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Saturday, February 14, 2004 RON: T&P -- Updating the exisiting civs
Here's my assessment of what they have done to the existing civs:
Aztecs: early game boost, mid/late game nerf British: boost Chinese: tiny nerf Japanese: small boost Mayans: nerf on all bonuses Romans: small boost Russians: decent boost Spanish: tiny nerf Given the tiny nerf on Spain, I think they have more work to do. In the hands of an expert, Spain was the equal of Maya, and would dominate any other civ. They haven't done much to reduce it (yet). Friday, February 13, 2004 First Impressions on the New Wonders
Hanging Gardens: AWESOME! It boosts knowledge
Forbidden City: An extra (buff) city. Basically, an expensive city, but it pays for itself rather quickly (3 min); other than that ... big deal? Red Fort: A buff fort. Another "big deal?" More on Governments
Yea, after playing around with it some, I definitely preferred the "old" stats. The special units provided seem particularly unimpressive, basically a beefed up general/spy or general/supply wagon combo. Nice thing, though, is it's free and does not require a castle. If killed, it gets replaced after a suitable time delay.
Once you research a government, you are stuck with it, no changing it until you reach the next "level." Then you choose between the next level military or economic one. However, you RETAIN your previous government powers. This means choices are permanent, and you can tailor your civ throughout the game to fit your preferences: Level - Choices II - Despotism and Republic IV - Monarchy and Democracy VI - Socialism and Capitalism You research these in order, in Classical: D or S, in Gunpoweder: M or D, in Industrial: S or C; so, during the course of the game, you really have 8 potential approaches: D-M-S R-M-SThere is problem with this in its current form which leads me to immediately see an optimal path (at least for me). The problem is that some of the benefits are temporary, and some of them are long-lasting. Some are good and some are pretty much worthless. I suppose it all comes down to your strategy; however , for example, I'd much rather have a permanent reduction in military unit costs than a "temporary" reduction in non-library research costs. It's temporary because I will eventually run out of things to research. RON: T&P UPDATE - The Americans
Never mind the Lakota, check out the Americans. MS has recently updated the info. [Americans] also have the additional power of receiving +3 Food, Timber, Metal, and Wealth for every non-Scout Barracks unit.Holy Cow! That means every barracks unit brings in more resources than a normal villager! You can boom AND attack! That could be EVIL. UPDATE: Nevermind. It ain't +3. We're not allowed to discuss detailed stats, so I shouldn't say what it really is (since it hasn't been released). But while we're on the subject of Americans, I can safely say the Wonder the Americans will use their bonus on is NOT the Collossus. It's the Hanging Gardens. This wonder is the first (and only) thing you can build that actually increases knowledge gathered. With this bonus, plus the extra scholar per uni, Americans might even be faster boomers than the Greeks. But the Americans ALSO have the barracks troop bonus resource thingy going on. RON: T&P - Governments
WOW.
Governments look like they could completely revolutionize RON. Never mind RON, how about ALL future RTS games? Government gives your nation military and non-military bonuses. To establish a government, you must first build a Senate and have the appropriate technology researched. Each government type also allows you to create a Patriot, a unique leader who can enhance your nation’s military or economic power. You can build a Senate after your nation advances to the Classical Age. It must be constructed within the City Limits.Imagine being able to take that crappy rushing civ and making it into an economic powehouse with Capitalism? Or tricking your opponents with an economic civ and then hitting them hard with an early attack because you went with Despotism. BHG just added a WHOLE NEW DIMENSION to the game with governments. This is pretty neat. Looks like being the CIV2 lead has finally paid some dividends (just kidding Brian). One more thing I have to play around with now. I'll report back once I have a better idea how these work. UPDATE: Never mind that, Scot_free points out that MS has updated their site with more (or less) detail. Choose:Is it just me, or were the "old" benefits more interesting? I think I'd rather have a Socialism where Russia could get even MORE border pushing. C'mon, don't tone them down, boost them up! If the impact of government is lukewarm, then it won't have much of an impact on the game. Make them be REAL choices with REAL tradeoffs. Maybe like make Despotism = -25 Commerce cap, +10% research cost, and -25% military unit costs and upgrade costs. Where Democracy = +100 Commerce Cap, +100% military unit cost or something like that. Then have the first government be relatively cheap (so you choose one) and every change (they do allow changes, right?) ramp up very quickly and expensively. A strategy game should have STRATEGIC CHOICES that must be made. RON:T&P Update - The Lakota
Of all the new nations and features in the game, the Lakota tribe intrigues me the most. They have the unique ability to build buildings outside their borders, but not in enemy territory. This could be Huge. One of the unique (and limiting) factors in RON is the concept of borders, whereby you cannot build anything outside them. The introduction of the Lakota blows that concept out of the water. You can build all military buildings (e.g., docks, stables, towers), cities, and resource locations (e.g., mines and lumber camps) anywhere not controlled by the enemy. This enables a player to play the game simialr to AOK. Cities, resource spots, and military buildings can go almost anywhere. And this will likely reward very aggressive players the most -- Forward Building is back! The drawback is that military buildings placed forward, without the support of a city, will eventually get ungulfed by enemy border pressure and could be vulnerable to attrition, or even bribery. The question is, are the Lakota strong enough as a nation (tribe) to take advantage of their new found freedom. We shall see.
First of all, there are some limitations. You can only build buildings outside your territory that do not have city limit restrictions. For example, the university must be built within city limits, so you can't just go off and build a bunch of universities in the corner. A second limitation is the economy. The Lakota don't make farms -- their citizen and stable units provide intrinsic food income. To compensate, they start off with fewer units. In fact, they currently start with only 2 villagers! Ouch!! So any early movement off to build will cause you to lose a big percentage of your income. Tied to that is the fact that each villager can only make +5 food. At first, your villagers will only be chopping wood, so you will exceed the wood cap well before you reach the food cap. It takes 20 villagers to make 100 food. So your extra villagers end up being idle, or off scouting. Scouting with villagers takes some extra micro, so you'll need to focus extra effort to make sure you maximize that scouting role and don't have too many idle villagers. By themselves, the Lokota don't seem all that dangerous, since even if they rush over to cramp you with their #2 city, the villagers are slow enough that an opponent can place a good #2 before you get yours started. So don't expect to be building right on top of their capital. However, pair a Lokota with a Mayan, Russian or a Bantu and you can expect to see some pretty dominating territory tactics. Territory expansion is limited by having to build WITHIN the existing border. But if you could build outside the border, your city border influence doesn't overlap. One theoretical strategy is to have the Lokata buidl far forward and have the Russian/Mayan/Bantu ally build in the Lakota territory, effectively getting the same bonus. The Lakota could then raze (if needed) and build elsewhere, setting up another great spot for the ally's #3 city. Imagine those as Russian cities! Ouch! UPDATE: yhano points out that they might be good candidates for fishing. I agree, they'd probably be perfect for a fishing boom, since all their early vills are going on wood. Meanwhile HalfLotus thinks that the forward building cities will create long trade routes vulnerable to raiding. UPDATE II: El_Capitan posted his vision of a hypothetical Lakota rush. The Lakota will be tough to stop if they ever succeed in a Kamikaze rush. Imagine... once they sack your Capital, they can have any Citizens brought with them to build a Tower and another Barracks because once you take the City, the area becomes neutral until taken back or assimilated. However, a good strategy would be to go to the middle of the map with a few Citizens and build the 1st Barracks there. After the Barracks is made, the Citizens continue to the outside border of the enemy's Capital. By then, you should have 5 HI. Raze the Barracks when your units are out and start your attack. Once your Barracks is razed, you build another one right outside the enemy Capital's border to make your 3 LI. Once you take the Capital, you get your bonus resources. Continue streaming in LI and FA from your new Barracks. Your Citizens should be at the taken Capital by now to make a few Towers and repair the Capital. Game over.Indeed. I've been thinking about how the tower and barracks building in neutral territory makes them a cinch to take and hold someone's capital. Sounds nasty. UPDATE III: I imagine Lakota would be pretty strong on Nomad, since they'd be collecting food while building that first city. Also, if they got the normal 3 villagers, they wouldn't start off behind other civs like they do with small town. Regarding the funky economy: Normally, to reach +100, you would need to have 2 cities + 8 choppers and 8 farmers. Lakota can do it with 2 cities + 8 choppers + 8 vills standing around. Or instead of standing around, they could be scouting for ruins, building stuff, and later mining metal. Basically, Lakota just saved the wood for EIGHT FARMS! To compensate, you start slower -- only 2 vills instead of 5. We'll have to see whether the granary allows them to upgrade that +5 in proportion to other resource production boosters. Throne & Patriots Expansion (beta)
Graham was kind enough to include us in the list of beta recipients for the upcoming RON expansion: Throne & Patriots. The cool thing is it's a media preview, so as Graham said: This beta is not covered by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so you can talk about it in forums, on your websites, and take screenshots. Remember though, that this is beta software, so nothing is set in stone. We'd ask that you don't give out specific stats, such as unit attack strength or nation powers, as they have likely already changed.So there you have it. I'll leave all the PR stuff to the big media outlets and instead focus on balancing and strategy issues. More later as I get to play it. Thursday, February 12, 2004 Cool new product
No, it's not the Love Detector, although that's pretty cool, too.
Scroll down the page to see the announcement for truth verification eyeglasses. Soon V Entertainment will be introducing a new product that will be a personal truth verification software. Finally a lie detector for everyone!For the man who has everything...but the truth. Unit Counter Chart
Big Huge Army - Top 10 list
Latest results 1 - Stiff *75* (5112) Mongols.Yuck. Looks like Mongols will win. Well at least I have the highest (tied with ReadyMan) non-Mongol score. So why are Mongols now considered to be weaker? I still think they are a very effective civ. Another great spy tip
biodegradeablefi(sh) aka AU_Humble posted another excellent spy tip. OK. How many times in multiplayer have you converted units and lost your spies as they are seen after the conversion, or clicked on a bunch of units but miss the last one and click the ground cancelling all previous orders. Wednesday, February 11, 2004 Hard luck story in the rated room
Anrjo gets royally screwed in the Rated Room. Well just when you think you've seen everything you get hit with something new.Yup. They definitely need MORE flexibility in how matches are decided. I should be able to do loose matching but EXCLUDE deathmatch type games. BHG could EASILY implement the same filters that ALREADY EXIST in Gamespy to do criteria matching. These filters could be used to exclude the chance of me getting into games with certain settings (e.g., Deathmatch West Indies). C'mon guys :-) New BHG/MFO tournament
This one sounds pretty cool: you must choose a RANDOM OFFENSIVE NATION! They are giving away big cash prizes, too. Go sign up! It's 1v1 arena-sized secret random land map.
UPDATE: BTW, Graham@BHG says that the "offensive" nations are: JAPANESEPersonally, I am amused that Germans show up as an Offensive Nation instead of an Economic one. They are almost as good as the British, and I've never gotten them as Offensive, although I don't play Offensive that much. Awesome post on various UU strengths
Over at MFO, El_Capitan posts a run down of UUs by nation through the ages. A small sample: Heavy Infantry- The best Heavy Infantry until Gunpowder Age is the Roman Heavy Infantry. They take out other Heavy Infantry as well as Cavalry. The Spanish have the best Heavy Infantry vs.Cavalry, especially starting in Gunpowder Age when they have ranged attacks. The Japanese have the best Heavy Infantry for taking out buildings and the German Heavy Infantry is about the same as the Japanese, but they don't get the Japanese bonus for taking down buildings faster. In Enlightenment Age, the Japanese have the best, and in Modern and Enlightenment, it goes back to the Maya.Go read the whole thing. Meet the Prez
ROFL.
One of the commenters at Calpundit posted a link to a clip from the Daily Show giving a funny send up of the President's interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press. |