Ask The Civ IV Dev Team 384
On Monday, we asked you for questions for industry legend Sid Meier. Today, we're asking for question to put to the folks behind the technology of Civilization IV. Besides the actual coding and development that went into the game itself, the team has made Civilization IV infinitely moddable through technologies such as XML, Python, and a fully developed SDK. Led by lead designer Soren Johnson, the team will answer your questions about the creation of the fourth chapter in one of the most influential game series out there. So, fire away with your questions. One per comment, please, and keep them topical. We'll pass the ten best questions to Johnson and the team, and the answers will be posted as soon as we have them in our hands.
The Civ4 AI (Score:5, Interesting)
If so, how?
As a player, I almost always find the key to really taking control of a game is to react well to the overall shape of things. Nuances with the terrain, the way cities are arranged in respect to each other, grabbing some resources at the expense of others -- this all provides opportunities for the human player that I wouldn't think an AI could easily pick up on. How can you get the AI to "consider the map", so to speak, rather than simply reacting to the stimulus around it and carrying out a set of predetermined functions (which, at least in my estimation, is the limitation that prevents it from competing fairly at high difficulty levels in the previous Civ games).
Or does the AI find its effectiveness in, say, it's ability to reexamine every city every turn? Or will it, you know, just continue to cheat to compete at advanced levels?
Thanks!
PS: My wife's traveling on business most weekends over the next couple of months. If you wanted to, you know, mail me an advanced copy... Just tossing that out there.
Mac Version (Score:4, Interesting)
Portables (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux Support (Score:4, Interesting)
My Question for You... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unit Moddablity? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is Slashdot, so I have to ask it... (Score:1, Interesting)
Planning on releasing a Linux version? Or any other OS other than Windows?
Adding custom units - how much of a pain? (Score:2, Interesting)
In civ2 adding units was very simple. Cut/Paste an image, add a line to a single text file. In civ3 this was a serious PITA, we needed to use external software to render in hundreads of animation frames, hope things were on scale and lined up correctly, then edit no less than three config files just to add a single unit. Can you give me, any hope that adding custom graphics for a unit to civ4 will be easier in the vein of civ2 and less like the crosspatched swamp that was civ3?
-GenTimJS
Extensibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Family Gaming (Score:5, Interesting)
Politics... (Score:5, Interesting)
How much is Sid involved? (Score:5, Interesting)
No bad vibes, meant to the Gaming God... just curious how involved he is with the 5th (counting "Alpha Centauri") cantation of his classic...
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back I played a game called Galactic Civilizations, a 4X game set in space (compare to Master of Orion). Its best show was the AI, which on the high difficulty levels is simply ingenious. It can spot when you're plotting to do something before you're even half ready to strike, and stop you, without cheating. It is very hard to distract the AI on hard difficulty levels using bait, or any of the classic anti-AI tricks. Even the old tried-and-true get-the-AIs-to-shoot-each-other-until-you-overpow
Why to purchase (Score:4, Interesting)
How customisable? (Score:5, Interesting)
3D Modeling (Score:2, Interesting)
Civ Economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a small country becoming a trading / banking power, sort of like the Dutch (minus the whole tulip fiasco), or Switzerland, countries that can buy their immunity and economically dominate other countries.
Just a thought...
Do you think 3D graphics will enhance gameplay? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I say 'add to the gameplay' I mean, add to the game experience in a way 2D sprites couldn't. For example: Physics, multipls views, wind, etc.. (I have only really seen the 3D globe, and like the idea)
As a 3D game developer, I have seen so many of my favorite games rehashed into 3D versions just because the developers thought that a 2D sprite-based game cannot make it in this market, and that annoys me. From Pirates! to Monkey Island, it seems developers would rather make a 3D game without any real need for 3D art or gameplay elements. Do you feel this pressure, or do you feel that a 3D game is inherently better because it has a new dimention? (Even if it still has the same locked off camera angle and usually poorer quality art assets)
what was the worst technology decision you made? (Score:5, Interesting)
Working with Sid (Score:5, Interesting)
Please make a short mode game (Score:3, Interesting)
civ2 - civ4 (Score:5, Interesting)
Alas...when civ3 came out, it didn't do it for me. Despite the poor graphics compared to civ3, I still prefer civ2. It's not easy to put the finger on the the reason why, but I suspect it's because civ3 has become a bit *too* complex. It's all very nice to have borders of influence, and insurgents in cities, and elaborate negotiation...but, somehow, I find civ2 is just easier and more fun to play. Sometimes, one just wants to 'go for it', without all the extra complexity. Now, will it be possible to play Civ4 in a 'easy' mode, which makes it more simple and user-friendly according to the lines (and rules) of civ2? I really think such a 'easy' setting would be greatly appreciated by those who want less complexity, and more simple, user-friendly gameplay.
Alternatively, will you place the civ2 game (and engine) under the GPL or similar licence, so people might freely hack and expand on that?
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the AI going to be as moddable and customizable as the rest of the game content?
I know Mr. Caudill mentioned an 'AI SDK' for 'experienced programmers' over on the IGN Civ 4 preview to tailor the AI to their desires. But it was mentioned as a seperate entity from the XML unit files and the basic Phython scripts.
Is this because the AI is more hard coded (less of it in easily accessible scripts) than say unit stats, or just an attempt to give a helping hand to less experianced modderings in a rather complex enviorment like the AI.
Basically I was hoping you could go into some more detail on what AI and other more complex modding might entail.
Re:Do you think 3D graphics will enhance gameplay? (Score:3, Interesting)
I Agree. I am an oldtime gamer now. I want to know what game play enhancements you are creating. I am not interested in how the new version is pretty and uses 3d graphics. What are you doing to the underlying game to get me addicted to it?
Portability (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we "flag" points on the map? (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd like not only the ability to name geographical locations (like Salty Dog Sea or Cmdr Taco Mt.) but similar to SimCity 3K be able to plant named flags -- that the other players don't see, of course -- so that I can remember my strategy when I come back to the game. Kind of like you see in old movies where the Generals are discussing their war strategy.
For example, it would be really nice to be able to put a pin onto the map and label it "objective 3 - after tanks invented" or "Don't forget to reinforce here from London".
That way I could take a break, eat some food, get some sleep.... heck even wait for the next weekend. That would go such a long way towards convincing my wife I wasn't obsessed.
Classic modes (Score:5, Interesting)
for example will I be able to play Civ 1,2 or 3, and not just their rules, but their units, tech trees and civilipedia?
Will this be provided or will it (if possible) have to be user add-ons?
If they are user add-ons will the team help a serious community effort to help them get the propper algorythems for combat resolution and what not (so our precious bomber can still be killed by the phalax that walks away undamaged)?
Is this one question? I think it counts as such.
Macro and Micro Management (Score:5, Interesting)
Ken's Rule of Gaming: Complexity in feature should be inversly proportional to the amount of player control.
The more complex a process is in real life, the less direct control a person has, this is what MOO3 tried to resolve.
MOO3 was a real shock to many players but once you learned to let go of micromanagment the game becomes rather plesant and suprising. A good contrast is what Sim City is To Civilization as Civilization is to M003.
Which Direction is Civ4 taking?
Re:Linux Support (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we can all appreciate the extra resources required to port a game to a different OS. The size of the current linux market may not make a native linux port financially attractive, though Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri did see a linux version, so the idea of a linux SM game is not without precedence. If no native Linux version is planned, have you ever given consideration to working with the Transgaming people to get Civ IV running under Linux using Cedega?
Even if not officially supported, that would enable you to reach a larger segment of the gaming market yet not require the level of resources of a full blown port.
Re:Linux Support (Score:3, Interesting)
Nevermind the added testing required, the unexplicable differences in behavior between both platforms, and having to reduce design decisions to the lowest common denominator amongst all platforms.
Game development should be about making a great game, not winning some political battle.
Mod tools for XML (Score:2, Interesting)
Colonization (Score:3, Interesting)
Accurate cities on world map (Score:4, Interesting)
DRM in Civ IV (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you feel about the existence and use of such cracks? Will you include this CD requirement in Civ IV even though it does not prevent copyright infringement but still inconveniences your customers?
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want a tech lead, what you are doing will simply not work. There is a pretty harsh penalty for committing too much to science; you are throwing money out the window. A few AIs that are trading amongst themselves will naturally research faster than a single, larger civ without any cheating.
You need to be the civ that's making those trades and benefitting from them. If you have a tech that one other civ has, then you must immediately sell that tech to all other civs for whatever you can get for it. If you don't, then the AI will, and you lose out.
In making these trades, you need to constantly strip the AIs of all cash and all income. Once they have no resources left to trade techs with each other, you can safely stop sharing and get your nice tech lead. This won't happen until the renaissance/modern eras however.
A different AI question: AI moddability (Score:5, Interesting)
Rationalle: As an fan AI-coder for CRPG's (I worked with David Gaider on AI in the Ascention mod of Baldur's Gate 2), it's my experience that with no deadlines and lot of playing experience (very important), a community of modders are willing and able to write a much smarter AI than any game engineer. Nothing would more increase my willingness to replay the game than the promise that this time, a newly modded AI really will give me a run for my money. In my experience, it only took several solid weeks of playing and a few weeks of coding before I could make a computer-controlled magic-user in BG2 who could regularly kick the ass of an identically-able human controlled magic user, without cheating.
For Civ-specific AI issues, here are the features of what I take to be the holy grail of AI:
Re:How customisable? (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine there will always be some aspects that won't be moddable, if for no other reason than you gotta anchor the game system somewhere.
For example, I have no great hopes of seeing my "alien invaders" scenario get much easier to implement. The premise is that you are a space-faring alien civ (with all techs) crash landed on an already developed planet. Basically, you're given one settler and a couple defense-only "mecha" units in some random spot on the map, but all the other civs have already had 40-80 turns to build up their empires. The only way I could do this in Civ3 was to force the "alien invader" player to build a large and difficult wonder only available to them (I called it "Spacecraft Salvage") before they could build any new units. This basically forced the player to sit there and press "next turn" 40-80 times in order to give the enemy civs a head start. It was a fun scenario because the strategies get really weird when it's one small hyper-advanced civ vs. a half dozen crazy beligerant iron age, renaissance, or industrial age civs; but it was always a pain to sit there and hit space for 10 minutes at the beginning of every game.
Re:Civ Economy or Econ Terrorism 101 (Score:2, Interesting)
I for one would like to see methods like the British used in the Falklands War, where they parasailed in units that counterfeited large quantities of Argentinian money, or the current economic supports the Saudis (or I guess technically the Saudi rebels - how you can call 99 percent of a country "rebels" is another matter) give to the Iraqi Resistance in the current Iraqi War, or what we did in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation - anyway, I would love to see this in the final version of Civ that comes out.
Reality is sometimes stranger than fiction, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper to research and develop simulations for.
Re:The Civ4 AI (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that's cheating
Open Protocalls? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. 3rd party clients, can play games against CIV 4 clients?
2. will CIV 4 Clients be able to connect to 3rd Party servers to play multiplayer games?
Civilization game length (Score:4, Interesting)
Civilization II (still my favorite!) sometimes took two sittings, but it was manageable.
Alpha Centauri took a bit longer, but the "storyline" helped break things up.
Call to Power and Civilization III each seemed to take longer than the last. I bought Civ III, spent several nights playing the same game, and uninstalled it.
Skill with a game is acquired through repeated plays, but each version of Civ has taken longer and longer to play through a game. Is Civilization IV continuing this tradition, or are you making changes to keep a game from taking weeks of real time?
Clock (Score:3, Interesting)
Globe? (Score:5, Interesting)
Python+XML vs lua (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of lua or anything. I've only done minor programming in it. My question is why did you choose the language that you did (python + xml files), what are the advantages to this approach, what are the disadvantages and finally, how much development time would you say is needed using your SDK would take vs attempting to design a mod for some of the other popular games (Quake3, Half-Life2, etc.)
Oh and I guess one more thing. How far have we come in modding games since Doom I
Sumit
Re:Map reactive is cool, but player reactive bette (Score:5, Interesting)
that is a good idea. i have always been annoyed how the AI would cross into my area, find a single open tile where the influence of my towns convereged but didnt cover and build a city. it would be like me moving to france and starting a city in the country and considering that city part of the u.s.. i did use this against the other civs since my culture was often much stronger. so my question:
will the other cultures in civ 4 truly respect my borders and not build in the 'middle' of my 'country'?
Re:Macro and Micro Management (Score:3, Interesting)
and so forth. Anyway, what I was getting at was that Scalability and self-maintaining systems are good.
Industrialized building (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Which user-requested features? (Score:4, Interesting)
> explorers going from mountaintop to mountaintop, which is not at all historically accurate.
Or the often maligned fact that trains move across the world instantaniously, but it takes an aircraft 20 years to do the same. Civ has always been great up to about the invention of gunpowder, then it breaks down into a total mess.
jfs
Governments (Score:3, Interesting)
I know I want my own little Iran, and I sure would have more nukes than you could sheik a stick at :D
Will you use a non-Microsoft networking stack? (Score:1, Interesting)
Once a week, ever since the original CivNet was published, the droogs and I play multiplayer Civ on a home LAN. We've probably canceled six or seven games total in that time span- typically due to the host's wedding anniversary or something similarly earthshaking. Members of the group have literally driven through hurricanes and blizzards to make the game, and when the host (originally me, not anymore) is on vacation, spare house keys are distributed so that the LAN can still be accessed.
We like Sid Meier games, and we want you to keep making them, so we do not bootleg them. Every member of our group owns every (Sid Meier) version of Civilization ever published! We require that you own a CD in order to play, even though we use no-CD cracks and similar tricks to make network installations (this speeds up the game start and ensures patch level compatibility).
Each time a new version of the game has upped the hardware requirements, I've rebuilt all nine of the LAN's PCs accordingly. When I moved to a new house, the LAN was moved to another player's house first, so that the game could continue even while I was in the process of moving (and there it has stayed, incidentally). All the machines are built from dumpster-diving booty, except the video cards - Civ 3 required more video $$ than we could find in corporate dumpsters, so we each bought a card.
We have played every Sid Meier version of Civ so far (including Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire). Of these, the most robust is the original Alpha Centauri, followed by Civ2 (there are certain crashes characteristic to each version that show up when you play them thousands of times, AC and Civ2 have have the lowest frequencies of such problems in real use). We are very familiar with "messages from the network underworld".
I think I can authoritatively state that the quality and capabilities of the networking stack took a nosedive when you went to Microsoft's DirectPlay gaming system. The simultaneous movement capability, for example, was much better in the hoary old (Civ1 based) CivNet than it is in Civ3.
I believe this is because a third party vendor, particularly when it's an OS vendor, has completely different motives than a game producer. You, the game producers, want maximum capability presented to the programming staff and the end users, but the vendor wants to use the game as a wedge to drive end users with other systems (or older systems) into an upgrade path that generates income.
I recommend a test case with 3 players outside a single-IP-address NAT gateway, and 3 inside, and one computer player. If you can do that, you have a clean multiplayer networking stack!
Mac OS X, animation, micro-management (Score:3, Interesting)
On a different topic. . . I was disappointed to read that Civ4 will have lots of animation. Animation is cool when it corresponds with the user doing something. But simply staring at the map while it's "working alive" with units going through their little motions is awful. That only makes it hard to find your cursor. It's like camouflage.
I'm highly skeptical of all the religious stuff. Seems like something else I'll have to micro-manage in a game I thought should be made more streamlined, not more complicated. Just another complicating factor I have no interest in, that my enemies can use against me. (like culture. . . only worse?)
What I would really love to see in the game is an optional "Empire mode". It would be a simplified game mode where all the micro-management is bypassed, and the focus is just on fighting a war. Instead of having to spend hours and hours building up your civilization first, you could dive into military conflict quickly.
Trace one feature from inception to release (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Globe? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, I can't speak for the dev team, but my monitor happens to be flat and rectangular.
Alpha Centauri (Score:3, Interesting)
UI design for multiple monitors (Score:5, Interesting)
Alpha Centauri diplomacy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Which kind of diplomacy will Civilization IV be having?
How does the AI *really* work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you do any game recording/playback?
Do you have the game play itself?
What kind of "tuning knobs" do you have?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Screen resolution... (Score:2, Interesting)
Civ III forced a resolution of 1024x768 or similar, which was extremely annoying given the small amount of map area visible (a big problem with the game IMO). The ability to zoom will somewhat alleviate this problem, but it would also be nice to use the full 1920x1200 resolution I have available. This is particularly relevant to a tactical game like Civ where you often need an overview of an area for strategic planning, and having to scroll back and forth to get this is detrimental to the playability of the game.
btw. FreeCiv allows any resolution (being window based), so if an Open source clone can do it there's no excuse for a commercial release
Hexagonal grid support... (Score:2, Interesting)
The screen shots I have seen are all square grids. Hex grids make for a fairer movement system, as opposed to square grids where a diagonal move costs the same but takes you further than left/right/up/down moves. FreeCiv provides a hex grid/tileset that I find preferable to the 'classic' square style.
If there is no support for hexagonal grids, what has been done to resolve the issue with movement points and other problems resulting from the use of a square grid system?
City Issues (maintainance and population growth). (Score:2, Interesting)
Spearman v. Tank (Score:3, Interesting)
Any thought given to expanding guerilla tactics?