Civilization V Catch-All

If there is not a great artist named Aldous Huxley in the expansion there is no justice in the world.

Also, the important question of our time vis a vis pre-ordering: TF2 Hattes, Valve?

I'm really excited about the trade routes (if balanced well), but kind of wary of the World Congress thing. At least for single player. As it is and always has been in Civ, the AI tends to conspire against you. Even when they're not, they often act very irrationally. If not balanced or programmed carefully, I'm afraid it will sap the fun out of it.

I also hope that being the first to discover all other Civs is not the only variable in determining who gets to propose resolutions. That seems rather unbalanced too.

All in all, very excited about another expansion though!

dejanzie wrote:

I'm really excited about the trade routes (if balanced well), but kind of wary of the World Congress thing. At least for single player. As it is and always has been in Civ, the AI tends to conspire against you. Even when they're not, they often act very irrationally. If not balanced or programmed carefully, I'm afraid it will sap the fun out of it.

I also hope that being the first to discover all other Civs is not the only variable in determining who gets to propose resolutions. That seems rather unbalanced too.

All in all, very excited about another expansion though!

It sounds like discovering the others first is just a bonus for the *first* congress. Others after that work differently.

That would make more sense, yes

MyBrainHz wrote:

If there is not a great artist named Aldous Huxley in the expansion there is no justice in the world.

Also, the important question of our time vis a vis pre-ordering: TF2 Hattes, Valve?

Yes... leader hats for each of the nine representatives of the TF2 congress... <.<

Yay, culture victory! It's the major thing I'm missing from this iteration right now!

Running list of what's known about the new expansion here.

Xcom in Civ V:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/1MA5a06.png)

Just got Civilization V in the Bioshock Infinite deal from GMG. I'm running vanilla, for now. I see that Gods & Kings is highly recommended, and the upgrade to the Gold Edition is a small fee of £10.00! This includes all of the DLC thus far, unless I am mistaken. Should I upgrade now or have a little patience and hold out for a sale and any further potential DLC?

Chaotic Clown wrote:

Just got Civilization V in the Bioshock Infinite deal from GMG. I'm running vanilla, for now. I see that Gods & Kings is highly recommended, and the upgrade to the Gold Edition is a small fee of £10.00! This includes all of the DLC thus far, unless I am mistaken. Should I upgrade now or have a little patience and hold out for a sale and any further potential DLC?

Personally, I think G&K fixes some issues with vanilla and adds some really cool new systems that make it well worth buying. But as somebody who paid full price for both Civ V and G&K, I may not be qualified to make a recommendation for somebody who has managed to resist its allure for this long

Chaotic Clown wrote:

Just got Civilization V in the Bioshock Infinite deal from GMG. I'm running vanilla, for now. I see that Gods & Kings is highly recommended, and the upgrade to the Gold Edition is a small fee of £10.00! This includes all of the DLC thus far, unless I am mistaken. Should I upgrade now or have a little patience and hold out for a sale and any further potential DLC?

I think Gold might miss a DLC or two. Not 100% certain. G&K isn't included in Gold.

I'd recommend you get them on a sale. Especially G&Ks, which is a significant game play update vs adding new countries, etc. G&Ks has been hitting sub $10 regularly lately.

Steam lists G&K as part of the Gold Edition.

I do find it a little odd considering G&K is £19.99 to purchase as a standalone add-on. Perhaps it is an error in the package listing. Or perhaps it is just a crazy good deal, especially for a £10.00 upgrade (for those who own the standard release).

25 minute video of Brave New World features by the developer. Damn cool stuff!

Tkyl wrote:

Amazon has a deal going on right now. I'm not sure how long it will last.

Civ IV Complete Pack, Civ V Gold Edition and XCOM: EU for $19.99

Shawnosaurus wrote:

25 minute video of Brave New World features by the developer. Damn cool stuff!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/EMO79ylKga0[youtube]

That was really great. Are there more or similar videos to this online?

Every few months I pick this up and play through a handful of games. As such, I've been playing quite a bit of this recently, and while I was lukewarm on it at launch and understand the AI-based complaints of people who are far better at the game than I am, at this point I'm a big fan of this iteration. I love how they've made each Civ feel unique via the unique units. buildings, and traits. A lot of the traits seem like they should be overpowered, but they manage to balance out nicely. For example, Austria can 'purchase' city-states and integrate them into their empire. This seems like it could easily unbalance the game, but upon playing as Austria you quickly realize that you have to sacrifice quite a bit in order to boost the relations enough that you can purchase them and then you blow a not-insignificant sum of money on each one. It's really quite well done. And what really matters there is that playing a game as Austria feels completely different than playing a game as Japan. The people behind Civ V and G&K deserve a lot of credit for making each civ unique enough that they all provide a slightly different challenge when playing a game -- something that no Civ game outside of SMAC has managed to do.

Now - all that said, I still can't beat the game on King difficulty. Which is probably why the AI complaints don't matter to me. I can beat Prince in a runaway victory every time, no matter which victory condition I'm going for or which civ I'm playing (I generally set the civ to 'random' so that I'm forced to play different styles). On King, the only time I've managed a victory has been on an Archipelago map, where I was able dominate the game with my navy. Other than that game I tend to make it to the Renaissance era before starting over because I'm in last place by score and lagging behind in tech, culture, etc.

New trailer for the new expansion. I just won my first game on Prince as a new player to the franchise so I am looking forward to this, but these new features sound really smart and I will have to spend a few hours to understand them all.

So, who's going first?

My new favorite way to play this game: Quick Speed, All-random.
Random Civs, Random Map Size/Player Count, Random Map Type.

It makes the first half of the game so much more interesting and unpredictable.

I generally play random civ, random map, small or standard map size (any bigger and my iMac chugs mid-game), and standard game speed. The most important thing in there for me is the random civ - in previous iterations of the series I'd just find a civ I liked and play them nearly every game - but in this version I find that by doing a random civ (and restarting if I get one I've won as before) I get a different experience with each game.

omnipherous wrote:

So, who's going first? :-)

Oh, I'm definitely going to buy it before release, but I think I'll wait to see if anything better comes along. Worst-case, I'm pretty sure I have some Amazon credit laying around that I could use on it.

omnipherous wrote:

So, who's going first? :-)

Arrgh, why're you charging Australians $50 for this expansion Firaxis/2K?

Ugh. Just when I thought I was done with Civ5, they pull me back in. At least, for the Gold Upgrade for a mere $5. Gods and Kings+all the maps? Sure. Now I just have to reinstall.

Oy, do want! Maybe I can wait at least a little bit, there's so much else to play

I'm a big fan of Civ 5. But I'm going to be busy so I might as well wait for that sale for $7 just like Gods and Kings last year. Sad I know.

Redwing wrote:
omnipherous wrote:

So, who's going first? :-)

Arrgh, why're you charging Australians $50 for this expansion Firaxis/2K? :(

How much are they charging everyone else?

It's £17.99 here, whatever that translates as.. $28US?

Likewise, I'll probably hang off for a bit.. see how long my resistance can stand up, plus, there's so much else to play.

I will, however, grab all the extra DLC that I've missed in the past, which is quite a lot..

U.S. (after 10% preorder discount) is 26.99. I plan on holding out as long as possible (which will probably be the night before it launches) before buying it.

Any idea if/when they are going to make a bitboss for this game? I would love to play some multiplayer games but it just takes too long for anything other than a pitboss game.