Gonna take the plunge and buy it.

Played the demo for a bit and instantly fell in love. Again.

I just love early expansion and resource grabbing

I only ever played Civ 2 on, I think Playstation. Or something. But I liked it. I've been eying the new one, but not sure I want to pay full price.

Anyway, please let us know how it is.

I played 30 mins and it's orgasmic.

The new graphics work wonders. Civ 4 and 3 somehow had a very nerdy and raw feel to the interface, this interface is super-polished and friendly.

The game also feels somewhat more... natural. The AI behaves in a more reasonable manner according to what real life adversaries may have done. Stuff like barbarians are less dangerous now, but will hurt you if you neglect them.

The whole idea of adopting policy has been taken to a whole new level. In Civ 4 you could choose your government, economic, social, technological system, etc in a linear fashion. But now they're introduced trees. I was able to define my policy 3 times within those 30 minutes. I chose expansionist advantages over productive or military.

The economy in the early game has also somewhat relaxed. Before you would somehow start LOSING money if you expanded quick-ish, ie, built alot of settlements. Something which isn't really realistic. But now, there is no such cost. You just have to commit the time to build the settler and that's it.

They've improved everything essentially. Building workers to make infrastucture improvements and choosing settlement locations is currently giving me a major hard-on.

I'm playing as the Roman civ in a random huge world. I'm close to a few other Civs including China, which I am befriending. I will wait until im able to build legionaries and use that time to impose a sort of golden-age or campaign to make conquests or smite any fools that are pissing me off, e.g. the Aztecs. Before then, I will make sure to expand as much as possible and grab as many resources as possible.

Cool, sounds good. Maybe once I finish my Overlord fetish I'll give that game a shot.

My day 1 AAR:

Had to abandon my first game as the Romans because it was too easy. I expanded like a mofo by about 1500 AD and all other civs only had like 5 settlements max.

The game has some stability issues (CTD's) when you try to start a new game, unless you run it in DX9 mode. I'm sure a patch will fix this.

Now i'm in another game, 1 difficulty up, still as the Romans and still expanding like a whore It's about 1200 AD now and to summarise:

- Early game was tricker cos barbarians are more active now. So, the start was a bit slower.
- The continent i'm on has 3 city states on most of the discovered east coast. I'm allied will all 3. I gift them money, and they give me trade and the odd military unit. However, by 1900 AD, I will most likely need more coastal control, so my feeling is that i'll need to cut off our friendships and conquer them.
- The damn Aztecs are really aggressive. They attacked me suddenly around 400 AD, and I was able to fend them off quite comfortably (it's hard to capture big cities without siege weapons). They asked for peace, offering 500 gold, which I took. I build up some Legions and Ballistas and i'm now in the process of capturing all their settlements. Damn Aztecs.

I have the feeling i'll still need to bump the difficulty up next time round.

The whole city states thing is pretty cool imo.

I also found out that Legionaries can build roads and forts! Discovering that bought a bit smile to my face That and the fact they kick ass against most if not all units in that period.

My only slight complaint at this point, is that similar to previous Civ games, perhaps time files by too quickly. Perhaps they could make each age last longer if they provided more buildings, units and techs. I'm only saying that cos i'm playing on the "longer" setting and it still feels as if the classical era flew by.

Haha, awesome stuff. What are the city states exactly like in Civ V though? Like single cities acting as a single 'civilization'?

I love it when the AI bites off more than it can chew and then comes crawling for peace.

Yeah, exactly that. They can build anything you can but they don't expand.

One other slight complaint is that you cannot control trade so well. I think it was Civ 3 that introduced a really cool trade control system, but it was dropped in Civ 4.

And how's the diplomacy? I mean how extensive does it get. I'm always hoping for Alpha Centauri style diplomacy (only a little more refined).

I haven't used diplomacy tbh.

Every so often some civ will ask me for:

- Open borders agreement
- Pact of secrecy
- Pact of cooperation
- War against civ X
- Research agreement

To which i saw no to all except research agreement. I don't know how any of them effect me, so i can't be arsed to deal with them. So yeah, i wouldn't say diplomacy is improved per se. If you could trade resources and make money that way, or exchange resources for services, then that would be cool.

Im having a bit of trouble with immersing myself into the spirit of the game. Somehow the thought of going beyond the medieval age as Rome is a bit... wrong. Also, the enemy seems to expand MUCH less than I do. I would just prefer it if the civilisations were fictional, or abstract.

So I tried starting a game as the Russians on the huge Earth map, but a) The "huge" map is too small. E.g. Italy consists of about 5 tiles, and b) It's not possible to start in a pre-definied location, e.g. being the Russians and wanting to expand like a whore, Russia would have been suitable, but the initial placement is random, and so is that of the enemies.

I would have like the idea of playing a huge map as the Russians against todays superpowers (or equivalents). E.g. America, Arabia, India, China, etc... but the placement is random.

Also another minor gripe is that at about 2500 BC, my 1 settlement Civ (Russians) "demanded" wine. It's a mechanism to let you know that in order to improve hapiness, you need to start importing some luxury goods. But this was a bit silly. How to Russians from 2500 BC know what wine is, let alone "demand" it.

My last gripe is a bit more wide-reaching. I would criticise the game a little for being a little uninventive. Yes, the interface is polished and yes the mechanics have been improved, but It seems now that the Civ ruleset is a little, aged. It's overall too simplistic and doesn't allow you to control alot. E.g. Settlers are a good example. All you need to do to expand is build a settler, take him to your desired location and click the Found button. The only difficulty is that the settlement you use to build the settler, cannot grow until the settler has been built. Isn't that a little simplistic? How about raising the money, population and resources to make this settler unit? I'm not talking about Europa Universalis, but it does seem to me that Civ, like the Total War series could do with a little more depth.

Doesn't the speed with which you can build a settler (or any unit) depend on the size and resources of the settlement? So the more there is to work with, the faster you'll finish the settler and grow? It's not ultrarealistic clearly but good enough.

Maybe you're gonna need more deep stuff like Europe Universalis to keep you enthralled, or Dwarf Fortress.

Ok I think i've found a good balance now.

I'm playing as China (a fairly abstract and mysterious enough Civ) in a huge random continental map against 11 real-world super-powers (America, India, Russia, etc). Oh, on a medium difficulty too.

Actually i'm having quite a good game. My starting location is very hilly, which isn't entirely to my liking, but it's jam-packed full of resources, particularly silver. The overall "happiness" rating of your Civ is a bitch to maintain positive, cos if it goes negative it affects your growth rate. If it gets worse, it affects your production and it it gets even worse, you combat effectiveness. So it's pretty central to success. Luckily since there is a good range of luxurious resources nearby, i've been keeping my populace pretty content, which means i've been able to expand quite successfully and even conquered one city state.

The americans nearby are not very happy with me right now, but luckily I have 4 Cho-Ku-Nu stationed near the border Cho-Ku-Nu's rock! If the yanks try to pull something, they'd better try it with some uber advanced unit.

What the hell is a Cho-Ku-Nu?

Sounds fun though...i'm almost tempted to dive in myself BUT I MUST RESTRAIN MYSELF. I already have a pile of virtual crack on my shelf with Dwarf Fotress, Minecraft and Starcraft 2. And now the TF2 trading update is out, aaaaaargh!

Time to take a holiday. Or some sick days.

I know, it's crazy. There are so many other games on the immediate horizon yet I am so compelled with Civ V. I suspect the other titles will simply have to wait.

Cho-Ku-Nu refers to the legendary Chinese crossbow soldier. They kick ass in Civ V because they get to fire twice