Civilization V

[Art Blade]

The more you guys mention "slow" and something along the line of "take your own time" the more it interests me. Remembering the good old Dune II, despite the difference to its predecessor which was an adventure (RPG), I did like to build armies. I don't want to play RTS (oh dear, if you watch online games, see the links above.. but it really is fun to watch commented top level games) because of their hectic nature. So, who knows, maybe I'll give Civ V a shot sometime.  :)

[PZ]

I've started 3 games now while becoming accustomed to the game - it is the first of it's kind that I've ever played.  I don't know if you can choose where you begin your adventure, but this is my experience so far.

Spoiler

The first game I started was set in Greece, and one of the first things you do is to build a settlement.  When I accomplished that task, it turned out to be Athens.  The music was appropriate for the city  :-()

The second game was evidently set in what will eventually be France, because my first settlement was Paris. Again the music was appropriate to the setting.

With my third game, I'm in Asia because my first town is not Beijing, complete with the distinctively Asian music.

Although I'm still not positive the game will be to my liking, it may be something that I install on my office computer so while I'm going through my daily activities, I can take a break every once in a while to take a turn with the game.  Because it is STEAM based, I can install it wherever I want.

[JRD]

(...) it may be something that I install on my office computer so while I'm going through my daily activities, I can take a break every once in a while to take a turn with the game.  Because it is STEAM based, I can install it wherever I want.

I also remember something about you baking ginger cookies in your office...  ????

Say... do you have any position available? I can bake cookis and more and sure like playing games. If I have to do it monday to friday, working hours, I'm sure we can get to an agreement as to how much you'll pay me  8) :-D

[Art Blade]

I'd apply for a job over there, too. Between games, I'd even make coffee for all of us.  ;D

[PZ]

lol, I'll let you guys know as soon as a spot opens up!  ;)

I had to give up baking cookies in my office through - the fragrance of baked cookies was more than my colleagues could stand  :'(

[Art Blade]

Just knock them unconscious until you're finished eating them. All that remains would be a faint smell no one could tell where it came from. You should wash your mouth with a couple of espressi though and remove the crumbs scattered all over your belly before those guys regain consciousness.  ;D

[fragger]

Lol guys ^+-+

Well, I finished my first game last night, by launching a spaceship to Alpha Centauri and thereby pulling off a Science Victory. Man, I'm really hooked on this silly game :-X Gonna start a new one and see how I go as a war-mongering despot this time >:D

I played on the second-easiest difficulty setting, and only just managed to slip a victory in before the turns ran out. It's a tough game to beat. Here's one tip I've discovered: try to become allied with at least a couple of the "City-States". Each map throws up a bunch of these, they're sort of like AI players but they don't expand and build more cities, instead they just inhabit one city surrounded by a small area of land throughout the game. Becoming allied with two or more of them can get a good dollop of extra dough in the kitty each turn, can provide you with additional resources, and sometimes they'll supply you with new units. To get allied, you have to build up enough "influence" points with them. One way is to make them a gift of money, the more you give them, the longer the alliance will last. City-States also issue different kinds of "missions" from time to time, and completing one for them will earn you a large pile of influence with that City-State. This influence diminishes over time unless you keep it up by periodically giving them money and/or units, or by doing missions for them. It's a cool new concept in Civ, and can be very beneficial to your empire :-X

I have to make yet another correction to my original review (just as well I don't do this for a living :-\\ ). I claimed that the number pf players was tied to the map size, but I found that you can in fact specify the number of players for any map (I didn't notice the "Advanced" button in the pre-game set-up screen - d'oh) and you don't always start in the same location. At the same time you don't have any control over where you start on a map, but I did notice in the Save Game menu that you can save either the whole game or just the map you're playing on, so if you ever get a map you like you can save it and have different games on it. I also discovered what the mechanism is for making the map go from its initially fixed state to wrap-around mode. At first the small world-map in the lower-right corner is zoomed right in on your start position, and as your empire expands and your units explore further and further afield the world map view zooms out, until such time as you explore enough ground for the map to end up being zoomed right out to it's full extent. That's when it begins to wrap around from left to right.

I'm finding this to be a delightful game, with all sorts of cool little surprises popping up. The animations just get more and more entertaining the more advanced the units become. Paratroops can be dropped into any land square within 5 hexes of your territory, and when they do, a little Hercules aircraft will fly across the map and your unit will float down into the indicated hex on their 'chutes. Order a bomber to attack a target and a silver Flying Fortress will take off, fly to the target, do a bomb run, circle around and do another one, then fly home and land. The sound effects are great :-X

I found a couple of minor graphical glitches. All units have a colour-coded symbol above them to tell you whose it is, and when you have an aircraft carrier with a few planes aboard, a number also appears above this unit to indicate how many aircraft are aboard. At one stage I moved a carrier and a copy of that number stayed behind in the hex, apparently for the rest of the game. It didn't obstruct movement or anything, but it looked odd. There's also the odd flaw where the map wraps left to right, at one stage I had what looked like a straight line of coast in the sea by itself which persisted for quite some time before it went away, and at one stage all the resource icons disappeared from one city display, returning in the subsequent turn. Minor glitches, and hopefully there'll be a patch of two to take care of them.

Right - I'm off to conquer the world 8)

[Art Blade]

don't worry about errors in your first review, as long as you know they're there and  correct them in a follow-up, no harm done :)

Those graphical glitches you mentioned, try to scroll/move/zoom those glitches away, like outside the screen and then go back in again. Sometimes they are just reminiscences of a certain event that didn't get "washed" away, at least that's what I observed in similar games that use that kind of map view (they disappear once you get back in again).

However, have fun :)

[PZ]

Great review fragger - I must say that the game is rather adicting - hours whiz by before you know it.  I'm currently in a game in which I chose the largest map (Earth), the greatest number of other AI players (24, I believe), and am at about 450 AD in time.

I agree wholeheartedly about the animations - they're really funny!  I typically start at a far view hex, and when anticipating a battle, zoom in to close view where I can see their weapons, battle dress, and almost their faces before I initiate the action.  Loads of fun watching the little guys line up and then launch foreign objects at one another.   ^+-+

[PZ]

Here's a screen cap of my little guys in the city
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[PZ]

My boys (left) are firing on a group of barbarians (right)
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[Art Blade]

Those "little" guys are about as little as the rocky mountains when you look at the map completely and utterly unbiased.  ;D

[PZ]

Yes, they are giants among men, but ants among gamers.  >:D

I found a way (new for me) to maximize my efficiency in each turn - when I started, I was just moving around the map looking for any of my units that needed to do something.  Then I discovered the Unit display, which is sortable by what the unit is doing - automated versus player controlled.  A little green light indicates that the unit can still be manipulated.  Now at a glance I can see the list of who I need to instruct, click on the unit in the list, and the map centers on it's position - much easier, and I don't leave anyone out.

[Art Blade]

they are giants among men, but ants among gamers.

I think this  is worth quoting.  ;D

[PZ]

 ^+-+

[fragger]

Yay, finally – screenies! (thanks for the link to Irfanview, PZ – much obliged. Neat bit of software that, btw :-X )

I've cropped nearly all of these, but the game looks terrific on a widescreen monitor.

Here's a couple of my Egyptian War Chariots. The "light from above" effect and circle on the ground indicates that this is the selected unit to be moved. This was from my first trial game which I later aborted due to getting my butt kicked...

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There are many cool landmarks in the game, and being the first player in the game to discover these on the map can improve your peoples' happiness factor.

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The State of the Nation, circa 1575 AD. The wriggly white lines around my cities are my territorial borders.

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There are lots of cool little surprises – this is a Great Artist. There are also Great Merchants, Great Scientists, Great Engineers and Great Generals which may be generated by your cities over time, and these Great People can give your empire a large boost in terms of resources, money, scientific discovery, military strength, and other ways. This particular GA is a 1930s-era filmmaker (note the cameraman in the back of the car).

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Game of Battleships, anyone?

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Here's my spaceship to Alpha Centauri being constructed on the launch pad in my capital city.

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And here comes the final module, on its way by rail to be installed. Note the modern buildings in the city. Cities and units change in appearance over time depending on what era you're in, going from primitive to modern during the course of the game.

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Of course, these screenpics lost a lot in quality and clarity during the translation. The copies in my Media folder (fragger's stuff) are a little bit clearer, if you want to check them out there.

[PZ]

Outstanding pics, fragger  :-X

I'm looking forward to making my way through the game as you have.  One regret is that there are a limited number of moves in a game.

[fragger]

Thanks, PZ :)

True, the turns are limited, but there is sort of a way around that, although it's not very satisfactory. Whenever anyone wins a game, be it you or the AI, you get the option of concluding the game at that point or playing on. If you play on, the game will just keep going and going ad infinitum, though of course it's no longer possible for anyone to win a second time. But for instance, you might achieve a Science victory, and then just for the heck of it, see if you can conquer the world afterwards. If you do, you won't win anything except the knowledge that you did it. Eventually you'll reach the end of the tech tree, but there's one last endless set of techs collectively called "Future Tech". These are simply numbered (FT1, FT2...) and they don't give you anything new when you discover them, they're just there so that part of the program has something to do.

But if you don't mind the fact that you can't win, or win a second time, you can go on playing the same game indefinitely, if you're so inclined.

[PZ]

Now, that's my kind of game! It is kind of like FC2, or just about any other game I've played - the ability to go on and continue to explore the world is just plain fun.  In this instance, seeing what else you can accomplish.

One question - if I just plain stink at the game, is it possible to still be riding horses, and flinging wooden shafts when the AI wins, or do you automatically advance in time regardless of your gaming prowess?

[JRD]

This and: can you save anytime you want and resume from that point at any time?

I hope so! ::)

[PZ]

Yes, save any time you want, and also lets you save on steam so you can synchronize from anywhere

[fragger]

@PZ, you'll still keep discovering new techs throughout the game, no matter how badly you play it.  The game employs a base number of game turns that are required for each discovery to be made, and the more you can up your empire's science output, the shorter that number of turns becomes. You can increase your science output by building things in your cities like Libraries, Universities and the like, but of course you need to discover the prerequisite techs for these buildings first. The point though is that the research goes on in the background regardless and you'll still keep making discoveries which will unlock more advanced units and such, it's just that if you fail to build any "Science" buildings, it'll take a lot longer. Actually, it's not really the case that you can mess things up, and things can often be corrected – for example, if you order a Worker to build a Farm in a hexagon but later feel that a Trading Post might be better there, a Worker can build the new improvement over the old one. You can upgrade your old, obsolete units to new-fangled ones, or you can disband them and get some gold back into your coffers. You can also change whatever your cities are building and what tech you're researching at any time if you change your mind.

On my second go-around, and I'm currently in the process of ridding the land of the Chinese as this continent ain't big enough for the both of us. I captured one of their cities and mauled their forces so badly that they offered a very lucrative peace deal to persuade me to back off, which included ceding two of their smaller cities to me. Of course I accepted as I needed the time to regroup and refit. But now the deal's up and my guys are spoiling for a fight - time to clean house >:D

[PZ]

Sounds great, and makes me like the game even more - I appreciate all of the thought that goes on in the background of a strategy game.  This will be fun for quite a while.  :-X

[fragger]

One annoying thing about Civ V is that whenever you fire up the game, it forces you into the intro sequence. If you're getting sick of seeing that old geezer sitting by the fire, there's a way to skip over it:

1. Go to \[My] Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5.

2. Find the file UserSettings.ini, and open it with your fave text editor.

3. Find the line SkipIntroVideo = 0 in the section named GameSettings and change it to SkipIntroVideo = 1.

This will skip the intro video. You'll find yourself staring at a blank screen for a moment of two when you load the game, but it is working, so just let it run.

Incidentally, I think the intro sequence is an excellent piece of CG-ing:

Civilization V Intro - HD

[PZ]

Nice one, fragger  :-X