Civ V

[Bubba Grizz]

Civ V comes out on teh 21st. I'll probably get it but won't be able to play it for a while until I can find some time.

[Winnow]

Civ V comes out on teh 21st. I'll probably get it but won't be able to play it for a while until I can find some time.

Keep us updated bubba!


Word on the street is that Civ V is the best of the series so far. I've never enjoyed Civ games but my try out the demo for on this based on my childhood experiences with Sea Monkeys.

[Dregor Thule]

I'm already hooked JUST ONE MORE TURN I SWEAR!

[Animalor]

The demo is on Steam.. Just sayin..

[Fairweather Pure]

Native Eyefinity support is +1 from me!

[Syenye]

I'm enjoying it. The lack of unit stacking is hard for me to get used to, and I don't really like maintaining relationships with city-states. But neither of these things stopped me from playing it for 8 hours yesterday.

[Sylvus]

If you use a unit to fortify a town, can you ever get that unit out of that town? That screwed me up in my first game, I seem to have lost my first warrior unit and couldn't find it.

[Syenye]

If you use a unit to fortify a town, can you ever get that unit out of that town? That screwed me up in my first game, I seem to have lost my first warrior unit and couldn't find it.

There should be a little icon near the town's name. I'm not sure if this works for all units. I seem to have misplaced a few airplanes.

[Show]

Giant Death Robots!

[Dregor Thule]

Any unit put in a city can be taken out. For military land units there'll be a circular icon towards the left side of the city name plate, just click that. For worker units/great leaders there's a triangular icon to the right side. For air units it's represented by a small number at the top.

This game has consumed me, but kinda annoyed by some AI problems. Enemy civs are doing weird stuff like founding their 2nd city across the map right next to someone elses, or not expanding at all.

[masteen]

I wish I could name all my great leader units Kim Jon Ill

[Winnow]

Here's the Civ 5 manual if someone's bored at work and wants to browse through it.

Civ5 8mb

[Winnow]

This is first Civ game I've tried to play seriously. Having resource issues, otherwise seems pretty solid.

I had fun for a day. Not sure if I'll play again.

Played as Alexander, eventually made a buttload of his special Companion Calvary (super long travel range, +14 damage) units and jackstomped all the other civilizations.



Being able to ride into a city, attack, and then move after attacking back out of the city is a very nice bonus. As long as you can secure some horses in your city, you can get these units up and running pretty early in the game for cheap and they roll over most opposition. I had like 6 or 7 of these units blitzkrieging cities and then moving out to heal. Three of these units can take out a city in a single round. The random Great General spawn is just extra.

[Winnow]

This managed to suck me in for another few days in one mega game that I'm still not done with.

I played the Japanese which really doesn't have much advantage compared to the Calvary mentioned above. I am just now getting to the Zeros.

I went about my business early in the game, exploring and building cities. At some point, I had wiped out everyone on my continent except for England. England had discovered/built the Great Wall (very cool looking in game) and built the wall around three of its primary cities. For the fucking life of me, I couldn't find a way to break a treaty in place with the English. I was unable to attack England and couldn't find out what the treaty was but no matter what did to annoy England, the Queen didn't break the treaty.

Here's an early game shot of England's Great Wall:



I went like 150 turns (seriously) just building up units and advancing my tech trees because I couldn't do anything and my ships weren't able to cross over open seas yet. There were two other civs on another continent that I couldn't see. Eventually I encountered a ship from the other continent and I made a HUGE fleet of Frigates that could travel across water. It took me awhile (my own fault) to figure out how to send troops across the water using the "embark" command.

When I got over to the other continent, it was Hiawatha (hello stereotype!) Civ that I discovered and it was build up just as strong as mine. I first circumnavigated the other continent to reveal it's border, and then picked a peninsula that I could surround with my Fleet of Frigates, with plans for a massive bombardment of the city on it to eventually create a foothold on the new continent. For like 20 turns I kept blowing the crap out of any troops that set foot on the peninsula, and upgraded my land attack +20% ship skills. Hiawatha kept throwing rifle troop after rifle troop at me that couldn't touch my ships. After I thought I had weakened his army enough, and I figured out how to embark troops and sent them on their way across the ocean. I started my massive "D-Day" campaign.

My army was massive, having been untouched for 150-200 turns, with pussy England still hiding. The ocean was filled with my Rifleman troops heading over to the new continent. I had my Frigates placed, wrapped around the peninsula to give support to my landing troops. I had Frigates dedicated to pounding the crap out of the city to keep it's health low for an easy capture once my troops arrived.

The first wave of my Riflemen land, about three units at a time. Hiawatha's army wasn't as depleted as I thought and out of the clouds came wave after wave of his own Riflemen. What followed next was the bloodiest days ever recorded in my virtual Civ world. I went through five turns of my Riflemen getting obliterated as they landed on the beach, despite my Ships pounding Hiawatha's troops, I eventually was able to get some enhanced Calvary units over and managed to keep them alive on the beach.

Hiawatha breaks out his cannon troops and starts to pound my Frigates but I made quick work of them. Using my Ships and Riflemen to keep the remainder of his Riflemen busy, my Calvary was able to capture the city which pretty much put an and to the bloodshed. I moved in a great general type and secured the peninsula. I'm now moving my fleet of Frigates, max enhanced for pounding ground units due to the previous long campaign, and taking cities up the coast with my ground troops as they follow to clean up.

I STILL can't attack England. I'm guessing it's a bug. There's no way I can break whatever treaty is in place and England isn't about to break it and take the beating it would receive from my army massed outside its great wall.

I would never have even got to the industrial age if it wasn't for this England bug and not being able to get to the other continent. It did allow me to see some of the more advanced units. I still have a long ways to go to conquer the other continent but I'm sure I will with my superior forces at this point. The game has been fun but a little tedious with so many clicks per turn when huge armies are involved. My little workers have built on every hex in the fucking continent and just sit around. I built a road network President Eisenhower would be proud of. I even started my roads to unconquered cities early. I ran into gold issues in this ongoing game because I've got so many buildings and roads to upkeep without being able to expand (during the 150 turn stagnation) Eventually, putting most of my troops into hibernation helped with the shit-ton of clicking each turn.

This game is OK. Still don't think I'll play it much but it did capture my attention (and still to finish) for three full days. If England ever unpussifies itself, there will be a massive battle on my home continent. I can see England is having money issues as well though. I'm going to nuke those bastards and then abandon the continent.

Here's state of the game and a city assault presently: (city already captured)

[Dregor Thule]

There's definitely bugs with the game. The unbreakable treaties is a really infuriating one and has bit me a couple of times. The AI is also a bit lacking, but most Civ releases start out with problems and are gradually fixed. It's sad that it's become the norm and I've accepted it, but hey, I love the games.

I tried bumping my difficulty up to Emperor from King recently and discovered that the AI does in fact know how to fight a war. Ouch. Talk about getting curb stomped.

As for UUs, UBs, and civ traits, there's some balance issues for sure. A few off the top of my head are the Comp Cavalry you mentioned, Russia is just strong overall with their bonuses, Ottoman Janissary's are crazy with their full heal upon killing a unit. Some civs really suffer from bad ones, like Aztec Jaguar warriors, American Musketmen (their trait is all tiles cost 1 movement; sounds good until you try and use a road/rail system), the Ottoman trait (chance to take over defeated naval units, can't remember if it's barb only but I imagine it is).

Overall tho I give the game thumbs up. The graphics are awesome, at least if you're playing on a good machine that can handle the DX11, and the overhaul to combat really makes fighting a war a lot more interesting. After bug fixes and some balance tweaks, and hopefully some good AI tinkering either officially or from the fanbase, it'll be one solid ass game.

[Bagar-]

So I'm not big into RTS games (the only RTS I've played in my entire life is warcraft 3, and that was just to see the warcraft lore stuff), but I am thinking about picking this up and giving it a shot.

Can anyone give me a basic breakdown of the game? I mean, I get that it's an RTS, but outside of that I know nothing about the Civ series. I don't need a winnow-esque 5 page review - just a general outline of how the game works would be awesome.

For example, from reading this thread it appears that you chose an actual civilization to play as - is this selection permanent or do you change throughout the game? Are there different time periods to choose from? Is the game single-player only or is there an online mode as well? Is there an actual goal or objective to 'beat' the game, or do you simply continue expanding your civilization indefinitely?

Thanks!

[Dregor Thule]

It's actually not an RTS, it's a TBS. Goes in turns, much slower pace than an RTS game. You start a game by picking a civ, map size, difficulty, that sort of thing. Then you build your empire, make cities, armies, buildings, wonders of the world. You can win via technology, conquest, diplomacy, culture. You can be warlike or peaceful, tho you'll still need an army for defense because inevitably fighting is going to happen. There is single player and multiplayer, tho I haven't really messed around with the later to comment on it.

There's a free demo on Steam you can try out.

[Bagar-]

I'll definitely be trying out the demo. Thanks!

[Noysyrump]

Whatta ya think Dregor... better than CIV? I loved #4 so much I will be upset if 5 isnt up to snuff.

Cash flow is super tight for me atm, so plopping down $50 for a game I'm not gonna play over 4 is not gonna happen.

By the way I'm Hauptman on apolyton in case ya forgot.

[Dregor Thule]

I remember.

I personally like it. It's different than 4, and doesn't have 2 expansions + patches to fix stuff behind it yet, but I think it'll eventually be a superior product in almost everyones eyes. Game mechanics alone are great, it's mostly just bugs and an AI that can't handle the combat super well yet that is the problem IMO.

[Bubba Grizz]

I'll be buying it tomorrow I think. I was waiting on Best Buy coupons and got them yesterday. Now to find time in my schedule to play.

[Bubba Grizz]

So I bought the game last night. I tried to install it. I'm not sure I like how they have things now where you need to install Steam in order to install the game. Whatever happened to just buying the game, putting the disk in, and installing it?

I tried to input the key code and Steam wouldn't connect. I had to go through all my router and firewall configurations to allow the ports needed for Steam to work. I was able to open Steam on my computer but I wasn't able to get the key code to be recognized. Finally I put the code in exactly how it looked on the back of the manual with the - and caps and then it suddenly worked.

I understand that Steam is probably how the enable multiplayer and updates much like Battlenet for Blizzard but I'm not sure I like it. The jury is out right now. Oh, and I didn't get the game installed before it was time to crash for the night. So maybe I'll get to play it tonight. It's tough to enjoy the game with wife aggro looming over you.

[Sylvus]

It's tough to enjoy the game with wife aggro looming over you.

My wife went up to bed at like 10pm to watch Top Chef: Cupcakes (or somesuch) and I sat down to start a new Civilization last night. I came to bed at like 1am and she woke up and was like "were you really playing a game for three hours straight??" If only she knew me 10 years ago.

[masteen]

It's tough to enjoy the game with wife aggro looming over you.

My wife went up to bed at like 10pm to watch Top Chef: Cupcakes (or somesuch) and I sat down to start a new Civilization last night. I came to bed at like 1am and she woke up and was like "were you really playing a game for three hours straight??" If only she knew me 10 years ago.

Did you IRLPK her?

[Xouqoa]

If only she knew me 10 years ago.

lol

[Bubba Grizz]

"Just....one....more....turn....." I worked from home yesterday and spent it entirely playing CIV. Perfect game for working from home because it is turn based. Much easier to take a call and get a few clicks in here and there than if I were pvp'ing in WoW.

So I'm playing on the level 2 difficulty (beginner) and haven't had any real battles yet. Is it worth conquering the City States? It took me a while to figure out the Embark thing but now that I know, it is pretty cool. Except for when you put your workers on auto and they go trapesing off to the other city on a different island.

[Animalor]

Got the game last night. Went to bed at 3AM.

Feelin dumb this morning.

[Jice Virago]

Its a descent foundation for a game, but its a long way from being truely good. Patching can solve many of the issues, but some of them are too fundemental to be corrected by anything short of an expansion ala Beyond the Sword in C4. Here are the issues I have with it:

1) Attrocious AI-
The diplomacy is downright schitzophrenic, with other nations bitching about you being near their territory with troops when you are actively kicking the shit out of a common enemy that you are both at war with. The computer also simply does not seem to care about winning in any manner short of domination, and even then it won't attempt it if your army significantly outclasses it. A lot of the choices the AI makes in diplomacy make little sense and there is no cohesion with long term efforts like there was in C4. A CPU player is just as likely to agree to mutual protection pacts if you have a long history of trade and support as it is if you have been wailing on it militarily.

The diplomacy stuff is probably correctable in Mods, though. The real AI issue centers around their new combat engine. Now, I really like the one per tile and cities being unit mechanic (as long as the CPU does not cheat on dice rolls) as it is far more strategic and encourages a variety of units, instead of spamming the best available uber unit. The problem is the computer cannot fight its way out of a wet paper bag. I have literally rolled empires twice my size with a handful of units, because the computer cannot intelligently manage its forces. The computer should not be invincibly efficient, but it needs to be able to mount an effective defense so that it does not get rolled on its home turf even with a 2:1 numbers advantage. A big part of this is the fact that the CPU does not seem to cycle out/upgrade obsolete units, so you wind up punching through a front wall of modern units then spend the rest of your invasion wading through hordes of archers and spearmen.

The AI is the biggest problem right now and where I would spend most of my time, if I were the developers.

2) Resource imbalance-
Gold is king in this game, followed shortly by hapiness. Military might and science are almost completely irrelevant, if you build for gold, as there is not a single problem that cannot be tackled by throwing gold at it, aside from happiness. Need more food? Dump a grand on a Maritime City state. Need troops? Keep a couple Military City States as allies or insta buy some units where you need them. Need Culture? Again, city states. Technology is never an issue because even at immortal you can keep pace with the CPU with nothing more than libraries and the policy that gives you tech from city states. The key issue would seem to be city states, but really you can thump the game with money simply by speed buying an army and pupetting a bunch of cities that you conquer. This issue is made more severe by the fact that the computer never seems to focus on money (beyond spamming five million trading posts) and a human player can easily outspend them. I routinely have half a dozen or more City States on perm ally status and a couple grand in the bank, all with 4-5 cities. Meanwhile, the CPU can barely initiate Research pacts and can never afford to keep its military current. This is Warlord Difficulty, mind you.

This leaves Happiness as the only other resource to manage. Now the idea behind it is sound, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Specifically, on the easier difficulties its of so little impact as to be meaningless, while on the higher difficulties you get crippled so fast that you spend half of your time building money buildings and the rest building happiness ones. Failing that, you will find yourself intentionally stunting the growth of your empire or, worse, building some little shithole town in the middle of nowhere with nothing but hapiness buildings just to artificially inflate it, because its global and linear. The fact that it penalizes you so heavily for expanding or conquering means that you will probably raze most cities you conquer (and rebuild on the same spot if it was a descent one) to avoid the long term hit. It was obviously intended as a mechanism to limit rapid expansion (or sprawling empires) but its very poorly balanced. As powerful as gold is in this game, the support mechanic from C4 should have stayed.

3) Culture Lock In-
Ignore for the moment how much better going Liberty/Piety/Freedom/City States/Order is than any alternatives. The biggest issue with the Culture system is the inability to change civics to adapt to a game change. You pretty much have to decide early how you plan on winning and stick to that. The only possible change is to go Domination, because every other style mandates small empires and a limited route through the Culture tree. The fact that you are penalized, exponentially, for expanding means you are pretty committed to one path on turn one. Unless you screw up and have to go "ah fuckit domination!!" at the end of the game. The complete inability to change civics at all in this game pretty much eliminated an entire section of strategy.

4) The CPU still cheats-
Unfortunately with the horrid AI, it has to. Still, its so depressing playing by different rules than the CPU, especially as it pertains to combat results rolls and happiness management.


Now, I like the game and have played it a lot on all the difficulties. But its going to take a while before its good and I will probably shelve it until the first major expansion.

[Noysyrump]

But its going to take a while before its good and I will probably shelve it until the first major expansion.

Well that's what I wanted to hear. I'll stick to Europa Universalis III, Total War: Stainless Steel, and CIV for all my strategy needs for a while longer.