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[Jelle]

Also:  I love the african dude's voice actor.  He sounds so chill.  "No village was ever ruined by trade!"

I absolutely hate that guy. Just the sound of his voice, blah.

Spoiler: More considerations (click to show/hide)

What do you guys think of the manufactury improvement? Compared to similar improvement namely biowell, academy and dome it seems rather useless. All are either 3 yield or 2 yield and one extra effect for 2 energy maintenance improvements with one tech upgrade, except with manufactury having that very pesky 2 unhealth. You can somewhat justify the 1 unhealth on oil wells, how the oil resource can be extremely useful for orbital units. Anyway, with that 2 unhealth I can"t ever see manufacturies being useful.

Also that tangent about oil wells reminded be, how about the water refinery building? +1food and production on sea tiles seems awfully powerful, making coast tiles better than all land tiles with a basic improvement so long as there's no river involved. Sea resources become so absurdly powerful especially early on with a refinery built, the only downside is there being no tech to upgrade barges and petroleum wells. Also offshore petroleum almost always being better than land deposits because of the water refinery. I don't know, sea resources seem crazy powerful if you've got one or two to benefit from a refinery.

Lastly biofuel plant. This building has a lot going for it, giving an impressive +1 production and +3 energy and +2 energy for every algae and another 2 trader specialist slots, all that with no maintenance cost. Compared to other resource specific boosting buildings that's a hellofalot and you're also much more likely to find multiple algae close to one another. Seems way overboard I should think.

Ahh no I forgot, I've got one more, opinions on geothermal? All the other strategic resources start off with 0 yield bonuses on a plot and +3 when upgraded, and basic resources +2 yield bonuses and another +1 when improved, however geothermal starts off with +2 and upgrades for another +4 (although resource view says +3, strange. Must test). I don't know, I have to wonder wether they didn't initially intend for it to be a basic resource but then decided to make it a strategic but forgot about the +2 extra yield heh.

[Puzzlemaker]

Personally I find Geothermal the weirdest strategic resource.  Why is it a resource?  It makes no sense!

Its also barely used by anything.  I feel like it should be replaced with something.

Also, terraforming:  Is it possible in BE's engine?

And, how do you hate that guys voice?  It's so awesome!

[Jelle]

Personally I find Geothermal the weirdest strategic resource.  Why is it a resource?  It makes no sense!

Its also barely used by anything.  I feel like it should be replaced with something.

Also, terraforming:  Is it possible in BE's engine?

And, how do you hate that guys voice?  It's so awesome!

Well there's 4 buildings that use it but they're all wonders. It does feel strange for being a resource.
Also I had power systems researched hence the +4, derp.

It does seem like terraforming tiles was under developement but I've no idea if the code for it is there. The files do contain lines like TERRAFORM_TO_FOREST and TERRAFORM_TO_PLAINS etc. Looks like it was discontinued.
I'm going to see if I can get it to work.
Edit: Heehee I added a forest to a tile. On a desert. 

[smjjames]

I'm really disappointed with the endgame. 

You're given pretty much no indication that another civ is working on a win condition project, and when one is completed you just a get a game over screen.  The first time it happened to me I thought the game was bugged... I reloaded an old autosave and the second time around I noticed you get a very brief message in the corner of the screen "So-and-so has won the game!".  Yeah... how???  Tell me or show me what they did!

You didn't usually get a warning in Civ V either. I actually almost lost when I saw Hutama building the mind flower, so I rushed to get mine built, finished a couple turns after him, managed to grab the victory.

Also, for the transcendance victory, it said that during the period between building the mind flower and winning, the planet would undergo all sorts of upheaval, like quakes, mountains suddenly forming and increased wildlife activity, but there was nothing, and there were TWO mind flowers going.

-snip-

I get the same feeling here, that it's little more than a reskin of Civ V without the religion stuff.

The AI also seems to be the same and they're really bad at placing cities, tending to crowd them as close as possible.

I like the Australian guy myself. The way he constantly rolls his eyes at me.

 He's supposed to be polynesian, I think.

As for the whole Great Mistake thing, if you read the 'interviews' on the Civilization main site, there are hints that a nuclear war happened at some point, along with the usual consequences of global warming and sea level rise. There were also various mentions of the 'inflection point' approaching, but while nothing actually explains what it is, it seems to have something to do with scarce resources.

I think they could have done much better on the intro because the preview video with various nationalities and ships launching from many cities was a lot better.

Also, does anybody know for sure if the various factions actually go for different affinities each game? I only played one full game and in the various smaller ones I've played, they seem to generally go in the same direction each time.

[umiman]

Some kind of SE Asian + Australasia combo. He starts speaking in Bahasa and Filipino at points.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

It does seem like terraforming tiles was under developement but I've no idea if the code for it is there. The files do contain lines like TERRAFORM_TO_FOREST and TERRAFORM_TO_PLAINS etc. Looks like it was discontinued.
I'm going to see if I can get it to work.
Edit: Heehee I added a forest to a tile. On a desert. 

Anything about raising/lowering terrain?

[Jelle]

It does seem like terraforming tiles was under developement but I've no idea if the code for it is there. The files do contain lines like TERRAFORM_TO_FOREST and TERRAFORM_TO_PLAINS etc. Looks like it was discontinued.
I'm going to see if I can get it to work.
Edit: Heehee I added a forest to a tile. On a desert. 

Anything about raising/lowering terrain?

Do you mean like turning land into sea and vice versa? Doesn't seem to work. With some tweaking you can get a worker on the task but the game crashes the moment the task were to complete. Placing hills and mountains should be possible though (no idea what happens to the worker who made the mountain though, being impassable terrain hehe) even if it wasn't intended in the scrapped terraforming feature.

I should also note changing the terrain doesn't update it to its new visuals and the graphics need to be reinitialized for it to show propperly.

[Biowraith]

Spoiler: More considerations (click to show/hide)

What do you guys think of the manufactury improvement? Compared to similar improvement namely biowell, academy and dome it seems rather useless. All are either 3 yield or 2 yield and one extra effect for 2 energy maintenance improvements with one tech upgrade, except with manufactury having that very pesky 2 unhealth. You can somewhat justify the 1 unhealth on oil wells, how the oil resource can be extremely useful for orbital units. Anyway, with that 2 unhealth I can"t ever see manufacturies being useful.

Also that tangent about oil wells reminded be, how about the water refinery building? +1food and production on sea tiles seems awfully powerful, making coast tiles better than all land tiles with a basic improvement so long as there's no river involved. Sea resources become so absurdly powerful especially early on with a refinery built, the only downside is there being no tech to upgrade barges and petroleum wells. Also offshore petroleum almost always being better than land deposits because of the water refinery. I don't know, sea resources seem crazy powerful if you've got one or two to benefit from a refinery.

Lastly biofuel plant. This building has a lot going for it, giving an impressive +1 production and +3 energy and +2 energy for every algae and another 2 trader specialist slots, all that with no maintenance cost. Compared to other resource specific boosting buildings that's a hellofalot and you're also much more likely to find multiple algae close to one another. Seems way overboard I should think.

Ahh no I forgot, I've got one more, opinions on geothermal? All the other strategic resources start off with 0 yield bonuses on a plot and +3 when upgraded, and basic resources +2 yield bonuses and another +1 when improved, however geothermal starts off with +2 and upgrades for another +4 (although resource view says +3, strange. Must test). I don't know, I have to wonder wether they didn't initially intend for it to be a basic resource but then decided to make it a strategic but forgot about the +2 extra yield heh.

Manufactory isn't really worth it at its base bonus but becomes a bit more attractive with that one tech that bumps it to +5.  The health malus is either a fairly major issue or utterly trivial, depending which path(s) you've been taking through culture and tech (my last game I finished with 75 excess health, the game before I spent most of the game struggling to stay out of a minus).  Presumably difficulty level would be a concern there too.

And yes, water refinery is a pretty nice building.  Throw in a weather control satellite or two over the ocean to generate a bunch more algae and coral and coastal/island cities can be very nice.  I'm not certain, but it seems like trade boats generate higher value trade routes than trade trucks too.

I haven't really paid attention to the biofuel plant other than to build it if it's available.  Bonus energy doesn't interest me too much though as I've been swimming in energy every game.  As for geothermal, I vaguely remember having something that needed it in my first game but no idea what, maybe one of the satellites or something?  I usually just trade it to the AIs.

[Majestic7]

You know, one pretty jarring little thing is that the quotes regarding tech etc are not spoken by the voice actor of the leader quoted. It is always the same generic voice. I think that is one small thing that takes away a lot of personality from the leaders.

[Sartain]

You know, one pretty jarring little thing is that the quotes regarding tech etc are not spoken by the voice actor of the leader quoted. It is always the same generic voice. I think that is one small thing that takes away a lot of personality from the leaders.

I think the choice of voice-actor for the tech quotes is...strange. Is it the Kavithan leader? She sounds strange somehow, like a cheeky middl-eastern or indian person who's just about to break down laughing, I think.
I'm guessing the jarring nature of the voice-actor would have been a lot less so if she hadn't been the only one. Now, instead of being a voice in the game she's THE voice of the game.

[umiman]

I think it's supposed to be that girl you see in the intro.

[Sartain]

That was my initial thought as well, but what's she doing quoting the faction leaders? I'd guess it'd make more sense than it being the Kavithan lady but I still feel like the narrator is just a mirthful laugh away from doing a Bollywood routine.
I suppose the girl (wouldn't she be from around India anyway, those guards in the intro look kinda Sikh?) is supposed to be the poster-child for the new world. I certainly can't say I feel that was the right design choice, Civilization games aren't supposed to revolve around some random peon that we never see again.

[Majestic7]

Laziness in writing and design in small things like those quotes really ruins atmosphere for this game and for many others. It is a shame, really - isn't there like some overall quality director who should be paying attention to these things? It isn't like it would be a huge cost issue.

[umiman]

Perhaps for some reason, Firaxis no longer cares about audio quality or descriptions as much as it did before. Maybe they fired all the guys that did or maybe they just have a new direction that focuses on other things. Who knows.

In the past they certainly cared, what with Spock and Alpha Centauri and all. Now they're the guys who released a game about international soldiers except all of them only spoke English and they only fought in America. It wasn't until fans questioned their really bizarre decision that they decided to finally include the other voices they recorded into the game.

Or maybe EA, the guys who hold the AC license, is telling people trying to make AC clones that they can't have the expressive leaders and quotes. After all, none of the clones have done it even though it's so bloody obvious that that single aspect is what everybody wants.

Or maybe this is like an Atlas thing. Where Atlas's number 1 rule in the company is that if it makes a game by itself, it can never have dual audio because Japanese players might decide to buy foreign copies that are cheaper.

Who freaking knows.

[Graknorke]

Or maybe EA, the guys who hold the AC license

Wait what?
That seems like a poor decision to let happen.