard for the lives of insignificant soldiers).

 

[RGE]

Civ 3 had lots of gameplay 'improvements' that all completely sucked balls ...

I must not have played enough to discover those 'improvements', because I quote enjoyed the gameplay in Civ III. I suppose that it is a bit unrealistic to be able to conquer the whole world with horses though. No real civilisation has been able to do it - they all stopped for one reason or another, well before the whole world had been subjugated. But I prefer ancient and medieval times to industrialism and modern times, so it suits me just fine.

 

[Crnobog]

I should note, neither roads nor city buildings (including wonders) were destroyed due to a nuclear attack in CIV II.

Really? Maybe I was thinking of Call to Power then...not sure about the nukes, but the ecoranger destroyed the entire city and surrounding squares

In SMAC, the city was completely wiped out and the terrain lowered a level (with the fission bomb), which is just overboard.

And boy was it FUN :D

I actually liked some of the new features in CivIII, like cultural influence and needing specific resources to produce some units

 

[dunduks]

SMAC was and is loads better then Civ, it had nifty features such as good diplomacy, custumizable units, you could terrorize/brainwash your people into obedience etc.

And boy was it FUN :D

Yeah, I still remember how it was the only military unit in my city and some dork decided to attack it, whooosh , it was a good city too.

 

[LlamaGod]

I remember making a Fission bomb missle thingy in SMAC, I had just started playing it and was getting into and made one. Wasnt sure what they did, either.

I had good relations with everyone, and would get them all to turn on the one person I was attacking, so it was like 5 vs. 1.

Anyways, I made one and was all 'hmm, I wonder what this does' and I send it to the enemy's capital city and KABOOM.

Giant explosion with a huge crater and then all those allies turn on me becuase of it.

That was pretty funny.

 

[Jed]

SMAC and Civ II are all you need for this genre. They shouldn't even bother making any more land-based 4X games. Really.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Civ III (which I preordered in the box set for 70 bucks), dramatic, sweeping, idiotic changes to gameplay...many of which made no sense whatsoever. Massive bugs on release. Shittiest graphics and interface imaginable, absolutely none of the great stuff such as the wonders videos. overall, not even nearly as good as alpha centauri, let alone the other civs.

Don't forget the shitty AI that still cheats like crazy and can see the whole map.

 

[bryce777]

Civ III (which I preordered in the box set for 70 bucks), dramatic, sweeping, idiotic changes to gameplay...many of which made no sense whatsoever. Massive bugs on release. Shittiest graphics and interface imaginable, absolutely none of the great stuff such as the wonders videos. overall, not even nearly as good as alpha centauri, let alone the other civs.

Don't forget the shitty AI that still cheats like crazy and can see the whole map.

Very true. The whole culture thing annoyed me because I would be VASTLY superior to any opponent, and the turn after I take a border town it would go back over AND they would get a free tech, and moreso I was annoyed by the limited resources...especially saltpeter?!?!?! Which obviously is not a limited resource at all....

If anyone likes that, I can't imagine why. For someone who is not THE ELITE MASTER of such games, I can understand how the culture thing would not be as much of an annoyance, but I also would in short order expand to the very limits of my civilization's size, too, making it impossible to conquer everyone when combined with the culture thing, despite having 10x the power of everyone else put together.

 

[NOVD]

I remember making a Fission bomb missle thingy in SMAC, I had just started playing it and was getting into and made one. Wasnt sure what they did, either.

I had good relations with everyone, and would get them all to turn on the one person I was attacking, so it was like 5 vs. 1.

Anyways, I made one and was all 'hmm, I wonder what this does' and I send it to the enemy's capital city and KABOOM.

Giant explosion with a huge crater and then all those allies turn on me becuase of it.

That was pretty funny.

If you were playing with abundant native life-forms, you'd get molested by worms too -- so many worms. And, of course, the singularity bomb was like 5 times as powerful as the fission bomb (planet buster).

Don't forget the shitty AI that still cheats like crazy and can see the whole map.

The AI can no longer see the whole map; they are equal with players in terms of sight. It still cheats on higher difficulties, though. Firaxis says that at least the AI takes advantage of its cheating on higher difficulties, so at least it's not using the same exact tactics.

SMAC and Civ II are all you need for this genre. They shouldn't even bother making any more land-based 4X games. Really.

SMAC was by far the best. Civ II really wasn't all that great; Civ III with mods was probably about as good as it was.


Finally, remember, http://web.mit.edu/21w.780/Materials/douglasall.html . When you play civilization, the fun comes from exciting your base, imperialist instincts.

 

[Balor]

SMAC was by far the best. Civ II really wasn't all that great; Civ III with mods was probably about as good as it was.

Now that is fun - I was just replaying it.
Not just SMAC, but SMAC:AC (Alien's Crossfire).

I just love that 'ultra-hitech' theme.
And did I mention that 'tech quotes' are completely kickass?
There are some probs with balance, though - a faction that first gets to cloning vats first is 99.9% winner... unless you play a 'small' world, where you may get eradicated much faster then that, heh.
And copters are kinda overpowered - they can attack up to 20! times a round... provided you deck 'em out with nice addons and the with best weapon, you can wipe out entire armies in one turn.
Much fun doing it, though .

 

[LlamaGod]

I used a Planet Buster for that nuke, but I dont remember everything.

I should re-install SMAC, I had alot of fun with that game. Could never find Alien Crossfire, though and dont wanna buy dumb crap over Ebay or whatever.