I apologize in advance for the randomness of this post.
1. I was playing a HUGE map, Deity level, against 12 Civs. When my turn ended, I sat waiting for the other civs a minimum of 25 seconds, and sometimes 45 seconds. I have a 64-bit system with two processors and eight gig of RAM. Holy hell. In any given hour of game play I'm going to be sitting here for 30 to 40 minutes ... waiting? Is anyone else having this problem?
2. Unfortunately, that's not my biggest complaint about Deity. By turn 9 (yes, turn 9) Stonehenge had been built in a far away land. By turn 15 someone had the pyramids up. By turn 52 more than a dozen Wonders had been built, some in the Renaissance era. Civ used to be a strategy game. One of its best features was that there were multiple paths to victory. Civ V seems, at the higher levels, to be strictly a wargame. And because the AI can be defeated so easily, it's not much of a wargame. So I quit that game. I don't know if there was any way to actually win a science or cultural victory, I figured my only "strategy" was war. And I had wanted to see if I could do it without waging war. In Civ IV you could try and sit on the sidelines, avoiding skirmishes by offering techs or sending money gifts, hoping to eventually win a space race, or a cultural victory. But ... and I accept that I didn't even give it the ol' college try ... I lost my desire to play this particular game. I didn't think I would ever be able to catch up. I realize that at the hardest levels it's going to be hard ... but I should still feel like MAYBE I can do it my way. And I didn't. Has anyone won a Deity level game other than via war?
As an aside, I was able to destroy an enemy Pikeman with my Archer in one turn, but it took 3 turns to kill an enemy worker that was clogging a chokepoint because of the 1UPT. So now I keep workers out in "look out" positions for enemy armies. Especially near chokepoints. You can hold up an entire army with a handful of workers.
3. I DO understand that in an effort to make the map "beautiful" they wanted to get rid of all those roads that were required in previous Civs. But I DO NOT understand why I don't get the road bonus on a developed tile. In hilly terrain, it can take a worker 6 turns or more to move from one side of the city-spread to another. Not one of those farmers thought to build a road? Even if I don't see it, can't we all just agree it's there? This is actually one of my top issues with Civ V.
4. This is totally from a wish-list of mine. I've played Civ since the beginning. I always thought the only way to really make the war aspect of Civ fit into the broad landscape of the game, is to move the battle to a separate map. Two opposing units (or stacked armies even) meet ON THE SAME TILE and then that "battle" is fought on a separate map, with all the units spread out and one tile equals 100 yards or something like that. So I'm disappointed about that. I could look past it if the AI wasn't so bad.
5. I think Civ V was developed to be a multi-player game. Only. It doesn't play very well as a single player game. But if all the civs are human, then we're all in the same boat regarding all of the mechanics of the game. I don't really think they give a damn about any complaints made by single-player players.
6. I miss the feeling that I'm building a civilization. Often I'll look down at my mini-map and think my "civilization" looks just like a bunch of city-states. I don't really ever feel like I'm building a cohesive civilization. I just feel like I'm clicking this to achieve that so I can get to the next thing I have to click. Don't flame me about this. If you're having a great time, I'm happy for you.
Also, in previous Civs, I remember the sense of accomplishment I felt when I finally discovered Railroad. Now I could link my civilization by iron road! Often at this point in Civ 4 I would change my sliders more toward cultural, bring down science a bit. In Civ V, Railroad is just another stop along the way. You don't even need coal. Achieving Railroad is a HUGE step in history. Thomas Jefferson thought it might take seven generations to populate the western U.S. Then twenty years later the railroad is invented and it took barely two generations. This is a huge moment. But not in Civ V. It doesn't seem to have much meaning at all. And I miss it. At no point in Civ V do I have any sense of accomplishment or achievement. Even when I win.
7. The game just ends. I won a space race and BOOM. The game ended. Because I have to send my spaceship parts to my capitol, I right-clicked and sent what turned out to be the last piece off to my capitol four moves away. Then I continued playing. Then four turns later, I'm about to move another piece and BOOM. The game ends. I win. And then no victory dance, no replays, no stats. Just on to the next game, or not.
8. I'm fifty-one years old. I play strategy games instead of console games because I want to think and plan. I want choices because I have the luxury of time in a strategy game. I don't have to make a decision faster than I can blink. Civ IV had choices. Dozens and dozens of choices. Civ V seems to be much the same types of choices over and over. Three hundred turns in and it all gets to be a bit of a drag. I can't even build a farm where a horse is standing. I have to fence him in. That's not a choice. The game should just automatically fence him in as soon as my city-spread gets there.
9. I have NO idea why this game requires DirectX 11. It would be much, much faster as a tile-based game. You could even have 4 levels of tiles ... Far Away, Distant, Close, and Really Close (for those who like to count nose hairs). This isn't like a shoot-em-up where anything can pop up around the next corner. It's a hill. Just blit the hill onto the screen along with any improvements and let's get on with it.
10. I went back and played a game of Civ 4 BTS ... and didn't like it anymore. I missed being able to buy tiles. Now what am I going to do? I'm a man without a Civilization.
