I lost terribly in a grinding end.

I played the Ottomans at the east end of a large continent with England, Russia, Greece, and America as neighbors. There were others, but they seemed to be on the other side of the continent (Germany, Japan, Iroquois, etc).

Standard size, wet, 10 civs, 20 city-states, and Prince level.


A few things I noticed:

1. The game graphics are beautiful. Although the character animations were not mind-blowing.
   
2. I love the action-oriented play and the new strategy involved.
   
3. I liked the streamlined play which has less hassle.
   
4. I liked the concept of buying tiles and that borders are semi-permanent (culture does not cause fluctuation in the borders).
   
5. No spaghetti roads.
   
6. I liked that the AIs are willing to give up more when negotiating (but also felt that they give up too much).
   
7. City-states is a good concept.

1. What the heck is with the land units turning into naval units? Is this Transformers? I can't tell if it is a transport unit or an attack ship...
   
2. I can't seem to build an army. It seems like I can play with only a few units. Otherwise, I go bankrupt. Anyhow, other civs don't seem to have many units.
   
3. There are very few changes on the map. The only time there is a big change is when a civ surrenders. (The "practice" game before that, I was fighting a war to stalemate and the other civ suddenly asks for peace and gives up half their cities. Trying to annex all of them brings me to ruin and I start this game.)
   
4. I cannot conquer a single damn city. I brought five units against the English city of York which only had one defensive unit. No way. No can do.
   
5. One city-state kept buying tiles in the sea OVER the ones I bought. This means they jumped over my tile to buy a tile in the sea. The rule should be that tiles can only be bought adjacent to ones you own. I say this because without such a rule, the maps looks ridiculous.
   
6. The economy and happiness is difficult to manage. Perhaps this is just me not used to the system in Civ 5 as I had experienced a similar problem in Civ 4 while trying to ICS. I fell into a rut. I think this time it might have been because I built too many buildings. So what do you do? Just build wealth? I can't seem to build an army...
   
7. No map trading. It's the 20th century and I can only see where my units have traveled. This is not realistic.
   
8. City-states are too fickle. It costs way too much to maintain a good relationship with one. And why do they keep giving me units that I can't afford to maintain. It's only helpful in the beginning. They should give gold or workers instead.
   
9. I miss religion, naval/air units, cottages/towns, and building large armies and fighting massive wars.

In the end, Germany won by Diplomatic Victory as they had the sway of most of the city-states. Most of the city-states voted for Germany in the U.N. elections which were held around 1950.

My Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, came to grinding halt with almost no army and no technological development. I was on the verge of bankruptcy all the time and had to sell resources for cheap. The last three hours of play were just clicking "next turn" over and over again. Nobody even bothered to attack me.

I felt the game was made like this. The design team were aware of the basic concepts and game play of Civilization. They then decided to make a whole new game that would appeal more to the masses. They did NOTHING to improve the interface and give more options of play. Why can't I adjust the amount of desert by percentage? Why can't I name the AI civs and give them characteristics and advantages/disadvantages? What happened to culturally-linked starting locations? WHAT HAPPENED TO GENERATE NEW MAP?!! I have to start all over again, if I don't like the map!

Civ 2 was THE BEST (for its time). It had a great interface with many options to work with (that was not in XML and user-friendly). And it was FUN!!!