How many of you tried it out so far? I'm pretty much a Civ newbie, I played 4 for awhile, didn't learn much, cheated while playing it. I just finished 5 on the middle difficulty and steamrolled my way through the game.

The game itself pissed me off quite a bit on the tech side. The DX 10/11 mode is crashtastic for some reason, so I had to play it in DX9. It gets very jerky at times when it wants to throw 10 animated icons at you at once, while moving the entire world's units around in between turns. Very annoying. The screenshots it takes also had issues for me, my first nuking and the screenshots attached all have some black boxes around a few of the misting effects, like where uranium is, things like that.

Gameplay I played peacefully and traded with the heavily aggressive to everyone else, empire around me for most of the game, somewhere around turn 250 I got annoyed with him expanding on my borders and decided to take him out while he was fighting a war on 2 other fronts. I didn't realize 2 of the city states that were to the south of me were allied to the guy, so I had a hell of a fight that kept me up a good several hours.

Luckily when I won, I found I was on a stretch of land that was connected to the rest of the land on that side of the map by one tile. I stationed my strongest units there and hung out for another 100 turns or so until the Siamese guy decided to get froggy. I literally held off his entire army with a few ships sinking anything that tried to cross by water, and a few longswordsmen in the Hot Gates of Chicago =P

When the Ai came to me for surrender, he literally offered me nearly every city he had in my neck of the woods, all his gold, every resource he had for 30 turns, and a peace agreement for 10. In the pic, what I took from him in surrender is all the blue in the bottom left of the mini map pic. The guy left himself with basically desert and marshland. Another 100 turns or so and I built myself up and wiped him out, giving back the capitals to England and Greece.

Which resulted in me only getting 5 out of 10 for the UN? The game never explains how to get others to vote for you. I bribed 3 city states to ally, conquered 3 more, allied with Japan, and yet, it looked like I was getting to vote for myself, England and Greece voted for me, and 2 city states voted for me. That left France, Japan, and Ottomans voting for themselves. 8 voters total, but 10 needed to win? Don't really understand that. I did see one vote where an undiscovered party abstained from voting, but I never did find them. I saw a Syrian scouting party quite often, but never did find a Syrian nation despite the leader talking to me towards the end of the game asking for a pact of cooperation. Ninja nation? Still would of been 1 vote short of 10.

Fighting can be hella buggy as well. I had a few units just vanish, I had bombers that were stationed on aircraft carriers not show up on the carrier, but somewhere in the middle of the ocean, yet used the carrier to determine their attacking range. The bombing animation in particular pissed me off, because there is a very large delay in between when you click bomb, and it happens. The plane flies out, 2-5 seconds, bombs the target 1-2 seconds, flies back, 2-5 seconds, and then it's another 3 seconds + for damage to register. Also it seems that planes cannot cause a city to be destroyed, only ground attacks. Same with nukes, I never had a city get nuke wiped.

Luckily I started in the middle next to the ocean with rivers all around me, awesome farmland, and due to taking over the whole island, I had 3 oil deposits, a few aluminum, and a few uranium before anyone else even had the tech to make guns.

Games like this usually bore the piss out of me. I cant quite explain why I was so enthralled with this the last 3 days. It needs some tweaks, and it's a royal pain in the ass to cross oceans with your units, but I had fun with it.

 

I like that the different paths to victory are actually mutually exclusive now - trying to go for a culture victory means keeping a relatively small empire with larger, more cultured cities, for instance. The city-states are an interesting addition too - befriending a few maritime city-states early on can give you an incredible boost to growth, cultured ones can really help you get early policies... haven't tried snuggling up to a militaristic one yet.

The happiness change is huge - it being an empire-wide resource instead of city-by-city. It makes capturing cities far less of a no-brainer, especially if you think you can place it better or it's still a small city - it can be a lot better to just raze it and settle the area yourself, especially considering the amount of time it takes to build a courthouse as well as the maintenance for it.

Another thing that blows my mind is the new border system. Expanding tile-by-tile instead of having the full fat cross early on is a huge change, to my mind, especially considering the three-tile distance. You can swallow up a lot of resources with a well-placed city. I'm a little disappointed that the minor features - cows, sheep, wheat, etc - just give a boost to the plot's resources instead of having an empire-wide effect like happiness or strategic resources do, but that's a relatively minor quibble.

I like the individuality of the different factions. The small blurb while loading is a great little feature, and all the factions seem to have their own flavour to them, especially considering their traits are individual instead of the whole 'trait/trait' system of the earlier games, and a lot of them are complete game-changers. I find myself starting new games just to play with the effects of a different leader's trait. Also, Catherine is a fox.

One last small thing I really approve of? No more fucking transport units. Fuck yes. Once you've got optics, you can just have your dudes wander off the coast.

 

I beat Immortal on the second playthrough. I'm a solid Monarch/Emperor 4 player. This game is just too simple right now. I see a lot of potential, especially if they patch the AI and fix some of the more obvious balance flaws. Oh, and MP on it just sucks.

Edited in as I read the above two posts a little more in depth: The bonuses in the city states, esp in what is often considered to be the best one, maritime, are not OP. What is stupid is that the AI can not compete with a determined human on outbidding for their friendship/typically find them first(competent player of course). Let's take a hypothetical situation of multiplayer, in which two players both want to befriend a maritime city state for the food bonus. I acknowledge that there are different ways to befriend a city state, but the one that's not dependant on chance is gold. You'll always be able to gift gold to get the city state's favour. So one player gets the control, then the other one outbids him, then the first one outbids again and so on, as it makes sense as long as the gain is bigger than the loss. But at some point it won't make sense to bid any more, and the "price" for gaining the food bonus is set at balance with the actual bonus. What you could do is make the bonuses, esp. the maritime one, less, or change the AI script to fight harder for these city states. And what concerns me? This isn't even the most pressing of problems, or game balances.

 

Allying with militaristic city states makes no sense at all the benefits you get. The ones I did gave me units. But I had one who was fielding spearmen give me anti air guns. I guess it'd be useless for them to give me spearmen, but it made zero sense.

I wanted to take the research to victory path, but found I had to expand pretty large to get enough to make it not take 20 turns to research every single middle road item. Once I knocked the Ottoman out of my side of the island, I wound up having so much more space my production and research grew big time, to where it made me feel I should of just went military to start with.

And don't get me started on how game breaking bombers and minutemen were for me, I got those way too early, only maybe my 10th game of Civ ever, my 1st game of 5, and I beat the shit out of the AI.

I really didn't notice this. Granted I had +12 to happy from the game difficulty, but mine often sat at around 20. In my screenshot it's at +11, and that's with just having taken 4 city states, and having another 8 cities given to me as spoils of war. The only time I went into negative is when I captured all of the Siam/yellow on the pic's cities and were waiting for them to raze down. I built enough happiness modifiers in each city to offset it.

Later on in the game when you have gold coming in by the truck load, it's easy to just purchase a settler, throw a city down, and throw 5K gold at it to buy up the +% production buildings and have a 30 production town like nothing. I liked it, because you can't really do that unless you plan just right, or have very low upkeep, but every 50 turns or so I was able to crank out a beast town pretty quick if I wanted to. I ended the game getting like 700 gold a turn net.

I'm going to do this today.

Be careful to protect them though. I had a giant death robot evidentally go down in one hit from a destroyer while it was in boat form in the middle of the ocean. Don't know if that was intended, but it drove me apeshit.

I did like how I was very limited in what I could build by my resources. My nukes, took up 2 uranium, I had like 20. I stockpiled the nukes only to not be able to build shit to base them on.

I tried gifting them units. Total waste of a unit, it barely moves the meter. I don't get diplomacy of the AI's either. I'd have Greece ask me for a pact of secrecy against the Ottomans who'd been fucking with them, and Greece had a stronger army. I tried to get him to declare war by offering him everything, and he wouldn't do it. I'd be asked to declare war on one guy, refuse, then ask him later on to declare with me, and nothing. It's not real consistent.

I'd sometimes have the Ottoman ruled call me names, exit out the screen and come back and suddenly he's nicer? I liberated England after it'd been out of the game a good 200 turns, and they were my allies. Then I attacked a few more cities, liberating Greeces capital bringing them back, and England got on my shit about preying on the weak?

:facepalm

 

Oh that's just CIV AI.

One moment they love you the next they hate your guts. They demand things in tribute and blatantly disavantageous trades to you and get mad if you refuse.

'S why most of my games turn from peaceful culture/space race to FUCK YOU EVERYONE DIES NUKES FOR EVERYONE.

 

Fixed that for you.

 

Maybe its just me, but in my limited games the AI often places forward city locations toward me, usually within my BFC or whatever the Civ 5 version of it should be called. Now, due to the culture system, the only way to knock back it is too use a GA, and only 2 or 3 tiles at best. Therefore, you have to invade.

However, the AI is so incompetent at war its just ridiculous, even at the higher standing. In my Immortal game, using 3 trebs and a couple of champion cavs(playing as Greece) I curbstomped 3 or so cities before peace, in which I picked up another 2 cities, leaving the pitiful AI, Japan, playing OOC. The AI needs to become better, or, within probably a week, this game will be boring and lackluster outside of MP.

And of course Multiplayer is laggy as hell. I tried a game last night with a couple of friends, 3 players on a Tiny map. 20 seconds to load up. I don't have a great computer, but it mets the specs, and so do theirs. And no PBEM, no Pitboss, no double move counter, etc. just makes MP a tacked on version, or so it feels.

Good thing my rich friend is letting me piggyback off him, and I didn't spend 50 bucks on this game.

Edit: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=9682601#post9682601 Down loadable SDK. Why this didn't come with the base game is beyond me. At least the mod community will be happy for a little while. Now appease us ladder players. :3

 

Yeah but the nukes in this game dont do enough fucking damage. My stealth bomber seemed like it was doing almost as much damage as the nuke it took me forever to get.

This game uses a fuckload of resources for no apparent reason. I used to play Crysis with zero trouble and yet this game at times makes my shit crawl.

 

Really my all time favorite Turn Based Strategy game has come and gone. Call To power 2. It was essentially Civ 2 with better graphics, a absolutely HUGE mod list, gigantic tech trees, and good AI.

Civ 5 kind of seems like a dumbed down version of that. The trading is simplified (which is a good thing here), but the AI is shit, both in combat and diplomatically. There's no reason to try and be diplomatic with other nations besides city states, and they'll just break agreements and attack for no reason.

The combat is extremely easy, so much that on my very first game on default settings I pretty much slaughtered all 6 enemies in less than 400 turns.

Maybe I'm going on about this wrong, because I'm not that good. I've never been a good strategy player (I utterly and completely fail at starcraft for example), but it seems like the AI here is just weak.

 

Started a new game playing as the Persians. Their double length of golden age combined with on of the early wonders that boosts golden ages by 50% is really fucking powerful. I've spent much of my game in golden ages so far.

However I tried 4 different new games with this empire, and each time, the game decided to put civilizations up my ass and then throw in another 3 or 4 city states right on top of that. In my first game, the pic I linked above, I had 3 city states a good distance away from my capital/starting spot, and I didn't see another empire in anything but scout unit form for awhile.

I had France, Russia, Iroquis, and the Syrian guy, with 3 city states where I could either see their capital or their borders within one screen without zooming out much. Multiple reload put about the same cluster of shit on me no matter what. I guess different civilizations have different starting settings? Washington always started on a river with high food when I screwed around with it trying to get used to the game. The Persians seem to start real close to desert and oasises for me.

So I decided to go exploring and try to find a better spot to set up my capital in. Did alright after 10 turns and got a nice spot. I messed up and looked for food instead of production though, so my capital takes awhile to build anything. However even the few turns I took to get established means I'm getting my ass kicked on wonder rushes. I'm still comparable tech wise, but until I wiped out the Russians they were snapping up wonders left and right somehow. Next time I'll quicksave and explore then see if I can get the settlers there in under 5 turns or I'll just plop them down where I spawned at, even a few turn delay is a big deal.

The tile purchase reduction on Washington adds up, I'm constantly out of gold for the Persians to expand with. However, I did notice a trick that works well. I sold my first luxury resource for 300 gold, then took that and some more gold and allied a maritime city state... that had 3 luxury resources, and a big fucking food bonus. I did the same a few turns later to a military city state, and then another I got by killing barbarians, and was overflowing with units that I used to wipe out Russia, since the fuckers literally formed a ring around my capital with settlements cutting off my expansion and snapping up my planned iron, silver, and cattle resources.

 

Yeah, there's a bias for civilisations to start in an appropriate sort of terrain. You can turn it off in the advanced game set-up. And I'm getting the impression that the smaller the map size, the closer you start to the competition.

 

Playing with the standard map size. Same as the Washington game and I didn't have a screen full of people on me in any of the restarts I did in that one, but every restart does for my Persians.

 

Same map mode? I've found it more crowded with Pangaea than with Continents, and I've yet to share an island with anyone but City-States in Archipelago. Changed any of the advanced options? A higher sea-level or younger Earth could make for a more crowded map.

 

I'm a Civ newbie as well, played Civ 4 only briefly at friends place before but since it looked pretty interesting I decided to give it a go.

First game was with Japan on difficulty 5(Prince, aka Normal). I techwhored to get my Samurais and I must say... damn those guys absolutely flattened anything and everything without breaking a sweat(I did have a General supporting them but still) I took out the entire continents opposing civilizations somewhere around turn 200 just plowing through them all.

The AI I'll agree could be much better, in battles it was completely lack-luster, just throwing troops around and at me.

I'm now playing over internet with a few mates and I must say it's a lot more interesting and intense there(Specially with raging barbarians, they really do go around raging there).

Out of curiosity, which civilization you guys like the best so far? I'd have to go with Japan, the passive with samurais equals a complete steamrolling infantry and city taker. It also makes the barbarians at start really easy.

 

Damn it, Firaxis...

Edit: and it fixed itself as the road continued. Still annoying, though. I've come to expect more polish than this from Firaxis.



More road shenanigans: I removed the road in the top-left tile after discovering that you can't form trade routes with allied city-states (fuckdamnit).

 

Only thing I changed was the no battle animation.

I like America best so far, probably just because of the awesome rolling I did with them, but Rome looks like it'll be awesome once I expand. I tried just keeping one city though, and I'm flying through the policies.

Can you not form trade routes to other civ cities? I would of thought that would be expected if you had say open borders, but it seems you cant =/

Restarted again in Rome, I had a nice game going, then I bought a bunc of water tiles to get my navy on and found out you have to start the city ON the water to be able to build work boats. Fucking fail. 1 hex away made me restart my 100 turn game, because it completely fucked my strategy, lol.

 

Please change your avatar Audeamus. Its the same I use at CFC, and its just driving me batshit crazy having to look at it, and see, did I write that, no some other person did.

 

The level of self-important 14-year-old newbie in this post is off the fucking charts.

I just tried a game as Egypt. Their unique building is maintenance-free and gives two culture and two gold for not much more than the price of a monument. Also decided that of the early Wonders, Pyramids are the must-have - +8 culture of Stonehenge is great for free border expansion, sure, and the Colossus gives a seaside city a nice economic boost, but Pyramids gives the only boost that can't be replicated by something else.

And I repeat my assertion that Maritime city-states are the best city-states. +4 food in the capital and +2 everywhere else at Ally level is always valuable, while the +8 culture from a Cultural CS is lackluster after the first few policies jacks the price up. Good early on, though - throw them some gold early if you got lucky with goody huts and barbarian counter-pillaging, or snap them up if there's a convenient mission.

I've yet to have more than three cities before the Medieval era, has anyone else been more expansionist? I know I'm a bit harsh when it comes to judging whether an area is worthy of a city or not.

 

You can actually form roads to city states, I did manage to do it when one requested I do so. I had to build the road to just outside of it's borders, and then it connected it itself. Also, beware the patch, it's making me lockup quite often.

 

You can build roads to them sure enough, but it doesn't do anything except cost maintenance and give you a one-time boost to relations if you have the mission. It doesn't give you another trade route, and they don't need it to get resources to you. Although if you've got workers to spare, sending them into an allied CS' turf to develop their strategic or happiness resources is a good use of time, because they'll send them straight your way.