Alternatively you can just hit 'G' to show/hide hexes.

Well, I had the Elemental beta for months and was 1000% behind it, but CIV 5 is hands down better if you have a PC to handle it.  For me, both will get play, I'll be playing CIV 5 for the next month until I go on a roadtrip for a few months and then I'll play elemental because it should run decently on my laptop (where CIV V wont).  Hopefully, this will give elemental time to "mature" as well.

I have loved stardock for many years, elemental is going to take time to live up to that and I hope it will but CIV V is definitely the bomb for now.

Yeah, the insults are a bit obvious.

In the diplomacy summary screen, I saw one of the civs labeled as "Hostile" but we weren't at war with each other.

Dammit. I want this game so bad. Come sooner Christmas. Please.

So ... I heard the AI was REALLY bad. Is this true??

I mean, it seems like the combat AI would be more easy to "improve" due to the 1 unit per tile. I mean right? Computer AIs can handle chess pretty well, and as for the combat AI, its largely like a game of chess.

Yeah, the AI could use some work.

I was fighting a war with Askia to the south of me (takes 3 turns for units to travel from capital to front) when England declared war.  I had to make peace with Askia and start shifting to meet England.  I survived the initial onslaught and then France declared.  Red and Blue units everywhere.  I survived the initial rounds and then it was like they disappeared.  Between the two of them they should have easily wiped the floor with me.  I was playing on normal, but even then they should have pressed the advantage and wiped me out.

Later I discovered that two city states on the other side of France's empire that I was allied with was tearing it up.  Between the two they had captured and razed two French cities, lol.  Now I know why France's forces disappeared from the front.  As for England, I don't know why.

One thing I'd like to figure out is how to avoid micro-managing workers.  From the wars, I captured a lot of workers.  I got annoyed with having to continually tell them what to do.  However when I set them to automated the forts I built disappeared.  Very annoying.

In Civ 4 there is an option for "automated workers to leave existing improvements alone." Is this not the case for Civ 5?

This is a pretty useful thread Tridus. Thanks for starting it. I've been looking for non-review info to try to figure out if it was worth wasting my bandwidth to try this out or not. The retarded dumbed down combat always turned me off of the Civ games. I liked some of the other concepts behind the Civ games, and I like Alpha Centauri back in it's day, but the combat of the Civ games has by far always been it's weakest area if you ask me.

I don't know why strategy game devs can't just get it through their thick skulls that if they're going to put so much work and detail into the strategy side of a game then the combative options need to have the same depth as the other aspects of the game. Too bad Firaxis and Sid Meier couldn't get together with The Creative Assembly and do a game together. Have Sid and the Firaxis guys do the strategy map and diplomacy aspects and have the TW guys do the combat side of the game. I think those two together could turn out the ultimate strategy game if they put their heads together.

I can agree with Paradox. I think saying "and RTS does not fit its genre - for the same reasons Elemental discarded RTS" is a matter of opinion really though. Lots of games, especially some of the TW games, do a Awesome job of mixing deep 4X with the RTS battles. Med2 TW, Rome, Empire, all good examples of some good 4X on the strategic campaign map. Elemental's battles were changed to better fit the turn based inspiration and to give a wider depth of strategic choices in battles, not because it didn't really fit, though that too all depends on what kind of a game you're making from the outset. If the makers of the game say "We're making a game with deep 4x turn based gameplay with real time strategic battles" then it fits because they say it does because that's what they set out to make.

When getting back into Elemental's gameplay, we're going to be seeing a Lot of changes in the battles between now and the first and second expansions. I don't think they'll take it back to real time, but many of the aspects they have planned would fit it if they chose to re-examine that aspect later down the road. I'm still ecstatically happy about what Brad and I discussed last week .

Back to CivV talk though . Is it any good?

Yeah. I declare war on a far away India state in order to support Japan who asked me for that. After 10-15 turns India ask for 10 turn peace giving me 1650 gold. Wow! I have 2 questions: why they do that? how to accumulate that much gold at the middle age era?

They mainly exist to connect cities to your capital for a trade route to generate extra gold. Harbors can be built on coastal cities to link them to your capital if it also has a harbor without having to build a road, but units also travel much faster on them.

Roads cost even outside of your territory, which took a while to work out since the info didn't match up properly but furtuher testing proves it does.

Or does it? I totaly don't know anymore the info presented in game is... lacking.

according to the devs hands-on video, roads in neutral territory still incur a maintenance fee for the civ that built the roads.