Have CivRev, will play.

[dojoboy]

I picked up my reserved copy of CivRev for the DS today after work. I've been able to sit down with it for about 45 minutes, but will play hard later this evening.

It took me a few minutes before the controls felt comfortable, mainly with movement and opening the city view. I kept tapping the city twice to open it. Where the hell did I pick that habit up? :sarcasm:

Of course I'm playing my first game on Chieftain, as Elizabeth. [Props go out to the Motherland.] I've met Cleo and Toku, sent a couple caravans to Cleo before I decided to see how battles go. I declared war on her and moved 3 warriors and a LB to attack. I won every battle, gaining promotions (really like how this works), but was unable to take her only city. On the next turn, I won a couple, but moved the units out to heal. I sent 3 legionnaires to join the offensive. My next time in, I lost everything but a legionnaire. She had a kick-ass LB or two ripping me up before I could touch her (she was on defense, but the range attack was decimating).

So, I saved the game. I read a bit, finding the method for creating an army. I could have done that twice. More comments to follow.

Good job, Sid & Company!

[Maquiladora]

I also picked Lizzie and Chieftain to learn the ropes in my first game.

First thing I formed a couple of wariror armies and killed Rome, Japan, then Arabia, need one more capital (Madrid) for a domination victory.

I eventually found Isabella sitting on an island so it's taking longer than I expected. In the mean time I shipped a caravan to her for 300 gold. I was building up a few Legions to finish the game before teh gf stoled my DS to play Puzzle Quest

I like it so far. Streamlined in the right areas (road building, armies, city management etc), could do with a couple more screens for city info and civilopedia, but it can be learned. I'll see what the AI and wi-fi (if I can sort out my router) is really like before I rate it properly.

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I also picked Lizzie and Chieftain to learn the ropes in my first game.

First thing I formed a couple of wariror armies and killed Rome, Japan, then Arabia, need one more capital (Madrid) for a domination victory.

I eventually found Isabella sitting on an island so it's taking longer than I expected. In the mean time I shipped a caravan to her for 300 gold. I was building up a few Legions to finish the game before teh gf stoled my DS to play Puzzle Quest

I like it so far. Streamlined in the right areas (road building, armies, city management etc), could do with a couple more screens for city info and civilopedia, but it can be learned. I'll see what the AI and wi-fi (if I can sort out my router) is really like before I rate it properly.

Can't blame her, Puzzle Quest is great game too. I'm looking forward to the next iteration of it, coming in October - Puzzle Quest Glactica.

I'd like some more hotkeys for CivRev, some that are customizable.

[Maquiladora]

I just tried the game of the week (yeah Chieftain...) and

Spoiler:

got a 900BC domination victory with Shaka. Probably could have done it much sooner without waiting to make armies.

It's a shame the DS GOTW is not ranked too.

Had a quick 4plyr wi-fi game, it was very laggy on a 1Mb/128kb connection. This was a random game so I'm hoping it's better with players I know are closer to me. 2 of the players dropped out early so I went too, no idea how I was doing.

[joebreeves]

How do you see your attack strength against your opponent? I am in an early game and I am going to attack a barbarian outpost, but I have no idea what I am attacking. The Xbox version shows your strength versus the attackee, where is it on the DS?

[dojoboy]

It is located in the upper screen. When you drag your movement arrow to attack (you see the attack icon over the enemy), you'll see your attack rating and their defense rating. No odds shown.

[joebreeves]

Yeah, that was a bit of my fault, but I noticed on Barbarian Villages this info doesn't show up sometimes.

There's lots of these little problems on the DS version. There's no easy way to switch your trade production to gold and to science if you use a custom worker layout. The 360 version does this with a single Y button press.

You can't see your defensive strength of your cities as far as I can tell. I stole the Great Wall. Okay.. what did that do? My experience from Civ says it helps with defense, but I have no idea as there is no way to check the benefits of a wonder after you built it.

As far as I can tell you can't sell units.

The wonder build choice screen does not list when they go obsolete. This is a really bad omission. Do they go obsolete? I'm sure they do, because I happen to know that from the 360 game.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by joebreeves

There's lots of these little problems on the DS version.

I know. There are too many screens where a couple of lines of text or a shortcut could have easily been left to help the user.

Like when you check existing buildings/wonders in a city. Was it really necessary to take up the whole bottom screen to have a picture for each building wonder and have to scroll through each one at a time to see what's in the city, but NOT have information underneath each picture? I would rather just have a plain list of buildings and wonders so I can check QUICKLY what's in the city, not have to scroll through them all.

There is plenty of space for more info in the tech tree too. You don't even get unit, building, and wonder stats. That again could have been done, even with a scrolling line of text it's better than nothing.

[SSBLoveU]

It is no secret I use my army and navy and technology to win my games. Actually, I just finished an exciting CivIII game were I had to use my artillery and bomber and ground troop combination to win a diplomatic victory because one of my rivals out maneuvered my usual technology build up. So, it was about time to see if the DS version of CivRev will be fun. I have some work to do, but I should be getting it next week to find out how it handles my outposts and such . . . Can't say much about the game now . . .