Initial thoughts

[rastak]

Random civ for the first one on Prince. Started as Rome and have captured a city from France after she got mouthy. Spain is nearby and England on the other side of Spain. Having a fantastic time! The reports screen is extremely well done. Kudos big time.

I'm absolutely happy with how it turned out at launch. Thanks Firaxis! It'll get better as they tweak and balance and the inevitable expansions. I'd love to chat but I gotta get back to see to my empire.

 

[pochesun]

Some more "initial" thoughts:
- I couldn't find the option in diplomacy to bribe/lure AI to start war against another AI or, whats more important for me, to make AI stop waging war against another AI or CC. Anyone can help?
- AI adresses you not that often, unlike CIV 5. Probably it is detirmined by the fact that trading luxury resources is not that appealing for AI (not many in excess and, apparently, he needs every one piece of those for his cities).
- Looks like comercial Hub (district) is bugged or maybe i read it wrong. It says it gets gold for each adjacent river. I assume it describes tiles with access to river, but it only gave me 2 gold though i had at least 3 adjacent river tiles. Weird.
- Still hoping to see the indicator of boarder expansion
- Coastal cities are harder to develop so its crucial to find a good spot to justify settling.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Some more "initial" thoughts:
- I couldn't find the option in diplomacy to bribe/lure AI to start war against another AI or, whats more important for me, to make AI stop waging war against another AI or CC. Anyone can help?
- AI adresses you not that often, unlike CIV 5. Probably it is detirmined by the fact that trading luxury resources is not that appealing for AI (not many in excess and, apparently, he needs every one piece of those for his cities).
- Looks like comercial Hub (district) is bugged or maybe i read it wrong. It says it gets gold for each adjacent river. I assume it describes tiles with access to river, but it only gave me 2 gold though i had at least 3 adjacent river tiles. Weird.
- Still hoping to see the indicator of boarder expansion
- Coastal cities are harder to develop so its crucial to find a good spot to justify settling.

The Youtubers say you can't bribe civs to make war or peace any more. The closest thing is to propose a joint war.

Commercial Hub gets its adjacency bonus for having a river, not per river tile.

 

[Panixs]

I was really confused as to why my units were not healing earlier. It seams that only the most up to date tech units could heal. Is this happening to others or just a bug?

 

[pochesun]

The Youtubers say you can't bribe civs to make war or peace any more. The closest thing is to propose a joint war.

Commercial Hub gets its adjacency bonus for having a river, not per river tile.

ok, thx for the clarification. I wonder, though, why they removed that option from diplomacy.

 

[Frank327]

ok, thx for the clarification. I wonder, though, why they removed that option from diplomacy.

Probably because it was a very common deity strategy to constantly bribe the AI into wars with each other while the player sits back and builds up their empire in peace.

 

[Jeckel]

Do you need a certain tech so that your builders can repair pillaged or damaged stuff?? My Legions can...

I don't know if there is a tech required for builders to repair improvements, I don't think there is as my builder repaired one of my earlier on. If you are talking about pillaged districts, for some reason, you can't repair them with builders, you have to repair them with the city like you originally built them. It is a very strange design choice.

 

[Katakanja]

I don't know if there is a tech required for builders to repair improvements, I don't think there is as my builder repaired one of my earlier on. If you are talking about pillaged districts, for some reason, you can't repair them with builders, you have to repair them with the city like you originally built them. It is a very strange design choice.

I'm quite liking it actually, it encourages you to prioritize defending them over normal improvements if a wave of barbarians comes at you. Also it makes raiding wars against enemies more viable as you can set them back significantly just by pillaging their districts and then running away without going near their city centres. If they could just undo that damage quickly with a builder it wouldn't be anywhere near as useful a tactic

 

[Silverdawn]

Builders make improvements so they repair improvements.

Cities make districts and buildings so they repair districts and building.

 

[Veneke]

Actually enjoyed the gameplay significantly more than I was expecting. Civ 5 at release was nightmarish at times and while I am only a few hours into a game it certainly feels like it plays much better.

It's definitely not without its issues though:
- No build queue is baffling.
- Advanced Start options were also removed for some reason.
- Map type selection is a little barren. I used to play almost exclusively on small continents and Island Plates is too much like Archipelago for me.
- The trader screen (ie when you have a trader and tell him to go from one city to another) feels wonky. That might just be me though.
- Eurekas and Inspirations are much too easily obtained and/or too powerful. I feel like I have a constant Research Agreement running when it comes to science provided I can grab most/all of these, which isn't difficult.
- Mixed feelings about dead-end techs atm. I like them conceptually, but it feels off to be able to ignore archery indefinitely if desired.
- Lack of access to fresh water is actually not as major a hindrance as I would have expected. A granary and a few tile improvements and you're kinda set for a good amount of population.
- The AI has serious issues when it comes to identifying good city placement and popping tribal huts.

All in all though I've got a pretty good first impression of it in only 3ish hours of gameplay.

 

[Grotius]

I'm loving it so far. I like the new, more complex game systems. And the AI seems better to me.

I'd write more but I wanna go play more.

 

[RetiredPeon]

Sorry but, if I may ask, if this 4 points convinced you to ask a refund after 1.5 hrs how many games have you actually managed to buy and keep?

Well, it wasn't "just" those 4 things. Since STEAM only has a 2-hour return policy you have to decide pretty quickly. I think I've only returned 2 games and kept about 8. Sooo, 20%? I may well buy it way down the line. But my (admittedly short) first impressions just didn't do it for me.

Edit: Guess it's more like sitting in a new car. You've done all your research online-- it's got great specs, features, etc. But when you visit the dealer it just doesn't feel right. The gear shift is under the seat. The speedometer is on the door. Visibility is bad. I'm sure it's a great car taken point by point, but it just doesn't FIT. It still sells a million units, but it's just not for you.

 

[Larsenex]

All of my starts as Rome were 'stone' heavy. I am playing on huge maps MINUS one civ from the recommended number. This seems to give more room I love it.

 

[pietro1990]

Warmonger penalty is way to harsh after declaring war one time the whole world will denounce you.

 

[Menzies]

Most of the way through my first game on it. One thing that sticks out as odd is that literally everyone hates eachother, except Teddy and I, who are basically married at this point. Maybe it's just a bad mix of agendas, but the World is essentially sitting about making frowny faces with very little actually happening.

Most of the game systems seem quite fun to play with, the map looks cool and didn't take too long to adjust to. Not entirely sure why there isn't an option to scale the UI for playing on larger screens though. It just looks comical small at points.

I'm also not convinced that the game should say "an unknown player has been defeated" every time Tomyris "integrates" the people of a city state.

I've probably missed something on my first playthrough, but I couldn't find exactly where it stated how close to a border expansion a city was, nor a list of units. Quite tired though, so could have easily missed that.

 

[Zhahz]

Overall I love the game. I played from unlock at 9pm for me to 4am and only stopped since I need to pretend to work today.

There are a few things that REALLY bother me that I hope will get addressed (tooltip delay and lack of option, the unit cycling behavior is jacked, topping my list - I know you can disable cycling via file but there's no wait key nor is there a hotkey that I'm aware of to go to next unit).

Too early for me to judge the AI but in the early eras both mine and my brother's games had plenty of war/carnage and I, myself had a nasty war with Sumeria where the AI not only attacked with alarming force (for prince) but defended his city ruthlessly - both far better executed than anything I ever saw in 5. Also saw Japan take out a city state with an organized group of 10+ units (although the decision to take out the way more valuable city states with open land to settle is odd to me - he REALLY wanted a good coastal city). If the AI is reluctant to war in later eras due to war mongering penalties I'd think that's more design issue than ability of AI to conduct war (at least as a first impression).

Some things about the AI did impress me like fairly beefy attack forces when they did attack early on; very good city defending (but sumerian war carts are damn powerful early so that helped), playing continents and france started on an island and settled on "my" continent very early to be able to expand, I have yet to see a single unbalanced trade deal in my favor - in fact, I've yet to do a trade deal because the AI's are dealing like it's late game civ 5 - they want 3 of my resources for 1gpt kind of thing.

So many things could be discussed.

Some were concerned with tech rate and overpowered eurekas but I'd say that's not a problem. It is NOT easy to do all the euraka things, especially if you get into an early war and have to crank out units instead of doing eureka things. You almost have to make going for eurekas a mini game to really nail them and so many of those things won't fit what you're actually wanting to do - I pulled off some from LP viewing experience - as a new player I don't know them well enough and couldn't juggle things well enough - way too much other stuff going on. I got somewhat bailed out by getting eurekas via great scientists otherwise things would've been even more bleak (eureka wise).

Even after watching dev and let's plays some changes were way more impactful than expected, like the difference in movement and requiring movement for combat changes things so much. Exploration is also tough because of it (and not being able to enter city states unless you're at good relations means sometimes parts of the map are blocked, barb ships pummel land units, etc.

The game in some ways feels influenced by the community balance patch. Tile growth in cities is brutally slow at first and there aren't a ton of culture options to push that (and with limits on building districts you can't just build whatever); the movement changes slow down some things; the seemingly insane power of some wonders, natural wonders, and GP, a lot of things you build take ages to build, and so on. You really have to juggle civics and think more about what you're doing if you don't want it all to take an eternity.

" It's very possible that they updated the AI between the Battle Royale"

Possible and/or like I've been saying about this - that was just ONE "royale" and civ is a very dynamic game with a ton of replay or we wouldn't love it so much. IMO people put WAY too much stock into the results of a single AI v AI match. Coding and testing takes a long time, you don't just make radical alterations to your AI in one day and slap out a hotfix.

 

[agonistes]

Actually enjoyed the gameplay significantly more than I was expecting.

I am loving it. Game is awesome. Thanks again for the VPN tip. Woo hoo! Only thing really driving me bonkers is the delay when you go to move a unit. The 'target' doesn't follow your cursor right away. Could be my hardware I guess.

I am playing on huge maps MINUS one civ from the recommended number. This seems to give more room I love it.

Hmm. I am doing that but with +1 instead of -1. I don't know who I would cut. I have: Russia, Germany, Spain, France, England. Then India, China, Japan, Arabia. Egypt and Kongo. And America. Finally Rome. So what I consider the 'modern core'

I guess Rome is the one that doesn't fit... but, man, hard to cut Rome. The problem is WE NEED BIGGER MAPS. Modders?

I guess I could play a wide and sparse 'ancient' game.... Rome, Egypt, Sumeria, Scythia, China, Greece, maybe Aztec and Kongo for giggles. I've been wanting to start as China or Egypt... guess its a good game for it.

 

[TruthfulCake]

There are a few things that REALLY bother me that I hope will get addressed (tooltip delay and lack of option, the unit cycling behavior is jacked, topping my list - I know you can disable cycling via file but there's no wait key nor is there a hotkey that I'm aware of to go to next unit).

Doesn't the Return key work for going to the next unit?

 

[sonicmyst]

I just finished my culture game as Egypt. The end cinematics sucks =(

 

[Zhahz]

One thing I forgot to mention that I think is important...

Game feels ultra smooth. Plays amazingly smooth. Pretty sure I have all the graphics set to max (minus bloom since I generally don't like it). Game feels solid.