Civ5 has sold approximately 5.84 million copies

I'm sure when Sid Meier created his first game, put it in a bag with a manual, and sold it in a grocery store he had no idea that he would end up as the creator of one of the most successful video game franchises in the world. Shout out to anyone who watched the documentary about his video game creating career that came with Civ 4.
 
Empire was the first Total war game that really was sold on steam and therefore benefit from being there longer and having gone through more sales.

And I'd bet the fact that it was a rather weak game in its original version, something that only mods fixed, drew away many players from the next episodes. Then there's probably the appeal, shogun 2 was a good game but I can see how it's not as popular and Rome 2 was heavily criticized for being a rushed disapointing product.

With all these in consideration, I'm not that surprised Empire is first.

I think the explanation may in fact be that Empire had a free week-end. I certainly downloaded it then.
 
Stunning figures.

I've played Civ since the beginning and find Civ V a huge disappointment (and yes I have the latest version with G&K and BNW) with lots of poor design decisions which make it a much weaker game than Civ IV, however you can't argue with this amazing commercial success - even if many people will have bought it in sales etc like I did (paid $15 for the complete bundle).
 
Civ 4 fan? I heard that many civ 4 players dislike civ 5.

Civ I, II, III (bad but not near as bad as V), IV, CTP, I, II, SMAC (X) fans ... :p

It is interesting that the median is 29 hours, so half of the population played about three games or less and got bored with Civ V - I put in more effort than that to find fun in it, yet to no avail.

Great sales figures though, despite of a mediocre game, for civ standards - the concept still stands out.
 
Civ I, II, III (bad but not near as bad as V), IV, CTP, I, II, SMAC (X) fans ... :p

It is interesting that the median is 29 hours, so half of the population played about three games or less and got bored with Civ V - I put in more effort than that to find fun in it, yet to no avail.

Great sales figures though, despite of a mediocre game, for civ standards - the concept still stands out.

well i played mostly offline, more than 20:1 games. The logged on time count doesn't give any figure to actual time played.
 
Civ I, II, III (bad but not near as bad as V), IV, CTP, I, II, SMAC (X) fans ... :p

It is interesting that the median is 29 hours, so half of the population played about three games or less and got bored with Civ V - I put in more effort than that to find fun in it, yet to no avail.

Great sales figures though, despite of a mediocre game, for civ standards - the concept still stands out.

do you know median hours for civ4?

you say you dont like civ5 but like CTP which was generally concidered a crap.. dont you think your taste is quite non-standard? anyways saying civ5 is mediocre is an error as it proved to be the most popular game in the series. it just isnt good enough for you.
 
do you know median hours for civ4?

you say you dont like civ5 but like CTP which was generally concidered a crap.. dont you think your taste is quite non-standard? anyways saying civ5 is mediocre is an error as it proved to be the most popular game in the series. it just isnt good enough for you.

To be fair, we don't necessarily know if Civ5 is the most popular game in the series. It's certainly the most popular on Steam, but it's also the only Civ game that came out after Steam was really popular and the only one that required Steam. Civ4 sold 3 million copies by spring 2008, so it's quite possible that it has sold more copies than Civ5 cumulatively so far (although even if so, that may or may not be true in a few years). It's too bad Firaxis didn't clarify if the 20 million sales included expansions or if it was 20 million base games. If it includes expansions, Civ5 probably has sold the most, but if it doesn't, Civ4 has probably sold the most.

To really compare, it would also be necessary to take into account how common computers were when each game was released. Civ1 probably has sold the least number of units (of the core Civ1 -> Civ5 series), but compared to the size of the market at the time it may well not be the least popular, and could even be the most popular.

And probably 99% of people think their taste is fairly standard.
 
Civ1 probably has sold the least number of units (of the core Civ1 -> Civ5 series), but compared to the size of the market at the time it may well not be the least popular, and could even be the most popular.
yeah theres no certain way to measure popularity
ofc market was much smaller but there were less good games (at least in the strategy genre) to rival civ1. plus, strategy genre was having much more potential than now as action/rpg games today have stunning graphics and sound and world detalization. as for competitors now we have total war, paradox games, fantasy strategy games like heroes or age of wonders etc - but see, not a single strategy game came even close to success of civ5, civ5 is the only strategy game in the first 20 games having most players/hours played, and it's 7th in this list, beating many famous titles of other genres.
 
To be honest I am astonished by the fact this game sold so good. Come on, this is strategy game :D

CiV has shortcomings, but production quality is certainly not one of them. It is a very pretty and polished game and the UI is just great. It makes it a very easy game to get into, even for someone who never played a strategy game before.

Please Stop making up delusional stories. The fact is you and a small minority like you are not able to deal/ adapt with changes in game design while majority of people play the game and enjoy it.

I would like to point out three things.
1. # of sales is in no way an indication of game quality.
2. Just because you personally enjoy something does not automatically make it good.
3. There is a difference between not being able to adapt to changes and simply rejecting the changes.
 
Some people converted, most left, and many new ones joined - which is what Firaxis really cared about - the game is good enough to appeal to mass market.

Civ Rev, is just a more extreme example of direction where Civ as a franchise was going since Civ IV... more streamlined, less complex, and IIRC that sold well too.

The core concept is still good, even though the way it was executed in "V" is just lacking for people who played earlier games in the franchise a lot.
 
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