YohanLeafheart
Warlord
So, two games I started. First one with Bismarck and second as Catherine. Both on continents, large, prince, epic, and everything else default. With Bismarck I just started the game, founded a few cities to grab the core stuff, with Catherine I won a bloody Domination victory with a final assault by see of Thebes. From everything I see, I'm loving this game, as much as I loved Civ 4, and I don't see myself going back to it. Now for the analysis.
Combat
I think only the most anal player couldn't like the new combat system. Much, much better than how it was before. The 1UPT works like a charm, and the hex makes for a much nicer map. Fighting my way to glory was awesome. If I could improve it, would be the ability to group a civilian with a military unit so they always move together (to scout settlers and Great Generals). And to move by block. SHIFT+Click a group of units, with a spearhead and they should move all on the same direction
Culture and City Borders
Here is something that at the same time I loved and I had problems with. Civ 5 make border overlaps almost mandatory, and you should not worry much about it. Buying titles is a fantastic exercise and a good balance on the economics of your empire (I will come back to this latter). Still on the city, not having to connect the resource was a nice bonus, which allows for easier placement of cities. All in all, I liked, and I spent quite sometime microing the city titles to guarantee that the focus were where I wanted.
City States
Playing as Catherine, I was luck to have a lot of city states around on my map. 5 close to me. City states are awesome, and, besides another balance on your budget, they give you plenty of alternatives to help with the needs of your empire. I would love to see more types in the future, maybe a City State that can give you hammers. Having a maritime ally can be a bless if you have cities on low food locations, like a desert. Military City States are another beast that helped me a lot. After saving Hanoi from a Siam attack and having it indebted with me forever, the units they gave were amazing. Mid-war and suddenly there is a new Knight for you, is not something to take lightly. If you are low on strategic resources, a Military City State will at least give you some good units that you maybe hadn't access. Culture was the disappointment to me. Not worth the trouble. Maybe if you were aiming for the Culture victory, but otherwise not worth the problem.
Wonders
I read a lot of people complaining about the wonders and how they weren't wonder enough, and the lack of video, etc, and that's a complain I really cannot understand. The videos were very, very nice to watch.... once or twice. After that it was auto skip. As for the effects, still as wonderful as before. Free Tech? Free Golden Age? 50% more Golden Age? More culture! More gold! ZERO maintenance! Hell yeah.
Just one more turn syndrome.
I just played for... 10 hours straight. Yeah, it is still there.
Good riddance slider
One of the things that annoyed me in Civ 4 was the science\culture slicer. Small annoying bugger that had to be tweaked from time to time, and the cheapest possible way to guarantee that your economy is not broken (just put everything to gold). The way Civ 5 breaks it, by separating the 3 parameters into three different economies, add happiness as another one connected by production and dependent on one of them (gold because of maintenance) is fantastic. Much more in depth, much more profound. It is no longer just a question of "is it worth the time?", it is a question of "will it pay for itself"
Religion, Espionage and Corporations
Can I say Good Riddance? Yeah, I think I can. Really don't miss either of them.
The Interface. Good ideas with a terrible implementation
So, the interface. There are very good things on it. The messager pop-us are really good and useful, and unobtrusive, so I like them. I miss some more information on the mouse over, even with almost no delay set some things are just not there. The animation of the titles is again an useful thing that is gone. I really liked them. The queue interface needs some tweak, if we could manipulate it with the arrow keys it would be a lot better. For example, allow us to navigate the list of possible builds, and using the 1-6 assign it to an specific slot on the queue. Or simply a shift+click to put the order on top.
The unit interface needs work too. Sometimes the bonus overlap and are hard to see. Same with the attack summary that sometimes don't show all of the bonus that are applied. Talking about bonus, a little more info on the titles would be really useful. For example, how much does a forest give as bonus on defense? That should be on the title tooltip. An option to make the unit data appear with a mouse over instead of only after clicking it would be terrific too. I couldn't find an easy keyboard way of cycling on the units too, so if there is none it is a very good addition.
So the verdict
Yes it is Civ, and it is awesomely good.. No it is not Civ 4 with shinier graphs, it is different, in a lot of aspects. If you can put it on your head you will enjoy a great game. If you wanted Civ with shinier graphs and more stuff, run for your life.
Combat
I think only the most anal player couldn't like the new combat system. Much, much better than how it was before. The 1UPT works like a charm, and the hex makes for a much nicer map. Fighting my way to glory was awesome. If I could improve it, would be the ability to group a civilian with a military unit so they always move together (to scout settlers and Great Generals). And to move by block. SHIFT+Click a group of units, with a spearhead and they should move all on the same direction
Culture and City Borders
Here is something that at the same time I loved and I had problems with. Civ 5 make border overlaps almost mandatory, and you should not worry much about it. Buying titles is a fantastic exercise and a good balance on the economics of your empire (I will come back to this latter). Still on the city, not having to connect the resource was a nice bonus, which allows for easier placement of cities. All in all, I liked, and I spent quite sometime microing the city titles to guarantee that the focus were where I wanted.
City States
Playing as Catherine, I was luck to have a lot of city states around on my map. 5 close to me. City states are awesome, and, besides another balance on your budget, they give you plenty of alternatives to help with the needs of your empire. I would love to see more types in the future, maybe a City State that can give you hammers. Having a maritime ally can be a bless if you have cities on low food locations, like a desert. Military City States are another beast that helped me a lot. After saving Hanoi from a Siam attack and having it indebted with me forever, the units they gave were amazing. Mid-war and suddenly there is a new Knight for you, is not something to take lightly. If you are low on strategic resources, a Military City State will at least give you some good units that you maybe hadn't access. Culture was the disappointment to me. Not worth the trouble. Maybe if you were aiming for the Culture victory, but otherwise not worth the problem.
Wonders
I read a lot of people complaining about the wonders and how they weren't wonder enough, and the lack of video, etc, and that's a complain I really cannot understand. The videos were very, very nice to watch.... once or twice. After that it was auto skip. As for the effects, still as wonderful as before. Free Tech? Free Golden Age? 50% more Golden Age? More culture! More gold! ZERO maintenance! Hell yeah.
Just one more turn syndrome.
I just played for... 10 hours straight. Yeah, it is still there.
Good riddance slider
One of the things that annoyed me in Civ 4 was the science\culture slicer. Small annoying bugger that had to be tweaked from time to time, and the cheapest possible way to guarantee that your economy is not broken (just put everything to gold). The way Civ 5 breaks it, by separating the 3 parameters into three different economies, add happiness as another one connected by production and dependent on one of them (gold because of maintenance) is fantastic. Much more in depth, much more profound. It is no longer just a question of "is it worth the time?", it is a question of "will it pay for itself"
Religion, Espionage and Corporations
Can I say Good Riddance? Yeah, I think I can. Really don't miss either of them.
The Interface. Good ideas with a terrible implementation
So, the interface. There are very good things on it. The messager pop-us are really good and useful, and unobtrusive, so I like them. I miss some more information on the mouse over, even with almost no delay set some things are just not there. The animation of the titles is again an useful thing that is gone. I really liked them. The queue interface needs some tweak, if we could manipulate it with the arrow keys it would be a lot better. For example, allow us to navigate the list of possible builds, and using the 1-6 assign it to an specific slot on the queue. Or simply a shift+click to put the order on top.
The unit interface needs work too. Sometimes the bonus overlap and are hard to see. Same with the attack summary that sometimes don't show all of the bonus that are applied. Talking about bonus, a little more info on the titles would be really useful. For example, how much does a forest give as bonus on defense? That should be on the title tooltip. An option to make the unit data appear with a mouse over instead of only after clicking it would be terrific too. I couldn't find an easy keyboard way of cycling on the units too, so if there is none it is a very good addition.
So the verdict
Yes it is Civ, and it is awesomely good.. No it is not Civ 4 with shinier graphs, it is different, in a lot of aspects. If you can put it on your head you will enjoy a great game. If you wanted Civ with shinier graphs and more stuff, run for your life.
