I'm offically burnt out with Civ 5.

Its mainly with the changes in civ 5.. lets see

I have 858 hours played.

It's really the global happiness limiter that makes me tired just tired and frustated because i'm not allowed to have huge empires while the AI go and build their huge empires with chieftain happiness limits.

I've been taking longer and longer breaks, but the spark isn't there anymore.

War sucks in prince or whatever the normal difficulity is called because it's too easy to win. I found king wars very fun but, they AI empires balloon with no limits whatsoever. They have no happiness limiters while I have it so i am finding it exhausting and unfair.

I could create empires that cover the whole world in civ 4 under my color. And the limiter on it was the economy and maintenance, and If i controlled my expansion properly I could keep on expanding forever well, thats if the rebellion or whatever doesn't pwnt me that is.


But no, in civ 5 you are kicked in the crotch for being successful at defending yourself against AIs that expand with no limits.

I don't want to go back to civ 4 because i hate the combat system there so boring but it was tolerable but after i get taste of civ 5 combat, i can't play civ 4 anymore.


To sum it up, i like civ 4 expansion stuff and I like the civ 5 combat.

I HATE civ 5's expansion stuff and I hate civ 4 combat.


Its over for me, no more love affair with civ 5. Its over its over.

I'm depressed that i might have tow ait like 10 years before civ 6 comes out and it might use civ 4 expansion with civ 5 combat. farewell thee guys I loved reading this forums since my young days in highschool during civ 3.

I still remember few posters that's still posting even now from when I was a lurker.

Faretheewell happy civving i just can't civ anymore.

You're doing it wrong. I love the big empires too. Use faith beliefs, policies and wonders to boost your happiness.

I have positive 36 with 46 cities. It wasn't that long ago that I was above 80 but due to war breaking my lux deals as well as a few new annexed cities, it has dropped.

This is on emperor.

Yes, the AI get too much of a bonus with . I'm not sure why the dev's made it this way, as it effectively limits your options in terms of taking an AI down.

Have you tried any mods? If not they can definitely give breath new life into Civ 5. CivUp, and Gem really make the game more fun and less ai cheating. Others can point ya in the direction of other good mods. I can't play without them.

Also the dll just came out... image what modders can do with that!

U r playing wrong

That's a shame, I suggest reading the happiness guides

A huge empire in Civ5 is like 20-30 cities (less on smaller maps, lower end of that for standard size), which isn't hard to do. I don't know what your idea of huge is, but if it's beyond that, yeah, happiness might be a problem before late game.

Religion is huge, and so are happiness buildings. Pick SP's that will give you more happiness due to your wide empire, if possible, and if needed, you can always trade for resources as well, but I find that it's rarely an issue.

Maybe you get worried about slight unhappiness? There's really no penalty for unhappiness until 10. 1-9 is just slowing down pop growth so you don't get there, and I often find myself there for 75% of the game (and 15% in larger unhappiness because I took a city and have not yet stabilized happiness to acceptable levels.)

In all fairness to him, with the "you're playing it wrong" and "doing it wrong" comments, I love civ just as much as the next but if the brother logs in 800+ hours and says he's spent then he probably is. This game ain't for everyone

You should never have to feel like that with a game, if you get to that point, stop playing and call it a day. No point if you are having no enjoyment. Instead, leave it until eventually you get that slow itch to start playing again and you'll come back more enthusiastic then ever

if happiness is the reason you are frustrated with this game and you have spent the amount of hours on this game as you claim then i dont know what to say. happiness has never limited me in expanding, it's really just not that big of a factor. civ iv expansion was fraught with far greater difficulties - requiring a garrison for your new city, pollution/corruption/cultural conversion. i do agree however that civ iv was the superior game and that once youve tasted 1upt its impossible to go back to civ iv stacks, there's so much i miss about civ iv but i just cant bring myself to go back to stack warfare and really civ v has made me lazy, i dont have the energy to deal with tax sliders, local happiness, corruption, pollution, cultural conversions, etc. i just remembered though, cottages, man those were great, the way they'd grow into hamlets and towns, so much more flavour than these generic 'trading posts' which stay 'trading posts' throughout the game. lets just hope civ 6 turns into a hybrid of the two, the best of both. but honestly, i dont expect it, it'll likely degernate into an even bigger arcadized version

I am not thrilled about civ 5, but I do play it. and it is possible to control HUGE empires, at least I do. civ 4 was a lot mroe fun but it's not fun going back to civ 4 anymore. played all the civ 4 mods. the mods in civ 5 are dissapointing. I miss the vassal option. and I miss beeing able to have more than one military troop in one tile

Every game enjoyability goes up and down. Although the issues about happiness is probably that OP is not using the games options according to his playing style. Civ 5 gives the player more options about happiness than Civ 4 regarding religion, SP and CS combinations.

Befriend Mercantile City states.

A couple of those will be very powerful.

Probably won't meet your desires for UNLIMITED EXPANSION but it should help power you to a decent sized empire earlier.

Also when I play wide, I keep more core to no more than 4-5 original cities. Otherwise, you'll get nowhere with Social Polices. You can unpuppet more later when culture is easier to get.

Representation in the Liberty SP tree should be a priority if you plan on building lots of native cities as it reduces SP cost of each new one by 33%. IIRC, the culture inflation cost is 10% per new city, so with this Social policy, it will only cost you 6.7% more.

If you plan and play properly, a wide empire even not including puppets is completely doable. It requires more forethought than Civ4 did, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

If you play correctly, happiness should not be an issue for expansion, especially mid-to-late game. I once had an Emperor level complete takeover domination win on Huge Earth Map think I had like 60+ cities

Well, I regularly play on prince, but ever since I saw the army sizes on king, I couldn't move down anymore. Prince armies is too puny for me.

Oh the maps is Huge, Pangaea, raging barbs.

Also, Every single game, an empire will eventually end up in an dystopia no matter what you do, that' is what burns me out on it. Rot from inside out.

And for people that insists that I'm doing it wrong.

I hope the screenshots will help you change your mind..
Because image spam will be too much so i'm using links to them instead of image linking them all and just some is better.

An Empire with 177 happiness.
http://i45.tinypic.com/2wegn7k.jpg
I have every single happiness possible pre gods n kings. But what happens when your empire gives birth to 177 more population points? That's right, an dystopia.

Here's some more to show that it isn't a fluke.

http://i48.tinypic.com/mcqf5h.jpg This one, in process of taking over japan, france, and china at same time.


And now for ones with gods n kings, I am perfectly aware of the mercantile city states, and they really juicy however they only provide enough happiness for like two big cities on general basically +26 happiness per mercantile city states without repeat luxuries for you.


Poor celts experiencing an pincer attack on two sides. Avalanche of Giant Death Robots on west and experienced panzers going on fancy conquer the world route for fun on the east.
http://i50.tinypic.com/14wfurk.jpg


This one could easily be the pinnacle of my achievements on gods n kings, an science victory when I normally go for domination and it shows in this map <_< an science victory through domination means. And its the last game I have completed in months.

But you won't really understand how i feel like by a single picture in this map so I decided awhile ago to take the pictures showing progression.

This occured during renaissance era?
War between me and siam sparked over control of coal resources, I needed that 7 coal node badly enough to kill siam's ambitions in my southern reaches and take samarqand and the city state next to it to confirm to others that this area with coal mine is my territory and there's nothing they can do about it.
But take notice.
I only have 12 cities to siam's 23 cities just because of happiness limitations. As of consequence of this stupid thing, he can tech quicker than me just cuz lulz
http://i50.tinypic.com/1h2wrq.jpg

and this picture is showing me Attacking maya to stop their escape from earth before 2012 and before the offical start of actual blitzkrieg where siam lost so many size 30 cities in six turns. I'm currently at+50 and I have a bunch of cities in various stages of being razed. Well, I already absorbed the first 1/4 of siam cities in earlier wars.. you can see it, the three city states on my north, everything northeast of it is siamese. Keep in mind that, I HAVE ALOT OF CITIES BEING RAZED AT THIS MOMENT.

http://i50.tinypic.com/13yh4zp.jpg

This shows the in progress conquest while interacting with amusing bug I found Valletta was reliberated, it was siam's pet city state.
http://i46.tinypic.com/fnbj1k.jpg
See me drop down to 11 happiness? yeah its that brutal. Every single city you see in siam is being razed by me down to small sizes or completely burning them to the ground because of their poorly situated location.

And then, me winning the science victory just 10 turns before time is up..
with the picture of my core zone showing. No cities is being razed and all emo cities out of rebellion so its at the stable 65 happiness at the moment with a whole bunch of useless siamese cities razed.
http://i46.tinypic.com/mjqq74.jpg

I'm angry because my mayan cities will never be good production centers because I don't have the happiness limits to support it. I only have enough happiness to support four more massive metropolis and that's it for me, dystopia hi old friend of civ 5 foe rudely ending all my games before the real game starts!
I'm no slouch but, siam's core zone had twice as much city pop to me.

Pretty much just made me upset because I basically lost by winning the game, statistically the ai's cities was just plain better than mine across the board and there's nothing I can do about it. But what finally sealed the deal was the game I had in king ..

This war between iroquois and me.
http://i47.tinypic.com/29xspdz.jpg
you can see I have 62 happiness, that's good i know right. Oh and I have marrakech because austria have the nerve to marry it while its in my core zone so I simply declared war on austria and take it over. There's nothing she could do about it. After that, she left all other city states near me alone otherwise I would just roll in and annex them.
Despite the proximity, england too weak to declare war on me.

After the gigantic aerial and land warfare of ww1.. I enter ww2, and see oh nice hacks you have there AI and quit the game.
As you can see in the earlier picture, I only realistically can take Onondaga, brantford, canandaigua lake, and kanatsiokareke and If I try hard and raze a couple of cities, ganienkeh.


I look at my 77 happiness, and then inspected AI's policies and wonders and luxuries. And simply concluded that the AI cheats on happiness. Called the AI a bunch of disparaging remarks and logged off for a real real real long time.

As you can see in the latest picture, I only have 10 cities, while the AI have uh, bazillion cities. Fun fact, me, france, and austria is fighting the war against iroquois and winning. That near dead group if soldiers just got hit by a couple of atomic bombs, and in following turns i retaliated by dropping a whole bunch of atomic bombs against them. Which consequently had rather negative effect for iroquois because it just let my panzers which i hid deep in my country to charge out and nail the near dead cities and raze them to the ground. Oh and that Aelius brigade infantry pwnt a 100 hp SAM missle vehicle thingie while only having 10 hp.

Despite that, I just look at their policies and their numbers of cities which is only allowed through their cheater happinesses so i just logged off. I came back for the fall patch but, it was just more of the same and logged off in boredom because of cheater happinesses. There wasn't just any luxuries available to trade, nor any wonders to build.

I have a single king game in progress with the fall patch but nary a desire to play it any further, atm at 11 cities and i'm watching other ais expand with no happiness concerns.

I'm not happy, i ran out of happiness points that I accured up from civ 4. It's no fun anymore. I grab every single happiness junk but i always run out of happiness its self defeating. Civ 4 did't stab you in the back for having a succesful empire, civ 5 however is emo and will make sure you die a horrible death for being too good at the game over time no matter how long you play it will all end up in same way by dropping the happiness to 0 because all ur cities is always growing and then eventually reach that magical mark of -20 unhappiness and barbarians pop up all over your lands no matter what you do.



And, what angers me is the rebels is just barbarians because firaxis is too lazy to create a special unit that spawns up only during unhappiness, just called them barbarians and left it at that instead of taking some kind of effort and renaming them rebels. Its sad when your empire is -20 and you have whole world conquered and barbarians with clubs spawn in your map and you go and beat them up with giant death robots. Its like, despite all the progression, your citizens is still living in caves and beating a couple of rocks together.

And this isn't even mentioning how small the maps feel, civ 4 feels way bigger than this. Islands so small. I seem to recall being able to fit four metropolises on an decent island in the past, today, only one.

Yup, i'm burnt out after giving civ 5 a chance for 858 hours. No satisfaction found.
There were times where I got pwnt in civ 4. i even found satisfaction in being pwnt. But, Civ 5, too easy and sad and snoozefest because there's only thing you need, and that is ensure to always have growing sources of happiness but the model civ 5 works on is unsustainable. Every single game is guaranteeded to end in dystopia. Its jsut that it'll just take the AI longer to reach dystopia than human players would do because of their cheater happinesses. Stupid chieftain bonuses for them.

Welp, can't be helped. I do have fallout 3 to finish..

858 hours is quite a lot to see if you like the game. At some point most games are just worn out and you have to move on, you got pretty good bang for your buck.

I hear your complaints though, barbarians in general have become just a nuisance. All they are now are a tax on you having a couple extra troops one to sit on top of a early worker/settler and the occasional pop to save an improvement. Having them as world events would be much more interesting and allowing them to accumulate to conquer cities would help. Perhaps some diplo options for joining up with other civs to wipe out the barbarian horde? Bribe them to help topple another civ? So many good untouched options leaving us with boring city state missions and some gold farming.

I do love having a point for industrial troops, civ suffered in the fact that the game was basically over at cannon and riflemen push timings. I do love some of the feelings of having a nice huge land air war with 1upt. However the AI is terrible with it, atleast with stack of doom you had chances for run away civs to be a huge threat. Now its just comp stomping armies several times your size. I had scary looking early rushes in deity that get held off by two archers and a town on a hill.

Mister you have to mix it up with games. I like a change of pace now and then. That way you never entirely get sick of a game. Play some TW, or EUIII. In my case, I grabbed Oblivion for my Xbox 360. After that I'll get Skyrim. I miss playing RPGs.

All I can say to post #15 is WOW!