Thanks for the nice responses
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There are some things more to mention, which i forgot before:
- Every national wonder has a building prerequisite, and this building has to be in every city. The national college needs a library in every city, ironworks needs a forge in every city, etc.
- The citadel from the great general gives -1 production on the tile
- Resources don't need a street for the connection (that's probably known, i guess)
- Fertilizer gives +1 food on tiles without fresh water
- An earlier tech gives +1 food on tiles with fresh water
- 2 wonders (Opera house and oracle, IIRC) give a free social policy
- There are 2 views on the social policies: 1 where you see everything, another one there everything which you don't have is hidden and you see only the images
- Barbarians can capture settlers and workers, and will bring them to a random camp around, so that you can get them back. Or you can also capture caught units from other civs, and you get the option to gift them back or to keep them
- In my opinion, most of the interface buttons are too small, and not very distinctive.
- There's finally a menu for a building queue (but it's first hidden)
- civilopedia entries of the civs are very long
- You remember, the arabian factoid ("None") on the civ page? Guess what, there's no such section in the arabian civilopedia
- In general, there's more than one factoid, germany had 5 things mentioned
Your report really worries me
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You shouldn't be that worried, it played fine
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I didn't think removing diplomatic modifiers was a big deal at first, but now I think we really do need them. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I don't want the AI to act exactly like a human (especially not an extremely flaky and illogical human). I'm all in favor of the AI being a little more cutthroat and opportunistic, but it would totally break the immersion if your longtime ally declared war on you because you started building a spaceship or a utopia.
This whole thing with diplomacy worries me. Ive been trying to give the no modifiers a chance, hoping they could pull it off. If it isnt obvious, or atleast semi, how do they expect new players and veterans alike to know what they are in for? Trial and error?
ok, here's a thought. Did J try to give away everything pretty much at once? I'm pretty sure you could do that in IV and also not get a huge + to the relationship beyond the normal modifier. [...] So maybe it's just that diplomacy has more to do with how you treat them over the course of the game and not what you can do in one turn or the past 10 turns. Kinda like how brushing for an extra-extra long time doesn't fool the dentist if you haven't been taking care of your teeth for years.
That could sure be. The problem is, that you will maybe not notice it.
If you play with 17 other civs, you will not remember, to whom you gifted you what 50 turns before, who made a friendly offer, who tried to blackmail you, etc.
If the effect is over a bigger time length, then you would at the moment have to write all your actions down, and to calculate later, how the AI might feel now, because there's no ingame overview, about what you did.
If there was some summary, like "made 3 times a fair open borders agreement, 3 successful research pacts, 2 times fair resource trades, joined one time in a war" or "demanded 3 times resources, didn't join in a war 3 times, backstabed AI X" it would be okay. I don't need "+4 because of X", but there has to be something, where you can remember, what you did in the past. You certainly can't without some notification.
(Note for non-Germans: This guy has braved the Gießener Ring for bringing this report to you, he deserves a serious pat on the back. As anyone who knows this area can tell you, the highways there are the work of raving lunatic. They are probably meant to spell out a secret sign to passing UFOs, their layout certainly doesn't make any sense when driving on them.)
It would be interesting to hear how troop movement, positioning, and attacking/defending felt (with regard to the 1UPT rule). Also, it would be great to hear a bit about the AI, but I guess that a March build of the game won't yield meaningful results about AI quality anyway ...
Too early to say anything. I've only played a hour, and it probably needs more time to get a real feeling for it, for the advantages and disadvantages.
But 1UpT didn't file like big micromanaging, and there were no bigger problems with units being blocked.
About the AI, i can only say, that i saw that they interacted with the city states, became friends with them, and did some quests for them.
Saw something odd, a unit from Hiathawa standing at the coast, healing, and it didn't move out of the range from the barbarian ship outside
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From what you first say about the notifications system it sounds like its adding a lot of clicking/more work.
Not necessarily.
The one mentioned problem was only, that you have to look over the whole monitor, and back, and back again, that was just bad interace design at a small point.
The notifications itself...mmhh...i know this system from total war, but in this case, it didn't feel that good, but i don't know why, or if this changes over time (i guess so).
Some of the notifications need some more infos, that's the main thing.
Another "problem" (depends on your view) is, you can choose to ignore 50% of them, and hit the end turn button...also by accident -> you maybe don't see some things at the right time.
I would wish a game option here, which prevents this, but i maybe didn't see it
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The overall picture from your write up seems to me that they have done many new things, made a pretty good game, but have left out and forgotten all the little things, things you dont notice when they are there, but miss them greatly when they are gone.
Oh, certainly not all the little things, only some. Like said, it felt overall good.
At least we finally got a decent preview that doesn't use the word "organic" about 50 times or talks about the same damn thing as all the other previews. (Ooh look hexes!)
You have to see, who's the audience of the game previews (people who don't know anything about Civ5), and who's the audience here
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"organic"...yeah, could have used it. The look fits imho everywhere, the elements combine fine, so it looks organic.
At some parts even to much, like already mentioned for the units and cities, which do not stand out enough imho (same for some of the improvements).
- Interface is partially crap, especially in view on tech choice/tech tree. Short description: You get a new technology, it pops up. Then you close the popup in the middle of the screen and...nothing. You click then on the right on hte science notification, then you have to click at the left on the technologies/click to get the tech tree, and then on the tech tree you click again probably somewher
Strange .. In my opinion tech tree interface is very comfortable and much better than civ 4.
The tech tree handling itself is okay, but the way to the tech tree is not.
Mark and Worf mentioned this also, so it's not only me.
3D Files is hidden for FPK! Files FPK requires new unpack program.
Ah, that explains it.
But didn't see any .fpks
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The_J I for one am very happy. There's still unbiased perspective in this world! Finally something critical and not "omgomgthisiscivitsgreat!"
I'm certainly not unbiased
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It's a good game, but the time was just to short to get a real feeling for it, and it might get great later after some time.
To note: For civ4, my first impressions would have been worse than this here, and i really love civ4
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As for the diplomacy, the largest problem I have is...
Is this really true, that there's no Diplomacy screen, showing relations between all encountered Civilizations/City-States? Well if so then that's just stupid. I still hope that thing like Demographics screen are being done as we post, since it doesn't strike me as a terribly difficult thing to do...
I didn't find such a screen, right, and i really hope they add a screen like that.
Because else you'll have to write it down, and well...that's not really what you want.
Also The_J, if I can ask a question:
What if your city produce a unit and all the 37 hexes around you city are full of units already. If that's the case, you can't end your turn so the game is stuck?
There's no worldbuilder or something like that, so i could not test it.
But from what i've seen, such a situation is highly unlikely, because if you have so many troops, you'll certainly not group them around only one city.
Most beta testers said that was their feeling initially as well but game slowed down later on and eventually become longer than avarage civ4 session.
Thanks for your input anyway.
You might be right.
But it really felt fast, wonders in 8-9 rounds, normal buildings in 4 rounds.
Also I think the OP was focusing on some different things than we've read in every review so far.
If i told you, they are using hexes and 1UpT, i would get hit here, i'm sure
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It's a natural human reaction. We're all going to sit down with the demo and have "I'm not sure I'm going to like THAT" moments about the UI or gameplay or whatever.
completely right.
