400 Turns of Civilization V

Wes found a preview of one of the most anticipated upcoming releases by the inhabitants of my office: Civ V. It starts "This preview of Civilization V is incomplete. It takes more than nine Earth hours, you see, for the great Arabian empire — land of Mecca, Rio De Janeiro and Beijing — to assume dominance of the globe."

Advert

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod op 'advert'.

The Tags are getting more absurd each day

[Lars T.]

"alternatehistory" - really?

Hex!

[Saysys]

"The biggest change in Civ V is that the Civilization world is no longer sliced into squares. It is composed of hexagons."

This change is about 15 years late... but most welcome

Re:Only Nine Hours?

[mooingyak]

He did say it was a small map on standard w/ Chieftain difficulty, and he was probably rushing so he could write up a review.

Re:Civilization

[dkleinsc]

You had completely the wrong solution to this situation: Better would be to sell your Civ game to a jerk with higher grades than you for $45. Still cheaper than the full $50 for him, recovers your grades, ruins his, and means you only lost $5.

Oh, and if you play real life like you would Civ, then club him over the head and take the game back, then repeat the process with another person you don't like.

Re:meh

[raddan]

I haven't played Civ IV myself, having found Civ III to be a nice improvement over Civ II (man, can we just get a new Alpha Centauri already?!), but I think the consensus was that Civ IV was a flop. The game got rid of some nice gameplay elements and expanded on others (diplomacy). That may be your kind of game-- after all, I loved the original Railroad Tycoon and intensely disliked the follow-up, but my opinion runs contrary to the masses there. But hopefully they've learned from their mistakes in Civ IV.

Anyway, the way is see it is: Sid Meier is a fucking genius. I will buy anything he makes. If that makes me a Sid Meier fanboy, so be it. He's the only game maker who has consistently kept my attention over the years (Pirates!, Civ series, F119/F117A Stealth Fighter, Railroad Tycoon series, and so on). His games have HUGE replay value.

Re:Great...

[ch-chuck]

Good idea tho, actually, if we put politicians through a civ test or *something* we the voting electorate might be able to tell the actual skilled legislators from the big mouthed wannabees.

Ya the rest of my year is shot for sure

[Sycraft-fu]

Not only Civ V, but there's also Elemental War of Magic. I've been beta testing and it is great. So I'll have not one but TWO epic TBS games. I'll be lucky if I keep my job :D.

Re:meh

[Feyshtey]

I actually found CivIII to be the most annoying of the franchise. I just couldn't get into it at all. Civ II and IV, while having some failing points, are superior to III IMO.

Re:meh

[Mongoose Disciple]

but I think the consensus was that Civ IV was a flop

Source?

Anecdotal, obviously, but I don't know anyone who doesn't think 4 is the best one. I'm still playing it regularly (some single player, some multi with wife + friends) and if 5 isn't great I probably won't stop.

Re:Peeking down the Casual Gamer avenue.

[Delusion_]

I don't necessarily disagree. But if the choice is between animated, flowing wheat fields in the farming squares, or a bigger game, I want the bigger game.

This is another case of not having to choose; let me play the big game, and if that becomes a five, ten minute turn compute-fest, let me turn off features I value less, such as terrain animation, in order to make that more practical.

Re:Pet Peeve

[osu-neko]

Positional notation is unarguably better for doing mathematics, particularly on paper. For communications purposes, however, any arbitrary system for representing numbers is fine, and there is no advantage of one over the other for communication purposes save familiarity with the system by the intended reader. It is often assumed that any reasonably literate person can at least read from I to XII as easily in roman numerals as in arabic numerals, as these are the twelve numbers you see written on a clock face. It's also assumed that people can read clocks. I know in modern times there are a lot of particularly dull people who can't do either, but that's another issue entirely. In any case, I object to the notion that communications should always be dumbed-down for the sake of the semi-literate.

Life, sleep, work got in the way?

[DaveGod]

Forgive the Kotaku previewer, will you? Life, sleep, work got in the way, despite the best efforts of the people at Firaxis who made this pleasure trap of a game. Thankfully, nine hours allowed for plenty of time to learn about the game.

A good Civ game gets in the way of life, sleep and work, not the other way around. A good session of Civ finishes with the guilty realisation that the sun isn't setting, it's rising.

And 9 hours is plenty of time to scratch the surface of a good Civ game, unless you spent it reading the manual (being the rare game where the manual is good reference, well written, and the size of a decent novel). Even a hardcore Civ player should be reading the pages where they explain what's new to the series.

Re:Just one question:

[blackraven14250]

Good thing the Europeans focus on disliking us, the Middle East mostly hates us (with a small fraction who love us), South America mostly hates us, Russia hates us, India is taking all our orders literally, and China is too busy making all of our stuff to hate us.

Good thing nothing is actually about the USA, except for, you know, everything.

Steam only

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to have a steam account to install it on your computer. Major turn off.

Re:Yay, FireAxis

[Anonymous Coward]

Civ 4 does too. Not until you've been playing a while it says 'Out of Memory' and dies.

Never happened to me. I play way too much and always on the Huge map size. And what's more its the OSX port, which you would have assumed would be buggier ... Hmm

Re:Great...

[cashman73]

Don't feel too bad. Sarah Palin can't even score that high! She'd quit the game before getting the score!

Re:Just one question:

[someone1234]

Most people doesn't hate the USA. Except some (or rather, many) things they do.
It is not specific to the USA, if China would do the same, it would be China's deeds that people hate.
And there ARE deeds of China that are hated.
So, nah, it is not about the USA, it is about deeds.