So, how was your first game?

[CandleJack]

Lots of threads about the bad aspects of the game, lets talk about the fun, perhaps some helpful tips.

First game, Epic time, continents, Greeks. Was able to kill several City-States, The Iroquois, America, and later England. However, Siam was on the other continent and did the same. I head a huge tech lead but he had a bigger army. I quit playing around 1980's since I had time victory off, and neither of us were near the spaceship(I had one part building). Was a fun 5 hour game though

As a tip, Don't kill too much at the start . Mid way through the game, all the other city-states were in permanent war with me. I might go and finish the game but more likely that I'll start anew. What about you guys?

 

[migkillertwo]

my game is ongoing. Let's just say that it was almost 9 hours non-stop

 

[Elite]

SP: 10 hours
MP: 4 hours


SP: I maintain a rather large standing army, and Alexander STUPIDLY placed a city next to my borders, well we were trading partners for awhile and when I see that Ghandi declared war on Alex, I jumped right in and took his city, not my fault he chose to place ot there, lol.

MP: first game, my friend forgot to turn the AI on, second game I conquered Thebes.

 

[juijin]

fun! even thou it was a small map with the japanese at the easiest difficulty.. the japanese are hax.... there armies can move non stop basicly

 

[Varelse]

You can build more cities than you could in Civ 4.

 

[Gath]

I would also like to say, that having the other leaders speak another language is not enjoyable. I'd rather they spoke accented english (or whatever your local language is).

 

[Sonereal]

Just one my first game as India, domination duel.

I have to say that in Civ4, the same settings would've been boring to play on but city-states make things verrrrry interesting. Especially if you set the option to 28 city-states on a duel-sized map.

Basically, everything was going good. I had three allied city-states, just curising on a pretty easy difficulty, getting the feel of the game. Then Bismark allied with Venice and long story short, my military advisior has been itching at a go with the Germans.

To test out my military skills, I invaded Venice. The war on the border was pretty short but not without a threat to my flank by a Venice Warrior. Anyway, I took down their army and razed the countryside. Pillaging in Civ5 is so rewarding. Seeing the countryside literally up in flames in front of you is nice. Anyway, all there was left was the city.

But the whole time, Bismark is throwing a fit. He keeps demanding I withdraw my troops but he knows that he can't do squat to stop me. The Indian UU (War Elephants?) is amazing. It can smash most of the Venecian troops in melee and outperform my archers in sheer ranged attack power so I've only built one archer so far. Still, the city is bombarding my troops. Especially my near-dead spearman flank covering my army in case the Germans smelled weakness.

Finally, the city fell under flaming arrow/rock fire and my swordsmen swooped in nearly unopposed. I got a GG from it which I plan to use....later.

 

[RD-BH]

Broken.

 

[Vandraad]

First game was bad..they always are. Started as Greece and within 2 hours the Aztecs had me totally surrounded and were demanding everything I had and somehow they got 5 city states to ally with them super quick. Needless to say, I got clobbered.

2nd game went a little better as I had a bit more breathing room, but still ended up losing because the French just started dropping tiny cities everywhere and had a roaming army of 40+ units whereas I had like 6.

3rd game is going better. I've got 4 city states allied with me, 9 cities all at population 10, earning a good bit of gold and command all the strategic resources on this island. I'd keep going but it's late and have to work in the morning.

First impressions are good..it's going to take quite some time to get used to CiV.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

First game went very, very well. It felt like a mix of Civ Rev and Civ 4, both of which I enjoyed greatly.

If you don't want a long story about my first game, scroll down past the italics.

________________________________________

I chose Songhai on Prince and decided early on to go for a military victory as I had Monty right next to me (about 20 tiles away!) and Germany on the other side of him through a mountain pass.

Germany and I decided on a Secretive Pact against the Aztecs and I quickly found out how awesome they can be. I buttered Germany up with some cash I was getting from the Barbarians and also did a gamble on a Research Agreement which probably won me the game. I chose to gamble and go for early Pikemen and Knights, ignoring a lot of the other techs, save what I saw as essentials.

Anyway, after I gained access to the pikemen tech, Germany decided it was time to declare war on the Aztecs and I requested that he wait 10 turns, which he obliged.

I payed for a few pikemen (I had a lot of cash due to 2 luxury resources and lots of barbarian encampents) abd built another and sent them on the way to Monty. Germany didn't seem to attack, or was thwarted, but my attack worked flawlessly. His Jaguars fell to my Pikemen and his secondary city was mine!

Next, I focused on his capital. After taking his secondary city, I began to build a Settler to put near where his second city was (it was early game, razeing was the best option) and payed for another pikeman. I sent the rest of my pikes to his capital, pushed it, and won.

His Jaguars were a few tiles away, I assume from attempting to take the German capital, when I took his capital.

After that I started to expand and found two city states. I also found out that it was only Germany and I on this continent now.

I quickly allied with whichever city state it was (Maritime meant my cities could more easily expand) and I began to produce more settlers. By the time Knight tech came, I had about 5 cities, 2 of which had great production, the others had great gold production (I got very lucky with the luxury resources).

So, I pumped out a bunch of Mandekalu Cavalry and gave ol' Bizmacrk what you could call a 'curb stomping'. See, I buttered up Bizmacrk in to thinking we were game long partners by sending him tributes of gold and helping him in war so he seemed content in only building a few Landsknechts which, being the same power as spearmen but half the cost... my spearmen beat.

I do feel that the Mandekalu Cavalry are probably stronger than they should be. Three to four of them can take a city out in one turn with minor injuries and then repeat the process. Of course, I buttered Bizmarck up a whole lot and he lacked any serious production capabilities (I had all the hills, seriously).

Anyway, after conquering what was now known as Songhailand, I spread a few more cities out and began to adopt honor. I decided to take my early Cavalry advantage and wipe somebody out.

Except I had no sea tech .

So I spent the next few turns building up an army and researching what I needed. As soon as I could embark, I sent my units to the West. Why? Because my production cities were on the west side of Songhailand.

Eventually I met India, Arabia, and Siam. Siam and India immediately requested Pacts of Secrecy against Arabia. I agreed and then checked his score and, sure enough, he was pimp daddy strong. I buttered Arabia up with some gold and a luxury resource to get open borders and scouted him out.

He had a huge army but... they were all rather dated units. Around this time I declared war on Arabia when both India and Siam were like "Nah, no more secret pact foo you dun did it."

This meant that they too must die.

After taking Arabias capital and a few other cities, Harun al-Rashid decided he would give me two of his cities, all of his gold, some gold per minute, and several resources in exchange for peace.

I obliged and decided to take my frustrations out on Ghandi whom I just defended (he was at war with Arabia but didn't ask me for help with the pact... dunno). Ghandi was the usual pacifist. He had a few archers but I just sort of walked up to his one huge 20 some population capital and took it fairly easily.

It took me about 30 or so turns to do this. Don't ask.

Eventually I got back to Arabia who, when talked to, was being a sissy. He just wanted to get punched in the face.

I obliged and decided to punch him in the face.

So, by this point, Songhailand is pumping out wonders. I haven't built many more units or gotten any more military techs. I happened to have two great artists and a general and wanted to try something.

I took my two great artists and did two culture bombs (I was saddened when I had to wait some 9 turns before I could do another culture bomb) towards one of Ramkhamhaeng-a-long-a-ding-dongs cities. I was saddened further when I didn't take over his city but I was impressed that the overall idea worked. I created a hole in his cultural boundary and then put a fort at the tip.

This allowed me to take his outlying towns without much of a problem and allowed my Marmadukes a place to run back and heal safely.

At this point I decided to tech and made it up to Cavalry. After taking one of his cities, I upgraded all of my Marmadukes and drop-kicked ol Ramkhamhaeng in his skull for the domination victory.

__________________________________________

So, obviously this game is a bit easier, at least for me, than Civ 4 as I was barely a Prince player and I was able to absolutely curb stomp the competition. From what I saw of the policies, there's an absolutely huge amount of strategic potential there.

The combat in this game feels so much better than other civs. Pikes can't beat tanks !!! My cavalry don't feel redundant! Having a mobile force matters!

 

[HamTard]

Normal speed
Duel size map
Me as Arabia vs AI Persia
4.5 hours long
Prince

I lost. I didn't make enough of an army, and assumed that because we were far apart seperated by city states that I was safe. I was wrong. He wouldn't negotiate peace even after like 20 turns of war. What does it take to negotiate peace in this game?

 

[King Jason]

I would also like to say, that having the other leaders speak another language is not enjoyable. I'd rather they spoke accented english (or whatever your local language is).

I already shut off voices and leader animations in the game.

Though I haven't been able to finish a full game yet... I keep getting interrupted and anytime I go back to it I feel like starting over with someone new. I have about 6 saves already.

Surprisingly, Marathon seemed like too long, so I've kicked it up to Epic and I'm pretty content with it, though tomorrow I have the whole day off and will probably start a Marathon game to check it out again.

So far the Greeks are my favorite civ, and I don't think German's UA is that underpowered at all, and I played their game on normal speed. Expansion is slow, there's plenty of room for barb camps to spawn and I conquered two city states with nothing but my starting warrior and a barb army. In fact, It wasn't until I was decently expanded that I even bothered to begin building better troops as Germany.

 

[Thormodr]

I played on Warlord difficulty as Siam.

I was on a medium sized island with 2 city states. (1 Maritime and 1 Cultured)

I never met another Civ until 1700 AD.

Rome, Greece, China and Japan all got destroyed. (I thought they'd be better at war. lol)

Germany was weak, England was middle of the road and Persia was godlike powerful.

I think they had 12X the military score of me. We got along well though.

I quit around 1900 to try another game.

 

[Sneaky Snake]

Currently in a 8 hour game as America. The new city states are amazing! Seriously, I got into a massive war with Ramesses because he attacked a friendly state. In the end, he "surrendered" and I got a massive amount of spoils!

 

[bhavv]

You can build more cities than you could in Civ 4.

Actually, no you cant

 

[planetary]

Warlord Babylon at standard pace on a small pangaea.

It was the best fun I've had playing a Civ game, ever.

There are quite a few technical headaches with getting the software running initially. Getting any version of the game to run at all, even though I have a quad core machines with 12G of RAM and an ATI HD 4870, I was stuck in the forums banging my head against a wall. Even now, the only way it runs if by clicking the "Play" button on the steam page app, clicking Direct X 9, then selecting Direct X 9 from the popup again. It's crazy.

Also, I have a 30" display, and the thing barfs at native 2560x1600 resolution, splatting a gray bar on the rightmost quarter of the screen -- so I have to downres to "merely" 1920x1200, which seems to work.

Scraping together through these problems, I had no problems during the game itself, and played for 8 hours all the way through to 2004, when Babylon ascended into space.

The ending is rather anti-climactic, given all the music and cinematics of the game itself. And the post-game screens and data should be richer, full of lots of juicy data.

But the gameplay itself? Loads and loads of fun. Vast improvement over Civ 4 and its expansions, in my opinion. Despite the technical headaches, I'm glad I took the day off work.

 

[Helmling]

Mine's ongoing. Started on Prince as Greece (as always).

The pace feels really, really slow. I feel like I'm on Epic speed, even though it's standard. I've played 80 turns and I don't feel like I've built much of anything. Only two wonders and a hand full of units.

One reason for the plodding pace, though, is that I maxed it out. Huge map with 21 other Civs and 28 city states. It's very diverse. Love it, except that each turn the computer has to do a lot of thinking.

I'm starting to get used to the new terrain, but it doesn't help that mine looks pretty weird (some sort of Windows-running-in-Mac video glitch). It's hard to see what's going on sometimes. It's a good thing they give you the "Unit Needs Orders" locator buttons because half the time I can't see my damned unites. God but the ocean does look awesome. Sadly I haven't put a boat to sea yet, but I'd like to be sitting on that shore watching the sheen on the breakers. Very nice work there.

Good riddance to religion. I've played all this time and nobody hates me. A few neighbors have gotten testy, but some hoplites in the right places have persuaded my would be enemies to back the heck off. There are legitimate tensions arising, though, because I have two city states allied with me. Quite the little cash cows those are. I'm getting food and units a plenty, but of course, I paid in. The buy-your-friends system is my only complaint about the city-state system, which is on the whole a really wonderful addition to the gameplay dynamic.

On the whole, I'll side against the alarmists. Civ 5 is a great game and a worthy successor.

 

[Helmling]

Actually, no you cant

No? I've felt a lot less hamstrung. The corruption limitation in Civ4 that always drained down my income if I expanded too quickly sure isn't there. I felt much more like I was choosing the size of my empire like in the games before Civ 4--as opposed to being coerced into a particular size by the designers.

That's one change I applaud.

 

[tep620]

first game random civ (Japan) small map, chieftain difficulty. First I took out Rome to the north, then Babylon out west with my Samurai (they are unstoppable), then i got lazy moving all my units and bought all the city-states for a diplo victory. also got a ~24 turn golden age

started my second game as India, standard map, warlord, have 4 policy trees unlocked and will probably try to build utopia as long as my neighbor Japan doesn't decide to backstab me after taking out russia and germany.. i stopped playing when my cpu froze in strategic view, which i thought was odd since the normal view worked just fine

 

[Monsterzuma]

Fun, but I went cottage frenzy (oops, I mean, trading post frenzy) and ended up with a massive pile of gold that I couldn't conveniently turn into research.