Civilization V

[Oppenheimer]

Yeah the victories aren't as elaborate as other games or even prior games in this series. I liked Civ Rev's scientific victory. You'd actually see the parts go into space and connect to a ship and you'd get the choice of when you think it's complete enough to launch. Then you get to see it arrive on the new planet. Civ V's victories is very anti-climactic. You don't even get a good close up of the lift off. It's hidden behind the victory window.

In Civ Rev you'd also get a panoramic flight over your world showing all the cities celebrating your victory and a roll call of various dates and times civilizations in your world accomplished something.

As much as Civ V is better in than previous games, that doesn't include the diplomacy (except research agreements are awesome) or endings. You'd think that they spent so much on that super long partially unskippable sequence of the old man talking to his son the least they could do is have something at the end too.

Edit: Typo

[Nikisaur]

So it's not just me? It is unskippable? Well, until you get to the...boat bit? I think.

So I've got into this game properly and...(drum roll please)... I like it! Except, can you ask other leaders what they think of eachother? Because there's this dude next to me with TWO CITIES, and I have the stongest military (I think). I just don't want to crush him and have everyone else throwing their toys out. They all like me at the moment, except the guy with two cities. He's a bit lippy for someone I could probably flatten in 2 turns. Seriously though, I have more whales than people to trade them with...

Also, how scary does Montezuma look? I don't like dealing with him because he frightens me a little.

[Raww Le Klueze]

The annoying flaws aside, like lackluster endings, bad diplamacy, etc, Civ V is ultimately a good game cause it has the Civ quality, as in you wake up on a weekend and start a game and next thing you know it's 8 hours later and you still haven't had breakfeast.

[Oppenheimer]

can you ask other leaders what they think of eachother?

Nope, they don't seem to have that option anymore.

[blah1017]

Here's a list of how the AI responds to warmongering found in the gamedata:


Al Rashid 5
Alexander 2
Askia 4
Augustus 4
Bismark 6
Catherine 5
Darius 5
Elizabeth 7
Gandhi 7
Hiawatha 6
Montezuma 1
Napoleon 3
Oda Nobunaga 6
Ramesses 6
Ramkhamaeng 8
Sulieman 4
Washington 7
Wu Zetian 5


I'm guessing a higher number means that they get more upset if you're being a warmonger. LOL @ Montezuma having a 1, crazy bastard.

[Oppenheimer]

No Nebuchadnezzar II?

[Raww Le Klueze]

Okay, that's it. I'm turning the -ing barbarians off for every coming playthrough. This is ridiculous, they're worse than roaches.

[Oppenheimer]

Yeah, you have to park a unit right on top of their spawn point (they always appears in the same spots) or else build a city there or just get your borders overtop of the spot. Except for when they put themselves in the ice they usually pick a spot that's pretty good place for a city.

[blah1017]

Barbarians are great for early experience for your units!

[Nikisaur]

I haven't had any trouble with barbarians really... (famous last words) but that sounds really annoying. I didn't realise you could turn them off! Blah is right about the experience though.

I wish you could talk behind eachothers backs! That would have made things easier. I finially attacked that guy, three other leaders declared war on him at once. So me and three city states jumped ont he band wagon. I like how your cities can attack people!

[blah1017]

They just released the first patch!

patch notes:
UI

* Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
* Aircraft banner corrections - now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
* Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
* Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
* Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
* Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the "open" side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
* Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
* Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen.
Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
* Auto-populate save menu with save file name
* Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
* Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen
* Added new tab to the Economic Overview Screen: "Resources & Happiness."
* Added option to activate the mp score list in single player (for "always up" score similar to Civ IV.)
* The Annex/Puppet/Raze popup now indicates how much extra Unhappiness will be assumed with each action.
* If there are less than 5 buildings still needed to construct a National Wonder, the production popup tool-tip now lists which cities lack them.
* Added Yield & Culture tool-tip info to the production popup.
* Tweak information on the Global Politics tab in the Diplomacy Overview screen.


MODDING

* Category list now displays correctly
* "Installed" panel now displays ALL versions of a mod but prevents the user from enabling multiple versions.

GAMEPLAY

* Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don't change what you decide was best for a plot).
* Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
* Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
* Economy - Increased city wealth setting to 25%
* Economy - Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
* Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
* Trade - Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
* City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
* Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
* Military - Fix for Minuteman movement.
* Military - Correct promotions for "archer-like" units (horse archers, chariots).
* Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
* Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
* Balance - Engineers +1 hammer
* Balance - Disbanding units now provides only 10% of their production cost in gold.
* Request - Enable "one more turn" button if you lose, but are still alive.


AI

* Military - Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.).
* Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
* Military - Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
* Diplomacy - AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
* Diplomacy - Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
* City - City specialization and city focus improvements.
* City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
* Workers - Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
* Workers - Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.
* City - Make sure Puppets don't construct buildings that require Resources.
* City - Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold.
* Military - Defensive tactical AI update. When you are at war and threatening an enemy city, the AI will better utilize the garrison, as well as the surrounding terrain in defense of the target city.


MULTIPLAYER

* Exploit - Fix for gifting unit exploit
* Chat - Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
* Deals - Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed


MISC

* Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
* Save/Load - Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
* Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
* Map - Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the "glowing red orbs" seen on the map are an indicator of this).
* Map - Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
* Strategic View - Crash fix for units rendering in background.
* Strategic View - Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
* Eyefinity - Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
* Tutorials - Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
* Multiple crash fixes.
* Taller than wide map crash fix.


Also free Genghis Khan DLC is supposed to come out in a few days. God I love the Mongols can't wait to play as them

[Oppenheimer]

* Military - Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.).

That will really help. The Civs were crippled by the archipelago map.

Does anyone know how multi-player teams work? If you put yourself on the same team as a computer before you start the game and your computer ally wins a scientific victory do you win as well? I'm trying to get the hardest difficulty level achievements and the only way I can think of doing it is if I'm teamed up with a equally powerful computer player but I don't want that to not count as a victory.

[blah1017]

I don't know if it does, I don't think it would bit it might

Just conquer all of the AIs except for 2, and then tech to victory from there

Edit: if that was too broad here's a couple of other tips for cheap assing the achievements

Play on a duel map, declare war early and steal the AI's worker. Declare war every so often and pillage their stuff

Or you could play as Babylon and do a Riflemen slingshot: hoard 3 great scientists and when you discover Steel use them to bulb straight to rifles. Conquer everyone with your superior army

[Oppenheimer]

So single player is great but multiplayer is a very stripped version of it. I posted this in some other forums but thought I'd repost it here:

Here's a list of everything that's wrong with multiplayer that doesn't occur int he single player from my experience to give others a heads up:

1) No Downloadable Civs, Babylon and the Monguls can't be played in Multiplayer or be opposing Civs, they just don't show up. Glad you paid an extra 5-10 for Babylon?

2) No animation of units. Units just pop around the map and don't walk. When fighting red numbers appear with no animation. It's hard to even tell if you've been attached or are attacking. Especially at the beginning of the turn when the computer attacks you. If you miss the semi-transparent text that appears at the top of the screen for a moment at the beginning of battle and fades within a few seconds you won't have a clue how a battle went.

3) No animation or even portrait of other civs. When you contact them for diplomacy you get text pop ups and that's all. Hard to even remember who you're talking to except for their civ's icon at the left of the text.

4) Other civs *never* contact you diplomatically. They might declare war on you but they won't warn you they were going to do it and won't contact you for open borders, etc. They won't even beg for peace and offer you lots of stuff if you're trouncing them in battle. It's like they're mute unless you go to them first.

5) Civs don't declare war on each other. Maybe I just never noticed it but it seems like Civs never attack one another in multiplayer.

6) No tutorial messages. If you're new to the game you have to play single player if you want tutorial pop ups. They don't exist here.

7) Saving is hidden. There's no "Save" on the menu. You have to press Ctrl-S to save.

8 ) Connection issues for some people, especially with LAN. As other multiplayer topics have said connection is fickle. Not everyone has this problem but I can't ever host a LAN game although I can accept it (although sometimes even that doesn't work). Internet games are fine so it's weird that LAN is such a problem.

9) No achievements except for the one "Last Man Standing' multiplayer achievement. Even if you beat a game with a leader you've never played before you won't get the achievement. All but one are only for single player:-(

10) There's no voiced over intro for your leader at the start of a game and the text box talking about them disappears as soon as loading is complete so you don't even have time to read it or refer to your special units.

11) When you reach a new Era there is no pop up telling you so. There isn't even a small text message at the top like they do with some other announcements. Yes you can just go into culture to see what's still locked or see if your workers have a costume change but that shouldn't be necessary.

12) Similarly getting new tech gives you a little icon at the side letting you know and even clicking that gives you a voice over for the name but never the quote. If you like hearing the quotes, too bad.

13) Clearing barbarian civs or ruins gives you a quick white text at the top that quickly fades, rather than a pop up window you can close once you've read it. What did you get from the ruins? Better read fast to find out or else you'll never know!

These are all the things I've noticed. Multiplayer can still be fun because it's with real people and the game is still great with the hexes and no unit stacking but it's just so stripped compared to single player

[Raww Le Klueze]

14) Region blocks. For incomprehensible reasons you cannot play multiplayer with people outside your own region (e.g US can't play with EU). In a PC game. In 2010.