Lord Tirian
Erratic Poster
Or: "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love to Button" 
So, my impressions/mini-review about Civ5, after I (as European) finally got hold of the game (instead of just the demo). Let's start with the tl;dr version:
Great game, one of this year's highlights. Worth the price of admission and absolutely a Civilization game - the series is better for having it. It's not perfect, but none of the Civ games before were. So: Thumbs up!
The short version out of the way, let's talk about the one thing that stood out to me:
Civilization V is *not* a sequel to CivIV.
Let me explain: Once upon a time, we had CivI, then CivII... which actually had too sequels: CivIII and SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, for those who don't know). CivIV was in many ways a sequel to both of them and contained many elements of SMAC, though polished up (civics, importance of unit experience, unit customisation, civilisations with different traits) and a key part of the philosophy: modularity. SMAC and CivIV (and to a lesser extent CivIII) had a lot of subsystems and was very compartmentalised: the aforementioned civics, unit customisation, the advisor screens, culture/border management.
Compared to that, CivII back then, was a lot more simpler in structure: It had a couple of main systems, complexity emerged from the interplay of them; an example would be CivII spies - not some espionage subsystems - ...just semi-regular units with some special abilites "tacked on" to the normal unit system. And not only in terms of overall design, even in terms of aesthetics: very stylised icons (though in CivII that was a technical necessity), full-screen diplomacy, advisors, city-graphics that are a lot simpler (instead of showing every building, it mainly highlights the city's size + a couple of very important buildings) etc.
And as "back to the roots" sequel to CivII with picking the best bits out of CivIII and CivIV, Civ5 is a lot easier to understand. And as such, it works brilliantly.
To top this observations off, a couple of high and low points:
Great stuff:
...and some not so good:
Cheers, LT.
So, my impressions/mini-review about Civ5, after I (as European) finally got hold of the game (instead of just the demo). Let's start with the tl;dr version:
Great game, one of this year's highlights. Worth the price of admission and absolutely a Civilization game - the series is better for having it. It's not perfect, but none of the Civ games before were. So: Thumbs up!
The short version out of the way, let's talk about the one thing that stood out to me:
Civilization V is *not* a sequel to CivIV.
Let me explain: Once upon a time, we had CivI, then CivII... which actually had too sequels: CivIII and SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, for those who don't know). CivIV was in many ways a sequel to both of them and contained many elements of SMAC, though polished up (civics, importance of unit experience, unit customisation, civilisations with different traits) and a key part of the philosophy: modularity. SMAC and CivIV (and to a lesser extent CivIII) had a lot of subsystems and was very compartmentalised: the aforementioned civics, unit customisation, the advisor screens, culture/border management.
Compared to that, CivII back then, was a lot more simpler in structure: It had a couple of main systems, complexity emerged from the interplay of them; an example would be CivII spies - not some espionage subsystems - ...just semi-regular units with some special abilites "tacked on" to the normal unit system. And not only in terms of overall design, even in terms of aesthetics: very stylised icons (though in CivII that was a technical necessity), full-screen diplomacy, advisors, city-graphics that are a lot simpler (instead of showing every building, it mainly highlights the city's size + a couple of very important buildings) etc.
And as "back to the roots" sequel to CivII with picking the best bits out of CivIII and CivIV, Civ5 is a lot easier to understand. And as such, it works brilliantly.
To top this observations off, a couple of high and low points:
Great stuff:
- New combat - hexes, ranged fire and 1upt make combat fun! And I'm a builder.
- Cities! *Fwooosh* go my little rockets at the puny barbarians!
- City states... they're pretty amazing, it's cool to deal with them, cool to have them as friends, cool to wipe them out. And they give the world a very "living" feeling with their requests.
- Embarkation, soooooo convenient. And I like the new little transport ships.
- Love the new great people, less random, more powerful effects and neat way of "settling" them.
- The look and feel - it really captures some nostalgic feel from older Civs, not sure how it does that, but it feels a lot less "cold" or "technical" than CivIII/CivIV.
- Extra point for the terrain - it's mostly amazing (not everything, but the things they got right, they *got* right)
- Global happiness - a great example how simple things can still be interesting and complex, because *wow* it works a lot better than the previous ways of busting REX and ICS, without being fiddly.
...and some not so good:
- The slightly whimsical UI; don't get me wrong, I love the look & feel, some some parts of it feel really unorganised, especially the diplo overviews - a web-style overview over wars and your own deals would've been *very* welcome.
- The AI... is a bit dumb. It's not terrible, but I've been spoilt by the Better BTS AI - and seeing the general suckage in the naval sector is really, really sad; especially since embarkation + 1upt + ranged fire would invite some really fierce and interesting fleet action
- Barbarians are neat during the early game... but trireme pirates in 2000 AD? Me thinks that's not quite what happened... not to mention: not very challanging, eh?
- A bit rough around the edges: yeah, a couple of things appear to need a bit of extra polishing - e.g. graphics. I miss the intercept planes swirling around my cities, the rivers need a make-over (though having looked through the art book, I can see what they were going for... just not quite there yet, sadly) - having the pentagon in the ocean and the great lighthouse landlocked (graphics-wise) is silly... zooming/turning the camera was cool in CivIV... and the options menu could need some more options (in-game clock, skip intro movie and so on).
- The Earth maps! Dammit, but there is no land bridge between France and England! They... could've needed some make-over, just to get the close-up shapes a bit better.
Cheers, LT.
