Civilization V

[Oppenheimer]

The game was released yesterday. I think if you get it digitally you have to get it through Steam. I usually get games through Direct 2 Drive but even doing that made me install Steam anyway (which wasn't wise on their part to send me to their competition).

Anyway, I like it a lot even more than Civ IV. The removal of stacking units is a really nice change that makes attacking a city less arduous. Ranged combat is nice as well. City States are pretty fun and give you a somewhat mission based objective now and then. Overall I'm very pleased. Does anyone else have this? If so did you buy it on Steam or at a brick and mortar store?

[Antimatzist]

My computer is too bad for it, but I will get it in the future.

I've read the manual (you could download it for free) and there were a lot of interesting aspects in it. I like how you create your own governmental system, it seems a lot more fun than in IV (which was good, but some features were pointless imo).

On the other hand, I dont like that they dropped religions. I think that was a neat feature with all the state-religion thing and so. I would have loved to see it further evolved.

[Nikisaur]

They dropped religions?! Like, an integral part of a developing civilisation? I don't get it.

It comes out here in New Zealand tomorrow. I'm definately going to buy it.

[thcrock]

I loved CIv II and III. Never got around to Civ IV, though I will pick this up when I build a new computer. My machine can't hope to run it. The changes sound interesting. Really I've been meaning to try out Civilization Revolution on PS3, but also never got around to that.

[Humphrey Mintz]

Ohh I must buy this now that I know it's out. Always enjoyed the series. Someone should make a Suikoden mod for it or something. Not sure how it'd work but it sure would be interesting. =]

[thcrock]

Wow, I forgot about that. Back in the day I did make Civ II maps for Jowston and possibly something else. This was pre-Suikosource, I think I posted them on the old Castle of Kain website, because it was when that was active (2001 or so). The maps were kind of half-assed, but I did get most of the terrain correctly IIRC. A full Suikoden world map instead of just a single country would be much more interesting, although with Jowston it at least makes sense with the concept of 'city-states' that could potentially be at war. But actually making a scenario (do they still have those?) with the whole world at the time of one of the major wars would actually be fun to play.

[Antimatzist]

They dropped religions?! Like, an integral part of a developing civilisation? I don't get it.

It comes out here in New Zealand tomorrow. I'm definately going to buy it.

They just dropped the Christianity/Islam/Buddhism etc thing. Of course you can build temples (or whatever) and even have Religion have an impact on your governmental system. But this works like this this time: You kinda have a tech-tree and can explore new branches in one aspect of the government (the aspects are like tradition, which brings bonusses to your capital, religion, autocracy etc). Some aspects forbid each other, so you cannot be religious and I think liberal at the same time I think. You can pretty much build your own perfect system which fits you, I think that's neat.

Wow, I forgot about that. Back in the day I did make Civ II maps for Jowston and possibly something else. This was pre-Suikosource, I think I posted them on the old Castle of Kain website, because it was when that was active (2001 or so). The maps were kind of half-assed, but I did get most of the terrain correctly IIRC. A full Suikoden world map instead of just a single country would be much more interesting, although with Jowston it at least makes sense with the concept of 'city-states' that could potentially be at war. But actually making a scenario (do they still have those?) with the whole world at the time of one of the major wars would actually be fun to play.

I am pretty sure there is a Suikoden map for the northern continent for Suikoden IV. I know that John Layfield from duefiumi began to build a more detailed version with own tech-tree and he replaced religions with races (so you don't have muslims/christians/jews/.. in your city, but Kobolds, Elves, Dwarves,..). I really was looking forward to its completion, however this will never see the light of day I guess.

[Humphrey Mintz]

I've never really been good at making mods or anything so I'd like to see someone do something like that. As well as the world map and scenarios, etc. I think it'd be cool if they could somehow implement a few of the Suikoden gameplay features like the Stars of Destiny that were recruitable at different places in the world and maybe runes, blacksmiths, etc. but like I say I've never made a mod so I don't know how hard it'd be. Would be pretty cool though. Obviously I'd like to see a cross between both games rather than just taking away all aspects of Civilization to be replaced with Suikoden since that what Suikoden's for haha but to combine both would be good. =]

[Raww Le Klueze]

I've been looking forward to it, it's not out till tomorrow here but I'm a bit worried that my computer won't be able to handle it. Maybe I should check Steam.

Either way, just the fact that stacking is gone should make it better than IV. Global conquest was not really an alternative late in the game thanks to the endless stacks of units defending cities, if you wanted to conquer someone you basically had to do it in the B.C's.

The whole hexagon tiles feels completely pointless estethic though.

[Oppenheimer]

Can You Run It is useful for discovering if your computer can run any particular game. I use it all the time and haven't had any problems with it access info on my computer.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

[blah1017]

Just won a conquest victory as Napoleon, as a big Civ4 fan and Civilization fan in general I am IN LOVE with this game so much. It's just fantastic, I miss some things from Civ4 but the improvements made in general are just great.

I honestly didn't like Religions in civ4. They're kind of neat and they have historical merit but as far as gameplay goes, they sucked. They polarized diplomacy and the makers of Civ5 really wanted to revamp diplomacy, so they couldn't include a factor like Religion where you're either the same religion as another civ and they're your friends, or you're not and they dislike you. Maybe it'll come back in an expansion, but after playing 1.5 games, I'm not missing it.

One unit per tile is amazing, wars are actually more involved than "whoever has the highest production wins!" The Social Policy tree is probably my favorite addition, it really lets you speciailize your civilization and give you OPTIONS other than just REXing or Aggresively expanding by taking cities. In Civ4, land is power, and most of my games ended up going the same route: Early aggressive expansion, tech to bronze working for chopping and slavery, attack neighbors, tech to code of laws to build courthouses, keep expanding. That's boring, especially with the style of war in Civ4, once I hit the Renaissance era I no longer care about my half dozen stacks of units. Too much micromanagement. But in Civ5, there's far more emphasis on managing your civilization as an EMPIRE and not as individual cities. You still choose production for cities every turn, don't get me wrong, but now happiness is empire based, and less resources are wasted for no reason. (example:spillover happiness is used to generate golden ages instead of just being useless) The Social Policies are great because they let you do things other than be a land whore, if you have less cities you can get more social policies faster, and there are social policies specifically for smaller empires, as well as bonuses to your navy, military, your interactions with city states, and there are policies for large nations as well.

City States are great too, they give you certain benefits and incentives that give you a reason to not just declare war on all of them, but your rivals also want these bonuses. They create interesting conflicts of interest and zones of control. In a game I'm playing now as Russia, Japan just declared war on Singapore, but they've been my allies for hundreds of years and have been supplying me with precious horses, one of the few supplies of them I have. Now I have to decide whether I want to risk a dangerous war with Japan to protect them, or let them fall and search for resources elsewhere. I could try bribing Japan into peace or maybe gift Singapore units so they can defend themselves and I wont have to get involved directly. This extra drama just makes the world feel like an actual world, like you're building an actual history instead of just playing a game with a set of rules.

My only qualms? You can't raze Capitals or City States. I understand the gameplay implications, they don't let you raze city states so other civs have the opportunity to take them back and liberate them, but at the same time if I want to burn a city I should get to. No more power charts, the advisers fill this role now, but I miss that one screen in civ4 that showed all the civs with the lines between them, and when you were at war the lines would be red, not a big problem but I always thought it was funny how dramatic that screen got when the world was at war. Also I can't find an option to see an ingame clock, in Civ4 you could put a clock in the upper right hand corner so you always knew what time it was. That really helped because I lose track of time every single time I play Civ, I guess I'll have to keep my phone on me as I play or something.

Really though, phenomenal game. It's been awhile since a game came out that I was hyped for that actually met and exceeded my expectations. It's not the perfect game, there are flaws, and there are some balance issues and bugs, but it really is a great game.

[blah1017]

I've been looking forward to it, it's not out till tomorrow here but I'm a bit worried that my computer won't be able to handle it. Maybe I should check Steam.

Either way, just the fact that stacking is gone should make it better than IV. Global conquest was not really an alternative late in the game thanks to the endless stacks of units defending cities, if you wanted to conquer someone you basically had to do it in the B.C's.

The whole hexagon tiles feels completely pointless estethic though.

Late game conquest was possible in Civ4 but even more boring than it was in the early game. I'd actually say it was easier in the late game due to more effective seige weapons, air and naval support, and nukes. The problem being that it's so annoying to move EVERY SINGLE airplane and boat, late game wars make each turn last like 10 minutes, it's such a joke.

Hexagon tiles balance out the map and make it so you can't "cheat" the map by going diagonally. A unit moving diagonally in the square grid system covers a larger distance in the same amount of time as one traveling vertically or horizontally. Hexes also work well with one unit per tile, giving you advantages to combat with the flanking bonus.
They also do have an aesthetic purpose. They just look better, the map looks more natural as the terrain changes.

[Humphrey Mintz]

Can You Run It is useful for discovering if your computer can run any particular game. I use it all the time and haven't had any problems with it access info on my computer.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

This is useful. I'll be adding this to my bookmarks. It's less trouble to use this than to look at each individual thing. XD

I meet all the minimum requirements. Then all of the recommended except the CPU, which says...

Recommended: 1.8 GHz Quad Core CPU
You Have: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7300 @ 2.66GHz

So would it be worth me getting this? Would it go really slow or something or do you think it would be fine?

[Raww Le Klueze]

Can You Run It is useful for discovering if your computer can run any particular game. I use it all the time and haven't had any problems with it access info on my computer.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

Hmm. I seem to manage the minimum with some margin at least. It's complaining about my video card though, even though I apparently pass all the individual requirements

Not sure why it complains about the RAM though, I have 4 GB but it says I have 2,7.

Well it's worth a shot.

[Hirathien]

Can You Run It is useful for discovering if your computer can run any particular game. I use it all the time and haven't had any problems with it access info on my computer.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

Hmm. I seem to manage the minimum with some margin at least. It's complaining about my video card though, even though I apparently pass all the individual requirements

Not sure why it complains about the RAM though, I have 4 GB but it says I have 2,7.

Well it's worth a shot.

Don't expect it to be 100% accurate. That site keeps telling me my Graphicscard got 2.5gb of RAM, and it doesn't even have half of that in reality.

And some cases the Video Card you got isn't supported and thus, they're saying it's gonna be funky.