Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

Ed Beach confirmed Dido's capital movement is considered for Domination. That is, wherever the new Capital is, that is the one you should target. So you could literally run around the world if you so desire to play keepaway.

Also neat - Chocolate Hills is confirmed a natural wonder. Nice to see my country get some representation (besides being a city state in V). Strange though that they call the except "Filipino Folk Tale" rather than its actual title Ibong Adarna or "The Adarna Bird". Also I am so unused seeing a part of it in English.

Presumably, then, she can't move her capital if it has already been captured? Otherwise that's kind of cheap.

I mean at that point she is already considered dominated. Don't forget that the capital still has bonuses and stuff related to it.

Edited by Ookamikun on Feb 1st 2019 at 8:17:48 PM

What I mean is that the Move Capital project should no longer be able to be built in Dido's cities if her existing capital has been captured.

Don't Civs usually create a "secondary" capital if the original one is dominated? I'd argue it'd still have that function.

I just saw on the subreddit that they turned the Flat Earth conspiracy theory into a Hidden Agenda in Gathering Storm, making it so the AI hates other civs who try to circumnavigate the globe or try to go to space.

Edited by tclittle on Feb 1st 2019 at 7:33:03 AM

Could be. I thought of that, but the secondary capital isn't as strong as the original.

I wonder whether that'll be seen as validation or mockery for those idiots.

Given how stupid and unreasonable the AI is about their agendas, definitely a mockery.

As always, the biggest problem I have with the AI is that it is not programmed to display fear. As I get more powerful throughout the game, most civs will offer worse and worse trades even if they are friendly to me. They will attack city-states that I am suzerain of. They will threaten me diplomatically even after I've steamrolled their neighbors. They'll refuse demands even if I'm on their borders with five times their military strength.

As I build up greater and greater warmonger penalties, the AI will bluster and threaten, it will denounce me, but it won't take the logical step of either ganging up on me or groveling before me.

Heck, even some acknowledgement that I'm approaching a victory condition would be nice. "Your culture is sweeping through the world. I fear that soon we will all be lost in it." They did that in Civ V; why take it away?

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 1st 2019 at 3:04:45 PM

"My demands must be met."

Okay, Wilhemina, you and your two growth-stunted cities stuck in a desert/tundra defended by spearmen sure have cowed my intercontinental empire into giving you that cacao you want so badly. We'll bring it to you escorted by a platoon of infantry and artillery cannons, sound good?

This. So very, very much.

It would also be awesome to be able to expand alliances to include multiple parties. So you could form an economic alliance among a group of civilizations, all of whom gain bonuses from trading with each other. You could simultaneously have a military alliance with a different but overlapping group of civs.

It makes zero sense that forming a military alliance with Peter means I can't also form an economic alliance with him, or that Pedro, Peter and I can't have a mutual military alliance.

Edited to add: Another thing I find weird is that the AI will accept far less gold in cash than it will in the equivalent promise of GPT. For example, I can offer the AI 100 gold straight-up, and it may treat that as the equivalent of, say, 10 GPT, which is 300 gold over the term of the agreement. Is the AI baking in the chance that you'll break your word later, or does it just place a huge mathematical premium on up-front payment?

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 1st 2019 at 4:22:56 AM

Whenever I think about that sort of thing, I think of the best/worst example of how that sort of AI behavior can work: Spore.

In Spore, the space era in particular, the AI has no real concept of their surroundings: they just wanted things. If they wanted an occupied planet, they would attack it. It didn’t matter how strong the opponent was, how weak they were, who the opponent was allied with, or how many times they had failed in the past: they would invade. If you crushed them and took a planet or so from them in the process, they would simply wait a while and perform the exact same action again.

The only way to get them to knock it off was either to befriend them or destroy them entirely. And since you couldn’t get two AI to befriend one another, if they were attacking a race you wanted to see stick around you had no choice but to embark on a war of annihilation, even if you were also friends.

The AI should not be acting like that, but even though Spore is an extreme case you still see behavior like that elsewhere, even in Civ. It cuts the player’s interest in the diplomatic and social part of the game and just go around as if the other nations don’t exist.

Eleanor of Aquitaine to be the alternative leader for England... and France.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Feb 5th 2019 at 4:18:11 PM

One leader; two new alternate leaders:

Eleanor of Aquitaine leads France or England

Court of Love - Great Works produce -1 Loyalty in enemy cities within 9 tiles. When cities join her civilization due to loyalty pressure, they skip the Free City stage of their transfer

Edited by tclittle on Feb 5th 2019 at 9:23:53 AM

Wait, what? So you get two choices for her on the start game menu: she can lead England or France? Interesting.

Obviously a Culture victory focused leader, you get huge benefits from building museums and other Great Work buildings on your borders.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 5th 2019 at 10:35:33 AM

I was expecting something like that eventually. European history is full of jokers who led multiple of the current civilizations at once.

Eleonora’s from the HRE, so she’s a sticking point like that. Where do you even put people like her and Charlemagne?

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 5th 2019 at 2:35:36 AM

Either bring back the HRE like Civ 4 did or have Charlemagne as a alternate leader for Germany and/or France.

Edited by tclittle on Feb 5th 2019 at 11:23:01 AM

She synergizes more with France than England though I guess there's some quirk to go with her England ability.

Also how are we gonna put her entry in Civilization?

Edited by Ookamikun on Feb 6th 2019 at 2:34:42 AM

I would just put Charlemagne as the leader of Francia instead of trying to pigeonhole him as the leader of any modern country. Similarly, Eleanor probably should just be the leader of... Aquitaine.

Neither "France" nor "Germany" in the game are meat to represent a "modern country", though. This is particularly obvious with Germany, as Barbarossa is the leader, the Hanse the unique district and the Free Cities the unique ability all precede the nation state of "Germany". The game is very open to treat civilizations as abstract concepts, that have a clear continuity from ancient eras to today, even when this doesn't make sense.

And, really, these would hardly be the silliest thing the game have done. Looking at you, India and Indonesia, post colonial nations being ruled by ancient monarchs (and a guy who was never a ruler to begin with).

Edited by Heatth on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:42:42 PM

And Teddy Roosevelt was born in 4000 BC and somehow lived for sixty centuries. Ancient medicine was amazing, yo.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 6th 2019 at 11:16:25 AM

Still wish they'd at least bring back era-appropriate clothing for the leaders.

I don't mind having Roosevelt in the Bronze Age, but at least give him different clothing for that time period.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 6th 2019 at 3:58:11 PM

Yeah, but then they'd have to spend a lot more on 3D modeling, and you can already feel that particular budget straining at its seams. Heck, some of the first DLC leaders, like Jadwiga, take forever to load on my computer because they apparently made the models use about five times more disk space than the later ones, and they still haven't gone back and fixed that.

I still don't understand Firaxis' stance on optimization. Apparently it didn't occur to them that the calculation of trade routes on a Huge map in late game where the player has 30+ of them might lag the game out for several seconds. Also, game sessions use increasing amounts of system resources as they go on, including some of the popups lagging or dropping out, until reloaded.

And whoever designed the game interface must have been operating from the philosophy that the more clicks it takes to get to a desired piece of information, the better.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 6th 2019 at 10:15:56 AM

I mean, ancient America is apparently banjos so there's that :P

There isn't even really an "ancient" America. The United States was founded in the 18th century.