First of all, great effort guys.
I think overall the demo by the three of you was a big success, and I got a much better idea about the game than I had previously gotten from the millions of near-identical preview articles.
My comments on the video:
Search feature: Hmm, well obviously putting in the exact name of a unit is going to be one of the easiest things for the search function to do, what about if you spelt panser?
What about game concepts like capturing cities? (I'm just nitpicking, wishing you actually showed a better example of the search)
Popups from huts seem to look a bit annoying. Considering they rave about how popups are now moved first to the notification area, I think it would be nice if popups from such trivial things as huts and natural wonders didn't demand immediate attention, especially when not asking you to make a decision - just OK! Hope those little popups can be turned off.
Disappointed to see that zoom-to-cursor is not in the game. This is a really good UI concept but it is hard to appreciate if one has not experienced it before. I always refer back to the example of Supreme Commander so at least people who have played that game know exactly what I mean. Having to use the arrow keys on the keyboard or the minimap doesn't seem tedious until you see how intuitive, smooth and fast it is to just use zoom-to-cursor all the time.
I noticed Decisive Victory was not a guaranteed complete victory. His scout did not finish off the barbarian.
I hope to see a Don't Cycle Units option. After he fights and doesn't kill that barbarian, the camera pulls him straight away to another unit before he even gets to see the end of combat properly. (Barely gets a moment to see the xp float up and be displayed)
Advisor commenting that city states are not in to win the game. This will disappoint some of the realism-obsessives, because it pulls the player out of immersion. Personally I don't care - just expect to see people complaining about it.
When they were commenting on number of city states that you put at start of game, I wondered if there is a way to select a random number? IMO it would be more fun to
not know in advance exactly how many city states there were remaining to be met.
Turn times appeared to be very slow. I'm hoping it was due to the demands of other software on that system. I'm not all that optimistic about it though. Timing the turns revealed even 5 second or more turns in the 3000BC era, but hopefully that is not typical.
By the way guys, it's PIE-ety. Not pee-ity.
(or maybe that's just regional variation)
Regarding the ability to "lock" citizens to a tile while still being able to set a focus, fantastic idea Firaxis - I applaud you.
Oh noes, the graphics glitch was pretty bad. Overheated graphics card maybe? :s Gosh my graphics card is fanless - I wonder how it will do. :s
Excellent to see the detailed info (advisor) screens have not been skimped on.
Deal History screen - very cool - I would never have thought of putting that in.
All the overlays in the strategic mode look great. It didn't look like it was possible but my only request would be that you be able to choose icon overlays to see simultaneously rather than have them all or have only one. e.g. see both improvements and resources but not units.
Watching the last half hour of video now...
