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Infogrames attempted to catch the fans napping with a surprise launch one day before all our intelligence officers had expected the assault. Quick as a flash, advance scouts reported the breaking news on Apolyton and I was hot-footing it down to the store having hastily negotiated a day off.
First impressions were mixed. Infogrames UK have defintely done a make-over, with the advertised European art and credits in evidence on the box and manual. This is a boxed release, no DvD option in sight. With the size and weight of the manual this is quite understandable - it would never fit into even a double DvD case. The rest of the contents were disappointing - a plain paper case for the CD and a flimsy Infogrames slip.
With nothing else to occupy my attention on the train home, I dove straight into the manual. Hallelujah, it has a table of contents and an index. The style is readable and informative. Unfortunately on some key technical details it is silent, like it never actually explains how you load troops into a leader and leaves you to discover that the load icon becomes active once you have converted to an army. Similarly the index is good but occasionally there are inaccurate page listings or you are led to a page where the concept is only mentioned in passing. The all important list of hot-keys is buried near (but not at) the back. This badly needs to become a reference sheet in any MGE style release.
Firing up my PII 450 I knew I was near the low end of the spec requirements, but I have 256 Mb RAM, a top rate graphics card and plenty of disk space to compensate. The install went smoothly until we reached the obviously patched in UK registration code, which was clunky and taking ages to draw its screens. Deciding not to go online and register I cancelled out of the process, which hung the PC in a fit of pique. With many other games containing CD protection I discovered on restarting that the desktop icons also failed to recognise the CD, so I resorted to the tried and tested method of ejecting and reinserting the CD. Sure enough, the autorun went smoothly and I was in.
I won't go into huge detail at this point about the games I proceeded to play (I just deleted 2 huge para's here and realised the whole thing was getting book sized)
, except to say they have all been regent level games on standard civ random worlds with 8 players. The game has given me that 'one more turn/hour' feeling, despite some periods of intense frustration, for about 86 hours of play. The bugs, interface irritations and AI omniscence simply do not detract significantly from the experience. I'm going to be more than happy playing the current version until remedies arrive. I might have to play on a difficulty level where the ability to intercept enemy bombers is not a problem, but so be it. Here, not in order of importance, are some observations:
-The screen scrolling is pretty smooth despite the large tiles, except when a ship voyages too close to the poles. Then there is a sort of double jerk every time you move.
- The slimmed down interface is very graceful until you want to find an option you are not sure about. Then reaching for the manual is more awkward than hunting drop down menus would have been. Menu's at least allowed you to spot other activities that you might be able to do under other circumstances.
- Despite my initial reservations, the barring of road movement in enemy territory does make planning necessary for every attack and has led to some strategic battles. More fun than a single turn landslide assault for everyone except the rush-attack specialist.
- The science advisor always begs for increased funding even when we are the #1 science civ. It gets old, fast.
- Specialists are not very useful, but since every content citizen adds to your civ score, I suppose their function is now one of score boosting rather than establishing a super science or industrial city capable of immense output.
- Corruption in Commercial Civs is manageable on the standard map if you make the effort to move your palace around strategically once you have built the forbidden palace. You can't occupy everything but you can productively control a considerable area unless you went for an archipelago map. I am not looking forward to trying a non-commercial civ.
- The build queue shows and suggests building units that went out of fashion millenia ago. An option to only show the modern stuff unless you run out of resources would be nice.
- The AI has little idea of when to retire or upgrade its old units. The Egyptians seem especially fond of their chariots but they are no match for tanks. It amuses me when their chariots attack to capture workers when their far superior infantry are obviously tagged as defensive and only seem to want to pillage improvements.
- The AI is far too fixated on worker capture. It needs to recognise its numerical advantage and attack your units with bad defence in order to remove their threat first. Running round your units (receiving free opportunity fire) to get a worker behind them is suicidal.
- The AI will build a new city adjacent to 12 tanks of a nation it is at war with (that just razed a much larger city) and protect it with one rifleman. Can we say D'oh?
- If you knock out an opponent very early, they seem to get a better restart elsewhere. I wouldn't mind except the restarting civ remembers your ancient eradication and holds it against you for the rest of the game.
- The computer may not cheat but it makes out like a bandit at times. On the whole most battles go with the stated odds but sometimes it is just outrageous. I expect the problem is that the one in 256 chances are the ones we remember over and above all the average outcomes. Having once rolled a 1 in 46,656 chance personally in a boardgame I suppose I should not complain
- The turns do get long in big world war situations. Then again I should be thankful that the massive stacks I see moving around belong to my allies, not the enemy! Holding down shift helps but relies on your active intervention.
- Auto worker is fine in no-pressure peacetime situations. In wartime they are hopeless, running into all sorts of suicidal positions without a care for the enemy.
- I'm a bit surprised there is no B52 jet bomber to accompany the jet fighter. The standard bomber just isn't up to the job of tackling modern units and the stealth unit is designed for precision, not punch.
- My first complete game ended in a 4 way struggle to complete the spaceship. It actually had me loading up an armor laden convoy to go and "persuade" the English to back off, by nuclear means if necessary, before it became clear I just had enough tech lead to complete the final components ahead of the pack
Not had that feeling of tension for a long, long time.
- The diplomacy is great. Learning how the opponents work out what to ask for, and how much, is great fun. It does make sense, but only when you work out why they think they can demand so much.
- The palace screen is lovely but is not recorded as part of your score credit like in Civ 1. It also seems to switch off if you resign a game then start a new one. It was 800 AD once before I noticed I still had a pile of rubble despite my position of world dominance.
- Late game manipulation of dozens of captured workers tackling pollution squares is not fun and it is not clever. Similarly massive lumberjacking stacks is horrible but a strategy too powerful to ignore in hard fought games where you need every advantage.
- The spying seems almost too low key. I was at least expecting a way of actively spending to heighten my internal security without having to manually mole hunt at intervals.
- Some of the diplomatic language is too dumbed down for my personal taste. I don't expect world leaders to be going "wazzup, dude?" to each other. I'm also commonly referred to by my advisors as "Mr.," when we hit democracy. Shouldn't that be my name, Prime Minister or President?
- The sleep/patrol button is badly needed for when you want your peacetime corps patrolling/CAP but not asking for instructions every turn.
- when you have groups of 8 artillery and 1 mech inf that always move as a team, an auto stack movement would be a godsend. Similarly for the 10 worker pollution hit-squads or a way to keep "auto-worker" turned on even when they can find nothing to do for a few turns.
- Oh, and the auto-shutdown to insist you get at least 6 hours sleep before your next 18 hour session really ought to have made it in, too
Just to recap, those above are minor quibbles about a fantastic playing experience. I won't be putting this one on the shelf until the patch comes out, let alone returning it to the store. I hate you for rushing the job, Firaxis, but thanks for releasing it!
First impressions were mixed. Infogrames UK have defintely done a make-over, with the advertised European art and credits in evidence on the box and manual. This is a boxed release, no DvD option in sight. With the size and weight of the manual this is quite understandable - it would never fit into even a double DvD case. The rest of the contents were disappointing - a plain paper case for the CD and a flimsy Infogrames slip.
With nothing else to occupy my attention on the train home, I dove straight into the manual. Hallelujah, it has a table of contents and an index. The style is readable and informative. Unfortunately on some key technical details it is silent, like it never actually explains how you load troops into a leader and leaves you to discover that the load icon becomes active once you have converted to an army. Similarly the index is good but occasionally there are inaccurate page listings or you are led to a page where the concept is only mentioned in passing. The all important list of hot-keys is buried near (but not at) the back. This badly needs to become a reference sheet in any MGE style release.
Firing up my PII 450 I knew I was near the low end of the spec requirements, but I have 256 Mb RAM, a top rate graphics card and plenty of disk space to compensate. The install went smoothly until we reached the obviously patched in UK registration code, which was clunky and taking ages to draw its screens. Deciding not to go online and register I cancelled out of the process, which hung the PC in a fit of pique. With many other games containing CD protection I discovered on restarting that the desktop icons also failed to recognise the CD, so I resorted to the tried and tested method of ejecting and reinserting the CD. Sure enough, the autorun went smoothly and I was in.
I won't go into huge detail at this point about the games I proceeded to play (I just deleted 2 huge para's here and realised the whole thing was getting book sized)
, except to say they have all been regent level games on standard civ random worlds with 8 players. The game has given me that 'one more turn/hour' feeling, despite some periods of intense frustration, for about 86 hours of play. The bugs, interface irritations and AI omniscence simply do not detract significantly from the experience. I'm going to be more than happy playing the current version until remedies arrive. I might have to play on a difficulty level where the ability to intercept enemy bombers is not a problem, but so be it. Here, not in order of importance, are some observations:-The screen scrolling is pretty smooth despite the large tiles, except when a ship voyages too close to the poles. Then there is a sort of double jerk every time you move.
- The slimmed down interface is very graceful until you want to find an option you are not sure about. Then reaching for the manual is more awkward than hunting drop down menus would have been. Menu's at least allowed you to spot other activities that you might be able to do under other circumstances.
- Despite my initial reservations, the barring of road movement in enemy territory does make planning necessary for every attack and has led to some strategic battles. More fun than a single turn landslide assault for everyone except the rush-attack specialist.
- The science advisor always begs for increased funding even when we are the #1 science civ. It gets old, fast.
- Specialists are not very useful, but since every content citizen adds to your civ score, I suppose their function is now one of score boosting rather than establishing a super science or industrial city capable of immense output.
- Corruption in Commercial Civs is manageable on the standard map if you make the effort to move your palace around strategically once you have built the forbidden palace. You can't occupy everything but you can productively control a considerable area unless you went for an archipelago map. I am not looking forward to trying a non-commercial civ.
- The build queue shows and suggests building units that went out of fashion millenia ago. An option to only show the modern stuff unless you run out of resources would be nice.
- The AI has little idea of when to retire or upgrade its old units. The Egyptians seem especially fond of their chariots but they are no match for tanks. It amuses me when their chariots attack to capture workers when their far superior infantry are obviously tagged as defensive and only seem to want to pillage improvements.
- The AI is far too fixated on worker capture. It needs to recognise its numerical advantage and attack your units with bad defence in order to remove their threat first. Running round your units (receiving free opportunity fire) to get a worker behind them is suicidal.
- The AI will build a new city adjacent to 12 tanks of a nation it is at war with (that just razed a much larger city) and protect it with one rifleman. Can we say D'oh?
- If you knock out an opponent very early, they seem to get a better restart elsewhere. I wouldn't mind except the restarting civ remembers your ancient eradication and holds it against you for the rest of the game.
- The computer may not cheat but it makes out like a bandit at times. On the whole most battles go with the stated odds but sometimes it is just outrageous. I expect the problem is that the one in 256 chances are the ones we remember over and above all the average outcomes. Having once rolled a 1 in 46,656 chance personally in a boardgame I suppose I should not complain
- The turns do get long in big world war situations. Then again I should be thankful that the massive stacks I see moving around belong to my allies, not the enemy! Holding down shift helps but relies on your active intervention.
- Auto worker is fine in no-pressure peacetime situations. In wartime they are hopeless, running into all sorts of suicidal positions without a care for the enemy.
- I'm a bit surprised there is no B52 jet bomber to accompany the jet fighter. The standard bomber just isn't up to the job of tackling modern units and the stealth unit is designed for precision, not punch.
- My first complete game ended in a 4 way struggle to complete the spaceship. It actually had me loading up an armor laden convoy to go and "persuade" the English to back off, by nuclear means if necessary, before it became clear I just had enough tech lead to complete the final components ahead of the pack
Not had that feeling of tension for a long, long time.- The diplomacy is great. Learning how the opponents work out what to ask for, and how much, is great fun. It does make sense, but only when you work out why they think they can demand so much.
- The palace screen is lovely but is not recorded as part of your score credit like in Civ 1. It also seems to switch off if you resign a game then start a new one. It was 800 AD once before I noticed I still had a pile of rubble despite my position of world dominance.
- Late game manipulation of dozens of captured workers tackling pollution squares is not fun and it is not clever. Similarly massive lumberjacking stacks is horrible but a strategy too powerful to ignore in hard fought games where you need every advantage.
- The spying seems almost too low key. I was at least expecting a way of actively spending to heighten my internal security without having to manually mole hunt at intervals.
- Some of the diplomatic language is too dumbed down for my personal taste. I don't expect world leaders to be going "wazzup, dude?" to each other. I'm also commonly referred to by my advisors as "Mr.," when we hit democracy. Shouldn't that be my name, Prime Minister or President?
- The sleep/patrol button is badly needed for when you want your peacetime corps patrolling/CAP but not asking for instructions every turn.
- when you have groups of 8 artillery and 1 mech inf that always move as a team, an auto stack movement would be a godsend. Similarly for the 10 worker pollution hit-squads or a way to keep "auto-worker" turned on even when they can find nothing to do for a few turns.
- Oh, and the auto-shutdown to insist you get at least 6 hours sleep before your next 18 hour session really ought to have made it in, too
Just to recap, those above are minor quibbles about a fantastic playing experience. I won't be putting this one on the shelf until the patch comes out, let alone returning it to the store. I hate you for rushing the job, Firaxis, but thanks for releasing it!
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