[Civ 5] Rise of Mankind design discussion

Man, since my copy of Civ V will be coming from Amazon tomorrow or thursday, I went and downloaded the demo version. Now that the demo finished, I went back to RoM and missed Civ V almost immediately. I gotta admit although Civ V is more for the general masses that aren't familiar with it, some mechanics are 'dumbed down' but for the most part it's rather enchanting. The flowing graphics, the reorganized UI, the combat mechanics, hexagonal tiles and the knowledge that it's a blank slate that won't be slowed down by mods as easily as Civ IV was. I know I sound like I'm not telling anything new than what was in the video interviews, but playing it is a very different experience than just watching the gameplay videos.
 
Civ5 is out since today. I played with a demo. You had played with a demo or a full game.

Opinions please.

Reminder: Afforess is away until Sunday for personal reasons so wait for his comments until then.

My review of a brief play with the demo.

Interface is disturbingly confusing. The text are a lot smaller. (Relevant because I have low vision) City screen is a bit confusing. So basically I need to play more but in windowed so I can use my ZoomText program. But eventually if we can find text xml to mod, I will increase text size then.

Otherwise, the game looked really nice. Though I will definitely jump for joy when AUA for Civ5 comes out :).


@Civ Fuehrer and os79

I must agree with you guys. After playing the demo a few times I have been more confused and frustrated more than anything. Overall i think the UI is a graphics nightmare and I much prefer civ4 even if it is much more complex. I also think I am a bit spoiled with RoM and AND. There is just not a lot there and things seem to advance way too fast. By the time I can build a unit it seems to be already obsolete. It really seems more like Spore Civ Phase than Civilization. In short until I see more about the modding and what can be done I will be sticking with RoM/AND since its so much more fun to play.
 
@Civ Fuehrer and os79

I must agree with you guys. After playing the demo a few times I have been more confused and frustrated more than anything. Overall i think the UI is a graphics nightmare and I much prefer civ4 even if it is much more complex. I also think I am a bit spoiled with RoM and AND. There is just not a lot there and things seem to advance way too fast. By the time I can build a unit it seems to be already obsolete. It really seems more like Spore Civ Phase than Civilization. In short until I see more about the modding and what can be done I will be sticking with RoM/AND since its so much more fun to play.

Well being one of the modders I have to familiarize myself with the game and all it's little mechanics to know how to tweak them accordingly, once I get my hard copy from Amazon first thing is to re-adjust the costs of everything. I mean, c'mon it shouldn't take longer to create a simple archer with a level 6 city containing 2 mines, 3 farms and a marble quarry than it does to research archery itself. (Researching took 9 turns, building an archer took 15 turns)
 
apparently it was designed for a 12yr old, the wii and a 80 inch plasma, still you can finish a game in four hours now, it's sad.

I am afraid i have to agree, its more cartoonist than ever. Static pictures every where, compared to Civ4, well you play it. I hope Kael (or anyone else) can get it to look like his FfH does now. With figures that are not static in the interface. I mean in an "age of computer graphics are fantastic", they come up with Static, i mean come on already.

What is the idea with "all" those units just for ONE unit, like 10 explorers all the same unit? 3 is WAY more than enough for a unit.

Also it takes about five minutes to load if you dont have the internet on, it comes up with this, then it's FINALLY back to Single player.

And now i get this message, dang what is going ON?
 
I am afraid i have to agree, its more cartoonist than ever. Static pictures every where, compared to Civ4, well you play it. I hope Kael (or anyone else) can get it to look like his FfH does now. With figures that are not static in the interface. I mean in an "age of computer graphics are fantastic", they come up with Static, i mean come on already.

What is the idea with "all" those units just for ONE unit, like 10 explorers all the same unit? 3 is WAY more than enough for a unit.

Also it takes about five minutes to load if you dont have the internet on, it comes up with this, then it's FINALLY back to Single player.

And now i get this message, dang what is going ON?

Some computers have all their settings for Civ V set on minimum by default which is static images galore, I had to set things to medium to get animations working. Also keep in mind that they wanted the units to look more natural even though they're just representations of units on the ground. The number of meshes - or people - within a unit changes dynamically so it is also good at estimating how damaged the unit is at a glance. One more thing I must say is that the tech research to unit/building production speeds is way off, playing my second demo game the ratios are just pissing me off. On top of that the game gave a CTD however I did change the gamespeeds.XML so I could get through more techs during the allotted amount of turns allowed in a demo, but that shouldn't have made the CTD.

Man... my first Civ V CTD... SO EARLY!!:run: Hopefully it gets patched soon, this is unacceptable. Damn Civ replenished my addiction to the franchise, and I can't even mod it yet... At least not to the degree I want to.:mischief:
 
I hear ya, but i have it set at 8X and all on HIGH.

I mean the old Civ IV look compared to a picture, just doesnt seem right. But alas i guess i will have to contend with it.

Never know maybe i will like it after 100 games or so and say its the "Best Game out there." Never know.
 
Yeah I got a crash to desktop when using the "embark" function. My whole desktop went super low graphics for some reason. Like my video card gave up or something.

As for the static icons, I actually like their style. If anything I think they went a little overboard with the leaders and their super eye candy graphics. I mean really how much stuff do i really need? I would not care if they were the static graphics and it just had all the text diplomacy choices.

I am actually getting worried if RoM/AND will be worth it for Civ5. I mean not all sequels to games are better. Look at Sim City Societies vs Sim City 4. Sim City Societies had better graphics but was really dumbed down and had horrible game play. Sim City 4 on the other hand was a great game that had lots of detail and decent graphics for the time.

In short why are game designer dumbing down so many games? I would rather play a good, detailed game that makes me think, than one that just has eye candy and simplistic game play.
 
In short why are game designer dumbing down so many games? I would rather play a good, detailed game that makes me think, than one that just has eye candy and simplistic game play.
...because they try to sell the game as much as possible and I predict that during next year or so we'll see bunch of official Firaxis DLCs for Civ 5 that will cost some bucks and we'll have to buy them if we want keep our game up to date with all those new features that the DLCs will add to the game... and then there's the expansions that will probably hit the market once the sales of Civ 5 cool down enough. The goal is to milk as much of money from gamers as possible - that's the game industry's direction been for couple years now with DLCs/expansions...

Anyway, Steam's Civ 5 will be playable on 24th ie. on Friday so I'll be playing it whole weekend :)
 
Any thought of modding the 1 upt limit? I don't want the Stack's O'Doom, but something that allows deployment of more than one military unit in a tile would be nice.

There supposedly is already a mod out that does that, but IIRC, it doesn't do much with the UI so it's not possible to move the units all at once.

The general idea I proposed over on the Civ5 forum was to make it something limited to buildings, like world and national wonders. Some sort of logistical score that lets multiple units operate in the same tile. Maybe some of the social policies could increase it too.

This is mainly because I think they went too far in the other direction. In Civ1 and 2, you could have multiple units per tile, but you'd lose them all if one of the units lost a battle. Civ3 took that away, but you could only damage one unit at a time (unless you used nukes) so you needed your own stack to take on theirs. Collateral damage in Civ4 helped, but there still was a problem with the stacks of doom. Now we're at one unit per tile, which might be manageable, but I still think a limited number of units per tile based on the "logistics" score I mentioned above would be better.

Oh and future era unit suggestion: Bolo tanks. The Mark I, II, III and IV versions would fit nicely. Sadly, the Hellbore-equipped (megatons/sec) ones were on the interstellar era and wouldn't fit outside of specific scenarios.
 
Any thought of modding the 1 upt limit? I don't want the Stack's O'Doom, but something that allows deployment of more than one military unit in a tile would be nice.

There supposedly is already a mod out that does that, but IIRC, it doesn't do much with the UI so it's not possible to move the units all at once.

The general idea I proposed over on the Civ5 forum was to make it something limited to buildings, like world and national wonders. Some sort of logistical score that lets multiple units operate in the same tile. Maybe some of the social policies could increase it too.

This is mainly because I think they went too far in the other direction. In Civ1 and 2, you could have multiple units per tile, but you'd lose them all if one of the units lost a battle. Civ3 took that away, but you could only damage one unit at a time (unless you used nukes) so you needed your own stack to take on theirs. Collateral damage in Civ4 helped, but there still was a problem with the stacks of doom. Now we're at one unit per tile, which might be manageable, but I still think a limited number of units per tile based on the "logistics" score I mentioned above would be better.

Oh and future era unit suggestion: Bolo tanks. The Mark I, II, III and IV versions would fit nicely. Sadly, the Hellbore-equipped (megatons/sec) ones were on the interstellar era and wouldn't fit outside of specific scenarios.

Or you could even use the Army mechanic from Civ3. Burn a general to create a stackable unit.
 
I was thinking about what are the features from RoM/AND that I would like to see in Civ5. Here is what I came up wih for my top 10 features.

1. Revolutions
2. Assimilation
3. Minor Civilizations
4. Snail Speed / Early Buildings
5. Extensive Tech Tree
6. Terrain Damage (Ex. Damage from Tundra or Desert)
7. More Resources (Ex. Cement, Steel, Biofuel, etc)
8. Building Upgrades / Building Dependency Webs
9. Usable Mountains
10. Unit Trading / Advanced Diplomacy

What are your top 10 features from Civ4 RoM/AND that you would want in Civ5 RoM/AND?
 
Widened tech tree, revolutions and the extra resources would be my favorites (if anyone cares about a guy new to the forums :)). Although since the new focus in combat seems to be having less units than in Civ4 it might be a problem to have 50 different units available when you can only realistically expect to use like 20 at once with the current system.
 
Widened tech tree, revolutions and the extra resources would be my favorites (if anyone cares about a guy new to the forums :)). Although since the new focus in combat seems to be having less units than in Civ4 it might be a problem to have 50 different units available when you can only realistically expect to use like 20 at once with the current system.
I have a plan for units... ;) ...but first I got to play the game to see if my idea is plausible with Civ 5... only one day left to wait...

edit: Also I got alternative unit ideas, in case my plan doesn't work out :D
 
Yay, sounds promising :D. I loved the RoM for Civ4, although I only got to use it from.. v2.3 I think it was. I'm not sure you can just apply everything you had to Civ5 because of the new basics. If you guys do have plans but need some extra manpower, I'd love to help with development if I can. (meh, Stupid forum rules disable private messages for a few days/posts)
 
I wait for too long for the next Civ and I was upset for the new contents. My favorite game is the Civilization.

In My dream the Civ5 have a changeable nation-alarm-level (5 level like In Real Life), much of units in a gigantic world with lots of techs and much deeper gameplay....

But now as I see the world will smaller than ever, less cities, less units (one unit/tile) ....more populate game (=simple, but nice game)....and thats is very bad news for me.
Maybe these thinks will change when I'll see the full game.

So My favorite mod for ever is a ROM and I waiting for the new Rise Of Mankind mod.
I hope this will shake the Civ 5 gameplay with likeable features, much of thechs, units and much features.
Go Zappara! You can shake the world!

Sorry for my bad english if I have.
 
Been playing several hours straight Civ 5 this morning and got to say that there's lot of new concepts and changes... I checked some xml files too. It's going to take a while to first master the new game and then master the modding of it (need to start learning Lua language too).. At the moment there's no way to unpack the Civ 5 fpk files which contain the graphics and I couldn't find any art define xmls so I have no idea where the graphics are set for each object. Need to figure it out before I can start making new tech tree / icons etc.
 
Been playing several hours straight Civ 5 this morning and got to say that there's lot of new concepts and changes... I checked some xml files too. It's going to take a while to first master the new game and then master the modding of it (need to start learning Lua language too).. At the moment there's no way to unpack the Civ 5 fpk files which contain the graphics and I couldn't find any art define xmls so I have no idea where the graphics are set for each object. Need to figure it out before I can start making new tech tree / icons etc.

Yeah, they have a patch out ALREADY and then on Friday (today) sometime they are SUPPOSED to release the lock on all the rest like WB and ArtDefines.
 
I cant wait to see what you will make Zapp.

This game IMHO has more potential than civ4, with lower units on the map all the added buildings will actually get built... :goodjob:

As it stands... i feel like im playing civ-for-kids.
 
Yesterday I tested if I could make a small mod by copying one example mod and making my own version but apparently Civ 5 doesn't load mods that don't have unique IDs ie. we need the modding the tools before we can add any custom mods to the game because mods need to be sent to the Firaxis mod db.... I guess we'll be playing Civ 5 for some months before we can add any custom mods (without modifying the game's original xml files).

About Civ 5:
- I think the UI needs to be changed - it just seems un-informative for me (after playing RoM). The lack of city screen (well, there's one but it sucks...) and how hard it is to determine what tiles are being worked just annoys me.

- Game AI makes odd decisions. I was having this war with Iroqouis and I had conquered one of their city and was sieging another one when they decided to make a ludicrous peace offer: They gave all their biggest cities, moved capital to smallest city, gave all their gold to me, gave all their stratetic resources to me etc. Basically it seemed like human decision ie. Iroqouis leader must have thought "I quit this game and beat you next time! Here, take all I got and win this game the easy way!"

- Game speed / building speed on normal game speed / standard map isn't balanced. I'm on medieval era and haven't had time to build the simplest buildings - something is wrong here...

- Early in game keeping city states on your side takes all your gold and keeps your few units busy at whacking any barbarians that might threaten their city... and then the barbarians appear next to your land and your military units are on the other side of the map.. :rolleyes:

- Unlocking social policies takes too long. I think I had 3 options unlocked at 200AD even when I had culture building built first in every city.

- Happiness... is a mystery to me. Can't annex conquered cities or your empire gets really mad and with puppet city option you don't control what that city produces... Happiness comes from luxury goods (from City states and by diplomacy) and I think the first happiness building is colosseum which takes too long to build at normal speed...

One thing is sure, this game needs a patch and soon :D
 
Once BUG gets going on Civ 5 the better, never cared about Revolutions at all. But i believe the Tech Tree ought to be the first thing to be made, add in the First new eras, whether you want to call it Prehistoric/Stone/Neo/what ever (minimum of two) then anymore like TransHuman (and others), then work from there, you can add anything from there but without the starting point, it makes it 10 times harder. IMHO.
 
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