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[s0]

On the fence about this gam. Anyone play it yet?

[ProgramGamer]

I've played Civ 5 

[eyeliner]

I have the full lineup of games. Have yet to play V properly. From what I read, the game is quite good.

[s0]

i've bought it meanwhile. i bought a boxed copy which was just a steam key in a box and was actually 10 euros cheaper than buying directly from steam. i also got a pretty nifty cloth map and the preorder bonus (even tho i didnt preorder) along with it. so IN UR FACE STEAM CUSTOMERS.

anyway, this game is probably better than any other civ at release. the features from 5 (and its expansions) are all still there in some form and the new/redesigned mechanics are mostly very good. some people claim that this is a huge departure for the series. it isn't. it's pretty much civ5 2.0. not a clone or a departure, but an iteration.

that said, even though it IS very polished for a newly released civ game, it still has some issues and bugs that need to be ironed out, weak AI being one of them. also the UI unfortunately kinda sucks compared to 5. if youre interested in it, i would recommend waiting until it has a few patches under its belt and sticking with 5 in the meantime.

[Dacke]

I find V pretty dysfunctional as a game. The early game can be fun as heck as long as you give the terrible Tactics AI a huge material handicap. But once you stabilize and move into the mid/late game, it's just extremely slow. Either you have to micro manage troops to move them large distances (the move-to function bugs out for any non-trivial movement) and completely crush the AI once your army reaches it's destination (did I mention the AI is terrible at war). Or you just end up passing turns until you win (the AI is also terrible at stopping you or winning in general). Bleh.

[s0]

That's all civs ever tho. If you want good mechanics in a strategy game, play some board games.

[Dacke]

Having one unit per tile makes it that much worse, though. I find it to be a nicer system in theory, but the AI simply can't navigate the world.

[s0]

Thats why age of wonders 3 is better  

I play civ mainly for the "experience" of building my civilization tho. i don't minmax my turns generally.

[s0]

Btw, serious question: are u some kind of genius? every post you make about a gam is a complaint about easy it is. i don't doubt your claims, but maybe you just have much better analytical abilities than the average person? because i certainly don't win easily at civ 5 above prince difficulty.

[Dacke]

Sorry, I didn't realize I was doing that. Pretty embarrassing of me.

No, I'm not a genius. I do have a knack for analytical things (math, programming, games), but I'm not among the best at anything. What I do have is a passion for these kinds of games, but most of them have so many obvious flaws that I get frustrated playing them. Hence the whining about strategy games and why in practice I have more fun playing games that have specifically designed challenges, focus on telling stories or challenge my non-analytical skills.

But my complaint isn't really about it being too easy. I haven't actually tried Civ V on the highest difficulty setting and I wouldn't be surprised if it killed me at that level. And if I did beat it, I could always install a mod that gave the AI an even more ridiculous handicap.

My complaint has more to do with game flow and how the AI acts.

The game just becomes unbearably slow at later stages, either microing units or passing turns (waiting for the AI to act).

At higher difficulties, the AI could crush you if it just played decently. So you have to learn what kinds of mistakes it will make. For example not following through attacks, getting stuck on terrain, not contesting city states even if they have lots of money and you're about to win. But I just don't enjoy that level of meta gaming, where I need to build my play style around the AI's ineptitude.

[Alevice]

The game just becomes unbearably slow at later stages, either microing units or passing turns (waiting for the AI to act).

This has been all civs for me sadly.

[eyeliner]

That is a common complaint, but that's how it is, specially if there's a few civs in there too.

Also, aything above "medium" difficulty is just to hard for me. I get owned by the enemy armies and have some serious difficulties progressing, though I like to have the maximum number of civilizations on the map, so combat is frequent.

[s0]

Sorry, I didn't realize I was doing that. Pretty embarrassing of me.

nah it's ok. i don't have a problem with it. i was just curious.

[s0]

The game just becomes unbearably slow at later stages, either microing units or passing turns (waiting for the AI to act).

This has been all civs for me sadly.

yes lol. thats why i recommended to play board games. almost every computer strategy gam has pacing issues, among other things.

[s0]

I feel ambivalent about 1UPT in civ 5 and 6. On the one hand i like the more battle for wesnoth esque approach to units and increased tactical play as opposed to stacks of doom. Otoh there is the AI issue you mentioned and late game devolving into unit tetris. Thats why i like the limited stacking in Age of Wonders. Feels like a best of both worlds solution to me. But then again AoW has tactical battles on separate battle maps rather than the overmap.