2901

The tactical AI (once the game gets going) is horrible. The AI looks serviceable in early years, then drops off a cliff. The more choices the AI has unit-wise, the worse it does. In my last game during the 1800’s, the Ottomans declared war on me, then 2 turns later begged for peace, offering me 12g/turn + 300 gold + 2 luxury resources/turn. All I had to do was beat up 2 crappy units. This bankrupted the AI. Then to add insult to injury, I conquered one of their cities and the game just quit out to the post-game screen. Game over, just like that. It was so disappointing and anti-climactic.

I still can’t grasp how the “Frankenstein” test group didn’t go nuts about the end-game stuff. For someone who bought the game it’s terribly disappointing how unfulfilling winning/losing a game is now.

2902

One of my major disappointments with the game is the lack of rule-changing progression from technology later in the game. The only two major ones I can think of are getting the ability to traverse oceans and the introduction of airplane based bombardment. You do also get some of that feeling during the discovery of new strategic resources.

Without hard numbers, I’d say it doesn’t feel like railroads really change the unit movement compared to roads. Embarked unit speed increases, but you never get any kind of airlift ability for the end game. Most terrain improvements are available from very early on, I think the last one you get(other than railroads) is the sawmill.

Compared to previous Civs, the modern and industrial eras feel very similar to the ones that came before.

2903

One very nice touch with the std civ selection screen is the map that comes up with the geography of their empires during their rule. The Iroquois shows the proximity of many other Native American races. I was just thinking how incredibly fun it would be to have all the major Indian races fleshed out like the current civs (animations, voice, character). That would be incredible considering the diversity of the Native groups here in North America.

2904

CiV will run just fine on that system. It runs on my laptop with a 256MB 8600M GT. Your card is quite a bit more powerful than mine, and your CPU is a good bit faster.

I’d suggest you go out and buy the game and see how it runs for you. You might be pleasantly surprised.

2905

The major change in the eras, in my opinion, is that you finally get the ability to really up the hammer count in cities with hydro plants, factories, and railroad connections, whereas improvements before were weak. I actually think the industrial/modern era is the stronger part of the game, because the amount of choices is broadened.

2906

I’m starting to think the most important improvement, other than ones needed to hook up resources, is the farm. In Civ IV farms were generally an iffy proposition until you got +2 food out of them, but since research is almost entirely a function of population in Civ V, early growth is a big deal.

2907

I’m still pretty sad at playing Civ games but only because I’m always avoiding conflict if I can. It seems to me that unless you are isolated and going full-bore on a diplomatic or cultural victory, you will have to go to war against someone at some point. It’s one thing I find annoying about civ games; while I like the option of war, I’m a builder at heart and find it difficult to maintain neutrality in a winning way. Too, every other civ in the game seems to go to war on a regular basis and/or is asking me to go to war with them.

I came up against this in my current game (yes, a sad little Warlord one, my second game of Civ5; I start off low level moving it up until I start losing regularly then stay on that level; in Civ4 I didn’t go higher than Noble). I had a nice Arabian civilization of only five cities, keeping it small, nestled away in one corner of a single large continent (it turns out). I had a very slow start, being up against desert to my north, with mountains, and water surrounding me except for Egypt to the south (and a pile of city states). Throughout the game, all the other civs (6 others) at various times asked me for pacts against Bismarck (who was on the other side of the continent), and I traded with them as I could while keeping Bismarck in the dark. Unfortunately, he was slowly rolling through the rest of the continent, eliminating civs and city states as he came, not to mention he had a massive gold surplus of approximately 5000. Tad worrisome.

Eventually, he’d wiped out Egypt (and all but two other civs) and attacked some of my allied city states. All the city states left in the world declare war on him and I figure enough is enough. He was so far ahead in points, and had created so many puppet cities throughout the continent, that I knew there was no way I was going to win this game and it was only a matter of time before he went after me anyway. Fortunately, I was prepared for defense and had a fairly strong bit of military to back me up (I had tanks against his infantry), not to mention being slightly ahead in tech. I may be a bad player, but I’m not unaware of what’s going on; I just try to play my way. Now, with 20 turns left, I’ve slowly pushed Bismarck back where he came from, liberating Egypt’s capital (and bringing the civ back into the game*). Now it’s just a matter of whether I can do enough to win the game on points (the war put a stop to my cultural victory plans) or if I let him get too far ahead and waited too long.

So, while it’s somewhat interesting to play my two-pronged steamroller war machine, split by a range of mountains across the middle of the continent, it’s just an example of how it’s necessary to fight to win. Even in my first game, which I won a cultural victory on, it was only possible to win because I wiped out Washington (I was Siam) and then slowly annexed all his cities to build myself a much larger civ than I planned but one that outstripped other civs that were building up through war.

I suppose I’ll see how this game ends tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have to give in and play the way the game wants me to play instead of trying to do it my way in the future.

*A note on the liberation of Egypt: how stupid is it that as soon as I liberate the capital city and bring Egypt back into the game, getting the automatic open borders, he’s yelling at me because of all my military around. Really? You mean the military that just saved your ass? Great. You’d think that there’d be an automatic friendly/ally setting on a civ you liberate like that. I felt like I should have just created a puppet city and left him dead and gone from the world. Annoying. Do all civs act that way coming out of being wiped?

2908

I loved the airlift ability. I hope that gets added back in in the expansion.

2909

Won my first game on Prince level by outscoring my only remaining opponent in 2050 by less than a hundred points. It was fun, and I love pretty much all of the new mechanics, but I don’t feel compelled to play again for the time being. I’ll probably check back in after there’s a healthy mod selection.

2910

You meant 1GB, right? :)

2911

I finally persevered to the point of actually winning a game. Ramses at Prince level. Tedious as hell, since I didn’t want to micromanage the resources I’d need if I was going to conquer everyone because of the evil overhead formula, so after building a decent country and kicking my neighbors asses, I sat there and researched to the science victory.

OMG, how lame. How anticlimactic. I knew they were skimping on fluff, and that there wouldn’t be a civilization history recap or anything cool like that, but this is silly. Not even a score? Not even a rating? You play this game for hours and hours, and all it gives you is one little image and 10 seconds of voiceover? It almost seems insulting. More sense of accomplishment from winning a game of rogue, really.

I guess they must have completely ran out of money at the end or something… Seemed very appropriate that I got that stupid GWB quote for future tech just before finishing the game.

Well maybe someone like Kael will mod it in a major way, or the next expansion will make it actually fun.

2912

I wouldn’t bother getting a new, high-end graphics card with that system. If you did, odds are you won’t see a huge leap forward because the graphics card will be CPU starved with that processor. Not to mention, to even take advantage of the DX10/11 features of a new card you’ll need to replace XP with Vista or 7.

2913

It does give you a score and a comparison to (in)famous historical persons just like the previous Civilization games. On the victory screen there should have been tabs or something at the top to click to see that information. You can go to the hall of fame from the menu screen (under “other”) to at least see your score.

2914

I just had TWO successful research agreements with Monty, what the christ man?!?

I guess he liked that I went full Loyalty/Piety as Bismarck. :3

2915

Looking at the screen is fundamental. There are big-ass buttons at the top of the victory popup that switch to the various ranking tables.

2916

Maybe it miscalculated, or maybe there was another reason for war, like you’d annoyed the hell out of them for centuries by saying “you’re wrong” :).

Based on my experience with this game, and especially with Civ 4, and the comments of others in this thread and elsewhere on the web, it seems that this is the way the AI works.

2917

Yeah, I still don’t see any big problems with the diplomatic AI, especially compared to Civ4. The two real issues I’m seeing is the AI not using military units effectively against multiple threats, and always lagging behind in research and general city development (which I’m currently guessing is due to the absence of Civ4’s “intelligent” city governors, and the AI not using city focus appropriately).

2918

After playing (only?) two games I agree with this. The Diplomacy AI is actually better than Civ4. You can be friends with civs without bribing them every ten turns, although they will occasionally ask for free stuff if you have a treaty of cooperation.
In Civ4 the only way to not be at war with someone was a lucky combination of having the same religion, not being near each other (which doesn’t work very well with the first condition) and being equally strong. In all other cases the negative factors where so outweighing the positive ones that it was more of a Total War diplomacy of enemies and temporary cease fires. Civ 5 AIs are much more reasonable.

The military AI might be a bit weak, although in my games the AI mostly lost because of inferior technology or inferior numbers. I have rarely seen a field battle between equal armies so it’s difficult to judge. The AI tends to build too many ranged units, so once you break through it’s a slaughter.
I still like the Civ 5 tactics more than Civ 4’s complete lack of a war-AI with a hostile stack of doom moving in your general direction and the AI snatching under-defended cities with its omniscience.

2919

Yes, big time. In my last game, as Egypt I had 4 cities and had managed to eradicate Persians. The Iroquois (American Indian guys) who were my long time friends suddenly get less friendly. About 20 turns later they ask me to attack France, which I decline. 10 turns later the Iroquois attack me. Now I had an upkeep of about 50gp / turn of military. They easily had 4 or 5 units per my one. This wall of units comes rampaging down from the north taking out 3 or 4 cities (not just mine) at a time. Soon the whole world is Iroquois and my 2nd to last city is about to fall before I quit.

I was playing on Prince level. Does the AI even use gold? How could he afford to maintain an army of that size?

This is probably my 5th “Prince” game that I lost.

To the Pro’s out there who find “Prince” too easy, can you write a newbie guide? You know things to DO and things NOT to do? I read somewhere here I should never accept an open borders agreement (which I always have). How many cities should I shoot for? How soon should I get my 2nd city? or 3rd? Anyway, general tips from the pros are welcome.

Addendum question: When you first start, is the starting spot usually the best spot to found your city? If not, how long to people scout before planting their capitol?

2920

Son of a bitch! It’s still not out in stores here.

So I either have to spend a 25% premium and get it off Steam or wait for our local distributors to get their heads out of their asses and release it. And it’s the same with almost every game, book or movie. It’s so nice feeling appreciated for deciding not to pirate stuff.

Besides feeling good for supporting the things I love, there’s literally no upside to being legitimate with my purchases.