Civilization 5 Rants Thread

Here's what I hate.

[capsrant_on]

WHO THE HELL WAS F*&$^@ STUPID ENOUGH TO FORCE YOU TO MAKE EVERY DAMN UNIT HAVE ORDERS! LIKE I GIVE A DAMN ABOUT A STUPID WORKER THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO. WHY DO I HAVE TO FORCE THROUGH 10 UNIT SLEEP COMMANDS EACH TURN!!

MORONS!!!!!!
[/capsrant]

And don't get me started on the useless cow resources.
 
More on Topic, now that I've realized I can get a rant out...

How is it that everything in civ 5 is so shallow? I mean, statistically, shouldn't they have been able to add some depth on accident? Like oops, turns out that trade route system ended up having impressive emergent gameplay factors!

But no. it doesn't. It's like a team of ignoramous monkeys were tasked with the job to subvert the pleasure of the player into a grind house of tedium.

Whew. That felt good. Okay one more.

Who on EARTH patches a game with these kinds of balance changes? The game is literally falling apart at the seems due to internal balancing issues (like victory conditions not being equally viable, much less fun) (or better yet, most buildings being worthless) and instead of fixing those... they nerf certain strategies.

It's like giving your sinking boat a new coat of paint. YOU ARE FIXING THE WRONG THINGS! Heck, even then... you don't even have multiplayer set up. Balance is a concept that only those who enjoy the base product will give 2 shii... er, I still can't swear can I? okay, suffice to say then that Balance is something only people who already enjoy the game will worry about. I mean, I don't want to buy your DLC civ 5. I don't want your maps or new civs. Not while I think the game is shallower than the kiddy pool at a smurf Hotel.
 
... the game is shallower than the kiddy pool at a smurf Hotel.
Welcome to Civ:Rev for the PC

... It'll be ported to consoles to make it even more lucrative and then onto Smart Phones ... who needs immersion when you have these other more "interesting" ways to play.

This is what happened to "The Sims" ... even the latest version - Sims 3, is on the iphone now ... sheesh.

... this is the direction that Civilization development has decided to take. The fear was seeded with Civ:Rev; how could you put it on a "console". It was confirmed when I got Civ 4:Colonization, too much clicking and micro-management and then when I finally got Civ 5 my hopes of a great game was dashed.

... no worries ... Civilization 5 may live on on the iphone ... a mere shadow of it's former self. A $1.99 app "click the ticket" winner for the publisher ... but the end of a wonderful franchise ... destroyed for the almighty dollar ... i.e. compatible for many platforms.
 
I was really not impressed with what Civ5 had to offer, the new combat system felt like a clunky, turn based version of the Total War games. And it takes just as long to complete one match as it does to sit through the entire period of history that the game covers.

But i'm not too pissed off with it, for all it's flaws i had a bit of fun with the game. And some of the new mods are pretty interesting, but the time i had fun with the game was about an hour. Until i got bored and just slipped in Victoria 2, which despite also being a broken game (Great Britain is TOO powerful) was at least deep, interesting and FUN. I didn't have to sit around for hours waiting for the goddamn enemy to expand into my territoty, i could just go and kill something.

Also, the game is unplayable on the larger maps, and that sucks for me. Since i REALLY like my gigantic maps. Also, the AI is boring to play against. They never attack, ever. They just sit around like dumbasses waiting for me to kill them, which is also easy because the AI is freaking braindead. You don't really have to form a strategy just spam one unit over and over again and you'll win pretty quickly.

But most of all, i hate this game because Civilization IV was such an amazing title. I hold it as one of the greatest Strategy games i've ever played, and it sucks that the Sequel was so poorly handled. Another thing that really annoys me is the selection of countries, who wants to play as the stock Civs like England, France and Russia when you can play as a country that dosen't appear in many strategy games. Scotland, Austria and the under appreciated South American countries are rarely seen in Strategy games. The Songhai and Siam mix things up a bit, but other than them, all we have is the same sh*t all over again. It really dosen't look very spectacular.
 
When the game seems to lock up or move to slow at times, I hit the 'W' key (Wait) and this seems to speed it up. I typically do this after combat as my unit will sit there for 4-5 seconds before giving focus to the next thing...

I gave this a try and it really works. Hitting W will stop the slowdown after you bombard something. Hopefully the devs will become aware of this as it should lead them to a solution to stop this stupid problem.

In the mean time, the above post should circulated to help kill a little frustration.
 
It did acutally. I spotted this just before I grabbed a hammer to let my pc know how frustrated I was.
 
id say the fact that the game seems unfinished, or maybe its just dulled down? dont like having to go through steam. at any rate the constant crashes havent helped me enjoy the newest version of civ in any way.

sure there are (poor)work arounds, but why should i have to play small maps or in windowed mode?

Make the best quality of goods possible(civ 5= fail) at the lowest cost possible(civ 5= fail, but $50-60 seems the norm), paying the highest wages possible(probably not fail).
 
Maybe this is a 'little' bit of a rant thread and maybe I do need to let off some steam but really... I mean come on is it too much to ask for a challenging difficulty level without just giving the AI the starting equivalent of 50 Spanish FOY?

I just played about 15 games on Immortal, all of which were abandoned by turn 100 or so... heres what happened:

AIs just ICS and Warrior spamming and making random unprovoked DOWs.

Every game!!!

Sure, it was good the major patch stopped mindless horse rushing and ICS, but the AI can still (and does) ICS as much as it likes, thanks to incredible amounts of extra happiness.

The result is being hopeless behind in both tech, land population and soldiers by turn 100.

I tried various strategies: National College Rush, Rex, Warrior Rushing, Horse Rushing, and nothing can keep up.

Sure, it maybe playable if you can kill your closest neighbor early, but now that early combat is unnecessarily difficult, I can't see how you can do this, especially if you have a crappy start, or no iron, or w/e.

Only reasonable strategy I can see is a cheesy Mongol rush, which basically takes us back to a slightly calmed pre patch game...

I give up...

Moderator Action: Merged into Rants thread.
 
the ai is borken so they give them huge modifers, and cheats at high lvl. oh and I agree with your post this game is garbage.
 
Maybe this is a 'little' bit of a rant thread and maybe I do need to let off some steam but really... I mean come on is it too much to ask for a challenging difficulty level without just giving the AI the starting equivalent of 50 Spanish FOY?

I just played about 15 games on Immortal, all of which were abandoned by turn 100 or so... heres what happened:

AIs just ICS and Warrior spamming and making random unprovoked DOWs.

Every game!!!

Sure, it was good the major patch stopped mindless horse rushing and ICS, but the AI can still (and does) ICS as much as it likes, thanks to incredible amounts of extra happiness.

The result is being hopeless behind in both tech, land population and soldiers by turn 100.

I tried various strategies: National College Rush, Rex, Warrior Rushing, Horse Rushing, and nothing can keep up.

Sure, it maybe playable if you can kill your closest neighbor early, but now that early combat is unnecessarily difficult, I can't see how you can do this, especially if you have a crappy start, or no iron, or w/e.

Only reasonable strategy I can see is a cheesy Mongol rush, which basically takes us back to a slightly calmed pre patch game...

I give up...

This is what happens when the AI plays like a human....
 
This is what happens when the AI plays like a human....

Although the AI is using a 'human' tactic, ICS, its not playing like a human because it can always do it better because of its happiness bonus.

I would have no problem with an AI ICS if it was on equal footing.
 
These levels are supposed to be hard. Some players can beat them.

Now that that's out of the way, I've been meaning to edit out the AI happiness bonuses from the xml to see what effect that would have on the game. Has anybody tried this?
 
Yes this is truly just a rant thread.

So you seriously think the AI was going to "outplay" you on those difficulties?. No it receives huge bonuses. If you don't like it go down a level, these levels exist for people who like to min/max and se how much they can abuse the system or find loopholes to beat the huge bonuses the AI receives. Not to play the game like it's meant to be played.

If you play on diety/immortal you just have to accept that the AI plays by different rules then you do. You can't expect to outrace, outtech or expand better then them, you just have to learn to abuse the game mechanisms better.
 
yeah

that's why civ single player has always been kind of a joke. it has its challenges but it's mainly about exploiting stupidity and memorizing AI behaviors
 
yeah

that's why civ single player has always been kind of a joke. it has its challenges but it's mainly about exploiting stupidity and memorizing AI behaviors

I think you summed up Ankh's post very well there.

I don't really consider playing to exploit AI programming as a great game.

Harder difficulty levels without stupid handicaps can be done.

Take computer chess for example, its not like a hard AI starts with 5 queens, which is effectively whats happening here!
 
I think you summed up Ankh's post very well there.

I don't really consider playing to exploit AI programming as a great game.

Harder difficulty levels without stupid handicaps can be done.

Take computer chess for example, its not like a hard AI starts with 5 queens, which is effectively whats happening here!

Perhaps its a bit like that, but theres a huge difference, chess has been mastered by computers and mathematics to the point where it is impossible for some computer programs (Rybka 4 for example) to lose a set of games, even to a grand master. CiV is much more complicated than chess, to create an AI which can master the different aspects of the game without "cheating" would take enormous amounts of computer power and man hours of programming, it simply isn't feasible right now to expect a perfect AI which can play smarter than you without exploits
 
Perhaps its a bit like that, but theres a huge difference, chess has been mastered by computers and mathematics to the point where it is impossible for some computer programs (Rybka 4 for example) to lose a set of games, even to a grand master. CiV is much more complicated than chess, to create an AI which can master the different aspects of the game without "cheating" would take enormous amounts of computer power and man hours of programming, it simply isn't feasible right now to expect a perfect AI which can play smarter than you without exploits

I agree with that, but, I think we can agree it would be nice if it was possible.

Maybe its just because handicaps seem so sloppy in a detailed strategy game like civ!
 
Trust me Kamex I would like a smarter AI as well, but it just isn't possible with a complex game like civ. From what I have come to understand why an AI in civ can't be as good as for example chess are:

1. The Board changes each Game (random map)
2. The Pieces changes each Game (promotions, new units)
3. The Rules changes each game (game setup)

Now if we had a fixed map and a fixed setup I would assume it would be pretty easy to script a relative decent AI. But then we would have a pretty limited game.

Also game development time isn't focused to much to polish the last difficult levels because very few play on them. People like to win, if they start to lose they lose interest and move on to something else. Its basic game design. A few people (me) like to be challenged and sometimes lose but we are in the minority.

So without the possibility to create a good AI at the higher level, game developers are forced to use the rather "sloppy" handicap solution, not because they want to. Because they simply have no other choice.
 
Take computer chess for example, its not like a hard AI starts with 5 queens, which is effectively whats happening here!

if you played chess vs ai you'd be complaining about that as well... they play nothing like humans, they just brute force calculate and weigh every possibility for the next x amount of moves, then choose the highest weight (best move).

i do think it's unfortunate that the ai basically has to cheat to be competitive, but i also realize it's near impossible to mimic human behavior in any somewhat complex game. hopefully they do keep improving the ai.
 
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