Someone many pages back said something along the lines of playing Civ5 is like having a nagging developer stand over your shoulder slapping your wrist whenever you try to play the game 'wrong'. I felt like the game was always trying to force me down the rails rather than giving me piles of options and letting me try to piece them all together. In Sid's terms, I felt I had fewer interesting decisions to make.
As an example, playing Civ5 on huge maps, there never feels like there's any competition for land. Mostly the land remains fallow throughout the game, which eliminates one of my favorite periods of a Civ game: the land rush. Having to take decisions on what location to prioritize over others, what resources are going to be needed, how quickly I should be shooting for settlers vs. military units and structures, how far I could try to expand without overextending myself militarily or economically.
Another thing is the lack of features like Health and Religion. There were times in Civ4 where I'd have a materially poor start, but was able to have a rip-roaring economy due to being able to focus on religious techs, founding a few religions, and carefully spreading those to my neighbors to keep them off my neck long enough for me to establish myself. In terms of Health, while it was minor, I still miss it. I miss starting in a "Nile" type region, where the abundance of flood plains was going to mean big population gains but massive health problems. It gave me another interesting decision, in that I prioritized trading for (or expanding to) additional sources of food for health, or shooting for techs I otherwise might not in order to get health under control. Nowadays I start in that same Nile type scenario and... well, it's not really much different than any other location with a river.
It plays like a much more streamlined game with a fairly set path to take rather than a sandbox. That's what always led to my particular frustration. I love the Civ franchise, and Civ5 certainly brings some interesting ideas to the table, but it's just not there yet. I'm really hoping for a true expansion to the game, with some re-working of some systems (I like the concept of 1UPT in terms of removing SODs, but the current implementation needs work), addition of new mechanics, and some polishing in terms of AI/MP, this game still has the potential to be really good.
) but even paying 50 dollars for the disc i still had to download the game from steam i thought that was a bit crappy, it took me 40 hours to download the game!!!
