Civilization 5 Rants Thread

ori

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The Civ 5 General Discussions forum is being overrun with copycat threads complaining about Civ 5. Almost all of those threads do not present an actual discussion, just a list of why you don't like the game. This new thread is now for all your personal rants against Civ 5 so we can keep them all together and not clutter the forum.

Actual discussion threads, that maintain a discussion and do not turn into a simply list of why you don't like the game will be permitted, but those that fail to meet that actual discussion standard, will be merged into this thread without notice.

If you don't like the game or some aspect of the game, please post it here.

Moderator Action: As with all threads: all forum rules apply: please keep your posts civil[ized]
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Dislike:

1) completely opaque diplomacy

2) bad tactical AI (really bad)

3) no health (this was a neat governor on city pop. growth in civ iv)

4) no city maintenance cost or corruption (this limited number of cities in earlier versions of civ)

5) civilization-wide happiness (liked the civ iv model better)

6) no replay function after winning (and lame victory screen)
 
The Civ 5 General Discussions forum is being overrun with copycat threads complaining about Civ 5. Almost all of those threads do not present an actual discussion, just a list of why you don't like the game. This new thread is now for all your personal rants against Civ 5 so we can keep them all together and not clutter the forum.

Actual discussion threads, that maintain a discussion and do not turn into a simply list of why you don't like the game will be permitted, but those that fail to meet that actual discussion standard, will be merged into this thread without notice.

If you don't like the game or some aspect of the game, please post it here.

Moderator Action: As with all threads: all forum rules apply: please keep your posts civil[ized]
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Sooooooo,

Dissent will not be tolerated eh? Free discourse is a violation? You will quarantine what we say because you disagree huh?

Cowardice.

Consider me disgusted.
 
Sooooooo,

Dissent will not be tolerated eh? Free discourse is a violation? You will quarantine what we say because you disagree huh?

Cowardice.

Consider me disgusted.

There's also a 'raves' thread, so no group is being singled out.
 
We could also set up a thread where people are only allowed to post happy thoughts about the game. That way we'd ensure that no one ever read something by anyone with a different opinion.

Look, we've been down this road before. You can ask for threads to be merged if they have true overlap, or that they get renamed. You can report flames. But you can't make a useful dumping ground thread. It's already been established that the real objection appears to be the presence of any criticism of the game on any grounds.
 
Sooooooo,

Dissent will not be tolerated eh? Free discourse is a violation? You will quarantine what we say because you disagree huh?

Cowardice.

Consider me disgusted.

While I'd be right there storming the barricades if this was really suppression, read the OP more carefully. Threads that criticize Civ5 will be allowed to stand, provided they contain some points for discussion. My understanding is that these Rant / Rave threads are just for the one-liners that new members tend to start which contain nothing more than "I love Civ5, best game EVER" or "Man this game sux, WTH Firaxis way to fail."

From Ori's OP, it sounds like threads with substantiated points are permitted to continue on their own. This is just an organizational move, IMO - not herding the critics into a ghetto. (And there's a "Raves" one too.)

EDIT: Here's an example of a critical thread with substantiated discussion that (according to the OP) would likely be allowed to stand: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=400803

And here's an example of a critical thread that lacks any points for discussion, that (according to the OP) would likely be moved into this dumping ground: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=399703
 
While I'd be right there storming the barricades if this was really suppression, read the OP more carefully. Threads that criticize Civ5 will be allowed to stand, provided they contain some points for discussion. My understanding is that these Rant / Rave threads are just for the one-liners that new members tend to start which contain nothing more than "I love Civ5, best game EVER" or "Man this game sux, WTH Firaxis way to fail."

From Ori's OP, it sounds like threads with substantiated points are permitted to continue on their own. This is just an organizational move, IMO - not herding the critics into a ghetto. (And there's a "Raves" one too.)

Good Points Superjay. I just have a feeling it wont actually work out that way. If you are right, thats not terrible, but still somewhat disagreeable that certian opinions and discussion of said opinions are verbotten. (yeah, godwins law is coming!)
 
7) Downloadable *paid* content; especially charging for map packs.*

8) No-stacking (you should at least be able to stack 2 units).

9) Removal of religion (some of my best civ 4'ing was starting a jewish crusade as germany :) ).

10) Total dumbing down of the whole game; screwing over the hardcore players (us) and giving in to the mainstream.

*This relates to #10 since hardcore gamers like us have been getting awesome maps from CFC forever (for free). C'mon Steam/Firaxis, how stupid do you think we are?
 
Good Points Superjay. I just have a feeling it wont actually work out that way. If you are right, thats not terrible, but still somewhat disagreeable that certian opinions and discussion of said opinions are verbotten. (yeah, godwins law is coming!)

Time will tell of course, but I really don't think it's going to be a problem given Ori's OP. I am vehemently against restricting discussion based on the opinions expressed therein, but IMO this is purely a way for the mods to clean up the forum a bit by moving all the one-liners into these Rants and Raves threads.

Nowhere does the OP say "all criticism must be posted here or it will be moved;" nowhere does OP say that "certain opinions or discussion of said opinions is forbidden."

This is the kind of post that will likely be moved here:

Subject: Why Did You Kill Civilization Jons

What did it ever do to you
 
My biggest unresolved rant ? What are we looking at, is it in fact the start of a more mass market game - personaly I think it is - or is it a very badly balanced Strategy game?

As it stands at present, its a giant leap of faith to call Civ5 a Strategy Game, so much has been stripped out, and options/choices as to which "Strategy" to adopt are so restricted. With the balance as it stands, its hard to come to a definitive conclusion without personal prejudice and faith intervening and clouding the issue.

In all this, what is considered "Strategy" and what is considered "Tactics"? Certainly the classic posts re "warrior rush" "horse rush" et al, are not "Strategy", they are tactics. Loose terminology, boarding on trying push forward a pre-concieved notion of what Civ 5 actually is, does not help. We then end up with arguments as to where the game stands as a "Strategy" game, and in fact all thats happening is arguments over tactics.

Its not being picky over words, because unless we really understand what 2k/Fireaxis are doing with this, it is real hard to have a sensible discussion. Its a bit like a boxer's biggest problem when first starting, is punching fresh air with frequent wild punches, not targeted ones, and the boxer quickly gets cornered or gets exhausted - he's fighting the wrong battle.

The effect of 1UPT is massive, its not just the simplistic on the surface effect of only 1UPT. How thats dealt with points to whether or not this is now being developed as mass market (which is my belief with the way they are balancing 1UPT), or a genuine Strategy game. Its a little disingenuous to automatically assume its mass market, but its very hard not to come come to that conclusion - because if its not, then there is some real basic - terrible frankly - efforts to balance it as a Strategy game.

If they would come clean with this, it would take out a lot of the noise that currently surrounds Civ 5. We dont really know what we are discussing, mass market or strategy game. Most assume its a Strategy Game - but is it really ?? Both genres have different make up and structure, knowing which they are trying to put together for Civ 5 would remove the boxer's "thrashing at fresh air" syndrome.

Regards
Zy
 
Sooooooo,

Dissent will not be tolerated eh? Free discourse is a violation? You will quarantine what we say because you disagree huh?

Cowardice.

Consider me disgusted.

We are not trying to squash dissent, just trying to reduce clutter and duplicate threads for BOTH raves and rant like topics. :) If you have further questions/comments, please PM me or another mod. Thanks.

And now...back to the topic...
 
As a somewhat casual player, I have only one real rant (and also the reason why I don't play Civ V anymore); The game crashes every time I get a few turns into the modern age.

I play on huge maps (I love exploration) and I have never been able to complete any games. Every time I get near the end the game crashes to desktop, and after looking in the bugs forum it seems that Civ V just can't handle large maps.

Talk about a massive disappointment; releasing a game that can't even run within its own defined settings is frankly unacceptable.
 
Why does it take so freaking long to finish a game? Especially on higher levels, where the AI can produce almost 1 unit/turn from all its cities. People talk about 1UPT... it should really be 1 unit per turn, not per tile. Every war feels like an unending grind through a horde of zombies.
 
Dislike the diplomacy, both in terms of its opacity(I don't mind not seeing the hard numbers, and wasn't entirely thrilled with the thematically-flat "-1 you traded with them guys!" point system, but I would like at least an abstracted metric to figure out relative relations, beyond the "hostile" blip), and its lack of conceptual logic (replacing the somewhat-broken "capitulation" set up with "please give us peace and we'll give you every single one of our cities except the capital even though it would take you 40 turns to actually conquer all of them and there's no logical reason why you would *want* most of them and we're going to continue to be hostile to you anyway derp derp derrrrrrp" system)

Dislike the streamlining of the tech tree, specifically I dislike how quickly one can go from muskets to rifles to infantry. In the context of how long build times are in the game (which doesn't really bother me), the quickness of research and the ease of obsoleting units before the first one is built is really quite annoying.

Hate the fact that after all this time, international trade is *still* a matter of "Ugh ugh, i give you gold for incense, NOT 6gpt!! yes 5gpt is generous, ugh ugh."

I'd be okay with tech trading being gone if Research Pacts were less "one size fits all SURPRISE!!!NEW TECH!!!"-ish. Any nuance or complexity in them would make me a happy camper, but as-is I find myself pinin' for the fjords tech trades.

Though I love the "culture-points = social policies" idea, I dislike that every single one of them is "permanent", unless you dump out of the trees that are mutually exclusive. A mix of permanent and changeable policies would be lovely.


Not a big fan of ICS returning as a viable tactic.


Hate the fact that I still can't set up a system wherein one city makes food and another makes production and the two support each other. That was achievable waaaaaaaay back in the days of Civ1 and Food Caravans, and it annoys me that it's never returned.
 
Dislike the atrocious way of handling DLC.
4 maps for 10$, hell no.
Community can make em easily, way better, and for free.

Take a look at the warcraft map, while not my cup of tea, it's still a pretty good detailed map.
Unlike the DLC maps released... just look how bad Italy looks o.O
 
My biggest beef with the game is the diplomacy. The AI just has no sense of it. One turn they will want to offer me a pact of cooperation. I mis-click on accident and then ask them if they want one. They say no it's not in their best interest. Another example: Gandhi will come asking if I want to join him in a war against Elizabeth, I say no because I don't feel like getting in a war. 1 turn later I will ask Gandhi if he wants to go to war against Elizabeth and he says "No, we've already been through this before, the answer is still no."

Another thing that really pisses me off is when the AI settles right on your borders just because there is a luxury resource there or because it has a wheat tile or something else. Then they will blame you for being too close to them and eventually they will declare war. I just wish you could somehow have peace with another civ even if you were inferior militarily wise and if you bordered them. Imagine the USA and Canada - Canada has a tiny military compared to the United States, but the United States doesn't invade them just because they're weak and they present an easy target. It's called mutual cooperation and something this game needs. Perhaps creating a road from your capital to another AI's capitol would allow trade between the two civs.
 
Things I reckon were implemented poorly. (See the other thread for things I reckon were good ideas).

1. Buy your way to victory. "Cash is king" is an old problem from Civ 1 and 2 (where you could literally buy your opponents' cities), but it's back in Civ5. I can buy land before my neighbour earns it, buy city states for cash and troops, buy buildings all the time...

2. Strict 1UPT. Just too hard for an AI to cope with, with a knock-on effect that while they devs were trying to solve that one they weren't putting as much effort into the AI's higher strategy. Non-strict 1UPT (eg, a "crowding" combat penalty) and a higher maintenance cost for units would have both been more suitable for an AI and allowed more interesting decisions (do I stack a unit on top of that damaged one, risking my other unit with a crowding combat penalty in order to protect the wounded?)

3. Unimpressive resources. There are very few tiles where it makes a meaningful difference whether I beat my neighbour to them or not. Even losing your fishing boats just costs a bit of cash not food.

4. Mundane city states. They don't actually do that much and just keep spamming requests for the same (uninspiring) "missions".

5. Mundane diplomacy. In Civ 4, religion had the handy effect of putting the player into some tough choices -- you couldn't easily be on happy terms with everyone. Your internal[/I choices affected diplomacy, as did trading with the enemy. And when other teams acquired a religion and how they were distributed dramatically changed the diplomatic landscape from game to game. In Civ 5, I can basically ignore diplomacy with very little impact.

6. Social policies. The social policy mechanic is just a repeat of unit promotions. In all previous Civs, including Alpha Centauri you'd find yourself often wanting to change course mid-stream (have a revolution to warmonger for a bit, etc). In Civ 5, once you've started down a path you might as well just keep going -- decisions are permanent with no penalties and made early.

7. Game engine. I get the feeling that because they had to write their own engine this time (rather than just using Gamebryo) they had less time for the remaining development, and the game engine is horribly slow on laptops too!

8. Full screen leaders. Two reasons. 1: I have a laptop, so they are pictures! 2: Leaderheads felt much more like you were playing against a real character -- it's rather similar to a person's face appearing on video Skype, Facetime, etc. Very rarely when I talk to someone "face-to-face" via a computer or phone do I see their entire body.
 
My biggest beef with the game is the diplomacy. The AI just has no sense of it. One turn they will want to offer me a pact of cooperation. I mis-click on accident and then ask them if they want one. They say no it's not in their best interest. Another example: Gandhi will come asking if I want to join him in a war against Elizabeth, I say no because I don't feel like getting in a war. 1 turn later I will ask Gandhi if he wants to go to war against Elizabeth and he says "No, we've already been through this before, the answer is still no."

There's a reasonable explanation for this. Gandhi is a paranoid schizophrenic. You see, when you refused to help him in his war, that was fine, no biggie. Sure, maybe some of his troops died a gruesome horrible death being impaled by rusty farm implements because you weren't there to help, but that's OK. However, when you came back a turn later and asked for his help against Elizabeth, that's where the problems started.

Gandhi must have thought to himself, "Wait a second, didn't I offer that to him a minute ago and he said no? Why would he offer the same thing to me now? That doesn't make sense. No one changes his mind that quickly for no reason. Unless... Unless... Unless he was the one that offered it to me in the first place, and I said no, and I'm confused now. Did I take my pills yesterday? I think I did. Or maybe I didn't. Didn't I? Damn... I don't remember. If I say yes now, he's going to think I'm unbalanced and erratic. Must keep a firm line. Must say no again. That's it, no."

Hence his "No, we've already been through this before, the answer is still no." He actually believes he said no the first time.
 
We are not trying to squash dissent, just trying to reduce clutter and duplicate threads for BOTH raves and rant like topics. :) If you have further questions/comments, please PM me or another mod. Thanks.

And now...back to the topic...

You have my full support, whiners clog the forum and make it harder for people that play the game to find useful data. I am getting tired of all those whining posts, seriously...
Moderator Action: As I said: forum rules apply - this includes the prohibition on trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

I mean, yeah, the game has is downs, like the AI, diplomacy, etc, but all and all it is a move in the right direction (given the flaws are patched ASAP). I love having frontlines, instead of getting 30 units (out of which 10 catapults) stacked... it was no strategy back then, just spam units and win...
Hopefully I will not have to complain about the AI once they implement hot seat or something so I can play with my brother

Dislike paying for maps and new civs...
just issue an expansion pack and charge me 10 euro for it (while adding tons of maps, civs and functionality)... A lot of people would buy that
 
I'm kind of a pessimist but this game will never be as good as civilization 4. Civ 5 has better graphics and fighting but all the other levels of the game are pretty bad.
 
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