Civ5 at PAX

Aussie:

2.5 social policies trees (Commerce is Navy + economy) out of 10 focus on warmongering and you're screaming about that? You can even neatly split the game into Military, Economy, Science and Diplomacy and Culture and the Military side would barely have larger than its share.

I just think you got tripped up over some detail and then just spiraled downwards.

The Diplomacy thing is worrisome, granted, but the social policy stuff is just being ridiculous.

Actually, Commerce is almost entirely about navy. My point though was that, with all the beefing up combat has gotten already, it didn't need to have almost 3 whole branches of the social policy tree dedicated to it as well. You can claim that I'm being "ridiculous" in that view, but it seems pretty obvious to me that a lot of good systems from Civ4 have been abandoned for no other reason except that it was too complicated for war-gamers to grasp, & that a lot of other unrelated game systems are being designed entirely with war-gaming in mind!

Aussie.
 
But you guys know that the ''no info about what the IA think of the player'' thing was annonced as such and was one of the reason why they did not wanted religion in? They felt it was to easy to manipulate the IA and wanted single player game to feel more like you are playing against human (So they can basckstab you anytime if it's the best to win... just like you would do because you are human.).

I think this is a good thing, I always thought it was stupid in Civ4 to have + and - to a relation with the IA and to be able to predict how they would react.

About the missing information for cooperation pact and such, there is no way this is not going to be in the full game... Don't worry... it will at least be in the Super PDF manual.

No, what they told us was that we wouldn't be able to see the specific bonuses & penalties. So no more "-1 Our close borders are sparking tension". They did *not* tell us that we wouldn't be able to tell if a Civ liked or disliked us. If that's gone, then I'll be *Extremely* unhappy :(!

Aussie.
 
No, what they told us was that we wouldn't be able to see the specific bonuses & penalties. So no more "-1 Our close borders are sparking tension". They did *not* tell us that we wouldn't be able to tell if a Civ liked or disliked us. If that's gone, then I'll be *Extremely* unhappy :(!

Aussie.

I think I remember watching a interview where they said that the reason for this is that they wanted the AI leaders to feel like real people by making their opinions on you obvious through their actions and not their words.

Whether this will turn out to be a great or a terrible design decision remains to be seen.
 
They said we would be able to tell what a civs mood/feeling towards us was through the new full body leader heads. So their body language and speech would let us know if the liked or disliked us. This is fine when we are in diplomatic talks and negotiations, but doesn't cut it if I want to know my standings between all civs on the fly.

Azazell showed me a pic, that is now gone, that did show what deals we had made, how long they lasted, and there was more different options that I cannot recall. He did say that they had just added that, makin it sound like since he started playing they had patched that menu in. Anyone who's curious can read and see where he posted this in his old pics thread, look for my postings, it's in reply to me. He also said that it would only say next to a civs name "hostile", showing when someone disliked you, but not friendly/cautious etc.

Anyways, if no real testers ever brought any of this stuff up, and the game doesn't release with some kind of on the fly standings between civs, I'll be greatly dissapointed. This won't be something for the modders to do. No, this is something for the devs to do now, if it hasn't been already.
 
I don't mind if there's little to no information on a status screen about how other Civs feel about you ("Hostile" or whatever is fine, but not necessary), but it would be silly if there was no way to see the active deals and agreements you have.
 
Don't be so mad, I'm pretty sure Religion will be one of the first thing to be reintroduced by a DLE (downloadable expansion). Meanwhile, it will be a great oppotunity for the modding company to be creative and invent new path.

I wasn't mad because of the loss of religion-I was mad because bjbrains suggested that I have disliked Civ5 from the outset, which is simply *untrue*!

Aussie.
 
So I played Civ5 some more today, not terribly much because of tight scheduling (I had to wait two hours in line for a chance to play Brink) but I did take a closer look at the map overlay toggles amongst other things. There is indeed a way to toggle resource bubbles and tile yields; it's hidden inside a little button with a scroll icon next to the minimap; I'd ignored it before because I thought it was the message log. The same button in strategic view lets you apply filters, but you can't combine multiple filter views (it's a drop-down list). I haven't been able to play with it to see if it really works the way I'd like.

There is an experience bar for the units, it's simply easy to miss if you aren't looking for it. It's a long bar running horizontally above the unit strength/movement numbers, and it shows the unit experience if you hover over it. I am finding it a little frustrating that the 'wait until fully healed' unit action does not give an estimate of how long it would take.

No good news on the diplomacy front. The diplomacy screen shows a number next to each civilization but doesn't tell you what that number is supposed to mean; after further investigation I concluded it represented their overall score. I'm not sure how well the menu currently reflects trade opportunities, as I haven't been able to play enough to get a feel for it. Still nothing apparent for getting a rough estimate of their disposition.

The Civilopedia feels unpolished, and to some extent automatically generated. There was at least one entry that essentially reads 'press this button to exit the [something] menu'. It uses a folder-style system, but defaults to having all the folders expanded so looking for a specific entry can be a mess. There's a search box, which I didn't get around to testing. I also realized that after opening the Civilopedia with F1, there's no close button, so I had to hit F1 again to close it.

If it matters, the version number shown on the main menu was 0.3.0.164
 
Looks like they're still using the months old preview version. No wonder they were kinda hidden at PAX.
 
Do you have any other sources citing a version number? I'd like to have an idea of how old it is, at least.
 
Do you have any other sources citing a version number? I'd like to have an idea of how old it is, at least.

No, but you found the same issues other previewers found. So it must be the same game.
 
That's the kind of assumption that has a tendency to cause problems.
 
I'm with Aussie on this. Civ V is increasingly looking like its a wargame, designed by a lead designer with a wargamer background.

Trouble is, I don't want "Panzer General with social policies". I want a game with rich diplomacy, economic options and social policies. Not to mention Trade, which I believe has also been dumbed down. Or Health, is now part of happiness (Fast food anyone?).

And I expect those features out of the box, not in an expansion

I believe Civ is meant to be a broad brush of history, not a history of warfare
 
I am pleased that warfare has improved as it was actually pretty crappy from Civs I through IV. I do agree however that they are emphasizing it too much though. Many aspects of the game have been either simplified or have been dropped or seem to have gotten worse.

Shame...
 
I'm with Aussie on this. Civ V is increasingly looking like its a wargame, designed by a lead designer with a wargamer background.

Trouble is, I don't want "Panzer General with social policies". I want a game with rich diplomacy, economic options and social policies. Not to mention Trade, which I believe has also been dumbed down. Or Health, is now part of happiness (Fast food anyone?).

And I expect those features out of the box, not in an expansion

I believe Civ is meant to be a broad brush of history, not a history of warfare

Was there ever a time in the history of the world that mankind was in a long lasting state of peace? I'm pretty sure that just about every year for as long as we've existed there have been tribes, societies, cities, countries, etc. at war. You will not be in a state of war all the time in Civ V, but chances are it will come your way at some point.
 
Funny how different people have different views. The diplomacy was the bit I hated in Civ IV. It seemed so brutally scientific and cold, and it was the most vital part of the game, almost to the exclusion of everything else. If you played with a lot of Civs (which I like to do), it pretty much made the game impossible to play at any significant difficulty level.

Just because something has numbers over it doesn't mean it is complicated. The fact that the information was handed to you on a plate and you knew everything seems "dumbed down" to me. As I say though, it's just my point of view.
 
For what it's worth, I didn't get the impression of a war-centric game after having played Civ5 for a bit. I haven't played much in the later ages, but overall balance of unit costs, land mass, and city spread means that you really have to focus on warmongering to get very far as a warmonger.

It's much easier to build just enough units to defend and then focus on infrastructure, because each unit takes about as long to produce as a building (of the same tech level) and you need three to four units minimum to to start taking cities. Then you'll need more units to help defend that territory, squash barbarians, etc. You'll end up pumping most your gold into rush-buying infrastructure, at least in the early game. Builders will be doing the opposite and buying units to beef up their army when needed.
 
Funny how different people have different views. The diplomacy was the bit I hated in Civ IV. It seemed so brutally scientific and cold, and it was the most vital part of the game, almost to the exclusion of everything else. If you played with a lot of Civs (which I like to do), it pretty much made the game impossible to play at any significant difficulty level.

Just because something has numbers over it doesn't mean it is complicated. The fact that the information was handed to you on a plate and you knew everything seems "dumbed down" to me. As I say though, it's just my point of view.

Never said I wanted *all* the information laid out on a plate like it was in Civ4 (like the -8 "This war is hurting our relationship"), but that doesn't mean I want it to be a complete *mystery* either. I want to be able to ask my Foreign Advisor what this Civilization currently thinks of me-in broad terms-& to occasionally remind me of things I've done to help, or hinder, them in the past. What I don't want is to be flying blind through the entire game without knowing if *any* of my efforts are having any impact on my neighbours at all!

Aussie.
 
Was there ever a time in the history of the world that mankind was in a long lasting state of peace? I'm pretty sure that just about every year for as long as we've existed there have been tribes, societies, cities, countries, etc. at war. You will not be in a state of war all the time in Civ V, but chances are it will come your way at some point.

Trust me, I don't mind having the occasional war, but I don't want it to be the *focus* of the entire game. I actually like the 1upt system, because I agree it will at least make war less tedious than it was previously. That said, though, too many systems (like some of the Social Policies & the entire Happiness mechanism) also seem to be aimed at the War-Monger, which really does bother me!

Aussie.
 
Perhaps I am near sighted - or simply optimistic - but I honestly think that there is less emphasis on the military aspect of the game. By that I mean that the military aspect of the game has been made less powerful and less of a crutch. I do think that the military aspect of the game has been made more interesting, though.

Maybe it's a function of the level I play (Monarch, usually), but in Civ IV, you could use a strong military to leverage your way to any of the available victory conditions, because more cities meant more of everything else - more gold, more science, more production, more units, more votes in the UN. . . It was the classic snowball effect, and - because of the limitless stack mechanism - it was unstoppable: whether you were on offense or defense, the size of your stack was the biggest factor in any war.

The 1upH mechanic means that war will be more interesting - we will have to pay more attention to it - but it also means that other factors become much more relevant in determining who will win, such as: the size of the front, the terrain, how your units are deployed. . . and a host of other factors.

But, in the grander scope of the game, war has become less powerful. It cannot be leveraged into a diplomatic victory - and may actually make that victory condition unattainable. Global happiness means that there is a limit to how much you can benefit from conquered cities. Puppets allow some wiggle room, but do not add units or production capability to your empire.

More cities means that Social policies cost more, so that smaller empires might be better positioned to achieve a Culture Victory - and continuous conquest will increase those costs without really giving you the means to make up the difference - probably putting that VC out of reach as well.

Research pacts require long term friends, which will be harder to find for aggressive, warmongering civs, meaning that they may tech slower, making a Scientific Victory harder to achieve.

Continuous aggression may very well limit you to a Domination Victory. If that proves to be the case, then the military aspect of the game is less powerful.

Since conquered cities bring their acquired tiles with them - there is even a place for limited conquest (which became more and more difficult in Civ IV, the later in the game you went, because of overwhelming native culture).
 
Looks like they're still using the months old preview version. No wonder they were kinda hidden at PAX.

Why would they do that? Why wouldn't they use the latest, best build they have?
 
Top Bottom