Sid Meier's Civilization V announced. (OMG!)

[Kaisha]

I've barely played Civ IV (or III *coughs*. got both Complete editions dirt cheap via Steam earlier this year), but from the looks and large gameplay changes of Civ V (aside from beefed up gpu-requirements, nn laptop players), it seems like the two will complement one another rather than V just replacing IV once it catches up in content via expansions no?

Just trying to determine if I should bother spending time learning IV further, or just wait for the day I get V. I only put about 4 hours into it, and I still don't know wtf I'm doing lol.



Civ series is considered part of the 4X genre last I checked also.

[Hyan]

tactics?

Dayum, gotta try it out.

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

turn based like tactics but you sort of build up armies like an rts, also with some base(city) building all while juggling alliances and expanding and upgrading

[Darkdreamer]

I've been debating buying this (and by debating I mean waiting for permission from the wife to buy this). So I got on Steam and d/l the free demo. You get about 100 turns and you get like 3 civilizations to choose from, small map, in other words a small demo.

I haven't played Civ in quite a few years, but I do remember my countless hours over the years planning my world domination in previous Civ games. The updated features from what the demo has are quite nice.

The combat and hexagon layout are big improvements. No more stacking 100 units on a single tile to wipe out someone, now it's 1 unit per tile (each unit has like 10 fighters of that type on it). Also towns can attack without having military fortified within the city and they have about a 2 hexagon range to attack from center. Since you can't play the numbers zerg fest as easily it adds some challenge to attacking. The hexagons just seem to make a lot more sense and it seems to clean up movement and spacing a lot.

Things like religion and Governments are pretty much gone and replaced with a tiered ideology type reward system (I can't remember the exact name for it). Basically as you progress you can select different tier group and you can earn permanent bonues as you progress (like more productive workers, stronger military units, etc; I can't get far enough to see anything very advanced in this).

There's still a heavy reliance on research and upgrading your cities from what I saw and you definitely need to have a military force around to protect you and fight barbarians that seem to breed like rabbits. The communication with allies/enemies seems a lot more polished than in previous versions and you have a visible meter to see how you stand with the town to see if they're friend or enemy.

My biggest up front complaint, and this could be just because it was the demo, was the workers. Since you can't stack units, including workers, building roads, and mines, and things go REALLY slow. Now this probably speeds up as you get better technology and upgrades to ideaology tiers, so this complaint could be resolved once I get out of the stone ages, honestly with 100 turns you can only go so far.

So just from the demo I got a pretty solid feel for how the game plays out, at least early on, and I would be really interested in seeing how things progress. There is a bit of a learning curve at first especially if you haven't played Civ in awhile or not at all just to get used to all the new features.

Hope the info is helpful to anyone, this is just my 2 cents after playing 5-6 demo runs last night.

[Zetanio]

I picked it up yesterday and played one complete game. The new additions are city state that can act as allies, neutral or enemies, depending entirely on whether you kill barbarians when they ask, or simply give them gold.

There is a LOT more emphasis on spending gold then in previous Civ's. The non-stacking units is fairly annoying at first, especially if you are used to Civ IV style game play. Terrain plays a much more important factor for attacking, you can cross shallow water in ANY unit but if you are attacked by a naval unit it's a guaranteed loss.

I could honestly write 1000+ words on how they've changed, upgraded, cut stuff but you need to play it. If you enjoyed the other Civ's, you'll enjoy this quite a bit. The new graphics are pretty fantastic it runs pretty clean until you get past 2000BCE and have 100's of units running around every turn.

[Kiarax]

Million dollar question: IS IT BETTER THAN CIV 2?

[Lbelle]

God damn played this for HOURS yesterday, so much fun...

[dejet]

Million dollar question: IS IT BETTER THAN CIV 2?

how can you ask that so soon? >.> you prob have 500+ hours logged on civ 2 lol

[Gryffes]

Civ 1 > All, editing the intro text was awesome.

[Kiarax]

how can you ask that so soon? >.> you prob have 500+ hours logged on civ 2 lol

Shit, 500 hours is like 1 game. That's small time.

[Takedown3]

is this playable in min settings on laptops, video card is a NVS 3100M and 4g ram and 2.67ghz i7 M620

i REALLY need to play this and would like some input

[Kaisha]

I know it's not common on the PC platform these days, but there's a demo of Civ 5 available to use as a bechmark tool to see how it runs for the first couple hours of gameplay, if it runs at all.

[Takedown3]

tried the demo, it was bare bones on this system and a bit on the sluggish side but i think i can handle up to a medium size map with 3 or 4 civs without much of an issue.

downloading paid full version on steam now.

i wish i had a power house of a PC again, up until a few years ago i swore against laptops but needed to push towards them for biz ;(

[Cesaria]

Million dollar question: IS IT BETTER THAN CIV 2?

In all honesty - no I don't think it is. They've tried to remove a lot of the real micro management of Civ2 over time - but I still think it was the best one of the series and they've gotten easier over time.

[Takedown3]

game is a hog on the laptop on a standard map shit gets too laggy

gonna keep at it tho loving this game alot

[Cesaria]

The slowdown's a problem with all the Civ games once you get to where there are a lot of enemy turns to generate each go. I don't think it's actual lag as such - just lots and lots of stuff to go through each turn.

[GRT]

at 400ish turns on a huge size earth map the turn wait is about 10 minutes each

[Takedown3]

do u think this is something that is patchable? i've been an avid civ'er since civ1 on my mom's 286 and i'm just wondering if they might fix that. if it seems unplayable for anyone on the largetst maps with tons of shit happening you would think they would try and clean that up

[Elesirdur]

Got it yesterday, played for about 2 hours in the afternoon, went out at night, played for "a bit" when I got home...fuck, it's 4:30...meh, this game is amazing.

[Takedown3]

so anyone want to discuss tactics at all? i'm playing against AI at first before i jump online mostly to get used to the new shit but also because my laptop will have trouble against online opponents

my first game was on the second easist difficulty (chieftan i think?) and i found that it was incredibly easy, the AI civ's wouldn't expand or build or agress, so i bumped it up to warlord just one notch higher on the difficulty scale and now it seems like it's MUCH harded, civs are expanding like crazy, building every wonder before i get a chance to even select it, killing city states, etc etc.

i start out with whatever civ i feel like trying as i like to experiment with all of them, start with 1 city right away regardless of the hex so i dont lose a turn of science/productivity, i build a worker then a settler right away to start expanding and i head for philosphy right out of the gates to try and get the wonders attached (great library and the free policy one).

this is basically what i've done in all civs. not sure if this is the right approach anymore. can anyone offer 2cents?