Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I had a play with an early version of Civilization Revolution on Xbox 360 the other day, my optimistic thoughts on which can be found here. (Don’t worry, this post is PC-relevant). Inevitably, a few readers quickly expressed dismay that the tech tree had lost several branches, some micromanagement (e.g. city health) had evaporated, and all-told it has a greater sense of rapidity and accessibility than the PC Civ games. I’m sure some of our readers feel the same way. A shame, as the game’s bold intention is to non-patronisingly bring the core 4X values – the values that made us love it in the first place – of Civ to an audience that otherwise would run screaming. So, dismissing what CivRev is trying to achieve outright because you’re saddened it only has one type of religion seems a little short-sighted. This is a companion piece to the PC Civs and not the death of them, but presumably that’s scant consolation if your desire is simply for Civ 4 on a gamepad and HDTV.

Anyway, MTV Multiplayer’s Patrick Klepek thought to ask the question I didn’t – partly because of my 6am-train-dulled wits, but mostly because the answer was abundantly obvious within seconds of playing the game. Will this cartoony, minimal-buttony new take on Sid Meier’s most-milked cashcow come to PC?
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From our ‘Putting Words In Sid Meier’s Mouth’ desk.

Newish community-written site Gamersglobal chucked up an exclusive interview with cuddly ol’ Sid Meier over the weekend. He was there primarily to talk about Civilization Revolution, the upcoming console reimagining of the strategy daddy, but dropped in this intruiging bombshell:

“I certainly would like to play around with a MMO concept in the future… I enjoy the idea of doing something I haven’t done before, so a MMO would fit perfectly, but I really can’t say if that would be the next game we do or if it’s still a couple of games down the road before we come to that. Because I have new single player games I want to do, as well.”

Start your speculat-o-engines now. A confirmation it isn’t, but it’s a generous amount of fuel to the gossip fire. Sid’s major franchises, Civ and Pirates, both seem brimming with potential for a massively multi rebirth (though Pirates of the Burning Sea has already had an unofficial crack at the latter). Of course, we’d all love to see Alpha Centauri revisited too. So which will it be? Or will it, in a shocking break with Firaxis tradition, be a new IP entirely?

While Meer’s been battering his way through it, I haven’t had a chance to actually play the new Beyond the Sword pack yet (Though the hype around it has caused me to have a vanilla-Civ4 relapse). However, it looks like I’m never actually going to get a chance to play it as the developers intended, as – by all accounts – I should immediately patch it with the latest Unofficial patch from Solver over at Apolyton.

Where this becomes officially unofficial is that the patch includes a load of fixes that Blake – responsible for the improved AI in Beyond the Sword, among other things – has developed. There’s a long list of general improvements, but let’s go for some of the Blake specific ones.

* Fixed AI airstrike bug
* AI now only capitulates to the team which has done them a majority of the damage.
* On non-aggressive AI, the AI’s are more aggressive early in the game.
* AI trains more units early in the game.
* AI SHOULD do a better job of bribing other AI’s (this may or may not work)
* The cost to Bribe AI’s into war now uses a new algorithm, it better reflects the impact of the bribe (ie a large AI charges a lot more to be ordered around). Generally bribing will be more expensive, especially cases where it used to be excessively cheap.
* AI’s tell you to sod off if you try to bribe them onto a victim with an intact nuclear arsenal.
* AI brags about it’s nukes more.

That Blake has managed to make the game act like I do when I play Defcon is proof that the Turin test is about to be completed. Our robot overlords live among us.

As a quick aside, I find this sort of blurring the lines of the official/unofficial releases for games fascinating. See also the guy who made the improved Shaders for STALKER which just made the game much better… which was then worked into the next patch.