Civilization 5 Rants Thread

Thormodr said:

Civilization 5: Beyond Earth.

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I love how you say Civ 5: Beyond Earth. Because it is kind of equivalent to a decent mod for Civ 5...a mod that you pay $50 for.

May I ask, what is it that you dislike about V, other than diplomacy and 1UPT? I personally have found it to be a very engaging game, though I can't compare it to other Civ games because I never played them.

59saintdane said:

May I ask, what is it that you dislike about V, other than diplomacy and 1UPT? I personally have found it to be a very engaging game, though I can't compare it to other Civ games because I never played them.

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1. Lack of tactical depth.
2. Lack of difficult choices to be made.
3. Inability to change the nature of your Empire.
4. Poor quality of graphics.

Of course these all pale in comparison to the diplomacy and 1UPT fiascoes.

What's so bad about 1UPT anyway, other than the AI combat problems it caused? With 1UPT, you're actually forced to think tactically in combat, rather than just pushing forward with a giant "stack of doom". Also, it gives smaller armies a greater opportunity to stand up to larger ones.

59saintdane said:

What's so bad about 1UPT anyway, other than the AI combat problems it caused? With 1UPT, you're actually forced to think tactically in combat, rather than just pushing forward with a giant "stack of doom". Also, it gives smaller armies a greater opportunity to stand up to larger ones.

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Apart from the tedium of managing carpets of doom it affects the whole design, they had to crimp the whole Production system leading to a very boring game.

The Designer himself is very aware of the problems:-

To address this, I slowed the rate of production, which in turn led to more waiting around for buckets to fill up. For pacing reasons, in the early game I might have wanted players to be training new units every 4 turns. But this was impossible, because the map would have then become covered in Warriors by the end of the classical era. And once the map fills up too much, even warfare stops being fun.

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59saintdane, 1UPT and horrific diplomacy really kill the game for me.

NobleZarkon has explained why 1UPT is bad for gameplay very well.

1UPT has far reaching effects that reverberate throughout all of Civilization 5. It destroys the pacing all in the name of avoiding the dreaded carpet of doom. It affects production, tile yields, etc. It just makes the game tedious and exacorbates the sliding puzzle tedium of moving your troops around. I think I finally gave up on Civilization 5 (and I gave it a good 125 hours to really try and like it) when it wouldn't let me have a great engineer and a spaceship part in the same hex.

The late game in particular is quite bad. Since the game was obviously rushed, this is not surprising. It came out a year too early.

Also, Giant Death Robots? *Ugh*

I don't know, I found the rate of production to be fairly reasonable. If it was faster, I think it would ruin the balance--if things are built too quickly in comparison to the tech speed, it also is bad for the game.

The late-game was very bad in Vanilla and G&K, it is less so in BNW with the World Congress and Ideologies (you have BNW I'm assuming). It still isn't nearly as good as the early- and mid-game experiences, but I usually don't play too far into the late-game provided I'm the solid winner (or loser) of the game by that point.

In regards to diplomacy, I agree that it's an issue, and I hope that it's fixed in VI. But I've managed to enjoy the game without it, because at the end of the day, diplomacy isn't the core of the game. Building your empire is, and diplomacy is just there to assist you. Having a good diplomacy system would make for a much richer gaming experience, but having a bad diplomacy system doesn't ruin it, at least in my view.

59saintdane said:

I don't know, I found the rate of production to be fairly reasonable. If it was faster, I think it would ruin the balance--if things are built too quickly in comparison to the tech speed, it also is bad for the game.

The late-game was very bad in Vanilla and G&K, it is less so in BNW with the World Congress and Ideologies (you have BNW I'm assuming). It still isn't nearly as good as the early- and mid-game experiences, but I usually don't play too far into the late-game provided I'm the solid winner (or loser) of the game by that point.

In regards to diplomacy, I agree that it's an issue, and I hope that it's fixed in VI. But I've managed to enjoy the game without it, because at the end of the day, diplomacy isn't the core of the game. Building your empire is, and diplomacy is just there to assist you. Having a good diplomacy system would make for a much richer gaming experience, but having a bad diplomacy system doesn't ruin it, at least in my view.

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Well, I like to role play in my games. The AI is supposed to assist and compliment that role playing experience. It is essential for me, anyway.

I do think Jon Shafer is a good guy and he meant well but his diplomacy system was really, really bad and he admitted as much. He really should have stuck with what Soren Johnson did in cIV. I highly recommend this video of his on his AI philosophy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI

I wish Soren Johnson could have done Civ VI but alas, he is working on Offworld Trading Company. I've preordered it because I hold him and his design philosophy in such high regard. He clearly "gets it."

I am playing as Arabia on a standard map with 7 other civs. I am trying to spread my religion across the world, and once the world congress got together for the first time I got to pick a resolution. I decided to go with the world religion one and of course selected my own religion.

That native american faction has 6 points in the congress and is thus by far the most powerful. At the time they had no religion of their own, and thus I sent a missionary to spread my religion to their capital. Some time after they contacted me and offered me their support in the world congress vote if I gave them a bunch of stuff in return like luxury resources instead. Of course I accepted because he had so much power in the world congress and getting my world religion accepted would have made a huge difference for me.

However, then they add their own suggestion of banning copper...

Ok, I thought. He has so many votes he can spend them on both. Then the vote comes and it fails. After I looked at who had voted what, it turned out that he had spent 2 votes in favor of banning copper, 1 vote in favor of my religion, and 3 votes against my religion.

He made me pay him so that he would support me, and then he both votes for AND against me! And he spent more votes against me than for me!!!

Is there ANY reason to ever deal with the AI for congress or UN votes if this is what they can do???

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Thormodr said:

59saintdane, 1UPT and horrific diplomacy really kill the game for me.

NobleZarkon has explained why 1UPT is bad for gameplay very well.

1UPT has far reaching effects that reverberate throughout all of Civilization 5. It destroys the pacing all in the name of avoiding the dreaded carpet of doom. It affects production, tile yields, etc. It just makes the game tedious and exacorbates the sliding puzzle tedium of moving your troops around. I think I finally gave up on Civilization 5 (and I gave it a good 125 hours to really try and like it) when it wouldn't let me have a great engineer and a spaceship part in the same hex.

The late game in particular is quite bad. Since the game was obviously rushed, this is not surprising. It came out a year too early.

Also, Giant Death Robots? *Ugh*

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I find the hostility to 1 UPT a bit surprising really, all things considered. If I could change something it wouldn't be that, but I would like it a lot more if there were more hexes for a given area - that would ease congestion and allow better military manouvres; unit movement could then be re-scaled accordingly.

And I agree that GDR's are a bit phooey!

Walter R said:

I find the hostility to 1 UPT a bit surprising really, all things considered. If I could change something it wouldn't be that, but I would like it a lot more if there were more hexes for a given area

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More hexes would just make 1UPT even more tedious - an even bigger carpet of doom doesn't help anything.

^^ I think the point would have to be to increase the hex resolution without increasing the unit count.

I agree with WalterR that 1UPT is not really a problem, although is a favorite thing to complain about. Aside from the mod potential (which is huge, don't get me wrong), I have not read any convincing arguments why IV is better than V.

beetle said:

I agree with WalterR that 1UPT is not really a problem, although is a favorite thing to complain about. Aside from the mod potential (which is huge, don't get me wrong), I have not read any convincing arguments why IV is better than V.

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I think people just have different preferences - personally I have not read any convincing arguments why V is better than IV!

The graphics are worse, 1UPT is a pain, Policies are a mess etc etc.

I do like the idea of Great Prophets spawning religions and them having different effects - the implementation was botched but hopefully that is something they can build on for VI.

Preferences are definitely much of it. I think it depends what you fell in love with. SMAC was so much more layered than III or IV that my expectations were high.

NobleZarkon said:

personally I have not read any convincing arguments why V is better than IV!

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The killer feature for me is that the delta between difficulty levels in V are well tuned. Both III and IV had the fatal flaw that one level would be much too easy and next level much too hard, and it didn't take but a few games to hit that spot where one would be stuck.

The other objective observation is that the nationalities are much more variable than what came before. Playing each civ to its strengths, deviating from your usual course to deliberately make use of UU, UB, UA makes the game very interesting, and provides lots of replay out-of-the-box.

But the graphics are worse???

beetle said:

The killer feature for me is that the delta between difficulty levels in V are well tuned. Both III and IV had the fatal flaw that one level would be much too easy and next level much too hard, and it didn't take but a few games to hit that spot where one would be stuck.

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Don't really agree with that to be honest, especially with all the helpful folks on this Forum!

beetle said:

The other objective observation is that the nationalities are much more variable than what came before. Playing each civ to its strengths, deviating from your usual course to deliberately make use of UU, UB, UA makes the game very interesting, and provides lots of replay out-of-the-box.

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I'll give you that one.

beetle said:

But the graphics are worse???

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Absolutely - V just seems so cartoony to me and there is much less detail than in IV, I was terribly disappointed with the graphics in V given the time and advancement of technology.

NobleZarkon said:

Don't really agree with that to be honest, especially with all the helpful folks on this Forum!

I'll give you that one.

Absolutely - V just seems so cartoony to me and there is much less detail than in IV, I was terribly disappointed with the graphics in V given the time and advancement of technology.

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+1 to that. Give me Blue Marble 4.0+ or Platy's Python any day.

NobleZarkon said:

Don't really agree with that to be honest, especially with all the helpful folks on this Forum!

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Civ II, SMAC, V all facilitate a player getting better, progressing up levels, without resorting to forums. For III and IV, “higher” level play is all very wrote and counter intuitive. The majority of folks will not figure it out without resorting to external resources. Deity V play is like that too, but it's the last level out of seven, not most levels above the middle!

given the time and advancement of technology

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With the caveat, I agree, and I miss zooming in on the mines and whatnot. That said, I have been happily surprised how much I appreciate the lush textures in V, as I didn't think I was one to care about that aspect of play at all.

So graphics goes into the agree-to-disagree pile.

I can think of two aspects of game play that were better in IV than V: Corporations and the vassal game mechanic. I don't see either as being incompatible with BNW, so I am disappointed about that. City States are a very interesting feature though, so that makes up for half.

Drakarska said:

+1 to that. Give me Blue Marble 4.0+ or Platy's Python any day.

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You are back to mods, to which everyone agrees IV did a better job than V.

What else does III or IV do objectively better than V? How about multiplayer support? (Or is MP IV pretty poor as well?)

A lot of the problems could be solved with Civ VI using a 64 bit engine. That way enormous maps are possible and computers will be able to handle very sophisticated graphics. Plus, modding will be much, much easier.

I do hope that Firaxis is already working on a 64 bit Civ VI so that we won't repeat the disaster that is Civilization 5.

I can think of two aspects of game play that were better in IV than V: Corporations and the vassal game mechanic. I don't see either as being incompatible with BNW, so I am disappointed about that. City States are a very interesting feature though, so that makes up for half.

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This made me laugh. I would say those are among the worst-handled features of Civ 4 - speaking as someone who prefers Civ 4 over all the others of the series.

But not the place for this discussion.

Thormodr said:

A lot of the problems could be solved with Civ VI using a 64 bit engine. That way enormous maps are possible and computers will be able to handle very sophisticated graphics. Plus, modding will be much, much easier.

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I am not convinced that 64 vs 32 bit is the bottle neck.

I do hope that Firaxis is already working on a 64 bit Civ VI...

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I would guess they are focused more on iOS than anything else. But hey, iOS is 64 bit! My prediction is that VI is simplified V to accommodate touch. What you are hoping for might have to wait for Civ VII! But I am not clear what you are looking for...

...so that we won't repeat the disaster that is Civilization 5.

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It is the minority who would characterize Civ5 as a disaster. If nothing else, it sold extremely well. From the mod perspective, “disaster” is not hyperbolic, but otherwise I think you would be well served by being able to better articulate your disappointment. But hey, this is a rant thread, and you are entitled to your opinion.

Qgqqqqq said:

I would say those are among the worst-handled features of Civ 4 ... But not the place for this discussion.

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I think “better” encompasses weak features when they are missing in the alternative.

So, where is a better place for discussion of what Civ 4 offers over all the others of the series?