I'm a man without a Civilization

The game will throught 3-4 major patches until the 'f' (final) patch is applied.

There's going to be at least 1 expansion.

And if all else fails, DLC mini-expansions.

There's at least 3 years to work on the things that aren't working right now. I'd expect this kind of talk if we got our first big patch and they patch graphical issues and nothing else.

I can sympathize with the OP. I don't agree with every point or have an identical experience, but after just a few weeks I have to grudingly admit that I'm getting bored with Civ5. That's depressing.

I'm not mad at Firaxis or gonna go off screaming about "unfinished" and "paid beta testers" or get hysterical about my favorite game franchise, but I can't deny that I'm disappointed and saddened that this game just isn't engaging me the way the Civ series always has. It was hard to even admit that to myself, let alone talk about it with others.

It's unfortunate that threads here at CFC so often degenerate into each side attacking the other, especially when nobody is "right" about Civ5. We humans tell ourselves stories based on facts; that's how we form opinions. A set of facts can tell an infinite amount of stories. Our stories differ, that's all.

Unfortunately with a group as passionate about this franchise as CFC has, people take their own stories very seriously, often mistaking them for facts (e.g. "The game was unfinished at release" or "Civ 5 is deep and complex"). Neither of those opinions are "wrong" empirically; but neither of them are facts, either.

And I'm a die-hard Civ fan. I'm not a pro player, but I've been onboard the Civ train since 1991. Like many here, I've always felt Civ was "my game." The one I revered above most others for having something special that set it apart. I loved Civ5 when it first came out, and had too many late nights playing "just one more turn." But now, a scant 2 weeks later, I'm finding myself playing other games when I have free time.

So while I'm disappointed, I'll still play from time to time, trying out different gametypes, win conditions, tweaking settings and trying out new mods to enhance the experience. I'm also still holding out hope for patches, mods, and eventual expansions to help me become re-engaged with Civ5.

TOTR said:

Same here. I want Civ to be hard to learn. I want it to take months to grasp the last aspects of the game. I am now downloading the Rise of Man mod for Civ IV and I am sad.

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Same here too. I downloaded Rise of Man last night. Funny how Civ 5 has renewed my interest in Civ 4.

I sympathise with the OP as I feel a bit lost, too. I like some new features in Civ 5, but in general, far too much has been cut out. Reducing road spam is a good idea, I expect they could speed up movement in developed hexes in a patch. Not much else that I miss from 5 when going back to 4.

Even considering trying Civ3 and Civ2 again to see how they compare to Civ5.

I actually did that. Know what? Civ 2 was a much better game, but some features are repeated.
The building costs were there.
No Stacks of doom, since that would get your army destroyed.(You lost one unit and the whole stack was lost)
The diplomacy was just as opaque. You just can't read the other civs. And they are over agressive.
But the game mechanics are still awesome. I forgot about govs, caravans, city view, corruption, unit production upkeep, throne room, etc.
I'm interested in going back to civ 3 too, but have to get my cds.

If Civ 4 is your comparison point, every other Civ have opaque aggressive AI. The problem is that Civ4 leader system gave too much away, and it was too easy to control diplomacy.

Diplomacy, like aggro in MMO needs to be a puzzle a player solves. who are my enemies, who are my friends. Can I trust Montezuma? What do I know about Monty etc.

The Civ5 leader AI, is actually quite advanced from what I can gather. For example they remember specific events that occured.

The problem with Civ5 diplomacy right now is it isn't capable of showing appreciation for good things you've done and the AI seem incapable of showing only 2 emotions. 'arms length' friends, and hostile. There's a bit of gray area in between with Ghandi where he plays like he wants to be your friend while secretly plotting behind you.

so No, I really don't want to go back to Civ4 as my primary Civ experience. The diplomacy is just so glaringly stunted in that game. No mod can save it.

dexters said:

If Civ 4 is your comparison point, every other Civ have opaque aggressive AI. The problem is that Civ4 leader system gave too much away, and it was too easy to control diplomacy.

Diplomacy, like aggro in MMO needs to be a puzzle a player solves. who are my enemies, who are my friends. Can I trust Montezuma? What do I know about Monty etc.

The Civ5 leader AI, is actually quite advanced from what I can gather. For example they remember specific events that occured.

The problem with Civ5 diplomacy right now is it isn't capable of showing appreciation for good things you've done and the AI seem incapable of showing only 2 emotions. 'arms length' friends, and hostile. There's a bit of gray area in between with Ghandi where he plays like he wants to be your friend while secretly plotting behind you.

so No, I really don't want to go back to Civ4 as my primary Civ experience. The diplomacy is just so glaringly stunted in that game. No mod can save it.

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Are you talking to me? Cause I'm just stating how Civ 2 compare to Civ 5, not Civ 4. I actually think that Civ2 when came out was awesome and a better game than Civ IV when that came out. Taking the tech into account obviously. Nowadays Civ 2 is dated, but the core mechanics is still awesome.

Btw most of the dissatisfied people in this forum would agree that diplomacy was something that could be improved in Civ IV. IMO Civ V is just not a good example of it, but a turn back in time.

I'm not talking to you. OP mentioned it, a lot of people commenting on this threaad mentioned the 'agressive opaque Civ5 AI'.

I'm merely pointing out civ4 was the abberation and not the norm. But for a lot o people, the frame of reference is civ4 and only Civ4. Which as I explaiend had a stunted 'restrianed' AI because a lot of design choices were made around making diplomacy easy to handle. Well, they made it too easy.

They do that because Civ IV is the most recent one in their minds, is only natural. I personally didn't remember many features Civ 2 had. Building cost was one of them. There was building costs in Civ2. Got droped in Civ 3 or CIv4, I don't remember, but it was a nice feature.

Diplomacy was a little too transparent, I agree, but is better then having no clue of what the other Player, in this case the AI, thinks. A well implemented Spy system could solve that. You really want to know what Monty is thinking, spy on him.
The way it is now make people behave like they are in Total war all the time.

I did not read half of the posts since I have been reading the same kind of replies for weeks now. I just want to say this: this is not civ IV, this is civ V. Try not to change the game but yourself.

Well I don't want to be a man without civilization so I guess I am not going to buy the V. just yet.
From what I have understood so far it would be best to have some kind of combination of the best from V.& the best from the older versions. Maybe that will happen in Civ VI. but till than I better to play 8/10 IV. then 6/10 V.

osmosis said:

I did not read half of the posts since I have been reading the same kind of replies for weeks now. I just want to say this: this is not civ IV, this is civ V. Try not to change the game but yourself.

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I hear you, but if you did read these posts, you might find that they're not all complaining about Civ5 being different than Civ4.

Believe me, two short weeks ago I was in the same position you are now, telling myself that all the haters were just afraid of change or whatever. (To be fair, the shrillest complaints are usually the most apparent, and they really overwhelmed the reasonable but disappointed people who had valid points.)

I don't want Civ5 to become Civ4. I actually like a lot of the changes introduced in Civ5. I enjoy 1UPT, city-states, social policies (though I think they could be tweaked) and the revamped UI. But once my excitement about those new features faded and I dug in to game after game, I got stuck with a lot of "Next Turn, Next Turn, Next Turn" boredom.

The root of my problem is the AI, especially in regards to combat and tactics. It just doesn't challenge the player much at all. Any game that I can win whenever I decide to win it becomes pointless to continue. And yes, harder difficulties will make that victory more difficult to attain, but they don't make the AI more challenging - they just give you more penalties to overcome, and give the other civs more bonuses. (Wonders completed on the 10th turn of the game, for example.)

That's just my experience. I hope it's not yours. I don't want to be "right" here; honestly wouldn't want any other longtime Civ fan to feel the peculiar mix of sadness and loss that I'm experiencing. But my response to the game has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it's not Civ4; I've been evaluating it on its own since Day 1. I just can't avoid feeling bored and let down, as much as I'd love to be cheerleading for Firaxis right now.

OP, if you're getting out-teched and out-produced at deity difficulty, why not play on a lower difficulty? That's basically the defining characteristic of deity difficulty... the ridiculous advantages the AI gets.

Workers get captured by melee units so they can't "clog" anything other than an archer-only army. Just walk into them with melee units and your problems are solved. I'm not quite sure why they're so resilient to archer fire, but it doesn't matter much.

The game doesn't cut off at the end, at least not for me. When I did the space race, I saw a spaceship launch from the apollo program, and a screen with a video and a voice-over epilogue.

I think by FAR the most important thing many of the detractors, especially the most vocal cIV lovers, are failing to realize is just how much better ciV shipped than any of it's predecessors. I understand how people regularly forget what happened to them 5 days ago let alone 5 years so boot up a fresh install of cIV, or III , if you need a reminder. cIV was flawed in so many ways and mods + BTS + patches fixed it, kind of, into what we know and love. If you can get an evenly matched ffa or team multi game going ciV shines so so so much more than any civ before. If and I stress if the AI can be vastly improved as I just find it grossly incompetent at this point ciV will be all it was meant to be. I have won every victory on every level at this point vs AI and although I DO love ciV I am getting the same lack of just one more turn feeling that a lot of others are experiencing with single player. Thankfully I go to college with other civers who are all very good players and it leads to some great lans.

charon2112 said:

I just got my a$$ handed to me by Russia on Prince, so seems balanced to me.

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Heh, and you want to talk about complexity/depth of this game...

Many of us who are playing this game at emperor+ (basically people with more understanding of Civ5 than you) are bored cause of how linear the game is. I hope you can see this once you learn more about this game.

That was one particular game, that I was experimenting in. If you read a little further you'd see that. I didn't even build a military.

Gaizokubanou said:

Heh, and you want to talk about complexity/depth of this game...

Many of us who are playing this game at emperor+ (basically people with more understanding of Civ5 than you) are bored cause of how linear the game is. I hope you can see this once you learn more about this game.

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Gaizokubanou said:

Heh, and you want to talk about complexity/depth of this game...

Many of us who are playing this game at emperor+ (basically people with more understanding of Civ5 than you) are bored cause of how linear the game is. I hope you can see this once you learn more about this game.

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My best advice would be to get multiplayer games going to you and many others on here as I said above. The experience is so much more rewarding until they fix the AI. It shouldn't be too hard to organize CFanatics games with other like minded individuals. Pitboss once added will also be a boon as you can than have lots of games going, I had over 60 at one point on cIV.

PieceOfMind said:

You've summed up nicely the point on which we can come to an agreement. Although I think you're being pretty absurd with the FPS game example (I mean come on, if you have to exaggerate that much you pretty much weaken your own argument).

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I don't think this is absurd at all. It's exactly what happened to the X-Com series. Thankfully, a change like this is easily noticeable, while the changes from Civ4 to Civ5 are sometimes not that easy to spot by reading reviews and looking at screenshots (e.g. the simplification of the buildings).

I believe Civ5 still has remained true to the Civilization formula, and certainly a great deal more so than Civ Rev.

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Agreed, it just is, imo, boring, slow, unfinished and badly programed.

So maybe the expansions of civ5 will named "shut up" and "just get used to V"

charon2112 said:

That was one particular game, that I was experimenting in. If you read a little further you'd see that. I didn't even build a military.

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And in Civ 4, intelligent experimentation could reveal a viable strategy you never thought of before to incorporate into your main strategy and make it better.

In Civ 5 there is a clear and strict path to victory and if you stray from it like you did, you will not win. If you experiment, you'll only delay or prevent victory, not discover anything useful.

falconne said:

And in Civ 4, intelligent experimentation could reveal a viable strategy you never thought of before to incorporate into your main strategy and make it better.

In Civ 5 there is a clear and strict path to victory and if you stray from it like you did, you will not win. If you experiment, you'll only delay or prevent victory, not discover anything useful.

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well, I was gandhi, alone on a continent with montezuma and catherine...and I wanted a peaceful science win. In IV or V that spells a big loss.