As a big Civ fan, I can happily say that Civ 5 is awesome. The new changes really make for a different experience from previous games. I'm still not sure what difference hex's make.

I hate this game. It's fucking terrible. It's keeping me from doing anything else in my life now.

Personally, the one unit per field limit is the biggest change, spreading fights much more.

Hex fields just make moving in different directions more equal. It was the traditional way of making up a map in strategy games and a reason Sid Meier didn't want it in his first Civ, which was supposed to appeal to every gamer. Well, finally they came to hexes...

How great it feels that my copy arrived without a key and I won't be able to return it to the store until wednesday.

I keep thinking V stands for 4. Hope you guys are having fun though.
I'm thinking about loading up Civ III soon, but I kind of want to play through Tropico first.
What do you think?

It really is excellent... slower paced in a way, but you have to manage each unit more in combat. I always hated putting 20 tanks on a tile and steamrolling the AI in Civ4... this feels much better.

About the only thing I dislike right now is that the AI appears to never invade across water. I have played 5 full games already and on at least 2 of them the AI declared war but then never attacked because I was on another contintent.

I'm so sad my computer can't run it. Oh well, it's not like I have the money anyway...

...And besides, I still have that one save in CivIV where my glorious English empire still needs to crush Spain.

Yea, just for the heck of it, I declared war on 3 neighboring civilizations early on, and all 3 surrendered a few turns later, giving me a ton of money. And each one pays me 7 gold per turn for 75 turns as well as 300 on the spot. That happened 3 times in a couple turns. They really make surrender a big deal in this game. Your computer can certainly run it if it can run Civ IV. Theres a DX9 mode.

Gah! You do realise I'm just saying that so I could not be...tempted. Getting addicted all over again is definitely not in my plans now. Not when college starts.

But...but...but...

*quivers like a junkie*

okay..

1.it's not strange after a while really and saves an awful lot of annoyance, exploration is faster in some ways thanks to it but the huge map size is over twice the old huge! And its tech requirement means tiremes usually get out there well before units do.

2. You can still micromanage but it's now very much not a necessary thing anymore the governer AI is much improved over all.

3. Culture is still there and is infact much more important at times the slowed down growth rate of cities and fact you get policies from culture makes it vital. Religion and it's overpowered abilities aren't really missed at least by me.

Overall it's much cleaner and faster though 1 turn on my huge marathon just took me 20 minutes >.< it's a good game and the mods should make it even better as they have much more control over the game than ever before.

I would love to play this game, but Steam only, and unsure if it has its own DRM; so it is a non-starter for me. :o(

Funny, I never really liked religion in Civ.

just steamworks from what i can see

AFAIK it's 100% Steamworks. Certainly, the DRM isn't going to stop modding, there's at least half a dozen small mods out on CivFanatics alone, including one that allows stacking again.