Soon...

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Davo
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Soon...

Unread post by Davo »

Sadly, i cannot get this game yet.

Destination: Friday...


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MinionJoe
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by MinionJoe »

Same here.

Target doesn't appear to be carrying it in their stores. I'll have to order it online.
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Davo
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Re: Soon...

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are you sure today wasnt the pre order release date?
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MinionJoe
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by MinionJoe »

Nope. Today is the release release date.

But, according to the woman in Target's electronics department, "Never EVER believe what the target.com website tells you."

They have it. In stock. In the stores. $49.99. Which I charged to my RED card. Woot!

The package is remarkably thin though. I worry that they've gone to PDF manuals. Which would be a shame. I really enjoyed the spiral bound that came with IV.

Addendum: Yup, they've gone to digital manuals. The package includes the DVD-ROM, a tech-tree wall chart, and an installation instruction pamphlet.

Oh, and too, I believe they are using Steamworks for their DRM. I definately check to make sure they weren't using SecuROM. Though, Firaxis only did that with Civ: Colonization, and then removed it with the first patch.
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Davo
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by Davo »

i'd be happy with a wall chart.

C&C 4 was the first C&C to not give me a poster. i have a lot of game posters posted up in a room dedicated to them
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by MinionJoe »

Civ V is epic!

I played for 6 hours straight last night. Quick play, Chieftan difficulty, small map, continents, as Siam.

The city-states are brilliant. Hex map is brilliant. Ranged units are brilliant.

Once you have the tech, you can 'embark' any land unit and transport them across water. But they count as civilian units and are instantly destroyed by military units. So moving your army of swordsmen across the Pacific ocean so you can destroy Venice to gain the favor of Florence and Oslo is nerve-wracking! But also epic and brilliant.

Resources are handled a bit differently. One tile of iron may give you 4-6 iron. For each iron, you can build one swordsman or one cannon, etc. But really, with the one-unit-per-tile rule (brilliant!) and the protracted unit battles (epic!), you never need a dozen swordsmen.

I'm still trying to find all my favorite charts with city, unit, and diplomacy stats. They're there, just buried under the simplified interfaces.

Had NO problems running Civ V with moderate graphics settings on my $500 PC.

Couple other things:

Religion has been removed entirely. I assume corporations are gone too.

Great people can be used to build tile improvements (sa science academy) rather than buildings in a city. One great person can trigger a Golden Age, but the duration decreases for each subsequent Golden Age (starts at 8 turns and drops to a minimum of 3 turns). But Golden Ages also happen randomly now when your citizens are happy enough for long enough (not sure on the formula yet). Great people can still be used to research a tech [Actually, sorry, only Great Scientists can research technologies].

The tech tree has been streamlined and simplified. Everyone starts with Agriculture and can research the same 4 techs in the beginning. It gets a little more complicated the farther down the chart you go, but I never had to decide between more than 6 techs at any given time.

You don't have to build roads to your mines/pastures/plantations in order to connect the resource anymore. In fact, roads are only used to travel quickly between cities. And they cost gold to maintain (1gp per turn per road tile), so you don't want to build them everywhere. And they look a lot better than they did in IV.

The new animated leaders are pretty swank. And speaking in their native languages was an exellent touch. Music seems to be civilization appropriate, and varied sufficiently that it doesn't sound repeatative. (I believe the deluxe edition includes TWO music CDs, so there's a LOT of music in V.)

I've not messed with city specialists much, but they seem to be keyed to specific buildings (ie you assign the citizen to the building). There doesn't seem to be as much emphasis on specialists for tuning your cities in V though.

There are quite a few new units (longswordsmen, lancers, etc). I'm still trying to get a handle on the advantages/disadvantages of each.

Not all of the keyboard shortcuts I remember from IV work in V. And since there is no in-game list of controls, I couldn't verify all of them. 'C' still centers on the current unit and 'space' skips the units turn. Most everything in the game has a clickable button or icon though. (I'm just a keyboard jockey.)
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Davo
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by Davo »

excellent review joe!
my friend (MC Smalls) that has followed the series for a while will enjoy seeing this!
and he will help me break into this series as well.

we may go in halves on the game. but money is REAL tight this month. im getting married on 10/10/10
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by MinionJoe »

Congrats! (If congrats are in order. :) )

I finished my first "quick play" game last night. Even on a small map and at very low difficulty, it took 10-11 hours total over two evenings. Standard games will probably take WEEKS to complete!

The old options for micromanagement are still there, but really aren't necessary unless you're trying to specialize a city for wonder production or something. The new AI is superb when it comes to default placement citizens, and the emphasis wizard (for focusing on food/production/gold/etc) does a very good job.

The AI also did an excellent job of selecting new city tiles during border expansions. I'd placed a late coastal city and forgotten about it for a hundred years. When I came back, it'd expanded it's borders automatically to encompass all the resources in the area, including two straight lines out to the fish that were 3 hexes off shore. You can always manually buy tiles with gold though, if you're in a rush to get to the resources.

The opponent AIs were more lively than in previous versions. I'd just explored across the western ocean. As Siam, I was interested in establishing relationships with all the city-states (I was going for a cultural or diplomatic victory). Two of the city-states (Florence and Oslo) wanted me to off Venice. I was thinking "Two for one sale!" and invaded. Florence and Oslo became my allies, but India, America, and Greece were SUPER pissed. They wouldn't trade with me for the rest of the game. But the old +- indicators for your relationships are gone. Instead, you have to watch the leader's expressions, body language, and tone of voice to figure out just how they feel about you.

And they all looked so sad once I'd destroyed their civilizations... ;)
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ashkelon
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by ashkelon »

Thanks, this is about the depth of information I was looking for. I have a basic, rather vague idea how the game works coupled by my initial bad impression of trying to fight my way through what must have been the original version (knowing me, without really looking at the manual -- yeah, I'm one of THOSE). Actually, I learn something this complex much better from watching someone play, even a little (also one of THOSE).

The idea of the AI taking over more management, and doing a reasonable job is very promising to me. That's typically what turns me off about strategy games. I love playing Risk. I don't want to have to tell the citizens every time there's available food.

I won't be getting it soon, since Pokemon B&W will be coming this winter (I hope) and new opportunities for move sets trumps everything ;D
And after I pull off that miracle, maybe I'll go punch out God.
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screenname1111
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by screenname1111 »

Religion has been removed entirely? I guess they changed their mind,because Civ 4 Gold edition's(which I have)Manual says these exact words:

"....However,given the importance religions have had in human development,we didn't want to just leave them out of the game altogether......"

It still sounds like a good game though,kind of more realistic that you can buy tiles.It didn't make sense to me that everytime you had more culture your city just "expanded".
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MinionJoe
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by MinionJoe »

Specific religions are removed from the game, but you can still play a "religious" civilization by the social policies you pick (tradition, piety, etc).

Also, you can no longer convert a city through culture. I'm not sure if I like that or not. It means that once a tile is bought, it's fixed to the owning civilization unless you A) conquer the city by force; or B) use a great artist.

I suppose that's a pretty good mechanic though. Just different.
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screenname1111
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by screenname1111 »

I got Civ V! :D and the DS game as well.

It's everything the last review is,but if you have played Civ IV for a while like I have,its kind of hard to get used to.

Barbarians now appear randomely with their bases as "encampments".It gets kind of annoying when you see another barbarian camp where you just cleared one out 5 minutes ago.
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Davo
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by Davo »

i cant believe i forgot this..
but those camps sound better to me.
in a rts game, or strat game like this or c&c4, i enjoy constant battles.

im not sure if Civ ever had a way of capturing areas with speed or stealth but in the C&C i play like that.
i get the most of my units individually.

just wanted to say that.
i wish i could get more C&C players here.

edit: can you capture those encampments and use the 'camps' as your area to build around? or is it just for destroying?
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Kaos
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by Kaos »

The Barbarian Encampments are actually low level forts, and are destroyed automatically by your soldiers. Your workers can construct forts (that aren't destroyed automatically) when you have researched the applicable tech, and Great Generals (super units that are spawned most often when you are being successful in a war) can be consumed to create Citadels, which are like super amazing forts that automagically damage enemy units near them.
Barbarians are mostly for destroying, and only if you are Germany are they good to see. While playing as Germany, if you destroy a barbarian in an encampment, you have a 50-50 chance that they will join your army - a good way to get ahead in early game.
The nice thing that I like about Civ V is how they changed ranged bombardments, and that cities can now defend themselves. Very cool, and I enjoyed playing it all of yesterday.
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MinionJoe
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by MinionJoe »

Now, you can conquer City-States (which are one-city NPC civs) and use them to build up your Civilization. Other civilizations probably won't like it though, because it removes the City-State from the game (unless they are later liberated). The new mechanics involving City-States and diplomacy are very engaging.
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Kaos
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Re: Soon...

Unread post by Kaos »

I actually ended up winning by buying off all of the City States to get the majority vote once the UN was up.
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