Solver:	In CivIV, diplomacy is much improved with the AIs forming blocs and dealing cleverly. Tell us more about this system!
Sirian:	Another thing that has improved in the late game is the Diplomatic victory. The CivIII diplomatic victory was an afterthought, and it showed. All you had to do to win was to build the UN yourself and bribe a few civs, and the game ended. Talk about anti-climactic! The new diplomatic victory requires to obtain the support of 60% of the world's population, or more. Diplomatic relations are also more sophisticated now. Instead of a single “reputation” value, there are numerous elements that will add to or subtract from relations. The "15-fer" trade deal I mentioned, summer 2002. [Technology trade order] Five techs from the middle ages and ten from the industrial era. I won this game by Diplomacy in 750AD! On Deity! This was one of the early R[ealms] B[eyond] Civ tourney games, and a month or two later, the last patch for CivIII came out, in which Soren fixed the unbalanced tech pace on higher difficulty. You can't duplicate the 750AD diplomatic win on today's versions of CivIII. Not without modding! The AIs will get upset at you if you have dealings with their enemies. So once some of the AIs have started to dislike other AIs, it becomes tough to remain friends with both sides. In some cases, it is not possible to please all the people all the time. These relations build up over the course of the game, based on your actions, your choices, and your responses to AI initiatives. You can see where you stand at all times, with each rival. The game shows you the diplomatic modifiers currently in place: things that pleased that civ, things that annoyed them. Many testers now believe that the diplomatic victory is the hardest one to obtain. I'm not sure I agree (Cultural is pretty tough – there is more or less only one way to get there), but just the fact that some can argue that Diplomatic is the hardest and make a legitimate case says a lot. The AI can also now win by diplomacy! And it has done so! This is not an everyday occurrence, but testers who were doing well in their military campaigns have lost the game because they upset too many AIs and a bloc lined up against them and voted someone else the winner. The AI has also won by diplomacy in Soren's "AI Only" test runs that he is constantly using to check his latest tweaks, make sure they are playing nice with the rest of the code. (If Soren changes something in the AI and it causes the AI to do unintended things, like collapse completely, then he has to backtrack and try something else!) I'm a harsh critic when it comes to Diplomacy, though. I do indeed believe it is the most important element of the AI, the one where any shortfall will have a game-altering impact. I wish we had been able to do even more than we were able to do. What we ended up with is leaps and bounds ahead of any previous incarnation of Civ, so I expect fans to be pleased on the whole. If I continue to be involved in CivIV development, on into the expansion packs, diplomacy will remain an area of highest concern to me. There is still room for more improvement, and you can bet I will push for it if I'm there.
Solver:	Yet another big, I'd even say huge, tweak in CivIV is the combat system. We now have promotions and different unit strengths, prompting a huge change in strategy. In CivIII, you could conquer nations through lots of bombardment with no danger to yourself and loads of your best attacking unit. In CivIV, there will be few situations when one huge stack of one unit type is the right choice. Do you share my excitement at the combat in CivIV?
Sirian:	Definitely. One of my favorite lines, when things go better for me in a game than I expected, is to say, “Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.” That rarely applies in CivIV, though! Luck of the dice is a much-reduced factor in the combat. This is something players will have to experience to understand. Luck can still break against you, but it is now a wild card, rather than the dominant deciding factor. In CivIII, luck was a big deal on the scale of a few units. You could transform that luck in to statistics by involving large enough “data samples”. If you had already won the battle by having a vastly superior force in place, the luck couldn't ruin you. However, on the smaller scale, luck played a huge role. The "Spearman vs. Tank" mythology represents this most clearly. CivIII had a lot of combat results that, unit-to-unit, made little sense. When Soren designed CivIV, one of his priorities was to reduce the number of units involved. Fewer workers, fewer military units, fewer everything. He did not want to shift the core game balance, though. So now one worker does the job that three used to do, and costs three times as much. (Or thereabouts). The military is the same. With fewer units on both sides, the balance is unaltered. However, to make this fun, the "luck factor" really had to go! IT... HAD... TO... GO! The CivIV combat system is much more deterministic. Stronger units rarely lose to weaker ones. Even a small edge in Strength value makes a big difference in terms of unit survival. A unit with as little as ten percent more strength than the enemy unit has much more than a ten percent edge in survival odds. It may come out badly hurt, though. What this tends to mean is that little advantages matter. That 25% boost for defending on a hill? That may decide the whole battle! Which promotion a unit decided to take... That may help it one battle, but the enemy may bring a different mix of units to the next battle. You have to choose between stronger promotion types that one work vs. one category of units, or weaker promotions that work vs. everybody. Offensive-oriented promotions, defensive, or special abilities. With luck's role diminished, and fewer units in play, each unit matters a lot more. The system must be experienced to be appreciated. You cannot look at the numbers and concepts, not having played with this system yet, and get a feel for how it works. It must be experienced to be understood! CivIV combat is a lot more fun, now, in my view. Your strategic choices matter! I have been able to salvage some dismal-looking situations with the right mix of units, promotions, etc. CivIV's motto, according to Soren: “CivIV: Sometimes it is better to be good than lucky!”

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