Civ5 at PAX

MisterBarca said:

Did you get a feeling that there are more tiles with hexes than old squares?

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It feels like there's more space, but I think that's because they increased the number of tiles per world size, not because of the change to hexes. After hearing about units all having a base two movement, I expected them to have doubled the the number of tiles to keep the same relative scale; I haven't actually counted the number of tiles though.

Also, city spam feels reduced a bit, so there is more empty space during mid-game as well.

lockstep said:

I have noticed your many comparisons of Civ4 v. Civ5 features, and I generally regard them as well founded. However, I think you have at least unknowingly disregarded the "cascading conquest" effect described by Thyrwin and also regularly witnessed by me. (You didn't respond to Thyrwin "I always could cope with these problems" but "I've never run into the problems you mention".)

lockstep

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I can only tell you my own experiences, which is that I've not encountered the "Cascading Conquest" problem that you mention. If I had to really think about it, I'm sure there might be 1 or 2 instances where I've lost a city I've just conquered due to the culture of a neighboring empire, but I certainly can't remember any off the top of my head. If it did happen, though, it would be very rare indeed. I always pay close attention to building strong culture, so maybe thats why I haven't had the problem so often (when I conquer cities, they're often well on the way to being mine anyway!)
Anyway, you might note that I have *not* called the Civ4 system perfect. It had problems, not least the lack of control the player had over the process. However, I think that rather than taking the lazy approach of chucking everything but the awful Culture Bomb, they could have taken a little time to fix these problems in the existing mechanic (for the record, a number of mods exist for Civ4 that *do* fix this very problem!)

Aussie.

Aussie_Lurker said:

I can only tell you my own experiences, which is that I've not encountered the "Cascading Conquest" problem that you mention. If I had to really think about it, I'm sure there might be 1 or 2 instances where I've lost a city I've just conquered due to the culture of a neighboring empire, but I certainly can't remember any off the top of my head. If it did happen, though, it would be very rare indeed. I always pay close attention to building strong culture, so maybe thats why I haven't had the problem so often (when I conquer cities, they're often well on the way to being mine anyway!)

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I'm sort of an "hybrid" player who in Civ4 paid attention to being of at-least-average culture (and correctly setting up three high-culture cities for a possible cultural victory), but also built up a strong military. In the early and mid-game, a recently conquered enemy border city might well already have leaned to my side, and flipping to third parties rarely if ever occured. However, if I wanted to consolidate my late-game lead and trim a rival without necessarily eliminating him, the "cascading conquest" effect (I eliminated him anyway to get some use out of his former cities) was not the exception but the rule.

In the end, maybe you should have qualified your response to Thyrwin by mentioning your specific kind of playstyle.

Aussie_Lurker said:

So you're accusing me of lying then are you? You might notice that I *also* said that, whatever faults existed in the Civ4 culture system, I believe it worked far *better* than the system they've gone with for Civ5-which effectively makes your culture USELESS outside your own borders (except on unowned tiles)! To me that, & an inability to buy owned tiles, is going to make the game way too dull for words!

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If you're producing a lot of culture, chances are you also have a lot of wonders. You'll be popping out great people far more than the others, and as a result you'll have great artists to steal border tiles if you're put in a scenario where an AI or city state is simply too close to your borders for comfort.

As I said in the preview at VE, I had a chance to try every end game scenario with the preview build. I won a culture game with a main game focus on just one single core city, and it was a monster early game because of all the culture it was generating. I was forced into war, and had to fight back to eliminate the enemy near the end, but only made two puppet cities out of that. The rest of my culture came from the single city, and my relationships with cultural based city states.

I'm not sure if it's well known at this time, but the required culture for policy picks increases each time you create a new city, or annex one you've taken over. Culture wins are definitely possible if you want to sit back with a small number of cities (or just one).

Also remember, more great people means you'll have gold coming in (and better relationships with CSs) from great merchant missions, free techs from great scientists, fast wonder / building production from great engineers, and of course the opportunity to culture bomb often. That's assuming you don't build their unique buildings, or use them for golden ages.

Aussie

I've seen a lot of your posts and I think the best thing I've read, and I can't remember who said it, but they said that you seem to be after another expansion to Civ4 rather than a Civ5.

My feeling is that they have created a new game, having felt that Civ4BTS+mods took the old model as far as it could go.

This is now a brave new world and creates a new set of mechanics to explore, expand and mod. Over the course of time the subjects that were in Civ4BTS will be added, based on the new paradigm. I am looking forward to the new thinking, the new challenges and the new problems posed by the design.

I've explored Civ4, as much as I care to now, and based on the way I like to play, I find games tend to fall the same way. It's getting a little boring, and I'm ready for something, anything, new. Comparing Civ5 to Civ4 is not really interesting to me, because I don't want anything in Civ5 to be "the same as Civ4", because I want those new challenges. Just by being different, as far as I am concerned, it is better.

treadwin said:

Aussie

I've seen a lot of your posts and I think the best thing I've read, and I can't remember who said it, but they said that you seem to be after another expansion to Civ4 rather than a Civ5.

My feeling is that they have created a new game, having felt that Civ4BTS+mods took the old model as far as it could go.

This is now a brave new world and creates a new set of mechanics to explore, expand and mod. Over the course of time the subjects that were in Civ4BTS will be added, based on the new paradigm. I am looking forward to the new thinking, the new challenges and the new problems posed by the design.

I've explored Civ4, as much as I care to now, and based on the way I like to play, I find games tend to fall the same way. It's getting a little boring, and I'm ready for something, anything, new. Comparing Civ5 to Civ4 is not really interesting to me, because I don't want anything in Civ5 to be "the same as Civ4", because I want those new challenges. Just by being different, as far as I am concerned, it is better.

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Well said.

Suho1004 said:

The social policies in Civ 5 are designed to "stack"

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I knew the Stack of Doom was hiding somewhere...

TheMystic said:

If you're producing a lot of culture, chances are you also have a lot of wonders. You'll be popping out great people far more than the others, and as a result you'll have great artists to steal border tiles if you're put in a scenario where an AI or city state is simply too close to your borders for comfort.

As I said in the preview at VE, I had a chance to try every end game scenario with the preview build. I won a culture game with a main game focus on just one single core city, and it was a monster early game because of all the culture it was generating. I was forced into war, and had to fight back to eliminate the enemy near the end, but only made two puppet cities out of that. The rest of my culture came from the single city, and my relationships with cultural based city states.

I'm not sure if it's well known at this time, but the required culture for policy picks increases each time you create a new city, or annex one you've taken over. Culture wins are definitely possible if you want to sit back with a small number of cities (or just one).

Also remember, more great people means you'll have gold coming in (and better relationships with CSs) from great merchant missions, free techs from great scientists, fast wonder / building production from great engineers, and of course the opportunity to culture bomb often. That's assuming you don't build their unique buildings, or use them for golden ages.

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Have you had a chance to notice how the increased culture threshold for additionnal cities works ? How much did it scale up ?
Also, if you stay with a constant number of city, by how much the next policy requirement ramp up ?

Thyrwyn said:

2) Foreign trade routes: really? how did they improve the game? the system was entirely opaque and the player had no real way to influence it anyway.

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Not true. The player could influence it by going to war--in particular, a world war could seriously mess up your economy. Similarly, adopting Mercantilism had a large effect, although predicting the overall effect ahead of time was a bit tricky.

That said, I agree that the late game lag made the system cost more than its worth. But, I would have preferred a compromise system (your capital can establish a high-value trade route to each foreign capital) than would have kept the essence of foreign trade without the exorbitant computational cost.

DalekDavros said:

Not true. The player could influence it by going to war--in particular, a world war could seriously mess up your economy. Similarly, adopting Mercantilism had a large effect, although predicting the overall effect ahead of time was a bit tricky.

That said, I agree that the late game lag made the system cost more than its worth. But, I would have preferred a compromise system (your capital can establish a high-value trade route to each foreign capital) than would have kept the essence of foreign trade without the exorbitant computational cost.

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I concur, I would have been happy with a compromise too. Some kind of Foreign Trade Route system could have been really interesting *if* they provided more than merely gold!

Aussie.

Me said:

Nobody would be interested in a diplo write up.

"Monty asked my for a peace treaty." "Then I asked Monty for a research pact.

Now an explanation of what all the diplo options do would be nice.

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War write up: "he attacked my unit, I attacked his..."

If you do it on purpose, you can make everything sound boring.

But diplomacy review isnt boring at all. Example: "I met monty. He seemed nicer than in civ4". He asked for peace, resource trading, and after a few turns he even offered me a research agreement! And 3 turns after paying 300gold he backstabbed me with his army at my doors and no gold to rushbuy!!"

And if you tell the story of relationships between many leaders instead just 1, it can get much more interesting.

Aussie_Lurker said:

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.

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So essentially, you want him to remind you of the things that you actively did for/against him? I think they're try to make this aspect more realistic, since in real-life you would look insane if you had to ask another leader why he hates you ("um, you bombed half of my cities?"). It's only mysterious if you've forgotten what you did in the past.

bernlin2000 said:

I think they're try to make this aspect more realistic, since in real-life you would look insane if you had to ask another leader why he hates you

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In real life, you don't take two weeks off from international politics to take care of the children and work at your job. This is what I was talking about: Computer game producers have this problem realizing what real life looks like. Some of us can't play every day, or even every week.

EmpireOfCats said:

In real life, you don't take two weeks off from international politics to take care of the children and work at your job. This is what I was talking about: Computer game producers have this problem realizing what real life looks like. Some of us can't play every day, or even every week.

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Exactly. Also, even in the REAL WORLD, world leaders have FOREIGN ADVISORS to tell them what the state of Foreign Affairs currently is, & to keep the leader informed of recent developments. If the Foreign Advisor in Civ5 is incapable of doing even that small task, then we must surely question why they wasted the resources to put one in.

Aussie.

If you take William Hague as an example, and you believe the media innuendo and hype, his advisors do a lot more than just keep him up to date with international affairs.

Ok, I went to the small group demo of CIV 5 at PAX, and I played the game quite a bit at invidia's booth, probably a couple of hours total over the course of the weekend. I honestly think the worrying going on in this thread is unfounded.

Talking points I would like to add to this conversation:

1. At PAX the game was not being officially demoed by Firaxis or Take2, instead the playable demo was part of the invidia booth who had a whole suite of playable demos and betas set up to show off their hardware. I would honestly be shocked if the versions they had were not weeks or months old (and Civ 5 was not the only demo by invidia that suffered this problem).

2. In regards to the diplomacy thing, I never found and explicit menu that listed rival civ's opinions of me but I have to admit for never looking for it. Simply put I never needed it - the opinions that other civs had of me were always more or less clear. In talking to other civs, and especially in watching how they dealt with city states allied with me, figuring out how others felt about me was not some great frustrating mystery. In fact, it was a lot of fun to piece together the world's current diplomatic relations and figure them out for myself, without the game spoonfeeding me that information. Also, if you really MUST have an explicit diplomacy screen, I imagine that is why you have a foreign advisor in this game... though I must admit I never felt the need to speak with them.

3. Finally, and most importantly, the game "feels" like Civ. I don't know how else to put it into words. Its new, its different, but starting up a game and playing felt like settling down with an old and dear friend. It was amazing, simply put. I had my doubts about Civ 5 as well, no longer. And no, I am not a representative from Take2

Riss

AussieLurker said:

Here's the thing. Overall I *love* the Social Policy Tree concept, but one thing that bothers me about it is how-if what I've been hearing is true-you don't need to give up the benefits of one policy to go to the one above it. The thing I really liked about the Civics system was that it forced often difficult decisions on the player (especially after I was done with modifying them ) Its one of the things that makes the game fun IMHO!

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You're going to have more choices with social policies than civics. Quite frankly, even with all civic options available to you, there are only a couple ones that you would actively choose between over the course of the game. There are some obvious powerhouse choices. Before that final era, the civics options might as well be just bonuses for getting certain techs. On the other hand, you make a choice between policies each time you have enough culture to purchase them. And we've seen no evidence about losing policies, unless you count switching between opposing trees.

The civics tree is more like a "talent tree" from an MMO than the social policies. The civics represent choices and giving up something for something else, while the social policies represent a build-up of additional power over time. However, with any talent tree system, it is balanced around considering the whole tree. Considering Civ's slow build-up until every feature is eventually accessible in the final era, a talent tree system is not a good idea.

Where is a official article for PAX? Its somewhere video preview from PAX?

Celevin said:

Considering Civ's slow build-up until every feature is eventually accessible in the final era, a talent tree system is not a good idea.

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You need 5 out of 10 full trees to start building utopia. So if you not going for cultural victory, you'll rarely have more than 3 out of 10 full trees, IMHO.

Celevin said:

You're going to have more choices with social policies than civics. Quite frankly, even with all civic options available to you, there are only a couple ones that you would actively choose between over the course of the game. There are some obvious powerhouse choices. Before that final era, the civics options might as well be just bonuses for getting certain techs. On the other hand, you make a choice between policies each time you have enough culture to purchase them. And we've seen no evidence about losing policies, unless you count switching between opposing trees.

The civics tree is more like a "talent tree" from an MMO than the social policies. The civics represent choices and giving up something for something else, while the social policies represent a build-up of additional power over time. However, with any talent tree system, it is balanced around considering the whole tree. Considering Civ's slow build-up until every feature is eventually accessible in the final era, a talent tree system is not a good idea.

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But, you've got wild cards with the wonders.

@Azazell : It's just fan hand-on review !