toblix

Civilization V

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Did you pre-order X-Com, 'blix? The final weird (and frankly I think this new system is fucked to high heaven) pre-order bonus for enough X:COM pre-orders is a copy of Civ 5 vanilla, which has been reached, as I got one yesterday as well.

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So I just wasted my entire day playing Civ -- as you do. Felt like Civ III, but prettier, and less annoying. Although it certain has its quirks, too! What did everyone else think of this?

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I love the removal of stacked units, but apparently it has its problems. It guides you too much... There are a few ways to win the game, now you choose one and just stick to it. The worst problem for me is that mods don't work for multiplayer.

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I played a lot of good games earlier last year, but I realized today that I never played with the Gods and Kings DLC. Man, there's a lot more depth now. I ended up making a few stupid tech decisions, leaving me way behind in military units when Rome came knocking. In general, I like the original Civ5 stuff better than anything since Civ2, but I'm still not sold on them adding religion back in with the DLC. That always used to be a pain in Civ4.

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I really enjoyed it. I didn't mind the loss of stacking units. I found that, as per usual, my army fell behind the AI's almost immediately, as I scrambled to get new tech and cooler cities, but in 5 it didn't matter so much. Playing defensively, I could easily take out anyone who attacked my city. Alexander the Great kept insulting me and then attacking me. His army was huge, but he barely made a dent in my civilization -- I lost two cities through the entire game. That's a nice change.

 

One thing I felt was missing was all the stats! It was much harder to see who was at war with who. What was going on with regard to different things. In the age of info-graphics, I was expecting much improved versions of the ones from Civ 3 -- instead they were just missing. A bit weird! The ending screen was really dull and ugly, too. I know it's not about the ending, but at least in Civ 3 you got some slight emotional satisfaction. You could see how you did against your opponents throughout the game in different areas, etc. In Civ 5 it feels like they dropped the ball there. (Apparently the "space" ending is similarly bland, too -- which is a shame.)

 

Also, I'm not sure how Culture works in Civ 5. It seems that you win just by spending your "Culture Points" on Social Programs -- as opposed to just having the most awesomest culture in the world that every loves. In Civ 3, if you culture was amazing (many wonders, tons of high-tech cities, etc.), a lone city surrounded by all this would willingly want to become part of your civilization. That never happened in Civ 5, which I thought was odd. Also, there doesn't seem to be "cultural influence" any more -- you just buy hexes when you want them.

 

Also also, I was confused by the UN. I created the United Nations, then everyone voted -- on what, I don't know... nobody told me -- I got the most votes, and then nothing happened. It was all a bit weird. Does anyone know what the point of that was?

 

Finally, I thought they did a good job with how the other AIs talk. Rather than say things like, "We demand Spices from your puny nation!" (like in Civ 3), they would be more diplomatic in their threats, making them sound far more reasonable, even when they were just threats. I also enjoyed how they responded to my warmongering -- I got a lot of crap for my actions :)

 

On the whole, it felt kind of half-finished. Or three quarters finished. I was kind of expecting it to the be the ultimate version of Civ, and in many ways it was, but in others it dropped the ball. I'll have to check out that Gods and Kings DLC!

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Also, I'm not sure how Culture works in Civ 5. It seems that you win just by spending your "Culture Points" on Social Programs -- as opposed to just having the most awesomest culture in the world that every loves. In Civ 3, if you culture was amazing (many wonders, tons of high-tech cities, etc.), a lone city surrounded by all this would willingly want to become part of your civilization. That never happened in Civ 5, which I thought was odd. Also, there doesn't seem to be "cultural influence" any more -- you just buy hexes when you want them.

 

Civs with a high culture output are also going to passively generate some friendship with the city-states. Once you hit critical mass you'll be getting alliances without having to work hard or spend much, even from city-states that aren't in your neighborhood.

 

 

 

Also also, I was confused by the UN. I created the United Nations, then everyone voted -- on what, I don't know... nobody told me -- I got the most votes, and then nothing happened. It was all a bit weird. Does anyone know what the point of that was?

 

 

City-states vote for the people they're allied with, and I think you need 10 votes total. It's a 'friendship' contest. If anyone gets 10 votes, it's game over.

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On the whole, it felt kind of half-finished. Or three quarters finished. I was kind of expecting it to the be the ultimate version of Civ, and in many ways it was, but in others it dropped the ball. I'll have to check out that Gods and Kings DLC!

 

Civ 5 has its flaws, but I think you're short changing it a bit. The adjustment to culture, for example, was a good development. I forget how it worked in Civ 3 exactly, but in Civ 4 it was a little too easy to culture bomb your enemies into submission, and once you got your output rolling it became very difficult for the AI to stop you in your tracks even if it was aware of what you were doing. The main advantage of culture in Civ 5 is simply allowing you to quickly move along the social policy track, and completing those tracks is one way to achieve victory. Another improvement in the victory conditions is not having to wait around for the discovery of Alpha Centauri if you're going for a technological victory.

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My assessment of it has nothing to do with the changes to the Culture system. Also the Technogical Victory is exactly the same as it is in Civ 3. It's more to do with the less obvious things, like poor presentation of stats (which gets in the way sometimes), a few rough edges from the UI POV, and the lame way the ending is handled.

Anyhoo, it's still very good, I just wish the high level of polish was present in *every* aspect of the game. (Maybe Gods and Kings adds stuff?)

(Also, on my Core i7 it still can take an age between turns...! I feel like there's a setting somewhere that would speed it up.)

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Bought a Bioshock Infinite download and had a choice of the first two Bioshocks, Xcom or Civ 5 as an extra. Bioshock key didn't work but this was fine. Never played a Civ before. I ended up doing 6 hours straight, although the last two were wasted. I got into a funk, attacking Florence with peashooters. Think I need to get my cities going before venturing too far afield - I had scouts hoovering up the fog all over the map for no reason other than the fog irritates me. Addictive though.

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The little city-states have really powerful militaries and the benefit of having very little turf to have to protect. Generally, I shy away from trying to conquer them after the first hour or two.

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Definitely wasn't up til 5am playing this. Playing as England, I started slowly with America, Italy and Persia building up around me. Everything was fine until the 1400s. An island to the west had two city states on either side so I ventured over, paid off Singapore and attacked Warsaw. All was fine, but then I turned against Singapore (for no reason other than to be tidy) and all shit broke out. Washington AND Caesar AND Darius declared war on me and I spent an hour fending them off. Washington brought out the cannons. Nightmare. I managed to hold my own but it's a diplomatic clusterfuck.

 

Good game.

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So I spent too much time playing Civ 5 yesterday, but it was really fun. I finally finished my game as Korea (fighting!). This is the second game I've played all the way through to the end. I haven't played any Civilization games before 5 and so the process of learning how to play them has been interesting to me.
My first game (which I did not finish) was fun because I just tried to colonize as much of the world as possible. I played on a map designed to look like the actual Earth; so doing things like building the Great Pyramids off the coast of south-eastern China (which was actually Arabia in my game), colonizing Austalia and turning it into a giant factory and mine for my war efforts with Egypt, Rome and England, was super fun and novel. I learned the basic mechanics as I played and eventually, the combination of having an idea of how I wanted to play and getting overwhelmed made me quit.
Then months later, I played as Ethiopia on a randomly-generated map (so that I wouldn't know if there was a continent across the Atlantic ocean, for instance). When I started that game, I had an idea of what production did, and the importance of science and luxury goods. I concentrated on having a small empire (which gets bonuses when you play as Haile Selassie I) and I tried to be as peaceful as possible, but I was also far too isolationistic which led to Greece becoming far too powerful. Greece "won" the game by building a spaceship. It was really odd when I was trying to manage my empire and a game-over screen popped up to tell me that I lost. I kept playing that game after victory was announced and tried to deal with the world-state and tried to make sure my empire would continue to flourish. During that period, I finally started to understand how diplomacy with the other civilizations worked. I got a taste of how you can bribe civs with luxury goods to go to war, and I started to understand how to use defensive-pacts, denouncements and declarations-of-friendships. I couldn't wait to play again, now that I had discovered this whole layer of the game that I didn't really understand how to influence before. It was like finding out that you could turn into a ball after finishing Metroid.
So then, about a month ago, I started my game as Korea. I understood how the "science-victory" and the "domination-victory" worked, but "cultural-victory" and "diplomatic-victory" were still confusing. Brave New World introduced the World-Congress (which is a by far the coolest addition to the game) and tourism, neither of which I knew how would work, but like I said, I was excited about negotiating with the other civs from the beginning of the match. I didn't really care about winning, I just wanted to build up my civilization and make sure it was the coolest.
My game as Korea was fucking epic. Understanding what types of negotiation between civs are available and using them as tools is so satisfying to me. Poland, which was my bulldog at the beginning of the match, got way too powerful by being oddly successful in the wars I paid it to wage. 3/4 of the game was trying to nerf Poland while not angering them; all the while having to maintain enough military presence, beneficial trade-value, and reliable alliances to keep Persia from deciding that invading one of my most productive cities (less than 6 tiles away from it's capital) would be worth it. Luckily, the majority of the civilizations joined the communist ideology with me, leaving Poland and Persia to fend for themselves. It was amazing.
Around 2040, I realized that the game was going to end. I had made sure that I would achieve "science-victory" first, and "domination-victory" would not be possible for anyone. I had the majority of delegate in the World-Congress, so "diplomatic-victory" would be easier for me than anyone else, and my tourism had overtaken the local culture of France, Venice, Persia, and was gaining in Germany and Carthage. The World-Congress had embargoed Poland as it's first resolution, and so my cultural influence could not go in. 2050 comes around and I get the game-over screen. Poland won through points. Fine, I don't care about winning, just looking forward to building this spaceship I've been working on for the last 20 years. Nope. After victory is declared, you can't assemble the spaceship. The game was over.
I understand that the game has to have victory-conditions and that around 2050, the game can get kinda boring because you run out of available upgrades. By 2049, all of my cities were just creating wealth, where for the majority of the game, they had been building granaries, and universities and cool stuff that I wasn't sure what it would do. There is an awesome sense of discoverability to research and building shit. I actually feel like I won, even though a screen popped up that said I lost. The world in my Korea game was a paradise compared to the world at the end of my Ethiopia game. Poland was still aggressive, but we had it under control. We even signed a non-nuclear proliferation treaty. I had influenced the world to create a balance of power where trade was more profitable than war, that was what I had wanted to do and I did it.

 

 

I'm going to play another match, but this time, I suspect that I'll be trying to win. I'll be trying to win after just having fun trying shit out for 90 hours. It finally turned into a game for me, where before it was a history-builder. If I can only appreciate Civ 5 as a game-to-win, it'll be a little sad, but honestly, it's a computer-game; after 90 hours, I would expect to have a good idea of its limits. Now that I REALLY know what I'm doing, Civ 5 has transformed into a very enjoyable strategy game, from an interesting sim. What a fantastic game.

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