Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[Thormodr]

Well, it's been said many times before, but the social policies system kind of feels like a different tech tree. I'm guessing that doesn't help differentiate the system and give it personality, since it plays relatively like the techs.

I see it as a skill tree in a game like Diablo II. A tech tree is a pretty good comparison as well.

Having every skill have positive effects only is pretty dull as well. It's hard to replicate historical situations like Korea's extreme isolationism in Joseon dynasty Korea from 1600-1900 (higher social stability at a significant cost to science and technology leading to stagnation and severe decline), Russia under the Czars/Czarinas (placating nobility at the cost of the peasantry and significantly lowering production), etc.

The real world had plenty of tradeoffs where a national policy could be positive in some ways and detrimental in others. It makes a choice truly meaningful.

Civilization 5 is consistent though, in trying to remove negative things that might upset casuals, newbies and soccer moms. No random events to spoil your day, no nasty results from goodie huts, wimpified Barbs, only positive skill trees, etc.

Hopefully modders will save the day (when the source code gets released) for people who are not satisfied with this arcade style level upping.

 

[Roxlimn]

SimonL:

Again, I have to wonder what game people have been playing to get that impression. The tech tree proceeds relatively linearly and can be bulbed and RA'd through, involving managing median tech costs to maximize RAs, and getting to key techs to enable buildings and units.

Social Policies are largely hammer-free in that they generally give their benefits immediately, and they're not linear. Each Tree is tiered according to its own nature, and you can pick from tree to tree, or even go back and fill out an earlier tree that would benefit you when your empire has changed in nature.

The only tech-like thing about it is that the Policies are branched within trees - and that's about it. Oh, and there's more than 15 of them. It plays nothing at all like tech in any game I've ever played.

 

[Roxlimn]

Thormodr:

I can easily contend that this thinking:

The real world had plenty of tradeoffs where a national policy could be positive in some ways and detrimental in others. It makes a choice truly meaningful.

is part of why Civ 4 Civics were so much worse that Alpha Centauri's Social Engineering. It put the emphasis on the wrong factor.

Bureaucracy compared to Barbarism supposedly has a higher upkeep cost, but its benefits generally directly countered those costs anyway, so there was no meaningful choice between Barbarisn and Bureaucracy. The same could be said between Slavery and Tribalism.

In a truly meaningful Civic choice like between Slavery and Caste System, we do not factor in downsides hardly at all. The primary driving factors are choosing between the benefits, which you would largely be the same when you have a choice between, say, Military Tradition in Honor or Organized Religion in Piety.

The difference is that there are more of these meaningful choices in Civ5, and less in Civ 4.

 

[Thormodr]

Thormodr:

I can easily contend that this thinking:



is part of why Civ 4 Civics were so much worse that Alpha Centauri's Social Engineering. It put the emphasis on the wrong factor.

Bureaucracy compared to Barbarism supposedly has a higher upkeep cost, but its benefits generally directly countered those costs anyway, so there was no meaningful choice between Barbarisn and Bureaucracy. The same could be said between Slavery and Tribalism.

In a truly meaningful Civic choice like between Slavery and Caste System, we do not factor in downsides hardly at all. The primary driving factors are choosing between the benefits, which you would largely be the same when you have a choice between, say, Military Tradition in Honor or Organized Religion in Piety.

The difference is that there are more of these meaningful choices in Civ5, and less in Civ 4.

Disagree entirely but what you gonna do.

In my opinion, they need to change the name of the game to "Sid Meir's Leveling Up through the Ages". (LUTTA for short) It'd be more appropriate for this arcade style action game.

Not surprising they made the game like this, though. Civilization is apparently not contemporary enough. However, arcade style games are still popular with the younger generation that Firaxis/2K Games is chasing after.

 

[Roxlimn]

Thormodr:

I get the "Get Offa My Lawn!" attitude. I really do. I get that way myself sometimes, but I don't know that it really applies here. One of bitula's complaints about the game was that you don't get more and more powerful as the Eras go by. Social Policies speaks rather directly against that. Outside of anything else, having a lot of Social Policies makes a Civ really strong.

It's not an action game, and it's not more arcade-y just because the designers decided to focus on the important factors in Civic/Social Policy decision-making.

It's easy to go off the deep end and misassign things like this, and blame "all the kiddies and the soccer moms," for developments we don't like, but commentary like this that makes no sense is part of what makes this thread so silly.

 

[Thormodr]

Thormodr:

I get the "Get Offa My Lawn!" attitude. I really do. I get that way myself sometimes, but I don't know that it really applies here. One of bitula's complaints about the game was that you don't get more and more powerful as the Eras go by. Social Policies speaks rather directly against that. Outside of anything else, having a lot of Social Policies makes a Civ really strong.

It's not an action game, and it's not more arcade-y just because the designers decided to focus on the important factors in Civic/Social Policy decision-making.

It's easy to go off the deep end and misassign things like this, and blame "all the kiddies and the soccer moms," for developments we don't like, but commentary like this that makes no sense is part of what makes this thread so silly.

Agree to disagree then. There are many, many valid complaints in this thread. To declare them silly is tantamount to baiting in my books.

I'm not quite sure why you decided to make it your personal raison d'être to come into the Rants thread and declare how wonderful Civilization 5 is anyway but to each his/her own.

 

[Roxlimn]

I recall saying that it's a problem in Civ 5 that it snowballs so bad. Is it required not to be reasonable to rant?

I'm just trying to point out that a LOT of the complaints in this thread are no longer rooted in actual fact. One of those is the characterization of Civ 5 as an action-arcade game. You can still say that, I'm just saying.

 

[Thormodr]

I recall saying that it's a problem in Civ 5 that it snowballs so bad. Is it required not to be reasonable to rant?

I'm just trying to point out that a LOT of the complaints in this thread are no longer rooted in actual fact. One of those is the characterization of Civ 5 as an action-arcade game. You can still say that, I'm just saying.

Civilization 5 being an arcade style game is an opinion, that's true. Saying it isn't an arcade style game is an opinion as well. Proclaiming it as a fact does not make logical sense.

Saying Civilization 5 is boring is an opinion just like saying you think it's fun is an opinion.

To come onto this thread and purposely declare that we are all more or less deluded and aren't facing the facts strikes as me as a rather odd thing to do.

Anyway, I have said enough on the matter. Do what you think is best.

 

[Roxlimn]

Thormodr:

Thanks. I will. There was a time when many of the rants here had merit. That time has passed. I would like for the rants here to have merit again. That's all. I mean, if someone here was ranting that all the Civ in Civ 5 were colored pink, I think it would be reasonable, even here, to point out that it was not so, right?

As for arcade games, there's an actual definition:

Arcade games often have very short levels, simple and intuitive control schemes, and rapidly increasing difficulty. This is due to the environment of the Arcade, where the player is essentially renting the game for as long as their in-game avatar can stay alive (or until they run out of tokens).

Games on consoles or PCs can be referred to as "arcade games" if they share these qualities or are direct ports of arcade titles. Many independent developers are now producing games in the arcade genre that are designed specifically for use on the Internet. These games are usually designed with Flash/Java/DHTML and run directly in web-browsers.

I mean, it is equally an opinion to rant that Civ 5 has become a Flight Sim-style game. It's equally silly, of course, and you're quite free to say so. Again, I'm just saying.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: @Roxlimn- please don't use this thread to argue with others. It's designed for rants, and not really for disagreement with those rants. There is some room to disagree on details or clear up what you see to be misconceptions, but not to turn it into a fully-fledged discussion. You're welcome to start a thread on a topic if you think it requires that, but please do not continue with it in this thread. Thanks.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I can't agree. In Civ4, you chose generally, one set of optimized Civics and a plan for engaging to get there through play, generally facilitated by either Bureaucracy or Representation conjoined with the most able Civics from each tree as dictated. You didn't change very often because each change was a costly 5 turn Anarchy cost.

Uh... I never had a 5 turn Anarchy in 6 years of playing Civ4.

And there are definitely some civics that are more generally useful than others in Civ4, but even the less popular civics have their niche. I certainly keep changing my civics right through to the end of the game, especially if I'm Spiritual.

 

[bitula]

Roxlim,
You are diverting the point Im talking about see (1). You wrote a very long post about how buildings are balanced, whereas I admitted myself that this aspect may have been balanced. Then you say, you totally disagree with everything I say, whereas just read your own posts and you will see that you actually agree with most of what I say. For example you admit that to enjoy this game armies must be kept small. Yes, that is the point, why would one enjoy having small armies (I really loved pool of radiance where you had a party of up to six characters, but that is a very different game.) In other civ series mentioned here, you could chose between small armies, large armies, there wasnt the problem (1), which is only in Civ5 and which forces you to play with small army no matter how large a map you are playing on. Actually and paradoxically the larger the map you play on, the smaller armies you should make, since it takes even more time for the units to travel to the destination where the combat occurs.

 

[Clement]

Whatever they did to the game, it doesn't feel like any other Civ game i ever played, i'm not going to pretend i'm clever enough to analyse exactly why i dislike the game as Sulla did, i can't even say i agree with him as i don't really understand what he was saying, but i do know the following as a player:

1. I don't feel like i'm controlling a great nation when i play civ 5 which is what i want from a civ game, i feel like i'm playing a board-game against human players, which is not something i felt in my two other favourite civ's. 2 and 4, and not something i wanted, i hate multi-player, why did my single player have to become like that?

2. The diplomacy angers and infuriates me, it is full of dumb things like a leader hating you even though you save their capital city, it doesn't have decent depth, and it is the major part of my disatisfaction with the game, almost a year on it still hasn't been fixed despite what i see as many rushed and ill-thought out changes, yet the crummy DLC that adds nothing of importance but just more civs keeps rolling on.

3. I find City states to be generic and uninteresting.

4. There are no vassals, no spies, no sabotage, just war to deal with any problems your neighbours throw at you, trade is simplistic and uninteresting.

5. There are so many horribly contrived rules in the game, from indestructible capitals to only being able to build trade routes among your own cities, it all serves to keep reminding me that i'm not leading a great nation, just playing a badly designed board-game against opposition that doesn't even require tact to be dealt with, just the hammer of my army, diplomacy, that's the word i keep coming back to when playing this game, it truly sucks.

6. I don't get the sense of wonder and excitement i got from previous Civ games, again i think that has to do with the game so forcefully making me be a board-game player instead of allowing me to pretend the world is real, being relegated by the game from imagining i was a leader, to being a player on a team.


If i could describe the change i experienced from playing Civ 4 to playing Civ 5 in an abstract manner, i'd say it was like playing with and enjoying lego, and then one day finding that the pieces had been replaced with ones twice the size, had been cut in number and had less types of parts, for me less definitely didn't turn out to be more with this game.

I found myself completely unable to suspend my disbelief and pretend i was a leader of a great nation while playing, because the game kept reminding me at every opportunity that it's trying to be a boardgame, that didn't happen to me with the other civ games.

That's my feed-back one year on, i still regret having bought the game, i've bought games i wasn't happy with before and not been that bothered, the Civ series was a staple series to me for 15 years that i just loved playing, not any more, as far as i am concerned the only thing i want to know now is if civ 6 will be "carrying on the great work of 5" or if they will try a completely different approach, that should let me know if i have any interest left in the series at all.

Edit* almost forgot, the user interface, with so much important info missing, hidden behind a thousand mouseclicks or crammed all at the top of the screen in tiny writing, also sucks.

Double Edit* the high graphic requirements are pretty amazing considering how static the game world is, the units are also too small and hard to recognise without having icons above their heads enabled, i can't zoom in as much as i'd like to either, i guess zooming in closely was too much of a luxury.

 

[kaltorak]

So Kaltorak, I'm very interested as to why you couldn't get into it to begin with and now why you can? To me it seems that ultimately, not much has changed besides some balancing, bug fixing etc.

I am not very sure either. The thing that always bugged me most in civ5 was diplomacy, and that hasn't been fixed. So I guess it's more about balancing.

I hated how resources were not very important, as workable tiles. You just cared about building any city near a new happyness resource. That made the whole map uninteresting.

Now resources have been tweeked. Also, buildings are much more interesting than they were before.

Infoaddict has been tweeked too, I would never play civ5 without this addon. A civ without lots of statistics is not a civ, wonder what devs were thinking. The new replay feature makes it even worse, since having the feature but not including it during the game is plain horrible. This is civilization ffs, I want numbers and stats. But then again, we got infoaddict.

So, like I said, I don't know what changed, besides some resource and building balance, but I find it pretty good right now. Not perfect at all, due to diplomacy mostly.

 

[Sadan01]

That's my feed-back one year on, i still regret having bought the game, i've bought games i wasn't happy with before and not been that bothered, the Civ series was a staple series to me for 15 years that i just loved playing, not any more, as far as i am concerned the only thing i want to know now is if civ 6 will be "carrying on the great work of 5" or if they will try a completely different approach, that should let me know if i have any interest left in the series at all.

There are so many great points you make that I agree with in your post however the one I have quoted above really stands out in my mind. You explain exactly how I feel about Firaxis and the franchise that is Civilization.

I'm sure your post will be picked apart by those that cannot seem to take any criticism of Civilization V (and they're not even employees of Firaxis! ) however I'm sure there are many others that will agree - me being one of them.

As for the point made in another post about the definition of an arcade game - a comparison by someone that doesn't like Civilization V to any prior version may come to that conclusion as by definition, arcade games generally require less thinking of your moves than what would a pure strategy game require. Civilization V would be in that category as well. The interface in "arcade" games doesn't need to be "complex", in fact, it doesn't need to change at all. Oh look, Civilization V by default has that unchanging interface unless you decide to click on those un-user-friendly buttons to drop-out some information which then only gets in the way of trying to see those god-awful ugly resource and unit icons scattered all over the map and in the city screen.

Sure, Civilization V isn't an arcade game in terms of fitting it into a genre, but Firaxis sure feel like they've borrowed concepts from arcade-style games with their slim interface, the missing complexity to most ideas presented in the game (diplomacy for one) and the fact that it just feels like half a game, unlike the others before it. Clement's analogy to Lego is very fitting.

 

[bitula]

Double Edit* the high graphic requirements are pretty amazing considering how static the game world is, the units are also too small and hard to recognise without having icons above their heads enabled, i can't zoom in as much as i'd like to either, i guess zooming in closely was too much of a luxury.

Yeah thats correct, I was almost amazed how static and unvivid the world is. Is there still a lack of idle animation? And those miniature armies look like a mass of indistinguishable insects. The cities dont seem to grow naturally, they grow like mushrooms, which get proportionally bigger and bigger. Hexes? Big deal.., they just add up to the confusion of identifying individual tiles. Strategic view? What an uglyness... I always thought that to be a joke, it was probably invented to have a clearer view, and thus admittedly the original view is confusing. You did not need this sort of a workaround in other civ games, because they were visually clear. So here we are people, the only aspect of the game (the graphics), which must be superior to Civ 4, is actually worse... Oh and yeah, I also did not understand the issue with the zooming, while am I not able to zoom in at a certain level? Did they dumb down the graphical engine as well? I have a fast comp, but the time between turns are sort of even, its slow in the beggining and slow at the end game. What is the game engine doing I wonder, counts all tiles each turn?

 

[shl7070]

I got civ 5 half a year ago and regret wasting my money on it. I played all versions since civ 2 15 years ago and enjoyed all of them but not this one.

1) System requirements: Civ games were originally designed to run lightly so that they can conform even to outdated systems for their time. Civ 2 ran on an XT-486 which was severely outdated when civ2 was released, C3C ran on an outdated Pentium 2 desktop, Civ 4 can run on my old laptop and it's a better game then civ 5 overall, civ 5 gameplay is not worth getting a new expensive computer as only the most expensive CPUs can run it smoothly. All previous iterations ran on systems 2-3 years obsolete during their release.

2) 1UPT: 1UPT makes combat very tedious in what should be a builder game, the SODs of earlier version can sometimes be absurd but that what is necessary compromise to make the strategic level better including a relatively better AI. There could be more elegant solutions to the SOD like the collateral damage of SMAC and the 9 unit stacking of call to power or even a province based tactical fighting like total war and age old imperialism series.

3) Diplomacy: Unpredictability is sometimes good, unlike the total predictability of civ 4, better to have a compromise like C3C and not the schizophrenia of civ 5. Elimination of tech trade is a bad idea as tech trade is a very important element of all previous iterations and enables a chance to correct past mistakes and return to the fold. Why was it eliminated? In C3C there were heroic stories of comebacks from last place and age lags, this became impossible now.

4) Building and rushing: We returned to the bad old feature of civ2 where you could totally neglect production and rush your way to victory, this is unbalanced. Why should I invest in production if this doesn't pay off. In civ 4 they severely limited this shortcut as was in C3C to make me invest in production.

5) Limits to expansion: The designers wanted to fight ICS but why? ICS in civ2 and C3C was at best a strategy to achieve certain victory conditions quickly. It's not the most efficient in the long run, not even in C3C as each truly productive city will require improvements and in ICS the cost will be higher for the same gain. Here they try to block you in every way continuing the tradition of civ4 to absurdity. You can't call a game an empire building one if you have 5-10 city "empire" as optimum. I miss the days of the 50-100 city empires of C3C.

6) Terrain improvement: They offer you many improvements but only one is feasible- trade post. This is worse then civ4 which also points you to cottage spam. Gold is more important then before so getting it over anything else become an obsession.

7) All civs are the same: In two previous iterations there were great differences between the civs, both my and the AIs. Each civ had truly unique bonuses which were geared up for certain strats and playing in different strat was a challenge- like warmongering with a builder or the reverse, now the difference feels blunted.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I personally love the 1 UpT, mostly because Stacks of Doom, I found them to be a huge difficulty to over come, since it technically required tons of turns to A complete it yourself and B, then you had to defeat your opponents CITY stacks, which they tended to have a lot, which I think is just ridicolous, that's the only reason why I still play Civ 5 instead of IV.
I don't think Civs are all the same, they all have unique bonuses they only have, and to be perfectly honest, a lot of times in my games, the A.I behaved in totally unique way from one another (i.e Psycho Monty), but at the same time, a lot of times, especailly later in the game, I constantly get denounced for no appereant reason (well, except for the useless fact they covet my land and wonders).

system requirements are undoubtely "overdone", my game starts to perform BADLY in Industrial Ages and up, which at one point prevents me from getting a Domination Conquest on larger maps.

I do agree with the Limit to expansion, if you expand too quickly the A.I will start getting annoye dbecause your "expanding" too aggresively and the only way I had a huge empire was as Monty after I conquered sevreal nations (Denmark, Babylon and Egypt and Iroquois), and pretty much, only Domination, Diplomatic and Scientfici victories require "huge empire" (especailly Scientific).

I do enjoy the Building and Rushing, especailly Rushing, purchasing with gold allows you to quickly build up defences if an A.I declares war on you unexpecedtly, as well as quickly building up your army too, I don't see anything wrong with that.

That's my comments on your post shl7070

 

[bitula]

I personally love the 1 UpT, mostly because Stacks of Doom, I found them to be a huge difficulty to over come, since it technically required tons of turns to A complete it yourself and B, then you had to defeat your opponents CITY stacks, which they tended to have a lot, which I think is just ridicolous, that's the only reason why I still play Civ 5 instead of IV.

In Civ4 you can 1UPt if you want, just place the units near each other and dont stackt them. In Civ 5 you cannot do the other way around. Its just a limitation, and its really hard to understand how can one call a limitation a feature. How can a feature be a simplification or an elimination of something. Its like saying, aaaah you know, Civ5 is much better, because it doesnt have this-and-that, oh and how I love Civ5 becaus there is no religion which I always hated etc, etc. How can a game be prased on basis it doesnt have something. Btw, I happened to forget: what is new in Civ5 which is not a lack of something or simplification of something. Hexes? Oh well if you think it is worth to buy a game because of hexes, good idea... (Btw, Im not addressing your post with the second half, just some generic thoughts).

 

[shl7070]

I do agree with the Limit to expansion, if you expand too quickly the A.I will start getting annoye dbecause your "expanding" too aggresively and the only way I had a huge empire was as Monty after I conquered sevreal nations (Denmark, Babylon and Egypt and Iroquois), and pretty much, only Domination, Diplomatic and Scientfici victories require "huge empire" (especailly Scientific).

I do enjoy the Building and Rushing, especailly Rushing, purchasing with gold allows you to quickly build up defences if an A.I declares war on you unexpecedtly, as well as quickly building up your army too, I don't see anything wrong with that.

That's my comments on your post shl7070

Thats are exactly the problem points for me. Regarding needed conditions for victory huge empires weren't necessary to achieve anything except domination and conquest in the previous iterations. You could win diplomatic with one city in civ4 and C3C, you could win by spaceship (science) with few large cities. In any case the definition of "huge" empire got smaller over time- In civ4 the empires are still larger then civ5 and in C3C a 50 city empire is small for large maps.

The ability to rush your way out of a debacle is one of those "streamlining" features. In civ4 you should be reasonably prepared for war or suffer, in C3C you can rush your way but only in the endgame. Gold is much harder to get and hoarding it comes at the expense of science. Gold also attract AI aggression.

City stacks of doom are problem but not an unsolvable one in previous cases. They cost support to the AI making him weak elsewhere, you could always organize SOD yourself and it's not that hard if you have many cities and commit resources. In the end you can nuke them out of existence if nothing else works-two nukes and job done.

Regarding civ differences look at the old C3C system. In C3C each civ had 2 traits (out of 8 possible) and one UU. Traits could radically change aspects of play. Some halved production costs for a group of buildings, other gave super workers or significant advantage of exploration or research and finally allowed you to build large cities in the desert because you could make a desert square produce 2 food (1 food without that trait). The trait combination defined what a civ is best at and most civs had unique combination (28 possible combinations for 31 civs). The UU were mostly significantly different from the generic units. The examples are giving you an attack or defence that enables a unit to survive an era as a viable unit. Immortal was better then anything until cavalry on offence, Legionary was viable until muskets as all around. Other UU gave extra movement that turned some type into a completely different type like gallic sword that had same strength as normal sword but became a fast unit with all advantages of that status. The UUs were so significant that you felt really uphill struggle when fighting AI UUs like the huge difficulty of fighting against Greece or Persia during ancient age. There was no counter and no detour, they were just stronger during ancient and you had to live with that, but if you were Viking for example you could reverse the trend in medieval and crush the same Greece and Persia with your UU. In civ5 the Arabs build camel and you can counter it with pike while in C3C they built Ansar that can be countered only by the next era Cavalry The UUs are less divergent in civ5 and the other bonuses are less sweeping, just try beating culturally an AI that produce culture improvements half cost when you can't or out-researching someone who builds science improvements half-cost, That can be done but with devotion and planning or by playing your strength in other field like making war or expansion.