My first impressions: Not good

[Unionfield]

I have just finished my second game -- first: Warlord, second: Prince -- and here are some first impressions.

Good:

- The combat system is structured in a far more realistic way. Cities having their own defense points with one unit to garrison makes far more sense. Also, the one-unit-per-tile system makes combat a lot more nimble and thought-provoking.

- The social policies and City-States are pretty cool.

Bad:

- The AI is way, way too aggressive. In both games I played, war was declared on me within 20 turns and it took more than 30 turns each time to get the sides to *start* negotiating peace. It seems like the AI issues highlighted by a few reviewers were right on the money. It wouldn't be that bad if...

- ... it didn't take *forever* to build anything. For more or less the entire game, my capital city was the only one to build at a reasonable rate. My other cities were essentially useless -- all producing units/buildings once every twenty turns on average. With my gold and research production operating normally, how does this make sense?

- The graphics are a huge disappointment. Wasn't this game built with state-of-the-art DirectX 11 rendering? I have my graphics cranked and I'm not sure I see 1-2 generations of technology difference between Civ V and IV.

- There are definitely some bugs left over in the game (i.e. glitches, flickering, etc.)

- The interface feels a lot clunkier than the one in Civ V.

My way of judging sequels is this: how much does the sequel make you miss playing the previous iteration? So far, I'd definitely rather deal with stacks of doom and the like than what I've seen so far. I'm jumping into another game to try to turn my first impressions around. Anyways, these are just my opinions.

 

[Mustakrakish]

I played the demo and only on turn 80 or something Germans declared war and came begging for peace as soon as I showed up on their borders with couple of units. No one else declared war on me. So that argument of yours is now moot.

Of course there will be bugs! We don't even have the game yet here in Europe. You know what they usually do with bugs? they fix them.

There are some problems with interface yes, mainly not seeing your resources in the city screen for example. Some confusion not being able to see who is protecting who... Pacts of cooperation are kinda confusing, but I hope someone who understand how they work exactly will explain...

Overall the game is amazing, simply getting through the turn feels like something, sense of achievement is big, the atmosphere (if that's the right word) is amazing, music is awesome... Just a couple of things from my first impressions.

If you really want to instead play civ4, no one is keeping you from doing so...

 

[Unionfield]

You've only played the demo. Don't offer an opinion on the full game until you've played it.

 

[Zeppelin4]

I'm in to my second game and so far the AI has been pretty passive. Maybe it has something to do with my Bab Archers. I have yet to encounter one bug and have not seen this flicker your talking about. I have my game set to Prince level.

I like the graphics so far and I'm pretty impressed with the leader animations. I have not played a whole lot but I find the interface to be great. To each his own I guess.

 

[Ahriman]

Bad:

- The AI is way, way too aggressive. In both games I played, war was declared on me within 20 turns and it took more than 30 turns each time to get the sides to *start* negotiating peace. It seems like the AI issues highlighted by a few reviewers were right on the money. It wouldn't be that bad if...

This sounds like good news to me; it seems like you have the difficulty set too high for you, or you didn't have a sufficiently large military.

Why *should* the AI be willing to negotiate for peace if its winning?

 

[ValugaTheLord]

Well i have played demo for more than 80turns.. i did play as every race and twice as egypt )

My experience was good.. didn't find much bugs and only thing that really bugs me are rivers :\

As for interfaces.. they could be better i think.. but i did get along even tho i could not find some maintenance info but figured out with F1

But all of this is no reason to rant over such a greath product it has everything i would even want and more

for example social policies are greath to construct such empire you want and create make it trully interesting to play way you intend!

Battle is way better than it was in any other CiV! It actually involves thinking this time around!

So yea.. its best thing ever!

 

[Sphinx]

I pwnt romans with my greeks . Hoplites with a great general supporting them are very powerful. (demo)

 

[lou4gehrig]

Most of the complaints seem to based on people's expectations using Civ IV strategies. This is not a sequel. It's a new game. Maybe you got attacked in turn 20 because you're using antiquated Civ 4 techniques to defend your empire. Maybe there are new areas of focus that would prevent attacks. You get attacked when in a position of weakness.

As for the graphics, true eye-candy helps some, but I'd rather have the game playable in turn 300 with 20 civs and huge map than having pretty trees that sway in the wind. It's just like HD TV, after awhile you get so used to the graphics you don't even notice it.

 

[Mightion]

I'm still playing the tutorial, and just conquered Cape Town, so I don't have much to say besides:

1. The game is beautiful. I haven't really seen any graphics bugs, and it set everything on my Core i7 920 and GTX 275 CO OP to High.

2. I concur, building things does seem slow, but considering I seem to have more gold than I know what to do with, buying units is nice.

3. I love how a ranged attack can destroy an enemy melee unit with one volley sometimes.

4. Is it just me, or are roads not needed everywhere? Makes the map look a bit cleaner.

5. Resources "running out" seems to be new. (I never played the demo.)

6. EDIT: Is it me, or is the game really fussy when it comes to scrolling when the pointer is moved to the right edge of the screen?
Anyway, currently debating whether to push Bismarck into the ocean, or just start a "real" game.

 

[krunsh]

I'm playing on prince (around 1250 ad I think) and no one has declared war on me yet. I'm playing on standard time and it seems like I have something to do almost everyturn with 3 city that I build and now 3 more city conquered (were puppet and slowly annexed after).

Like you said, combat is good and policies + city states are awesome.

About ''the bad'': The IA never declared war on me (Persia, Siam and babylone). My advisor say that I am supperior to siam and persia millitary and equal to babylone so maybe that's why they don't try anything stupid... I was impressed by the IA when I conquered the persian capital. When I went to capture a second city, he offered me the city and pretty much all is gold and ressource for peace. I like that. So clearly, your AI problem are not a general thing.

Like I said, my three city are pretty productive (actualy, one of them is not since it's in the desert and jsut have lots of farm around the rivers... but that's normal.).

Graphics are greeat (well like in the video we saw...) so I guess it's a matter of opinion.

About glitches, I had one: 3d leader skins turned multicolor. I saved and reloaded and it was gone.

And the interface is great, it's my favorite new thing about the game. The pop up are way better than the system in civ 4 and everything is just extremly clean.

EDIT: Crap! I just realized that by annexing 3 more city I obliterated my chanced of a cultural victory... wich is what I was aiming for lol.

Oh well, Gotta learn the hard way

 

[krunsh]

I'm playing on prince (around 1250 ad I think) and no one has declared war on me yet. I'm playing on standard time and it seems like I have something to do almost everyturn with 3 city that I build and now 3 more city conquered (were puppet and slowly annexed after).

Like you said, combat is good and policies + city states are awesome.

About ''the bad'': The IA never declared war on me (Persia, Siam and babylone). My advisor say that I am supperior to siam and persia millitary and equal to babylone so maybe that's why they don't try anything stupid... I was impressed by the IA when I conquered the persian capital. When I went to capture a second city, he offered me the city and pretty much all is gold and ressource for peace. I like that. So clearly, your AI problem are not a general thing.

Like I said, my three city are pretty productive (actualy, one of them is not since it's in the desert and jsut have lots of farm around the rivers... but that's normal.).

Graphics are greeat (well like in the video we saw...) so I guess it's a matter of opinion.

About glitches, I had one: 3d leader skins turned multicolor. I saved and reloaded and it was gone.

And the interface is great, it's my favorite new thing about the game. The pop up are way better than the system in civ 4 and everything is just extremly clean.

 

[Morlark]

Most of the complaints seem to based on people's expectations using Civ IV strategies. This is not a sequel. It's a new game. Maybe you got attacked in turn 20 because you're using antiquated Civ 4 techniques to defend your empire. Maybe there are new areas of focus that would prevent attacks. You get attacked when in a position of weakness.

Well, given that most of the complaints have been "the interface is bad", I'm really not sure how you're reading Civ4 strategies into that. And for the record, the interface is indeed objectively worse than Civ4. I don't think it's awful. But I'd certainly not rate it any higher than adequate. And, uh, I think you'll find that Civ5 is in fact the very definition of a sequel to Civ4.

 

[Tarkhan]

Yeah, really happy about the lack of "road spaghetti" all over the world.

 

[Cilpot]

I've only played the demo, so I can't comment on anything but the graphics. Of them, I only have to say..

.. I'm a bit disappointed.

I have all settings maxed out, and I don't think the level of detail is the issue. Cities, units and resources looks faboulous. As does the interface. The terrains however. They are horrible. There's a sort of gray-green-yellow filter on everything and the textures for the different terrain types look really... bland. Not to mention the rivers. My oh my. And the jungles and forests lack all detail.

It reminds me of vanilla Civ III graphics. I really hope for a Snoopy-esque graphics pack here

In the latest months I've mostly been playing Fall from Heaven 2, and the terrain graphics there should be a lesson for people making such graphics. It's a perfect example of saturated doesn't necessarily mean cartoonish.

My two cents

 

[krunsh]

.. I'm a bit disappointed.

I have all settings maxed out, and I don't think the level of detail is the issue. Cities, units and resources looks faboulous. As does the interface. The terrains however. They are horrible. There's a sort of gray-green-yellow filter on everything and the textures for the different terrain types look really... bland. Not to mention the rivers. My oh my. And the jungles and forrests lack all detail.

I'm not sure we are playing the same game...

 

[lemmy101]

"The interface feels a lot clunkier"

What????

Whatever you could possibly say about Civ V, to say the UI is anything but spectacularly better than 4 is ludicrous.

 

[Minmaster]

city states are annoying as hell... the first one i met i gifted them money several times but then they slowly decide they don't want to be friends... so i just ended up conquering them. and every other turn is some city state whining and begging for stuff even though i barely know them... STOP BUGGING ME!

 

[El Caballerion]

So far, so good for me. The graphics are kinda okay, but then again, I'm using a 256 mb card, so I can't complain.

 

[Cilpot]

I'm not sure we are playing the same game...

Well, here, for example, is a scene from FfH of "empty" lands. Grassland, forest, coast, rivers. I think these graphics are much more polished and alive than Civ V.

 

[bernlin2000]

The graphics...I mean, if you thought you were going to be playing Crysis, then you were misinformed: none of the civilization games have ever had state-of-the-art graphics, they're turn-based games so it shouldn't be expected. They look better than CivIV, that's really all I expected. I'm still learning the UI, so it certainly seems more clunky than CivIV, but I played that game for 5 years. You haven't even played the game for a day, so give it time

Well, here, for example, is a scene from FfH of "empty" lands. Grassland, forest, coast, rivers. I think these graphics are much more polished and alive than Civ V.

Not "alive" but certainly bolder colors than CiV. Everything in this game looks smoother and even a bit fuzzy (not necessarily in a bad way). I can't wait for a Blue Marble texture pack though: I always prefer more distinction between different terrain types: it's hard to distinguish between plains, desert, and grassland (should be more green).