Civilization 5 Rants Thread

NotSure said:
Phil, what do you mean by "the old city radius mechanic?" If you mean the number of tiles a city can work, I don't believe that's changed.
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Yes, it's changed from previous games. A city can work any tile in its borders (that isn't claimed by another city), not just ones two squares/hexes in any direction as in the previous games (three with cultural expansion in Civ IV); I think the corner tiles on the map in the city screen may be excluded but that's it, there are still a larger number of workable tiles in the city screen map). I came to Civ V after the major patches, so I don't know whether this is a change or a feature the game's had since the beginning, or likewise when/if the number of hexes between cities was changed. My point was that every Civ game has had that limit. Personally, I've only rarely come up against it - and as smaller maps have fewer cities and CSes to begin with, it should only rarely affect capital placement - and then not because of the mechanic but because of poor distribution of settlers in the landscape (which I've observed only once, when my first settler and capital prevented Ragusa from being founded).
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It is a change, not a feature and I think you actually proved my point because you've seen it yourself (the issue with initial settlers, that is). But we've already been informed that this is the game he will have to play, he doesn't own the game, and he doesn't have the right to complain about it in the rants thread. So, now that I've been informed, I'll politely move along. :D
 
NotSure said:
It is a change, not a feature and I think you actually proved my point because you've seen it yourself (the issue with initial settlers, that is). But we've already been informed that this is the game he will have to play, he doesn't own the game, and he doesn't have the right to complain about it in the rants thread. So, now that I've been informed, I'll politely move along. :D
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Actually, the issue with the settler isn't the 4 space mechanic. It's the AI that refuses to move a settler if it has its heart set on a starting location, even if that forces the settler to stand still within 4 spaces of the capital. In theory a city could be settled within 2 squares of a settler in Civs 1-4 with the same result, but the AI in those games could adapt sufficiently to move the settler elsewhere, so the situation didn't arise.

I very much doubt the case would ever arise where a human got stuck because he ran out of space to move, unless two settlers were to spawn on a small island.
 
I just can't help myself... Of course the human has no problem, and it doesn't matter much what may be at the heart of the problem while you're trying to play the game that isn't working as intended. The fact is, at that point, it's a reasonable frustration to find a civs initial settler just standing there waiting to be captured (I don't think this ever happened before the ultra-nerfs of 2010, by the way). It seems to me it would also be reasonable that someone would be frustrated when he comes back to a game he hoped would be fixed to find a new, apparently unnecessary, rule that makes even settling cities cumbersome.

I just didn't see a need to assume he was "not clever" and under some delusion that owned the Civilization franchise. Seemed like he went to the right thread to air out a reasonable (there's that word again) frustration.
 
The limitation on city spacing is unusually severe relative to prior versions of the game.

For me, the idea that you can't direct natural city growth (by telling the city which tile to pick next) was an exasperating triumph of aesthetics over game design. You get to decide where a city goes; what tiles get worked; what tiles get developed; what the city builds. But you have to burn cash to make a city unlock hills instead of river valleys. It's simply inconsistent with the approach that the Civ series has always made to development.

Next in line: paying gold to change what the city builds, what tiles get worked, and what workers decide to improve...
 
Actually, city spacing is at the core of the AI's (and game design) problems. 1UPT does not scale well with the traditional civ core gameplay, and this iteration is the proof. In simple words, 1UPT needs more maneuver room, not less. Opposite to this latest complaint, I find myself modifying the variable to give inter-city space more tiles, not less. I have tested the AI extensively with the logger, and watched it behave moderately better with more space between cities. Sweet spot seems to be 4 tiles (including a city), or 3 tiles in between cities, and I am not surprised that they adapted the game to that in the latest patches.

If you want to use some other value, it's as easy as finding the variable MIN_CITY_RANGE inside GlobalDefines.xml, and changing it to whatever you like. I highly recommend leaving it at the present vanilla value of 3, though, or even higher (you ought to yourself to playtest a game on a huge map with standard map number of civs/CS, and with this value set to 4 or 5, to see what I mean). The first thing I change in VEM is this value and set it back to 3. A value of 2 is just crazy with 1UPT.

Now, to use this debate and/or valid complaint as a "proof" that most complaints here are "silly", well, THAT is silly. Hear me, Bowles? I asked you once before, very politely, and I repeat myself here: this is the RANTS thread, there is no room here for someone with hard to understand interests in defending the game. Please leave.

There is enough wrong with this shaferite "design" to try to invalid true problems with a phalacy.
 
Aristos said:
Now, to use this debate and/or valid complaint as a "proof" that most complaints here are "silly", well, THAT is silly.
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No doubt it is. As you'll no doubt notice from my post, of course, I didn't make any claim as to whether or not the 'sillier' complaints represented the majority.

Hear me, Bowles? I asked you once before, very politely, and I repeat myself here: this is the RANTS thread, there is no room here for someone with hard to understand interests in defending the game.
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As I explained before, and granted it was a generous assumption on my part to consider a thread called a 'Rants' thread a haven for constructive or well-founded criticism of the game, my focus wasn't in "defending" the game but in evaluating problems with specific complaints that are, indeed, not constructive or well-founded. Or as you put it yourself:

There is enough wrong with this shaferite "design" to try to invalid true problems with a phalacy.
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Complain the AI doesn't work? Complain the diplomacy system is flawed? Complain the combat AI can't use 1UPT effectively? Complain about the research agreement system? By all means - I've supported these complaints with Civ V and more on other threads.

Complain that a feature which has always existed in prior Civ games is suddenly a flaw just because it was left out of the pre-patched release of Civ V? If you can't see the idiocy in that from someone who liked the older games, I can't add a lot. This isn't a case of finding something genuinely wrong with Civ V, it's a case of deciding to hate Civ V and finding spurious reasons to dislike it - quite bafflingly, since there are plenty of genuine issues with the game which can quite reasonably put people off.

Your own posts betray the same bias - anyone who isn't leaping on the bandwagon to find any excuse to support their own bashing of Civ V, however ill-conceived a given objection, is exhibiting a "hard to understand interest in defending the game". Just because someone voices a complaint about a game you don't like, it doesn't imply that that complaint is inherently valid and defensible, any more than it follows that any criticism of a game you do like (such as Civ IV or, in my case, both Civ IV and Civ V) is inherently invalid (an example I give deliberately, since I recall that pointing out shortcomings with the previous game, even if fully acknowledging the same shortcomings in Civ V, also resulted in peculiar 'accusations' of defending Civ V).
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well, this is the last bastion of those of us who "don't like the game", or parts of it... you like the game? This is not your room. Go to the Civ5 Praise thread, if you can find it.

Back to topic.
 
Aristos said:
well, this is the last bastion of those of us who "don't like the game", or parts of it... you like the game? This is not your room. Go to the Civ5 Praise thread, if you can find it.

Back to topic.
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It's funny how important it is for these people to try to convince us that the game is good. Almost like their own Civ5 experience is affected by this thread. :rolleyes:
 
Moderator Action: @Aristos- please don't take it upon yourself to tell people to leave the thread. That's our job. Please report posts you find rule-breaking.

@PhilBowles- please don't argue too vociferously. This is the rants thread, after all.
 
Started playing the game and figured out what it took to win on Prince and King, this game hardly adds anything new from civ 4, the biggest difference is it makes everything move much slower.

Piss poor game for the franchise.

Maybe there's an option I'm missing in the menus, but late game I'm sick of spending more time watching city-states and civs kill barbarian frigates than actually managing my civ.
 
Levgre said:
Maybe there's an option I'm missing in the menus, but late game I'm sick of spending more time watching city-states and civs kill barbarian frigates than actually managing my civ.
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I hate that! I'd be doing my thing in my territory, but every turn the camera would be pulled off to one of my distant city-states invariably locked in a drawn-out bombardment with a barbarian frigate. And I'd have nothing to do but watch... which is annoying enough when you just have one allied city-state. But when you have five or six? Heinously frustrating.

I think you can turn off the combat animations, which should make that go faster, but you'll still probably have the screen pulled over there.
 
Aristos said:
well, this is the last bastion of those of us who "don't like the game", or parts of it... you like the game? This is not your room. Go to the Civ5 Praise thread, if you can find it.

Back to topic.
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I don't like parts of it either (and as for 'last bastion', most threads in this forum seem to feature more contributions from people interested in slamming the game than those who like it - something that's par for the course for forums on any game you care to name), but again there are sensible concerns and not-so-sensible ones. And surely if you want a refuge for people who don't like Civ V, the logical place to look is a forum that's not devoted to Civ V at all...?

For instance, take the above example of the settler that can't move out of the way to found a city. Is this a problem with the game? Clearly. Is it a problem with the 4 spaces between cities, a variant of a Civ mechanic from the first game onwards? No. It's a problem with an AI that, unlike those in all previous Civ games, is incapable of choosing a new location once the first choice is denied. Remove the 4 tile restriction and all you'll get is a settler settling in a stupid place that interferes with both your capital's growth and theirs, not a solution to the problem (and what is the point of criticisms if not to identify problems that need solving)?

If you want a rant, I can certainly supply one about my most recent game (Immortal, Pangea, Huge). I regularly checked my diplomatic status with the other civs I'd encountered - a warning flag that the Iroquois (whose territory I hadn't seen) wanted territory I'd settled, even when I only had one city. They seemed to drop the land claim after a while and 'desired friendly relations', but I still had my eye on them.

Having run into a number of other civs in the years since, I checked their relations with the Iroqois. Both Germany and Arabia, friendly with me (but no declarations of friendship) were friends with the Iroqois. So I approached both (and the Iroqois themselves) offering declaration of friendship. Refused in all cases, in the Iroqois case with the "No, I don't think so" response which normally translates as "War is imminent".

Now, luxuries were thinly scattered through the landscape, and in fact only Russia and I had duplicates to trade. So I couldn't influence diplomacy with trade. The Iroqois, I think, had no funds for a research agreement, so that was out. I hadn't expanded into any areas they apparently wanted, and hadn't engaged in relations with any city-states (which were being grabbed by Germany and India). I hadn't successfully built any Wonders. Open borders doesn't affect relations. And being Immortal, the Iroqois were a number of techs ahead of me - they eventually attacked my newest city with three Mohawks when I only had an archer to defend.

This is the core problem with Civ V - in the above my play took full account of my diplomatic options (except, admittedly, for granting presents) as well as evaluating relationships between the Iroqois and other civs that could help me influence them. And it was rewarded by ... complete failure. And clearly I had no control over whether the Iroqois wanted my capital or the tiles it happened to have expanded its borders into (I hadn't bought any tiles). And in my experience something similar always happens on Pangea maps, regardless of difficulty level (it's obviously harder to defend against on higher difficulties). It's not that enemy civs are personality-less or inherently belligerent or schizophrenic, it's that player options to control diplomatic relations are very limited.

I don't necessarily think there should be as many positive modifiers to relations as there are negative ones, but there certainly should be more than there are that are within the player's control, and events that affect relationships over which players have limited control (such as going for the same Wonders) should have less effect than they do. You can see which policy branches another leader has - that gives an obvious way to add a positive modifier for sharing policy branches, say. Trade should have more effect than it does (I think I've only once seen "We've traded recently" as a positive modifier), and open borders probably as well.
 
Just checking in to say: Civ5 still sux. Worst game of the franchise, a let-down for all Civilization fans, a strategical disappointment with poor game mechanics. Thought they had changed some parts of that since the last time i played this mess of a game (shortly after it got released), but actually they only improved some issues. The actual game is still boring as hell and not worth playing. What a huge, huge disappointment. Firaxis surely lost a customer with that release. Oh well, guess they can afford it with all the kids and casuals jumping on the train. With almost 1,5 years of patching without any clear progress in the "fun" part, i've lost my faith that this game could be somewhat enjoyable some day.

Hopefully Failaxis will lose the franchise, so they can't mess it up even more.
 
PhilBowles said:
And surely if you want a refuge for people who don't like Civ V, the logical place to look is a forum that's not devoted to Civ V at all...?
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As a fan of the series since 1992 and a member of these boards for ten years, I want the developers to know that I'm not happy with their new way of thinking. Sure, I could send them emails, but having "rants threads" on the big forums is surely a better way to convince them.

If all old time fans just left, they market would only consist of the console kids and that would eliminate all hope for another good Civ game.
 
Bad Brett said:
As a fan of the series since 1992 and a member of these boards for ten years, I want the developers to know that I'm not happy with their new way of thinking. Sure, I could send them emails, but having "rants threads" on the big forums is surely a better way to convince them.

If all old time fans just left, they market would only consist of the console kids and that would eliminate all hope for another good Civ game.
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E-X-A-C-T-L-Y.

That is why it is important to continue to grow this thread without derailing it. In the mid to long term, it will be the testament of the quality of this iteration and how it was received among those who really sustained the franchise for the last 20 years.

@Camikaze: you are right.
 
Bad Brett said:
As a fan of the series since 1992 and a member of these boards for ten years, I want the developers to know that I'm not happy with their new way of thinking. Sure, I could send them emails, but having "rants threads" on the big forums is surely a better way to convince them.

If all old time fans just left, they market would only consist of the console kids and that would eliminate all hope for another good Civ game.
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Spot on. If we want a quality game in the future, we'll have to show them that the game as it currently is is totally unacceptable.

Personally, my hope is that the source dll/source code whatever is finally released and modders make the game that we all really wanted. Something true to the game's roots. Firaxis will then take note and learn from their mistakes.

With cIV, I remember a thread on Apolyton that was 165 pages long with suggestions for what we wanted for cIV. Soren Johnson (God bless him) took this to heart and really listened to the fans. What we got was the best version of Civ ever.

Hoping that somehow, Civ VI will get made and it will be a god game design like the Civs I through IV rather than the board game design of Civilization 5. Chalk Civilization 5 up to an experiment that went horribly wrong and get back to making the franchise great again.
 
They wouldn't care less about our whingings.

2k set the sight for moneygrabbing, as they were not very solvent as a company and they won that one. DLC's and no follow-up of the title, will only make new ppl play the game and buy their expensive leaders.

I held back for a long time until this weekend, missus used her 2 cards to try to buy me all extra civs.

Guess what? Steam denied her purchases for no real reason, even if the cards was loaded with real cash and she can use them everywhere else. So fail.

So no Babylon for me.
 
gozpel said:
They wouldn't care less about our whingings.

2k set the sight for moneygrabbing, as they were not very solvent as a company and they won that one. DLC's and no follow-up of the title, will only make new ppl play the game and buy their expensive leaders.

I held back for a long time until this weekend, missus used her 2 cards to try to buy me all extra civs.

Guess what? Steam denied her purchases for no real reason, even if the cards was loaded with real cash and she can use them everywhere else. So fail.

So no Babylon for me.
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If one card is denied, steam sometimes blocks all transactions for your account for security reasons. If that happens, you cannot add games to your account no matter what. You can contact an admin to have the block undone.

This happened to me once, yes it was frustrating but it was also nice to see that steam will not accept my credit card for any transaction should they suspect foul play.
 
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