Okay... Nine hours played of the demo alone :blush:

Still four more hours to go, not much sleeping this night, i'd imagine

From the demo, its almost a completely different game. Civ 1 to 2 was just more of the same with a graphic update, Civ 3 to 4 was kinda simiar to that. THe difference between this and Civ 4 is bigger than the difference between Civ 2 and 3.

You'll need to think about your units and armies differently, Gold finally has a use again, The advisors are back (in a cut down way) from Civ 2 (When I saw advisors in the manual, I was hoping to have drinking sessions with my good buddies Elvis and the military Advisor). There's no adjustable slider for Tax/Science/Culture(luxuries) instead you gain all of them completely seperately. Religon and Corporations are out (which I have no issue with, I don't think they worked well) as is espionage. Units seemed to be a lot more specialised and cities can defend themselves.

It does seem to be a lot more streamlined now. I think you'll be suprised by how much that is cut you don't miss.

Definitely the combat system, cities can defend themselves and, no more "stack of doom" but that's about it. They also removed alot from the game and made it feel like a console game.
but its still a good game.

Stacks of Doom? Collateral damage FTW

I actually miss the stack of doom it was EPIC.


I miss everything that they cut out from this game and the customizations.

DRM and Steam are now inseparable parts of Civ, so they're totally relevant to such a broad topic as "Civilization V". But yeah I'm done with talking about it on this forum. I'm interested in reading reviews about the gameplay itself.

This is sounding good. I always found Civ to just have too much going on - there was always something dragging the game down. I'm going to have to keep looking into it. Still not sure I'll buy it, but I'm hoping to keep hearing more.

Well, the opinion is that this version has cut some feature in order to make it more newbie frindly. Personally i've never played any Civlization game (or any proper turn-based 4x strategy), but i was able to learn the gameplay from the demo alone, without consulting the "Civlopedia". Another point in it's favor is that i actually bothered to play the demo long enough to learn to play it.

I'm torn between buying the game over Steam now, or waiting until I can get a ride to a game store and buying the boxed version. I really love my boxes.... but I want to play.

Question - are cities a huge pain in the ass still? That was one of my biggest downfalls - needing to know land types, and choosing to build this and that - it was just so much work. I liked in Civ Rev you just build something in the city, and that applied to all land types in the area so you didn't need to micromanage so much.

What the [censored] steam? Civ5 for USD$80!? Not $80 Australian dollars, but 80 US DOLLARS?! :blink:

The US steam site says the game is USD$49! What the hell is the extra $30 for? The stress having to transfer the game digitally to the other side of the world? Or is this just another case of "bugger off Australia, we'll overcharge you because we can"? Steam is meant to be cheaper than the Australian retailer price not MORE expensive! :stare:

Not happy 2K :swear:

That is really bad. Could you try getting an account at Direct2Drive? They are cheaper than that, they offer Civ5 (a first, if I'm not mistaken, can't remember a Steamworks game showing up on a legit third party site), and you can access all their sites (.com, .eu, and so on) with the same account to choose the best deal.

The game pops up little graphics on the map when you have a settler selected saying where it recommends building cities, so if you need to, you can just go with what the game recommends.

There is only one true Civilization game. Civilization 1

(Wow. I just wrote that without looking at the keyboard)

Been playing for about 8 hrs now. DX10/11 mode seems unstable, but DX 9 mode is quite nice.

Yeeeeah...not downloading that, at least not on this connection, might download it at school next week though. Or I'll wait to hear some reviews, I know Spoony and Angry Joe were excited, I'm sure both will review the game pretty quickly.

Hm, I have had no problems with DX10/11 mode. I'm running on maximum settings on an HD4890.

Getting some annoying bugs, most notably with the intro cinematic and generating worlds, but once in the game proper it's been great so far
That said, I won't be uninstalling Civ IV either

Just disable the intro video. My Games folder (under My Documents), Civ V, usersettings, and look for skipintrovideo. Set to 1. Done.
I have no idea why they removed the nice loading bar that Civ IV had, just to show that something is happening while you now only see a black screen.

Oh, until Rise of Mankind or Rhye's and Fall are available for Civ V, I'll be sure to keep the previous one around. ^_^

Positives:

Wealth is gone. Gold, Science, and Culture are now produced by terrain and buildings (which cost gold again).
Game is as addicting as ever and maintains the "just one more turn" effect.
City States add an interesting gameplay element similar to what was found in Colonization, but more robust.
Research Projects allow for study of more than one tech at a time, as long as someone likes you enough.
Barbarian leaders have returned, granting gold to those who hunt them down.

Negatives:

Creating solid defenses is challenging since units cannot be stacked. This makes attacking a much more viable option than defending.
Promotions have been streamlined so that most units wind up the same instead of specialized.
World events appear to be gone (the mini quests and diplomatic changes).
You lose a lot of sleep and wind up late for work if you start a match after 7:30 PM.
Steam

No kidding, it took me an hour take a bathroom break :blush: Or, as a reviewer said about Elemental; "'just one more turn', and the next thing you know your boss calls and tells you're fired".

The game crashed once when acyivating the alternative world map, otherwise runs perfectly. Playing a game in world map now, apparently Washington is located in Sahara :huh:

The game tends to crash now for me, too. Also saw that the main menu shows 1.0.0.17 now, instead of 1.0.0.7, which it was at a day ago. Guess something was screwed up in the patch for my game.
Washington settled his town of Washington in Scandinavia in my current run. ^_^

Well, 17 is bigger than 7, my game shows the same, ti updated it earlier today. I think i saw a world map with real starting positions in the mod section, i'll give a try once i finish this. And nice that Helsinki made a city state ^_^

Yeah, they were nice enough to include an important city for most Civs they had in previous games. Sure laughed when I saw that both Edinburgh and Dublin were both of the aggressive kind.


Oh, about mods, even simple maps deactivate any achievement tracking. Just in case anyone wants those. ^_^

Meh, achievements are pointless on PC games, outside of roleplaying games.