RFC players' first impression of Civ 5

[Leoreth]

Complaints about complexity make even more pissed off: complexity doesn't always make a better game. Not to mention Civ5 has much more tactical depth, and culture, gold, and policies are more complex. hey simplified some areas, and made other areas more complex. Plus, other civs war agaist each other better, and you aren't forced to expand to compete in the harder difficulties.

"Tactical" is the key word here, though.

But I agree with you that Civ5 gets criticized too much, despite my constant scepticism here. If we would all remember how bad Civ4 was on release, there's still much potential, and everything that won't be patched can definitely be modded. But I predict that RFC for Civ5 will differ more from its vanilla version than its Civ4 counterpart.

 

[Mxzs]

Am I the only one who keeps winding up with the 1upt rule suspended on Mod maps? I noted earlier that I was able to stack units on the TSL Huge Earth map. Well, tonight I imported the RFC map into CiV, did a few tweaks of it in World Builder, and saved it. I didn't do any modding, only WBing. I launched it to play, and I and all the other players are able to stack.

 

[nody]

Am I the only one who keeps winding up with the 1upt rule suspended on Mod maps? I noted earlier that I was able to stack units on the TSL Huge Earth map. Well, tonight I imported the RFC map into CiV, did a few tweaks of it in World Builder, and saved it. I didn't do any modding, only WBing. I launched it to play, and I and all the other players are able to stack.

??? How the hell do you import a square tile map into a hex tile system.
Not to mention resources that are in Civ IV and aren't in Civ V ???

 

[Úmarth]

There's a converter with the SDK.

 

[JujuLautre]

??? How the hell do you import a square tile map into a hex tile system.
Not to mention resources that are in Civ IV and aren't in Civ V ???

Conversion square->hex should not be that difficult. I suspect it works something like this way:

Spoiler :

 A   B   C   D   E   F
 G   H   I   J   K   L
 M   N   O   P   Q   R
 S   T   U   V   W   X

becomes

 A   B   C   D   E   F
   G   H   I   J   K   L
 M   N   O   P   Q   R
   S   T   U   V   W   X

And there you go
Obv, you can also do that vertically

 

[Mxzs]

??? How the hell do you import a square tile map into a hex tile system.
Not to mention resources that are in Civ IV and aren't in Civ V ???

The non-conceptual answer (which, because I'm an idiot, took me several minutes to figure out) is: Launch the World Builder. Click on "Load" (or "Open"; I forget which) a map. At the bottom of the window will appear a menu choice that says "Civ 5 map". You can toggle that to "Civ 4" map. At that point the visible options for loading will switch from Civ 5 maps to Civ 4 maps.

You can use this to import maps you or others have made in Civ 4. There will be changes, of course. As noted elsewhere, the RFC map will not have the Panamanian isthmus (or the Suez isthmus); Italy is too narrow; some of the islands and land masses will have weird bays or one-hex peninsulas stuck on. Stone, Crab, Pig, Corn, Copper, and Clam resources will have disappeared. No starting locations, either. But, of course, it's in World Builder, so you can fix these pretty easily. Except, obviously, for the missing resource types. That takes actual modding.

But I also get the stacking ability, which I don't particularly want when "playtesting" an RFC map in Civ 5.

 

[Wessel V1]

I just got it but it appears that my system barely can hold it together, so I'll wait for some time to install it on a more reasonable computer. What I can tell you though, is that Firaxis has done a good job with the interface. I'm above the system requirements so I can only guess why it doesn't work properly.

 

[civ_king]

I just got it but it appears that my system barely can hold it together, so I'll wait for some time to install it on a more reasonable computer. What I can tell you though, is that Firaxis has done a good job with the interface. I'm above the system requirements so I can only guess why it doesn't work properly.

Considering we will probably have Civ V for five years I think you will get a comp powerful enough eventually

 

[Úmarth]

I'm playing on a laptop that just meets the minimum specs and it runs more or less fine. Lowest graphics settings, of course, and I sometimes get crashes when generating Huge maps from a map script, but all things considering I'm pretty impressed.

 

[Wessel V1]

Considering we will probably have Civ V for five years I think you will get a comp powerful enough eventually

That is what I thought too when I 'bought' (I used some gift coupons) the game... maybe I'm going to buy a quadcore laptop when I have the money, but that will take some time. Because obviously, the 2.0 GHz Dual Core is the weak component.

 

[civ_king]

That is what I thought too when I 'bought' (I used some gift coupons) the game... maybe I'm going to buy a quadcore laptop when I have the money, but that will take some time. Because obviously, the 2.0 GHz Dual Core is the weak component.

A year from now will be a good time to buy as then Quad cores will be the minimum

 

[Wessel V1]

Right. Well on the other hand, I edited some options (lower screen resolution and directX 9) and it works fine now. But I think I'll stick to RFC for now.

 

[LuKo]

I've finally played a demo. It's awesome! Culture and Social Policies are great! OK, it needs some tweaks, but not major ones. Ranged combat is really fun. 1UPT isn't Buying tiles by cities is really good. Not seeing if you connected a resource and what it gives is crappy. Map is really nice but hardly-readable. There are too few technologies but they are OK (that's why GS are broken). To sum the things up I have to say that ciV is much better than I thought it will be

 

[SalmonSoil]

I've finally played a demo. It's awesome! Culture and Social Policies are great! OK, it needs some tweaks, but not major ones. Ranged combat is really fun. 1UPT isn't Buying tiles by cities is really good. Not seeing if you connected a resource and what it gives is crappy. Map is really nice but hardly-readable. There are too few technologies but they are OK (that's why GS are broken). To sum the things up I have to say that ciV is much better than I thought it will be

You don't need to connect resources any more, just build an improvement and there yours.

 

[LuKo]

What for is grain now? Roads in civ2 were crucial, in cIV were used only for resources and connecting cities and now...

 

[Úmarth]

It's sort of compensated by the fact that roads are more important for connecting cities now - rivers can't be used to link cities any more (stupid, IMO) and you have to a build a harbour, which is unlocked with a relatively late tech, to do it by sea (smart, IMO). I've enjoyed building huge Silk Road-esque roads between civs in my current game, which was pointless in Civ IV because two cities at either of end of the globe could be linked by sea for no cost at all.

 

[LuKo]

For what connect cities? Trade? Because resources are now bonuses for the empire, not city?

 

[Úmarth]

The true answer: out of habit.

After checking the manual: because connected cities generate extra gold. Which does render my Silk Roads absolutely pointless =P

 

[KMRblue1027]

It's sort of compensated by the fact that roads are more important for connecting cities now - rivers can't be used to link cities any more (stupid, IMO) and you have to a build a harbour, which is unlocked with a relatively late tech, to do it by sea (smart, IMO). I've enjoyed building huge Silk Road-esque roads between civs in my current game, which was pointless in Civ IV because two cities at either of end of the globe could be linked by sea for no cost at all.

This is exactly how it was in Civ3 nothing new here.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I look forward to the day when I no longer need to build roads AROUND my cities so that my troops can march to their targets quickly THROUGH cities. Garrisons should not be required to evacuate their barracks, make way for the armies coming through, and then go back to their barracks, leaving cities undefended for a turn or so, unless you have an encampment WITH ROADS outside your city.