Civilization V!!

[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.

[TinCow]

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]

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 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. 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]

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]

http://play.tm/news/32192/mongols-an...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]

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]

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

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.