Civilization 5 Rants Thread

PhilBowles said:

From what I can gather, most of the most ardent opponents of Civ V began the series with Civ 4, so only have that as a reference point. People who've seen it change through multiple iterations have more of an idea of what the core game has always focused on and the way the mechanics have changed to accommodate that, rather than seeing mainly the mechanical differences between the two most recent versions.


what is really impressive regarding the really old players/fans of civ series, is that instead of explaining the flaws of the current game and point out the problems/issues, they have a tendency to justify everything "for the sake of old times"....
it's like having a fatherhood love....
for example, I haven't fount at least one decent answer to the problem of diplomacy. But strangely, the old fans don't feel this is a problem for the rationality of the game. Instead, they are happy because "they saw what the developers were trying to do..." But, is this the case after all? is the intention enough?

my belief is that especially the old fans should be the first here to enlighten the others or they should be more demanding because they can really see there favorite game to losing the grasp....

Click to expand...

Rivaldo said:

PhilBowles said:

From what I can gather, most of the most ardent opponents of Civ V began the series with Civ 4, so only have that as a reference point. People who've seen it change through multiple iterations have more of an idea of what the core game has always focused on and the way the mechanics have changed to accommodate that, rather than seeing mainly the mechanical differences between the two most recent versions.


what is really impressive regarding the really old players/fans of civ series, is that instead of explaining the flaws of the current game and point out the problems/issues, they have a tendency to justify everything "for the sake of old times"....
it's like having a fatherhood love....
for example, I haven't fount at least one decent answer to the problem of diplomacy.

Click to expand...

This might relate to the vagueness of this statement. Which particular problem? This is a particularly difficult issue to comment on without specifics in Civ V, as there are a great many complaints about diplomacy that come down to people not being familiar with the system. On the other hand, there are serious inherent problems with the game's execution of much of the diplomacy. The trick is in separating the two.

For instance, "the AI randomly declares war" is a player problem. The AI is, indeed, more aggressive than in Civ IV - this appears to be designed so that players are forced to engage in diplomacy, rather than treat it as the optional extra it amounted to in Civ IV. However, there are reliable ways to mitigate this, and the AI's behaviour usually relates to the specific pluses and minuses it has accumulated regarding you. So, it's not random and it can be managed. The key is knowing how to use DoFs and denunciations, the two new elements of the diplomacy system - it's no longer about what you do to appease Civ X if they're best friends with Civ Y and don't like the way you've treated them.

However, as I noticed was pointed out in one of the posts above, it can be unreasonably difficult to manage at times. This is not a player problem, because it relates to specifics in the implementation of the system: there are many negative modifiers, but few positive ones. There are negative modifiers for things largely or completely outside the player's control ("They want the same Wonder"). The single biggest predictor of war seems to be 'our borders are too close' - which is much too severe a penalty when you can't avoid having a border with at least one other civ, and usually early in the game.

In a game that's designed so heavily around diplomacy that it actively shoves it in your face every few turns ('Open Borders/Declaration of Friendship/trade agreement has expired - time to renew.' 'You are about to lose favour with City State X'. 'You've been ignoring me lately, so I think I'll declare war on you'), and that's trying to sell itself on improving its credentials as a strategy game more than as a Europa Universalis-style sandbox, putting important elements of the diplomacy system beyond the player's control is simply bad design.

Hopefully much of this will be rectified with the addition of (presumably positive as well as negative) modifiers relating to religion, establishing embassies, and intelligence trading in the expansion.

Similarly, there are plenty of flaws in other aspects of execution. Research agreements are widely recognised to be too exploitable, as are any deals made with the AI for gold because it is unable to recognise what constitutes a good trade. There was no very obvious reason to remove Civ's age-old map trading system, which would work fine within the current diplomacy system.

But strangely, the old fans don't feel this is a problem for the rationality of the game.

Click to expand...

What do you mean by the "rationality of the game"? There wasn't anything terribly rational about the diplomacy in previous Civ games - you declare war on someone, you can launch attacks on them while they're sitting in their best friend's city, with no diplomatic repercussions. Probably it's more noticeable (to you) in Civ V because the diplomacy system is apparently intended to act rationally in a way it never was before, and it's programmed with an AI that simply isn't up to the more complex tasks it's been given.

Instead, they are happy because "they saw what the developers were trying to do..." But, is this the case after all? is the intention enough?

Click to expand...

It's less the intention than the basic game engine that matters. If the game engine is flawed, it should be scrapped for the next edition and wouldn't be salvageable with an expansion. That's not obviously the case with Civ V.

my belief is that especially the old fans should be the first here to enlighten the others or they should be more demanding because they can really see there favorite game to losing the grasp....

Click to expand...

Surely pointing out unfounded assumptions or mistakes based on only a few games' experience with Civ V does qualify as "enlightening the others"?

As for being more demanding, that's a matter of perspective. We're demanding from the perspective of people who have seen Civ through several incarnations and want it to be as good as it can be. This is not the same as being demanding from the perspective of someone who has seen only Civ IV and thinks that it was the model of Civ perfection.

I've played Civ 4 a lot. I like it a lot. But I miss build-your-own castles on We Love the King Day. I miss diplomacy that can actually go wrong if you make a bad demand/decision rather than one that spoonfeeds you only the options the other side will accept. I miss coming upon a tribal village and worrying that it might spawn a bunch of barbarians, because in the gentle, happy land of Civ IV only good things come out of tribal villages. I miss barbarian spawns that actually make sense, with barbarians travelling from settlements or rising up in revolt if your city became too unhappy, rather than randomly spawning a barbarian at the borders of your territory every few minutes. (Sadly, Civ 5 still doesn't have hostile villages or castles. And when you're starting all the world's civs from scratch, it's stupid to come across 'ancient ruins' all over the landscape. What was wrong with calling them tribal villages?)

I know that there are things Civ IV retained that were irritants throughout much of the game's history, among them stack combat and transport ships.

I feel there are changes made in Civ IV that were for the worse. Maintenance removed individual unit or building maintenance costs, drastically oversimplifying (in my view) micro-level decision making on what to produce where/when, and didn't have much payoff to show for it. It's credited with killing ICS, however it was maintenance in combination with a 7-square limit on city placement that did that - maintenance for cities within your core territory was trivial. Health was a replacement for the very artificial population caps of earlier Civ games, which Civ IV was right to dispense with. Yet it was a failed mechanic - the only Civ game with a mechanic actively designed to stall population growth was the only one in which you could routinely build pop 30+ cities. Religion is beloved for the diplomacy modifier, neglecting the fact that this was only one of its effects - the others were mostly more badly thought-out, and could be unbalancing when religion was required to unlock several key buildings. I never liked corporations. I disliked the way the 'personalities' that were supposed to make Civ 4 AI Civs distinctive, while a good idea, did so by basically forcing the personality routine to overrule the player's diplomatic efforts. I disliked the replacement of Civ-specific abilities from Civs II and III with 'mix and match' leader traits, though liked the addition of unique units and buildings.

And on top of that, I feel there are elements of Civ IV (and some previous Civ games) which seemed okay at the time, but which experience with Civ V makes me feel the series is better without. Civics were a nice idea and an advance over the static government systems of the previous games - but social policies make me realise how restrictive they were, not just in terms of the number of abilities they unlocked, but also in the fact that (like all previous Civ government systems) they were tied to specific technology, forcing you down a given tech path. In all previous versions of Civ, Monarchy was the go-to technology of the early game, whatever your strategy, and Civ IV's civics amplified this trend by being somewhat poorly-balanced - some options (including Hereditary Rule) were always or nearly always no-brainers. I'd never considered a Civ government system unrelated to technology, but now that we have one it's an improvement.

I've mentioned that the universal happiness mechanic as now handled seems a lot less restrictive in how it's managed than its predecessors; I always accepted city-level happiness as a Civ fact of life, but it's not something I'd particularly want to go back to now. I didn't like the idea of Great People, mostly from a thematic point of view, in Civ IV (I was guilty of much of the same elitism I see now towards Civ V - adding 'heroes' and unit experience, to me, felt like dumbing down Civ IV for the arcade-game masses compared with its predecessors. Needless to say I was as wrong with my take on that as the same crowd are about Civ V), but the execution is generally better in Civ V (the exception being the Great Scientist, which is overpowered) and I look forward to getting them; the fact that they can no longer all be used to research a tech makes them much more useful for their specific abilities, and helps make the different types feel much more distinct, and I prefer the improvement idea to adding them as super-specialists; again with more specialised bonuses that help to distinguish them more from one another.

All of which means, in short, that I'm looking at Civ V to see what it can bring to Civilization as a series, not at how well it copies Civ IV, which was just one iteration in the series. Quite possibly the strongest to date, but nonetheless a game with many of its own flaws. I see a lot in Civ V that actively sets out to address many of those - and yes, it does get partial credit for that. It gets more for getting many of those changes right.

The result, of course, is that Civ V is far from perfect too - but I've lived with Civ games that were far from perfect since the mid 1990s (the original Civilization, naturally, being wholly flawless...). So I know what to demand of it, but also that realistically perfection isn't going to happen with Civ V any more than it did with Civ IV.

Moderator Action: Use this thread for ranting, not for discussing.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Aristos said:

Please stop flooding the Rants thread with the wordy defense of civ5 and simultaneous bashing of civ 4. This is the civ 5 Rants thread.

Reported.

Click to expand...

PhilBowles said:

The above was in response to a specific query.

Click to expand...

firecat318 said:

My biggest beef with the game is the diplomacy. The AI just has no sense of it. One turn they will want to offer me a pact of cooperation. I mis-click on accident and then ask them if they want one. They say no it's not in their best interest. Another example: Gandhi will come asking if I want to join him in a war against Elizabeth, I say no because I don't feel like getting in a war. 1 turn later I will ask Gandhi if he wants to go to war against Elizabeth and he says "No, we've already been through this before, the answer is still no."

Another thing that really pisses me off is when the AI settles right on your borders just because there is a luxury resource there or because it has a wheat tile or something else. Then they will blame you for being too close to them and eventually they will declare war. I just wish you could somehow have peace with another civ even if you were inferior militarily wise and if you bordered them. Imagine the USA and Canada - Canada has a tiny military compared to the United States, but the United States doesn't invade them just because they're weak and they present an easy target. It's called mutual cooperation and something this game needs. Perhaps creating a road from your capital to another AI's capitol would allow trade between the two civs.

Click to expand...

BubbaYeti said:

Dislike:

3) no health (this was a neat governor on city pop. growth in civ iv)

Click to expand...

You're looking at it the wrong way, I think - there's still a governor on city pop growth in the global happiness mechanic; that's not gone just because it's no longer treated at city scale. Health in Civ 4 was a nice idea, but when the one instalment of the franchise with a 'soft' population control measure, until Civ V (rather than artificial 12-pop limits etc.) was also the only one where you could easily maintain pop 30+ cities, and get there quickly, you really have to conclude that health simply wasn't up to the job.

4) no city maintenance cost or corruption (this limited number of cities in earlier versions of civ)

Click to expand...

Again, the same mechanic is there, it's just handled at global rather than city-scale. City limitation is generally stronger than it was in past versions of the game. Corruption, like health, didn't work. Maintenance only worked in combination with the 7-square city limit rule, since spamming cities was trivial otherwise and, in Civ 4, gold wasn't really useful for anything except covering city maintenance costs - so you could happily run on negative income as long as you had gold stored. ICS is gone in Civ 5, it was gone in Civ 4 - the mechanics of how that's achieved is less relevant.

6) no replay function after winning (and lame victory screen)

Click to expand...

Yes, I still get taken aback when it just goes straight to the victory screen, and not only is it not accompanied by a movie, there isn't even an end-game picture.

whb said:

Things I reckon were implemented poorly. (See the other thread for things I reckon were good ideas).

1. Buy your way to victory. "Cash is king" is an old problem from Civ 1 and 2 (where you could literally buy your opponents' cities), but it's back in Civ5. I can buy land before my neighbour earns it, buy city states for cash and troops, buy buildings all the time...

Click to expand...

I've read that buying CSes is out in the expansion, which is good. Though in Civ V you usually want to try the quests simply because you'll want your gold for all the other things at higher levels. In principle you can buy anything, but unless you just want to exploit the game's AI and trade everything for gold, you are going to have to make hard decisions on what to spend that valuable gold on. If I'm buying CS favour, can I afford to upgrade my troops? If I want this land, can I afford this research agreement? To maximise my income, how should I limit/focus my building and unit production? And while gold is now farmed one-to-one, unlike Civs 1 and 2 you don't have an unlimited cash reserve that you can tap into just by moving the slider.

I agree it's possible they went too far - I'm not sure about the land-buying system, the designers clearly recognise the CS exploitability issue, and above all research agreements are over the top. But I think gold needed to be made more important than it was in Civ 4, where spare gold only existed to cover any maintenance income deficit, allowing you to run giant armies or excess cities at a loss.

2. Strict 1UPT. Just too hard for an AI to cope with, with a knock-on effect that while they devs were trying to solve that one they weren't putting as much effort into the AI's higher strategy.

Click to expand...

Certainly too hard for this AI to cope with. It remains to be seen if it's fixable. But it's not just 1UPT - a core problem with the AI is its inflexibility, which makes it do very strange things strategically. I was facing a large AI army close to my third city, Muang Saluang. I'd have held the city against it but the army could have done some damage. Instead the AI seemed intent on domination victory, so it instead started moving that army past the third city up towards Sukothai. The result? My army caught up and wiped them out before they got there.

Same game: Rome was at war with me and Denmark, but gave priority to attacking a Danish city, even when I had damaged units that were easy prey - I could have lost much of my army. Instead I lost one unit, and that to a Babylonian crossbowman.

They'll launch attacks with one or two units against a CS, and then keep doing so. Or just wander around getting shot without doing anything. Rome wasted an army of Pikemen just walking around Warsaw while they got killed by the city.

And let's not even start on the AI's complete inability to get to grips with the whole embarking-disembarking thing.

Non-strict 1UPT (eg, a "crowding" combat penalty) and a higher maintenance cost for units would have both been more suitable for an AI and allowed more interesting decisions (do I stack a unit on top of that damaged one, risking my other unit with a crowding combat penalty in order to protect the wounded?)

Click to expand...

I like the idea of a stacking penalty - better than other stacking ideas I've heard. Maintenance costs wouldn't affect the way the AI plays, because of another poor design feature in Civ V - when you run out of cash, you don't have to sacrifice anything, you just start losing science (though I hear that you do lose one unit a turn if you have negative income and no reserve). The AI already runs its giant armies by exploiting this mechanic - higher maintenance with the current AI would just mean their giant armies are of slightly more primitive units.

3. Unimpressive resources. There are very few tiles where it makes a meaningful difference whether I beat my neighbour to them or not. Even losing your fishing boats just costs a bit of cash not food.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I'd agree with this, as tile harvests are lower to begin with. A resource adds at least +1 something, and improving it an additional +1, for an improvement generally of 33-50% of tile income - plus extra benefits as you develop technologies. This looks to be expanded further in the expansion, where it will make a difference whether a resource improvement is, e.g., a camp (which I believe gives +1 food with the Goddess of the Hunt pantheon member).

In any Civ game, however, the context of the landscape is what matters more than the individual resource tiles. In my last game, for instance, I got an early commerce city because there happened to be a river with three nearby sources of sugar - so I settled a second city there, specifically for the gold bonus from multiple sugar tiles (I already had sugar as a trade resource from my capital). The bonuses can add up.

4. Mundane city states. They don't actually do that much and just keep spamming requests for the same (uninspiring) "missions".

Click to expand...

You'd be surprised. The mission system could work better (and reportedly will in the expansion - in particular they won't get 'locked' on "Destroy CS X" for most of the game, since they can offer multiple quests at once). As objectives and game-relevant features, however, CSes can really come into their own at high levels. I've had Tyre become a prize possession following its conquest of a second CS (two votes, after all, plus extra resources). Sydney capturing three enemy cities, including Mecca. Those both in the same game. They're often good defensive buffers if you have an ally at your border. Then of course they're a good way to shore up happiness, they can provide useful later-game strategic resources (and sometimes the valuable early-game iron if you find yourself lacking it), and you can squeeze several more advantages out of them - principally science and Great People - with the Patronage tree. Of course they also influence diplomatic relations because someone, at some stage, is going to be after the same CS you are.

5. Mundane diplomacy. In Civ 4, religion had the handy effect of putting the player into some tough choices -- you couldn't easily be on happy terms with everyone. Your internal[/I choices affected diplomacy, as did trading with the enemy. And when other teams acquired a religion and how they were distributed dramatically changed the diplomatic landscape from game to game. In Civ 5, I can basically ignore diplomacy with very little impact.

Click to expand...

I found I could ignore diplomacy with very little impact in Civ 4. Religion? At most a -4 modifier, generally somewhat less; by the time you have a religion this will be more than outweighed from passive positives from open borders and trade. No one seemed to much care who your allies and enemies were, to the extent that I could attack my best friend's ally in my best friend's own cities and get no negatives. In other games I've just opened borders and traded, and then completely ignored diplomacy for the rest of the game, despite having a different religion from my neighbours.

In Civ V, by contrast, I just lost a game by not engaging sufficiently in diplomacy with the Babylonians, and by neglecting the fact that my longstanding alliance with Denmark annoyed most of the rest of the world (since the Danes had declared war with everyone, and so I got the 'You have a Declaration of Friendship with our enemies' penalty). Even when I could secure DoFs from other powers, such as Russia and, eventually, India, the persistent negatives from such earlier actions as alliance with Denmark and contests for the same city-states meant that I couldn't get particularly favourable deals from them - and in particular couldn't persuade them to intervene in wars on my behalf, which people will only tend to do in Civ V if both happy with you and bribed in advance.

It's quite possible you're comparing apples to oranges - I played Civ 4 at Prince or thereabouts when happily attacking Aztecs in Portuguese cities. I play Civ V at Emperor for the most part - at levels below King, at least, diplomacy isn't any more relevant in Civ V than in my experience of Civ IV.

6. Social policies. The social policy mechanic is just a repeat of unit promotions. In all previous Civs, including Alpha Centauri you'd find yourself often wanting to change course mid-stream (have a revolution to warmonger for a bit, etc). In Civ 5, once you've started down a path you might as well just keep going -- decisions are permanent with no penalties and made early.

Click to expand...

The penalty is opportunity cost, just as with Civ 4 civics or different governments in earlier civs. Late in the game I was wanting to choose Autocracy as my fifth policy branch, since I was in a long-running war; however I wasn't prepared to sacrifice Freedom, which was giving me important culture bonuses. And every policy you take from, say, Tradition is one you can't take from Liberty. You aren't locked in to finishing a policy branch once you start unless playing for culture victory - most of the 'finisher' bonuses aren't strong enough to devote five policies (plus a policy opener) to unless you want that particular branch.

It could certainly be better-balanced (a major reason I wanted Autocracy was actually because I've never completed that policy branch. With good reason since it removes your bonuses from two of the most valuable policy branches and its own policies aren't that great), but then so could civics (the only time you don't take Hereditary Rule is when you've researched Representation - and then only sometimes). But ultimately any strategy game is about trade-offs, and the biggest trade-off is always the opportunity cost. In Civ 4 you only care about the maintenance cost of civics if you're running your economy badly - it's always about what else you could be using instead.

7. Game engine. I get the feeling that because they had to write their own engine this time (rather than just using Gamebryo) they had less time for the remaining development, and the game engine is horribly slow on laptops too!

Click to expand...

Tell me about it.

Left Foot said:

There's a reasonable explanation for this. Gandhi is a paranoid schizophrenic. You see, when you refused to help him in his war, that was fine, no biggie. Sure, maybe some of his troops died a gruesome horrible death being impaled by rusty farm implements because you weren't there to help, but that's OK. However, when you came back a turn later and asked for his help against Elizabeth, that's where the problems started.

Gandhi must have thought to himself, "Wait a second, didn't I offer that to him a minute ago and he said no? Why would he offer the same thing to me now? That doesn't make sense. No one changes his mind that quickly for no reason. Unless... Unless... Unless he was the one that offered it to me in the first place, and I said no, and I'm confused now. Did I take my pills yesterday? I think I did. Or maybe I didn't. Didn't I? Damn... I don't remember. If I say yes now, he's going to think I'm unbalanced and erratic. Must keep a firm line. Must say no again. That's it, no."

Hence his "No, we've already been through this before, the answer is still no." He actually believes he said no the first time.

Click to expand...

That's certainly the best explanation I've seen for that... On a serious note it would be nice to see it fixed, however. That and 'we're friends now' the moment you declare peace with anyone.

In my last game I got Nebuchadnezzar's "Hah, I'm backstabbing you and only pretending to be your friend" message. Really? And here I was thinking it might have something to do with the fact that you resented me razing three of your cities, capturing one, forcing you into a peace treaty, making deals with your enemies, and the fact that generally you had only neutral or negative modifiers towards me, no positives. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that you weren't really my friend for those few turns your status said "Friendly".

EDIT: Hang on, this wasn't in the Rants thread when I started writing it...

Moderator Action: ...not believable. So, like said, this is the rants thread, not a discussion thread.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

PhilBowles said:

You're looking at it the wrong way, I think
[CUT]

Click to expand...

lietkynes said:

You don't get it, do you ?
This is not a discussion thread...

Click to expand...

Target MC said:

Still nothing worthy of mention coming out of Civilization V.

The apparent flaws and simplifying of the system mechanics are still there. One year and a half after it's initial release date.

Diplomacy, still lacking in depth.

I'm not sure what older Civ fans are waiting for.

Click to expand...