Well I just had a rather infuriating session.

My last game was too easy, so I decided to start again on the harder difficulty.

It was going well, I was mid-table in terms of score and suddenly, unprovoked, EVERYONE attacked me.

The difficulty slider in this game implies only 2 things:

a) Statistically buffed AI opponents, as opposed to more intelligent
b) Increased aggression onto the human player

Just played another on the same difficulty setting.

This time I got put on my own continent and nobody is attacking me. Got bored. I guess the AI can't handle seabourne invasions / attacks.

I think i'm now at a point where I can bash out a review.

Praise
- Graphical polish. The icons and general appearance is impressive.
- No unit stacking. Makes sense and requires you to think more carefully about which unit types you build and where you position them.
- Policy adoption. Much more open than before.
- Money and happiness is now something that i UNDERSTAND and can therefore control
- City states. Adds another, more natural dimension of Civ types.

Criticism
- Stability. There are some CTD, glitch issues which kills the immersion.
- Too fast. There are too few techs, units and civ's and this makes the earlier eras feel too brief.
- Somewhat faulty tech-trees. At times I have access to some units / buildings too early or too late, in comparison with other techs that I already have.
- Somewhat faulty AI. No seabourne attacks / invasions. Excessively aggressive on-land. They gang-up on the human.
- Weak diplomacy. Consists mainly of useless requests for open borders and coop pacts that don't really mean anything. Friendships far too volatile.
- Poor control of trade. No real method of making your resources count.
- Annoying load-screen narration.
- Annoying and unskippable intro movies.

Conclusion

I am very harsh with my ratings and so would give this a 2/5. I will be able to bump this up to a 3/5 with some kind of WW2 scenario, probably. Or alternatively with mods, it can also get to a 3/5. For now, vanilla Civ 5 is only really a 2/5.

To give you an idea of my experience, I started off playing on the easy difficulties, on a huge random map as either Rome, Russia or China. I found these early games too easy because I would expand like crazy and eventually dominate them. It may be worth mentioning at this point that i haven't yet reached the Future era.

So I bumped up the difficulty to medium and found it still too easy. I then tried to play on the huge "Earth" map, but was grossly disappointed. Italy consisted of merely 8 tiles.

Finding the early eras somewhat unrewarding, I bumped up the difficulty to Prince then King, on huge random maps, but this time starting at the Industrial era. However, the other Civs would all gang-up on me. Some civs would have superior technology to me VERY early on, which leads me to believe the difficulty slider merely buffs the ability, not intelligence of the opponents.

I then tried 1 more time, on the same map settings and difficulty, but was placed in a medium sized continent of my own. Interesting i thought. Unfortunately it became rather boring. The other civs were too busy fighting among themselves and totally ignored me. I was free to do all the research I wanted and it because obvious this was going to be too easy.

So i'm stuck at the moment. I would have enjoyed a team-islands type game but the AI seems incapable of seabourne attacks. My next step is to perhaps play a WW2 scenario since that may solve the problems regarding early-era dissatisfaction and ganging-up. A tech, unit and building overhaul mod would be welcome too.

I remember disliking vanilla Civ IV too, but the patches and expansions (especially Beyond the Sword) made it a great game later. So I hope that will happen with this instalment as well. Civ IV also had lots of stability issues, why do they always rush their games?

Probably cos there's no financial consequence.

lol.... man. Derf takes a game that's got a universal score around 90%.. and gives it 40%.

out of 5

Yes but unlike other media, game reviewers are rarely objective. They all hope to get early review copies, and they know that rating a game poorly reduced the chance considerably.

true enough, and i appreciate Derf's candor. The jade levels are quite entertaining as well. Something tells me he could get a game with perfect graphics, incredible depth, and it also gives you oral sex while you're playing it, and it would be lucky to obtain 4 jades out of 5.

Weak diplomacy in TBS games is an almost instant boner destroyer.

What could save that is a CIV5 MP games with 3-4 people and some AI. I've played some Civ and Civ-style games in MP and that was awesome because a) diplomacy becomes TIGHT and pacts and tech/financial exchanges are hard negotiations and b) no one has an inherent advantage because of being better clickers/having more time to focus since everyone works within their own turn/time.

Kind of an update, but since Civ V is not really playable, I had a look at the mods for Civ IV and was very surprised to see they've actually stabilised Rise Of Mankind, which is an overhaul mod, adding a shitload of resource types, buildings, units, techs, etc.

Of course, having felt somewhat robbed of money from Civ V's rather poor release, I found it morally acceptable to torrent Civ IV.

I'm kinda re-hooked on Civ IV now.

Civ V will take at least a year or two before it becomes playable thanks to mods.

Hahaha!

Weren't you the guy who did an all-nighter on Civ V just 2 weeks ago? Your gaming behaviour is so erratic it's awesome.

That also explains why you weren't online for some SC2 ass-whooping yesterday actually.

Hehe, yeah. Played till 1.30 am last night.

But i'll log into Steam tonight since i'm always down (depending on morale) for a SC game.

/me gives it a week before Derf rails against how crappy Civ IV is

Well i came across a hitch last night. I quit the campaign cos all of a sudden, 50% of Civ's declared war on me. They weren't even angry with me originally, they were pretty neutral. They werent allied, so they couldn't have coordinated such a move realistically.

I fired up a new campaign.

guess I overestimated on that week by about 7 days.