My review of the livecast

[Schuesseled]

too bad, guess you'll have to join one of the many boycotts.

I thought it looked sweet.

 

[Horserush]

Yeah I don't know how you guys can complain about the graphics, they are a huge improvement over civ4 for sure. In particular I really liked the sand dune graphic. The rivers still aren't perfect but whatever, the rest is awesome.

 

[Boris Godunov]

The river estuary looked like poop. A big light blue blob

What on earth have YOU been eating?

Seriously, yeah, the river graphics were about the only thing in the game that I found to be disappointing and ugly (aside from the city walls, which we know are not the final look anyway).

 

[Tylerryan79]

I really enjoyed when he loaded the game, and it went all wacky. That was a great wtf moment! And Elizabeth was quick too, shes like "Oh that new graphics card! You guys know how that is! Right?". Boy was I laughing!

 

[Boris Godunov]

The hills looked so unnatural, as if it was a rippled bedsheet or something.

You mean like...





I've been on enough cross-country flights to know that, by and large, that's what hills look like from the perspective the game takes.

 

[Schuesseled]

When i first saw the river estuary it took me a minute to adjust to the two blue interseeding each other, but other than that i think it looks fine.

 

[SeismoGraf]

One thing that really bugged me about the game was that they said the game was played on a high end machin, yet the graphics seemed so bad. The hills looked so unnatural, as if it was a rippled bedsheet or something. Also the colors looked horrible. I did not like the look one bit.

Probably just the lower resolution and compression of the video. I watched it full-screen and of course it was not at all comparable to high-res screenshots:



Resolution is lower, things get blurry, details lost, colors altered. All this is normal for a live stream.

 

[cracked]

The graphics look fine, and the gameplay looks like it will be allot better than CIV IV. Too much was broken in CIV IV and the expansions exacerbated some of those problems.

The way dilpomacy is handled is also better. How meaningful is a friendly attitude if the AI will declare war on you anyway if it wants to win? I played CIV IV plenty of times thinking an AI was friendly to me only to have it turn round and backstab me later.

Religion would have been nice, but it isn't vital really is it. And being able to use gold to research would have been good as well. I can see the inability to trade techs making harder levels really tough, but that aspect always seemed to favour the AI if it could tech faster anyway.

My only complaint with CIV V so far is the dearth of special units/buildings and how limited some of the special abilties of the leaders are. I would have liked to have seen a greater variety of units as well. I'm sure these are things that will get resovled in time. The other is the minimum spec of the machines required to play it. My laptop probably won't stand much of a chance even on the lowest settings.

 

[wapamingo]

Greg explained in another post that the AI had tried that earlier in the war:
I guess Napolean learnt from this and didn't try again, a very promising sign I must say.

I am not sure if I agree completely. Hitting your head against a wall (in this case the Suez) is wasteful. A smart AI would continually probe other avenues for conquest, and was identified earlier North Africa. Sure, he may have tried once and got beat. So what?

Send a scouting party to the North Africa area and make sure the area is clear and safe for a landing (and from the gameplay, it was undefended), and then do the landing at the same time while faking a major movement at the Suez to distract 2kGreg. If you manage to land a good 4 units + 2 cannons you will pose a serious threat. 2kGreg will have to divert forces to North Africa, and there you have it. A classical envelopment strategy. Judging Napoleon's high score, I would not be surprised if he cannot maintain the army to do the envelopment.

 

[Boris Godunov]

But Napoleon was apparently involved in other conflicts elsewhere, so he was likely fighting wars on multiple fronts. It may be that Greg was the target of least concern for Napoleon at the moment. In that light, it may have made sense for him to only divert enough troops to Greg's front to keep his inferior units tied up and wait until he was freed up on other fronts and achieved even better technological superiority before pressing his attack.

 

[wapamingo]

True, that may have been the case. If Napoleon was thinking of trapping 2kGreg at the Suez while taking care of the others, then that is smarter than I gave it credit for!

 

[cheesemijit]

i love the look, it is... dare i say organic?

 

[Gnollen]

look at some satellite pictures (or out of the window of an airplane) at some estuaries. Often the river water is a different color at the mouth where it washes into the sea. I think that's the effect they're going for.

 

[Schuesseled]

in order to perform a successful flank attack, you need to have spare troops to transport along the coast of north africa and land them at his back, and at the same time continue the attack on the choke point.

It's easier for Napoleon just to continue bashing away with ranged units at the check point. Especially since he was close to developing artillery.

 

[Ahriman]

When i first saw the river estuary it took me a minute to adjust to the two blue interseeding each other, but other than that i think it looks fine.

Yes, totally unrealistic.
Everyone knows rivers and ocean are the same color. No weird coloration effects there.

http://elliottback.com/wp/google-maps-egypt-nile-delta/
http://geology.com/press-release/age-of-the-amazon-river/amazon-delta-lg.jpg
http://images.art.com/images/products/large/10092000/10092100.jpg
http://www.intute.ac.uk/worldguide/satellite/232.jpg

 

[Schuesseled]

Like i said i adjusted, i'm used to the completley unrealistic civ 4 rivers

 

[Ahriman]

I totally agree that the Civ5 rivers are still ugly - basically the only thing that isn't looking nice.

I would have loved if they'd made them more interesting - rapids, islands, meandering flows, waterfalls, etc. rather than just making them straight-sided channels.

And make a small graphical delta effect at the mouth.

 

[adrianj]

There is one thing that bothered me from the live show - even in the early game it seemed to take a few seconds in between turns. You might say "a few seconds, who cares!" but they also said they're playing the game on a very high-end machine. I sure hope I don't have to wait tens of seconds when playing on my lowly laptop.

And since it's IBT, presumably this won't get sped up by lowering the graphics settings

Or maybe I just stick with small maps until I get a better machine

 

[Polobo]

There is one thing that bothered me from the live show - even in the early game it seemed to take a few seconds in between turns. You might say "a few seconds, who cares!" but they also said they're playing the game on a very high-end machine. I sure hope I don't have to wait tens of seconds when playing on my lowly laptop.

And since it's IBT, presumably this won't get sped up by lowering the graphics settings

Or maybe I just stick with small maps until I get a better machine

Unless you also plan to normally stream your gameplay live you should get much better performance even from a somewhat inferior machine.

 

[StittsvilleJame]

Funny, before civ V was announced, and early on, I couldn't count the number of posts people made saying "Graphics don't matter" or "concentrate on gameplay" and other such things.

So, I guess graphics do matter!

I think it looks great (which is important, apparently).

Also, if rivers had rapids, small islands, more varied look, how much harder would that be on your system?

Can't please all the people all the time. Make it look super pretty! Make it run super fast! This, my friends, is what we call compromise.

Carry on.