View Full Version : Civilization 5 is coming
Shabbaman
19-02-2010, 16:20
Are you looking forward to it?
barbu1977
19-02-2010, 16:29
I said no. I just don't have time to play that much anymore.
Yes, even more since I'm not playing Civ IV a lot anymore.
Civ4 is still quite an ugly game despite all the mods and expansions and patches. It has some strengths but gameplay is not smooth and not very enjoyable. Hopefully, Civ5 might improve on that.
I'd certainly like to see how it turns out. People thought that civ 4 wouldnt catch on in the manner civ3 did when it first came out but times have changed... (at least that bloody revolutions rubbish never did!)
Socrates
20-02-2010, 12:25
I like cookies :
- No more Windows here. Haven't played Civ since mid-2007.
- Still my all-time favourite video game, for various reasons, so I wanna know what they do with the legacy.
Civ4 is still quite an ugly game despite all the mods and expansions and patches. It has some strengths but gameplay is not smooth and not very enjoyable. Hopefully, Civ5 might improve on that.
Could be an idea to quickly sum up strengths and weaknesses of Civ4, especially compared to the previous versions of the series. As a final judgement before we move on to Civ5.
Shabbaman
01-03-2010, 17:02
Pro: it's here, civ5 is not. I like civ4 a lot, but I don't have the time or patience to spend time on it. I think I should get a laptop to play it on the couch/in the garden/on holiday or something, maybe that will work. Civ4 has a lot working for it, but there was something about civ3 that was appealing. I think it's the lack of micromanagement in civ4, dunno. I think I forgot...
What's still bugging me about civ4 is the crappy resource placement. Was that any better in civ3? I forgot...
No, if anything it was worse from what i remember because if you didn't have certain resources you were absolutely screwed. Now at least you have a chance.
IMO, it is quite as opposite. Civ4 has substantially more sophisticated system of micromanagement which actually requires use of spreadsheet calculations early in the game and great skill later on. MM in Civ3 was more straightforward and intuitive while in Civ4, it is sometimes subtle and certainly more important.
Never used the spreadsheet though I'm not an elite player, just an amateur. Professionals do it professionally and once you get to play a few SGOTMs with Obormot, Lexad, Grey Cardinal or Dynamic, the gap becomes quite evident.
I certainly played more of Civ3 than Civ4 but even considering this, I cannot ever hope to approach their level of understanding of the game. I simply don't know what I do wrong most of the time. In Civ3, I knew it, I was just too lazy to correct it since it was conveniet and not so boring to play with my play style and it brought in quite good results.
Shabbaman
01-03-2010, 21:58
IMO, it is quite as opposite. Civ4 has substantially more sophisticated system of micromanagement which actually requires use of spreadsheet calculations early in the game and great skill later on. MM in Civ3 was more straightforward and intuitive while in Civ4, it is sometimes subtle and certainly more important.
Maybe that's what it is, apparently I just don't get civ4.
Socrates
01-03-2010, 22:01
I remember very boring late games in either Civ1, Civ2 and Civ3. While Civ4 seems to be less boring in the end of the game, despite my little knowledge of it. I greatly enjoyed Soren Johnson's idea to dump boring MM, like pollution, giant SoD, uncountable and worthless cities, etc.
IMO, it is quite as opposite. Civ4 has substantially more sophisticated system of micromanagement which actually requires use of spreadsheet calculations early in the game and great skill later on. MM in Civ3 was more straightforward and intuitive while in Civ4, it is sometimes subtle and certainly more important.
and yet because of this i feel that you could still make mistakes during an early game of civ4 and get it back whereas civ3 you were screwed. Obviously not if you're playing one of the elite players.
... Civ4 seems to be less boring in the end of the game, despite my little knowledge of it. ...
That is because you don't understand the endgame in Civ4. Well, neither do I, at least not on a decent level. Indeed, for casual player, one can just set the governor to grow the score and forget about all the rest. For professionals, it involves careful planning and flawless execution to win a couple of extra turns of space race. In Civ3, I clearly remember Kemal's brilliant space race games where every turn counts. Well, in Civ4 every hammer counts as well. If you do it right.
and yet because of this i feel that you could still make mistakes during an early game of civ4 and get it back whereas civ3 you were screwed. Obviously not if you're playing one of the elite players.
IMO, against a good player, you cannot get back neither in Civ3, nor in Civ4 in a duel. It seems, that early mistakes eventually catch up and become very costly due to exponential nature of the game. Not making these early mistakes in Civ4 requires considerably more insight into game process and mechanics and higher level of understanding. It is not an art, just need a few extra hours and good spreadsheet calculator to set your priorities straight and follow the plan.
Of course, randomness of maps and presence of human-to-human diplomacy changes everything. It were a great fun to play PBEMs in Civ3 and it is true for PitBoss in Civ4 with 3+ ppl or multiplayer demogames. IMO, single player demogames suck either way.
Hopefully, they will finally fix the PB timer in Civ5 because it sucks. And this is just a simple timer. Don't tell me that timers are complicated, I know they are not. [evil]
Socrates
02-03-2010, 00:24
That is because you don't understand the endgame in Civ4.
I think I also stopped many Civ4 games... because it was litterally unplayable on my PC. :D So no surprise.
Fuck the 3D.
IMO, against a good player, you cannot get back neither in Civ3, nor in Civ4 in a duel. It seems, that early mistakes eventually catch up and become very costly due to exponential nature of the game. Not making these early mistakes in Civ4 requires considerably more insight into game process and mechanics and higher level of understanding. It is not an art, just need a few extra hours and good spreadsheet calculator to set your priorities straight and follow the plan.
Of course, randomness of maps and presence of human-to-human diplomacy changes everything. It were a great fun to play PBEMs in Civ3 and it is true for PitBoss in Civ4 with 3+ ppl or multiplayer demogames. IMO, single player demogames suck either way.
Hopefully, they will finally fix the PB timer in Civ5 because it sucks. And this is just a simple timer. Don't tell me that timers are complicated, I know they are not. [evil]
Well i could never be bothered with spreadsheet calculations and all that type of super micro management, its just sucks the fun right out of the game, which is the reason i play, its not like i get paid to do it. With that in mind i found civ4 more fun than civ3 as alot of the upfront MM was taken out since extra hammers and beakers overflow into the next project. Also getting rid of pollution was a big time saver as well as taking out the need to have masses of cities.
Totally agree about the timer, i mean how freaking hard is it to get a clock to work, particularly one with a constant connection to the internet that can get updates from the world clock. Its not like its off by a few minutes either
IMO, against a good player, you cannot get back neither in Civ3, nor in Civ4 in a duel. It seems, that early mistakes eventually catch up and become very costly due to exponential nature of the game. Not making these early mistakes in Civ4 requires considerably more insight into game process and mechanics and higher level of understanding. It is not an art, just need a few extra hours and good spreadsheet calculator to set your priorities straight and follow the plan.
Of course, randomness of maps and presence of human-to-human diplomacy changes everything. It were a great fun to play PBEMs in Civ3 and it is true for PitBoss in Civ4 with 3+ ppl or multiplayer demogames. IMO, single player demogames suck either way.
Hopefully, they will finally fix the PB timer in Civ5 because it sucks. And this is just a simple timer. Don't tell me that timers are complicated, I know they are not. [evil]
Hmmm i wouldn't say that you can easily get back but the chance aspect of being able to recover from a minor error seemed to be far greater, in my mind anyways, in civ 4 than civ3 but this may be because i was a better civ 4 player.
Civ5 (unless i've missed this update with civ4) I would like some way of avoiding the double turn situation you get with online pitboss. The principle with pitboss is that you dont have the time to commit a lot of time to a project otherwise you would play direct ip, those that do have the time have a very unfair advantage. I would like something brought into the game to prohibit the double moves (say a button to check when the game is set up). I'm not sure if this is what you mean with regards to the timer, either way a timer that adds on an extra 2-3 hours every turn sucks.
Socrates, yeah mine too- i had to win by industrial age or just call it a day! i played into modern age one time and had to give the computer a day off afterwards!
Fuck the 3D.
I blame lousy programmers with little aid from memory leaks. Have not experienced anything similar with any other games including most recent Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2. I understand that with turn-based strategy real time is irrelevant though, so as long as it plays, I can survive 3-4 minute of interturns in Fall from Haven with Orbis on a huge map. Just go take a snack or set lineup in hattrick. What sucks is that the lags are there for ANY movement during the game. Want to move a unit? Have to wait. Want to adjust specialists? It is not that simple, something is going on there in background. Have all animations turned off? Does not matter, it does not help. You have only 600 Mb memory occupied and 1Gb still free? You are naive, man, memory does not matter, you lost lagger, fuck you.
The only thing which remotely resembles Civ4 functioning is our local network at University. It has 15-20 scripts running at boot so nobody sane turns their computers off ever since it takes about an hour to be able to start anything. Add McAfee which checks and enforces policies every 1 minute, and periodic compliance audits by system supervisors at about twice daily. Also add mandatory remote system storage on a tape back up file server and Dell as a supplier of hardware and that it takes 15 minutes to start Word after even minor network of Microsoft update and you life turns to hell quite easily. Compared to that even Civ4 is actually running flawlessly. [evil] And now I have a laptop with triple encryption and need to change all three passwords once a month and not all of them on the same day. That was obviously a rant.
socralynnek
02-03-2010, 09:18
Personally Civ4 feels much faster than Civ3 (ok, that's not really true as in the last 3 years, besides some SGOTMS I only played Civ3 when I was with my parents where my old machine still is, and Civ4 is only played with the newer one)
I like Civ4 over Civ3 although I am much worse at it...
In Civ3 I was finally able to work with spreadsheets and to use some strategies that kind of always work.
Civ4 is harder wrt that it's easier to lose a close advantage (no gpt deals that could win your tech advantages for the rest of the game, for example) and it is easier to hurt yourself while overexpanding.
OTOH, in Civ4, I must admit, that I don't even know what the top players do better, in Civ3 when my skills were getting better and better, I knew that most of the gap came from playing carelessly. But I guess the reason mostly is: Back then I had a lot more time to read about different strategies and to improve my skills.
I only manage to finish Civ4 GOTMs/BOTMs about once in half a year, although I start at least one per month.
And: For me Civ4 feels more like a game than Civ3 (although I can't really explain why that is)
The only thing which remotely resembles Civ4 functioning is our local network at University. It has 15-20 scripts running at boot so nobody sane turns their computers off ever since it takes about an hour to be able to start anything. Add McAfee which checks and enforces policies every 1 minute, and periodic compliance audits by system supervisors at about twice daily. Also add mandatory remote system storage on a tape back up file server and Dell as a supplier of hardware and that it takes 15 minutes to start Word after even minor network of Microsoft update and you life turns to hell quite easily. Compared to that even Civ4 is actually running flawlessly. [evil] And now I have a laptop with triple encryption and need to change all three passwords once a month and not all of them on the same day. That was obviously a rant.Add all accessed through Citrix to that and that is my rant too - I can type faster than the bloody thing can put the characters on the screen! Even my old P4 played Civ 4 better than this thing will run Word, once I got around incessant please insert the correct DVD that is.
I am looking forward to Civ 5, I hope that I will not have to buy another computer to run it or I'll be stuffed as I'm about to be made redundant. On the bright side I'll have more time for Civ and won't have to deal with that damn Citrix.
Started with Civ1, played civ 2 a littel then my computer was too outdated and I couldn't afford a new one till I was out of school. Never played civ 3... Seems I was getting married and having kids so I can not compare Civ 4 to Civ3..
Civ 4 was great in that while every turn counted you can make up headway. To this day my loss in a pitboss game by 1 turn in a space race haunts me as I know that I could have better micromanaged to get an extra few hammers. BUT in the end...I have a life and honestly it was still fun even losing by a turn or a few hammers. Its one of my most memorable games, even over some wins.
I also liked the "political" game in civ pitboss. All the deals and knowing who to trust based on who they played in previous games. Watching teams basically form to stop one player or a group of players and then watching those teams far part and turn on each other. That might happen in other games but CIV 4 was my first multiplayer game.
Civ 5....luckily it will come out later this year when the weather starts to suck and work slows down. So I need something to keep me out of trouble
Not quite sure yet, Civ4 never appealled to me in the way Civ3 did, as it with most of CDZ I guess. The getting married and having kids argument also worked against Civ4. Lately I have been playing Civ4 a bit more and actually grown to like it quite a bit. Still not the enthousiasm I had for no3 but still.
The 3d in Civ4 is totally unneccesary imo and only makes the game run like crap. My new laptop (6 months old) runs it smoothly but that's over 4 years after the game released, go figure.
Pretty sure I'll buy Civ5 the day it hits the shelves though. It's stronger than me you know......
Shabbaman
10-06-2010, 11:44
I think it should be possible to program a 3d-game with a "force isometric view" option, to make it possible to play games on slower machines. Still, civ-games have been tough on the processing side of things as well, so on an old computer you'd be forced to play very tiny maps. I have the feeling there's not really a market for low-graph games, outside of the civ-community there's rarely a voice to be heard for 2d games. Although my computer can run civ5 without a problem I agree that 3d doesn't add a thing to the game. 3d doesn't distract from the game either. Personally I like decent graphics and sound.
I think it should be possible to program a 3d-game with a "force isometric view" option, to make it possible to play games on slower machines. .
My sentiments exactly, and that should have been done for Civ4 as well
It does make it look nicer being played on a better computer but from a personal point of view I would prefer to be able to play the whole game and have slightly worse graphics rather than currently where the maximum is ~standard sized map.
It definitely needs an option to shut all the fancy stuff off when playing on a low spec computer. With people wanting to play on everything from basic netbooks upwards it's a big range to deal with. I started playing Civ 4 on a PC only slightly below the recommended specs, could not get it to run at all without deoderant and never got it running properly. It looks so much better on what I have now, I would have played a lot more if I had this PC then, except it is so far off the top spec of what was available then. You shouldn't need what is now a high spec computer to play a 4 year old game properly. If it was any game but Civ I'd have uninstalled and forgotten about it.
Shabbaman
11-06-2010, 08:08
I don't think you can run civ4 on a netbook, even if it were textbased.
socralynnek
11-06-2010, 08:16
Textbased?
You are located on a plains hill. A tank is approaching from the East.
What do you do?
;-)
We are kind of hardcore fans. We play this game for a few years. At that point, we have already seen the graphics a lot. For us usability and the core logic is more important. But to develop such a game, you need money. Money you get probably more from the occasional buyers who play the game for a few months. So I kind of agree with you that if they would like to please both, then maybe a low-graphics option would be nice.
I frequent the Civ 4 technical support on CFC and people do manage to run it on a netbook. It's not quick, but the main issues tend to see are problems with the lack of a CD drive and problems with the screensize being less than the minimum Civ 4 likes. All these are solveable, it depends how much the player wants to put up with the crap performance.
People shoudln't buy netbooks to play games, they're just backlit shopping lists with keyboards.
Shabbaman
11-06-2010, 16:05
If the gf would let me I wouldn't hesitate to buy an alienware m11x though...
Sounds like he's married...
I don't like the Alienware design very much. It's a pity that HP bought Voodoo and then killed the brand. I think their design were more stylish. As a consolation prize the 14" HP Envy laptop will be the first of that line to be available in the Netherlands. But wouldn't call that a gaming machine.
And 11", isnt that a bit tiny? Why not a 15"?
grahamiam
17-06-2010, 04:53
I have my eyes on an m11x as well :)
As far as gaming on a netbook, I don't play CIV on mine, but I do play older games (see Good Old Games) or Popcap stuff, which is fine. Main advantage is battery life, so I can play X-Com nonstop on flights to the West Coast and not worry about plugging in :)
Everyone has, but it is $2,000 in decent configuration with i-5 cpu which is way too much. Can by two very decent desktops for that price.
I have my eyes on an m11x as well :)
As far as gaming on a netbook, I don't play CIV on mine, but I do play older games (see Good Old Games) or Popcap stuff, which is fine. Main advantage is battery life, so I can play X-Com nonstop on flights to the West Coast and not worry about plugging in :)
Which X-com are you playing?
Shabbaman
17-06-2010, 11:50
Everyone has, but it is $2,000 in decent configuration with i-5 cpu which is way too much. Can by two very decent desktops for that price.
Define decent. Even the basic version for 800 bucks is decent in my book. And you could get the first processor upgrade from the SU4100 to the SU7300for free if you call the right agent. Unfortunately with the i5 option the basic price seems to have increased to 1000 euro's, which is unacceptable. That still isn't $2000. Aren't you confusing it with the M17?
grahamiam
17-06-2010, 14:15
Which X-com are you playing?
The best (first) one ;) I've also played Majesty, Jagged Alliance 2, Plants vs Zombies on my Dell 10v. Was eyeing Master of Orion 1 & 2 as well, but then I gave it to my son, so I'm in the market again for a netbook :)
As far as decent config for the m11x, an SU7300 + 4gig RAM + 500gb(7200) HD will cost about US$950, which ain't bad considering that it will play just about everything out right now.
Civilization V is available for pre-order from zavvi.com (http://www.zavvi.com/games/platforms/pc/sid-meier-s-civilization-v-5/10208055.html) for £9.95 and free shipping for UK orders. According to zavvi.com, that's a £30.04 saving from the RRP, or a £20 saving on the Steam price.
At that price I'm certainly not going to worry about bonus maps or Babylon.
Isn't the main issue with Zavvi that it is likely to go bankrupt sooner rather than later...
Price is back to 39.95 so sounds like it was a typo. So far nothing to say they won't be honouring my order.
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