Civilization 5 Announced

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Open survey question about "Pact of Secrecy" and "Pact of Cooperation"

Are these elements undocumented?
or unimplemented?
or unintended?

I had expected to find something more than text in the XML assets.

[Meiz]

Also, what's the point of choosing rude answers to the AI in diplomacy? Feels like you just get unnecessary penalties with no benefit. Again, it feels like that because I have no idea what actually happens...

[TheArchduke]

This idea of using City States as your economy already seems to be very powerful. It requires a completely different mindset from earlier Civ games: This is a game where control by influence (City States, puppets) has substantially replaced direct player control (settling, annexing). For some players that transition is going to be painful and confusing, but the result will not necessarily be bad.

With 1-2 happiness ressources and freedoom a quick rush to 5 cities without breaking the happiness cap is not a problem on monarch. So a quick push to expand out the door is viable. Settlers have been made very cheap after all.

[Dicorion]

I tried the Deluxe digital version bonus. The Babylonian civilization is looking good as the whole game I played yesterday. There are problems as a lot of you mentioned before, but still it was fun and well spent 1,5h of my time.
First I was surpridsed to see darelljs had a cow tile with 4 food. Then I remembered I had a banana tile with the same output, but that one was at river. I had a cow with 3food on grassland BUT not at river (as my capital was not in range of river in its original 3hexes distance). It is weird how rivers influences the food output of various tiles. Any observations this way?

[darrelljs]

Also, what's the point of choosing rude answers to the AI in diplomacy? Feels like you just get unnecessary penalties with no benefit. Again, it feels like that because I have no idea what actually happens...

If you lie to them they point it out. Its probably a choice between a small overall negative with every civ or one large negative with a single civ.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

I think we're supposed to be buy rushing more.

Maybe. Here are a few plots of rush buy costs.





You can see the more expensive things get, the more efficient rush buying becomes. Throw in the fact that gold multiplying buildings are more plentiful than hammer multiplying buildings (at least from what I've seen) and it implies to me that hammers are what you want early, but late game you are probably going to be cash rushing most things.

Darrell

P.S. Civil Service is uber, and the ability to select what tech a GS can bulb makes early Library -> early Great Scientist -> early Civil Service quite powerful. It seems like a safer bet than building the Great Library...although its a surprisingly cheap wonder and the tech path for it is on the way to Civil Service.

[Serdoa]

After having played now several hours I cannot say that it was not fun. But I am not sure if it was "fun because its a good game" or "fun because its a new game".

Anyway, as pointed out already, city screen is a mess, AI is dumb. And it really seems like Civ5 is not that much about empire-management. At least, I never had the feeling that it really is important to choose which building to build, which tile to work or whatever. Given, that might be because I am more then 10 techs in front of the AIs, have 8 self-managed and 8 puppet-cities as well as 5 city-states which are my allies. Or because there is only one civ left which has its capital.

For whatever reason, empire-management is not that important. Now, what do we get instead? Not city-states because, honestly, whatever was said about them was a lie. They are not a interesting new feature, they do not make the world living... they are boring. Get 2-4 maritim city-states and you get so much food, its not even funny anymore.

And the AI-leaders? Really, I am wondering... who had the glorious idea that they speak in their language? From the previews I thought that is only the first time you meet them, but no, it is all the time. Sounds cool, till you play with it and find out that they basically have paid much money for speech which you do not listen too.
Well, anyway, at least the possible interactions with them should be fun, I remember something about a deeper diplo-system? If there is such a thing, it is really deep... deeply buried so that it can't be found. At least I do not know what I should do with the other leaders diplomatically. Maybe that gets better at Immortal - if they are able to keep up there then.

Now, do I not like the game? No, no, I like it. Only I am not sure if that is really anymore Civilization. Like I said, I had fun. Lets see for how long.

[Sullla]

After having played now several hours I cannot say that it was not fun. But I am not sure if it was "fun because its a good game" or "fun because its a new game".

This was 100% my impression too, Serdoa. I did have fun experiencing the demo of Civ5. But I also felt that the fun was more from the newness of the experience than from the inherent value of Civ5 itself.

Going to buy the game this weekend most likely, and try cranking up the difficulty to see if that changes anything. I also think we might want to experiment with turning off city states (ha! one day after release and I'm already suggesting removing a core game element) just to see how that changes things. The maritime city-states gifting tons of food seems like a beyond broken game feature...

[T-hawk]

Others said the AI improved for Civ 4 over time, but that's not really the case as I see it. If not for Blake's BetterAI fan project, there wouldn't have been much improvement as far as I can remember.

Blake's BetterAI was the improvement over time. Others besides Blake also contributed and Firaxis took in many of the suggestions. The AI improvements were balanced out by reductions to the AI's difficulty-level handicaps, so the game didn't actually get harder to win with the better AI.

It's true that Firaxis itself didn't invest much in the AI for Civ 4 after the initial release, other than hiring Blake. However, why couldn't they take the same approach for Civ 5? Let the fans do the work - somebody will - and incorporate it into the inevitable expansion packs.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I think the lack of Slavery really dumbs down the game, but given how overpowered the Maritime city-states are in the game, it could've gotten really dumb. I think that is why your cities grow so slow. It is assumed that you are going to be getting tons of food from city-states.

So if you turn city-states off, it may be just about impossible to grow on a proper curve. Even with +10 food in my capital from city-states for several whole Eras, my capital was still only size 15 or 16 when the game ended.

As for settling land, rivers are they key. I wouldn't even bother to look at the tiles themselves. Just find a river and plant your city there. Between the Civil Service farms and the buildings you can only build on water (Garden, Water Mill, Hydro, And a Hammer per river tile one), forget flood plains. Settle on the rivers.