Civilization V!!

[Beskar]

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]

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

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:

[Beskar]

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.

[Monk]

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:

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]

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.

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:

[Monk]

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...

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

[naut]

As much as I want to get this. Steam only = no.

[Lemur]

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.)

[Beskar]

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. I hope this is a start of a beautiful trend.

[frogbeastegg]

Another good video here. 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.