Civilization V- Might actually be good now. Stay tuned.

[Sky]

On the game I'm currently (on hiatus from) playing, I'm egypt and wtf we get a + to building wonders and I'm on a good building site and rushing wonders and I get out-built like MAD. It's probably a driving factor in the ensuing bloodshed as I rampaged across the continent.

[Ingmar]

Gotta get the tech first too.

[MrHat]

Ran through once with Venice.

Good fun.  Won by a large tourist margin.  Took a real long time even though I was pretty capped out on what I could do.

Never once got the Merchant to be able to buy a city-state though.  Probably hurt me in the long run.

[Mithas]

Played as Shoshone on Emperor. Was doing really well until Zulu's DOW'd me. Got absolutely steamrolled. Time to take it down a notch I guess.

[Tannhauser]

Played as Assyria tonight.  Took Honor then the Statue of Zeus and then barracks and Great General for maximum firepower.  It was almost 0 B.C. before I nervously launched my assault on Persia.  I shouldn't have worried.  My siege towers knocked Persia THE FUCK OUT! By Marduk's beard, one hit did about 65% of the towns hit points! So I took the 'Assyrian Good Time Revival Army' to Delhi where it took me one turn to send Gandhi packing.  See where non-violent protests get with Assyria?  Got two wonders and a nice poem as booty.

Of course my trading partners freaked out and denounced me (but they still took my camels and gold).  I could have gone on, but even with puppeting all the slave cities I had tough issues with my happiness.

Does building roads assist trade caravans any?  And is a trade route only good for one circuit?  I noticed I had to keep assigning my caravans to new routes. 

I noticed that gold on ground tiles has been heavily nerfed.  Ninevah had zero gold income, that was weird, but I think I like the new city specializations.

FUN

[Sophismata]

I was going to buy and play this tonight. But, apparently I'm not allowed to play until the day after tomorrow.

So, fuck them. I'll buy something else.

[Yegolev]

tl;dr

Is this a good game?  Also, are the min specs actually min specs?  I'm being asked to recommend a computer purchase based on someone wanting to play CivV.

[Shannow]

Its a great game. I would definatly go over the min specs as load times can be quite long and the game can bog down a bit in the late game.

[WayAbvPar]

It seems like they optimized it a bit too...doesn't feel quite as sluggish now.

Also- Winged Hussars are rapewagons. Can't take over a city without some indirect fire help (unless you have A LOT of them), but they kick the shit out of anything not behind walls, and are tough enough/fast enough to hit a city and then move out of range of fire in the same turn if you do it right. 

[MrHat]

Wow.

Brazil is a cultural monster.  Find a starting area with some nice inland jungle.  Hit machinery and rock out those brazilwood upgrades.  Then rush acoustics and enjoy a crazy amount of culture and science from the jungle.  Combine it with 100% more tourism during golden ages and it's pretty awesome.

I started getting beat on right as I hit Modern age.  Boom - unlocked tenets and picked up Freedom.

Here's a quick way to win the game - Freedom L2 Volunteer Army insta gives you 6 Foreign Legion.  Guess what? Brazil's 70 strength unique unit upgrades from those Foreign Legion.

This is an insane amount of fire power when you get it.

[Flinky]

Tried a game as the Shonomish last night. The "pick what your scout finds" ability does not allow you to pick tech for every ruin.

The list of choices seems to be randomised per Ruin. It's entirely possible to be able to choose a free tech for each Ruin you claim, though you'd have to get fairly lucky to do so (I managed 4 techs out of 7 Ruins which is still  ).

[Teleku]

Its random?  Seemed to me when I played that after you chose something, the option would disappear until you hit another three villages, then it would come back.  Maybe it just randomized that way for me, but it seemed to do it for every choice...

[koro]

If you don't have Brave New World yet, it's $10 off on Steam until 1 PM EST today.

[Maledict]

Yeah, not exactly happy about that. Significant discounts on games on the day of release strikes m eas wrong, especially given how that looks for your pre-order customers.

Anywhose, it is absolutely worth getting. This is now definitely the best version of Civ there has been - time for a thread title change I think!

(NO COMMENTS ABOUT FALL FROM HEAVEN!!! ;-) )

[Merusk]

Pre-order on Steam was 25% off when I got it. 33% is only a few bucks, I'm not upset about it.

[Tebonas]

Ath least here in Europe Pre-order was 10%, I know because I bought it yesterday.  

[Trippy]

Pre-order in the US right before launch was 10% off too -- that's what I paid for mine. So it goes.

[MrHat]

I wonder how starting a game in Modern times and slowing it down to Marathon would play.

Just seems that once stuff gets crazy in the 1850s+, the game almost ends due to tourism or congress.

[naum]

I wonder how starting a game in Modern times and slowing it down to Marathon would play.

Just seems that once stuff gets crazy in the 1850s+, the game almost ends due to tourism or congress.

Repost from Lum's BF…

1st time ever I lost a game by non-military means -- was 1st in score, leading in everything, a real friendly world but then it seems Poland pulled out more city-state support in World Congress/UN and was elected supreme world leader. All of that tourism and art and great works meant nothing due to city-state shenanigans.

Not sure if I like the modern game plus stage tinkering. Despite all the graphical wondrousness it feels like an old school text game with blinded odds on how things are going to shake down. At least with units and buildings I know (generally) the odds of success v. failure and risk / reward to be undertaken, but these acts are more like black magic, at least in my initial comprehension.

[Ingmar]

The diplomatic victory has always been something that can get you out of nowhere, its just a question of figuring out how the delegates work now. With the tourism/cultural victory, you just need to keep an eye on that screen so you can take action if you notice someone pumping out tons of tourism.

EDIT: I *do* think it devalues the space win a lot, since it is generally easier to win with one of the other ones before that comes along as an option - but that, again, was always kind of true of the diplomatic victory.

[MrHat]

Actually, this has me curious what worlds everyone is playing in?

I just do a small world with default settings, standard pace, random world.

[Ingmar]

Typically standard for me.

[Merusk]

My preferred setup is standard speed, huge fractal world.

[Teleku]

Standard speed, Pangaea.  I haven't bothered with a non-pangaea game in civ in decades, just because they never could get the navel invasion AI correct.

[MrHat]

Standard speed, Pangaea.  I haven't bothered with a non-pangaea game in civ in decades, just because they never could get the navel invasion AI correct.

Still the case.  Venice on an island map is easy.

[Tannhauser]

Playing Duststorm map, standard size.  Trying a culture win with Morocco, but Egypt has a nearly insurmountable wall of culture.  Which has led me to the World Congress where I have a stranglehold on it thanks to Morocco's ability to gain obscene amounts of gold and buy city-states.  Using the WC, I've sent the Ottoman Empire into bankruptcy and disorder.  I've banned Salt (Egypt's main lux) and placed a trade embargo on them as well.

The WC might be unbalanced.  Get the gold, get the CS's, get the WC, get the diplo victory. Or maybe this is just Morocco.   More play is needed, but I'd hate to have the WC against me.

Culture now is...weird.  Archaeology is fun but the great art collecting is fiddly and I'm not sold on it just yet.  It's tough sledding, but maybe that's due to Egypt being such a culture whore itself.  Again, more play needed.  I do know I won't play another culture strat on normal speed. 

Aside from the WC, diplomacy is really sweet.  It feels much more reasonable.  My world is split into Freedom (me, America, Babylon) and Order (Egypt, Ottomans).  Leaders seem to more more logical overall.  I used to switch off Espionage, but the new system seems great and I like the diplomats gathering intel and sending them around to find out how other civs will be voting.  A bit fiddly as well, but fuck it.


tl;dr Great xpac but I'm not sold on culture/tourism and the WC yet.

[Ingmar]

You actually kind of need a lot of cities for a culture win now, because you need a lot of museums (etc) to hold everything to generate enough tourism. It's very different from before, where going big would slow your culture gain down too much.

That said you may have given up too early, I thought I was never going to catch the people with thousands of culture saved up but somehow I did.

[WayAbvPar]

I always play Huge world, Epic or marathon speed. I like exploring and having my 'modern' units last a few turns before they are obsolete. Usually randomize the map, but that seems to mean 'Panagaea" since the last 4 or 5 I have played have all ended up on one continent.

I finally finished a game (which is exceedingly rare for me...I save a game, then next time I come back always want to start a new game). Was going for a culture win with Pedro but ended up launching a spaceship instead with 3/8 remaining civs under my cultural sway.

[Merusk]

Heh.. same thing happened with my last game, also with Pedro. "Fuck it, it'll be 35 more turns to put Siam under my cultural umbrella and I can build the space ship in 6."

[Ingmar]

Interesting. When I did my first new culture win the world was just getting around to Great War Infantry when it finished.

[Paelos]

My first culture win I also had to steam roll Ghengis and Catherine because they didn't like my awesome wonderness in the 1900s.

At that point I was just ticking off military units because I'd run out of upgrades, so I figured I'd use them.

[Ingmar]

Mine was an oddly non violent game. Nobody ever war dec'd me the entire time, the one war I fought was to take Athens when Alexander beat me to a wonder I wanted.

[Paelos]

I have a "get off my island" mentality no matter what I'm chasing. If I start on a continent, it's fucking Thunderdome. Only one of us is going ocean to ocean.

[Ingmar]

What I mean by oddly was that none of the other AIs ever came after me. I got denounced a number of times, but that's it. I'm used to much more aggression from the AI players.

[Salamok]

tl;dr

Is this a good game?  Also, are the min specs actually min specs?  I'm being asked to recommend a computer purchase based on someone wanting to play CivV.

I'm with Yegolev here, 50 page thread and not sure what I am looking for.  I don't currently own any Civ games and I want it on PS3 so I can play it from the couch, am I looking to buy Civ V for PS3 and this will be a paid downloadable content for it or am I looking for the Civ V: Brave New World as a complete game or is this in the gold edition or something...