Three In One: Jukebox, Bleg, and Open Thread
First the Jukebox. We’re a few weeks past St. Patrick’s day at this point, but I’m feeling in an Irish mood today. So first some drinking music:
Dropkick Murphys - "Bar Room Hero"
Now for the bleg. My birthday is coming up relatively soon, and I’m asking the wife for a computer game. I have not gotten a new computer game in about 2 years, and even that was just an expansion pack to Civ IV. Any good recommendations for games comparable to Civ? Is Civ V worth getting if you only ever play against the AI or is it better to wait for an expansion pack to come out?
This is also an open thread.
Yesterday they had teh ‘Murphys blaring in the shipyard where my boat is hauled, smell of VOCs heavy in the air.Report
Knights of the Old Republic!
Seriously. It’ll blow you away.Report
Thanks for the reco. If ever I’m looking for an RPG, I’ll have to start with that.Report
I’m afraid my copy of Civ V remains unopened until I can finish about five other games.Report
If you haven’t tried it yet “Europa Universalis III” has many of the things that attracted me to Civ but is better at creating an international system (through reputational dynamics and diplomacy) that responds to the player, and the AI learns how you play as certain states and prevents you from repeat implementing certain strategies. It fed all my crazy micro-managing/historical needs, but it gets dopey at play the further you get from Europe (though this is somewhat resolved by the expansion packs).
I’ve played obsessively (ish, grad school ) for a year and I still haven’t gotten it down.Report
Thanks! That looks like my style, and it looks like I can download the complete version plus the Heir to the Throne expansion for $25. Combined with the fact that I only have the minimum system requirements for Civ V and don’t really feel like buying more memory to get to the recommended requirements, I think we have a winner.Report
Civ V is a very different sort of game than Civ IV. Even at an easier setting the AI is much more competitive than you’ve been used to. The hex grid, the limitation of one military piece to one tile, the ability of an ungarrisoned city to defend itself for many turns, and the high cost of producing miltiary units all around, all make warfare and particularly conquest a much more challenging venture than you’ve been used to in Civ IV.
But a decision about Civ V should be governed by your system’s capabilities. This is not one of those games where meeting the minimum system requirements is going to be good enough. My laptop meets the minimum requirements and the game performs with minimal speed and minimal graphics performance. I don’t get animations during diplomacy and often experience audio chop. If you’ve got a system that meets the reccomended requirements, it will play faster, look better, and be significantly more enjoyable.Report
Civ V really is a masterpiece, but as Burt says, it’s a very different game from Civ IV. In Civ IV, there was little incentive not to have the biggest empire you possibly could. Sure, you could run into some economic problems if you expanded too quickly but the limits on the maximum size of one’s empire were relatively weak. In Civ V, on the other hand, pursuing certain kinds of victory is all but impossible with a civilization in excess of a handful of cities. Really, it’s entirely possible to win with four or fewer.
Cities themselves are a lot bigger deal too. In Civ IV, bring a big enough stack of units and you could take basically any city in a single turn. Well you can’t stack units anymore, which makes each individual unit a lot more powerful. And reducing city defenses now takes two, three, even five turns rather than one. Cities also don’t strictly need a unit stationed in them; they come with their own defenses.
Also, resources are a lot more… interesting. In Civ IV, once you had a single source of whatever, you could make as many units/buildings requiring said resource as you wanted, making extra sources only valuable for the production boost on their square. In Civ V, each unit/building requires a unit of resource, so there’s a huge incentive to secure additional resources through settlement, conquest, or trade.
Burt is right though: this is a pretty demanding game, hardware-wise. I’ve got a Intel Core i5 with a GeForce GTS 250, and it runs adequately, but only just. A better video card would really speed things up.Report
Ryan, would you agree with me that a Civ V player at more than a trivial difficulty level needs to decide upon one and only one victory strategy by not later than the early renaissance era?Report
Not really. If you’re going for the cultural victory you need to decide that pretty early, but one can go for either the conquest, diplomatic, or scientific victories until fairly late in the game. Or, at least, that’s been my experience. But if you’re looking to maximize your score, then yes, one does need to make a commitment to a particular victory path far earlier than in previous incarnations. In the case of cultural victories, I’d push that back as far as the medieval period at the latest.Report
A few years back, Dropkick was coming to Ottawa. My wife and a few of her friends who did highland dancing contacted them and wound up dancing on stage for a few numbers.
One or two of the band members had their toddlers on tour with them, and during soundcheck, the kids were riding around on Big Wheels. That’s pretty cool.
I have no video game recommendations, sorry.Report
Civ 5 is great! I highly recommend it. They fixed just about everything that was bad with Civ 4 and the result is a much better game system with more options and strategies.
The AI voices are quite interesting, and the characters speak in the original languages. Queen Elizabeth is quite intimidating. Unfortunately, George Washington sounds like Bill Clinton.Report
I suspect that George Washington probably would have had an accent not at all unlike Bill Clinton’s, as would have most Virginians of the era. Not as sharp or twangy as a contemporary southern U.S. accent, and not as nasal or clipped as a Yankee-British New England accent, but by then a distinctively American sound.
Perhaps historians of the era (Jon Rowe, are you paying attention?) can offer some insight.Report
George Washington was a fussy creature, tremendously self-conscious. He would have affected the elocution of the Received English of his day, which is only found in rural Maine today.Report