It's my first civilization game so i can' t really comment regarding on the older ones. Long time players reaction seems divided, some think it's an improvement, others think it's dumbed down console-style game (despite not being released on consoles :huh:). Basically the same thing that happens everytime a sequel is released :hehe:

Best bet would be to try the demo, but that obviously doesn't really help in your case.

I can't stop playing this. I think it is an excellent improvement on Civilization IV, particularly the combat. I'm really enjoying it so far.

I was playing the demo last night. Even though I didn't know what the hell I was doing (Never played a Civ game before) I was having a ton of fun.

Although I think I'm missing something here. Every turn I seem to be just moving my army around and either researching something or producing. What else could I do each turn?

Also was in war with germany for a bit and 30 or so turns later after declining any treaties, I made 100 gold. Although I think I spent the beginning of the game building up my army too much when I really should get my economy going. Not really sure.

Building improvements on tiles, I personally really dislike what the automated workers do when you unlock trading posts (they build trading posts over farms, and then starve all your cities) through research, they also always cut down forests for a temporary benefit instead of a long term benefit of a lumbermill.

Just constantly keep track of how much gold you are producing and adjusting things accordingly, like building a bank and mint in the cities producing the most gold. Also outdated units I found are best deleted and then just building a more modern unit.

I usually build two or three cities before starting to build an army, it really depends on the situation, though. For example in one game i went staright for army and conquered one city state and civilization before building my second town, which was the fifth counting all the ones i conquered If you aren't at war there's not much to do than check that workers and cities are doing something smart and press the next turn button, in my cultural victory game, that's pretty much all i did in the last fifty or so turns :shrug:

Also, though it really doesn't really matter in the demo due to the short time limit, but you should build cities so that they can focus on a certain function due to the upkeep cost of buildings. For example building a barracks in every city is just a waste of income, focus troop training on cities with lots of production improvements. The Russian Krepost that replaces it is useful in every city you want to expand quickly, though.

And i hadn't played a Civ game before either, i played the demo so much that i learned how to :lmao:

That depends how well you are doing financially. If you have a lot of gold it's much more efficient to upgrade your units instead of wasting production time building more.

Usually, that country is me. Unlike previous Civs, where I was not great at the combat (due to how stupid it was), I am quite the conqueror in this game. I am think of moving up to 5 or 6.

Been playing non stop last few days constantly starting over as I learn new tricks.

Current game is up at 440 turns, I have only six cities, I'm in the modern age. Playing on normal difficulty so some challenge since I've never been overly good at this games. I've had two leaders get ticked off cos I was building all the wonders ,

I'm struggling on gold half the time, but occassionally manage to sell a bunch of luxury goods to some sap (Siam) for about five hundred gold each time

Recently fought a war with Napolean. Unfortunately, he was an age or two behind me so his seven squads of musketeers were no match for my single squad of riflemen and the city of York. Eventually he offered a peace treaty along with a 800 gold sweetener.......may have had something to do with me razing one of his cities :flamethrower:

6 cities on turn 440? WTF? That is really bad. So much for building an empire eh?

Maybe this is just my inner OCD coming out, but I absolutely hate how bad my empire looks because of the way borders expand. It just looks like a mess until very, very late in the game.

If I'm not at war at the moment then I will just let my units be and gradually phase them out as I build more updated units. However if I'm at war you're right, I produce units + purchase upgrades so I can get a big army quickly.In general though I've found deleting some ancient units (2 units off from current tech) to be a lot more effective than purchasing upgrades for them.

I've been playing on Prince...standard level. I've several started games, and have finished one, and nearly finished a second. At this level, the challenge is sufficient for me: This is a game, not a second job.

First completed game was with the Germans. I started out for a conquest victory, but won a science victory. With the Germans I found myself awash in free barbarian units, which really allowed me to concentrate on science and economics. I played on a large continent map and, after capturing the continent I started on, played a defensive game and pile drive the science.

My current game is with America, on a large continent map. I intended to repeat the science/economic model, but have found myself, after about 350 turns, very close to a conquest victory. I have the last player, along with a hostile city state, bottled up against the edge of an hour glass shaped continent. I did an Adrian's wall at the narrows and am leaving them alone, mostly, although I think I could destroy them in detail. I have about 30 B17's and a couple dozen fighters. The city state has airpower, but the remaining AI player does not. I have tanks and Mec INF along the border and warships all over the coast. I'm flush with gold, but my science is lagging a bit.

I bring this all up because I think it's interesting the way, in my mind anyway, the results vis a vis the civilizations are reversed.

Next time I'm going to try an historical England mercantilism strat and see how that works.

A couple comments comparing Civ V with Alpha Centauri/Civ II:

-Auto controls make management easy...too easy. I had worker zooming all over the world...often THROUGH enemy territory. I haven't been able to find a way to auto auto the workers so that they stay in their own city.
-AI is somewhat better, but still not perfect.

Several other minor annoyances, but I'm still having quite some fun.

Oh, and Washington looks like he wants to rip your head off....

Yeah, I kinda svck

5 is my sweet spot, any more cities than that are conquered, unless i desperately need some resource.

I like how playing on the harder difficulties, every other civ seems to build a wonder literally before the turn I'm finished. :swear:

Yeah that's annoying, and there's even an achievement for that happening ten times :lmao:

Be warned if you make a huge map, at turn 700 about, it takes FOREVER for the PC to make all its moves, unless you're playing while watching a movie, you are are waiting for a good portion of the game.

90 seconds wait to push the next turn button, like i posted a page back Also i hear that the Pangea type map has the worst delay.

Maybe i should start playing some other turn-based game in while waiting; Front Mission 3, Ring of Red and Valkyrie Chronicles all demand a replay :hehe:

Yup, Pangea is definitely the worst. Seems they didn't change the AI calculation methods that much from Civ 4 - the AI always checks all the available lands where a unit might be placed and calculates from there. So with that huge blob of land it takes quite a while longer.

Ah, Front Mission 3. Such a shame the series now goes for blowing stuff up in realtime.

I'm up to maybe 300 turns now (give or take a bit) on the huge Earth map and it can take a while for a turn to be completed. It's not game breaking anyway as the game isn't exactly played at breakneck speed or anything, but it'd be nice if it was faster.

My game is going very well right now. Playing as the Germans and I started off in Africa. I now control all of Africa (Songhai attacked me early when I was fairly weak and I managed to fight him off and then crushed him when he had little in the way of military left), all of India and Burma (and a bit more east of that), about half of Saudi Arabia and all of Spain. I conquered the Greeks and Aztecs in India/Burma as they both annoyed me, and now I'm in a major war with the Ottomans as they own all of Russia and Europe and were expanding a bit too rapidly for my liking.

I find combat to be a lot more entertaining than in Civ 4 as it takes a bit more thought than just stacking tons of units and overwhelming the enemy. City states are also awesome, I like how it actually is far more rewarding to befriend them than it is to conquer them. The social policy system is nice too, the Autocracy tree has helped me a lot in particular. I'd probably be quite poor without it drastically reducing my military unit upkeep costs.

Played the demo for 4 hours so far.

Do I have to upgrade my units in order to destroy a city state or something?

No.

Well I had two chariot archers, a few catapults, 2 units of foot archers and they still couldn't take down a city state.

I don't get it.

I'm finding the Babylonians fun, but just a little bit broken. They let me shoot ahead on the tech tree and it makes pretty much the entire early game be dominated by my advanced military.

City-States in the demo are quite robust, I had problems myself beating them back then. However, all-ranged won't net you all that great results. Go for some more robust units too (read: Melee)