Is it much better than Civ 4? Is it worth the purchase for a very casual gamer? Also has anyone ever played Colonization? That game was the bomb, I've always hoped they would release an updated version of it...

They did release a newer version of Colonization that runs of civ engine.I actually like the original colonization a lot better than newer version. Not sure if it is nostalgia but the new one feels off to me.

I have played Civ 5 it is good. Never played 4 so can't compare. I think the main difference are graphics and the City State mechanics they have in 5. It is an easy way to burn off some hours when your bored. If you like the series id say picking it up isn't a bad idea but if you rarely played old ones probably not worth it.

It's very different.

I like it a LOT better, but I had grown tired of the lack of strategy in civ4.
Here is a very quick overview of how Civ5 is different:
First -> it uses hexes instead of squares (with octagonal movement). This is a big departure from the traditional civ games, but I really like it.

There's multiple layers of timers/counters to be aware of and you need to balance them to some degree to do well.
Social Policies: these are sort of like your old government policies/civics/whatever they were called. It's very similar to the class trees in WoW in terms of how they're designed. You have 8 social policies (some are unlocked as you advance through the game), and within each there are 5 sub-policies, each of which are beneficial in some way. Once you accrue all 5 policies in a group, it counts as a 6th policy which is usually pretty good. These are controlled by your culture; more culture, quicker policies. Policies cost more as you accrue them
Tech: This is pretty similar to the old tech system from civ4-3-2-1. Certain techs will reveal resources on the map (and using the add on I like, it gives you the ability to see the resource before you can use it so you can build/conquer with future resources in mind). Techs also represent the major epochs: Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, Modern, Future. Each of these unlocks more social policies as you get to them.
Happiness: Your empire needs to be happy for it to grow. Happiness is basically a way to control population. Population is also the biggest source of unhappiness, with citizens under occupation/in puppet states costing you more happiness than those integrated into your empire as citizens. If you want to have a large population, you need to have a lot of happiness. happiness comes from buildings, luxury resources and from things you unlock as social policies (i.e., +1 happiness for each specialist; +2 happiness for each wonder, etc).
Money: This, again, works a lot like the old civ, except that if you are out of cash you don't get any science (maybe that was in the old one too?). There are a lot more money-making options and they've done a good job (at least the mod has) of making the oceans a better economic resource.

The combat system is really cool. You can only have 1 unit per tile & there is a unit limit (based on the number of cities you own -- I seldom run out unless I'm preparing for a conquest victory) but all that cap does is just slow down production of future units. There is a better rock-paper-scissors balance between units now. Ranged units are good to use to soften up units, but are trash on defence. Early melee units are good for attacking/protecting, but can get beaten by a handful of other units pretty easily. Vanguard units have a defence bonus, are cheaper and are good at absorbing damage, but are crappy for going offensive. You no longer need transports, every unit transports itself but is easier to kill while being transported. Naval units are nice ranged units; once you get to the modern age and start being able to bombard 3 tiles inland, they are VERY powerful. Aircraft are cool as well -- more options to shoot down enemy fighters and whatnot, but I find the AI can't manage their planes that well, so I don't usually go far down that path to keep the game more interesting.
Cities: The days of the infinite city strat are over. you can just keep building/conquering cities indefinitely -- that is still a strategy -- but the happiness + social policy penalties make it more economical to balance your empire. I typically build 4-5 really strong cities and fight for the land to let them grown, rather than just trying to build a TON of cities. Based on how the game is balanced, you can go for a LOT of small, crappy, focused cities (each one with a specific focus -- cash, tech, production or culture)
Great People: One for each major aspect of the game (artist, scientist, merchant, engineer, general). These guys work like the previous game, but the general is actually more useful (military modifier for units within 2 tiles) and there are ways to interact with enemies (making yuor artist take over all tiles within 2 tiles of him -- even if they are owned by others) or city states (merchants can conduct a "trade mission" which will increase their opinion of you + give you a bunch of $$$)
City states: these are cities that are standalone, not attached to a larger empire. they will ally you and provide bonuses (military - gives you troops regularly, culture - provides you culture, and farmers - export food to you).
Barbarians: I find barbarians a huge pain in the ass in this game. They are always around trying to steal your settlers and rush your cities early on. They don't really screw you up, but they are better than in previous games -- especially when the AI sucked more.
Trade routes: in this version, trade routes are actually defined and give you extra money based on the population of your capital + each city it is connected to. it makes having control of your capital even more important.
wonders: there are a lot of really cool wonders

The endgames are all pretty much the same, so I won't go into that.

That's my 'quick' review/what's new post for civ5 :p

PS. everything I mention assumes you have this mod installed: http://civmodding.wordpress.com/
I consider the game unplayable without that mod; it shouldn't have shipped as vanilla. the game wasn't properly balanced and the AI had glaring holes where it would suicide on someone or launch failed invasions of city states over and over again.

PPS. there is a colonization addon or something for either civ4 or civ5 -- i saw it in the store a while ago.

Pang hit essay format~

essay format? pfft

more like whatever popped into my head :p
essays are organized.

civ 4 is a game i wish i'd learn how to play some time

hex paper with octagonal movement? weird.

Sorry Pang :P Needed a laugh, I got a partial one, but works, thanks :P

it's hex tiles with hexagonal movement heh.....


My main problem with the new military system is... well it looks like it was modeled after a few games that already do that system -- but on a MUCH bigger scale; it actually becomes difficult to *do* a lot of stuff with your armies once they become bigger, which is unfortunate; what they really ought to have done was shrunk the relative tile size or unit size or something by like a factor of 7 (ie turn one hex into a hex surrounded by hexes) and then make unit production appropriately faster, and made them appropriately weaker compared to cities (which could still take up a larger 'master' tile) or something....

because it's really easy to make enough units so that you simply can't move anything anywhere....

err yes, i was talking about civ4 being based on square tiles with octo-movement

obviously hex tiles means hex movement :p

i don't really have issues with moving units around, but it does make you very careful about how you organize your troops. I also typically go navy-heavy, which accounts for the bulk of my non-melee forces (unless I'm severely landlocked)

what sort of map do you typically play on? I've been doing 10 civs on a standard map with the Perfect World map addon

Civ5>Civ4>Civ3>Civ2>Civ>Col/Civ4Col/FreeCol (played col very little in it's time, most experience from FreeCol and Civ4Col)

Think every release of civ was better than the one before. 5 probably introduces the biggest changes, and pretty much all for the better in my view. Basicly the same game, but since units can't be stacked, there are actually units maneuvering on their own instead of in your typical Civ1-4 stacks...

Played both old col, new col and FreeCol. I think they're all weak in relation to Civ. Way too much micro management, really really hard to decide what is best to do and judge on how to do optimizations after early game.

I've only had it for 2 weeks or so, my biggest concern with vanilla is probably that the ships are super weak most times. How do you manage? Is it just about prioritizing navy tech?

b00n00Buz

is this Sid Meier's Civ?

I like playing the biggest maps possible on the longest timeframe possible ^^ and then you have as many units as tiles by the time you get to like the industrial era

Civ 5: the real reason the admins are too busy for earth =P


(in case it needs to be said, I'm joking of course, they all put in a ton of effort and time)

I like Civ5 too, but my gpu cant handle playing a huge map with a bunch of players, so i tend to just play Civ4.

Tertius: nah, these days it'd be more like Skyrim ;)

Though atm it's actually because I got a j0b o.O or at least a contract heh...

Civs are my favorite games ever

for me it's finishing my changes, although i've been playing a bit more lately for a break...

and re: the navy -> the mod i posted beefs them up a bit. i use them in place of artillery where I can and they are good for dealing with barbarian threats along the coasts :)

heh awesome thanks for all the comments. Think I will play a little civ 4 for now, and if I'm really enjoying it think about some Civ 5 upgrade=)

I played this when it first came out, but strangely have no recollection of what it was like. I think it was OK. I do remember not liking the single military unit per tile, because i was so used to being able to stack units in Civ 3, though it doesn't take long to get used to. Some more bells and whistles than its predecessors, but still the same idea. Social policies were a cool new feature.

Better than civ 4 though. Civ 3 is the best imo, simply because you can stack ICBMs and turn the world into a nuclear waste land in one turn. Chh... limit my nukes will you civ 5, what kind of terrible future is this?

Civ5 is definitely better than Civ4 for me, the corruption is way too unmanagable at deity or higher levels of difficulty in Civ4 [if you aimed at World Domination victory].

The main new thing in Civ5 if 1UPT (1 Unit Per Tile) which encourages strategic placement of troops, but the AI is notoriously bad at it unlike in the previous franchises, because the computer (and you) could just build a Large Stack of Doom (SoD) and move it around. Yes, these are actual terms used on the CivFanatics forums if you follow those.

In my opinion, Civ5 > Civ1 > Civ2 > Civ3 > Colonization > Civ4, in terms of difficulty scaling balance.

I agree, Civ5 is better than Civ4.

Actually Civ4 I would rank as the worst of all the Civ games.

freeciv?

I love Civ. I put in tons of hours into 1, 2, 3. I was never able to get Civ 4 to work. I tried patches, I've tried to get it to work on 3-4 different computers. I was worried that'd I'd be wasting money getting the 5th one and not have it work.

I remember in the first one, you had to set up Carvan routes. They should bring that back :-p

They have, in two ways actually. First, roads cost 1 gold to maintain, but cities connected by roads (or sea way by harbor building) gives money (1 g per connected city size + 0.15 g per capitol size). This means you will mostly only build roads between cities, rather than cover your whole domain with them.

Secondly, great merchant can do trade missions with city states (for a lump sum rather than turn based income).

I follow that general strategy for the startup -- roads between cities only. Then once I have my empire in good shape, I start building roads to likely battlegrounds so I can maintain a smaller rapid deployment force which is pretty powerful, rather than a large standing army made up of units I expect to be fodder.

I also like the great artist culture bomb. I use that a lot (esp. after razing cities) to take over land/goods/resources without needing to keep building cities in non-optimal locations. These are also the likeliest areas to be fought over (I mean... I did just steal the land from someone :p) so I always road them up too.

I echo Xin's comment about the AI not being able to position its troops well. the mod I use does it better than vanilla, but it's not at all great. The enemy is all about feeding troops to you slowly, so if you have any kind of defence at all, it's easy to repell most folks. What I've started doing is basically just sitting back and letting the enemy walk into the meat grinders I set up when the war starts, then I take over a few of their larger cities and sit on them until peace time. Then I sell the cities back for cash on hand + cash per turn, using that money to finance buildings in my own empire.

Oh also, i don't think anyone's touched on the civ-specific abilities/buildings. Some of those are really cool.

Kind of reaching a point in my current game where I want to build roads to the location of some previously razed cities of an opponent (who built roads to the cities before I razed them). I've also experimented with capture-sells this game. Got 2k from the last one, after having to settle with a more or less white peace even after razing two cities, and capturing the one I sold back.

I wonder if I'm ever going to get a game as good as this again though, several really good city spots, well timed start stuff, and a random EARLY chariot archer -> knight from ruins (my little one man army :D) + a ruin-scout-archer who has survived from start and also has mad proms.

sifos: find an addon called PerfectWorld3 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=399952) and try that out.

it makes some nice world with nice spots for cities. look at the screenshots on that thread -- the rivers make for MUCH nicer start spots which is really nice

Glad I waited a day.

Wanted to buy a legit copy of Civ V to get the patches and whatnot, but didn't do it yesterday.

Today I see that steam has put the game of the year edition with all the DLC on sale for 29.99, half off.

Nice.

Steam is nice... but treacherous. I bought it there for 10ish euro. You could also get it + DLC's for 13 at the time (which I for some reason did not).

Cougar, don't buy it today yet. Wait a few days, and it might appear again with a 75% off special.

I'd say it's way too probable to use a word like "might" ;)

The Expansion goes live in 4 hours...

Anybody else buy it?

Try Civ2.

http://www.reddit.com/..._game_of_civilization_ii/

Yeah, i saw that a few days ago.


Sounds a whole lot like 1984.

I always thought Alpha Centauri was what Civ always wanted to be.. it was coded by the brains of Sid's early Civ versions.

more diplomatic options, designing your own units, political factions..

Also: Mind worms, alien artifacts, Blink Singularity Deathspheres..

Major overhaul...

They brought back Religion and Espionage, as well as adding new Civilizations, changing the culture options around a bit.

Not sure how they're thinking a lot of people will buy an expansion for 2½ times the cost the original game has already had during periods.

One of the smaller improvements I've noticed is that you are now able to have more fluid relations with other leaders.

Before this expansion, you couldn't ask someone to voluntarily give you a resource, if you offered a deal with only the computer giving to you, it was by default a "demand" and your relations would take a hit.

Meanwhile, the CPU asks for anything that is not nailed down, nonstop, all game long. If you don't give it to them, again your relations will take a hit.

Now, finally, relations are more equal. Everything that the CPU can ask of you, you can of them, without the pitfalls.

Just asked Genghis Khan to attack Pacal with me, and he gave me the yes, but in 10 turns answer. I've always had the ability to give that as an answer, but never had the CPU tell it to me.

CIV 5 is worth trying

I should try the expansion; the adding religion back seems a little silly, but may be fun, i don't know how well it's implemented


Also, the game AI really *REALLY* needed revamping, as it went hostile on you almost no matter what you did

As far as religion goes...

You now develop faith as a resource the same way you do with culture. A few of the original civ5 buildings that generate culture have been re-purposed to generate faith instead (ie monastery, mosque, and wonders such as Stonehenge). Also, a building called "shrine" has been added as a faith-generating version of the monument.

When you acquire enough faith, you are able to found a pantheon, which allows you to select one of a group of bonuses that do things such as increase in gold/productivity/faith for different types of tiles or extra happiness from certain conditions.

After getting some more faith, you spawn a Great Prophet who is able to found a full-fledged religion, which allows you to pick several other perks from different lists. The perks are limited to only one religion, so once someone else has picked it, it is unavailable.

As you keep generating faith, you can use it to make missionaries to spread your religion to two cities (great prophets can spread up to 4 times themselves) or inquisitors to remove other religions from your cities. Certain religion perk allow you to spend faith, instead of gold, on certain buildings. One perk even lets you spend faith on military units up to a certain age. Social policies unlock the ability to spend faith to buy a great person of your chosing.

Overall I like the religion addition. In Civ4:BTS I would try to found Hinduism and Judaism both in my capital city, build the money generating religious buildings for both, then build wall street and make tons of gold.. Can't really do that now.

Also, you can shake down city-states for tribute. If you have enough military in the area, they will give you gold or a worker, your choice. You will take a relations hit with them, and any civilization that has pledged protection will declare war on you. Also, if you have pledged protection, and a cpu demands tribute from one of your allies, you are given the choice to go to war with them. If you do not, the city-state that you backed out on will shun you for a number of turns.

Nice that they added some teeth there.

after re-reading, I would add that each civ can only found one religion per game.