This game is bad (not a hate post)

you are wrong.
civ4 - ~3.5 million
civ5 - 5.9 million



how may hours played, compare to the closest competitior total war


I thought TF2 had the most hours. Go figure.
 
civ4 - ~3.5 million
civ5 - 5.9 million
The civ5 number is correct. Where'd you get the civ4 number. I realize now the one I was using was misleading.
 
The civ5 number is correct. Where'd you get the civ4 number. I realize now the one I was using was misleading.

wikipedia sais there were 3 million copies of Civ4 sold though i've seen higher estimates somewhere. Now its sold in bundles with Civ5 and even with CivBE, so its sales should be rising. Personally i bought 3 disks of Civ4 (one complete edition, one civilization chronicles edition, and one vanilla civ4 which i have lost). and now i'm thinking of buying civ4 on Steam as my new PC has no compact disk drive. I guess Civ5 sales are more 'hard gain' because of changed conditions. There are no disks anymore so you cant lose the game and not lured to buy different editions. Competition has grown. <snip>

ps i am also wondering if warlords and bts were counted. for civ5 addons werent.

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I don't really know where to start with, so I'll start by what I found most disgusting: the religion system. I remember reading a Sid Meier's interview in which he said that he changed civilization from a real time strategy game that you would direct the cities production and watch them grow to the turn based classic everyone knows and loves 1 week before the global shipping date of the final game (for the younger boys and girls out there, physical distribution of software was the rule in a pre or bad internet world), and in that same interview he stated something like "adding too much content can make a game too complicated, and simpler can be better". These two statements really marked me, "it is never too late to change a game" and "simpler can be better". That's not the case in civ5's religious system introduced with G&K. Religion turned into some sort of secondary money that provides minor bonuses (although it can be used to produce some really powerful combinations, depending on the case), while it worked very interessantely as a major player in civ4 (what makes sense, to be honest).

Religion was over-emphasised in Civ V, I suspect, largely as an effort to respond to Civ fans' comments here and elsewhere, as they missed the importance it could have in Civ IV.

Let's make no bones about it: Civ IV handled religion very badly. Its value in a given game was largely contingent on variables outside the player's control - the identity of nearby civs and the value they place on religion, how many religions were founded and how many were able to spread to you. Temples were important early in the game, but not available early in the game unless you rushed specific techs before the AI got there.

Civ V has work that needs doing in terms of balancing both the game and diplomatic effects of religion (the former should be toned down and some of the more excessive bonuses, such as Tithe, either removed or given higher priority by the AI; the latter somewhat more relevant). But as is quite common in Civ V vs. the earlier games, Civ V provides a superior framework to work with (the same is the case with trade and with diplomacy, and possibly with combat) even if the execution can be more miss than hit. Removing the link between religion and technology was a particularly good move.

Adding extra options is not the same as adding extra complexity; in interviews given re Civ V, Sid has said - just as you've noted he said in the past - that the complexity of Civ games should remain about where it is, and he's contended that Civ V is no more involved in that regard than the previous games. There's some truth to this - an abundance of options can appear dauntingly complex when you're first learning to play (a friend has been turned off Beyond Earth by previews of the tech web on this basis), but religion is basically an extra set of options that co-opts the existing structure of policy or tech decision-making - the player already knows how the core system functions.

Even the more recent possibility of founding 'protestatism' before 'orthodoxy' or 'catholicism' makes me feel stupid. I understand that is a way to try to balance some completely useless flavour that the civilizations have (favorite religion), but it just makes absolutely no sense, even for a game like civilization.

This is true - they'd have been better off not using pre-named religions, but they needed a set of icons and I believe that - once again - this was a specific player-requested feature.

As the immersion of the game bases itself on building alternate timelines, doesn't it make more sense to scrap out the favorite religion flavour than to actually break one religion into 3, one of them making absolutely no sense without the existence of another one for about 1.5 thousand years? Turning faith into a resource also makes the religion reasonably too controlable, and it shouldn't be. Religiosity flows more freely, and civilization5 makes it too square, it just doesn't seem to fit in the game.

Civ V is very much more deterministic across the board than previous games. There are no more random events, for example. In terms of pure gameplay, this improves the strategic element, but it can also end up with games becoming somewhat too static.

Civ IV rather got the worst of both worlds in that regard - a strategy game should either promote problem-solving to find the 'best' strategies (which results in static, build-order-focused play of the sort you find in Civ V), or it should present you with environmental challenges that vary with each playthrough and to which you have to adapt.

Civ IV allowed the environment to exert a major impact on gameplay with random events and only slightly less random religion, however at the same time it was fundamentally a build-order game and didn't actually give you any tools that let you adapt to events to your advantage. As you say, you had very little control over religion, and you couldn't invite one in or choose a state religion unless that religion had randomly spread to you (unless you'd founded it). Random events just popped up and had effects, with nothing you could do to mitigate them or improve the likelihood of benefitting from them.

Given a choice, I'd prefer a game with environmental challenges and tools to adapt to them. But given the choice between a static, build-order game with absolute player control - like Civ V - and the same basic game with uncontrollable random events - like Civ IV - I'd go with Civ V.

The combat system. Unit stacking could really spoil the fun of the game sometimes, but the way the problem was solved isn't good. The overvaluation of the units in civilization5 makes it boring. The units move too fast for the board. The overall feeling is that there is less space in the board with the 3 hexes city range and with the multiple city states. And even though there is less space, the units are able to move faster and they might take multiple turns to die, which also tends to kind of overcrowd the game map even with fewer units if in comparison to other civ games. The AI doesn't know how to properly use ranged combat, it tends to stack multiple ranged units in nearby hexes and to target not the biggest potential threat to them, but an unit that will actually die if fired at, even if they all die on the following turn. The combination of ranged attacks with the 2 hexes default move also doesn't feel good, it adds too much flexibility to some units that shouldn't be too flexible. I gotta admit that that I really liked the hit points and firepower systems of the cities, though. Finally early sieging feels like what it should.

There are several issues here. As you rightly point out, when it's commonly complained that the AI can't use 1UPT, what is meant is that the AI can't handle ranged combat. I'd hope that future games restrict ranged combat type effects to siege and bombardment units (a la Civ IV). That alone would streamline the game.

I find I prefer Civ V's unit production rates and unit survival to earlier Civ games, merely because stacks were tedious mostly because of the numbers involved and because having to spam units every so often to keep up in the military race was excessively dull and strategically very limiting. You're right about map crowding, however. Some form of stacking might work better if unit production rates follow Civ V rather than the earlier games.

Gold. I like the fact that gold is more important in civ5, but it shouldn't be directly generated as a resource, it should be generated as an outcome of exploring other resources, and this shortcut civ5 has taken, although valid and theoretically interesting, is also dangerous. It is dangerous because it also to an overweighting of gold. Gold can surely buy pretty much anything, as long as it is for sale. And it can't do miracles (which it pretty much does in civ5, much more than faith). The old system of commerce and direction to the investments it allowed seemed more realistic than the new too plain budget system, something should be worked out in between those two. I also like the fact that science is now an independent resource per se, but this indepence is, too, exaggerated - it makes sense that a ruler, specially a godlike one, such as is the case of civ, should be able to direct its investment in science (if any).


Gold is something that has changed quite a bit over Civ V's lifetime. It's now in a pretty good place as far as how it's generated is concerned - it is now a production resource generated mostly from trade rather than harvested as 'commerce' sitting in the landscape, and having the resource generated in a fundamentally different way from the others is a great move. I'd like to see this further developed - remove gold from resource tiles, reduce base gold output from trade, and increase the weighting resources (and perhaps specific resources) add to trade routes. Trading post and custom house improvements could add to the value of trade routes that pass through them, again instead of producing output directly from tiles.

In terms of gold spending, this is I think another area where Civ V overcompensated for a weakness in the previous games. Civ V as it is is balanced around being able to buy anything and everything with gold, but hopefully Civ VI will tone it down somewhat and either limit what money can buy or increase the relative cost of purchases.

Also, Civ V appears to suffer in your eyes less for being what it is than for your greater awareness of the competition. Do you find Civ IV as engaging having played Paradox games, or are you enjoying it with a nostalgia you obviously can't have for a game that's contemporary with the Paradox titles?
 
you are wrong.
civ4 - ~3.5 million
civ5 - 5.9 million



how may hours played, compare to the closest competitior total war

These figures are misleading since Civ IV was not primarily sold on Steam when it was first released, and for most games the majority of hours played are accrued early in the release cycle.
 
These figures are misleading since Civ IV was not primarily sold on Steam when it was first released, and for most games the majority of hours played are accrued early in the release cycle.

there is no civ4 on these diagrams
its sales were counted before steam
 
Sales for computer games are notoriously difficult numerators.

Firstly, for some reason, the video gaming wing of general media is the only media which actively hides it's sales figures. Television viewing figures are always available quickly and efficiently (to facilitate advertising sales or justify public expenditure). Movie stats are as much a part of the engagement process as going to the movies, who are this years 100millers etc. Websites parade their active users like badges of honour.

But computer games? Ohhh, hush hush, top secret don'tcha know. Mum's the word. Massively ironic considering their interconnection to the internet communication highway.

I'm guessing there must be a reason for this...

Secondly, when some figures are finally discovered/provided, one still has to bare in mind that computers are still a growing phenomenon, each year more and more people have them.

So, when Civ 1 came out, only already uber-geeky people had them. And the popular games were the uber-geeky ones, like Civ 1. So the correlation between sales figures and quality is a potentially distracting one, because the more the lowest common denominators gets hold of computers, the more games need to cater to the lowest common denominator, and the most 'popular' games will likely be games that 'computer people' probably wont like, just by the laws of demographics (originally differentiated by the hardcore/casual definition, but with a wider audience, so the differences have increased in number and type).

So would 6 million Civ 5 sales equally represent 1 million Civ 1 sales (by what degrees has computer ownership increased over the same time-frame) or would 1 million Civ 1 sales actually equate to a much much much larger number when multiplied by the computer ownership multiplier?

Then once you have the multiplier figures for computer ownership, does 1 million geeks for Civ 1 equal or surpass 6 million geeks for Civ 5? (In that we are now just looking for the geek multiplier over time rather than a total population multiplier).

:scan:
 
I recently moved from civ4 to civ5. So far, my opinion is that civ5 is more streamlined, but I wouldn't really call this "dumping down". Sometimes a game is enhanced by getting rid of the extra stuff thereby allowing the player to enjoy the core of the game. I think most changes have been good. Being a veteran Panzer General player, 1UPT isn't new to me. Still, I feel 1UPT is less ideal for civ than for Panzer mainly because the map in civ is too clustered with 1UPT. There is often no room to maneuver at all, and it takes forever to issue orders to 50 units. Also annoying is the fact that move command would constantly get canceled because another unit ended turn on the destination tile.
 
Thanks for the people who had the patience to reply in a decent fashion, specially @PhilBowles, who came up with very good points.

First of all, I wasn't talking for anyone but me and perhaps a few close friends who play civ, I'm not generalizing. I'm really just saying my opinion of why I don't like civ 5, it's not to be taken as absolute truth nor anything like that.

If there have already been some posts like this, though, it may be a sign of something, don't you think? =p But I think you people have already pointed out very clearly what civ has moved from onto. It has become a more streamlined and deterministic strategy game, allowing gamers to enjoy the core aspect of it in a more controllable way (the crude board strategy itself), I had missed that, and I think all of you who stated that are completely right.

However, as @PhilBowles eloquently stated out, this can lead to more static games, and while he enjoys the absolute control, I actually enjoy the lack of it, maybe that's the key reason behind my highest regards of civ4, notoriously after BtS, even if you're not exactly completely focused on or able to adapt yourself to the random aspects of the game. I actually think it adds replayability to the game itself (given it's not taken to extreme levels, which I don't think being the case of Civ4). In resume, I disagree with him in one fundamental aspect, I'm really fond of strategy games that force the player to adapt themselves to uncontrollable circumstances, many of which can't be consciously taken advantage from. I think it actually adds replayability to the game, even if one specific random circumstance spoils one (or more) of your gameplays. The world is unfair, and I think that civ too should be (please, do notice that unfair doesn't mean imbalanced, I dont't enjoy imbalanced games). I don't wan't to sound rude or too simplist by saying this, but if I wanted a totally fair board strategy, I would play one of those eurogame board games with simple rules and not many random elements, such as Settlers of Catan or something of the like. But, again, that's just me =p

It has been many years since I actually posted in any forums whatsoever, so I really don't remeber how to manually quote multiple posts in this, and I'm really sorry for that, but I will answer to Phil's final question, which was "Also, Civ V appears to suffer in your eyes less for being what it is than for your greater awareness of the competition. Do you find Civ IV as engaging having played Paradox games, or are you enjoying it with a nostalgia you obviously can't have for a game that's contemporary with the Paradox titles?"

Yes, I do. But after many years playing it, you want to try out new things, and I'm actually a bit weary of civ4. I had already given some thought about it, and I think that I grew so fond of Paradox's games because of the immersion capacity, I hadn't mentioned it before, but I am a historian. I can't just turn that off from my personality, as people constantly try to with their jobs or careers. It's part of me, and I think that I will feel naturally lured into something good with great immersive capabalities. But that's not the reason why I play civ, that's the reason why I play EU 4. I play civ because I want a great strategy game that emulates one possible world in different ways, and maybe I feel that many of those ways were shut down from civ 4 to 5. I'm not really sure, though, maybe that's why I made this post.
 
I do see the OPs point on some topics. Specifically the over valuation of range warfare. Especially in early war. We shouldn't all have to resort to a composite bow rush...

I also don't like that Tradition is DRAMATICALLY better then the other 3 social policies.

And those 2 examples are thin gs that we've learned to play around despite their flaws. And finally AI is deplorable.


Having said all that. CiV is FAR from a bad game. In fact it's a great game.

I don't think it's fair to look at religion as inconsequential. They did what they set out to do. Make religion something thats useful but not necessary to accomplish goals. NOT having religion makes you pose out on interesting scenarios like religious rivalries and holy wars. Friendships built on shared religions. Civs that might sacrifice other aspects of society for religious zealotry. And there's more unique situations that come up that make you think of religious leaders and or conquerers that you might think of when someone sends their great prophet into your civ for the second time. Is it not fair to say that Constantine used christianity to his advantage. It might be debated how mu cj he believed or how much his followers believed but it paid off. Did not the Spartans feel they were the most elite military forcenter based on religion. In fact, their culture and religion reinforced the fact that in alot of ways they were. CiV brings those flavors into the fold in the way the fabled Civ 4 dont.

Also how can you argue that simple is better and then in the same way argue for EU? It has its strengths but simplicity isn't one of them. CiV still gives you that experience to mold your own world on made up continents with a dynamic number of personalities in a very vast and Macro way. It's like looking at a World history class from High school rather then a college course on the history of Napoleonic france in the 19th century. CiV serves to summarize the world in a series of sweeping generalities.

Overall the game directors need to be credited with a few innovations.
One of the most fun yet politically correct uses of religion
Hex instead of square
1UPT. Yes it has flaws and bugs but a major step in the right direction.
Ideology
Probably the most fun late game in the civ series
And Trade routes. Which even still are undervalued as that is what underpins 90% of the motives behind what most real civs do. Give them credit for there intro here.

Overall I think we'll look back at CiV as a transition game that sets the series on a new path. I can't wait for them to take the concept of the tech Web from there spinoff game and bring into the next series for Civ 6.
 
Personally if I find I'm getting bored in Civ5 I realize I'm not trying at a high enough level (I usually play immortal but sometimes go up to deity if I'm playing an easy civ). Or I try some option I haven't before. Or I limit the number off players so my victories don't get too bogged down. Or I try one of the maps that some how I've not played before. Also I turn of culture victory, I do find that just too tedious and don't care for wanting to worry about tourism so I turn it off to make the game more appealing to me, I'm sure others think the opposite but there are really so many options in Civ5 maybe you just are not trying the right ones to find a combination that actually tickles your fancy.

Try marathon maybe the slower pace and having time to conduct early wars with a bunch of early units (and not having to constantly upgrade them) might be just what you need (or might send you screaming to a PS4...but unless you try you may never know there is something that you actually enjoy about the game). Or kill off the first civ you meet so everyone hates you for the rest of the game and gang up on you...those are some of the most enjoyable games I've played.

I tried EU4, but just couldn't seem to get into it, I think part of it was knowing pretty much what the map was going to look like beforehand (I really couldn't see the point of fog of war in a game with one map even if the political borders change a bit the physical map is always the same). I might give it a try again though maybe I just wasn't in the right mood.
 
In my opinion, the game that was in the Civ II era was demolished when Civ IV came along (IMO, Civ IV was the biggest disappointment of the series, closely followed by Civ V).

I too am of the belief that simpler can be better. Being a long term fan of Runescape (the only game I've put more hours into than Civ), the simpleness of the classic (original) game was by far more engaging and interesting than the game is now.

However, since the initial few patches came to Civ V vanilla, I've found it to be a very enjoyable game. No, I haven't enjoyed every patch that's come along, and no, I've not enjoyed all updates that have come from the add-ons, but I don't find anything significantly wrong with the game. I for one welcome differences from previous versions - I don't want to be paying for the "same game" at each "new" release. I loved the fact that Civ II was immersive in a historical sense, and I loved the throne room improvements which we've not seen since. Things like this would be more than welcome in Civ V, but we may see them in future versions.
 
My problem with civ5 is that it is not ready: there still are clear bugs and MP goes from ok to unplayable. Some of civ5 mechanics are way too simply, like trade routes which is clearly designed to be like that because AI cant handle it very well. There are many other not so polished or not ready features of game but it is useless to have a reasonable conversation in fanforum.

And civforum is dying slowly, civ5 wasnt good enough and thats why there are very few lets plays and stories. Civ5 also has not so many mods and famous modders like Rhye simply gave up because of game code was a mess (and lack of testers).
 
My problem with civ5 is that it is not ready: there still are clear bugs and MP goes from ok to unplayable. Some of civ5 mechanics are way too simply, like trade routes which is clearly designed to be like that because AI cant handle it very well. There are many other not so polished or not ready features of game but it is useless to have a reasonable conversation in fanforum.

And civforum is dying slowly, civ5 wasnt good enough and thats why there are very few lets plays and stories. Civ5 also has not so many mods and famous modders like Rhye simply gave up because of game code was a mess (and lack of testers).


What are you atlking about ? There are a bunch of mods and let's plays out there, I'm not sure where that narrative comes from.

What makes you say these forums are dying out too ?

I think the trade routes are pretty great, and if I remember correctly CIV didn't have anything, does that makes CIV an unfinished game ?
 
What are you atlking about ? There are a bunch of mods and let's plays out there, I'm not sure where that narrative comes from.

What makes you say these forums are dying out too ?

I think the trade routes are pretty great, and if I remember correctly CIV didn't have anything, does that makes CIV an unfinished game ?

Civ5 has been out years now and if you compare amount of civ4 and civ3 has civ5 really has few mods. So time should not be an issue. Also there are zero mods that makes ai better so most likely ai cant be improved or it is very difficult.

Civfanatic feels bit down for me when you look civ5 lets play and stories section. We had civ5 mp game and reported progress there as a story form. Over 5300 people viewed it and total numbers of reply was 77... including out post. If you look any AAR section on paradox forum people are much more active and cheerful.

Trade is plain stupid because you cant cancel routes. Also number of routes is static no matter size of map or number of civs. On duel map 8 trade routes is too much. On huge too few. It is a good feature but on polished.
 
I don't really know where to start with, so I'll start by what I found most disgusting: the religion system. I remember reading a Sid Meier's interview in which he said that he changed civilization from a real time strategy game that you would direct the cities production and watch them grow to the turn based classic everyone knows and loves 1 week before the global shipping date of the final game (for the younger boys and girls out there, physical distribution of software was the rule in a pre or bad internet world), and in that same interview he stated something like "adding too much content can make a game too complicated, and simpler can be better". These two statements really marked me, "it is never too late to change a game" and "simpler can be better". That's not the case in civ5's religious system introduced with G&K. Religion turned into some sort of secondary money that provides minor bonuses (although it can be used to produce some really powerful combinations, depending on the case), while it worked very interessantely as a major player in civ4 (what makes sense, to be honest). Even the more recent possibility of founding 'protestatism' before 'orthodoxy' or 'catholicism' makes me feel stupid. I understand that is a way to try to balance some completely useless flavour that the civilizations have (favorite religion), but it just makes absolutely no sense, even for a game like civilization. As the immersion of the game bases itself on building alternate timelines, doesn't it make more sense to scrap out the favorite religion flavour than to actually break one religion into 3, one of them making absolutely no sense without the existence of another one for about 1.5 thousand years? Turning faith into a resource also makes the religion reasonably too controlable, and it shouldn't be. Religiosity flows more freely, and civilization5 makes it too square, it just doesn't seem to fit in the game.

I have to disagree with this. Religion is so much better in V then IV. Having more control over it is a huge plus in my mind. You can actually devise strategies around religion and use it to propel you to victory whereas with 4 it was just random. I have no idea how you can think religion in Civ 5 is too square considering it's extremely customizable.

As for being able to pick religions this isn't just for the AI, it's something most players wanted. In 4 I was pretty much Jewish 90% of the games because of the tech tree. Do you also hate that you can start the game with America even though it's a civ that splintered off?

The combat system. Unit stacking could really spoil the fun of the game sometimes, but the way the problem was solved isn't good. The overvaluation of the units in civilization5 makes it boring. The units move too fast for the board. The overall feeling is that there is less space in the board with the 3 hexes city range and with the multiple city states. And even though there is less space, the units are able to move faster and they might take multiple turns to die, which also tends to kind of overcrowd the game map even with fewer units if in comparison to other civ games. The AI doesn't know how to properly use ranged combat, it tends to stack multiple ranged units in nearby hexes and to target not the biggest potential threat to them, but an unit that will actually die if fired at, even if they all die on the following turn. The combination of ranged attacks with the 2 hexes default move also doesn't feel good, it adds too much flexibility to some units that shouldn't be too flexible. I gotta admit that that I really liked the hit points and firepower systems of the cities, though. Finally early sieging feels like what it should.

I don't have much problem with the space involved or having too much unit clutter, though I'm not expecting hugely tactical warfare. The AIs inability to use/defeat ranged is a huge problem. I'd say it's actually the biggest problem with the game because as a consequence the human player can cheap out on military and focus on other aspects without much risk.

Overall it's a big improvement over civ 4 but it's lacking that nerve racking experience which keeps you hooked. I think that's mostly because there's little fear of being attacked and losing so you never feel as if you're in a fight for your life.
 
Civ5 has been out years now and if you compare amount of civ4 and civ3 has civ5 really has few mods. So time should not be an issue. Also there are zero mods that makes ai better so most likely ai cant be improved or it is very difficult.

Civfanatic feels bit down for me when you look civ5 lets play and stories section. We had civ5 mp game and reported progress there as a story form. Over 5300 people viewed it and total numbers of reply was 77... including out post. If you look any AAR section on paradox forum people are much more active and cheerful.

Trade is plain stupid because you cant cancel routes. Also number of routes is static no matter size of map or number of civs. On duel map 8 trade routes is too much. On huge too few. It is a good feature but on polished.

I don't know about the number of mods, but there are a few mods that modify the AI's behaviour, there's one called "Smart AI" that's fairly popular.

Now you're comparing to Paradox games, previously you were talking about CIV. Regardless of how active Parafox communities are, the CiV community still looks fairly active to me.

As for trade, it would add a lotof intense micromanagement if you could cancel trade routes because you would basically have to check every turn if some new trade route came up or a previous mediocre one got better. I understand the complaint but that doesn't change my point : CIV had no trade routes at all, CiV has a system that might have flaws but is generally very good IMO (and has been quite well-received if I'm not mistaken).
 
I don't know about the number of mods, but there are a few mods that modify the AI's behaviour, there's one called "Smart AI" that's fairly popular.

Now you're comparing to Paradox games, previously you were talking about CIV. Regardless of how active Parafox communities are, the CiV community still looks fairly active to me.

As for trade, it would add a lotof intense micromanagement if you could cancel trade routes because you would basically have to check every turn if some new trade route came up or a previous mediocre one got better. I understand the complaint but that doesn't change my point : CIV had no trade routes at all, CiV has a system that might have flaws but is generally very good IMO (and has been quite well-received if I'm not mistaken).

Actually you did have trade routes. Every city would have X trade routes based on the size of the city. Open borders would allow the international trade routes, otherwise it was just internal ones. It would reevaluate the best routes each turn so there was essentially no management for you to do.
 
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