Civilization V

[thcrock]

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 lack of stacking actually does sound great. Even though I didn't play IV, I remember attacking in Civ II sucked after a certain point. I always just rushed towards Chivalry (knights) in Civ II and tried to take over the world by spamming knights before everybody had Pikemen and City Walls. Concquering after that became tedious.

[Raww Le Klueze]

The lack of stacking actually does sound great. Even though I didn't play IV, I remember attacking in Civ II sucked after a certain point. I always just rushed towards Chivalry (knights) in Civ II and tried to take over the world by spamming knights before everybody had Pikemen and City Walls. Concquering after that became tedious.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it's been played since Civ II. I used to just pick maps with small continents or archipelagos just to avoid having to fight over territory and have my own seperate country.

Then again, I don't care how big the continent is, I'm not into sharing it so this no-stacks should be interesting.

I just hope they tweaked the way civs behave. It got seriously annoying that just because you attacked someone once, 1000 years later they still go "You attacked our friend! -1", even though you could be allied with that nation now.

Oh get over it you big baby, move on already, it's been a millenium and it wasn't even you. The guy I attacked got over it.

[Oppenheimer]

The addition of both ranged units and non stacking units and hexes rather than the grid movement do improve the game dramatically. Cities function like super units(with ranged attacks) with lots of health and you can garrison one unit inside as well. It makes war far smoother an idea and more strategic too.

Edit: City States are very easy to please and will assist you in war if you're allied with them but never grow larger than one city. Other civilizations are almost all impossible to please and will go to war with you at the drop of a hat. It's pretty much the biggest complaint reviewers have.

[Iesous]

I would be interested, but my CPU apparently isn't satisfactory. Then again, I didn't expect it to be. I bought my laptop to be able to use it all day without plugging it in. So the CPU is a low voltage CPU and therefore slower than a lot of CPUs. This is what I have: Genuine Intel(R) CPU U7300 @ 1.30GHz; and this is what's suggested: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 64 2.0 GHz. I'm assuming that this is a problem. Can anyone confirm? All other minimums are fine.

[Nikisaur]

So I got it, took like and hour and a half to get it installed and running.

But man the start is sloooow. I don't want to spend forever learning The Wheel. That stuff should be over quick so you can get to EXPANDING.

[Humphrey Mintz]

Can't you change the speed time passes? I'm sure you could in previous games. I still need to get this. =P

[thcrock]

I would be interested, but my CPU apparently isn't satisfactory. Then again, I didn't expect it to be. I bought my laptop to be able to use it all day without plugging it in. So the CPU is a low voltage CPU and therefore slower than a lot of CPUs. This is what I have: Genuine Intel(R) CPU U7300 @ 1.30GHz; and this is what's suggested: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 64 2.0 GHz. I'm assuming that this is a problem. Can anyone confirm? All other minimums are fine.

You could always try (framerate isn't exactly crucial in a turn-based game, is it?), but that's a lot of wasted money if you can't run it.

[Nikisaur]

I always selected just the standard length in all of the other Civs, so figured that Civ5 would be similar. But like, 12 turns to learn the wheel? Let me build a damn road already!!!

May try to play it again tonight.

[Raww Le Klueze]

It does seem to take longer on average to research anything, the diplomatic options seem far less as well and they do a rather poor job of explaining what the few new options do, even the Civopedia doesn't really explain. Pact of secrecy? Does what exactly? Cooperation? Not that it matters, cause I haven't gotten anyone to actually accept one.

On the whole the AI just acts like a complete bastard at all times, is there a single civ that won't just berate you and start wars at the drop of a hat?

But on the whole it's like an improved Civ IV so it's nice, but some of the changes are hard to adjust to. Like not transporting units with ships, which is fine I suppose cause it gives them more autonomy but they have absolutely no defenses then and your tank can get sunk by a barbarian trireme.

Unfortunatly my computer just barely scrapes by so it runs a bit slow, especially at first for some reason but once it gets going it flows on rather nicely with a few hiccups.

[blah1017]

From what I understand Pact of secrecy undermines relations between you, whoever you're signing it with, and whoever it's targetted against. So if you're Washington, and you sign a Pact of Secrecy with Napoleon against Gandhi, Gandhi's relations drop with you and Napoleon. You're supposed to use it to goad people into war and control relations. Cooperation is the opposite, it improves relations between two civs.

If the AI is berating you and starting wars at the drop of a hat, you're probably weak. Build more military and you wont get pushed around. Although some leaders ARE complete bastards and are really just waiting for a chance to kill you. Played a game as Washington earlier and Oda Nobunga declared war on me twice, after holding him off for thousands of years I decided to go all out and take over his entire civilization, liberating Arabia in the process. Only after I took over his land, Askia stepped up to the plate and declared war. I had just about won the space race at that point so it didn't really matter, but you can't expect everyone to behave like Gandhi. Everyone is trying to attain dominance in their own way, and for people like Napoleon and Nobunga, the way to greatness is war.

No transports is a great thing IMO, now you don't have to build a useless stack of transports, instead you're required to maintain a functioning navy. If you can't protect your units, don't have them embark (or play as Askia, his embarked units can defend themselves)

Also the research does seem to take longer, but the tech tree is also smaller this time around, and tech trading is out. You should focus on teching things that you need at that current moment, the early game doesn't seem NEARLY as crucial as it was in the previous games. It's still very important to get your empire up and running early, but in Civ4, the early game was pretty much the entire game. If you messed up early, you were playing catch up the rest of the game, and if you didn't you were dominating. Here it seems much more possible to turn the tides against a superior opponent. I was 3rd in the power charts in my Washington game but careful placement of units and teching down the military branch helped me fill the gaps, I played a more defensive role in wars against Japan and England until their armies were crippled, and then stepped in for the kill.

[Oppenheimer]

I played the game again on a earth like map and I got all of North America and South America to myself and a few city states. No one declared war on me at all the entire time they were all very friendly except for asking to go to war, they agreed to research agreements and open boarders without asking for anything extra. I guess if you're not encroaching on their territory and aren't violent they don't see you as a threat even if you have no military. I ended up wining a scientific victory with no real problems except that it took me to 2030.

[Nikisaur]

Well in my game, everyone seems to be going to war with everyone else, but they all love me. I'm helping out my little city states, which I reckon are a cool addition. Whatever the other leaders want, I seem to be able to pacify them Whales. Everybody loves whales.

[Raww Le Klueze]

but you can't expect everyone to behave like Gandhi.

In this game you can't even expect Gandhi do behave like him. Getting berated by him after we just met seems very out of character. He basically started out hostile.

And the issue with being berated in relation to your military doesn't hold any water, my advisors tell me we are the strongest force, some other civs express awe at it and most importantly any time I do go to war it tends to make blitzkrieg seem like a war of attrition.

[blah1017]

I should have been more clear in my post, but declaring war on you and berating you were supposed to be two separate posts. You can expect people to go to war with you if you're weak and to berate you if you're strong. People are going to be hostile towards you if you're dramatically stronger than them, doesn't it make sense that they would be intimidated? Of course this all varies from leader to leader, a warmonger like Askia might respect you more if you have a large army, but to someone like Hiawatha who is interested in cultural and scientific pursuits, you're just power hungry

Also its kind of funny, because you cant expect Gandhi to be Gandhi. That's because of the system of "flavors," there is a level of randomness in that someone like Gandhi will generally be peaceful, but he can also be more warlike depending on how his flavor is chosen at the beginning of the game. They talked a lot about this during in interviews before the game came out.

Also what difficulty are you playing at? I played a game on Chieftain and the AI did act kind of wonky, but I think that was because of how much more powerful I was. I was the leader in everything except culture so obviously the rest of the world was intimidated by me. It was a continents map though and after I wiped everyone on my continent out the other continent was way friendlier.

It's still a new game so I don't have everything figured out, but IMO the diplomacy is way better than Civ4's transparent garbage

[Raww Le Klueze]

I ended up wining a scientific victory with no real problems except that it took me to 2030.

Just out of curiosity, did that seem undewhelming to you? It's like you click "Launch" and then get a victory screen.