Worst version of Civ EVER?

voted for 5. BTS will most likely be the peak of the civ series. i play civrev on the PS3 and while its certainly isnt a great game, maybe not even a good game, it still beats civ5. its good for a quick fix when i don't have the time or energy for a long game.

aziantuntija said:

I have played every civ (exept Rev) and i must say that civ II is the worst of the series.

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What didn't you like about 2, and what's your favorite of the series?

Jolly Rogerer said:

What didn't you like about 2, and what's your favorite of the series?

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Indeed. I find that an astonishing statement as Civ II was basically the same game as Civ I except that it was improved in a whole range of ways, starting with the graphics. I really can't understand why anyone would prefer Civ I to Civ II.

I was wondering the exact same thing, so I'm curious as well.

Im not sure why i didnt really care about civ2 but i just didnt. I remember reading about all those cool new stuff that they were adding to the game and being exited about them but when i played it for couple of days i was starting to get bored. Maybe because it wasnt so much of a new game, instead it just added more stuff to the original civ game wich i allready played for hours and hours.

Civ3 had much more great new stuff in it like cultural borders, how air units worked etc..

EDIT: To Jolly Rogerer, i cant name my favourite civ game, right now im playing 5 and enjoying it.

aziantuntija said:

I have played every civ (exept Rev) and i must say that civ II is the worst of the series.

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Going to have to second those that feel this statement is mind-boggling. Civ II corrected a number of Civ's flaws, and didn't introduce any undesirable mechanics that I can recall. It might have been underwhelming after hype, but that doesn't make it an inferior game. At worst you could call it disappointing.

I don't see how people that played both games legitimately think that Civ 5 is worse than Civ III was at release. That remains the only Civ game that got a swift uninstall from my hard drive and never saw the light of day again. Part of the problem may have been comparison; SMAC was still so much better that there was no cause to play Civ III. But it seemed intuitively obvious at the time that Civ III's mechanics were broken beyond repair, and the results seem to confirm that hypothesis.

By comparison, Civ V has the building blocks of a quality game. If rebalancing strengthens badly underpowered options such that they become meaningful, this can become a quality product. You would end up with a game similar to Civ II that doesn't provide a lot of challenge, but does provide a sandbox permitting a lot of possible approaches.

If you're judging the game on the strength of the AI, though, I'd say it's a hopeless case. In hindsight, we should have expected the outcome given the radically new 1UPT mechanic. The devs had to create new combat AI from scratch, and it took a lot of iterations to get an AI that could perform decently under the stack-of-doom regime.

Wholeheartedly agree with that analysis.

I voted for Civ 5. The broken AI makes it too boring to play more than once. I've played Civ Rev, but it is a console game not a PC game - I see it as a different category and have lower expectations. That being said, it's still better than Civ 5 in its current state.

aziantuntija said:

I have played every civ (exept Rev) and i must say that civ II is the worst of the series.

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aziantuntija said:

Maybe because it wasnt so much of a new game, instead it just added more stuff to the original civ game wich i allready played for hours and hours.

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Martin Alvito said:

Going to have to second those that feel this statement is mind-boggling. Civ II corrected a number of Civ's flaws, and didn't introduce any undesirable mechanics that I can recall. It might have been underwhelming after hype, but that doesn't make it an inferior game.

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So by just adding new stuff to the old base game is always a good thing?

Martin Alvito said:

At worst you could call it disappointing.

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You are wrong. To me civ2 is the worst game of the series and thats it.

Martin Alvito said:

Going to have to second those that feel this statement is mind-boggling. Civ II corrected a number of Civ's flaws, and didn't introduce any undesirable mechanics that I can recall.

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Aquaducts and sewer systems.

Health was much better than the hard caps introduced by civ 2, but "We Love the King Day" rapid expansion in early eras was a gameplay style that CIV 2 broke.

Quantum leaps vs. smooth curve in military was also eliminated in Civ 2 but returned in subsequent versions.

LOL so many emos voting for Civ5 over Rev. Blind with nerd RAAAAAAGE!!!
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Surgeon said:

LOL so many emos voting for Civ5 over Rev. Blind with nerd RAAAAAAGE!!!

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You slam the whole stock value discussion thread as being "filled with conjecture", and then come here and feel confident enough to attribute the votes of 243 people to a single factor, which you derisively call "emo nerd rage". Do you see a contradiction in these approaches?

If you read the thread, you'll see that several explanations for the result have already been offered. Some voters apparently haven't played CivRev, some hold it to different standards since it wasn't a PC game ("mobility outweighs complexity" etc.), and some simply didn't have a lot of expectations for CivRev and hence weren't as disappointed. I also wouldn't exclude the possibility that a lot of people simply regard Civ5 as a pretty bad game, especially in its released state.

Martin Alvito said:

By comparison, Civ V has the building blocks of a quality game. If rebalancing strengthens badly underpowered options such that they become meaningful, this can become a quality product. You would end up with a game similar to Civ II that doesn't provide a lot of challenge, but does provide a sandbox permitting a lot of possible approaches.

If you're judging the game on the strength of the AI, though, I'd say it's a hopeless case. In hindsight, we should have expected the outcome given the radically new 1UPT mechanic. The devs had to create new combat AI from scratch, and it took a lot of iterations to get an AI that could perform decently under the stack-of-doom regime.

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This.

Civ V isn't the worst of the series, it just needs some minor (and major, obviously) tweaks, and it will be at the level of Civ 4.

ThunderLizard2 said:

I voted for Civ 5. The broken AI makes it too boring to play more than once.

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I thought that was Civ 3?

aziantuntija said:

Im not sure why i didnt really care about civ2 but i just didnt. I remember reading about all those cool new stuff that they were adding to the game and being exited about them but when i played it for couple of days i was starting to get bored. Maybe because it wasnt so much of a new game, instead it just added more stuff to the original civ game wich i allready played for hours and hours.

Civ3 had much more great new stuff in it like cultural borders, how air units worked etc..

EDIT: To Jolly Rogerer, i cant name my favourite civ game, right now im playing 5 and enjoying it.

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I had a similar reaction to Civ2 at first. I realized that it had better graphics, more content, and repaired some broken game features, but it was pretty "meh" for someone who had played a gazillion hours of Civ1. As time has passed though, and I've turned to Civ2 to get my Civ fix my appreciation for it has grown. Civ3 was my most hated version, I bought it on release and played it for perhaps a week. I realized that I was never going to like it.

Chibiabos said:

I have played every PC version of Civilization, and of those, Civ V is the worst.

However, I cannot answer the poll as it includes Civ Rev which I have never played, and after feeling disappointed with the $50 I blew on Civ V, I certainly don't feel compelled to shell out $300 to buy a console and another $50 or whatever to shell out on Civ Rev just to say I have played it so I could give a more honest, definitive answer to this poll.

In terms of vanilla versions, I'd say Civ V is even worse than Civ IV:Colonization which without Dale's patch is pretty bad compared with the rest of the series and expansions.

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rev sucks, don't get the console. I have it on my iphone, it was fun for a few hours, maybe 20 or so, but all it did for me was rekindle my interest in civ iv. It might be better on a console or ipad, but definitely not worth it for the investment required imho.

I voted CIV III, CIV II is still my all-time favorite. I recall a WW1 scenario where i defeated the Germans as..... Spain! Ooohhhhh. the memories.......

Bandobras Took said:

Unfortunately, unit maintenance was also less burdensome based on number of cities, and so culture became rather hollow in Vanilla -- plop down the cities, don't bother expanding their borders because corruption will eat up most of what the tiles are producing anyway, then produce military units in one of your few cities with hammers after corruption and go beat on your nearest neighbor because they won't actually be friendly with you no matter what you're doing. You might even win if the essentially random combat resolution tosses a coin your way.

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My point was precisely that the gameplay fine-tuning was off, and as such the new concepts weren't very balanced.
BUT, these concepts were real advances in the franchise that were sound in their core principle and made it very hard to get back on previous iterations.
That's what Civ5 lacks. City-States are a completely artificial construct that really feels tacked-on and is perfectly removable. Social policies are just civics but far worse.
There is simply no core concept that adds to the franchise and make the previous games looks dated - the only potential candidate is the 1upt, and it's quite doubtful if it's really an improvement in the end.

Surgeon said:

LOL so many emos voting for Civ5 over Rev. Blind with nerd RAAAAAAGE!!!

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Blind with fanboyism much ?
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Akka said:

My point was precisely that the gameplay fine-tuning was off, and as such the new concepts weren't very balanced.
BUT, these concepts were real advances in the franchise that were sound in their core principle and made it very hard to get back on previous iterations.
That's what Civ5 lacks. City-States are a completely artificial construct that really feels tacked-on and is perfectly removable. Social policies are just civics but far worse.
There is simply no core concept that adds to the franchise and make the previous games looks dated - the only potential candidate is the 1upt, and it's quite doubtful if it's really an improvement in the end.

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Again, anybody who played Alpha Centauri would say the same thing about Civ 3 -- culture, unit maintenance, and resources were artificial constructs that were tacked on and perfectly removable -- not to mention corruption. The only real candidate was culture, and it's doubtful if it was really an improvement in Civ 3, given how much better Civ 4 was at handling it.

People, this is about VANILLA versions. I played Civ V and thought it was decent, then I played Vanilla Civ IV and I wanted to gouge my eyes out because of it's crappy AI and other lame stuff like that. Then I played BTS and I liked it because it was a MASSIVE improvement over Civ IV Vanilla. Also fully patched Civ IV Vanilla was way better than basic Civ IV, likewise with BTS.