Reflections after my first game...

[sonofman]

Last night, after over a week of weaving around my work/sleep/wife schedule, I finally completed my first game of Civ5.

I played a good deal of Civ 1, but left the series after that, coming back for this game, so I don't have the rose-glasses of the past that many people have been toting. Therefore, my experience may have a slightly more positive tint than many.... but...

I loved it...

Being an art teacher in love with their aesthetics, I chose Japan as my first civ. I was on a standard earth map on chieftain difficulty... (I know... started out super light, but... hey... my new game is on prince...)

I started fairly slow, not having a major game plan from the start. In fact, I was all over the place, researching based on the cool stuff you get, crafting units to try them out vs having a build-order, etc...

I slowly started having EVERYTHING on the tech tree... everything... I don't know if this is common or not, but I made it all the way to the modern era getting every single tech along the way.

My armies were of decent size, used to help out allies in times of war mainly. I think I helped so many different civs, that it ended up getting everyone pissed off at me. Seriously, from turn 300 till the end of the game EVERY other civilization was always hostile toward me. I ended up having to defend myself a few times, which always resulted in me claiming more land. I ended up with nearly all of Europe, Australia, and most of Africa. North America was owned completely (conveniently enough) by America and the other few civs had scattered cities build around the rest of the remaining world.

I was allies with Dublin after saving them from the Iroquois, and they actually supplied most of my army from that point on...


Well... around turn 500, I decided I wanted to try and launch a rocket into space, so I started gearing up toward that tech path. Having spent all my time meandering around the tech tree ate up most of my real opportunity to actually succeed at that, though as a noob, at the time I had not realized that yet.

When it got to be about 2035, I figured the space race was lost, so I decided to go out with a bang for fun, and NUKE America.... seemed somehow fitting....

They were currently the second biggest civ and I wanted some sort of dramatic ending to the game....

So, it came to pass that in early 2049, Japan sent over their fleets and took Washington DC (which was strangly exactly where DC should be on the NA map... ) DC was fell by a nuclear missile, Washington was enraged, and the game ended one turn later....

It was epic.,...

I really like how the games win conditions are set up and that sooooome forethought has to be exercised to accomplish any of them (other than the time endcap victory)

I ended up with a score in the 2300's and my closest opponent (America) was in the 800s.... I feel that the AI seemed pretty intense toward me, though this may be more based on my inexperience than on them using effective tactics...

anyway...

I completely enjoyed my game and will be starting a game a Russia after work today...