1881

Well, IMO, the default difficulty of a strategy game, if possible, should be the one where the AI is as smart as it can be (which is still not as smart as a human, if the game have a decent complexity) but still have not extra help in the shape of special economic/production/strength bonus.

So, if i am understanding it correctly, the game lacks what the most important difficulty setting, the default one.

1882

Well, hopefully the A.I. improves over time with patching.

Maybe there should be two sets of settings for overall difficulty:

  1. (A.I.) Chieftain - Deity with range of bad to good choice making increasing up

  2. (Bonuses/Penalties) Chieftain - Deity with range of tech/unit/ruins help decreasing up

I wonder what happened to “Sid” difficulty?

1883

signed, and Chris - I’ll be doing the exact same thing however I have a huge concern. What are the chances that they tied better decision making to AI bonus’s, because the AI can’t make better decisions within the confines of a fair economy? Otherwise I can’t understand why they’d make that decision.

1884

That’s possible… but we won’t know for sure until we try!

1885

Review from Arstechnica…

I like this gem:

“A few facets of the game that were cartoonish in the past have been simplified. Diplomacy is now conducted with still pictures of leaders that look somewhat like royal portraits. Likewise, the advisors are not live or animated—just pictures next to text boxes of their advice. I found that I missed the occasionally snarling CGI leaders of Civ4, as it was much easier to like or hate something that visually liked or hated you back—now all we have to go on are single facial expressions.”

And for our first tro…, I mean panning reviewer, I give you Matthew Murray from PCMAG and his review…

“Given the series’ stellar pedigree, Civilization V would have to work feverishly to be disappointing. But this highly simplified chapter in the Civ saga tries its best.”

1886

[/I]

Am I missing something? Because the civ leaders were all animated and even spoke in their native tongue on the videos I’ve seen, including in last weeks streaming demo. I’m wondering if the reviewer was playing with a version where that was not enabled.

1887

In comparison with which Civilization? Civilization IV, with all the expansions, is a different beast than say… Civilization 2.
In fact, i am playing Civ IV right now, and sometimes it feels too fiddly, with so many little things to manage, the specialists, the great people, the civics and their special effects, the individual upgrades for each unit, the culture, growth and happiness of each city, the resources and their consequences, the more varied upgrades for the tiles, the espionage, the religion, the temples and priests, how it spreads and which city and which civilizations have which religion and how it affects diplomacy, etc. Even the wonders are more fiddly, with two types, national and unique wonders.

I know i am biased in all this, because the first Civ i played and got addicted was Civ 2, so that game got established in my mind as the standard Civilization game, with a specific amount of little complexity but sweeping epicness, and a balance between micro and macro. In other words, my biased mind think that specifc amount of micro and complexity is Civilization, and that’s it. Even if Civ 4 is a great game :).

1888

Civ4 could definitely use some simplification, in terms of both gameplay and interface. That doesn’t bother me at all.

The leader images comment is really strange and sounds like the review is based on some incomplete version…

1889

You know Naeblis, after what Civ IV did with unit upkeep, making it empire wide, I struggle to go back to Civ II (or Alpha Centauri for that matter) because of the micro involved with the production mechanics. After all, having a “4 production shield” city churn out a crusader meant 1/4 of its production was lost if running under a democracy or republic. I’m not saying you are wrong in any way, I appreciate differenent perspectives, but I’m just the opposite in that I found the core parts of Civ II, city production, maintenance, corruption, even attacking cities where only howitzers could ignore city walls to be a bit more fiddly. Still, being able to plant a nuke in a civ’s city, bypassing the SDI defence, then paradropping in was always a lot of fun. Good memories.

In contrast, I think the core of Civ IV was streamlined, with the micro, in the form of specialists, religion, and dare I say, the line defining nation and unique wonders can be safely ignored, well, maybe until hitting prince difficulty or higher.

1890

Hmm, looking at the bullet points at the end of the Ars Technica review, it appears the reviewer didn’t reach the modern era. I wonder how typical that’ll be? Also, I was amused by the following paragraph, as it made me picture the AI calculating the time value of money:

Sometimes the AIs appear to be not-so-intelligent, despite their name. For instance, I once offered Siam five gold per turn for 10 turns, and their leader offered me a nonsensical 39 gold in exchange. It’s hard to say whether the AIs were designed to be facetious, but sometimes basic math seems to elude them. Maybe it is just a way to figure out how they really feel about you—see if your money’s any good to them.

1891

Ars review is more the typical ‘descriptive’ review than a critical review. 95% of the review is used to describe the different parts of the game, as in a extended preview, without saying if that part is good or not. I think that part about the diplomatic AI is one of the few tidbits where the reviewer make a value judgement.

1892

How sad it is to criticize the AI for something it understands better than you.

1893

That strikes me as a very optimistic description of the problem.

1894

If you wanted to rush a key wonder and didn’t have the gold necessary on a given turn to complete it, wouldn’t the “5 gold over 10 turns for 36 gold” be worth it if it netted you that wonder before someone else got it? It has nothing to do with the AI not understanding basic math as the reviewer stated.

1895

It is Sept. 21.

Why is this game not yet unlocked on my Steam? :(

1896

Because it’s not 10 AM yet.

1897

I know the demo comes out today but at what time? It’s 13:24 GMT and I’ve got no idea when and where (Steam or their site) to get the demo.

1898

Well, if the game itself doesn’t unlock until 10AM EST at the earliest, so you can be pretty certain the demo won’t be available until after that time.

1899

As for the PCMAG review, it’s an outlier right now since everything else is pretty much overwhelmingly positive. It sounds like the reviewer didn’t like getting away from the “stack of doom”, which is one of the things I’m most excited about.

1900

Argh! I have the box on my desk (review copy) but not only am I at work, I am also in Europe and assume that I can install it… and the just look on some static sign until it unlocks friday (I’m not one of those Tom Chick/Kieron Gillen/Troy Goodfellow actual important reviewers who gets early access to stuff…)