Crispy Review of Civ V

JLoZeppeli said:

As the buliding and expansion side are quite annoying, of the base mechanics and the low-paced overall speed of the game... So it turns in a wargame, because, at least, crushing the idiotic AI is the most fun thing left...

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Amen.

If you don't play Civ to conquer everyone else, it's just a lot of "Next Turn"s until you can build the blue spaceship, the pink spaceship, or buy the gold spaceship.

For the non-warmonger, there's precious little to do beyond await the popping of the next pink tech and occasionally, buy another vowel...errr... city state ally.

zonk said:

Amen.

If you don't play Civ to conquer everyone else, it's just a lot of "Next Turn"s until you can build the blue spaceship, the pink spaceship, or buy the gold spaceship.

For the non-warmonger, there's precious little to do beyond await the popping of the next pink tech and occasionally, buy another vowel...errr... city state ally.

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Well this would explain the statement "Civ 5 is all about war", which is a very valid complaint, I would say. But it doesn't explain the statement "Civ 5 is all about winning, not about the journey".

stethnorun said:

Metacritic isn't compatible with Crispy simply because we don't use number scores, that's it.

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That's totally false. Metacritic will assign scores even where the publication does not use number scores.

"For each review found, we will take the score given by the critic and convert it to a 0-100 point scale. (For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review.)."
https://metacritic.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1495/session/L3Nuby8wL3NpZC9DOFVxQkczaw==


The true reason why your reviews are not included in Metacritic is probably the following:

"Several other websites that provide links to movie reviews have weighed the quantity vs. quality issue and come out in favor of quantity. These sites typically include links to as many reviews as there are available on the net. And lately, with every Joe Schmo posting a movie review both before and after movie releases, there are quite a few reviews for each movie (we're talking 100's of reviews for the more popular titles). True, some of these Joe Schmos--or at least the Harry Knowles--do have quality sites with useful reviews and information. But the quality of many is inconsistent at best... Thus we felt that selecting a modest number of higher-quality publications would make the pages of the site easier to read and would maximize the quality of our information."
http://metacritic.custhelp.com/app/...ession/L2F2LzEvc25vLzAvc2lkL3FBVUpRdGRr/sno/0

stethnorun said:

and to respond to your edit, I came on to hear all types of opinions and even to debate the points I raised in my review. I like to engage with people, especially people that have differing points of view. The problem is that not many people (especially on this board, it seems) have very well thought out opinions.

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This is how you engage with people with differing points of view?

stethnorun said:

Not only that, you are so hateful that you research my credentials in an effort to "discredit" me. If that doesn't speak to your emotional bias, I don't know what does.

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stethnorun said:

The fact is, the "backlash" against Civ comes almost entirely from Civ 4 veterans that have a huge bone to pick. Their arguments against Civ 5 are, most times, quite vapid which is why they don't engage in a point by point debate. Just hyperbolic forum rants.

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stethnorun said:

*rolls eyes* My point, which I'm sure you will get confused by yet again, is that he didn't like my review, then proceeded to say basically: "This guy is even low enough to advertise his own review and then hide that fact from people!" It was an attempt to discredit me in some way, which had nothing to do with Civ 5.

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stethnorun said:

See these are the sort of hyperbolic rants I was talking about. Unless it isn't and you just didn't get a chance to qualify this statement. How, exactly, is Civ 5 an RTS (in TBS form) and how is it targeted at FPS gamers? If you can back that statement up with some examples and facts, I am eager to hear it.

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Seems pretty engaging and constructive to me! Now I understand how you are such an insightful reviewer.

stethnorun said:

Well this would explain the statement "Civ 5 is all about war", which is a very valid complaint, I would say. But it doesn't explain the statement "Civ 5 is all about winning, not about the journey".

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Perhaps the builder simply plays more FOR the journey than the win --

War was the challenge, the limiting factor to what I found to be the "fun" part of Civilization.... I enjoyed a variety of resource types which had a variety of uses and yields and building the infrastructure on them. I enjoyed multi-purpose buildings and figuring the cost/benefit of OOBs. I enjoyed using diplomacy to cultivate AI relations, sometimes in a quite machiavellian manner, to create buffers against potential attackers. I enjoyed spreading religions and configuring civics throughout the game to best suit the state of the empire and what I needed to accomplish.

"Winning" wasn't the end goal -- the end goal was to do precisely those things. As I said, war was the challenge and the limiting factor -- I couldn't just do those things, there was a need to defend and be able to defend one's self. In some cases, that even meant going on the offensive or cementing AI relationships by coming to their aid in war.

In V -- most of that fun is gone... tile improvements and resources were intentionally simplified and variety reduced. Buildings were made more costly and single dimensional. Diplomacy has been reduced to 'trading'.

Everything in V is locked into single swimlanes... going for the pink spaceship? Then build cultural buildings and pick pink sciences that boost pink science output. Going for the blue spaceship? Build science buildings and pick pink sciences that boost blue science output. There's no point in crossing into other swimlanes - it's too obviously counterproductive.

To the warmonger, perhaps there's some joy in tinkering with what are secondary things -- be they 'mildly amusing baubles' while I wait to build more horseman or 'necessary annoyances' while I build more horseman.

To the builder - they don't even rise to the level of mildly amusing baubles.... They're just occasional breaks in 25-30 Next Turn wastelands.

JLoZeppeli said:

In the review, dude, in the review...

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Mhmm...not seeing it. Can you quote it please?

Rohili said:

That's totally false. Metacritic will assign scores even where the publication does not use number scores.

"For each review found, we will take the score given by the critic and convert it to a 0-100 point scale. (For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review.)."
https://metacritic.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1495/session/L3Nuby8wL3NpZC9DOFVxQkczaw==


The true reason why your reviews are not included in Metacritic is probably the following:

"Several other websites that provide links to movie reviews have weighed the quantity vs. quality issue and come out in favor of quantity. These sites typically include links to as many reviews as there are available on the net. And lately, with every Joe Schmo posting a movie review both before and after movie releases, there are quite a few reviews for each movie (we're talking 100's of reviews for the more popular titles). True, some of these Joe Schmos--or at least the Harry Knowles--do have quality sites with useful reviews and information. But the quality of many is inconsistent at best... Thus we felt that selecting a modest number of higher-quality publications would make the pages of the site easier to read and would maximize the quality of our information."
http://metacritic.custhelp.com/app/...ession/L2F2LzEvc25vLzAvc2lkL3FBVUpRdGRr/sno/0

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So you would rather make guesses than accept what someone who works at the site tells you? Ok then.

@protocol7 Nope, that's how I engaged with people that spewed negativity containing nothing of substance. I'm glad you picked out those posts rather than the posts where I do engage, constructively, with posters. Thanks for playing.

I'd have to say that if anything, Civ 5 is a simplier game aimed to get the crowd who tried Civ 4 and thought "Daaaa, game 2 haaard, brain melt now." only to trundle off and play Halo on their much beloved 360 which didn't have all the problems of the nasty PC games.

I'm not sure what it is lately, but PC games have just felt like they're aimed at 5 year olds now days.

for someone who tries to avoid war and is a defensive player/Civ Builder.... Civ V is unplayable to me. There is a large sect of players who enjoy playing like this and now its just randomized war against AI's actions which seem random... while doing the bidding for this odd, ridiculous entity called City-States.

the entire mode of the game is not enjoyable to me at all. Reviewing the game, you didn't take into account, the different ways to play the game have been reduced and eliminated? Thats a pretty glaring omission.

Nice review! While I don't agree with everything I think it was well written and did Civilization 5 justice.

I know many people don't agree with the review and I for one think it's totally ok to say so but many comments here are very rude which I don't really care for. Since this is repeated as soon as someone says they like Civilization 5 many on this forum is increasingly looking as very elitist. I hope this trend will die as more people discover the beauty of Civilization 5.

Oh and btw... the design of Civilization 5 I would say is much more "smart" than of Civilization 4. The problem is the AI that make the game looks dumbed down since (especially for Civilization 4 veterans) it's usually quite easy for the human to win even on the harder difficulties.

Charvel1 said:

Mhmm...not seeing it. Can you quote it please?

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"Many are furious (or claim to be furious, in a "Danish Cartoon" sort of way) at the slightly flawed launch of Civ V, but Firaxis has never been a company to just leave people hanging. Civ IV got its last patch less than a year ago (4 years after launch) so I'm too not worried that the devs will get Civ V in perfect shape in short order.

I would forgive you if, in taking my bias into account, you deemed my review "tainted" and therefore unreliable. Indeed, those that wanted Civ 4.5 are so rabidly biased the other direction, that nothing anyone says will make an impact. I came into this game wanting to like it but fully prepared to be disappointed. Fortunately for me, even the rough state of the game did nothing to hamper my enjoyment and I will never be able to look at Civ IV again. There's no turning back now."

It is not very polite, and i'm using a soft touch because it seems the forum is undergoing strict policy about language "abuse" even if it is a joke....

stethnorun said:

@protocol7 Nope, that's how I engaged with people that spewed negativity containing nothing of substance. I'm glad you picked out those posts rather than the posts where I do engage, constructively, with posters. Thanks for playing.

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You're welcome! <3 It's much clearer now that I understand that everyone who disagrees with you is just spewing negativity.

JLoZeppeli said:

"Many are furious (or claim to be furious, in a "Danish Cartoon" sort of way) at the slightly flawed launch of Civ V, but Firaxis has never been a company to just leave people hanging. Civ IV got its last patch less than a year ago (4 years after launch) so I'm too not worried that the devs will get Civ V in perfect shape in short order.

I would forgive you if, in taking my bias into account, you deemed my review "tainted" and therefore unreliable. Indeed, those that wanted Civ 4.5 are so rabidly biased the other direction, that nothing anyone says will make an impact. I came into this game wanting to like it but fully prepared to be disappointed. Fortunately for me, even the rough state of the game did nothing to hamper my enjoyment and I will never be able to look at Civ IV again. There's no turning back now."

It is not very polite, and i'm using a soft touch because it seems the forum is undergoing strict policy about language "abuse" even if it is a joke....

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Still not seeing how that quote even remotely does this:

'then you judge the community on whether or not we were worthy of reading your enlightened views?'

How is he judging the community on whether or not they are 'worthy of reading (his) enlightened views'? He's only stating that there are people that have differing views from his. Never makes a judgment call on whether or not people are 'worthy'.

Charvel1 said:

Still not seeing how that quote even remotely does this:

'then you judge the community on whether or not we were worthy of reading your enlightened views?'

How is he judging the community on whether or not they are 'worthy of reading (his) enlightened views'? He's only stating that there are people that have differing views from his. Never makes a judgment call on whether or not people are 'worthy'.

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I was just talking about the part where he wrote an article, posted it to a forum, and then started arguing like an insecure child with everyone who disagreed with him. Mystery solved? I know I forgot my sarcasm tags, but I thought it was fairly obvious.

Ok than i will tell you that: every one sees what he wants to see (cit.)

protocol7 said:

I was just talking about the part where he wrote an article, posted it to a forum, and then started arguing like an insecure child with everyone who disagreed with him. Mystery solved? I know I forgot my sarcasm tags, but I thought it was fairly obvious.

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Yes, you should have used sarcasm tags.

On another note,

If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think
liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong,
though. It's Hambone.

Solymr said:

I'd have to say that if anything, Civ 5 is a simplier game aimed to get the crowd who tried Civ 4 and thought "Daaaa, game 2 haaard, brain melt now." only to trundle off and play Halo on their much beloved 360 which didn't have all the problems of the nasty PC games.

I'm not sure what it is lately, but PC games have just felt like they're aimed at 5 year olds now days.

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My thoughts exactly, also confirmed by Dennis Shirk.

Please excuse me but I must... puke on stethnorun.

Solymr said:

I'd have to say that if anything, Civ 5 is a simplier game aimed to get the crowd who tried Civ 4 and thought "Daaaa, game 2 haaard, brain melt now." only to trundle off and play Halo on their much beloved 360 which didn't have all the problems of the nasty PC games.

I'm not sure what it is lately, but PC games have just felt like they're aimed at 5 year olds now days.

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Fortunately a few devs remain loyal to the more "hardcore" community (eg: EvE and CoH(no not City of Heroes...) ) but how long it will last before they try to go for the console community is a mystery i hope will never be unraveled .