Civilization V

[Art Blade]

That was awesome  :-X

[fragger]

Cheers :)

[JRD]

Impressive indeed... the fire was perfect... and all textures a revery rich too...

[fragger]

If anyone besides me plays Civ V and you haven't come across this as yet, Steam has a new update available which will add a new civ (Mongols) and a swag of additions including new Buildings, Wonders and Tech features, as well as new options in the Setup Game screen such as new map styles and special rules. The in-game rules have been tweaked a bit as well, and some of the Social Policies have been modified. Maintenance costs for some Buildings have been reduced (such as the Colosseum, which I always felt was a bit steep to maintain originally) and some Buildings now provide extra benefits. There is in fact quite a bit of new stuff, so if you're into Civ V I believe the update is worth doing.

[Art Blade]

nice :) Have fun  :-X

[fragger]

Thanks mate :)

[PZ]

Thanks fragger - I have Civilization V - haven't played it in quite a while, but this update sounds pretty good.

[fragger]

No worries, PZ :)

If you start a new game by going to "Setup Game" and then click on the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the window, you'll see the new setup options. On the right is a list of things you can change, such as clicking on "Map Type" (I think that's what it's called, or "Map Style" - something like that) will cause a newly-lengthened list of map styles to appear. There's other new stuff in that right-hand list as well, and below that in the Special Rules section are some new rules. The other new stuff you'll come across during the game, such as in the Tech Tree and in Social Policies. Check out the auto pop-ups there and in the list of Buildings/Wonders in your City Displays to see what they now do - some have been changed in terms of function and benefits. For example, originally you could only build a Stable in a city that had the Horses resource nearby, now you can do so if the city has Horses, Sheep or Cattle. You'll still need Horses from somewhere to build mounted units, but even without Horses a city with a Stable will now get a Production and/or Food benefit . There's quite a lot of stuff like that, I'm still finding new things.

[PZ]

Sounds intriguing - thanks for posting, fragger  :-X

[fragger]

The update has added considerably more to the game than I first thought. There are now also some new Natural Wonders and a new terrain type (Atoll). I'm still coming across enhancements and new additions of one sort or another.

Some prior graphical issues appear to have been addressed, such as the "Railroad glitch". Prior to the update, if you had Workers building Railroads, they'd build a nice looking railroad up to a point, but past that point the appearance of the railroads would become indistinguishable from ordinary Roads (meaning you'd have to put your mouse over the hex and consult the popup to check if there was Road or Railroad there, if you couldn't remember what you'd built). I just finished a game where I had quite an extensive rail system in place and it all stayed looking the way it should. Other graphic quirks have been addressed too - there are no more odd bits of coastline in the middle of the ocean or mismatched tiles. Not that these glitches occurred very often, and they didn't affect the running of the game when they did, but they were a tad unsightly when they did occur.

These are the most powerful units in the game, the dreaded Giant Death Robots:

[smg id=3365 align=center width=400]

These aren't a new unit, they've have been in the game all along – I've just never gotten around to building any before. They only become available when one of the last two techs in the tree has been researched (Fusion Power) so more often than not a game is already over before this tech is reached. They're cool to watch – they tromp around leaving big footprints in the ground which quickly fade and blow away enemy units with rockets and plasmatic blasts. They're the only fanciful unit in the game, everything else is real-world.

I love Civ V - it's got to be the best Civ yet, and the best turn-based, deep-strategy empire building game ever 8) :-X

[Art Blade]

I think it's great that the devs/publishers got round to fixing those issues and on top add content players like, and all that in a regular patch rather than any DLC. Nice  :) :-X

[PZ]

Good post, fragger  :-X

[JRD]

Weekend deal at STEAM... US$17...

8)

[fragger]

Cool :-X

It's almost a pity I have it already :-()

[JRD]

It's a pitty I have so many other games I'm playing now...  :-[

[fragger]

Just for curiosity value, here's a comparison between DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 as seen in Civilization V. You can most readily see the difference in the water areas. I made no alterations to the in-game graphics options between the two pics. Bear in mind that I reduced these images from a res of 1920x1080 to 1200x675 before converting them to 60% compression jpegs, so there is some loss of image quality here. I also don't know why those weird  white areas at upper right are showing in the DX9 pic, they don't appear in the game. My guess is it has something to do with the fact that CivV saves its screenshots in Targa format, which is used for layer-based Alpha-channelled graphics, so for some reason it's treating those two areas as transparencies when saved in DX9 (the areas were black when seen in IrfanView and transparent in Photoshop, ended up white after saving from the latter):

DX9:
[smg id=4344 width=600]

DX11:
[smg id=4343 width=600]

The game looks fantastic in DX11 but at a cost of frame rates, there's a noticeable hit. Still, it's definitely prettier. You can't tell here but the water is animated and it looks so wet that I almost expected it to slop out of the side of the screen when I scrolled the map, lovely effect :-X

[PZ]

That's quite a dramatic difference!  :-X

[fragger]

It's been well over two years now since I started playing this gem of a game and I'm still not sick of it. Like all the previous Civ games (with the exception of IV, which I didn't like at all) the replay value is awesome - provided you like turn-based strategy that is. They have always been classic "just one more turn" games, addictive and engrossing. A Civ game of one iteration or another has always been on whatever PC I've owned since Civ II came out in 1996. I've played Civ II, Alpha Centauri (essentially a Civ game transplanted into the future and onto another planet - had to be done that way for legal reasons, long story), Civ III, Civ IV (very, very briefly - I hated that one, ugly pos) and now Civ V. I never played the original Civilization game but it was pretty mickey mouse judging by the screenies I've seen of it, like this one:

**Warning** - outdated, butt-ugly screenpic inside

1992 Civilization I:

[smg id=5527 align=center width=640]

(Blown up - original res was 320 x 200)

Compare that to the pics in my previous post here. It's come a long way since then!

Since JRD mentioned it in the Shout Box, I thought I'd provide a bit of an update. If you have Civ V or want to get into it, it's worth logging into Steam and letting the game update to it's newest state. The updates have been systematically improving the game over time, adding useful extras, refining the rules and expanding the options until they now have the gameplay balanced to near perfection. It was a tad unwieldy at first with some odd choices for cultural advantages and costings of some things (e.g. building Colosseums to help keep your people happy could quickly send you broke for relatively little return).

For JRD (or anyone else who wants to know): If you want to capture a screenshot, hit the PrintScreen key and a screenie will be saved in My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ScreenShots (just like FC2/3). However, Civ screenies are saved in .tga (Targa) format, which a few graphic apps have trouble handling, but IrfanView or Photoshop will display them just fine (recommend using IrfanView to open them, then save them as .jpgs). I find a funny thing happening with DX9 caps - there will sometimes be null areas where alpha-channeled transparencies have been used for some graphic objects. These show up as black in Irfanview and transparent in Photoshop. This doesn't seem to happen at all under DX10/11. Then again, it could just be my graphic card or driver.

Steam also has an upgrade available for owners of Civ V which will DL all the extra content that comes with the more recent GOTY edition for $20.00 USD, which is not bad considering that there's quite a lot there, mostly in the form of "scenarios" (which are a different way of playing Civ from the standard gameplay), but there are some new cultures and stuff as well. I intend to pick that up even though I was never crazy about scenario play. The other new stuff sounds cool though.

Long live Civilization, best empire-building strategy game series ever :-X I'll be playing this for years, or until there's a Civ VI...

[Art Blade]

 :) At least it's not from UBI so you don't report a gazillion of game crashes here  :-D

[PZ]

... If you have Civ V or want to get into it, it's worth logging into Steam and letting the game update to it's newest state...

OMG I never thought words like those would come out of fragger's mouth!  ???

[fragger]

 

The usual words almost did actually :-() When I first tried to login I had to wait almost an hour for the Steam platform to update, then another forty minutes for the Civ update. Then I tried to play offline like I always do and I kept getting an error. First, a Steam dialog would appear saying "Installing... 0%" which would sit there for a minute without proceeding before being replaced with another dialog saying "The Steam servers are too busy to handle your request for Sid Meier's Civilization V. Error Code (3)" followed by a tech support link. Actually, there would be two of these dialogs open at the same time. Following the link, I learned that error code 3 meant that I had some sort of connection error. Funny - I could get online and see other sites... I reopened Steam and my username was still showing in the Library window so I assumed I was still logged in (what do they say about assuming?) I tried to run the game from the Library window with the same result.

Just when I was starting to think up colourful names for Steam (my usual modus operandi when dealing with them) it clicked - even though my username was still showing, I wasn't in fact in online mode yet. Switched to that and everything went OK. Phew! I couldn't bear to lose my Civ...

[PZ]

Glad you got it sorted  :-X  When I first started reading your post I was thinking this would turn out to be another D_B story.  ????

[JRD]

Six hours vanished from my life in what felt like a blink of an eye!!

After trying some of the tutorial lesson to familiarize with the interface I started a game fresh from start today. All random but the easiest difficulty level.

I'm playing the Incas on a Continents type map.  8)

So far my impressions are of an excellent game.

Graphics The game looks great on DX11. The terrain is diverse and varied and relief is smooth. The characters and cities are very well done and pass the idea of an animated table top board game but with beautiful animations.

Interface The easiest difficulty level allows for players who are not familiar with Civ games but are no strangers to strategy games to learn as they play without much problem. The many advisors pop up as events needing your attention happen and there's always several links to a massive Civilopedia providing much more information than you can read but not on an overwhelming way!

Gameplay. Being able to win a game by military, technological, diplomatic or cultural victory adds a lot to the genre. One can simply be peaceful and invest in technology or negotiate and make friends or destroy enemies. Lots of fun.  :-X

Turn based strategy. The fact that you can think as much as you want and plan what you want to do next is a great feature. I can relax and enjoy a game taking my time... just great.  :-X

[fragger]

Glad you're enjoying it so far :-X Yep, the game is a major time-dilator :-()

The Advisers are a great help if you're new to the game. Once you've got a handle on things, you can turn them off in the Options menu. Once you've turned them off, you can still get their "feedback" by clicking on the appropriate button among the ones at the top right corner of the game screen. These buttons are quite helpful:

[smg id=5567 width=600]

A useful one is the first, smaller one. I call it "Reports", the official title is "Additional Information".
[smg id=5568 width=600]

You can get all kinds of useful info here. Remember too that if you hover the pointer over the info in the top-left bar (Science, Gold, Happiness, etc) informative popups will appear to help you know what's going on there.

The beauty of this game design is in the way info is presented and how accessible it is. Not like in Civ IV, which was about the most user-unfriendly Civ ever.

It can be a bit of a learning curve, but it can be great fun watching your forces go from primitive warriors to helicopter gunships, aircraft carriers and paratroops! And once you pull off a victory of some sort it's quite satisfying. IMO the toughest victory type to achieve is the Diplomatic one.

One tip I'd offer - make the most of City-State alliances. Picking the right ones to cultivate can make a world of difference, especially when it comes to getting access to Strategic and Luxury resources that you don't have access to yourself!

[JRD]

Great tips fragger... thanks a lot!  :-X

I specially like the "victory progress" one. It gives me a measure of my skills against the easiest players. In fact there are so many interfaces to take care of I'm still lon a steep earning curve. The presentation is so well organized I don't feel lost.

One tip I'd offer - make the most of City-State alliances. Picking the right ones to cultivate can make a world of difference, especially when it comes to getting access to Strategic and Luxury resources that you don't have access to yourself!

It's too late for the people of Lhasa, unfortunately!!!!! But I will try to keep my trebuchets away from those poor states from now on... the same cannot be said about China though... need more room to expand my empire!  >:D