So I’ve pre-loaded my copy of Civ 5 onto my PC ready for launch day next week (annoyingly for those of us outside the US it’s launching several days later, so you get all that civ goodness a bit before us), and I’ve watched the two hours of live video footage of a couple of the developers playing the game and answering questions - if you’ve not seen it I highly recommend it, you can find a link on the Civ 5 official website.
I can tell you I am officially STOKED for this game. I’ve taken a couple of days off work so that I can play it ceaselessly from the friday it comes out through to the monday and also have deliberately kept that weekend pretty free. Does that make me hardcore? I don’t know.
Anyway, who else is as excited as me about the return of the grand daddy of turn based strategy games? Bits you’re particularly interested in? Bits you think are going to suck? Things I like the sound of:
[ul]
[li]The new social policies that replace civics - having watched the live footage these look really interesting and I’m looking forward to getting to understand how these can be used to be part of your larger strategy[/li][li]The new special abilities for each civ - this should give each civ more flavour and distinctive style of play[/li][li]The new diplomacy system - looks better than the system in 4 where everything pretty much boiled down to religion and the hard coded personality of the leader[/li][li]Steam cloud saving - you can access your save games from anywhere via steam. Whilst it’s not particularly useful to me as I’ll only be playing on my home system, it does open up possibilities for the future![/li][li]The way resources are handled now, being more common but finite so it’s not have iron/not have iron any more. You’re much more likely to get a resource, but you only get so much of it so you have to ration it accordingly or find other sources.[/li][li]The new happiness mechanic looks interesting although it wasn’t explained too much in depth in the video. They described it as being at an empire level rather than city level now and designed so you need to pay attention to it to ensure your empire overall is able to grow and be stable (they said that unhappiness and disease is removed but didn’t say more than that, hmph)[/li][li]One unit per her. Say hello to actual tactical warfare. I think this is going to rock![/li][/ul]
What say you gamer dopers?
I’m very excited about this too but unfortunately won’t have proper time to devote to it until the end of next month…
My pc’s going to struggle a bit with it, the specs are quite high for a tbs. My main concern is that it will be dumbed down and have a greater focus on war than empire-building compared to previous versions.
I think the social policies, city states, fewer more powerful units, hexes etc all look great!
Bear in mind that in that video the ranged attacks were coming from a highly upgraded trebuchet which would have an impact, so they might not always be so devastating. The distinction between melee/ranged/mounted troops now becomes really signficant as they all perform different functions. You’ll virtually never be sending your archers in to attack a melee unit because its purpose is to stand a hex or so away and shoot at people to weaken them for your melee troops.
Forgot about city states, not sure how I feel about them. In the live playthrough one of the developers said they had become his favourite feature in the game, and I guess it makes playing a game of civ a little closer to reality too where you have a certain number of big powers and then a lot of much smaller powers that are present but not quite vying for domination like the main powers.
The empire building doesn’t look dumbed down to me, just different in this iteration to previous ones.
I am insanely stoked for this game. The game that was supposed to hold me over until Civ came out (Victoria 2) was a complete waste of money and time, so I’ve had nothing to play for a while.
I need to use this week to get ahead in my schoolwork, because I know I’m not going to be doing anything but playing as soon as it comes out.
I like the thought of finite resources. I can see wars for oil becoming common in the late game. Same with Uranium.
Listened to the Civilization 5 long gameplay videos and I’m now seriously considering upgrading my computer or getting a new one and letting the kids have the current beast.
Well, they haven’t announced the Mac release date yet, so it doesn’t exist yet in my world. Even when they do, I doubt my rapidly aging computer will be able to play it. I’ll probably use that release as an excuse to buy a new iMac.
I actually priced out a build the other day to see if I could justify spending the money on a PC just for Civ V. I couldn’t, not even close. I do love me some Civ, though. Looking forward to reading the reviews from those who will be playing it.
I’ve never played a CIV game. Would you recommend this? Would I need to play one or more previous CIV game for this to make sense or could I jump straight into CIV 5?
I second TheFifthYear - each iteration is different and is no better or worse teaching you how to play the game generally than another, so you might as well play the latest one (although there are those who find that their favourite is a previous iteration eventually - I’ve seen more than a few say that 2 or 3 is their favourite). Given how much of the fundamental mechanics of the game have changed this time around I think a lot of what you would learn from previous games would just have to be discarded anyway.
Don’t be afraid to get into it as a series generally either, they’re made for people ranging from no strategy/gaming experience up to the truly hardcore so you’ll be catered to wherever you fit, and they are amazing games. I’m not sure any other series has so consistently sucked up my time.
If one has never played a Civ game, might it not be better to start with IV instead of V? Most people love it, it’s cheaper, it’s much less likely to run poorly on your computer, you don’t have to worry about bugs or really unbalanced game features, etc.
While you definitely don’t need to play the earlier games to play Civ5 I would still recommend getting Civ4 Complete which is $12 on Amazon. This is a polished game with two expansion packs and lots of mods. Just as important you will find lots of tips and guides on sites like CivFanatics which really help you enjoy the game and improve. It will take a while before you get similar resources for Civ 5 and chances are the initial release will have a few teething issues anyway.
Having said all that I am pretty excited about Civ 5 as well. It sounds like a great game which will greatly improve the battle system making it both more streamlined and more interesting. The graphics look amazing though I wonder if my lowish end PC will handle it. And actually I only started playing Civ4 seriously a month or so back and am enjoying it a lot. So I will probably continue playing that for some time and wait before jumping into Civ5.
