Our sense that the AI was better was based primarily on the fact that it runs its empire better and actually tries to win the game. As far as military tactics, unfortunately the AI isn't great, but it is good enough on higher levels to keep me from winning on King yet, the level I was on in Civ IV.
Between Graham and I, we've played at least a thousand hours of Civ IV, and during the week between release and review we played a combined 30 or 35 hours of Civ V. Maybe we just aren't good enough at the game to notice the AI being completely broken, but we felt the AI was competent enough up through King difficulty to give us a run for our money(and neither of us were able to win a game on King). Regardless, we saw none of the various gameplay problems that I've seen mentioned on this site, and without experiencing them ourselves, we can't comment on them in our review.
Steam tells me I have played 44 hours of Civ 5 so far. Like I said, working up from the lowest level. I am curious, did you guys play much on the entry levels? For example current game at warlord level, after I have taken about 4 cities from Bismarck, 5 from Darius, three from Monte ... I come up to China ... and she is playing an occ!
Just her capital, and she is gone. And none of the AI seem to have troops in any significant numbers (three direct and 3 ranged units in formation seem to me to be a minimun brigade ... they don't even have that). And the silly peace deals (hopefully patched lately) that I have already mentioned ... not very impressive.
But that may be by design ... so if you played some at lower levels, did you see similar bad AI play (which may be programmed in on lower levels, I think I read somewhere) and was it gone at higher levels?
About the AI trying to win the game, in BTS they would go for culture and for space, for sure. In what additional ways is Civ 5 AI trying to win the game, and how can you tell?
We never checked out screenshots, and the save system worked perfectly for both of us involved in writing the review. As far as bugs are concerned, Graham Russell played in bootcamp on a Mac on medium graphics(don't know his specs), while I played on a computer that is technically below minimum specs, but has enough RAM to power my way through the game anyway, and never experienced any bugs that either of us could recall.
Screenshots save automatically as .tga files, and nothing stock on my computer would open them. And no option to name the shot as it is created, just default 0000 to infinity numbering. After trying four suggested programs, found two that will do the job (gimp and irfanview). Why fix what was not broke, and break it in the process?
So you could type a name in the box for a local save, and actually generate a save? Several of us have reported that typing a name in the box and hitting save does nothing. I found that if I manually populate the target saves folder with dummy saves (multiple copies of a game which I generate in "windows explorer" [not really that name anymore, I suppose]), then I can overwrite the saves with current games. Steam cloud and quick save worked fine. It is as if the save programming is now designed to fill defined slots, but won't make them. Seems like a console program, did they borrow it from Rev? And, I dont see a way to view the file paths in the save window, like Civ 4 did ... a real PC save system. Why fix what was not broke, and break it in the process?
As far as MP, we lament the lack of saves, but don't recall ever being able to save in MP before(outside of Pitboss and PBEM) anyway, so that wasn't exactly a negative. I suspect the MP problems we had, which were solely based on actually connecting to each other, are partly due to my system's specs(and the fact that it likes to overheat and shut down while running Civ V), and partly due to faulty code.
I played a lot of MP with a buddy of mine in Civ 4. We could save the game any time we wanted, into the MP save folder, during the game. Other than autosaves, I did not see a way to do that in Civ 5 when we played Friday. Which meant we played a small map, to finish in one sitting. We did have to both play in dx9 to get a connection, as he can't support 11 (I can) and mismatched, he could not find my game on steam (please bring back direct IP ... but I bet that violates the Firaxis-Steam contract
)
The thing is, our review scale differs from that of many sites. For most sites, 5/5 means that it is a perfect game, or as near as you can get. For our site, 5/5 means that it is a game that any fan of the genre should purchase.
So 4/5 means only 80% of fans should buy it? How do you know which should, and which should not, and which bucket a person is in?
Thanks all for your comments and interest! I'm always willing to answer any and all questions
As you can see, I am holding you to that!
Complaints actually come in several flavors:
Gameplay items:
1. You changed my game! (no cottages, people make science, etc) Correct execution of a change that someone dislikes. Not much to be done in most cases, I suspect.
2. Nice try, but ... (AI insanities, for example) An improvement that did not achieve the intended aim. Bring on the fix.
3. Exterminator please (take your pick) The bugs, or coding typos. Patch me!
Creature Comforts:
1. Green Acres (dumber save system, harder screenshot system) User friendliness features present in 4 but worse or gone in 5. Some nostalgia please?
2. Thanks for the fruitcake (the coin heads in the city screen) New things that just get in the way ... bring back the cleaner circles, and let's move the demands, buy tile and price bars to the EDGES of the city screen, where they don't block my view. Again, some nostalgia please.
My issues are mostly about creature comforts, which I see as fixable. But I think this breakdown of issue types in a useful way to sort the complaints (which are many).
dV
and I've seen Napoleon methodically take down every other AI before running into my Musketmen and Longswordsmen. I haven't played deep enough into a game to actually have any diplomatic, cultural, or space wins be feasible yet, but I expect to be fighting for those wins as well.
