Not Impressed So Far

[pdxsean]

Here are a few things Civ V has added.

Cities defend themselves and have ranged attacks.
Hexes
One Unit Per Tile
Cultural expansion one-hex-at-a-time
New movement mechanics
Ranged attack units
Citizen allocation locks
City States
Unit HPs and generally 2+ attacks to kill
Culture-based social policies
New jungle and hill terrain improvements
Limited resource allocation
Total War style reminders
Complete economic overhaul
Complete happiness overhaul

It's not a complete list, just some things I've written down today.

[Father Beast]

Just a few thoughts on the improvements, after one try of the demo (and yes, you may now flame me for talking with that little experience)

Here are a few things Civ V has added.

Cities defend themselves and have ranged attacks.

Awesome. Why didn't someone think of this before?

Hexes

Makes astonishingly little difference. Still, I have no objection.

One Unit Per Tile

This is something that probably sounded like a good idea in production, which may or may not be a good idea after all. it's too early to tell. Still, it seems like a step backwards from civ 4, where other people's units made a habit of traipsing through the streets of my capitol.

Cultural expansion one-hex-at-a-time

very cool.

New movement mechanics

Not entirely sure what that means. I haven't read the manual yet. (Yes, I have it.)

Ranged attack units

I suppose you mean attacking from two (or maybe more) hexes away. a little weird. makes (along with 1upt) the world seem more like battlefield level organization rather than a significant piece of a continent.

Citizen allocation locks

don't know what that is. maybe in manual.

City States

Going to be awesome. unless some people figure out the best way to exploit the mechanic, after which it will become a laughed at standard.

Unit HPs and generally 2+ attacks to kill

Actually pretty nice. a little tougher than previous versions, but not that big a deal.

Culture-based social policies

I like it. I am a bit apprehensive at never being able to get scientific after picking pious, but it will be interesting.

New jungle and hill terrain improvements

dk. manual.

Limited resource allocation

It makes me nervous. like when civ 3 introduced resources in the first place, and there was only one place in the entire world with coal, and I would lead a massive war to get it, and it would then dry up. at first glance, this mechanic seems like stepping back into civ 3 from civ 4.

Total War style reminders

never played total war.

Complete economic overhaul

manual awaits.

Complete happiness overhaul

same.

It's not a complete list, just some things I've written down today.

After playing that first demo game, I am a bit nervous. Remember when Civ 3 came out, and corruption was ruinously difficult, and resources were nerfed, and a few other things that combined to make it, well, less fun?

I enjoyed the game. It is still Civ, after all. But there are a number of things I just could not figure out how to do. I figured I would read the manual and that would clear it up. But it seems from a cursory glance at the forums that these things I just don't know how to do simply cannot be done, or at least some of them.

the final thing: after playing the demo, I didn't have an urge to go buy Civ 5. I had an urge to go back and play Civ 4 again.

[pdxsean]

The manual won't help you with the happiness or economic models. To be honest, the manual won't help you with anything. Like, everything you said in response to me that you'd look in the manual, you won't find it there. Nor in Civilopedia. It's terrible.

I've written a blog about some of the major economic hurdles that can come, the Puppet (Vampire) State blog. Through that blog there's a link to the Late Game Economic Concern thread where you can read all sorts of thoughts from the testers on how to get through the economic and happiness changes.

You won't find anything to tell you about the ability to build towns on top of jungles, or farms on hills. Or towns on forests... there are lots of interesting combinations I keep discovering.

Hexes work really well with 1UPT in combat, it's great to be able to pull your wounded unit behind and put two units guarding the approach. Just the "no diagonals" aspect makes a huge difference.

As for movement mechanics, I mean how they range from 2-8 tiles depending on the unit, and how there is a much wider range of how units move.

Finally, by "citizen allocation locks" I mean that you can lock your citizens into working a tile. Say you have a gold mine which provides three hammers and two gold. Yet the AI keeps wanting your town to grow so it allocates workers to the farms. You can lock one of those workers on the mine, so no matter what the AI does it'll always be worked. There is a lot of controls of the citizens in the towns, it has the best of Civ 2 style citizen management in that aspect, with Civ IV intelligence (where it was impossible to maintain manually imo).

[Nikolai]

Father beast, i won't be adressing all you said as i am writing from a phone anf it's three in the morning. But regarding incompatible policy trees: you can switch from piety to rationalism or vice versa. It will cost you one turn of anarchy (only anarchy left in the game) and you loose all the benefits of the branch you leave.

[dregor]

Father beast, i won't be adressing all you said as i am writing from a phone anf it's three in the morning. But regarding incompatible policy trees: you can switch from piety to rationalism or vice versa. It will cost you one turn of anarchy (only anarchy left in the game) and you loose all the benefits of the branch you leave.

Hmm, I didn't know that you could do that. Do you get the policy slots back to reallocate, or are they considered lost? If lost, does the amount of culture you need to get a new social policy get reduced? Interesting.

I think the social policy system is probably the most interesting new mechanic. Way more tweakable than the old "pick a government" model. And I love the new combat system, tho I need some more practice at herding my units where I want and in the right order to protect ranged units while keeping them in range of the target.

I don't think there is, but is there a way to post little signs on the map like in 4? So I can look at terrain and plot out where I want to place cities, make notes of it, then come back to it later?

[Dinner]

Starting location seems to be so important for early happiness because if you start with a luxury resource then it just makes everything so much easier. Other wise by the time you have three cities your happiness goes negative before you can even research the techs to build happiness improving buildings. My last game I started on an island without any luxury resources on it (other then wine but I hadn't gotten calendar yet) so the game was a struggle from turn 1.

[Boracks]

One thing to note about the feelings of players to CivV versus Civ4. Civ4 followed Civ3, so it was easy to be better, and eventually (years), was arguably the best yet. CivV is following Civ4 so the bar is a lot higher in comparison.

I think its worth buying, and playing, and eventually it may equal 4.

[Hauldren Collider]

Economics and stuff should all be in the Lua scripts. It was completely pointless to leave that out of the manual and civilopedia, since it's only a matter of time before it is fully understood anyways. Why would a civ player not want to know the rules of the game? Why would you keep them secret? Just why?

[Jeje2]

Have to agree - although I really like hexes - the rest has been disappointment sofar.

Now as I didn't like Civ IV at all either - starting to wonder have I become too old for Civ? Do I really want to stop playing one more turn?

[egavactip]

For those who think hexes are an "innovation," let me just point out that hex maps have been an incredibly common feature of wargames for half a century. The real question is why squares were EVER used...

[pdxsean]

I recall reading some discussion when Civ IV was in development. They were considering using hexes for a time but discarded it. The developers also explained why Civ I had squares (I'm guessing because it ran on 256k ram or whatever, for starters) and talked about how it'd been a point of contention for some time.

[Dinner]

One thing to note about the feelings of players to CivV versus Civ4. Civ4 followed Civ3, so it was easy to be better, and eventually (years), was arguably the best yet. CivV is following Civ4 so the bar is a lot higher in comparison.

I think its worth buying, and playing, and eventually it may equal 4.

I have to agree with this. Civ3 was easily the worst in the series and we're comparing Civ 5 right after its launch to a Civ4 which has received two expansion packs and a great deal of modding to make it an excellent game.

[Wiglaf]

What was wrong with Civilization 3 exactly? Don't answer me in hipster speak, talk to me like a man.

[Proteus_MST]

What was wrong with Civilization 3 exactly? Don't answer me in hipster speak, talk to me like a man.

One thing that comes immediately into my mind is the city spam... AI founding one city after another with you having to expand like mad, just to have a chance to get some of the rare (and yet undiscovered) strategic resources. If I remember correctly this was combined with the AI knowing about the strategic resource before getting the tech that would uncover it and would found its cities at exact those spots, in which these strategic resources would later be uncovered.
Another thing that comes into my mind is ICS (infinite city sprawl) as one of the best strategies in Civ 3 (which was IMHO a bad thing)

[Father Beast]

One thing that comes immediately into my mind is the city spam... AI founding one city after another with you having to expand like mad, just to have a chance to get some of the rare (and yet undiscovered) strategic resources. If I remember correctly this was combined with the AI knowing about the strategic resource before getting the tech that would uncover it and would found its cities at exact those spots, in which these strategic resources would later be uncovered.
Another thing that comes into my mind is ICS (infinite city sprawl) as one of the best strategies in Civ 3 (which was IMHO a bad thing)

ICS was a beat all strategy in civ 1 and 2 also. the problem with civ 3 was that you had to ICS since the AI was doing it too.

It took Civ 4 to find an actual cure for ICS