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

[Lantyssa]

How?  It always takes me to "choose policy" rather than "next turn".

[Miasma]

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 really hate how in the endgame (or after winning-game) you get prompted by that Bushism quote everytime future tech cycles.

[MrHat]

How?  It always takes me to "choose policy" rather than "next turn".

Right click on the "Make a Policy" thing.

[Tairnyn]

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.

[rk47]

Welcome back my son, I missed you....

<Game finishes loading and goes to main menu>

Awesome.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Jobu]

How?  It always takes me to "choose policy" rather than "next turn".

Right click on the "Make a Policy" thing.

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.

[Nissl]

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[sinij]

Buyers beware - Civ5 DVD version requires Steam. If I can't find a way to play without steam I will be returning this game.

[proudft]

Show us on the doll where Steam touched you.

[sinij]

No, really. I paid for Civ5 and instead got DVD with steam installer. WTF?!

[Musashi]

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.

[sinij]

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?

[Paelos]

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?

[Daeven]

What? RTFM?!!

/RAGEQUIT

[Daeven]

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.

It was allied to a major civ.

[Numtini]

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.

[Pezzle]

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!

[NiX]

Split out the Steam bullshit.

Back to "Just one more turn!"

[Murgos]

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.   

I still haven't uncovered most of the map but I think I missed the boat on discovering ruins.

[Sky]

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.

[Tannhauser]

Statue of liberty is a great wonder.

[rk47]

mech infantry vs musketmen = awesome.

[Paelos]

I'm ready to try a longer game I think. For some reason standard just feels short.

[NiX]

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.

[Pezzle]

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?

[rk47]

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.

[Velorath]

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).

[Reg]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Strazos]

I'm so weak...played the demo a bit, was entertained...one-click purchase. 

[Tannhauser]

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. 

[Big Gulp]

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.

[rk47]

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.