Civilization V Coming This Fall

[nanobreath]

I started left-click dragging instead.

Yeah, that is what I had to start doing as well. Just annoying.

Played for about 4 hours last night. Got to around 1100 AD. Wiped out the one civ that was on my continent, and the poor city-state he aligned with.

Some not so quick first thoughts.

I like the one unit per tile part. Combined with the 1 resource required per unit you build scales combat down to a more reasonable level. Combat is now more strategic in nature instead of just attack with as many units as possible. I really like ranged attacks available early in the game that allows you to weaken units safely from a distance and then finish them off with a melee unit. This was something you had to wait for airplanes for in civ4, but can now do the whole game.

Research and production is a bit skewed from what I'm used to from previous civs. What I mean is in the game I played I found I was getting much further in research than I was able to keep up with in producing the units I was researching. By the time I finished building the first or second military unit of a specific type...I was already able to build its successor. This was just producing units. Building any wonders or buildings makes things worse as they typically take longer to build. Imagine you will be specializing cities a lot in this game and not building everything you possibly can.

Gold. It seems like they wanted to give you more gold to spend on things, but then realized you had too much gold so they came up with stupid money sinks for you to spend the gold on. For instance:

Buying Land. REALLY?! I have to BUY land in order to work it? Who in the hell am I buying the land from? Seems too much like a gold sink and time waste than anything else.

City-States. Great concept. Lame implementation. They advertise it as cities you have to complete quests for to keep them happy. Give them resources, help defend them etc...Except not. It turns into nothing but who gives them the most gold. Who can bribe the city states the most. Great. Another gold sink.

Roads. They cost gold to upkeep. I.E. the more roads you build the less money you make. Meaning roads are now used primarily to connect cities, not to build in every tile to allow you quick movement in your territory. Sure you can build roads in every hex, but you're wasting gold you need to buy land with!...

The nice parts of the gold is that upgrading units is far more reasonable. So far the one step upgrades I have purchased have cost 150gold. Considering bribing a city-state costs 250g min, that is pretty reasonable. I guess there were enough other gold sinks that they didn't make this one so bad.

So far I'm still neutral on the game and will give it a lot more time before I make a final verdict. Some changes I like, others not so much. What I really liked about Civ IV is how much they reduced the tediousness of controlling a civ. I'm afraid Civ V adds a bit of that back in. Time shall tell.

Whew that went on a bit longer than I expected and I could go on about so much more...

 

[Rhezuss]

I like the gold spending aspect of the game, it's probably gonna end in the "you love it or hate it" file.

The city-state...I agree with you that they are badly implemented. It's an awesome idea but it's lacking in the application. Maybe we'll see imporvements in patches and mods!

I would give a lot to be off work play right now!!!!!!

 

[bryanW1995]

Played through a default game on small map yesterday, 6 civs 12 city states. I always play civ iv on marathon other than mods, and playing civ 5 on normal it took just as long. probably 9 hrs from start to finish playing japan. could have won earlier but I just took out france and songalia then focused on seeing all the new units/improvements. units as mentioned take a lot longer to produce. I'm afraid to try this on marathon!

major pet peeve is the cost to maintain roads/railroad. it wasn't a problem on chieftan but I'm confidant that at higher difficulty levels it will become a real pita.

city states are great, I had so much gold that I just made nice with every single one of them. they gift you lots of culture and science each turn. was working on space race victory but you can see what the UN vote would look like before building the wonder, I had votes from all 11 remaining city states so I was able to win that way instead. No replay of game or hall of fame.

 

[nanobreath]

There's also an option to sleep a unit, which I assume means skip turns indefinitely until manually activated.

There is an alert option. This fortifies a unit until it sees an enemy at which time it wakes up and waits for a new command. However, it doesn't lose its fortify bonus yet. It doesn't lose that until you actually tell it to attack or move. So it is still active and warns you that it needs orders before you end turn, but still gets fortify bonuses if you want to leave it as is for now.

So far so good, I started my first game yesterday with the Ottomans. Discovered some ancient ruins and defeated 3 barbarians camps so far but I think I attacked a neutral city-state too fast (they pissed me quickly...I protected them from barbarians and a dozen turns later we're no longer friendly?!!?...yeah then eat my flame arrows and spears!!!!!!!). I'm enjoying this game a lot, great buy for fans and new players!

Do NOT leave your units inside a city-state's territory. You lose reputation with them for every unit inside their territory when you end turn. Other than that, your reputation decays naturally over time. Different civs and policies reduce the decay rate, but you still gotta bribe them to keep them happy. In the early game I was decaying at 1 per turn every turn.

 

[Rhezuss]

There is an alert option. This fortifies a unit until it sees an enemy at which time it wakes up and waits for a new command. However, it doesn't lose its fortify bonus yet. It doesn't lose that until you actually tell it to attack or move. So it is still active and warns you that it needs orders before you end turn, but still gets fortify bonuses if you want to leave it as is for now.QUOTE]

Where's this alert option in the menus?

I think that's what i'm looking for heheh!

 

[nanobreath]

Where's this alert option in the menus?

I think that's what i'm looking for heheh!

All military units have the option. It is a shield with two swords crossed in front of it. Hotkey is "A". The plain shield icon, with no swords, is the fortify key.

The game seems to limit the number of buttons shown to 6(or something like that) in the normal window for unit commands. At the bottom is a button that says something like "Additional commands" Chances are if you don't see something you think a unit can do, it's in that additional commands window. From my experience though, the alert button is on the default window, and fortify is on the additional command window.

 

[Elias824]

I love the game so far, so many awsome improvments, combat is not retarded uber stacks anymore. My one complaint is diplomacy, there is no way to tell other peoples opinion of you, or easily check what going on in a nice graph.

 

[Martimus]

I love the game so far, so many awsome improvments, combat is not retarded uber stacks anymore. My one complaint is diplomacy, there is no way to tell other peoples opinion of you, or easily check what going on in a nice graph.

Yeah, diplomacy in all the Civ games has been crappy. That is one thing that Gal Civ has always been better at than Civilization.

I will have to buy this game when it comes down in price. $50 is way too much for me to spend on a Steamworks game. I don't mind spending $10 on something that forces me to use Steam though.

 

[KMFJD]

Yeah, diplomacy in all the Civ games has been crappy. That is one thing that Gal Civ has always been better at than Civilization.

I will have to buy this game when it comes down in price. $50 is way too much for me to spend on a Steamworks game. I don't mind spending $10 on something that forces me to use Steam though.

I guess you wont be playing it anytime soon then...

 

[Elias824]

Yeah, diplomacy in all the Civ games has been crappy. That is one thing that Gal Civ has always been better at than Civilization.

I will have to buy this game when it comes down in price. $50 is way too much for me to spend on a Steamworks game. I don't mind spending $10 on something that forces me to use Steam though.

Steam is awesome, id almost pay more to get a game on steam. No dealing with installing, games are easy to backup, no dealing with keys, no scratches discs, install from anywhere.

 

[paperfist]

my first impression is that civ went mainstream, it is very friendly towards new players. Also it appears to be fairly different form previous versions, which will old players like me appreciate - i like change, I've spend endless hours on first four games.

Yeah, but mainstream = Civ Revolution, it wasn't suppose to come to the PC

Ugh, so far I'm totally not getting into this game. I've played everyone one to death since the beginning but not so with this one. The just one more turn mantra isn't stacking up for me as I keep exiting out of every game I start.

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Those wanting to skip the intro movie edit your 'UserSettings' file under My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5 by changing this:
'SkipIntroVideo = 0' to 1. There's two other config files, but I have no idea what the settings are

 

[CottonRabbit]

New single stack combat is the only saving grace for the game IMO. In every other aspect, I find it to be worse than Civ 4 BtS. Reviewers keep saying the UI is streamlined, but it takes more mouse clicks to do everything now. The city management screen is especially bad. As other have said, the game just doesn't feel very epic.

 

[Exterous]

I really really like the lack of SoDs. I am still figuring out the best way to move my army forward though

I really like the resource limits on troops. Forces you to care and plan more instead of just spamming units

Production seems VERY slow so I hardly get to use any of the buildings.

I DO NOT like the city screen. Adding buildings to the queue is WAY more involved than it should be. I also thought the whole information interface was too big but someone on another forum mentioned this can be scaled in the settings.

I HATE the fact that the mouse moves out of the game window and onto a second monitor. Seems like a big issue considering how many people use multiple monitors these days

The happiness issue will be interesting as I like larger maps/empires but I haven't really played enough to see how that pans out

Overall I like the game and it will probably consume more than a couple hours of my life

 

[Martimus]

Steam is awesome, id almost pay more to get a game on steam. No dealing with installing, games are easy to backup, no dealing with keys, no scratches discs, install from anywhere.

No need to make this a thread about the virtues/faults of steam. I know what I like and dislike about the service, as I am sure most others who read this forum do as well.

I guess you wont be playing it anytime soon then...

I am unsure about this game from what I read so far. The UI seems to be pretty poor if everyone is having a hard time figuring out how to do basic things. I do like the single stack idea, which can help make battles more tactical (like say HoMM or Elemental). The game is not nearly intriguing enough for me to buy it right now, especially with the caviat that I am required to run Steam in the background when I have the game running. So far it doesn't bother me that I am not going to be playing it for a while.

 

[nageov3t]

anyone know how you unlock exploring through deep water? haven't run across it in the tech trees.

 

[nanobreath]

anyone know how you unlock exploring through deep water? haven't run across it in the tech trees.

Astronomy is the tech your looking for. It both allows the building of caravels(the first boat that can go in ocean tiles) and allows embarked units to enter ocean tiles.

 

[Kyteland]

Yea sucks he retired, he was a great voice for reading the tech stuff. Who is it now?

Morgan Sheppard. Not as much name recognition as Nimoy buy any real geek would recognize him.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Yowzers. Before release (for the most part) if the Civilization had a rear-end, everbody was kissing it. Some of these comments are surprising. I'm not doubting anyone as I haven't been able to play my copy and likely won't have the chance until the weekend or even after. Here's hoping for patches/mods fairly soon if this stuff is true.

 

[skace]

I was almost late to work today because of Civ5. I'm digging it, not sure what all the bitching on this page is about but it's been a lot of fun. The game seems much more 'personal' compared to Civ4. In Civ4 I'd basically build whatever was recommended, put my works on automatic, pump out units and really every city was very similar. In this game, I'm much more concerned about what I do with each city because of time investments / etc.

Things I've liked so far:
- Beating the Brits to some land by buying it up.
- Being warned by the Brits that I'm f'ing with their land.
- City States requesting help w/ Barbarians.
- Wonders are built outside the city.
- Natural Wonders (pre-built wonders that you can settle near)
- The new function of money

I like most of the UI so far, but I need to spend more time with it. I like that very few screens have kind of grabbed my full focus.

 

[bryanW1995]

The happiness issue will be interesting as I like larger maps/empires but I haven't really played enough to see how that pans out

happiness is easy, there are tons of buildings to manage it plus resources, resources from city states, etc.

I made nice with a couple city states early on just to mess with it, but they really provide nice boosts to culture and science, plus the military unit production can be very beneficial and let you focus more on buildings/etc if you're not invading somebody.

I was almost late to work today because of Civ5. I'm digging it, not sure what all the bitching on this page is about but it's been a lot of fun. The game seems much more 'personal' compared to Civ4. In Civ4 I'd basically build whatever was recommended, put my works on automatic, pump out units and really every city was very similar. In this game, I'm much more concerned about what I do with each city because of time investments / etc.

Things I've liked so far:
- Beating the Brits to some land by buying it up.
- Being warned by the Brits that I'm f'ing with their land.
- City States requesting help w/ Barbarians.
- Wonders are built outside the city.
- Natural Wonders (pre-built wonders that you can settle near)
- The new function of money

I like most of the UI so far, but I need to spend more time with it. I like that very few screens have kind of grabbed my full focus.

I like that I can play a full game on med/high settings with only 2gb memory on win 7 x64. also, they've done a great job of greatly improving the visuals without making the game unplayable for low/mid gaming rigs. civ iv seemed to bog down for me at the end of large maps even on my i7 920@4.2, civ 5 had no slowdowns at all (thus far).

 

[Possessed Freak]

Well... after playing another game of it I think I am done for a while. Unless the interface gets retooled I have had it. It is just too damn hard to issue orders now.

I really did like the single stacking units and the hex system but gosh darn it they could have kept the pieces that worked from IV.

 

[sjwaste]

Unless I haven't figured it out, there is just way too much clicking required to play this game. Enter, instead of space, is now end of turn - but a lot of other stuff is unfamiliar.

Also, does anyone else find it strange that they made units really hard to select? Clicking on the actual unit doesnt seem to work, you have to use the icon above it.

Cities also grow a lot more slowly, and territorial expansion is mostly through gold as far as I can tell. You buy adjacent tiles, rather than through cultural expansion.

Finally, everything is just a little bit too cartoonish. I don't like how nothing is at the bottom of the screen anymore. Instead, they're giant, exaggerated icons on the sides - and you also have sub/"advanced" command menus to sift through.

Ugh, this is going to take some getting used to.

 

[BoberFett]

I'm almost done with my first game. I decided to go the cultural victory for the first game and I'm finding it very difficult. I could have conquered the world militarily by now, but I'm going to stick it out. It requires a hell of a lot of culture to buy five trees worth of policies. I'm at over 600 culture per turn right now and still not quite done getting my fourth tree completed, and that's with all of the policy cost reductions I can find.

Things I really like:

Hexes. It just feels more natural than squares.

Social policy options. Being able to tailor them to fit your play style makes a huge difference compared to just choosing Monarchy or Democracy.

The new combat. Combat is far more tactical and you actually have to think about what units you're going to create now. I also have yet to lose a tank to a pikeman.

City-states. They're a huge improvement over vassals, as far as I'm concerned. It always seemed like the AI cheated it's way into getting vassals easily in Civ4 while it was nearly impossible for me. Here actually I have a chance at picking up some allies with good resources. Having an ally that gifts you culture or military units is extremely handy. The tasks they give you keep things interesting as well.

City growth. I love the way the city slowly expands one tile at a time instead of two big rings and that's it. Also I actually like being able to buy specific tiles. There's always that situation where you're going to plop down a settler to try to grab a couple of resources, but they're not close enough together to get them both. Now instead of having to wait a long time for that first city growth, just put your settler down next to one of the resources then buy the other tile that's just out of reach. This is actually one of my favorite features, the whole thing feels like a more organic way to grow your civ than the old way.


Things I'm not wild about:

As others have said, the interface can be clunky in some areas. Some of the scrolling to find what you're looking for is a pain.

It is a pig of a game resource wise. I'm not running the newest hardware, but it's not the worst either. E6500 (3Ghz), 3.5GB RAM (XP, so no full 4) and an 8600GTS. It's kind of annoying to watch the graphics slowly update with higher res textures as I scroll around. It is a very nice looking game though.


There are other things I like, but these are the biggest points. So far I'm really liking it.

 

[bryanW1995]

agree with most of your points.

re the graphics, 8600 gts sucks. can't get away with that quite as easily as we could with civ iv . keep in mind that this game + expansions will probably be "current" civ for 5 years or so. You should either turn down the graphics settings or upgrade the card. The good news is that you can get nice graphics cards for very reasonable prices these days, and 6xxx is right around the corner.

 

[minmaster]

Unless I haven't figured it out, there is just way too much clicking required to play this game. Enter, instead of space, is now end of turn - but a lot of other stuff is unfamiliar.

Also, does anyone else find it strange that they made units really hard to select? Clicking on the actual unit doesnt seem to work, you have to use the icon above it.

Cities also grow a lot more slowly, and territorial expansion is mostly through gold as far as I can tell. You buy adjacent tiles, rather than through cultural expansion.

Finally, everything is just a little bit too cartoonish. I don't like how nothing is at the bottom of the screen anymore. Instead, they're giant, exaggerated icons on the sides - and you also have sub/"advanced" command menus to sift through.

Ugh, this is going to take some getting used to.

it's like they took the interface and created a "consolized" interface that was made for a "controller" maybe they took a lot of stuff they already made for civ rev or maybe they are planning on bringing civ5 to the consoles.

the interface is totally dumbed down. they hid all the useful information that was easy to access. now it's hidden behind some shiny buttons and some of that info can't even be found anymore. it took me forever to figure out how where to find the screen that shows you all the current deals you have with other civs.