: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. 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.

Quote Originally Posted by LEN
Then ya greenies provide an insightful review, aye ? Should be froguality
Eventually, yes.

Quote Originally Posted by Beskar View Post
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."
CA worked on Crossworlds and took over Valve?! They're expanding stealthily!

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.