Civ V is a great game.

[vee4473]

One thing that is irking me (or am I missing something?) is that the cost to rush build a unit or structure doesn't seem to decrease in relation to how long you've been building it. It seems to be an either all or nothing approach. I kinda liked the way it used to work where if I couldnt afford or didn't want to spend the "sticker price" for a unit or structure, I could spend a few turns building it and rush it when the price was lower.

Also, you can't seem to rush build a unit if you have one garrisoned in the city. So you have to move the unit out, then buy the new unit.

Maybe i'm missing something.

[Nikolai]

You are right on both accounts.

[Guynemer]

The "additional info" button in the top right will allow you to bring up various lists like economy, diplomacy relations, lists of cities and units (the unit list shows great general progress). But, yeah, the diplomacy list is fairly useless and they could use a little more info.

Also, in each city screen the tabs on the right will show GP progress if your city can even make one. By default alot of the tabs start as minimized I think though.

I'm aware of this. But I want to be able to pull up one little info panel that tells me how long until all of my cities pop a GP.

[pdxsean]

the cost to rush build a unit or structure doesn't seem to decrease in relation to how long you've been building it. It seems to be an either all or nothing approach.

The flip side of this, and a big boost imo, is that you can rush build something while you're in the middle of building something else.

Say I am building the Angkor Wat and am halfway done when I need to build a swordsman for some reason. Instead of ditching all the work on my wonder, I can just buy me a swordsman. I do like that, although I kind of miss being able to rush finish something I've halfway completed.

[Aro]

Just noticed, after a few games... No more animals! No barbarian wolves, lions, bears... Or is this just on low levels?

[pdxsean]

Ha! I'd forgotten about those.

I've been playing with raging barbarians on, and they present plenty enough trouble to make up for the lack of wildlife.

Have you noticed that scouts are no longer complete pushovers?

[Boris Godunov]

I do think the game is boring as it currently is but I don't hate it and I think with an expansion pack it can be ok especially if they restore things like religion and corporations. You put that big quote up there and you failed yet again to prove your main point that Oerdin only bad mouths the game and never makes specific criticism when in fact most of my posts have very specific criticism in them.

Religion and corporations especially both sucked. That you think they are somehow key to an enjoyable Civ experience means you suck at the game and should go play EU2.

Where did I say you didn't make specific criticism? I said it was superficial and unintelligent. So far, you haven't challenged that point.

Let's watch some more of watch Boris fail because he can't admit he was wrong. He claimed my complaint about the pathing AI was "uninformed" and "stupid" then 2K admitted there was problems with the pathing AI and that they'd improve it in a patch. That's official confirmation that my point was valid, you schmuck!

Because I'm not wrong. If you think pointing out that there's a problem with AI pathing is some sort of deep, insightful look at the game's issues, then you're an idiot. It's almost as dumb as the guys over at CFC who hate the game because the rivers don't look cool enough for them.

[Boris Godunov]

Ha! I'd forgotten about those.

I've been playing with raging barbarians on, and they present plenty enough trouble to make up for the lack of wildlife.

On the 2nd game I played as Egypt, the barbs cause me a great deal of trouble. They killed my first scout and kidnapped a worker.

I was pleasantly surprised to get the worker back 4000+ years later from the French...

Have you noticed that scouts are no longer complete pushovers?

Some egomaniac on CFC was claiming he'd beat the game on the toughest difficulty level building nothing but archers and scouts...

[Louis Cyr]

I love this game because...

...now i realy like to wage war. In other civ games i was more a peacefull builder heading for space race or cultural victory.

Now i realy have the feeling of being a great general leading his troups to victory!

From peacefull buider, to avid warmonger MOUHAHAHA

[pdxsean]

On the 2nd game I played as Egypt, the barbs cause me a great deal of trouble. They killed my first scout and kidnapped a worker.

I was pleasantly surprised to get the worker back 4000+ years later from the French...

Ha! That is hilarious.

I think they're a little light with the vanilla setting, but if you put on raging barbarians they're pretty awesome. Gives me a good reason to keep a military unit hanging around the home base.

You're from Portland too? Isn't that funny. I live in Goose Hollow...

[pdxsean]

...now i realy like to wage war. In other civ games i was more a peacefull builder heading for space race or cultural victory.

Now i realy have the feeling of being a great general leading his troups to victory!

I agree. I still try for the space race victory (or UN if need be) but inevitably I end up in a war of some sort. In my current game I upped the # of starting civs and it has been pretty violent. Still long stretches of peace, but I've been at war with five neighbors now.

The upside is, I'm down to two neighbors.

I love the hexes and how they effect combat. Much more fun than just marching a stack across a bunch of squares. The relatively smaller armies is also nice, I think I have 15 units in my current SP game and I feel like I can conquer the world.

[Brutus66]

I have to side with those who feel that this game is easier than Civ 4. Tonight was my third full game and I won on Prince, without being fully conversant with the game mechanics. Personally, prince level on Civ 4 was a challenge for me, experimenting with concepts like a specialist economy, etc.

That's not to say I didn't have a good time playing this game; I just found it easier. I definitely think it favors the warmonger approach- once one civ achieves the momentum in a war, they become virtually unstoppable. It takes so long to build a unit that the losing side ends up getting steamrolled. For the attacker, once the defender's army in the field is dispatched, it becomes a matter of reducing a city, healing, then moving on to the next.

My takeaway from tonight's game was that you shouldn't bother building many units in the early game. Just produce enough units to fend off the barbarians and let the other civs know you're not entirely defenseless. Save the money you would otherwise spend on unit maintenance and stash a few thousand in the bank. Focus on achieving a big tech lead. When the inevitable attack comes, you can buy a bunch of advanced units and clobber your attacker. Never grant them a peace treaty, no matter how appealing their offer might be- kill them ruthlessly and install puppet rulers in their cities. If you get the opportunity to liberate the capital of a fallen civ, don't bother- they're never appreciative and will just resent your rising power and hegemony for the remainder of the game. Better to just take the resources for yourself than deal with their snottiness.

[MxM]

I don't disagree that some things are definitely more complicated (or rather one thing); since there are no sliders if I want to increase gold output I have to go into each city and change the tiles the pops work so that they end up producing more gold (at the expense of producing less of something else like food or hammers) and it definately becames a chore to keep doing that. My point was the slider solution was much easier, simple, and a more elegant solution to the same problem. Sure, people can and did move pops around especially in ladder or MP games but if you just wanted to play the game the sliders were a great way to simplify things so that even someone new at the game could follow without spending more then a 2-3 seconds thinking about it.

There are 2(!) easy ways to convert excess gold into science. One is research agreement, 2nd is the city focus screen. Due to the need of having only minor adjustments you usually can not afford to switch more than one city to science. And 3, a bit more complected, is to build the right improvements.

Yes, not having sliders makes game harder, which in my book is a good thing. But people are saying that the game is easy because it is so simplified, which is incorrect. The game is indeed easy to understand, but to master it is harder. Again, good thing in my book.

[Wyrda Edocsil]

I have to side with those who feel that this game is easier than Civ 4. Tonight was my third full game and I won on Prince, without being fully conversant with the game mechanics. Personally, prince level on Civ 4 was a challenge for me, experimenting with concepts like a specialist economy, etc.

Prince in Civ V is different than prince in Civ IV. Prince is the new "normal" difficulty level, replacing noble difficulty from earlier games. I'm not really sure whether it's easier than noble was in Civ IV. I only played one or two games on it in Civ V, to get used to the changes to the game, and generally played on monarch-emperor difficulty in Civ IV. The AI definitely needs some improvement in tactics, though. I can easily decimate even Japan with only half the number of units that the AI has.

MxM's point about the game being easier to learn, and harder to master, IMO, is absolutely correct. It makes for a much better game, and most likely achieved Firaxis' goal of making the game less imposing to new players, without annoying more experienced ones.

[MxM]

I have to side with those who feel that this game is easier than Civ 4. Tonight was my third full game and I won on Prince, without being fully conversant with the game mechanics. Personally, prince level on Civ 4 was a challenge for me, experimenting with concepts like a specialist economy, etc.

Prince level in Civ V is called noble level in Civ IV. It is level where both you and AI have the same benefits, that is AI does not cheat. If you want to compare prince in Civ IV, try king in civ V - this is the first level where AI have some unfair advantages.