Waiting for the price to drop. I've heard mixed reviews but I'm quite excited. Thoughts?
That's fair, it's kinda expensive.
I'm happy with 80ish% of the new upgrades. The new sprawling city dynamics is a great upgrade, same with the builders. The tech trees move so much faster because their split, it's not uncommon to be in the modern era around 1400, and having the separate civic tree is sweet, can really focus only on what you need and not absolutely everything. Now, you only need one or two strategic resources (like Iron, coal, oil, etc) to pump out as many units as you want, instead of 10 of more plots or iron. Luxury resources you still need many if you want to trade. Trading is.. Simpler. Now roads are built by the traders as they make their first delivery, whether to city states, your cities, or other civs. City states are easier to work with now, instead of Alexander stealing *all* of them. They also have great benefits if you find them first, or give them your influence points. The great people is an interesting dynamic. You can see who's coming down the pipeline and how close another civ is to getting it. If you have the resources, you can buy one out for under them if you feel so dastardly. The units are a huge improvement, you can now put an archer with a trebuchet and a military engineer, or a swordsman with a siege tower and a great general and just kill cities left and right. And forming Corps is nice. If you have one unit that you've brought up from the beginning of time, you can group it with two other brand new of the same units and still have the experience of the original one.
But the 20% of dislike is in the AI. Yes, having a known policy and an unknown policy was great in the first three games, but they act on those policies at turn 2. If you meet them and you haven't spit out another warrior or haven't built a wonder yet, they're looking down upon you. And it continues to rub it in your face for the rest of the game. They can be as confused as Trump in negations (we want your luxuries and your gonna pay us for it!), or as open as the own bicycle (oh, you want three luxury resources, I only want 2 gold), but it can be in the same negotiation. And the other part, there's a lot more reading to figure out what to do, symbols aren't nearly as common making it feel more complicated than it actually is.
But ai has always been a bit of a problem with civ games, and I wouldn't make a deal out of it, except for they put so much effort into making advertising "ai is better!", almost seems like the devs never had a chance to play it and work out the bugs.
All of that said about the ai, online play is great, a good tussle always happens and it's turned into better fights and a better game play.
