Civilization V!!

[Boohugh]

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]

No one posted links to the pair of civ5 live gameplay videos? Gosh.

Part 1
Part 2

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.

[Martok]

Well the first reviews are already in. They're so overwhelmingly positive it's almost ridiculous. The average score so far is over 98%!


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.

[tibilicus]

Well the first reviews are already in. They're so overwhelmingly positive it's almost ridiculous. The average score so far is over 98%!


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.

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...

[Monk]

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]

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.

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.

[Beskar]

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]

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]

I think it was after ETW, but with the updated steam you can tell steam not to update your games.