Civ V is a big improvement over Civ IV

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

Just thought you chumps would like to know.

[Dash87]

1. Somebody posted about CIV!!!

:)

I downloaded this game today off of steam, but am so darn busy I couldn't play it at all. :(

From your screeny, it looks like you can shoot cannon balls at people from a distance. Really cool! Can't wait to try it out. :D

Civ4 was definately my favorite game in the world for like 5 years. If there's any game I blind buy, it's Civilization. It just looks so complicated, so I'll be like "WTF?" for the next two months. lol

PS I'll also probably jump into the online version, but everyone just kicks my butt on there so bad. lol! Apparently nobody plays at my lvl of 'settler.'. :(

♥

[LSdemocrat]

2. Did you like Civ IV?

Civ IV is my favorite of the series, and some of the changes in Civ V have made me somewhat skeptical, but the reviews have been so good that I'll probably pick the game up at some point anyway, since Civ is the only computer game I really play.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Didn't care for the vanilla civ.

Some of the modpacks made it pretty fun.

[Danger Mouse]

3. I really liked Civ IV for the most part. What's different about V?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Combat's been completely revamped.

Combat in Civ IV regularly devolved into massive stacks of combat units slugging it out. And wars would go to whoever had the bigger stack.

In this, you're restricted to one unit per tile. So less units, but far more strategy. Archers, cannons, etc. are ranged units, striking two or three tiles away. Promotion system is much better. Cities can defend themselves without the presence of unit. Barbarians are better done.

Tech tree's been revised.

Government "civics" have been replaced by social "policies," rather straight forward upgrades your civ can purchase via a cultural point system. It's not like earlier Civs where you might get a new advanced government but it sucks.

The UI is much improved.

Maps are bigger, pace is slower, AI is trying to win the game instead of just declaring war on you at every opportunity.

Religion is gone. Science/culture/tax slider is gone.

Overall, I wouldn't say these are absolutely huge changes. But when all taken together they make for a much more polished game.

[Posteritatis]

16. Removing the slider's interesting - how do they handle science/tax/culture? (nt)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. A lot of it's behind the scenese, I'm still learning a lot of it.

Money is made by the tiles you work (as in past civs, e.g. river tiles give an extra gold per turn). This is augmented by building maintenance, unit maintenance, trade routes, and civ happiness.

Science is a function of how many people you have, augmented by buildings, and how well your economy is doing over all. More surplus money means your science is doing better.

It may seem like there is less control, but this actually makes it more intuitive. Don't build an army you can't maintain, don't build a lot of unnecessary buildings, keep your people happy. In past games, the slider was basically used to keep science as high as possible, while still having some amount of money in the bank. There wasn't a lot of strategy. This change removes a lot of unnecessary micromanagement. Also, money can be used to buy just about anything at any time, buildings, units, and new expanded city tiles.

Culture is produced mostly from buildings. At a city level it will slowly expand the city radius. At a national level it will allow you to buy new social policies. Examples of social policies include: half off settler production cost (hammers), +1 production in every city, 25% combat bonus against barbarians, etc. There are thirty or so policies in six different "trees." Lots of strategy. Cultural victories are achieved by unlocking all policies, IIRC.

You can also get culture from befriending city states, a major new feature I forgot to mention. They're single-city non-competitive civs in three flavors: military, cultural, and maritime. They award units, culture points, and food respectively if you gain their friendship (by giving them gold, units, or doing them favors such as defeating threatening barbarians, or connecting them to your road network). They're also important diplomatically. It's a real fun addition.

[Posteritatis]

19. Ahhh, that makes sense

The "max out the science slider" thing felt kind of cheap to me a lot of the time, so abstracting that into the economy in general is probably a neat idea. I was one of the "80% research all the time" people, but I fully acknowledge how little sense that made. ;)

The national policies sound especially neat; that seems like the sort of thing they were probably working towards for the last few Civs but didn't quite get.

You mentioned unnecessary buildings; I take it there's a push away from the whole "every city has every building minus a couple of national wonders" that Civ Previous all had? Having to think about specializing them at a level deeper than "port or not" would be nice.

[Odin2005]

21. NOOOOO! Religion was one of the funnest parts of Civ4.

That and "culture-bombing".

[Danger Mouse]

29. All of that sounds pretty significant.

Honestly, I got sick of enemies declaring wars on you all the time for absolutely no reason. Very tiresome.
I'll have to pick this one up, it seems like.

[mtowngman]

4. I loved Civ IV

Then I got an iMac and an x-box and I've been stuck with Civ Rev. Basically sucks compared to pc & playstation games.

[JonLP24]

7. I got Civ 5 on my Gamefly list

Never played any of those games... is it fun to play?

I usually don't go far away from usual genres. Mostly Sports games I play, especially NCAA & Madden. The only thing besides sports was the GTA series. I played Red Dead mostly because it was from Rockstar and very similar to GTA as far as gameplay. Anyways what I'm saying is now that I have Gamefly I can afford to take risks as far as choosing games to play because if I don't like it, I can send it back. I got around 40 games on the list I have yet to play. I really hope they're good games.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. It's a lot different than sports or sandbox games.

I've been playing Civ since the original. So I honestly have no idea how easy it is for newbies to get into. I do know there are an awful lot of tutorials that I skip through.

If there's no risk, try it out.

[JonLP24]

25. Actually it is

Civilization Revolution that I have on the list. I think the other games for the series are PC games and what I have is the one for the XBox 360 platform.

[fishwax]

14. my gaming habits are similar to how you've described yours, and I like the game a lot

I haven't played the newest version, but I've played a few of the older versions. Mostly I play sports games, other than a handful of sandbox games like GTA and The Godfather. But after playing bit of Civ while visiting my brother a while back I got pretty hooked on it. Went out and bought it for myself. I thought it was pretty easy to pick up on how to play.

Of course that doesn't mean you'll like it, but it's definitely worth a shot :)

[JonLP24]

24. Thanks

It doesn't mean that I ONLY like sports and Rockstar action-adventure games. It's just that when it came to buying games I was always afraid to try out games I never played before so I just stuck games I was familiar with.

I got MLB 2K10 next. I haven't played a baseball game in years. The last time I did though I did the home run derby a lot and my old cat that is no longer with us would attack the ball as it is floating in the air. :D

This may seem strange to most video game fans but I'm dying to play FIFA 11. FIFA games are pretty deep when it comes franchise or manager modes and from previews it is going to be MUCH deeper.

With Gamefly it gives me chance to try out some games and see if I like them. I think that I would like Civ because I liked Sim City and Roller Coaster Tycoon in the older days. I sucked at Sim City because I always end up in debt even when I enter the cheat code for the mysterious shady guy that gives you a huge payment. Roller Coaster Tycoon was a blast. I understand the game is probably very different but I like games that you can create and run stuff. :)

[CrownPrinceBandar]

8. I sure wish they'd release an updated Alpha Centauri.....

I still play it 11 years after its release.

[Hosnon]

9. I hated IV - III is the Gold Standard, although I haven't played V. I'm too scared too.

I'm not ready to sacrifice all my free time at that altar.

[dawg]

15. I just downloaded Civ III Complete for $4.99

Yes, I'm cheap. Besides, it's a brand new game to me.

[Odin2005]

22. Civ3 SUCKED, Civ4 is awesome.

The debacle that was Civ3 did in Infogrames Interactive, which was bought up by Atari. We all called it "InfoGreed".

[MrCoffee]

11. Shut up! I can't play it on my crappy 5 year old computer

WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

[krispos42]

12. Heh, I've never played anything past Civ II

And get off my lawn!

[cemaphonic]

13. Yeah, Civ 2 is the best one (though I havent tried 5 yet)

maybe Alpha Centauri, if it counts.

[lazarus]

17. I'm with you two

I still play Civ 2 (found a download and patch that lets me play it in Win7). I also still play OCC.

One City Challenge. One city is all you can ever have. You have to play on Deity mode, with barbarians set on rabid, and you can't save/reload on huts (although I've been known to cheat on that occasionally).

Back when I played all the time, I could usually hit Alpha Centauri by 1850. I know the very good players can hit it by the 1600s or earlier, but I have no idea how. Trade routes become hyper-critical, and diplomacy is important, as you really can't fight off the AI if it decides to wipe you out.

I tried Civ III, and hated it, it just didn't look right. I'm intrigued by Civ V's move to hexes, which make more sense. I may read up on it and consider trying it out.

[krispos42]

27. I always played conservatively... too conservatively to get the really hard levels.

I just love technology and infrastructure! :-)

[Odin2005]

23. My words are backed with THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS!!!

:)

[krispos42]

26. Yeah yeah, here's 2000 gold. Go away while I build up a fleet of cruise-missile subs

:P

[Odin2005]

20. WANT!!!

[Teaser]

28. fuck that noise. I'm playing minecraft.

.

[flvegan]

30. This entire thread might as well be written in Mandarin.

No idea what you folks are talking about.

[newcriminal]

31. Are you nerds still talking about this stuff today?

:tinfoilhat: