5681

Civ 5 is definitely much improved over its state at release.

5682

Does anyone still think traditional expansions are on the way for the game, or is (pardon my editorializing French) bullshit DLC the way from here till support is dropped?

5683

Given that there’s no word or hint about an expansion a year past the release date, I imagine they’ll just milk this with DLC as long as they can. Which is a shame, because Civ5 could become quite good with a couple expansions under it’s belt.

Given 2K exec’s comments about strategy games not being contemporary, I highly doubt they’re interested in funding more Civilization titles unless they figure some way of doing it as a FPS.

5684

Yea… i’ve bought all the DLC for Civ V except for the Koreans, which i haven’t got around to yet. I’m afraid this is the “last” Civ we’ll see unless we show the nobs in charge that they can milk us like an MMO :/. And i don’t even think that it’s that good of a game.

5685

Are there other games of this ilk that have had a lot of DLC, where that DLC content was rounded up into an expansion or combo pack, at a later time?

I like Civ V, but don’t play it enough to make it worth getting the DLC as it trickles out. It seems like over time once the DLC is dated, it would be worth it for all that to be combined to some sort of combo pack, with all the DLC up to a certain point. Do publishers ever do that, these days?

5686

Funny, while in reality this very thing prevented a nuclear war it causes one Civ. :P

5687

I believe fighters and other anti-air have a chance of intercepting nuclear missiles, but I’ve never played long enough for the computer to develop them.

5688

It seems like DLC are here to stay I would certainly expect them to be bundled, or at the very least a Civ V gold edition. To be available which might be cheaper than individual DLC.

5689

Nukes cannot be intercepted, ever. The Civopedia claims that there’s a 50% interception chance but players have reported that nukes always get through, and that’s also been my experience. There’s no equivalent to SDI either, nor any diplomatic penalty to using them. Nukes are the instant-win button in Civ5 which is a shame – if a nearby hostile AI gets nukes before you do you might as well quit, it’s game over. Realistic in a way, but not very fun!

5690

Ah, well that settles that then. I was only going off what I had read in-game about that evasion modifier nukes have and interception rates, etc. That’s a real shame.

5691

Wow, what sort of fucked up game did I buy? At least it was on sale :/

5692

I finally bought this as well via the Steam sale, along with the DLCs. I find that Steam is the “I might as well buy this now that it’s $10” service of choice, heh.

5693

We picked up four copies this weekend, plus my brother in law picked it up also. Civ 4 was one of our favorite family games (Wife, oldest daughter, son and I) so at this price we couldn’t pass it up. I’ve been enjoying it so far. Love how it looks and don’t mind the changes, though the Mrs really hates that they took out the religions. Glad we waited for some fixes and a nice price before jumping in, but its shaping up to be a family favorite.

5694

So besides the before mentioned Civ Nights Mods.

Any “Must have” mods that would improve gameplay without totally changing the game?

5695

That’s the problem I have with most of the current Civ V mods. They go too far and break the game in different ways. I haven’t yet found one that strikes that balance between improvement and breaking the game or over-complicating things.

For example, Civ Nights is a well done mod, but I can’t get into it. Every city + military unit increased unhappiness. The expanded tech tree means it takes longer to bring happiness resources online. As such, any type of REX or even a successful early military campaign means your unhappiness goes haywire. God pity you if you have to go all the way to Iron Working to get your gem mines online.

5696

In the same vein as the NiGHTS mod, there’s the unofficial patch and vanilla enhanced mod, available here. They’re going to change up the gameplay and attempt to streamline it (so it’s not just some interface mod), but the core Civ V experience is likely still there. It was referenced in the NiGHTS article on RPS as a hyperlink but didn’t get a mention in the body proper beyond that.

I should note that I have yet to try it but am merely pointing it out because I downloaded it yesterday along with NiGHTS. Eventually, I plan to give them both a try.

5697

I tried those too, but Civ V (which was already pokey) was downright slow with those mods enabled. NIGHTS, which is bigger, did not cause any slowdowns. However, after reading the forums, it appears that the latest release of that mod (just a couple of days ago) improved the speed, so I may have to give it another shot.

5698

The Vanilla Enhanced mod looks pretty good; in particular I like the faction changes they made, and the balance changes towards encouraging more play variety.

Has anyone here done any Civ 5 modding? Is it possible to hack a mod’s changes directly into the core game rules? I’d like to use this mod for hotseat…

A quick perusal leads me to believe that (crazily) the core game constants just aren’t stored in a text file, but hopefully I’m missing something. :-/

5699

I think everything is stored in Lua or XML files; Civ4 did something fairly similar.

edit: Aside from the stuff going on in the .dlls of course.

5700

I wholeheartedly agree with your take. Nights seems to be a nice piece of work from what I’ve read, but it goes too far with its changes for my tastes.

Kal