State of the game

Hi all, I was just wondering how the game is like currently.

I got the game when it first came out, and was severely disappointed in it's lack of depth. How's the game now compared to Civ4? Has Civ5 improved or is it still mainly a war game? Do buildings matter yet? Is the CPU's grasp of 1UPT still terrible?

Thanks

If you're going into it with the preconception that it ever was "mainly a war game", you're likely to still be disappointed. The game has improved a lot in terms of its gameplay, but stylistically it functions in the same way.

If you're of the opinion that marching around with a 1UPT carpet of doom to dominate your rivals rather than doing exactly the same thing with a stack of doom in Civ IV magically makes Civ V more of a wargame, it's still more of a wargame - 1UPT is still there and, indeed, battles now tend to last longer with changes to the hitpoint system, making tactical play more relevant to extracting units from danger or pressing your attack.

If you're of the opinion that having more tile improvement options or a mechanic that rewarded you for chopping down jungles you were going to chop down anyway made choosing a city based on considerations of resource access, terrain and desired city specialisation more important in Civ IV than choosing a city based on exactly the same considerations (plus a mechanic that makes you think twice about chopping down that jungle) in Civ V, then Civ V lacks depth compared to Civ IV. Likewise if you think that having a small number of civic choices that you always gain full access to but can change during the game offers more choice than a larger number of fixed policy choices that force you to make decisions about which ones to pursue.

To put it another way, if you're asking the question the answer is probably 'no', because it's founded on personal preferences for a different system that achieves the same game objectives and presents the same strategic decision-making in a different way, not on any objective differences in play or depth. If you preferred Civ IV stylistically in the first place, you'll prefer Civ IV now.

If, on the other hand, you're asking something more targeted, along the lines of "Is the diplomacy more accessible so that permanent alliances are easier and random warfare rarer?", "Has the game added features such as religion and espionage, and do these enhance gameplay?" or "Has the game AI improved at all?" the answer is yes on all counts

Diplomacy is surely better, but there are still some things I would like to be able to do with my neighbors. To that extent, City States are still a hit or miss feature. Some people love them, others hate them. Espionage and Religion give us more control over them, and the first few successful coups you put together really get you excited about the system. On the whole, money as the sole influence on city states has been toned down, but it still plays a role.

As with most games these days, you can still only bring one nation to the table at a time. No joint declarations of friendship (although they usually happen in a way where the result is the same).

Combat AI needs more tweaking, but I don't by any means think Gods and Kings is the last expansion, and I'm sure they will touch up on it again.

Buildings matter, but they always seemed to matter to me. There is a Gods and Kings demo out that you should consider trying. It should be a good enough demonstration.

I can do little but echo PhilBowles great as always write-up, so I'll just summarize: did you actually like the things that CiV did differently? Did you like SPs and 1UPT, the whip and draft being replaced by gold rush, both tall and wide empires being equally viable choices? If not, well, the game is the same, just better balanced. They didn't add things from IV, V was never intended to be Civ 4.5. If you thought though that it had a lot of potential, but was unbalanced and unfinished, then yes, it's been fixed.

My 2 cents as someone who hated the game at launch, but really wanted to like it:

Buildings are very much worth building. Maintenances have been adjusted multiple times, almost always getting lowered, and I think on that account they have done quite well. The growth formula for cities has been changed, so now cities actually grow beyond size 10. Production has been sped up noticeably. SPs have been tweaked so much (Piety in particular) that I feel some of the trees barely resemble their counterparts at launch. Your choice between the last 3 Sp trees also has an influence on diplomacy just like civics in IV. Happiness has seen numerous changes. In the last vanilla version it was quite the challenge to balance it out, in G+K it's easier and leaves you some more room to expand. Now each city can't generate more happiness than its pop size, introducing local happiness that's part of the global. Just goes to show you that the whole system isn't really that good, but it works well enough, I don't mind it.

The expansion did a lot of good things too. Diplomacy has been improved and it is now possible to be at good terms with other civs. It's also more transparent (even if more could be done here) and it's generally easier to evaluate how much a civ AI likes or hates you. The tactical AI has also been improved - while it's better, calling it "good" would steel be a bit of an overstatement, but it's light-years away from what we had at launch. Currently there is this weird thing where some civs just don't expand at all, but I am sure they will iron it out with a patch. G+K also brought probably the biggest redesign of the tech tree I have seen in a Civ game, all for the better, now it actually deserves to be called a tech tree (as opposed to a ladder) and researching is considerably slower, which means that now you don't obsolete units before you even get a chance to build them. All GPs except the merchant have been tweaked, GS bulbing doesn't work the way it did before, neither do RAs (another feature that has nothing to do with its initial version when the game launched). City States offer way more quests than before and they are generally a lot more fun to do as well, while gold has been nerfed quite a lot. In the late game buying them out is very much the best tactic, but until around late-Renaissance or early Industrial you won't be able to do that.

There are still some oddities, particularly with the AI and the warmonger diplo penalty is still curiously annoying at times, but the game is much better now. I don't know what constitutes in your opinion a builder game as opposed to a war game though, so can't comment on that, although I could argue that Civ has always had a warming heart for better or worse. For me the big problem before was low production (fixed IMO), too fast teching (fixed), really slow growth (fixed) and nothing to do beyond choosing what to build and research. That last bit was remedied by the truly great religion and Espionage, which, while underwhelming, still brings flavour. Also lets you steal tech, which is nice.

There is a G+K demo on Steam, I suggest you try it out. You might hate it for all I know, but as someone who is a builder and was gravely disappointed by V at launch, the recent patches and the expansion made me change my views. Same goes for PhilBowles for example. It might be more streamlined than IV, but I actually like that, in the late game CIV sometimes just got tedious with all the micromanagement.

But then again, I thought that CIV BTS was a bit bloated (corps, espionage, health? Would be better off without them), so maybe I'm out of line here.

In a very few words: Civ V G&K has many improvements, mainly diplomacy, but it is basically still a war game.

PreLynMax said:

In a very few words: Civ V G&K has many improvements, mainly diplomacy, but it is basically still a war game.

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I really don't understand this, what exactly makes it a wargame in a way that wasn't present in previous games? And if you say 1UPT I am gonna :suicide:

Andulias said:

I really don't understand this, what exactly makes it a wargame in a way that wasn't present in previous games? And if you say 1UPT I am gonna :suicide:

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Oh no, I LOVED 1upt. That feature give Civ 5 a better feature over Civ 4's stacks. What I really meant is diplomacy, especially at higher difficulties, the AI strongly favor war over peace.

I probably said this in an earlier thread, warring in Civ 5 is a little better than Civ 4, but it's still very tedious, to the point where I usually ragequit in the middle of a war, whether it be offensive or defensive.

Yes, I agree on all accounts, although it's worth noting that I've found myself being on friendly terms with almost everyone for surprisingly long after the expansion. I am hardly getting DOW-ed often as I used to, even if at times some civs still do stupid things. I am 2nd in military strength, Germany was crushed hundreds of years ago and is now reduced to a city state, so it decides to declare a war on me? Oh, Bismarck

As a builder first I hated civ 5 on launch. Wonders were weak, diplomacy randomn and completely passive, buildings worthless, terrain of little importance, except overpowered rivers, and social policies were hideously unbalanced. A new city cost 30% in sp policy cost and puppets did nothing but build expensive and useless buildings. That made my empire much smaller and production was far too slow for stuff to happen.

All those issues have been fixed. City sp increase has been cut in half and can be reduced to a third. Puppets build useful things, and the balance is so much better its not even the same game anymore. Try the demo and see if you can handle 1upt. The AI still can't handle it. Though now you need combined arms and naval units are good so at lease it feels more tactical. Thats the thing that can break the game. But as a builder who always found war boring in civ CIv 5 is great.

I find that the diplomacy post G&K often results in two or three blocks of friendly civs who denounce and/or war with the same rivals. I often get asked by several of my friendly civs to DOW the same enemy during the same turn.

PreLynMax said:

Oh no, I LOVED 1upt. That feature give Civ 5 a better feature over Civ 4's stacks. What I really meant is diplomacy, especially at higher difficulties, the AI strongly favor war over peace.

I probably said this in an earlier thread, warring in Civ 5 is a little better than Civ 4, but it's still very tedious, to the point where I usually ragequit in the middle of a war, whether it be offensive or defensive.

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Stacks of doom always ruined Civ for me. I was ecstatic when I heard about 1UPT. Feels like a much more tactical game.

I still feel more could be done, as I still feel it's basically 2 walls pushing against each other till one crumbles, but early game, when everyone has only a few units, the fights are more about smart unit use than overpowering forces with numbers

Mesix said:

I find that the diplomacy post G&K often results in two or three blocks of friendly civs who denounce and/or war with the same rivals. I often get asked by several of my friendly civs to DOW the same enemy during the same turn.

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I found diplomacy resulted in exactly the same thing in vanilla (though it was pretty much always two blocs, rarely if ever three).

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'll give the demo a try.