Roll Call: Are you playing Civ V?

[Jaybe]

Okay Zoets, understand that I've never even had the desire to play deity. I probably won't go much beyond prince in c5. In civ4 I played a modified prince level which was essentially noble with deity-level max city maintenance.

[AeonOfTime]

Have it, play it, enjoy it thoroughly! The late game is somewhat boring, but it has always been throughout the series (at least in my experience).

[Boracks]

I have it and am playing it -

I suspect that as with Civ IV it won't fully grab my attention until it has been polished by a year or so of patches and expansions.

Essentially set it aside with the same feeling as quoted. This happened with Civ4 for me, it took the expansions to really make it the classic game.

[Arrian]

I will be getting it for Christmas. Given what I know about it (based on both the official info released about it and what I've read here & elsewhere), my expectations are set pretty low. I expect an unbalanced mess that might eventually be patched up to a solid game. Sorta like, say, CivIII.

-Arrian

[Asher]

The game was $29.99 yesterday on Amazon.

[Elok]

I'm vaguely curious about it, but mostly the previews just sounded bad. I come here to see if maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't seen much to that effect yet.

[DarthVeda]

I've been playing it while cursing at it. I find that the games I have played on Prince resolve in two ways by mid-game. Either I am way ahead and have no chance of losing, or I am presented with an impossible situation and I can't possibly win. In either case, I'm kind of missing the "but I could turn it around" feeling.

The game has a very strong slippery slope. It either works for the player, or against the player. Your starting conditions help to determine the entire game.

Some of the Civs are overpowered, some underpowered. Same story with the wonders. The economy feels slow, the tech game is even worse. However, the military game is wonderful. It's not served well because the AI tends to be mediocre for multiple reasons. They don't respond at all to rushes and they can't form up a long-game against overpowering military foes.

That having been said, this is probably the most I've played and enjoyed a Civilization game since Civ 2.

[notyoueither]

I am curious as to what sorts of impossible situations you are seeing.

[DarthVeda]

My primary complaint is that it's not possible to change one's starting strategy mid-game in certain circumstances. In the early game, all strategies are viable. By the mid-game, one has to execute, and by the late game (last 100 turns), if a player is not on "wrap-up", it's over. I have not yet seen a "close" game into the twilight stages. It's all about the inflexibility of the mid-game and the slippery slope.

I've seen around six or seven games have the following outcome. I'm playing as the Indians or Siam, fishing for the cultural and/or one-city victory. I randomize as many settings as possible. I start on the same continent as three other civs.

I'll get about mid-game, good relations with all three, then one, two, and three will declare war on me. Now I realize that somewhere behind the scenes the AI thinks: "Tasty morsel. Has limited military units. Flip war switch on." The desire to do so probably also increases given the number of civs that somebody is at war with.

The problem with this scenario, is that if a player is gunning for cultural victory, one needs to be undisturbed for the majority of the game. A player definitely can't spend the time to proactively build a huge military to fend off three foes. Small empires just don't have the resources to support that. With a small starting military, it's possible to defeat off one foe, but not three. In the end, fighting that war will leave a player so far behind that the original goal is in deep jeopardy, if not impossible. GG; go play another game.

I had another game where I went straight military in the early game (<150 turns), ran out of things to concur, and couldn't swing around the boom fast enough to outpace the other continent(s). I spent around another 100 turns in futility trying to catch up. GG.

There are a number of other situations where the AI out-booms me on another continent because they have free reign and I do not. We'll both start out in the "boom" mindset, but I'll get ambushed. Even if I manage to defeat AIs one, two, and three on continent A, the AI alone on continent B is so far ahead by the end that it doesn't matter. I paid a huge price in the mid-game to fight those wars. Again, GG.

In retrospect, there's probably a number of things I could have done in all these games to win. Or at least increase my chances. They ran contrary to the starting strategy though. Once a player is past the early game, it's prohibitively expensive to change one's strategy to win.

[notyoueither]

You do have to look ahead and be developing your economy at all times. If you don't, you can find yourself in a tough situation. This is especially true as the AI civs seem capable of pressing an advantage and becoming a 'run-away.'

The other thing I find is that you have to play the map. Not every start is going to be compatible with any given strategy and path to victory. You have to go military in some; others may allow culture more easily. Trying for culture is probably a bad plan when Monty starts 15 hexes from you on a small continent.

I am wondering if you have the turn 0 save from any of the games you ran into unwinable situations. I could give it a try and we could compare notes.

[MxM]

Waiting for patches, expansions, mods, etc. Not playing so far. For whatever reason I tried TF2 (did not play it for a year) and they added so much content, that I do not bother with Civ V for now.

Last men alive locks the door!
-Soldier

[Nikolai]

Dale has an interesting mod going about over at WPC. Same with two other modders, don't remember their names, who have a mod called DUCKS running over there, which provides a seriously deep religion system as far as I can understand.