Civilization 5 Announced

[SleepingMoogle]

It should be fine Kylearan. Living in France hasn't prevented the last dozen games purchased on Steam from installing in English for me. And at least one of those had a localized French version.

[darrelljs]

Oh, and I just gave in and preordered the game. Can't...resist...civ...on hex tiles...

I hope you went with direct2drive for the free DLC! I have an ongoing Steam saga right now, I was going to wait until the end to post results.

Darrell

[Sullla]

I enjoyed the preview going out of its way to mention that Civ5 will create autosaves while playing. You mean something that's been present in every previous Civilization game will also exist in this one? Gee willikers, does Civ5 come with mouse support too?!?

More and more, this game looks radically different from the previous ones. I can't get over the vast tracks of empty land that seem to last throughout the game, due to the new happiness mechanic. And growth in the early game seems to be much, much slower than in Civ4, due to lack of major food bonuses. I suppose that's a good thing, since we have an entirely new game to learn and play around with, but at the same time, I still have mixed feelings about the direction they're taking the game in. Meh.

Multiplayer looks like it is going to royally suck in this game, if that's the best preview they could come up with.

[haphazard1]

The new food yields and lack of big food bonus tiles has me worried about specializing cities. If very few tiles are going to provide significant excess food (beyond that required to feed the pop working the tile), then working tiles which do not feed themselves is going to be a major decision due to the effect on the already slow city growth rate.

Granaries will apparently provide a fixed +2 food, which is only 1 pop point. There is a food saving/multiplying building with effects similar to the Civ IV granary, but it is apparently much later in the tech tree.

Maybe buying control of more tiles won't be needed much, because your cities will grow so slowly anyway? It seems likely that despite the larger potential BFH of your cities, spacing them closely with overlap is not going to be much of a problem since they will take eternity to grow to theoretical full size. But countering this is the new happy mechanic -- maybe spreading your cities out and leaving lots of unclaimed land is the way to go after all?

I am also concerned about the "hard" unit support cap, based on population and number of cities. Hopefully it will not be set too low, but if it was not intended to actually do anything then they would not have included it. It seems wrong that even if I have enough gold and hammers, I am blocked from building more units if I want them.

Maybe I am the only one, but the mental impression I am getting of Civ V so far is "small". Small civs due to happiness caps, small armies due to unit limits, small areas due to one unit per tile (how big can an area which can only contain one group of a few hundred (or later a few thousand) soldiers really be?), tactical combat focus rather than strategic focus.... It just all sounds so small...like a Huge Pangaea map might be about the size of Australia.

[Krill]

We should start an 18 player MP game with it and see what the hell happens...

But yes, small is the most apt description around, and that just ain't good, regardless of what the devs want us to believe.

SIZE DOES MATTER!

[Jowy]

The thing I hated the most about Civ4 was managing a large empire after a war phase, especially in the late eras. As long as those few cities that we're allowed to have in civ5 are actually strong and versatile, I'm all up for it.

[T-hawk]

Gee willikers, does Civ5 come with mouse support too?!?

That's premium content, you only get that if you pre-order. :neenernee

I can't get over the vast tracks of empty land that seem to last throughout the game, due to the new happiness mechanic.

Ever seen Siberia, or the Sahara, or the Amazon rain forest, or even some pretty big chunks of the American plains?

And growth in the early game seems to be much, much slower than in Civ4, due to lack of major food bonuses.

Well, Civ 4 city growth was slower than in Civ 3, which was generally seen as a positive change. Civ 3 was all about hitting the threshold of +5 food to grow every two turns (and then using that city to spew out workers to merge into cities not so lucky on food.) Also, if workers don't consume food to build, that takes a brake off city growth.

I'm not jumping into Civ 5 at release, or probably before Christmas at least. Let the hype sort out first and then we'll see if there's a good game there.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Ugh - I had been intending to finally take the multiplayer plunge in C5.

Maybe I'd be feeling better if the existing videos would hold my interest longer, but the game for the moment seems to be defining itself with negatives.

Ah well, sunk cost. Pessimism won't earn me a rebate.

[sunrise089]

@T-Hawl - so those areas are unclaimed by civilization then? I guess I better drive my way west, I could find the next Sealand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand). I actually get what you're saying, but Civ4 already incorporates Siberia or the Sahara via culture expansions to lousy tiles. If you plant your cap in the far north, you'll get 20 tiles of tundra/ice in the late game. Full-on unclaimed land is a very different story I think.

[Square Leg]

I am going to be waiting before purchasing Civ5 for a few reasons:

- I want to play the demo first and see if I like it.

- In the first few months there are going to be errors, bad mechanics etc that will need patching. I'm happy to wait for a game that has been road tested properly by the community before buying.

- If it isn't actually that good - I won't buy it. I remember buying SimSocieties before testing it and what a mistake that was!!!!