So how's the state of Civ 5 these days?

It's not a matter of the game being objectively less complex and some people just preferring it simpler, but rather of people having different opinions as to what amounts to complexity.

Well that's the thing with me. I enjoyed the increase of complexity of Civ 4 over the previous versions of the game and I was hoping that Firaxis would take yet another leap in that direction. Yet they seemed to take a step backwards instead.
 
It's not a matter of the game being objectively less complex and some people just preferring it simpler, but rather of people having different opinions as to what amounts to complexity.

Fair enough as well. :) While I personally find it hard to imagine what could amount to a feeling of similar complexity in the two games, since for me the difference is so vast, I can accept that other people may view the matter differently. Concerning historical plausibility however, it's really beyond any doubt that Civ 4 is much more accurate and closer to a simulation-style game than Civ 5. Note that that is not a value judgement per se, as some players may not care about the historical aspects at all. It may be understandable though that for me as someone whose job is teaching history it is a very important factor and the primary reason I dislike Civ 5 so much.
 
I have Civ5 since it came out, but I never got into it. For all the criticism that I'm aware of, there's lots of people who seem to have a great time with it, so there must be some appeal. My suspicion is that it will take a lot of playing to find it and I just don't have as much time for computer games as I used to.

The shortcut on my desktop keeps looking at me accusingly, so every few month I decide to spend a few precious hours to "really" get into it. Then it seems like I waste half the time to wrestle the Steam demon who (although started in offline-mode) somehow insists on updating himself and sometimes comes up with funny error messages. Being inconvenienced like that with technicalities of third-party-software that I don't (and don't want to have to) really understand doesn't put me in the best of moods to begin with and for whatever reason I never ended up at the point where I'd play one more turn no matter how late it was. Usually, I called it a day with the feeling that I would had a better evening with one of the older versions.

"We are certain that Civilization is the last game you’ll ever need", Mr Meier wrote in 1991 about Civ1 and, if you put the emphasis on "need", he was spot on. All the old Civ games and their expansions are still there and still good fun in their different ways, so it's not like Civ5 takes anything away from the games we already have ... it only takes away time from playing them.
 
Can it be used with BUG if I have BUG installed as a standalone mod?

I can't remember for sure, but I believe that BUG is incorporated in K-Mod. I have definitely used K-Mod with the BUG interface, so even if it isn't incorporated, you can use both simultaneously.
 
So what's the basis of your judgement? I see religion made it's way back in with the first expansion, how about some of the other complexities that existed in Civ 4 but were removed? And no, I don't want to have to rely on some mod to give me the complexity that I crave in these games. After reading about the early game I just felt that much of the decision making was gone, how have they added it back since then?

You wanted my opinion and I gave it. If you want an essay, I charge 25 cents per word. :lol:

Communitas and BUG are equivalent products, and I believe that Thal had a huge part in both.
 
You wanted my opinion and I gave it. If you want an essay, I charge 25 cents per word. :lol:

Unfortunately that your opinion doesn't give me much to work with when it comes to deciding whether I should give the game a try at this point.

Communitas and BUG are equivalent products, and I believe that Thal had a huge part in both.

So Communitas is basically an interface mod? That I could live with, even some AI improvements like BULL's Better AI addition. Which is considerably better than the Civ 4 default I must say. I used to readily beat the AI on Noble level, but quite often now I get left in the dust, or get my butt kicked.
 
Unfortunately that your opinion doesn't give me much to work with when it comes to deciding whether I should give the game a try at this point.

My snark aside, I don't remember tons about Civ IV. G&K added back religion and improved it ten-fold from IV, making your religious choices matter a lot more. What complexities do you see as missing?

Other than that, I can't say my current experience with Civ V is any less rich than when I played III and IV.
 
G&K added back religion and improved it ten-fold from IV, making your religious choices matter a lot more.

Which I thought should have been done in the original game. I felt religion was one of the best features to be added in Civ4, it just needs some improvement. I was also hoping on seeing Corporations expanded on to make trading more robust and dynamic, but those were cut too.

What complexities do you see as missing?

Well no tech trading is certainly a big one for me. That's always been an important decision for me to make in the game, even as far back as Civ 1. Do I trade a tech that might lose me a Wonder in order to catch up with a civ I'm falling behind from, or one that will allow a potential enemy to gain an advantage over me? Plus the Civ wide happiness and the removal of city health meant that I didn't have to think very much about what to build in a particular city. Having culture spread one tile at a time meant I didn't have to think about how to develop my city area, I just had to respond to whatever terrain happened to appear at that time. Having my troops be able to miraculously find a boat that would transport them across the ocean at any point meant that I didn't have to decide which would be the best place on my landmass from which to launch an attack on another continent. Plus I read lots of complaints about the diplomacy in the game, how it was virtually impossible to develop any sort of meaningful relationship with another civ. Even Jon Schafer, in an article I read recently, mentioned how woefully inconsistent the other civs could be. Those and a few others I can't recall at the moment are the complexities I felt were missing.
 
Ah, give it a rest. You're not looking for reasons to play CiV; you're looking for everything that was in CIV, plus some new stuff to spark your interest. You won't find that in CiV.

We get it -- you don't want to back-track from CIV's "complexity" and can't stomach giving up features you've come to genuinely enjoy about CIV (that's clear), with layers of features and gameplay elements piled on top of each other after 3 expansions and thousands of mods (does anyone play unmodded CIV? even BTS?).

There's much that is new in CiV (and I find it more enjoyable than CIV -- yes, in your eyes I'm a benighted simpleton), but if you want all of the old as well as the new, you're going to be disappointed.
 
Which I thought should have been done in the original game. I felt religion was one of the best features to be added in Civ4, it just needs some improvement. I was also hoping on seeing Corporations expanded on to make trading more robust and dynamic, but those were cut too.

Well no tech trading is certainly a big one for me. That's always been an important decision for me to make in the game, even as far back as Civ 1. Do I trade a tech that might lose me a Wonder in order to catch up with a civ I'm falling behind from, or one that will allow a potential enemy to gain an advantage over me? Plus the Civ wide happiness and the removal of city health meant that I didn't have to think very much about what to build in a particular city. Having culture spread one tile at a time meant I didn't have to think about how to develop my city area, I just had to respond to whatever terrain happened to appear at that time. Having my troops be able to miraculously find a boat that would transport them across the ocean at any point meant that I didn't have to decide which would be the best place on my landmass from which to launch an attack on another continent. Plus I read lots of complaints about the diplomacy in the game, how it was virtually impossible to develop any sort of meaningful relationship with another civ. Even Jon Schafer, in an article I read recently, mentioned how woefully inconsistent the other civs could be. Those and a few others I can't recall at the moment are the complexities I felt were missing.

I'm about to upload an 18 minute video of Civ V handing me my ass on King difficulty. Maybe you'll see something to help you make up your mind one way or another.
 
If it takes you this amount of time and effort to decide whether or not you should try a game that is cheaper than $15 during sales, then it sounds to me like you aren't genuinely interested in trying out the game and are more interested in instigating on forums by expressing your obvious dissatisfaction about CiV being different from CIV.

But that's just my observation. :)
 
The AI impresses me sometimes, until it deploys its army to take a city state and loses every unit, leaves settlers in barbarian camps for over 100 turns, and decides to give me 240 gold for every piece of cotton or lump of salt I throw at it. :lol:
 
I finally broke down and got CIV 5 and the expansion a few weeks ago. I had to wait, because my old PC couldn't handle it. When I got my new PC I was hesitant to buy CIV5 due to some of the negative things I have read, but for $20 on amazon I got too good a deal to pass up.. I started playing the original CIV in the mid 90's and have loved every release since. This release is pretty awesome. Once again I am in that late night "one more turn" mode.
 
Ah, give it a rest. You're not looking for reasons to play CiV; you're looking for everything that was in CIV, plus some new stuff to spark your interest. You won't find that in CiV.

We get it -- you don't want to back-track from CIV's "complexity" and can't stomach giving up features you've come to genuinely enjoy about CIV (that's clear), with layers of features and gameplay elements piled on top of each other after 3 expansions and thousands of mods (does anyone play unmodded CIV? even BTS?).

There's much that is new in CiV (and I find it more enjoyable than CIV -- yes, in your eyes I'm a benighted simpleton), but if you want all of the old as well as the new, you're going to be disappointed.

Man, what's with the hostility? You're putting words in my mouth that simply aren't true. When Sid once was commenting on what makes a good sequel, he mentioned that a good formula to use was 1/3 new, 1/3 old and 1/3 improved. That's what I was looking for in Civ 5, but all I got was a bunch of new features with very little in the way of improved. They tossed out way too many things for the sake of simplifying the game IMO. But since I haven't looked at the game for quite awhile, I just came here to see if they had put some of things back they took. Some they did, but not enough to appeal to me to try it at this time. I'll wait until the Complete version is out.
 
If it takes you this amount of time and effort to decide whether or not you should try a game that is cheaper than $15 during sales, then it sounds to me like you aren't genuinely interested in trying out the game and are more interested in instigating on forums by expressing your obvious dissatisfaction about CiV being different from CIV.

But that's just my observation. :)

Well at this point, I'm simple responding to comments that people come along and make. I had made my mind up a long time ago. Why is that so many people on game site consider someone a flamer simply because they don't love a game as much as some fan. If I were instigating I would certainly not have tried to be so polite.
 
Civ5 is a good game. It has some elements that are an improvement. IMO, the overall game play and replayability of civ5+G&K is a step back from civ4. Now, that isn't such a bad thing, since it is a good game. I personally found the AI improvements most welcome but they are still lacking. I like solo playing civ since I prefer long matches as opposed to the quick games you usually play with MP. So the AI needs to be a military threat for the game to be compelling, and it still isn't, though it is better than release where it was quite lacking.
 
I go back and forth...

Civ4 feels more like a Civilization building game. It just feels much more rewarding to build up and play. Tech choices feel more meaningful and a peace-style game feels a lot easier to play and maintain.

However, Civ5 does have a lot of improvements that I personally really like. Hexes, Embarking and City-states to name but a few.

As far as combat goes I do feel like neither version is quite right, Units should perhaps be able to stack up to a max (say 3 per tile-ish). I think doing this however would hurt the A.I even more as I don't think it would know how to correctly stack the units into groups of 3 or so... (I am just guessing here).

TLDR: I really like both games, and when playing one I often remember why I love the other... But it seems being a fan of both is somehow wrong or disallowed? :p
 
As far as combat goes I do feel like neither version is quite right, Units should perhaps be able to stack up to a max (say 3 per tile-ish).

As I've mentioned, I would have liked to see a separate tactical map for combat, like Rome: Total War, with stack movement being allowed on the world map. That would have been ideal. I basically like the idea of 1UPT for combat, it makes for a much more tactical combat encounter, but it makes absolutely no sense when a tile may represent over 200 square miles.
 
As I've mentioned, I would have liked to see a separate tactical map for combat, like Rome: Total War, with stack movement being allowed on the world map. That would have been ideal. I basically like the idea of 1UPT for combat, it makes for a much more tactical combat encounter, but it makes absolutely no sense when a tile may represent over 200 square miles.

But does it have to make sense? I mean, it is a game. I don't mind suspended disbelief if it is to aid the game-play personally?

I also don't like the Total War series because of the combat oddly. Admittedly the last one I played was Shogun: Total War. But I always auto-resolved combat and just played it like a board game (if that's what you meant? I am unfamiliar with Rome's combat and if it is any different to Shogun's).
 
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