Civilization V Coming This Fall

[bryanW1995]

Quick questions about your playstyles:

- How big of an army do you build for your Empire? I currently have one unit fortified in every cities plus: 2 Trireme and 2 cavaleries exploring and killing barbarians.

- Do you build imporvements on every tile of your empire (farms, camps, pastures, mines, etc)?

- Do you establish quickly your cities or do you go slowly and expans to a minimum?

- How do you keep your money income high enough?

- Do you recommend upgrading policies of getting many without improving them?

I'm asking this because on my current game with the Persians I started slowly and had only 2 cities for quite long. Then, while exploring, I discovered many silver and gold mines, some iron and some silk. so I decided to expand my empire and go establish cities near all those luxury materials (they were a long way from each other). So I'm now at 7 cities (3 of them with limited food since in the desert or snow tiles because of the luxury mats), one unit fortified in each, no real army power (2 boats and 2 cavaleries), roads between all my cities for the luxury mats and in peace with everyone. My income is sitting at 20-25 gold per turn, which I think is low but i'm rarely buying tiles or units...I have some wonders now, I think 3 or 4, all the tiles are improved...

It's not going badly at all...it's just if i'm being attacked, i'll end up dead in no time...

what difficulty are you playing on? remember that cities are much beefier now than they used to be, you don't need a ton of units esp if you have roads connecting everything. if you're worried about invasion then build walls/castles. sure if you want to invade somebody else you need enough melee power to allow your artillery to take out their cities, but if you're going for a tech advantage and/or high gold count then too much military could hurt. I've had tons of fun with my first couple of games by getting as many city states on my side as possible. get allied with a couple of militaristic city states in fact and you can just focus on building wonders/buildings/etc and allow them to provide your military.

 

[MrMatt]

Ok, question: How many squares can a city farm now, maximum? Is it the same number as before?

 

[MrMatt]

I'll be honest, so far this game feels like a cartoony step backwards. So many of the things that made sense about previous versions have been removed.

• You cant adjust tax rates? Seriously?
• No more cottages/towns/etc.? How does removing those make sense? In Civ 4 they were like the suburbs to an urban center, that made PERFECT sense. Now they're replaced by trading posts, academies, etc. Seriously? I can carpet the area around my city with trading posts? THAT makes more sense than towns?
• Lists of people 'that smile the most"? Wtf?
• No world builder so I can make a custom map, or see if at the beginning of the game if I'm stuck on a desert island? I played one round for about 30 minutes before discovering I was surrounded by desert on all sides. Lame.
• No Tech trading, and only 'mutual research goals' or whatever with other civs?
• No ability to see how another civ feels about you at all?

 

[minmaster]

i didn't think i'd see the day when civ would become consolized, but this is what has happened imo. it feels like a glorified civ rev than the civ games we had on pc.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Any one know how well multi-threaded Civ 5 is?
Will it gain significant performance from a X6 over a X4 processor?

 

[datalink7]

I've played it off and on since release. Nothing to a full game but a bunch of different civs.

I think it has enough good going for it that once the mod community gets 6 months to a year it will rock. Right now it is still fun but inferior to Civ IV with mods.

 

[trevor0323]

Seriously I dont think Sid Meier had anything to do with this game other than using his namesake. For starters I dont even see his avatar in the tutorial ala Civ 4 (which also is about as helpful as a cheap mobo manual)

Honestly, I have put a lot of time into this game since its release (43 hours according to steam) and can now safely say that there are things missing, or taken away that I feel will just not be fixed in a patch.

Someone made mention of this first mini patch and the issues that it adressed honestly sounded like bush league stuff. The interaction with other leaders in trading is still funky after this patch as well. Yesterday I ended up going to war in two separate games with countries complaining about me expanding on their borders. Bear in mind in both these instances I had not even seen these countries cities yet and had only met because they sailed to me.

I am not sure if I am the only one but I also seem to have a repeated problem with the main action bar. Mostly it occurs when something is produced in a city and I need to pick a new production. I can click and click the bar but to no avail. The only method is to click the city and pick production manually. This little problem became a major problem when playing in an online game in which people kept getting pissed off at me because I was taking the whole time to finish my turn only because I could not end until I picked production but couldnt.

Also in regards to online games, which seem to have the feel of playing on a null modem, I am not to excited about this same time movement crap. It essentially stops being a turned based game and turns into a pay attention to who ends there turn last so you can click to your right military unit to issue a kill or ecsape from an enemy before they issue there command. I ended up losing quite a few units due to this process.

I really dont understand what in the hell the team behind this game has been doing since Civ 4, I am not sure if this is a new graphics engine or a modified civ 4 version but they dont look much better than civ 4 at all. It baffles me why this game is so slow moving and taxing on my system compared to civ 4 and my only assumption is bad coding. The week before the release of this I was actually playing some Sid Meiers Railroads! which is a great game btw. Despite its age Railroads! graphics seriously look better then civ 5s.

I noticed many of you also mentioned things that are missing from Civ 4. There is indeed a laundry list of tried and gameplay mechanics from the civ series that have gone missing and no reviewer seems to mention. This leads me to the assumption that most of the review sites really dont play this game and probably wont after the review.

Why did Tile improvment have to take ten steps backward (These ramshackle marketplace looking things are not an improvement over evolving cottages. Why in the hell are civics so secretive and personal now. It seems like other leaders could care less which ones I pick, Why is the AI worse in this then in Civilization 3. No I dont want to play against an enemy on deity who gets unfair bonues because he cant figure out how to move his troops correctly. Why does it take me 2 minutes to end my turn. It cant be that the AI is doing anything actually tacticlly. Someone else mentioned where are the wonder videos or zoom in's along with unique buildings from great people. There is no acomplishment in building any of these anymore. I am sure I could go on and on but what does it matter. The point is these are not the kinds of things you can fix with a simple patch.

Civ 5 has actually has a few new good ideas but they took so many of there old ones out that it is no longer a fun game. The other night I got to gunpowder era twice in a row and then just quit. The appeal is still there somewhat with first setting up your cities but it drags ass hard in the mid to late game. Civ has definitely lost its one more turn appeal

Seriously I would have been more than happy with a graphical update to CIV 4 that ran well on
my system and included elements of warlords and bos with some new material as well
So congratulations to Sid for handing his masterpiece over to the likes of 2k. good luck and im sure the console versions will be smash hits!

 

[minmaster]

yup... can't wait for civ6. they moo3'd this one.

 

[sandorski]

All you saying the Graphics are the same as Civ4 need to get your eyes checked. Srsly.

 

[acheron]

Seriously I dont think Sid Meier had anything to do with this game other than using his namesake. For starters I dont even see his avatar in the tutorial ala Civ 4 (which also is about as helpful as a cheap mobo manual)

Sid hasn't designed any of them since the first. Brian Reynolds designed 2, Jeff Briggs did 3, Soren Johnson did 4, and Jon Schaefer did this one. The only recent one Sid designed was... Civ Revolution.

 

[coloumb]

Easy to see why civ 5 is "dumbed down" when compared to civ 4 - Civ 5 lead designer created mods for civ 3 and maps for civ 4. After reading this interview it's clear why civ 5 was "dumbed down". If Soren would've stayed on board as lead designer I'm sure we'd see an entirely different game on the pc while the consoles would've had something very similar to what civ 5 is right now.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/code-to-joy-jon-shafer-on-civilization-v/

 

[Acanthus]

Ok, question: How many squares can a city farm now, maximum? Is it the same number as before?

2 tiles away from the city.

 

[MrMatt]

yah I'm playing this more, and honestly....this is like a 1st graders version of civ 4. There's virtually NO, I repeat NO improvements over civ 4, and they took a bunch of stuff out. Just awful. Those marketplace things are retarded. Bring back cottages. Also the graphics aren't that good. Actually the only improvement is in the warfare, no more stacks of doom. They could've done that with a patch to civ 4 though

 

[WildW]

Any one know how well multi-threaded Civ 5 is?
Will it gain significant performance from a X6 over a X4 processor?

I left Task Manager open for a bit while I was playing to see. I'm seeing all 4 of my cores sitting around 30% each during my turns. They all spike up a bit at turn-end. Seems like the load is well spread around anyways.

 

[YoungGun21]

Any one know how well multi-threaded Civ 5 is?
Will it gain significant performance from a X6 over a X4 processor?

I have an X6 and performance isn't great. Could be that my video card is on the low end though, ATI HD5750.

 

[Acanthus]

The warfare, culture, and economy have dramatically improved, they also cut a lot of the stupid tape like making happiness global instead of having to micromanage every damn city.

The AI seems to be worse, but the multiplayer experience is dramatically better.

 

[Nizology]

yah I'm playing this more, and honestly....this is like a 1st graders version of civ 4. There's virtually NO, I repeat NO improvements over civ 4, and they took a bunch of stuff out. Just awful. Those marketplace things are retarded. Bring back cottages. Also the graphics aren't that good. Actually the only improvement is in the warfare, no more stacks of doom. They could've done that with a patch to civ 4 though

Honestly, I only ever see comments from you complaining about some aspect of a game. Are there any games you do enjoy playing?

I guess, like always...haters gonna hate.

 

[Atheus]

Just picked it up and installed - makes my oc 8800GT groan in agony... maybe I'll try DX9 mode... or maybe just buy a graphics card....

So, it seems like a mixed response from the ATers. I think it's gonna be a very different game from IV so I'm not worried about things being 'taken out' as some of you say. I'm thinking of it as co-existing with Total War and Civ 3/4 in my turn based collection... almost a mix between them...

But I love civ, and every previous major civ title, so this had better be good!

 

[Chaotic42]

Evidently nobody remembers history. This is playing out almost exactly like the Civ 4 launch. People bitched incessantly about how bad the game was compared to 3. It's buggy. This feature is dumb. My favorite wonder is gone. My favorite civ is gone. The interface sucks. It was non stop.

Yet somehow we got a great game out of it. Between patches, modding and expansions it evolved from a fun-but-not-perfect game into an awesome game.

For my part I'm enjoying Civ 5 in spite of itself and think it will only get better with time.

I liked Civ 4 when it came out. I know everyone is saying "It needs expansions like Civ 4 did, you have to wait". That would be true if this were another Civ game made by another company, but it's made by the same people. They should be building on BTS, not vanilla Civ 4.

I haven't played it enough to have an opinion, the multiplayer kept messing up and dropping people, so I turned the computer off for a few days. If Civ 5 isn't really good, my days of computer gaming might be up. For now, at least.

 

[MrMatt]

The warfare, culture, and economy have dramatically improved, they also cut a lot of the stupid tape like making happiness global instead of having to micromanage every damn city.

The AI seems to be worse, but the multiplayer experience is dramatically better.

I feel the exact opposite about the economy. You can't adjust science, tax, or luxury rates anymore. It's been dumbed down to a ridiculous degree. Culture has been nerfed as well, it has virtually 0 effect on the game whatsoever. I agree with warfare though.

 

[MrMatt]

Honestly, I only ever see comments from you complaining about some aspect of a game. Are there any games you do enjoy playing?

I guess, like always...haters gonna hate.

Civ 3 & 4, BTS. Roller Coaster Tycoon 2. BC2.

 

[StinkyPinky]

yah I'm playing this more, and honestly....this is like a 1st graders version of civ 4. There's virtually NO, I repeat NO improvements over civ 4, and they took a bunch of stuff out. Just awful. Those marketplace things are retarded. Bring back cottages. Also the graphics aren't that good. Actually the only improvement is in the warfare, no more stacks of doom. They could've done that with a patch to civ 4 though

Disagree. It's a fantastic game. Everything is more streamlined with less retarded micro-management. Not everyone wants to spend a minutes tweaking every single city they have.

Also the new "puppet city" is an excellent addition. Love the ranged combat and cities being able to defend themselves. Which makes perfect sense.

Sure, the game isn't perfect. I would like more control on the research/economy balance but nothing is perfect.

8.5/10

 

[paperfist]

Any one know how well multi-threaded Civ 5 is?
Will it gain significant performance from a X6 over a X4 processor?

Not exactly in-depth, but Gamespot says no in their CPU/GPU Civ V test:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6279244/index.html?tag=topslot;thumb;3

They also threw in this tidbit for making turns end quicker:

"We did discover one interesting tidbit though: Enabling the strategic map before you end your turn shaves off more than 20 percent of the time to complete a turn--that's pretty much a free upgrade!"

 

[Bateluer]

I definitely miss civics and meaningful culture. The culture upgrade lines are interesting, but I think they could have been implemented next to better society/government civics.

Cities need to expand their influence by culture, Civ5's method is dismal.

Also, diplomacy. Its pretty slim in Civ 5, needs to be beefed up big time.

 

[datalink7]

I've seen a lot of people saying that it sucks that cities don't auto-expand their borders anymore. For me at least they do. It's just really slow but there is some expansion.