Civilization 5 is out.

[Darmalus]

Played my first game today, haven't had a chance to explore it in detail yet, but a few first impressions.

Not being able to access the Civilopedia from the main menu kinda stinks. I need to be in an actual game to bring it up, unless they hid it really well.

I hope all the nation introductions are as bombastic as the American one, it seems we single handedly won both world wars are are just totally awesome guys.

Lack of a map editor, I loved that thing.

Culture as currency is interesting, I think I like it better than the old mechanic. You use it to buy these social aspects for you civilization, I was lucky and a ruin game me some culture, so I got Honor (bonus to fighting barbarians) and Tradition (extra food in the capital) right away. Some of these are exclusive with each other, but because every purchase makes the next one more expensive, it will be a while before I can get a third.

The ability to buy terrain, units and buildings without need for a specific civic is nice, I used to wind up with more gold than I knew what to do with due to my choice of civics. I wonder if I will be able to buy tiles from my neighbors once I get large enough that we share borders, it would be great if I could make land purchases instead of having to burn down cities every time I want a resource tile.

Slaughtering barbarian camps has been a great early source of gold and keeps my spearmen in fighting trim.

I really hope this trade route works out between my capital and my second city, this road will be a bit expensive to maintain once it is completed.

Over all, I am liking what I see so far, but I don't pretend to be deep enough into the game to find any problems with the Diplomacy system or AI behavior yet.

[General Zod]

Can you play it on less than a quad core PC without the game shuddering to a halt?

[Darmalus]

Ran just fine on my: ASUS M70 Series M70Vm-X1 NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T9400(2.53GHz) 17.0" Wide UXGA 4GB Memory 320GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS

Hope that helps.

Edit: Running a huge map, max number of civs and city states.

[Jon]

I'm a 150 turns in on a 2 year old piece of shit dell laptop and it's going fine.

[adam_grif]

What I want to know is if it will run on a single core processor.

Also:

Apparently Nvidia is running some sort of promotion with Civ V.

[TC Pilot]

If the demo is any indicator, they need to boost the rate of unit/building production by about an order of magnitude. A hundred turns and only two civs built a second city (myself and Egypt). I myself only managed to build a half dozen units before the time limit, and yet Great Wonders are cheaper than anything.

[AniThyng]

Demo runs fine on my Athlon X2 5200 - it does seem like AI calcs might be taking the bulk of the processor power, I have a ATI 4850 and the graphics are fluid and good looking - it's the turns take seem to take a while, but it's not really any worse then Empire or how Civ IV used to run on my Athlon XP. But this is on 100 turn demo small map - I'm not sure how this scales to a standard size late game map.

[MKSheppard]

Yep, called it. AI processing for what they wanted to do was the increase in box requirements.

[Stark]

Haha, 'you' called it? Hilarious.

It's a bit sad they have obviously built the game for 2-3 expansions to make it feature-complete.

[Lonestar]

If the demo is any indicator, they need to boost the rate of unit/building production by about an order of magnitude. A hundred turns and only two civs built a second city (myself and Egypt). I myself only managed to build a half dozen units before the time limit, and yet Great Wonders are cheaper than anything.

So far it's much the same with me. It seems to take waaaaayyyy too long to build units and buildings. Also, I seem to have a frustrating time finding resources like iron, even after setting the resource amount to "abundant". But at least I have a gazillion tiles worth of dye and cotton.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I've been surrounded by iron, but then I'm playing Rome, and by default it matches starting areas to roughly approximate a faction's real environment.

I haven't gotten far though, because it hangs and crashes upon viewing the Civilipedia page on great persons, which I keep trying to read to figure out WTF to do with mine.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I hope all the nation introductions are as bombastic as the American one, it seems we single handedly won both world wars are are just totally awesome guys.

I started the game as american, and I didn't see this part? Where does it say that?

[Laughing Mechanicus]

It's a bit sad they have obviously built the game for 2-3 expansions to make it feature-complete.

I haven't had a chance to try the demo yet; what do you mean by this?

[AniThyng]

It's a bit sad they have obviously built the game for 2-3 expansions to make it feature-complete.

I haven't had a chance to try the demo yet; what do you mean by this?

There's a lot of places where you can clearly see that gaps can be filled in - be it unit niches or more extensive diplomacy options etc. This isn;t new though - compare civ iv vanilla and civ iv BTS.

Gold seems to be way too limited...but the demo ends just when things get interesting so I dunno. Damn worldwide release date!

[Lonestar]

I started the game as american, and I didn't see this part? Where does it say that?

It doesn't, he's just reading too much into "survived two world wars that destroyed other nations".

[Stravo]

I played this thing for 5 hours last night as Egyptians (Love the bonus to building wonders) and here are my observations:

It immediately struck me how different the presentation is graphically. The lands look different, it takes a while to even see the special resources and you can't tell what kind of land feature it is (tundra, plains, etc) without hovering your mouse over it. The units looks nice and the cities are gorgeous and especially love the feature of the wonders showing up in the city view on the world map so Thebes my capital has a sprawl of wonders all over its terrain. After awhile though the trouble of seeing the different features wore off and I got used to the presentation.

The interface is pretty intuitive and all the commands seem to be there at your fingertips I just think that it's a little too helpful in the sense that it prompts the hell out of you to make sure you visit every city and every unit. Now mind you this is a nice feature for when you have a sprawling empire, I can't tell you how many times I forgot to order a unit because it's my 16th infantry unit somewhere off to the side. It can't happen now with this system but it can still be kind of annoying.

Civs are smaller now. I was stuck at 2-3 cities for a very long time and only now that I hit my stride and have everything running am I starting to pump out the settlers. The issue is I'm in the 1200's when I start my settler spam. By this point in Old Civ I would be planning the World Conquest phase of my empire. Still it's kind of cool to have a smaller more concentrated civilization I just don't know if covering the entire world, especially on a Huge map which os my preference, is going to happen with this game.

Wonder movies, I was really disappointed that they did away with Wonder movies and went with stills and a quote but after experiencing it I was totally fine with it especially because they have such a great voice actor doing the voice overs. The choice of wonders is a little off, they definitely went with a more non-Western approach so we see things like the Porcelain Tower and I forget the name of the Japanese castle. We also see several Eastern Civs that have never been in the game before too - their names escape me. Nothing wrong with that, it's just different.

I also like that wonders aren't as time and resource intensive as in previous games. I banged out the pyramids in 24 turns and I haven't seen a wonder take more than 30 turns in my high production cities.

Cities in general I love the improvements. You don't have to garrison if you don't want to. Cities can take care of themselves and actually have ranged attacks so if barbarians are approaching you get to bombard them for several turns before they arrive. NICE. No longer are you forced to watch an opponent just stroll in and take a booming Metropolis without a scratch. They have to pay for it. The downside as an attacker is I'm not sure what the mechanic is for taking a city. Old Civ you knew you could kill the garrison and it was yours. Now I attack it for several turns, bringing down its strength until I eventually march in but not sure where the strength rating is and how it is effected. I'm sure I'll pick it up quickly but this is all based on a few hours of play late last night. Also really digging the feature that you cna buy tiles ahead of the culture spread. Remember you used to have to build your cities right next to a resource even though the terrain around it was generally shitty so you had this size 3 city sitting there for the whole game doing nothng? Well now you can build it on better terrain close to the resource and then buy the tiles you want to work on even if they are not in the big fat cross city zone you usually have in Civ. Brilliant. In general I am thrilled with the new city dynamic.

Units. Back in Old Civ you would have your stacks of doom and you would descend like an Orc horde on your enemy. Now there is no more unit stacking so every unit occupies its own hex. Add to that if you want to build a unit that requires a special resource you can only build a single unit for every resource you have so if you only have one Iron deposit you get to build just one swordsmen. Bullshit you say? I was in the same camp until I realized with the new combat dynamic each unit is like a stack of doom on its own. My swordsmen fought and killed several units without dying pitifully as they did in Old Civ. Each unit is like a superunit. Very well done, I was a skeptic about this feature but it sold me. Mind you at least on my current map there is a liberal sprinkling of all the special resources so if your empire is big enough you don't run into having just one of everything.

Advisors. I remember Civ II or was it III that had the actual video capture advisors. So you had your military advisor actually an actor speaking to you when you clicked on him, my favorite of course was my domestic advisor who was Elvis and I loved getting the old "Hail to the King your Majesty. Your people love you." That was my favorite set up. I like the interactivity. The following Civs just had stat screens. BORING. Now we have a nice mix between the video advisors and the stat screens. Unanimated but speaking advisors actually give you decent advice. Well done. Anything was better than the shit advisors we had in Civ IV

Research is handled very well, nothing takes forever to research and although there is no tech trading in the game which made me nervous when I heard about it they have these research treaties that you can do that allow you to spend 250 gold and at the end of 20 turns I think, you get a free tech and so does your partner. It's tech trading but in a creative way. Diplomacy in general is better I think than in the past with more options and less irrationality from the AI.

City states is the only iffy feature I have to say I'm not totally sold on. Independent cities that act like a gold drain on your economy with all the whining and attention you have to shower on them when you can just march out and take them once your strong enough. Kind of silly if you ask me.

There are neat little new things like natural wonders. As you explore the world you come upon natural wonders like Mount Fuji and the Great Barrier Reef and if you are the first to discover them you get a happiness bonus. That's pretty cool. I don't see random events happening like in Civ IV which is kind of a disappointment.

I agree BTW with some people's assertions that the game has gaps or feels incomplete. I definitely got the sense that they were leaving room for Civ V expansions but that's OK, anyone that's played Civ long enough actually looks forward to those expansions to make their game new and fresh again.

Overall a great addition to the series and am looking forward to playing it again as soon as I get home. I knew I had a winner on my hands when I got that "Just one more turn" feeling and ended up playing until 4am on a work night. Cool.

[AniThyng]

I believe units get a flanking bonus +15% for every friendly unit adjectant to the target enemy unit or city, so a literal seige ought to work for cracking tough cities.

[Gunhead]

I want more information how combat works. I played Civ IV and I hated the stacks of doom and the fact most units have no chance of retreating if they're getting their asses kicked.
So is combat still a fight to the death or can you have your unit commit to battle and if it's going badly have them break off?

What about resource management? Shifting production points from town to town? Are there build ques?

-Gunhead

[TC Pilot]

So is combat still a fight to the death or can you have your unit commit to battle and if it's going badly have them break off?

Battles aren't neccesarily a fight to the death. If you hover your cursor over an enemy unit, a window will pop up detailing how much damage you'll recieve and take. In most cases, like say a fight between your first warrior and a barbarian warrior, it'll take more than one turn to kill their unit. Other times, like say my Greek companion cavalry attacking a barbarian warrior, they'll be strong enough to kill them in one go.

[Darmalus]

I started the game as american, and I didn't see this part? Where does it say that?

Yeah, as Lonestar said, I was just reading to much into that.

On the Diplomacy front, I keep getting this cryptic message from one of the civilizations where he says something along the lines of "Isn't it too bad one guy beats up on another?" and my only response options are "You'll pay for this!" and "Very well." which really confuses me because he is waaaay across the map from me where I can't even see what is going on.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I started the game as american, and I didn't see this part? Where does it say that?

Yeah, as Lonestar said, I was just reading to much into that.

Yeah, I know. I just wanted to see if you could justify it...

On the Diplomacy front, I keep getting this cryptic message from one of the civilizations where he says something along the lines of "Isn't it too bad one guy beats up on another?" and my only response options are "You'll pay for this!" and "Very well." which really confuses me because he is waaaay across the map from me where I can't even see what is going on.

He is declaring war on you, but yeah I agree I had the same "what?" moment...

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I'm still deciding how I feel about their tie-in with culture and civics. But now there seems to be a more legitimate reason to get culture.

[adam_grif]

Reporting that although my PC doesn't meet minimum reqs for processor (AMD Athlon 3500+), I can still run the demo (on the lowest settings) without too much hassle.

[AniThyng]

For those of you with the full game: how do the civics work when they say "cannot be active at same time as <x>", does that mean that you can switch between the two or once you take the mutually exclusive branch the older branch is permantly disabled?

[Meest]

For Stravo you can view icons or overlays for resources. Right beside your minimap on the left there's a button where you can set what you want viewable. Question about ship movement, does anyone know if boats can cross land like at Panama? Do you need to put at city there if anything to get them to cross? Had a stupid city state there and wouldn't let me raze the city and put a new one on the right tile.