f13.net

Civilization V Announced (http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/214082/civilization-v-announced-on-next-gamepro-cover/)


Fall 2010. Which means 2012 and 1st expansion before a playable version is available (at least judging from Civ 3/Civ 4 history)…

Love the hexagon tile shift, intrigued how gameplay will modify to suit — i.e., doesn't that really increase the number of tiles "belonging" to a city and hence, core game economics?

Though Civ has traditionally been on the PC, it easily transitions to consoles...I wondering if they'll make this for consoles right off the bat, rather than making a, erm, "Revolution" version.

Some screenshots are posted here:
http://www.civilization5.com/

(http://img.skitch.com/20100218-jfa7jq99xdx1tdqu83q3p7rr4q.png)

Hope the hex thing works, that's a major change to gameplay.

Some screens over on http://www.civilization5.com/ (dammit naum)

NOTE TO SID: HIRE KAEL or at least make FFH3 an official retail product. He made Civ 4 worth playing.

But yeah. Civ 5. All over it. Civ has always had the best value of any game I've bought (even if Civ4 is mostly thanks to Kael). We'll all buy it and bitch about the changes until the expansion that makes it playable (BtS imo for Civ 4 vanilla).

Hell yeah.  Hex grid looks like sweet. 

Oooh, I love the change to hex.  Good choice.

On 2nd thought, not really - what is it, 21 squares now that "belong" to city (5x5 - 4 corners) whereas a hex grid with a 2 tile radius is 19 tiles…

Hexes are much better for war games.  I approve of this change.

(I find it works better for D&D and other mini games, too.  The only drawback being buildings tend to be square so they don't 'fit' perfectly.  Distance calculations and effects flow much more smoothly though.)

Can I still kill an jet bomber with a phalanx?   :why_so_serious:

As an ex-board game enthusiast, I agree that the hex scheme seems a good thing.  Perhaps it's just nostalgia talking.

Dammit, Civ V is a PC Exclusive.

Good. Be nice to have a game without a terrible console-y UI.

I still haven't gotten around to trying FFH. One of these days...

Hex are great for gameplay but ugly for aesthetics.  Look at that retarded border line.  They should programming it to be a straight line, even if it doesn't follow perfectly the actual hex.  Hex should not even be visible anyway; square were not in Civ 4.

You could toggle the on or off.  Also, borders are rarely straight IRL.

I always turn the tile grid ON (Cmd|Ctrl-T) when I play.

I think the change to hex will be nice, it will give the game a different feel even if it doesn't change the gameplay much.  Still, I'd much rather this was an announcement for Alpha Centauri 2.

Yes.  Or at least turning it on and off so I can see how certain things are going to be laid out.  It may be my boardgaming past, but the change to hexes as opposed to squares looks a lot better to me aesthetically.  

I have never liked hexes, but I don't think it will impact the enjoyment of the game much  :grin:

I really hope they made waging war past about 200 AD less of a pain in the ass. I avoid conflict most of the time just because it takes so goddamned long to get through even a small conflict.

Would love to see more natural resouces too- planning city locations around them is one of my favorite parts of the game. Probably why I restart new games over and over.

More natural resources is one of the arcs from Civ 3 - Civ 4 I really liked.

But, definitely with you on the mircomanagement — it's painful past mid game, especially in larger map games with lots of other civs. Surprised that FreeCiv still has some automated commands that the commercial Civ series still doesn't — Patrol for instance, where I can simply toggle a unit/stack to move along a set of points (in a loop) ad infinitum (until accosted, just like Sentry command).

Also, would like to see more on the social engineering aspect, similar to what was done in Alpha Centauri. Instead, Civ 4 took a cowardly route, as all of the religion/government/economic choices really aren't that impactful (at least in comparison to micromanagement of your city placement/tile allotment).

:mob:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171398
That's one of the best things about ffh2, it really highlights how vanilla civ4 is. Playing as Sheaim is a totally different game than playing as Ljosalfar. And the whole Mercurians/Infernals endgame is a great spin on the Revolution period of Colonization.

Wonder if 'Spearman beats Tank' will work in this game.

Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.


Agreed.  And please make the AI not trade every single tech with every other civilization by default...

Don't you live north of the 49th parrallel?  :oh_i_see:

Whoever drew that line must've been drunk at the time because it gets all fucked up to the right.

much love for FFH and Alpha Cent.  The more CIV gets away from genocide-FTW the better.

Love the hex thing as well.  I loved Civ IV as well, very fun game.  As long as it comes to steam, I will be a happy camper.

I will still buy it even if they just shit in the box...

That doesn't really happen in Civ 4.  I mean it's technically possible if your tank is at like 0.1 health and the spearman is full.  But a spearman will never beat a tank all else being equal.  It's funny to me that this is the one thing people latch on to with Civ with there is so much more wrong with the game.  Namely, its botched patching process and its botched multiplayer.  Not to mention its absurdly high min requirements for a turn based strategy game and such shitty graphics.


But I've played a lot of Civ in my life and never seen a spearman take on a tank.  And when are all these "tank vs. spear" matches supposed to occur?  Who is playing on such easy difficulty settings that they out-tech the AI by that much?  And if you are winning by that much I think you can fucking spare a one in a million tank loss to a phalanx.  Jesus.

I love the idea of some nerdy asshole sitting in front of his computer for 12 hours, 11 hours after the game became a foregone conclusion on the tutorial difficulty setting suddenly in an outrage because one of his modern armored tanks reduced in strength by several orders of magnitude just lost to a crack troop of muskets.  Insane.

Relax buddy, it's a civ1 joke where a spearman with a couple of good defence modifiers (mountain, fortress) could have a reasonable chance to beat a battleship or tank.

Groan. 

I know but Civ I came out 20 years ago.  So since it's not still relevant or funny (especially after the 3rd time its brought up) I can only presume people are serious.

Somehow I'm thinking you'll survive. 

They go back and forth.  They fixed it in 2, then flubbed it in 3 (The Random Number God is cold and callous), and flubbed it in a different direction in 4 (promotion and Cultural defense allows for some wonky things).  Mods fixed most of the problems, but combat has never really been the game's point so... eh.

Lets hope that Kael and team are up for another mod.

To me, FFH was to Civ IV as Counterstrike was to Half Life. I spent every Sunday afternoon for four months playing on a large map, eight civilizations, with our house "RP ruleset". Incredibly fun.

Kael really broke me.

The first thing I thought when reading this was "Yay, there might be a Fall From Heaven 3"

Heh.  Oh I'll SURVIVE all right!  But seriously,  I've never played a game where someone was out teched that hard (bronze/modern).  I just don't get the complaint.  It's a game, if everytime someone got a new unit and it couldn't lose to a older unit the game would be broken.  There is a shitton of unrealistic things in Civ, it's not exactly a spot-on historical simulation.  But really, people should just sack up and stop playing on the easiest difficulty setting.  Because that's the only way to out tech someone that much.

You guys take this gaming stuff WAY too seriously. 

Its not just about out teching, but also encouraging upgrading old units.  I mean, its still GOOD to upgrade, but you can get away with not doing it.  It isn't so much that you'll be sending bombers at someone when they are in the bronze age, but if someone forgets to put any new units in a city after an archer, you SHOULD be able to roll over it with no losses.

Still, doesn't mean I wouldn't play the game or something, I just have to admit it is something that feels odd when it happens.

Thank you for this.  You summed up my feelings nicely. 

Some of the early issues with the game were jarring.  Many were addressed, but some lingered or came and went.  I still love the franchise, but it does/did have its issues. 

Ok but then my next question is who you're playing against that is so bad that they leave archers defending their border cities in the modern era?  Because the AI doesn't do that past the newb setting.

My original statement was an exaggeration intended to be a silly comment.  I never realized it would rock the foundations of gaming lore. 

I suppose I just got exposed for being a Civ nerd.  You've flushed the rabbit from its den!  Onwards!

It's all good.  I'm quite the Civ nerd myself.  Like I said, Civ 3 and 4 had the problem in various degrees.  Civ 3 with the low unit hit points and RNG.  Civ 4 with various bonuses and such (promoted units are viciously strong if set up right)

I personally don't think it's that bad, but I still find it funny when it happens.  Gal Civ II (yes, not the same company) was in the same vein, with slightly more logical (logical for a game with aliens and spaceships) combat.

People actually play Civ multiplayer? Not PBEM, but actual mutiplayer?

I loved this game.  I think it was my fondness for it's origins (if anyone remembers Reach for the Stars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reach_for_the_Stars_%28computer_game%29)).

I apologize if my comment slighted anyone.  I too am a huge Sid Meiers fan and have lost countless hours of my life to these games, particularly Railroad Tycoon.  

You really should have known better.  This has turned awesome though.  Good job!

I did once. My wife was out of town. My buddy's wife was out of town. We started right after supper. When we finished, I was astonished to see the sun was coming up. Amazingly fun, but my god, not something that can be done very often.

Civ 4 has a system called "simultaneous turns."  Pretty self-explanatory.  You can also set maximum time limits for each turn which scale as the game progresses and your empires (presumably) grow.  It's pretty cool, except for the online servers being run by GameSpy.  Winners are usually decided in about an hour.

I would have to view multiplayer games of Civ as being similar to Monopoly-  something that is often started but rarely finished in its entirety.

I hope they take some cues from revolution.

Civ 4 multiplayer is all about warfare.  Games are seldom "finished" because people quit or concede once it becomes obvious who the winner will be.  This usually takes about an hour.

Civ Rev was dumbed down so much that it became uninteresting.

Interesting, I always preferred Civ Rev because I felt it boiled Civ down to the essentials and could actually be played in a reasonable amount of time..

About the Tanks vs Archers. I rationalize that those archers actually have assault rifles it's just that they are a bunch of illiterate goons with no organization who can barely reload the things, sort of like most third world armies right now.

I wish that Firaxis had some way to make this visual as it would defuse a lot of the so called controversy.

My point.

(http://www.filmbuffonline.com/FBOLNewsreel/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/GreenArrow.jpg)

Same. It was a great stream line, I really don't need a slider for wiping each citizens butt. However one of my first games as Civ one, so..

Why is the arrowhead at a 30° angle to the shaft?

So he can shoot around corners.

Hexes? In my Civs!?  I'm torn on this.  If they do nothing with them re:facings then, why? 

Still, new civs.  I'll buy it day 0. Gimmeh!

No elevation! Again! It's like someone went back in time and prevented SMAC from ever being created. Will they ever surpass a game they released 12 years ago?

That said, I do like this talk of limiting the number of units in a tile space. That's going to change things tremendously.

What's this? Limit the number of units in a tile space? But I LIKE stacking 25 Numidian cavalry in the same tile and then roll over other civilizations! :(

it would be nice to not have to fuck around with 500 units at a time.

I don't think there's many occasions where you would have more than 50-100 unfortified units at the same time, and many of them would be on multi-turn move orders. Assuming that you limited it to 3 units per square, it's manageable.

And if it eliminates the dreaded Stack 'o Death and makes terrain more important during war, I'm all for it.

I hope it has something like Combined Arms Stack Attack in Dale's Combat Mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=257210).

IGN has a new preview up. (http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1075587p1.html)  I'm still a bit torn on the one unit per tile thing.

Yeah, I can see maybe restricting stacks to a smaller size...but one? That's not even Civ anymore imo. I mean...your own units will block movement for each other?

I'll hold off judgement until I play but I still hope to hell that Kael makes FFH3. While I still like the franchise, it's been moving in odd directions since Civ2. I had actually stopped playing Civ4 until I discovered FFH2. There a whole lot of "hmm...I hope that works out" in that article.

Iron mines only supporting 5 units, borders expanding toward food instead of production, no culture-flipping, no religion or espionage...time will tell.

Unit/tile restrictions will almost have to make warfare less kludgy, yes? If so, that is a huge step in the right direction for me.

Its been a long time, but isn't that how the original played out?

If it leads to the computer using a strategy other than just producing axemen in every city for a hundred years and then sending them at me in one giant stack - I'll be happy.

Agreed.  While I don't want to see non-combat stuff get taken out/reduced, I think having a more interesting combat/warfare system would be quite interesting.

IIRC you could stack in the original but the entire stack died if you lost on defence.

This will be my first Civilization game. The need to play something like Dawn of Discovery that isn't Ubisoft and a desire to return to games like Master of Orion has fueled this purchase.

I'm scurred.   :?

Yep... which lead to only stacking defenseless units (like the settlers or diplomats) with an offensive unit so they weren't raped.


Just play at a level that's fun for you.  Start out at Chieftain or Settler if you're really scared and want to learn it to the endgame.

I don't think I've ever played above Prince. Beyond that it just became really obvious the computer was cheating, and that bothered me more than it felt like a challenge.

Back in the day I played above that level.  These days I just want to play an even game and enjoy doing so.  But yeah I hated them cheating bastards.

I forget what level I played on, but I recall puttering around thinking I was doing ok as I had triremes, swordsmen and 3 cities going and hadn't seen another civ yet.

That was when the stack of Knights showed up.

I'm excited for this more than any other game.

Same.  I don't mind a challenging AI, but I simply couldn't keep up with massive bonuses above that level.

Yeah, the people who play at the highest levels are generally borderline abusing game mechanics to achieve victories.  To me, that's not very compelling but some people like it.

I tended to play my first few games on the easiest or second-easiest level. However, once I got to the point where I got so pissed about my neighbor's chariots stooging around inside my borders that I used F-16s to blow them up, I'd make a note to bump up the difficulty next game. :)

Then again, sometimes that is the fun.

I always set at the 1:1 level (can't remember which one that is)… …and if I need a challenge then will opt for totally random world setups (i.e., dryer/wetter/warmer/colder planets can make it tough getting your civ ramped up, especially with a bad start location draw).

noble is essentially 1:1.  i find monarch challenging.

Just won a random civ Pangaea game on Monarch.  Got a diplomatic victory at 1726 A.D.  Normalized score was like 86,000.  Of course, I lucked out with Rome.  Praets are so far and away the best unit in the game it's basically easy mode considering they are viable from the iron age until someone gets riflemen.  Even macemen/x-bows don't totally own them because praets are so cheap.  I think I could take the next difficulty up after Monarch but it would be a chore because I'd have to get a domination victory.

Another Civ fan here!  I've played II-IV and looking forward to V.  As a veteran wargamer, I'm glad to see hexes and I do hope the combat is more detailed.  Civ is one of the very few games that I can't stop playing.  Also liked Civ Rev very much.  I didn't mind giving up some complexity for lay on your couch eatin' Cheetos fun.

Shit, I may fire that up again...

The tutorial, user experience, and how well the game conveys information will make or break this game for me. I gotta be confident that I know what I'm doing.

Don't play the best Civ, FFH2. It's got a pretty rough learning curve. For a game like that, I'm ok with it, since it means decent versatility and depth, something vanilla civ lacks. Kael has actually made me somewhat 'meh' about Civ V, I want to know what he's doing next.

Chedd linked previously he's doing a standalone game next

Gamespot preview (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationv/news.html?sid=6272395&part=rss&tag=gs_pc&subj=6272395&mode=previews)

I hate (HATE!!!!!) the art deco crap. The actual gameplay sounds awesome, however.

I think the Art Deco look is fantastic, but I'm a fan of it in general so :oh_i_see:.

I really like the art deco interface.

Also an art deco fan.

You people are deranged!  :grin:

Art for art's sake...

Interface looks great, imo.

I like it.  Futura is the greatest font of all time. 

Indubitably.

(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=5350;type=avatar)
 :Love_Letters:

Careful, his mountain lion will get you.  That thing is possessive.

Its not like anything they've shown is like way out there art deco either, its pretty tame and doesn't take a lot of chances.  Is it really that bad?  I imagine most people wouldn't even recognize it as art deco without being told thats what it is.

The stuff around the edges is pretty apparent, as is the look of the modern cities when they get large. Something about the outline or the shape of the interface stuff just annoys me. I am sure I won't even notice it after a few hours of play, but just looking at screenshots it is glaring.

Edit- looking at the screenshots again, it is definitely the outlining around all the icons that bugs me, as well as the font. Bleah.

I just hope it's narrated by Leonard Nemoy.

:oh_i_see:

Sys requirements are up.  Time to plot out your upgrade if required:

http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/system_requirements

Minimum Requirements
Operating System: Windows® XP SP3/ Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
Processor: Dual Core CPU
Memory: 2GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free
DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation
Video: 256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® version 9.0c

Recommended Requirements
Operating System: Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
Processor: 1.8 GHz Quad Core CPU
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free
DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation
Video: 512 MB ATI 4800 series or better, 512 MB nVidia 9800 series or better
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® version 11
Other Requirements: Initial installation requires one-time Internet connection for Steam authentication; software installations required (included with the game) include Steam Client, Microsoft Visual C++2008 Runtime Libraries and Microsoft DirectX.
Internet Connection and acceptance of Steam™ Subscriber Agreement required for activation. See www.steampowered.com/agreement for details

Gonna be Morgan Sheppard (http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/feature_technology_quotes).

Hopefully this will be optimized for quad cores and not bog down to a grind in the modern/future age.

I want  you to promise me now that you will BiiF this.   :why_so_serious:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/civilization-revolution/id324563544?cjid=10492644-1225267-u0t2167266f9fp0c0s5814#

Civ Revolutions is free for the iPhone today.

So, in Civ V, can a trireme sometimes beat a battleship?

This is actually a really crucial part of it for me.  I am probably going to buy Civ 5 regardless, but this has ALWAYS bothered the hell out of me.  Now, I can understand why it is moderately important to have weaker units being able to sometimes prevail from a game balance standpoint ,but there needs to be some sort of tech difference at which the older stuff just won't ever win.  Though the combat changes so far look to be the biggest and best changes to the game in general, so I'm hoping it turns out to work well, whatever they decide.

The way I see it, if you're putting battleships against their trimeres, you can afford losing sometimes. :oh_i_see:

There was that one wargame where the guy playing the insurgents blew up battleships with rubber rafts, so it's not that far out an idea...

I think the main problem is how its represented on screen.  I think unorthodox tactics as a way of evening an unfair fight in an interesting idea in a strategy/war game.  However, in Civ the boats sort of just sail up alongside each other and one shoots 80mm cannons, and the other has guy shooting arrows.  This leads to a sort of break that just "feels" wrong, regardless of any underlying mechanics.

For me personally, it's not about realism, it's that it's an annoying gameplay mechanic.  Compare it to something like Advance Wars, where there's still a bit of randomness in the damage units do, but a tank (for example) is never going to get one-shotted by an infantry unit.  In Civ, that does sometimes happen, however rarely.  It's one of the most annoying elements of the Fall from Heaven mod, the idea that my Hero can have a 96% chance of victory, but if God rolls his dice and they come up short (and they often do, wars in my multiplayer games of FfH are marked by a chorus of "BULLSHIT I HAD 95% ODDS ON THAT" screams every five minutes or so) then that hero is gone, dead, and you're fucked.  Not because of a mistake you made, or a brilliant tactical move on the part of the computer, but because of random luck.  It goes against the feel of a "strategic" game.  Compared to a more predictable system, it punishes the player who plans well and has good odds by occasionally giving him the finger, no matter how well he's planned, and it rewards the player who is making poor choices and has poor odds with occasional victories he really hasn't earned.  Admittedly, it's not usually enough to turn the tide, but it's still an annoying mechanic.

Sounds like it could be even more annoying coupled with the "one unit per tile" thing, since one unit that dies on a 10% chance could open a hole in your lines and expose your back lines to slaughter.

FWIW in most competitive environments, mechanics like these are actually a good thing. Nobody wants to go into a game knowing they have literally no chance against a player who is better than they are. For any big multiplayer type endeavor where there are players of vastly different skill levels random elements act to keep a lot more people interested than otherwise would be.

Actually most competitive multiplayer games strive to reduce randomness in as many ways as possible.

See SSBM and it's Final Destination, No Items.

TF2 disables random crits, random weapon damage spread and random bullet patterns.

Sure, but TF2 when it is played that way could hardly be described as an environment where you have noobs rubbing elbows with experts. I'm in particular thinking of how the random element makes competitive play much more accessible in games like MtG.

This is pretty much the exact opposite of true.  Maybe for casual games in which you are playing against another human being its fine, but in any truly "competitive" setting randomness is shunned.

I was too slow, it seems this has been said.

Clearly the answer to all our problems here is Mega Damage.

That explains the vast popularity of competitive poker, then.  :oh_i_see:

Randomness keeps the players who aren't in the tip top tier interested. For games with real matchmaking systems like SC2 or whatever, sure, you don't need it, since the weaker players end up paired with each other. But for anything where everyone is just in the pool together? A bit of randomness is great from a design perspective, and frankly I think it keeps the better players interested too. Recovering from a bad random event actually gives you another place to make skill show anyway.

EDIT: Let me expand. Games (and I'm going to limit this to non-action games, because ultimately Civ is just a fancy boardgame) run the gamut from 100% combinatorial (chess or tic tac toe would be examples - there are no random elements and no hidden information at all) to 100% random (let's flip a coin and see who wins). The sweet spot for competitive games is a spot that allows a lot of skill to be shown, so good players can see a lot of success, but still has enough of a random element so every game is not the same and the weaker players have a shot at knocking out a good player once in a while. They get that nice winning feeling to keep them involved and keep showing up to events.

I think it depends on how you look at it.  The people who want it to be more sport like want as little random factor as possible, the people who want it more game like tend not to mind.   Its perhaps a dubious distinction, but imagine football but you rolled dice to see which quarterback was in the game on a given snap or something...yeah...kinda shitty.  To me, a "competitive" match means more than simply two people playing against each other, it means to people testing their skill against each other.  The more randomness it is, the less a test of skill it is.

Football has plenty of random elements, though, they're just not really exposed to us. Coin flips, what ref you got that day, the direction of the wind when you happen to be up for that big kick, etc., etc. I think it is kind of outside the scope of discussion as a team athletics thing rather than a boardgame-like endeavor in any case. EDIT: Actually probably a more germane reason it is outside the scope of the discussion is because it is entirely played by professionals. You don't get random teams of people just showing up to play etc.

The problem with the games that are literally 100% skill based is that they're almost never any fun unless you're playing against someone equally or near-equally matched. There's not a lot of fun to be had in a game of chess that is over in 5 moves, for the winner or the loser, and I'm not sure that anyone has *ever* had any fun plaiyng tic tac toe at all.

Also, weighing probabilities and risk factors and such is still a skill. I don't think bad random outcomes mean that a game is testing skill any less. If the cost of losing Super Unit X is a lot worse than the benefit of taking Weakly Defended Objective Y, there's an interesting decision to make there. Maybe the player should be using less important units to take said objective and saving Super Unit X for situations that have more upside. Honestly, that's the major downside of the random element in games; players like to blame the random element when things go wrong instead of the decisions that led them to the situation where the random element can screw them (assuming we're not down at the "let's flip a coin!" end of the spectrum.)

Why do you think Counter-strike became so popular (and at the same time, impopular with the vast majority of the Quake crowd?)

BOOM. HEADSHOT.

Well, the referees are *ideally* all equal (I'm definitely not saying they are, but they are not an intentionally random part of the game is my point).  The environment is also random, but you know what it is and its the same for both teams.  Not to mention they GENERALLY have super bowls in domes to try and minimize that factor on their championship game.  This was even an issue when NY got the super bowl for 2014 or whenever that was, and the talking point that whole week on sports talk radio was "will snow play a factor in the super bowl"

 The really only intentionally truly random part of the game is the coin flip as you said, and thats only because well, you have to decide who gets the ball first somehow.

Anyway, to me that all a lot different from "5% chance you just fail no matter what you did" which is what I really have a problem with.

Lastly "There almost never any fun" isn't really the point.  Competitive play (keep in mind, im talking ONLY about competitive play here, not just 2 folks playing a video game in general) is about determining who is best, not about having fun.  If you don't care about who is better and just care about having fun games, then yea, randomness is fine, and I like plenty of games like that.  But I do NOT like it a "competitive" environment.

Maybe this entire argument is just an argument over the definition of competitive.

There are random things that happen in games that add flavor and keep people interested.  But those things are pretty hard to imagine.  Most iterations end up stupidly overpowered and suck the life right out of the game by becoming the only real option, or so inane that nobody bothers with them at all.  It's also one of those things that different people are more or less comfortable with different levels of.  So speaking in terms of design, the Ockham's Razor principle applies.  A simple, elegant game like chess is more accessible in principle because the game itself isn't imposing any disadvantageous terms that alienate some people just by being possible.

To put it in terms of this thread, Archer beating Rifleman on that .1% chance is retarded all day, every day.  That doesn't lend itself to accessibility as far as I'm concerned because I think it's silly.  You can try to change my mind.  But you're not going to change everyone's mind.  So you're always going to have people who see that and say, "Fuck that was lame."  And you can't say they are wrong because it's just a matter of preference.  And quite frankly, I'd be interested to hear you say, "Oh that's just Sid's way of making the game accessible to newbs." if it your Rifleman got smoked by an Archer.  My bet it just like me, "Fuck that was lame."  :)

I can say with 100% certainty that if, say, Magic the Gathering had 0 random elements in it, it would have died an early death and nobody would be plaiyng it now. With the random elements, it has an incredibly successful tournament scene and it is getting close to 20 years old.

Look at poker - if it didn't have any random elements or hidden information, who would ever play it? Unless you were that one top player, you'd just be throwing your money away every time you sat down at the table.

The competitive game I have the most personal experience with is D&D Minis (sadly no longer with us.) In that game I was that guy in our local area to a large extent. If the game hadn't had the potential for some lucky outcomes the game would have died years before it did simply because there would be very little opportunity for anyone but me or the other couple very good players to ever win anything.

Luck is a poweful element for keeping a larger audience involved in a game. I think if you actually got a Civ game with no random elements at all you'd be bored with it inside a week. With turn-based games there's no twitchy skill curve like you see in a FPS or RTS - in a game like that you can always get better at timing and speed or making decisions more quickly. In a turn based game where you have a more or less arbitrary amount of time to make decisions, the skill curve is more like a skill staircase, and eventually you reach that top step if you're not having to weigh probabilities and what-ifs. There's probably a mod out there somewhere that turns off fog of war, distributes resources evenly, and always lets the stronger unit win. I'm guessing it wouldn't be much of a game that way though.

Well, to hear Sid Meier talk about Civ in that keynote address he did earlier in the year for...something GDC maybe, players never think its "lame" when they are on the winning side, but I think hes wrong on that one.  For instance I when I get a crit rocket in TF2 and kill someone it just feels like the kill was cheapened.  I know a lot of people don't feel that way though and cheer when they get crits, including one friend I have who likes to shout out loud "You liked that didn't you!" whenever he crits someone. So I might be in the minority.  

Also, I know crits are valves way of trying to introduce the highs and lows of their single player pacing into a multiplayer environment, and it does do that effectively to some extent, but I don't really want that experience in multiplayer.

 Also, I think we're missing the point a little here.  Its not like a tank needs to beat a machinegunner every time, but really, the tank DOES need to beat the archer every time.  Just because I mean...COME ON.

It wouldn't be a Civ game without that.  :heart:

I think you just kind of have to take the view that there's a layer of abstraction in there somewhere, since in a world where one side has tanks and the other side has archers, the guy with the archers *probably* could get his hands on a hand grenade or something. And the overconfident tank driver left his hatch open or something.  :grin:

That would be fine, if that was actually the justification and they articulated it somewhere.  Instead its really just because "Civ combat has randomness."


I can think of two reasons just off the top of my head:  

Because you are two people of relatively equal skill.

Because who the "top player" is isn't just a matter of course and is generally "decided" through competition.

You're effectively saying "Why race, we all know Usain Bolt is the fastest man alive"

You seem to be making some odd assumptions like,
People only ever have one skill level and never get better or worse,
 the hierarchy of skill is obvious just as a matter of course, so why bother playing?
People play at the same exact skill level every time and never have good days or bad days.

Upsets happen!, and it isn't because of random elements, its because humans aren't robots, and is perhaps an important point in this discussion

Oh god, now look at what you've done.

Civ is not an inherently competitive game. There isn't a huge tournament scene out there (is there?) and most people who talk about it either play solo, or with friends. All the comparisons to professional football are retarded.

Since I know virtually nothing about MtG or D&D whatever, I'm going to counter your example with something everyone can understand.  Street Fighter 2.  Everyone (back in my day, whippersnappers) loved it.  But a good player could take all the luck out of the game for a newb.  But it didn't stop me or my friends from trying to beat that god damn other friend of mine who would laugh in our faces as he finished us off with perfectly timed spinning piledrivers every god damn time.  We weren't trying to beat him in the hopes we'd get lucky.  We were trying to get better by practicing against somebody who was better than us.

The point is that adding a relative element means that different people are going to react differently to your game.  It's definitely not a universally good or bad thing.  When you introduce luck, you introduce a fundamental level of discomfort for a lot of people.  It's a crutch.  But it's a relative crutch.  You're okay with it.  But other people think it's cheap.  Still others rely on it exclusively, convincing themselves they are awesome - like Malakili's friend with his crit rockets.  That only further exacerbates the issues that the people who think it's cheap have with it.  So you can't just say adding a luck factor is universally good.

It may help certain games or mechanics here and there in moderation.  And for some games, like poker, it's fundamentally understood.  But you know, diff'rent strokes.

Musashi, the follow-up to your argument is that the random element is a fundamental part of the Civ experience, and removing it changes the game in a fundamental way.

Yea.  A fundamentally better way.  In Civ, Modern Armor vs. Warrior (best ground unit vs. worst) is still 99.9%.  So according to Sid, there's a .1% chance that a man with a club kicks the shit out of a modern Tank.  Like I said, one man's 'Civ Experience' is another man's retarded experience.

Like somebody else said, it's okay in moderation.  A machine gun vs tank gets lucky or something.  But as it is, it's really silly.

As I said before, I think action games are fundamentally different than turn based games in this area.

Not sure I agree with that (since I generally play against the AI anyways) but even so, I don't really have a problem with Civ having some  random elements, it's being random to the degree that a caveman can take out the Death Star that I object to.  You can have random elements without putting a player at the mercy of them.

To use Advance Wars as an example again (numbers are fudged here), if your Tank attacks an Infantry, it'll do about 100% damage.  Sometimes it'll do a little over 100% and kill the Infantry unit instantly, sometimes it'll do a little less than 100% and leave the Infantry crippled, but alive.  Compare that to Civ, where the best case scenario is the same (Infantry dead) but in the worst case scenario, not only is the enemy left alive, but your Tank is dead.  That's a pretty massive gap in possible outcomes, and if you want to have a decent chance of winning, your only real chance is to build up an enormous force with a miniscule chance of failure so that if you do lose a few units it won't matter.  That kind of fight is fairly uninteresting, tactically, and it's only the economy and diplomacy that go into building that army that keep Civ from being crushingly boring.

I don't think that all randomness should be removed from the game.  I have no problem starting a new map and seeing, for example, that the enemy has all the horses on the continent or something.  It means I have to adjust my strategy.  But when my units just sometimes randomly die to anything manufactured in the last century, how do I adjust to that without resorting to the same "big blob of units" tactics in every game?

You're playing a game spanning 5000 odd years. There are plenty of examples throughout human history where vastly inferior forces have won. "It's just not realistic!" isn't an argument. In fact, it's MORE realistic than the opposite. A tank unit is maybe 10 tanks. A warrior unit is maybe 1000 infantry. That's not an as uneven game as you might think if the infantry has the tactical advantage. All you really need is big pits and fire.

And yes, it is random, because nobody expects it. That's kind of the point of these turn-the-tables battles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2488/4192902635_341130c233.jpg)

Ai! Yai yai yai!

lol.  I think I made the same point earlier in the thread.  You have to be a complete asswipe to have such an exponential technological advantage and then bitch and moan that you lost one of your tanks to a musketman.  Umm, not sure that's gonna make or break you chief.  And as much Civ 4 as I've played, I've never seen that happen at full strength.  People who talk about it like it's a huge problem are A) people who haven't played a Civ game in about a decade or B) the asswipes who do nothing but play the AI on too easy (for them) settings and have the gall to throw a hissy fit when one of their modern armors is lost rolling through the sixth medieval hamlet its crushed in as many turns. 

Let's keep in mind that the chance of defeat is very, very low. It's only a problem if you try to use a single battleship and a single tank to take out an entire nation. Steamrolling undeveloped nations in Civ gets boring way before stuff like that becomes an issue.

Civilization combat has always been silly because the units are not literal representations (a tank) but just fancy animations for a numerical strength. And it is generally good game design to have some degree of uncertainty whether for the "I should try, I might win" or the "I still have to be careful, I could lose". And if you can't accept that roll of the dice then that's what save games are for.

Of course it is quite possible for a man with a club to beat a tank. You hide amongst the civilian population till the crew goes home, break into their house and bludgeon them while they sleep (see asymmetric warfare). After all a civilization combat turn is actually an extended conflict that goes on for a substantial amount of time.

 :awesome_for_real:

This is possibly the worst argument since the mechs one.  Use your imagination, they got moltovs or the tank blew a track and they had to repair it then got peppered with arrows.   Or, if it's really that big a deal mod the game so you can win and only have to build that single tank to wipe out the other civ.

Then the next game, play it on something other than chieftain and discover you don't have that problem anymore.

As for the 96% losses in FFH, I've begun to suspect that the calcs look only at the raw numbers and bonuses on the units and they don't take into account the first strikes.  I say this because when I get a unit with all the first strike promos he's able to take out enemies with a 40% odds of winning more often than he should.

How about a moisture farmer with a single torpedo?

Its not that you just want to win the game with one tank, its when you bring an army of tanks to attack a city and his 5 fortified archers murder do insane damage to your army, even if you end up winning in the end.  But, the days of that are going to be gone in Civ 5 anyway.

 The single unit per hex and ranged units having actual...range.. is going to make positioning and composition actually more important than just bringing a huge stack of doom to the fight.  I think its going to make the game far more enjoyable all around.

Not to sound horrible, but if this is happening to you you're not playing the game right. Civ 4 pushes multi-component armies, not just stacks of doom of one troop. Your tanks should be paired with artillery, which will allow you to blow through those cities like they don't even exist. It's only really early one when you are axemen rushing someone that pure "one unit type" armies work.

Fundamentally, in all the time I've played Civ 4, I can't even think of one situation where the loss of a high tech unit to a very low tech unit hasn't either been my own fault for being arrogant, or mattered. It's such a non-issue in civ 4, not sure why it's come up now. They deliberately built the game so that it's incredibly hard for that situation to occur, and assuming you use the armies right it just doesn't happen.

Yeah, I'm probably not playing the game right, I don't take Civ very seriously, which is probably due to the fact that I was young when I played the original and I've never broken out of the mentality that I approached the game with then, which was just generally "build whatever I feel like whenever I feel like".  I actually prefer to avoid combat all together though when possible because I find the mechanics to be pretty crap (not just the tech thing).  I'd much prefer to turtle up and win some sort of culture victory since if I want engaging combat I have 100 other games I can think of off the top of my head that are better.

Eh.  Luck is a component in real life.  Modern military doctrine does try minimize the effects of luck via process but shit still happens.  I would not be a fan of any system that didn't have a component of randomness built in.

Again, lots not miss the forest for the trees here.  We aren't talking about every unit hard countering another unit. We had the sort of side discussion about competitive games and randomness, but that isn't really the issue as it was brought up initially.  Really were talking about specific instances of higher tech units losing to really outclasses and outdated army units.  Its not the end of the world either, but I'll admit that there are a lot of times in Civ combat where I'm just like "this is stupid" and it definitely is one of the things about the series that I don't particularly like.

So we're talking about whether luck universally improves the game by increasing accessibility.  I'm saying that introducing luck to a game alone alienates different people relatively and therefore can't be universal since some people don't view it positively in every context and always differently in different contexts.  Like in this thread, everybody has a relatively different level of comfort with tank losing vs archer.  But if this weren't the case, and tank always beat archer - if this had always been the case, and nobody knew otherwise, it wouldn't be an issue.  And the same people arguing for random mechanics here wouldn't be necessarily arguing for this level of luck to be introduced, even if they were arguing for a random mechanic to increase accessibility in the first place and not just taking it for granted, as any sane person would, that your Civ guys with sticks are going to lose to a god damn tank.  They'd just be arguing for some level of luck, not necessarily to the degree of tank beating archer.  And that's okay with me, as long as it isn't being declared as a universal maxim that even the most egregiously unlikely mechanics are still good because they provide accessibility.

I'll use another example.  I like that David Sirlin game, Kongai, on Kongregate.  So I made a thread about it in web games.  It has a mechanic called 'intercept' that some people feel is cheesy because it's basically a 50/50 shot to totally fuck up your opponent's day on every turn.  When I made the thread, I wasn't expecting other people to view this mechanic differently than me because I thought it was, in this context, one of the more interesting parts of the game.  But people did feel differently, and of course in f13 fashion, they let me know (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19042.0).  So in a game where deck building is important, and those with any deck at all have an advantage over a complete noob, the argument against me says that everyone should be happy about intercept because it's a luck based mechanic that levels the playing field.  But it's not the case.  Experience or better stuff does not encumber a complete noob from concluding that he's not comfortable with that level of luck determining the outcome of his play session.  And I admit I was surprised to figure this out, because it's something I never really thought about.

There is a huge difference between "luck should play a factor" and "luck is the overriding or only factor".  Let's not think so black and white.

I'm honestly not sure why you even wrote those words.  Nobody said that.  I'm just going to assume you misinterpreted, or are having an off day.

It's what I'm reading a lot of people saying in this thread.

(Though that could be the painkillers, too.)

I think at this point we should be asking a different question:

Should something be done in general about those "Wow, that was really fucking lame" moments that tend to happen in Civ combat from time to time?

How often they are occur or how much they *actually* effect the outcome of a game isn't the point, but it is one of those things that when it happens just makes me want to say, aw fuck it and quit playing, and I think other people have the same experience. "Learn2Play" isn't really addressing the point.

Apply that statement to anything else in life and you'll fail just as miserably as you are now in Civ.  At the risk of coming off as an elitist gosu Civ guy, people that aren't familiar with Civ need to realize the fundamental and inescapable fact that the people who complain about the astronomically low odds of losing a modern combat unit to an ancient combat unit in a game of Civ are just botched on a very basic mental and evolutionary level.  The reason is because power projection in a game of Civ is a derivative of technological capacity.  Therefore, if you're attacking (as in every fucking example of this line of criticism) a archer defended city with a pack of tanks, the game is already well in hand.  In fact, it has been for many turns (i.e. you're playing an opponent that is vastly inferior.)


It's sort of like playing a kid with Downs in a game of chess and then bitching about the fact that you weren't able to convert one of your pawns into a queen.  This is really the line between the vast majority of people who start a game on an easy setting to learn the ropes, and then move up accordingly to a level that challenges them, and the weird and pathetic minority who don't wish to be challenged.

Going to try to get this across one more time, here goes:

It's not that I'm bitching about realism.  I've played tons of action games where I can take out a tank with a sword or something, it's not a scenario that kills games for me.  It's not that I'm bitching about difficulty.  As people have noted several times in this thread, this doesn't make the game any easier or harder since it screws over your opponents just as often as it screws you over.  Claiming that units randomly dying is "challenging" isn't accurate, since I could just as easily claim that the ability for any unit to win any fight is something that only bad players like, since it lets poor players reload battles they should lose over and over again until they win.  Either way, it's not the point.

It is about control versus randomness.  Spearman vs. Tank is a popular example because it's the most obvious "WTF" moment, but it happens in every fight in the game: you always have a chance to lose, and there's nothing you can do about it.  Barbarians can come in and conquer one of your border cities in a fight with one-in-a hundred odds.  Does that mean you'll lose the game?  No, but it's a pain to shift everything around to retake the city.  Did you screw up?  Not really, the odds against it happening were pretty solid.  But it happened anyways.  If your units die, it should be because of a mistake you made.  Sending up a massively powerful force against a weaker unit should result in the weaker unit dying.  That's the whole point.  Note that I'm not saying that MY units should be invulnerable, if the computer comes at my Spearmen with Tanks and I win, that's just as stupid.  I fucked up, my guys should be dead, but instead I get a win that I didn't earn, that's not something I'm going to cheer about.  It doesn't matter that it probably won't change who ultimately wins the game, it's still an annoying mechanic and I wonder why they continue to include it.

There is a neat trick to avoid this. Set yourself a limit. Every fight with loss chances under this limit, save the game beforehand, reload if you lose. Over that limit, play as intended.

See, you just circumvented that (for you) silly randomness and can enjoy the game as you like.

I did that once; reloaded a battle 10 times. From what I could figure, their supposed 99% win chance means you will actually win 40% of the time. So I did it again and again and again until I got pissed off and stopped playing for months. I could research it further and find out what they really mean by 99%, but I'd rather be pissed off because it fills me with a false sense of superiority.

I mean really, if it WAS a 99% chance for a tank to beat a spearman, why is everybody on the entire Internet complaining about it?

DAMMIT now I want to play Civ again. >_<

Reloading a game of Civ to get a different result is folly unless you select the "random seed" on reload option.  Otherwise, the random number generator will, in theory, generate the same result that you would be trying to avoid by reloading the saved state.  

Also, I'm scratching my head trying to think of a PC game  of any depth where randomness doesn't come into play to a significant degree.  I know there must be some examples, but it seems to me that nearly every game I've ever played incorporates some degree of randomness.  I think the "wahhhhh the results of every encounter should be guaranteed!" argument is, while valid hypothetically, not legitimate in any realistic context.  

In fact, the whole thing is practically a logical fallacy.  The idea that "massively stronger units should always win" is neat.  But where do you hardcode the line?  Do crossbowmen always defeat swordsmen?  Or is it Macemen?  The whole argument quickly breaks down into the very ridiculous.  For me (and nearly everyone else on the planet) 99% odds is good enough.  It's also more realistic than all the asswipes who are clamoring for some sort of mythical "guarantee" of victory, no matter the odds.

Yes, you need either the "random seed on reload" option, or wait another turn for a retry (which I found to be a balancing factor to not do it all the time, just when you are really pissed to lose a tricked-out hero on <0.1% chance)

Do you guys realize that things are generally not completely under your control? Most strategy games, board games, RPGs, etc. all have heavily random elements. Civ's is only particularly frustrating because the combat system is very simple: a single roll that, despite modifiers, can only give a 999/1000 chance of victory. But of course people only remember that 1/1000; this is exacerbated by the fact that most combat in Civ (until you bring Withdraw, First Strikes, etc. into play) is all or nothing. Once Unit X attacks Unit Y, one of the two dies.

However, as Maledict said earlier in the thread, this doesn't happen a lot in Civ4. 1 in 1000 is pretty long odds, to the point where it doesn't bother most people. I'm not sure if those of you who are upset about this are control-freaks or what, but I don't see the big deal. Games involve dice rolls. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

To use another example, take Risk. With the way the system works, one "army" can continue to defeat an infinite number of enemies, so long as the defending player at least ties the attacking player's best roll. Now, the attacker has 3 dice, and the defender only gets 1, so the odds aren't great. But I've seen some major upsets where 1 army takes out 10+ (as I'm sure any other Risk players here have), yet no one suggests they remove the die rolling aspect from the game.

I'm pretty sure Risk is a terrible example. There are a lot of people (myself included) who find the mechanics annoying.

Randomness if often a key element of fun because the people playing the game (i.e. us) aren't deterministic, and arguably more importantly respond to different situations in different ways. It's why we enjoy sports so much. The issue is that there needs to be justification for that randomness and it needs to fit in with the game. We don't care that weapons in many RPGs have weapon ranges because the whole system is usually a silly approximation for some form of hypothetical combat.

After considering this for a bit more, I think that I like the idea of Civ more than the actual game.  If Civ 5 combat mechanics are more to my liking I'll probably get it anyway, but I guess this is just one of those I don't approach with the right kind of mentality to understand how its supposed to be played.  Perhaps its the casual/non time sensitive nature of turn based games that makes it hard for my to treat them with the sense of urgency required to play them well, or maybe its just that I enjoy more reflex oriented games (though I get a fair amount of enjoyment over other kinds of Turn Based war games (Risk, Axis and Allies).

Now that I think about it after writing that last sentence I wonder how much of this can be attributed to the physical act of rolling dice v. the RNG doing it for me.  For some reason when the dice treat me bad during a board game I just laugh it off.  When it happens in a computer game, it makes me rage like few other things.

In the case of Poker, your skill at playing has nothing to do with the cards you receive. The winner is not the player who is dealt the best hand.



Randomness does do what you say it does - it evens the playing field and makes the experience more enjoyable for those who are worse at the game. This is the reason why, for example, TF2 is a great casual game. The crit system allows anyone to level the playing field. SSB is a party game because anyone can grab that hammer and start kicking people around.

However, these qualities are not desirable in a 'competitive' environment and most such environments will strive to limit randomness wherever possible.


Ultimately, in all but purely random games, there will be people who are better than others and will win more often statistically. Even if competative SSBM, or SFIV, or TF2, or CS:S or whatever had large random elements to gameplay, you would still see the same people come out on top most of the time. However, the general feeling is that a game isn't worth playing for money if virtual dice have a large impact in who wins the match.

What always?  That would be nice but, unfortunately, not true.  Skill is important, largely as a matter of knowing when to wait for better cards, but getting good cards really, really helps.

Am I the only one who is dissapointed that they didn't hire Morgan Freemen as the narrator?

"Like a twinkie, like a twinkie."

Did someone say twinkies?

(http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/a-zombieland-woody.jpg)

I liked Nimoy.

Beep....Beep....Beep

It's nothing like that at all.

MY triremes NEVER take down the game's battleships.  EVER.

I played Civ (the original) for 5 years.  Seeing the same shitty mechanic in Civ 2, 3, and 4 that I suffered through in the original this many years after the first game speaks to me that they still have the same shitty AI.  On top of that, I think a lot of the added units crap added no enjoyment to my game; just another annoying layer of bullshit to go through.  I'm not crazy about some of the directions the game has taken since the original. 

You can dress it up any way you like, but you're wrong.  (Frankly, you sound more like a fanboi than an elitist.)

In the context of a Civ-like strategy game, I disagree.  The randomness isn't there to even the playing field, it's there because the game is trying to simulate being a supreme commander.  The part that the RNG is simulating is the "you can't control everything" part.  A good supreme commander expects losses and has backup and contingency plans in place for when the unthinkable occurs.

I think that the makers of the original board games deliberately choose to include dice for this reason and a move away from the "winner-take-all" nature of conflict in Chess (the queen suffers no loss of capability for attacking a pawn or a knight).

Then you are very unlucky, because my spearmen (left pitifully un-upgraded in a poorly defended city) have indeed killed off AI tanks.

Over time, yes. In any given hand though? Having the better cards helps a lot. The same thing is true in most of the games I've brought up that are played competitively that include a random factor. The best players will still tend to win tournaments, and will win more matches than they lose - but weaker players can steal a match here and there as they're improving, which does not tend to happen in games like chess nearly as often, and getting that early taste of success gets you more motivated to improve, and also tends to keep the players who just don't improve showing up anyway.

As far as your other statement about people 'generally' agreeing that things aren't worth playing for money if there is a die roll involved... no. Gambling is more popular than pretty much every other kind of gaming combined, even the kind of gambling that comes in at that other far end of the spectrum, where it is literally just a die roll with no skill at all.

Thats because of this:

http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Intermittent_reinforcement

Then again, I hate gambling too, so maybe its for the same reason I don't like too much random in my games

Gambling just came up last night in a (rare) discussion with my fiancee about dungeons and raiding in mmo and why people put up with so much shit to keep playing the same content over and over. I don't think I've every gotten a decent drop out of a raid, I just have shit luck with the RNG. Lacking the gambling habit, it didn't make me want to try again and again, it made me want to go do something more interesting and/or fun.

But a lot of people...a LOT of people...they fucking love them some gambling.

So, a .01% chance that something unrealistic could happen would ruin somebody's game? Really?

I mean hell, how do you get out of bed in the morning if that's the way you have fun?

When you factor in other mechanics, it's more than that.  You could conceivably siege modern units with catapults and axemen.  And that .01% is only the most extreme example of the best and worst units fighting straight up with no other adjustments from experience or fortification.  There are many more examples in between that are only slightly less retarded.

Still, if you're dumb enough to be waltzing around with no artillery and a shitload of tanks, I'm guessing 1-2 are probably expendable. As far as bowman taking cities from machine guns? I've yet to see that.

No. Only defenders get the luck of randomness with defensive bonuses like first strikes, culture, structures in the city etc.
Attacking anything with bowmen would only result in wasted time and productions since they're slow and can never gain attack promotions like City Raider. However, keeping 2 of them in a stack of doom will result in better defensive response should your stack of doom comes under attack when camped at a hill. Nothing is stopping you from keeping 1-2 archers stacked with your catapults either. Collateral damage be damned.

Never getting anything will do that.  At that point, it doesn't feel random, it feels like a waste of time.

It's also why I find a Diablo-like loot system far more appealing than fixed loot tables.  It gives some variety so you can go "Oooh, what will I get!?" instead of "Please drop my leggings!".

(Yes, the Diablo's had tables, too, but nowhere near as fixed.  They were more of a quality level than a guarantee.)

Okay.  But if you're going to use rational terms to explain why the tanks are realistically expendable, you shouldn't be able to take them with an unrealistically minimal force.  You won't hear me complain if you take my tank with a realistically appropriate unit.  But if you don't have the commerce to upgrade that unit, then you don't deserve my tank.

But then you're left with the tech tree being the only path to victory.

Aside from random, bullshit, unrealistic losses, what's different?  The name on the box says Civilization.  Advancing your dudes is a given.  Your awesome modern dudes randomly getting pwned by ancient weak dudes is not.  I kind of feel like with that comment, you're just appealing to people's sense of noobery.  The tech tree in Civ represents all aspects of gameplay, whether it's commerce, diplomacy, and strategy on a macro level, or tactics and city management on a micro level.  You can't just imply that taking away a little bit of randomness distills the whole game down to tech tree decisions because the techs are the rewards for everything you do.

Again, I think everyone who's complaining would just be happy if the disparity between possible outcomes was less egregious.  I don't think anyone is asking for all or nothing.  Just more realistic.

I'm beginning to think I have played a different version of Civ 4 to everyone else.

In the *entire* time I have played (and I'm fairly certain I've played more than most people!), I think I can remember *one* occasion where I had some tanks lose to a spearman, causing me to swear at the screen and get very annoyed. Once. How are people having this so often? Heck, how are people having tanks attacking spear men all the time without playing on Chieftain difficulty?

i) If you are attacking spearmen with tanks - you have won. If you lose a tank, it doesn't matter. You have won.

ii) If you only have tanks, and no support units, then you deserve to lose units occasionally - heck, more often that actually happens in game. Armies are not comprised of one type of troop, and Civ 4 is very explicit in pushing you towards combined stacks to make workable armies outside of the bronze age stuff.

iii) It. Just. Doesn't. Happen. That. Often. When the game says a 99% chance of winning, that can cover anything from a 1% chance of losing to a 0.0001% chance of losing. It simply isn't possible for tanks to be losing that often to spearmen!

Really, it just seems like people are focussing on one tiny event, that doesn't actually matter, that happened once in a game and it's stuck in their heads beyond all rational evidence. Would it help if a little pop up box shot up with a line saying "Employing cunning guerrilla tactics, enemy tribesmen snuck into a tank compound and poisoned the water supply for the troops, massacring them the day after!". Heck, in terms of realism you should be objecting to the fact there ARE guys with spears still running around whilst there are armoured tank divisions in the world. Guns are very cheap, and very plentifully - Afghanistan can't build tanks or guns, but the insurgents there can still get hold of weapons easily. How often do tank divisions invade countries and cities where the only defenses are people holding spears?

Out of all that could be improved or changed in Civ, the mathematically insignificant odds of very occasionally losing one unit when you are crushing a crippled opponent who you have already beaten is really not the main thing to focus on.

My last Civ game was 2. :awesome_for_real:

Fundamentally they're all the same though.  It's a strange occurrence which stands out, so people think of it as a terrible thing which dominates Civ games.

Seriously, WTF are you people complaining about? This is rising to whole new levels of minutia. Hell, the stack of doom was what killed the games for most people, not the fact that crazy ass spearmen are one-shotting tanks. Good lord.  :why_so_serious:

Bitching about minutiae is what F13 is all about lately.

*hits Paelos with the RNG*

Take that!

Clearly, they need to add achievements to the Civ series.

Call it "See, It Happened To Me!" And the icon can be a Spartan type, who's flipped open the hatch on the tank's turret and run his spear through the command officer.

If I had to hazard a guess, a lot of them are playing the FFH mod and lost one of their big special hero units to some nobody unit. Flavor-wise that seems even more fine to me, since there's no glaring gun vs. spear technology difference to cause cognitive dissonance in that case, just some lucky bastard with a spear finding Achilles's heel.

Started a game recently, wanted to see how I would do on Noble. Playing Babylon, got a nice setup with only one nation bordeing me, and he was both weaker than me and non agressive.

So I get a message from Shaka that he wants me to do something or other. I can't even see Shaka on my world map, he doesn't border me anywhere, so I tell him to f-off.

A century later, I'm plugging away, just getting in to the gunpowder range, when suddenly a horn blows and Shaka has declared war on me. I look to my border, and there is a stack 20 troops calmly walking through my neighbour's territory and in to mine. I scramble to redistribute my production and I boldy hold him off with some strtegic counterattacks, managing to wipe out his whole stack. This leaves my defenses mostly depleted, but I figure I have cities building troops, and I'm only ten or so turns from riflemen - so all is good.

Then I notice the three more stacks of twenty Zulus marching across the plains... 

I turned the game off.

That is one thing that really fucking annoys me- your neighbors allowing people to use their territory to launch attacks at you. That should automatically make them go to war with you.

On higher difficulties, the AI cheats.  It produces more units than it's physically possible to make.  It's weak but it's really the only way to make it harder.  I don't know if it's doing that on Noble.  Also, give Shaka what he wants.  He's aggressive as fuck, and will backstab you no problem.  Mose over his name, and if he's anything less than Pleased with you, you're basically fair game for him.  Best way to handle him is to get him to adopt your religion.  If you can chop out Oracle, you can get Code of Laws and found Confucianism pretty reliably.  It's also a great way to help your commerce because once you get a great person and make it a holy city, you get a gold per city with Confucianism.  So just use that city to spam missionaries the whole game.

Watch out for Caesar, Tokugawa, and Genghis too.

Well, the problem is that open border agreements are pretty important for peacetime activities such as exploration and commerce.  They aren't just war related.  If somebody declares war on you, and the only way they can attack you is through a neighbor, negotiate with the neighbor to get the deal canceled.  If you can't, then just declare war on him.

I had a pretty solid Christian empire running at that point, my mistake was not sending out the missionaries, clearly.

The problem with doing what Shaka wants, is that he was always asking me to break treaties with the civs that liked me.

Open borders were ill-designed. There should be an economic option for open borders, and a military option that requires an alliance. Letting troops wander around is really stupid.

Yea, there's not much you can do about that.  If you can't meet his demand, see if there's something you can give him to bump up your relations with him.  In general it sounds like you should be paying a little more attention to diplomacy.  You have to watch the aggressive civs, bordering civs, and civs that need something you have.  For instance, if Caesar doesn't have iron and you do, you can bank on him coming your way.  He needs it for Praetorians.  So he's going to try to shove so many chariots and axemen up your ass that you beg him to take it.  Same thing with Carthage/Mongolia and horses, etc.  Shaka's Civ is based on fighting.  His special building is a barracks that also reduces maintenance cost for cities.  So he's going to declare war on someone as soon as he doesn't have any more room to expand.  The goal is for that not to be you until you're ready to kick his ass.  Just don't try to fight him with horses or elephants.  Ghandi, on the other hand, you can pretty much piss all over and he'll never lift a finger.

If you're interested in boning up on Civ mojo before the new one, I suggest tooling around Civfanatics (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/civilizations).

Interesting.  The Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/5602257/400-turns-of-civilization-v) preview mentions that roads will cost upkeep in V, I suppose to try to curtail the time-worn strategy of covering every square inch of land with roads and railroads.

Ooo, that idea actually sounds intriguing.

Hmm, that could be good or bad. Fire and forget workers weren't terrible, but if they decreased the number of needed workers and put more emphasis on actually planning your settlement's surrounding area strategically, I would be in favor of it.

I wouldn't be in favor of simply adding worker micromanagement if it's going to be require standard actions given the terrain.

Pillaging roads will actually have an effect now, too, since there won't simply be 3 ways for your defender to get to the same square in the same amount of moves.

Looks like over all the combat is going to turn out to be much more tactical than it has been.

City placement, too.  Since you won't have to play tetris as much to get the best land bonuses.

All your crying has been answered. From the article:

Wow way to finally catch up with mechanics from the 1980s, Civ! Hit points, lawdy!  :why_so_serious:

Civ 4 had HP too, but they were generally only used to weaken the survivor; attacks still always resulted in a kill without Withdraw.

Didn't Civ 4 have units that had withdrawal chances?

Yea, that's what I said.

Maybe thats only Fall From Heaven and not Vanilla Civ, but Withdrawing could give you two units with reduces HPs and no dead unit. All in all this sounds like Firaxis took some clues from the Mod, which isn't the worst thing to do. XP points and unit upgrades and transforms are realized in Fall From Heaven as well.

As long as they don't include withdrawing catapults, I'm fine with that. Having seige weapons constantly attacking in the stack of doom for collateral damage but never dying was total cheese.

One unit per tile, as far as I can tell.  So unless they give catapults an AoE or something weird like that, they'll probably just be units that get a bonus to attack cities or ignore walls or something.  And no more hiding your catapult under a stack of 20 archers, either.

Really, I'm actually starting to feel cautiously optimistic about this game now.

Yes the more I am reminded about the one unit per tile thing, the more I realize it will solve about 80% of my problems with the AI and the game mechanics.

Catapults will have the ranged bombardment thing that they did in Civ 3 I believe.

Errr...?

Read it as, "without withdraw, attacks still always resulted in a kill."

That was my whole dillemna in that loss to Shaka. He was sending stacks of horse archers and axe men against my macemen, archers and musketeers. I should have held him off fine, but each of his stacks had 5 catapults at the bottom, which would kamikazi me all at once, using the colateral damage to drop the deffense on all my troops at once.

XP points and unit transforms were in Vanilla Civ4 as well. Xp is how you gain promotions and is tracked in the same manner as FFH, granted via combat victory, civics or special buildings.  Unit transforms are known as upgrades in Vanilla and are available when you got a new tech. This mechanic has been in since Civ2.

Units in Civ4 DO have hit points as outlined above. Withdraw is a vanilla Civ promotion for all cavalry and ships, most folks just don't take it.  IIRC Civ 2 had hit points of this type but they took it out because folks complained the combat didn't feel like Civs anymore. 

I'll rephrase as Ingmar suggested.

Without the Withdraw promotion, attacks always resulted in a kill.

It's a common tactic - given that it's pretty much the only way of dealing with stacks'o'doom throughout most of the game. Otherwise anyone who got the early edge in unit production would be unbeatable. As a counter, you could have tried spreading your stacks out, so that he can only divebomb a few at a time.

Or make sure you have some trebs and siege the shit out of him first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITXPfHltRg

New CivAnon Ad - worth the 1 minute watch for the comedy value.

Yeah, everything is great on drugs.

So, it's become glaringly obvious that all the people who have a problem with the "problem" of early game units killing late game units are just really bad at video games.  Civ 4 has its share of problems (shitty engine, botched multiplayer, busy interface).  Maybe the biggest problem it has are the dummies who don't know what they're doing fucking up on the easiest difficulty settings and then polluting the internet with their nonsense.

Christ, it's just math.  There isn't even any room for argument.

So its become glaringly obvious that you like to troll internet forums.

What's worse? Trolls? Or people that go on and on and on about games they don't have any intention of playing?  Or are they the same thing?

:awesome_for_real:

Also, I'm almost certainly going to be buying this game.

You admitted you don't know what the fuck you're talking about yet you still felt the need to keep spewing your diarrhea.  You're horrifically bad at the game.  Everything you've said confirms it, and you play at difficulty settings so low, that you end up out-teching your crippled AI opponent to the extent that you are assembling modern weaponry against medieval arms.  Then you still manage to fuck it up and lose units.  It's not the game's fault.  It's your fault.  And all the numbnuts that agree with you are just as bad and just as misinformed.  Likely due to them talking out of their assholes because they haven't REALLY played a Civ game in nine years.  

I mean seriously, what the fuck?  This shit is so dumb it's not even about denigrating the game it's just about people being colossally retarded on myriad levels.

Oh hi there, I like cake, do you like cake as well?  I hear it comes in a variety of flavors and is very tasty.

P.S - Get over yourself.

You stay classy, Duse.

OK, let's all STFU and talk about Civ V, shall we?

Day 1 purchase!  I'm interested to see how hexagons, resource dependencies, and no unit stacking mix together in a Civ game.

It would be great if this game came out a week before FFXIV...

I really don't want to buy it but probably will.

This describes almost every game I buy :ye_gods:

I'm such a whore for miniatures.  Busted out a few gift cards I had for Ebgames and got the CE for this.

I am going to die broke and sleepless by the first week of October. NHL 11 (had about 100 hours played of 10, and about double that with 9), Civ V, and FIFA 11 (hundreds of hours played in 10) all come out during September. I need to find a way I can afford to retire no later than September 28th.

I'm really hoping I win some free games at PAX or something, as I likely won't have any money when I get back to buy games with :(

I am assuming you are also buying NHL 11, as is your birthright?  :awesome_for_real:

Day 1 purchase, though I'm a bit worried about all of the changes.  Hexes!

:why_so_serious: (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17788.0)

I'm allergic to people who say a bunch of really stupid shit that's wrong on every level.  So sorry.

Whats it like to be autoallergic?

"And then another one, just like it."

"What kind of cat? Was it the same cat?"

I think dusematic's avatar actually pisses me off more than what he writes, I imagine Tom Cruise saying everything he posts, and it makes me rage a little.

I can understand how it would be hard taking criticism from one of the greatest living actors of our time.

At least I can understand the trolling. The talk of game mechanics left me a little  :uhrr:.

Obvious Troll is obvious. One can think people are stupid for playing Civilization differently than oneself. But thinking Cruise is anything but a Shitstain on reality? No sane person does that and means it. Nice try.

Right on.  I'm gonna make a thread about Starcraft 2 detailing my predilection for building nothing but vultures on the casual difficulty setting.  I'll be confused why that doesn't work.  IF anyone DARES hassle me, then I'll just explain that I'm probably playing wrong, but that it's ok since I played the original when I was really young and the vulture strategy always worked for me then.  Besides, I'll say, I'm really not that serious about the game anyway.  

Then I'll get pissed when one of my vultures dies to some zerglings while I decimate the AI base.  Then I'll write 750 words about it on the internet and how it's really ghey.   :-)



Then I'll go watch Jerry Maguire by myself alone in the dark and laugh at all the right parts.

I'm still not sure if you really like Tom Cruise. Thats the real question and possible tragedy here.

We can't discuss Civilization 5 in detail before it comes out anyway.

His trolling is much better when based on an actual position.  I thought someone ganked his account since there was a point behind it.

Last warning. STFU about trolls and trollees and talk about the game.

I'd buy it day one if only for the addition of non-stacking units. That kind of change makes my mind spin with the possibilities. The fact that it will likely be modded to make it not bland six months later for replay value makes it also worthwhile.

I'm excited most by the online functionality with Steamworks.  If they pull off a slick online interface/interoperability then that will be pretty awesome and a long time coming.  Single player Civ got boring to me like 6 years ago.  But I still fire up a multiplayer game of Civ 4 every now and again.

Definitely- it will be nice to see which friends are playing; much easier to get a MP game that way.

Also, they're gonna have an in-game mod/map searcher sort of like SC2.  No longer will you have to scour the bowels of the internet to find cool maps and mods, it can all be found without even having to alt-tab.  

Sounds good, but I'm nervous the online component is going to be a fiasco like it always has been with this series.  


The ultimate question for online play is really whether or not they'll have some sort of anti-abuse measures incorporated.  Presently, the online scene breaks down to mongoloids constantly spewing hate speech in the GameSpy lobby, (the standard trifecta of nigger, Jew, and Hitler) and guys who sit in the lobby all day joining games in progress and ruining them through a variety of means.  Typically they just continuously pause the game until someone gets pissed and leaves, and then they refuse to vote to continue the game, though other ways to ruin a game exist.  But there are people who will LITERALLY sit in the lobby all day and just ruin games.  To the point where nobody will make any games or people have to password their games and selectively invite people in secret because the word is out that "FluffyPillow" or whoever else is on a game ruining spree that day is on the prowl.

There needs to be ways to see how often someone quits in the first 5 minutes of a game, (a chronic problem since people who don't like their starts will just quit, which causes a snowball effect to everyone else quitting)  disconnects, etc.  Sort of like in HoN how you could check a player's leave percentage, and then nobody wanted to play with that guy.  Worked like a charm.

Well, they really need to balance their random generator so that you get a terrible start less often, if at all.  Or at least give the option to regenerate in multi-player like there is in single-player.

I've opted to download this on Steam and play it over starting up FFXIV. Hope that was a wise decision, I imagine both games could involve a similar time investment.

New podcast up on their website today about combat, it seems like they've addressed basically every concern people have had in this thread about combat in previous Civ games.

It was.  Did you play FF14 Beta?  Laaaaaaame.  I played it for 20 minutes before puking in my mouth and furiously beating off.  It's difficult to explain why it sucked.  For one, the combat is ultra-slow.  For another, the controls aren't intuitive, you had to press like three keystrokes to enter attack mode and fight someone.  I'm a fucking MMO veteran and I was sort of at a loss for a few minutes trying to figure out how to engage in basic combat.  For three, it's EXACTLY the same as FF11. 

I'm going to download this from Steam.  I have a fetish about game boxes, they look so nice on a shelf, but Steam is just so damn handy.

I think I am going to go boxed, though the Digital Deluxe edition is tempting, I must admit.

It is tied to Steam either way (Steamworks is integrated into the client). I am going to get a box so I have a manual and don't have to fight the masses trying to download it on release day. Hopefully the servers will work long enough for me to get authenticated  :grin:

Don't need a manual as it's just going to regurgitate the Civilopedia.  Online pre-order is the way to go, they're giving out free bonus content at different distributors, like maps and civs.  I believe the Babylonian Civ comes with Steam pre-order.

Babylonians aren't a standard civ?  :uhrr:

What else.. tanks are DLC?  Fuck this trend.

The list of Civs changes with each version.  They're still launching with 18, a typical amount.  For instance, Spain isn't a civ in Civ 5, but was in Civ 4 (and wasn't in Civ 3).  Although, in Civ 3, Spain was added via an expansion pack.


I'm by no means a DLC apologist, but I wouldn't say that because the Songhai are a civ instead of the Babylonians in Civ 5 that it will be in any way less complete.  In prior years they'd simply release it as one of many other civs in an expansion pack.

It's more that Babylonians have always been one of the "iconic" civs, to me.  They caused more "wtf, assholes" moments over the years of playing than any civ other than the Zulus.  Losing them feels as significant a change as losing stacks or roads.   It's nearly as if it were a different game entirely.  Not a bad thing, per se but more and more it feels like they're taking this new game and just using the Civs name to market it.  Like that X-com shooter bullshit.

The Babylonian Civ comes with the Digital Deluxe version.  The Mesopotamia map pack is the pre-order bonus (for the standard and the deluxe version).  Amazon has a different map pack for their pre-order, and I haven't seen any pre-order bonuses at any other retailers yet.

I am betting (actually am, since I am gambling by not buying a deluxe set or preorder) that the DLC price will dwarf the price of the deluxe versions. I don't need artbooks and CDs of the soundtrack; I just want the extra gameplay stuff. So I will just buy it when it is available.

Yeah, I'm hoping for the same.

This game is still modable right?  Not sure what the "this civ isn't in it" problem is.

Um.  So when Babylon wasn't in Civ 4, or the first expansion for it, did you feel the same way?  Has this discontent been quietly brewing inside you for the past 5 years?  Roads are still in Civ 5, they simply cost upkeep now to prevent one from simply covering every tile on the map in roads and to make road-building into a strategic element.  

I really have no idea what you're even talking about.  Seems like you don't either.

Yea it's supposed to be the most mod friendly Civ game ever.

The guy in the cubicle next to me (a former Firaxis QA and scenario designer) says all the senior people on Civ5 were hired from the mod community.

I saw the underlying tech at a IGDA presentation. They say all the memory problems in Civ4 are gone, and they showed the game running equally well on an Alienware ubermachine and "my mom's laptop."

That's good to hear.  Civ4 had some pretty beefy engine requirements considering the game didn't look all that great.

Hopefully that means any games that get to the modern era won't completely bog down. That was definitely my least favorite 'feature'.

Whatever it is, I do hope they tweaked the defensive bonuses a little. I don't really enjoy games where you grind out results by sending suicide siege machines to have any hope of overcoming enemies with equal tech. Heck, even with a tier tech down, if they plop that city on a hill, it's going to take a bit to chew through. I had a game where I sieged Japan for over 10 turns per city to whittle down their 100% defense bonus to nothing. Ridiculous.

I don't mind that except for the fact that it makes the time scale of the game kind of stupid. "We sieged this city for 150 years!"

Cities falling too easily would be bad.  You can permanently cripple someone who turtles by pillaging the countryside.  The gold you get from this is not insubstantial.  The enemy can then either come out, or sit tight.  If they sit tight, they're done.  You'll eventually get the cities because they'll never recover.


In Civ 4 you can demand they become your vassal.  That's another good solution.

Found a sweet ass Civ 5 site.  Collates all known date about the game and organizes it in a nice way.  http://well-of-souls.com/civ/

Dude check out all these different bundles and versions.  Three versions: regular, deluxe, and special edition.  Then there's all sorts of different bundling of scenarios, map packs, and whatnot from different retailers.  Fucking horrific.  http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9393360&postcount=6 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9393360&postcount=6)

Notice there is no one option to get EVERYTHING.  Unbelievable.

Also, the game won't have a manual, they just posted something on their site about being more eco-friendly.  Instead they're rolling with an "interactive" PDF manual, that they pledge to update as the game changes.  I like this move, mainly because I don't care about manuals.  I can see how manual nerds will be miffed.

Just going to get the standard edition on Steam anyway.  Not like there's a shortage of Civilizations to play or maps to use.

The only thing you miss out on mostly appears to be extra maps, I'm not sure I'd pay for those even if they were offered as DLC anyway. 99% of the time most people just play random maps anyway.

What do you mean by random maps?  If you just mean random as not based on real geography then yeah I guess so.  However, in online multiplayer play, there is a biggish Earth/Europe/Mediterranean map scene.

Nice find.  Bookmarked.

WTF? There goes half the reason I wanted a store copy. Goddamn it.

Over a manual? Print is dead.

I get the whole "wanting to have a physical copy of something" thing.  It's just that I stopped using manuals around the same time you could alt-tab and pull up a website that was current and had better info for every game under the sun.

Yeah, but then what do you read on the shitter that first week?

EXACTLY. Nothing in the world is better to read in the can than gaming related materials. Manuals, Player's Handbooks, Monster Manuals, etc.

That's why I have an iPhone.

Seriously.  Get a Droid or at least a printer.  Fuck.

Yea, but what happens if the phone goes into the toilet?! A manual is much safer.

I don't own a phone. No need, I'm a desk jockey or out in the field in front of the guy I need to be talking to.  If I'm not near a phone, I don't need to talk to you.  (And iPads are just expensive toys, I'd rather buy a new camera lens.)

As for printing; I don't see why I should spend another $10 worth of paper and ink (mainly the fucking ink. Pricerape) for something I used to get for the purchase price. I'll just be disappointed and get over it.

Where are you holding it that it could go into the toilet?  NM, DON'T WANT TO KNOW!! :ye_gods:

You know, WAP, I think this should be the ultimate gamer nerd gauge.

Question 1 for 3 nerd points. Have you ever read a gaming manual on the pot?
Question 2 for 3 million nerd points. Do you actually look forward to a game just so that you can read its manual on the can?

Sure guy.  I don't need a phone either.  I also don't need to wipe my asshole.  I just find both phone ownership and asswiping to be incredibly useful tactics in life.  YMMV.   :awesome_for_real:

Yeah that's what I meant. I am pretty sure 90% (numbers courtesy of my ass) of the games of Civ that get played are single player games on random geography.

Sure I'm on board with that.  I do dig the whole "pre-set start" map scene though.  They've got some really cool user made maps based on Earth, Europe, Mediterranean, etc. that are really well balanced.  In these maps, each civ starts approximately where you would expect.  So obviously England starts at modern day London, and so on.  It's pretty cool and fun.  Like playing a giant game of Risk (if Risk had any strategy or complexity).

We had a guy at work lose his because he put it in his shirt pocket.  No electronic eye flushers, so it fell into the can as he was bending over to pull the lever.  You've never seen a guy embarrassed until you see one trying to explain said situation to the receptionist, and why she needed to call building maintenance.

Risk does have strategy and complexity.  You just have to realize that you're playing other players and not the board.  Risk allows for pacts, alliances and betrayal which is more than I can say for something like Axis & Allies....

Way to set the bar high there.  :oh_i_see:

I can see why the fixed maps would be popular for multiplayer, everyone is theoretically on an even playing field in terms of knowing things they "shouldnt" due to fog of war terrain-wise. In a single-player game it makes for an extra advantage against the AI that you don't really need.

One can avoid that happening by flushing with your foot.

I'm reading this on my iPhone ine the shitter. GET OUT OF MY HEAD F13

Get us out of your bathroom!

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationv/video/6275453/sid-meiers-civilization-v--video-walk-through

I don't think this video has been posted yet.  Lots of gameplay, shows some combat, terrain advantages, ranged units, etc.  Also shows the city management screen, which looks nice.

Generally just pretty nice looking.

Yeah.  Interface looks crisp as fuck.  I got nerd wood.

Nigga, please.  That's really all I have to say about that.

Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, I've been out on single player for a long time.  I think after I started consistently winning on Monarch, even with the blatant CPU cheating, it just sort of lost its luster.  Multi-player is so fucking cutthroat and unpredictable that I'll never look back.  Though I do agree with your overarching point.    ;D

I can't wait can't wait can't wait.

I'm sort of worried that it may seem a little shallow after playing an expansioned-to-the-hilt Civ 4

Me, too.

But I pre-ordered it on Steam anyway. It's the oldest standing pc gaming tradition I have, buying Civ on launch. Just glad I don't have to drive an hour to get it this time.

iPads - best PDF readers ever invented.

How is that going to fit in my Civ V box?

With a bigger, $500 box of course.

Am I a bad person if I would consider buying that?

Wait, what do iPads have to do with Civ 5?  Sorry for not being in the infinity loop and caring about Apple or its shitty products.

Yeah, but 500-700$ I can buy a nice cashmere coat at Nordstroms.

You can pre-load on Steam now.  Also, they have the achievements listed.

The last 2 pages tl;dr is that they are moving from paper manuals to a constantly updated online PDF, which you can easily reference on your ipad. On the can.

I want this game. So much.

Preloading.  Waiting is killing me!

I ordered it from Amazon because I couldn't stand the mental anguish of loading it from Steam on my computer, but having no access to it. When it's in a box far far away I can take it.

Ah, thanks, I'm an idiot.  I think anything bigger than a smartphone is too much technology for me while I'm shitting.

Apple should market the iPad as a head unit for car stereo systems.  At $500 it's a cheaper better alternative to the crap touch screen systems they have in there now.

Pre-order receipt is in my wallet.

Just got the ok to book the 22nd off work.


I'm taking a day off work, to play a video game.   :grin:

I spent two days of my past week off playing a game. Of course, I did run some laundry and get a few things done. The fiancee called me on being a catass again. It's not as cute anymore :P She really loves Civ type games, because they're not all splodey and she can read in the same room.

Me too, although I'm taking the 21st off. I pre-loaded it last night from Steam. I literally cannot wait a week for this, the anticipation is killing me.

Absolutely completely OT, but I picked up a pair of good headphones for this exact reason.  Now I can play shooty boom boom games all day long and not get yelled at by the wife (and now the children).

Attempting to milk whatever is left of the 4th installment.

Conquered the earth map as Japan. Huge - long drawn out shit. When I unlocked tanks in early 1900s, it got a little faster. Much faster with air power bombardment, it solved the 'suicide siege' mechanics which slowed the assault pace to a grind in Europe - considering I railroaded from Mongolia to Germany.

Was playing a nice Khazad game in FFH mod. Sweet sweet gold stockpiling. Full happiness and coins with little war. I almost wish there's a war going on with my three heroes just sitting around gaining XP. Less than a week. FUCKKKKKKK~~

Hell I haven't even owned speakers for my computer in a solid 7 years or so.

To get back on topic though, did anyone see the new AI podcast?  I actually think it was weaker because it ended up being a lot of trying to describe how it feels/works in game, but its harder to talk about that sort of thing than some of their other topics.
 
That being said, it seems like they are going out of their way to make different civs play differently and act differently when played against, which I think will be a nice change.  I always thought the civs, while playing different a bit, never really felt ALL that different before, especially compared to now.

Sorry about your wife. "Honey, I'm going to play a game." "Ok, I'll go in the bedroom/on the porch/in the den/home to read."  :grin: I play through the surround sound in the living room. I do turn it down a bit and avoid FPS when she's sleeping, because I'm not a dick about it. She's pretty awesome.

Rk47 - I almost feel bad with early wars and early heroes, it's some nagging min/max DNA in the back of my head saying "The XP earned in this battle will reduce the amount of free XP your hero gains under the 100XP cap." I always want to tuck my heroes away until they have 100XP, then send them out. Never works that way, but there it is. Really going to miss FFH in Civ 5 imo.

Headphones are a requirement when tiny humans are added to the mix.  God himself couldn't help you if your video game woke up the baby.

Another reason she's pretty awesome. We've both agreed that the kitty boy is enough to fulfill that role. He likes Civ games, too. Though he lays across my right arm (mouse pillow) which hampers my use of the keyboard keypad...then he gets all pissed at me because I keep jostling him to move units. Come to think of it, it's the only game he ever gets intrusive like that.

I just find the peaceful game really boring overall. But it was the first time I 'clicked' when playing Khazad's gold hoarding nature. Read over the Mother Lode spell and 25 gold per mined tile? Ka-CHING! 20 mined tiles later and I never looked back. Found out I shared continent with Malakim and Amurites. Amurites was nice enough to offer me Fellowship of the Leaves, but I want Malakim's Rune of Kilmorph. So I waited a while and it was worth it. Market, Temples, Moneychangers for every city! I think I stroked my imaginary beard as I hit Full Vault.

22nd and 24th for me (have to go in one of the 3 days to get something ready to ship, otherwise it would be 3 straight days). Coincided with our child care provider's vacation, so my wife and I are going to take a couple of days off to hang with the boy and maybe take him to the fair. I have a sneaking suspicion that daddy will be playing a lot of Civ during the rest of the time.

Baby's First Civ!

Some people read things at other times as well.

Only people with something to prove.

I actually got a copy of the Civilization game for XBox through a friend. I'm going to check it out. Or would it be funnier if I waited for Civ 5 next week?

Civ Rev is such a barebones Civ game that it's really a different game entirely.  For me, Civ Rev didn't have enough depth to get me to play for more than an hour.  Might be a good entry in to the series though.

If anyone wants to get in a little Civ 4 action tonight or this weekend in anticipation of Civ 5, send me a pm.  If we get enough people (4+) maybe we could do like a Mediterranean map or something, with direct IP connection to avoid GaySpy.

After hemming and hawing for a long time over which version I was going to buy, I just decided to go with the Steam deluxe.   Preloading now!

Gonna Steam it myself when I get home. Regular edition though- I will buy the DLC when it is available.

I'm going to download it tonite off Steam, normal version.  Hope there is some way to play an Earth map though I love the random ones too.

Manual is now up on the Civ 5 site, in the Community section.

There's a thread on CivFanatics complaining that the copies of the game some Wal-Mart street broke don't work. That made me laugh.

So, I still want this game, but I am becoming a lot more hesitant due to the amount of DLC that they seem to be shooting for - the entire damn game seems to be AWASH in it, and it almost makes me just want to wait 6 months for a 'super edition' to come out with it all bundled in.

I completely understand where you're coming from, bhodi.   I've felt burned ever since buying Fallout 3 right before the GOTY edition was announced.  I'll still buy Civ V because I'm a fanatic about my Civs games, but the amount of Day 0 DLC is disheartening.

DLC doesn't bother me much, since I never play the scenarios and almost never touch the premade maps. Unless of course they start offering new leaders/civs via DLC. That, I would be all over,

I want to get this.  Civ IV is still installed and I played a game of it not more than a couple of months ago.  BUT, I can't see me getting it until the new year simply due to backlog.  Hopefully, by then the DLC stuff will be bundled and at a discount.

Almost here! Must...contain...excitement...  :drill:

Already here....just not unlocked   :why_so_serious:

Fiancee works late the next two nights, so it's all Civ5 after 5 until I drop. Makes me wish I still knew a weed dealer. Ah, well.

Who are you and what have you done with the real Sky?!

Oh, and congrats on getting engaged, you imposter!   :awesome_for_real:

Drug testing.

GameTrailers gave Civ V a 94.  Not sure if it's the highest score they've ever given but it's up there.

I've seen nothing but excellent reviews so far (for whatever they are worth).  Looking forward to playing some tomorrow night, though to be honest, I am going to have a lot of work to do... going to try to squeeze in a couple hours.

Did they ditch espionage and corporations?

Those are two systems that flatly ruined Civ4 for me, and - apparently - they were both the precious, precious children of Civ5's lead designer.

Read one review that said they're both gone.

As is religion.

I broke down and bought it from Steam over the weekend. And couldn't control myself, so I ended up with the deluxe edition. In my defense, I was under the impression it was $69.99 instead of $59.99, so I figured the 10 bux was doable.

A little less than 18 hours to go. Woooooooohoooooo.

Not liking espionage I can understand.  Having spies whack parts of my infrastructure, when I simply couldn't figure out a defense, was really irritating.

I'm not sure I get disliking corporations though.

I don't mind both being gone from Civ V, for sure.

I think streamlining the game in those regards was a good idea since the single unit thing really brings the strategy back into this TBS game. A lot of the features were really just pointless bloat they added to the game when everything devolved into stack on stack wankery.

You can save $15 if you buy it through D2D (http://www.direct2drive.com/9611/product/Buy-Sid-Meier%27s-Civilization-V-Download) before 10am tomorrow, if you want the first DLC (scenario maps and extra civ) and don't care about the music CD & making of video, using the D2D and the PAX promo code "PAX".

Get what amounts to the steam deluxe edition gameplay for $44.95.

Note that this is exactly like buying through steam, since civ5 is a steamworks game; they literally email you a cd-key and you add it to your account & preload through steam. Just like a steam game, except that you save $15.

Small note: This MIGHT not be 100% true, it includes "Double Civilization 1st DLC" instead of "Babylon" which some people think may be different. This is why I hate fucking DLC.

I'm going to miss religion in Civ V.  I wish they had made it less powerful.  I like to try to convert every religion to mine, haven't done it yet, was close with Buddhism but those damn Hindu kept at it.  Sent them all to meet their pagan gods!

BUDDHA OR A BEATIN', YOUR CHOICE.

The reviews are making this hard to resist.  But I must.. tomorrow is also DeathSpank and next week is Dead Rising 2.   I MUST BE STRONG.

http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/09/10_cool_things_in_civilization.php

OTOH, don't like reading the reports that the game has been dumbed down.

That and dumping religion.

You just saved me 15$.  Thanks, bro.

I think a lot of people disliked corps because they ate resources and you couldn't block people from sending them at you without nuking open border agreements, which was worse than the resource nuking.

Religions, on the other hand, were fun but couldn't be implemented correctly in their attempt to keep them PC.  I'll miss them but we're better off without them as they were implemented.

Until I play, I keep filing people who complain it was "Dumbed Down" into the "They used all the stacking exploits they could" file.

Ed: From reading the list naum linked, the complaints about 'dumbing down' also seem to be aimed at quality of life fixes.  No micromanaging planes and transports?  About fucking time.  The only thing I'm iffy about is the insta-build with gold.. but hey, if a turn is a decade why not.  Also, #5 on that list? Definitely not 'dumbing down.'  I like it.

Thanks man at worst you saved me $5  :awesome_for_real:

Preloading now on steam.

Either it is only $5 off or the deal changed (I put the text on the checkout below in the spoiler). The Pax promo code is only for $5 off, not $15. The link you provided only leads to the regular version ($49.95 -$5 = $44.95) and only has the scenario pack DLC for pre-ordering, while the deluxe version includes the scenario pack and Babylon but will cost $54.95 after the promo code is added.

Here's the differences of the deluxe versions (not counting soundtrack and behind the scenes because those don't matter anyways  :why_so_serious:):
D2D is the first double civilization DLC scenario pack (for pre-ordering) and Babylon civ (for the deluxe version)
Steam is the Cradle of Civilizations map pack (for pre-ordering) and Babylon civ (for the deluxe version)

Supposedly, both the double civ and cradle of civ will be available for purchasable DLC at a later, unannounced, date.


All that said, thanks for the code and saving a few people $5. Hopefully people are clear as to which version does what.

Edit: Obviously, buying the regular version you lose out on the Babylon civ and leader, but then it really is $44.95
Edit 2: due to taxes, $5 off saves just over $1 compared to Steam (US-IL resident fwiw)

I don't suppose the Steam version will be active at midnight tonight... right?

I believe 10am pst tomorrow as that is when Steam starts their Tuesday. Could be wrong but I'm fairly sure that is accurate.

Conservative board of directors. Not worth losing my career because my name shows up in the paper for a violation. Sucks, but I like my house.Civ IV was a dumbed-down version of FFH2. Civ is dumbed down to bland vanilla mediocrity.

It would appear from when it says it will unlock that it's 10am eastern.

I had no clue, I had expected to get in a half hour of playing before work :(

I did, too.  Have a bit of extra time because of a dentist appointment.  Now I'm reading about Civ V instead of playing it.  :cry2:

Thanks a lot! Steam and PayPal have up until this point refused to allow me to use my Norwegian VISA-card to shop steam-games from Canada, and I do not yet have a Canadian credit-card, so was kinda stumped on how to actually pre-order this :P Direct2Drive accepted my order though. Installing the game in Steam right now xD

Is it time to impotently rage against regionalized Internet again? My Steam tells me that Civilization 5 will be available at the 24th of September.

If boxed copy distributors are to blame I hope they go bankrupt and die a slow agonizing starvation death.

Have no fear. We'll post updates!  :awesome_for_real:


Sorry man, that sucks.

Trying to get it running, but shockingly the Steam servers seem to be getting hammered. Who'd have thought that would happen?

Edit- and suddenly it jumped from 0% updated to 81 then 82%. Squeee!

Unlock faster dangit!

27%.  Sigh.  I guess I can eat breakfast.  Possibly lunch and dinner too.   :heartbreak:

Updated thread title to reflect launchedness.

Decrypting 25%  :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

There is an ingame unit called the Giant Death Robot
 :heart:

Because I had to have the stupid mini's, I don't get the game until tomorrow.     :heartbreak:

Not a good sign. NVidia 465 GTX (ver 258.96 stock). Launch a game with default video settings. Flickering crap all over. I can't see a map at all. I've tried various resolutions and video settings. Nothing. I also was surprised that DirectX10 and DirectX11 aren't supported on my system (tons of RAM, Quad-core, etc). Also the Anti-Alias settings are greyed out.  Very strange.

Waiting for a patch on launch day. Figures.

Note: After it's de-crypted make sure to check file integrity. It seems a lot of people are getting partial downloads that are reported as complete. This will download the remaining files needed. I still cannot play full-screen but at least it's running in a window now.

Well telling Steam I'm NOT running Vista fixed everything. Just played a complete game fullscreen.

Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam, right click on steam.exe, go to properties, got compatability, click on change settings for all users. Unselect "run this program in compatability mode"

Mine's in the mail.

I hope.

GoGamer doesn't seem to offer tracking on order paid through PayPal.

I have to wait another 2 days. I am not happy with Steam.

Performance is terrible, quad core, 4GB ram, windows 7, 8800gt and its dog slow. Also steam warned me the files were heavily fragmented right after decrypting (some achievements so far (http://steamcommunity.com/id/iot/games)).

I managed to resist buying it until trying the demo, which is now available if anyone is interested.

Also, I just noticed being able to grab AMD Catalyst video card updates through Steam.  Pretty nice.  Info (http://blogs.amd.com/play/2010/09/14/video-driver-updates-made-easy-amd-and-valve-team-up-to-provide-ati-catalyst-updates-on-steam/).  More info (http://blogs.amd.com/play/2010/09/14/video-driver-updates-made-easy-amd-and-valve-team-up-to-provide-ati-catalyst-updates-on-steam/).

Loved religion, loved corporationss, loved espionage. But you gain some, you lose others. I just watched the playthrough video, and I'm not sure I'll like the one-troop-per-hex gameplay. I generally suck at spacial strategy like this. I prefer mashing stacks of troops together like a 4-year-old playing with He-Mans and dinosaurs. SMASH SMASH SMASH.

Try turning off the shadows.  I've got a dual core w/ 2gb on xp with a 9500gt and I haven't had a problem with sluggishness at all.

The gameplay, however, is really different.  Techs seem to come too fast and production in cities is fucking slow.  I'm at ~1000AD now but I'm in the Industrial age still struggling to build granaries and temples in my 6 cities while maintaining an army. I'm on Warlord difficulty so it's only a step down from Prince (to learn things) which is supposed to be "normal." I can't imagine a slower production crawl at higher levels being any fun.

The armies require a bit more planning when going to crush someone.  Cities haven't proven overly tough, but they can smear a few units with their 3 range bombard if you don't plan your attack to come in on the shortest route of attack before you declare war.

I'm of two minds about the new way to grow your city, buying-up the tiles.  I like it because you can snag that resource the AI is about to build a city on your doorstep for, but at the same time I miss the predictability of cultural expansion.

Took me a while to get used to gold being so plentiful.  It's a much more common resource than in previous Civs, but that's because there's a ton of gold sinks for it.  I've felt obligated to build units rather than produce them, simply because production is so low in the early game.  Losing those 15 turns for an archer really felt like it was killing my city by not producing a building.

Also, too many fucking minor civs.  I've encountered 9 of them but only 4 majors. Some little cities are going to have to die.  They're massive gold sinks to get their benefits.  I think I'd rather just take their asses over and then keep them as puppet cities.

I thought you just bought buildings outright with gold now?

Personally, I was hoping for something akin to Dale's Combat Mod (http://rtw.apolyton.net/index4.html) for Civ4, in which stacks attacked each other as whole units.

You can, but for the most part you still build everything the old-fashioned way.

Huh, interesting. Some preview I had read seemed to imply that unit and building production was not in the same queue anymore, must have just been misleading.

So far, Joy.

I like 'bombarding' passing pirate ships with my cities, and using archery on opponents from two hexes away. Definitely much more depth to the combat.

Although, apparently I'm not right in the head, as I've earned the 'Seriously?' achievement not having figured out how to buy things in the prod queue.

The graphics are all ready chugging ,I'm going to have to turn this thing down. Or go buy a new PC. Or three. Hmm.

I clicked this, thinking "yay, driver updates made easier!"

two and a half goddamned hours later, my display is fixed.

No, it's not steam's fault, it's that ATI can't write a goddamned installer to save their fucking lives, and the 10.8 and 10.9 also wound up with known issues where the overscan settings (that are wrong by default) reset to defaults every reboot. Oh, and you have a 10% chance of opening the control panel to reset them.

*rant* I love ATI's hardware, but they need to hire a tools programmer.

Really liking the game but had a couple of crashes.  Might be my drivers though.

Beautiful game but I can see already I'll need to crush these greedy city-states.  :drill:

Eek sorry :( my update went fine but I am intimately familiar with overscan setting resets and the Where's Waldo search to correct it.  Same with pixel format limited/full settings.

As for Civ V, the graphics make my computer chug even with all shadows off.  Going to the 2D/strategic map mode plays smooth though and I recommended it to anyone struggling with the graphics.

I played for about 10 hours today. Poopsock indeed.

It's civ. Just as good as all the others, with prettier graphics.

I don't notice the lack of corporations/religion. It seems like I should be buying more buildings/units than I am currently. Culture goes up way slow, and buildings do as well.

End turn started to really chug when I got to modern age, ended up crashing when I got to future age, but I had basically won at that point anyway. Looked at the options, default is save every 10 turns. I made it 5, maybe I'll make it 2-3.

Got a couple hours worth in this evening.  Definitely as good as I had hoped.  I really like the way military units work now.  Choosing where to place my units every term feels important and brings in strategy on a different levels, in terms of how you want your military units to be positioned.  Every turn really feels like it matters a bit more than it used to.  Maybe thats slightly over stating it, but so far I am impressed.

Good idea, I'll do the same.  Seems to take longer to build units and tech tree is re-arranged quite a bit.  Only played two hours, the new diplomacy options have me intrigued, can't wait to figure those out.

So. This game runs like shit on a 8800gtx. I thought this one was supposed to run better than Civ 4? Runs ok if I turn everything to minimum, low and off...but it looks like complete dogshit.

Waste of $50 I didn't have to waste. If there isn't some serious performance patches soon, this one gets deleted until I get a new computer in 2014.

I'm even less happy with the US$80 price just because I'm in Australia.  They're just asking us to Pirate it.

I know you're generally strapped, but you can get a card that's twice as fast for $100. Probably less if you want to try craigslist. Did you try directx 9 mode?

Eh, I got it running decently on middling settings. Never mind  :oh_i_see:

(http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:R1kffka13g7BnM:http://www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/download/Number/21556/filename/emily_litella.jpg&t=1)

great, cant skip the intro movie and the intro movie crashes out.    WTG!

I played the hell out of this today...11 hours or so. Hurray for working from home and being done with all my deliveries for the week! I love it.  Trotski came over and played some MP on the LAN...very fun to have someone in the same room, but holy fuck it is annoyingly slow, even with just one other player. I saw the option for simo turns somewhere before he came over, but I couldn't find it again, and we were too busy playing to do any research  :awesome_for_real: I am sure I will find it eventually.

Not sure how I feel about the city-states. Sometimes they make it interesting, but more often they are just kind of...there. Would like to see them get some more love in the future. Love the embark ability. God that makes exploration, settling, and warfare across the pond SO much less of a hassle. I can't wait to see what the modders do. Gonna be playing this one for years, I'm guessing.

Demo just crashes out on me as soon as it gives me a mouse pointer.  Glad I didn't buy it on a whim.  :uhrr:

For a second I thought Leon Trotsky was one of the possible leaders of the Soviet Union and was excited.

It's 2:20am and I just got done with my first Warlord game to give the game a spin.  Ended up wiping the French for world domination with my army of unstoppable Death Robots.  :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

I like the combat in this.  I also like how cities aren't defenseless if you don't have a  unit in them.  I love how units don't stack.

The game almost ran flawlessly except for 3 or 4 flickering tiles.

I played a game with two continents and my continent didn't have any aluminum so I was fucked to build high tech stuff.

Will try a harder game tomorrow.  Oooooooh joy!

Great job here and I'm sure there is much I'm leaving out or didn't notice how to do it.  I didn't see a slider for taxes/science/culture.

Anyway sleep time.

It's reaaally slow on standard.  Turn it to quick or you'll emo out.  Unless you like that sort of thing.

Overall I'll just echo the changes to combat are a billion times better.  Very streamlined.  I don't miss religion.  The AI is interesting.  I expanded quickly, dropping to settlers in successive turns, and Napolean shoots a shot across my bow saying, "If you keep taking land I feel is mine, I'll blah blah blah."

If you're annoyed by not being able to skip past the opening movie you can fix that. Just go into the civ 5 directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization v) and rename the opening movie .wmv file to something else. There are 5 of them for various languages. I just renamed the english one and now I don't need to sit through it anymore.

Still not released in Singapore. I did not pre-order.  :heartbreak:

I was able to skip the intro movie in both DX9 and DX11 versions. You have to wait like 3-5 seconds and then you can click or press escape.

I got Seriously? last night on my second game (the first one I cheesed a warlord victory out of my funky replacement knights and their city attack bonus. Three fast moving units that can twoshot a capital? Yes please.) because I was happiness/luxury blocked on my starting island and couldn't get my populace to freaking breed.

I do like that in the policy trees combined with some buildings you could make hilariously strong melee units.

That and infantry abusing medic upgrades are hilarious.

So far I'm really liking this, sloooooow first 40-80 turns aside, which is a rarity. Older Civs I just kind of didn't get.

On the demo - got mid range graphics going on my 8800gtx and its pretty smooth.

Yeah, what I'm trying to figure out is why I'm finding this one so awesome when I never liked the previous iterations.  Hell, I might end up buying this one.  Was this version dumbed down or something?

Delete them from the Civ 5 folder. It sucks that not only can't you change video options at all from in the game, but when you change them from the main menu screen, you need to reboot to apply them. Every time. I got tired of those intro movies (and the clickthrough) every damned time. Still a long boot (and the clickthrough), but better than the stupid movies. The Steam dx11 shortcut still asks you which dx version you want to run, every time.

Like the UI, like the combat. Didn't get a lot of time, because I was reading through the advisors and civopedia links as I played and poking around the UI. And it was late, since I had to restart the game for every graphical tweak which took forever. The UI is much, much better, the polish level seems much higher than ever. Things just seem to work together better and not be such a mishmash of old systems.

I got an archer a couple turns in, my scout explored a ruin or something and magically learned how to fire a bow. I wish there had been a yes/no popup, since I really need a scout more than an archer right now.

I really, really hope Kael has plans for modding FFH3 into this. Sorry, had to.

I think the turn by turn gameplay is a LOT more engaging than in previous versions.  The grand/long term strategy was always good, but I always found that there was a fair amount of "dead" turns in the old game (still are sometimes), but I feel much more engaged with the game in this ine than in previous versions.

I don't think its been dumbed down, though I suspect there will be some people who suggest it has a little.

Here's the big secret: Civ was never a smart game. Not in comparison to its competition over the years. It was an engaging, medium complexity game with really tuned in designers. I love this because some of the stuff even huge fans of Civ would find tedious is stripped out. Mark my words, there are going to be a lot of people mistaking past games' tedium for complexity.

I was tired of my GTX 260 making my room into an oven, so I bought a 460, which was running perfectly cool.

Until Civ V.  It handled the gameplay smoothly, but after a few hours of play I noticed that I was getting a little toasty.  It was definitely stressing my new card.  Everything was very pretty, sure, but I'm not sure that the pretty was in line with the demands it made on my computer, especially given that Starcraft 2's pretty wasn't making my computer break a sweat with everything maxed out.  Hopefully they'll optimize performance a little better in the next updates.

I found running in DX9 mode solved all my graphic problems. I don't understand what you sacrifice when switching to it, but it's worth a shot for those of you with bad performance. Thanks for the tip on removing the opening cinematic, I was stuck watching about 20 seconds of it each and every time.

Love the embarquement upgrade! No more micro-managing armadas of transports!!!

I freaking love the new diplomacy screens, especially since they jabber at me in their native language too. Integration into the steam cloud is great, I can play my game across work and home all week.

I thought all the new features would make it more difficult to adapt to, but I'm already beating the snot out of the computer on my first playthrough at the level below Prince. I guess the core of the game hasn't changed much at all. I found myself barely reading the technology tree or production queues, because they so closely mirrored the ones in Civ 4, I could just go with my traditional strategies and not spend time having to re-learn the system.

I can't turn on anti-aliasing with the DX9 version.

Played the demo in the DX10/11 mode.

Very nice, and I do enjoy the lack of a stack of doom. Didn't get far enough to see how taking a city works, but it appears that it's a bit tougher.

Kinda glad that I don't have the spare dough to grab it right now. I'm working from home this week and that would pretty much kill any chance of productivity.

Your archer is actually an archer/scout, he keeps any and all scout bonuses (+ to barbarians, ignore tile types, possible extended sight range)

Taking a city involves a siege engine or archers, and exploiting the ever living shit out of the medic upgrade on an infantry wall <3 <3


My first warfare game I wound up looking around for witnesses and then bashing city states over the head until they all declared permanent war on me for conquering too many  :grin: I had more puppet governments than the CIA.

About seven hous played on my first game, as the Greeks. Wish I had clued in to how important early workers are a little sooner. I'm really enjoying the little things. Alexander is all about befriending City States, so that's what I focused on. I have a cultural one my my border at 147 of 60 right now, because I keep saving his ass. Was really cool that I could defend him from Bismark by secretly shipping him troops, without pissing the Germans off. Quite funny watching a Companion Cavalry suddenly charge from his city and wipe out Bismarks catapults.

Really have not played the military much yet, as Bismark jumped out to an early lead and I didn't want him coming after me, but the diplomatic/science race game seems quite solid.

Oh man.  Special edition box just got here and I have to say, it is seriously sexy.

I'm not really a fan of Great People building outside of cities.  I'm not entirely sure citadels are worth anything (the two games I played both had pretty open maps.)

I wish I had gotten coal.  Just once.

I wanted to pull my hair out the third time a worker decided to park in my capital while I was trying to move SS modules to said capital, which of course meant I had to pull the worker out.

I noticed some graphical weirdness with some tiles, it ran a little slowly on my 2 year old computer in the later stages, but no crashes or problems like that.  I ran the DX9 version just because.

I was a bit :awesome_for_real: at the free xp to be gotten by putting the medic upgrade on a unit and sitting them in range of an enemy city while set to heal to full.

I like pretty much everything else.

That's wicked. He did have + to barbs, and I thought all units were 2 move radius and ignoring terrain, but now that I think about it, the warrior I scrambled to take over the barbarian outpost only traveled over grassland to get there.

Honestly, with the way Barbs work now, unless all scouts get ranged attacks they're pretty much useless.  Whenever you're exploring even already uncovered fog of war, you have a chance to pop a Barb hut.  And if you do, your scout is basically either going to have to run or he's meat.  I'd rather use a warrior who can take out barbs pretty reliably.  Even if he's slower, he's still going to last longer, and eventually get more exploring done.

I'm really liking this the more I dig into it.

I have a militaristic city state right next to me. My first reaction is to ignore them and eventually conquer them. After becoming allies with them because of a coincidence (they wanted a Wonder I was already building) they started gifting me military units. The units were up to par with my current tech and resources, and were varied between melee, defense, and ranged. It sunk in that if I just keep them marginally happy, I have a free unit factory that can free up my other cities to produce culture and workers, which suits my cultural/economic focus. Now I wish I had made friends with the cultural city states to get a constant drip of free culture. Quite a clever little addition.

Funny thing I haven't had to use a siege engine yet.  I expected to need a ton of them, but the 3 archers/ xbbowmen I sent with my long swordsmen took out Siam without any bombardment.   The same was true for the French with my fighter plane.  Enough air attacks to get them red and it was only a few rushes from infantry/ riflemen/ cavalry.

It seems like you'll only need sieges if you're attacking a more advanced civ.. which is slightly disappointing because it means if you're on the disadvantaged side you're going to be equally screwed.

There's a bit of balancing involving conquering cities that I'm enjoying.  The more "cities" you have, the more expensive policies are.  But if you set them up as Puppet's, they give gold, research and culture, and don't cause your policies to go up.  However, you can't purchase land around Puppets.

It's fun :)

Siege just makes it a lot faster. My muskets could take a town in about 5-6 attacks, or just one if two siege units pounded it first. The upgrades on siege units are nice for what they do. They're just hard to get into position until you hit modernish artillery with longer ranges or no setup time.

Just played up to 1000 AD and my Romans first had to chase off pesky Persian's who plopped a town right where I was going to.  Then the city-state of Hanoi really expanded and allied with the Arabs.  Once the Arabs dropped the alliance I hit Hanoi (20STR).  I got my nose blooded until I brought up my Great General, Legion and a Ballista.  The ballista, with the GG combat bonus wrecked Hanoi and my legion almost walked in. 

Going military has hurt my culture and trade but I finally am cranking out over 100gp a turn.  My science is average to below average but coming up. 

Plus I played DX9 version for 4.5hrs straight and no crash, not even tile flickering.  Nice!  Really great game so far, loving it!

Won my first small map 4hrs in. Really fun and switching to DX9 fixed 99% of my performance issues, could actually turn up a bunch of settings. Thanks Jobu.

Well, I got it working by just changing the .ini to have the game skip the into.  100 turns later and I'm done with the demo.  Hell, this is some addictive stuff.  My eyes feel like they're about ready to jump out of their sockets.

Performs pretty decent on my aged machine as well. Sure, I had to turn a lot of the eye candy off, but it's a strategy game.  I could live with it.

So tempting...  :|

Give in to the dark side. Search your feelings, you know this to be true. :awesome_for_real:

You can't nuke capital cities or raze capital cities into oblivion :(

I was trying a sneak attack on the other continent, took one of two remaining capital cities.  Starting moving to the second one, thinking I could just raze the first.

Nope, and they can take back the capital.

I'm going to have to switch to DX9, this is ridiculous. I get four turns in, and the game goes tits up.

Kael is already tooling around with Civ5.

Stacked Units Mod (http://kael.civfanatics.net/Legions/index.shtml)

Celtic Civilization (http://kael.civfanatics.net/QueenoftheIceni/index.shtml)

Nothing remarkable yet, but he could well lay the groundwork for something bigger.

Are those just concept?  I don't see any download links.

Your suppose to be able to access and manage mods from the in game mod browser. It hasn't worked for me at all yet.

Yay Kael! Learn those new tools, kid!

I got a bit more time in with this last night. I also went to dx9 mode, then was able to turn all graphics to the max, there's got to be something wonky going on with the dx10 renderer. It's nice having enough new twists to make it a newer experience, even if I'm still completely spoiled by FFH2 - "What's with this tiny linear tech tree?"

I like city states, they do add quite a bit to the strategy imo. Two of them want to wipe each other out and have appealed to the civs to help them. I was moving a warrior and settler (can you select two units at once, I can find a way to stack the combat and noncombat units) and the barbarians jumped them. The warrior peeled off to take out the barbarians, for some reasons the settler was out of moves. Another barbarian force had snuck up behind and captured the settler. I was able to get them back the next turn. I don't remember barbarians stealing settlers in the old version, or maybe I just used to guard them better...

The UI and art is great. The game world is ok, a nice upgrade from civ 4 but nothing to knock off socks.

I ended up with a Map with a perfect chokepoint for a citadel, so you never know. As for coal, I had none on my continent either, so I'm really glad the gane doesn't penalize you the way four did for starting colonies a long ways from the capital.

My map ended up with a long narrow continent. France to left, Siam in the middle, me to the right, Germany below me and Siam. Napoleon picked a fight, so I marched my army in to Siam to head him off. Ended up with a big stalemate of Musketeers vs Riflemen, building a front right in the middle of Siam. Next thing I know, Bismark invades Siam from below. There were essentially no empty hexes in all of Siam, as we carefully jockied around trying to fight our seperate wars. Was quite funny.

Highlight of the game so far - Gandhi popping up randomly just to tell me that he "Wished I would just go away". We weren't even on the same landmass.

Yep, this.  I needed to split Japan's forces in a current game and prevent them from reinforcing the southern part of the continent we were warring over..  I plopped a citadel down reinforced with some cannons (and later, artillery)  in a great chokepoint, and stuck Japan quite nicely.

The contrarians weigh in.

Tom Chick (1up): C (http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3181540)
Troy Goodfellow (Gameshark): B+ (http://www.gameshark.com/reviews/3627/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-V-Review.htm)

Other than Chick not liking the interface (WTF?  :uhrr: ), those are both pretty fair critiques as far as I can tell. The diplomacy stuff especially.

Ehhh, diplomacy has always pretty much sucked in Civ. Nothing new there. Everyone is either a war-mongering simpleton, or too cowed by your wealth/culture/military to do anything other than turtle inside their two podunk cities.

The AI on the other hand is much much dumber than expected. I've seen them embark random pikemen into the ocean during a war, just to wander aimlessly around the water for awhile before landing on a small, uninhabited island. After that I stopped paying attention, so who knows what it got up to. Maybe he was looking for Walt or something. *shrug*

I definitely agree with Troy's review - the diplomacy and army AI both need some polishing.    I think Tom is being overly harsh about the black box aspect that diplomacy is (though I don't entirely disagree) and I personally really like the current social policies so far.  I can see where you want them to be the levers that Civ 4's civics were, but I like the concept of long term decisions and building the policy tree up over the span of the game.

I found not having the indicators of other nation's policies to be very jarring.  I want to know how they are building so I can adapt accordingly.

It's another "controversial" review by Tom Chick that doesn't match other scores or the game itself. Yes, the game is flawed and needs polishing, but his criticisms are overboard. In particular, he seems to spend the majority of the review just saying "It's not Civ 4" - his dismissal of the new social policies structure is silly, for example.

Bear in mind that Elemental got a C+ from 1up and it shows how ridiculous the review and score is. A game which *literally* was unplayable on release, that's been categorically shamed by it's own designer for being a bad, unfinished game, scores higher than Civ 5. For it's faults, Civ 5 is a billion years ahead of Elemental.

Love reading Tom Chik's site and thoughts, but in terms of reviews I can't think of anyone I could rely on less than him. He goes out of his way to be contrary and daring, and it's a shame because he often has some really interesting insights and thoughts.

This game is way better than Civ 4 on launch. Yes there are balance issues and the AI is borderline retarded, but as far as a launch goes, I think they hit it out of the park. Give it a few weeks for patches and a few months for some spergers to code in good AI and you've got yourself a game.

I'm also interested to see what people come up with for the UI, since that's extensively modable, too.

Remember, Civ 4 had 3 separate expansions.

I agree with Chick on his two major points about shoddy AI (my perennial gripe, when will developers ever make good AI that fits a game properly?) and getting locked into Civics. Part of the core fun of civ 4 was making (or seeing someone else make) the move to a war footing by switching to the war civics.

Bhodi, Civ 4 was also pretty mediocre and really only decent after the final expansion was released. I actually didn't like Civ 4 much at all, Kael is really the only reason I bought BtS or even installed Civ 4 again (let alone buying it again on steam).

That said, I think Civ 5 has WAY more promise to be a great game. And by great game I mean FFH3, bwahaha. Ok, sorry.

I was mildly unhappy at how sprawly cities got in 5.  In 4 you could eventually get a pretty good pile of resources out of any one tile if you worked it up decently, but in 5 it seemed like even my best tiles were yielding only mediocre amounts of stuff.  Especially building bonuses.  It was taking me goddamn forever to make anything on account of only having a couple of wood mills giving +2 building to the city.

Chick makes one or two good points (the AI is definitely not strong at least at lower difficulties, and not being able to shift civics is kind of annoying, especially considering some are exclusive with each other but they aren't all available at the same time) but most of it - the part about preferring a giant pile of hammer icons to a number showing your production makes me especially  :uhrr: - is full of crap.

The AI is just terrible, at all levels.  Civ has always compensated on the higher difficulty levels by just allowing the AI to cheat like crazy, and that's still true.  

I had some of the same gripes about the interface as the above review(s).  Many statistics and types of information are either far too obscure or not present at all, diplomacy being the worst area.  Not a fan of the civics system, I would prefer at least some flexibility in the later game.

Despite the issues I'm still having a ton of fun with it.  The problems are balanced against the enormous improvements to combat that range and one-unit-per-tile bring, and I really enjoy the organic way that borders spread now and the new resource system (which is something I've been praying for ever since Civ III).  

Mods and patches can't come fast enough, I think this has a ton of potential down the road.

Edit: yeah, what Sky said.

Hrm.  Stumbled across a bit of an oddity tonight while playing - looks like the city levers aren't properly taking things into account. 

I was constructing a building in a coastal town, and had it set to Emphasize Food.  Build time was like 17 turns.  I set it to Emphasize Production, and build time INCREASED to like 23 or something like that.   

Sadly, the intelligence is not there yet.

Remember that there are a very very small (read: one to two) people working on the AI and game balance. It's that intern who got his dream job as a lead designer. He's *it*. I'm still shocked that huge multi-million dollar teams of dozens of people can only spare one dude for stuff like this, but it seems to be common.

After all, blizzard only has what, one, two people writing quests? On launch, it was ONE guy doing the entire talent trees for all the classes? Yeah.

One guy doing talents, tech trees, or other advances is somewhat sensible.  Theoretically they should be easier to balance when the person making a discrete part is well aware of where it fits into the whole.

Documentation would probably be a better solution.

Anyway, is it just the demo or does the game consistently 'forget' to present units for orders in the full game as well?

Eff.

There's no replay through history when you win anymore :(

And there's no Retire option either.

Other random thing for those looking to install Kael's mods and then getting stuck when it says Completed, but never Installed.

It's apparently 1990 again or some shit, and it doesn't realize that Steam could be installed on a *gasp* second harddrive/partition! 

So yah, Steam on C:\  no problem with mods
Steam NOT on C:\ - wait for a patch.

Thats amateur hour.

Thanks for the heads up. I thought I was too stupid to make it work.

I would be a terrible city planner/strategist.  I tried this demo last night and I had NO IDEA what I was doing.  I like it, but I just didn't "get it".

I normally hate these kinds of games...usually because I don't have the patience to learn them.  Played the demo of this, though, and immediately wanted more so I actually bought the game.  I have a feeling I'm going to lose many, many hours to this.

I took the Romans out for a test-drive on standard settings... so I certainly haven't plumbed the depths of the new game.

That said, I _love_ the new streamlined Empire Management approach and the single unit military tactics/strategy; I even like the character customization, er... Policies, but agree that you should get a re-spec every time you enter into a new era.

What seems "off" to me is the entire city-building game... which is kind of a big thing to be "off."  What I mean by this is that the city improvements don't seem to do very much, and simultaneously take forever to build.  Even after I got over my old Civ gold-hording instincts and bought shit willy-nilly, I never really felt that resounding thunk of, "well, that city is on its way now" or, "now I can start cranking units from here."  In MMO terms, it felt like I had to spend lots of "talent points" on 1% increases.  Sure, my cities were incrementally better, but the increments were so small that I never really seemed to feel any sense of accomplishment.  Same goes for Wonders; clearly Wonders have been de-emphasized (and perhaps not unreasonably), but there is never that satisfying "ca-chunk" of winning a wonder race.  More than a few times I lost a race and actually considered the gold that was deposited in the treasury perhaps more useful... that strikes me as "off".  Some of this may be open to a bit of tuning/balancing, but more than a little is surely by design.

Clearly they have taken a "WoW-ish" approach in making the game more fun, approachable and streamlined into a focus on playability and big picture empire management... and for those things I'm with them (even though it means a change in how I learned Civ)... but the city techs need to either be small and fast incremental changes or big and beefy investments - not slow and minimal.  So much for first impressions.

This is really bothering me in the demo.  Also if I click somewhere out of a unit's move range the unit won't continue forward automatically the next turn.

The computer executes moves that were out of range last turn when you click End of Turn.

Ah, thanks.

Actually now I'm thinking the units the game wouldn't present as having moves available were the units I tried to move out of their range, so double thanks!

I have noticed that the Wonders do give a bit less bang for the buck, but the city improvements do get more impressive the farther you go in the game. I looked at a well built city with all the buildings, versus a new one that had grown to the same size really fast (thanks to fish). The old city had a science around 60, the new one around 8. Buildings make a difference.

I get the feeling that they've balanced the game for multiplayer at the expense of single player. That means that there can't be any real wonders that give you a big advantage anymore.  And it means they can have a shitty AI.

I'm a little disappointed to be honest but we'll see how it is after a patch or two.

Multiplayer civ is the lunatic fringe.

Yeah the wonders do seem to be quite a bit less sexy in terms of game-changing power. I can't decide yet if that is good or bad. It does mean that there's a lot less incentive to ragequit and start over if you lose out on an early wonder though.

Huh, if wonders have very little effect as you said, then taking the effort to build them ,weakening your military to spend production elsewhere is going to be a harsh cost to even use in cutthroat multiplayers.

They aren't useless - they appear to be the only effective way to get great people for example. They just aren't quite as massively game changing as say the Pyramids were in Civ 4.

Stonehenge is a really great early grab if you're going for a culture victory, too.

In that vein, going the Traditional path for policy, at least for the 33% boost to Wonder production, is pretty nice.

I was dinking around with a game yesterday, China, only one city, grabbed the 33% wonder production policy asap, and I was doing pretty solidly in terms of culture and getting wonders built.  Not so great for science though, not sure I want to continue that game.

Overall, the game really seems to reward expansive civs over tiny ones.  Although maybe I just haven't hit the right ideas for keeping my civ small.  Such as making puppets out of all around me.   :oh_i_see:

I'm doing this as China in a Huge/Warlord/Epic game.  I got Stonehenge and the Pyramids built, but then got out-built on the next two.  The Colossus was even the turn after I started.

I'm thinking going as Egypt+Traditional might be fun.  Also a good strategy is to clear forests around your city while you are building, since that gives a production boost.

One thing to keep in mind is the cost of policy upgrades goes up 30% with every city you add, so if you have a big sprawling empire and aren't keeping up with your culture buildings you can get to a point where you're really going slow on that track. I pretty easily did a cultural victory with just one city and a lot of allied cultural city-states. The empire size target really seems to vary depending on what win condition you're trying for, which I think is pretty cool. Going big and going small are both viable for different approaches.

Right.  The thing that's got me is I've been spending money on purchasing improvements that I need, and burning as many hammers as possible on wonders.  So I haven't had the money to buy friends with city-states, and my income isn't that great.

I got the deluxe Steam version.  Does anyone know how to access the behind the scenes video that was supposed to be included, or the extra map?  


As an aside, it's completely fucking lame that Babylon, the extra civ, isn't usable in multiplay.



Edit:  And another thing:  My computer runs the game smoothly, but for some lame reason the intro movie cannot be skipped past.  Does anyone else experience this?

Each new version seems to cut back on wonders.  Pyramids in 4 were less effective than 3. (Pick any government you want, vs Granary in every city.)

Combined with the continuing lack of wonder movies, they're not really wondrous.   They're like "World Points of Interest."

Is there even a scoreboard? I just got a diplomatic victory last night and realized I didn't get the traditional "You are as effective as <leader>" screen.  grr.

No! Really? That's a bummer.

Kind of on the fence.  I'm going to give the demo a shot.  I haven't really explored the Civ 4 expansions fully so I'm deciding whether to keep on with it or jump to V.

Fuck my asshole.  Just spent the last two nights playing Civ 5 multiplayer.  It's way more crisp than Civ 4 multi, but I fucking suck ass.  It's frustrating going from unstoppable to incompetent.

The old score is still there it's at the top of the victory screen,top right if I remember right.There's a few other screens available also but they are easy to miss as they don't stand out very well.

Along the lines of missing things.Can't seem too find a way to end diplomatic agreements,was trying to end an open borders too isolate one part of a nation and couldn't find any way to do it.Also can't seem to find any screen that let's me know how many luxury resources I have access too.

I've had 2 wins now.

First game was with the Babylon civ, and they have some crazy Golden Age bonus.  At one point I had a golden age for about 40 turns. 

Other one was single city egypt + wonders + policy win.  Was pretty boring.

What I've noticed is that buildings are great if you focus the city.  That is, you want a crazy research city, you really only have the time to build the research buildings.  Culture? Then build only culture buildings.  Military? Build only military buildings.

Wonders do do some fun stuff, but not as "whoa" as previous civs. 

The video is masking loading from what I can tell.  Go to your Civ folder, open User Settings and set SkipIntroVideo = 1.  You'll have a black screen until the game loads.  Alternatively keep mashing ESC until the video zooms in on the old man's face.


Regarding luxury resources, mouse over your happiness and it will tell you what's up.

The breakpoint if you're going for a culture victory is 5 cities. You can go up to 6, but don't go beyond it.

Well, here I was trying to get Babylon into a Culture victory and BAM, Siam tries to get cocky. My Minor City alllies act as a buffer between me and Siam while I rush 4 Knights and go to town with the Trebuchets Hanoi gifted me a few years ago.

Siam surrenders and I make all but two of their cities into puppets of my new vast empire ranging the whole North of America, not negatively affecting my Culture rate. I plop one fortress in Mexico to keep the Americans in the South were they belong, and I happily continue producing culture while my Knights go to rape and pillage Barbarian tribes in Alaska and the polar region for fun and profit.

For all the things that are missing I really love the new things. The way strategic resources are implemented makes them more interesting (I loaned out some of my horses I didn't use to Siam for Minor Civ bribe money), puppet cites and minor civs are a good method to expand if you are a "peaceful" Civ. Particular interesting cities you can annex completely as the happiness level permits.

The game is a bit too streamlined, though. That might become tedious once the newness wears off. But by then Mods should be here and working :)

Something interesting happened to me last night.  I was driving south thru Africa, conquering German cities, when Bismark asked for peace.  Not only did he offer gold and resources, but he tacked on FIVE of his cities.  So I accepted, made them puppets and now Germany is a rump-state with three small cities.

Seems like the AI knows when it's beat in this version or was it like this in Civ IV?

Japan offered me EVERYTHING (a town, all of their gold, all gold they were making, all resources) they owned except Kyoto last night. I took it, waited out the peace treaty, then ran all over them. :why_so_serious: I have to say it took me a little by surprise, too.

So I've just lost two days to this game.  It was a bad idea buying this.

Now that you mention it... and here I was thinking, "Finally, a game AI that appreciates my strategic and tactical genius"   :oh_i_see:

Nah, I have a couple of War Chariots that won't get their rotation in the movement and command phase until I go hunt them down on the map and click them.

Okay, dumb question -- what's the first naval unit that can carry ground units over water and/or what technology do I need to accomplish this?  I've got a nice start on an island but it's time to expand and I can't find the path to do that...

I'm having the same issues, I'm putting it down to my fault for now.

One thing I keep doing is trying to move my units overland when I can more easily embark them and move them by sea.  Such a radical change and not sank in yet I guess.  

There are no longer naval transports.  Once you research (sailing?) you can simply move the units onto the water.

Aha, the "embark" action.  Wow.  That had me completely baffled.  Thanks!

Sooooooo, does anyone know how to access the "behind the scenes" vid thatw as supposed to come with Steam digital deluxe?  Can't fucking find it anywhere unless it's buried in the folder somewhere.

Yep. Sailing for Embark, then Navigation to be able to cross Ocean tiles.

In my last game I liberated the German capital from someone and they came back into the game.  They didn't act particularly pre-disposed to me, however their existence didn't stop me from getting a conquer victory.  They seemed to be a city-state capable of diplomacy at that point.

Honestly, it feels like the whole diplomacy thing was cut until it was ready.  I was reading on the 2K forums, and it makes it sound like they're are planning on patching in a bunch of stuff that they didn't have time for.  Stupid Publisher, I gladly would've waited until December for proper diplomacy.

I love the city-state diplomacy options mostly due to the fact that there's a giant number I can see that makes my actions with them known to me.  

I gifted like 400g, luxeries and plenty of other things to some civs because I was trying to bribe a defensive pact, just to see if there were still options to become a vassalage. Did they take that out too?

 I did this same thing: But gladly would've allowed them to stay if I knew that it was going to matter to some vote or something later.  As far as I can tell, the only bad thing from doing this is you get called 'bloodthirsty' by the other civs.

It just seems like they left out complication in the game hoping that modders will simply add it in.  I mean, seriously? Satellites don't reveal the map?

Well I'm far less angry about the unskippable intro movie now that I know it's actually loading.  This could be used as the latest benchmarking tool for computers.  I get all the way to the word "lush" before it's done, damn vista.

Someone just gave out this link over at the Civ 5 thread at Qt3. It's pretty funny stuff.

clicky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU&feature=player_embedded)

That was brilliant. Made me LOL several times.

12 unhappiness is not fun.

I dunno why my people are unhappy.  I am the British.  I created a huge armada and invaded France.  Seriously, what's not to like about that?

(Okay, I accidentally subjugated a few cities I probably should have left as puppets.  Still!)

Two games so far.  My first was Greek, no iron, coal, aluminum or uranium near any of my cities when I revealed them.  My second game is Japan and the pattern is repeating.  I think the game hates me!

RE no resources near your cities: I've noticed this as well.  I believe the standard seeding algorithm biases your starting area against strategic resources, I guess to force you to expand or trade for them.  I'd have to run a ton of games to really test it though, and I'm nowhere near that dedicated.

Edit: it occurs to me that it may be civilization specific as well.  I was pretty well supplied with iron as Rome, and very horse heavy as Arabia.  Hmmmm...

In my 2 games so far all the oil, uranium and aluminium has appeared in areas I'd already conquered. None appears in my howe cities. Also the city states tended to get 1 of them.

Didn't crack a smile most of the way, but the Lion King bit got me.

The new combat. I like it, in general, except for:

a) Ranged attacks are not ranged enough. Woods, heights or pretty much anything but plains make them too hard to use, especially since the majority of the units are completely defenseless. There's no point in ranged units being ranged if you have to park them right next to the enemy.

b) Units are still too important for the defense of cities, as the city artillery is far too puny to discourage enemies from capturing your workers and pillaging your lands. Basically it would have been better to have a "miltia unit" that was leashed to the city by distance. That way you could atleast have been a little proactive with the defense of your city. Passive defenses are an ill fit for Civilization, I think.

c) Lack of multi-select. I really, really want to be able to select multiple units because often it's not that important exactly where they end up standing. Jumping back and forth between two points in order to move the 10+ units you need for an invasion becomes tedious quickly.

d) Excessive unit sprawl. Not stacking in the open is one thing, but it would really, really help if you could atleast stack them in cities. They needn't contribute to combat, they just need to be hidden away. Having a pile of units fortified in the middle of nowhere (normally in a desert) "just in case" looks stupid.

I've been doing mostly naval combat this game, and I actually like the look of my carrier group (escorting the carrier are two destroyers and four ships of the line!)

I haven't quite wrapped my head around how to expand sanely -- I think I may have founded too many cities too soon or I'm not just not raising enough cash fast enough to balance the upkeep on all my buildings (many of which I need to keep my people happy).

Yes, watch your expansion.  Building roads costs 1gp per hex, 2 with railroad and you can get in debt in a hurry.  So far  puppet states are working out well for me, lowering my costs.  Still having a bit of trouble increasing production, taking a lot of turns to build anything.

The lack of stacking, even stacking units that can stack, is bothering the hell out of me. Why can't my settler and warrior stack for movement? That's just hassling the player who is playing by the rules! Or stacking a commander and a military unit?

Also bothering me, even more, the inability to move by keypad into a space occupied by another unit, even if you have enough movement to move out of that space before the turn ends. Really, the whole inability to move units through because of anti-stack rules makes the game a pain in the ass. I have two roads through mountainous terrain, and it's like some kind of wild west where one wagon has to pull off the side of the road and wait for the other unit to move through, wasting a couple turns in the interim, hassling me via micromanagement and slowing down gameplay.

I'm trying to play the game as if it's a new TBS and not Civ, it's slightly more fun that way, and I am enjoying it somewhat. I really can't believe it shipped in this state, though. Built an acadamy (great scientist building) on a shoreline, it kind of fades off into the sea. Really?

Balancing 'hammers' against gold production is the central problem of the city building aspect of the game, for me.  I'm considering science and culture as a distant third/fourth in importance.

Sky - I've found just setting a go-to command for the unit and forgetting about it works out pretty well, and keeps me from pulling out my hair about the movement restrictions.  Out on the battle front where a one or two square difference matters I'm going to be micromanaging everything any way, so it's not a huge issue there.

Tarami - I think the city bombard is mainly there to provide a defender's advantage, and not really to murder stray units.  It allows your warrior to beat their warrior 1 on 1, as long as you bombard it first, or for your city to push away an archer that's plinking away at it.  As for the ranged system, I actually like it exactly as is.  Firing one extra hex away would be a bit too powerful, particularly for things like chariot archers or artillery; you'd never be able to effectively hit them back without your own, equal, ranged units.  I've been using archers mainly as a first strike for my melee types, not as dedicated killers.  One or two shots makes even higher tier units vulnerable to a frontal attack.  Then again, it's not hard to abuse the hell out of the A.I.  And I do.   :oh_i_see:

Um, it can?  You can have one combat and one non-combat (settler, worker, great leader) unit per square. Unless you mean attaching non-combat to a warrior unit; I would be surprised if this didn't get added - the help bubble even suggests you should be able to. I wonder if it got scrapped or just wasn't finished in time for release. The keypad thing would annoy, but I switched to right-click move after Civ 3.

You can, in fact it's the only way to keep a Military leader alive near hostile ranged units. The AI will target them when they are alone, as I discovered when I drove General Zukov took close to the Russian Artillery batteries.

I'm reading lots of posts from people complaining about the AI being dumb, but often it ends up the AI was giving the player the finger after losing the war, or the human was playing on Warlord or something. The AI could defiantly use better writing though, and there are huge expansion sized holes in the Diplomacy. It reminds me a lot of Spore for some reason.

I hadn't know that mods were FINDABLE in game, and rateable somehow. So far the mods look like cheesefests, but it should make well known good ones easy to use. I'm hoping someone redoes SMAC.

I know, I question whether someone who says that has even played the game.

Finished my first game (as Russia/Catherine), and enjoyed the heck out of it.  It feels a lot more intuitive than previous Civs to me, and though some people seem to be claiming that its (over)simplified Civ a bit (and it probably has), the tactical choices you are making on a turn by turn basis seem to keep the depth up anyway.

The only thing I'd say if that I probably will have less city states in the game next time.  I like them, but I don't like having 2 of them for everyone 1 major civ in the game, it makes things feel a litle too...crowded.  Though who knows, maybe i'll switch back afterwards if I turn out to have liked it better the first game.  I do worry about balance for the Civs that are city state based in their bonuses (Greece, Siam), if I do that though.

I read it (unit stacking issues) as a complaint about the fact that you have to move the warrior and then the settler individually, and cannot group select them.

What I am enjoying thus far is the game makes me veer from my planned victory at the drop of a hat. I'll start a game, thinking I'll go for, say, the diplomacy victory. Then some civ will START SHIT with me and next thing I know I've sort of conquered half the map, whoops.

The only reason I haven't done a conquest victory yet is I don't want to crush everyone on my small-sized map, it takes forever for me to roll my little army of death across it. On the other hand, I actually like fighting in this Civ, I have never ever liked it before. I like that there's some vague strategery involved.

The game still hasn't solved my tendancy to restart at random. I've only actually finished a game twice. :P

That's exactly what annoys me.  I had a settler with a warrior escort once, sent them both to the same hex from the same hex and they took different routes to get there.

I suggest giving the move order to the warrior one turn before the settler, then they should take the same route.

Or like always, never, ever send a unit someplace you're not sure of on multiple turn orders.  It's dumb.  It was dumb in Civ 4 too.  If your units are in the fog of war, and you value them, you should be moving them one turn at a time - preferably into tiles with defensive bonuses.  Yes, it's tedious.  But so is starting over again and again until you learn.

Nice to hear I'm not the only one that does that.  Sometimes I'll be doing just fine and then decide to start a new game for no particular reason.

Second game with Siam, I tried for cultural victory (again, with Babylon I went for that but was thwarted by being elected king of the world by the UN thanks to my Minor Civ lackeys).  This time I will etch out a conquest victory instead if those retards don't stop agonizing me and declare war only to be curbstomped by my Elephant army and promptly surrendering once I take away one of their cities.

Persia declared war on me twice. I play Siam pacifistic, but the third time Darius will be used as elephant toilet paper!

Standard with 28 minor civs is no good idea, btw. Worked better on huge.

Won first game Domination on Easy mode with Romans.  I think the AI is excellent for placing cities but not with army actions.  Came down to me and Japan, it was 1962 and my tanks crawled across the central Asian desert to be met in battle by Samurai.  :awesome_for_real:

Second game on Normal mode I am building monuments to my glory as Egypt.  Greece and England are in a slugging match with Greece losing their capital and England with a higher score than me.  May be time to take England down a peg as I may not get a better chance.

I too am a dirty re-starter.  I like to see what kind of starting areas the game gives me.  I also dial down the number of city-states to 2/3 the normal number.  Unless you have  a civ and policies to exploit them I think they are only good for conquest.  My influence goes down too fast unless I'm a super-rich civ.

First game Japan, blew up the world with rifles and cannons. Got bored and restarted.

Second game Arabia, making gold and bribing city states, discovered how broken it is to get immense culture boosts with little effort. So peaceful and prosperous that I'm thinking it's a broken feature. I'm kinda disappointed with how easy it is to designate one city as trade posts spam and crank out gold multiplying buildings like no tomorrow. Compared to the hassle of warmongering and managing puppets + unhappy faces....Gee whiz, it's good to be peaceful.

Won my third attempt on King as England with a scientific victory.

The AI is still pretty brainless especially diplomatically. After I had annihilated Catherine's army and taken 4 cities she still wouldn't go to peace with me. Occasionally the combat AI would be reasonably ok but strategically it is brainless and I'm not sure it knows how to do a naval invasion.

It seems that social policies make a huge difference to being able to maintain a large empire. I like getting Stonehenge for the +8 culture boost it really helps expand quickly. Also you can do a lot of golden age time if you build Chitchen Itza for the +50% culture boost. I spent most of the last 50 turns of my game in a golden age, the cash was rolling in although if golden age was off I was losing up to 100 g per turn.

Has anyone else found the civs less hostile?  I've yet to have war declared on me across three games, from Chieftain to Prince level.

It's amazing how a single-city empire is viable.  I'm doing Egypt for the Wonder bonus, and by the time I hit 1900 and the Renisaince I have all but three wonders, and a 4-5 hex radius from culture.  My city is an unassailable 39 defense with three super scout-crossbow units guarding it that I don't even need since no one goes to war with me.

They wage war all of the time if you settle in their perceived area of influence or if you befriend the wrong minor Civs. But maybe I was just unlucky.

Man, money is absolutely king in this game.  I've pretty much been ignoring culture, expanding like mad, and focusing on happiness and money.  As long as you've got money coming in you're at a massive tech advantage if you just keep the research pacts constantly going.  I think I'm going to go the peaceful route until the industrial era when I'll finally let Bismarck unleash his panzers on the world.

Nth game (I also am a dirty restarter), random standard map, Babylon, Prince.

The map places me in the top of a fat, upside down U.  Aztecs to the western peninsula.  Germans to the east/south, beyond them Japan, England, someone else (who loses early).  China and Rome are on another continent.

I expand like a rabbit once I get something that gives me  :awesome_for_real: happyness (cannot recall what it is that I build, some wonder).  I also have access to a broad mix of luxury items (sheer luck).

[Note: To also chime in an answer Lantyssa's question]  Some civ's are uber-aggressive.  Germany in the game I'm talking about, for example.  Early and regularly I start seeing, "Germany conquers X, Germany conquers Japan, Germany conquers England".

The Aztecs get annoyed at my rapid expansion.  I get tired of their whining and I stomp them.  Now it's just me and Bizmark in the late mid 1800s.

I move ALL of my forces to the small land bridge leading to Germany.  Germany declares war.  I upgrade my two trebuchets to cannon, convert a general into a citadel, and place one cannon in the citadel.  Germany seems pretty happy to throw all their landsrecht (sp?) away against my cannons, to their credit they almost succeed twice.  This starts to disappointed me - annoying that they are throwing away all their forces.

... DOH!  That crafty Bismark has split his forces and, escorted by frigates, a force of knights, swordsman and trebuchets hits my unprotected southern flank.  Two of my cities fall in short order.  I frantically switch my build order to the newly available musketmen and try to hold out for reinforcements by shifting my sole knight (in that area) around to hit and run.  His opposition in the east has disappeared, so I press my advantage there and begin finally take the extremely-tough-nut-to-crack Edinboro.

I hold out until the musketmen begin to come off the line - he is too cautious in the south.  I take another city in the east.  I hold his advancement in the west.

My economy collapses under the weight of musketmen and lack of economic research and building.  My economy now becomes conquest.  I'm at -76 gold per turn.  My unhappiness is at 35.  I play around with switching my cities over to producing wealth, but that is much too small of an impact.

I loose my first cannon in a surprise counter-offensive in the east, along with a musket man.  I retake Bucharest in the west and musketmen are now pouring into the area.  I offer peace, but only if he will return my taken city.  He is too proud.

I see that my "economic strategy" will work if I continue to take a city every other turn, but only after a few disband due to non-payment.

Banks begin to be completed, I lose a fair number of my forces in my eastern-continent march to the south and I have for the first time in 30ish turns a positive cash flow.  Unhappiness is at 37.

He surprises me again with cannon strategically placed.  I lose four musketmen.  The placement of the cannon means I cannot get to them in one move.  The surrounding cites means that a protracted push to the cannon will result in a loss of many musketmen riflemen.  I'm forced to take out a city from the north which is partially protected by mountains.  I lose more riflemen in the process.

Not surprisingly, every so often he requests peace.  I always demand the next city in the list of cities that I'll take.  Each time he tells me to get stuffed.  Then I take the city.

Finally, sadly, Bizmark is no more.

Why can't I see what Ghandi's attitude is toward me? I've been buying up land next to him (why run anything but a gold empire?) and he's warned me several times. I keep buying up land every few turns, but I see no way of telling if he's annoyed with me yet. I do miss the Civ4 mouse-over that gave the attitude with all the modifiers listed. Unless I missing where it is in Civ 5.

And yeah, the movement thing is what I was talking about with stacking units. It's dumb that I can't move a warrior and settler as a stack, or have a warrior stacked with my workers on the frontier. It's just too much of the core game to leave something like that out. I rarely give "go-to" orders unless it's a long trek deep in my own territory. Adding the whole 'pardon me' 'no, excuse me' shuffle, losing movement time due to what are apparently exceedingly tiny roads, it's just obnoxious. I've got three or four units just sitting in the hills because apparently no single hill is large enough to contain them.

Given the new 1-military-per-tile stack hate, taking over barbarians is now a shuffle, too. Send a calvary unit...ooops, they're barb spearmen. Send the calvary back to their hill on the side of the road so they're not in the way of any travelling units on the road, send out the pokey archery unit to go piddle down the spearmen from range.

Maybe uberstacks were a problem in Civ. At least they didn't make the core gameplay of shuffling units around the map a giant hassle.

I think they were trying to make combat more tactical with these limitations but honestly, if you have enough bonuses, your horses can probably take the barbarians;  you get a prediction if you mouse over them.

I've got one game going as russia/standard map/continents/warlord  and I went a bit hyper-expansion due to my civ 4 experience.  There are 5 city states on my continent and there was one other civ.  We were getting along fine until he went after a city state and moved the bulk of his troops against them...my military was more advanced so I moved them up and took out his capital aftera bout 3 turns or archers/swordsmen/knights attacking.

Turns out that was his only city...one other AI on my continent and he only had one city?  I was dissapointed.  There are only two of us left now in the 1800s and we still havent met each other.  The game has gotten kind of dull and has been really easy;  I dont want to restart, but I'm not sure I will have much choice.

If you are annihilating the AI and it's obvious to both sides what's going to happen to their last city, the AI does what any human would do if it couldn't ragequit.


That said, it's hard to tell diplomatically what the AI wants if they don't approach you first. If they call you up, they tend to tell you want they want (Your culture is pathetic, your army is pathetic, stop building in lands I consider mine, stop helping that city state). The only really bad part about is when you want something from them and they won't provide a clue on what their problem is.


If you started with 8 civs and there's only 2 of you left, the other one obviously killed everyone else and owns the other continent....

On my second game, trying out a peaceful cultural victory (stopped at 4 cities, but even that seems too much). This forced me to buddy up to the big military guys in the early game so I would be left alone. Problem is that same military guy (Germany) keeps asking me to go to war with him against everyone else. Finally I cave and decide, well... why not. Might as well keep him happy. He wants to eradicate Japan, which has only two cities left, both of which are tiny outposts right on my border as their main capital was abolished turns and turns ago. So, I do my allied duty and roll down and destroy Japan AS WE AGREED UPON. Then suddenly I get a message from Germany telling me I'm a bloodthirsty brute for beating up on the little guys!! Him and half the world are now hostile towards me. WTF?! Stupid stupid stupid! I had to reload to like 50 turns back.

Has anyone noticed the Angkor Wat wonder seems broken? The description says reduces the CULTURE cost of new territory tiles by 75%. When I built it, I noticed neither the gold cost of buying tiles, or the total culture cost of a new policy changed. It's a bugged, useless building unless it helped in a way I didn't notice...?

I think what Angor Wat does is reduce the (hidden from you) culture cost of the organic expansion your cities do naturally overtime.  So your cities expand faster without costing you money.

Edit: do instead of due

Culture cost of tiles is the amount of culture a city needs to produce to unlock a new tile for allocation. It's the cerise hex in the city UI.

We should start a game testing service, ffs.

I remember reading somewhere that diplomatic relations with other civs has to be gleaned from body language / attitude on the civ leader screens.  Generally other leaders look aloof but when I first met Alexander he was literally smiling at me and actually had more diplomatic options available.

I like this vague system but then again I have only played Civ I so what do I know.

Yes, this is exactly what happened to me in the situation I described above. Bismarck was suddenly scowling, arms folded, and he was standing on the right side of the screen instead of his usual genial, smiling self on the left side of the screen. That, and the tone of their conversation was different. Instead of "Hey buddy" it was "Who let the trash in?"

Napoleon was a complete warmonger in my game. Has attacked me twice, despite us not even bordering each other, and now I'm making him pay for it.

Oh man, I can't believe I didn't realize this in my first game, I actually really like that.  I'll have to stop paying attention to the animation instead of just reading the dialog options.

I was doing fine with my one city civ, until I signed some Open Borders agreements.  Then suddenly I'm at war with almost everyone.  I fended off one guy, took 3 or 4 cities (left them as puppets, naturally) and he still wants all of my resources and gold for peace.    :uhrr:  It's more comedic because he's having to embark units to attack me.

Japan is a bit more serious, he's up to rifleman, and I just started researching Rifling.  This turns out to be a big problem, because rifles murder horses, and pretty much all of my good troops that are still alive are horses.   :oh_i_see:

I hate open borders and almost never use them, in Civ or FFH. I took a deal with Ghandi where he threw that in (he always wants it). A couple turns later, he's marching a settler and calvary through my territory to build in a strip of land between his buddy city state and my northern border. Fuck off, hippy. I scrambled to buy up enough land and crank up the "don't build near me" rhetoric to make him turn around just as he got to the target area.

It annoys me that there don't seem to be any indicator of the path a unit will take when you tell them to "Go To" a specific location or "build roads from here to there". And if you select those units later on while they're in the middle of moving/building their roads, then you have no way of telling WHERE they are going.

And what's up with the whole double-end turn clicking required when units are auto-moving? You click the button, then your units auto-move and you have to click the button AGAIN. When I click End Turn I want the turn to bloody well END. Gah.

And why is there so little feedback when you try to use a ranged unit to attack another unit/city, but you're actually "out of range" or have too few moving points to reach there? You end up right clicking on the target unit/city to attack, but nothing happens, so you right click AGAIN, and nothing happens once more. Repeat until realization of unit not being able to fire that far sets in.

Too many of these small annoyances for my liking. In fact, the more I play this game, the less I like it. *boots up Civilization 4 instead*

You can right click to see the path they'll take (and to see their movement range.)

I got into the habit of clicking Open Borders in Civ IV because it'd create trade routes, which would benefit me economically.  Of course, that doesn't exist in Civ V.

In fact, the only benefit to Open Borders is if you want to position your units next to another civ's city before declaring war, as war decs do not boot all of your units outside of his territory.

Hm. I always right-click (and hold) when moving units. Never seen a path yet. Maybe the path gets disabled at the lower video settings? Hrm.

When you click end turn the first time it's auto-moving all your units with move orders set, and doesn't actually roll over the turn in case something happens with them that makes you go "oh shit!" or in case they have moves left over for you to use.  

As for range, there are manual commands to bring up the ranged attack radius on units, 'b' is the default key if I'm not mistaken.  It will make a little red ring of hexes around them to show their range, taking into account obstructions like hills.  It should be on the commands tab on the left, over the mini-map over the unit portrait because this isn't Starcraft, in any case.

Instead of just right clicking with a ranged unit, select it and click the 'ranged attack' button on the left edge of the screen, that will give you an overlay showing what they can attack.

As Muffled said the reason the turn doesn't end when you're automoving because one of the units you were moving ended up still having movement points left when it got where it was going, or something else happened during the move that the game wants to draw your attention to. Feature, not bug. And a nice feature at that, imo.

Well fuck. Research pacing is totally off from the production speed. There's always a case whereby you can't even build a new unit from scratch before a new tech makes it slightly obsolete. When discoveries takes shorter time than production, I seriously wonder what the design team is smoking when they made it this way.
Maybe they're too busy worshiping gold and using it to upgrade obsolete units. Sigh.

And I cannot use gold to accelerate unit production which is halfway completed? What. The . Fuck? I can summon units out of thin air with magic gold but I cannot purchase half the materials and manpower to complete a half completed batallion?  :uhrr:

Yea, I really don't get that one. Am I missing something, or is there really no way to "complete" something with gold?

There isn't, purchasing is all or nothing.  :?

Yeah the no rushing on something that is in progress is seriously weird.

It is.  Production seems exceptionally low in comparison to other incomes.  Longer tech games don't help, as all the other variables are multiplied as well.

I noticed last night that puppet states will build structures that require strategic resources, preventing you from making use of them.  And since you can't do anything about their build choices, I had to annex the city and change production just to get my uranium back. 

Yeah I don't find a lot of value in the puppet states thing. The game really incentivizes razing captured cities unless they're really good ones because of that, mostly because of factories wanting coal.

We should make a coherent list of all the little things we're annoyed about and then spend some time creating an "F13 Conveinence Mod".

1. Stack Creation for Combat + Non-Combat Unit - "Escort"

2. Puppet states are not allowed to use strategic resources.  Maybe give a negative happiness for this option.  Makes sense - city can't use coal, city is upset.

3. Rush to finish production of units and buildings currently in production.  Pretty much a % left = % spent calculation.

I was off dealing with Napoleon's 25 cities and 100 spearmen (before he got truly dangerous) when Egypt, America, China and the Iroquois all decided the world wasn't big enough for... me, really.

Earlier I had gotten into a bad place conquering my way into massive unhappiness (thank you expansionist neighbor Askia).  I resolved that by gifting the cities to the other civilizations, making sure to alternate between civs that were at war.  :awesome_for_real:  Anyway, they kept each other busy on my eastern flank while I paved the earth on the west - Siam, England, and France alle tote.  Yay for being first to artillery.  When my army was a world away, and after I'd razed my 30th city, the justice league struck from the east overrunning 3 cities before I could blunt the push - all were razed.  For a few turns I was worried about it, then I realized they were razing puppet cities and actually improving my overall happiness.  Iroquois riflemen all over the place at the start, but with my army still 15 turns away I'm stable and stalling for the counter.  Really, could have razed one more and I'd be even happier.  Japan and Greece are still ambivalent to me (or probably more angry at the justice league), Suleiman killed by the Iroquois earlier.  Artillery range = 3 is a huge difference, but maybe it will go slower in the more developed west.

I've done a lot of things poorly (I haven't played civ in a long time), but have a pretty effortlessly commanding lead.  The huge map is a real pain pre-rail and finally undertanding how to spot for the artillery really changed the way I was approaching combat.  Getting pipped repeatedly a hundred turns into a wonder is a pain, especially without production roll-over or rushing without a Great Engineer.  I'm +100 gold per turn, or thereabouts, all my cash going to keep city states harassing my enemies rear flanks so I can sweep in from the front (I did the patronage policy).

1st game: Huge Marathon Pangea Prince - Ze Germans  ~900 turns into it, 35 hours played.  I just wanted to win with Panzers, I'm 1.5 techs away from that in the early 1800s.

Running DX11, a few multimon issues usually when loading the leader diplomacy screens (whole OS UI unresponsive).  Game has been slowish from time to time, but plays for 8-10 hours in one go.  There is clear work left to do, but this looks like a solid base for many years of mods and gaming. production rate << new research.  It'll take me 60 turns to build a new rifleman, but only 27 turns to research Steam. It'll take me 20 turns to get from the former site of Paris back to my own lands and then another 25 just to reach the other end of the map, much less drive my enemies before me along the way.  By the time my unit is deployed it is obsolete - but you have to be in friendly territory to upgrade.

We need to organize a multiplayer game stat.  There are enough people here.  I nominate Saturday.

Anyone else noticed the starting spot matters a fuckton more than it used to?  I mean, it was always important but on the last 2 Prince games I started I was way behind the power curve because I had been surrounded by 1) Jungle on Grasslands then 2) Forest on Grasslands.  Fucking production drought and no way of clearing it forever.   Even moving a turn or two away didn't resolve the jungle start's problem.   

The value of the puppets is they cost way less happiness.  I conquered most of Greece & China with my unhappiness bouncing between like 9 and 15 frowny faces so every city I took I just puppetized until my empire got more in order, then annexed them as happiness permitted.  I think I finally got them all absorbed into the melting pot.

This. It's also helpful to use the various civics that give extra happiness for trade routes to the capital, etc. In the earlyish game, it's fun to run with liberty and piety for that very reason. As you can pull it off, annex the puppets and have your production cake and eat it too.

I generally tend to run with a mix of honor, freedom and rationality. That way, you get happiness, a decent science benny and a cheaper military. Not to mention less food consumption toward the end.

And yeah, keep puppets puppets until you can afford to bring them into the fold. Unless of course they belong to that bitch Katherine the Great. Then you lock the gates and burn 'em down.

Oh my fucking God, I HATE Catherine the Great. Elizabeth I is running a close second. Bitches, am I rite?

60 turns for a rifleman?  Are you on epic speed with all your cities gold farms or...?

I've actually had more trouble with Hiawatha, dude starts shit even when we don't spawn on the same continent. 

I think if you are facing production issues, then you can resort to trading post spam to help with cash flow and buy stuff. Overall dominating in Prince game. Time to move on to King. City State tributing is too rewarding for little investment.

Marathon game speed + auto workers + specialist buildings = crap production. 
My pop 17 capital has:
 27 production
 59.5 Gold
 42.75 Science
 10 Culture
in 1900 - 40 turns to build Infantry.
Default citizen focus brings production down to 16 and a 56 turn build (and up to 35 with production focus - drops build time to 26 turns).
I haven't played civ in a few versions, so I didn't see the specialist building trap coming.  That and I liked the older more pronounced railroads - can't really tell what is railroaded now.

The marathon game speed is kind of ... wacky to start with anyway.

I thought I had enough patience for a marathon game, but it turns out, not so much.  Epic is pretty much my sweet spot.

I think Epic is going to be my sweet spot as well.

Lay railroad on top of roads.  It makes the path more well-defined, even if it takes a bit longer later in the game.

Elizabeth never bothers me, but Caesar likes to talk a lot of shit until I roll over a city or two. Oddly, Napoleon is always really nice to me, even while he's starting wars with everyone else on the planet.

I played one game as Ghandi last night in quick fashion. Built only one city, went for the entirely cultural route, and ended up winning the culture victory with 7 turns left in the game. It was quite a diplomatic balancing act, but a lot of quick fun. I think the entire game lasted 2 hours on standard speed.

The space race game I played on Huge took something like 8+ hours on standard speed, I don't really feel a need to move it up at this point.

I am frankly amazed at how viable small empires can be. It's one of the nice balancing aspects they added to the game, making juggernaught cities that are nigh unbeatable.

Really makes mountains something worthwhile having around.

If it was Bismark instead of Ghandi I was up against, the mountains that are a hassle to move units through would become a blessing. My core two cities are in an amazingly defensible position. Lolghandi.

The problem with puppet states is that their AI is completely broken. I don't mind that they fixed the exploit that allowed you to control what they were building, but they should at least have fixed the very stupid problem with puppet states. the normal AI doesn't suffer from this, so not sure why puppet states do.

For some reason, despite the fact puppet states cannot build units, they prioritise unit buildings above everything else apart from monuments / temples. (And coliseums if your empire is unhappy). They even build the very specialist buildings like the forge or the stables. That adds a huge amount to their maintenance, meaning puppets often end up costing you a ton of cash for no benefit. at the same time, they don't even build libraries or market places - the very basic buildings that are first on any city's list. Instead, they even go for Military Academies first - a building you *definitely* do not want in every building in your empire.

So fix the exploit - but don't leave puppets completely pointless as they are now, stuck building buildings they cannot actually use nor need whilst ignoring the vital cheap upgrades every city should have. even the AI doesn't do that.

I had a good game as America over the weekend.  Playing with the advanced settings can produce some interesting results.  For that game I went with archipelago, high seas, wet, hot, fast combat and no start bias.  I cranked up the resource setting a bit as well.  What I got was an Island that would have enough room for 2 mediocre cities.  Undaunted, my brave people went to work.  My decision was one city on my primary island which meant finding more land fast.

Two ships was enough to make some lucky finds.  A city state located on a nearby landmass.  For whatever reason they were easy to befriend.  They asked for a natural wonder that my explorers found and help against barbarians.  The other important  discovery was a pocket of land large enough to support 3 more cities.  This pocket was SW of my islands and I controlled the only shallow water entry to the area.  

After establishing another city or two I encounter Bismarck up the coast from my City-State friends.  He immediately makes me feel welcome by calling my military puny and setting up a city that blocks off my sea access to the rest of the world.  This should be easy.  Request for open borders denied.  Ok.  I guess we infrastructure up a bit.  Found an island off his Western coast for a city.  

A short time later some interesting events take place.  Bismarck starts alternating between contacting me to insult my military and offering open borders which he then refuses to accept.  This must be a prelude to war so I crank up ship production.  The next thing I know the Germans declare war on my friends.  At this point I have all of two pike units as a ground military but my caravel fleet is master of the seas where I roam.  Not wanting to start a fight with him (having no iron or horses, what a shock) I give my ground unit to my friend and gift back the unit he gives me.  

It becomes clear that my friend will simply not hold out, swordsmen and the like are hammering his defenses.  For him to live I must become directly involved.  My navy begins a successful bombardment of his troops.  Fearing the counter attack one ship is ordered on patrol up his coast.  I found his reinforcements coming all right, lots of them and they were on ships.  Naval commanders quickly swept up the coast sinking his transports.  Then I pressed the advantage a bit, bombarding a couple of units that made it to land.

As the powerful American navy (6 Caravels) closed in on his port towns he asked for peace, offering me substantial gold, tribute, several horses, open borders and of course peace for me and my allies.  A short time after that he is interested in research deals.  Then, rather strangely he declares that my ally city state is under his protection and warns me not to meddle in his sphere of influence.  I guess he figures that no one can protect them from the hostiles (him) better than himself.  Hard to argue with logic like that.

While prepping myself for a land war with the Germans (they have iron and no doubt everything else in time) I ran across the Japanese.  Oda might be even crazier and we were at war soon, but that is a different story.

Can city-states take over other cities and expand their empires?  I haven't been playing with enough military units to gift more than what they need for basic defense.

Not that I have ever seen.  They seem content to mill around in or near their borders, even when at war. 

If a city state is hostile, I don't even bother with it. The decay is too much of a PITA to keep up.

City-states in certain circumstances will take over cities from regular countries, yes. Usually they will raze cities they capture, but since you can't raze capitals they will hang on to those if they capture them. Also for whatever reason Bucharest in my huge map game captured a city, started razing it, and then it never burned down and the razing icon went away. That latter one may have been a bug.

Fun times: having a technological lead on everyone, and feeding advanced units to city-states that are at war with other player countries. Watching them roll over entire empires with their gift units is hilarious, and you get the benefit of potentially crippling an enemy without having to pay any maintenance or even pay any real attention to the process. It is especially nice when you have a bunch of city-states allied and you can just gift the free military units the militaristic states are handing you to whoever is under attack at a given time.

I had a City-state declare war on me, snag an outlying town, hold on to if for about 6 turns, and then /RAGEQUIT raze the captured city after I took his capital from him.

That's actually pretty hilarious and probably close to a real player response.  :awesome_for_real:

I tried to find a U MAD? console query, but I didn't want the game to format the drive in question.

Did the city-state declare war of its own accord, or was it allied with a major state? I've never seen a city-state go to war by itself except in the case of the "all the city states unite against the guy who keeps attacking city-states" event.

"City States Unite!" is always a hilarious bucket of fail in every game I've seen. Japan steamrolled them all while I was building wonders in one of my games.

That's why you start handing them tanks and paratroopers and shit!

The last version of Civ I played was 2- many fond memories of sending boatloads of diplomats to North America to buy every Iroquois city  :oh_i_see:

I bought this one, though, and here are my thoughts:

(1)  Taking a city is a bitch.  I usually need to batter at it for a few turns with multiple ranged units, and pray that the AI is dumb enough to not bombard the archers (usually, it will- or the lowest health melee if one is near death).

(2)  Am I doing it wrong to try to have a lot of cities?  Everyone here seems to be implying they have these mini-empires of 2-6 cities.  How can you possibly defend yourself when 15 Germans show up on your doorstep? 

(3)  Am I supposed to leave the city-states alive?  I just hate having other people near me, but usually once I attack more than 1 everyone in the game declares war on me. 

(4)  Worker control is wonky.  Sometimes i have to instruct them to start something 3 turns in a row before they'll start.  Other times they'll stop mid-project and I have to re-give the commands.

(5)  For God's sake, let me MOVE through other units even if I can't stack them.  Even moving units around in my empire is a fucking hassle.


Overall, having fun, I just need to catch up on several generations of mechanics. 

(1)  Taking a city is a bitch.  I usually need to batter at it for a few turns with multiple ranged units, and pray that the AI is dumb enough to not bombard the archers (usually, it will- or the lowest health melee if one is near death).

You kind of need ballista/catapults/trebuchets. One or two turns and the cities fall.

(2)  Am I doing it wrong to try to have a lot of cities?  Everyone here seems to be implying they have these mini-empires of 2-6 cities.  How can you possibly defend yourself when 15 Germans show up on your doorstep?  

Culture and happiness becomes a real issue after you get more than say 8 cities. I don't generally go above that number. If you want a culture victory, don't go above 5.

(3)  Am I supposed to leave the city-states alive?  I just hate having other people near me, but usually once I attack more than 1 everyone in the game declares war on me.  

Well, they're pretty strong and if you push for economic domination, you can buy them all off -- any allied ones will declare war when you do. Also, they feed you culture and any resources in their area. Downside, it's kind of expensive and sometimes less hassle to just conquer them.

(4)  Worker control is wonky.  Sometimes i have to instruct them to start something 3 turns in a row before they'll start.  Other times they'll stop mid-project and I have to re-give the commands.

Workers re-activate if they are within sight of an enemy - this is so you notice and have an opportunity to move them out of the way.

(5)  For God's sake, let me MOVE through other units even if I can't stack them.  Even moving units around in my empire is a fucking hassle.

You can move through, right click on destination square. You can't do it with the keyboard.

Thanks for the advice- good stuff.

So far The Forbidden Palace is the must have wonder because of this. The -50% (I think) to Empire Size related unhappiness is *huge*.

Elizabeth bothers me CONSTANTLY. I took great satisfaction running over her smug, irritatingly-voiced ass with my RIGHTEOUS IROQUOI ARMY OF DOOM after she kept bothering me.

That game was sort of funny, I totally didn't intend to become a huge pissy empire, but first Elizabeth started bothering me, so I ran her off the continent. Well, she had a GIGANTIC chunk of it, so the other two people on it (Siam and Germany) take this to mean I am coming for them next and declare war on me first in a hilariously emo way. Bismark in particular was all, "I know you're going to crush me, BUT I AM GOING DOWN FIGHTING, BITCH." Who was I to deny him his glorious death?

What you really get from 2-6 cities empire isn't exactly a superb production, but instead you gain happiness points. The happy points contribute towards Golden Age points. Trigger that and suddenly things build so much faster like in Civ IV. I still haven't got the hang of it, but the social policies are really game-changing. Want to build wonder? Go for Tradition. Honor are for warmongers etc.

Also, try to keep your empire compact and connected by roads to get that gold flowing. Grab luxury resources, and don't be shy to sell it for 30 turns at 300 gp to other civs. These gold can be used to purchase city states loyalty. For 500 gp you might get a military unit, culture, or extra food. On top of that, you gain their luxury resources and moar happy faces. Also, pay attention to what your city demands, make luxury resource swaps as needed to trigger we love the king effect. That way, their growth will double.

Something that was perhaps not self-evident at first, by the way, is you can save your policy points up and dump them into multiple buys all at once later. This is handy if you don't want to get any of the ancient age policy trees in a particular game, you could just pile into Patronage for example once you hit medieval age.

How?  It always takes me to "choose policy" rather than "next turn".

I really hate how in the endgame (or after winning-game) you get prompted by that Bushism quote everytime future tech cycles.

Right click on the "Make a Policy" thing.

On turn 350 of my first game, hoping for a science victory but worried I might get delayed by the production of the spaceship parts. Definitely going to be smarter about choosing a role for cities my next game. I really like that money has a more significant role and that the need for having a unit in every city is reduced. Overall I like the changes and I can't wait for a strong mod with more diversity to come out.

Airing of grievances:

- Don't make the puppet cities build a bunch of expensive military buildings when they can't actually build units that would use them. Also, allow me to raze a puppet city without annexing it first.

- Provide some information regarding what my army is costing and how I could save money by disbanding units. Sometimes I get 6 gold income back from something as simple as deleting a worker, sometimes I get nothing.

- Allow me to view not only the current income/production/science, etc. of a city but also the potential maximum they can achieve. A city that can pump out a lot of production will have a low value when you have it focused on something else. This makes it very difficult to decide which bonuses I want to put in which cities, especially as far as wonders are concerned.

- Have the "Stop City Growth" option discard any extra food and force the city to be stagnant. Sometimes there's an extra +1 or +2 left over and it eventually leads to growth and the resulting reduction in happiness.

<Game finishes loading and goes to main menu>

Awesome.

I'm still waiting for a Civ to bring back Test of Time's multi-map functionality. Can I dream that's in the first expansion?

FFH3 with undersea, underground, and planar layers would make me squee.

Or just hit the close button in the bottom left once you are in the policy screen.

There's a theoretical exploit in that you can build up a gigantic empire, then sell all your cities to other civilizations to get back down to 1 city and buttloads of cash. You've spent the whole game stockpiling 10 cities+buildings worth of culture, and you can blow it all for super cheap policies at the end. Haven't tried it, but it made sense when I read it.

At about 900 AD in my second game, and have kind of hit the wall.  Bumped it to prince after winning a chieftain game around 1600, this time I had a couple touch and go situations with some early barbs and a decent fight defending a city state from a six unit army with two units.  But I'm at a point where the 3 AI civs on my continent are down to their capitals and paying me everything they have to avoid war.  I can't imagine wiping the other continent(s) is going to be particularly challenging.  I guess I could restart and go for a non-military victory, but I'm a world explorer at heart so...

A couple observations:
Having to decide the fate of a traded or captured city without being able to see it is obnoxious.
Maritime city-states are too good. 
The current tradeoff you get for expanding quickly is happiness/culture vs. science/gold/production.  Not very balanced.  And it turns expansion planning into just making sure you can capture a luxury, buy one off a city state, or build a couple happiness buildings.  As bad as it is for my playstyle, it's much more balanced if poor or excessive expansion hurts your gold production.
For me DX10/11 is slow as heck, DX9 has messed up city tile production graphics.

I think you're underselling how good the culture policy stuff is. Expanding a lot *really* slows down your policy acquisition, and they're very powerful. I think the tradeoff is pretty big.

Buyers beware - Civ5 DVD version requires Steam. If I can't find a way to play without steam I will be returning this game.

Show us on the doll where Steam touched you.

No, really. I paid for Civ5 and instead got DVD with steam installer. WTF?!

It requires Steam because it uses Steam Cloud.  It's a good thing.  You can disable it if you want to, but I don't know why you would.

No, you don't understand... it *only* installs Steam on my machine. I am assuming they expect me to download the game?! Is there even a way to play it offline?

Uh, yeah you can play game offline. It also installs the game from the disk when you try to install it. Did you read anything about how this works or did you just ragequit when it prompted you to Steam?

What? RTFM?!!

/RAGEQUIT

It was allied to a major civ.

Being able to preload the game and just play without having to run to Best Buy and spend a half an hour loading a disk, then try to find it every time I play, and then try to find it a year later after I'm bored with it? Please bring on more of that misery.

I actually rebought Civ IV through Steam because I got tired of looking for the disk when I wanted to reinstall it. Life is just too short to spend an hour in my basement, then an hour reinstalling stuff, just to play a game for a few hours.

I did not know it was packaged that way.  Of course I do not read all the websites.  I did look at the box, steam was not immediately obvious.  To be fair my examination was not terribly careful.  If it is listed in system requirements I certainly missed it by not looking.  Since Frontier SUCKS, there was hope for a non steam version.  As it was the purchase was made at hated Best Buy.

Back to game news!

Yesterday I discovered the power of Germany's barbarian conversion perk.  3 of 4 camps gave me troops to soften up the Persians and Romans for very early elimination and mastery of MY continent. 

Playing with aircraft carriers led to discovery of how abusive rebase is.  Build your aircraft here and rebase to the other side of the world instantly?  NO PROBLEM!

Split out the Steam bullshit.

Back to "Just one more turn!"

I 'finished' the demo and then immediately bought the full version.  Elizabeth, Huge, Epic, Continents.  I played up to ~900 BC last night.

Adding in promotions, lightouse wonder and civ bonus and I have a Trireme that moves 8 hexes per turn.   :awesome_for_real:

I still haven't uncovered most of the map but I think I missed the boat on discovering ruins.

I'm still playing the tutorial map in small bits, hah. I could stomp Ghandi but I WANT TO NUKE HIM! I'm so close, just got some uranium. I'm such a turtle.

Statue of liberty is a great wonder.

mech infantry vs musketmen = awesome.

I'm ready to try a longer game I think. For some reason standard just feels short.

I haven't had time to play Civ 5 on my PC, so I grabbed Civ Rev on my iPhone (On sale for .99) while at work. What a bad fucking idea. Figured I would try a couple turns and next thing I know it's 45 minutes later. Total productivity killer.

No nuke use for me yet.  By the time I reach them there is either no need due to my dominance or no use because the game is going a different route.  They also seem a serious pain just to reach.  My experience is also the game becomes cumbersome at those stages as well.  Lots of clicking next turn as my machine chugs along.

Maybe playing with custom settings will make modern war machines more viable.  Has anyone used nukes?  Do they create radiation your workers can clean up as before?

Yes. Fallout within 2-3 tiles radius of the city. Fallout cost 2 movement points. My infantry was caught in the blast and was reduced to 1 HP. The city is near death as well as I marched another infantry in to take over Turkey's and last capital for domination victory.

Don't know if this was already mentioned, but apparently the mod tools are available for download now on Steam (Library ---> Tools ---> Sid Meier's Civilization V SDK).

All I want is a map editor like they had in Civ 4. My dirty little secret is that I like to give myself all the important resources when the game starts when I'm playing at higher difficulty levels.

Yeah, with online achieves I don't think we're ever going to get that.  Can't have people "cheating" to flip these meaningless virtual bits.

I'm so weak...played the demo a bit, was entertained...one-click purchase.  :oh_i_see:

Diplomacy sucks in this game.  You help a nation for years and they go hostile to you.  You send strategic resources to a nation being steamrolled and they go hostile to you.  You can gift units to city-states but not other nations?  Or am I missing something?

UN's built but I can't get the votes.  I've bought off the city-states but I'm a vote shy.  No one's started the Apollo Project, even though it's 2020, maybe I should change gears.  I have nukes sitting off the coast of Persia to give me...options.  Persia has offered peace, but only if I give them every strat resource I have.  No dice jerks, my navy controls the oceans!

A very tense, enjoyable game, but I am just not understanding diplomacy. 

So I start another game on a huge earth map, and it spawns me as Germany right around where New York city should be.  I have Hiawatha to the north of me, but he got boned with a shitty Arctic spawn and is stuck with one city.  Gandhi, however, spawned down in Mexico, and he's already founded Mumbai in Florida.  I can see that the little bastard has designs on Texas, which I know I'll need later in the game for its sweet, sweet oil.

I bide my time, whoop as many barb encampments as I can, and send my 12 brute horde against the diapered one.  2000 BC and North America is basically mine, but I'll leave Hiawatha alone.  For now.

I beat Emperor difficulty with Japan horseman rush. I think they need to reconsider giving 4 movement units so early in the game.
Nerf it down to 3 and maybe the AI has a chance to DO something before I pillage every single shit they had and laughed at their faces.
They start on a chase outside their border and got consequently plinked by Chariot archers and destroyed by horsemen.

It's not even Alexander's Companion's Cavalry, which is faster than mech. infantry. Seriously wtf. 5 MOVEMENT POINTS?

Quite disappointed with a lack of scenarios. I'll have to wait for WW2 mod or something. And fixed starting points for Earth please. I played India and spawned in North America? Sucks dick to be honest.

Also, do away with Universal Happiness. They screwed themselves with that one. I cannot for one imagine why anyone thinks it makes goddamn sense for everyone in Washington DC to be cheering on the streets when Hawaii built a theater. Individual cities shd have their own happiness rating. Not this retarded aggregate empire whereby Nazi Germany would be crying buckets of unhappiness due to 'overcrowding' after they occupied the whole France in the first few months of WW2, thereby forcing Hitler to employ Gas Chambers (raze in Civ V) to keep happiness up.

Actually, it looks like they did, sort of.  Download the SDK from steam.  Find your config for civ5.  Edit it and change EnableTuner to 1.  Start up civ 5 and the firetuner, load the game and alt tab.  There seems to be a bug right now where resources dropped in your border will not be usable.

Just rush to blanket tech.

I'm playing as Japan and basically ended up on a Continent of my own by start position. I proceeded to settle that whole area, then went across the ocean to find Arabia. He's a total dishrag, so I sent over two horsemen and a capapult to plink one of his outlier cities on the coast. That enraged his little city-state in the South. After I take his city, he immediately sues for peace by giving me all his resources, all his gold, and an open border treaty. I take the deal because little city-state is about to get a bitch slapping. After taking that are, I now have two footholds on his continent, and I'm already pressing into another unsettled island with two city-states alone on it.

I have no idea where the rest of the 4 players are, and I've exposed 55% of the map. Also, the "Bushido" ability mixed with Samuri is RIDICULOUSLY overpowered in the mid-game. They are a walking wrecking crew at that point.

Last night when I was in the territory of someone I had open borders with I noticed there was a gift option on the extended actions menu.

Neither method of unit gifting is particularly user friendly.  You either need to be in their territory and have the unit in question active (with movement left) using the gift action OR talk with the people, offer a unit gift, find it on the map and click it. 

I guess you could say that they're gay?

You have to physically walk the unit into the nation's territory and then one of the unit options is "Gift". Of course, you need open borders to do that in the first place, so yeah... pretty uneven.

Another small gripe.  I would like to run trade missions with something other than great merchants.  Even if I am restricted to great merchants how about letting me trade with other civs instead of only city-states? 

Also, gifting a unit to a city-state ports the unit across the map.

Weird that it works with city-states and not with civs.

The inconstancies are embarrassing.

Note, however, that this is an inconsistent expectation in the play of the game and neither a crash to desktop nor memory leak. 
While the game would be better with these types of issues resolved, the game is at least ready to be seen in public.  This is unfortunately more rare than it ought to be.

On Tiny Map, Emperor difficulty, second fastest turn speed:

Aztec and Napoleon are crippled by archipeligo maps, for instance, while Arabia, Iroquois, and America are just beating me to the punch (Haiwatha pipped me with a spaceship 2 turns before the UN vote that would have won for me).  Win some and lose some, 65 hours played so far and only a couple 'not responding' moments when I've multi-mon transitioned in a critical section (music skipping is a telltale sign).  That's so much more reliable than other releases this year that I can be patient with the equivalent of rules in need of errata.

Another unfortunate inconsistency, the UI layout is easier to use with DX9 than with the DX11 settings.  Not sure why that would be the case, though the auto-detect for my resolution and graphics settings was better for the DX11.

Question since I don't have the game - Do resources always spawn in their historical location on Earth maps?  Or can you toggle that?

It also sounds like the AI is horrible at anything naval, as in every other version of Civ.  Oh well, I guess I did always prefer Pangea anyway...  :oh_i_see:

On the one Earth game I played so far, neither resources nor country locations were historical.

In my limited experience, naval AI is defensive.  The Persian Navy liked for me to move in and bombard a city, then they'd call up destroyer's and ironclads(!) to box me in while land based artillery blasted away.  Haven't seen much from them offensively but they do enjoy sending out transports to their doom.

I think it's an improvement from Civ IV but like I said, limited experience.

Yeah, that was the biggest irritant to me. The whole point of the Earth maps is predictability of enemy locations and resources.  If you randomize both you're just playing on a really shitty continents map.  America in particular (north and south), I'm looking at you.  Hello West Coast is useless due to Mountains and Desert with no resources and room only for 1 poor city.

Stockholm was taking up the whole west coast in my game anyway.  :why_so_serious:

Mind you I'm not sure I care that much about the historicity of the maps given that America could be there in 4000 BC.

First game...was doing well...sniped the Aztecs early because they were getting too close and block some resources. Wipe them and a city-state that folks are annoyed with, expand throughout...and Rome walks in with heavy infantry. My Hiawatha are...not that heavily armed.


What sort of strats do people use? I just pump workers and auto-improve, and sort of go up the research and building lines haphazardly. I figure you need to get just about everything anyway.

You do need all the techs eventually, but there are some that are VERY worth rushing toward.  Swordsmen or hosemen early, any other key military tech (knights, artillery, PANZERS JA), various techs for specific wonders you want to beat everyone else to.  Try to set some goals and work towards them as quickly as you can, then fill in the other stuff later.

As for auto-improve on workers, that shit will gimp your cities all to hell.  Figure out what you want a city to be focused on based on the terrain and build improvements with an eye toward that, keeping a positive food balance at each step if possible.

As for Roman legions: buy him off until you hit medieval tech.   :oh_i_see:

Playing on King/Large with a few extra civs and less city states and finding it more satisfying.  While I dislike the concept of playing against a rigged deck, in this game I'm realizing that AI cheating allows it to produce and grow at a rate approximating a decent player.  Like other people have pointed out the AI likes workers and trading posts *way* too much too early in the game.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned... I think horsemen are too good for their build cost, especially against cities, at least in the early game.  3x fresh horsemen unimpeded can blitz a capital and a neighboring major city in 4-5 turns with no losses  - they can move in and attack from outside city range, they can get ready to attack a second city on the same turn they capture a city, they fortify after attacking in a turn, virtually every unit levels up at some point during the attack and gets a bonus heal if needed.  I've done this to about 8 empires straight now.  Speedcap 2 cities, make ridiculous peace deal and allow your happiness and units to recover, speedcap and raze last crummy holdings.

People keep talking about setting up catapults and other early siege equipment and I'm not sure why they'd bother.  I drag the catapult off the back of my army every time I try to use one.

Cav are hilariously strong in cities compared to infantry. Not sure why. I actually had a situation where my spearmen couldn't hurt a city state, they'd get wiped out every time they tried to hit it, even though two cats had reduced it to nothing. So I had to run some cav over just to cap the city.

It's even funnier with whatever civ gets replacement knights with a bonus against cities.

Spear units are very weak for their tech level in absolute terms, they're only beastly against horses because of the double strength bonus they get against mounted.  Hence, very poor city takers.  Combat strength imbalance seems to scale down the chance of damage against the stronger unit very quickly, so even a 2 HP city with high strength could very well be suicide for lower strength units.

Horsemen are a bit OP, I would agree.  The horse resource is so abundant that controlling enough of it to make a full army, unlike aluminum or uranium, is trivial.


This has been said before, I think, and you may already know, but unless you customized the game and set it to generate a new random seed on every load, you'll get exactly the same combat outcomes every time if you're loading and replaying a fight, hoping to get lucky.