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comes out today apparently. please post personal reviews.
I took a badass screenshot in Fallout3 in the TreeMan (or whatever) area that everyone worships with a flamethrower and I was extremely tempted to post that screenshot here, even I was impressed how ing badass it looked.
comes out today apparently. please post personal reviews.
Tell you when I get home. If I can, I am going to skate out of work a little early today.
Just about to fire it up for the first time.
2 hours in with no update. seems like DarkReign likes it.
good to know.
I hears its the
I was able to play for about an hour before I had to go to work today.
It is a damn sexy game. Damn sexy.
I definitely like the hex tiles much more than square tiles, and only being able to have one military unit on a tile requires one to put a little more thought into tactics and strategy.
Didn't get too far in the game but so far its great!
I just got done with a two hour stint.
4 player game with 6 city states, beginner.
I started on a continent with Montezuma, Sorry dude you or me.
I expanded until I found horses and then found a city-state with iron.
At first going into battle I was thinking, "Make a stack and go in the city" infact I was kind of lost due to the fact its not available anymore, and it felt as if I wasn't playing a civ game at all.
So I had to reevaluate my whole attack. I experimented and found an effective means.
Using an attack of 3 horsemen to 1 horse archer and multiple archers. I surrounded his first of 3 cities and rained a fiery unto his people. (I could have nixed the 1 horsemen and just used archers.)
The only defense he put up were his ass backwards warriors who were dealt with by my swordsmen(2 of 2). However I did lose both AND my alliance with the city state supplying the iron. I kinda panicked but my adviser stated that I had him out numbered and to crush him before he tried to sign a treaty. After his first city fell, we marched to his capital and attacked same manner. His defense was pretty worthless, took me 10 turns or so. Ive read the AI is pretty weak, I guess so. Next up the city state with my Iron.
You're doing it wrong.
Played until about 4am last night and only got to year 1500 (or so).
Totally different game that, IMO, the jury is kind of out on in some areas.
Like TWF mentioned, the hex map is far better, no question.
Combat is more like a game of chess, maybe even closer to a game like Rome whereby you need your infantry protecting your archers with horseman on the flanks. My army march was literally (imagine this being a hex field, so side-by-side units get staggered depending on which direction youre facing ie North/South vs East/West)....
H A G A H
P P P P P
H = Horseman
A = Archer
G = Great General
P = Pikeman
First thing to note, units in Civ5 are worth a uva lot more than they were in Civ4. They cost more to build (a lot more) and when you lose one, you actually wince. That configuration I had up there took some time to put together (production-wise) and I have just rolled across my continent, conquering three Civs and one City State with literally, just that one army. Havent even lost a unit, mostly because the AI didnt expand enough to compete with my advancements. Bottom line: Combat is ing awesome in Civ5. Its far more strategic and rewarding because position means a lot (terrain, flanking, proximity to Great General, etc). With that said, youre not going to beat Knights with Warriors (thats a good thing) but if you have enough Spearmen (less than Pikeman) on defensive tiles with Archers in the back on a hill, you stand a chance at winning if you play it smart and patient. Since I didnt pay attention to what difficulty setting I am on, I assume its beginner because Im walking through everything and its kind of boring.
BUT!
Its a nice way to learn the totally overhauled interface, great people effects, worker instructions, naval capabilities, etc, etc.
Everything is different. EVERYTHING.
Roads cost 1G in maintenance per tile, so the days of your empire having a road on every tile are gone (unless youre filthy, stinking rich beyond the wildest imagination...and even then its a complete waste of gold).
More to the point here, workers require a lot more micro management. Everything they do takes longer. I have buffs from wonders and social policies that speed workers construction rates and it still takes 6 turns to build a mine. 3 turns for a road, etc. Workers do have an "Automate" option, but I havent tried that yet because I do not like the AI's build patterns (maybe its better in Civ5? not sure yet, doubt it).
I never had an interest in naval advancements in any Civ game...until now. The units are extremely powerful, have super-long range for their attack and can move, like, 6-10 tiles in one turn. I have built a grand total of 3 Triremes that I absolutely murdered people with (then I upgraded them to Frigates when I teched far enough and the raping just got worse). Even the lowly Trireme can bombard cities and units and it only gets stronger and stronger from that point on.
Even better and IMO, so ing cool, is that units do not need Transports/Galleys anymore to cross water tiles. Such an extremely welcome change that already, in my first game, expanding across the ocean is easier and more commonplace. You just direct your individual ground units to the first water tile and they turn into little boats with medium movement range, but zero defense or offense. Meaning, they need escorts unless you want your 180 hammer Knight getting pillaged by a simple Barbarian Galley. Most welcome change to the series that I can think of (mostly because I always played Continents and I would quickly counquer my own and it would take forever to build the necessary Galleys/Galleons/Transports for my army to even stand a chance on the other side of the world).
Next post will be about the things I am not quite sure about.
Last edited by DarkReign; 09-22-2010 at 12:14 PM.
Onto the things I either dont like, or havent adjusted to or havent given enough of a chance.
The City screen is a mess. In past Civs, Alt+Clicking a unit meant that city would make that unit infinitely until told otherwise. Thats gone now, and really, maybe for the better since units are more expensive, time-consuming and resource-consuming (more on that in a bit).
In past Civs, Ctrl+clicking a unit/building automatically sent that to the front of the queue. In contrast, Shift+Clicking sent that item to the bottom. Neither of these methods work and I hate it. Everything must be manually sorted via the Queue menu and while the result is the same, the means to get there takes longer because there is no hotkey to execute the command.
Another thing about the City screen that is God-awful and completely un-intuitive is tile working. If you have played a Civ game, you know micromanaging what tiles your cities work is of extreme importance. It helps specialize cities, create GP farms, production cities and gold producers. While the ability to specialize is still there, it looks awful and so far, to me, is completely confusing. There is so much detail in the terrain, the yields and tile improvements, its easy to lose track of what tiles are being worked because the only indicator is a small, non-descript "Coin" above the tile to indicate thats being worked. Seeing as I am a freak about micromanagement in city screens, I find I am having an extremely hard time adjusting to this...and I hate it...a lot.
One good thing about the city screen, though, is the way Specialists work. Now, every time you construct a building that allows X specialists, on the right side that building will be listed and there will be X slots for Specialists that the building allows. It isnt too big of a deal because in previous Civs, you just keep hitting the plus sign next to the Scientist/Whatever icon until you ran out. But unless you were a pretty advanced player, you never knew what buildings/wonders allowed specific Specialists and how to tailor your game to get them. Not so anymore, so thats cool.
Now, something I am completely pissed off about.
No Vassal states. None, zero, nada. That ing blows. Big balls. There was always something extremely rewarding about forcing an opponent to Capitulate to your rule, and even from a historic standpoint it was accurate and well do ented that this was a very real, very well-used strategy. Apparently, it wasnt cool enough for Civ5 and I am bummed about it. Now, when you crush your enemies and march toward their capital/last city, they start engaging you diplomatically basically giving you everything they own in an attempt to stop you from erasing their people from the history of Earth. If they could capitulate, I would allow them to exist. Since they cannot, I burn them from the memory of time. Real bummed about the subtraction of this game-changing feature. I wont waste time here going over the ins-and-outs of how you could abuse a Vassal, but its safe to say it was a really cool element.
Mind you, I havent won my game yet (thats a formality, judging by the ease at which Ive progressed so far, and Ive even stumbled adjusting to the new gameplay and wasted lots of time familiarizing myself with the God-awful City screen), but its safe to say this game rocks your socks.
The combat alone makes the game...some huge percentage better. Way better, markedly better, more rewarding, more engaging, more intense, more, more, more. And since every Civ game will always find war, this change is awesome.
For the cosmetic aspects, Civ5 looks gorgeous. But I was disappointed to see that you cant zoom in your cities like previous Civs and see all the particular buildings that city has. In Civ4, you could zoom in and see the University and hear the bustle on the streets, the temple bells, etc. Wonders show up on on your cities in Civ5, but even those are underwhelming. Before, youd get a cool little CG cut scene when you completed a Wonder, now in Civ5, you dont. You get a poorly voiced-over quote with a picture...total letdown. But overall, the animation of units, combat, movement, etc. look great.
The diplomatic screens are pretty cool, too. Im sure youve heard that the other leaders are animated and voiced in their native tongues, which is a nice touch...especially when theyre pissed! lol. But diplomacy has been limited in a sense to a bare bones approach, where I felt the Diplo screens and options from Civ4 were more robust in what could be demanded/traded.
Oh, I forgot three very important changes. Extremely important, actually...its pretty bad I got this far and havent mentioned them yet.
Happiness: Is no longer city-specific, its Civ specific. You have a global happiness indicator that changes globally even when one city builds a happiness building. So, if you have a -2 Unhappy population, have one city build a Coliseum (+3 Happy) and your entire civ's score is now +1 Happy. Makes managing this feature much easier, IMO. Welcome change, although I havent played on higher difficulties to determine the difficulty because since a Happy building affects your entire Civ, the production cost is through the roof for even the smallest Happiness buildings.
Resources: Roads are no longer needed to connect a resource to your Civ. So long as the resource is in one of your city's sphere of influence and it is "tapped", its yours. There are two categories of resources in Civ5. Luxury ( e, wine, cotton, etc) and Strategic (iron, coal, horses, etc). Luxury resources confer Happiness benefits but only for the first resource. In past Civs, one e resource conferred +2 Happiness in every city that was connected to it. If you had six es, you had +12 happiness. Not anymore. After the first resource bonus, every subsequent resource is considered an extra to be traded. Welcome change as this encourages trading, even for an Isolationist like myself.
Strategic resources are finite and this has HUGE implications. When you discover and tap a source of iron, you have (5) Iron to be used on Units (Swordsmen, Catapults, Trebuchets, etc). Meaning, with that one resource, you will only be able to produce a total of (5) units that use that particular resource. Once you have reached that limit, that resource is toast and you have to find another or trade for another (good luck with that, youre going to overpay, unless youre in good with a City-State who has one). This changes the field of battle enormously, as every unit that needs a Strat resource (basically, every good unit does, Horses for Knights, Iron for Swordsmen, etc) is uber-powerful compared to a unit that does not use a resource. Another welcome layer of change to an impressive, overhauled combat system.
City Expansion: Firaxis scrapped the Culture bombs of Civ4. Culture still expands your individual cities borders, but its so ing slow as to be almost useless. No, you have to buy your tiles and I guarantee this is where every player will be spending most of their money. Example: You plop a Settler down and only the immediate adjacent tiles are available to work, but you can purchase the expanding rings around each city for a hefty fee per tile. So expansion is a careful consideration depending on your civs resource need/wants, because a city can purchase tiles WELL BEYOND what that city can work, so in theory, one city's cultural borders can reach across an entire continent. In theory, not practice, as the cost of doing so would be...astronomical. Every resource inside your cultural borders is yours to tap and use, so this is also a new, welcome wrinkle to city planning and expansion. You dont need nearly as many cities as you did in previous games trying to reach that needed resource you so desperately want. Now you need money, a gameplan and hope your rivals dont beat you to it.
Wrap up next post.
Wrap up.
There arent any sliders in game and there is no religion whatsoever. You do not need worry about what % your Science slider is at, you need to construct buildings and allocate specialists to increase your output. Im in my first game, but so far, I like it.
Religion...meh, whatever. Dont get me wrong, I was a religion in Civ4. It was far too much (early) money to ignore, espcially with priests and Stonehenge kicking out a Prophet every 15 turns. But thats gone and maybe its because the game is new, I dont miss it...yet.
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster espionage is gone. Hated it in BtS, hated the idea, hated using it when I was forced to, hated the buildings, the effects, spies, everything about it. Every Civ4 game, I completely ignored Espionage and now it is gone. Good ing riddance, die a horrible death and let some modder who laments your loss create a game that has it so I dont have to play it ever again...ever.
I have played about 10 hours and I am impressed. Extremely impressed. I know I am missing some elements (city-state relationships, etc) and wonder about other mechanics I havent seen in Civ5 (like tech trading, havent even seen the option in the Diplo screen), but all in all, its a sweet game.
If you have ever played Civilization, or a turn-based strategy game in general, you will not be disappointed. Well, well worth the money and I havent even touched on multiplayer or the mod community that has churned out excellent mods for years. Now those mods are available right from the main menu, they download and install in-game and you can fire them up with no hassle. I am not a mod player, but even I am interested in this feature.
Is this the pinnacle of turn-based Startegy games? No, there is ample room for improvement, especially with the interface (and the ing City screen). But I'll chalk those complaints up to me not embracing change and I am confident time will alleviate these concerns.
Otherwise, this game is a mesh of Civilization4, CivRev, a little touch (very little) of Rome:TW and Final Fantasy Tactics. All in a beautiful package of infinte replay value.
Its 2010...Civilization4 was released in 2005. Ive logged the second most hours of my gaming life into Civ4 and I still play it 5 years after it came out.
I am quite confident that I will be stil be playing Civ5 in 2015 and thats about the highest compliment I can pay it.
Buy it. Support the developer and ing buy it if you have any interest in this sort of game whatsoever.
Last edited by DarkReign; 09-22-2010 at 12:22 PM.
I pretty much agree with everything DarkReign said about the game. There's some quirks and annoyances, but it's a damn fine game.
However, I do have one extra gripe. You can't raze city states?? Really??? I thought the city state concept was cool at first, but not being able to raze them really pisses me off. Especially when my capital is COMPLETELY surrounded by them. My only expansion option is to conquer one. And if they're in a stupid position... oh well. I'm stuck with them. I'm tempted to just turn city states off in my next game, which I don't really want to do because I -do- like dealing with them diplomatically. But there are times when their placement is completely rediculous (like when I was completely surrounded by them and had no room for my own expansion) and I'd rather just burn one to the ground.
You also can't raze capitals, which I'm ok with though it still seems a bit silly.
About 7 hours into my first game. The AI for beginner is idiotic, I havent been attacked by Siam once.
I think tommorow I will kill him off and win the game, to start another, I am blazing through the tech tree.
Couple gripes
Maybe I am not looking in the right unit or place but there is no Air recon. I have two bombers and there is no recon option. What type of bull is that?
select city>select building or unit to building> add to queue> repeat over and over and over. On the previous civs you could save a queue, come on wheres the love?
Kinda slow, I am still building walls and early early early buildings though its late game.
Please remove OLD OLD OLD units from the building menu.
Not sure if its that I am running on DX9, but i miss the round globe planet.
Sound track is pretty ing weak compared to previous versions.
I am sure its going to be an even more outstanding game when the patchs start rolling out.
Speaking of mods; two have already been released, one removes 1upt rule. Why not just play civ4 then?
Haven't bought it yet because it will take over my life, something I can't have right now. Too much else going on.
Thanks DR for your review.
Will buy it in a few weeks
Talk about a comprehensive review
I'm definitely buying it. Have bought every Civ game since the first.
Thanks.
I screwed up though on one observation.
One city cannot buy tiles outside their sphere, only culture can expand beyond whats bought.
Its just that each city's sphere is pretty f-ing big, I hadnt reached my limit on any city until last night.
It was a bad assumption.
i kind of like that idea of city spheres having to be worked according to market. if thats true, its alot like hinterlands irl. sounds like a cool addition.
Well, I dont have the ing luxury of playing a game long before its release to tell accurate details.
The Great Artist? Yeah, his special talent is literally called "Culture Bomb".
Got my ass kicked on Prince. Royally.
...and got my ass kicked again.
Apparently, on Prince, my rivals can afford extremely large armies, yet I cant afford to build ing buildings, much less units that cost 3G per turn in upkeep.
Starting to reeeeeeally not like this game.
lol
maybe you need to change your strategy from civ IV style to civ V. start a fresh mindset.
After playing quite a bit, I have to say I don't have as much fun with this game as I did with Civ 4. Cheiftan level is laughingly easy, as I am able to steamroll over any civilization I come across with no problems. There is definitely a signifcant difficulty hike (read: AI cheats more) on Prince level. The game goes from being extremely easy on one difficulty to extremely difficult on the next. Throughout all the levels, I am a little annoyed at how long it takes to build buildings.
Combat is definitely very fun, and by far the best part of the game and to be honest I have more fun hunting down barbarian camps than I do dealing with domestic issues in my civilization. I do like city sieges. It's nice to know your city can defend itself without a garrison.
I don't like how cultural borders work at all. I prefer Civ 4's system. It made it easier to give the appearance of actual country borders.
Diplomacy is dumbed down from Civ 4. The only thing I like about it are the leaders. Research agreements are a neat idea.
City states are annoying when set on the default #s. If you play on default on a standard sized map expect to be completely surrounded by unrazeable cities. City states are neat but not THAT important, and honestly any leader trait or social policy tree that gives bonuses to city state relations are worthless.
There are some really overpowered leader traits. I recently played the Germans, which has a trait that gives you a 50% chance to gain extra money and a brand new warrior unit every time you destroy a barbarian camp. Needless to say I had a dozen warriors before I founded my third city. I wiped away every civ on that continent quite easily and only had to actually build 2 units.
It's going to take some getting used to...
Much like the first release of civ4, civ5 needs to be tuned. All the makings for a great game are there though.
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