Civ 5

[pinback]

Please make this game come out right now.

[AArdvark]

Sure, about the same time they release StarCraft II and Diabo III. Why does it look like Warcraft?
Actually, I've never played the civilization series but have a decent respect for Sid Meier for his work on Pirates! i actually did research at the library because of that game. I hope they don't cartoonize the new Civ game like they did for the last pirates. Gameplay is only part of the experience. Gotta have decent visuals too.

THE
REFERENCE SECTION
AARDVARK

[pinback]

Look at the screenshot above. If that is not "decent visuals", then either your monitor is broken, or you've never seen a screenshot of a previous version of Civilization, or you are Lysander.

lol

[AArdvark]

Actually, the 'decent visuals' was in reference to the new Pirates! They improved the gameplay but turned it into a cartoon. Civ5 looks great.

[Worm]

I guess having almost 100% of your install base using third part textures is a lesson to change your fucking textures.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Worm played Civ 5 today, as it was at PAX East. I feel he should share what it's like to have a Civ with no religion.

(And he can't say "it's like Civ 3.")

[Worm]

I had to line up for half an hour at 10 AM to get scheduled to see the game at 5 PM, they took us into a little box with royal purple velvet-ish walls and movie theater seats. I guess they really didn't want audio or video getting leaked, and with the way those guys on civfanatics obtain information, I can't totally blame them. I only saw a presentation and none of us got to play the game.

In short, the guy blew off the removal of religion so easily, it kind of made me re-evaluate what it's worth was in Civ 4, and I think it was pretty worthless. It was endlessly gamey, a reward for out-teching, and a retarded way to manipulate the leader relation thing. I don't think I'm going to miss it too much. It was a fun mechanic to exploit, but was just an annoying reason for Civilizations to want to go to war with you. It seems like less the removal of religion, and more the removal of it as a mechanic.

They actually took the graphics in a non-cartoony direction. The leader interactions are in full screen, with a full bodied normal looking leader who speaks in their proper language and is in their proper context.


Hey kids, it's Otto von Bismarck!

Ground units are still large, but they're not super sized groups of three. The entire game looks great, which I guess after 100% of their install base was running 3rd party textures in Civ 4 they took a fucking hint. It looks like hexes are going to produce a little better looking maps as far as weird generation anomalies go, though that's just sort of a guess.

The hexes seem like they're going to really improve combat. Additionally ranged units will be able to be used at ranged. I got direct assurances that a spear man won't be able to beat a tank. They tried to say that less units would mean less of an exponential load time increase, though when they went to load a save later into the game, I noticed it took quite awhile.

They took barbarian towns and made them into sko NPC towns which can provide bonuses if you befriend them. Which is a pretty nice improvement, since it's horrible when they just kind of bonus towns that you had to rush to before someone else rushed to them.

Additionally instead of waiting for your borders to expand you can expand your borders by a hex, which is a pretty major upgrade, since having slightly sub-par culture output is no longer going to seriously cripple your resource acquisition.

[AArdvark]

Excellent.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Neville Chamberlain! A challenger appears! Do y- fuck, he quit the game.