Civilian Target

I'm wondering whether to buy a copy of this and write off the next 3
weeks. Have any of you tried it yet? How is it?

Civilian_Target

JC

"Civilian Target" <tadhgp@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:8l392cFkl0U1@mid.individual.net...
> I'm wondering whether to buy a copy of this and write off the next 3
> weeks. Have any of you tried it yet? How is it?
>
> Civilian_Target

I have been playing the game for about a week, as I usually won't play a new
game until the first bug patch comes out. I have some positive and negative
views about the game, and respectfully disagree with some of Marshall's
comments.

First the negative.

The program is a bit of a dog. It takes a long time to load and you have to
change an ini file to turn off the stupid compulsory introductory movie. The
save files also take a long time to load. Of course the graphics are
demanding - that's to be expected in a major release. However, the dx10/11
mode is flakey. I run it on a dx10 system and after a while you get
unresolveable screen corruption. However, this can be avoided by running in
dx9 mode. The graphics aren't as pretty but it seems pretty solid.

The interface is a bit awkward and although you can sometimes use the
keyboard its pretty much a mouse only affair. Many people won't care about
that, but it bothers me a bit.

I note that other people have had really serious performance issues with big
maps, but I haven't experienced that yet.

I also don't like Steam very much, although it does have some advantages -
especially when moving your games from one computer to another.

Now the positive.

I've been playing civ since civ 1. They've all been good, although I didn't
like civ 3 as much as the others. Civ 2 (or possibly 1 - my memory isn't
what it was) had a combat system that discouraged the stack of doom, and
that was a good thing. Civ 5 has a different approach. It basically outlaws
the stack of doom by requiring that two military units cannot end their turn
in the same tile (although they can pass through each other). That's a good
thing, but it radically changes the game and I'm still coming to grips with
it. The biggest impact (for me) was a bit unexpected. In previous civs, you
fought your way to a city then garrisoned it and beat off the enemy
counterattack from within the city walls. That doesn't work in civ 5 as you
can only garrison with one unit and the enemy just takes it back. Instead,
you have to attack past a city and then take if from all sides, while
leaving a screening force on the enemy side of the city. It might sound
clumsy, but I think it makes civ 5 a much better game.

The hex map is better in almost every way. The only downside is it is
sometime harder to see the positional relationship of the tiles and units,
especially near cities. But that's a minor issue, I love the hex map. This
is also the first civ since civ 2 that actually remembers when you turn the
map grid on. That use to drive me crazy in 3 and 4.

Marshall said that the enemy civs are very agressive. I've had the opposite
experience, as they don't often attack a player who has a strong military.

The game mechanics and combat system are great, at least at my early stage
of understanding the game, but remember I've only been playing a week.

The civ happiness system is a big improvement. The social policies seem
pretty good, but I don't fully understand their impact yet.

I though I would miss religions, but I don't. In civ 4 it became a
micromanagement burden and a bit of an exploit.

All in all I think this is the best civ ever, and would thoroughly recommend
it, provided your system is up to it and you can tolerate the performance
issues.

JC