I'm a man without a Civilization

I have to agree with the OP. The more I play, the more I see behind the curtain and it seems like there's just no substance there. It took me YEARS to become a decent Civ IV player. In a week I was mopping the floor with V. Not only that, the numerous bugs and broken game mechanics just take all the joy out of the experience. There's no choice and very little challenge, even on higher difficulty levels.

I really, really regret giving it so much credit in that review that I wrote a couple weeks back. I feel like a complete idiot. This game needed months more testing and tweaking before release and some of the systems in it are just plain bad from a game design perspective.

I haven't played in days and that's really sad.

EDIT: And before I get tagged as the "I hate change" guy, I love 1upt, I love hexes and I love city states etc. I just hate the fact that this is like some panzer general mod with a bunch of Civ features stripped out and not an empire building game, that the AI plays like a bad 90s RTS skirmish AI and that there's one path to victory: build units. It just feels so empty to me =(

Thormodr said:

I seriously doubt you have been playing Civ for almost 2 decades if you managed to lose on prince level in ciV. Prince is a walk in the park. To be charitable though, I'd say a good player could lose maybe 5-10% of the time so it may have been one of those times.

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I don't go for quick exploitive wins. I like slow games, even if I lose. I was Ghandi, going for a quiet science win, alone on a continent with Catherine and Monty, what do you think was going to happen? I'm surprised I lasted as long as I did.

charon2112 said:

I'm sorry to hear that. But you're in a very small minority. Is your rig powerful?

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I had above recommended requirements for cIV. I was in a fairly large group of people that couldn't get the game to run properly. It took about 3 months for them to get it straightened out.

Once again, in ciV, I have above recommended requirements. There are no real issues with running the game that way. I will give credit to the designers for that. They did learn something from cIV's launch. Some other lessons didn't sink in unfortunately.

I understand that in this industry, its rare to have a bug-less game on release. However, charon2112 is pretending that Civ 5 does not have bugs: "so how about a list of civ V bugs. I haven't experienced any." Even with all of these complaints, I've still gotten enjoyment out of the game and I'm sure mods and patches will improve it.

AI does not build air units.

AI rarely builds naval units. Don't bother with island type maps, its a joke.

AI seems to have pathing issues whenever it attacks a city. http://imgur.com/S4fve.jpg 13 pikemen + 3 archers versus 3 knights, 1 catapult, 1 near dead swordsman, 1 allied city. I won this without even losing the swordsman because the AI just shuffles around. Its has to be some sort of pathing or priority malfunction.

I've seen AIs get dominated by barbarians. With 2 barbarians camping its capital city, AI continues to produce non-military units.

When the AI seemed to have an advantage in military units, the AI has offered profitable peace treaty terms.

Later in the game, I'll get 15-20 seconds of non-responsiveness from the game randomly whenever I click on units or cities. It doesn't matter what setting the game is on. My rig isn't top of the line, but its only one generation behind and still ahead of the recommended system requirements: Core i7 920, GTX 260 (Black Edition factory overclocked etc). This happens on even standard maps.

For some reason, the game actually runs slower and the texture loading seems to lag when I put it in DirectX9 mode instead of DirectX10.

On large and huge maps, when most of the fog of war has been lifted, I will get slow greyed out texture loading.

Occasionally a unit's image will just get "stuck" even though it was moved. Forced to either deal with it or reload a saved game to fix it.

Permanent peace treaty bug.

Diplomacy is a joke.

Sometimes its impossible to click on non-combat units in the normal view. I have to press F10 and click on them through the strategy view.

There are unlimited resource trade bugs.

civ V looks like civ I (about features abviously)
At least, civ I was amazing cause it was the first one

civ V is a joke

charon2112 that poll doesn't mean the game is perfect at all. I voted thumbs up on that poll and you still see me complaining more than praising on this forum.
The game has potential, and I have fun playing it. But it has many many issues.

kaltorak said:

charon2112 that poll doesn't mean the game is perfect at all. I voted thumbs up on that poll and you still see me complaining more than praising on this forum.

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What does that say about you?

Asterix Rage said:

civ V looks like civ I (about features abviously)
At least, civ I was amazing cause it was the first one

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Yeah, the Freedom social policy is really underpowered compared to Honor, just like in Civ 1. And UN doesn't do anything but victory votes, just like in Civ 1.

charon2112 said:

What does that say about you?

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That a game isn't black or white? That you can like a game and still think it can improve a lot and not just blindly defend every aspect?

charon2112 said:

I hear you. Back then, the exact same complaints were made. The forums were full of: "worst civ ever", "dumbed down", now everyone speaks of Civ IV as if it's god...it's the same all over again. There's always a percentage that just won't be satisfied no matter what. All you can do is try to ignore them.

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And that was exactly what I was thinking. Vanilla civ 4 ran very bad on my rig. Civ 5 does run quite good with all the visual candy turned low (I don't really care about that.). Civ 4 reached maturity with BTS. I hope civ5 will also have great benifits from its future additions because now, I don't like it too much.

With the fanbase and expansions wihich will undoubtly come, I do not give up hope. My prediciton is that it will get better with expansions and more important: MODS...

Sorry, but... charon2112 seems to be the Sid's wife or something like that. lol

Ok, I think too that Civ has been dumbed down and so, a lot btw. But just look Civ4 vanilla, with the espionage removed, without corporations or vassal states. Now im bored of Civ5, too simple. But who knows if in 2 or 3 expansions the game will be better than BTS.

I feel like a milked cow, but that is how the industry works

Been playing Civ since 1993 and the sad thing is that i like every new design idea (1upt, city states, global happiness, less roads, lean interface, low production until industrial age,no tech trade, new/less aggressive diplomacy style, panzer general combat ect) + pretty graphics and easy loading of mods in the menu BUT the battle ai nearly/just kills the experience. it is just depressing.

additionally i miss all the great additions of the ROM/AND mods which have have slapped a lot of good content on the top of the game. but that is not to blame on the Shafer-team

Do i feel I have wasted 44 Euro? No, Im still having fun testing wacky strategies, but I would like to experience some AI wizardry on behalf of Firaxis the coming weeks/months.

eoran said:

Sorry, but... charon2112 seems to be the Sid's wife or something like that. lol

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Nah... I get the feeling Sid didn't have a lot to do with this game. Maybe the wife of that other guy who had more direction with this one lol.


My opinion of this game changes by the day. Fun here, bored there, fun again, kinda bored now.

I don't think its that it simpler than other Civ games, I don't even think its simpler than IV. It just hardly feels like Civilization anymore. I don't need to get into the reasons. A lot of people seem to feel the same way.

To the OP:
Im a veteran, been playing since civ 1. I like civ5. It is a very complex game, you just have to play it different than civ4. Global happiness, building mantienance, strategic resource limitation all creates new fun challenges. I agree with some of your points, especially the part about warmongering being really important. Still, wasnt this the case in civ4 as well on higher difficulties? If i tried to stay out of the way some alexander or monty always attacked me. Maybe the AI agressiveness needs to be toned down slightly though, right now every civ is like monty from civ4. Oh, and the AI cant fight a war without overwhelming numbers, you are right about that. I agree about the incredible unsatisfying ending as well. No replay?? Thats like taking lightsabers out of Star wars.

charon2112 said:

I picked one of the oldest polls, so has more numbers, so more accurate data.

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No you didn't, you went and looked for a poll that agreed with your argument that the significant majority are satisfied with Civ V, because the other polls don't reflect that. The poll you found was several pages past the front page and has 565 votes. The poll I pointed out is one day older than yours, is still on the front and has 1141 votes.

So it's older and has twice as many votes, so by your own logic it's more accurate. It shows a 1:1 ratio between people satisfied with the game and those who aren't. People don't even need to give the game a "thumbs up" in this one, they just have to say it's not dumbed down to be considered satisfied, and it's showing the audience split down the middle.

charon2112 said:

I hear you. Back then, the exact same complaints were made. The forums were full of: "worst civ ever", "dumbed down", now everyone speaks of Civ IV as if it's god...it's the same all over again. There's always a percentage that just won't be satisfied no matter what. All you can do is try to ignore them.

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No, there weren't. I was here when Civ 4 was released. The complaints were about the performance, which was atrocious. I read two Terry Pratchett novels during the wait times on my first game.

The gameplay was great. They didn't remove anything from Civ 3 except the separate attack/defence stacks and ranged bombardment... those were minor compared to everything that was added, and complaints regarding those being removed were few and far between. Just look at this forum - most of the complaints are about the game being too simple and too boring.

charon2112 said:

I picked one of the oldest polls, so has more numbers, so more accurate data.

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Really? Your poll has currently 568 votes.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=381961 - 1142 votes
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=387240 - 543 votes
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=385718 - 953 votes

All of these more active polls have about as much or more votes than yours. In only one of them the satisfied (majority of them only somewhat) exceed 50%. Based on the polls it's absurd to say that majority is loving (i.e. completely satisfied with) the game.

Civ 5 is as much a wargame as Civ 4 was on the higher difficulties. It has always been like this, on the higher difficulties victory by warmongering becomes the only real option (even if you only take a couple of cities, in order to be able to keep up the research) to reliably win given the bonuses you get for having a big empire. In Civ 4 there was little incentitive not to grab as many cities as possible beyond maintenance / distance and war was by far the easiest way to achieve it. Civ V atleast tries to balance it by having a global happiness modifier.

I admit I sometimes worry when I read comments like Civ 4 was about choices. Did you play the same game as I did ? The only real choice was deciding between cottage / specialist, everything else was building a ton of siege units and autodeclare on the nearest AI, rinse and repeat, atleast on the higher difficulties.

eoran said:

Sorry, but... charon2112 seems to be the Sid's wife or something like that. lol

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Indeed. I was just about to write that when you look at charons posts (not only in this thread but overall in the past few days), it is very peculiar how violently he defends Civ5. I am convinced now that he gets paid either by Firaxis directly or a connected PR firm. It is common practice nowadays and would not surprise me at all (actually, one such incidence just blew up in the companies face).

Don't get me wrong, I do believe everybody should be able to voice their opinion, but the way he ignores so many valid arguments in pretty much every negative thread and just tells us how great the game is over and over creeps me out.

ricardojahns said:

the "new" fanbase, you mean...

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Im sorry i didn´t start playing civilization with civ I but only with civ 2, i guess that makes all my opinions meaningless. But i happen to love civ 5 and see alot of potential in it and realy look forward to what expansions and mods will bring to it.

Im usualy one who is pretty fast to bash gaming companys for not living up to their fans expectations, god knows i have a problem with XCOM, but i can´t for the love of god understand how firaxis sold out or dumbed down civ.

You know ivé been coming to thees forums from time to time having alot of respect for the people here and always loved how it was a great source for strategy and reading about how people go about their games. Always found that a big part of the civ experience. Recently not so much.

I´m sorry, i meen you no disrespect but how does the opinion from me or a guy or girl just now starting out with civ5 don´t count. Gaming isn´t some elite club only for the selected few and a do think firaxis very much reads forums like this and very much takes into account what people around here thinks about their product.

So yeah, civ5 have bug and and the AI needs working on it, 1UPT is great, hexes are great, espionage always sucked.

There you have it, one of the new fans spoke.