{"id":219,"date":"2005-08-24T11:17:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-24T15:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=219"},"modified":"2006-08-18T17:34:55","modified_gmt":"2006-08-18T21:34:55","slug":"combat-in-civ-4-caudill-speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2005\/08\/24\/combat-in-civ-4-caudill-speaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Combat in Civ 4 – Caudill speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gamespot has an excellent interview<\/a> with Firaxis’s Barry Caudill on some of the changes coming in Civilization IV<\/i>. My own preview will be coming out in print in a few weeks, so I’ll save most of my comments until it is published and you’ve all had a chance to read it. For now, my opinions are still on the CGM dime.<\/p>\n

One part of the interview did stand out as unusual. In a discussion of the new and improved combat model, Caudill said:<\/p>\n

“The main change is that we brought back a system similar to firepower from Civ II. That system was a bit too complex and many people struggled to understand it; so, like many other things in Civ IV, we decided to streamline the process.<\/b><\/i>”<\/p>\n

How dumb do you have to be to find the combat system in Civilization<\/i> “too complex”? In Civ II<\/i>, units had hitpoints and firepower and the combat result was a function of those, taking into account fortification, terrain and veteran status. By and large, new tech beat old tech in most cases, so you didn’t have to be a math whiz to know that your archers would have some trouble taking out that musketeer fortified on a mountain. The manual even had a nice little example and a formula.<\/p>\n

Have we gotten to the point where even casual strategy gamers want to know the precise odds before they take an action?<\/p>\n

Apparently so. Civilization IV<\/i> lets you know what the fortification bonus for your unit is. It lets you know what the odds of victory are. It lets you add +1 or +2 bonuses here and there to improve your chances.<\/p>\n

Generally, openness is good in a game. Players shouldn’t stumble around wasting units because they don’t know what will happen. But Civ<\/i> is one of the most intuitive games around. Even the much celebrated “phalanx beats battleship” experience was a once or twice a game thing – and no one made you attack that mountain phalanx. Generally, modern trumped ancient with some confusion in the middle stages.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Civ IV<\/i> incorporates all this new information in a very user friendly and unobtrusive manner. But more on that later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gamespot has an excellent interview with Firaxis’s Barry Caudill on some of the changes coming in Civilization IV. My own preview will be coming out in print in a few weeks, so I’ll save most of my comments until it is published and you’ve all had a chance to read it. For now, my opinions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-3x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}