Civilization V Catch-All

Just announced: Expansion pack!

Putting in religion, espionage, new Diplomacy, naval combat. Maybe this will be what takes Civ5 to where I wanted it at launch!

Atras wrote:

Just announced: Expansion pack!

Putting in religion, espionage, new Diplomacy, naval combat. Maybe this will be what takes Civ5 to where I wanted it at launch!

Very cool!

It just goes to show: the best time to buy a Civilization game is when its sequel is announced

Atras wrote:

Just announced: Expansion pack!

Putting in religion, espionage, new Diplomacy, naval combat. Maybe this will be what takes Civ5 to where I wanted it at launch!

I'm really excited about it too, plus there have been statements that PitBoss will be added in an upcoming patch. I'd really love to get another PitBoss game going, the one we played in Civ IV was a blast and one of the first things I did as a Goodjer.

Aw yeah, I'd given up hope on an expansion so this is welcome news.

Will they (or have they ever through a patch; I stopped paying attention to patch notes) fixed that thing where the AI is too stupid to guard their archers? 'Cause that's what kind of killed the game for me; the new combat system seemed neat on paper, but since the AI wasn't programmed to use it properly, it got boring exploiting it.

hbi2k wrote:

Will they (or have they ever through a patch; I stopped paying attention to patch notes) fixed that thing where the AI is too stupid to guard their archers? 'Cause that's what kind of killed the game for me; the new combat system seemed neat on paper, but since the AI wasn't programmed to use it properly, it got boring exploiting it.

They claim there are improvements.

I will claim to be optimistic.

The truth of both of those statements will be revealed in time =)

Atras wrote:

Just announced: Expansion pack!

Putting in religion, espionage, new Diplomacy, naval combat. Maybe this will be what takes Civ5 to where I wanted it at launch!

I think this is kind of funny, given the supposed reasons religion and espionage were omitted in the first place. Now all of a sudden we have the technology to make it "work"?

Although I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out, I also would really like them to keep their word and release the .dll source before I give them more money.

I admittedly will pay any price for this expansion, but I sure hope it's about $29 at most. I love the feature list though. Even if it (like every Civ product release ever in history) will be frustrating and flawed as hell until it's patched at least once or twice. I'm excited that religions sound like more of an organic process than just a tech tree race to spam buddhism. And any improvement to the AI diplomacy is welcome news.

Exciting!

The Victorian Sci-Fi setting sold me. I'm iffy on the espionage and religion part, especially the religion part. It was badly done in Civ IV, at least when playing the higher diff settings.

hbi2k wrote:

Will they (or have they ever through a patch; I stopped paying attention to patch notes) fixed that thing where the AI is too stupid to guard their archers? 'Cause that's what kind of killed the game for me; the new combat system seemed neat on paper, but since the AI wasn't programmed to use it properly, it got boring exploiting it.

I'm not sure whether it's the mod I'm using or a recent patch, but the AI does seem to know how to use archers now. Actually, I'm guessing it's partly the patch and mostly the mod.

It's called the Civ 5 Unoffical Patch / Vanilla Enhanced Mod. It was pretty much what I was looking for; the basic game, but refined in a number of ways.

Some of the battles in my recent game were the trickiest I've fought. That said, a human player will ALWAYS beat the AI, which is why I found Civ 5 multiplayer so amazing in battle terms.

Looking forward to this, very exciting news. Also, don't read the comments under the announcement.

dejanzie wrote:

Looking forward to this, very exciting news. Also, don't read the comments under the announcement.

Civ fans sure seen to be a whiny bunch. I'm looking forward to the expansion, myself.

Michael wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

Looking forward to this, very exciting news. Also, don't read the comments under the announcement.

Civ fans sure seen to be a whiny bunch. I'm looking forward to the expansion, myself.

That was my reactions to the comment as well. You're well advised to heed dejanzie.

Just checking in... I've played some of the Civ games before, but I'm absolutely terrible at them -- the computer just stomps all over me when I play on anything more than ultra-baby difficulty. That said, I bought Civ5 from Amazon a few weeks ago when it was on that crazy "2011 bestseller" deal, for $4. I figured if I get too frustrated or annoyed, no big deal.

I played the "tutorial" (really just the tiny map, 2 nations, on ultra-baby mode), and had a darned good time. A few days later I thought I'd ramp it up a bit, and switched to small/4 nations/mostly-baby mode... and started getting smacked around. I realized my mistake soon enough (building my cities way too far away from each other, leaving my dudes open to barbarian attacks), so that's good. I tried a new game last night with the same settings, and finally decided to pack it up for the evening at about 700AD, when I invented Musketmen and Cannons... and that's when I noticed it was already 1:30AM, and I had to get up early for work.

Damn this game.

Now you need to play with your kids. Start a game up in hotseat mode, and let it run all day. After the first handful of turns, you can just keep an eye on whose turn it is and spend a day with a game in the background. My kids love seeing their nation develop and learning some facts about history at the same time.

Atras wrote:

Now you need to play with your kids. Start a game up in hotseat mode, and let it run all day. After the first handful of turns, you can just keep an eye on whose turn it is and spend a day with a game in the background. My kids love seeing their nation develop and learning some facts about history at the same time.

Facts like how Gandhi is a bloodthirsty warmongering maniac? Cause, for real, eff that dude...

Atras wrote:

Now you need to play with your kids. Start a game up in hotseat mode, and let it run all day. After the first handful of turns, you can just keep an eye on whose turn it is and spend a day with a game in the background. My kids love seeing their nation develop and learning some facts about history at the same time.

Actually, my oldest (12yo) dropped by the PC to say good night last night and watched me play for a good 30 minutes -- I was just coming up on my first Civ5 science victory, and she got to enjoy seeing the Roman Empire kick some scientific ass.

I'm interested to see what the changes are to the combat system and AI that the press release mentions are. Most likely pretty superficial, but they just might put the effort in that this game needs. Touting melee naval units doesn't make me optimistic.

Gunner:

I've been talking around the forums every now and then. I mentioned adjusting the naval combat system that way last year to account for the horrible way naval battle is done right now. I also suggested using oceanic terrain, FWIW. My apologies for pushing that idea if it turns out to be bad.

Caddrel:

Haven't played for a while now. The VEM sports a ton of modifications which I think address the majority of balance concerns in Civ V. Of particular interest to warmongers would be the addition of the cheap line of infantries - Vanguard class units. The concept's long overdue in the Civ series.

LarryC wrote:

Caddrel:

Haven't played for a while now. The VEM sports a ton of modifications which I think address the majority of balance concerns in Civ V. Of particular interest to warmongers would be the addition of the cheap line of infantries - Vanguard class units. The concept's long overdue in the Civ series.

I love VEM. Not only does it do a lot of balancing but it also seems to give a lot more strategic options. The latest version even adds random events. Thal's done an amazing job considering the lack of .dll access, and I know he has plans to make VEM even better when/if the source becomes available.

This is the latest info I've seen on the source release. I'm not sure what the "horizon" is though and I hope "many months" is significantly less than 12.

LarryC wrote:

Gunner:

I've been talking around the forums every now and then. I mentioned adjusting the naval combat system that way last year to account for the horrible way naval battle is done right now. I also suggested using oceanic terrain, FWIW. My apologies for pushing that idea if it turns out to be bad.

Oh I didn't mean it like that! In fact, mixing up the naval combat with terrain and melee could be quite good.

The issue is that a new feature addressing only naval combat seems tangential to the major concerns that a "reworked combat system" should be addressing. In the end, there's only so much one can tell from the marketing speak though.

So all the DLC is 75% off today. Is it worth buying or should I wait, and hope they include it in the Expansion pak?

WizKid wrote:

So all the DLC is 75% off today. Is it worth buying or should I wait, and hope they include it in the Expansion pak?

I'm guessing they wont put dlc included in the expansion. I'm just getting the new civs/leaders + ancient wonders dlc for around $6. I'm not really into new maps. Some of the dlc is bundle together (Korean civ and ancient wonder is only $1.84 together), so watch out for that for that.

I was weak. I gave in and bought the game of the year edition with all the bells and whistles from Steam on Sunday. Pray for me.

momgamer wrote:

I was weak. I gave in and bought the game of the year edition with all the bells and whistles from Steam on Sunday. Pray for me.

We'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Sonicator wrote:
momgamer wrote:

I was weak. I gave in and bought the game of the year edition with all the bells and whistles from Steam on Sunday. Pray for me.

We'll see you in a couple of months. :-)

FTFY

Just started picking this up again thanks to a lull in new games I want to play. There are a crap ton of mods that have been made since I last played and I'm wondering if anyone here has a "must have" or top list of mods to recommend?

Thurgrim wrote:

Just started picking this up again thanks to a lull in new games I want to play. There are a crap ton of mods that have been made since I last played and I'm wondering if anyone here has a "must have" or top list of mods to recommend?

Have you tried the Warlock: Master of the Arcane demo on Steam? It hits that Civ V spot, but has a very Master of Magic feel with a Majesty style. If you have a lull, might be worth looking at instead of a mod.

I've been playing a bunch of Civ V in anticipation of Warlock: Master of the Arcane, or "Wamota" as I've taken to calling it. Very excited for Tuesday.

Coldstream wrote:

Have you tried the Warlock: Master of the Arcane demo on Steam? It hits that Civ V spot, but has a very Master of Magic feel with a Majesty style. If you have a lull, might be worth looking at instead of a mod.

I tried the demo and just couldn't get into it myself. While the gameplay and look was very Civ, I felt like it was lacking the breadth and depth of what Civ has to offer as my options seemed to be limited to build and conquer. While I occasionally like to go on the war path in Civ, I usually go for science or cultural victories, making peace with as many allies as possible and defending a small empire. Maybe it was just their lack of a decent tutorial in the demo, but it felt very kill or be killed.