Eager to see those in action, I started a standard game on a big map. And…well… I still preferred the long game back then as opposed to scenarios.īut it is that bias towards Civ II that made this expansion a must have for me, as the Firaxis team brought back two aspects of early versions of the game and integrated them into Civ V ideology and trade routes. Wonders were much less numerous, and many of those that were there had a much bigger impact on the game. Achievements were barely a thing, and only if you count the high score list.
Notepad is ever the most basic tool in software development. So I used to create new civilizations by editing the game data, which was stored in a text file.
And, of course, there were some new wonders thrown in.Īs always, you must remember I look at this through the lens of Civilization II, which remains one of my favorite games ever. Some new scenarios were added on, though I must admit I rarely play those, preferring the traditional long game. New civilizations are included, though I cannot see that as a big thrill unless you are looking for some more “Win a game as…” achievements or want to see what the city names are. There was the usual spate of items included in the expansion.
MMO gaming was out the window as I tried out the new expansion.
I had it pre-ordered on Steam and downloaded the update as soon as I got home last night. Yesterday saw the launch of the Brave New World expansion to Civilization V. It is more a game you need to invest in, one that becomes a hobby or a regular group activity with friends. But it definitely feels like a game you don’t play casually. Here we have a title that is rich and deep in features but which often left me stumbling around trying to figure out things that have been simple in similar commercial titles. The UI thing is pretty much an object lesson in how much UI design impacts playability and why it is an important aspect of any game.
And there are several windows where you can do things in the wrong order and the games just lets you and moves on because you didn’t, in effect, say “please” to get what you wanted.īasically, it is the confluence of a very deep game with a lot of features, a mid level “good enough” UI, and having grown used to the Civ series putting up a modal alert that you can’t ignore or move forward past without at least acknowledging the event in question. The research screen is interesting and convenient because it allowed you to queue up your research goals… but then reading what is in the actual queue isn’t exactly clear to me.
My immediate solution has been to play at a much smaller resolution in order to not miss so many notifications.īut most of the annoyance is just figuring out how to read some of the windows. Nothing like finding that somebody has started attacking you because you missed the Diplomacy alert in blue (it should be flashing red) or realizing you’re not researching anything because you missed the Research alert showing up (should be double flashing red), but then you see if pop up and it is just telling you that it finished something in your queue with the same quite level of assertion.
Now, before you point it out, those text tabs look pretty substantial in that screen shot, but only because I made the game window a manageable size (~1500 x 1100) rather than the full native size of my monitor (3440 x 1440) just to keep the screen shot from being enormous and completely illegible when scaled down to 600 pixels wide to fit into the column width of the blog. Little tabs showing up at the bottom of the screen The UI though, the flip side of it being happy to use up all my screen real estate is that it outputs the information you need in tiny text in windows and tabs that appear at the lower edge of the window, which is easy glance past on a large screen monitor. The first stumble for me is getting used to shift-enter to end a turn, rather than having to mouse around to find the end turn button on the left side info bar. You can play on Linux as well, which means the UI has to stay at a somewhat primitive level of development when it comes to giving feedback to the user. Any open source project will end up with the “good enough” issue or compromises in UI to be able to support things as widely as possible. How it plays though… well, you have to get used to it.
And it looks decent enough, with its own home grown tile set and units that are different from the original games but similar enough to not take too much guess work to figure out. It plays like the early Civ titles for the most part. You’ve probably seen a situation like this beforeĪs I noted, it is up to date in a lot of way and can, for example, expand to use all the real estate that my 34″ monitor has to offer.