Author Topic: Civ V  (Read 15830 times)

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Overall though, i think there're a few more negatives than positives. First off, performance is a dog once you get a big empire. Admittedly, i'm at least a generation behind current hardware, but for a turn based strategy hand it's painfully over graphical. I'm definitely going to have to tank the graphics for next time. Also, and i know it's terribly non specific of me, it's just ... Lost the vibe of number 4. 3 and 4 got of hooked straight away, but 5 feels a bit like a struggle, a chore. I think it's because the timing is off - it takes too long to do anything at the begining, then everything happens too quickly to take stock of new events. I'm going to fiddle the speed and difficulty settings and see how i go before i give up though.

I have to agree with these points. Performance isn't as great as it should be on my i7 with 12 gigs of RAM. Granted the nivida 9800 gt inside it isn't exactly top of the line these days, but I play games that look a lot more impressive than Civ 5 and get great performance out of it. Thing is, the game feels terribly unoptimized. I like some new game concepts but the thing is lagging all the time and I get long loading times where I shouldn't. I also don't like the fact that you no longer need sea transport units to move your troops to different continents / islands. The unit turning into a "boat" automatically when it moves on the sea seems a bit too convenient to me. Overall, I liked the "vibe" you mentioned a lot better in civs 3 and 4.

Wait... you don't need transport? But that was always one of my favorite moments in any civ 4 game, building your first galley and conquering a few nearby islands unopposed (fast exploration has always been a strategy of mine)
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Offline Hades

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Nope, sure don't. And now that I've used just about every unit and almost beat he game, I have some things to say:

  • Ships generally feel useless, their attacks against ground units is minimal and they can't completely take down the HP of a base. The only thing really worth building is the carrier and only because bombers are pretty good for killing ground units.
  • Later game, bases are absolutely useless at defending themselves, their attack does an usual 1 damage to anything, which is kind of annoying.
  • The game starts up a bit too slow, it only really gets interesting at 70 turns or so.
  • Diplomacy seems to be non-existent in this game, I have no real idea how to make other empires happy.
  • I hate how all you have to do to kill a ground unit on water is to move a ship over the tile the unit is on.
  • The megadeath robot can kill a well defended base in one hit. Just sayin'.
  • Most later ground infantry can easily take over a well defended base on their own.

And probably some other things I need to remember.
[22:29] <sigtau> Hello, #hard-light?  I'm trying to tell a girl she looks really good for someone who doesn't exercise.  How do I word that non-offensively?
[22:29] <RangerKarl|AtWork> "you look like a big tasty muffin"
----
<batwota> wouldn’t that mean that it’s prepared to kiss your ass if you flank it :p
<batwota> wow
<batwota> KILL

 

Offline newman

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Invading another island or even a continent was a huge undertaking before; in addition to creating enough attack units to invade with, you also had to build enough transport ships to carry them over and have enough of a navy to protect the units in transit. You had to embark your units on said transports and send them to suitable landing zones. Now you just send your land units wherever and they magically spawn boats for themselves when they reach the sea. This effectively kills the strategic importance of islands as it's no longer that big of an issue to invade one - it's almost like invading territory on the same continent as yourself; the only difference is that you do have to watch out for the enemy navy not to sink your units in transit. That's it - no huge feeling of accomplishment once you've successfully invaded an island, having worked hard for it, making sure all the strategic and logistical requirements are met. Just create a big enough mob and send it over.. lame.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline mxlm

  • 29
Anyone having issues with performance, switch to strategic view. I've been told that someone who runs Civ IV at 12 fps on their old and busted laptop has no problems with Civ V once it's switched to strategic view.

Do you think I should buy Civ 4 now that it's cheap?
I think that when RPS talks about V being a companion to IV rather than a replacement of it, they're correct. So yes.
I will ask that you explain yourself. Please do so with the clear understanding that I may decide I am angry enough to destroy all of you and raze this sickening mausoleum of fraud down to the naked rock it stands on.

 


There's a mod for that.
Sig nuked! New one coming soon!

 
A friend of mine bought it and...

Apparently it not only requires Steam, but that's all the disk has on it: Steam. You need to download the whole game, even if you bought a boxed version in the store.

And that's why Steam is retarded

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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And that's why Steam is retarded

I'm sorry, why does a decision by Firaxis result in Steam being retarded?

Or is this a PEBKAC on your part?
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A Feddie Story

 
And that's why Steam is retarded

I'm sorry, why does a decision by Firaxis result in Steam being retarded?

Or is this a PEBKAC on your part?

Steam is an enabler.
It enables companies to do stupid **** like this where you buy a game in a store and it's not the full game and you cannot even play the thing without an internet connection. If you buy a game off steam, as I have done on a few occasions, then sure download it. But if you buy a copy in the brick and mortar store there shouldn't be any asinine internet-based DRM.

That and the only reason companies are likely doing this sort of thing is because Valve themselves in part, or in whole, pioneered this thing when they sold their games with only 95% of the game on the disk and required a steam download to actually play.


On topic though, I want to pick up Civ V. I only played the demo in Civ IV but the combat and weird land development turned me off. Civ V looks more like III but with tactical combat instead of stacks o' doom. Sounds like a winner.

Though given my computer I probably can't play it yet anyway. Nor Starcraft II for that matter.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2010, 07:41:46 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 
Starcraft II scales pretty heroically, in my experience. If you don't mind my asking, what are your specs?
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I'm shaking, I just had such a good game in Civ 4. Fighting against all 6 AI opponents who got pissed after I finished the manhattan project. Through a ton of luck, rapid unit movement, and selective capital nuking, I was able to force them all to peace one by one. But time was running out, and england and inca were both leading by ~300 points because of all the pillaging on my land. So I rallied my citizens and my civics, and stockpiled as many ICBMs as possible. With one turn left to go, I unleashed 60 nukes total on the two, and managed to win bit a measly 7 points. But I won. It feels so good.
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Offline Hades

  • FINISHING MODELS IS OVERRATED
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  • i wonder when my polycounts will exceed my iq
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The AI in this game is stupid. All I ever seem to get is nothing, hostility, or war from them. They like to randomly go to war with the player for absolutely no reason at all, you can't ever seem to get them to form packs of cooperation or secrecy nor can you get them to go to war with anyone else. Trading with them is finicky too.

tl;dr The AI are assholes
[22:29] <sigtau> Hello, #hard-light?  I'm trying to tell a girl she looks really good for someone who doesn't exercise.  How do I word that non-offensively?
[22:29] <RangerKarl|AtWork> "you look like a big tasty muffin"
----
<batwota> wouldn’t that mean that it’s prepared to kiss your ass if you flank it :p
<batwota> wow
<batwota> KILL

 
Starcraft II scales pretty heroically, in my experience. If you don't mind my asking, what are your specs?

I'm not even sure how to look that up dude.
But what I do know off the top of my head, I think my graphics card is some ancient Radeon X800 or something. And my computer is about 2-2.5GB dual core processor. So . . . a few years old now.


EDIT - more accurately:

Pentium(R) D CPU 2.66GHz, 1.00 GB RAM
Radeon X800

« Last Edit: October 02, 2010, 03:59:34 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 

Offline newman

  • 211
Some other things that bothered me with civ 5:


- pretty ridiculous resource system - can't build enough modern units because a lot of them require aluminum, for instance; a helicopter gunship requires just as much aluminum as a spaceship factory does. A nuclear sub doesn't need uranium but it does need aluminum. So does rocket artillery, modern armor, helicopter gunships, missile cruisers, etc. Want to have lots of carriers filled with jet fighters or stealth bombers? Carrier only requires oil but all of the modern planes require aluminum, meaning 3 fully stocked carriers will cost you 3 oil and 9 aluminum. Almost the entire selection of modern units relies mostly on this one resource. This effectively means you either have to be extremely lucky that really large amounts of aluminum appear near your cities, or go to war with half the map to acquire the necessary resources. Don't even get me started on nuclear missiles (not atomic bombs, these are ICBMs) which require 2 uranium each (no plutonium in the game, but meh I can live with that). So a single ICBM requires the same amount of radioactive material you'd need to run two nuclear power plants indefinitely? It's not even a MIRV.. Of course once it detonates it frees up the two uranium it cost. This entire system is flawed from the get go.

- removal of sea transports, all units now magically turn into boats when they reach the sea (mentioned this before but it's such a huge point it deserves to be mentioned twice);

- removal of airports and the airdrop mechanics that came with them;

- removal of cool wonders like the space elevator;

- removal of a separate spaceship building screen like in Civ 4 (fluff, I know, but it was cool);

- various bugs pertaining to combat bonuses;

- graphical glitches and overall crap performance even on my system which is relatively powerful;

- global happiness system;

- unexplored parts of the map now remained unexplored even after you've researched "satellites" and/or built the apollo program; in previous civs the entire map would become "explored" once you got to space. They probably just forgot about this in civ 5, but it's still annoying and makes no sense.

- nuclear subs can't enter other empire's territory unless you have an "open borders" agreement with them (duh, didn't mean you should cruise to their shores on the surface, dive and be quiet ffs - I can partially accept this restriction on standard diesel electric subs as the time they can spend submerged is limited, even though modern diesel electrics can also stay below the surface for long periods of time)

- re-basing air units now only works for cities/carriers in range of that unit. On the surface this seems logical but let's think about it for a moment - you're not ordering that unit to perform an air strike here. Re-basing an air unit could be handled by other transports or it could automatically land to refuel on certain points along the way; they might be refueled in mid-air too - point is it should be done automatically for you, the way it was in Civ 4 where you could re-base an air unit to any city on the map. This way re-basing a fighter squadron to a city on the other end of the world can literally take years in game time. It particularly doesn't make sense when you look at some other design decisions that oversimplify matters - such as the mentioned removal of sea transports and making every unit in the game amphibious. It's like they didn't know themselves whether they want to simplify or complicate matters so they decided to have the worst of both worlds.

- "Science victory" (used to be called "space race victory" before) has been downgraded to complete suckage. Apart from not having a separate spaceship construction screen, there's only 4 different parts needed for the ship, one of which needs to be built 3 times. Once the ship is built, it launches automatically and all you get is an end-game victory screen. There's no countdown until the ship reaches destination; no end game cutscene of your colonists reaching their new home - nothing. After that needlessly long non-skippable intro sequence I expected at least a short outtro..

I still think this game has a lot of potential and in a year or two it'll probably be awesome - even though at present it seems like someone did his best to kick as much awesome out of it as humanly possible. At any rate, out-of-the-box product by itself needs a lot of work.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2010, 11:58:42 am by newman »
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 
Hey, at least they've patched it more than once.
That's two patches more than most 2k Games get.

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I know we're not the only ones, and we were not the first,
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Offline mxlm

  • 29
This entire system is flawed from the get go.
And by flawed, you mean great.
I will ask that you explain yourself. Please do so with the clear understanding that I may decide I am angry enough to destroy all of you and raze this sickening mausoleum of fraud down to the naked rock it stands on.

 
Some other things that bothered me with civ 5:

- removal of sea transports, all units now magically turn into boats when they reach the sea (mentioned this before but it's such a huge point it deserves to be mentioned twice);

Well that's pretty obvious.
Units can't stack right? So if you put 9 guys inside a transport, are you going to wait 3 turns to fully unload them? That would be infuriating and unrealistic I think. Most places where you can make landfall you can only have 3 adjacents hexes which means 3 units unloading each turn which means 3 turns to get 9 guys ashore.

 

Offline Ravenholme

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And that's why Steam is retarded

I'm sorry, why does a decision by Firaxis result in Steam being retarded?

Or is this a PEBKAC on your part?

Steam is an enabler.
It enables companies to do stupid **** like this where you buy a game in a store and it's not the full game and you cannot even play the thing without an internet connection. If you buy a game off steam, as I have done on a few occasions, then sure download it. But if you buy a copy in the brick and mortar store there shouldn't be any asinine internet-based DRM.

That and the only reason companies are likely doing this sort of thing is because Valve themselves in part, or in whole, pioneered this thing when they sold their games with only 95% of the game on the disk and required a steam download to actually play.


On topic though, I want to pick up Civ V. I only played the demo in Civ IV but the combat and weird land development turned me off. Civ V looks more like III but with tactical combat instead of stacks o' doom. Sounds like a winner.

Though given my computer I probably can't play it yet anyway. Nor Starcraft II for that matter.

Incorrect. You install the games from the disc into steam. That's what happened with Darksiders retail, and another game I got that installed through steam - Ah, Dawn of War II.

Any downloading that happens after that is patches, day one or whatever. Which is always nice, saves you the effort of hunting them down your self.

Oh, and I manage to play my steam library offline all the time, save for games by people like Ubisoft (And that's nothing to do with Steam)

Sorry to come down on you like that, but it's that kind of misinformed statement about steam that really irks me.

On topic: It does seem to me like Civ 5 loses a lot of the things that I really enjoyed about previous civ incarnations, so I'm on the fence about purchasing it.
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Offline BloodEagle

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And that's why Steam is retarded

I'm sorry, why does a decision by Firaxis result in Steam being retarded?

Or is this a PEBKAC on your part?

Steam is an enabler.
It enables companies to do stupid **** like this where you buy a game in a store and it's not the full game and you cannot even play the thing without an internet connection. If you buy a game off steam, as I have done on a few occasions, then sure download it. But if you buy a copy in the brick and mortar store there shouldn't be any asinine internet-based DRM.

That and the only reason companies are likely doing this sort of thing is because Valve themselves in part, or in whole, pioneered this thing when they sold their games with only 95% of the game on the disk and required a steam download to actually play.


On topic though, I want to pick up Civ V. I only played the demo in Civ IV but the combat and weird land development turned me off. Civ V looks more like III but with tactical combat instead of stacks o' doom. Sounds like a winner.

Though given my computer I probably can't play it yet anyway. Nor Starcraft II for that matter.

Incorrect. You install the games from the disc into steam. That's what happened with Darksiders retail, and another game I got that installed through steam - Ah, Dawn of War II.

Any downloading that happens after that is patches, day one or whatever. Which is always nice, saves you the effort of hunting them down your self.

If you can't play it without patching it, it isn't complete.

 
Steam is an enabler.
It enables companies to do stupid **** like this where you buy a game in a store and it's not the full game and you cannot even play the thing without an internet connection. If you buy a game off steam, as I have done on a few occasions, then sure download it. But if you buy a copy in the brick and mortar store there shouldn't be any asinine internet-based DRM.

That and the only reason companies are likely doing this sort of thing is because Valve themselves in part, or in whole, pioneered this thing when they sold their games with only 95% of the game on the disk and required a steam download to actually play.


On topic though, I want to pick up Civ V. I only played the demo in Civ IV but the combat and weird land development turned me off. Civ V looks more like III but with tactical combat instead of stacks o' doom. Sounds like a winner.

Though given my computer I probably can't play it yet anyway. Nor Starcraft II for that matter.

Incorrect. You install the games from the disc into steam. That's what happened with Darksiders retail, and another game I got that installed through steam - Ah, Dawn of War II.

Any downloading that happens after that is patches, day one or whatever. Which is always nice, saves you the effort of hunting them down your self.

Oh, and I manage to play my steam library offline all the time, save for games by people like Ubisoft (And that's nothing to do with Steam)

Sorry to come down on you like that, but it's that kind of misinformed statement about steam that really irks me.

On topic: It does seem to me like Civ 5 loses a lot of the things that I really enjoyed about previous civ incarnations, so I'm on the fence about purchasing it.

I never said that you need Steam and a continually internet connection to play games, so your implication that I did is incorrect. I know that Steam is not quite the same as the Assassin's Creed 2 DRM that ubisoft employs.

But nothing I said was wrong. I bought Half Life 2 and the episode pack. Without an internet connection, I could never play them because I could never fully install them. Heck I bought the Half Life 1 platinum edition or whatever as well. It's the same thing. The disc that you buy in the store, does NOT ALLOW you to play the game. After installing the game from the disc, or, 95% of the game more accurately, you NEED an internet connection to download the rest.

Which is bull****.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2010, 11:19:53 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

  
A few things;

A) You're arguing about needing an internet connection for activation on an internet forum. :wtf:
B) In most countries where people can afford the hardware that'll play the games, they can afford broadband, let alone dialup, as of two years ago 95% of the UK had access to high speed broadband, and we're 'mid-range' for developed countries.
C) Dial up penetration makes for almost complete coverage world wide.
D) If you hate it that much just 'acquire' a copy after you buy a game. - I very rarely use the CDs for my games, especially, the ones I've bought, unless they have a heavy online component.
"Neutrality means that you don't really care, cuz the struggle goes on even when you're not there: Blind and unaware."

"We still believe in all the things that we stood by before,
and after everything we've seen here maybe even more.
I know we're not the only ones, and we were not the first,
and unapologetically we'll stand behind each word."