Day One Observations

[comatosedragon]

So, I just successfully quit my first game of CIV V! Just a couple of things I noticed in the first 2 hours or so of gameplay that I would like to share.

1) No Civelopedia access from the main menu?! This is unforgivable (and probably one of the first things to be patched).

2) No in-game clock. Not a big deal, and again something which will probably be patched soon.

3) Ships can not heal? I'm not sure if I am missing something here, but it seems that the only way to heal a ship is with the instant heal promotion. Odd.

4) Fortify until heal button does not tell you how many turns it takes to heal your units! And, unlike in CIV IV, there seems to be no "mouse over" info box.

5) The Great Barrier Reef (which covers two tiles) seems to give you the happiness bonuses for each tile (I got +1 happiness on one turn, and then another +1 on the next turn when I moved my unit and uncovered the other tile). Not sure if this is intended or not, but still good to know I guess!

6) Chopping forests adds 20 production "to the nearest city". Unfortunately, if you have a forest equal distance between two cities and chop, there is no way to know which city will get the production.

7) Suleiman (Ottomans) seems to be a major tech-whore. He entered the medieval period before 0AD!

8) Civelopedia needs some serious work. Although much more information is presented this time around, the 'pedia is as much as (if not more) or a jumbled up mess as Vanilla Civ IV. Even features added (like the search box) which should make things easier are just plain broken. Typing "pacts" (to find information on scientific or cooperation pacts) and hitting search just returns "No information on 'pacts' could be found.

Anyway, just a couple of nit-picky things, overall the game feels like CIV (although to me it feels like a much SLOWER pace, but then again I have only played 1 game for about 2 hours), looks beautiful, and seems to be just as scalable as we were promised all along.

(Oh, and in case anyone cares, my first game was as Iroquois, continents, Prince, Normal)

 

[Taiyama]

3) Ships can not heal? I'm not sure if I am missing something here, but it seems that the only way to heal a ship is with the instant heal promotion. Odd.

I believe I heard in a review--though I'm afraid I couldn't track down where it was exactly--that you have to heal ships in friendly territory. You can't in neutral or enemy. Do you think that might be your problem?

 

[comatosedragon]

Well, I wouldn't say it is "my problem", but you are probably right (and I was going to test this, just did not feel like moving halfway across the world before posting!)

 

[kattana]

from pg 62 of the manual

Naval units cannot heal unless in Friendly territory, where they heal 2 HPs per turn.

 

[Kopernikus1979]

To put in my 2 cents:

1. cities now grow when you build a worker
2. there is no information how long a worker still needs for building a field improvement while the worker is building it
3. in cities you can not create a production line anymore

Just playing the demo until Friday

 

[Abyss08]

I am pretty sure that number 1 is by design, the civilopedia changes depending on the game type you are in, or mod, or scenario.

 

[Dermo]

I believe I heard in a review--though I'm afraid I couldn't track down where it was exactly--that you have to heal ships in friendly territory. You can't in neutral or enemy. Do you think that might be your problem?

It says this in the manual "Naval units cannot heal unless in friendly territory where they heal 2HP per turn"

Would be interesting to see though if you could embark a land unit with the Medic promotion and have it sit with a Naval Unit in enemy territory

 

[comatosedragon]

2. there is no information how long a worker still needs for building a field improvement while the worker is building it

Yeah, this kind of sucks.

3. in cities you can not create a production line anymore

I'm not sure what you mean by "production line"; but if you're talking about queuing up builds, this option does still exist. I'm not sure if it's in the demo though.

 

[Olleus]

You have to toggle on the 'queue' option on the city view (bottom left, second icon) to have queues.

I played in the demo as Greece and allied with venice - never got any food in my capital or elsewhere.

When attacking a city, I didn't seem to get any bonuses for discipline, which was annoying.

Its really hard to figure out where all the unhappiness comes from - its not the simple formula we thought it was. All that I know is that I was rolling in the stuff (warlord difficulty). I had LOTS of happiness resources and allied city states. It is very much worth saving up and using 500 gold to insta buy an ally.

The diplomacy screen isn't too bad. It makes it fairly obvious what your relations/trade with other leaders/city states are. However, it would be nice to have a menu summarising all the different quests that have been sent. I would also like to know what the leaders think of each other. Oh, and what the hell does a pact of co-operation actually do?

I really like the new diplomacy system though - Caesar asked me to declare war on Rammses, I said give me 10 turns, he asked me at that point to declare war and I declined - preferring to capture Berlin instead.

Cities are really hard to capture. I just about managed to capture Stockholm (size 5 - defence 15), with a general, 2 hoplites and a companion cavalry. I had to use the heal instantly promotion, which by the way counts as a promotion and causes the 'cost' of the next promotion to rise. As far as I can tell it goes 10, 20, 60. Never went beyond that.

Borders expand very slowly - was barely keeping up with my population growth. That said, apart form buying a few resource tiles early on, I didn't need to buy any more. All my gold was spent on city states (although I think I rushed a worker for Berlin).

 

[juijin]

im pretty sure you still can see how long a worker needs, on the bottom right when you click the worker it has *improvement name* (*number of turns*)
or maybe my workers are just special XD

 

[Kopernikus1979]

Yeah, I mean queuing up builds. In the demo it does not work.

@Juijin: you can not see how many turns are left when a worker IS building the improvement

 

[LordGek]

Well, I wouldn't say it is "my problem", but you are probably right (and I was going to test this, just did not feel like moving halfway across the world before posting!)

I wonder if this is purely a bit of game balance as I could see a few ships just decimating one's coastline with few ways to effectively counter if you can't get some ships out there of your own. At least with most land units you'll have many more ways to counter them.

The Supply promotion will give you the healing ability of 2 hp a turn even outside of Friendly Territory.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

My observation: my internet connection sucks.

 

[Dr Darkspeed]

Couple of things i noticed from the demo:

A scout got upgraded to an archer via a ruin, and the new unit kept the scouts ability to ignore movement penalties.

Any units set on auto-explore will happily trespass in City States land.

I started playing the demo and it suddenly got dark outside.

 

[Lancor]

I'm not sure what you mean by "production line"; but if you're talking about queuing up builds, this option does still exist. I'm not sure if it's in the demo though.

It is.

 

[warpstorm]

Yeah, I mean queuing up builds. In the demo it does not work.

Sure it does. I just tried it. All you need to do is click "Show Queue".

 

[lymond]

yep, you can queue and it actually is easier than 4 in that you can do it with the mouse only.

 

[kattana]

Yeah, I mean queuing up builds. In the demo it does not work.

im playing the demo here at work and when i click on a city tab to open its screen up, there is a little box at the left saying "show queue" when i place a check in it, i can then queue up things to build.

 

[edmund22]

Cities are really hard to capture. I just about managed to capture Stockholm (size 5 - defence 15), with a general, 2 hoplites and a companion cavalry.

You need few archers from second row, then it's a lot easier. But still very challenging

 

[warpstorm]

However, it would be nice to have a menu summarising all the different quests that have been sent.

The Diplomacy popup has this. The little icons show what quests the City-States have with a tooltip.