Arkangelus
Prince
I tried to put up a glowingly positive post a while back, but the board ate it 
But now I've been playing more, its even more true. I'm absolutely adoring this Civ so far, I think that the framework its laid down to be built upon over the years is absolutely incredible.
I've played games like Red Alert over the years and while I've liked them and been fairly good at them, its never been *fun* that there's just one optimal path, one build order that you have to play to be successful. Civ 4, once I got fairly good at it, had a lot of that feeling, with things like religion, if you didn't get it all right and set up perfectly out of the classical era, it was barely worth playing on. So far I've been compelled to finish every single game I started, that kind of linear efficient feeling is gone. I understand that might be a negative for really hardcore players, but there's still plenty to micromanage if you want! The level of depth is there in terms of things like preventing city growth that I just overlooked the first few times, bigger is not always better so specialising to ensure that your city is 'finished' at pop 11 or so is possible now instead of like in previous games you just got it to pop 20 and then had specialists.
1UPT and tactical combat, with rivers and hills and things, just makes warring an absolute joy. There are a few issues with things like the AI (lol, just a bit) and how badly things snowball when you beat the first line - maybe taking cities should be harder? - but actually warring and moving the units around on your front, outflanking people isntead of stack marching is amazing fun.
I just wanted to add some positivity to the board! Things do seem to be getting better, but for me this is by a long distance the best experience Civ has ever delivered, even with massive scope and room for expansion and polish.
But now I've been playing more, its even more true. I'm absolutely adoring this Civ so far, I think that the framework its laid down to be built upon over the years is absolutely incredible.I've played games like Red Alert over the years and while I've liked them and been fairly good at them, its never been *fun* that there's just one optimal path, one build order that you have to play to be successful. Civ 4, once I got fairly good at it, had a lot of that feeling, with things like religion, if you didn't get it all right and set up perfectly out of the classical era, it was barely worth playing on. So far I've been compelled to finish every single game I started, that kind of linear efficient feeling is gone. I understand that might be a negative for really hardcore players, but there's still plenty to micromanage if you want! The level of depth is there in terms of things like preventing city growth that I just overlooked the first few times, bigger is not always better so specialising to ensure that your city is 'finished' at pop 11 or so is possible now instead of like in previous games you just got it to pop 20 and then had specialists.
1UPT and tactical combat, with rivers and hills and things, just makes warring an absolute joy. There are a few issues with things like the AI (lol, just a bit) and how badly things snowball when you beat the first line - maybe taking cities should be harder? - but actually warring and moving the units around on your front, outflanking people isntead of stack marching is amazing fun.
I just wanted to add some positivity to the board! Things do seem to be getting better, but for me this is by a long distance the best experience Civ has ever delivered, even with massive scope and room for expansion and polish.
