Rate Civ V

I haven't played Civ in about 2 years but I'm looking into getting back into playing it as I have more free time now. I've made this poll where you can rate Civ V on a scale of 1-10 1 being the lowest and 10 being the best score. This will help me and any others who still haven't bought Civ V decide if we should. As always comments about why you gave it a rating are welcome.

Rated it a 5. When I see a game coming out, I expect it to be a 10. Why wouldn't it be? Civ5 has bug issues, AI problems, and balance issues on release. For a game as widely advertised and promoted to be the flagship of the Civ series, it really was disappointing to see that once again a civ game had plenty of issues upon release. However, I have been living with bugs, crappy AI, and balance issues in gaming for years, things like that only disappoint me, they don't ruin the game.

This lowers my score to a 8.5. The big game breaker for me is lack of immersion. I can't play a single game, and feel like I'm ruling an empire. Every game feels like I'm playing a strategy game with a historical theme. The AI also plays to win, making it as unpredictable as a drunken man with a gun. I can't have a relationship with the AI because I know it will just backstab me as I pursue my goal in winning the game. I don't even want to try to win in Civ, until the late game, but Civ5 forces you to pick a winning goal early on, and then stick with it. There's no immersive value in pursuing victory at the start of a game. My every move in the game becomes controlled by the fact that if I don't try to win at my chosen victory type, then I'm going to lose. I feel like I only get to make one choice, choosing my victory goal, and then the game plays out the rest for me. The lack of immersion brings my score down to a 6.

Finally I take away another point because so much of what Fraxis could have done, wasn't done. Fraxis could have improved diplomacy, but it remains the same old, with a crazy AI controlling it. City states are nice and all, but I don't consider then part of diplomacy. Diplomacy, the weakest point in Civ, has once again returned as its weakest point. Fraxis could have improved a whole number of aspects to civ building, but instead they chose combat, which in my opinion was a bad idea. Combat didn't need much improvement. There were other more pressing matters.

So it ads up to a 5. Its an ok game. I can play it every now and then, but it just gets boring after a while. It feels like any other average game I would pick up at the store, not Civ.

I rated it a 5, which was a little unfair but I wanted to steer you away from buying Civ V as Civilization IV is so much better.

Stick with IV.

When Civ5 came out, I gave it a 5/10 but post-patch, a 7/10. Still below Civ4 and Civ2 at their peaks but good enough to not go back and play a regular (non-scenario) game of Civ4.

I rated it a 5. Not much inside after playing it a few times. In IV, there were games within the game. Many little things you could choose to do or not do. In V, you are more straightjacketed in to what you should be doing.

I rated it an 8.

Firstly because it improves on Civ IV in 2 good ways - the elimination of 'stacks of doom' - military armies all piled up on 1 tile, and strategy - while the above poster disagrees with the methods used to gain a victory, I find it an integral part of the game that I might be sacrificing my technological advancement in order to get a cultural victory and hence the risk that my non-technologically advanced army might have as a result.

However, there are bugs, and a notoriously long waiting time between turns in the late game.

Overall though, the game has a lot of replay value, with many different ways to play, and also lots of mods.

With regard to the bugs in the game - I remember buying Civ4 when it came out and it was riddled with bugs also, which detracted severely from the game. In fact I would go as far as to say that IV did not become a truly great game until the release of the "Beyond the Sword" expansion pack, an expansion which gamers had to pay for, no less.

So overall score:

Graphics 9.5/10 - really looks beautiful on a high end machine.
Gameplay 8.5/10 - Once you get past the bugs and lag, it's pretty damn immersive.
Replay Value 10/10 - I've played so many games now that I've lost count.
Sounds 8/10 - No custom music option, and the in game music, while great at first, does get a bit tedious after several hundred hours of play. A link to my own choice of music (which was already done in Civ IV) would be preferable.
Multiplayer 9/10 - It's great fun online, loses a mark for the lag though, particularly on large maps.
Price 9/10 - You get a lot of hours of gameplay out of this game, so well worth the money.

The average of all of this is around 9/10 I believe, but I knocked off a point for one (heavily debated on this forum) reason: forced subscription to the Steam service, which personally is a turn-off for me and had this not been a Civilization franchise would have been enough to put me off buying the game altogether.

gave it 7, really enjoying playing it at the moment but it has alot of issues in: performance, bugs/stability, some balancing problems, diplomacy system needs work, ai combat stupidity

how much these things are an issue depends on taste, preferred play style, preferred map size, preferred difficulty levels, preferred game speed, how good your pc is...

if you have a pc on the lower end of the system requirements i'd go for civ4 complete
waiting until after the next patch may also be worthwhile

have a read through the strategy threads, that may give you an idea of how the grame plays from people who are enjoying the game

Gave it an 8. I love all the new mechanics they've implemented, and I think they've really taken it in a good direction; but it has a fair way to go in terms of balance tweaks (mods help this a lot already), diplomacy, performance and AI. I still really enjoy playing it as it is now despite the flaws though (which I think are substantial but mostly relatively superficial), and I find myself going back to it constantly; hence the 8 (7 unmodded).

I give it an 8. I love the strategy screen - the fancy landscape graphics were/are lost on me. I also play without sound on. With Civ IV I would occasionally get fooled by an enemy unit I didn't see - the little pulsing red circle just didn't do the trick. With Civ V there is absolutely no doubt about where each unit is - you get big clear icons.

Good riddance to the stack of doom. I find the movement of the units in formation is much more challenging - get the great generals in place and the catapults behind melee units in front. A good siege of a city can be great fun. Playing as Montezuma, it's all war all the time so there's plenty of intricate deployment called for. Using zone of influence to block routes is an art, especially at sea. Embarkation is a great advance, particularly for workers who can take off for another continent without going by ship. I'm always standing by to nail settlers moving across the water.

V is far more fun for me to play. I was buried by the detail with IV and never could quite explain what was happening and why because there were so many factors to consider. With V I have a good sense of where I stand and what I need to do at all times. The relationship between the land and the outputs (gold, production, food) is direct without the number of modifiers found in IV. So they've made the game much leaner and I feel in control of it - which doesn't mean I always win but does mean I know why I win or lose. I'm now eager to make each move because I know where I'm going with it. The feedback I get from what I do is clear, so I can change my strategy intelligently if a change is needed.

I rated a 8. I think that the game is good overall, but the bugs, stupid AI and boringness when not at war decreased the rank from 10 to 8.

I rated 4.

I Havent played a full game passed October and tried the patch at Christmas and it's still boring has hell.

I'm back playing IV and will NEVER throw any money towards 2K again, neither should you!


edit: Dont listen to the 1UPT lovers up there... I dont understand how it can be "more" challenging when you cant play MP and the AI cant handle it... Its like beating up a 3 yrs old playing chess... might be fun the first time, but gets boring pretty fast.

Keep in mind that a lot of the disappointed have left already. Try searching for similar polls that were started about 1-2 months after release.

I rated 2.

Gismo said:

Keep in mind that a lot of the disappointed have left already.

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Are you serious! Quite the opposite, I would rather say that keep in mind that most of the people who love the game have left due to being insulted a lot or being just plain tired of complaining and having better things to do.

But, to the subject (okay, sorry, copied things that I agree with):

Graphics 9/10 - I have it on medium with a 5 year old computer, works wonderous. Some bugs are there though.
Gameplay 9/10 - Once you get past the bugs (no lag for me), it's pretty immersive.
Replay Value 10/10 - I've played so many games now that I've lost count. Immensely more replay value than IV, which is just a big min-max.
Sounds 10/10 - Love the music. Just love it.
Multiplayer 6/10 - Fun, yes, but 1. No good save/load options and 2. Bugs+lag, especially in LAN play.
Price 9/10 - You get a lot of hours of gameplay out of this game, so well worth the money.
DLC price 8/10 - Yes, who wouldn't want everythign to be free, but come on, two civilizations for like the cost of cheese in the food store? (about 4€ or 5$) Is it really that bad?

With regard to the bugs in the game - I remember buying Civ4 when it came out and it was riddled with bugs also, which detracted severely from the game. In fact I would go as far as to say that IV did not become a truly great game until the release of the "Beyond the Sword" expansion pack, an expansion which gamers had to pay for, no less.

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Exactly this..

BTW, if you always expect a game to be 10 at release, you will about always be very disappointed, it's not realistic at all. Waiting before release for every game to be 5 would be more realistic.

It got a 6 from me. Decent game, but could be (and hopefully will be) so much better.

I like alot of the new features, but they could of been implemented better. Hopefully depth will be added via DLC and XP's.

Thinking back, i would of scored Civ 4 - vanilla=6,Warlords=7 and BtS=9, so theres hope yet!!

I'm one of the hardcore disappointed fans that occasionally drops in from the Civ IV forums to get a good laugh in the CiV forums. I've tried several times but I just can't get into the game at all - haven't even finished any of my attempts. The game is simply uninteresting and boring - the bugs are the least of its problems. I've chalked it up as a lost cause and believe strongly that the game will never good for the hardcore civvers.

I rated it a 3 which may be too generous. I find it astonishing that there are any fans of this game at all. Although I suspect that most are rather new to Civ in general or were CivRev fans, and the newness factor of the game has not worn out yet.

lymond said:

Although I suspect that most are rather new to Civ in general or were CivRev fans, and the newness factor of the game has not worn out yet.

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Player since II.

aatami said:

Player since II.

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With all seriousness, I'd really like to hear what long-term civvers like yourself find appealing about this game. I just don't understand it. I'm glad you like it though and are getting enjoyment out of it - I'm not here to make you not like it . It least you got your money's worth. I did not. Trust me, I wanted to like it - I wanted to love it, but the experience just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I see hordes of players returning to IV.

Disraeli said:

I rated it a 5, which was a little unfair but I wanted to steer you away from buying Civ V as Civilization IV is so much better.

Stick with IV.

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Kinda same opinion but i have reated it with 7 and await to buy CIV IV

lymond said:

With all seriousness, I'd really like to hear what long-term civvers like yourself find appealing about this game. I just don't understand it. I'm glad you like it though and are getting enjoyment out of it - I'm not here to make you not like it . It least you got your money's worth. I did not. Trust me, I wanted to like it - I wanted to love it, but the experience just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I see hordes of players returning to IV.

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i've played the lot (i'm that old!), and this latest version has taken time to get into

i was initially soooo excited that a new civ was coming (i'm that sad as well!) and i was disappointed after a few days, but slowing it is growing on me, and i hope over time it gets gradually better and better

civ4 BtS is/was an awesome game, but it did take time to get that good (vanilla civ4 wasn't much too shout about iirc)

the main new features i like about civ5 -
social policies
city states
no SOD's
exploration (natural wonders, ruins, barb camps)
Unique Abilities
city expansion (3 hex's, buying tiles)

lymond said:

With all seriousness, I'd really like to hear what long-term civvers like yourself find appealing about this game. I just don't understand it. I'm glad you like it though and are getting enjoyment out of it - I'm not here to make you not like it . It least you got your money's worth. I did not. Trust me, I wanted to like it - I wanted to love it, but the experience just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I see hordes of players returning to IV.

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I remember when Civ I was the best thing since sliced bread, I played it more than any other in the series except Alpha Centauri; I loved 2 and particularly 4, and I was never keen on 3 - but I love 5.
I came into 5 with an extremely negative vibe, not really expecting to think much of it at all, especially after BtS was such a high point of the series. I was surprised that it won me over so quickly. The first aspect was the combat, which has never quite felt right in civ, but which I think they've finally pretty much nailed. But more than that, I sort of feel that civ kind of slipped into a rut where micromanagement was more important than macromanagement, where to win at Immortal it was all about managing your hammers so that you only had 6 hammers (epic speed) so that you could whip 2 pop instead of 1 at a time to rush that axeman and have maximum spillover production for the next one etc; and that it was all about sweating the small details at the expense of the big picture of running a whole empire - like you were playing the role of ten mayors taped together instead of an emperor. And sweating the details like that really makes it much clearer that you're playing the game's idiosyncratic mechanics rather than actually managing an empire. It was more about knowing the rules than anything else.

I guess part of it was that I just found that your Paradox games and Dwarf Fortresses etc could really scratch that micromanagement itch in a much more satisfying way than Civ could; and that Civ V really feels like it brings back the feeling of making real leadership decisions, each of which is important and meaningful; rather than thousands of tiny, inconsequential decisions that felt more like just gaming the system. I think that Civ V has a lot more complexity than it's given credit for, it's just that it's taken away the tedious micromanagement that masquerades as complexity, but which is really just a tedious weaselly way to eke out an advantage over a bonus-heavy AI by hundreds of iterations of petty stuff that doesn't matter, rather than by using better grand strategy. Civ V is more about working the big-picture level of empire management, and I think it is improved by it.

Civ is not, never has been, nor really ever can be a series fanatically devoted to serving historical realism because the whole of human history is too big to fit realistically into one set of game mechanics; that's where your Europa Universalis-es and Victorias and Hearts of Irons step in, one era at a time. Civ has always been steeped in its boardgame roots, and I really think this iteration is a breath of fresh air by being honest and embracing those roots, in a way that I think really works.