I'm not sure to buy civ 5

[ProPain]

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

And you don't do chimps justice, they're way smarter than the AI. I'm not sure about the vegetables, as they lack opposable thumbs, but vegetables can't be any worse than the betatesters.

lol

Now I never actually read the manual as I can't be bothered to print up a 100 pages I'll likely never read anyways but afaik the exact workings of the pact of secrecy aren't in the manual as well. On CFC I read that it's most important effect is that the civ you get it against is going to hate you. Makes you wonder how secret that pact really is

The complaints about the lack of info in the manual and civilopedia are numerous. What raised my eyebrow is that I saw a video where Sid Meier talked about the civ1 tech tree. He told his first idea was to keep it mysterious and with a random order so you never knew exactly what tech you were gonna get next. PLayers hated this, they wanted to know how to reach a certain tech so they could get there as fast as possible when their strategy required that and they changed it up. Morale of the story: players hate unknowns and randomness.

So they learned this at Civ I but messed it up here anyways

[Robi D]

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

And seriously: who reads the manual?

Well it is helpful when you don't know something.

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

Heh. I've read up a bit on AI behaviour, and perhaps this can be tweaked by a reconfiguring AI tedencies. For example, the tendency to keep always keep a unit next to another unit. But this is a (unlikely) solution, why they published the game like this is beyond me. And you don't do chimps justice, they're way smarter than the AI. I'm not sure about the vegetables, as they lack opposable thumbs, but vegetables can't be any worse than the betatesters.

My apologies to any chimps that have been insulted. To have the AI at a level where it couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag is a disgrace, in fact there might be insulted vegetables out there so sorry to them as well. A question that comes to my mind is how in the hell this game got such high reviews. Doesn't say much about the reviewers.

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

You're the first one who has brought this up. With the release of the ps3 and the xbox360 the suggested retail price of games has risen from 50 to 60 euro's, and I think from 50 to 60 USD as well (as most publishers just keep 1 euro = 1 dollar). I've paid something like 45 euro's for civ4, and 50 for civ5. I'm not up to par on aussie dollar exchange rates (and it's history), but it seems you're not really benefitting from it. BTW, up to two years ago Steam sold their games in USD, so all games were a third cheaper. Not anymore, unfortunately.

Yeah i notice the RRP went up a little while back. As far as the the Aussie dollar goes when civ5 was released in september it was at $0.95 US and it hasn't been under that since. The lowest its been this year was back in july at $0.85 US. So in my mind there is no reason the game should cost more than $70 AU, $80 at a maximum. To ask for $100, someone is taking a hefty slice for themselves.

Originally Posted by ProPain

The complaints about the lack of info in the manual and civilopedia are numerous. What raised my eyebrow is that I saw a video where Sid Meier talked about the civ1 tech tree. He told his first idea was to keep it mysterious and with a random order so you never knew exactly what tech you were gonna get next. PLayers hated this, they wanted to know how to reach a certain tech so they could get there as fast as possible when their strategy required that and they changed it up. Morale of the story: players hate unknowns and randomness.

So they learned this at Civ I but messed it up here anyways

Someone working there now obviously think they know better. Actually Soren in the vid you posted kind of touched on similar things a couple times, so why go against that in this game now? Its a good question

[Darkness]

Originally Posted by Robi D

Actually Soren in the vid you posted kind of touched on similar things a couple times, so why go against that in this game now? Its a good question

New lead designer?

Jon Shafer, aka "Trip", who we all know from the Civ3 intersite demogame as the biggest "know-it-all" to ever play Civ...

[grahamiam]

http://kotaku.com/5582531/layoffs-hi...ion-v-creators

I'm guessing they were from AI quality control dept, but it could have been people working on the 3rd Firaxis title (ie, not CivV and not Facebook civ). Jesse Smith was layed off around that time too, wonder if he was clashing with some vision of Civ V (though he was heading up the cancelled project as well)

[ProPain]

Originally Posted by grahamiam

I'm guessing they were from AI quality control dept,

ROFL

[akots]

There are no new numbers but it seems that sales of Civ5 are not that impressive. The only thing I was able to find is this:
http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales...ivilization-v/

Have no idea how accurate it is. Total is about 0.5 million copies. Considering that a copy is on average $50, and subtracting share of 2K, retail dealers, and Steam, minus production expenses, Firaxis should be happy getting about $12-15 million. This is not a lot of money IMO, and they obviously have had many people working for them with decent salaries. In Maryland, $60K is a survival minimum and respectable programmers won't even consider anything less than $150K. Assuming all these 20 ppl worked for at least a year, that is just 3 million only in paychecks at the very least.

Also some local versions are included in this statistics. And these might be considerably cheaper. For example, Russian version of the game is sold on disks and as Steam codes for about $18-20, and this is absolutely legal product which checks for Russian IP address when activating the game. Australia is sort of crazy with that price of theirs and might be Japan also. So, may be, on average, it will be about $40, not $50. Also, due to low sales, game is discounted on Amazon by 10%. Some retailers sell it for $37 already while it is still less than 2 months on the market.

It would be very surprizing if Firaxis can survive this epic failure, I mean as a company. On the other hand, they have made a lot, really a lot of monies with Civ4 and addons. Which might help them to stay afloat.

[Robi D]

Originally Posted by Darkness

New lead designer?

Jon Shafer, aka "Trip", who we all know from the Civ3 intersite demogame as the biggest "know-it-all" to ever play Civ...

Wasn't around for that but i take your word for it

Originally Posted by grahamiam

http://kotaku.com/5582531/layoffs-hi...ion-v-creators

I'm guessing they were from AI quality control dept

I find it hard to believe they had an AI quality control dept at any stage

Originally Posted by akots

Australia is sort of crazy with that price of theirs and might be Japan also.

Not sure about Japan, their currency hasn't moved as much but it seems someone isn't passing on the fact that the Australian dollar has increased in value compared to the US and are now cashing in.

And speaking of value civ5 is $100, civ4 complete which includes both expansions and colonization $70. I know which offer i'd take if i was choosing

[socralynnek]

Yeah, I hope, Firaxis will be doing well enough to build a proper Expansion pack with better gameplay. Then I'll buy it... (Special edition of Civ5 is already available for 40€ at amazon.de; but as the reviews on that site for the game are bad, I guess they had to...)

[ProPain]

Originally Posted by Robi D

And speaking of value civ5 is $100, civ4 complete which includes both expansions and colonization $70. I know which offer i'd take if i was choosing

Are those retail and/or Steam prices?

[Robi D]

Originally Posted by ProPain

Are those retail and/or Steam prices?

Retail, haven't look on steam. And i think i could probably find a better price for civ4 complete if i did a bit more of search.