sketch162000
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
- Messages
- 221
All interesting...
Let's see...I'm still playing and still finding myself engrossed in games. So much so, in fact, that Saturday night I couldn't sleep until 4AM. I had to beat back a Persian invasion and shore up a win (I took diplomacy because it shored 30 turns off the culture win) before I could get to sleep. My wife just rolled her eyes at me; after all these years, she's pretty much used to it.
Since the patch, I really don't find myself frustrated by much...less so than Civ 4, actually. Maybe Civ 5 is only working for certain types of players. I'm a Utopian builder. I always play Greece and I'm an unrepentant wonder-whore. As such, I'm having a great time on Civ 5. I'm finding it easier to balance my play style and keep a functioning defense than on Civ 4--which had so many roadblocks that it was pretty frustrating. As such, I'll readily admit the difficulty has shifted. I settled into Monarch for most of my time playing 4 and BtS, but I'm already pretty comfortable on Emperor with Civ 5.
People are complaining that Civ 5 is too easy to beat through war. Well, I remember that was very much true of Civ 2 also. To conquer the whole world in 2 all you needed was patience--lots of it if you picked the biggest map. It was seriously tedious and the cities you conquered were useless because of corruption, but it didn't matter. Once you reached a critical mass, you could just keep on rolling.
It's funny, I don't remember how the balance worked in Civ 3...what was the penalty for super-huge empires again? I do remember I liked the bombardment in Civ 3 a lot better than what came next.
Civ 4 had a lot of problems if you ask me. Suicide catapults were just as silly as the long-range archers in Civ5. Worse, though, was the empire balance. The escalating costs of more cities meant that I never once conquered the whole map. (I insist on playing on the biggest maps available to me and I never could figure out a way to conquer one without burning down a bunch of cities--which I was loathe to do.)
So Civ 5 feels to me like par for the course. I find the comparisons to Civ Rev unfair, and that's based on playing a lot of Civ Rev, which I found to be a fun way to cram in a Civ-like, but not quite Civ experience into a quick two hour game. I've heard stories of egregious AI behavior, but in my games I've only noticed the much-touted combat weaknesses and the inability of a run-away AI to pick a victory condition. Clearly the 1upt change is really showcasing the AI's limitations. So I agree it's a shame that Firaxis didn't put more into the AI, but on the whole, I'm still enjoying the living hell out of my Civ purchase, and I think somebody pointed out something note-worthy: What other entertainment purchase do you expect to give you more than a hundred hours of diversion?
Thanks for remaining very civil, even though you disagree with a lot of us.
I wonder if your post is at all indicative of the divide between players--that people who were not so enthralled with Civ IV are now enjoying Civ V, and that people who really liked Civ IV are not impressed with V. I wonder if there will ever be a happy medium...
I, for one, LOVED Civ IV, even vanilla. I get these arguments from the Civ V people, "It's only fair to compare vanilla Civ IV to Civ V!" Well, if I do, I find Civ IV vanilla was/is a much better game down to it's core, IMO.