Civilization 5 Announced

[Brian Shanahan]

I read the review:
Perhaps initally your friends may determine which empire your in, but as I understand the combat system from the review, if you lose your city, it's not damaged at all, but you instead end up as part of the empire that conquered you.
So those without friends would quickly end up as a part of a real empire and may well be on the winning side.

Looks like the main things your be online for is the "mini games" like trying to get a great artist. Yep, can definitely see an advantage for a team that starts with (or conquers so that they then have them) players spending a lot of time doing so.
I would guess though that conquering three cities that each belong to a once a day a player would be of greater benefit than conquering a city belonging to the on constantly on player. (For that matter, I expect that most of the players who start independent with no or few friends would purposely build no military whatsoever in hopes of being conquered into a team with a shot at winning, so the cost doing so may well be nothing.)

So all I'll have to do to win is start up a game and ignore it after that, and just hope I get lucky in conquering me. [Bum Review]Yeah that's the greatest game mechanic I have ever seen in my life.[/Bum Review]

[MJW (ya that one)]

First CivWorld Preview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJ97DCNXXo

[Krill]

RB empire?

[MJW (ya that one)]

RB empire?

I doubt anyone would like this game who is here. We might have to restart a few times in order to get one but it should not be to hard if members here try.

[Brian Shanahan]

Looks like a mongrel offspring between Civ 5 and Farmville, frankly.

Seeing as neither of those games have the slightest appeal to me (and in addition that Civ 5 is a broken mess) I won't be touching it with a 40 foot pole.

Hopefully this game will be a commercial and critical failure, as if it succeeds, then you've just been looking at the future of civ in that video, a game for bored office workers and 8 year olds.

[Sullla]

You can get into the beta pretty easily if you want by signing up through CivFanatics or one of the other Civ fansites. As for the game itself, pretty clearly it's not for me. I won't try to hate on it (although I do think it looks several degrees of terrible); good luck to anyone who enjoys that sort of thing.

I honestly don't think we'll be getting any more good strategy games from Firaxis. The talent that made that company special has left for other jobs. Firaxis hasn't made a genuinely good game in about 5 years now. Hopefully we'll see some other companies step in and fill the void.

[Zed-F]

I have to agree that there is no point in hoping for Civ World to be a failure, since (a) it's not targeted at hardcore strategy fans, and (b) its failure wouldn't convince Firaxis to shift its philosophy from pleasing casual gamers to pleasing hardcore gamers. Firaxis is fully on the path of pleasing the casual gamer and we just have to accept that that boat has sailed; if you are looking for hardcore strat games you must look elsewhere.

Fortunately there are plenty of places to look. There's no real reason to maintain a focus on Civ as the one true game franchise when there are so many other good strategy games to choose from. Digital distribution has been a real boon to the PC game space in general and the strategy game space in particular.

[Sullla]

Well, E3 has come and gone, with no news whatsoever on a Civ5 expansion. (I realize that Take-Two and Firaxis were not present at E3, but their very lack of presence there, unlike most other years, is itself significant.) For anyone who's still watching the news on this game, I'm curious to ask: do you think there will ever be an expansion for Civ5?

When the game came out, I would have laughed away any such suggestion. By now though, I honestly don't think they will ever make one. The Warlords expansion for Civ4 came out nine months after the game's release. Civ5 has now been out for nine months itself, and there hasn't even been an announcement of an expansion. Furthermore, if they announced one today, it couldn't be out any sooner than the holiday season. Given how easy it is to pump out downloadable civs with minimal coding/art assets required, I really think that's what the future of Civ5 will be, with maybe a collection of all DLC civs available for purchase in a year or so.

Now I wouldn't be buying an expansion anyway under any circumstances, but there seems to be this persistent belief online that an expansion is coming that will magically fix the game's problems. Why would anyone think that? Is there any evidence that an expansion will ever be released?

[Sareln]

Now I wouldn't be buying an expansion anyway under any circumstances, but there seems to be this persistent belief online that an expansion is coming that will magically fix the game's problems. Why would anyone think that? Is there any evidence that an expansion will ever be released?

It is a heartbreaking thing, to face the reality of how deeply the game has failed as a thoughtful strategy game. Much easier, instead, to pine wistfully for the magic patch/expansion that will fix everything and make all good in the world again.

As to whether or not there will be an expansion pack for CIV V, my guess is firmly in the "no" camp right now. Here's my reasoning:

Expansion packs for strategy games can have their features divided roughly into two parts:

1. Fundamental Changes to the Game Rules
   
2. More Stuff (CIVs, Units, Maps, etc.)

The second of these can be easily covered in the DLC business model, so all that is left for the expansion pack is the first component - gameplay changes. Once your expansion pack is focused primarily around gameplay changes, how do you justify it to the suits as an expansion pack, rather than a new game, or a standalone? I don't think you can. So the traditional idea of the expansion pack dies, and we're left with new iterations of a series to give us large gameplay changes.

----

Two strategy games came out last fall that managed to fall flat on their collective faces - Civilization 5 and Elemental. Both have been patched multiple times at this point. As Sullla points out, expansion packs normally come fairly quickly, and Stardock is still following that model with Fallen Enchantress (I'm sure you've all started to see the literature for it appearing on the web, interviews, etc.). That we've heard nary a peep from Firaxis about an expo at this point is probably all the confirmation we need that it's not coming .

[Amelia]

I thought that Elemental was not such a fall flat, compared to Civ 5, if i read correctly on this thread?