The new patch has made a bad game even worse

Heh, ask yourself... How long was it before you were winning on non-stacked settings on Civ IV deity? (as in, not tiny mapy duel type stuff) For me, it was a *very* long time. Why expect Civ V to be different?

Your complaint is basically "It's too hard! The AI has too many advantages!" The odds are hugely stacked, but that's the entire point of difficulty levels, and it's not a change from previous Civs. You said moving down in difficulty is a pride thing... Well, we basically got released a beta and people were dominating deity within a few days - THIS is more how Civ is supposed to be, not the other way around. Be glad there are difficulty levels to look forward to as you get better at the game.

This isn't to say things still need fixing, but hell, the game being an absolutely nasty challenge on the highest difficulty is a GOOD thing in my eyes.
 
Actually, the patch *HAS* made the game worse.

Yes, it is no longer easy to conquer the cities of a braindead AI and this a good thing.
But: this was not achieved by making the AI considerably more intelligent. Actually, I found it to be almost as bad as before. Still I got attacked by lonely archers, being an easy prey for each of my units, except workers...

Lifting the difficulty was achieved by different changes which require you to spend more time in defensive buildings, making it harder to get money by trading and building blocks of nations.

Strange enough, people were complaining about this blockbuilding due to Civ4's religion. Now, out of a sudden, when you do the same by DoF's, everything is fine? C'mon...

We need more production, but still the border expansion avoids any hex related to production as long as possible. Wth?

Furthermore, as with the last patch, new errors were implemented.
With patch 0.62, we've got a city governor which lets cities starve. Wth?

Now we've got trades which mystically are ended after one turn; we experience that the road to our allied city state doesn't have any benefit anymore.
What the heck are these guys doing?
 
I have to disagree with the OP. The patch is a massive step in the right direction, imo. Apart from two infamous natural wonders (especially the "Fountain of joy and invincibility"), all the changes were for the better. I would probably change a bit here and there (like add some small maintenace for defensive buildings above walls), but overall it feels much better now. Sure the AI is still really ..behind in a battle, but to say the game is worse now is completely off.
 
Naokaukodem said:
They mess up things like they, in fact, always did. Hey it's Firaxis. ;)
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Heh, bingo. I mean, I'm reading through some of the complaints here from a guy like Ischnarch... Does he not remember Civ IV patches? It was a *rare* patch that introduced anything new without breaking something horribly. I've still got bookmarked threads in the tech support forum because they managed to recomplicate some graphics error or break multiplayer every patch. Not to mention gameplay elements...

Anyone remember when they released a patch and spies poisoning the water supply was roughly 10x as effective as intended, and would literally wipe out a large city out with one application? And the AI *loved* to poison water. They didn't even have the excuse of "this is a new game with heaps of balance issues and bugs that we have to address" - this was on a game that had been out for years and had most fundamental issues worked out - which took lots of time to do, I might add. Sometimes I wonder if people actually remember the saga of Civ IV's oftentimes game breaking bugs - it was a colourful one. And add to that, if it weren't for guys like Bhruic, we would have been waiting literally months for the official patch to fix issues like that water supply one. Civ V, on the other hand, is a new game... Are people really so unfamiliar with Firaxis' patching process? This isn't an excuse, this is just a reality of a company that has a sketchy history of patching at best. This last patch for Civ V is impressively good for them, by the benchmark I'm used to set by Civ IV!

Apart from that, there are still the fundamental "I don't like the direction of the game" stuff. Well, that's unfortunate... I hope they work it out in a way you like. I'm not displeased with it.
 
AfterShafter said:
Anyone remember when they released a patch and spies poisoning the water supply was roughly 10x as effective as intended, and would literally wipe out a large city out with one application? And the AI *loved* to poison water.
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You really have to help me in this regard.
As far as I remember, the poisening was very strong at the beginning and had to be tweaked in patches.

What I remember, though, was that the "adding culture" feature (whatever it was called) didn't work correctly. And there I seem to recall a factor of 10.
Yet, as I hadn't used it by myself, I can only say what I've read.
 
skallben said:
Yeah I guess for us who played with tech brokering off in IV, it's rough times. How come RAs was are not optional in advanced settings is beyond me. They need to redesign RAs. I think they should have a percentage bonus but with diminishing returns for having several and bonuses for ******ed civs.
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Or maybe make a NO TECH BROKERING option for RAs? That way you can't give another civilization a tech through an RA that you got through an RA. This would do a lot to cut down on tech proliferation.
 
kamex said:
On the higher levels, the game is just unplayable for several reasons:

Ancient combat is now useless, the combination of nerfing horsemen AND increased city defenses and attacks, AND increased city HP regeneration just makes early wars unprofitable. May as well sit at home and build.

This combined with the even more ******ed happy caps has just made conquest of the world impossible. The huge happy penalty for capturing a city, either puppet or raze, which destroys your happiness the next turn, and then weakens your military by 50% :sad:

Also, the patch has brought even more misery, in that the handicap AIs can still out tech you, thanks to minimal scientist slots, always has more gold, and can thus always easily beat you to a diplomatic victory and regularly steals your allies throughout the game - meaning city states are now another redundant concept in the game (at least this boosts Mongolia's power of getting rid of the things - oh no, wait you can't, as the unhappiness from even puppeting would ruin you.

So not only has happiness been destroyed already for the reasons mentioned above, now that liberty tree has been nerfed to the point of being useless, and FP nerfed too, big empires are now impossible (unless your an AI where you get +60 happiness on turn 1 for no reason) - there is no way a human can compete.

The diplomacy system puts the last few nails in the coffin. As the AI DOWs and denounces for no good reason, and when one AI denounces you they all do. The explanations only 'explain' what for AI has done, but not why.

In conclusion, I am glad to see the end of horse rushing and ICS, but not to the point where a human can't even compete on Emperor/above.

The game has became a complete joke - its time to boot up Civ IV.
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Lets just face it. This game can't be fixed. The game was poorly made, and wasn't even what we had asked for in the first place. Lets all just move on.
 
CivFanaticMan said:
Lets just face it. This game can't be fixed. The game was poorly made, and wasn't even what we had asked for in the first place. Lets all just move on.
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I'll stick around, thanks. What I'm having trouble figuring out is why so many people who think the game is fundamentally garbage are still in this forum every day informing us about it in a completely non-constructive manner?
 
AfterShafter said:
I'll stick around, thanks. What I'm having trouble figuring out is why so many people who think the game is fundamentally garbage are still in this forum every day informing us about it in a completely non-constructive manner?
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CFM has nothing better to do than post 10 times a day about how "stupid" Civ5 is. He not only believes he's right, but believes that everyone who likes the game is uncultured and savage. Therefore, he is trying to impress his views onto other users.

You know, sorta like what the Spanish did to everyone in Central America and the Caribbean at some point.

Moderator Action: Please keep the discussion related to the topic, do not discuss other posters. Thanks.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
lschnarch said:
You really have to help me in this regard.
As far as I remember, the poisening was very strong at the beginning and had to be tweaked in patches.

What I remember, though, was that the "adding culture" feature (whatever it was called) didn't work correctly. And there I seem to recall a factor of 10.
Yet, as I hadn't used it by myself, I can only say what I've read.
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No specifics - I don't exactly keep notes. All I remember is playing for a bit and then seeing one of my size 14 cities drop to size 4 in a few turns, then another, and another and another... And pretty soon I was rolling the game back to the previous patch.

I don't recall about the adding culture feature. Honestly, all I recall about it was it was useless for most of its existence. But, I do recall things like perfectly effective all catapult armies prior to them being made unable to take cities, grossly unbalanced UU's for different civs in a variety of eras, HUGE multiplayer connection issues, and literally hundreds of small issues which, frankly, would have gone months without being dealt with without Bhruic's and Solvers' patches. And each official patch added to add some more issues, literally until the bitter end...

Civ IV was far from perfect. In the running for my favourite games (something Civ V isn't even close to doing yet), but I'm trying not to rose colour it in hindsight - the game was bugged, and while I very much appreciate that Firaxis listens to its fans with their patches, they do have tremendous issues with getting their patches to not break/imbalance things. Civ IV was a work in progress for a *long* time.
 
AfterShafter said:
I'll stick around, thanks. What I'm having trouble figuring out is why so many people who think the game is fundamentally garbage are still in this forum every day informing us about it in a completely non-constructive manner?
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This should pretty much be the motto of the CiV general discussion board.
 
Sonereal said:
Or maybe make a NO TECH BROKERING option for RAs? That way you can't give another civilization a tech through an RA that you got through an RA. This would do a lot to cut down on tech proliferation.
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I'm making a thread in mod forums about RAs. Gonna quote this if you don't mind. My idea is a bit different but anything being made about RAs in the form of a mod rather than a hack i make for myself should be good. Ideal is of course that Firaxis adress the issue but I figure next patch should take a while.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=403782
 
ohioastronomy said:
Giving the computer tons of happiness and flaunting tactics which were just heavily penalized for players is just having the AI "play to win" by obvious and extreme cheating.

You don't introduce a series of changes intended to discourage players from doing something, and simultaneously boost the ability of the AI to use *precisely* the same thing (ICS).
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I think the problem isn't that the AI got harder its how the AI got harder. They made the happiness system even more annoying and frustrating in particular ways designed to nerf ICS, while simultaneously getting the AI to use ICS itself relying on a preprogrammed bonus. If a tactic is problematic enough when the human player uses it that you require nerfing it then DON'T HAVE THE AI DO IT. Civ is on some level supposed to be a symmetrical game, and the AI bonuses are supposed to make up for the fact that the AI doesn't play well. Using the AI bonuses to intentionally have the AI implement a tactic that you nerf the hell out of for humans is just breaking that symmetry in the worst possible way.

My big problem with Civ V right now is that on any level where the game is actually fun to play its also way too easy to stay fun long. I want to play against an opponent not a little smiley face on the top of my screen (Which is generally the biggest barrier to everything in this game, a barrier that the AI gets to freely ignore).
 
This thread, esp. the OP, really pissed me off.

I used to win on Diety and now struggling on Emperor...
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Players like you, and perhaps me, should not be playing on Deity, let alone winning at it. That's what makes a strategy game good - learning and spending the time to practice in getting better, even if it means to think of alternate strategies.

But I guess I take solace when I hear people cry about how hard the game is. That means it is going in the right direction. I wish they had released a game initially like then we would not have seen all of those this-game-is-way-too-easy threads. But knowing the population here, it would have been replaced by the this-game-is-way-too-hard whinefest.
 
Babri said:
A simple question from you. Do you play ciV for fun or to just win on the highest difficulty ?
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I know the question was not meant for me but I play Civ to be challenged. The fun is in the learning of different strategies and working your way up the difficulty, winning different ways. Once I hit a plateau like I did in Civ4, then I start thinking outside of the box and read about very different ways to play.
 
Buccaneer said:
This thread, esp. the OP, really pissed me off.

Players like you, and perhaps me, should not be playing on Deity, let alone winning at it. That's what makes a strategy game good - learning and spending the time to practice in getting better, even if it means to think of alternate strategies.

But I guess I take solace when I hear people cry about how hard the game is. That means it is going in the right direction. I wish they had released a game initially like then we would not have seen all of those this-game-is-way-too-easy threads. But knowing the population here, it would have been replaced by the this-game-is-way-too-hard whinefest.
Click to expand...

Suppose I make a version of CiV where I decide that every AI player starts with 1,000,000 gold, buys the best military unit they can afford (with a mix of settlers to expand so they can buy more military units per turn). And is very warmonger oriented. This game would obviously be hard (The AI would have such an absurd unit advantage and would convert that into attacking you, but it wouldn't be fun. The way in which the AI breaks symmetry is just completely jarring and boring.

In CiV, we have a tactical combat system where the AI can't adequately handle combat. As a result it recieves huge economic bonuses, which already tends to force strategies into a very narrow window (the easiest way to beat the game is to exploit the AI's bad combat interface, trying to keep up economically is suicide). Several strategies emerged for keeping up economically, most notably ICS, and the game programmers responded by nerfing ICS to the extreme for game balance (fine it was unbalanced), but also with an AI programmed to ICS (look at the AI city spacing), and then instead of adapting the AI to the nerfs, they rely on a massive happiness bonus to ignore them.

In essence on high difficulty levels the AI is playing a game of ICS with other huge bonuses (free units including a settler, two workers, four warriors,...). That game got given added value by making its cities more easily defended (another patch change), and by the results of taking cities as puppets (happiness penalties) resulting in it being hard to conquer the AI in one go. Instead of the AI offering me a tactical challenge, I still destroy it tactically rather effortlessly, but the happiness penalty exists slowly to slow down my steamroll. If a player had the same happiness bonus as the AI it would without a doubt be correct to ICS. In essence, the game has one clearly optimal strategy which the AI is using and a system (happiness) is introduced in a way that doesn't affect the AI using that strategy but which closes it to the player. This violates every notion of the game being a symmetric strategy game.
 
LordTC said:
In CiV, we have a tactical combat system where the AI can't adequately handle combat.
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I have always had a hard time trying to read when people use CIV or CiV or whatever. I have to stare at it to see what game they are talking about. In this case, it didn't matter if you wrote Civ4 or Civ5.

But I do understand your point. It just it's been that way since Civ1 (taking different forms).
 
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