1000 reasons why you're disappointed

Apart from the terrible AI, badly designed UI and the obvious bugs and obsolete building production in this game... apart from all that: what I don't get and what I'm amazed about is how little people are talking about the happiness and culture in this game.

Why do larger empires can get less social policies? Is there even a single reason for this? It sure as hell is not a realistic one.

Also they did a great job at happiness in CIV4. If you have buildings/bonuses to make 10 people happy, the eleventh would be unhappy and this limited your growth like it should.
In CIV5 you can have 150 happy civilians because of buildings, policies, wonders, luxuries but then if you get one more city to your empire suddenly EVERYBODY is unhappy. What is up with that? Like people in my capital care that much that we added another foreign city to the empire and are currently not so happy with that.

Perhaps most importantly, in what world do the luxury bonuses make sense? When you have 1 population it gives +5 happy. When you have 200 population it still gets +5 happy. Shouldn't there be some kind of increase in that happiness? I'm quite sure that if 1 person enjoyed one item that much, more than 5 people enjoy it out of 200 population.

Creating large empires is just the same routine every single time. Puppet some stuff, get your happiness up to get back in the game, then get your economy out of the drain because of all the maintenance and then be 3 ages further along in the game because research didn't stop and you were busy maintaining puppet states... heh.

Also in the category "why is nobody complaining about this", roads and unit movement. It just makes no sense at all that even in future era passing through an already improved hex such as a farm still takes up that much movement points. I like that not all hexes have a road on them but the ones that are improved could be given some kind of movement bonus halfway in the game right? Modern transportation and all that. This would make moving around other units in your territory be less frustrating as well.

No progress graphs. No end of game replay. No religion. No health. No leader traits. No culture flip.
No small font that doesn't take up half the screen displaying 4 items. No tactical AI. No diplomatic AI.
But worst of all: No strategic thought required.

man-erg said:

No progress graphs. No end of game replay. No religion. No health. No leader traits. No culture flip.
No small font that doesn't take up half the screen displaying 4 items. No tactical AI. No diplomatic AI.
But worst of all: No strategic thought required.

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Agreed. I couldn't believe that there wasn't an end-of-game replay. No espionage I can deal with. No flipping through culture? Why not. (statement, not a question). I find the interface so suitable for a XBOX360 or PS3 it isn't funny. I completely expect Firaxis to announce a version of Civ V for both consoles within 12 months. Seriously.

Once again, with another PC game, we have a complete and utter failure when it comes to (popular) published reviews of Civ V. Not a single reviewer yet has slammed the game for the bugs or lack of features in comparison to Civ IV. The only thing I could mention that would be anywhere close would be the instability some have had - I've seen that mentioned in some reviews. Gamespot even call it a "slick interface". IGN however do question some of the missing features from Civ IV to V and also question the boredom of dealing with the city states. Not really far enough IMO.

Sadan01 said:

No flipping through culture? Why not.

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Culture flipping seemed a realistic alternate strategy to war-mongering. Maybe that's why they removed it? I guess it could be added in a patch... It certainly reflects real life, thinking of various border cities that are a mix of 2 countries. e.g Strasbourg. Even more so, cities far away from the capital where the locals eventually revolt and go back to their original nation.

Sadan01 said:

I find the interface so suitable for a XBOX360 or PS3 it isn't funny. I completely expect Firaxis to announce a version of Civ V for both consoles within 12 months. Seriously.

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Please somebody release a mod that shrinks the font sizes! How come in Civ 4 all unit orders were visible and selectable, yet in Civ 5 we have an annoying sub-menu as buttons are much too big? Hiding something as useful as "Fortify" in a sub-menu is objectively bad UI design. It makes the NDS port simpler though.

Sadan01 said:

Once again, with another PC game, we have a complete and utter failure when it comes to (popular) published reviews of Civ V. Not a single reviewer yet has slammed the game for the bugs or lack of features in comparison to Civ IV.

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The industry has been doing this for years. Although Tom Chick gave what seems a fair review to me. He gave it a C.

Sadan01 said:

It makes me think more and more that Civilization V is, in a way, a reboot of the series. Maybe that isn't a bad thing as I have read a lot of comments from people that haven't played a Civilization game before and are loving this one. Let's hope Firaxis fix this one in quickly. Not all is lost.

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This is probably true. I do intend to give it a few weeks more, then go back to Civ 4 to see if I miss anything from Civ 5. Or it could be a Civ 3 thing, where a lot of good ideas were introduced, but implemented badly, waiting till 4 until being perfected.

..... No fast piece slide, no disabling of tedious combat animations, no wild animals, no wonder movies, no scenarios, no cannons that can fire further than archers, no vague guestimate of combat results pre-battle, no zoom out to very high level.....

Besides all that, I do like the hexes, fewer but bigger units and auto-loading of boats to move them. And I'm beginning to prefer the strategy map to the 3D world view as that is just a mush of confusion to me.

Sadan01 said:

[...]

I find the interface so suitable for a XBOX360 or PS3 it isn't funny. I completely expect Firaxis to announce a version of Civ V for both consoles within 12 months.

[...]

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... they'll probably wait for the fine modders in the community to fix the issues before they do that!

I agree with alot of what's been said here... but I am enjoying the game so far. Some of things don't make sense to me... or seem arbitrary..

I'd like to see annexed cities happiness penalty eventually go away if you hold the city long enough... I mean if you capture a city and hold it for a thousand years you gotta think that at some point the culture has assimilated to some extent.. assuming there isn't pressure from their original culture constantly pressuring them.

For me though the two biggest complaints I had before reading any forums are pretty nitpicky:
*Culture Bomb - what?? I don't care about the mechanics of what it does, but just how they named it.. Culture Bomb? Whatever happened to Great Work of Art or Create a Masterpiece or whatever they called it.. just something that is at least internally consistent...
*A rival leader poppd up and said "We are tired of your greed at collecting all the wonders of the world" Again... this seemed so... meta-gamey.. how about "You show too much pride with your construction of great wonders. Do you think you are better than us?"; or something like that? Something internally consistent.
This makes think of when a tv series runs so long that it is eventually being written by fans-made-writers and the original writers are long gone. This isn't a game about civilizations, it's a game about a game of civilizations.
I know, these are silly complaints, but I believe they are indicative of the "attitude" and "feel" of Civ V.. along with the "great people are cool" in the Civilopedia.

On the Civilopedia.. ignoring the writing for a monent and the unhelpful info contained, is anyone else having a hard time navigating it? In Civ IV I felt like everything was a hyperlink.. I could get lost in it like in Wikipedia, constantly linking to new things. If I was researching my Civ's special unit, I could link the unit that it replaced in case I wanted to know what the differences were.

In Civ V, I just get a bit of text Samurai replaces Swordsman. Want to know about the swordsman? Go look it up.
I was trying to find out how trade routes worked and when i searched "trade routes" I got a paragraph that ended with "For more information, see the section on trade routes" Really? Ya think? And where might that be? Mind you that text was not a link.

So I have mixed feelings.. I am enjoying playing it.. I really like the non-stacking units and ranged attack.. although don't like that an archer can shoot further than a rifleman... but something here files childish, immature... for a long running series in it's 5th iteration, "immature" is not what I would have expected.

Buggy, maybe. Unbalanced, sure. But immature? If anything the concepts and general gameplay should be solid.. the interface should be polished. We shouldn't be missing things like the in-game clock and the end game replay...

And if it is because they want to market to kids.. well I have news for you, most of us started playing these games as kids.. kids don't usually want things that are "for kids"

One observation on the color scheme. I'm color blind, and the screen looks washed out to me. The graphics on Civ IV are much easier for me to follow. I could use some sort if marker to make things stand out better (but that might destroy the pastoral quality of the screen).

Having played for a while now, I really miss the vassalage-option. I used to conquer all but 1 of the cities of my foes - and then making that faction my trophy-. 'Pact of Cooperation' doesn't have the same schwung over it, and they won't give me everything I crave at my say-so.