Now that Civ5 has been announced and more info will be trickling out over the coming weeks and months, we are trying to plan ahead for CFC's main site Civ5 coverage.

As you probably know, for Civ4, we have an Info Center (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info) (put together during pre-release to consolidate known info), online Civilopedia (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/civilopedia) (post-game release), and sections like the War Academy (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy) (for strategy), among others.

For Civ5, we would like to get users' input as to what you would like to see. Basically, feel free to critique our main site coverage of Civ4 and suggest what you like to see for Civ5!

Here are some questions to discuss so you can change the future. :king:

Were some pages too hard to find?

Was there info you wished was there and wasn't?

Did you want more of a focus on strategy or general topics or modding or multiplayer, etc.?

Would you have liked more videos or screenshots?

Is an online Civilopedia helpful?

Do you prefer one big info center or smaller, more concise pages?

Are you interested in following things like popular stories or succession games or multiplayer games?

Any other War Academy-type pages that highlight forum content you can think of?

Were the pages easy to read? Too dense?

Do you prefer more formatting like bolding and use of colors or not?
Any input or suggestions is welcome. :)

One thing that I think could be of use: Strategy Articles Index. To a degree, the War Academy has does this, with a nice and clear contents that allow for easy navigation, but if you index every single Strategy Article into clear categories, then strategy info will be even more accessible and easy to find, on a much wider range of topics, and on much more specific topics. For instance, if you are going to the Civ4 War Academy at the moment to find out about espionage, it's simple to find a good article on espionage. But if you were wanting to find something a lot more specific, a lot more in depth, or if you were trying to find a variety of articles on the one topic, then you would find it harder to find in the War Academy. This is where a central index of all strategy articles, in clear categories, would serve well. Just my (initial) $0.02.

Not as many sub-forums. It's insane to try and navigate the Civ4 forums.

A few suggestions

Copy and paste the text of info or jpegs from games sites. A lot of people cannot access these sites form work.

A bit more moderating and merging of threads. Its great that the site is so active, but sometimes there are so many threads it gets irritating.

For patches, mods, fixes etc, dont assume people have even rudimentry experience with PC games. Give step-by-by step instructions on how to install mods, unzip files etc

The coverage of the Civ IV articles was nice, but it would be even better if strategy articles were more easy to find. Calling it a war academy to stay in character is fine, but calling it strategy section is more clear.

That is basically what I would like to see since most of the trivial stuff like info on leader traits and such is accesible in-game too and it is hardly something that the site can offer as a bonus.

For patches, mods, fixes etc, dont assume people have even rudimentry experience with PC games. Give step-by-by step instructions on how to install mods, unzip files etc

Not quite sure how much that will help but it can't hurt. Most of the people who need help in that area don't seem to be able to read the instructions and simply start a tread or post asking for help. A lot of the tech support I do for my Star Trek mod is simply repeating what the readme says.

I would like to see an expanded game mechanics section of the war academy, and some logical way of organizing it. Although a lot of the info is in the xml, for those of us that aren't skilled at reading such things (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) having a place to look for those game mechanic types of things would be really nice (for example, I recently wanted to find out what turn human barbs appear on a certain level. I remember seeing an article somewhere on that, but it is difficult to find with searching the forums or google). Even seemingly simple game mechanics things would be nice to have a clear online source for.

A list of XML and possible even python tags with short descriptions would be very nice :)

As expansions flowed out it was hard to see all the things together. For example, when playing a game with BTS I'd like to research who I want to play before I being, so I'd stop by the Info Center see all the unique units. But in the BTS Info Center I only get the BTS-specific units. So then I have to have the Warlords and Vanilla info centers open in new tabs to try and compare all of the civs together… it proves to be very frustrating.

Don't do that again.

Can we separate articles explaining game mechanics from articles advising strategies?

It would be great if articles explaining the mechanics of (e.g. whipping) could be part of the Info Center, preferably stripped of all the back-and-forth discussion.

I realize that most of these articles evolve over time from discussions, as we players learn more about how things work and as the awesome code divers really start understand the algorithms, but when I was learning it was confusing to figure out which discussions were mechanics (facts) and which were recommended strategies.

Also, strategy articles tend to go out of date as (1) superior strategies are discovered, and (2) patches are issued which close certain exploits, e.g. perpetual anarchy. Promoting articles like that to canon can make it confusing for the novice to understand what techniques still work.

This isn't meant as a criticism of anyone's work - a huge amount of effort and contribution was made by many people to bring us where we are today in understanding Civ 4. Just some suggestions made in the spirit of making things easier for Civ 5, especially in the early days when it comes out, where everyone is creatively trying to figure out how best to win.

More dev chats!

Copy and paste the text of info or jpegs from games sites. A lot of people cannot access these sites form work.
Can the images from the blocked sites be loaded, or do we have to transload to Imageshack?
A bit more moderating and merging of threads. Its great that the site is so active, but sometimes there are so many threads it gets irritating.
That would call for recruiting a new batch of moderators, most likely.
For patches, mods, fixes etc, dont assume people have even rudimentry experience with PC games. Give step-by-by step instructions on how to install mods, unzip files etcYou'll even get the usual 'why doesn't my game start' threads.

More dev chats ala-croxis, and a civ5 war academy.

Perhaps off-topic: I propose recurring updates from interesting threads on the forums. The idea is to promote the living debates in the forum as well as integrating the news-site and the forum - thus inviting new peeps inside.

Can we separate articles explaining game mechanics from articles advising strategies?
Definitely needed. Probably articles forum should be kinda heavily moderated to ensure clean content.

Also, I would very like to see dedicated forum for various mass offline playthroughs and famous public games, like Neal and Mad Scientist series.

A list of XML and possible even python tags with short descriptions would be very nice :)

There are a few descriptions written by the designer team/programmers in the xml-files. Let’s hope that they write a lot more of that. If not, I support your request.

Just one issue about Civ5 coverage.
Could you make a sticky thread editable only by moderators where we could find all that is know up to date about Civ5? And I mean: could you make it quite soon
I know ther's not much right now but lately I was surprised when I found that there was an article in Dutch (I think it was Dutch) magazine with some new information. Now I'm wondering how many of such articles or interviews are still hidden in any of threads.
I wish there was a place where all the new stuff about Civ5 was placed (maybe even with links to original sites) because I am not so lucky to have time to read everything in this section of forum.

It would be nice to have a hardware / OS section where system requirements and optimal performance are discussed. Users could also report what configurations they have that are working properly. If it's anything like the release of Civ4, many people could benefit from a section like this.

in-depth interview with a prominent developer, right stat now!

Agree with the need to seperate game mechanics articles from strategy articles. And it would be great to have a section for "outdated" articles, not only for those that have been obsoleted by patches, but also for those that are obsoleted by progress in strategy knowledge.
Currently, the CIV4 war academy is riddled with outdated info, and, lets face it, useless strategy advice. This makes it hard to find and recognize the real gems that are mixed in somewhere.

Secondly, the info center is a great idea. BUT it would be nice to clearly state what it really is, a compilation of pre-release information. After the game is released, calling it info center is a bit misleading.

Finally, promoting the competitive formats (XOTM,HOF) more aggressively would not hurt. This could work well in conjunction with a strategy article compilation (eg. referencing game reports)

what's XOTM? I heard of GOTM but XOTM?

I'd like to see the Civlopedia on the website.

May I ask, what would be the point of having the civilopedia on the website?

To look things up when you're at work.

But you English go home at 5, so you ahve ample time to spare.

A locked, stickie thread, linking to threads that discuss official release material?

Agree with the need to seperate game mechanics articles from strategy articles. And it would be great to have a section for "outdated" articles, not only for those that have been obsoleted by patches, but also for those that are obsoleted by progress in strategy knowledge.
Currently, the CIV4 war academy is riddled with outdated info, and, lets face it, useless strategy advice. This makes it hard to find and recognize the real gems that are mixed in somewhere.

Secondly, the info center is a great idea. BUT it would be nice to clearly state what it really is, a compilation of pre-release information. After the game is released, calling it info center is a bit misleading.

Finally, promoting the competitive formats (XOTM,HOF) more aggressively would not hurt. This could work well in conjunction with a strategy article compilation (eg. referencing game reports)

I agree. Also, please update the common acronyms page regularly.

Definitely a thread where all officially confirmed info can easily be seen. Also, when new info is recieived, the threat title should have 'Official:' in it, so we can see it's not just speculation

the main thing is: gimme info! NOW! I am staaaarving... :)

Definitely need a Civ5 Info Center, just like we had for Civ4, that summarized and organized all information we know about Civ5 (which is not too much right now...). While awaiting Civ4, one of my first stops each day was to the Civ4 Info Center to look for those little yellow "New!" tags that pointed to new intelligence about the game.

Thanks

I used the Online Civilopedia from time to time and found it useful and don't recall ever wanting it to
be presented differently or improved in any way. And the Civ4 and expansions Info Centers were great.

I'd like to see a stickied Civ5 Info Center as soon as possible. I'm one who is just interested in the new info. Would be nice to have one 'official' announcements thread for verified info... locked to all but the moderators to update. People can subscribe to it and get notifications when new info is released. I don't think it's too early for this.

One large info center with links to the different parts. Therefore if you want to find something speciically yo can just control-f it.

May I ask, what would be the point of having the civilopedia on the website?

I use the Civ4 online Civilopedia a lot, and also frequently some of the downloadable reference charts and strategy guides.

I use the in-game Civilopedia when I'm actually playing and know exactly where to find what I'm looking for. But it's not very convenient for the kind of browsing I frequently do when planning my game strategy, especially since it isn't searchable at all. Everything just takes too many clicks.

As to the rest of the questions, I'd like to see more "War Academy" type content, have it in a well-known place and kept up to date with particularly good strategy articles from the CFC community. Not every strategy thread should automatically go there, but maybe there should be a process for "promoting" the best of them.

I really like the wiki-type of information. No, not the "everyone can edit" part. But rather the "easy to search and find what you are looking for"-part. As it is now, I like he civilopedia, but it isn't easy searching for stuff in it.

Regarding strategy articles:

I think it may be helpful to have a link to a story where this strategy is being used exemplary. There won't be a story for every strategy right from the start, of course. However it may be motivational for some players to create a story when they know their story could be linked to the war academy.

This would be of double-sided advantage. Articles are easier to understand due to an elaborated example AND people find motivation to write these stories especially in the beginning. It could be a start for some succession games for example to use a special strategy which is explained in the war academy.

I guess it was OK to have more than just one story linked. Maybe different stories for different difficulty levels? This would mean a higher effort of moderation work to do though.

maybe, at the end of some pages, some link toward strategy/game mechanics:

For example, the page with civ and leaders can have some links towards leaders and civ analysis or strategy playing...
The page explaining the different victories can have a link toward the war academy pages for each victories...

Have a separate thread for games played ALC-styled. I mean, when i used to go to the strategy forum, most of the thread on the front page were games, not strategy discussion...

I second the one who ask to put all info from vanilla and extension in one page. Really tiring to navigate through three info center...
Moreover, it would be nice if all the info was organised in the same way in all extensions.

Finally, get the info center now, so we know what is official and what is a guess. Please add the source link for unit, leaders, civ, etc...

We definitely need a sticky that compiles all the known info about the game. That should be the absolute beginning of coverage.

We definitely need a sticky that compiles all the known info about the game. That should be the absolute beginning of coverage.

Yeah, it should - without wishing to sound rude to the mods, could one of them just go ahead and do this? It should be very very easy and quick, just sticky it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355156

Please sticky that thread. Seems to be the best compilation thread thus far.

Yeah, it should - without wishing to sound rude to the mods, could one of them just go ahead and do this? It should be very very easy and quick, just sticky it.

It's really not "very very easy," and at the moment real life is taking up some time. We'll get around to it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355156

Please sticky that thread. Seems to be the best compilation thread thus far.
Just stickied it. :)

TY once again Thunderfall!

I like how it's set up

Were some pages too hard to find?
nah
Was there info you wished was there and wasn't?
not that i can think of off-hand
Did you want more of a focus on strategy or general topics or modding or multiplayer, etc.?
strategy and general. i haven't bothered modding, but it'd be nice for a step by step
of a very basic example if i ever decide to try my hand at it.
Would you have liked more videos or screenshots?
didn't really bother watching many of them
Is an online Civilopedia helpful?
yeah, sometimes i want to look stuff up when i'm not at home playing
Do you prefer one big info center or smaller, more concise pages?
depends on the situation.
Are you interested in following things like popular stories or succession games or multiplayer games?
not personally, but i guess it couldn't hurt
Any other War Academy-type pages that highlight forum content you can think of?
not off-hand
Were the pages easy to read? Too dense?
didn't find them too difficult, but i didn't look at all of them. again, links could help
Do you prefer more formatting like bolding and use of colors or not?
only if it adds proper emphasis.

I don't have the patience to look through all the posts, so if it hasn't been mentioned, a tutorial or information you can access easily in the game would be nice. Again, please don't blame me if it has already been mentioned.

Ooh, I just thought of this, what about more dificulty levels?

Ooh, I just thought of this, what about more dificulty levels?

No reason, any that we want could be modded in, in terms of difficulty level. You've heard the joke about Civ3, "You have given the AI a cost factor of 1 on Deity level and still consistently won."

what's XOTM? I heard of GOTM but XOTM?
X of the Month, as in Whatever of the Month. Could be G for Game, but also other flavours of the month.

I hope Firaxis is reading this. I'm sorry, but I'm poor. I have bought every new version of Sid Meier's Civilization because it's a great entertainment value. Much as the US went to the movies to escape the daily grind of the Great Depression, I need games.

I may never be able to afford anything but a dial-up internet connection. Others in the same circumstances are more prone to depression, and need games more than people who only need a game for relaxation. But if you require Steam to play Civilization V, we on dial-up will have to carry our processor boxes to a friend with a fast connection, every time there's an update.

By the way, I do work very hard. And games actually help. A good turn-based game that has me reloading from a saved game has allowed me to read hundreds of pages of otherwise rather dry textbooks, write hundreds of pages for assignments, and allowed me to keep going. At age 51, I am finally receiving a bachelor's degree in economics, this weekend, with honors.

But I am on disability income and expect to run into walls of age and disability discrimination, both of which are hard to prove and thus hard to fight. There's not much point in my asking for State Property to stop giving increased food production, or disconnecting the fascism tech from Mount Rushmore, except that I know young people will be playing the game, and I don't want them misled. I wish I could find where those are being discussed.

Mr. L

Also, strategy articles tend to go out of date as (1) superior strategies are discovered, and (2) patches are issued which close certain exploits, e.g. perpetual anarchy. Promoting articles like that to canon can make it confusing for the novice to understand what techniques still work.

As a novice to the site and just recently looking at the strategies ect. I came across various things that where outdated, and mechanics had changed. It took me a while to figure out what was relevant and what wasnt. I thought it was "canon", only to find out it didnt apply or was cut out and/or changed.

We badly need versioned civlopedias (or whatever the V equivalent is). The existing format with multiple releases sharing a single 'pedia was just too clumsy to use for answering questions when multiple versions of the game are in play. It would also be a lot easier to support discussions describing how the implementation has changed.

Online Civlopedia entries should be cross referenced (just as the in game version is) so that it is easier to navigate by clicking on links.

We need better markup tags for navigating to and from the Civlopedia/War Academy/Info center and forum posts/replies.

There should be a common library of images available for use in posts, especially the splash screens (leader heads, technologies, wonders/projects). These images should be available via clear tags (ie, the markup should supply the deep linking needed.

I suspect that we also need a versioned War Academy. The simple implementation would allow for the community to deprecate articles using a similar process to what is used to nominate them to begin with.

The more complicated variation would track for each article a "suitability score" for each version.

(Please note I'm recommending versioning of the Academy itself - the pages within it are already versioned).

If an article is promoted into the War Academy, the Academy should hold the master copy of the article - the contents of the forum post should be pulled from the academy, rather than duplicated. The edit button should take the author to the Academy, rather than the original post.

When the strategy article is promoted to the War Academy, a link to an editing tutorial should be PMed to the principal author.

Users profiles should have a default patch level that can be set. New threads started by that user should be tagged with the current patch level. When the user changes their profile, previously created threads should continue to track the old patch level.


This pattern may need to be expanded to account for downloadable content.

The published SDKs should be available, quotable, linkable (markup to direct the user to the specific class/function referenced), and versioned.

Use The Edit Button, Do Not Make 8 Posts In A Row

As a player who learned a lot from the Civ 4 War Academy, I think that linking strategy articles with saved games would be useful.

For instance, I found the article on "The Early Rush" very helpful to my game. Linking it to some saves (say one with easily available copper and one with horses) would make it even better.

As has been repeated again and again:

How will DLC effect modding?

In greater summation:

Is it wise, economically speaking, to compete with fan made mods?
Does Firaxis/2K view the modding community as a financial asset (do they believe the civ4 mods in particular have helped drive sales)? Note this question is not asking if the firms believe modding to be an open ended assets, as the response will always be yes whether this is believe or not, the question is strictly about sales and direct economic impact.
Will modders be locked out or otherwise forbidden/discouraged from producing work that is similar or identical to DLC? If so how will DLC be locked out (will the assets be encrypted or something)?
How will DLC effect Multiplayer?
When civ4 was first announced John Shafer personally stated knowing C++ and being able to work with the dll would be a valuable tool for modders. Has this changed (will modders be limited to working with a scripting language and data entry only)?
What engine is being used to render the art?
For BtS Firaxis hired a particularly talented modder to code the AI. The AI for BtS is one of the most robust produced for a strategy game, even nearly 5 years after release. Specifically who is the lead developer for the AI in Civ5, and what other projects have they worked on in this field?


Edit wrong thread, but I'll leave it up anyway and repost.

i'd really like more types of resources

I just posted this as a thread, but I should have replied here...

I would like to see Firaxis allow at least one play tester to walk us through a game of Civ 5 (with periodic screen shots) from start to finish. I recall this was allowed for Civ 4, and I believe it was Sulli who was allowed to do so (although I may have the person wrong), providing a new "walkthrough" every few weeks with a different civ and showcasing different new features.

That was the #1 thing that influenced my decision to buy Civ 4. I hope they will do the same for Civ 5.

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/1637/nodsmileyp.gif Agreed. Step-by-step previews!!! :)

I desperately vote for a Mod-Section on CFC. I just recently discovered Mods in CivIV and was really surprised how hard it is to find Information for even the popular BTS-included Mods.

There should be a list that lists the following info:

Name of the Mod (and acronym)
Author
type of Mod: graphical mod, gameplay mod, custom units, custom civs, unofficial patch, AI mod etc., multi- or singleplayer, minor tweak
recent version of the mod, including the date of last update
required version of the main program
download link


Each entry of that list list should link to Mod-Detail-Pages than contains the following additional information:


Intro: Description of the Mod, Intention of the Modder
Screenshots (!!!)
Installation Instruction
Dependencies and Conflicts with other mods (don't know if this is an issue...)
Link to Mod-Subforum

I would like to see Firaxis allow at least one play tester to walk us through a game of Civ 5 (with periodic screen shots) from start to finish. I recall this was allowed for Civ 4, and I believe it was Sulli who was allowed to do so (although I may have the person wrong), providing a new "walkthrough" every few weeks with a different civ and showcasing different new features.

It was Sulla (http://www.garath.net/Sullla/civ4.html) who did it, and he did a fantastic job. He was so detailed that, reading the piece, I felt like I was nearly playing the game. And the way he talked about new game concepts like religion really helped me wrap my head around them.

I think that also helped me decide to make the purchase of Civ IV. It would be so fantastic if Sulla, or some other beta tester, took the time to post something so thorough about Civ V.

I hope Firaxis is reading this. I'm sorry, but I'm poor. I have bought every new version of Sid Meier's Civilization because it's a great entertainment value. Much as the US went to the movies to escape the daily grind of the Great Depression, I need games.

I may never be able to afford anything but a dial-up internet connection. Others in the same circumstances are more prone to depression, and need games more than people who only need a game for relaxation. But if you require Steam to play Civilization V, we on dial-up will have to carry our processor boxes to a friend with a fast connection, every time there's an update.

Mr. L

Mr. L, With Steam a dial-up connection is sufficient to log in, and then go into offline mode to play the game. But yes if thier is a large update you will need to carry the box to a friends and download via broadband. Not sure if downloading the patch onto a USB drive is possible and then manually putting it into the Steam file, it might be possible to USB drive the whole Steam/Game file, update it on a broadband connection and then copy the whole Game folder from the USB drive into your Steam Apps Folder, then it will have the updated version, though it will probably have a problem till you delete the .ncf file and re-download on dial up that I believe Is a solution to problems caused by transfering files to Steam via USB. Or try asking the Question on the Steam forums directly, perhaps someone technologically aware can offer advice.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/

The CFC Civilopedia articles were quite helpful to me as I returned to playing Civ4 prior to the release of Civ5. I always thought they could be drastically improved with a number of cross-references and improvements to the data presentation. For instance, a side-by-side comparison of a unique unit or building with the original, etc. It would be almost trivial to include versioned details with a wiki. Even linking to general purpose resources (like Wikipedia) for history would be quite interesting.

If a wikipedia-like Civilopedia was in the works for CFC, I would happily act as a curator.

(And yes, I made an account just to offer to work on a pro bono wiki project... something must be wrong with me as I have a dissertation to write yet insist on wasting time reading Civ5 news.)

I just posted this as a thread, but I should have replied here...

I would like to see Firaxis allow at least one play tester to walk us through a game of Civ 5 (with periodic screen shots) from start to finish. I recall this was allowed for Civ 4, and I believe it was Sulli who was allowed to do so (although I may have the person wrong), providing a new "walkthrough" every few weeks with a different civ and showcasing different new features.

That was the #1 thing that influenced my decision to buy Civ 4. I hope they will do the same for Civ 5.

I agree with that. I bought civ 4 two years ago and I wasn't readig anything at any forums or asking someone because no one who I know plays civ. So, I was playing game here and ther, when I was bored and I didn't have a clue what was I doing. So, when I've discovered CF forum, first, reading articles in war academy, I had understand game concepts and after that I was looking which question bothers other people. I was suprised how many people had same problems like me. So, first I won few chieftain games. Then, I was fighting with noble for few months(because I was playing 1 or two games per week because of school) I won my first noble game. After that, in 2 weeks I had 15 victories and only 1 loss. When school ended (in Croatia it lasts only till the 20th of June and starts on 1st Monday in September , yea, for you it is quiet short). When school ended I was playing civ 4 for a few weeks and then I had lost my will to play, so, now I'm waiting for civ 5. I'll try to become more involved on this forum. At the beginning we should discuss at civ 5 disscusing forum about our first thoughts and then we should Civ 5 strategy and tips forum like for civ 4 and, when some of us understand some game mechanics sould start writing about that and so on and on. And, Archie has made very good site about civ 5 so, that problem is solved.

I would like to see some lose coverage through screenshots and videos. I would REALLY like to see some screenshots of the lower graphics to show us who wont run high graphics can see how it looks. You dont have to release them as normal screens, but specify "THESE ARE LOWER GRAPHICS! DONT EXPECT THESE WHEN RUNNING HIGH GRAPHICS SETTINGS!". I know there are people wwout there that want those pictures. And a video showing more gameplay would get us (and our friends) more excited about the game. And after release (its hard to think about it, feels so far!) I would like to see a walkthrugh as a different civ each week, as mentioned before.

A walkthrough on every civ? What's the point in playing a game after you've seen what it's like?

A walkthrough on every civ? What's the point in playing a game after you've seen what it's like?

Its not like your going to do the exact same thing they do. Its more to see what the opinon is of how the abilities of each civ works, so you know what you would like to play as. Its not like its a story mode, a game can do alot of different ways. You make it sounds so similar...

But finding out is part of the fun…

But finding out is part of the fun…

If your a new player to civ, it certainly isnt fun to loose your first ten games to find the one that works...trust me >.<

*ahem* tutorial mode/lower difficulty…

*ahem* tutorial mode/lower difficulty…

you would be surprised how bad new players can be...

A preview by someone at civfantics would seem to be in order. How is it that 20 or so gaming sites, most I'd never heard of before, can do a preview but the best civ site on the planet doesn't have one? Does not compute!

I would like to see Firaxis allow at least one play tester to walk us through a game of Civ 5 (with periodic screen shots) from start to finish. I recall this was allowed for Civ 4, and I believe it was Sulli who was allowed to do so (although I may have the person wrong), providing a new "walkthrough" every few weeks with a different civ and showcasing different new features.

That was the #1 thing that influenced my decision to buy Civ 4. I hope they will do the same for Civ 5.

Agreed. The Sulla walkthrus from before Civ IV released were better than any preview or info a community rep could ever reveal, in terms of information presentation and "marketing" (in that they would get you more fired up for the game than anything else).

A preview by someone at civfantics would seem to be in order. How is it that 20 or so gaming sites, most I'd never heard of before, can do a preview but the best civ site on the planet doesn't have one?

A civ fanatic will buy the game, even without a preview.
But the gaming sites are reaching the people, who maybe even haven't heard of Civilization, so the gaming sites provide new customers. We here probably don't.

And whatever, what for the demo, far better than a preview.

The CFC Civilopedia articles were quite helpful to me as I returned to playing Civ4 prior to the release of Civ5. I always thought they could be drastically improved with a number of cross-references and improvements to the data presentation. For instance, a side-by-side comparison of a unique unit or building with the original, etc. It would be almost trivial to include versioned details with a wiki. Even linking to general purpose resources (like Wikipedia) for history would be quite interesting.

If a wikipedia-like Civilopedia was in the works for CFC, I would happily act as a curator.

(And yes, I made an account just to offer to work on a pro bono wiki project... something must be wrong with me as I have a dissertation to write yet insist on wasting time reading Civ5 news.)

Ian, a late response but I think a Wiki would be a great way for a community to quickly build up information on the game. There's so much information that the game doesn't reveal. Civopedia's good, but as Civ 4 showed, there's scope for a Sevopedia.

Though I hesitate to think of the edit wars around the entry for "Specialist Economy" :)

Have you had other feedback so far?

I'd personally would like to see high-quality images of all the civ pre-loading screens. Because we only have Songhai, Egypt, and Japan (With Iroquois being barely legible, and Rome ineligible in any way).

I would also like the demo NOW please!!!!!!

Hi. What I would like is an option for a projected end to the game: instead of Time being 2050 one can opt for, say, 1900; or 2000. Also, if one retires early, a valuation of the game be given and not 'lose' as is at present. Dave.

I would like units/technologies lists to be by era rather than alphabetical.

Or both.

Well this might be a little off topic but you could actually put ads up in the screen we get redirected to saying that we have to see this ad before we can continue to the forums. I have never seen an ad on that page the entire time Ive come to this site even though it tells me I will every day. I dont really like ads but if would rather see one than a black page especially if it means you guys get money out of it.

Well, maybe you've turned off ads on your browser…

The biggest thing I can think of is keeping articles on civ 5 vanilla and articles on any expantion packs that may come along seperate. Numerous times I read information about civ 4 only to find out it was for Warlords and had been changed in BtS.

^^this. Just assume the expansions will make vanilla mechanics obsolete.

Also, a couple of feature articles showing off what CFC games are like. Like the gotm and pitboss and all those things you guys talk about here. Show us what they are about!!! Do it in a let's play fashion.

A suggestion about the Mod Download Section.

Could you please make them sorted by Patch Version?
I have spend hours trying to sort out my Downloaded Mod's that where great but only worked with the older Patch...
Allways assuming that it will be the same with Civ5 of course...

Do yall think/ know that "multiple maps" will be possible with Civ V??

(as in, say, an "underground" level for a given map)

First of all my compliments on the site, in particular to many of the more experienced contributors. I've been playing Civ on and off since Civ one. I played very badly until I came across Civfanatics. I still play badly but at least now I'm able to register the odd win at Prince.

Looking forward to Civ 5, which releases here in Ireland tomorrow and have already informed my wife that I'll be out of action for most of Saturday.

My comment is a general one in that I'd like to see more of a focus on the mid-level player. I think the newbie and the experienced player are very well looked after. It is a little more difficult for improvers and, let's face it, that's the category most players belong to.

For instance it would be great to look at the most common mistakes made by long-term players before they came to the site. Hooked on setting workers to auto - break the habit. Neglecting culture - here are a few easy fixes.

Also I'd like to see more walk throughs. I need to learn and there is no better way to learn than watching a master, or mistress, at work. And can somebody please explain to me why there are so few gameplay videos out there. Is this a Firaxis restriction. I don't play any games other than Civ but I know that when it comes to games such as Modern Warfare there are trillions of such videos available on Youtube.

Rockflake
- a struggling prince

I posted this suggestion in another topic, let me repeat here.

We need a page that lists all streams (also youtube links etc) related to Civ5. Bonus points if this can be put in a corner of the main interface (couple be optional, activated from the control center or something) so it can display when a live Civ5 stream is on.

For Starcraft players / an example there is a similar feature on teamliquid.net top right corner.

Also for everyone thinking of doing video content, seriously consider using streams instead of youtube as they will make your life and ours easier.