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First Reviews of Civilization V
An anonymous reader submitted linkage to a story explaining why Hemos has been twitching for a week in anticipation: "Defying the urge to phone-in an unambitious sequel and coast on past successes, Sid Meier's Civilization V is anything but a lazy rehash. It feels almost as if someone described the concept of the renowned 19-year-old turn-based strategy series to a talented designer who'd never played it, and let him come up with his own version. It's similar enough to be familiar to veterans, different enough to be fresh, and its polish and accessibility make it a great place for new players to pick up one hell of a Civ addiction."
Just... another... one...
I was lost for Civilization II - Why the two 'I's? Confused me with World War II - "eye eye".....
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Been playing it all morning.
Be back later.
What is the wine status? I want to know whether to get it right away or wait for wine to gain proper support for it..
Farewell Starcraft II, we had a good run but my heart now lies with Civilization V.
Reading tfa... Most interesting so far:
Hexagons instead of squares. And this:
"Civ I through IV are like Risk, where you can stack all your armies on one space and march around the world conquering everything in your path. Civ V scraps that system in favor of something more like global-scale chess, where each space can only be occupied by one combat unit at a time, and some, like archers and artillery, can attack over a distance."
That's all for now.
I spent lord knows how many hours with the Civilization series. Countless memories of LAN parties and late night solo games. I'm hoping Civilization V will provide more of the same kind of memories.
Everything I've read about the way things have been streamlined seems to be like a good direction to go. Not sure I'm keen on them dropping religion from the game, but nearly everything else I've heard about seems like a shift in the right direction.
Living With a Nerd
I paid for both Loki releases and I would have loved to be able to waste time again and again and again with Civ old and new :) A linux version of a new Civ would be most welcome and I will be glad to pay for it.
However, that does not seem to be on the menu so until then it looks like the "commuter train game" will still be Nethack again and again.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I didn't see anything in the review related to DRM. That's an essential subject for any game review these days.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I can't force everyone to convert to Confucianism anymore?
...and I, for one, won't play Civ V in the foreseeable future. Why? Because none of my computers reaches the minimum hardware specs required by the game. I could spend some money to get up to speed with the newest PC gadgetry (plus some money for the game itself), but as a grad student supporting a family of three, I cannot easily afford that, just to play a game. I bought all the Civilization games, from the good-old DOS-based first Civ to Civ IV, and all expansion packs. But for the first time Civilization's HW specs overstepped my current setups.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The article tantalizes, but leaves more questions than answers. One question I'd have is why the CPU requirements keep getting jacked up. Shouldn't a turn based strategy game be a bit easier on the CPUs than that?
My other question is not about the actual story, but the slashdot blurb. What on earth is a "Hemos"???
What reason is there to release the game 3 days later in Europe?
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
But I did do the steam unlock on my laptop and copied over the music directory to play while I'm at work today. The 15 hours and 58 minutes of oggs (and, I think, one wav) I copied over have -- at least so far -- been top notch. Not that I've listened to anything near the 15 hours of them, only about 2-3, but still.
Nice background music too; mostly instrumental, not too quiet nor too loud.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
An explanation of how their DRM works:
The executables for the game are built to need to launch Steam (it can be cracked, of course). When you run the game, Steam must be running on the system. If it is not currently, it will be spawned. Steam will then need to log in with a user and password that has purchased that game. By default, it will log in online which gives access to things like achievements, online chat, multi-player and so on. Also any game the person has purchase is available. If it is not installed on the system, it can be downloaded. There is no restriction on the number of downloads, you can download to new systems or reinstall as often as you like.
However if an Internet connection is not available, or if requested by the user, it will log in offline mode. You will have access to any games that account has purchased that are currently installed on the system. Obviously you can't download any new ones if you aren't online.
As you might guess you do require an Internet connection the first time a game is installed. You either need to be online to download it, or if purchased retail, online to activate it and add it to your account.
However no matter what, Steam has to be running and has to be logged in with a legit account, be it online or offline.
Also because of the activation, the game may not be resold. It becomes tied to your Steam account. I suppose you could make an account just for that one game and then sell the account with the game, but as a practical matter Steamworks games cannot be transferred or resold.
So it is not the least invasive DRM, but it isn't horrible. It does come with some bonuses too, like the download capability. Buy a game retail, it is associated with your account. Losing the DVD is no problem, just redownload it. The Steam interface provides nice perks too. However it does mean no resale and you have to run Steam to play.
I consider it an acceptable DRM, but some do not.
The only thing on there that is even remotely "heavy hitting" is requiring a discrete graphics card. However if you are a computer gamer, well then you should be well aware that games need a discrete graphics card, and they aren't expensive (A 5750 runs it great and costs $110-130 or so and is current technology).
A dual core with 2GB I consider to be the minimum sort of system you should have these days for desktop usage. It is not expensive, and well worth it. A dual core CPU really makes things much smoother and more responsive, even if you are just doing basic office productivity stuff. The ability for the processor to actually do two things at once is a big gain in terms of responsiveness. RAM is also big performance wise, and really cheap. I recommend 4GB, even for desktop usage, but 2GB minimum. Less than that and you are swapping when you don't need to.
Those are NOT onerous system requirements, particularly for a game. They aren't demanding the highest end system. Hell even their recommend requirements are tame: 1.8GHz quad, 4GB of ram and a 4800/9800 series GPU.
Personally, I'd say if you can't afford a dual core system and a mid range graphics card from a few generations ago, you probably can't afford a new $50 game either. In that case, stick with Civ 4 or Civ 3 (or 2 or 1). They haven't stopped working. You can still play them. Hell if I end up not liking Civ 5's gameplay and can't mod it to my likes, I'll go back to Civ 4 since I do like it.
I do not find it very legit to whine about not having the rather reasonable system requirements, while still saying that $50 is a fine price to spend. Save that $50 for a better computer, something that will do better for EVERYTHING you do, rather than spending it on a new game.
I love Civ IV on the Mac, but I'm not going to bother Bootcamping or VMing into Windows just for this. I'll wait until the Mac version comes out. I'm also not going to screw with creating a "Steam" account just to play a game.
I don't want three blind men describing an elephant incorrectly. I want Civ.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Like it or no, most games sales still happen in the retail market. Don't believe the online surveys, they suffer heavily from selection bias and are not properly conducted. Go ask a developer/publisher (Stardock has talked about this, as they do both). Retail still outsells online by a large margin. That means you have to keep retailers happy and part of that means not selling online before they can sell it retail.
As to why it is taking longer to get to retail there, that's the real question. Did they fuck up the shipping? Were the EU retailers pushing for a later date? Was there some EU reg they and to deal with?
That's the reason though. They don't want to sell it online early and anger the retailers. Retailers have limited shelf space and if you piss them off, they might not give it to you.
Can someone comment on the support for red/green color blindness? I often had problems being able to read certain map features and recognizing some units in Civ III and Civ IV because of it.
Love sees no species.
So from TFA, it sounds as though they've simplified the city side of things while making the warfare more complex with a need to micro-manage the positioning of units and strategize about precise unit positioning needed to take a city over.
Maybe it's just me, but I HATE micromanaging battles, or micro-managing anything for that matter. I'm the Emperor / President / King so I like deciding the blend of units to produce, general city enhancements to pursue, when and where to build new cities, diplomacy, etc. Managing the tactical battle plans sound like a pain in the ass.
I don't play the amount of strategy games I used to but Alpha-Centauri is still far and away the best game I've ever played that allowed this "macro" level control over things.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
we're going to take over the world, Pinky.
It will never be a true nerd game until there is a Linux version!
We still don't have Alpha Centauri 2
:(
That's all I ever want.
Nothing else.
Just that.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
You can only gift new games. So if I wanted to buy you a game, I could do that. I'd purchase it, say it was a gift, and then specify who for. However existing games can't be gifted:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?p_faqid=549
For single player, wait for an expansion to fix the AI. The review in PCGamer said the AI does really stupid things with its combat units, like send them headlong into battle without regard to unit type, so its ranged units go right up to your melee units, and its melee units get trapped behind its own ranged units. The game balance is preserved simply by giving computer players more units. Given that this is the most tactical Civ yet (due to elimination of unit stacking), it's clear from the review it suffers even more from AI limitations than Civ IV did (before the Civ IV expansions).
And yes, it does run under linux :)
(Using Wine or Crossover Games (Wine))
Starcraft 2 and Civ V running under linux .. good times. (Too bad its not native, but we take what we get)
One person on CIV Fanatics reported they got the game early but were unable to install it till the appointed time. Steam blocked them.
To me this is unacceptable. They had the boxed game. We have a DRM system which states that that is not enough to play a game. They reserve the right with thirty days notification to change/void the agreement.
In other words, they can prevent you from using the product you purchased. No longer is the $50 for having a game you can play when and where you want to, it only applies when and where they permit you.
Steam is invasive and essentially arbitrary.
I did find it humorous how many derided the retailer at being at fault for selling the game. With users like this what hope is there for the old model.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I was itching to buy it, but then found out that the Mac version will be ready "eventually", not a simultaneous release. Bugger. Back to Civ IV for me.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Ten years from now, when Steam no longer works or supports your game, you'll find out that you were just renting it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I got pretty sick of monotone Leonard Nemoy in the last game
http://www.civanon.com/
Now you'll be able to produce Praetorians with City Raider 2 promos off the bat if you've built baracks.
But what do I get if I've taken a more country-first path and built johns instead of baracks?
I'm curious whether they did this more for "zomg the pirates" or because they want to force people who play it at home with their family to buy multiple copies.
Probably the latter. Otherwise, there would be spawn support like on the first StarCraft.
Starcraft 1 and Civilization 2 are both amazing games; though I'd love to see where the series headed, I like being able to keep a computer with older specs.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
No sleep tonight!
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
This came up when talking about the game earlier...
The one unit per spot thing could prevent abuses/skews that came with huge piles of units in one place, make it more than "how many units could you place on the square"
Also, consider how railroads make it almost too easy to move invading troops around; I wonder what they did about that.
[I play II, so I'm not very knowledgeable in how these were addressed - or not - in III and IV]
(At RIT you can have long and involved conversations about the Civilization series...)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Sometimes, the game really could use added features, sometimes they overload the players' game-management capabilities. Often, the sweet spot seems to be hit in the middle of the series.
the 2nd Sim City and 2nd Civilization were massive improvements over their already-intriguing predecessors; although they both could have stood some tweaks, not sure what more's needed.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
How do you make a better Civilization? Create an AI that can challenge the player without cheating, and perform diplomacy as well or better than a human player. It sounds like they missed yet another opportunity, and instead opted for graphics and ease of play. Again. Double sigh.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I see this argument a lot, and while it makes sense on the surface, if you actually sit down and do the math it seems pretty empty to me. Take a top game from ten years ago, I'll go with Deus Ex for an example. Looking at Amazon I see I can buy a new copy of Deus Ex for a low as $17. I think it's safe to assume that this is a fairly typical price drop for a game over the course of 10 years. Now $17, while cheap, is still a bit too much money for us to simply write off completely. However, we're not spending this $17 today, we're spending it 10 years from now, which means we have to discount it. Inflation typically hovers around 3-4% and the rate on a relatively risk free investment (your opportunity cost for that $17) is historically around 5-6%. So for the sake of simplicity, let's just assume a discount rate of 10%.
If you do the math, that puts the present value of having to repurchase that game you're so afraid of losing at about $6.50. But wait, we're not done yet. That's the value if you're absolutely 100% certain that you're going to have to repurchase that game, which we're not. To figure out that real cost of "renting" that game, you'll need to multiply your present worth by your expected probability that Valve will actually go out of business, and not unlock your games before doing so. So if we think Valve has a 50% chance (a fairly high number IMO) of going out of business, then the present value of the expected cost of re-purchasing that game is only about $3.25. If you think Valve has a 20% chance of going out of business (probably a more realistic number), then the value drops to $1.30.
Call me unconvinced that an expected $1.30 is something to get all up in arms about, especially when it's probably less than the tax I pay if for some reason I decide not to buy on STEAM.
I look at entertainment expenses this way:
How much did I pay for it? How many hours of enjoyment did I get out of that expense?
Let's say I buy a game for $100 and only play it for a year. Let's further stipulate that I play it only 10 times, with each session lasting 10 hours (which is actually a very fast game of Civ). $100 for 100 hours. $1/hr.
Even with those very conservative numbers, if the game stopped working after a year I'd feel I'd received my money's worth. It's a far better deal than going to a movie theater or an amusement park. I've probably put in at least 400 hours with Civ 3, and even though I've only dabbled with Civ 4, it's already approaching the $1/hr. mark.
Whether I'm renting it or owning it is immaterial.
Ten years from now, when Steam no longer works or supports your game, you'll find out that you were just renting it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
different enough to be fresh, and its polish and accessibility make it a great place for new players to pick up one hell of a Civ addiction.
While I'm glad that there is Polish version, I don't really get why it is so great for new players worldwide.
I play civ since Civ1, and Civ4 was the best yet. Not only game mechanics were much polished, it was endless fun playing it online (which is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT game from single player). We online players were hopping for just a civ4 with better graphics (sell point for non-hardcore gamers) and with multiplayer issues solved (host control of joiners, no Out Of Synchs, ban of trolls etc etc). Instead we get a new kind of Civilization Revolutions, which is a game for non-civ players. Sure it will get more people into civ, but WHY THE HELL SHOULD THE FANS BUY IT? No reason at all for us civ4 players to buy this noob game.
Not really. Or rather, not really like in Civ 4. In Civ 4 you can basically have a monopoly on religion, so to speak. Historically that didn't work anywhere near that good.
E.g., sure, you can superficially say that the Egyptians did the same, but really they didn't. Each city has its own deity before Narmer even came along, and really mostly stuck with it. Even afterwards, there were several competing systems even inside the country, with the Ennead being severely at odds with the Ogdoad and both being at odds with Akhenaten's monotheism or with the Hyskos cult of Set.
And then Egyptians having polytheism didn't stop the Greeks from having their own different version, nor the Akkadian zone from having its own, nor the Mayans or Azteks across the ocean from having their own, and so on.
Even stuff like "Hinduism" or "Monotheism" that's in the game, really weren't anywhere near a monopoly.
E.g., Hinduism... which Hinduism? It's a blanket label applied to a multitude of religions in India ranging from polytheistic to monotheistic to technically atheistic. It's about as accurate as saying that everything from England to Persia is Abrahamic.
Monotheism? Which Monotheism? Judaism didn't prevent Zoroastrianism from existing in parallel (and while some versions were strictly dualist, some were really monotheistic), nor the monolatry of Marduk in Mesopotamia taken to near-monotheistic extremes, nor most of the Phoenician city-states from really having each their own monotheistic cult of Ba'al. Was it the same religion? Nope. Check out the whole Jezebel episode in the Old Testament for an example one monotheistic religion kicking out another.
Heck, even Judaism had splintered relatively early. Ever hear of the Good Samaritan? There's a reason a Samaritan is chosen there. Because Samaria had its own version of One True Judaism and were bitter religious enemies with Jerusalem over that. That parable chooses for "even he counts as your neighbour" an example as extreme as that. So there you have it. Two countries with their own version of it.
Even when technically there was one religion, having a grip on it world-wide proved to be a nigh impossible task. Christianity was splintered majorly for a few centuries, with competing schools including Arianism, Pelagianism, etc. Even just the major interpretations of Christianity were a battle royale between monophysitism (Jesus had only one nature, which in turn split into those who made him 100% human and those who made him 100% god), dyophysitism (natch, he had both natures), and miaphysitism (dude, he had two, but _inseparable_.) And if you think the last two are just splitting hairs, they had schisms and purges over that. In fact so severe was the purge done by the Byzantines in Armenia over such a hair-splitting issue that it basically removed any Armenian support or know-how in dealing with the Turks and, in a too long story for this message, it paved the road for Manzikert and the start of the fall of Byzantium.
And then political or nationalistic interests caused further splits. E.g., the Husites ravaged Germany in the name of their own interpretation of the bible, but that in turn was more fuelled by anti-German sentiment than by actually what was in the bible. E.g., earlier, the fight for religious hegemony between Rome and Byzantium ended up with something as ridiculous as the Pope and Byzantine Emperor excommunicating each other over whether the communion hosts (the Jesus-flavoured chips;) should be leavened or unleavened bread.
Really, nobody could have a monopoly on a religion like in Civ 4, much less a monopoly on a _type_ of religion. Inventing Monotheism didn't prevent someone else from inventing their own, much less keep it from splintering.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The problem is not the existence of powerful stacks, it's the AI's inability to use them properly. It is much better for the human player to have a few powerful units than a hundred weaker ones because they are easier to control. The sheer tedium of arranging your units so they'll attack properly is the result of the latter, and is the reason I am not even going to bother getting this new civ.
Supreme Ruler 2020 is a good example of this problem. You get really wimpy units that you are supposed to make a lot of and then to manually layer them to put the artillery and supply units behind the infantry. To take on a decent sized country you'll need a several hundred units, arranged into a three line front, which can take hours to set up. And God help you if you want to change formation in case the AI tries its favorite tactic of circling around your front to cut off your supply. Sure it's sort of realistic, but the real world solution of widening the front line is simply not practical for my poor human patience.
Micromanaging units is NOT a good thing. It's what the computer ought to know how to do already. Please, give me some AI generals that will already know that the artillery goes behind the infantry and should STAY THERE, DAMMIT! Let the computer do tactics because it should be good at it and the player do strategy because humans are better at that.
I rather stay with Europa Universalis series games.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
... in under 10 minutes... after that I considered it junk...
I still liked the Call to Power series more then the direction Civilization took. I'm sad no more CtP sequels are being made.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Would anybody know; if you buy the boxed version, will you be able to download it from steam at a later date ? Or does buying it over the counter negate any advantage you get from buying it from steam in the first place ?
A sad fact of the new economics of the video game industry is planning for expansions.
I've been in meetings before for a variety of programming projects (I do enterprise test environment managment these days) and a constant issue that is brought up is what "enchancements" go into a release. For business and office software this revolves around quarterly releases. For game development it is about (direct quote from a meeting in March):
"What features go into the initial release and which are RETAINED for a future expansion pack"
The feature in question for the project was "... bookmarking route templates ...".
The business line determined that the feature was "Too good" for the inital release and was a better value to RETAIN\WITHOLD the feature for the first expansion pack as it "Provides better leverage in promoting the expansion".
Ironically no project had begun for an expansion yet. For all they know the initial game would flop and no expansion ever made. But costs, development time, etc need to be factored in.
With Civ4 and the complexity that Civ games tend to have it would make perfect sense to me to retain a good number of features and hold them off for expansion packs. I expect it would take Civ5 players 6-18 months to exhaust the current feature set so I'd sit for 3 months, troll the forums, and see what 4-6 retained features should be deployed next. With mod support it will be easy to see where players want to go with the features.
Sounds like good business and in the long run, as was with Civ4, a decent return for players.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I never understood why the AI RR'ed every square on the map. All I did was build direct links, and RR up the industrial squares that benefitted from the shield bonus.
I find other ways to screw around with surplus Engineers (small new cities, Transform, etc.)
I did put roads everywhere within city radius, because of trade bonus.
Ought to see if the fix help overall, or if they're outweighed by assorted other things thrown into the game.
I never did scorched-earth, because I planned to reconquer and usually stood a chance at doing so. Often times, my border cities fell in harassment operations easily reversible next turn. (Defeating enemies on their home turf was/is my issue sometimes.)
I did sometimes cut railroad links due to a threatening siege, something the AI could have done; I only ever saw them pillage near my cities, when on the attack.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I focus on Civ II for Windows; I've only occasionally messed around with FreeCiv on the Linux box that's my secondary computer anyways.
I have Civ II on physical CD, but I play without the disc so I don't have to fish it out. I play my normal music collection in the background, like I usually do, with game sound effects mostly turned off.
(Civ II can select music for the game from a regular audio CD, but doesn't play whole tracks, switching tracks when the game music would have normally switched.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The only thing I don't like about Civ V is that the "please wait" duration is far too long. I am playing a huge map on Chieftan (second?) level and Marathon setting with 4 other civs in the game on a Quad Core machine with 6 Gigs of RAM and it still takes 20 seconds +/- for the computer to take it's turn. I like everything else about the game, but that wait is far too long for today's technology.