CiV (Demo) is out

[Darth Roxor]

Interesting. When I was starting the demo, all the 'starting credits' with gamespy/2k/firaxis were lagging like shit, the same thing happened with the intro, and it used to end after 2-3 seconds of lagging.

 

[Destroid]

Consider yourself lucky.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Mkay. So, I've played CiV for a couple of games... and went back to heavily modded CivIV with expansions for my next-gen Civ extravaganza.
I'm not going to rage about CiV, though - the game's not worth it. I'll simply say that the UI is so uninformative and hugealific and everything's so simplified and retard-friendly - especially, the global happiness, lack of drawbacks to buildings/policies, tax/cult/sci/spy sliders and options in general - that it got so incredibly boring that I saw no reason to continue. And yes, it could just as well be ported to consoles and do fine.
Overall impression: "I have better ways to waste my time."

 

[ChristofferC]

LOL no effect, right -75% pop growth, -50% production and -50% combat efficiency for low happiness. Dunno about research its not as visible as building one unit for 30 turns. Dude You ever played the game?

Pop growth doesnt matter because cities don't grow much beyond 10-12 pop anyway. -50% production doesn't matter because you buy everything and your units never die anyway (I didn't know that production is reduced though). Combat efficiency is offset by great generals.

What? They don't die? I'm really starting to think that you didn't play the game because my troops sure as hell went to oblivion numerous times. Also cities do grow beyond 10-12 pop. I just won a cultural victory with my capital with 21 pop. You know hospital+medical lab + farms = high pop. And yes, if you don't spam as a common retard trading posts everywhere you can have plenty of pops in the city whom you can use as specialists that give you gold/production/hammers in addition to giving you once in a while a great person. So yes, there are many ways to win this game, not only straightforward spamming trade posts.

Change to happiness is very good. I don't need to spend much of my time in cities that rebel every once in a while. What I need is to constantly monitor what trade goods do I have and can trade with other empires. It also gives you more reasons to deal with city states.

As for your retarded objections related limited expansion I find it very well thought out. You don't have to annex them right away. You can make them puppets and when annex them when it's convinient to you. I don't recall Warsaw building troops for Nazis during WW2, so there's a pretty good correlation with real world events.

All right, here is a screenshot from my current immortal game. I lost around 4 units so far. See the promotions?

I feel it is faster this way than having to recover after each expansion. When I ignore happines I can just keep going and going and going.

 

[Grunker]

I can not in my wildest dreams fathomed how you did that. Must be mad skillz. I've tried twice now to expend without regards to happiness, and the only thing that happens is my production goes to a halt, and I either get swarmed by the enemy or just fall rapidly behind.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Yeah, promotions are ridiculous. I figured out that +1 healing rate stacks. You can have all of your units attacking and autohealing at 5 health per turn. Fucked up. Also, Horse archers with multiple attacks per turn can actually shoot 4 times per turn. Perfectly balanced

I don't play immortal out of principle though.

Is there any way to find info on how many luxurious resources you have? By far the two worst things about this Civ is the general lack of information and the bloody huge and MAC-like-click-one-thousand-times-to-reach-your-destination-UI!

Should be at the top of your main screen.

Anyone figured out where it lists the maintenance costs for units?

 

[ChristofferC]

By now I have enough money to just buy a second army so I can fight on two fronts at the same time lol.

 

[Silellak]

Yeah, promotions are ridiculous. I figured out that +1 healing rate stacks. You can have all of your units attacking and autohealing at 5 health per turn. Fucked up.

I don't play immortal out of principle though.

Is there any way to find info on how many luxurious resources you have? By far the two worst things about this Civ is the general lack of information and the bloody huge and MAC-like-click-one-thousand-times-to-reach-your-destination-UI!

Should be at the top of your main screen.

Anyone figured out where it lists the maintenance costs for units?

Individual or overall? I know you can see the overall cost just by mouse-hovering over your gold count at the top of the screen. It will give you a breakdown over your overall income and expenditures.

 

[ChristofferC]

Here's a savefile if you want to check it out. http://www.mediafire.com/?zki0s43kv0kyoab

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Yeah, promotions are ridiculous. I figured out that +1 healing rate stacks. You can have all of your units attacking and autohealing at 5 health per turn. Fucked up.

I don't play immortal out of principle though.

Is there any way to find info on how many luxurious resources you have? By far the two worst things about this Civ is the general lack of information and the bloody huge and MAC-like-click-one-thousand-times-to-reach-your-destination-UI!

Should be at the top of your main screen.

Anyone figured out where it lists the maintenance costs for units?

Individual or overall? I know you can see the overall cost just by mouse-hovering over your gold count at the top of the screen. It will give you a breakdown over your overall income and expenditures.

Individual. Both manual and ingame help tell me nothing :/

Also, is there any information on what units can be upgraded to what? Pissed me the hell off when I found my crossbowmen couldn't be upgraded to musketeers.

 

[ChristofferC]

Yeah, promotions are ridiculous. I figured out that +1 healing rate stacks. You can have all of your units attacking and autohealing at 5 health per turn. Fucked up.

I don't play immortal out of principle though.

Is there any way to find info on how many luxurious resources you have? By far the two worst things about this Civ is the general lack of information and the bloody huge and MAC-like-click-one-thousand-times-to-reach-your-destination-UI!

Should be at the top of your main screen.

Anyone figured out where it lists the maintenance costs for units?

Individual or overall? I know you can see the overall cost just by mouse-hovering over your gold count at the top of the screen. It will give you a breakdown over your overall income and expenditures.

Individual. Both manual and ingame help tell me nothing :/

Also, is there any information on what units can be upgraded to what? Pissed me the hell off when I found my crossbowmen couldn't be upgraded to musketeers.

No I don't think so. I guess you could dig around in the XML files... I noticed that mounted units don't upgrade to tanks. Crossbowmen can be upgraded to riflemen.

 

[poocolator]

I can not in my wildest dreams fathomed how you did that. Must be mad skillz. I've tried twice now to expend without regards to happiness, and the only thing that happens is my production goes to a halt, and I either get swarmed by the enemy or just fall rapidly behind.

He just spams trading posts, keeps his cities at like 5 population, and amasses gold to fast-produce everything. The problem here is that unhappiness doesn't do enough to stop these retarded strategies. If they disabled gold production during unhappiness, you'd actually have to plan around happiness.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Is Civ multi really that playable in turn-based? I played Civ4 quite a bit at LAN parties on simultaneous turns, and even then it still felt like we spent a lot of time waiting for the slow people to finish their turn. I can't fathom what it would be like if you had to wait for 11 or players to take their turn one by one before you can go again.

Well, three things.

1) Don't play with 11 people.

2) Don't play with slow people.

3) Alt-tab and look at porno while you are waiting on your opponent(who will always be slower than you because you are a more competent and cool person than they are as a rule) to finish. Masturbate casually and then settle back down when it's your turn. It's actually a great way to practice tantric techniques!

This is how I play all turn-based strategy games.

And honestly, I think that Civ IV is a poor benchmark for multi compared to V. What with the stacking and immense amount of micromanagement, there isn't much more to be had from it than single. Civ V on the other hand seems to have given a lot more of a nod to this from the standpoint of basic mechanics.

Have you tried Sword of the Stars? You should pirate it to see what I am talking about. If you weigh the game on it's single-player merits, it's rather mediocre or even bad. But, if you take into account that reducing the management of everything to a couple of sliders allows you to focus on where you are moving your ships and outfoxxing your opponent, it's a lot more admirable of a design philosophy. Of course, that's entirely negligible if you are playing an utterly predictable AI.

Who knows though, I'm just guessing that Civ V has good potential in that department. It could very well be a complete ball of crap for all I know.

But, even with games that take a long time on the turns, I've always found multiplayer strategy games to be a lot more fulfilling than any single-player iteration. Beyond 'you haven't played many strategy games,'(which is major lol, I play more strategy games than anything else EASILY) I haven't heard an argument for one with good AI yet.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Also, is there any information on what units can be upgraded to what? Pissed me the hell off when I found my crossbowmen couldn't be upgraded to musketeers.

Check the Civopedia: each unit profile says what the unit upgrades to. Crossbowmen upgrade to Riflemen I think.

And to clarify on the luxury resource thing, mouse over the happiness icon at the top of the main screen. I'm actually rather liking the happiness/luxury mechanic as it really forces you to seek out trade agreements with other civs and to interact with the city states, which in turn means that how you're perceived by the AI MATTERS if you're doing anything but global conquest.

3) Alt-tab and look at porno while you are waiting on your opponent(who will always be slower than you because you are a more competent and cool person than they are as a rule) to finish. Masturbate casually and then settle back down when it's your turn. It's actually a great way to practice tantric techniques!

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

I thought I'd get a few more turns in before leaving for class, but now the game crashes when I attempt to load any save or start a new game. According to the 2K boards it's a "known issue".

I'm actually enjoying Civ5 a great deal, and am really warming up to the changed mechanics, but nevertheless this has to be one of the most broken releases I've seen in a long time. After patches and an expansion or two, it ought to be a real gem though.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Trust me, Elemental was far more broken.

 

[Grunker]

The combat in this Civ is fifteen million leagues better than in any Civ-game ever.

True story.

 

[spectre]

Just got it two days ago, played a few games to learn the ropes, got my first win today.

Mixed feelings overall, but I have to confess, it looks like a solid foundation for future expansions (i.e. good for what it is).
What can I say, I totally dig the new combat system and strategic resource system.

There are bad things, though, like the overall lack of information, and ridiculous AI which cannot into the new combat system at all. Makes domination games a total pushover.
I dislike what has been done to buildings and wonders. Most of them take way to long to build for too little effect. Specifically, very few wonders seem to be worth it, and its effects can be easily obtained otherwise.

At first, i hated the global happiness system, but in the end I got over it. I prefer the civ IV system here, but oh well.

The main gripe remains - domination victory is way too easy, on higher levels the AI may pose a challenge, but mainly due to insane cheating. Can't say for other victory types. Hopefully, it will be patched or modded somehow.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Also, is there any information on what units can be upgraded to what? Pissed me the hell off when I found my crossbowmen couldn't be upgraded to musketeers.

Check the Civopedia: each unit profile says what the unit upgrades to. Crossbowmen upgrade to Riflemen I think.

Its a sad day when in game help is more detailed then the game manual

And to clarify on the luxury resource thing, mouse over the happiness icon at the top of the main screen. I'm actually rather liking the happiness/luxury mechanic as it really forces you to seek out trade agreements with other civs and to interact with the city states, which in turn means that how you're perceived by the AI MATTERS if you're doing anything but global conquest.

For me its the opposite. If I'm not war hungry I'm practically drowning in happy citizens. The only time I actually need more happiness is when I'm taking cities. At the same time, I haven't seen any indication that the AI (other then city states) even has an opinion of you. As soon as I end wars civs will happily give me open borders or cooperation pacts, and other civs will declare war on me from across the globe for no reason that I can discern.

Also, funny exploit I found: If you have research agreements, they expire immediately and you get the tech payoff if you go to war with that civilization. Absolutely . So yes, spamming NOTHING BUT TRADING POSTS can be exploited to do just about everything in the game. The only thing you can't buy with money is wonders.

I'm gonna try a game where I leave every city I conquer as a puppet. Hopefully, the end result is my happiness stays higher while my cultural policies never increase in price due to extra cities, meaning I have a huge world-spanning empire going for a cultural victory

 

[racofer]

The combat in this Civ is fifteen million leagues better than in any Civ-game ever.

True story.

Acquiring

 

[HanoverF]

CiV:
Newly annexed Codex city



"They built a theater in the capital!"

 

[Grunker]

Also, is there any information on what units can be upgraded to what? Pissed me the hell off when I found my crossbowmen couldn't be upgraded to musketeers.

Check the Civopedia: each unit profile says what the unit upgrades to. Crossbowmen upgrade to Riflemen I think.

Its a sad day when in game help is more detailed then the game manual

The civiliopedia has ALWAYS been infinitely more detailed than the game manual. The civiliopedia has also always been brilliant.

CiV's civiliopedia is by far the worst and least informative one yet. It also lacks the nice fluff from IV, sadly

 

[Malakal]

Yea, civilopedia sucks now. At first glance I was all 'wtf were they thinking!' and ammount of information stored there is pathetic.

I also find stupid the fact that luxury resources cant be stacked or that one source is enough for all cities, especially considering the new strategic resources mechanic.

But combat is damn good and way better than before.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Best civilopedia was civ III, no contest.

 

[gromit]

Is there any way to find info on how many luxurious resources you have? By far the two worst things about this Civ is the general lack of information and the bloody huge and MAC-like-click-one-thousand-times-to-reach-your-destination-UI!

This... it's a big step down enough from vanilla Civ4, but from BUG? Ouch!