Just about the only gaming I’ve done on PC for the last few years has been playing Civ of some form. My laptop is barely capable of playing CIV IV. So Here I am envious of all you guys with your fancy new toy. I might have to get myself a new rig just to play. now if I can only convince the minister of finance that I need it for work or something…
In short, I’m green right now. Want, Want, Want.
Excellent! Also, they’ve posted a whole bunch of new podcasts in the last couple of days.
Strollen
1683
It is a very fine manual and I’m pleased with the level of completeness.
My only complaint is would have been nice to have a few more links, so for example clicking on the UU or UBs would have taken you to the appropriate page.
I am pleasantly surprised at the number and variety of buildings. It appears that there are two and sometimes 4 levels of increases. So for instance you have Barracks which add 15 XP and Armories which add another 15 XP. I think specialization maybe more important in Civ V than Civ IV.
I am even more excited about social policies, these look like they will make a huge difference in how the game is played.
Oops, small problem with the manual… it opens like this in Acrobat Professional:
Turns out the page numbers, next page & previous page buttons at the bottom of each page have been implemented as form fields, so Acrobat Pro automatically requests the reader to fill them in. Just for aesthetics’ sake and to avoid confusion, anyone from Firaxis reading this should tell the manual author(s) not to use form fields in a document that isn’t actually a form to be filled in by readers.
Sarkus
1685
It does the same thing in Adobe Reader 8, which is what I have installed on my PC.
TurinTur
1686
The right answer is use Foxit, of course.
Foxit still doesn’t support PDF forms?
TurinTur
1688
It supports it, but you can hide the message, and they are called interactive fields.
Netriak
1689
You can hide the message in the Adobe reader too.
The manual is surprisingly detailed – it’s really a complete reference to the game, not just an introductory pamphlet. Spotted one little error on page 47, though:
Ranged units are units that can attack enemies in adjacent hexes and in hexes one or more spaces away. The distance a unit can attack is determined by its “Range” statistic. The strength of its ranged attack is determined by its “Ranged Combat” statistic. An Archer unit, for example, has a Combat Strength of 7, a Ranged Combat Strength of 8, and a Range of 2. It can attack enemy units one or two hexes away with a Strength of 7. However, if an enemy unit attacks it, it defends with its Combat Strength of 4.
Sounds like the Archer should have a Combat Strength of 4 rather than 7, and attack enemy units with a strength of 8, if I understand that passage correctly.
JM1
1691
Day 0 manual patch please!
Does anyone else find it curious that archers can perform ranged attacks but gunpowder units and tanks can’t?
I’ll probably rationalise it along the lines of my explanation for “spearman defeats a tank” (the spearman is really a poorly trained militiaman with an old AK-47 and a bunch of molotov cocktails; the archer is a guy with an early muzzle-loading rifle that outranges the musketmen), and the gameplay rationale is probably because otherwise all modern combat would be ranged, but it still will look odd.
Release Day: Start Playing
The Day After: Start modding a King of Dragon Pass and Renaissance Italy mods.
The civ descriptions are a thing of beauty and everyone should read them.
I assume it’s meant to reflect the idea that some units can shoot over other units, rather than comparative raw distance. Muskets and tanks fire straight and thus shouldn’t be able to shoot through hexes with friendly units, but archers and artillery can “lob” their shots.
I think the weirder abstraction is the relationship of map scale to range, but I don’t think that’s going to bother me either.
TurinTur
1696
It seems silly to me. Effective fire distance is much more important than the ability to fire in parabole (and btw, both rifles and tanks can lob their shots in real life). A bow can fire up to… what, 300 mts? A tank more than 1000mts.
It’s all an abstraction.
And while archers were traditionally used to lob shots over friendly forces, guns never were. Tanks can be used that way, I assume, but they’re certainly not supposed to be. They’re direct fire weapons (as opposed to artillery and mortars) .
I don’t really think Civ has ever been mistaken for a military simulator…
But not mistake them for actual history…
WHAT.
