Civilization V!!

[frogbeastegg]

Another good video here. Recommended viewing. I'm very pleased to hear they learned from Civ: Rev's interface as it was excellent, very streamlined.

If my PC won't play this at a decent level I think I'll cry.

[Beskar]

That video made me buy Civ5 before I even realised I did.

I am looking forward to it now, it has some of the big improvements I wanted (especially in warfare).

Wish I never ordered Elemental: Waste of Money.

[Lemur]

As much as I want to get this. Steam only = no.

I dunno, I find Steam to be the least offensive of the DRM schemes. At least Steam adds some value, rather than just serving as a self-defeating lockbox. I did a brief replay of Stalker: Clear Sky recently (wanted to play the "Complete" mod), and was mildly shocked that I had to keep the disc in. Expectations change.

[Krusader]

Pre-ordered Civ V Deluxe Edition...will admit I feel a bit dirty shelling out extra 5 € for extra civilization :/

I'm getting more convinced Civ V will be a good game AND a money grab, where they release DLCs that add map packs (Nordic Edition of Civ V contains 3 map packs extra), civs, units etc.
As long as it isn't "required" I'll most likely stay away from DLCs.

[Beskar]

Pre-ordered Civ V Deluxe Edition...will admit I feel a bit dirty shelling out extra 5 € for extra civilization :/

Thats cheap considering its £10 here for the deluxe (£15 since it is steam only, and amazon/etc sell the game £5 less than Steam)

[God Emperor]

Ofc we all look forward to CIV V :)
I don't think this has been posted yet. The leaders and their greetings

http://www.civilization5.com/#/civilizations-all/

[Monk]

Pre-ordered from Amazon, times like this i'm glad i got a ton of store credit with them thanks to selling back textbooks. Also got release day delivery for only $1, can't beat that.

If my PC won't play this at a decent level I think I'll cry.

I more than meet the requirements for this game, but it wouldn't be the first time I've been lead on by odd requirement claims. We'll see. Tuesday is fast approaching, can't wait! If my hardware holds i'd be glad to throw down in some multiplayer with anyone who wants to, after extensive singleplayer practice of course. Steam page is here.

[Lemur]

Well, enjoy Civ V tomorrow, kids. Call in sick to work if you can. I think it's ling past time that employers recognized major PC title launches as secular holidays. We shall see how long a lemur can stay strong and not buy it. Make sure to report here on how fantastic and life-changing it is, just to torment me.

-edit-

Ars Technica weighs in. Verdict: Buy.

[Monk]

Well, enjoy Civ V tomorrow, kids. Call in sick to work if you can. I think it's ling past time that employers recognized major PC title launches as secular holidays. We shall see how long a lemur can stay strong and not buy it. Make sure to report here on how fantastic and life-changing it is, just to torment me..

Well you know that's why i log in every day Lemur, to torment you!

I won't be seeing my copy arrive until later today, probably not until the afternoon. The Steam unlock is scheduled for nine hours from now (or 10 AM EST) so i won't be missing that much game time. To everyone who has no work or social obligations, feel free to share your thoughts after the unlock!

[frogbeastegg]

Demo is downloading; averaging 900kbs-1mbs so the server seems to be in good shape. Gives me an hour or so to do my cooking, ironing and a few other jobs before I sink my teeth into my latest world domination scheme.

It's small map, 3 civs, 150 turns, no techs better than medieval. Or so the description says.

EDIT: Rock, Paper, Shotgun's first look review is up. Some good news in there, and some concerning. Sounds like Civ has been infected with the Black Knight syndrome we all know and loathe from TW. In civ 4 that kind of behaviour was mostly kept to the warmongers like Monty, Napoleon, or Shaka.

[Krauser]

Anyone who already has the game, how is it compared to Civ 4? I've had a blast playing that game, and don't feel the need to upgrade to the new one unless there is something really big. I did read about the combat changes which sounds interesting, but that's not enough for me to buy it right now. I don't do so much warmongering stuff in Civ 4. I like to focus on more peaceful victories like Culture and Science (Space Ship). If there are some major updates to the other gameplay styles, I would definitely buy it.

I've also seen a lot of videos and reviews. The videos have so far all been PR talk, not honest gamer opinions. The reviews have all seemed to be something like "It's Civ 5, buy it". I want more info on changes besides combat system.

[frogbeastegg]

Finished with the demo already. 1.6 hours to hit the turn cap according to steam's play time tracker. That's quite quick for the number of turns. Random thoughts:

It works. Performance was good, even. Not so happy with some of the visual aspects; the units are all ragged around the edges and so small in scale so they look very bad and it's hard to tell some of them apart. It won't let me turn on some basic options like AA for some reason I can't figure out; my video card is more than capable.

Why do I have to exit the entire game every time I change anything in the video/performance tab? Really? And I can't alter anything outside of the main menu? Really? So how am I meant to tailor performance?

Please stop forcing me to watch the intro videos. I appreciate you spent thousands on them but I'm not interested. Not the first time, and not the third time after I've been booted out of the game due to changing settings. Hammering escape should skip them!

City states are neat. The bonus they provide to allied civs is quite respectable. The missions they give add some low level optional goals, and can give some good rewards.

Combat's ok I guess. I didn't get to do much, just a bit of barb slaying. Burning down barb encampments is fun and worthwhile; it's the first time in any of these games that I haven't viewed it as a chore.

Wonders seem weaker, at least based on their descriptions. They are now more of a handy bonus than a potentially game winning boost.

Civics are nice. Saving up culture points to buy a later civ tree instead of an earlier one might be a strong tactic. Some look far more powerful than others. Slightly improved wonder construction versus easier to maintain relations with city states who provide me with extras resources and trade, as well as being a military ally, also saving me loads of gold because I don't need to give them handouts as often? Yeah, I'll take the latter thanks, even if I have to wait a bit for it to be offered.

Having everyone move 2 hexes by default is nice. No more 1 tile per turn dawdling.

Demo map's so small that there wasn't anywhere to expand to by the time city states and the other civs were added. I squeezed in 2 cities and felt like I'd hit a dead end. I like to have fewer cities, yes, but I hate feeling crowded. Definitely need to play on larger maps!

I like the Alexander leader diplomacy screen. Can't say why. He's ... neat. Bismark and Augustus were a bit boring.

Music is ok, all very easy to ignore. Nothing to rival boba yetu.

Which reminds me - the main menu is underwhelming after civ 4's view of earth from space plus boba yetu. That menu felt epic. This one is something left over from Bioshock minus the water damage.

The advisors aren't much use IMO. I selected the civ veteran level and they still kept telling me idiot level stuff instead of giving useful advice. I know that food makes a city grow, gah!

Can you please stop dumping tundra and desert all over me, please? I always get a tonne of tundra and desert tiles around my starting position in this series. If it's not that then it's a tonne of jungle instead. It's be nice to start out with half decent land for once, like most other people seem to do in the AARs they post.

Aside from that, the main impression is that it's a different game to civ 4. It won't replace it; I shall probably end up with both on my HD. It felt quite similar to Civ:Rev with its fast turns, lack of stacks, and smaller map.

Preordered. Once I'm on a bigger map without the limitations of the demo I'll like it more. I won't play the demo again.

[Beskar]

Can you please stop dumping tundra and desert all over me, please? I always get a tonne of tundra and desert tiles around my starting position in this series. If it's not that then it's a tonne of jungle instead. It's be nice to start out with half decent land for once, like most other people seem to do in the AARs they post.

Aside from that, the main impression is that it's a different game to civ 4. It won't replace it; I shall probably end up with both on my HD. It felt quite similar to Civ:Rev with its fast turns, lack of stacks, and smaller map. .

It seems to be the same start and map for everyone, to show off the different areas. In the proper version, there are continents full of realistic terrain.

From what I have seen of Civ 5, it will most likely be replacing Civ 4 for me. The gameplay and graphical element is a big step up from Civ 4 in my opinion, and I feel guilty at only ordering it at £25, because it feels well worth it, from what I can tell from the demo.

[Monk]

Just got my copy in the mail. Froggy will be happy to know installing from the disk works fine. Did have some trouble with the CD key, mainly due to how similiar letters look. All fixed and jumping in game, will have thoughts on it soon.

[naut]

EDIT: Rock, Paper, Shotgun's first look review is up. Some good news in there, and some concerning. Sounds like Civ has been infected with the Black Knight syndrome we all know and loathe from TW. In civ 4 that kind of behaviour was mostly kept to the warmongers like Monty, Napoleon, or Shaka.

Well. Judging by that. It needs expansions and mods. Sigh.

[LeftEyeNine]

My demo impressions are...uh...maybe it's the demo that's "skimmed" or the feel I perceived is definitely subjective.

It felt as if I was playing something too simple. I don't know why but it all felt as if I was playing a console version of Civilization V.

These are impressions in an-hour-long demo experience after all. But, still...

I'm not sure.

[Monk]

Played a few games, reached the 200+ turn mark in one and decided to stop for now since i have stuff to do soon. Didn't have much trouble with interface issues or anything. In fact it was relatively easy to get used to, there weren't many times that I was digging through menus trying to track down functions down. I like it. Performance was okay but you'll definitely need to tweak things a bit, like most games civ 5 is completely hopeless in trying to auto set your video settings. Once i swapped a few things frame rate went through the roof, very happy about that.

Unit to unit combat is where it should be. Being a dice-roll based system there are going to be real odd moments, but overall its not frustrating. Seiging cities on the other hand is dumb, and the resources required to take a city are massive. It feels really unbalanced when somehow a city chews through three units of spearmen and two units of archers over 10 turns, forcing a 30 turn stalemate because my archers, for some reason, do terrible damage to cities. So attacking cities without siege equipment is pretty much suicide.

Haven't encountered any instances of illogical, homicidal AI that has been much talked about. I made alliances with other civs pretty easily and they held for a long time. In my longest game (around 250 turns) no one declared war on me, it was me doing the warmongering when my ally asked me to declare war on another civ. Washington got annoyed with me after 70 turns of me killing stuff, but other than that. The diplomacy screen needs tweaks. When i am declaring war on someone it doesn't allow me to see the city-states he's got in his pocket. Pretty annoying when you declare war on someone only to find they'd spent the entire game building alliances with the minor factions.

Haven't seen any bugs or encountered any crashes, i'm sure they're there, but I haven't seen any thus far.

Please stop forcing me to watch the intro videos. I appreciate you spent thousands on them but I'm not interested. Not the first time, and not the third time after I've been booted out of the game due to changing settings. Hammering escape should skip them!

After the company logos try clicking the mouse a few times, three clicks got me to skip the videos.

Aside from that, the main impression is that it's a different game to civ 4. It won't replace it; I shall probably end up with both on my HD. It felt quite similar to Civ:Rev with its fast turns, lack of stacks, and smaller map.

I hated Civ 4, but so far I like Civ 5. We'll see how I feel about it when I have the chance to play a super long game - but thus far I really can't complain.

Anyone who already has the game, how is it compared to Civ 4? I've had a blast playing that game, and don't feel the need to upgrade to the new one unless there is something really big. I did read about the combat changes which sounds interesting, but that's not enough for me to buy it right now. I don't do so much warmongering stuff in Civ 4. I like to focus on more peaceful victories like Culture and Science (Space Ship). If there are some major updates to the other gameplay styles, I would definitely buy it.

I'm really not sure. It isn't as if culture and science are not respected by the AI, they most certainly are, but the game pushes you toward combat above the other paths to victory. The different systems work, but it almost feels like there isn't enough room for all of these systems to play nice. Maybe it's just me. If you're on the fence i'd definitely wait until more media/information comes out.

[Beskar]

My demo impressions are...uh...maybe it's the demo that's "skimmed" or the feel I perceived is definitely subjective.

It felt as if I was playing something too simple. I don't know why but it all felt as if I was playing a console version of Civilization V.

These are impressions in an-hour-long demo experience after all. But, still...

I'm not sure.

I don't quite get your post. From my impressions of the Demo, it is just like Civ IV with a bunch of improvements, graphical and gameplay, especially the military aspect.

[al Roumi]

I don't quite get your post. From my impressions of the Demo, it is just like Civ IV with a bunch of improvements, graphical and gameplay, especially the military aspect.

I agree with LEN, the demo definitley gives a boiled down civ experience. But then I'm used to Marathon/Epic game length so I was alarmed to be reaching the middle ages by 100 turns.

The game looks nice IMO, the interface is also much better -the prompts about things happening are useful and should peel the layers off the onion, helping the player get more involved with population management (which was always quite arcane and micro/chore heavy) -for example.

The RPS review is somewhat disconcerting however - I'm not sure i really want a "baby" civ. Civ for me is about being a complete agrophobe and having a serious game against AI (much, ironicaly as was/is my interest in TW games). I stand to be rather disapointed if that's not what this will deliver...

[LeftEyeNine]

@Beskar

alh_p has better English skills than me.

[frogbeastegg]

A few more things I thought of from my demo game and neglected to add to my list:

Why don't I get a tooltip telling me what my workers are doing and how many turns are left when I hover my cursor over them?

Why is it so hard to get a tooltip which tells me what a unit is? Instead of putting my cursor over any part of the unit and waiting a second I have to put it over the tiny disc that shows faction ownership and wait.

Why do I have to hold down the right mouse button to see the movement radius for a unit? It's awkward. Why not have it appear by default when the unit is selected?

I like the end turn button. Or rather, I like the varied functions placed on the end turn button. It always takes you through the things which can be done so you can't miss anything. The notification system is also nice; I like the way the game is always saying "Something neat happened, what do you want to do next?" to you.

The combat comparison report is detailed and useful.

Auto-explore is perfectly happy to walk units through the borders of city states. There's a relations penalty for each item of trespass. Ergo using auto-explore makes city states hate you. Gah! I like to do my intial exploration by hand and then turn over control to the computer once there's nothing nearby left to investigate.

It seems to be the same start and map for everyone, to show off the different areas. In the proper version, there are continents full of realistic terrain.

It was something of a general plea to any god of civilisation that happened to be watching. It's long established civ tradition that the frog will get a starting area surrounded by rubbish tiles. Every entry in the series and it's the same thing. :wistful sigh:

Froggy will be happy to know installing from the disk works fine.

My disc arrives tomorrow. I won't be able to do anything with it until Friday (no more said and don't anybody dare comment because that's a rant about DRM I'm politely holding back) and I haven't seen what time the UK unlock is supposed to be. I won't be able to do anything myself until after 5PM, so I'm hoping the unlock will happen earlier and I will be trying to get mine working after the initial rush. Then it's more likely to go smoothly.

After the company logos try clicking the mouse a few times, three clicks got me to skip the videos.

Must be demo specific then. When none of those usual clicks/buttons worked I tried hammering everything and still no joy.

I didn't want to watch the video at all until I first loaded up the proper game. It's a ritual of mine; I watch all of the intro stuff in full the first time I start any game. Never on demos. It feels like something of the specialness of a new game is lost when the intro is old news and needs to be skipped.

I hated Civ 4

I never did get around to asking why. So, why not? If you don't mind elaborating.

Well. Judging by that. It needs expansions and mods. Sigh.

Civ 4's AI received a lot of work in patches, for vanilla and then on both expansions.

Civ 5 might already have received some work as I'm hearing that there's a big day 0 patch which downloads after installing the game. Perhaps Monk can fill the picture in here and confirm whether it's a patch proper or something to do with the unlocking process?

It felt as if I was playing something too simple. I don't know why but it all felt as if I was playing a console version of Civilization V.

Oddly enough, the console version of civ (Civilisation: revolution) felt more demanding and active than this demo. Fun game.

The demo is the kind of game set up I wouldn't choose to play for fun. Too small, too few AIs, too limited. Plus I don't know what I'm doing; familiarity with civ 4 revealed depths which weren't so visible from an innocent surface view.

[Monk]

Civ 5 might already have received some work as I'm hearing that there's a big day 0 patch which downloads after installing the game. Perhaps Monk can fill the picture in here and confirm whether it's a patch proper or something to do with the unlocking process?

Um... No. I installed from the disk and went right into the game without downloading anything. If I did download something it was small enough to escape notice. I'll verify my game cache to make sure i'm 100% up to date while i write this.

Scan complete. One file failed to validate and was reacquired. Not sure who is claiming there was a day 0 patch, but I ain't seein' it. The only download i'm aware of is my pre-order DLC, which I recieved the code to just a few hours ago. I've yet to enter it. Maybe that's what people are talking about?

I never did get around to asking why. So, why not? If you don't mind elaborating.

Everything felt incredibly cramped and constrained, i felt lost from the moment i pushed "go", not once did the game offer a hand in helping me grasp the finer points of the system it was expecting me to play with. Try as I might i just couldn't get into it.

On the into video, the thing is finicky. I started up the game to check the game version and noticed that it was really hard to click through, i had to alt-tab to force it to skip the movies. Really odd.

[frogbeastegg]

Um... No. I installed from the disk and went right into the game without downloading anything. If I did download something it was small enough to escape notice. I'll verify my game cache to make sure i'm 100% up to date while i write this.

I wonder if it was for downloaded versions only then? A lot of the people I saw mention it had preloaded the game.

i felt lost from the moment i pushed "go", not once did the game offer a hand in helping me grasp the finer points of the system it was expecting me to play with.

I'm surprised. Civ 4 is widely considered to be one of the most beginner friendly games in the entire genre, aside from the fact that we strategy vets don't tend to like playing on lower difficulties and so end up missing most of the help without realising! Disguising the tutorial as the easiest difficulty level isn't the best way to lure gamers with experience in to play it.
On settler difficulty the game gives a lot of good advice; you can play in whatever direction you want and it will guide you. I may be a trifle fortunate as I learned with the vanilla game at release; the expansions added more plates to keep spinning, which make it harder to learn.

Anyway, you've got civ 5 and appear to be finding it better. They must have made some further improvements.

My first game of civ 5 will be on settler since it's the same 'tutorial disguised as dumbo mode' set up. Civ 4 vanilla was an easier game to learn than civ 4 complete. Small map, few AI, dumbo difficulty. More educational than fun. Ho hum.

[Monk]

I wonder if it was for downloaded versions only then? A lot of the people I saw mention it had preloaded the game.

It's quite possible there was a problem with preloading, allowing only a portion of the game to be downloaded? Perhaps an older, "review" version of the game was allowed for preloading? I dunno. I do know my installation was even smoother than L4d2 (which i also got on a disk), which was very surprising.

I wonder if it was for downloaded versions only then? A lot of the people I saw mention it had preloaded the game.


I'm surprised. Civ 4 is widely considered to be one of the most beginner friendly games in the entire genre, aside from the fact that we strategy vets don't tend to like playing on lower difficulties and so end up missing most of the help without realising! Disguising the tutorial as the easiest difficulty level isn't the best way to lure gamers with experience in to play it.
On settler difficulty the game gives a lot of good advice; you can play in whatever direction you want and it will guide you. I may be a trifle fortunate as I learned with the vanilla game at release; the expansions added more plates to keep spinning, which make it harder to learn.

Huh.. Well . Don't let my curmudgeon stance fool you. I hated the game but I could definetely feel something there. It just didn't feel right for me. Civ 5 feels like a good step up and is finally on par with what i like in my strategy games. Ho hum indeed.

[Krauser]

I think the one day patch is not any kind of patch. I visited one of my friends that got the game to try it out. He bought the digital deluxe version. After the regular install, he had to download an additional 1GB "patch" which turned out to be the Making Of video and soundtrack. The video is about 22 minutes and 720p HD quality (~650MB). The soundtrack is about 30 short mp3 tracks (256kb quality) with themes from each civilization and the title themes (~300MB). Both of these came with a cover JPG file in case he wants to burn them onto actual CD/DVD. So that's the "day 0 patch".

If you got a standard version, you would not have that extra download. If you got the retail collector's edition you would already have physical media of the Making Of and soundtrack.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I'm kind of on the same page as monk regarding 4 v 5. I didn't hate 4 so much as I had zero interest in playing. I'm finding 5 more interesting (at least if I can get a coherent plan together for what I want to do in a particular game).

As for besieging cities, I don't think it's worth it unless you're willing to become a warmonger. In a current game as the Greeks I started out hoping to ally with all the citystates (something I'm slowly doing now) but decided to take a nearby city (the Babylonians put a new city exactly where I wanted to expand to). It took maybe 30 turns to build up enough hoplites and cavalry to take it (strangely, cav is better than inf for attacking cities, at least in the classical/medieval eras). However, I now had a big enough force to finish off the Babylonian capital and destroy another city the English dropped near me. So now I'm behind on cities, tech, production, and culture but I've got a potent land army. Unfortunately the nearest other civ is hostile and has loads of units around me. Fittingly it's Darius and the Persians. I do have one military ally and a maritime ally though, so I will probably be able to deal with them.

But yeah, long story short, to get an army capable of challenging cities I needed to stunt most of my other areas of growth. Which makes sense, gameplay-wise. I think siege units proper are too cumbersome though. They take forever to get anywhere and their range isn't any better than a standard ranged unit. I think a better mechanic would be to allow units to build stationary siege units (and the build time would be based on unit strength). So the defender has to work on killing attackers as they build siege units. And it would take roughly as long as dragging siege units along does with less frustration.

[al Roumi]

I must say I'm I'm surprised at the grief for Civ 4, IMO it is the most complete Civ yet. That said th game's enormity is a possible issue in itself, not to mention the flaws (e.g. usualy boring by the time you get to the modern age -but that migth be my play style). I'd be intersted to know how long your CIV5 games are lasting...

[LeftEyeNine]

Which Civ game does not evolve into a stuck, railroadz-everywarez bore pack after certain ages ?

I like the game's primal eras a lot. I can start some Civ game over and over. However I don't remember a single game in Civ 4 which I could stand so long as to have reached modern times.

[Lemur]

So did anybody spring for deluxe? How's Babylon? Worth it?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Which Civ game does not evolve into a stuck, railroadz-everywarez bore pack after certain ages ?

I like the game's primal eras a lot. I can start some Civ game over and over. However I don't remember a single game in Civ 4 which I could stand so long as to have reached modern times.

Well in Civ 5 railroads take a long time to build and have a respectable upkeep cost, so I don't think you'll see many games where they're everywhere. Playing an odd game right now but I've only got 3 lines (connecting my 3 cities to the capital) and nothing else.

So did anybody spring for deluxe? How's Babylon? Worth it?

My friend preordered it for me for my birthday but I haven't played as them yet. I've seen them be kind of sad in one game, but in another game they conquered everyone but me.