1781

When is Steam unlocking the game? If feel the sniffles coming and may need to stay home sometime this week…

1782

Cheers, that did indeed work perfectly.

1783

Speaking of the manual: it’s great to read it in advance, since I always read a manual before playing a game. Only to page 86 so far. Does anyone know if this version of the manual is the one that’ll be arriving with the game, though? This one seems to have some oddities in it. For instance, the Unit List Panel pic on page 24 shows the Warrior status as “TXT_KEY_UNIT_STATUS_FORTOED” (where O is a green circle), likely from an early build before the info was populated. It’ll be great to see if they keep up with manual updates to fix errors and keep it current to the game version (after patches).

1784

This won’t be the physical manual in the box - THAT will be a smaller “quick start” style guide. They wanted to save some trees from this 230+ page monstrosity.

You’ll notice the 1.0 in the file name? They PLAN on keeping it updated through the years, so hopefully they’ll stick with it. I’d be impressed if they actually did, it seems like one of those things easily forgotten about once the game ships.

1785

I thought the manual was well written, but there are more bugs, incomplete pages and glaring errors than any manual I’ve ever read for AAA title. I guess the advantage of actually spending money on PRINTING a manual is that somebody will actually read the thing with a fresh pair of eyes. If they were trying to get free proofreading, releasing the manual the weekend before the game unlocks is a stroke of genius.

It doesn’t however make me comfortable the game will be bug free. I think/hope that just as matter of professional pride that somebody at Firaxis takes the time to clean it up.

1786

So anyone know if they purchase the game locally will they come home and find out Steam will want to install its version so installing from the DVD will be worthless? For some reason I think that happened with the Orange Box, but not 100% sure.

Wondering because if I buy locally Tuesday and come home, I do not want to find out I had to go and download the game anyways. Forcing me to wait a few hours (at minimum if I am lucky) to play the game. I needs my preciousness now now now not later.

Because if that is going to happen, best just buy it on Steam and preload.

1787

If it works like other releases you can install it from the dvd and then steam will update it if you have that selected, but steam will need to be installed and steam will need to do it’s thing. But you can install from the Dvd

1788

If you’re that worried about it, why not just buy it on Steam?

1789

Well considering the K-Mart deal (if the price was a typo and it is being sold for $49.99) in order to get the $20 credit.

Otherwise it will be Steam. Just looking at all options before I bite the bullet. Nothing else to do until Tuesday.

1790

North America unlocks at 10am EDT on the 21st, 9am central, etc. Even if a brick and mortar breaks street date, you still can’t play the game until that unlock time on Steam.

1791

I am American (as is my Steam account) but I’m temporarily living overseas. Apparently I have to wait until Friday also. I don’t understand the logic behind the different release dates and it makes me sad, especially since my internet connection is currently too poor to play Starcraft 2 online.

1792

The logic is this:

  1. In the US and Canada, Tuesday is movie and game release day as determined by retail. In Europe and most of the rest of the world, Friday is movie and game release day as determined by retail.

  2. Even big publishers don’t have their own “foot in the door” in every country where they might want to sell their games. So they make deals with local publishers to make sure their games end up on the shelves on release day.

  3. If a game is anticipated to be really really huge (i.e. Halo Reach), then a publisher can probably do a worldwide release on a day of their chosing and ignore the Tuesday/Friday norms. Civ5 is a big game, but it’s not that big.

  4. Looking at the above three factors, it means that there needed to be two release dates. Most US developed games get released here first and in Europe later. Many European titles can go the other way. So Civ5 is in North America on Tuesday and everywhere else on Friday.

  5. Even though Steam is involved, 2K still has to make its overseas partners happy (#2) so that’s another reason for the release days being what they are.

  6. Regardless of your nationality, Steam only gives you games based on where you are living. And they look at where you are connecting from, so even if you have a US address on file with them, they aren’t going to just assume you are downloading into the US.

And that’s that. One day we will hopefully get over this stuff and just have a single global day where you can download the game.

1793

Giant Death Robot :o

1794

From Fidgit:

If you’re the kind of person who’s worried that Civilization V is really going to suck you in, then you’re the kind of person who needs to be worried. Because you’re probably right. It’s got some serious problems – namely in terms of the under-developed diplomacy system and the AI’s inability to handle warfare – but it’s also got that seriously addictive Civ quality.

Ugh.

1795

From Tom on Fidgit

If you’re the kind of person who’s worried that Civilization V is really going to suck you in, then you’re the kind of person who needs to be worried. Because you’re probably right. It’s got some serious problems – namely in terms of the under-developed diplomacy system and the AI’s inability to handle warfare – but it’s also got that seriously addictive Civ quality

I’m a little concerned about the ‘serious problems.’ Tom, care to elaborate? Does the AI really screw up the warfare?

1796

this doesnt surprise me… watching the 2 hour video from a week back, the AI constantly attacked the bottleneck position and it didn’t seem to change tactics.

hopefully theyre working on it. im pretty sure they are, because the die hard civ fans wont let it slide.

1797

Let’s be serious here, we are all hyped for the game, in general there is lots of hype for the game in all the sites i visit, which made us believe the game was going to be perfect and it came from heaven and all that… even if we haven’t still played it.

A pair of areas where the game is a bit weak or could be better is not that strange, once we come back to ground, expectations wise. In specific, with a more complex and totally remodeled system for the combat, it makes sense if the AI have some problems with warfare.

In the other hand, Tom still gave the week a “level red threat” and basically confirmed is a very good game.

1798

Right. Which is why I wanted him to elaborate. I have not watched the stream.

1799

having watched the civ 5 wargaming from the stream, the combat is very good, its as deep as panzer general type gameplay. but there is some ‘gamey’ things that a PG type combat system is open to. and combined with the 4x gameplay, im guessing the warfare can get even more gamey. but we’ll see on tuesday! the game certainly still looks playable and addictive.

and there is the possiblity tom is just too good! fwiw, most 4x games i’ve played don’t really tactically play well… its either brute force, cheats or exploiting easy weaknesses.

1800

This is one of the few times I’m happy that games usually release 2-3 days later in the EU than in the US.

The demo will be released on the 21st of september, right? So that would give us Europeans 2 days to still preorder…