I'm a man without a Civilization

lol, maybe, -but the title is great

c'mon tho

51 and complaining about an ol civ game's lack of whatever ?

they gots like big buttons for new players and crap and of course they should have like big buttons and crap for new players

like a 12 year old that likes the history channel and goes- "cool, i can be rome and attack with these sword guys in a stack" -

they actually cover a broad spectrum if'n ya ask me

the evidence is clear

I still don't get why people want Civ 4.5

The concepts in 4, are played out. do you guys really just want more happiness /health whack a mole and religion with better graphics? That's what a console game is (see Madden,Guitar Hero )

That's not to say CiV doesn't have problems, it does. AI needs work. Some information are hidden and too hard to find.


We should be pointing those out and offering suggestions rather than asking for them to re-write CiV as CiIV Part II. One of those things is likely to happen and its certainly not going to be a code re-write.

dexters said:

I still don't get why people want Civ 4.5

The concepts in 4, are played out. do you guys really just want more happiness /health whack a mole and religion with better graphics? That's what a console game is (see Madden,Guitar Hero )

That's not to say CiV doesn't have problems, it does. AI needs work. Some information are hidden and too hard to find.


We should be pointing those out and offering suggestions rather than asking for them to re-write CiV as CiIV Part II. One of those things is likely to happen and its certainly not going to be a code re-write.

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The thing is.. if they would have left features there but reworked them to work with CiV then I imagine the majority of complaints wouldn't exist. No one expected them to just add to civ IV.. but people did expect to see features/gameplay dynamics that were in it. Religion as an example.. had they redesigned it to work differently rather than pretty much completely removing it that would have been fine with me personally.. but the removal of features rather than the redesigning of them is my biggest complaint.

Yes we were silly for expecting a game that at least had as many dynamics as Civ IV. Our only recourse is to complain. Is it going to make any difference in regards to CiV? nope.. anyone who believes it will is fooling himself. I've resigned to the fact that CiV is not the game i hoped it would be.. and will never be and removed it from my harddrive.

Never ending forum debates aside I think alot of people were disappointed with ciV for whatever reason. The big question comes down to how its going to effect you. People who dislike the game for CORE game issues most likely won't buy expansions.. less sold means less produced etc. It will be interesting to see how CiV ends up on the grand scale of things in the months/years to come.

hated it

got it and hated it

and i am using a T2300 1.66 ghz 980 mhz 2 gig ram with an X1400 Ati card- a long way of saying i think that i am way below specs

so i hated it and it turned grey and stuttered and locked

then i #@$#%^& with it and kinda got it to work to where i could play and had to toggle to that flat screen which i hated too

then i got it to work better by downloading ATI stuff i do not understand -like self made stuff i found on a blog

and i hated the stupid graphics- but i could play- and i hated it

then i @#@$#%$& around with it some more- until i get movies that play and full animation and medium water so it has waves and that light and dark

then i liked the graphics - and i played- and i hated it

then i could toggle to the flat screen thing which i knew about now and watch movies and listen to voice overs and music which are good - and muck around

in essence- ol civ- i can always get it to work- can always have a good time - and can always gripe about stuff as well

now i like it

like the above post states- what do you want , the same old crap?
now i am like "ok, i will do ever kind of arbitrary thing i can think of because i spent 50 beans and i will milk this thing for all it is worth

which leads to "Attacko's Wandering Settler Til You Find A Natural Wonder No Matter How ##$^^ Many Turns it Takes, Scout Assault"

but on the strategy page thing

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Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

charon2112 said:

Sir (or madam)- look at your own first link. "Who else agrees that Civ has been dumbed down". That poll is absolutely useless. It already assumes you hate the game, it tells you in the title what to think and is obviously is going to attract people who hate the game and lovers of the game won't even go in to vote. I chose mine because it was completely balanced. Thumbs up or down. Overwhelmingly, civ fans chose thumbs up.

Why would anyone who loves ciV, go in and vote in a "how badly do you hate ciV" poll.

ridiculous. But, good effort.

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In Germany, Germans think you're dead wrong. They much prefer cIV BTS to watered down, mass market appealing ciV.

http://www.civforum.de/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=7512

Put down your poms poms and take off your rose coloured glasses please.

Moderator Action: Please just refute the points made, no need to add the sarcastic remarks...thanks.
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Thormodr said:

In Germany, Germans think you're dead wrong. They much prefer cIV BTS to watered down, mass market appealing ciV.

http://www.civforum.de/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=7512

Put down your poms poms and take off your rose coloured glasses please.

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Yeah, I'm not sure what your fixation with cheerleaders is, but you already said that.

Not commenting one way or the other on CiV, but two reasons why that poll is flawed.

One, it compares cIV BTS to CiV, and it really shouldn't. As people have said several times, CiV is a different game, with enough new mechanics that it can't be considered a true sequel to cIV. It didn't take up where cIV left off, it's starting in an entirely new direction, for good or ill. Final comparisons should wait until it also has had an expansion or two, so that we can see how its potential plays out. cIV was negatively received in much the same way, yet the rough edges were refined into brilliance.

Two, online polls are inherently unreliable, because they're online. They're voluntary. Absolutely zero external validity. Using one to try and "win" an argument, or to use as "proof" of any kind, is not really a great idea. That goes for all the other polls that charon brought up, as well. Until we start randomly calling up ciV users or civfanatics members, polls are useless for debating anything.


...Even if they weren't, the poll you link to is in German. Doesn't do much good if you can't read the options

GambleFish said:

Yeah, I'm not sure what your fixation with cheerleaders is, but you already said that.

Not commenting one way or the other on CiV, but two reasons why that poll is flawed.

One, it compares cIV BTS to CiV, and it really shouldn't. As people have said several times, CiV is a different game, with enough new mechanics that it can't be considered a true sequel to cIV. It didn't take up where cIV left off, it's starting in an entirely new direction, for good or ill. Final comparisons should wait until it also has had an expansion or two, so that we can see how its potential plays out. cIV was negatively received in much the same way, yet the rough edges were refined into brilliance.

Two, online polls are inherently unreliable, because they're online. They're voluntary. Absolutely zero external validity. Using one to try and "win" an argument, or to use as "proof" of any kind, is not really a great idea. That goes for all the other polls that charon brought up, as well. Until we start randomly calling up ciV users or civfanatics members, polls are useless for debating anything.


...Even if they weren't, the poll you link to is in German. Doesn't do much good if you can't read the options

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Google can translate it for you. Less than 30% think ciV is better than cIV BTS. 34% of people think cIV (No BTS) is better than ciV.
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.civforum.de%2Fpoll.php%3Fdo%3Dshowresults%26pollid%3D7512

civ IV no BTS is definately not better than ciV. It was in many ways Civ3.5 with a 3-D engine

Vassal states changed the dynamic of the game and that didn't come out until Warlords.

Granted arguing about unscinetific polls are a waste of time really, but that poll in particular is probably being trolled by people who don't like ciV and aren't really giving objective opinions.

GambleFish said:

cIV was negatively received in much the same way, yet the rough edges were refined into brilliance.

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It was NOT negatively received. And the edges WEREN'T rough. I really get tired of this bullcrap. The vast majority of the community greeted it with enthusiasm. The only exceptions were a tiny minority who complained about the lack of an "epic feel". By this they meant that you could no longer build empires with many hundreds of cities, something I was certainly happy to leave behind.

The issues all revolved around bugs - mainly memory leaks, slow turns and incompatibility with ATI video cards. The leaks and the slow turns (although happily not the video issues) are here with us in ciV yet again. We don't talk about them now because the abominable game play is a far bigger concern. After all, most of the bugs are tolerable and Firaxis will probably fix them this time around too.

In the same way, we don't talk about the fact that this game was clearly released before it was finished. For example, where are the victory movies?

The game play is far bigger concern. It should simply not be possible for a player to beat Deity in his first few outings. I don't know of anyone who did it on Vanilla civ. The vast majority were playing below emperor until the AI bonuses were cut back in BTS. Only Acidsatyr and his intrepid crew ventured into the heights of Immortal.

I really don't see how they can fix that without huge changes to the core game. To start with, the 1UPT rule has to be relaxed to allow moving units properly. The AI can't do it. It causes huge performance hits. And it's very frustrating for the player. I really doubt that Mr PG will let it happen though.

Secondly, the AI has to learn to conduct war in the game. This may happen, although I have my doubts.

After that, it would be nice to get back some of the depth we had in previous games. That will take lots more changes. Just looking at that tech tree makes me puke. The original Civilization had more variety and interest. This is far from the only thing that makes it dull and formulaic.

Tell me, do you think that the RBC community will be embracing this game like they did cIV the moment it came out? I sure don't.

dexters said:

civ IV no BTS is definately not better than ciV.

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It most certainly was. I played thousands of hours in Vanilla and Warlords. I'm already getting bored with Civ5.

It was in many ways Civ3.5 with a 3-D engine

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It was completely re-written and the differences were enormous. One key difference is that Civ3 was extremely formulaic. Get to Republic ASAP and revolt. Then conquer the world with Knights or Cavs. Civ5 is even worse than Civ3 was. Don't worry about a revolt; just grab a couple of Honor policies. Then use horsemen instead.

In contrast, you had to think about your tech order in Civ4. You certainly weren't going to conquer the world with ancient-era units. That's for sure.

Vassal states changed the dynamic of the game and that didn't come out until Warlords.

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Vassal states were a minor change. They detracted from the game play and were largely annoying nuisances. Same thing for the stuff they added in BTS, especially colonies. It was the original game which was the core of Civ4's success. Certainly BTS was better but not by that much.

Abegweit said:

It most certainly was. I played thousands of hours in Vanilla and Warlords. I'm already getting bored with Civ5.

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Maybe the game arrived at a right time in your life, maybe you didn't get into civ3 as much and attributed a lot of the core design borrowed from civ3 to civ4. Any number of reasons could be why you played a lot of vanilla civ4.

It was completely re-written and the differences were enormous. One key difference is that Civ3 was extremely formulaic. Get to Republic ASAP and revolt. Then conquer the world with Knights or Cavs. Civ5 is even worse than Civ3 was. Don't worry about a revolt; just grab a couple of Honor policies. Then use horsemen instead.

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Civ3 had scale Civ4 lacked. People complain about dumbing down, but a lot of Civ3 players complained about the same thing with Civ4. No more 100 unit AI armies on modest difficulty levels. A lot of us from Civ3 wanted Civ4 to retain the scale, we were very disappointed when the game was scaled down. Different strokes for different folks.

And I did eventually grew to like Civ4, after BTS. But I find in Civ5, what I found in Civ3. Epic scale from a decidely small scale game. I love the extended turns even on a normal speed game.

Vassal states were a minor change. They detracted from the game play and were largely annoying nuisances. Same thing for the stuff they added in BTS, especially colonies. It was the original game which was the core of Civ4's success. Certainly BTS was better but not by that much.

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Well, it gets mentioned every other post as a key feature people want back (actually personally I think it could work better in Civ5). Are you speaking for the others here?

charon2112 said:

i suggest reading the BradyGames strategy guide for civ V. it goes into tons of detail about each civ and leader, using city states and policy strategy. civ V is a FAR more complex game than you're giving it credit for...it needs to be played very differently than civ IV.

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Not for $20 I'm not! It's a shame the 'manual' doesn't get more detailed than it does.

I'm really enjoying playing and I guess I'll just have to keep figuring it out as I go.

charon2112 said:

so how about a list of civ V bugs. I haven't experienced any.

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Ever go to strategic view?

Abegweit said:

You certainly weren't going to conquer the world with ancient-era units. That's for sure.

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Unless you are Rome.

CivNoob2008 said:

10. I went back and played a game of Civ 4 BTS ... and didn't like it anymore. I missed being able to buy tiles. Now what am I going to do? I'm a man without a Civilization.

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Ignored the rest of the tl;dr post, but I can sympathize with you there. Realizing it'll be awhile if ever before I buy V I went ahead and put IV back on my comp. Sank many an hour into trying to get into it and ennui-quit each game. The BFCs, SoDs, and "who are we kidding, I'll be using universal suffrage, emancipation, free speech, and state property forever the second I get them and almost never play any other way" civics... it's just hard to get into knowing there's something better out there and I haven't even played V at all yet, not even the demo. But based on some of what I've read about it so far I'm not sure if V will do it for me either (I'm the roleplaying type, it sounds like V doesn't lend itself to that well). Maybe I'll love V anyway, but if not I don't see how I can go back to IV either. The V loving contingent on this forum loves saying "go back to IV," but they don't realize how hard that would be.

dexters said:

Maybe the game arrived at a right time in your life, maybe you didn't get into civ3 as much and attributed a lot of the core design borrowed from civ3 to civ4. Any number of reasons could be why you played a lot of vanilla civ4.

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Perhaps because it was a good game? BTW, when I said thousands of hours, I was referring to the entire Civ4 series. Not just the first game.

I put thousands of hours into Civ3 as well, as you might have guessed from my post. My point remains. Civ4 was a class act when it first came out and the AI was huge improvement on its predecessor. That's true of Civ1, Civ2 and Civ3 as well. Civ5 is not. The game is boring and the AI is worse than the one in Civ2. At least units in that game didn't stand around waiting to be killed.

Civ3 had scale Civ4 lacked. People complain about dumbing down, but a lot of Civ3 players complained about the same thing with Civ4. No more 100 unit AI armies on modest difficulty levels. A lot of us from Civ3 wanted Civ4 to retain the scale, we were very disappointed when the game was scaled down. Different strokes for different folks.

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So you're one of the "epic feel" people? As I said, that was the one complaint about Civ4. This was Firaxis' second attempt to kill city spam. They failed with Civ3 but this time they succeeded. Each to his own.

And I did eventually grew to like Civ4, after BTS. But I find in Civ5, what I found in Civ3. Epic scale from a decidely small scale game. I love the extended turns even on a normal speed game.

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Bizarre. I don't see that that <Push ENTER>-<WAIT 10 Seconds><REPEAT> is epic in any way. Nor is there anything about Civ5 which could be described as "having scale". It's just boring.

Well, it gets mentioned every other post as a key feature people want back (actually personally I think it could work better in Civ5). Are you speaking for the others here?

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Certainly I'm not speaking for others. How could I? There do seem to a lot of people who have a laundry list of Civ4 features that they want back. I'm not one of the them. I simply want a good game with playability and repeatability.

As for vassals, I really don't see their allure. My basic take is that they added little to the game but didn't take much away from it either. They finally made them work reasonably with the final patches of BTS. At the beginning they were largely annoyances that stole your territory and gave away your techs. IMO, City States are a much more interesting concept that has real potential. Unfortunately, like just about everything else in Civ5, they are badly implemented. Maritimers are OP; the diplo with them is too limited; the quests are dumb. Most importantly, the AI has no clue how to use them.

Edit: on reflection, I think you're right - vassals fit well into the Civ5 model. So why didn't they include them instead of the idiotic puppets?

jihe said:

Abegweit said:

You certainly weren't going to conquer the world with ancient-era units. That's for sure.

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Unless you are Rome.

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Wrong.

Try that on Immortal - or even Monarch. For one thing, you'd completely kill your economy long before you were finished. And the Praet was far from the best A/E unit anyway - especially for world conquest. Try Egypt or Mongolia instead. Their UUs didn't have the mobility of the Companion Cavalry but they sure were better than the Praet.

Abegweit said:

Perhaps because it was a good game? BTW, when I said thousands of hours, I was referring to the entire Civ4 series. Not just the first game.

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Don't doubt it was. Civ4 designed by the same lead designer behind Civ3 basing core mechanics off a 5 year old game. It was III.5

I put thousands of hours into Civ3 as well, as you might have guessed from my post. My point remains. Civ4 was a class act when it first came out and the AI was huge improvement on its predecessor. That's true of Civ1, Civ2 and Civ3 as well. Civ5 is not. The game is boring and the AI is worse than the one in Civ2. At least units in that game didn't stand around waiting to be killed.

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Hyperbole much? AI needs work but it can do a lot of things even the Civ3 and 4 AI can't, like using seige units properly.

So you're one of the "epic feel" people? As I said, that was the one complaint about Civ4. This was Firaxis' second attempt to kill city spam. They failed with Civ3 but this time they succeeded. Each to his own.

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Epicness isn't about cities or number of units. It was that in Civ3. Civ4 was just Civ3 cut in half. With smaller maps, fewer cities and less micromanagement, which the hardcore fanbase made up for by micronaging each city even more than they did before.

Civ5's epicness is its scale. You don't fill out your landmass right way, tech pace moves at a slower pace due to lack fo tech trading which invariably favours humans. There's no slider shenanigans, which again favours humans.

Bizarre. I don't see that that <Push ENTER>-<WAIT 10 Seconds><REPEAT> is epic in any way. Nor is there anything about Civ5 which could be described as "having scale". It's just boring.

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Civ4 felt like running a kingdom, not an empire. Again, scale is something that can't be described. it's part of the gameplay. A game either has it or it doesn't. I appreciate the return to Civ3 aesthics in Civ5. Heck, even the map itself is reminiscent of the tonality and visual look of the cityview in Civ3, except its all done in real-time.

Certainly I'm not speaking for others. How could I? There do seem to a lot of people who have a laundry list of Civ4 features that they want back. I'm not one of the them. I simply want a good game with playability and repeatability.

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Then there's not much to talk about. Vassal states and religion are 2 constants among Civ4 fans who keep mentioning it as the pinnacle of Civ4 design aesthics.

I don't mind vassal states, and I think it will be far more interesting/balance once it gets into Civ5, probably via an expansion pack focusing on city state diplomacy (one aspect of Civ5 that felt unfinished)

Relgion though I could do without. It's a crutch for human players in multiple dimensions. Economically, and diplomatically. Hey i'm you're friend, but really, let me move my army over here. Still same relgion, we're friends!

You can imagine how I hated it when I discovered that happiness thing is there merely for one thing - so that AI can cheat! How was I surprised when on King level I discovered that I had -6 happiness, while Rhameses had +56 smilies, and more cities and bigger cities...! This derogates the legendary game Civilization onto the level of some cheap console game. This is not about intelligent playing any more. This is simply about generating adrenalin addiction to beat the game on "high" levels.

jihe said:

Ever go to strategic view?

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absolutely. never a problem.

I've been playing Civ V non-stop since it came out, and I just keep enjoying it more and more as I learn about it's intricities. I'll be playing this game for many years, just as I have played, and continue to play, Civ IV...