Civ5 is starting to look much more polished

[Horizons]

I finally got around to playing an hour or so of the patch nouveau and things feel quite solid.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Yes, this a much more playable game now. There are a few remaining sorely needed balance adjustments (eg: scaling up the tech costs rather than fixing Research Agreements was not a good idea), but there are now many viable approaches to the game.

 

[Tabarnak]

I agree. More fun to build more things and it's exactly what we can do now.

 

[alaric1112]

I agree this game is becoming a great game it just needs a great exspansion or two to complete it!!

 

[Jim Bro]

still bad on the AI, diplomacy and victory conditions if you ask me

 

[aatami]

I personally think military victory is going to be as good as it ever will, but I like the tech victory.
The so called "diplomatic" victory needs a lot of tuning, and they could add a little bit of extra zing to the cultural victory, still. Even though it's okay now, I wouldn't say the cultural victory is a high priority issue.

Rather have them finish and release the Hot-Seat option.

BTW I think diplo is now far more complex than in IV, due to the more human-like personalities of the leaders.

 

[Tapewormlondon]

Yes I think it plays alot better now. Diplo needs sorting imho, just add some more positive modifiers and dont make all the AI so psycho!! Also some tiny things that will make this game alot better are things like - replay after victory, better victory endings, better civlopedia etc.

 

[Horizons]

Yes, I mean that the core game is polished and it's now time for Firaxis to focus on adding new content (espionage, international trade, a better AI, new diplomacy, religion, everything else etc).

Please let's have no more patches released that do silly little things like change the output of deer tiles, or reduce bonuses from 33% to 20%, and other annoying little 'fixes' when the elephant in the room is causing the floorboards to crack ....

 

[Olleus]

I think that the latest patch (just finishing my 1st full game with it) was astoundingly good, even though it was just lots of "little changes". A lot of the prior useless buildings are now very important, especially the ones that boost tile yields (granary, stables, ect...) have revolutionised the early game. Fixing production and the cost of techs has also made the late game playable.

And I think diplo is actually very good. Its almost trivial to make everyone like you (or rather, keep 80% of people friendly and the others neutral) as long as you dont go around declaring war or conquering people. Which is exactly what diplomacy should be about - a method for punishing warmongers.

I do agree that the victory conditions are a little dull (but thats always been the case in Civ), the AI could be better and a few technical issues are still remaining; but this is the first time that I think I can unequivocally say that I absolutely prefer this to Civ4.

 

[Tapewormlondon]

yeah so i understand that diplo should be used to punish consistant warmongers - but then the AI should have the same negatives.

I dont want Alex calling me a warmonger bcause i was declared on and managed to take my agressors city, especially when Alex himself has conquered half the world!!!

 

[Truthy]

Does it look polished or feel polished?

 

[Rince]

Frankly, in my current game it feels very polished. Just won an attack on London literally with my last unit standing. As soon as I declared war, England brought 2 Ships-of-the-Line near London and relentlessly attacked my units. They always focused the attack on single unit. Like this I was loosing 1-2 units per turn and could only conquer the city by sacrificing my second to last unit and throwing the last one at it. One more turn and I would have had to make peace without having gained any land and with the loss of my complete army.

Very thrilling experience. This is King by the way. England is the underdog with only two cities on a small map.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Please let's have no more patches released that do silly little things like change the output of deer tiles, or reduce bonuses from 33% to 20%, and other annoying little 'fixes' when the elephant in the room is causing the floorboards to crack ....

Agreed!

The sooner they seal the ruleset the more we can actually expect supplemental Features (done through Modding or within some eventual DLL release) that *ADD* gameplay elements.
Vanilla has been fiddled with extensively and whichever final design_concept is handed over to the community will only open up new horizons.

I wouldn't expect such a frozen state to appear before "Expansion" projects are announced though. 6, maybe more months. Which leads us all to a full year of public development.
Once a final (bug free & documented, that is!) SDK is solidly given, watch out - it's gonna be the Dominoes ride in the modding realm.
We're bracing already for some action.

 

[aatami]

Please let's have no more patches released that do silly little things like change the output of deer tiles, or reduce bonuses from 33% to 20%, and other annoying little 'fixes' when the elephant in the room is causing the floorboards to crack ....

I do agree with you in a sense, but I'd like to remind you that before that one of the major complaint topics was "X is so unbalanced", and that already had some people stop playing the game.
It was both unnecessary and necessary at the same time. I'm okay with it, as long as they adress the more important issues too, and fast...

But hey, at least we get this. BattleForge players have to wait a month or so to get a few unit's values tinkered. And there is a period now, where the implementation of new content has almost stopped. Good game though, but just pointing out that things aren't that bad here.

 

[baldfalk]

And I think diplo is actually very good. Its almost trivial to make everyone like you

I think that's the problem that people have with Diplomatic Victory. It's more of Economic Victory than Diplo.

If there were, say, a cap on the amount of gold you could throw at each state, and more 'quests' (although the current quest set -is- pretty extensive, just too... granular if you will) and more ways to tip votes back and forth then we'd be talking. As it is, whoever throws more money at City States wins a Diplo Victory.

(Not to be confused with AI Diplomacy which I think is actually pretty good other than the warmongering hate issue)

 

[Horizons]

I do agree with you in a sense, but I'd like to remind you that before that one of the major complaint topics was "X is so unbalanced", and that already had some people stop playing the game.
It was both unnecessary and necessary at the same time. I'm okay with it, as long as they adress the more important issues too, and fast...

But hey, at least we get this. BattleForge players have to wait a month or so to get a few unit's values tinkered. And there is a period now, where the implementation of new content has almost stopped. Good game though, but just pointing out that things aren't that bad here.

I agree that some of the tinkering has been very beneficial. But there are other things that Firaxis has muddled around with and just made things worse. They over-nerfed several things and changed some things needlessly. It's time for something more substantial.

 

[Ironmonger69]

Some of the many many broken things fixed? Definitely.

Polsihed? Not at all. I still think it can be, though.

My perception may differ due the style of game I preferred; conquest and huge maps, which are virtually unplayable in the current condition. And for the love of God, how difficult is it to get Stealth Bombers to upgrade???

 

[dexters]

I took a few months off , and came back to another patch in early March. The more balanced Policy tree is great.

I agree that some of the tinkering has been very beneficial. But there are other things that Firaxis has muddled around with and just made things worse. They over-nerfed several things and changed some things needlessly. It's time for something more substantial.

Which things did they nerf?

 

[Superluminal]

I agree. The game has become much more enjoyable with the recent patch. I have logged 200 hours since game release and it doesn't seems to stop, Civ V keeps improving and I remain addicted.

With that said, I'd like to see more performance improvements because at late game with 12 civs and a Huge map near the 1900's the game begins to crash much more frequently to the point where I have to tone down the settings to it's lowest. Civ V is very poorly optimized. My PC is a beast and can play Crysis at very high settings, I see no need to take such drastic actions with Civ V. I can't imagine how less powerful PC's cope with the crashes. Really hurts the experience.

 

[Olleus]

I think that's the problem that people have with Diplomatic Victory. It's more of Economic Victory than Diplo.

If there were, say, a cap on the amount of gold you could throw at each state, and more 'quests' (although the current quest set -is- pretty extensive, just too... granular if you will) and more ways to tip votes back and forth then we'd be talking. As it is, whoever throws more money at City States wins a Diplo Victory.

(Not to be confused with AI Diplomacy which I think is actually pretty good other than the warmongering hate issue)

I entirely agree with you there. The diplomatic victory is poor. I believe the real problem with quests is that sooner or later they all end up being "wipe this city state out", which the AI (and I) very rarely do because its not worth the larger repercussions. I would like to see more of the "hook up this or this resource", because that would force you to actually be diplomatic with other civs. I also think having a "gift us this unit" quest could be quite interesting and easy although still a considerable investment. I also think a nice quest could be "become friends with City State X", which could lead to some interesting dynamics. More importantly, they need to have a time limit of maybe 60-80 turns, so that the games doesnt get stuck on quests that arent worth it.

Lastly, the amount of gold you need to buy influence should increase with eras to balance it out. In the early eras it needs to be reduced, because at the moment theres no point in killing barbs for city states because the influence never goes high enough to make a difference for long. Gold should be the last measure to increase influence; not the main one.