🚀 go-pugleaf

In message <MPG.29b073c341ccd30b98969a@news.individual.net>, Peter 
Huebner <no.one@this.address> writes
>
>
>I bought Civ 5 a couple of days ago.
>
>First impressions were annoyance: I bought the boxed disk version. Ho,
>hum: as it turned out the disk version not only wants you to install
>Steam to activate the program, it will always spawn Steam in order to
>play, if you want it or not. Ok, so I can run Steam in offline mode,
>it's still a nuissance. I was NOT expecting that. I resent having to
>poke holes in my firewall so Steam can do ... nothing useful at all, in
>order for me to play a game.
>
>I have upgraced my OS since I had my old Steam install, and recovering
>my account details simply didn't work. In the end I had to make a new
>account ... fortunately my only other Steam game, X3, does not require
>Steam to run at all, so this is not a major piss-off. A bloody lot of
>frustration all the same. Particularly since Steam immediately tried to
>upgrade the game client and timed out. Second try after restarting Steam
>worked fortunately, so after about 2 hours of mucking about and deciding
>that Firaxis will not sell me another game on this basis I finally got
>to take a look at the game. (Oh, and in the first session Steam started
>spamming me with unwanted pop-ups and requesters -- fortunately it
>doesn't seem to do that any more since I put it into offline mode -- but
>spam sure is a great way of getting on the wrong side of my temper).
>I will be *extremely* circumspect about/before buying another Firaxis/2k
>game.
>Likely: not. Any company that does not understand that user experience
>plays a role in buying decisions deserves to lose customers.
>
>To the game:
>Radically changed interface and mechanics nonwithstanding, I felt more
>or less at home after some 10 minutes of play. It's a little slow
>though, despite a system with an i5 quadcore and an nvidia gtx 570 video
>card. Fall from Heaven 2 on a huge map is snappier than this.
>
>On that subject: I'm running the dx10/11 client on Win7 64 ultimate ---
>woohoo: this game really heats up the gpu: it's the first time ever that
>I've heard the fans spin up to high speed, and the gpu is at 60 celsius
>instead of the normal 40-45. Again FFH2 does not seem anywhere near as
>demanding.
>
>Overall I can hardly give an opinion about the game per se: there are
>enough new things to keep me entertained for now; for instance all the
>wonders that used to give civilization-wide virtual building benefits
>seem to be conceptually revamped. Furthermore strategic resources come
>on a one by one basis - so if you have 1 iron resource you can have
>exactly 1 swordman in the game, no more. Same goes for mounts. Which
>forces interesting strategic new issues: expand to grab resources vs.
>the increasing cost of cultural/civ advances with more cities and the
>requirement of some wonders to have one of something in _every_ city. No
>Oxford University unless you have a Uni in each of your cities, et
>cetera.
>
>This will take some experimentation with _small_ civs vs. large ones.
>
>-P.

Deja Vu,
Except my negative experiences of Steam with Civ 5 meant I was not 
prepared to give Civ 5's radical reworking a chance to show they were 
actually improvements rather than madness and the game remained unplayed 
after the first attempt.
-- 
Kevin Blackburn                         Kevin@fairbruk.demon.co.uk