Sid Meier's Civilization V Review

By Quintin Smith Published 21 September, 2010

Epic win?

Version tested: PC

When I first got my hands on Sid Meier's Civilization V, my life became a fight. I don't mean I was struggling to guide my civilisation to global renown, languidly picking my way up the research tree, sending little men to die in little wars. It wasn't that kind of fight. I mean I was fighting not to click the icon that led to the game that led without fail or mercy to me entering a kind of strategy fugue, which I'd emerge from, hungry and dehydrated, between three and seven hours later. To say this game is addictive is like saying that dry toast is edible. Of course it is, but that's not the whole picture.

If you haven't played a Civilization game before, they have the grandest of all strategy concepts. You're given control of an entire race of people circa 4000 BC, and from a humble beginning caving in the heads of local barbarians you engineer your nation's success over whole millennia, eventually reaching a day-after-tomorrow technological level with Nanotech and (new with Civ V) Giant Death Robots.

'Sid Meier's Civilization V' Screenshot 1

The new interface is a thing of beauty. Can city statistics and tile resources ever be beautiful? 'KINDA,' proclaims Civ V.

One of the more curious parts of Civ is the different ways you can win it. The Domination victory has been simplified with Civ V to "simply" holding the capitals of all the other civilisations. Then there's the Science victory, whereby you assemble the various parts of a spaceship and launch it; the Diplomatic victory, where your peaceful ass is voted to be head of the United Nations; and the Cultural victory, which in Civ V means using culture points to complete five social policy branches and then the 'Utopia Project'.

Maybe this is all sounding unpleasantly dry and complicated, but it's not in the slightest. The turn-to-turn action in Civ V is built out of nothing but intriguing little questions. This is its genius. "What's this city going to build?" the game asks. "Good, good. Now, where's this ship going to move? Oh, wow, you researched Banking! Holy crap! Now, what would you like to research next?"

And then it's 7pm and you're eating fistfuls of dry cereal straight out of the box because the prospect of leaving the game to cook something as complicated as cheese on toast is an impossible idea. Mouth full of bran flakes, you order Beijing to begin the 40-year construction of the Notre Dame.

'Sid Meier's Civilization V' Screenshot 2

Hey Bismarck! The Bismarckster. Bismarky Mark. How about you swap me your Silks resource for my Pearls? No? Why you gotta be like that, Bismarck.

Which is something else that gives the game colour. Civ forgoes abstraction for letting you re-assemble human history in the wrong order. The Americans can build the Pyramids and the English can build the Pentagon, and every race is led by a disturbingly immortal imagining of one of their most famous leaders. If you spend a game neighbours with France, you're going to be putting up with Napoleon for several thousand years. Probably best just to start a new game. Or crush him immediately under a swarm of primitive spearmen. "What are you going to research?" SPEARMEN. "What's this city going to build?" SPEARMEN. "Where are these units going?" TOWARDS THAT BASTARD.

Civilization V's primary goal was to streamline this concept even further, something it's done a wonderful job with. If you've never played a Civ game before, this is the place to start. The interface, the information the game provides you with, the array of excellent sound effects as you clunk and swoosh your way through various decisions - it's all pretty much perfect. Likewise, a lot of attention's been lavished on the visuals of the world, the idling deer, the animations of your workers and so forth. This and the swap from the series' traditional square grid to a hex-based map, has created a place that's pleasant to explore and develop.

Likewise, the few changes that developer Firaxis has made to the game itself are all smart changes made by smart men. The swapping out of religion and the old government system for a kind of cultural tech tree strengthens the game's sense of upward momentum.

The simple removal of units being able to stack up in a single tile, and the addition of ranged units that can fire across a tile (archers, ships, artillery) ends up having absolutely massive consequences. Assaulting a city (which now get a ranged attack of their own) in Civ V often requires at least 30 seconds of chin-stroking as you consider where to place your troops. More importantly, deft positioning of your army now allows you to overcome a substantially larger force. It's a fun addition to a game where combat was often a case of a fat stack steamrollering everything else.

Then there are the new city-states, which are a cross between an AI nation and a static map resource. They're individual cities that won't expand, somehow manage to boast some of the most advanced units in the game, and that can be befriended through money, gifts, or doing missions for them, whereupon they'll give you a bonus of anything from military units to culture points for as long as you keep bribing them.

The great thing about city-states is how much flavour they add to the map. Despite who they help being a transparently mathematical thing, they're also oddly human, and the feeling of some aggressive despot declaring war on you only for your three city-states to start slinging armies his way is heartwarming.

'Sid Meier's Civilization V' Screenshot 3

Come to think of it, why doesn't Civ ever cough up a conflict on the scale of World War 2?

But all of these new features have one thing in common. They're all small enough changes to have very little impact on the way Civilization plays, meaning this game has all the same pitfalls as previous Civ titles. For most of the time nothing is happening, and you're clicking your way through turns in an addicted trance. Then every so often a terrible attacking force will come out of nowhere, you'll have no means of reacting to it since units often take at least 10 turns to build, and in the worst cases you're left with no choice but to restart an earlier save.

Far more common than these crippling blitzkriegs are the wars that make no sense and that you knock back with ease, because the AI in Civ V is still curiously terrible. At its absolute smartest (what the game calls its 'normal' difficulty setting, before the AI starts receiving stat bonuses) the AI still makes inexplicable demands from you. It will refuse your demands, even if you've got an apocalyptic horde parked outside its borders. It will go to war with you, dash a dozen armies against your defences, then offer you everything it's got for a peace settlement. These aren't opponents that make for fond memories. Civ V is occasionally capable of clashes between equally-matched nations, but they're unforgivably rare. If you want respectable competition, you need to head online.

This is the reason I spent that week actively wrestling with my burning desire to click on the Civ V icon, despite it being such an astoundingly slick, engaging game. For all the hours it eats up, outside of its multiplayer it gives disappointingly little back, and it will continue to give very little back until Firaxis bites the bullet and admits that there are aspects of Civilization which deserve not just to be improved, but fixed.

8 / 10

Civilization V is released for PC on 24th September.

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
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About Quintin Smith

Read more articles from Quintin by visiting the Quintin Smith archive page.

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Comments (142) Latest comment 5 months ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • stephenb #1 1 year ago

    Superb! Time to annex some foreign dogs!

  • OlMaster #2 1 year ago

    It seems that a lot of the criticism is levelled at the concept of Civ rather than the game itself. Of course you can't retract turns, that would defeat the purpose of a turn based strategy game, and moreover there is no reason why Firaxis would allow you to instantly build troops as that would be hideously unbalanced.

    The actions of the AI need a bit of context as well: I think it's reasonable for a country with complete ideological differences, for example, not to do a deal with you, or for a country that is exhausted all its resources in fighting you to try to barter a peace settlement.

    That said I've not played the game, but 8 seems a particularly harsh score.

  • cloud_ix #3 1 year ago

    read like a 10

  • Hantheman #4 1 year ago

    Ohhh only (?) 8/10. WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE METASCORE!?

  • Tetsuo_Shima #5 1 year ago

    Can't wait to get my greasy mitts on this!

  • el_pollo_diablo #6 1 year ago

    I wish I was intelligent enough for this game.

  • hello_fi #7 1 year ago

    ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  • Moonbender #8 1 year ago

    "And then it's 7pm and you're eating fistfuls of dry cereal straight out of the box because the prospect of leaving the game to cook something as complicated as cheese on toast is an impossible idea."

    I've been there. Only it was 7am.

  • Apaar #9 1 year ago

    Surprisingly harsh end note. First 2/3 of the review read like a description of the perfect strategy game, but then a slew of criticism agains the inner nature of the Civ games assaulted at the last moment, dragging the whole thing down. I wonder if any of the problems Mr Smith faced could be fixed through modding (which is a central feature that wasn't at all mentioned in the review).

  • riceNpea #10 1 year ago

    agree with the stupidity of the AI raging pointless wars against you, often every nation at once. other then that it's great

  • Trinod #11 1 year ago

    Is it as good as Civ 4?

  • Zawath #12 1 year ago

    If Civ 5 was a console game you would have given it a 10/10.

  • cairbre1977 #13 1 year ago

    Mine is preordered on steam cant wait.

  • dsmx #14 1 year ago

    That's the really bugger in CIV, they still haven't fixed the AI. However CIV 5 can be modded so someone will release something to improve the AI so it's not the end of the world.

  • mr_shoe_uk #15 1 year ago

    Those turns were nothing happens are turns where war doesn't happen. There's always some kind of escalating tech going on in Civ, and that's why it's so furiously hard to stop playing.

  • WrongShui #16 1 year ago

    I've been playing paradox games since Civ 4, I wonder if this will be too strategy lite for me now.

  • Petulant_Radish #17 1 year ago

    Sigh..read the words, don't pay attention to the score. Generally gushing praise throughout the review means an instant purchase (not that it ever wasn't going to be) and as such I will lose many, many, many hours to this and quite possibly my girlfriend in the process. It'll be worth it though to beat those bloody French...

  • lucky_jim #18 1 year ago

    @MrParker- Argh! Civ is addictive, not addicting! Sorry, one of my many bugbears.

    I've never been able to love Civ as much as I wanted to, I found it all a bit too baffling (apart from the great, but very different, Civ Rev on consoles). I've been trying to get into it ever since the first game, but the learning curve frightens me. I can see how awesome it is, but it's kind of scary. Hopefully this will be the game to ease me into it.

  • dsmx #19 1 year ago

    Good job then there's a demo on the steam store for everyone to have a go with.

  • Cherub007 #20 1 year ago

    I wanted to love Civ 4 but never really felt I had too much genuine control over what I developed or the direction my civilization took. Maybe my expectations were slewed by my addiction to Rome: Total War (which probably failed in many areas where Civ 4 succeeded, but was the game I played, and loved, first). This does look nice, though, so I think I could be tempted.

  • Stuz359 #21 1 year ago

    Damn Civ, I am going to have to repeat a year at Uni now.

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #22 1 year ago

    So basically it's just as great as other Civs, except for the crap AI?

    Personally, I just die at every difficulty above about Chieftan, but I do find the AI to either be ridiculously stupid or preposterously over-powerful.

  • ChthonicEcho #23 1 year ago

    Strange. Almost every 8/10 review I've read on Eurogamer feels forced. They name a vast variety of positive elements only to hastily scribble a fault or two that are not notable enough to bring down the score (case in point, Amnesia's length).

    Not that some arbitrary score matters enough to hotly debate it. The game is what matters, and this is a great one. As someone who rarely touched combat in Civ IV, numerous improvements in that area in Civ V now make me want to reconsider. When a game changes how you approach certain virtual challenges - that is the definition of brilliant game design.

  • hiddenranbir #24 1 year ago

    Is that it? TWO pages?

    You can get four pages out of ten-hour FPS shooters but Civ can only manage TWO?

  • caligari #25 1 year ago

    @ LuckyJim - hah hah, I'm glad you got there before me.

  • epiazk #26 1 year ago

    @ hiddenranbir

    WORD

    Its almost a negative review in itself that its 2 pages. Does that mean its just an "update"?

  • MaxiSleep #27 1 year ago

    I always thought Civ 1 produced the best "wars". Everytime they added units it made it less and less likely that there would be a dun engagement. Would love if the re released civ classic with some of the nicer modern unit auto manage things

  • Pixelzombie #28 1 year ago

    Can't agree with all the faults you see in Civilization games in general, but more importantly - this review was hilarious! I had fun reading it! What will I do now?! SPEARMEN.

  • Bokke #29 1 year ago

    Days and nights of click click click click, drink some whiskey, click click click click, drink some whiskey, I can't wait.

  • Scimarad #30 1 year ago

    If I was to pick one game concept as the finest one ever created it would easily be Civ.

  • dirtysteve #31 1 year ago

    Who's doing the voiceover in this one? Leonard Nimoy was a good choice for the last one.

  • Eraserhead #32 1 year ago

    Kudos for not automatically assuming everyone has played Civ before in the review (even though they bloody well should have), but a measly two pages for this? Tssssch.

  • HisDudness #33 1 year ago

    I have to agree with others complaining about the length of this review. It's pretty anemic, which is unfortunate because that puts more emphasis on reading the score. To be honest it feels like the review is missing a page.

    I have read other reviews (Arstechnica.com has a lengthy review which I can recommend reading), which bring up the issue with AI, but also give a lot more treatment to how the new features (combat, city states, etc. play out). If you are really on the fence about this game (which I doubt many Civ fans are) I suggest you look elsewhere for a more comprehensive treatment of the changes since IV. As for the concerns of complexity from Civ virgins - this is apparently a much more approachable entry than previous iterations.

  • StarMagic #34 1 year ago

    I liked religion in the last game, it added good depth and different bonuses. I wish they'd kept that.

  • jjmanch #35 1 year ago

    Agreed - never posted on Eurogamer before, as usually you're more or less spot on and cover everything in some depth, but practically every other review I've read so far tells me more about the game than you guys. Poor show.

  • Razz #36 1 year ago

    Pizza Menus? Check!
    Coffee Maker? Check!
    Biscuits? Check!

    Goodbye real world! It's Civ time!

    (o/

  • Azazel #37 1 year ago

    A good game for when you're trapped in some kind of SG1 like time dilation device.

  • Chufty #38 1 year ago

    Pretty crap review, EG. It's a hugely complex games and vast swathes of discussion have been completely overlooked. Multiplayer? Those new civil policy things? The sexy new city screen?

    You know what, I don't care, it's been preordered for weeks anyway.

  • billy-beauts #39 1 year ago

    Great review because it acually spot-lights the main problem with the game; the AI. When I was younger playing CIV 1 and 2 my imagination took over and it wasn't a problem. But in CIV 3 and 4 those AI patterns that you mentioned in the last 3 paragraphs really began to get on my nerves and I've stopped playing it because basically I know that after many many hours of playing I will be left disappointed. I will check out CIV 5 later, but well done for calling it out on it's flaw.

  • UncleLou #40 1 year ago

    No entirely unexpected, but at least a little bit surprising after the AI was mentioned in every interview and article in the past few years as one of their main focus points in development.

  • TitusCrow #41 1 year ago

    "Who's doing the voiceover in this one? Leonard Nimoy was a good choice for the last one."

    I think its the Geordie guy from Alan partridge this time round. I also heard a rumour that karl pilkington turned it down "due to other commitments" Both of these are unconfirmed at this moment.

  • tossrStu #42 1 year ago

    @Micro_Explosion.: Quinns is ALWAYS short of iron.

  • darkmorgado #43 1 year ago

    Glad this is good, I've had it on preorder for ages. Oddly, even though this and DR2 are released on the same day, Shopto have dispatched my copy of DR2 for next day delivery (woohoo! I have the day of as well!), but not my Civ V. Presumably they haven't received stock yet.

    Anyway, can't wait!

  • orpheus #44 1 year ago

    Demo?!!

    *clicks Steam frantically*

  • CouldntResist #45 1 year ago

    The burning question i have is how does the AI compare to that of CIV IV, which is one of my favourite games of all time. I knew the CIV 4 AI wasn't great, but it was abstracted enough behind front-end that you didn't notice its deficiencies enough for them to be a distraction. If the CIV 5 AI performs no worse, then with the introduction of features like hexes and better combat mechanics, as well as retaining the same CIV scale and feel, this game will easily be a 10/10 for me.

    Also a note on the author's criticisim regarding sudden invasions - i'm sorry but that just smells like bad planning. Surely you will have an idea of the military strength of your neighbouring states, as well as their general disposition towards you. It pays to be prepared...
    Edited by 1 at 21/09/10 @ 19:17

  • butler` #46 1 year ago

    thought it would be a 9 tbh

  • Masarin #47 1 year ago

    The first year after the release of 'Civilization I' I couldn't listen to Sonic Youth's album 'Dirty' without seeing images of cheating diplomats, stupid camels and feeling to invade some stubborn European country. Hm... wonder what my choice of album will be the soundtrack of Civ V.
    Edited by 2 at 21/09/10 @ 19:53

  • SheffieldSteel #48 1 year ago

    @Couldn'tResist
    That is the question, though, isn't it? Is there a way of knowing that your neighbour is pissed off with you* ahead of time, or does the game lack a mechanism for displaying such info?
    Of course, it's possible that the AI is declaring war simply because it's hard-coded to attack a player who has chronically underfunded their armed forces, but it seems from various reviews that the AI is also prone to declaring war in situations where it can't win. So it seems that there's more than one issue here, and it isn't clear exactly what the problem is.

    * The AI may or may not harbour gudges over an extended period. I would hope so!

  • enfilade #49 1 year ago

    Do you still get to be taught how to play by that adorable computerised rendition of Sid Meier? Also, who's reading the research quotes this time? NONE OF THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED D:

  • CouldntResist #50 1 year ago

    @SheffieldSteel

    Well attitude indicators were a critical part of CIV 4 diplomacy. I'd astounded if this was removed.

  • UncleLou #51 1 year ago

    Never liked the attitude indicators in CivIV all that much, they were a little too blatantly mathematical. Of course, not knowing what's going on at all isn't an alternative.

  • spekkeh #52 1 year ago

    i don't get it, how can mario galaxy get a 10/10 and civ get an 8/10 ?

    Erm, can't speak for this game, but try really playing mario galaxy for once. When it comes to game design, streamlining and cognitive scaffolding and such, it's beyond parallel.

    Must say I'm quite surprised at the score after the 9.6 this was going for on metacritic. However, for a strategy game the AI is pretty much the most important aspect, so if that's botched and they have to resort to stats 'cheating', then extremely good job on calling it out Quintin. I will probably still like it, but now it will have to wait till past the busy october/november season.

    Do agree that the review is pretty short, although it's nicely framed.

  • spekkeh #53 1 year ago

    The first year after the release of 'Civilization I' I couldn't listen to Sonic Youth's album 'Dirty' without seeing images of cheating diplomats, stupid camels and feeling to invade some stubborn European country. Hm... wonder what my choice of album will be the soundtrack of Civ V.

    Civ 1 had a soundtrack?! I don't think I had anything more than a PC speaker then :D.

  • UncleLou #54 1 year ago

    However, for a strategy game the AI is pretty much the most important aspect, so if that's botched and they have to resort to stats 'cheating', then extremely good job on calling it out Quintin

    It was always clear that higher AI levels would get bonuses. That isn't the problem, and probably not even doable any other way. The problem is, as far as I can see, that it doesn't act convincingly on a diplomacy/interaction level.

  • CouldntResist #55 1 year ago

    The problem is, as far as I can see, that it doesn't act convincingly on a diplomacy/interaction level.

    Just curious - has any game ever done this convincingly?

    I have a huge problem with this in the TW series but not so much with civ. This isn't because civ has better diplomatic AI but more to do with the fact that i play civ like i play Sim City. I am far more inwardly focused in civ and really the AI is only there to provide a sense of competition and instill some life into the world. It does irk me sometimes though when the AI declares war for no good reason.

  • Shikasama #56 1 year ago

    It's really dissapointing to see that despite some great changes, the two most annoying and crap parts of civ havn't been improved on, namely the amount of 'dead' turns where your waiting for something to happen and the ridiculous AI decision making. I think I can give this a miss if thats the case which is a shame because I was really digging it in development.

  • Khanivor #57 1 year ago

    So how much of this review was written before the game was in the reviewer's hand? 90%? This reads like a preview with a supposiiton of what the AI would be like.

  • mumblyjoe #58 1 year ago

    Should be 9/10 really, cause you have to knock one point of for lack of Leonard Nimoy as voice over

  • Inertia #59 1 year ago

    I don't quite understand why everyone is agreeing with the reviewer. I've played it for 5 hours now and I feel it is a bit buggy, but then every civ was like this, but the core game is better than 4 because the combat is now so much more fun. Diplomacy was appalling on civ 4 too. But it's not real life so you play it like a person playing a boardgame.

    The interface and world map is definitely an improvement, and combat is now tactical as opposed to spamming units. So if anyone keeps on saying they are disappointed it should be with the review not the game. As clearly the lack of detail in the review indicates the level of the skills of the reviewer.

    It's good, play the demo, and don't put so much trust in these reviews

  • SheffieldSteel #60 1 year ago

    --The problem is, as far as I can see, that it doesn't act convincingly on a diplomacy/interaction level.

    -Just curious - has any game ever done this convincingly?

    Fragile Allegiance had some very nice diplomacy options, with a solid model behind them. It didn't seem to need an overt display of how you were getting on with any of the other races. Of course, that's going back over 10 years, but it still looks pretty enough - if you can get it to run.

  • Drool #61 1 year ago

    6 out of 9 games recieving an 8/10. Settlers 7 and Red Alert 3 just as good as Napoleon: Total War and Civ V (which seems to be better than Civ 4 and nowadays should propably still score a 9/10)? That seems kind of silly, I guess they're just continuing the trend of forcing scores below the metascore to come across as "harsh critics" rather than people that seem to approach games in the complete wrong way e.q. by comparing Mafia 2 to GTA.

  • Cantisque #62 1 year ago

    "Then every so often a terrible attacking force will come out of nowhere, you'll have no means of reacting to it since units often take at least 10 turns to build, and in the worst cases you're left with no choice but to restart an earlier save."

    Clearly the reviewer isn't very good at this game...

  • Inertia #63 1 year ago

    You can use money to buy units or buildings instantly so his point is irrelevant. If you have a strong economy you can buy a defence. The unit will appear the next turn.


  • ShiroBen #64 1 year ago

    That's all well and good, but how about a new Alpha Centauri sometime?

  • Zephro #65 1 year ago

    Ok odd review.

    Incrementally as good as Civ 4 but slightly overly angry AI, which is true of every single strategy game ever. Yet civ 4 got 9/10?

    Eurogamer must have a policy about giving either PC and/or strategy games higher than an 8. Also only 2 pages? Eurogamer have done 4 page reviews before and Civ is a far bigger game than most other franchises.

    We live in the end times before everything becomes either Mario Galaxy or Call of Duty. I mean Eurogamer didn't even bother to review Hearts of Iron 3 or Victoria II or the DLC campaigns for Napoleon.

    I guess it's just the trend of what will sell these days and nobody can really be blamed for that. Depressing though.

    EDIT: This also applies to F1 2010, glowing review but some sense of it being "niche" meant it could only get 8/10. Nonsense.
    Edited by 1 at 21/09/10 @ 22:12

  • rivuzu #66 1 year ago

    Yet, no mention of how the game performs online, despite you saying that's where the real goodies are.

    Is this really a complete review? Should there not be more to this, perhaps explaining deeper into the complexities of how online games function, what type of user experience there is to be had other than "It's the tits, dawg" and more around the other options?

    This is a review for previous Civ players. As someone who'se not played anything Meier since, lord, Alpha Centauri? It's quite discouraging to see a review which is more of a glossy blurb than an in depth opinion and report from someone an expert in their field. Discouraging indeed. :/

  • Zephro #67 1 year ago

    "This is a review for previous Civ players. :/"

    I was thinking the opposite.

  • RedSparrows #68 1 year ago

    Civ is the greatest, flaws and all!

  • Nephirion #69 1 year ago

    8/10 lol?

  • faselei #70 1 year ago

    Hmm, too short and contradictory. Review states itself this is the most grandest and ambitious of game concepts. It aint "shoot da nazis for a few hours". So it isn't going to be a shiny and smooth. It will have certain nuances.

    Its a more clever and deeper than any samey samey FPS . You just don't get it.

  • Zamn10210 #71 1 year ago

    I'm not going argue about the score, I don't agree but it's arbitrary and subjective.

    I am going to complain about the length of the review though. I've seen reviews twice as long for games half as deep, it's hard to shake the feeling that this review is rushed and half-arsed. Can we have a proper Civ V review please? I don't care if the score changes or not but I want a serious effort at reviewing the game if that's not too much to ask.

  • WJF #72 1 year ago

    Tbf, this was better than Wired's review (the other lowest one on Metacritic) which stated that the 'Appeal is limited to patient gamers' as the sole negative. Confusingly, the same site didn't then go on to rate Halo: Reach down because its 'appeal was limited to players who like games like this', which left me bemused.

    In all honesty, if you're saying the game's faulty because it caught you with your pants down and you couldn't suddenly magic up troops in one turn, you maybe should have been doing some more planning during those 'dead turns' (which, naturally, were another negative). I don't doubt they're there though, but the best way to eliminate them before was to bump the difficulty up a notch, speed up the game settings, add more civs etc. It's been a series that you can adapt to the way you want it to play for the last few entries - I doubt that aspect has changed much.

    AI-wise - I'll have to play the full game to comment on that, really. It's always been a bit on-off on previous games, mind. Civ 4 BTS after patching was the best they've ever got it. I never found the AI particularly awful for a game though - it's not like they're pre-programmed to run into cover on certain marked sections of a map, is it?

    Also - Two pages? Really EG? One of the biggest PC releases of the year and it gets two pages?

    /is an unashamed Civ fanboy

  • effinjamie #73 1 year ago

    Has there been any word on a Mac version?

  • Harmonica #74 1 year ago

    Whilst the review was well written I feel like it doesn't go into anywhere near enough detail for veterans of the series who've played every Civ release - it only comes close in the last few paragraphs talking about the poor AI. Yes, Civ does have absolutely abysmal enemy AI - they only seem like tough opponents when they're receiving stat bonuses from higher difficulties. If you compare Civ AI to that of games like GalCiv then it pales in comparison.

    There's just not very much talk of how it feels in comparison to the near enough 'perfect' (with all the Civ foibles) Civ IV, the clunky heavyweight Civ III or the grandaddy Civ II.

    Civ is always great until you've played it for x hours and several games later, and it all becomes extremely samey.

    Agree with the dismay at this only receiving a two page offering. This is one of the few pillars of PC gaming left intact these days, so it kind of necessitates an essay length analysis of whether it's still worthy of its position in the pantheon of great game experiences. Comon, give Tim Stone a call.
    Edited by 1 at 21/09/10 @ 23:14

  • BigBadB #75 1 year ago

    "For most of the time nothing is happening, and you're clicking your way through turns in an addicted trance. Then every so often a terrible attacking force will come out of nowhere, you'll have no means of reacting to it since units often take at least 10 turns to build, and in the worst cases you're left with no choice but to restart an earlier save."

    It's called planning ahead. Which is a fairly important element of, you know, that 'strategy' thing. Hence 'strategy game'. All those turns when "nothing is happening"? Guess what, stuff *was* happening, and you should have been thinking about what it could be, and how you could deal with it, and adjusting your actions accordingly, instead of "clicking your way through turns in an addicted trance".

    Sheesh. The guy marks the game down because he's bad at it? Awesome critical skills...
    Edited by 1 at 21/09/10 @ 23:36

  • darkmorgado #76 1 year ago

    @drool

    I guess they're just continuing the trend of forcing scores below the metascore to come across as "harsh critics" rather than people that seem to approach games in the complete wrong way e.q. by comparing Mafia 2 to GTA.

    Well, I would say that that is certainly a debate worth having, HOWEVER* I would also argue that, in the event of any such serious debate, this is effectively purely based on speculation and that there is no evidence to support the notion. I'm approaching this on the basis of, say, how a trial is conducted - there needs to be evidence laid down in order to provide a firm grounding as to the accusation. In all cases like this, the burden of proof is actually on the person making the claim rather than the person being accused. So unless you are able to provide any specific evidence to support the notion that they are deliberately altering final scores to undermine metacritic, then your argument (from a legal standpoint) has absolutely no merit. I am sure that EG would contend that they have continually, and consistently, maintained that their review scores are based on the personal opinion of the person reviewing the game in question, and that in any sense the concept of a "review" is entirely subjective regardless. I am also sure that they would point out that if they awarded scores based on a need to be "consistent" with wider critical consensus, that that would, in itself, undermine their journalistic integrity in a similar manner to what you are suggesting.

    In short, I think it is a debate worth having (as it is an issue and a concern that is raised repeatedly by the community on this site), but I think it is a debate founded on incredibly shaky ground with absolutely no supporting evidence.

    *Spoken as someone who has spent the last two years, annoyingly (and in particular all of today) dealing with the irritating pedantry of the legal system.

  • UsernamePending #77 1 year ago

    "Erm, can't speak for this game, but try really playing mario galaxy for once. When it comes to game design, streamlining and cognitive scaffolding and such, it's beyond parallel. "

    Too right. I used Cognitive Scaffolding for a simple extension project. Not a parallel tube in sight and they never came to back to take it away!

  • darkmorgado #78 1 year ago

    Anyway, returning to the more on-topic subject of the review itself:

    eventually reaching a day-after-tomorrow technological level with Nanotech and (new with Civ V) Giant Death Robots.

    This please me. Greatly. I have always thought "what if they made a game where Civilisation and Alpha Centauri were actually made the same game" rather than them being divorced. It always slightly niggled me that, despite the game constantly making a fuss about the "span of human history" that it felt reluctant to speculate on future history despite producing a game founded on this exact principle and using the exact same systems. Let's be honest, Alpha Centauri is, literally, "civ in the future". I hope that the inclusion of more speculative technology, as indicated in the review, is indicative to a future direction to go beyond the confines of researching things limited to contemporary events and understandings and to become more adventurous.

    I also find it a bit curious, in that the attitude of the reviewer towards the addictive nature of the game appears to be presented in two different ways. At the outset, he says that Civ's addictive nature goes beyond what we would conventionally understand as an addictive game (citing our understanding of addiction with relation to MMOs, Farmville etc) and more towards it being the quality of its gameplay and the absorbing nature of its mechanics. However, towards the end of the review, in the penultimate paragraphs, it seems as though there is a sudden shift in attitude and that he is actually arguing that its addictive nature is NOT through absorbing and interesting mechanics but rather through a more OCD-related "one more go" mentality. It just seems an odd shift in sentiment, and to be honest I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that this wasn't picked up during editing.

    I concede his points regarding AI decisions not really always making sense in the context of the situation. However, I would argue that perhaps the humanistic way in which the AI is portrayed (through avatars and recognisable figures) perhaps actually results in unrealistic expectations. After all, we are human beings - we understand context, common sense, tactics, etc. It is perhaps unfair (not to mention unrealistic) to expect AI to be able to appreciate the huge variety of factors and an UNDERSTANDING as to what is a "human" response to these sorts of situations. In a way, I would be a bit worried if we COULD develop AI on this level, as the day we manage to do this would truly be a "birth of skynet" moment.

    EDIT: To clarify, I have always viewed Alpha Centauri as being, in effect, an expansion pack to Civilisation based on the assumption of a Space Race victory. This is, IIRC, the actual entire basis of the premise. So it therefore felt odd that, post-release, there has been no attempt to merge the scope of this into the base Civ games.
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 00:40

  • Masarin #79 1 year ago

    @darkmorgado

    *Spoken as someone who has spent the last two years, annoyingly (and in particular all of today) dealing with the irritating pedantry of the legal system.

    Just build another Courthouse... ah-haaa... oh well, you mean in REAL life. :-)

  • darkmorgado #80 1 year ago

    @Masarin

    Unfortunately yes, I do mean in real life. However I don't think it is appropriate to discuss the matter in any more detail in a public forum, if not for any other reason than the matter in question is ongoing.

    EDIT: Ah, I think perhaps you weren't being serious. F*CKING ASPERGERS STRIKES AGAIN! Sorry about that.
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 00:35

  • Inertia #81 1 year ago

    @darkmorgado

    Well the review is written badly, has little substance, and the complaints of being attacked without being able to respond quick enough are just plain wrong. If the review is entirely subjective then really don't pretend objectivity by sticking a number at the end. Let's look at how they treat the AI in other games and here we can see that Napoleon Total war, another strategy rival to civ on the PC does get knocked down for bad AI and gets a similiar score 8.

    But games like CoD where the enemies almost have no AI it rarely ever becomes an issue. So I would say they are inconsistent between genres but seem about the same for strategy reviews.

    So make of that what you will but I still think CIV is a better strategy game than Total war and deserves to be marked higher accordingly.

  • Stop-gap #82 1 year ago

    No work? Check.
    Uni over? Check.
    Masses of free time to kill? Check.

    A new Civ game? See you in the Spring. :D

  • darkmorgado #83 1 year ago

    the complaints of being attacked without being able to respond quick enough are just plain wrong

    I have to be honest, that I did find that a bit odd as well. After all, the nature of Civ is that it is turn-based, so "time to respond" really isn't a valid issue in a game where, by definition, you actually have an unlimited amount of time with which to consider your response. He may not have anticipated a sudden agressive move, but it doesn't follow that he then isn't given sufficient time to decide how to respond to that.

    With respect to your points related to my comments regarding AI, I partly agree with what you are saying. I think, perhaps, that it is unfair to hold similar expectations to AI across genres as you imply, as the restrictions and requirements of AI are very different (particularly in your example of COD, where the game relies on a lot of its impact coming from scripted encounters). Within the strategy genre though, considered in isolation, I think that expectations of AI are somewhat unrealistic. As I have already said, if we were able to develop AI that was able to consider situations in a convincingly human manner, and give consideration and understanding to all of the factors that human beings consider, then quite frankly it would go beyond being "good game AI" and become "holy shit, we've invented SKYNET!".

    EDIT: I do agree though on your point regarding the suitability of slapping a number on the end of a review which is, by definition, subjective. I am also pleased that there actually appears to be an increasing community sentiment that scores should be abandoned altogether in favour of allowing the text to stand for itself. The best issue of EDGE that I ever read was the one where they did not place a score after their reviews (though they did place them, in a small box, at the back of the issue). It really highlighted how people interpret the text of a review, and how that interpretation then affects how people give their own "personal score" to a game. I think removing scores entirely, for example, would instantly get rid of all the stupid "reads like a 9" etc bollocks that seems to clog up discussions of EVERY review on this site, and any other site I visit. In addition, I think it would also emphasise that people really should consider what the comments mean to them, rather than relying on a quantifiable number telling them what it should mean to them.

    In essence, I think review scores actually undermine journalistic integrity and runs contrary to reviews being seen as "subjective". This is, certainly, something which I think EG needs to really address, involving the community. And not just as a throwaway question during some customer survey.

    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 03:15

  • Inertia #84 1 year ago

    Well in Shooters it's well acknowledged that Halo has good AI and CoD is pretty awful and saved by heavily scripted events. So AI doesn't even factor in the scoring there as they get the same marks in reviews and good AI like F.E.A.R or Halo do make games better to replay.

    Also as civ is turn-based you would think of it less like real life but more like a board game. And so it's more about does it put up a competitive game for the individual player. I think the difficulty selection is quite good in the civ series you can find a level for beginners or regulars of the series.

    The only real complaint against civ is after a few games and once you develop your strategy it can become quite samey. But then what game escapes that problem. Hence the demand for new games is always high

  • Cannibal #85 1 year ago

    Alpha Centauri had the best diplomacy and computer AI in my mind. Always disappointed they didn't copy the Alpha Centauri model for Civ.

  • darkmorgado #86 1 year ago

    Well in Shooters it's well acknowledged that Halo has good AI and CoD is pretty awful and saved by heavily scripted events. So AI doesn't even factor in the scoring there as they get the same marks in reviews and good AI like F.E.A.R or Halo do make games better to replay.

    I still feel that my point regarding AI is being a bit missed here. I think it is incredibly unfair to compare the AI in an FPS to the AI in a strategy game (in the same way it is generally regarded as being unfair to consider a review score as comparative across games in different genres), particularly one as in-depth as Civ or the aforementioned TW series. That is, in fairness, probably my failing in correctly conveying my argument, so in the interests of clarity I would say this:

    In an FPS (say Halo, COD, etc), the AI requirements are limited to simulating how someone would respond to a person pointing a gun at them and killing them first. Yes, they take into account maneuvering, flanking, the positions of their AI allies, etc. But they are still simply, and ONLY concerned with how to respond to someone whose only recourse while playing the game is to point a gun at everything and kill it.

    In strategy, and looking particularly at Civ, AI needs to consider a VASTLY wider array of factors. It has to consider the size of your empire. It has to consider your technological advancement. It has to consider your political alignments with rivals. It has to consider the evident size and advancement of your armies. It has to consider your diplomatic efforts. It has to consider the rate of your expansion. It has to consider your previous history of agression/diplomacy etc (i.e personal playstyle, given the multiple win conditions of the game) and attempt to second-guess how you are planning on outsmarting it. It has to consider, particularly given the random generation of game maps, the distribution of resources.

    My point is that in a shooter, the AI only has to consider "oh fuck, someone has a gun in my face". In Civ, as I have demonstrated, the considerations of the AI are WAY beyond such simplistic expectations. As a result, the capabilities of us to create AI that is sufficiently capable of demonstrating an awareness of the sheer multitude of factors, and then demonstrating an ability to understand how those factors can relate to each other and inform each other, goes beyond simple considerations of "convincing game AI" and that, if we are somehow able to one day solve these problems, a more obvious application of this feat would actually be more likely given to the fucking Military (re: my previous skynet analogy) rather than a game played by (stereotypes aside), geeks in their bedrooms.

    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 05:39

  • darkmorgado #87 1 year ago

    WHY CANT THEY BUILD A HALF DECENT AI PROTOCOL THAT MAKES LOGICAL DECISIONS???

    Read my previous posts. It's simply beyond human ability. You are basically asking them to invent Skynet.

  • faselei #88 1 year ago

    @notmyrealname. For crying out loud, the very post right before yours explains it. The one right before. And it was 10 minutes before so you could of read it.

  • Eisenstein #89 1 year ago

    After playing the game for too many hours last night (VPN be thanked) this game even beat out Civ IV in most things for me (still miss Nimoy though). A tad disappointed to see 8/10 at the end of the review, especially since the review itself reads far more praising.

    Oh well, it's 10/10 for me anyway and a game to stay for years, like Civ IV was. Only now I play Civ _and_ Panzer General, two of my favourite games at the same time!

  • Lamb #90 1 year ago

    Cash Cow!

    Civ 4 had too many bugs in it and most of them weren't sorted out till two years later.

    And no narration by Nimoy, he was the gold standard!


    WHY CANT THEY BUILD A HALF DECENT AI PROTOCOL THAT MAKES LOGICAL DECISIONS???

    Most of the computers used by consumers suck and can't play at the highest resolution. They could just add a calculator that takes into account threshold amounts and reacts according to the outlook of that specific AI. But those values get skewed and need to be revaluated. So maybe in ten years time with much more powerful computers we will get a half decent AI.

    The game is still fun though and the higher difficulty settings make the game more fun and replayable once you have taken your licks at the lower settings. And its satisfying winning through different methods.

  • Lamb #91 1 year ago

    Is that the Napoleon from the Jack of All Trades tv series? :D

    The film The Emperors New Clothes was also good.
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 07:44

  • marilena #92 1 year ago

    I feel that at least a few people here are exaggerating the problems with the AIs of the Civilization and Total War games. These games have always been enjoyable and have always worked. Sure, the AI is never as smart as a human, but it keeps the game going and it even gains a certain personality (mostly because the player projects it, but still; Ghandi makes many friends, Isabella is a religious freak etc.; it works).

    I haven't played Civ V yet and this isn't the only review to mention weird behavior in regards to war, but suddenly hearing people that all Civ games suck and they've never improved the AI and so on is ridiculous. I can't think of a game series that I love more than Civ and they've always worked, even the third one, which most people consider the weakest.

    Number IV, which is considered the best, also had a number of bugs at release that were fixed through patches (for instance, space victory was initially very overpowered) and some weaker areas that were fixed by the expansion packs. But it was still really good from the start.

    (On an unrelated note, what's the problem with dead turns? Just press the 'end turn' button.)
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 08:28

  • levitate #93 1 year ago

    The score doesn't matter to me. I rather play this against the computer where I know I'll meet _some_ sort of intelligence. Playing this against other people on the Internet is a surefire way of playing against NO intelligence most of the time. The amount of players thinking this is SC2 where you rush at start is just staggering and depressing.

    I've bought and played all Civilization games and I'm not about to stop now. This seems to be an amazing game!

  • OtaQ #94 1 year ago

    They could just take the AI of "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" and everything would be fine :p

  • DrowJones #95 1 year ago

    What a crappy review. One page spent trying to be funny (hint - it was not) and the other complaining about turn-based strategy games in general (there's no undo button that allows you to play your last 10 turns again, oh noes!). Please concentrate on the actual game the next time you'll write a review. I know you'll have plenty of chances to do that, the quality of Eurogamer reviews has been so low lately that even poor reviewers will have a safe job here for years to come.

  • kangarootoo #96 1 year ago

    "8 seems a particularly harsh score"

    And no doubt this is how the thread has continued for over 100 posts.

    Something things never change :(

  • darkmorgado #97 1 year ago


    And no doubt this is how the thread has continued for over 100 posts.

    Actually Kanga, in fairness, it hasn't. There has been some bizarre outbursts regarding AI, and there have certainly been some of that predictable "8/10 wtf" posts, but on balance it certainly hasn't approached the levels of hysteria as, say, your average console exclusive. Have a read :-)

    Anyway, I'm off to play Dead Rising 2. Not sure what I'm doing with this free preorder t-shirt though. It's HUGE. As in, big even by american standards.

    EDIT: And then along came notmyrealname, spouting utterly nasty comments about disabilities.

    /facepalm
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 13:22

  • Zephro #98 1 year ago

    Also as a follow up to darkmorgado.

    FPS AI has received bucket loads of investment and work over the last 10 years. There's middleware for doing the path finding, all the big guys working on Half Life, FEAR, CoD, Halo etc. etc. have been investing and working really hard on making the opponents fulfil the easy task of looking like realistic targets.

    What about strategy in the same period? Well RTS games have much simpler AI as it is always hostile to you and is just about building things quick enough to rush you.

    So how much of a wider community of knowledge is there for grand strategy AI with decent investment budgets? Probably exactly just Firaxis and Creative Assembly.

  • UncleLou #99 1 year ago

    It really would be interesting to see an in depth interview with or article about AI in strategy games from someone who really knows about this stuff (with no offense to the more prolific posters in this thread, which made for good reading). If Firaxis and CA are to be believed - and I do no really doubt it - they spend a lot of time developing AI, and maybe there just isn't much more doable atm with finite resources (and the requirement that it needs to run on consumer PCs in the end).

    I, too, for example seem to remember that the AI in Alpha Centauri was pretty good though, but maybe I was just more impressionable at the time?

    I also think that the AI in Empire was pretty good, on the strategic map, I mean. It had or has deep flaws regarding naval invasions etc., but at least it did seem to make reasonable war/peace decisions based on their and the player's strength and diplomatic relations - which lead to a lot of players complaining the AI was too passive.

    In the end, I also agree with marilena. I always find these games fun to play anyway.
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 10:16

  • cnlfailure #100 1 year ago

    I've no issues with the Civ AI whatsoever, they play just like I do to an extent - play friendly, then snap all of a sudden and decide to wipe you out. Civ for me has always been a building game punctuated by lengthy and protracted bouts of all-out warfare. That's how it has been in every Civ from 1-4, and this sounds no different to me at all.

    No reloading saves to go back in time ever, if I'm stupid enough to be in a position to be wiped out, so be it.

    /waiting impatiently for my preload to unlock

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #101 1 year ago

    I played through the demo last night (and certainly couldn't switch it off until I got the 'End of demo' message), but I was slightly disappointed at how much the same it felt to previous Civs, despite all the obvious new differences. I think, perhaps, I wasn't playing it right, though, since I was patently unable to overrun one of those little city states when I tried. I'm sure I'll get it, but I'm not so desperate for it as I was when Civ 4 came out. 8/10 seems reasonable to me, and I'd add my voice to the call for integrating more of the features from Alpha Centauri.

  • Zephro #102 1 year ago

    I've no issues with the Civ AI whatsoever, they play just like I do to an extent - play friendly, then snap all of a sudden and decide to wipe you out. Civ for me has always been a building game punctuated by lengthy and protracted bouts of all-out warfare. That's how it has been in every Civ from 1-4, and this sounds no different to me at all.


    That's what I meant about it being like a board game. We play boardgames like this sometimes and it's exactly what we do as humans, sniff out a weakness then pounce on them violently.
    Edited by 2 at 22/09/10 @ 10:49

  • rojjer #103 1 year ago

    agree with most of these comments - this review makes the game seem really shallow which it isn't at all? I'm no Civ fanboy, but I've dipped in and out over the years and Civ 4 was pretty great (plus all the addons, thanks steam) - might pick this up

  • darkmorgado #104 1 year ago

    @notmyrealname

    Well done on resorting to personal insults there. Really mature of you.

  • Zephro #105 1 year ago

    Same goes for Total War. STOP DEVELOPING THE GRAPHICS!

  • Zephro #106 1 year ago

    Oh going back and reading darkmorgado's comments.

    I think Civ is a far simpler knowledge base than Skynet would need, you were over exaggerating by quite a bit there.

  • darkmorgado #107 1 year ago

    @Zephro

    I may have been over-exagerrating, granted, but only to stress a point. As said, the requirements of AI in an FPS are far below the requirements for a strategy game. Also, it strikes me that some people expect the AI to actually understand context outside of following simple logic, which of course is completely outside of our capabilities.

    @notmyrealname

    I really don't understand where your agression is coming from. Were you picked on as a child? Whether you think I am full of it or not is completely irrelevant to me. That's your opinion, and you are entitled to it. Whether the manner in which you expressed it concurs with common human decency is another.

  • Zephro #108 1 year ago

    @darkmorgado: AI to actually understand context outside of following simple logic, which of course is completely outside of our capabilities.

    Depends on your definition of "understand" and "simple logic".

    AI theorem proofers are actually capable of deriving logical inferences far in excess of humans these days. The recent(ish) proof of the 3 colours map problem was done mostly by using an AI system capable of making far more complex inference leaps than a human could. That's using full first order predicate logic which seems to be beyond the grasp of most humans to "understand".

    It's also the case that most humans don't understand anything they do either they just follow simple sets of inbuilt rules they've learnt.


    Anyway AI in general and in the future is and will be capable of these things. Currently Game AI isn't because it gets no CPU resources or investment. But it's not because of the intractability of the problem.

  • swissorc #109 1 year ago

    Two reasons I wont be buying this. One it's not available on any platform but PC. Two my PC is so old and creaky its only any good for streaming Naruto every Friday and browsing. It would take one look a Civ 5 and in computer speak go... REEEALLLLY?

  • levitate #110 1 year ago

    @notmyrealname:

    You're a douchebag. Get a clue before you spout your profanities here. Just sayin'.

  • Harmonica #111 1 year ago

    The AI in Civ is pretty poor in the sense that it has no human flavour to it. It's extremely basic and by the numbers. GalCiv has far better simulated intelligence, *and* proper working negotiations, and it's incredibly customisable. Civ gets by with having ridiculously overstatted AI leaders on higher difficulty levels, which are difficult to beat, that hides the fact that they are making the same decisions in exactly the same way regardless of the difficulty.

    The idea that you can't do nuanced, complex AI in a TBS like Civ is bollocks.

    Also simplifying FPS AI down to 'hurr, which gun is the dude carrying, is he pointing it at you?' is laughable. Halo is scary at times with the things that the enemy characters pull off, and it's all down to the layers of analysis that the AI routines are pulling out, and the way they respond to the player so that it's never the same (essentially throwing the player into the mix as a dynamic value). Halo is lightyears ahead of Civ in terms of giving the enemy characters believeable personality with levels of intelligence from substandard to clairvoyent. I love both Halo and Civ and FPSs and TBS games, and that's just how it is. However, like I said, there are 4X games with decent thinking AI (there are chess games with more nuanced AI than Civ to be honest).

    ...but the whole AI discussion is a bit of a departure anyway because it's only one a handful of things which haven't progressed, and although it would be nice to have ER play like ER, or Napoleon play like Napoleon, it ain't happening, and the game still trundles on fairly brilliantly regardless.
    Edited by 2 at 22/09/10 @ 12:32

  • Sarge #112 1 year ago

    Giant Death Robots?

    Pre-ordered simply for that. Now if only it had Giant Death Monkeys as well...
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 12:31

  • Harmonica #113 1 year ago

    Get a room you two, honestly.

  • darkmorgado #114 1 year ago

    authistic people are rarely smart

    Two points:

    a) You preach to me about being intelligent while simultaneously failing to spell a basic word.

    b) You obviously have absolutely no understanding of Autism, that is an umbrella term comprising of a range of conditions, and that people with Asperger's are actually DEFINED apart from other Autistic conditions because we have normal or above-average intelligence.

    There is a large range of conditions that fall within the terminology of "Autistic Spectrum Conditions". In addition, there are a large number of additional conditions that are associated with ASC by virtue of the prevalence of co-morbidity or symptoms being broadly consistent. Of all of those conditions (Kanners, HFA, Asperger's, PDD-NOS, arguagbly dyspraxia and others), only one, just one is actually typified by a clinical requirement of the presentation of a below-average IQ, and that is Kanner's Syndrome (once known as Classic Autism). In fact, my particular disability, Asperger's, has a clinical diagnostic requirement that there not be any impairment to cognitive or language development.

    I refer you to the DSM-IV, the ICD-10 and also to Attwood's The Complete Guide to Asperger's, as well as the website of the National Autistic Society or, indeed, ANY research paper written on the subject.

    So, the next time you want to start spouting ignorant bigotry, you might want to actually get a clue about the subject beforehand, particularly when you are directing your comments towards someone who

    1. Has a condition on the Autistic Spectrum, as they are more likely to know what they are talking about than you are and

    2. Someone who is a clinical bloody expert on the matter.

    EDIT:

    Sadly life isn't a russel crowe movie, it would be nice if it were though

    WTF does Russel Crowe have to do with Autism?

    PS - I suggest you seek a referral to your local community MHT. You are presenting patterns of behaviour broadly consistent with ASPD and BPD. Those conditions can have quite unpleasant social consequences if left without the proper medication and support - mainly for society itself, admittedly.

    EDIT 2: Additional information and clarification surrounding my point.
    EDIT 3: Typos
    Edited by 3 at 22/09/10 @ 23:25

  • HisDudness #115 1 year ago

    Yeah that Russel Crowe comment was a bit nonsensical. John Nash IS a paranoid schizophrenic, not autistic...

    But keep it up notmyrealname, you are doing an excellent job of making friends and influencing people!

    edit: Nash is still alive...
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 12:53

  • darkmorgado #116 1 year ago

    But keep it up notmyrealname, you are doing an excellent job of making friends and influencing people!

    Not to mention convincingly demonstrating his intelligence and maturity!

  • Retroid #117 1 year ago

    Drop the personal abuse on here, you lot.

  • darkmorgado #118 1 year ago

    Ah good, nice to see moderator intervention.

    Thanks guys!

  • Harmonica #119 1 year ago

    Yawn.

    Just to stem you talking about each other for another two pages, darkmorgando maybe you could elaborate on why you believe that the kind of actions that take place in an FPS environment (or really, any real-time non-turn-based environment) are any less varied and complex than those in a game like Civ.

    I would actually argue that it's completely the other way around. In a simple FPS type example of someone running at a bunch of guys in an environment with obstacles, with a variety of weapons and maybe vehicles and a variety of types of enemy, there are innumerate ways that it could play out, simply due to the analog nature of the gameplay. Compared to in a turn basd game, where at any point, the player is going to doing a fairly limited number of actions, like moving a unit on a grid, tweaking things inside a city, and so on.

    Setting that aside, and just comparing the kind of AI brain needed in both scenarios: it seems to me that what Civ has already which isn't sufficient is the standard mathmatical analysis of the setup at a particular turn, or say, upto one or two turns ahead (the most advanced chess programs for example run for many many moves further afield which lends them the sense of being very intelligent, although they primarily make use of pre-resolved decision trees which are n thousand-fold deep). The type of things it is doing is comparing pure stats and figures. You could say that ALL AIs are doing this this on the basic level, but turn based strategy games are more predisposed to being ABOUT numbers and stats. FPS games don't just work on things like, 'is the player's weapon capable of doing x damage?', they are looking at the player's logic, and past logic, and his actions, and trying to guess at his next move, for example checking if he might hide behind a piece of cover.

    All in all, I'd say that at this point FPS games need more advanced AI, and they have more advanced AI (or detailed scripting which can be one and the same), but there's nothing to say that down the line you couldn't have a TBS with a truly detailed thinking AI controller behind it. Like I've mentioned, GalCiv does come close at times at being surprising and sentient seeming, but once you have played out a handful of games you will notice patterns of logic repeating themselves. Of course, the same is true of Halo and you'll notice enemies doing similar things at times, but the difference is the variety of things they can do, and their ability to use them almost seamlessly and interchangeably.
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 13:02

  • darkmorgado #120 1 year ago

    @ Harmonica

    I concede to your point. In retrospect, I can see the flaws in my argument.
    Thank you for pointing them out in a such an intelligent, not to mention civil manner.

    +1

  • darkmorgado #121 1 year ago

    Woohoo! Just had an email confirming dispatch from Shopto. Today is spent slaughtering Zombies, tomorrow will be spent building my new empire. Awesome.

  • Zephro #122 1 year ago

    "Setting that aside, and just comparing the kind of AI brain needed in both scenarios: it seems to me that what Civ has already which isn't sufficient is the standard mathmatical analysis of the setup at a particular turn, or say, upto one or two turns ahead (the most advanced chess programs for example run for many many moves further afield which lends them the sense of being very intelligent, although they primarily make use of pre-resolved decision trees which are n thousand-fold deep). The type of things it is doing is comparing pure stats and figures. You could say that ALL AIs are doing this this on the basic level, but turn based strategy games are more predisposed to being ABOUT numbers and stats. FPS games don't just work on things like, 'is the player's weapon capable of doing x damage?', they are looking at the player's logic, and past logic, and his actions, and trying to guess at his next move, for example checking if he might hide behind a piece of cover. "

    I'm interested to know what you think the "standard" mathematical analysis of a game is? Most of this just seems wrong and besides the point. For one chess programs do not use decision trees, they use a game theory heuristic and an alpha-beta pruning search. They also don't "mostly" use pre-resolved moves, though they tend to use pre-resolved opening gambits and sometimes finishing moves I believe.

    I've never heard evidence of FPS games looking for previous player "logic" I think you meant behaviour which is a different concept. But as far as I'm aware almost all FPS games use some set of pre-defined behaviours to pick between normally arranged as a sort of decision tree along with a set of factors to calculate based on the abstraction of the environment they use.

    The reason FPS games are more simple is that the heuristic for understanding said environment is far better defined even if the environment is more continuous (a trap people often suffer from) the environments as abstractions tend to have a smaller set of variables (immediate scenery, what I can see, other agents about) compared to the set of variables in an empire wide strategy game. In fact strategy games unlike the claim are MORE about not "number crunching" what ever nonsense that meant, they have more subtle concepts to attempt to encapsulate than an FPS.

    There's alot more that could be said to rip that paragraph apart tbh.
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 14:08

  • Ergates_Antius #123 1 year ago

    "It's always been that way" is a pretty weak excuse for the AI's faults. They've had years to work on it yet still haven't managed to fix some basic problems. GalCiv2 had better AI - it still had it's faults, but it was noticably better - so it's definately possible.

    We're not asking for Skynet or something that would pass a Turing test, just something that can provide a decent challenge without needing stat boosts.

  • WJF #124 1 year ago

    '"It's always been that way" is a pretty weak excuse for the AI's faults. They've had years to work on it yet still haven't managed to fix some basic problems. GalCiv2 had better AI - it still had it's faults, but it was noticably better - so it's definately possible. '

    The problem is that Civ V isn't Civ IV - the changes to the gameplay mechanics are quite fundamental. It isn't a linear case of 'improve AI for sequel' because under-the-hood it's a completely different game (science linked to pop, gold linked to culture, culture linked to 'government', 'government' now an RPG-style skill tree etc.)

    Civ 4 BTS post-patching actually had damn fine AI, which was slightly broken by the fact they kept the bonus system hanging from the weak release version (making prince a b***). Personally, I don't mind if they need bonuses - almost every game in every genre does this to make things difficult (bullet damage increased, health reduced, stuff like that)

    I also don't see what the massive deal about GalCiv 2's AI's about. 'Intelligent' was like playing on Noble on Civ for me - good fun, but 99% winnable. Anything higher was giving bonuses to the enemy Civs.

    [EDIT: It was pretty decent though, for sure, but it doesn't half get trotted out when AI gets mentioned]


    [edited the last bit]
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 18:47

  • Lamb #125 1 year ago

    Insightful as to the present state of the game.

    http://ww w.1up.com/do/reviewPage?pager.o...

    For laughs checkout CivAnon video, its on the same page.
    Edited by 1 at 22/09/10 @ 23:45

  • darkmorgado #126 1 year ago

    Just so everyone is aware:

    "''EDIT 2: Additional information and clarification surrounding my point.
    EDIT 3: Typos
    Edited 3 times, most recently on 22/09/10 @ 23:25 ''

    Seriously :D

    No but in all truth, you really do come across as a simpleton, and it's fun to troll your ass because of this. Partly because it's so easy, but also because it keeps being so damn funny. gl though!!!!!111

    Message sent to me from notmyrealname. I am not sure what's worse, to be honest. That he admits that he is a troll, or that he is happy to make discriminatory comments against me based on my disability and considers it "fun" to do so.

    Who the fuck can actually try and justify discrimination on the basis of "it's funny"?

    What an utterly fucking vile individual.
    Edited by 1 at 23/09/10 @ 02:20

  • darkmorgado #127 1 year ago

    Oohhh so scared, no srsly you are too funny to troll!

    darkmorgado wrote:
    | Thanks for that,
    |
    | Not sure if you are aware but you have been placed under monitoring after
    | your behaviour towards me today.

  • darkmorgado #128 1 year ago



    Subject Re: you are so easy to troll
    From darkmorgado
    Date September 23, 2010, 2:25 am
    To notmyrealname
    The pathetic thing is that you are either probably a child sat up past his bedtime, or some fat ugly fuck. Either way it is obvious that you have nothing better in your life than to make people's lives a misery based on a disability that they already suffer discrimination from.

    You deserve a f*cking punch in the mouth, and I know for a fact I'm not the only one with that opinion.

    So carry on with your sick and twisted mindset; you're only reinforcing my point and I will sit here quite happily in the knowledge that I have a fantastic partner who I will spend the rest of my life with, that I have an amazing career, while you are just some sad and lonely bigot who thinks the anonymity granted by a keyboard allows you to break the law (and yes, before you argue, any sort of discrimination against people who have disabilities is a crime).

    Enjoy your wotsits, you fucking loser.

    I'm posting this mainly so everyone can see just how much a twat this child is.
    Edited by 1 at 23/09/10 @ 02:47

  • darkmorgado #129 1 year ago

    Sorry for posting this but, as a disabled person, there is only so much discrimination that I can tolerate and the fact that this utter c*nt is directly singling me out for his abuse on the basis of my disability is utterly fucking disgusting.

    The c*nt deserves to be named and shamed, as far as I am concerned.

  • lmephisto #130 1 year ago

    YAY got it in my hands! cant wait until 2morrow!

  • darkmorgado #131 1 year ago

    Me too! Arrived this morning from Shopto!

    Installing now. MOVE YOU DAMN PROGRESS BAR!

  • Matfink #132 1 year ago

    Come on Darkmo: rise above the scum, don't feed em!

    re: WHY CANT THEY BUILD A HALF DECENT AI PROTOCOL THAT MAKES LOGICAL DECISIONS???
    I don't think it's beyond the wit of man to do this given the restricted world-model Civ uses.

  • tomkuryakin #133 1 year ago

    I'm not wild about the compulsory steam client download. I don't play many games on the PC any more; is this sort of thing standard these days?

  • darkmorgado #134 1 year ago

    Come on Darkmo: rise above the scum, don't feed em!

    It's ok, he's been banned now. Thank god that I wasn't the only one that thought his behaviour was disgusting.

  • darkmorgado #135 1 year ago

    @tomkuriyakin

    Yeah, pretty much. Its an anti-piracy measure as much as anything (not to mention it preventing second-hand sales).
    Still, at least it then means you can play without the disc in the drive.

  • darkmorgado #136 1 year ago

    Damn it! Steam won't allow me to play the game because it hasn't been officially released yet! BOOOOO!

    "We are sorry but the product key you have entered is not yet available for purchase in your country."

  • actionfitz #137 1 year ago

    "And then it's 7pm and you're eating fistfuls of dry cereal straight out of the box because the prospect of leaving the game to cook something as complicated as cheese on toast is an impossible idea. Mouth full of bran flakes, you order Beijing to begin the 40-year construction of the Notre Dame."


    ah so true.
    I love thee Civ!... destroyer of my free time :)

  • paulf #138 1 year ago

    having a few problems with crashes on the dx11 version on win 7 64 bit - anyone else having issues?

  • faselei #139 1 year ago

    After playing the game and re-reading the review. Pretty weak that the most important PC-exclusive release of the year get such a short and generally poor review.

    Game 9/10
    Review 3/10

    Ho hum.

  • Sildur #140 1 year ago

    This is not the kind of review I expect from the guys at Eurogamer.

    Sure, having been in Eat Electric Death with some of them I can attest that they are the kind of self-important nerdy freaks with the kind of personalities (or lack thereof) that no sane person would actually want to spend any time with with them in real life, but about the only thing they can do decently is write very good game reviews.

    There are some good points in this review actually... But it has been well and truly phoned-in.

  • Sildur #141 1 year ago

    Okay, this game is incomplete, buggy, and intensely boring compared to the older Civ games. I do not understand how it's getting such great reviews. Fraxis have really screwed the pooch on this one.

  • loginsrun #142 5 months ago

    People should know that when playing Co-op online with people, ALL the animations are missing (ie moving, attacking etc.), and it has been like this since release, in 2010, till now, 2011.

    Not mentioned in this review is just really shameful.

    Meanwhile several DLC has been released.
    Hmm I wonder where there priorities lie...