Analysis of Screen of the Week

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Heres the screen shot

I used Adobe 6.0 to blow it up, and heres what I see.

Aluminum is represented by a trash can. This one is in the plains. Looks sort of weird to have a trash can in the middle of a plain.

Irrigation does not need to be ajacent to water or each other.

Some cities have numbers to the right of their name, some don't. I wonder what this means

Some cities by the water have an anchor. This probably signifies a harbor or something.

Mines have changed (they no longer have railroads coming out of them, so it doesnt look weird to have railroads in the anceint area

Theres some weird 'energy balls' close to Tlatelolco

[HalfLotus]

The "energy balls" have me stumped too.

[Mars]

I think they're uranium

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by HalfLotus
The "energy balls" have me stumped too.

The "energy balls" are the fireworks when a city is in WLTK

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by HalfLotus
The "energy balls" have me stumped too.

Nope, those little things are above the city, and are fireworks exploding which denote a 'We Love The King Day'. Obviously it is hard to tell on a still screenshot because they are animated in the real game...

[Darkknight]

The number shows how many turns till the city grows. Some cities are stable and dont grow.

[Provost Harrison]

Now I do have one query about this screenshot. You see the city of Salamanca on here at the top left hand side, which is far up the west coast of Canada. And we have confirmed this is their capital from civ of the week. But hold on, shouldn't the Iroquois starting point be at the other side of the country, near the great lakes?

[Mars]

may be it took them awhile to find a good location to put the capitial

but seriously, that is a good point i hope we can have fixed starting locations cause it would suc other wise

[Akron]

Starting places may have been randomized, even though it seems rather unlikely, as the Iroquois started on N. America and Australia is uninhabited. But it's possible.

[Chowlett]

Now I do have one query about this screenshot. You see the city of Salamanca on here at the top left hand side, which is far up the west coast of Canada. And we have confirmed this is their capital from civ of the week. But hold on, shouldn't the Iroquois starting point be at the other side of the country, near the great lakes?

No idea - but notice it has a star by it. My guess is this indicates which city is the captial. Another neat easy-to-spot-info feature!

Actually - aren't the french pink? If so, why are they in China? My guess here is that they're playing on a world map with random starting locations

Also, note the encouraging number of Civs left. there's the iroquois in USA, the "browns" in europe, "blues" and "pinks/french" in asia and the "greens", "yellows" and "beiges" (possibly) in africa. From the city spacing, i'd say this is 100x100 map (also tiles seem to indicate this), so we've got 6 civ's still around in 1782, when aluminium is known, and I think uranium too - check the green thing to the east of Calixtlahuaca. This bodes well.

[Akron]

I don't believe that color is attached to a civ, as the Indians in the Gamespot preview screenshots were purple and the Iroquois in this screenshot are purple too. And since all civs can play together, both couldn't be purple at the same time. So civs may have a prefered color, but I don't think they are confined to that color.

[Zanzin]

I suppose it's logical that the civs could have random/different colours.

So much better than CTP where you always had to play as "blue".

I haven't seen one screenshot where the Romans aren't red though

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Chowlett

Quote:

Now I do have one query about this screenshot. You see the city of Salamanca on here at the top left hand side, which is far up the west coast of Canada. And we have confirmed this is their capital from civ of the week. But hold on, shouldn't the Iroquois starting point be at the other side of the country, near the great lakes?

No idea - but notice it has a star by it. My guess is this indicates which city is the captial. Another neat easy-to-spot-info feature!

Actually - aren't the french pink? If so, why are they in China? My guess here is that they're playing on a world map with random starting locations

Also, note the encouraging number of Civs left. there's the iroquois in USA, the "browns" in europe, "blues" and "pinks/french" in asia and the "greens", "yellows" and "beiges" (possibly) in africa. From the city spacing, i'd say this is 100x100 map (also tiles seem to indicate this), so we've got 6 civ's still around in 1782, when aluminium is known, and I think uranium too - check the green thing to the east of Calixtlahuaca. This bodes well.

Dan said he was using a debug version of the game where he could cheat, he revealed the whole map and that's why we see all of the resources. It's not because of the tech level.

Who knows, maybe the civilizations got displaced due to war or something else. It's about rewriting history, not recreating

[Mars]

What different 16 colors are there. These are the only ones i can think of that are distincitvely different:

red
blue
purple
white
black
orange
pink
green
grey
brown
yellow
light blue
light green(can't really use the others with a light form IMO cuz they're not different enough)

that's only 13 though

[jerkwaterbox]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
Aluminum is represented by a trash can. This one is in the plains. Looks sort of weird to have a trash can in the middle of a plain.[

Trash can or soda can? Looks like soda can.

[StratAll]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Now I do have one query about this screenshot. You see the city of Salamanca on here at the top left hand side, which is far up the west coast of Canada. And we have confirmed this is their capital from civ of the week. But hold on, shouldn't the Iroquois starting point be at the other side of the country, near the great lakes?

Well, here might be an acceptable explanation :
Firaxis said that in the text that goes with the Civ of the Week that the Iroquois civ aren't solely the Iroquois tribe but more like a collection of all the indian tribes that lived in North America and historically their ancestors entered the continent by passing the Bering Street that separates the Americas form the Eurasian continent.

Apart from that, maybe they thought that it became a little crowded with the starting location of the Americans and the Iroquois too close to each other?

[Crouchback]

Originally posted by StratAll
Apart from that, maybe they thought that it became a little crowded with the starting location of the Americans and the Iroquois too close to each other?

It always was a little crowded in reality.

But try being the English on a world map when the Irish are in the game in Civ 2, they had to die or there would only be room for three English cities. Actually, in reality...

David

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Crouchback


It always was a little crowded in reality.

But try being the English on a world map when the Irish are in the game in Civ 2, they had to die or there would only be room for three English cities. Actually, in reality...

David

You mean the Celts, right? Yah, even on the largest Earth map in Civ II you could only have a couple cities. It was very difficult to setup the huge empire where the sun never set... starting as the English.

But now that we have 256x256 maps.... ohhh the things we can do!

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Trash can or soda can

I think that its a trash can since there seems to be an opening on the side, and not on the top

But now that we have 256x256 maps.... ohhh the things we can do!

256*256=65536 squares
16 civs, so each civ can take a maximum of 65536/16 or 4096 squares or 64*64 without having to fight for any of it.

What different 16 colors are there.

Well, lets see
White
Yellow
Green
Blue
Brown
Black
Orange
Purple
Pink
Grey
Red
Dark Green (have a look at last weeks screen of the week)
Dark Blue (compare last weeks screens blue with this weeks)

These are the only ones which we have seen, but im sure that there are also variations of other colors.

[Faboba]

'scuse me...... drooling

[ixnay]

Here's another pic of aluminum...looks like a pop can which makes sense - most people associate aluminum cans with pop cans.

[Faboba]

Oh and regardin the starting position. It is correct that accuracy wise, the Iroquois should start below the great lakes, however they are representative of the Native American people in the game who covered the North American Continent.

Were they to start them where the Iroquois actually were then they would have major problems with the Americans and Iroquois starting too close. I was presumably felt it would be better if they started at opposite sides of the land.

I'm sure however you can change this. Hell, I may well eliminate the American's entirely, I'm not sure.

Why they couldn't just have left it as the Sioux lord only knows. I liked Sitting Bull and having my army sack Little Bighorn

[Lawrence of Arabia]

hmmmm

Maybe you're right

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Were they to start them where the Iroquois actually were then they would have major problems with the Americans and Iroquois starting too close.

Especially if the Americans started with a 0.0.x scout who would walk straight into an undefended city and finish the Iroquois empire.

[Sabre2th]

The Iroquois actually represent all of the Native American civs, so it would make sense that they're not in the northeast. This, of course doesn't fit with the city names. I think the best explanation for this shot is a random start.

[Mars]

My vote is that aluminum is a soda can.

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
Well, lets see
White
Yellow
Green
Blue
Brown
Black
Orange
Purple
Pink
Grey
Red
Dark Green (have a look at last weeks screen of the week)
Dark Blue (compare last weeks screens blue with this weeks)

These are the only ones which we have seen, but im sure that there are also variations of other colors.

Hey those are all the colors i said, practically.
I'm sure there will be more to but what will they be

[Skanky Burns]

Ive seen a few posts on what 16 colors Civ could use, so i decided to look up my Tandy 1000 manual for THE list of 16 colors - This is the colors computers used back when they only had 16 colors:

0 Black
1 Blue
2 Green
3 Cyan (light blue)
4 Red
5 Magenta (purplish)
6 Brown
7 Grey
8 Dark Grey
9 Light Blue
10 Light Green
11 Light Cyan
12 Light Red
13 Light Magenta
14 Yellow
15 White

Even in THE list, some colors are similar.
And yes, i do have too much time on my hands

[Executor]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
256*256=65536 squares
16 civs, so each civ can take a maximum of 65536/16 or 4096 squares or 64*64 without having to fight for any of it.

Except that 60% of all the area on the map is ocean squares. Probably another 10-20% will not be usable, either in hard to use areas or tundra, desert, etc. So not enough space for my vast empires. I wonder if we could convince Firaxis to expand the size of the map to 512x512 in the expansion.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Executor


Except that 60% of all the area on the map is ocean squares. Probably another 10-20% will not be usable, either in hard to use areas or tundra, desert, etc. So not enough space for my vast empires. I wonder if we could convince Firaxis to expand the size of the map to 512x512 in the expansion.

That is way more than you will need... ever. Especially considering low movement rates. You have one huge ego Executor, I'm gonna laugh when you lose your first game 1000 years in...

But seriously, 256x256 is awesome compared to the "large" we had before.

[Akron]

Originally posted by Executor


Except that 60% of all the area on the map is ocean squares. Probably another 10-20% will not be usable, either in hard to use areas or tundra, desert, etc. So not enough space for my vast empires. I wonder if we could convince Firaxis to expand the size of the map to 512x512 in the expansion.

512x512

Probably at least 30% of the map will be usuable, as civs can build cities on the coast, which harvest ocean squares, balancing out the squares lost in unuseable terrain. I think 180x180 will be more than enough for 16 civs. I don't think I'll be venturing over that size, but go ahead if you want. Good luck finding another civ within the first 5500 years.