What To Expect From Civ V?

[Makonnen91]

Hello all. I'm a long time lurker and occasional poster on the Civ IV boards and have been checking these ones as of late. I'll get right to it. I bought Civ V Gold a while back while I was still playing BTS so I never tried it. I felt as if IV was great game and had that 'empire building feel to it'. I have read from many folks who say complexity and depth has been scaled down a bit in V. But does it still have that epic Civ feel to it?

I ask this now because I plan to delay any playing of V until the release of BNW in order to get a complete play experience. I feel as if I may be wearing my welcome with IV and moving to V is probably imminent.




***EDIT*** It dawned on me that I have never played CIV BTS any further than the Medieval/ Renaissance eras lol. I love the early game with the, but always got bored and restarted once it was over. Terrible I know, but that kind of clued me to thinking I just may need to move on all together.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm actually about to boot up Civ IV so I can play a game and have it fresh in my mind for comparison with BNW...

Civ V certainly has very much what I would define as a "Civ feel", and in many ways moreso than IV or III (by which I refer to the feel I recall when first playing Civ in 1990). To some degree this probably stems from some of the streamlining of mechanics and options - to me V, and the early Civ games place you in the world and give you time to immerse yourself in its development. You don't have the later games' lightning-fast tech progression or build times and it feels much more about the "empire" than managing the minutiae of individual cities.

Civ V is also very much about interacting with the civs around you, rather than just opening borders, adopting a religion, and letting the modifiers accumulate while sometimes stopping buy to trade for the odd pig - which is at least the feel I had with Civ IV when returning to it. So, in the sense that you have command of a whole empire and play within a broader political landscape, it feels very much an empire builder.

On the other hand, much of the above is what attracts criticism - particularly the focus on macromanagement and near-absence of micromanagement. People complain about diplomacy because, essentially, the game forces you to play within a diplomatic framework - if you don't make allies and are not proactive in selecting adversaries to denounce or attack - or if you play the diplomacy game "wrong" - you'll more often than not be on the receiving end of a war led by civs that are using diplomacy to their advantage.

You also have smaller maps and will have fewer, smaller cities, so you're going to be controlling a smaller empire than in Civ IV, if this is something that affects your perception of an empire-builder (which it can do - large figures, such as pop 30 cities, 20 cities, or 100 units in an army, do intrinsically lend a sense of scale that's missing in Civ V where a large player-controlled empire is one that has maybe 6-10 cities, probably only just into double figures population-wise, and with perhaps a dozen units in total).

 

[Makonnen91]

Any other thoughts would be appreciated. I will most likely purchase and play BNW to kick off my first foray into Civ V.

 

[BluegrassGeek]

PhilBowles summed it up pretty well. Civ 5 is more of a "big picture" game, rather than one focusing on the small details of your empire. There is a small amount of micromanaging, such as designating specific resources for your citizens to work, but that's about it.

They also got rid of unit stacking. You can have one military unit and one civilian unit per hex. That means you have to be more careful about your strategy when attacking or defending, and you do have to pay closer attention to your units pathing.

And you do have to pay attention to the diplomacy. Some civs are impossible to get along with (*cough* Inca *cough*), others may backstab you. Now, with BNW, you've got the World Congress, trade and tourism to keep in mind, so establishing good relations with your neighbors will be a must.