I'm really, really looking forward to this game.

T minus like 16 hours...Civ is the only non MMO PC game i actually buy for the most part. They got rid of the dumb religion and combat stacking so the game will have a definite new feel to it while still keeping the things that makes it so damn adicting....OMG ONE MORE TURN....work in 3 hours....one more turn!

Freaking meetings i can't get out of in the morning but the afternoon....my Roman's are going to go teach those dirty whorish German's about being a true Empire. (might actually go Egypt on the harder levels depending on how significant Wonders can effect the game)

Game on!

I'm a little worried =/ I wouldn't mind if they replaced religion with something else that was more complex, but it sounds like they dumbed down the complexity and made it almost too accessible. Tech tree is smaller, no Leonard Nimoy awesomeness, and no Swahili intro music! =( I truly hope my fears are unfounded.

I have high hopes for Civ5, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a little simpler than Civ4, based on the path they took for Revolution. Civ4 with all the upgrades was a bit unwieldy: religions, civics, special events, etc. I still enjoy playing it (and guess I'll have to because I don't have a PC gaming rig right now *cry*), but it's pretty intimidating to newcomers.

Bought it and installed it during lunch. Looking forward to playing it tonight.

If you were on the fence about getting the game, this is all you need to see:

The game requires an Internet connection to install, and I don't currently have one .

Ain't no shame in it. Not for Civ.

There is no place like that within an hour of my home, unfortunately, at least as far as I know.

Well now would be the time you stop being cheap and get an Internet connection. Internet is not expensive if you take the basic service. I am sure you can afford it if you post here it means you have a job.

Or just tether your PC to your cell phone to register on steam and then play in offline mode once the install is done...

oh no, I'm definitely being cheap. I didn't say otherwise. I work many many hours and I'm not really home very much. I decided quite a while ago that it was a waste of money for me.

Anybody else having a problem with civs starting in weird places on an earth map? Even with the box checked and unchecked in advanced I can not make Japan start on the fucking island of Japan.

There's a mod for 'True Starting Areas'

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88426

So how's it compare to Civ 4? I'm still torn on buying this one. I could only find a couple of bad reviews, but they both complained about the complexity being dumbed down a bit, which leaves me worried =/ Does it just have a glossy finish, or is there meat under the surface? =D

I can speak to both of those.

On one hand, some of the complexity of the latest Civ4 addons is noticeably missing from Civ5: religion, special events. What were civics in Civ4 is greatly expanded in Civ5. I've only played the first 4 difficulty settings so far, but the Civs seem far less hostile and expansionist. Overall, the game feels slower. That could just be my gimpy setup, but I'm talking about gameplay, not just graphics. I enjoy it, but I'd enjoy it more if I ran it natively, I'm sure.

The combat changes, I'm mixed on. I liked having different strengths for offense and defense, which was removed in Civ5. But I like not having more than one combat unit per tile and the new hex grid. And some of the unit upgrades are good additions, too.

I'm expecting more complexity in the game as I bump up the difficulty.

The complexity is there, its just in different areas. Combat is the huge difference, but unfortunately, from what I've seen so far, too complex for the AI to handle. It will repeatedly throw units away on simple defensive positions, and now that it can't throw SoD's at you, their fighting ability is much hampered. I haven't done any Multiplayer yet, but I'd imagine thats where the complexity of the new combat system would really shine.

On the plus side, non-conquer methods of winning are much more viable now, as its not hard to maintain a solid defense against even the most aggressive civs without throwing away all your resources/techs on fighting units.

I do agree about the slowness, it feels much longer, even on 'quick' setting.

Thanks for the responses, sounds interesting. I particularly like the part about non-conquer victories being more viable. I dunno, I guess I don't mind the game taking a long time as long as it's interesting the whole way through. I remember some 10-12 hour-long campaigns that I did in Galciv 2 that were a blast to play through, even though they took a while.

I actually disagree on that point. Maybe it's my style of play, but I would almost always pursue non-combat victories in Civ4. In Civ5, they make the game feel more drawn out for me. So far, I've always been able to just kick their asses faster than I could launch a spaceship, win by points, or (still haven't done) cultural domination.

Culture was my standard method of winning in Civ4.

Wuss

lol, I liked getting cities without conquering them, what can I say?

Patch notes (no ETA on when it will be released):

UI
Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
Aircraft banner corrections – now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the "open" side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen. Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
Auto-populate save menu with save file name
Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen

Modding
Category list now displays correctly

Gameplay
Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don't change what you decide was best for a plot).
Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
Economy – Increased city wealth setting to 25%
Economy – Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
Trade – Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
Military – Fix for Minuteman movement.
Military – Correct promotions for "archer-like" units (horse archers, chariots).
Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
Balance - Engineers +1 hammer

AI
Military – Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.) .
Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
Military – Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
Diplomacy – AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
Diplomacy – Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
City – City specialization and city focus improvements.
City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
Workers – Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
Workers – Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.

Multiplayer
Exploit – Fix for gifting unit exploit
Chat – Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
Deals – Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed

Misc
Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
Save/Load – Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
Map – Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the "glowing red orbs" seen on the map are an indicator of this).
Map – Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
Strategic View – Crash fix for units rendering in background.
Strategic View – Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
Eyefinity – Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
Tutorials – Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
Multiple crash fixes.

Are you still playing the game, Neesha?

I still dabble in world domination, yes.