I absolutely love it. Those are my impressions after about 6 hours of playing yesterday. This is what a game sequel should be.
First thing I noticed was the interface. Brilliant job. There is so much information now on the screen or just a mouse roll over away, it's incredible how it's so clean still. You can toggle layers on the maps to show resources, improvements, units, grid lines, etc. The GUI is simply polished and a joy to use.
Graphics are nothing stellar, but that's not what drives these games. They are a major step up regardless. So many unique unit animations make it fun just to watch the map. For instance, scouts, when dormant for a bit, kneel down and rub their hands on the ground to examine it for tracks. Enter a jungle and bats fly out of the trees (and that makes me laugh each time because I'm a simple man lol). The tile improvements are animated and more robust now too. Farms are working farms with houses, livestock get corraled up into a pen, mines have carts rolling out and dumping into a smelt with smoke. There's so much more too.
The music is awesome. What's not awesome is the way it's set up by default. There is none unless you're zoomed into the "city level" where you hear the cities music, or enter the city screen and hear the rustlings of village life (dogs, people chattering). Zoom out some and that's where the soundtrack is. Under the Audio options, if you choose the Custom Playlist and point it at x:\Program Files\Firaxis\Civilization 4\Assests\Soundtrack (I think, I'm at work now), it will randomly play a track out of each era. I hope they fix it so each era has it's own music instead of hearing Bach when chasing wolves with my scouts. But the custom play list seems to hint that you can add your own music to the game by pointing it to the correct folder. I haven't tried it, but don't see why it wouldn't work. I might just supplement the game's soundtrack with a few personal favorite works.
Mulitplayer is more than I could have asked for in this revision. It's extremely intuitive. I played mostly multiplayer with Sly and had a blast. It was him and myself teamed, against 9 AI players. The teaming option is great. It allows instant map updating from each player (you explore a new area, they see it immediately so no more constant map trading). The Civ score monitor also tells you what Technology your teammates are researching and in how many turns so no more "what are you researching again?". You can also research a technology as a team, and this is simply awesome. Got an advanced tech you want, like one that will found a religion in your city, but it takes 50 turns? By setting us both to the same tech, we pooled our resources together automatically and were able to research it in less than 14 turns. It also allows for one teammate to go after a big tech, and another hit the quick ones out. Once a tech is discovered, all team members are updated instantly with a friendly reminder from Leonard Nemoy and a choice historical quote that relates to the technology you've acquired.
Barbarians actually take control of cities now, not just raize them. I found that out the hard way. You simply can not expand like you could in previous Civ games. Cities need good protection as well as security escorts for settlers and workers. If you fail to escort them, you may as well just disband them as they are created. Besides barbarians, there's now teeming hordes of wolves, bears, panthers, and other such creatures to make little visits to your units and cities.
The wolves and such aren't bad if you've got some military units out looking for them. THose battles can level up your unit for promotion. No longer is there a attack/defense value to the units. It's a single strength value now. When attacking a unit, it will show you before hand the values of your target and also the bonuses that the terrain may give. Promoting is really great for creating specialized units as there are several different roles you can promote to. My scouts have been promoted to have bonuses of extra defense in the forest/jungle and on hills. My archers have City Defense bonuses and first strike abilities now.
The Great People still are cloudy to me. I somehow got Moses the Great last night. While being very cool to have the man with the power to part the Red Sea sitting in Athens, he also had the options to build several fun things. He could instantly discover a tech, work on a wonder, add population to the city, build certain kinds of temples, and a few others I forgot. I had him build the Temple of Solomon. As soon as it was done, you could see it in the city. (Note: there's no more city view as it's not needed. The city on the map is a real time reflection of the city and it's structures. Just zoom all the way in). Next thing I knew, I was the Judaism center of the world and receiving healthy benefits for supplying my people's one true God for the next 20 turns until I found another.
More to come! But so far, I'm having a great time.
**sorry for the spelling errors. It's early and I'm still working on my first coffee.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
). Once my borders, albeit very extended from home, are secure, I invest in my interior. You just need to do a good bit of exploring and map trading to get a complete feel of your surroundings and an idea of how big you want your core empire to be.