Haven’t read the article but isn’t it considered unprofessional to give games a ranking higher than 95%? They need to find something to criticise or they’re not doing their jobs properly or some such.
I can only think of one title off the top of my head that got a 10/10 from IGN, for example, but tons that scored between 9 and 9.8.
I have the PC Gamer review in front of me. Their only complaints were as follows:
He goes on to mention that it doesn’t make the AI easy. Any difficulty higher than ‘Prince’ and the AI kicked his arse.
The review did make the curious mistake of implying that, due the the hex-based grid, you could now be attacked from another two directions… I’m not sure how that slipped past the editor.
I’m kind of amazed at the listed requirements for this game. It looks great but c’mon…it’s a turn based strategy game. Anyway, I bought a new PC a month ago so I am good to go and have taken a day off work to enjoy it. I am a long time fan of the series and I cannot count the number of times “just one more turn” saw me seeing the sun come up and realizing I got no sleep. 
Here are the minimum requirements:
Minimum:
* OS: Windows® XP SP3/ Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
* Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 64 2.0 GHz
* Memory: 2GB RAM
* Graphics:256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics
* DirectX®: DirectX® version 9.0c
* Hard Drive: 8 GB Free
* Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
Here are the recommended requirements:
Recommended:
* OS: Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
* Processor: 1.8 GHz Quad Core CPU
* Memory: 4 GB RAM
* Graphics: 512 MB ATI 4800 series or better, 512 MB nVidia 9800 series or better
* DirectX®: DirectX® version 11
* Hard Drive: 8 GB Free
* Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound cardI am kind of disappointed about the tedious movement part. My understanding was that they had done away with stacked movement but at the same time made the units more expensive meaning fewer of them. This is important because IMO one of the most biggest weaknesses of the series is that in the end-game moving innumerable units often becomes a chore. It sounds as if this problem still persists and is in fact even worse without stacked movement.
Blinks
He did what? You’re serious? I don’t fucking believe this. The fans moan and bitch continually that at higher levels of difficulty you’re just playing against the same stupid AI with an ever increasing resource advantage/player penalty and what a cop out that is, and now people moan that the AI gets really difficult to play against and it’s too hard.
Forgive me for being blunt but, wib wib wib wib wib
Rapidly rubs finger vertically up and down over lips
Yeah I am wondering about this as well. My system is a bit above the minimum requirements but definitely below the recommended but I tend to turn off the animation and play on smaller maps anyway. Civ 5 has some beautiful artwork but I don’t see why it should be that much more resource intensive than Civ 4 which runs fine on my PC. Anyway I believe they will release a demo so we should all be able to figure out how it runs on our machines.
MJinks might make it clearer, but it doesn’t sound like the reviewer was complaining at all, just that on really high difficulty levels the AI gets a production bonus on top of the AI already being good enough to beat him on lower levels.
He wasn’t complaining about the difficulty. He mentioned the difficulty only to reassure readers that the slightly confused AI didn’t make things easy.
Apart from the section I quoted, the rest of the review was gushing with praise and admiration.
Sorry for the confusion.
Stops wibbing
Hmph. Well, alright then.
One thing I really wish they’d do is, at least in the latter periods, make the food an empire wide resource, the same as they’re doing with happiness.
I’d love to be able to have a few select cities feed my empire. In real life you don’t have Los Angeles and New York worrying about whether they have enough food for their citizens, everything gets trucked in.
I’d love it for two reasons:
Able to make cities even more specialized.
Raises the strategic importance of a city or region. You better protect your breadbasket or your country will be in a lot of trouble. It also adds blockading to the mix.
I like your line of thinking. One of things that bothers me the most about the Civ games is how population growth is handled. Yes, scarce food means a higher rate of infant mortality, but more food should only increase population growth up to a point. Also, Civ-style population growth makes food shortages extremely rare.
I suppose it would be possible to concoct a population growth system by which the birth rate and various subsets of death rate (disease, infant mortality, workplace accidents, etc.) are tracked at a regional level (and change with technology and buildings), with migration between cities and even countries. The two biggest issues with this idea is that it could wind up being A) not fun, or B) not Civ.
I complained about the graphics for Civ 4, as well. “Why should I need a fancy graphics card for a game which should depend on play, not on pretty animations,” I asked. “Because fancy animations are COOOOL,” was the answer.
I’m not inclined to buy 5. Civ may have finally lost me.
Admittedly I have a soft spot in my heart for Civ 2. Truly went to work on more than one occasion with little to no sleep because the thing kept me up. Compared to today the graphics are shit but its awesomeness remains.
That said I am an eye candy junky and the new one looks pretty damn sweet. In the end the game play trumps all though and Civ 2 would probably still be enjoyable. I have Civ Revolutions on my iPhone which is comparatively simplistic and I play it all the time (did today in fact).
One thing I do miss from Civ 2 was seeing a rendering of your city with the Wonders you built. I constantly wish I could get that again.
Me, I thought I wasn’t - saw myself on the side of “who cares if the graphics are crap, as long as the game itself is good ?”. I mean, I play *Dominions 3 *and Combat Mission. The bar is set pretty damn low. Then I got stranded with a crap PC with a crap internet connection & tried playing Civ 2 on it again.
Couldn’t get past the stone age. Man those graphics were bad. And I had completely forgotten about the corny-ass advisors, too. “BUILD MORE WALLS, SIRE !” 
That’s in Civ 4, in a way. Each city on the map shows every building in it, including the wonders. You just have to zoom in close to see most of them. I also really like the fact that the Great Wall actually puts down a wall on the map along your borders.
I agree. Who plays without turning off all the animations, anyway? The game takes too damn long if you leave them on.
Everything I’ve read about Civ 5 suggests to me that the game is being dumbed down in favor of graphics: only one unit per tile, less units overall, no more technology trading, religion and espionage removed, civ traits removed, etc., etc.
When I first heard about the one unit per tile thing some months back, I mentioned in another thread that I thought the logistics of that would be a nightmare. And now I see the review quoted above… I won’t be at all surprised to see people bitching about this, once the initial excitement has worn off.
I’m sure I’ll buy Civ 5 - eventually. Once all the expansions are out and I can get it for dirt cheap.
So you’re saying that one unit (army, in real tems) per tile is less realistic and tactical to just shoving dozens of units into a stack and moving it around the map crushing everything in its path? Because for me the latter is way more simplistic. One unit per tile requires actual tactical consideration such as placement, choke points, unit type etc, in a way that you didn’t before. Also It’s not longer win/lose so there is an element of ongoiong conflict with certain units.
I don’t see armies sprawling out of control, given the live footage video showed a later era game save and his empire of about 6 cities only had around 8 or so units. Sure it might get worse in the modern era, but when has the modern era NOT been about churning out vast numbers of units leading to tedious micro management?
I really disagree with all these accusations of dumbing down, and I don’t see why making a game look attractive is in and of itself a sign of that.
No Mac version, so I can’t play it.
Also, Ghengis Kahn is missing from the initial list of available leaders, in what I can only imagine is a shameless money-grab to make you buy the inevitable expansion that will add him in.
The only thing my laptop failed on according to srtest:
I’m not sure why this is a fail, could someone more tecchy help me?
Is your 2GHz a single core processor? If so that would be why.
Sorry, what’s srtest? Does it remotely validate your system on a per game basis or is it something from downloads.com?