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

[Slyfeind]

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.

[Merusk]

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).

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.

[Ingmar]

I thought you just bought buildings outright with gold now?

[Stormwaltz]

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.

Personally, I was hoping for something akin to Dale's Combat Mod for Civ4, in which stacks attacked each other as whole units.

[Velorath]

I thought you just bought buildings outright with gold now?

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

[Ingmar]

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.

[Daeven]

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.

[kildorn]

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.  More info.

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.

[Tannhauser]

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. 

[ffc]

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.

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.

[bhodi]

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.

[Malakili]

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.

[Tannhauser]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[pants]

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

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

[bhodi]

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 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?

[Sky]

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

[Demonix]

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

[WayAbvPar]

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   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.

[Rasix]

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

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

[Tebonas]

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

[Draegan]

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.  

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.

[Musashi]

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."

[Reg]

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.

[rk47]

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

[Trouble]

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.

[kildorn]

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 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.

[Hawkbit]

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?

[Sky]

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

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.

[Malakili]

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?

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.

[Modern Angel]

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.

[Kitsune]

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.

[Jobu]

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.

[Trouble]

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

[CmdrSlack]

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.