I won’t get it to run any time soon either, that and Starcraft II.
Looks like its back to Civ III for me 
I’m disappointed that there won’t be any marines in this game. They were vital in my mid-late game strategies.
I’ve already bought it via Steam and preloaded, although I’m annoyed that it is released later (Friday) in Europe than in the US (Tuesday). At least there is the demo to spend the time in between.
From the manual linked to above:
I will definitely not be buying it.
As someone who probably has around 700 hours invested in Civ4, this seems like an obvious buy. However, every Civ game seems to be much better after a few expansions. In two years there will likely be a Gold edition that includes everything for $50 or less. Count me in as one who is going to wait it out.
Oh, crap. Steam.
Uh, yeah, I might hold off.
Why does everyone hate thing? I absolutely love it, especially with Steam cloud (my saved games on my desktop will sync with my laptop).
Steam used to be annoying with its unprompted updates and whatnot. Nowadays it doesn’t have the problems it used to, but I think some people don’t know that (because they stormed off in a huff back when it was annoying and haven’t looked back). Having a game available on Steam is definitely a plus in my book.
This is actually the first game I bought on Steam. I was pretty sceptical about Steam in the past but the advantages finally convinced me.
I’m playing on two computers at different location at weekends vs. during the week. Having the install DVD at the wrong place and copying savegames beetween computers can get very annoying. There were a few time where just being able to download any of my games and having savegames in the cloud would have been pretty useful.
Something like the Ubisoft DRM or online activation with limited number of installs would be a deal-breaker for me. Compared to that, Steam has some significant advantages to me for the limitations it imposes.
Having a game available is all right, but not having it available any other way kind of sucks.
Steam can also get extremely annoying to modders. I don’t know the specifics, whether it’s that Steam encodes or organizes the files differently, or the Steam file integrity verifications screw with mods or whatnot, but there are several games out there where mods that are perfectly fine on the retail game don’t work with the Steam version.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ve just skimmed the first 50 pages. So far it looks like it’ll play a lot like Civ IV, with a few exceptions. The biggest new thing I’ve noticed so far (in addition to hexes and stacking restrictions) is that finite strategic resources also apply to buildings. You can use that unit of iron to build a swordsman, or you can use it to build a forge in one of your cities. This will complicate my usual builder strategy; I can’t just mostly build peacefully and periodically use my immense production capacity to throw together a big army. A warmonger that neglects city improvements in favor of military units will retain a distinct advantage even when we’re both “at capacity”.
Also, it looks like there will be more types of buildings that can be build by consuming a great person: citadel, landmark, custom house, and manufactory.
Oh, dear.
This shouldn’t be a problem for Civ 5 as the modding element is integrated into the game, and steam is required for Civ 5. That should ensure they work better together.
Upon further reading in the manual, it appears that I was mistaken about forges. A forge merely requires the city to be near an improved source of iron, but does not consume it. Some buildings do consume resources, though (e.g. factories consume coal). Also, citadels and custom houses and so forth are tile improvements, not buildings.
I’m probably going to dislike some of the tile requirements some buildings have. A city must be near an otherwise useless mountain to build an observatory, it must be near a desert to build a solar plant, and must not be on a hill to build a windmill. Some unique buildings differ significantly from their default counterpart: A workshop increases the construction speed of buildings by 20%, while an Iroquois longhouse instead gives +1 production from forest tiles.
I’m especially looking forward to unique civ abilities. I disliked how in Civ III and IV, by the time I got around to playing as Egypt or Russia they just had a new pair of traits that I’d already played as. Many of the civ abilities are quite distinctive. Glory of Rome allows gives you a 25% bonus to production of buildings that you’ve already built in your capital. Persia’s Archaemenid Legacy gives them 50% longer golden ages and their units gain a movement bonus and a 10% attack and defense strength bonus during a golden age. China’s Art of War give them Great Generals more often, and increases their effectiveness.
Mind you, there are some inconsistencies in the manual, so some of this may be out of date.
Then the warmonger will be at a disadvantage in production, and as you know, quantity has a quality all its own.
Do I want to read CivFanatics or Apolyton to l2p better?
I have been watching the long gameplay video and the game is very impressive and has one of the most elegant interfaces I have seen on any piece of software. I particularly liked the full-screen animations of the leaders speaking in their original languages (in part 2). I will probably hold off from the game for now but it’s going to be a real treat when I get to it.
Is this kind of video common for game releases these days? It seems a great idea for promoting the game at very little cost. You have two Firaxis employees talking about the game while playing it and also answering questions from a live online chat with fans. Anyone here participate in the chat?
GameTrailers usually have interviews and features where designers would talk about their games and show walk-throughs of its unique features. I think it’s pretty much a given for action games, but turn-based strategy games should do this too. Elemental: War of Magic does this as well.
I know Valve goes out of their way to make sure mods work when they can. They rewrote the oblivion executable so the script extender could work for example.
For a game that’s designed to have steamworks from the ground up, modding won’t be a problem - they’ll have designed it right into it.
I really don’t get the anti-steam attitude. Maybe if the last time you used it was 2005 it could be annoying at times, but now it’s not only smooth but awesome. I’ve bought my last, oh, 200 games on steam and I have no desire to get them any other way.
Anyway, by having the mandatory steam install, they can do stuff like use steam matchmaking to find people to play against, make it easier to host games for your friends, keep track of achievements, keep track of options and save g ames through the steam cloud, etc. Those are all features that everyone will need steam to use, and they don’t want to split up their user base.