Civilization 5

[Itse]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Shadows are computationally expensive in any game, and lower detail shadows are probably the least impacting to overall eye candy, so I’d start there.

Yeah I've noted that in other games. I also noted that I actually prefer the classical fog of war you get on minimum setting. Mostly I wondered about tesselation and overlay.

But I guess I'll just try stuff out and see what works. Mostly I'm interested in things that make for clear visuals, not so much in the eye candy.

[Draug]

Originally Posted by silentsim

so question, i see that my cities need "spices" for example. to find a place with spices do i basically have to explore like crazy?

Yes, you can explore and expand until you find the given resource yourself, and then produce it. Or, you can trade with a City State or other Nation for that resource.

Once you get the desired resource, that city will celebrate "We Love the King Day". During that time, they'll get a food production bonus of 25%.

Speaking of bonuses, I learned that a Marble resource will give you a 25% "Wonder Production Bonus" while you are building a Wonder. But, it only applies to the city that has the Marble in its' radius. There is no mention of this anywhere in the Civilopedia.

And yes, I am posting at 6am because I was up all night playing ... sigh ... you'd think I would know better by now!

[JayP]

Originally Posted by silentsim

so question, i see that my cities need "spices" for example. to find a place with spices do i basically have to explore like crazy?

If it's close by it's sometimes worth it to found a new city just to get access to the resource. However, that's usually reserved for when you have a lack of strategic resources (horses, iron, etc.). If there's 2-3 luxury resources in close proximity then it's more justified in forming a new city.

Your best bet is probably trading with city states. If you can become allies with one that has access to spices they'll grant you them immediately (along with the other benefits of City States). You can also trade other Civs for spices too. The best way of doing this is to trade excess luxury resources for their spices. However, unless the other Civ has excess spices (2 or more sources of spice in their empire) it can be difficult and costly to trade them for it.

[silentsim]

so once i locate thespices, the only way to secure them is by building a city near it?

[JayP]

Originally Posted by silentsim

so once i locate thespices, the only way to secure them is by building a city near it?

You'll need to build a plantation on the tile with the spices and that can only be done if the tile is part of your territory. So yeah basically your only option is to build a city near it.

If the spices are pretty far away though I'd consider the City State or trading with other Civs route first.

[jammies]

It needs to be reiterated that the AI is hopeless. It still beelines for any unescorted workers it can see; I had an enemy archer leave the city it was in to recapture a worker I had just captured, and of course the archer got slaughtered by my adjacent swordsman and then the city fell shortly after. How many versions and expansion packs does it take for the programmers to LEARN TO HAVE THE AI IGNORE THE WORKERS ALREADY!

It sends unescorted troops across water (you don't need transports any more, they "embark" and go across water on their own, but have no defence if you attack them with a naval unit) right in front of your navy and gets them slaughtered. It keeps hopelessly obsolete troops in the line of battle, which in a game where there aren't that many units to begin with, is practically a game-breaker right there. It spreads its ranged fire out over multiple units instead of concentrating on one unit at a time. It attacks uphill across rivers against superior units.

I think this is probably the worst AI of any of the versions of Civ I've played, and I've played them all since I. I just played a war-mongering King-level game where I never lost a unit - not one - the entire time until I got bored and lost a bomber by continually sending it against cities to see how long it would take before it got shot down. I just can't see playing much against such a pitiful opponent, and from what I hear multi-player is unstable too (leaving aside the question of who has 10-15 hours straight to sit and play one game of Civ).

It's too bad because there is so much potential here for a really deep game. But when you get to the modern era and see dozens of military unit types, of which you need only 2 to conquer the world with (Rocket Artillery, Mechanized Infantry), you can tell the designers spent too much time thinking about cool concepts and not enough time actually implementing them properly.

I certainly hope the modding community is on the AI problem pretty quickly, as otherwise I can see this being a huge, long-term disappointment. I can't recommend anyone buying this game, you'd be far better off getting Civ IV Complete and playing that.

[Regorium]

Just finished a MP game. One thing that kind of bothered me is how we kinda had a "climatic" fight, but the way it works now is due to the simultaneous turns, whoever clicks first gets that order to go through.

Without any animations to see who is bombarding from where, it was just a giant cluster - I'm trying to save my promotions to heal up my units, but I have no idea which units are bombarding and which are attacking. Likewise, he had no chance to really pick and choose which units to retreat or attack with.

I actually lost that fight because during one turn, I had a city/worker that finished stuff far away from the action and the game kept focusing my camera over there with every action I gave. Basically I was only able to bombard once before he gave commands to all his units and destroyed my force while I was trying to scroll back.

Was a fun game, but I can't help but feel the game was rushed in many aspects. Still going to play more, but just a small gripe.

[RyZ]

Kinda noobish question here, but how do I grow my town borders faster? I am so far ahead of most of my opponents in this game I'm in right now but I don't have anywhere near the biggest boarders going on. I thought it was culture that expanded town boarders, but it can't be that alone or I would have taken my whole continent already.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Just finished a MP game. One thing that kind of bothered me is how we kinda had a "climatic" fight, but the way it works now is due to the simultaneous turns, whoever clicks first gets that order to go through.

Without any animations to see who is bombarding from where, it was just a giant cluster - I'm trying to save my promotions to heal up my units, but I have no idea which units are bombarding and which are attacking. Likewise, he had no chance to really pick and choose which units to retreat or attack with.

I actually lost that fight because during one turn, I had a city/worker that finished stuff far away from the action and the game kept focusing my camera over there with every action I gave. Basically I was only able to bombard once before he gave commands to all his units and destroyed my force while I was trying to scroll back.

Was a fun game, but I can't help but feel the game was rushed in many aspects. Still going to play more, but just a small gripe.

what bugs me in single player about the focus aspect is if my Caravel is exploring and happens to come across the shoreline of 2 nations at war, the game feels the need to focus on their battle every turn, so i have to scroll back to my side of the map to focus on my own stuff. same crap happens if i have a city state ally far away that's at war, i don't need to see what's happening to them

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by RyZ

Kinda noobish question here, but how do I grow my town borders faster? I am so far ahead of most of my opponents in this game I'm in right now but I don't have anywhere near the biggest boarders going on. I thought it was culture that expanded town boarders, but it can't be that alone or I would have taken my whole continent already.

Save up your money and buy your way to larger territories. Open up your city control, click 'buy tile', and you can buy your way to a larger empire. There's also a policy (I forget which it is) that lowers the cultural cost of growing borders significantly. You can also use great artists to create a culture bomb that will convert an area to your territory.

[stampsx2]

Since I don't have the game (because it's still sold out) I thought I would do you guys a favor that have it.

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

Since I don't have the game (because it's still sold out) I thought I would do you guys a favor that have it.

you can buy it online through steam or direct2drive and be playing within a couple hours with a decent connection

As for me, I thought it was pretty cool at first now I'm pretty much done with it. civ4 was miles better. My list of gripes.

Tech tree is entirely too linear, no room for tech specialization like in civ 4.

auto explore pathing is entirely moronic/useless. Scouts just keep walking over the same territory again and again.

AI offers you way too much for peace way to easily.

City states are way to powerful, especially as alexander. My last game I'm walking over everyone and I only built one unit the whole game, every other unit came from my 2-3 city state friends. Who not only exported the iron i didn't have to me, but build the swordsmen as well.

Foreign policy, is for all intents and purposes random. you can work all game to keep certain civs friendly and certain civs enemies, then 2 turns later your friend declares war on you and you enemy offers an alliance or some pact of uselessness or something.

Game is excruciatingly slow even on standard speeds, yet due to the extremely boring tech tree there's periods you blow through without even building the units. I've yet to bother building a catapult.

Had the game hang on me last night at the diplo screen, no buttons came up to do anything, had to alt f4 it and load from the latest auto save which was about 7 turns earlier and at that stage of the game way to much time lost to play over.

Social policies are interesting but, not well enough balanced. I find myself using the same ones over and over regardless of the style of game I'm playing. Alexander + city states + patronage fully explored = game over.

I could go on but i'm overall disapointed with the game. Maybe things are different on Diety but for some reason I doubt it.

[sclitheroe]

For the people that are going back to Civ4 - is this the general sentiment of the hardcore Civ community? Do you follow the community at all and can comment?

I’ve been playing Civ Rev, and I’m contemplating going back down the rabbit hole on Civ. I already own Civ4 on Steam, not sure now if I should really spring for Civ5, if the civ-heads judge Civ4 to be the best in the franchise. It’s been long enough for me that either is going to be a relatively fresh experience.

[starseed]

Heh. I used city-states to destroy my biggest opponent. They are powerful buggers. It was fun watching his empire get eaten away from all sides. Sure it cost a lot in gold, to maintain all those city-state alliances, but it was much quicker than sending an army of Foreign Legion across the ocean.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

For the people that are going back to Civ4 - is this the general sentiment of the hardcore Civ community? Do you follow the community at all and can comment?

I’ve been playing Civ Rev, and I’m contemplating going back down the rabbit hole on Civ. I already own Civ4 on Steam, not sure now if I should really spring for Civ5, if the civ-heads judge Civ4 to be the best in the franchise. It’s been long enough for me that either is going to be a relatively fresh experience.

give it a few months. when Civ 4 came out, all the die-hards said that Civ 3 was way better. personally i hated the stacks of death in the previous games, and Civ 5 got rid of some other stuff i hated from 4 like the culture/wealth/tech sliders and the religions. the only thing that i really don't like about 5 is how damn long it takes for the computer to calculate each turn in the late game

[mykalberta]

Alright, so after my first weekend here are my thoughts...

I beat it on Prince and Warlord, and am probably 50 turns away from beating it noble. (6 players, panagea).

The game is centered alot more on conquest than the last game imo. Befriending city states is completely useless. Its easier to puppet them and have them contribute their resources/gold/science/culture to you.

At least for me the 3 races that I found give the most advantage are in order 1 - England ..... 10 - Germany 12 - USA. The long bowmen the English provide are crazy good. I created a US style Iraqi tank column with 1 row of horseman, 3 swords, horseman, next row of 3 catapults with great general in middle, next row of 5 long bowmen. I just steamrolled the mowhawks, russians, and ghandi, and am working on montezuma - his jaguars provide some what of challenge but is easily thwarted by ranged weapons.

I do like how cities grow slower in this game, and combined with being able to purchase tiles I enjoy that aspect alot. Not sure what to think about the civics, they seem to come very slow. On my current game I have 4 cities ranging from 11-8 citizens with what seems should be more than enough cluture and yet the civics choice seems to still come very slowly.

I havent multiplayed yet, have to beat it on at least prince or Monarch before I go that route, still need to figure out the little tricks.

A few things I dont like, production is very slow - before you used to get 4-5 hammers on hill, now you get 3. Special tiles like wheat and cows etc only give one extra food. I wish you were given a choice between settler and 1 of the following to start: worker, warrior, scout. In this game where the cities can defend themselves having a warrior doesnt make alot of sense. In the Noble game 1 warrior cannot take out a single barbarian encampment. A worker or even scout would be far more useful imo.

Oh yah, i wont be going back to Civ 4, the only thing I miss is the music and choice of leaders but that will come with an expansion. I love the single tiled combat.

Oh yah, whoever said this game is a time machine, he was correct

[yads]

After playing for a little longer, I must say this is one of the better versions of the game. The only thing that seems odd to me is the simplified happiness. It doesn't make too much sense to have happiness for your entire country. I love the addition of puppet states. The city states provide an interesting angle to the game. The fact that the number of strategic resources limit your production. The combat is phenomenal. Embarkation is awesome. They've really done a great job on this game.

[photon]

Sid Meier's Civilization V Update Released

Updates to Sid Meier's Civilization V have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Modding - Installer and permissions fixes. Should address any
remaining mod download and install issues.

Full screen crash fix. Game will now restart in Windowed mode if
it cannot find a suitable full-screen resolution on first start.

Hall of Fame now records data correctly when using a Windows
username with special characters.

Deal expiration fixes.

Fix for Puppet State production exploit.

Misc crash fixes.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by photon

Deal expiration fixes.

I had a trade agreement expire today, and it didn't give me back the iron I was sending out. Hopefully that's one of the fixes they're talking about.

[octothorp]

Hey, this issue may not be widespread because I'm running it on a bootcamped macbook pro, but I can't skip the startup video (the father and son one). It starts playing and I try all the usual things (escape, enter, space, mouseclick, etc.) and just end up mashing my keyboard in frustration and eventually it skips after playing for about 45 seconds. For you PC guys, is it just a case of clicking anywhere or hitting any key skips you through it?