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

[bhodi]

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.

[Sheepherder]

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.

[Murgos]

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?

[MrHat]

Eff.

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

And there's no Retire option either.

[JWIV]

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.

[Tebonas]

Thats amateur hour.

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

[SnakeCharmer]

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".

[Cyrrex]

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.

[March]

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.

[ffc]

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

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.

[Soulflame]

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

[ffc]

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!

[Bunk]

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.

[Reg]

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.

[Sky]

Multiplayer civ is the lunatic fringe.

[Ingmar]

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.

[rk47]

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.

[Bunk]

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.

[Ingmar]

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

[Soulflame]

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.   

[Lantyssa]

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.

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[Soulflame]

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.

[dusematic]

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?

[Merusk]

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.

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."

Eff.

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

And there's no Retire option either.

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.

[Special J]

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.

[dusematic]

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.

[Jade Falcon]

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.

[MrHat]

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. 

[ffc]

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?

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.

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.

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

[bhodi]

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.

[Tebonas]

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 :)

[Tannhauser]

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?

[Tarami]

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. I have to say it took me a little by surprise, too.

[Wasted]

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