A Returning Player’s Sentiment on the Current State of the Game

[Emperor Giulio]

It’s been a while since I’ve played a good game of Civilization. Usually, I pick it up and play for an extended period of time. Then there are times when I do not play for a perhaps a month or two. Before the last time I had put it down, was after the release of Brave New World. I did like a lot of the features that were newly included, but was dissatisfied with issues such as lax AI aggression. The other night I played a very good King game with Babylon, and I must say Civ V: BNW feels pretty much ideal to how I would like it to play. The AI was sufficiently aggressive; and BNW’s WC and UN features feel well integrated into the game. My last game was epic, and was definitive as to why I love the Civ series. I was surprised as to the new victory condition of Domination; now you must control everyone’s capital, not just the remaining sovereign ones. The end game was truly enjoyable, and exciting. I was Babylon, and had pursed Autocracy; in control of the western hemisphere. My final rival was the Ottoman Empire, who was investing in order; in control of the eastern hemisphere. I had made all of the CSs my allies, and declared Autocracy to be the world gov’t. I had used the UN as a means to vilify my rivals, causing civil unrest in their own constituency, whistle waging a world war on them. Civilization V in its current form is absolutely amazing, IMHO.

Sometimes I think about how vanilla Civ V played, and think to myself, “maybe there’s still hope for Rome II: Total war to get its act together.”

 

[Aristos]

It’s been a while since I’ve played a good game of Civilization. Usually, I pick it up and play for an extended period of time. Then there are times when I do not play for a perhaps a month or two. Before the last time I had put it down, was after the release of Brave New World. I did like a lot of the features that were newly included, but was dissatisfied with issues such as lax AI aggression. The other night I played a very good King game with Babylon, and I must say Civ V: BNW feels pretty much ideal to how I would like it to play. The AI was sufficiently aggressive; and BNW’s WC and UN features feel well integrated into the game. My last game was epic, and was definitive as to why I love the Civ series. I was surprised as to the new victory condition of Domination; now you must control everyone’s capital, not just the remaining sovereign ones. The end game was truly enjoyable, and exciting. I was Babylon, and had pursed Autocracy; in control of the western hemisphere. My final rival was the Ottoman Empire, who was investing in order; in control of the eastern hemisphere. I had made all of the CSs my allies, and declared Autocracy to be the world gov’t. I had used the UN as a means to vilify my rivals, causing civil unrest in their own constituency, whistle waging a world war on them. Civilization V in its current form is absolutely amazing, IMHO.

I can relate to that. I was one of the acid attackers of Shafer's civ 5 (I still am, that was just a piece of crepe)... but Ed Bleach's civ 5 turned me upside down. Civ 5 is now truly a piece worth of its name.

Sometimes I think about how vanilla Civ V played, and think to myself, “maybe there’s still hope for Rome II: Total war to get its act together.”

Now that is too far stretching...

 

[Aaron90495]

Agreed for the most part. The Fall Patch made some great changes, but I feel like the game still needs two fairly large balance patches to get it to where the devs can move on to CiVI. The starting policy trees, along with Rationalism, are quite unbalanced, and warmongering is simply not worth the effort, even on a small scale. But most importantly, wide play needs to be viable again. There's no reason to do it any more if you're playing optimally (at least on higher levels), and I know I and many others are so tired and sick of endless 4-city peaceful games.

If I sound like I'm being harsh, I just want the game to live up to its full potential.

 

[ferretbacon]

Sometimes I think about how vanilla Civ V played, and think to myself, “maybe there’s still hope for Rome II: Total war to get its act together.”

I feel like that's hoping for too much... talk about disappointing games. I started up Rome II on release day, excited as I'd ever been for a new game, and quit about 4 hours later due to boredom. That game has no soul.

 

[Emperor Giulio]

The improvements this fall patch has given me is same feeling of satisfaction, that Beyond the Sword for Civ IV gave me.

I would love to see even more content added to Civ V in the future.

As for Rome II, I really tried to enjoy it. It is a really nice looking game (if it complies with your rig). I've been a total war fan since Medieval TW, But Rome II does get boring pretty fast. Further, the AI is not very keen. I was willing to pay 3 bucks for the blood and gore dlc, but I can barely see any of the animations. Nevertheless, it is my hope that they patch the game massively, and make it worthy of the TW series. I feel they would benefit from fleshing out the political system; create better internal power struggle scenarios. The real ancient Rome had tons of betrayal, and murder in their politics. I think one single "climatic" (lack luster) civil war, really underplays what it is trying to emulate.

 

[Makavcio]

I'm generally satisfied with BNW and I really enjoyed changes introduced by the fall patch, but at the same time I find myself returning to GnK.

BNW did introduce many new mechanics (I epecially love the touch with great works of arts - marvelous!), it's even not as tranquil as it used to be before the patch, yet it doesn't really feel right to me. Early game can get boring sometimes with forced tall strategy. Warmongering, or even fighting any wars at that point of the game, is simply harmful to your empire. Sometimes you have to attack someone and you do, but in the long run you tend to lose more than you gain from the conquest. More importantly, if you have a starting location very different from optimum, it's much more harmfull than it used to be in GnK.

Mid game is annoyingly predetermined. You need to get your ideologies asap, you also need those archaeologists and at this moment of the game everything starts to move very slowly. Then ideologies kick in. No matter what difficulty, AI is always waaaaaaaaay behind me when it comes to them. In many immortal games, I don't see any AI ideologies before AI civs enter modern era. Interesting political things start to happen only then. The problem is that at this point the world is peaceful again or at best civs are waging wars against one black sheep they hate since ancient era for that single unsuccessful attack on a city state. You can be the hated civ if you like, ofc. AI is completely oblivious of how to properly manage its trade routes during conflicts and AI armies are still lead by Italian generals, if you catch my drift.

All in all, early game is less joyful than it used to be in GnK, mid game is richer, though slower, and late game is nice in theory, but I tend to quit it more often than I did in GnK.

Can't really complain about anything specific. There are no bad features or total screw ups like in Europa Universalis IV. It's just... Uh... Beyond the Sword had that awful vassalage system which could ruin the whole game with a single decision of a craven leader. I'm leaning toward conclusion that robustness of C5 BNW backfired a little and all promising games now unroll in a very similar fashion. This is not very enjoyable for me. GnK had many more possibilities open all the time.

Can't wait for Civ6. How about releasing it this Christmas, Firaxis?

 

[sendos]

BNW has very much stimulated my interest in civ 5. There is a lot of diversity and I think it would be rather hasty for Firaxis to introduce civ 6 any time soon. I don't think it would happen until something like 2015. Besides, you would want Firaxis to get just about everything right with civ 6, right? I would lose a lot of respect for Firaxis if they suddenly adopted the CoD business model: introduce a new civ game every year just to boost profits. They introduce civ 6 hastily and we all get disappointed, just like some people here are disappointing with RTW2.

Speaking of which, I had considered getting RTW2 eventually, but after hearing the negative reviews here, I might not consider getting it after all.

 

[Aristos]

...and AI armies are still lead by Italian generals, if you catch my drift.

... and manned by French soldiers...

sorry, couldn't resist. You know I love you, frenchies...

Makavcio, it's not that bad... way better than release, at least.

 

[Smokeybear]

There is a lot of diversity and I think it would be rather hasty for Firaxis to introduce civ 6 any time soon. I don't think it would happen until something like 2015. Besides, you would want Firaxis to get just about everything right with civ 6, right? I would lose a lot of respect for Firaxis if they suddenly adopted the CoD business model: introduce a new civ game every year just to boost profits. They introduce civ 6 hastily and we all get disappointed.

Civ 5 was released in September of 2010. Over three years, two expansion packs, and many DLC's ago. Seeing Civ 6 at any point beyond today would hardly be 'hasty', let alone a CoD-like release cycle. But of course, they best be doing a decent job of it before release... which makes me doubtful it would arrive before 2015, anyway, if they do it right.

 

[Emperor Giulio]

I would prefer that they release even more DLC for Civ V. But I think the next major civilization product we will buy will be Civ VI. However, it probably won't be for awhile; years I thinks.