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Civilization 5 steam sale
For those of you waiting for a good deal on Civ5 this is probably the best price you can get it.
Civ5 GoTY (includes some DLC) for $12.50 and $7.50 for the regular edition.
All the Civ5 stuff falls under that -75% so that goes for DLC too.
I got mine when it first came out at full price but I got more than my monies worth. With the sale the entertainment hours per $ would be much higher. 
Comments
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I think I have over 700 hours in Civ V heh... bargain.
Civ 4 Complete is even cheaper and is vastly superior to Civ 5, with mods that will blow your mind. I own a copy of Civ 5 but don't even have it installed anymore. Civ4 mods (Caveman 2 Cosmos my current favorite) just completely blow Civ 5 away.
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
I will affirm the Civ IV superiority. I cried when i saw what they did with Civ V. Just learning Caveman 2 Cosmos because I played Rise of Man: A new Dawn for so long.. But C2C is very good.
Currently bored with MMO's.
I have been a fan of the Civ series since Civ 1 and Colonization, but have yet to try Civ 5. Would anyone care to explain why Civ 4 is superior? It would be much appreciated...so thanks!
5 was the first of the Civ games that I really could get into. I may have played 2 or 3 long ago and it never grabbed me. Doesn't 4 have square tiles? I'm not sure I could go back to that.
Last game ike ths I played was Alpha Centauri. Put lots of hours into that, and Civ 2. Figured Id take advantage of this deal, thanks for posting
Several reasons, some which have probably been addressed in recent patches. A big issue is they tried to streamline the game in 5 (simpler tech trees, less options in building on tiles).
1) The lead dev tried to make the game more like "Panzer General" (hexagonal grid, one unit to a tile, more "human-like" AI, simplified choices to reduce the micromanagement that is common in most of the earlier games). The effect was to make a game that many hardcore fans felt was "Civ-lite".... not to mention the fact that the AI change totally contradicted Sid Meier's own thoughts on the matter (07:13 - 11:22).
Furthermore:
The hexagonal tiles and single unit per tile were pretty decent improvements EXCEPT the more "human-like" AI was broken and about as rational as a cranky two year old... (e.g., friendly AI would hate you for mysterious reasons, declare war when getting destroyed by another Civ, and all kinds of similarly perplexing actions).
The hexagonal tiles/single unit per tile also had a great amount of promise in making battles more interesting (instead of the "stack of death" common in earlier titles), but the AI's ability to fight battles/move units/make smart attacks is non-existent. Perhaps it was improved, but at launch, the AI would leave vulnerable units like catapults exposed and would attack strong points and lose units like a drunken general on a suicide mission... Because most AI's declared war, even if you were maintaining a strong army and playing friendly and going for cultural/diplomatic/tech victory, most games became war campaigns because AI's were so warlike.
The new hex tiles/etc. would have made player vs. player fights interesting, but at least at launch (and for quite awhile after), multiplayer mode was unplayable and many players complained of connection issues and enormous problems with lag.
2) Worse still, all the "streamlining" and making the game "more fun" by making it "simpler" really changed Civ from a TBS games that gave players the sense of being "gods" (or great builders of nations) to being bored board gamers who were just racing through a (more or less) linear tech tree and often watching as one of the war-mongering AI's on the other side of the world swept the board because nearly every game had a warmongering AI that would just sweep across the weak AI opponents.
3) Even though Civ IV vanilla was hardly the gem it is now when it was first released, Civ V had a LOT of bugs and people who looked at the code found many spots where the code was rushed/sloppy and outright unfinished. It made for a lot of strange bugs and a feeling that the game wasn't play-tested and that players were paying for the "privilege" of beta-testing a partially finished game that is a poor imitation of its predessors (and even guts some of the core elements of the earlier games).
4) All of these things that made the game feel unfinished and like an incredibly broken, enormous letdown for long-time fans of the game point to the sad reality that 2kgames was on the verge of bankruptcy, had cut staff and rushed Civ 5 to release in order to save the company (banking that long-time fans would buy the game expecting it to embody the same level of excellence of most of the earlier titles).
5) To me, the worst part was the unpredictable and inexplicable AI. Many enraged players took to the forums to vent their nerdrage and posted links to videos like the one up top, with Sid Meier himself pointing out what players think of "unpredictable" AI. Fans of the series howled that the AI was not transparent and felt "unreal", which was the biggest flaw to the whole game and was not the "improvement" that Jon Shafer promised.
* I should note I still own a copy of Civ V but don't have it installed. Many of the problems above could have been addressed in patches, but long after I first bought it, a quick look through forums showed that many problems still existed. Such a shame. I just gave up, but it might be better now. I still agree with other people's suggestion that you buy Civ IV complete and enjoy some BtS (and some of the better mods). To me, Civ 5 seems like a different game with a Civ skin. Was a huge disappointment, but glad that at least some people in this thread could enjoy it. Probably the last Civ game I'll ever buy without trying them out first from now on (they lost a trusting fan with 5's shoddy state at release).
P.S. They did add some other interesting features (city states), but they were somewhat broken and players found all kinds of way to exploit them (and also noted all kinds of weird quirks as far as the AI's attitudes and actions toward city states). A good example of the broken AI would be if a Civ (lets say Americans/Washington) lost a city state to the AI, you take the city and give it back to Washington... talk to Washington after and he is furious because you invaded his "ally" (the liberated city state). So many quirks like that killed the immersion and made the game a failed blend between panzer general/board game and epic god/building TBS game....
Bah! I just bought a bunch of the DLC a couple of weeks ago. I recall saying at the time that they'd probably go ahead and put them on sale again soon, I should have listened to my voice of reason.
No regrets though, I suppose. It's a great game!
MustaphaMond, thank you very much for the great reply. Looks like I will stick with Civ 4.
I don't like the tech tree simplifications, but the single unit per stack thing is an improvement imo. Civ 4 is cheaper of course, has more expansions and more mods.
Also lots of rage with Civ 5 was anti-drm rage with it being a steamworks game. Me not bothered Im happy enough with steam, its not bloody u play or origin
I do remember a lot of very weird quirks with AI at release, but I haven't noticed a lot of the same problems in my games over the past week. It seems like a number of them have cleared up, as I'm actually able to sustain longstanding alliances with civs and not have them inexplicably becoming hostile. Then again, it also depends on the leader personality too, and I find playing with random personalities more interesting as they're not as predictable.
The issues with the AI being really stupid have been improved as well, and obviously the harder difficulty of the game you play the smarter the AI plays.
Many of the balance issues have been tweaked out with patches as well, along with several bugs. I've not noticed any bugs in my recent playthroughs.
And as for the streamlining, yeah I do agree that's a, issue. Though the expansion that's been announced says it will include religion and espionage, which should add more depth and gameplay options to the game. Personall though, I prefer the hexagonal map a lot more over than standard square block maps, and that's the main reason I can't get back into Civ 4. I hope that the new expansion helps to bring Civ 5 closer to the greatness that Civ 4 had.
done and done
Browse the following directory: My DocumentsMy Games Sid Meier’s Civilization 5
Find the file called “UserSettings.ini”.
Once the file is open, find the “SkipIntroVideo” setting which is set to 0. (You can use CTRL + F to find it fast)
Set “SkipIntroVideo” to 1 and the intro should not come up when you start the game anymore.
Almost pointless to do since the game still takes either the same or almost the same amount of time to load, its not like its forcing you to sit through teh video while the games fully loaded.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
Eh? The video intro took about a minute or more and after the ini edit there is a black screen instead and it takes about 10 seconds at most to load.
Before, you might be able to skip the cutscene (with a long delay) after mashing every key combination
The hex/one unit per square is a huge improvement over Civ 4 IMO. it makes the combat much more fun. I always hated the pile up a bunch if guys on one square while the other guy piles up all his guys then you go at it till one guy loses.
In 5 you actually have to think about combat strategically a little bit. You have to position your troops in a smart way and consider how you are going to move them all.
The AI and multiplayer have seen a lot of patches as well.
Not to say that buying Civ 4 would be a bad choice at all, I just greatly prefer the fighting in 5.
Shadow's Hand Guild
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Guess I will have to give it a try again. I played it once not long ago, but not for long. First impressions really do matter, I guess... even if things are fine now, I still get bad feelings when I play 5 because of how they released it (and how messed up it was). I hope I didn't convince anybody not to play it, those were just my reasons 4 is superior (and a big part of that was my impressions of 5, no matter the improvements to it now). Anyway, hopefully they learned from that disaster and when/if they release 6, they actually make a real effort to release a semi-playable game this time =/
nah i timed it, i get in game in a third of the time
I only pl;ayed demo and loved it. I actually liked it a lot more than civ 4. I liked that it was simpler and combar was much more fun. But I am still waiting for thexpansion. it looks cool and I hope to buy it then.
This is the first of the series I tried, so I wouldn't know about the others but this one is certain pretty fun.
I just wish I could figure out why I can't blow up that city state I want too.
It may have been posted already but if not, the sale price on Steam was only on or at least ended on the 11th.