View Full Version : Civilization V!!
Official site (http://www.civilization5.com/)
IGN announcement (http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1070111p1.html)
February 18, 2010 - 2K Games just made the day a little brighter with the announcement of a brand new title in the best-selling Civilization series. Sid Meier's Civilization V, currently in development at Firaxis, will feature an "entirely new combat system, deeper diplomatic interactions, and a cavalcade of expanded features that deliver a fully immersive experience providing hours of enteratainment as players build and defend their empire on their quest to become the greatest ruler the world has ever known."
Perhaps most significantly for fans, the series is making the jump to hexagons rather than square tiles to "allow for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay, and stunning organic landscapes." The entire game is being built on an entirely new engine that's being built from the ground up to bring players "closer to the Civ experience than ever." Diplomacy is handled full screen now, with full leader animations and appropriate languages. Players who aren't inclined towards negotiations will find that war feels "more massive" and includes ranged bombardment from behind front lines.
Civilization V will also include an "extensive suite of community, modding and multiplayer elements," and an "in-game community hub where Civ fans can share content and compete against each other."
Firaxis' director of creative development and series' eponym Sid Meier shared his enthusiasm for the new project: "Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenge for our team. Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing." He added, "We're excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series."
Switching from tiles to hexes, less abstract combat (i.e., no stacking), improved diplomatic AI.... Damn, I think I might actually have to get this one!
Veho Nex
02-19-2010, 07:02
Just... one... more.. turn... Then I will go to sleep...
seireikhaan
02-19-2010, 07:32
Very nice, very nice indeed. Pretty big fan of the series, and good to hear they're making a concerted effort at improving the series still.
tibilicus
02-19-2010, 14:20
Lets hope they continue the trend of allowing a wide array of mods for their games. I've clocked a ridiculous amount of time on Civ 4..
Basileus
02-19-2010, 16:03
Just when i thought i was out it pulls me back in :D, Civ was what got me into gaming and this one will probably get me back into it again..cant wait.
My only problem with this is that it will come out just when I enrol at university. Otherwise, all is good.
Especially those rivers. Oh wow, just look at the rivers.
Kekvit Irae
02-19-2010, 18:36
Meh. Not interested. It's just yet another update to the Civ series.
If they came out with Alpha Centauri 2, THEN I would be interested.
tibilicus
02-19-2010, 19:03
My only problem with this is that it will come out just when I enrol at university. Otherwise, all is good.
Especially those rivers. Oh wow, just look at the rivers.
Same situation for me. Thank God most courses don't make the first year count towards any assessment. :book:
I also hope they fix the way military units are done in this game. I would prefer separate building ques for military and city based improvements. I never liked the way you had to choose between a nice city or a big military. I also hated the way the AI could build military units much faster than you. If you played past monarch difficulty it just got ridiculous.
Also an economics system I can understand would be nice.
Askthepizzaguy
02-19-2010, 21:00
I agree, I didn't like how much the "AI" relied upon cheating in order to defeat you on the highest levels. There was no actual strategy involved, it simply started with settlers and military units, and you started with a settler and a warrior. Then it had other bonuses and didn't get as penalized for civilization size like you did.
My favorite Civ was Civ II. I loved the advisors that spoke to you, I liked the user-friendly interface, and the playability, even at higher levels. I liked the various workable strategies that you could use to win.
Civ III I hated... didn't like the direction they went with it.
In Civ IV, it seemed that on upper levels, you could only win via military force to expand large enough to win the science race, since the AI would trade techs like mad and have more cities than you, that were more advanced than yours due to their bonuses. The only way to win then was to have more science cities, since they would usually beat you to several key world wonders and thus have at least one city that was better than half your cities combined.
I got into Civ IV a bit, but I still feel like Civ II was a better gameplay experience.
Same situation for me. Thank God most courses don't make the first year count towards any assessment. :book:.
I doubt Oxford is that merciful :|
I also hope they fix the way military units are done in this game. I would prefer separate building ques for military and city based improvements. I never liked the way you had to choose between a nice city or a big military. I also hated the way the AI could build military units much faster than you. If you played past monarch difficulty it just got ridiculous.
I agree totally. I always had a tiny millitary until Nationalism came along, and I could draft to my heart's content.
Also an economics system I can understand would be nice.
An economics system that actually involved economics would be nice.
Aemilius Paulus
02-19-2010, 21:54
If they came out with Alpha Centauri 2, THEN I would be interested.
You know they will never be able to make a worthy successor to that one. :no:
tibilicus
02-19-2010, 22:00
I doubt Oxford is that merciful :|
I agree totally. I always had a tiny millitary until Nationalism came along, and I could draft to my heart's content.
An economics system that actually involved economics would be nice.
Oxford? Nice. I guess much depends on the subject your taking too. provided I get the grades I should be doing History and Politics which luckily means, as an arts student, I shall need time to procrastinate about my reading. Although they expect a minimum 30 hour work week at most of the places I applied to so that will no doubt limit my time to play games to very little, if you throw in social stuff on top of that. Anyway, back on topic.
I think the main problem with the draft and nationalism was at the higher difficulties the unhappiness it caused just basically lead to empire wide rebellions. That was more a problem with the way the AI worked though. As you set the difficulty higher, the AI did get smarter but at the same time it got a ridiculous speed bonus in the way it could research technology and build stuff.
Civ on the maximum difficulty is merciless, I've never won a game on it, haven't even come close to winning one either.
Oxford? Nice. I guess much depends on the subject your taking too. provided I get the grades I should be doing History and Politics which luckily means, as an arts student, I shall need time to procrastinate about my reading. Although they expect a minimum 30 hour work week at most of the places I applied to so that will no doubt limit my time to play games to very little, if you throw in social stuff on top of that. Anyway, back on topic.
Thanks. I'm PPE, so they'll expect me to read and write loads. Which won't be a bad thing, but it means little time for games. You're Oxford too, right?
I think the main problem with the draft and nationalism was at the higher difficulties the unhappiness it caused just basically lead to empire wide rebellions. That was more a problem with the way the AI worked though. As you set the difficulty higher, the AI did get smarter but at the same time it got a ridiculous speed bonus in the way it could research technology and build stuff.
Civ on the maximum difficulty is merciless, I've never won a game on it, haven't even come close to winning one either.
If you had a big enough Empire though, you could just rotate your cities. Slavery helped too.
Civ on the maximum difficulty is merciless, I've never won a game on it, haven't even come close to winning one either.
I'm too scared to try it
tibilicus
02-20-2010, 00:09
Thanks. I'm PPE, so they'll expect me to read and write loads. Which won't be a bad thing, but it means little time for games. You're Oxford too, right?
If you had a big enough Empire though, you could just rotate your cities. Slavery helped too.
I'm too scared to try it
Oxford? I wish. My firm will most likely be Sheffield and my insurance Liverpool. I don't think my school actually got a single successful Oxbridge applicant this year, normally we might get one but it's pretty rare. Good choice in deciding to do PPE though. Get a 2:1 or higher in that and you'll have secure employment prospects for life basically. Although I couldn't handle the economics side of PPE, my maths ability is shocking. I take it your probably taking quite a few A levels at the moment if you plan on doing PPE?
BTW, did any one play the Rhyes and fall mod for civ 4? I really hope the guy behind it makes a similar mod for the new game. It just made civ a whole lot better.
CrossLOPER
02-20-2010, 16:25
My only problem with this is that it will come out just when I enrol at university. Otherwise, all is good.
Especially those rivers. Oh wow, just look at the rivers.
Dude, stay away from those games for the first semester. :beam:
Oxford? I wish. My firm will most likely be Sheffield and my insurance Liverpool.
Those are both still really good unis though. My insurance is Essex.
I don't think my school actually got a single successful Oxbridge applicant this year, normally we might get one but it's pretty rare. .
That sucks. My college gets better results on average than Eton (We're still state btw) and we get way less people into Oxbridge than Eton does....
Good choice in deciding to do PPE though. Get a 2:1 or higher in that and you'll have secure employment prospects for life basically. Although I couldn't handle the economics side of PPE, my maths ability is shocking. I take it your probably taking quite a few A levels at the moment if you plan on doing PPE?
Thanks. And I only realised that applied to me as well at the start of this year, hence my decision to cram AS Maths into UVI. It's not part of my offer though, so in theory, I could get a U in Maths and go to do Economics at Oxford. I'm also doing History, Politics, Economics, and I've got an AS in German along with an Economics Extended Project, to make up for my weak-ish Maths.
BTW, did any one play the Rhyes and fall mod for civ 4? I really hope the guy behind it makes a similar mod for the new game. It just made civ a whole lot better.
I really enjoyed certain features of it, such as Congresses, emergences, stability etc., but it felt a bit too rigid at times. The Dynamic names were fun though, and occasionally everything melted together beautifully (E.g. The Mongols conquered China in a few years, only for China to revolt, and then slowly be ground down by the Mongols again in a 200 year long war). I also enjoyed Total Realism, Gold Edition, and any mod that replaced Judaism with Zoroastrianism, so check them out as well.
Dude, stay away from those games for the first semester.
I don't know if I'll be able to resist for a whole term...
Ituralde
02-21-2010, 00:02
I'm completely psyched that this is coming up! And so soon after the anouncement too.
I'm just looking forward to see whether it'll hold up against BTS from the get go. But who am I kidding I'm gonna get it either way!
Beefy187
02-21-2010, 00:14
Now the game is more like Total War as we can't stack our units no more.
I'm not sure what to make of it just yet.. But it looks nice anyway
I won't make a judgement until it's out.
al Roumi
02-22-2010, 18:27
Meh. Not interested. It's just yet another update to the Civ series.
If they came out with Alpha Centauri 2, THEN I would be interested.
You know they will never be able to make a worthy successor to that one. :no:
If only they'd bloody try!
Scienter
02-22-2010, 22:59
Farewell, sleep. It was nice knowing you.
I stayed up late so many nights playing Civ IV. Hopefully V will be as much fun!
al Roumi
02-23-2010, 15:17
hmmm. It's not much to go on but looking at those screenies in the OP's link remind me of land combat in Pirates! I hope CIV V doesn't go down that route... Pirates land combat was fun enough but way too cheesy a mini-game for what I would like from CIV.
I found it easier to suspend belief of what was happening on the small scale of battle tactics when an army was in a stack. Not getting that involved, beyond some broad maneuvres (what ground to occupy, which units to lead the attack with) reinforced the higher level strategy aspect of the game. War in CIV has, for me, been more about production, tech and supply than anything to do with micro-managing battles & tactics. Ok, what has been before need not be the way of things to come but... it is kind of a defining feature of the game for me. I can imagine large scale war getting really tedious if you have to organise a battle line each time. In some respects it could be too much like TW, but not zoomed in low enough perhaps.
Ser Clegane
02-23-2010, 16:39
As they are already switching to hex they could use something similar to SSI's Panzer General. Straight forward enough to not distract too much from the main elements of a typical Civ game but still good tactical fun (at least IMHO)
I never liked Civ 4's battles......seemed too much like rock paper scissor stuff to me.......all you did was just make as many units as possible and keep making them until you win...
I remember one game where I had atleast 10 ICBMs in each of my city's....still couldn't defeat win.
One major benefit to a switch to hex is that we no longer have to worry about the 'fat cross' for city placement. Presumably cities will just work 2 concentric rings of hexes, which is a lot easier to figure out on the fly.
al Roumi
02-23-2010, 17:09
They still won't tesselate! :D Much better that way too, otherwise it's the days of CIV3 where the uniform city carpet/matrix ruled the day.
Scienter
02-23-2010, 17:27
One major benefit to a switch to hex is that we no longer have to worry about the 'fat cross' for city placement. Presumably cities will just work 2 concentric rings of hexes, which is a lot easier to figure out on the fly.
Hopefully you're right, I wouldn't miss the fat cross at all. I'd love to be able to turn the grid lines off.
I've read several articles on Civ V recently. Here are the highlights:
http://kotaku.com/5489814/civilization-v-preview-small-changes-big-differences
The current minimum spec Firaxis is hoping to accommodate are 256 MB video cards and dual core processors.
Players get a notification system this time, which alerts them to important new events such as a new bit of research being completed or a scouting party being attacked. Clicking on the alerts that appear on the right side of the screen, when relevant, warps the player to the location of the event.
Advisers are back in Civ V, characters who pop up to offer tips, Rival civilizations are now being programmed to fight with noticeably distinct artificial intelligence styles. (Less consequential to gameplay is the introduction of full-screen animations of rival leaders such as George Washington or Napoleon, set in character specific locales).
New city states appear on the map. These are always controlled by the computer. Players can enter pacts with them, trade with them, or even attack them. This complicates the relationships among the major civilizations, as an America that is friends with Budapest might be drawn into a war if it tries to free a besieged Budapest from the French. The city states were described by one developer showing the game as elements that "are there to make things happen."
A great civilization's area of influence used to spread evenly in Civ games. In the new one, a player will see the colored border representing the limits of their people's reach expand in more realistic ways. Turn after turn, the computer will automatically expand a player's civilization into areas that have relevant resources, say forest instead of desert, early in the game. Players can spend gold to speed the expansion.
Players will no longer be able to stack units onto one space and then carry that offensive stack to war. Each unit — which still represents and is depicted by — a cluster of fighters, can only occupy a space on its own. New ranged units can fire from afar (an extra hexagon away for the archers, according to the demo this week). And cities, which now have health bars, can fire back.
The developers said great civilizations can now agree to commence a research agreement, instead of just establishing trade or declaring war.
http://kotaku.com/5489834/civilization-v-to-eradicate-road-spaghetti
During a theater demonstration here in San Francisco of this fall's Civilization V that I witnessed yesterday (and chronicled in depth), I asked where the roads were.
I was being shown a civilization that was advanced enough to amass armies to attack other great civilizations. Yet all I saw was a single, nicely-paved road. It looked nice, but it didn't look like Civ.
It turns out, one of the developers of the game, told me, that the game's creators are re-thinking how roads are implemented and displayed in these games. The idea the creators at Civ studio Firaxis are going for is, they said, that "roads will mean something" this time. As in: Even a single road will have relevance and feel as special as a key highway does in the real world.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99021-Civilization-V-Offers-New-Strategic-Combat
Gone are features like Civ 4's religions
Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle, which means that civs can spend much more resources on maintaining their armies as opposed to cranking out new units. The combat that we saw took place completely outside of a city, and positioning and terrain are much more important. "In the past, combat revolved around stacks [of units], which our fans affectionately call 'stacks of doom,'" Shirk said. "We wanted to pull combat out of the cities, and make every unit important." No two units can occupy the same tile, even friendly ones, so positioning on the battlefield becomes very important. Ranged units, like archers, are used to soften up the front lines from up to two hexes away, but they are vulnerable to attacks from melee units. The result is an emphasis on battlefield tactics instead of most Civ games which favored the civ that was able to crank out the most units.
The resource system supports that concept. In Civ3 and 4, once your civilization gained access to Iron, each of your cities could pump out swordsmen and there was no limit to how many you could make. In CivV, gaining access to one source of Iron allows you to make one swordsman and that's it. You can't make another swordsman unit unless that one died or you gained access to another Iron source.
A new addition is city-states. "City-states are small NPCs that are scattered throughout the world. They're not trying to win the game, they never grow beyond a single city. But they make stuff happen in the world," Shirk said. For example, Budapest was a city-state in the demo and by talking to them, you had the option of helping them out against barbarians with gold or units. Doing so raises your friendship level which means that they might gift you with units or aid in scientific research. "Different city-states grant different things," Shirk said. A more militaristic city-state might ask you to attack a neighbor or a weaker state might be attacked and ask you to defend them. Of course, there's always the option to simply take them over and add the city to your civ.
Civ V will boast the most extensive modding tools ever available. Firaxis realized though that not many casual Civ fans know that such a vibrant mod community exists, so they are adding a way to browse for mods directly in-game. The mod browser will allow users to scan for mods by popularity with a built-in rating system, as well as give Firaxis the ability to feature mods on an ongoing schedule. Modders will be able to solicit comments and questions by linking to their fan pages on CivFanatics through an ingame web browser.
Krusader
03-11-2010, 14:58
Oh sweet jeez...I can't wait for this game.
Will be interesting to see how the new combat system works. And I like the 1 resource = 1 unit using said resource system too. Religions were fun though.
Last paragraph is the best. Think CA will follow suit? *now where's that roaring laughter smiley*
That all looks excellent, apart from:
Gone are features like Civ 4's religions
Noooooooooooo
EDIT: But I might forgive them, solely for this:
The Incas we have no leader for yet, but a Swedish article claims they resurrected the dead language (sic) of the Quechua for the game, as each leader speaks their native tongue with subtitles in English (or whatever language you play the game in). In reality, many people still speak Quechua, but whatever...
Scienter
03-13-2010, 15:44
I really liked the religions in Civ4, I'll miss them. Otherwise, all of these updates sound great! It would be so awesome if they could get Leonard Nimoy to narrate again. :grin: I can't wait for this to come out. It makes me want to go play Civ IV.
Pannonian
03-13-2010, 16:00
I want Alpha Centauri 2.
With release approaching later this month, thought I'd link a couple of articles from one of the esteemed writers at RPS and their thoughts on the game from the build they were allowed to play:
- http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/06/a-dozen-or-so-hours-with-civilization-v/
- http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/10/states-of-the-nation-more-civ-v-thoughts/#more-35637
I'm really looking forward to the improved combat and lack of unit-stacking, as that has probably been my biggest gripe with the Civ series in the past.
al Roumi
09-02-2010, 10:54
I want Alpha Centauri 2.
mir auch, but i'll take CIV 5 anyway...
I think there is some contractual issue with SMAC2, I don't think Firaxis own the rights or something like that.
frogbeastegg
09-03-2010, 14:46
I find myself long since resolved to wait for a demo for this one.
On the one hand I don't want a game that's too similar to Civ4; I've already got that, still play it, and see no reason to replace it with a hexier (har har) version. On the other hand some of the changes they've made don't immediately strike me as something I'd like. Army management in particular. Warfare has always been my least favourite civ aspect and now it sounds even less appealing; building stacks and relying on dice roll combat was bad enough without needing to shuffle around every single unit by hand sprawled out across a large area.
I'm also kind of concerned they will have continued to evolve in the direction of the Civ 4 expansions, namely the 'everything and the kitchen sink' school of design. All that stuff they added in the expansions detracts from the core gameplay and forces you to track/maintain/manage less interesting and useful aspects, thereby taking resources and time away from the really interesting stuff. My ideal version of Civ 4 would be the vanilla game with the expansion packs' civs and start up options added, nothing else.
al Roumi
09-03-2010, 15:43
I find myself long since resolved to wait for a demo for this one.
On the one hand I don't want a game that's too similar to Civ4; I've already got that, still play it, and see no reason to replace it with a hexier (har har) version. On the other hand some of the changes they've made don't immediately strike me as something I'd like. Army management in particular. Warfare has always been my least favourite civ aspect and now it sounds even less appealing; building stacks and relying on dice roll combat was bad enough without needing to shuffle around every single unit by hand sprawled out across a large area.
I'm also kind of concerned they will have continued to evolve in the direction of the Civ 4 expansions, namely the 'everything and the kitchen sink' school of design. All that stuff they added in the expansions detracts from the core gameplay and forces you to track/maintain/manage less interesting and useful aspects, thereby taking resources and time away from the really interesting stuff. My ideal version of Civ 4 would be the vanilla game with the expansion packs' civs and start up options added, nothing else.
Warfare in Civ has always been a bit micro management heavy, to say the least. If they can make it less so in Civ 5, and yet more tactical that should be interesting.
RPS' preview (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/06/a-dozen-or-so-hours-with-civilization-v/) made the interesting point that civ5 is deliberatley not trying to re-do civ4 and going back to basics in some respects, and probably ending up on a different tangent. Civ4 + all the expansions is probably as deep and detailed as any Civ game, civ 5 sounds like it might be a bit more civ "light" -although that may mean civ with a more rounded experience. Let's just hope the city/building side is not civ "casual".
God Emperor
09-03-2010, 16:12
I really liked the religions in Civ4, I'll miss them. Otherwise, all of these updates sound great! It would be so awesome if they could get Leonard Nimoy to narrate again. :grin: I can't wait for this to come out. It makes me want to go play Civ IV.
The religions were fun, but extreemly bad when game mechanics are taking in concideration. Because the computer requires much less beakers to research a technology, it will always get the starting religions first, unless you are extreemly lucky (they do not pick a religion tech, highly unlikely) or you make npc opponents that does not start with mysticism.
CIV V is going to be great :D
LeftEyeNine
09-03-2010, 23:17
N-no religions in Civ 5? Where's that from ?
frogbeastegg
09-04-2010, 13:07
Warfare in Civ has always been a bit micro management heavy, to say the least. If they can make it less so in Civ 5, and yet more tactical that should be interesting.
I would really like it if they slowed down the army tech advancement by adding more techs to the tree between each upgrade trigger. Or speed up the construction of units. I often find that by the time I have built my set of unit X it's obsolete because my research unlocked unit Y, so the whole cycle begins again. Upgrading would be a simple one click solution and defuse much of the annoyance, however often it is too expensive to be practical.
If they did that, and made shuffling units around less tedious, and ditched the percentage chance “Ooops, you conveniently managed to lose 8 consecutive 99% win chances in a row and now your entire stack is dead, it’s not a fix honest!” combat in favour of something which feels like less of a lottery, warfare in civ might be tolerable.
In fact that's another thing I'd like them to do: focus less on the later ages and add more meat to the pre-industrial ages. The last third of the game (in terms of tech tree) is the least interesting because it's filled with micro and most of your real work is done, yet it tends to take up well over half of my total hours in any game I play. The earlier stages, where you have the most to do and where there's most variety, fly by.
Civ 4 allowed you to influence both of these things to a degree via settings which were introduced after the original launch. They never quite worked satisfactorily IMO as they were a quick bandage rather than a detailed solution.
The religions were fun, but extreemly bad when game mechanics are taking in concideration. Because the computer requires much less beakers to research a technology, it will always get the starting religions first, unless you are extreemly lucky (they do not pick a religion tech, highly unlikely) or you make npc opponents that does not start with mysticism.
If I wanted to play a game where religion was a core part of my strategy and didn't take a civ with mysticism, I often aimed for a later religion, or let the AI develop and spread an early one before conquering their religious centre and making myself head of it.
Or sometimes I'd join a strong religion and not attempt to become head of it, instead letting the AI civ gain the extra gold and becoming close friends with them. I'd then have a stooge to do most of my fighting for me if I played the diplomacy carefully. Ah, nothing like unleashing a gold-hyped Izzy or Monty on an unsuspecting third party that happened to frown at me ... :devilish:
But I admit I never liked to play on the difficulties where the AI got large bonuses. Playing against a heavy cheater just makes me feel frustrated no matter what. If I win then it feels hollow because the opponent wasn't smarter; if I lose then it feels like it had little to do with my own playing and everything to do with the unfair bonuses.
Hmm, that would be another wish for civ 5: an AI that's better than Civ 4's already good AI, so cheating bonuses aren't as necessary.
tibilicus
09-04-2010, 13:38
I think I might wait a bit before buying Civ 5. I only ever really played it modded, in particular, the Rhyes and Fall of Civilizations mod and other historical mods. Also the excellent Fall From Heaven mod.
frogbeastegg
09-04-2010, 16:11
There's a really interesting new lecture about the AI in the civ series here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI&feature=sub). It's by Soren Johnson, the lead designer for civ 4. Definitely recommended if you like civ or have an interest in game AI in general.
If they did that, and made shuffling units around less tedious, and ditched the percentage chance “Ooops, you conveniently managed to lose 8 consecutive 99% win chances in a row and now your entire stack is dead, it’s not a fix honest!” combat in favour of something which feels like less of a lottery, warfare in civ might be tolerable.
From what I've read they seem to have slowed unit production down significantly (not sure what effect this will have on research and obsolete units though) with the idea being you have smaller armies that get used more tactically. I believe they have also changed the combat system so that you know who will win each attack beforehand (the old % system infuriated me too), again so that you learn to use your armies effectively rather than brute force through.
frogbeastegg
09-17-2010, 19:32
No one posted links to the pair of civ5 live gameplay videos? Gosh.
Part 1 (http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9553042)
Part 2 (http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9553920)
After watching them I think I might skip the demo and preorder for release. Lots of good stuff in there, though I'm still not convinced about the new warfare model. That needs to be experienced. The focus on fewer cities is a good move IMO; I liked civ4 when 5 cities was about right for most of the game span. In expansions it became easier and thus more important to have more and more cities.
Well the first reviews (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/57179/Civilization-V-Reviews-Hit-The-Net) are already in. They're so overwhelmingly positive it's almost ridiculous. The average score so far is over 98%! ~:eek:
Not sure where I stand on this one, myself. I'm still really turned off by the Steam requirement, and the whole "ranged units being able to fire at/into adjacent hexes" bit feels like it might stretch even my ability to suspend disbelief. On the other hand, I really like what I've read so far, and all those glowing reviews ain't exactly helping my willpower. :sweatdrop:
tibilicus
09-18-2010, 00:38
Well the first reviews (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/57179/Civilization-V-Reviews-Hit-The-Net) are already in. They're so overwhelmingly positive it's almost ridiculous. The average score so far is over 98%! ~:eek:
Not sure where I stand on this one, myself. I'm still really turned off by the Steam requirement, and the whole "ranged units being able to fire at/into adjacent hexes" bit feels like it might stretch even my ability to suspend disbelief. On the other hand, I really like what I've read so far, and all those glowing reviews ain't exactly helping my willpower. :sweatdrop:
You WILL buy it. Just like the rest of us. Before you know it, the hours will slip away, and then the days. None can resist that sweet Civ addiction.. Just one.. more... turn...
Suddenly this thread is ten times more interesting to me.
No one posted links to the pair of civ5 live gameplay videos? Gosh
I was never a big fan of Civ games and so Civ 5 hasn't been anywhere close to being on my radar until now. Watching the recorded stream it looks like nearly every gripe I had with C4 has been ironed out and polished to the point that the series looks like fun for once. I remember playing the demo for Civ4 and thinking "So when does this get fun" the entire time, looking at Civ5 in action it's almost night and day. I like pretty much every change they've made, form interface to automation options, looks like it could be a winner.
As to the steam requirement for those on the fence, allow me to say this. Not every game on Steam has the kind of integration that ETW had, most of them actually work seamlessly with the platform.
frogbeastegg
09-18-2010, 13:17
Not sure where I stand on this one, myself. I'm still really turned off by the Steam requirement, and the whole "ranged units being able to fire at/into adjacent hexes" bit feels like it might stretch even my ability to suspend disbelief. On the other hand, I really like what I've read so far, and all those glowing reviews ain't exactly helping my willpower. :sweatdrop:
Check the videos I posted. The glowing reviews are a given - the name alone secures adoration. Seeing the game in action with commentary does a far better job of showing what is what and allows you to make a better judgement on whether it's likely to appeal. Each video is around an hour long; the first shows the early game and the second shows the mid-game with emphasis on warfare.
I do wish it didn't come with steam. The launch will be a mess, it always is for anything remotely popular and often for less well known games too. I've been involved in two steam launches: ETW's launch was the worst thing I've experienced in a decade and a half of PC usage, and yesterday's King's Bounty Armoured Princess: Crossworlds was a mess. Granted, with the Crossworlds launch they did honour the massive misprice which let me buy the game for a total pittance and credit to them for that. But the actual experience of downloading, installing and unlocking, gah! It's been an entire week of mess up after mess up, and they still haven't got it right.
Steam is ok for super cheap games. I'll give them that. Grudgingly. Their big sales can be great. I don't like having anything that cost more than £7-£8 on there and I don't want my retail games tied to it. And I'm still waiting for the 1.2 patch for 'For the Glory' over a month later. Paradox say it was submitted to steam ages ago; steam say they don't have it.
I was never a big fan of Civ games and so Civ 5 hasn't been anywhere close to being on my radar until now. Watching the recorded stream it looks like nearly every gripe I had with C4 has been ironed out and polished to the point that the series looks like fun for once.
That's me and civ4. I played but didn't much like civ 2 test of time, civ 3, call to power 1 and call to power 2. I played and loved Alpha Centauri; that's why I kept on trying the series. Civ 4 changed everything. It threw out many of the things I disliked in the earlier entries, stole most of AC's best ideas, and added a load of refinement which improved the game to the power of ten. I liked Civilisation: Revolution too; it was very good at what it wanted to do.
I do wish it didn't come with steam. The launch will be a mess, it always is for anything remotely popular and often for less well known games too. I've been involved in two steam launches: ETW's launch was the worst thing I've experienced in a decade and a half of PC usage.
Not fair to blame Steam on CA's fault.
Dragon Age and Mass Effect were released flawlessly on Steam. The reason why? Bioware are worth their weight in gold compared to other companies on game release.
frogbeastegg
09-18-2010, 13:59
Not fair to blame Steam on CA's fault.
The problems I had were all entirely, fully and completely steam's fault. Entirely.
I'm not referring to the bugs or anything like that. I'm referring to being locked out of my game for days. To not being unable to unlock it when I should have been able to, for many hours. To getting shoddy service and enforced waits because my IP address isn't an American one. To having it refuse to install from the discs when I selected the option to install from the disc(!) and try to download the game repeatedly, download 20GB it didn't need to from an overloaded server when I'm on a bandwidth cap and have a disc. To installing on the wrong drive because the program doesn't explain itself decently and lacks the basic 'where do you want to install your stuff?' functionality most other programs have had for years. To it deciding that there was a patch and refusing to let me play even though the server was so overloaded it couldn't download the patch. To it giving me sub-dialup modem speeds to download every single patch, every single last accursed one. And more, lots more. It was hands down the single worst user experience I have ever had in computing. Rage does not begin to describe it. What made it worse was that the game was a gift. How was I meant to explain why I wasn't playing and having fun to the computer illiterate person who gave it me without making them feel bad?
The actual game? I liked ETW 1.0 and most of my recorded playtime comes from there. I'm probably the only person on the planet who did; I think I got the one copy in the world which wasn't riddled with bugs and half complete. The 1.0 I played had some flaws and a few bugs but was a solid game. The versions after 1.0, that's a different story. The first patch broke my game, later ones introdued problems I never had before, and the final patch still hadn't managed to restore things to the working, enjoyable state of 1.0. I liked 1.0 so much I wanted to go back to it; steam will never let me because it has decided that it knows what I want to play better than I do, all in the name of ensuring I'm compatable for an MP mode I have never once touched and never will, and this is a primarily SP game anyway. So thanks to steam a game I might play is turned into a game I will not waste HD space on. Thanks, steam.
I do not have a single good word to say about steam as it relates to ETW. Not so much as a single good letter out of a word.
Alexander the Pretty Good
09-18-2010, 18:03
I think it was after ETW, but with the updated steam you can tell steam not to update your games.
frogbeastegg
09-18-2010, 18:35
Civ 5's manual is now available (http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/feature_manual) on the official site. 233 pages long! Reading it has given me this terrible civ craving :eyes civ 4 icon on desktop:
I think it was after ETW, but with the updated steam you can tell steam not to update your games.
It's misleading. It won't update the game automatically, but nor will it let you play it until you have updated. As long as steam knows there's a patch for ETW you are forced to have it if you want the game to boot up; it always knows there's a patch because it checks that out during the install process. Placing steam in offline mode has the same effect. I tried a few times to find a way around to no avail. In the end I deleted the game and that's that, won't go back.
It's misleading. It won't update the game automatically, but nor will it let you play it until you have updated. As long as steam knows there's a patch for ETW you are forced to have it if you want the game to boot up; it always knows there's a patch because it checks that out during the install process. Placing steam in offline mode has the same effect. I tried a few times to find a way around to no avail. In the end I deleted the game and that's that, won't go back.
Updates were enforced by CA, that was the reason there. As for having to download 20 gigs when you have the CD? That was CA again,because they didn't ship the correct version on the disks. There are differences between games as the publisher has quite a lot of say with what happens on Steam, unfortunately, I learnt from experience that buying a game pre-order unless you can really trust the publisher (such as Bioware or even Blizzard) is a really bad idea.
Then again, I like the fact it auto-updates my games. So I don't mind that much. It is also very good for getting rid of mods and doing 'factory conditions' with ease. It is also cheaper than its competitors (gamersgate roughly charges you £5 more and doesn't have any of the steam advantages and a dodgy down loader too) and Impulse is like Steam but completely worse, with hidden charges, unable to even maintain a connection, even when I was at my other place, it wouldn't even connect due to the bad software (while Steam had zero issues). Also Impulse kept installing nonsense all over my computer which I couldn't get rid of. At least with Steam, it is all contained within the Steam folder, which I have in my "D:\Games\" section.
While you had issues with E:TW which made you have a negative opinion of Steam, it was misdirected, as it was CA's fault for the whole mess.
frogbeastegg
09-18-2010, 20:20
Huh. The tables at the end of the manual are very stat happy. It's nice to form some ideas ready to try out when the game/demo arrives. Some policies look very strong when paired with certain civs, or for certain play styles. -50% food consumption by specialists, mmmm, perfect for a specialist economy. I can see that one getting nerfed unless there have already been some changes to how specialists work.
Not sure which civ to try out first now I've seen a detailed breakdown of the unique traits, buildings and units. There isn't one which immediately stands out and calls to me. There are a bunch which have nice attributes plus one I don't like, and others which have a set of ok but not so appealing attributes. I like a 'research everyone into the dust while being filthy rich' civ :yes:
Tutorial options look decent. There's a bunch of dedicated tutorials on specific subjects, and an open tutorial mode which seems to function a lot like civ4's settler mode with full advice toggled on. If the civlopedia is half as good as it sounds this should be the easiest PC civ game to pick and up play.
Hehe, many people have been saying the Roman leader is Julius Caesar. It's not, it's Augustus. I guess that's what happens when you drop a Roman leader in and simply refer to him as Caesar.
Really not sure what I think of the art style for things like unit icons. It's something I wasn't keen on in the screenshots, and the manual gives a better look at them. I don't think I like the style; it's terribly 'chunky cartoon' and doesn't fit the more realistic terrain and leader throne room graphics.
I can't believe it. Giant death robots are real units. I thought they were a joke.
I begin to worry about how this will perform on my machine. I've seen reviewers chatting on forums and complaining about poor performance with PCs that are stronger than mine. Looks like my processor (core2duo E6600 at 2.4ghz) might hold things back a lot as it's a very CPU intensive game. Definitely got to try the demo - there's no point in playing civ if you have to stick to tiny maps and few AIs.
As for having to download 20 gigs when you have the CD? That was CA again,because they didn't ship the correct version on the disks.
Not true - I kept refusing to download the game because I had the CD, so if the CD version was bad I'd never have played the game. It installed without issue a second time from the disc when I brought a new hard drive and had to reinstall my games. It installed fine from disc without an internet connection the third time, when I attempted to lock the game into 1.0, only to fail at that goal because it detected the patch when validating the game.
It took a bunch of attempts and deleting global settings files from steam before it would install from the disc at release. I wasn't the only one with that problem; I found the solution on our ETW forum. Not had to do that in subsequent installs so evidentally the problem was fixed in one of the many client updates.
It is also cheaper than its competitors (gamersgate roughly charges you £5 more and doesn't have any of the steam advantages and a dodgy down loader too)
Not in my experience except in a few sale related cases, and I've had no problems whatsoever with gamersgate after 27 purchases compared to 2 problem launches and one missing patch out of half that number on steam.
Impulse is like Steam but completely worse
If there's a word for Impulse that word is disappointing. It started out as a decent idea but very unfinished. IMO it hasn't progressed from that, and also lacks games. It gets beaten to the punch on all sales too; other sites offer the same cheaper, or sooner, or with extras, or a combination of those. I used to use it a little bit, now not in a long time.
While you had issues with E:TW which made you have a negative opinion of Steam, it was misdirected, as it was CA's fault for the whole mess.
Not true. All of the problems listed above belong to steam, except possibly the forced updates if you're correct about CA insisting on that. I haven't seen any mention of that anywhere else at all, while I know it's one of steam's most vaunted aspects. Some of them are problems repeated in the Crossworlds launch I just sat through, including messing up people's access to the game. It's not the developer who enables access to the game, it's Valve. It's not the developer who owns the servers, it's Valve. It's not the developer who programs steam, it's Valve. It's not Paradox who lost the FtG patch, it's Valve. And it's definitely not the developer who was responsible for any part of the Crossworlds mess, that was all Valve once again. In fact I watched the developers working overtime talking to Valve in an effort to find out what was happening, and talking to customers where Valve's people only ignored them.
If steam always works fine for you, great. It does for a lot of other people too or I'd never have considered giving it a second go. It hasn't always for me, and it hasn't for lots of other people out there. If the civ 5 demo works ok on my machine I'll be preordering for release and we'll see how the stats fall out: will it be 1/3 good launches, or 0/3. Time will tell ... hopefully. :burns chips in honour of the god of CPUs in the hope he will look favourably on a frog's efforts to run Civ5 with medium+ maps and 4+ AI:
Some of them are problems repeated in the Crossworlds launch I just sat through, including messing up people's access to the game. It's not the developer who enables access to the game, it's Valve. It's not the developer who owns the servers, it's Valve. It's not the developer who programs steam, it's Valve. It's not Paradox who lost the FtG patch, it's Valve. And it's definitely not the developer who was responsible for any part of the Crossworlds mess, that was all Valve once again. In fact I watched the developers working overtime talking to Valve in an effort to find out what was happening, and talking to customers where Valve's people only ignored them.
Yeah, I know they have 'funny' unlocking time. Sometimes it is Steam related, other time it is Publisher related (ie: Assassin Creed 2 UK release), so I am not going to disagree with you on that and infact agree with you on it. :beam:
I was hoping this thread wouldn't devolve into steam discussion. Haven't we beaten that horse into the ground enough? It's fair to say no one is going to change their minds about the platform this late. I'll say this though, i've never had ONE problem with steam that caused playing my games a chore, even with big name releases. Impulse on the other hand gave me an invalid CD key for Dragon Age Origins. We've all had different experiences with the different platforms, i'm willing to agree to disagreeing.
That's me and civ4. I played but didn't much like civ 2 test of time, civ 3, call to power 1 and call to power 2. I played and loved Alpha Centauri; that's why I kept on trying the series. Civ 4 changed everything. It threw out many of the things I disliked in the earlier entries, stole most of AC's best ideas, and added a load of refinement which improved the game to the power of ten. I liked Civilisation: Revolution too; it was very good at what it wanted to do.
Yeah Civ4 seemed like a nice game but it just nagged me to death with every little thing that I didn't like about it. I finally just gave up. Watching civ 5 in action though, I tell you, it's very tempting to give it another chance.
Civ 5's manual is now available on the official site. 233 pages long! Reading it has given me this terrible civ craving :eyes civ 4 icon on desktop:
:dizzy: 233 pages, good god. I wonder if they are including a printed version with the boxed game, I might break my habit of ordering through digital distribution and order from Amazon if that was the case.
frogbeastegg
09-18-2010, 23:20
Watching civ 5 in action though, I tell you, it's very tempting to give it another chance.
Demo is due on Tuesday, which is also the US launch day. Why not give it a go?
Europeans have to wait until Friday for the release but still get the demo on Tuesday, in case anyone was wondering.
:dizzy: 233 pages, good god. I wonder if they are including a printed version with the boxed game, I might break my habit of ordering through digital distribution and order from Amazon if that was the case.
Nope. They're being cheap enviromentally friendly. No paper documentation at all in any version. They have said that they will update the manual PDF so it's always accurate if patches or extra content change anything. That should be good.
If you're looking at a download version, direct2drive currently has the best deal. Same price as on steam but with the first DLC pack for free when it arrives and a free copy of Civ 3 complete (dubious merit). Simply take the CD key they give you, plug it into steam, and sit back as you preload. The DLC pack contains two new civs and one scenario according to the description; nothing further is known except that there will be a month or two delay between launch and DLC. Again, a keycode will be emailed out to you for use in steam. If you're in America there's a $5 off voucher, PAX2010. It doesn't work for the rest of the world :sad froggy:
You know what's sad? I am going to get this game, but at the moment I can't justify $50. Budget is going to force me to wait, and I know darn well there won't be a sale for the first year. (Heck, Modern Warfare 2 is still going for $60, all these months later.)
So I will either wait until my self-imposed budget allows the expense, or I'll break down like a girly-man and buy it anyway.
(Am I the only person who glanced at the title of this thread and mistook the exclamation marks for II? I did a real double-take seeing you all were going on about Civilization 7.)
Nope. They're being cheap enviromentally friendly. No paper documentation at all in any version. They have said that they will update the manual PDF so it's always accurate if patches or extra content change anything. That should be good.
That... :furious3:
Wonderful. The one time i consider buying a boxed copy and the publisher decides that manuals aren't eco friendly cost effective. Bah!
You know what's sad? I am going to get this game, but at the moment I can't justify $50. Budget is going to force me to wait, and I know darn well there won't be a sale for the first year. (Heck, Modern Warfare 2 is still going for $60, all these months later.)
You can blame Activision for that. Fortunately, 2k Games isn't that bad, as most of their games get the annual price drop most other places do. Borderlands was at $50 for quite a while, but eventually saw the price drop and is now a comfortable $30
As much as I want to get this. Steam only = no.
You know what's sad? I am going to get this game, but at the moment I can't justify $50. Budget is going to force me to wait, and I know darn well there won't be a sale for the first year. (Heck, Modern Warfare 2 is still going for $60, all these months later.)
So I will either wait until my self-imposed budget allows the expense, or I'll break down like a girly-man and buy it anyway.
Buy it from Amazon, it is usually significantly cheaper. Thanks to Steamworks, the code from Amazon works in Steam. :beam: I hope this is a start of a beautiful trend.
frogbeastegg
09-19-2010, 15:32
Another good video here (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/comprehensive-walkthrough-civilization-v/704647). 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.
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.
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
09-19-2010, 21:32
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.
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
09-20-2010, 00:53
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/
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. ~D
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. :laugh4: Steam page is here (http://steamcommunity.com/id/hardluck).
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. (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/statecraft-as-entertainment-ars-reviews-civilization-v.ars) Verdict: Buy.
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! :laugh4:
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
09-21-2010, 17:24
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 (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/21/wot-i-think-civilization-v/#more-39674) 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.
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
09-21-2010, 20:48
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.
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.
Just got my copy in the mail. Froggy will be happy to know installing from the disk works fine. :laugh4: 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.
EDIT: Rock, Paper, Shotgun's first look review (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/21/wot-i-think-civilization-v/#more-39674) 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
09-22-2010, 08:01
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.
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. :shrug: 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.
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
09-22-2010, 17:17
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
09-22-2010, 17:23
@Beskar
alh_p has better English skills than me.
frogbeastegg
09-22-2010, 17:47
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. :laugh4:
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.
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. :shrug: 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
09-22-2010, 18:27
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.
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 :shrug:. 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.
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
09-22-2010, 20:37
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
09-23-2010, 10:36
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
09-23-2010, 16:54
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.
So did anybody spring for deluxe? How's Babylon? Worth it?
Alexander the Pretty Good
09-23-2010, 18:02
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.
frogbeastegg
09-23-2010, 18:11
:looks at copy of civ 5 lying abandoned on her table and tries not to think about the fact she could be playing it if it weren't for this infuriating unlocking business: It comes with a big tech tree poster and a pamphlet which tells you your legal rights. I find that latter item amusing. The poster has a lot of good information since it contains every tech, civic, unit promotion, hotkey, terrain info, and improvement info. Unfortunately it suffers from the usual drawback of these things - the size makes it completely unwieldy and useless as a reference tool.
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.
Civilisation: Revolution. Mostly. That's why I've finished 40+ games in it despite preferring civ 4 by a long way.
I'm the same. As soon as I exit the medieval section I'm losing interest fast. I do manage to finish some games of civ 4, more often when I play the vanilla version as BTS makes the late game still more a complete nightmare of tedium. 'Some' can be defined as not many, probably fewer than 1 in every 5 started. Civ 3, Civ 2 and the two call to power games, I barely finished any games in at all because I didn't like them much.
So did anybody spring for deluxe? How's Babylon? Worth it?
I didn't; that one civ effectively cost £10. It will be available later as DLC and surely won't cost as much as that.
Krusader
09-23-2010, 18:16
So did anybody spring for deluxe? How's Babylon? Worth it?
Will play them as soon as Steam allows me...damn different release dates setup that goes on.
Alexander the Pretty Good
09-24-2010, 02:06
Just lost a 500 turn game (due to running out of time!). There were two main continents and a few good sized islands. I was on the smaller of the two continents as the Babylonians. I shared it with the Persians and Ottomans and 3 city states. Around the 600 AD mark or so (don't remember exactly) the Ottomans proposed we wipe out the Persians. Fine with me; I coveted some of their city locations. We wipe them out handily and mostly split their territory. I'm not a big city builder, so I've got 4 cities of 10+ size and much better tech than the Ottos, who have built about a dozen cities 5-8 size. Around the mid-1800s I decide the island wasn't big enough for the two of us (plus I got to liberate two city states they conquered). Artillery makes very short work of cities and can't even be damaged (I'm referring to the specific industrial era siege unit, not artillery in general). So after destroying the Ottos and recolonizing some of the land (I think I got 8 cities total after all that) my island was indeed "my island."
On the other island the Romans destroyed the Greeks then destroyed almost all of the Siamese. Then the Japanese destroyed the Romans. So it's the crippled, backwards Siamese, myself as the fairly advanced Babylonians, and the massive order-of-magnitude-big Japanese left (plus city states). I keep teching up and barely stay afloat in terms of happiness and gold (can't make enough of either) and I decide to go for the Spaceship victory. I had maybe a third done before running out of turns (and I was a couple hundred points behind the Japanese). Fun game though my computer was really chugging on turn ends by the end of it, maybe I should play smaller maps.
This is the second game where one faction ate up an entire island to become unstoppable. Settings were:
Difficulty - Prince (standard)
Map - Continents
Size - Standard
Speed - Standard
Just lost a 500 turn game (due to running out of time!). There were two main continents and a few good sized islands. I was on the smaller of the two continents as the Babylonians. I shared it with the Persians and Ottomans and 3 city states. Around the 600 AD mark or so (don't remember exactly) the Ottomans proposed we wipe out the Persians. Fine with me; I coveted some of their city locations. We wipe them out handily and mostly split their territory. I'm not a big city builder, so I've got 4 cities of 10+ size and much better tech than the Ottos, who have built about a dozen cities 5-8 size. Around the mid-1800s I decide the island wasn't big enough for the two of us (plus I got to liberate two city states they conquered). Artillery makes very short work of cities and can't even be damaged (I'm referring to the specific industrial era siege unit, not artillery in general). So after destroying the Ottos and recolonizing some of the land (I think I got 8 cities total after all that) my island was indeed "my island."
On the other island the Romans destroyed the Greeks then destroyed almost all of the Siamese. Then the Japanese destroyed the Romans. So it's the crippled, backwards Siamese, myself as the fairly advanced Babylonians, and the massive order-of-magnitude-big Japanese left (plus city states). I keep teching up and barely stay afloat in terms of happiness and gold (can't make enough of either) and I decide to go for the Spaceship victory. I had maybe a third done before running out of turns (and I was a couple hundred points behind the Japanese). Fun game though my computer was really chugging on turn ends by the end of it, maybe I should play smaller maps.
This is the second game where one faction ate up an entire island to become unstoppable. Settings were:
Difficulty - Prince (standard)
Map - Continents
Size - Standard
Speed - Standard
I've noticed that performance degrades over time due to civs producing so many units, be they workers, settlers or military. Try bumping down your terrain settings, it seems to have the biggest impact (aside from AA).
LeftEyeNine
09-24-2010, 09:16
Performance degrading over time was essentially existent with Civ4 too. After a certain point, the producers had revealed a simple change of "0" to "1" in a config file so that, at the cost of game crashing if you ever Alt-tabbed, more resources were made available to the game to overcome the "obesity" of the game progressed to an extent.
Optimizations are sure to arrive as soon as enough player feedback is obtained.
God Emperor
09-24-2010, 10:04
I got civ V.. I am ever so excited :D
frogbeastegg
09-24-2010, 17:33
It installed without issue :fainting: Well, aside from taking forever and a day to consider my CD key; I thought it was going to get rejected. Must be something to that old saying about third time lucky, although I expect it's got more to do with my being here half a day after unlock.
Do people want to post PC specs and game performance? Might be useful for reference. Anyone interested in doing so should post a rough guide to the settings and game size they are using, and whether they're in the late game or early game.
I browsed the tech tree poster in detail last night. Wow, the classical era is short! It's a single layer of techs. Considering the amount of techs there used to be in classical that's somewhat shocking. I'm tempted to do a tech count for this and vanilla civ 4 and see how they compare as somehow Civ 5's looks quite ... light.
Anywho, defrag is running post install. Once it's done the frog shall play the rest of the day away. The Empire of the Amphibian rises again and anyone getting in the way will be squished. :scastle3:
I broke down and bought it. Installing now; when I complete certain work-related tasks I will give it a spin, which means probably later tonight.
No impulse control. Some days it's tough being a prosimian. At least I managed to force myself to buy the standard edition.
LeftEyeNine
09-24-2010, 19:44
Then ya greenies provide an insightful review, aye ? Should be froguality. :smoking:
It installed without issue :fainting: Well, aside from taking forever and a day to consider my CD key; I thought it was going to get rejected. Must be something to that old saying about third time lucky, although I expect it's got more to do with my being here half a day after unlock.
I had zero issues with my CD copy too, I was thinking "Ah ha, now Froggy will see Steam for what it really is, not the screw-ups CA did." :tongue:
frogbeastegg
09-25-2010, 00:01
:blinks: Aiiiieeee! Mine eyes, the contact lenses do stick to them uncomfortably and cloud mine view with mist! Yep, way to remind myself of why I don't do lengthy bouts of PC gaming. Time to quit and head to bed.
I'm halfway through my dumbo learning game. 200 turns, maybe? Date wise I'm in the middle ages, tech wise I'm slap in the centre of the renaissance. It's a slower game on small map and low difficulty combo than civ 4. I'd have finished a civ 4 game on those settings by now. I accidentally chose the random civ option for myself (thought it was for the AI, gah!) and ended up with China. Not so bad - the leader looks a bit like my avatar here. They are quite a militaristic civ so it's a bit of a wash for a tech 'n' gold froggy. Nice music though, it's all oriental in style.
So far the overall view is mixed. It's not got the same initial grab that civ 4 had; it reminds me of my first experiences in all of those civ games I didn't like so much. There's something ... too early to define. May improve, may not. We'll see when I know what I'm doing and bump the difficulty. It feels dry, definitely. Not much personality in there.
Tip of the day: Go to my documents\my games\civ5\ and open usersettings with notepad. Scroll down to find 'disableintromovie' and change the 0 to 1. No more intro sequences. Be happy.
I got a map with nice land. :smug: It's beautiful. Grass. Rivers. Resources. Barely any desert or other crappy tiles. Series first for the frog.
I miss my printed manual. Lots of times I thought “I want to look that up” or “I wonder how…?” only to realise that the civlopedia was disabled on that screen and to look up the decision I wanted I’d have to irrevocably make it first. Alt+tabbing out to the PDF crashes the game. The advisors aren’t much help. The popups aren’t much help. I can’t seem to find the variety of info I want anywhere. Blundering around cluelessly is the order of the day. Huh, wasn’t amused to see on the box that they boast about this lack of a manual as a great feature.
The game will not allow AA in directx9. At all. Weird.
Now, allow me to wail "What have they done to diplomacy!?" and sob quietly. They've gone from having some of the best player to AI diplomacy around to having barely any. I can't see what the AI think of me, can't see why they think it, can't see how likely they are to accept a deal and thus no way of knowing the value of items, can't see what they have researched, can't trade techs or maps, can't see what civics they are using, can't see what overall score they have - I'm near totally blind and hand-tied. I'm really disliking this; I hate having no way to gauge how the world stands. I really do not know how much longevity this game will have for me with such hacked down diplomacy. Probably not so much. It inclines the game towards the war, war, war bore that I do not enjoy at all. In the end that's why I got sick of Civ: Rev despite everything else I liked: bad diplomacy and war, war, war. Well, that and atrocious cheaty AI.
The civics are ... no, I'll keep those thoughts to myself until I've played a few more games. They might surprise me. I strongly hope so. I shall apply that principle to the rest - there's a lot I'm seeing and experiencing that I want to comment on but will not until I'm certain that it's not as misleading first impression. At the moment I don't see this one staying on my HD for 5 continuous years.
Performance wise, it works better than the demo and looks better too.
Then ya greenies provide an insightful review, aye ? Should be froguality
Eventually, yes.
I had zero issues with my CD copy too, I was thinking "Ah ha, now Froggy will see Steam for what it really is, not the screw-ups CA did." :tongue:
CA worked on Crossworlds and took over Valve?! They're expanding stealthily! :tongueg:
Moral of the story is to be like a grand lady, and turn up fashionably late to big steam events. About 8 hours late. Wearing an evening gown and jewels is optional but recommended for style purposes.
Now, where did that driver park my pumpkin carriage? Time to depart this party before my lenses end up glued to my eyeballs. :sweatdrop:
Alexander the Pretty Good
09-25-2010, 02:34
Tip of the day: Go to my documents\my games\civ5\ and open usersettings with notepad. Scroll down to find 'disableintromovie' and change the 0 to 1. No more intro sequences. Be happy.
It was "SkipIntroVideo" (line 31) for me but thank you very much!
The game needs an autosave. It has CTD'd a couple of times, and it makes me lose progress.
frogbeastegg
09-25-2010, 10:47
The game needs an autosave. It has CTD's a couple of times, and it makes me lose progress.
It's in the main options menu, under the gameplay tab IIRC. You can set how often it saves and how many it keeps. You might have to access the menu once you start the overall game but before you enter the game world; a lot of menu options vanish once you hit the world. By default it's on with 10 turns between saves.
It's in the main options menu, under the gameplay tab IIRC. You can set how often it saves and how many it keeps. You might have to access the menu once you start the overall game but before you enter the game world; a lot of menu options vanish once you hit the world. By default it's on with 10 turns between saves.
Found them, they were under a different tab, hence why I didn't see them.
frogbeastegg
09-25-2010, 21:32
The box boasts about giving a portion of the game's sale price to charity and says the player will be asked to choose a charity during install. I wasn't asked. How do you choose a charity for 2K to give money to? It'd be sad to miss the opportunity.
Finished my first game. 6.2 hours according to steam. Diplomatic victory because I got bored with how easy it was and that was quicker to grab than spaceship or cultural victories.
There were a pair of interesting little wars sparked by one AI attacking city states I had under my sphere of influence. The first was somewhat hard going (in an easy kind of way) because it happened very early on and, true to my froggy ways, I hadn't built up much of an army. I had to scramble units to send a decent force over, and didn't have much of a tech edge. I saved the place with a nick of time - the health bar was on its last shred of red and another turn would have seen the place conquered. The second was fun in a different way. I had industrial era units and the AI had late classical ones. Can you say shooting fish in a barrel? 4 units crushed an army far larger and razed his second city. That sort of thing's fun to do every once in a while. The third time someone declared war on one of my city states I simply gave them a single unit of mine since it wasn’t worth the bother of getting personally involved. Mobile infantry versus swordsmen and archers; the city state cleaned up without getting scratched.
Time to begin the climb up the difficulties until I find one which suits. It's a civ tradition of mine; I start at the bottom and work my way up even though I know most of the early levels will be way too easy. Why do I do this? Why? Cakewalks aren't much fun. Yet every single time I play one of these games I do it. Suppose it must have something to do with wanting to watch how the AI improves with each step.
Finished a game. Egyptians, second-easiest difficulty, large map, diplomatic victory.
IMHO combat is a huge improvement. Arranging your units for a successful assault is gratifying in a way no Stack of Doom could ever be. Diplomacy is meh. AI is okay. I ran into no Black Knight situations, but perhaps that was due to the difficulty setting. Social policies are funky and interesting, forcing you to make some huge decisions every so often.
Addictive. Fun. Neat little mod browser. I predict this is going to stay on my HD for a good long time.
frogbeastegg
09-26-2010, 10:30
Eeep! I think I've discovered this game's power strategy. Got to try it on higher levels but I can't see it failing to work since it ties into the core concepts introduced for this version. Two words: city states.
Focus on building culture via early wonders like Stonehenge, and speed ASAP to the middle ages to unlock the patronage tree. Stick with 1 city for now unless there's a highly pressing reason to make a second. Buy the concept followed by aesthetics and philanthropy. You now have a boost to starting influence, your influence decays 25% slower, and your gold gifts are 25% more effective, and you got them cheap because you only have 1 city.
Start wooing the city states. Begin with the ones closest to you. Order of preference is as follows: the maritime ones as the food boost they give you is massive - you won't need to make any farms. Then pick up culture ones; the amount you gain each turn sounds small but adds up into more policies very quickly. Then military ones. Let them build your army for you; don't build many units yourself and focus on more powerful stuff like wonders or the big boost buildings. If you reach the point where you don't want any more units, or you don't like the unit you have been given, simply gift it to a city state for a free influence bonus.
Found a second city if you like, and probably a third during the wooing process. Specialise your cities to gold, science or production. Remember: no need for farms. Spam improvements which give gold or production.
Once you factor in the rest of the patronage tree you're sitting even prettier. Bonus research, bonus great people, double resources (great for strategic resources) and extra happiness. Because you’re tailoring your city and focusing everything on useful resources instead of food or unit production you boom like crazy.
Greece is made for this strategy. Any civ can do it successfully.
Crandaeolon
09-26-2010, 20:30
Multiplayer is completely dysfuctional. Bought two copies to play with my fiancee; that was money well wasted. I wonder if a refund is possible... probably not. A couple of links to summarise some of the problems (yes, there are more.)
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88675
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89150
Veho Nex
09-26-2010, 22:39
What is with companies and hinting that in the future they might charge for updates. IE: Stardock's advertisement for people to buy Elemental or this fantastic line from 2k.
Thanks for the feedback. We will be improving multiplayer in free updates to the game.
frogbeastegg
10-01-2010, 17:21
The flash of steel civ 5 podcast is available (http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2010/09/30/three-moves-ahead-episode-84-civilization-v-with-todd-brakke/). IMO the site's podcasts are always worth listening to. For those who don't know, it's a dedicated strategy game site, mainly PC oriented.
Having played further, maritime city states = teh aw3s0mez!!11! Oh yes. So much so that they obsolete the entire population growth line of buildings, make farms an improvement which is rarely needed, and leave food the least valuable out of the gatherable trinity of food/production/gold. It's even better since food = population = research. Getting them on your side is the important diplomatic interaction; the rest is all fluff by comparison.
Following a discussion I learned something interesting which changes the way I view some facets of the game. Open borders is not a good idea, contrary to Civ 4. It's not the start of a friendly relationship, a handy status you want with the civs you intend to work with. More often it's your doom. The AI can't tell what units you have unless it can see them. Open borders means it scouts you. Insufficient military units? The AI will declare war now it knows you are weak. Keeping your border closed means the AI remains uncertain and will be wary. Closed borders plus units placed 1 hex back from your frontier will show strength regardless of how weak you are inside your empire. NB: don't put the units right on the edge of your border or it will be taken as aggression and the AI will begin to complain if you're lucky, or launch a pre-emptive strike if you're not.
So military deterrent is about placement and visibility, not numbers. Peace is about keeping closed borders. I kind of like it.
Gaiseric
10-04-2010, 03:40
No more Civ games for me. After playing Civ2, Civ3, + Civ4, I have decided that it is just way too much micromanagement for the rock-paper-scissors style combat that these games offer. The only way I would ever spend that much time micro-managing cities again would be if they gave me control of the battlefield like in TW games. Combine the AI of the Civ series with the battles of the TW series, and then you would have a great game!!!
UN option does not seem to bring up any resolutions or voting. Is that intentional?
frogbeastegg
10-05-2010, 16:44
UN option does not seem to bring up any resolutions or voting. Is that intentional?
It takes some turns before the vote appears. Something like 10-15. You can see a counter in your top right hand screen corner. Took me a while to figure this out when I did the diplo victory too.
Heh. I've now won a game on every single difficulty level and, unless the AI vastly improves when you can play on larger maps than the small ones I'm currently forced to use, all I can say it's pathetic. On the one hand it cheats way too much, on the other it's still as stupid as it was on the lower levels. On deity the AI entered the medieval era in ~50 turns, had 4 cities, and a teeming mass of units. I had 3 horsemen and I crushed it in a 3 turn long war. Game over. Awful! Regardless of whether the AI is improved or not, there's no way I am playing on deity again. Medieval era with all of that in 50 turns due to bonuses!? Where's the fun in that!?
For reference, I beat Civ: Rev on all difficulties and felt much the same about it: too dumb at low levels, too dumb and cheaty at high ones. Civ 4 I only got 2/3 of the way up the difficulty ladder on.
LeftEyeNine
10-11-2010, 12:30
If you're gonna make an arcade-style management game based on civilizations, fine, would be an alternative taste.
If you skim up Civilization series and call it the newest of it all, it's an insult.
Huge disappointment so far. And I'm pretty sure that it's been made so in order to make room for the expansions. And this is another way of offense too.
If you skim up Civilization series and call it the newest of it all, it's an insult.
Hmm, not sure I agree. At the very least, the move to hexes and the lack of stacks makes for a more strategic game than previous Civs. I'm kinda digging it.
LeftEyeNine
10-12-2010, 11:08
No culture ? Oh, yes we can unlock policies by collecting cultural points. :coffeenews:
No religion ?
No espionage ?
No leader-specific civilization features ?
Brushed diplomacy which only presents City-state driven Super-mario-like collect-it-all interstate relationships as something new ?
I thought this was a civilization simulation, not a lightweight web spinoff of Civ series.
Another victim to the console age; thanks, Sid, for the nice dirk you've thrusted into our Civ-crazy hearts.
frogbeastegg
10-12-2010, 13:58
I want Civ 4.5. Select features from 4 and from 5, with a pinch of Alpha Centauri.
From 5:
*Hex map and world generator - best civ maps I've seen by a long way.
*Combat system.
*Gold/research split instead of the slider.
*Ability to upgrade units for a reasonable price.
*AI which can't magically tell what military you have, and can be fooled by FOW and unit placement.
*Game pacing: early game lasts longer, late game is less tedious, units don't become obsolete on their way to their first battle.
*No road/railroad spam.
*Viability and strength of small empires.
*Cities can defend themselves against weak forces so no need for garrisons.
*Gold is useful and there's a lot of ways to spend it.
*Legendary start mode for resources. Mmmmmm, tasty.
*Weakened resource hammer/food/gold output means that city placement now calls for consideration of wider factors.
From 4:
*DIPLOMACY!!!!
*AI which isn't as dumb as a rock after a series of sleepless nights.
*Transparency on mechanics. You know why your unit upkeep is costing you that much, etc.
*Detailed breakdown of player/AI status: score, techs, cities - the works. I want to know where I am and where they are.
*AI leaders with personality.
*Leader screens which don't take ages to load and drag me out away from the game screen.
*The flexibility of the civic system.
*Religion.
*Wider range of resources, more 'use' from food resources.
*I want my end game summary window thingy back!
*The full collection of civs and leaders.
*Traits. The single, solid unique ability given by 5 is unbalanced, inflexible and not so fun.
*Great people construct buildings inside the city, not on a tile outside.
*Sense of awe.
*Big, fat paper manual filled with useful reference tables and info.
*Wide range of options for things like worker automation, etc.
To work on from both:
*A tech tree where every option feels useful and there are no filer techs a la 5 but where there's more options a la 4.
*Happiness. Global is nice and yet there's a few things about local I miss ... neither is fully satisfying.
*Wonders. I don't want an uber button. I don't want a boring building. I don't want some to be awesome and others to be weak.
*City states/minor civs. The idea is nice, the execution is always lacking.
*Culture victory. Booooring! Spam wonders and culture buildings, wait for points to pile up, win. Nice idea, now make it fun to do.
*Diplomatic victory. As above except chuck gold around, win.
From Alpha Centauri:
*Tech and wonder descriptions which don't make me hammer 'ok' in order to close the window and escape the tedious narration.
*This had the ultimate execution of faction personalities. Steal it - now!
Things I don't want to see unless they are massively changed because I've never found the implementation to be fun:
*Espionage
*Corporations
*City spam
*Large empires - make it doable in a way which doesn't weaken small empires. Make it function as a choice, not a min/max sum.
*Social policies. Too one-way and inflexible, I always end up choosing the same things, not exciting to use.
*Corruption
Things were either 4 or 5's version would be ok:
*Culture
*Unit promotions
*Unique units
*Barbarians, although I have a minor preference for 5's camps over 4's cities.
I played a test game up to about 1AD, then started a normal game and played until the late industrial era but didn't finish. Then I tried a multiplayer game with Scienter, which we abandoned relatively quickly once it became clear how buggy MP is.
Civ is my favorite game series ever, and I am extremely disappointed in this game. It is, frankly, pretty boring. I haven't touched it in a week and far prefer to spend my time playing Minecraft and Borderlands. Hopefully patching will spruce it up, but I doubt it. If I want to play Civ now, I'll go play Civ IV instead.
al Roumi
10-15-2010, 15:21
Civ is my favorite game series ever, and I am extremely disappointed in this game. It is, frankly, pretty boring. I haven't touched it in a week and far prefer to spend my time playing Minecraft and Borderlands. Hopefully patching will spruce it up, but I doubt it. If I want to play Civ now, I'll go play Civ IV instead.
I'm of the same mind. I played a few hundred turns of an easy game by way of introduction (the frog methodology for aclimatisation) on release and then tried another blast of a new game last night. After 2 hours (on Prince) and mid way through the medieval age, I was quite bored and went back to sociological experimentation in dwarf fortress.
I just feel like the Civ5 experience is pretty thin -compared to Civ 4 anyway. It's polished for sure but it just doesn't grab me by the balls like Civ 4 does. I don't feel very engaged, it's almost too easy to do things. Want to make friends with a city state, spend some cash: bam. Barbarians pose no-where near the challenge they do in Civ4 -maybe because you no longer need to garrison cities but probably also because I've only seen barbarian brutes and triremes. The challenge in civ4 for me was always to get enough bronze and axemen early enough to deal with the "awakening of the wilds" when barbarian cities appeared.
When I played the demo I thought the polish was good as it made things accessible and kept you informed, now I think it's polished because there isn't much depth behind it. I don't find myself making anywhere near the number of long-term challenging decisions I did in Civ4, e.g. balancing useful tech with religious to make sure I had a religion early enough not to face the fairly crippling unhappiness you get. The tech gamble just doesn't seem like a big deal in civ5. City planning also seems so simple compared to civ4, little balancing of food vs reources seems to be required -or at least its not so harsh/specialising as Civ4.
Then again, given my tolerance for things like Dwarf fortress (a current fad, if you hadn't noticed), I may count as one of the weirdos who like games that give them a headache.
I hope the expansions add depth becuase at the moment I'd almost rather play Elemental.
Then again, given my tolerance for things like Dwarf fortress (a current fad, if you hadn't noticed), I may count as one of the weirdos who like games that give them a headache.
Nice of you to mention DF, actually. I've been considering getting into it lately, but have been turned off a bit by the constant reports of just how steep the learning curve is. I have a pretty high tolerance for high-difficulty and high-complexity games, so DF itself seems like something I'd enjoy, but I don't feel like I have the time at the moment to spend an entire week learning how to play a game before it becomes fun. Is it really as hard to learn as the reports say, or are those reports generally written by pansies with no stomach for hardcore PC strategy gaming?
al Roumi
10-16-2010, 22:19
Is it really as hard to learn as the reports say, or are those reports generally written by pansies with no stomach for hardcore PC strategy gaming?
The interface is pretty sadistic, but once you've got over that, it's actually not that complex. The route to understanding is quite well trod and the wiki (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_page) is very comprehensive -I do play with it open in the background though!
The absolute best thing to do though is to give this step by step tutorial a go (http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/). There have been some changes since this version of the game, but they aren't major enough for it to be an issue when moving on to the current version.
The gameplay detail and freedom available for how you build your fortress is pretty breathtaking. I honestly couldn't consider playing this game without a tileset though :) If you like the feeling of developing and crafting something, I don't think I've ever played anything which provides such a strong dollop of it as DF. Definitley worth a try.
(Mod may like to move this to the Dwarf fortress thread, In the meantime I thought I should reply directly to Tincow)
tibilicus
10-17-2010, 01:53
Well I picked up a copy of the game today so have some initial thoughts.
I'm personally pleased with how turns seem a lot more interesting. By this, it appears that more seems to happen than in your average civ 4 game. I haven't yet found myself hammering the space bar through boredom to try and skip turns where nothing happen. The combat is an obvious improvement and I also like the way cities and the expanse of an empire works. Instead of expanding at a set point (when the culture reaches say 500, as in civ 4), it seems that borders expand in a much more organic way.
The only major negative I've picked up on so far is the way the new diplomacy interface works. It seems the AI is very sensitive and gets annoyed at the most minor thing. I browsed the civ fanatics fan site and it appears I'm not the only one with this gripe. It is a bit ludicrous for a civ to end all trade agreements simply because your building too many wonders.
So far though, I think I'm impressed. I only had time to play the game briefly earlier but I could already feel the familiar "one more turn" feeling sinking in.
Krusader
10-20-2010, 03:21
http://play.tm/news/32192/mongols-and-babylonians-feature-on-the-new-civ-5-dlc/
Mongls coming as free DLC, Babylonians as pay-for-DLC.
Surprised they release a free pack, and unsurprised they release a paid one.
Kekvit Irae
10-21-2010, 18:06
Played it for a week on launch day, then got bored with it and moved on.
As I've said on the Escapist, I equate games with gum.
Civilization V has a flavor that is bland, nothing you haven't tasted before, but you soon forget about that it until you realize 18 hours later you're still chewing the first piece.
al Roumi
10-22-2010, 11:13
Played it for a week on launch day, then got bored with it and moved on.
As I've said on the Escapist, I equate games with gum.
That's an interesting analogy.
I was giving CIV4 BTS a go again earlier this week and I do still prefer that version of the game. I intensely dislike civ5's city/tile/economy thing. For me, the strong focus on building cities around resources from civ4 was a very positive step forwards from civ3. Civ 5 has basicaly gone back to the city-spam of civ3 :shame:
I do think the military is improved but I'm kind of ambivalent about the city defense of civ5. Hexes I could take or leave.
xploring
03-16-2013, 02:07
http://www.civilization5.com/bravenewworld/
It's official!! The next expansion is called Brave New World, set to release this summer!
A quick rundown:
-9 new civilizations, including Poland (led by Casmir III, with the Winged Hussar UU and a UA that gives a free social policy upon entering an era); another yellowish civ is pictured in a screenshot, which could be Assyria or the Hittites, among others.
-8 new wonders, including Broadway, Effizi Gallery, and the Parthenon.
-International trade routes - send physical units back and forth with other civs, but Science/Religion/etc. can "leak out" to other civs along the way.
-More complex diplomacy in the form of the World Congress, which initiates when one civ has met all other civs. Civs have a certain number of delegates and vote on two policies per session, like enforcing a trade embargo. The World Congress can help control runaways.
-A "more active" strategy for culture victories is less dependent on turtling, as culture is now external. A culture victory is now triggered upon having "majority culture" with all other civs in the game.
-Cities in the same civ can share food, production, and more with internal trade routes.
-Great Artists are now Great Writers, Great Artists, and Great Musicians, all of which can create Great Works, which increase tourism. Great Works can be "hosted" in culture buildings (like Opera Houses) or the Great Library.
-Archaeologists can investigate city ruins and ancient battle sites to find artifcats.
-Near the end of the game, you choose Ideologies, which affect diplomacy more than the choice of Freedom/Order/Autocracy did previously
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=490784
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