Civilization IV has been patched, and the changes are pretty interesting.

In probably the most significant gameplay change, the “chop till you drop” strategy has been seriously weakened. Many of the most successful Civ IV players center their early game around the deforestation of their first few cities. The wood is converted into hammers, pushing production ahead very quickly. The new patch limits forest cuts and decreases their productivity the further you chop from a city. Discovering mathematics will give you a 50% bonus to the deforestation effort.

The biggest longterm balance changes, though, relate to modifications to civilization traits and civic costs. Expansive states now have extra health to let their cities manage growth better and financial states don’t get the bonus that came with banks. These changes are in line with many complaints from users that financial leaders were overpowered and expansive ones too weak to really expand.

The Pit Boss and SDK have also been released, which means that there should be a revival of MP interest and lots of new mods in the coming months.

Yeah, I’m just getting to this now. It was on my wish list, so the missus picked it up for my birthday. Good of her to do that. Always marry a nerd.

Lionhead and Peter Molyneux take a lot of beatings for creating games that are high on ambition and low on execution, and, despite the mostly positive reviews that The Movies got, this game has been lumped into the morass of failed expectations by much of the gaming public.

From what I can see that’s a little unfair. I haven’t really explored the much touted custom movie maker yet and I can already tell that this is a pretty good tycoon game. There are some interface problems, but there is a lot to recommend The Movies at a certain price point.

What I like most is that The Movies has a sense of time and place that few other games do. The period movies you make have the right feel, the clothing looks right, nothing is garishly out of place unless you advance too quickly on the research curve. I can think of few other “historical” game that has the same clarity about where and when it is set. And considering that the time changes with every passing hour, this is quite an accomplishment. Children of the Nile managed that feeling, but it was consciously an historical simulation, and limited to one time frame. This is a business simulation.

I may end up being disappointed in the end. But even if this is not the greatest people management sim of all time, I don’t quite get the dismissiveness that many gamers have for this title.

Actually, I think I do. Molyneux is still paying for Black and White. Developers that embrace publicity can never move out of the shadow of their worst game. Even as Derek Smart’s spaceship sims have improved (still not enough for me to understand them, mind you), he still bears the yoke of Battlecruiser 3000. A name change might let his games escape the past. John Romero will always be stuck with Daikatana. And Molyneux is forever linked with monkeys that throw crap.

This is partially Molyneux’s fault. He has a history of trumpeting how great and revolutionary his games will be, and from the man who gave me Populous, I expect great and revolutionary things. But Black and White and Fable were only partially successful in meeting expectations that he had raised.

And so, this good but not great movie making toy is lumped in with Moly’s Follies even though he made none of the same exaggerated predictions about what it would be or how it would transform gaming. Unfair, I think. But gamers are not exactly known for being fair.

I finally get a week to spend on some important chores, including finishing up some reviews for some important people plus the usual house stuff. (I’ll also be going to my first Nats game of the season on Wednesday night.)

The shame of the week, though, is that there is no huge new release for me to sink my teeth into. Rise of Legends is still a month off, so my gaming time will be consumed by some old stand-bys – Civ IV, GalCiv2, Battle for Middle Earth II. I’ve played all of these a lot, so something new would be appreciated.

I will hopefully find the time to give Birth of America a serious play through, including a PBEM game with my longtime wargaming rival. So I should have a few comments about it together by the end of the week. My impressions are still very positive at this point.

The Rise of Legends demo is proof positive that sometimes a developer’s enthusiasm or zeal to get their game before the public can be a PR failure. Complaints about how lacklustre this highly anticipated demo was were legion. The graphics don’t look all that good leading to a lot of concern that RoL was just too similar in look and feel to Rise of Nations. In a quick response to the outcry, Tim Train has announced that a second, improved demo is on the way. Considering that the game is only a little over a month away, you would hope that any demo would be an accurate reflection of the final product. Apparently not.

Paradox has recently released screenshots of Europa Universalis III, a game still almost a year away. And the screens are hideous. Of course they are. The game has only just been announced and most of the artwork is in the placeholder or concept phase. Still, with a huge worldwide audience, Paradox is under pressure to release something to the masses.

Part of me misses the days before the Internet, before it was essential for a developer to have an almost continual buzz about their game. Screenshots were limited to magazine articles or game catalogs and most people knew very little about a game until it was released. Then came the Internet and there was more. Then came everybody owning a website and PR companies sending them everything they had to keep the game in the public eye. The sense of surprise is gone, and there is real risk of never feeling that you are discovering a game.

There is an upside, naturally. The public battering that Big Huge Games took for the first demo could only have happened on the Internet. This is a reminder to all of us that sometimes companies care about their customers. For Paradox, early screenshots allow the audience to play along with “what does this screenshot mean?”, a popular forum activity where people take a tiny image and try to deduce what the entire game is going to be like. This can make for some interesting conversation.

I would be lying though if I said that my reactions to either of these “premature” releases were positive – or even neutral. The Rise of Legends demo was uninspiring for me, though I suspect a lot of that was because my hopes were sky high. The EU3 screenshots gave me Diplomacy flashbacks as I puzzled over why this game is being done in 3D.

The sign of a good lunch is when you’ve finished the food and still want to sit and talk for another two hours. So I had a very good lunch yesterday with Portico reader and Big Huge Games Design Lead Paul Stephanouk. He was present at the creation of the gaming company, and so played an important role in Rise of Nations, still the best RTS ever.

I described this meeting as a business lunch to friends and acquaintances, but it really wasn’t. It was mostly two guys talking about what they liked and didn’t like in games and a lot of speculation about game design and how strategy games can move in new directions.

It’s always nice to meet someone who shares your interests and opinions, and it seems that Paul and I are on the same page of a lot of stuff. Similar likes and dislikes, but always for our own personal reasons.

The highlight, I think, was hearing Paul’s opinions on artificial intelligence and the challenge of developing a strategy game AI that plays like a human player and/or is able to diagnose a situation instead of having build orders and precise goals.

Or maybe the highlight was hearing that Paul has hundreds of board games and that he is an old fashioned wargamer. Envy – we meet again!

Actually, the highlight was the entire conversation with another adult game geek who is really enthusiastic about his job and the hobby. There were all kinds of little details dropped here and there, but nothing earth shattering. Since the conversation was casual and, therefore, off-the-record, I couldn’t tell you anyway.

Thanks, Paul, for a great afternoon. Next time, I get the check.