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Holy crap is this game addictive!

Last night I played my first full game using the "Game of the Week" option. I played as Spain at the Chieftain difficulty level (a.k.a. Easy). It was a good way to get familiar with the full game mechanics, but it was laughably easy to win.

This is where things started to get ugly. I decided to try the Mongol empire on the "King" difficulty since Chieftain was such a pushover, skipping Warlord entirely. Big mistake on my part. I got my butt kicked 2 or 3 times before I wised up and decided to take it down a notch back to the Warlord level. And even the 1st attempt there I had no real plan so I got pushed out of my territory by Egypt too far to be able to come back, and with Caesar already having bombers and cannons in the Roman Civ, I bailed out again.

Now I'm about halfway through the latest attempt (made it to the Industrial Age) and feel comfortable with the flow of the game more than I did previously. My Mongol Civ took out the Japan Civ early on, and I've been battling to hang on to 5 cities while getting attacked from every direction by the India (Ghandi...you motherf***ing warmonger!) and Arab Civs. China got the best board position on the map (isolated), and they were the 1st to develop Steam Power (which I fortunately just got by getting an important person in my capital city), so if I'm going to attempt a domination victory with my Genghis Khan, they're probably going to be the last civ to fall. And there's NO WAY I'm trading tech with any of these bastards! At this point, my production has me generating at least 1 military unit per turn in my capital (usually it takes 3-5), and building roads to my cities has been a MAJOR factor in my succeeding to this point. Next I have to start building up my navy now that I have the steam power, so I can possibly flank the Arab Civ to get some relief for my cities. 

Damn you Sid Meier!

Needless to say, I highly recommend it! :D

Anyone else pick this one up?

I do enjoy remembering to eat and sleep SOME of the time. I try to stay away from Civ games for that reason.

I downloaded and played the demo this morning. Simply amazing! I have been a Civilization fan since Civ II on the PC. Now I just have to convince the wife into letting me spend $50 buying a game.  :-\

^Maybe trade in some stuff?  Glad you like the demo. 8)

Read a little more of the manual, I guess you move through the Ages (Ancient, Midieval, Industrial and Modern) based on how many Technologies you've acquired. Hopefully, knowing this bit of info, it will help me on subsequent sessions.

Civ games have always hooked me in. I picked this up for the 360, I haven't opened it yet though because I know I won't be able to put it down.

^And you would be right. :insomnia: I also recommend getting the strategy guide for this one because it's PACKED with info and tips for playing.

Well I traded in some old games yesterday and got myself a copy. Played a few rounds on chieften to get familiar with the controls. After destroying everyone on chieften I got my ass handed to me on Warlord. I'll be playing this game for a long time.  :)

At least you went incrementally. I got too cocky and went from Chieftain to King and got destroyed!

Recently, I was able to win on Warlord with Mongols (Military Domination win) and with the Zulu (Cultural win).

Only in this game can the following happen...

As Genghis Khan, I'm at war with Ghandi and the Arab nation. Ghandi asks for peace. After what seems like about a hundred turns of battling both the Indian nation and Arab nation, I figure ok so I can build up some tech and/or buildings.

Then I use the diplomacy menu to bribe Ghandi to attack the Arabs for the paltry sum of 100 gold for 5 turns.

Gotta love a game where you can bribe Ghandi to go to war... 8)

I so need to get this game.  Like.  NOW.

^Go get it! 8)

Or at least DL the demo from XBox Live to start getting familiar with it. :D

Last night I used England to get my first win on King difficulty. Won it on the very last turn.

The game mentioned that there were only 5 turns remaining (and it ended at 2096AD), and the last turns saw Greece going for the Tech victory. His space station was built up and on the last turn it took off for Alpha Centauri. However, apparently I got the win (domination, but without conquering all capitals) because he didn't "reach" Alpha Centauri. Phew! Close one.

I downloaded the demo on PS3 and I've played it like 20 times already...LOL.  Good game, keeps me interested; reminds me of how I used to play sim city years ago!

^Cool. 8)

Now it's time to pick up a copy. :)

I beat it on King again the other day with Russia.

I took out the Zulu early with a rushed army (and their capital was empty), so I got an extra city to build on. Later in the game, I was in the tech lead when Greece ended up catching up (somehow) and then surpassed me. At that time I realized the likelihood of the tech victory I wanted was starting to wane. Rather than deal with another war with Greece (who's borders were extended significantly due to their courthouse), and since I was already at war with France, I decided to get my spies involved and steal as many Great Persons as I could so I could go after a cultural victory. 1/2 price spies in the Modern era as the Russian Civ really worked out well.

I ended up taking 1 from Greece (Einstein) and 3 or 4 from Napoleon (and when I found out he was out of Great Persons I decided to demolish the Cathedral in Paris...ha!). Using spies is much fun!

Then, I just started churning out wonders until I had enough of them to be able to build the U.N.. Alexander never declared war (probably because of democracy),  nor did he attempt to nuke one of my cities, and my cultural victory held up.

I used to spend a huge amount of time on Civilization 2, then 3 just building up a massive army to wipe out the rest of the world in a few turns with. It made me feel better about myself. :) I then Bought Civilization Chronicles, which is a box set of all four games but I only installed Civ 4 and didn't really like it. I found it really hard to make any progress.

I might install Civ3 today. I think it was my favourite, being a mix of Civ2 with better graphics and a few gaming advances. Civ4 was pretty but kind of awkward to do anything with. They tried to add too much to it.

Why not download the free demo of Civ Rev from Xbox Live and try it out? 8)

I don't know anything about the other Civ games, but imo having 4 different victory conditions available in Civ Rev adds a lot to the interest and fun factors of the game.

I started to play the demo but put it down after 2mins.  I saw that if I would play it I would get addicted, and blow $50 of my banjo fund and go down to gamestop and pick it up. 

^The big question is...which would you get more enjoyment out of playing? The banjo or Civ Rev?

Something to think about.  :evilhappy:

Are we allowed both?

Well I just picked this up today after trading something in and it's now 12:15 and I want to stay up and start another game but I'm way too tired, but so far I love it.

Way to go.  You got me to play the demo.  now I want it sooo bad.  Unfortunatly I can't get a job.  (I'm 14) so now I will have to wait even longer for my banjo.  However, with a game as addicting as that, the time will fly.

Glad you liked the demo. Hope you're able to get the game soon. 8)

Damn. I've been trying to play on Emporer difficulty over the weekend. I was able to get  a Tech win as the Zulu. But I've been having trouble trying to make ANY progress with Germany and am not having any luck. Germany really gets shafted in the Ancient Era because they don't get any resource bonuses or Tech to start with...they don't even get a building. I'm thinking of giving up on Germany and trying someone else for awhile.

I play Civ IV on Warlord. Anything higher and the challenge is evaporated as the AI becomes bloodthirsty and attack after 20 minutes. I could never play Revolution though, the controller would just be weird for me, I need a keyboard/mouse for those games.

The controller is very intuitive. Since the game was specifically designed for consoles, it was implemented very well imo.

Saw the review over at GameTrailers. The game looks good indeed, although I'd expected it to be less cartoon-ish. This'll probably become a big hit, although it'll get criticized by PC gamers for losing depth in order to make it playable on consoles.

Frankly, I like the fact that I can complete a game in a matter of 2-6 hours instead of 20+(from what I've heard about the PC versions). And there's still plenty of strategy and depth to be had. 

But I agree that the PC purists will probably compare it to the PC Civ series and think it to be too "stripped down". Which is too bad, because it's an excellent game.

There's going to be downloadable content soon as well.

I'm willing to bet that this starts a new franchise for the consoles. I know I'd love to see an expansion and/or sequel in the future. There's plenty of room for it, imo.

Most likely. It's pretty easy to make an expansion/sequel for an RTS/TBS game. Just introduce some new races/civilizations with their own unique units & buildings, some new maps, up the graphics a bit and ..... BOOM: an expansion right there  ;)

^Exactly. They've already got the engine in place, now they can improve on it.

I have it for DS. I do love the demo on 360. It's pretty much the same game, just on a smaller screen. No achievements though. How's the multiplayer? I'd like to pick it up when I can afford it. The only thing better than picking up Civ Rev would be an Age of Empires 360 release.

That would be loco. I could never play an AoE game with a gamepad :O

Aren't the guys that designed the Age of Empires series currently working on Halo Wars?

@Antimind, I haven't tried the multiplayer yet. I've just been whoring on the achievements.

FYI, for those that got a special download code for new Wonders and Artifacts with their copy of the game, the content was released yesterday. BTW, the Statue of Liberty Wonder is ridiculously good (+2 pop in each city...at a cost of 350 production).

Was finally able to beat Deity with Greece. Tech win. 8)

Ensemble Studios yes. Imagine that, a Halo game even I might play. :)

You like RTS games, Tan? Or just the Age of series?

I played all games in the series except for the expansions of AoE3. I liked them all but Age of Mythology is my favorite, love the gameplay of it. Which one do you like most?

I'm not into the genre as a whole but I have a select few I really enjoy that are always on the HDD including AoE II, III and Mythology. I had the DS version of AoE as well but I didn't care for the slow pace of the turn based combat.

Ensemble Studios always impress me because they don't try to piss out games every year and release something only when it's finished. Every AoE game is of the highest quality, even the DS one and even though this one will be using the Halo license, if anyone can pull off a good RTS out of it, they can.

The videos I've seen for Halo Wars look good. Not my type of game though. They're really trying to keep the game in line with the Halo series as well as pleasing general RTS fans. There are a few vids on Xbox Marketplace. Worth a look.

That's true. I was very impressed with the visuals and physics of AoE III. I only got to play the game last year, because my PC at the time of release was a wreck and wouldn't be able to play it at all.
Heck, even with my new PC (almost a year old now) with a GeForce 8800GTX inside, I couldn't max out the visuals or the framerate would go down to like 20fps.

Ouch, you must have a lot of background tasks running or sorely need ram. :o

Most onboard vid chips from the last couple years can run that game at medium  or higher, an 8800 would chew that game up and spit it out under normal conditions. :P

Onboard graphic cards are really bad. I don't know why my card has problems with it, it shouldn't because it is a top-of-the-line card (atleast at its release, which was after the release of AoEIII :P)

My PC (important things):

Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit)
Intel Core2Duo E6750 @ 2.67Ghz - 1333Mhz Front Side Bus - 4Mb cache
2,00Gb Ram (but it's 677Mhz I think, not the faster 800Mhz)
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX - 768Mb DDR3 - 630 Mhz core
Asus P5K motherboard (regular version, not deluxe) with Intel P35 chipset
WD 320Gb S-ATA II - 7200RPM - 16 Mb cache
600Watt power supply to feed all this nonsense ;)

I use a 1680x1050 22" screen and play games at that same resolution (if the game supports it)

According to Vista, my RAM is the worst thing in my PC, scoring only 5,0, the rest scores higher.

PS: I'm not really that PC-focussed, I got one from my parents last year for going to uni, so I wanted one that was good :)

Do you might know what it could be that causes the slowdown, Tan?

EDIT: If you want I can screenshot my background tasks, because I think there are alot but I don't know enough of PC's so I don't dare to touch them :P

Screenshot it, and if he doesn't reply, I will. PC's are my forte, even though I'm on a mac now.  ;)

I build PCs for a living, but I won't kid you and say it can be solved easily without actually looking at it, no one can. Nor will I recommend things to disable. If your not comfortable digging around in services.msc or regedit or msconfig, then don't. Also I can't guess what you do and don't use on a regular basis, so I won't tell you what background tasks to get rid of either.

As any PC tech will tell you, you won't find adequate help from an "armchair repairman" online. There are just way too many factors and considerations without having hands on.

But here are a few suggestions all the same:

 - check for the latest drivers
 - do a manual vista defrag. not that crap that sits in yout System tools folder, I mean go into command prompt and type: defrag c: -v -w (command prompt is located under accessories in your start menu)
 - find yourself an anti-spyware program and make it your new best friend
 - if you have anything "Norton" related on your PC, get rid of it. the system resources Norton programs use take a big chunk out of your OS, Vista even more so.
 - try scaling back your resolution while playing. most games were developed with 800, 1024, or 1280 in mind, any more than that won't look much different and only causes undue work on the GPU.
 - Also, try scaling back or disabling anti-aliasing and/or antiscopic filtering which should be video options in-game. turn Vsync off and scale back from triple buffering to double.

You have a fine system and even a 5.0 on the windows experience scale is nothing to sneeze at. Vista can only recognize 3Gb of ram at max anyway so if your running pairs to take advantage of dual channel, then upgrading to 4 won't make much of a difference.

You could run the whole gamut and disable servies and startup items left right and center, but unless you know what your doing on a case by case basis, you may end up disabling something vital or used daily, especially if it's a system used for school. Those options I listed above will not hinder any functionality nor do they require PC know-how. :)

http://www.pcpitstop.com/

Alright Tan, I'll do those things.

Don't have Norton, I have Panda Antivirus 2008, don't know if its any good.
What spyware program do you recommend?

I'm noticing that, when firefox (only firefox) is on and I go check out my performance, 40% of my memory is being used all the time. Should this be the case?

Obviously, if I'll disable anti-aliasing and such, games will run much faster. But I thought my system should be able to manage AoE III with everything turned on to maximum. Or are these just vain dreams and does nobody really turns on V-sync and the anti-aliassing and such?

Bringing it back on topic.

FYI. On XBLA marketplace, there are 2 new sets of map packs (containing 3-4 new maps each) to download for free as well as 2 new scenario packs (containing 3 new scenarios each) for 100 points each.

So...for another $2.50, you can get a lot of new gameplay out of SMCR! 8)

Civ:revolution got it a couple of weeks ago went to work the next morning without any sleep because of it. Nice to know im not the only one that got douped into thing "hey this is easy", after my first time playing it.

Even more content got released a couple weeks ago. All 3 of the bonus artifact and wonder packs that were available at retail releases (depending on store) are out. And some additional maps/scenarios have been made available.

I DL'd all of them. 8)

Looking forward to playing.