My totally unbiased and definitely not paid for by 2k review

Blitz66 · Sep 28, 2010

Afforess said:
Diplomacy is definitely more interesting.

Afforess said:
However, diplomacy feels a bit too...artificial.

Stopped reading after this. How can it be more interesting, yet too artificial?

I'm not going to waste my time on a review that contradicts itself this early on.

Guardian_PL · Sep 28, 2010

Blitz66 said:
Stopped reading after this. How can it be more interesting, yet too artificial?

I'm not going to waste my time on a review that contradicts itself this early on.

So you can't possibly imagine a situation, in which something is definitely interesting, but at the same time it gives you the feeling that something with it is not the way you'd want?

Anyway, read or don't, it's your eyes not mine. I only thought that one of my favourite threads just got some more meaningful content, I guess I was wrong ^^

Lord Tirian · Sep 28, 2010

trevort said:
Shouldn't one of the CIV5 development goals have been " Make the new AI at least as good as the old AI."?

I think one of the problems might be that the new combat system exaggerates AI problems. In Civ4, the AI could compensate through sheer quantity (since larger stacks = higher pressure), in Civ5, quantity most only increases the duration of your assault, much less the "pressure".

So even a BtS-level AI might have difficulties, since the new game doesn't play to its strengths.

Blitz66 said:
Stopped reading after this. How can it be more interesting, yet too artificial?

Well, if you had continued reading, you might have found out...

Cheers, LT.

ArgentumStudios · Sep 28, 2010

Excellent review. I agree with most of what you said and hope that between patches from Firaxis and mods from the community that everything will be resolved in a way that fulfills the potential this game has.

r_rolo1 · Sep 28, 2010

Good review ... just two points:

- Minor correction: BtS AI does not pillage. This has a reason : Civ IV vanilla AI was eager of pillaging with a typical group of 2 mounted units . Given the lack of ZoC + SoD, that was pretty much the same then sending groups of 2 units to death

With 1upt + ZoC it is far more reasonable to pillage ...

- Where have you seen the unobtrusive UI ? I would actually like to see it, since that so far, i only have a completely unergonomical, obtrusive and badly organized UI

Ok, maybe too harsh ... the interface has sound ideas behind ( the explandable panels are one of them ... props up for this ), but the extensive ( and abusive ) use of round pictures + the bad organization of a lot of stuff ( the specs openings is simply the most glaring example ), makes it really bad.

USAFireFly · Sep 28, 2010

Civ 4 Rise of Mankind is awsome. Civ V Stinks! It is truly AWFUL! Unbelievable how people can take a decent product and ruin it.

Afforess · Sep 28, 2010

Time for the longest response to people ever! I'm going to be pushing to 30k Char limit for sure.

Addendum: I was right. This post has been split into two parts, as it originally was 36k Chars.

Veshta said:
I am curious why you give a point for mods/tools when the mod-browser doesn't work and the tools have yet to be release .. I thought you were evaluating what's there and not what's missing

I was evaluating the current system - not the future tools. The mod browser and modbuddy are inspired works, and will definitely make useing (and creating!) mods much easier. The XML is modular, and not file-dependent. Lua instead of python. I could go on - but basically, Firaxis did deliver in terms of modding.

Time for the longest response to people ever! I'm going to be pushing to 10k Char limit for sure.

Veshta said:
Food/Happiness system works OK'ish but you have no real control over it other than ticking 'prevent growth' and assigning specialists when needed. Needs the ability to fine-tune an empire.

I know what you mean. This is a large part of the problem with Civ5.

Guardian_PL said:
Can we please have this thread sticked?

Yes, please. For purely selfish reasons, of course.

Guardian_PL said:
Mr Afforess, you're full of win.

Thanks! I love praise.

Guardian_PL said:
Just finished my second game on Large Emperor with Greece and seriously, the AI is a joke. It's like they saved the labour time on the AI development saying "oh well, they'll probably play online anyway, if not it's their problem, and the rest of the daft fans won't even notice that there's a problem with the AI since they'll be killing Archers with their Giant. Death. Robots!"

That may be true, but MP is just as broken as the rest of the game. No Unit Animations? Random Unit Order? WTF?

Guardian_PL said:
...I'm just sad that regardless of difficulty (I'll try Immortal and Deity now, but I think I know what the outcome will be already ) I'm winning easily my two very first games of the new installment - I mean what gives? I've struggled for aaaages to win in Civ4/Civ3/Civ2 on King...

I know. I was a prince level player in Civ4. I played Monarch to get my butt kicked, which I always thoroughly enjoyed. (Honestly, losing a tough game is a lot more fun that winning by a wide margin, IMHO). I can play (and beat) Civ5 on diety, no problems.

Guardian_PL said:
Did anyone else noticed that not once we could read a word "organic" here?

You're right! I totally forgot to mention how great hexes are, and how "streamlined" the game is. :lol:

In all honesty, I didn't even notice the change from squares to hexes, and it doesn't seem to affect gameplay at all, so It's not worth mentioning.

jagdtigerciv said:
I agree. Great, honest review. Good advice for Firaxis too. Rare, this past week, to see some meaningful critics/praises of Civ5 other than "consoliz'd" and "dumbed-down".

Thanks! I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way - but I kinda wish I was.

JimMac99 said:
Oh yeah, a great review Afforess.

Thanks!

Teperi Blaze said:
I haven't even got my copy yet, so this information is great to know.

I imagined a fantastic game, but several mature reviews, this included. makes me understand a bit what I'm in for.

By miles, your mini-biased review should make it a sticky, it is full of information and greatly explained.

Thank you!

If your a die hard Civ fan, you're going to buy it anyway. If not - I suggest waiting for Fallout 4: New Vegas, that looks good.

timmey_o_tool said:
Hey, great review. Just one suggestion for diplomacy.

I would like to see multi-civs deals. I mean, declaring war on some super power alone is bad, with one ally it's better, but for real chances to win you would need 3-4 civs. But this is hard to achieve, as in the negotiation is only with one civ at the time.

This would be a lot of fun - I agree. It might be tricky to make work in MP though. I'll definitely consider such an idea when modding though. I always was partial to the idea of multi-nation alliances.

Guardian_PL said:
Suggestion of mine - please do sth to the AI so it'll stop spamming Trading Posts everywhere, including riverside tiles. I've seen bazillions of AI cities having nothing but Trading Posts everywhere, with farms only on the grain resources

I know, it's a total eyesore. The trading post graphics clash with the rest of the clean, and nice looking improvements. I kinda want the cottage chain back.

Dragonlord said:
Good review! I agree with all of it, especially the constructive criticism. I hope Firaxis will heed your suggestions.

Mostly, I like the game as is - I've been playing every free minute since it released in Europe on Friday - but there is definitely room for improvement, most of which you've covered nicely.
Unlike the Firaxis bashers I see on these forums, I'm trying to keep a sense of perspective. Yes, the game has some flaws - but which game nowadays doesn't? The proof of the pudding will be in how Firaxis supports the game and fixes those flaws - or gives out the SDK to allow the modders to fix them instead.
Compared to the far more basic flaws that plagued Civ4 on release (crashes, memory leaks etc.) I'm quite happy with Civ5 - it's lots of fun right from the start and can only get better!

I wasn't around for the Civ4 release, so I am unable to make a side-by-side comparison. However, I was around for the CitiesXL release, which had an eerily similar fate.

ZenithSD said:
I tend to agree with most of the OP's points, however the new combat system feels downright stupid, at least for myself. I play mostly Earth maps, and i find it weird when my archers can fire at troops on the other side of the Adriatic or Red Sea. It's simply way too tactical for a game that focuses on the strategic part of history.

Simply not allowing ranged combat over more than 1 tile for land units would fix that. I actually really like the civ5 combat system for the most part.

ZenithSD said:
Another issue i have with the game is trade routes. If you got cities on the banks of the same river, they're still not connected. That is with the sailing tech obviously. Again, it feels stupid when you see trade routes being established by harbors between cities on different sides of a continent but not through a river over 4-5 tiles.

I agree - the trade system they implemented is so strange as to be unnecessary. I'd almost be happier if they had just axed trade routes entirely instead of giving us this neutered version.

ZenithSD said:
City states. While at first i thought their introduction was a brilliant move, their actual implementation was horrific. So basically an empire has to pay tons of gold to get in the good graces of a lesser civilization? While it might be true in some cases in the past few decades(See Marshal Plan, or the current US aid to Pakistan and the likes), most of the times throughout history it was the weaker civ paying tribute and trying to please the stronger one. The way the game is designed, city states behave more like spoiled brats than civs in your sphere of influence.

Which is pretty much what I said in my review.

ZenithSD said:
City Growth. Even in the later ages, with hospitals, granaries and medical centers built, in relatively food rich areas it's still really really slow. Basically the only way to get a big city is to found it early. In the effort to make the game less frustrating early by having to stop a city's growth thus feel like wasting food, Firaxis made the game more frustrating overall. Not to mention that i was hoping Civ was gonna simulate the population boom since the Industrial age, yet me capital had 13 pop in the classical era and 21 pop in modern era. This applies to just about every feature in the game. You get all the goodies(carrots on a stick) relatively early, while making the game less and less rewarding the later it gets.

I know what you mean. I like the early game ( < 1600AD) the most in Civilization 5. I usually quit my games If I haven't won by the modern era. Turns take too long, there isn't much to do, and with so many units and cities, it feels more tedious than fun.

ZenithSD said:
I could go like this for like 5 more pages, but the my main issue is the whole feel of the game. It just feels arcadeish, more like an abstract RTS such as Starcraft rather than a simulator. I totally like the light hearted and cartoonish design, with humor sprinkled here and there so don't get me wrong, i didn't expect a complex and historically accurate simulator that would be so tedious that would no longer be fun to play. However so far i got so many issues with the game that i'll just wait for some mod. Firaxis should really have gotten some ideas from Ryhe's civ4 mod.

I actually never played Ryhe's Civ4 mod (Feel free to bash me) or Fall from Heaven (Kael's going to strike me down now...), but I'm sure either of those mods are more entertaining than Civ5 ATM. I just hope Firaxis can fix it ASAP.

Takeda said:
12/-8

so you give the game a -1.5 overall?

No one likes math geeks.

Nutteria said:
Also revamp the luxury resource +happyness.There should be flavors for different civs that grant +2 happynes for sertain resources while all the rest giving +3 instead of +5.

A system build around resource rarity instead of static values would be best. So if there were 15 dye resources, and 30 cities, dye would only give +2 happiness. But if there were 2 dyes, and 30 cities, dye would give +15.

Nutteria said:
At the moment grabing extra furs is way more cheaper and easy then building Colliseum.Luxuries must add falvour and civ specific bonuses more instead of a flat +5 from everything.

I believe I stated as much in my review. Why build the Effiel Tower for 8 happiness when you can conquer an entire civilization and take their resources in the same time?

Nutteria said:
Beef up the military policys .Currently they are quite underwhelming comapred to what you can get from the rest.

I get the general feeling that the early policies are disproportionately weaker than the later ones.

Nutteria said:
Last but not least defensive structure cost should DECREASE with every subsequent building AND add to the totall HP pool of the city.Currently even a 100 defence city can fall to 2 barrages from 3 cannons due to lack of HP upgrades.

A 10str city should be able to nearly kill a 7 str attacking unit, not the other way around. City Strength seems to be totally broken.

beholder2 said:
Hello !

At last a review on Civ5, and not a review of "What civ 5 is missing from civ 4". I appreciate !

I agree with most of the points.
My principal problem is, as you, the difficulty to see something well on the map. I don't think it's a graphic problem, just that colors/UI are not well thinked. I dislike the new system in town (the coin's one) : it's difficult to discern which tile is used or not, and what are my choices.

I share your pain.

beholder2 said:
1) Do you think it is well balanced to be able to sell all luxury resources to IA so early in the game ? I mean... selling ivory or gold for 200-300 randomly to an IA... Just insane. And they always accept it. With this gold you can randomly buy good tiles/buy workers/be friend with a CS.
And that the point where I don't understand you in your review : the power of of CS. You prefer destroying them and building your own city. But if you invest the gold in it (ok it's better with some leader like greeks) : you will often have strategic resources, luxury resources (OMG you sell one to be friend with a CS to get back one...) AND food if you aim at a sailing CS (but you might do this). This last point is the power : you don't need to bother for food in your town, just click on "focus production or gold", and you'll have tons of food with CS.

Okay - Maritime City States may be worth courting for the extra gold. But Military City States and Cultural City States aren't. It's much cheaper to just wipe them out.

beholder2 said:
2) I'd prefer seeing the effect of each action with IA in diplomacy. At first point because I don't remember all, and second thing because I think diplomacy should be at last interesting, compared to civ 4. I was extremely bored in civ 4 because, at the end, religions and behaviours were the only matters that really counted, and that was always THE reason to attack you. Modifiers were too high. And it was just impossible to be exactly in the same configuration as 2 others IA. So you might expect to be really friend/ally with one IA (with a completely stupid combinaison of configurations) but all others were at war with you because you don't do slavery anymore at 1850AD, or you were not christian etc...
At second point because it's IA. It has to act according to a specific rule. And you have to know the rule... So you have to know the exact current state with an IA.
If I don't want to know want does another player is planning, I play multiplayer with real guy
So... It should be a game parameter in order to please both !

Instead of adding back the Diplomacy Modifiers - the AI could have an "ambassador" or "embassy" screen where they publicly state (or lie about) some modifiers. So the AI might give both truthful reasons, and lies for what they feel about you. You'd be able to do the same to the AI - state that you liked them, and for general reasons (or lies). Then diplomacy would be based on subterfuge, and hiding your intentions.

beholder2 said:
3) Remove the military upgrade from ruins. It should be xp, but not improving the unit unless you have the appropriate technology. A scout->Archer is just too much OP

That's such an obvious bug that I figure Firaxis can fix it themselves.

beholder2 said:
4) First troup improvement is useless. We should have more choices than just +20% on open filed o +20% on accidented tiles.

I can't agree more - I totally forgot to review the promotion system. I'd prefer to have a lot more additional starting promotions to chose from.

beholder2 said:
Adding a "tree improvements" like the "science tree" would be very useful too.

edit : idea of improvement :

I think it would be great if you had some bonuses when being in a specific age. For example : behind in a specific age give you bonuses for building wonder from this age, and malus for others. So it could be a strategy to not advance on the next age in order to build faster a specific wonder. It would add a real strategy to the existence of ages, instead of just a changement of cities display

That's an interesting idea, and would slow down the tech pace. There would need to be a way to NOT research though, so you don't advance accidentally.

Lord Olleus said:
I agree with the review on everything except city states. It is NEVER worth conquering maritime or cultural ones. The food bonus from maritime city states in the mid-late game is so enormous that is worth far far more than even a couple of brilliantly situated cities. Pretty much all higher level strategies depend on either constant war and/or spending all of your gold on maritime city states.

This is made even worse by the fact that the AI virtually never tries to become allied with city states meaning that you dont have to compete with them for influence.

Cultural City States are still worth conquering IMHO.

Markstar said:
I would also like to say "good review" (was thinking of writing my own as well)! Imo you could have also addressed the UI and game performance a little, since it is even worse in Civ5 than Civ4.

I figured game performance is too relative and based on your machine - so I avoided it. I did review the UI.

Markstar said:
Here are a few points of my own (in addition to yours, Zeniths and the other suggestions (some of which can also be found in other threads):

Make the cultural requirements per level fixed. In my current game I have a total of 4 Policies and the end of the game, simply because I expand quicker than I can make cultural buildings.

Improve/fix the UI:

[Fix]Sometimes, when clicking on a city, you only get a limited build queue and have to go back to the city to look at it and add items to the queue

Make the building queue available without having to check the box

Allow drag & drop ordering of items in the queue

Show full city screen when selecting "Choose Production" (right now I find myself constantly building going back to the city to add something to the queue)

Make building queue longer

Show which tiles are being worked in the normal map view

Don't "scroll" to new events -> gets annoying over time

Introduce option to disable unit animations

Show unit destination on hover/click

Remove crossing river penalty later in the game

Improve worker speed later in the game (its quite slow even with improvements)

Improve game performance (not likely to happen): I play on a 3.2GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, Radeon 4870 1GB, Intel SSD and just loading the game takes 2 minutes on low graphic settings. Also time between turns is forever on larger maps, even from the very beginning.

That's it for now. Like most my top issues are lack of worthwhile improvements/wonders and horrible AI, but overall I was pleasantly surprised. As a longtime Civ-addict, I know that the games were always (well, except the first one) bug-ridden and not of overly good quality (sometimes until the end - for example, the Great Scientist in Civ3 never worked as promised and was a major announced feature of Conquests).

Cheers

Interesting suggestions. I think there is a UI fix list being compiled in another thread too. Might want to post there as well.

LegioCorvus said:
Good review.

I also find myself enjoying Civ5 less and less the more I play. I definitely think it has potential though, and I like a lot of what they've done that's been popular to complain about (such as Steam). There is definitely a lot to iron out, but it's hard to find between the posts of wailing anguish.

Like you said, I want to like this game.

I think this game can be saved. That's why I reviewed it. If I had lost hope - I would be one of those posters.

Jamesds said:
Thank you, that was a well-written, balanced and interesting review to read. I've not played long enough in my first game to notice some of the exploits, but I do agree with most of your review. Especially regarding the AI letting their military be cleared too easily and the fact that unit maintenance isn't explained at all. City production is also a let down, and mid-late game when you're at peace it can be somewhat boring without things to build often enough. The main problem for me is gold - it's so scarce, you hardly want to build improvements just for the small savings that will incur. The fact many of them don't reap much reward for the many turns it takes to build them doesn't help.

Once you realize that you only need 6-7 military units and 2 workers max, your gold problems will vanish. Golden Ages help too.

Jamesds said:
New games require new strategies, and like I said I'm only on my first game, but I do feel that with production being very low and gold being so scarce come mid-late game there needs to be some modification in at least one of these. I could cope with less production if there was more gold that gave me the opportunity to buy things here and there, but they both seem rather imbalanced at the moment, not optimal for good gameplay in my opinion.

But in saying that, I am enjoying Civ5 for what it is, and I'm sure with tweaks and the odd revamp here and there it'll turn out brilliantly. Good luck on the modding front

I hope you're right.

JLoZeppeli said:
Excuse me but i have to disagree with the review at some point.

Finally! I was getting sick of agreeing with people. :lol:

JLoZeppeli said:
First of all you speak of the barbarians as a challange... No way, at King difficulty and above i had little problems with them in the most of the games, they were sparring partners for my troops, a good exp machine.

Play with Raging Barbs.

JLoZeppeli said:
And combat have a big problem: the map is on world scale, when the troops and their mechanics are like a Panzer General scale, if you understand the problem. And how many time i have to play tetris with them. When i start a siege of a city protected by mountains is a pain in the ass and also if a neutral force has its troops in the way, as often happen, it is another big issue...

See the picture I put on the OP - it shows neutral troops blocking a war front completely. Yes, having them get in the way is annoying, but I guess it doesn't bother me as much as you.

JLoZeppeli said:
The speaking of general happiness it reduces a lot the micromanaging, because you don't need to build in a spacific town (like civ IV) the necessary building to raise up the value. Same for culture buildings.

The only real management of the single city is food, to speed up the grown.

The other thing I don't feel good is the city expansion by gold and the fact that you can't take over others tiles by culture like in the previous games (so basically it is a warlike game).

And you don't point out that the game is unbelanced, with some leaders way too powerful, if you use the socials like a combo... Speaking of mecenatism and Alexander, or Nobunaga with Honor and Autarchy....
While others a super dumbed down like Iroques...

I agree.

JLoZeppeli said:
I don't wanto to point out the worse Ai ever seen in a Civilization game, but thinking of the stupid moves i have seeen at high difficulty level (non the cheapest King), like attacking a city-state with allo of his troops with no reserves and no siege machines...

In my dreams this game could became great, but now is only a decent strategic game with a name not worth of...

I know, sadly. Say, what was it that we were disagreeing about?

SevenSpirits said:
While the BTS AI has definitely had more time to develop, I feel the Civ IV AI was better than random. My impression of the Civ V combat AI so far is that it's actually worse at combat than the barbarians. Combined with a combat system with a much higher potential for blowouts and you can literally beat 4 warriors, 3 archers, 2 swordsmen, 2 scouts and multiple cities using only 2 horsemen and a scout. (That's the example from my last game.) This is not by abusing known quirks of the AI, or even being particularly clever at all. It's just straight up attacking the closest guys on every turn you don't need to heal, and you literally never lose a single unit.

Seriously! It's not like I'm trying to not lose any units. On one turn, after killing a warrior, I left a wounded horseman in a far forward position in range of two archers and a sword. The archers attacked my fortified scout on the hill behind him instead, accomplishing nothing, and the swordsman walked out aimlessly onto the flatland next to the horseman. It's just unbelievable.

The more I play, the worse it seems... The AI should be attacking the MOST wounded troops, in order to kill it, not just the closest.

Cilpot said:
Thanks for a great review.

I think the suggestions about Pact of Secrecy and Pact of Cooperation are spot on. For a time I thought they worked like you suggested, as it doesn't have much point otherwise.

Yeah - It's a real downer when you realize that they actually have no real effect in-game. :sad:

MeteorPunch said:
I agree with many of your fixes, and many more - it's boggling how many things they missed. The game feels like it needs a couple months of solid work.

This game should have been a Christmas Release.

Haiku said:
Gameplay > Realism

Only to a certain degree. If you follow Gameplay > Realism for too long, you'll end up with COD:MW2. :lol:

TLF said:
Afforess,

The inevitable question is, Are these things that can be modded and is there a possibility that you might be interested?

Yes, and yes!

beholder2 said:
But it's truly a stupid mistake because when I write it, I spell it in english in my mind (I mean you don't pronounce letter with the same sound).

This is what we call "franglais"

French is : français
English is : Anglais

You mix and you obtain the 'franglais'

This was the cultural minute !!

I learned something new today!

Lord Tirian said:
Eh, Afforess' score seems to be much more of a "proper" score, as opposed to the inflated scores review magazines give (because, if you average review scores from them... the average won't be 50%).

For the review in general: Go, Afforess! It's a good review - I have a couple of minor issues with some points (e.g. your suggestions for diplomacy and your actual review of diplomacy - seems you let them off the hook... ). And I think the game is a bit better than your impression - but probably because I see a lot of potential in it.

So, let me say that I hope you mod Civ5 as soon as the SDK gets out, because implementing your suggestions/alleviating your criticisms would go a long way towards making Civ5 the game I want to play!

Cheers, LT.

Honestly, I never trust review sites anymore. I feel like they are all corporate shills...

V. Soma said:
No need to comment, Dale
Just forward this thread and other smart CFC ideas to the devs
Thanks, and cheers

In my mind I set a Christmas deadline for civ5 to reach a solid 1.1.0.0 state with patches

Feel free to sticky this!

Zen Blade said:
Afforeness,

Great review, and I think the score is about right.

You left out one issue that really came to bug me... "tile bonuses" I have come to the point where flood plains, cows, sheep, etc... are really just nothing special. It used to be finding that cow was a big deal b/c it would really help a city, but now...
ehh... I can take it or leave it. The "bonus" provided by the tile is nothing special. In general, most of the resources given by any particular tile is +/- 1 from any other tile. Grassland, plain, hill, etc... and the "improvement" placed on any one tile is also fairly weak sauce.

Oh yeah, the "Regular" Resources are a total bust.

Zen Blade said:
I think your larger point about turns taking a lot of time plus doing nothing on most turns is the most salient and scary point. The game, unfortunately, is largely a simulation. We are all going through the motions, and when we do have a chance to make a decision, the decision is often rather unimportant.

I agree

Zen Blade said:
Rarely in CiV have I found a "tough" decision. In Civ IV, there were always tough decisions, which improvement to build first, do I chop a forest now and hope it regrows, which building to produce first, which unit to make b/c of aggressive AI, which tech to get first, is now the time to risk building a 25 turn wonder, or do I get another settler out first...

I know - I get bored because no matter what I choose, I can do no wrong.

Afforess · Sep 28, 2010

Part two of the longest response ever! I care about you guys!

Zen Blade said:
In CiV, the tough choices are combat-related (combat is much better)... and social policy-related (new concept), but buildings, units, improvements, wonders, techs... nothing seems tough because most of the decisions seem to have little impact on what happens.
IF YOU REALLY NEED HAPPINESS, then you MUST build a theater, etc... so, wait 20-40 turns, and then you get to make another "tough" choice. However, in the meantime, there isn't much to do.

And I totally agree with your critique of the terrain... they spent countless hours designing something to make our lives more complicated. I try never to build trading posts because they are so much of an eye sore.
I can't wait for the Civ IV land/improvement mods...

I just wish I was wrong! Why hasn't anyone debated me yet!?

Rexflex said:
I definitely agree that an odds-based XP reward makes more sense, but I would go further by saying that any battle that has you with a decisive victory prediction should get absolutely zero XP under Civ V. I don't think any army has learned anything new from smashing through an opponent that is so strongly outclassed, and it would stop the XP farming in the game. There should always be a real risk/reward basis to XP.

I know. Seriously - I created this very system for Civ4, in my mod.

Rexflex said:
Likewise I think you shouldn't gain XP from being shot at. That is another Civ V XP farm exploit (approach, get shot at, then retreat and replenish). This also doesn't reflect reality for what you could possibly learn from standing around and letting yourself be shot at before retreating (other than it is a pretty good idea to not do that).

XP Farming! It's even easier in Civ5! :lol:

beholder2 said:
You even don't need to retreat in early game. Just have a doc behind you/or having doc upgrade on the unit, declare war on another stupid Civ, Fortify your unit near one of his city, and wait. +2xp every turn, +4 with the right civic, and enjoy. Fortify + doc = +2 hp, which is what the city will hit you for.
Don't remember if fortifying on a hill/forest reduces damages. But it avoid your unit from behind backstab by a stupid lurking barb that is unlucky roaming in this area

The best is to find a barb boat that can shoot you. Exact same technic, but no war at all. Priceless.
It's even better when they come near one of your coastal/near coastal city. NEVER SHOT THEM !! Put your unit on the field and fortify. Being on your land equal behind doc : +2hp per turn when fortified. AWESOME !

I had exactly the same scenario happen to me a Barb galley just kept shooting, and never left. I maxed out the XP cap pretty quickly.

Abremms said:
solid review, makes alot of good points and nothing i can really dissagree with.

however, for me there is a huge fun factor that greatly increases the score. i understand that its not there for everyone, but I've put over 40 hours into the game since release, haven't managed to get to sleep before 1am a single night, and spend nearly every free moment in the game. I am still having a blast. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, but the "just one more turn" magic is there in spades.

I am greatly anticipating what will happen when modders get their hands on the SDK.

Play another 40 hours, and tell me if the fun is still there. I initially enjoyed it a lot too - but after a couple games, it got boring quick.

CivFanMUC said:
Very good review, after >16 hours of playing (at a friends home on his pc), I have to agree with most of your points. BUT

Forcing Steam was a bad, bad, very bad decision.
If it would be optional, sure, +1
but with being forced to Steam, for me it's a clearly -40 for Firaxis, for I will not buy the game (but sure will play it at my friends (who is playing CSS since >4 years) on weekends....).

Unobtrusive? I'd rather say humble and therefore a -1 for Firaxis.

Plus, some things that JLoZeppeli said:

Not going to debate steam, but IHMO It's a plus. I like steam, and own Valve games. (TF2 + HL1&2)

ZenithSD said:
And if you're gonna say "well, there were no americans in the stone age either", the way i see it, the civilization series has always been about concepts. Americans, Egyptians or Chinese are there just so they wouldn't call the civs X, Y, Z. Same thing for most of the units, buildings or resources. Do you think that if there's only one wheat resource on the world map then that's the only place where you can grow wheat? Then what do you grow on a farm on a normal tile? What the wheat resource stands for is "a fertile area, favorable for the production of wheat". The coliseum building stands for "a building with the purpose of entertaining the masses". While only the romans called it so, other civs had odeons, ball courts or horse racing tracks.

Honestly, I always wish they would get rid of Civilizations, and just give us Red Team, Gold Team, Blue Team, etc... :lol:

Zen Blade said:
Rexflex,

A game exploit versus reality.... Farming XP is a game exploit, but in reality seeing combat is, by definition, experience-generating.

And yes, you do gain something by smashing a foe to pieces, confidence, familiarity with maneuvers, etc... The same goes with receiving range fire... you gain confidence in the face of such attacks, you are less likely to break during future attacks...
Morale is a big factor in combat, and most troops were not trained extensively before seeing combat. Yes, the elites, the nobles, they were... but peasants or the poor were not.

However, I do agree with odds-based experience.

Dynamic XP Gain based on the situation would fix that.

Viniloss said:
Well, i agree with most of your apointments. I just want to add that i am very disapointed with the game. I think we lose important things like:
- corporations (i changed few games founding them with that extra gold);
- resources: where is whales, pigs, rice, copper, hit musicals, movies...;
- healthy/unhealthy cities;
- the trade routes are a mess (good times when you could destroy a road and avoid a city to get a resource);
- the use of resources is dumb and the mains idea was soooo good (how can I get -3 iron if I bought the iron from another player? I mean, if I bought five iron and I used the 3 people who sold me should get right back only two iron at the end of the agreement, do not you think? I thought the idea was to get the resources they had an end. In other words, once used, they no longer exist);
-stupid wonders bonuses. WHats the point to build UN now? Any player can win a diplomatic vitory... We are no longer elected as secretary, we can not mark the end of wars, the beginning of them, the policies to be adopted;
- and the comerce between the cities of the diferent players?

My review is not about what's gone - It's about what's there. And what's there is pretty broken.

kaltorak said:
It's not realism > gameplay, nor the other way around.

Realism makes it fun. But when favouring gameplay in some aspect over realism makes it even more fun, than go ahead. After all, fun > all

I think Ryhe has shown that you can be realistic and fun at the same time.

ZenithSD said:
Why don't you just post a lolcat?

Dave_Oz said:
I agree with almost everything except

Adding Steam is in no way a good point, having it optional for people who don't know how to update or install mods would make more sense, forcing it on every is horrible.

Also Seaports should give more then just a production bonus to ships, how about a trade bonus ?

Not going to debate steam, TYVM.

Blitz66 said:
Stopped reading after this. How can it be more interesting, yet too artificial?

I'm not going to waste my time on a review that contradicts itself this early on.

Aritificial and Interesting are not mutually exclusive. For instance, a japenese sex robot would be totally artificial and yet interesting. :lol:

Lord Tirian said:
I think one of the problems might be that the new combat system exaggerates AI problems. In Civ4, the AI could compensate through sheer quantity (since larger stacks = higher pressure), in Civ5, quantity most only increases the duration of your assault, much less the "pressure".

So even a BtS-level AI might have difficulties, since the new game doesn't play to its strengths.

Whatever the case, I was still pleased to see some of my roads and farms get burned to the ground.

ArgentumStudios said:
Excellent review. I agree with most of what you said and hope that between patches from Firaxis and mods from the community that everything will be resolved in a way that fulfills the potential this game has.

I hope so too.

r_rolo1 said:
Good review ... just two points:

- Minor correction: BtS AI does not pillage. This has a reason : Civ IV vanilla AI was eager of pillaging with a typical group of 2 mounted units . Given the lack of ZoC + SoD, that was pretty much the same then sending groups of 2 units to death With 1upt + ZoC it is far more reasonable to pillage ...

- Where have you seen the unobtrusive UI ? I would actually like to see it, since that so far, i only have a completely unergonomical, obtrusive and badly organized UI Ok, maybe too harsh ... the interface has sound ideas behind ( the explandable panels are one of them ... props up for this ), but the extensive ( and abusive ) use of round pictures + the bad organization of a lot of stuff ( the specs openings is simply the most glaring example ), makes it really bad.

1.) See above.

2.) I Know I said I wasn't comparing to Civ4. I'm using Civ4 as an example of an obtrusive UI. I Civ4 when you finished your turn, you'd get like 20 popups in your face for a new tech, new production, etc, all taking over your screen. In civ5, they are queued neatly in the sidebar, and it's one of the changes I really do like a lot.

Zhahz · Sep 28, 2010

Nice review and I agree with most of your suggestions (but not all

I've had a city state retain a puppet in one of my games. Shocked the heck out of me. Annoying too since it poached it while I was sieging with intent to raze.

Spoiler :

Arrorn · Sep 28, 2010

Dhaeman said:
Trebuchets were made of iron and painted wood colored so the enemies didn't think they were as advanced as they really were.

........ No Trebuchets were made from wood!

The largest trebuchets needed exceptional quantities of timber: at the Siege of Damietta, in 1249, Louis IX of France was able to build a stockade for the whole Crusade camp with the wood from 24 captured Egyptian trebuchets.

From Wikipedia

And if anyone says that wikipedia is inaccurate........ it is better than Encyclopedia Brittanica.... look it up!

Dhaeman said:
Cannons are just made from leftover frigate cannons which don't need iron either.

Don't care how much iron it requires. Do cannons require some form of metal????? Yes... though of course it depends upon the cannon (Mythbusters built a working wooden cannon... but with iron bands to hold it together) but the one in civ5 does... or should. unless, someone wants to retexture it so it looks wooden?

I though not...

veBear · Sep 28, 2010

I would like to see more on the diplomatic front, and the advisors from civ4 vere just way better. Hoping for some improvement there.

troytheface · Sep 28, 2010

horrible review

said nothing

"these are new and i (like or dislike)

hardly a review

but a good metaphor for gameplay

hollow, no insight, no dynamic

Afforess · Sep 28, 2010

troytheface said:
horrible review

said nothing

"these are new and i (like or dislike)

hardly a review

but a good metaphor for gameplay

hollow, no insight, no dynamic

Care to clarify - what exactly was horrible about it? That you disagreed with my opinion? :lol:

vandyr · Sep 28, 2010

Afforess said:
Care to clarify - what exactly was horrible about it? That you disagreed with my opinion?

It was horrible because it didn't mirror the minority consensus that Firefly above spelled out so eloquently: "Civ V stinks it sucks!".

If you're not saying that or agreeing with it, then you're obviously a fanboy.

r_rolo1 · Sep 28, 2010

Well, it looks like no one remembers our resident troll of civ IV strats and tips forum

Welcome back troy

Lord Tirian · Sep 28, 2010

r_rolo1 said:
Well, it looks like no one remembers our resident troll of civ IV strats and tips forum Welcome back troy

...Attacko? :goodjob:

Cheers, LT.

PawelS · Sep 28, 2010

Arrorn said:
........ No Trebuchets were made from wood!

From Wikipedia

And if anyone says that wikipedia is inaccurate........ it is better than Encyclopedia Brittanica.... look it up!

It was a joke...

Afforess · Sep 28, 2010

r_rolo1 said:
Well, it looks like no one remembers our resident troll of civ IV strats and tips forum Welcome back troy

Wasn't around then, as my creation date tells.

vandyr said:
It was horrible because it didn't mirror the minority consensus that Firefly above spelled out so eloquently: "Civ V stinks it sucks!".

If you're not saying that or agreeing with it, then you're obviously a fanboy.

Well, I definitely am a fanboy. But Civ5 isn't giving me joyful orgasms like it should for any good fanboy.

Adam7Eight · Sep 28, 2010

r_rolo1 said:
Well, it looks like no one remembers our resident troll of civ IV strats and tips forum Welcome back troy

His trolling goes back to the Civ3 days.

vandyr · Sep 28, 2010

Afforess said:
Well, I definitely am a fanboy. But Civ5 isn't giving me joyful orgasms like it should for any good fanboy.

I pee a little every time I launch it, but I agree with every criticism of the AI that's been posted. It definitely seems subpar.

My totally unbiased and definitely not paid for by 2k review

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