Does anyone know what the printed manual is like?

[charon2112]

I love a good manual, especially for games like Civ. My Civ IV manual is quite dog-eared from being read many times in many places... Does anyone know how the Civ V manual is? Any idea of a page count...?

Thanks

 

[Dale]

There's 374 pages, of which 8 are the index, 3 the table of contents, and there's 18 colour pages in the middle with concept art. The rest of the manual is full of in-depth explanations of every topic, and near the end is the full civolopedia. Oh, and chapter 1 is a 56 page tutorial which leads you from the start to about the renaissance.

I kid...... no one's seen the manual yet, how will we know what it's like?

Though I remember 2K Greg posting something about it being a dynamic navigable PDF file to cut down on trees chopped.

 

[cccv]

Non existant. pdf only. You can always print it out though if you have plenty of ink and paper. 200+ pages.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=377452

 

[Jaybe]

No, there has been no mention of a printed manual, because there ISN'T one. Hopefully a little foldout to get you started

Included in the retail copies is a small quick-start manual to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

(and my forlorn hopes for a keyboard layout).

It's an interactive PDF manual you will get. Enjoy the game for itself.

EDIT: Oooh, just a few crossposts!

 

[Dale]

HA! Beat you all to it.

 

[cccv]

But I was more informative, so booya.

 

[Dale]

Read the last line of my post.

SNAP!

 

[cccv]

I actually posted the link though =o

....which, OP, leads to a thread where you can actually see a sample of it if you're interested.

 

[edpovi]

There's 374 pages, of which 8 are the index, 3 the table of contents, and there's 18 colour pages in the middle with concept art. The rest of the manual is full of in-depth explanations of every topic, and near the end is the full civolopedia. Oh, and chapter 1 is a 56 page tutorial which leads you from the start to about the renaissance.
...

That was just pure evil...

 

[Dale]

That was just pure evil...

All Aussies are evil, I thought everyone knew that.

 

[charon2112]

Non existant. pdf only.

That really, really sucks...it has nothing to do with trees, they just want to save a buck. I remember the huge manual that came with Civ II very fondly. What if I want to read it away from home, or in the bathroom?

Very disappointing.

 

[demidyad]

Well I dunno about you, but I can read PDFs away from home and in the bathroom

 

[charon2112]

Well I dunno about you, but I can read PDFs away from home and in the bathroom

not the same. and as long as we let companies screw us like this, it'll just get worse.

 

[Ahriman]

Does anyone know how the Civ V manual is?

Kinda chewy. Passes well though.

 

[Windsor]

Even in the 'good old days' where nobody patched their game those manuals where always incorrect. Now, when patches gets applied even before you play the game for the first time, printed manuals are totally obsolete.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Kinda chewy. Passes well though.

Lots of fiber!

 

[obscurereferenc]

That's a shame. I love a good civ manual to flick through. It takes me back to my first civ purchase. It was some kind of deluxe edition of civ 2, a big blue box with a picture of the statue of liberty, a big wall chart and a thick manual. Made the game seem really big and grown up and important.

Yeah I guess we don't really need it though.

 

[Louis XXIV]

not the same. and as long as we let companies screw us like this, it'll just get worse.

They could always pass the cost of printing and shipping the manual onto the consumer. Then we'd be "screwed" by the printing of the manual instead of the omission. I think people use the phrase "screw us" to lightly these days

 

[demidyad]

Even if they don't pass the savings onto the consumer, say if the game has a $5m budget, and they save say 1% of the budget by not printing manuals, then it allows them to put that 1% to other areas that benefit the majority of players a lot more. e.g. more QA

 

[deanej]

What makes you think they pass it anywhere except into the CEO's bank account? Let's be realistic here.

When I bought BtS (away from home) I was hoping to learn all the info that wasn't released online during the ride home by reading the manual. Imagine my disappointment to see that the manual was basically an advertisement for the civilopedia. And civ5 is even worse!

Given that smart phones are very expensive, I doubt most people can read a PDF anywhere but their computer.