Gaming Civilization 5 Hands-on Preview

This....

Unless all unit become homogeneous, I can't see how no stacking can work... Sure limit the number of stacked units to 5 inf/3 cannon/2 helo/1 tank (or equivalent)...

If units are more 'valuable' you'll want to protect them, so surely you will want to protect more offensive units with more defensive units??

I'll almost certainly be buying the game, but does this sound like a change too far..? I hope not. Or at least I hope they have thought it through properly...

 

Brian Reynolds was the chief programmer behind Civ II (and Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations) while Soren Johnson was behind Civ III and IV. While Civ III/IV had good AI, I felt the gameplay in both was crippled by the need to micro-manage workers.

The preview suggests that Firaxis are taking a bolder approach but the greatest innovations in my view came from Activision's Call to Power series - limited unit stacking (12 units), stack-based combat (all units in a stack would take part simultaneously, placing greater emphasis on having a balance of assault, flanking and artillery units), public works (points which could be collected and used to build terrain enhancements, removing the need for worker micromanagement) and future technology (being able to build underwater cities, maglevs and scifi units).

Unfortunately Call to Power II had significant bugs also - though the Ages of Man mod did deal with some of these while adding plenty of new features and upping the difficulty significantly.

 

That's strange that you should say that. Civ III and Civ IV both had the option to automate your workers. I remember the worker AI as being pretty good, too (though I haven't played Civ III in a long time). I always put them on autopilot after I reach a certain empire size and never had any problems.

 

I have high hopes for Civ 5 to be another step forward.
Religion is gone...why?
To me the best parts of the series are 3 and 4 yet and as stated above booth had AI-Workers!

 

Except that the AI isn't smart enough to identify priority tasks like running a railroad to a recently captured city. The most soul-destroying gaming experience I've had was in Civ III going through every automated worker trying to identify those who had not yet done their move, so that they could be de-automated and put to work on emergency railroad duty.

 

I'd hit up the strategy guides on CivFanatics if you're stuck strategy wise. The advisors should also help with that in Civ 5.

 

"Sid you're Absorbing my life"

I've been enjoying these games since I was 6, Civilization 1 and I quote it was amazing and also what got me trapped in the world of Civ! However, apart from the fond memories it would bring me, I would probably find the gameplay to be a little short of complexity. With every new addition of Civ I have found gameplay and empire tweaking to only increase & partially exhibiting an upgrade we all expect i.e. graphics in 2,3 & 4 to the coming of Civ 5, where superb graphics are expected these days and we hope for more intense gameplay. I must say though, I hate Civ Revolution for the 360 "Disappointing" very much a console game, should have expected it!
I'm looking forward to Civ 5 I'm confident Sid wont let us down, apart from Rev I've not been disappointed yet, sure no religions or stacking, but I've still got civ4 bts if I want that at the moment I wanna play a New Game.

 

Well it looks like Civ 5 will be using Steamworks (making a Steam account compulsory - confirmed here) so I can scratch that of my possible-purchase list...

 

Greetings!

Yep.
The three dozens of PC players that are still Steam-less will not play Civilization V.

 

Impar,

There are good reasons to avoid Steam - maybe you should read their subscriber agreement sometime...

 

Greetings!

The only good reason to avoid buying games from Steam is the high prices Steam charges, specially in Euros.
As for the Agreement, its the usual "cover-our-asses-legal-mambo-jambo".

The scare you have of Steam and similar services just means you wont be able to play a lot of games (legally).

 

No, it is a legal document that has serious consequences for Steam customers, who can have their accounts (and all purchases) revoked for a number of reasons - examples here and here.

Better that than being forced to pay multiple times for content or being restricted as to when (and where) I can play it (e.g. no laptop gaming unless you have a good mobile connection). Or being hit with a maintenance fee once Valve decides to boost their income...

 

Greetings!

The first one is a Steam problem, the second one is a Paypal problem (I had a couple of weird problems with Paypal some two tyears ago, stopped using it).

You ever heard of Steam offline play?
Valve already decided on how much will the fee be?