Me neither thats why I am going to play some other games that I am not supposed to mention.
Yes games other than CiV. But when they fix this game properly let me know I will be back at that point.
Civilization 5 Rants Thread
- Thread starter ori
- Start date
Me neither thats why I am going to play some other games that I am not supposed to mention.
Yes games other than CiV. But when they fix this game properly let me know I will be back at that point.Mîtiu Ioan
Deity
Well ... I get your logic - and I could agree with it at certain degree ... BUT ...
The described interaction still happens "on slices" on Civ ( or it's supposed to occur ) : during initial expansion phase the player seek to claim best possible/available spots while denying them to the other players ( AI ). During Space Race the player try to sabotage/accelerate production of his/her spaceship ... and so on.
So why to consider that Civ doesn't meet the criteria from (2) ?
abilard
Chieftain
ok... i held off on buying civ5 due to the mediocre user reviews. So now it's Christmas day and I caved and bought it. Just started the install and now I'm waiting on steam... huh?
yeah, ready to play in approximately 13 hours and 7 min (the the time just keeps getting longer, not shorter).
wtf?
i'm ok with waiting an hour, maybe two hours... but now I have to wait until tomorrow? this steam thing is horrible!
(and the clock has already ticked up to 14 hours and 10 min while writing this post!)
yeah, ready to play in approximately 13 hours and 7 min (the the time just keeps getting longer, not shorter).
wtf?
i'm ok with waiting an hour, maybe two hours... but now I have to wait until tomorrow? this steam thing is horrible!
(and the clock has already ticked up to 14 hours and 10 min while writing this post!)
bvanevery
Warlord
I hope you played the free playable demo first. I don't think anyone should ever cave in and buy a game without trying a demo. If a game doesn't make a demo, then as far as I'm concerned find your own way to play it. Don't pay for the privilege of taking a test drive. So many games are disappointing.
PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
Yes, Steam's terrible like that. I got their big deal pack on the Total War games - it took well over a day to download them all.
I had a similar problem. A few days back I decided to play a round for the first time in months and attempted to start the game up... only to get an error message each time saying it couldn't load. I checked my drivers and they were fine, so it was probably something about this last patch.
I sat back and realized I could probably figure out why it wouldn't start and fix it, but honestly I really didn't care. Instead, I uninstalled it from my computer and am now fully back to Civ4. A game that actually works, in every sense.
PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
Just tried getting into Medieval II Total War, which despite being a pre-Steam game will only load through Steam since I bought it from the site, and got a message saying "This game is unavailable at the moment", despite it having worked earlier in the day. No plans to uninstall it, but the forced 'play through Steam' thing is extremely annoying. Never run into any problems with Civ V yet.
Lord Terragon
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2009
- Messages
- 3
Civ series are the only games I play regularly. I have spent countless hours on 1 & 3. LOVE empire/civilization building, and have not yet found one that even comes close to Civ series. I had my doubts when I first started playing Civ V but I almost had a lump in my throat when on King difficulty I had one trireme off the coast of enemy Rome, and AI Caesar found it necessary to send suicide mission after suicide mission of embarked Legions out into the sea to face it. Pitiful attempt to attract a broader audience in attempt to make a few extra $$$, at the expense of long time and faithful Civ Fans.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Screw Steam and screw CiV, it's a dumbed down, overcomercialized piece of excrement, occasionally my masochistic desires will come out and want another try at it, I tend to find myself generally delighted in the beginning, finding your first city placement, scouting for ruins making those important early tech choices and finding the other budding nations.
This is ofcourse by no means an accurate representation of how a nation actually develops, but it's an interesting simily that's close enough for our imaginations to do the rest of the work.
And then it all goes downhill, when you initially engage in diplomacy with the AI, despite the very well done leader models that there is'nt a lot to be gained, you can ofcourse try for a DoF but we all knows how that turns out and because you have the healthy instinct to expand your likely to eventually get 'close' (a very relative term in this game)to another civilization, which is the first step to the cascade of denouncements and DoW's this game inevitably turns into.
The first couple of hours on a marathon game is generally alot of fun, you hav'nt discovered anything yet and the imagination takes over as to what riches there COULD be, but when the tedious midgame of micromanaging a huge empire (including it's workers ofcourse because the AI is rather suicidal with them, I only ever set them to auto out of spite for constantly bugging me with their damned "Hey hey") sets in and you start realizing that the computer treats war like a stunned herring, diplomacy is nothing but who is close to who, who has tried to intentionally piss who off and who has the biggest army score, the magic is lost, and what was a fairly intuitive 'Civilization' simulator turns into a mechanical management game, ofcourse alot of games require mechanical skills, where you would in Starcraft keep cycling through hotkey groups, pressing the hotkeys for workers and the rather extreme micro skills an actual battle needed. This is completely invalidaded in CiV because the mechanical actions require no skill beyond being able to wave a mouse vaguely in the right direction, thusly affording no challenge and becoming a cerebral activity that has about the same interest for most people as filing things.
Ofcourse there's the war aspect, but I have problems either playing against an AI that does'nt know what a siege unit is used for or playing against the same opponent with demonic hordes of said ill-used units, the first couple of times it can feel like an epic standoff, you against the hordes, but when that's the only scenario your faced with it quickly breaks the illusion and becomes more tedious busywork.
And ofcourse the rather distasteful interface style does'nt exactly help with immersion either, Age of Empires had historically themed interfaces, and that game is archaic by modern standards.
I find CiV to be similar to terrible fast food, occasionally the mood will strike you and you'll go to great lengths to acquire it, but after the first couple of bites you'll rediscover that terrible taste that made you not eat it for so long, and Steam is the greasy, leaking and soggy packaging it came in.
This is ofcourse by no means an accurate representation of how a nation actually develops, but it's an interesting simily that's close enough for our imaginations to do the rest of the work.
And then it all goes downhill, when you initially engage in diplomacy with the AI, despite the very well done leader models that there is'nt a lot to be gained, you can ofcourse try for a DoF but we all knows how that turns out and because you have the healthy instinct to expand your likely to eventually get 'close' (a very relative term in this game)to another civilization, which is the first step to the cascade of denouncements and DoW's this game inevitably turns into.
The first couple of hours on a marathon game is generally alot of fun, you hav'nt discovered anything yet and the imagination takes over as to what riches there COULD be, but when the tedious midgame of micromanaging a huge empire (including it's workers ofcourse because the AI is rather suicidal with them, I only ever set them to auto out of spite for constantly bugging me with their damned "Hey hey") sets in and you start realizing that the computer treats war like a stunned herring, diplomacy is nothing but who is close to who, who has tried to intentionally piss who off and who has the biggest army score, the magic is lost, and what was a fairly intuitive 'Civilization' simulator turns into a mechanical management game, ofcourse alot of games require mechanical skills, where you would in Starcraft keep cycling through hotkey groups, pressing the hotkeys for workers and the rather extreme micro skills an actual battle needed. This is completely invalidaded in CiV because the mechanical actions require no skill beyond being able to wave a mouse vaguely in the right direction, thusly affording no challenge and becoming a cerebral activity that has about the same interest for most people as filing things.
Ofcourse there's the war aspect, but I have problems either playing against an AI that does'nt know what a siege unit is used for or playing against the same opponent with demonic hordes of said ill-used units, the first couple of times it can feel like an epic standoff, you against the hordes, but when that's the only scenario your faced with it quickly breaks the illusion and becomes more tedious busywork.
And ofcourse the rather distasteful interface style does'nt exactly help with immersion either, Age of Empires had historically themed interfaces, and that game is archaic by modern standards.
I find CiV to be similar to terrible fast food, occasionally the mood will strike you and you'll go to great lengths to acquire it, but after the first couple of bites you'll rediscover that terrible taste that made you not eat it for so long, and Steam is the greasy, leaking and soggy packaging it came in.
PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
The first three Civ games had a stone-themed background and interface; I think Civ III might have actually had slightly different themes depending on the civilization's home region. It was a major letdown when Civ IV dispensed with this in favour of a characterless black interface in the style of Alpha Centauri, but I'd praise that to the heavens compared with Civ V's console game look.
Welcome to the forums Lord Terragon.
I think your post is spot on. Civilization 5 was made to cash in on the series' reputation which is a real shame.
Hopefully Firaxis will realize the error of their ways and attempt to reconnect with their loyal fanbase in the future.
I wouldn't bet the farm on that happening however.
PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
Welcome to the forums Lord Terragon.
I think your post is spot on. Civilization 5 was made to cash in on the series' reputation which is a real shame.
Hopefully Firaxis will realize the error of their ways and attempt to reconnect with their loyal fanbase in the future.
I wouldn't bet the farm on that happening however.
I still struggle to see how bad AI equates to an attempt to appeal to a broader audience, let alone how 'cashing in on the series' reputation' is expected to work ... Civ only *has* a widely-recognized brand name because it's already one of the most popular brands in computer game history. It's not even that the AI in this version is bad in a way that makes it necessarily easier to play against for the average gamer - it plays combat very badly, but its erratic aggressiveness is actually likely to be tougher for a player new to the series to overcome than for veterans. It's just bad because it's badly-programmed, and this is exacerbated by the way it is designed to try and pull off more complex tasks than Civ AI is built to handle (as noted by others, 1UPT combat is much more complex to manage by an automated system than 'stacks of doom'). The point has been made previously in this thread or another that Civ V is seen as unchallenging mainly by people who already know how to play and beat Civ games on the highest difficulty settings.
The original post was spot-on in its description of the problem: Civ V AI is poor even by Civ standards, and clearly kills enjoyment for many people. But the assumed motive and accusation of 'dumbing down' don't logically follow from that observation, and if anything are inconsistent with it.
Beyond which, I think the combat AI is only a problem because of bad diplomacy AI, without which combat would be rarer anyway. This post is pretty much spot on the mark:
I agree with your post from top to bottom. It's like the developers did a decent job with the early game and then were forced to release the game, far, far, far too early. This game needed at least another two years of work.
Greedy 2K Games needed Civ to save their bottom line though.
Anyway, there will be new companies that rise up to the challenge and give the fans what they want in the future. Developers are a lot like nature itself. They fill a void that has been created by the inability to adapt by others.
DrewBledsoe
Veteran QB
This is of course the longest sentence in recorded history (including Canadian literature) and deserves the first award of 2012 (even if its still 2011 Madden gets away with it)....
Congrats!
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Honestly, I wonder if 2 years of extra work would have fixed it, in every aspect of the game you find these horrible design mistakes, maybe this is Schaffer's fault as that should be his job, but the sheer number makes me think it's probably the entire studio that's dropping the ball, kind of like the crew after making Star Wars the Phantom Menace and seeing it for the first time, you can see on their faces they realize the movie is terrible and they try to rationalize this away by saying things like "It's designed to be this way." and "We can't cut anything out without messing up the entire continuity.", basically saying it sucks but it's too late now to really change anything, let alone the entire concept, I feel this is the position Firaxis worked themselves in just before release, everything was going fine, until 2 or 3 months before release they actually start playing the games alpha and realize that changing it would require a complete redesign, so they compromise by bringing out a lazy, badly working product that should for all intents and purposes be stripped and rebuilt from scratch.
Sorry can't pad that sentence anymore, we'll see if it can beat my previous high score.
Sorry can't pad that sentence anymore, we'll see if it can beat my previous high score.
DashieBaby87
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2010
- Messages
- 64
I have a big problem with Civ5, which is why I cannot say that it is better than Civ4: All of the little things that made the prior games fun are not in this game.
In my opinion:
- The battles feel somewhat flat - I don't think the death stacks of Civ IV are the answer, but I don't think forced one-unit-per-tile is it either. The mechanic of sitting outside a city with siege units, shelling, and then moving in with units is pretty boring. The re-introduction of ranged attacks did not fit well into this game. It's also pretty awkward when each ranged attack does 1 damage, so technically 10 archers could destroy a tank column.
- Barbarians? Just awful - Where's the ship-to-land invasions? Where's the brutal barbarian hordes trying to sack my capital? They actually can't even take over cities - it's pretty lame. There's a barbarian mod that puts a band-aid on this boo-boo in the game, but I feel that that modder's hands were tied because the barbarians are so bad to begin with. Historically, barbarians weren't just in encampments - they were whole civilizations! I liked Civ4's barbarians much better. Civ II's were also good.
- I preferred transports to units just jumping into the water to invade. This is pretty terrible. It makes invading by sea so awkward when all of the units are slamming into each other. Swimming units are also very hard to protect when you've got a bunch of them moving over the ocean.
- The AI is a joke in war. If you're on an isolated continent, you could be still in the stone age and they will never send units across the ocean to attack. Land AI is much better, but the AI does stupid things that gets itself killed. They will jump into the ocean when you have a trireme right there. They will sit their great general out in the open so that you can just pick it off.
- Diplomacy is terrible. None of the AI have unique personalities. They will pretty much hate you for any little thing. Even Gandhi will launch a preemptive strike on you.
- The SDK map editor is really bad, and should have really been included in the game as a world builder. It's tedious at best. Why do I have to create a project, build it like I would compile a program, and then start the game to play it when I could just build that in-game with a world builder and save it? Thankfully, there's a mod out now that's almost as good as Civ4's World Builder (It's called In-Game Editor - a very good mod!)
- After your riflemen become antiquated (as the game approaches modern times), warfare just isn't fun anymore. I would actually even say it becomes somewhat boring. I think this is because of one-unit-per-tile. It becomes strange where you can only have infantry in one hex, and tanks in another.
- Dozens of other, small things that make you want to come back to the game, like for example having an accurate earth map among other good scenarios, good GUI, good sounds and effects, minimal noticeable glitches (Civ5 is absolutely loaded with them), a good 'flow' to the game, etc.
Overall, Civ5 is a good game, but will never be great like Civ4. There's too many holes or tedious elements of the game play to make it as fun. I would give Civ5 a 8.5/10. and Civ4 a 9.5/10. In my opinion, Civ5 was never finished. This becomes apparent just by playing the game a little bit. It doesn't feel polished in the least bit.
I love the music of Civ5, though. It's better than Civ4, though I somewhat preferred the period pieces.
In my opinion:
- The battles feel somewhat flat - I don't think the death stacks of Civ IV are the answer, but I don't think forced one-unit-per-tile is it either. The mechanic of sitting outside a city with siege units, shelling, and then moving in with units is pretty boring. The re-introduction of ranged attacks did not fit well into this game. It's also pretty awkward when each ranged attack does 1 damage, so technically 10 archers could destroy a tank column.
- Barbarians? Just awful - Where's the ship-to-land invasions? Where's the brutal barbarian hordes trying to sack my capital? They actually can't even take over cities - it's pretty lame. There's a barbarian mod that puts a band-aid on this boo-boo in the game, but I feel that that modder's hands were tied because the barbarians are so bad to begin with. Historically, barbarians weren't just in encampments - they were whole civilizations! I liked Civ4's barbarians much better. Civ II's were also good.
- I preferred transports to units just jumping into the water to invade. This is pretty terrible. It makes invading by sea so awkward when all of the units are slamming into each other. Swimming units are also very hard to protect when you've got a bunch of them moving over the ocean.
- The AI is a joke in war. If you're on an isolated continent, you could be still in the stone age and they will never send units across the ocean to attack. Land AI is much better, but the AI does stupid things that gets itself killed. They will jump into the ocean when you have a trireme right there. They will sit their great general out in the open so that you can just pick it off.
- Diplomacy is terrible. None of the AI have unique personalities. They will pretty much hate you for any little thing. Even Gandhi will launch a preemptive strike on you.
- The SDK map editor is really bad, and should have really been included in the game as a world builder. It's tedious at best. Why do I have to create a project, build it like I would compile a program, and then start the game to play it when I could just build that in-game with a world builder and save it? Thankfully, there's a mod out now that's almost as good as Civ4's World Builder (It's called In-Game Editor - a very good mod!)
- After your riflemen become antiquated (as the game approaches modern times), warfare just isn't fun anymore. I would actually even say it becomes somewhat boring. I think this is because of one-unit-per-tile. It becomes strange where you can only have infantry in one hex, and tanks in another.
- Dozens of other, small things that make you want to come back to the game, like for example having an accurate earth map among other good scenarios, good GUI, good sounds and effects, minimal noticeable glitches (Civ5 is absolutely loaded with them), a good 'flow' to the game, etc.
Overall, Civ5 is a good game, but will never be great like Civ4. There's too many holes or tedious elements of the game play to make it as fun. I would give Civ5 a 8.5/10. and Civ4 a 9.5/10. In my opinion, Civ5 was never finished. This becomes apparent just by playing the game a little bit. It doesn't feel polished in the least bit.
I love the music of Civ5, though. It's better than Civ4, though I somewhat preferred the period pieces.
bvanevery
Warlord
In fairness, whose money are you expecting that to be done with? They have a successful franchise. They did some experiments, didn't do so great at some of them, but still made a lot of money. I want to write a "better Civ than Civ," but why would you expect them to? It's a business and they're there to make money. I don't like their product, so I'm going to try to make something to gather up all the people who feel similarly, but I hardly expect Firaxis to "solve" their 20 years of success. Please, go out and write the better game if you know what needs to be done.
You might hate what I have in mind. There aren't going to be any individual city screens or city improvements, because clearly that UI doesn't scale to dozens of cities. As far as I'm concerned it's just a drag on the job of conquering the world. Why would Firaxis ever do something that radical to their franchise?
PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
Was it Civ II that gave Barbarians permanent cities, essentially, that developed much as city-states do now? I think so. You can't really base valid criticisms of any Civ game on lack of historical accuracy or attention to detail, any more than I'd consider slamming Civ IV's religion mechanic because it's so much less realistic and detailed than, say, the Total War equivalent. Barbarians work well enough mechanically, although I did like the flavour of barbarians capturing cities and developing 'barbarian civilizations' (although 'barbarian' in Civ has always translated to 'not in a civilization', rather than the Roman or Chinese concepts of barbarians 'perfectly civilised people who just aren't Roman/Chinese/etc.'
What I miss (and unless I misremember I think this was also taken out of Civ IV) is the negative effect of tribal villages/ancient ruins, where you could uncover a horde of barbarians surrounding your scout if you were unlucky.
I don't know why embarked units can't stack at sea - in fact I think that non-combat units should be stackable, since worker movement can get awkward too. I think mechanically it's a slight improvement over the 'build a transport fleet, move your army to embark it, and then trek to the opposing island' system; it's awkward with large numbers of units (for instance in the Viking scenario when first launching from Normandy or Denmark), but you no longer really need giant armies. Especially since it makes it a lot quicker to reinforce in waves, rather than dropping off the invasion force and then either returning for reinforcements or building another set of transports to accommodate them.
I've maintained that, while this is a problem, it's not the key problem. The key problem is that the AI always insists on going to war ... and promptly loses when it has superior numbers because of its bad combat AI. Fix the diplomacy system first; combat AI still needs fixing, but it's less noticeable if there is simply less AI aggression. Defensively the AI can often hold cities quite well against moderate armies, even if it does do stupid things like part trebuchets in front of your cavalry or attack your pikemen with its damaged knights.
- Diplomacy is terrible. None of the AI have unique personalities. They will pretty much hate you for any little thing. Even Gandhi will launch a preemptive strike on you.
They don't have unique personalities, but they aren't all the same - their relations are dictated partly by their win condition, and at least anecdotally different civs seem predisposed to attempt particular win conditions more often than others, which does give some pattern to their behaviour. Greece, Inca, Mongolia and Denmark are commonly aggressive, Egypt generally more passive with a culture or science focus, Polynesia expanionist etc.
To be honest, I've always considered this to be true of Civ games. Nevertheless I find battles in Civ V inherently less boring than stack of doom combat.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Your argument essentially boils down to "You don't like then make one yourself.", I could say to you "If you don't agree with what Syria's doing then make a country yourself.", in both cases, I don't have the resources to fund a videogame studio and you don't have the resources to found a country.
Also, my point was that they should not have released CiV, not that I actually expect them to redo the whole thing, one can reminisce about how the Phantom Menace should never have been made or completely redone because, much like CiV, it's a crime to the franchise, sure the Phantom Menace sold well, like the Civilization series it has alot of fans jonesing for their next fix, that does'nt make it any less terrible though.
Let's see how the Phantom Menace debacle, which we can now look at from a more historical standpoint turned out:
It made a good amount of money
Children liked it (ie the new generation, 'casual' console 'players' in ours).
Most die hard Star Wars fans, the ones that made the initial success of the franchise possible where disheartened, lost interest in the franchise entirely or just clung to the old movies that where not made for mass consumerism, admittedly Return of the Jedi was a bit more centered on the mass audiences but even in that case you still hear people complain about the stupidity of Ewoks.
In retrospect anyone can tell you that the Star Wars prequels where a terrible idea, I just hope it does'nt cost Firaxis another 2 terrible games to figure out that they're alienating the core of people that play the game by making it more accessible for the new generation that I doubt will even make them most of the money, if you like action games and not thinking too much your not gonna be very inclined to play a game like Civilization anyway, with or without stacks of doom.
Similar threads
