Civilization V!!

[frogbeastegg]

: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]

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]

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

[Monk]

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]

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]

I got civ V.. I am ever so excited :D

[frogbeastegg]

It installed without issue 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.

[Lemur]

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]

Then ya greenies provide an insightful review, aye ? Should be froguality.

[Beskar]

It installed without issue 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."

[frogbeastegg]

: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.

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."

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.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

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!

[Beskar]

The game needs an autosave. It has CTD'd a couple of times, and it makes me lose progress.

[frogbeastegg]

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.

[Beskar]

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]

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.

[Lemur]

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]

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.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

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]

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]

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]

The flash of steel civ 5 podcast is available. 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]

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!!!

[Beskar]

UN option does not seem to bring up any resolutions or voting. Is that intentional?

[frogbeastegg]

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]

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.

[Lemur]

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]

No culture ? Oh, yes we can unlock policies by collecting cultural points.

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]

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.

[TinCow]

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]

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.