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Sadly we're on a vacation blackout at work But I plan to miss a *lot* of sleep and rest over the week it's released.
I'm liking removing stacking; I was dubious at first but the addition of ranges and zones of control promise to actually make combat more involved and have some actual challenge/ depth.

Looking forward to playing it, but it'll probably be closer to Christmas before I get around to buying/playing. Still playing SCII, haven't beaten Fallout 3 yet, and there's many more games I have to work through

You mean combat will involve more than just stacking as many of the best unit you can into a square? Sweet.

Though, I have to admit always getting a chuckle when a stack of axe-men bring down an attack helicopter...

Fascinating full manual has been released: http://downloads.2kgames.com/civ5/site1 ... h_v1.0.pdf Go look!

Particularly interesting is the radical new take on the Domination victory - be last Civ with original capital (which is different from "control all original capitals" that was the rumor). This introduces all sort of weird technicalities in which you could even lose yourself the game by conquering another Civ's OC while not in possession of your own.

Barbarians can have Tanks and Battleships? Huh?

Also, certain cities like original capitals and city-states are now invincible in that they cannot be razed. And there's the whole new "liberation" mechanic, in which you can bring a City-State or even a full-blown Civ back from the dead, and you are then guaranteed their vote for the Diplomatic Victory. The liberation thing has all sorts of unexplained conflicts (like, couldn't you "liberate" a Civ that you yourself eliminated or helped to eliminate, and then get their vote? Seems wrong. And wouldn't you have 4 options when capturing an eliminated Civ's city when you include razing? The manual says "three options" in that section. And how does all this work in multiplayer? Hmm.)

Civ V! yay!

Civ is like crack for me; I must resist. Though fortunately III and IV weren't much to my liking (though they both introduced some interesting ideas), so it was realitvely easy (I had to resist re-installing Civ II or FreeCiv, though). But Civ V looks much more like the direction I wanted to see it go, and therefore more addictive....

Barbarians can have Tanks and Battleships? Huh?

I think you need to broaden your mental definition of "barbarian." These days there are non-nation-state actors with armies (drug cartels, warlords, and "freedom fighters" / "insurgents" all over the world) and in many cases they fight with sophisticated modern weapons. They might not quite be fielding battleships (at least not yet) but they certainly can be equpped with tanks and aircraft. And yet by the standards of a nation state (and within the confines of what works in Civ) they would be catogorized as "barbarians."

One thing that I thought Civ should include is a sort of "cultural hegemony" factor that extends the whole idea of subverting nearby cities from neighboring civs -- add "culture" as a trade good (samizdat), extend the idea of diplomats to things like missionaries and cultural icons (writers, rock stars, etc) who may persist in a foreign city (unless expelled) and expand your influence there, plus the notion of investing in the strength of your culture (adding more city improvements like entertainment venues, museums, writer's retreats, etc). The idea being that other civs may be heavily influenced by yours and either refuse to go to war with you (despite their leader's wishes) or begin switching sides outright (city subversion) and thus offer another route to a win.

Like I said, I'm trying not to pay too much attention (must resist) so I haven't looked in the manual and don't know if this is already in there.

240 page manual. Dear god, oh god ohh...gotta go change brb

Ahem. A real manual is welcome. If t comes with a paper manual I may buy this in store instead of on steam. Looks good. Not perfect but very very good. Surrender to the siren call!

UberGerbil wrote:

Civ is like crack for me...

Hmm, sounds like you didn't play that much Civ IV. It's got missionaries (religion mechanic which affects diplomacy), plus city switching from cultural influence. Ironically both of which are culled from Civ V. Great Artists and cultural city improvements are still there though.

Even though some features have been streamlined or removed (religion took the fun out of diplomacy anyway), I still think Civ V is a definite step forward in a lot of ways. And if you can even halfways fit it into your schedule (my brother hasn't played Civ since II, and when I talk to him it's clear he's more afraid he'd like it then that he'd dislike it), I'd implore you to give V a go. Your brain will thank you.

paulWTAMU wrote:

Ahem. A real manual is welcome. If it comes with a paper manual I may buy this in store instead of on steam. Looks good. Not perfect but very very good. Surrender to the siren call!

Get the retail box. It all authenticates on Steam either way so all you're doing by getting the download version is depriving yourself of the paper manual without saving any money (well, minus the gas to get to the store).

No Mac version yet

does the retail box come with a hard copy of the manual though, or just a CDROM/PDF version?

Corrado wrote:

No Mac version yet

It'll come. Every single version of Civ has come out on Mac. Honestly I'm more worried about the system requirements for the Mac owners I know - even relatively recent MacBooks came with horrible Intel graphics and Civ V has awfully high requirements for a TBS.

paulWTAMU wrote:

does the retail box come with a hard copy of the manual though, or just a CDROM/PDF version?

I had assumed hard copy but honestly I'm not quite certain.

If it comes with a hard copy I'm buying it ata store. If it's just on a disc, might as well D/l it on steam after midnight tonight is all.


EDIT: If I got this right, the manual is on the disc as a PDF, not a hardcopy. Steam it is. Damnit, I wanted a mini-novel to explain the game CIv's one of the few games where having a manual during th game really makes a difference for me. Guess I'll print it out at work home.

I am a little worried about the high system requirements. Few reviews thus far even bother touching on graphics requirements or the system they used, but Extremetech did a preview of the game early August and had this to say about the system they used:
"In terms of what else you'll need, 2K hasn't finalized its system requirements yet. But we did our primary testing for the game on a home-built PC with an Intel Core i7-975 CPU , 6GB of DDR3 RAM, and an ATI Radeon HD 5870 video card (and the Catalyst 10.7 driver), running at resolutions of both 1,680 by 1,050 (in windowed mode) and 1,920 by 1,200 (full-screen), with all the detail settings at their highest values. Performance was flawless in the early part of the game, but began stuttering during the later, more frantic sections of the game. Still, Civilization V was satisfying overall from both technical and visual standpoints."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 392,00.asp

Yikes, seems a bit extreme for a very high end less than .01% of the population machine to have "stuttering" problems for a TBS game. If this is indeed true, a lot of people are going to need to crank things way down.

Joystiq.com touched on the requirements slightly. "Take those "recommended" PC specs seriously."

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/17/civil ... -5-review/

paulWTAMU wrote:

If it comes with a hard copy I'm buying it ata store. If it's just on a disc, might as well D/l it on steam after midnight tonight is all.


EDIT: If I got this right, the manual is on the disc as a PDF, not a hardcopy. Steam it is. Damnit, I wanted a mini-novel to explain the game CIv's one of the few games where having a manual during th game really makes a difference for me. Guess I'll print it out at work home.

Crap. I like to read the manual before I play the game and I'd much rather read a book than a PDF. So if that's the case, Steam for me too.

If you're actually in-game the Civilopedia should give you almost any information you need. No need for an awkward stapled printout cluttering up your desk.

I'm not on that current a GPU, which is disheartening; an 8800GT...but everything else is fine. I blow minimum out of the water and in most cases match/surpass reccomended.

It's possible that the game just includes a few performance-draining features with minimal visual effect, like ambient occlusion, or possibly the tessellation. I seem to remember that Rome: Total War had support for self-shadowing or something similar that cut frame rates by 60% but was barely noticeable. Such things pop up occasionally in marquee strategy titles when they're brought in from shooters a little earlier than the hardware can handle it at such scales.

paulWTAMU wrote:

I'm not on that current a GPU, which is disheartening; an 8800GT...but everything else is fine. I blow minimum out of the water and in most cases match/surpass reccomended.

Yeah same here, I have an even slower 9600 GT with 4 GB of RAM and an E8400 Dual Core, although it is faster than the recommended quad. I watched a preview playthrough online and noticed the turns in the later ages took considerably longer than Civ 4, much more in line with Total War and the insanely long turns...I am wondering if that is why they recommend a quad or better processor. Either way, it is curious that the turns took much longer as Civ4 had equally large amounts of information to process during turns.

SNM wrote:

It's possible that the game just includes a few performance-draining features with minimal visual effect, like ambient occlusion, or possibly the tessellation. I seem to remember that Rome: Total War had support for self-shadowing or something similar that cut frame rates by 60% but was barely noticeable. Such things pop up occasionally in marquee strategy titles when they're brought in from shooters a little earlier than the hardware can handle it at such scales.

I hear that. I hope turning off the worthless visual options and turning down AA (i run it in 1920 by 1200 so I don't need much AA) will keep it running well without having to crank things way down.

Yeah same here, I have an even slower 9600 GT with 4 GB of RAM and an E8400 Dual Core, although it is faster than the recommended quad. I watched a preview playthrough online and noticed the turns in the later ages took considerably longer than Civ 4, much more in line with Total War and the insanely long turns...I am wondering if that is why they recommend a quad or better processor. Either way, it is curious that the turns took much longer as Civ4 had equally large amounts of information to process during turns.

FWIW, I am playing it on a three year old Dell with a E6420 dual core, 2GB RAM, 9800 GT - and it runs just fine for me. The only graphics setting I changed was the resolution (set it to max) everything else is default, and it looks sweet. My game is around yr 1800 and the turns ARE taking longer, but not noticeably longer than CIV4 was taking.

All in all, I am really liking it. I like the new combat (ranged units especially) and the interface is far more efficient. In terms of graphics, the look and feel is just better all around - I have seen some occasional stutter when there are massive amounts of units all moving around, but it's been rare, and certainly not enough to bother me.

The AI is light-years ahead of the previous version.

can you tell me how the hell the trade works? I don't have an option to build caravans now...I've got ivory by rome and Antium is asking for it and I've linked it with roads and it won't trade AAAAAAAH

But yeah mostly enjoying it

I've bought the game but have been too busy to play =(

From what I've seen though, it runs butter smooth on my GTX260

can you tell me how the hell the trade works? I don't have an option to build caravans now...I've got ivory by rome and Antium is asking for it and I've linked it with roads and it won't trade AAAAAAAH

Good question... I know how to get trade working with other empires (through the diplomacy) but I haven't figured out how to trade within my own. Once in a while one of my cities will demand something, but I haven't worked out how to do that yet. Was planning to check the manual later this evening

No need for caravans, apparently.

Counting the minutes until I can leave work and go home to play for the rest of the night... IT. IS. SO. GOOD.

Counting the hours til I get home from Uni on Friday, when it's released here in the UK. Amazon better have my copy here on release day like they promised!

I tried the damn manual and it was entirely worthless. Pissed me off. Tutorial didn't help either

Just build your palace. Then connect roads to it.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the problem.

Chrono: already did that cause that's what I thought it would take. But it didn't work and I don't get it.

Did you already build the improvement on top of the resource?

yeah, trapping camp or smething like that (I'd have to look). May just be a glitch I guess?