Be Excellent To Each Other

So, I played the demo this morning, and it's probably the longest I've spent on a demo since the days of Amiga Power. Now, I know hardcore Civ IV fans are not going to like it, what with the lack of micro-management and all that boring shit, but I really enjoyed it. I don't have the time or inclination to sit at my computer desk for 4-5 hours a night (especially when I do this for 8 hours a day at work), fiddling with units and pressing "End Turn" ad infinitum until Catherine of Russia burps and we go to war.

While the graphical style isn't 100% to my taste, it didn't detract from the gaming experience, which was fun, fun, fun. In the time the demo allowed, as the Romans I'd made alliances with the Egyptians, Greeks and Zulus; only towards the end deciding to attack Egypt for the fun of it. I'd built Rome up to be a total fortress (in hindsight I wish I'd fortified Byzantine a bit more, as Cleopatra stole it from me after I broke our treaty (I'm trying to fit some kind of joke with the phrase 'comin' atcha' in it, but failing miserably).

It seems quite streamlined, but not dumbed down. I'd almost say it's back to the roots of the first two, crossed with a little bit of Carcassonne. I'm not sure if that sounds like it's good or not, but I like it.

From what I've read, games will be over within 4 hours, so if this sounds abhorrent to you, I'd stick to the PC version.

Anyway, that's enough from me. The demo's on the LIVE Marketplace (and I presume PSN as well, for you rich folk). Not long to wait for release either, it's comin' atcha later this month (phew, managed it).

Again, I cannot wait for the DS version, which is supposedly equal ace, if not more so. I shall persuade my friendo to get the Xbox one.

Well, no. In Civ IV (CIV) you can have turns auto-end. Duhh.

Still, sounds good. Four hour max? No probs. Hoorah!

Civ DS = a VERY bad idea. End of work as we know it, Bob.

Damn. I was sticking to my "no new games idiot" rule as I've barely touched Super Mario Galaxy or UT3, have most of GTAIV still to come, and Rock Band is still swallowing up my time. But you've made this sound ace myoptika. I had better try the demo then.

Ooooh! I'll be giving this a go when I get back from Sunday dinner. Ta-ra!

this demo is on xbox?
to the downloadatron!

Me and my mate Hardy in GCSE Geography used to add the words, "a new game by Sid Meier," after practically any new geographic term launched at us by our shock-haired teacher.

Eg:

"This is called Gentrification," - Mr Tunmore.
""A new game by Sid Meier," - Us.

Well, it was funny at the time.

I might have to give this a try as I've not played a Civ game of any kind. I'd like to see a new 'Covert Action' one day though.

Man, it used to take my Amiga 1200 about 4 hours to make a move on the original Civ.

downloaded it, and indeed it feels great, nice addition to the library and good to see this and also the red alert type stuff crossing over

rather confused & confusing review on EG
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?ar ... 085&page=2

My head is spinning from the impact of all the possibilities a game with this name would entail.

Day 1: Gentrification currently 0%

Do you:
1) Install 'distressed' leather sofas in local pub.
2) Get cafe to sell overpriced coffee instead of tea.
3) Persuade local grocer to stock organic chorizo.
4) Vastly increase rent on 99p Shop in high street.
5) Buy local chapel to turn into executive home

[Vote:5]

I'd love to see Sid Meier's Orographic Rainfall

Coming soon... Ox-Bow Lake Tycoon!

>2

Formatting ....

Just finished the demo and it's excellent! I love the chunky new style (although the advisor-folk take up a good bit of screen), and I think it's translated really well to the control pad. It hasn't been ruined in the simplificationizing process, which is good. Definitely be picking this up before long.

@squirt, those all increase the gentrification, where is the pre-jane-jacobs style : destroy and buid ugly public housing...

how many geographic term end on -ion to get this to work?

Bought Civ Rev. Started a game on default settings. Won a Cultural Victory. Reloaded last save, built building B instead of A, won an Economic Victory. Reloaded last save, built last bit of spaceship, won a Technology Victory. Reloaded last save, used my 1st Tank to single-handedly defeat every enemy unit and city on the map, so as to get the '20 kills' achievement, and win a Domination Victory. I have 21 of its 50 achievements, totalling 300g, after that experience.

So. Default settings are a mite easy, certainly if you've played the others a lot. But is it any good? Is it worth getting if if you already have Civ IV (or, if you were turned off by its complexity compared to the first two games?).

Yes. I spent practically all yesterday evening playing it. It's addictive, it's much faster-paced than its PC siblings, and it has many 'little touches' that I like. For example, the animation when your Tank wins a victory - it stomps and snorts its cannon, like a proud bull. Or the (genuinely amusing) animations of your advisers and enemies.

It does however have some baffling though minor flaws, almost of which involve its Options. There are none, save for adjusting the volume. Woo. By the end of my game above, I had around 9 cities, which I had made very little effort to take. They just sort of happened. I put buildings and stuff in. But then they still demanded build orders every turn. So I told them to build infantry. But then every turn I had to to 'Wait' them all. Doesn't sound so bad, eh, 9 units to Wait? Except! For some reason, the cities with higher production were turning out around 20 new units per turn.

I needed to wait about 7 turns, for my ship to reach Alpha Centauri. I spent that turn pressing 'B' repeatedly, sighing as the camera swooshed over to my city and zoomed in before I was allowed to 'B'ack out again. Causing the camera to swoosh to the next city. Where I had to pause 31 soldiers

Now, given that I wholly annihilated all competition (I played CIV IV rather a lot) it seems that I should just be able to up the difficulty in future - my cities will be working harder to meet demand, and this sort of tedium shouldn't happen again. Still, a very bad first impression for anyone who is generally good at the game.

That is fault 1. Fault 2 is far simpler - at about 200AD I found some native village, and they rewarded me with my 1st Tank. Whilst (due to learning the ropes and focusing elsewhere) I had just about mastered archery. Er. Later, during the Renaissance era, I was rewarded with a Spitfire and a Lancaster bomber, for mastering two technologies first. Er. Erm, so far this has proved reallly balance-damaging for me. However, it's supposedly quite rare (it's a freak occurrence and I have read that getting a Tank that early is 'at the limits' of how unbalanced it can be.

Still. Hmm. I understand totally why this concept is within the game, I'm sure. I think it might even prove to be a good thing. Still. It's a bit like the Blue Shell in Mario Kart games. Be advised.

73%

I've only played Civ 1 from the PC games but I consider it to be one of my fave games ever. Civ Rev is fine in terms of controls but the graphics sort of get in the way at times and it feels like you just have to play a general strategy and then can choose to specialise at the end.

It's nice enough but is a bit Bioshock as opposed to System Shock 2.

[quote="CUS"
It does however have some baffling though minor flaws, almost of which involve its Options. There are none, save for adjusting the volume. Woo. By the end of my game above, I had around 9 cities, which I had made very little effort to take. They just sort of happened. I put buildings and stuff in. But then they still demanded build orders every turn. So I told them to build infantry. But then every turn I had to to 'Wait' them all. Doesn't sound so bad, eh, 9 units to Wait? Except! For some reason, the cities with higher production were turning out around 20 new units per turn.
[/quote]

Firstly: I'm glad a civ game can FINALLY have a city produce more than one unit a turn. However, the fact that they've removed the capitalization/turn production into science beakers thing is completely confusing and ultra shit. Though I've not played the game so I can't comment.

...Come again, sorry?

I should maybe mention that I can see absolutely no way to say 'Build x number of units'. It just... decided to build 31 of 'em.

In previous civs, it worked like this:

Unit X costs 25 shields.
City Y outputs 200000 sheilds.

If you tell Y to build X, it will only build ONE of the fuckers. Therefor it's best to have Y build the "bigger" units that it either does in exactly a turn or 4 units every 5 turns, etc. (as it keeps overpsill). At no point in the civ series, though, have multiple units ever been produced from the same city in the same turn.

Do you see what I mean? It always annoyed me how the strong cities couldn't knock out 25 spitfires a turn, etc. Infact, it always annoyed me how it was EITHER builds OR units. Which makes no sense. I don't think Drill Sergants are Joiners in their spare time.

Think I'll pick this up, then.

I always just rationalised it by thinking that although they had the materials they didn't have the ability to train enough men fast enough. Which is a bit silly too come to think of it. Maybe they should do it as -

Citys's Pop:

1 - 5: 1 Unit
6 - 10: 2 Units
11 - 15: 3 Units

etc.

It was probably designed to stop games becoming a tedious drawn out slog match, I mean imagine if everyone had 30+ unit stacks trundling around. Erk.

Then they should reddesign how then combat works, so that you can throw 30+ unit stacks at each other and see who wins. Also, in Civ IV, the AI does throw 30+ unit stacks around! This is one of the reasons why it's a "better" AI than in previous Civs!

Personally I always thought colonization had it right. You take men, you give them guns, you get guns+men. Deadly. (I think I've mentioned on this very system tha I love this system about a billion times now)

Hoho. It was always excellent in Civ2 to plow everything you had into developing gunpowder, and then blasting hordes of archers and legionnaires with your musketeers.

Do the advisors still shout 'We should build a war elephant and trample our enemies!' in the year 2050 when you're building stealth bombers and AEGIS cruisers?

They do love those war elephants, bless them. And with good reason. Wouldn't you want a war elephant to trample your enemies? Indeed.

A war elephant wouldn't last long against a 105mm HEAT shell.

Nope. But the advisors do play a heavy part in things, much moreso than in CIV IV.

Right, I sat down last night to play a quick hour or so of it, before getting an early night in. I instead played it for over six hours. I fear it might actually be more addictive than regular Civilization! Being a faster playing game, that 'Ooo, I'll have <x> in two more turns...' factor comes around far more often. Genocide in the opening turns is more relevant and worth considering than ever.

Happily it's still fun and satisfying to play the 'long game'. Although it does get bloody irritating later, managing production queues, when you have loadsa cities. However, this might be negated when playing against a properly difficult set of opponents (I'm still ramping up the settings) when you're less likely to be riddled with the ennui of the near-all conquering ruler.

There are tons and tons of things that are dead good about it and that, like. I like how your efforts are now centered purely around your cities (with units as a means to an end). The simplification doesn't feel like it makes things easier - just purer, simpler. To give a really terrible analogy, it's the GTA IV to CIV's GTA: San Andreas. In case I ever do a 'proper review' I'll say no more now, except that I do think it's bloody good, and I'm looking forward to kicking some arse in multiplayer.

Three day score for Singleplayer: 8/10 - if there is any future DLC or expansions, this could easily rise to a 9.

I advise you to get it.

True, but they're so very "Rooargh!" and cute that the opposing army would find themselves saying, "Aw..." and "Blimey, it's like that bit in Lord of the Rings. Cor..." right up to the point when they were trampled.

http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=97




Can anyone with the demo go and have a look at the credits and tell me if this is true, pleaseeeee? He might be joking....

Without checking, I'd say that sounds at least potentially true. Since CIV, it uses a Python interpreter atop the main engine for all its 'game' code and stuff. I would imagine that it's true, and Sid wrote all the routines for the game rules and stuff - whilst everyone else got on with coding the different underlying engines for each platform. He'd only really have to do it the once, y'see.

True. But it's still quite a task for one man to do as well as being head honcho of a company.

Sid isn't the head honcho. Or at least, rather, it's not as though he also has to get the bog paper in and make sure that everyone gets paid at time. That's not his job there. Sir, his job is to do exactly what you're so disbelieving of

Sid must be relieved that this game is actually good and does what it says on the box, unlike 'Railroads!' which was actually '19th Century American Stock Market!'

I've always been skeptical of old Sidney after I found out he's rarely involved with half the games that have his name on them.

Bumpity Bump!

Just put up my review of the DS version.

From the little I've played of the DS version, it gives a functional game of Civ - so to that extent it is a success. But it's rendered on a disgrace of an engine. You have to click slowly through a painfully unresponsive UI.

After playing Anno 1701 and seeing a strategy engine designed exclusively for the DS it makes Civ look like something they've knocked up in afternoon for a mobile.

Seriously, the DS has a small screen and anno's map got around that by being able to be flicked about like silk. And anno's menus and controls are perfectly shaped.

Anno is a very different game to Civ and so it's not a replacement, but it humilates Civ. It's a disgrace of a conversion. They could have made a tremendous game and instead they phoned it in.

It's still decent because it's civ. But it's a civ constructed without care or love.

Bah!

Mm. I wasn't as excited about the game as LewieP.

You both definitely make valid points, I just think that for they don't harm the game that much, and it is more than adequate for what I was looking for in the portable experience.

Yeah my feelings mirror Craig's a lot closer (though I only played it for about 40 mins though).

And fuck, it features Atlantis? Sigh.

I do disagree with you about the screen size problem though. Have you played Anno 1701? It's not my kind of game but it's worth having a go on to see the tremendous engine they have going on there. The effortless flicking around the map renders the screen size a non-issue, and makes you realise what the fuss over touch screens is all about.

It would have worked perfectly for Civ and improved the game about a billion %.

Yeah but it's like a "more than adequate" mario game. That hurts.

It's very 73%.

Not played it, I will have to check it out.

Like I said on Revert to Saved, I think from what I've seen elsewhere a lot of whether you like Civ Rev is down to how much you like existing Civ. I loved Civ II. If they'd ported Civ II with wee graphics to DS, I'd have been over the moon. What I got instead is a very different game, which is fair enough. However, I also think it's an inferior game.

The AI is madly war-obsessed, which means games are more about racking up units and war than about the long game. It's annoying how stripped of strategy this version is. The best tactic appears to be get boats quickly, then find Atlantis, then get tanks, then trample everyone and everything else. Also, the tiny DS screen means you don't really get a sense of the world at all, which is massively disheartening, since that's one of the very best bits about Civ—seeing your empire grow. (Oddly, the 'replay' bit after the game does show this nicely, and is really good fun to play through.) It's also annoying that the game comes to an enforced halt at the point one of the 'win' conditions is met. I always enjoyed playing on in Civ after getting my spaceship off to the far reaches of space.

Ultimately, Civ Rev DS isn't, in my opinion, a bad game. The thing is, it's not a particularly great one either. It is annoyingly compelling, though, rather like Puzzle Quest, which I battled through for ages, before realising that it wasn't really much fun. That said, it was Zoo Keeper that made me wonder why the hell I'd ever play Puzzle Quest again, and although Civ Rev is a hell of a long way from perfect, I've yet to find something better and similar on DS. And Civ 1 in a SNES emulator is just utterly hateful.


As far as I can tell, it's in every game. It's certainly been in almost every one I've played so far. Once you get there, you get a bunch of tech discoveries, which basically mean you're way ahead of the opposition. Oddly, the same can happen by discovering villages. I remember that in Civ II, most such discoveries awarded you something fitting of the time. In Civ Rev, it's pretty common to get a tank or Spitfire around 200 AD, which is ridiculous.

As for Anno 1701, I'll check that out.

Yeah, check Anno out, if only so you can hate the clumsy machine that CivDS shouldn't be a little more.

I don't actually like it as a game mind. It just convinced me that now people had seen it done properly a gazzilion other strat games would be on their way. But it seems no one was watching.

Oh and I'm sure I've said it before but:





The fact that you get that, is why I give your reviews such weight.

Why, thank you, kind sir.

Expect a small flurry of retro-oriented DS reviews on RTS over the coming weeks, once some particularly nasty deadlines are dealt with.