Civilization IV: Colonization

[Zenicetus]

You know what I would absolutely love to see? Civilization IV: Master of Magic.

Keep an eye out for the upcoming Stardock (GalCiv2 developer) fantasy TBS. I think at one point they were trying to get the rights to do an updated version of MoM. That didn't work out, so they're doing their own proprietary magic system TBS game. I'm not sure what the release schedule will be... probably a year out, but I'm really looking forward to it, based on their GalCiv2 track record. And I'm not even a huge fan of fantasy games.

[FactionHeir]

So this game is about to come out, from the video previews, the interface looks very much like the first incarnation, which is great. Looks like people won't even need any high powered rig to run it.

Anyone got more info or even got the game already?

[frogbeastegg]

Got it this morning, played ~40 turns, and have now retreated to read the manual.

Initial impressions are mainly favourable. It looks great, the music is nice, and there seem to be quite a few choices to make. I played a couple of quick games of the original after this topic started, and from what I see this new version is very close to it.

The interface I'm less keen on - it's huge and ugly unless you use ctrl+I to make it transparent. The arrangement of buttons feels like it has been done to purposely confuse civ4 players; things have been shifted around for no reason I can discern. The worst niggle is one which I'm probably alone in considering to be that. The end turn button is in the middle of the interface, not on the bottom right. Gah! In transparent mode it vanishes altogether, forcing you to use the hotkey. Double gah! I never, ever, full stop ever use a hotkey to advance turns! Don't ask me why, I just don't. It feels utterly wrong.

[The_Doctor]

Got it this morning

I thought it was not out until tomorrow in Europe?

[frogbeastegg]

It's not. I pre-ordered it on Game's website. They guarantee that you will get the game for release day, which usually means they pop it in the post on Wednesday. As it is sent first class that means my game comes through my letterbox on Thursday nearly every time. Add the double loyalty points for pre-orders and those £3 and £5 off vouchers you can find floating about on the web and suddenly the biggest rip-off on the high street turns into an online retailer few can beat when it comes to titles you don't want to wait for.

[Lemur]

I loved me some Colonization back in the day, but I think I'll let it live in golden memory, rather than destroying my recollection as the remade Pirates did a few years ago ...

[frogbeastegg]

I've played three games this morning. Or rather, started and adandoned three games.

Game 1. I sail west for 3 turns and find land. It looks like a great spot: 2 crab sites, and plenty of nice food producing land in the immediate radius. Can you say 1 city population boom to fuel my expansion across the New World? I can! I hop out of my ship - and spot Monty right next to the place I wanted to slap my city. Ok, no worries. This isn't Civ4. He isn't a warmongering nut who lives solely to destroy everything near him. I settled my city, he send me a gift of furs, and my ship was sent on to follow the coast around. And around. Turns out I'm on an island that's got enough space for 2 cities, namely the one I have and the one Monty has. No more. It's less than 9x9 squares. Alright, that's a problem, but maybe I can cope. So I spend the next 17 turns sailing about until I find more land. It's a strip of land 3 squares wide which runs north/south for turn after turn of sailing. Meanwhile the AI is colonising the heck out of paradise, to judge from the scores.

Game 2. This time my 5x7 island is made of tundra and I don't bother settling on it. A further bunch of turns spent sailing reveals no more land. AI, scores, paradise, again, so it's just me with nowhere to plant a tent.

Game 3. I had to sail halfway across the map before I found land at all, and spent another 7 or 8 turns looking for somewhere decent. This time I got up 4 cities with space for more. However the AI had been settled long before I got there, and on the same big chunk of nice land.

I was using the default map settings on all 3. Either I'm being unlucky, or the random map generator isn't terribly hot.

Game 3 led me to another discovery. This game is not newbie friendly. The manual is not helpful; it skims along over everything in as little detail as possible and refers you to the civopedia constantly. The civlopedia doesn't help much unless you are searching for basic items like what bonuses each leader gets. The tutorial is a collection of text boxes which jabber on about concepts you've never heard of, and does its best to confuse you. At this point it feels the game relies on your being a vet of the original, which I'm not.

I also found that putting the interface into transparent mode disables the lower 3 buttons around the mini map. They're still visible but clicking on them does nothing. You have to put the interface back into regular mode, click the button, then make it transparent again.

I have a question vets of the original might be able to help with. I turned settlement 3 into a tool producing centre. Lots of ore, lots of wood, and two people in the blacksmith's to churn out tools each turn. Great! The dry dock I had chosen to build was shooting along, gone from its original 50 turn build time to 12. Wonderful. I watch the bar go up every turn, until it hits the 50 tools which should signal completion. Then a message pops up and tells me that construction can't continue because the dry dock needs 50 tools. The building has vanished from the queue entirely, and the 50 tools haven't been added to the city's pool so they must still be tied into the dry dock. What happened and how do I get my dry dock?





EDIT: Found my answer as to what happened to the dry dock on the civ fantatics civ:col forum.

* "Not Enough Tools Bug PART #1" - When you are building something, say, a Lumber Mill, and you reach the requisite number of wood-hammers to finish half of it, but do not have enough tools to finish it, you don't get warned about not having enough tools, instead you get a message that "construction on ______ cannot continue" and there is no implication as to why, nor is there an option to just leave it in your queue till you have enough tools. This could confuse the heck out a newbie, and is an annoyance if you're experienced.

* "Not Enough Tools Bug PART #2" - The only possible way to not lose your hammers on the building you want to have build, is to "Examine City" and then exit back out, where the option to build the Lumber Mill, or whatever, reappears with a 1-turn completion time beside it. You have to do this over and over and over, every turn, until you have enough tools to complete it. This is very annoying.

Wonderful. That means you need to micromanage the heck out of your production resources or you will risk losing your building progress repeatedly. Better yet, the game neglected to inform me that I needed anything other than tools to make the dry dock.

I learned a few other things on those forums which displeased me no end. The turn limit for the standard game speed is 300 turns. I'd played past 100 turns in game 3 above and was still involved in the basics of setting up my infant empire. The slower game speeds add more turns and make everything take longer, so there's the same problem but manifesting slower. This game's designed for players who want to run, not ones who want to stroll.

There are also issues with the difficulty settings. There's something badly out of whack with the calculations behind the size of the king's army, in that it seems it be applying the most difficult level's settings to all levels. It's not unusual to be hit by a 500 unit strong army on uber easy dumbo tutorial level. That size is incredibly difficult to defeat in this game even if you're prepared for it - there's an 11 page thread filled with people who are being crushed over and over. There's a secondary problem tying in to this. The poor documentation. Liberty bells are heavily responsible for the size of the king's army; more bells= more troops. Not only does the game and manual neglect to inform you that there's a downside to generating liberty bells, it actively encourages you to spam the heck out of them. Follow the tutorial and you ensure your own defeat. The solution? Don't generate bells until around turn 180-200. That means you miss out on the founding fathers, the production bonuses, the expansion of your borders, and many other gameplay elements.

You can also refuse your king's requests with no fallout whatsoever, unless he's asking for a tax increase. He's asking for a 650 gold gift? Tell him to shove his pinky ring where the sun doesn't shine and he'll not care.

I'm going to mod the turn limit to something like 600, and try again. There's no way I can play comfortably knowing that the time limit is so tight. See if I run into that bug again, and an uber king's army.