3701

This is largely a result of the Maritime City States giving such huge empire-wide bonuses. A big food surplus is quite significant in the amount of research you produce. +4 food over what you’d need normally is what gives you two scientists, and two scientists roughly triple the total science output of a smallish city. +4 food is hard to come by until you get Civil Service or you bribe a Maritime City State. Bribe two of them and suddenly every city in your empire can afford those 2 specialists.

If Civil Service worked the way it did in Civ IV, instead of giving you +2 food per farm, and if Maritime City States didn’t exist or gave some other bonus, players would be very concerned about food specials.

3702

@ Jon

I sent your community manager (2K Greg) a feedback with some bugs. I hope to help you improving this amazing game.

I love this game and I think this 5th episode is the best on the series. Apart from singleplayer, I usually play Civilization’s series games with a bunch friends, but we are not going to do it without animations because, honestly, it’s horrible to look at.
I have just one question: do I have to resign myself not having multiplayer animations, or there is a possibility that it will be implemented (as an options obviouvsly, as has always been on previous games)?

Bye and I wish you good work.

Post-scriptum: There is a serious translation error on italian language, I detailed for you on the feedback I sent to 2K greg.

3703

Wow Jon sightings brings the CFs out of the woodwork, look there’s another one!

3704

I’m happy to lurk here. Just that we have had 0 info from 2K or anyone post release.

3705

I think that is because the folks over at Civfanatics, tend to be hum what is the word, perhaps fanatical. Jon and the previous Civ designers (Soren, Brian) are long time members and sometime poster here for a various reasons, but I am guessing that avoiding some of the more nutty fans is probably one of the reasons.

Having said that I don’t understand why Elizabeth and 2KGreg have not posted over at CivFanatics, it seems to me that is part of their job.

3706

@Jon:

Thanks for posting. Any word on the multiplayer side of things? I’m sure you know, but the MP part of the game feels pretty much like an alpha right now.

Will we get some MP love in one of those patches you mentioned?

P.S.
We could sure use your presence over at the official 2k forums. It’s a shit-storm of rage and sorrow there right now, mostly because everyones in the dark regarding the state of the game and if/when a patch will happen.

3707

I laugh at the new accounts, though feel a bit sorry for Tom, I know this isn’t how he wants QT3 to roll.

Still, that guy complaining about no combat animations? DAMN STRAIGHT. MP is way less immersive without them, I play it with a mate and it’s close to killing the enjoyment for us.

3708

That makes sense, although I wish that information was readily apparent instead of needing your explanation (which, of course, is much appreciated along with your other number breakdowns). Some more math I could use corrected: I guess what I meant is that from my perspective farming and mining are generally very underpowered relative to trade posts. I expect a lot of the bankruptcy on forum complaints stems from people reflexively prioritizing those two and using trade posts for less useful spaces rather than keeping them at a minimum. Then, as Reldan explained, starve your puppets and make them gold factories by paving over all of their land except for useful resource mines with trade posts; they’ll build less crap over more time and bombard you with cash in no time. On a large map recently I was able to brandish a ludicrously big navy (first of ships of the line, then of destroyers) with 150-500 surplus per turn after my first puppeted empire, after which I was able to conclusively disprove the idea that naval bombardment is underpowered generally (obviously pangea would be less than ideal) by using it and a handful of infantry to conquer everything else. You probably need one or two “wonder” cities to churn out the important ones, and the rest is bought as needed. Food rarely becomes a problem you can’t bribe your way out of, and happiness can be purchased in blocs as each happy improvement gets unlocked and the money you fling at city states and culture improvements rakes in the quick policies.

Now, if food could be globalized to some degree, or if diversity of resources there somehow became anywhere near as relevant as variety of luxuries or even strategic goods (which suffer from killer resource/era, more or less), that’d be something.

3709

Anyone put the auto-tile-use focuses under the microscope yet? I think on I read on civfanatics somewhere that they were giving sub-par results.

Seemed ok to me.

3710

Why, is great expanses of forest implausible or something?

That’s just excess familiarity with previous Civs talking. I always found it silly that the optimal way to play before was to chop everything down and spam cottages.

3711

I missed that post. I need to try that, I tend to treat the puppets as normal cities, so I over-emphasize production, which of course they use to build high-upkeep structures. Puppets are actually very powerful in their way, since they contribute to your economy without increasing social policy cost, unlike razing and planting your own city. The problem is that they’ll sometimes neglect basic improvements like markets or monuments, and they like to build military academies and arsenals that they you can’t use unless you annex them.

I do miss Health from Civ IV. It was a big step forward for the series, it made food resources important and removed the somewhat arbitrary hard population caps from Aqueducts.

3712

Automatic citizen allocation gets pretty broken when your empire is unhappy. Something makes the AI want to turn everybody into specialists, even if you select Production focus. It does tend to work very well as long as you keep your people happy.

3713

No, it’s that as Hans said, both the AI and the player is usually leaving lots of resources and decent land languishing on the table because the happiness and social policy mechanics punish expansion. As I said, a 4X game that constantly whacks me on the knuckles for expanding doesn’t feel right for me - especially when I’ve consciously chosen a Large map to play on.

3714

Shouldn’t Maritimes give gold instead of food? That makes far more sense in basically every possible way.

3715

Except that you’d be offering them gold to increase their goodwill … so that they would give you gold.

3716

In previous Civ games I felt like I was punished for NOT constantly expanding. So I guess it depends on what you like. For me, large empires just become a micromanagement hassle. “Move to city 28, build a granary, move to city 29, build an aqueduct”.

Tony

3717

Good point. If you go into a deep unhappiness (especially via war) and then come out, it probably makes sense to cycle through your cities to ensure the AI adapted to the change.

3718

Not always. There are other ways to increase rep other than giving money, such as fighting on their behalf.

3719

But those are very situational. Offering gold is the only guaranteed way of getting a city-state onside.

3720

But you also said

[indent]I have no objection to giant swathes of desert or tundra going unsettled[/indent]

so it’s only the forest that irks you. The only reason it does this is because you have been conditioned by past Civs to chop forests down willy-nilly.

As I said, a 4X game that constantly whacks me on the knuckles for expanding doesn’t feel right for me - especially when I’ve consciously chosen a Large map to play on.

And when you choose a Large map, the game also scales down the knuckle-whacking.