I've played for about 8 hours now. I don't know if this game can pull me away from Civ4. I like the combat. It's easily the best addition. The animated, talking leaders are nice too. But the overall graphics seem worse than Civ4 unless they change completely with the highest graphic settings. I read somewhere else someone complained that the rivers were ugly and don't blend in well with the ocean, and that the trees look painted on, and I have to agree.
I'm not impressed with the music either. Civ4's music was perfect, but Civ5's music just doesn't seem to fit good. There doesn't seem to be any era-specific music. I think I've heard the same song from Ancient to Medieval era. The music is so unmemorable, that I can't even think of how it goes.
The game in general seems slow. It took forever to get out of BC. I miss wandering animals. I think the effects of gold and happiness is too excessive. The game penalizes you too much for growth and rewards you too much for spamming trading posts to buy instead of build.
The save/load menu is horrible. I thought the interface in Civ4 was just fine, and the Civ5 UI seems clunky and is missing vital info. Especially the Civilopedia. It's way too difficult to find out information, and usually I can't find it in the Civilopedia, things like what promotions unlock which promotions. And no hyperlinks to other info in entries. I don't like diplomacy. I can't tell what other Civs think of me unless they're hostile or at war with me.
The game in general seems to have major balance issues. It feels like I'm flying through the tech tree.
The AI does seem pretty weird. I had Russia to the north of me and Persia even farther north. Russia clearly hated me. I built a couple border cities to block off access to my land. Meanwhile I was friendly with Persia and made lots of deals. Persia still only has one city and it's almost AD. I see a huge Persian army traveling south past my northern border city all the way down, deep into my territory to my capital city. Even with open borders running out, it was impossible to stop them from crossing my territory since you can embark pretty much anywhere pretty early. Either way, they were obviously going to betray me, and it was in a very stupid strategic move, and I easily crushed his huge army with pretty much a couple warriors, an archer, and my city defenses. It seemed like Persia spent the whole game just building units to send to the slaughter in a pointless war against a far city they had no hope of capturing.
But the worst thing is the crashing. I have two crashes I can reproduce no matter what. The first was running in DirectX10 version, and zooming in on my unit would instantly crash the game. The second is from loading a save game after already loading one. I have to completely quit to desktop to load another game. The game doesn't even have tips during the load screen. Just forces you to watch the same leader screen.
Anyways. Had to get that off my chest. I didn't expect it to be like Civ4, but so many design choices seem like a step backwards. I don't want to be one of those people that say this game sucks. But I feel it needs some honest criticism.
I'm not impressed with the music either. Civ4's music was perfect, but Civ5's music just doesn't seem to fit good. There doesn't seem to be any era-specific music. I think I've heard the same song from Ancient to Medieval era. The music is so unmemorable, that I can't even think of how it goes.
The game in general seems slow. It took forever to get out of BC. I miss wandering animals. I think the effects of gold and happiness is too excessive. The game penalizes you too much for growth and rewards you too much for spamming trading posts to buy instead of build.
The save/load menu is horrible. I thought the interface in Civ4 was just fine, and the Civ5 UI seems clunky and is missing vital info. Especially the Civilopedia. It's way too difficult to find out information, and usually I can't find it in the Civilopedia, things like what promotions unlock which promotions. And no hyperlinks to other info in entries. I don't like diplomacy. I can't tell what other Civs think of me unless they're hostile or at war with me.
The game in general seems to have major balance issues. It feels like I'm flying through the tech tree.
The AI does seem pretty weird. I had Russia to the north of me and Persia even farther north. Russia clearly hated me. I built a couple border cities to block off access to my land. Meanwhile I was friendly with Persia and made lots of deals. Persia still only has one city and it's almost AD. I see a huge Persian army traveling south past my northern border city all the way down, deep into my territory to my capital city. Even with open borders running out, it was impossible to stop them from crossing my territory since you can embark pretty much anywhere pretty early. Either way, they were obviously going to betray me, and it was in a very stupid strategic move, and I easily crushed his huge army with pretty much a couple warriors, an archer, and my city defenses. It seemed like Persia spent the whole game just building units to send to the slaughter in a pointless war against a far city they had no hope of capturing.
But the worst thing is the crashing. I have two crashes I can reproduce no matter what. The first was running in DirectX10 version, and zooming in on my unit would instantly crash the game. The second is from loading a save game after already loading one. I have to completely quit to desktop to load another game. The game doesn't even have tips during the load screen. Just forces you to watch the same leader screen.
Anyways. Had to get that off my chest. I didn't expect it to be like Civ4, but so many design choices seem like a step backwards. I don't want to be one of those people that say this game sucks. But I feel it needs some honest criticism.
