fredmeister
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2009
- Messages
- 20
I think i'm now at a point where I can bash out a review. I am interested in your comments mainly.
Praise
- Graphical polish. The icons and general appearance is impressive.
- No unit stacking. Makes sense and requires you to think more carefully about which unit types you build and where you position them.
- Policy adoption. Much more open than before.
- Money and happiness is now something that i UNDERSTAND and can therefore control
- City states. Adds another, more natural dimension of Civ types.
Criticism
- Stability. There are some CTD, glitch issues which kills the immersion.
- Too fast. There are too few techs, units and civ's and this makes the earlier eras feel too brief.
- Somewhat faulty tech-trees. At times I have access to some units / buildings too early or too late, in comparison with other techs that I already have.
- Somewhat faulty AI. No seabourne attacks / invasions. Excessively aggressive on-land. They gang-up on the human.
- Weak diplomacy. Consists mainly of useless requests for open borders and coop pacts that don't really mean anything. Friendships far too volatile.
- Poor control of trade. No real method of making your resources count.
- Annoying load-screen narration.
- Annoying and unskippable intro movies.
Conclusion
I am very harsh with my ratings and so would give this a 2/5. I will be able to bump this up to a 3/5 with some kind of WW2 scenario, probably. Or alternatively with mods, it can also get to a 3/5. For now, vanilla Civ 5 is only really a 2/5.
To give you an idea of my experience, I started off playing on the easy difficulties, on a huge random map as either Rome, Russia or China. I found these early games too easy because I would expand like crazy and eventually dominate them. It may be worth mentioning at this point that i haven't yet reached the Future era.
So I bumped up the difficulty to medium and found it still too easy. I then tried to play on the huge "Earth" map, but was grossly disappointed. Italy consisted of merely 8 tiles.
Finding the early eras somewhat unrewarding, I bumped up the difficulty to Prince then King, on huge random maps, but this time starting at the Industrial era. However, the other Civs would all gang-up on me. Some civs would have superior technology to me VERY early on, which leads me to believe the difficulty slider merely buffs the ability, not intelligence of the opponents.
I then tried 1 more time, on the same map settings and difficulty, but was placed in a medium sized continent of my own. Interesting i thought. Unfortunately it became rather boring. The other civs were too busy fighting among themselves and totally ignored me. I was free to do all the research I wanted and it because obvious this was going to be too easy.
So i'm stuck at the moment. I would have enjoyed a team-islands type game but the AI seems incapable of seabourne attacks. My next step is to perhaps play a WW2 scenario since that may solve the problems regarding early-era dissatisfaction and ganging-up. A tech, unit and building overhaul mod would be welcome too.
Praise
- Graphical polish. The icons and general appearance is impressive.
- No unit stacking. Makes sense and requires you to think more carefully about which unit types you build and where you position them.
- Policy adoption. Much more open than before.
- Money and happiness is now something that i UNDERSTAND and can therefore control
- City states. Adds another, more natural dimension of Civ types.
Criticism
- Stability. There are some CTD, glitch issues which kills the immersion.
- Too fast. There are too few techs, units and civ's and this makes the earlier eras feel too brief.
- Somewhat faulty tech-trees. At times I have access to some units / buildings too early or too late, in comparison with other techs that I already have.
- Somewhat faulty AI. No seabourne attacks / invasions. Excessively aggressive on-land. They gang-up on the human.
- Weak diplomacy. Consists mainly of useless requests for open borders and coop pacts that don't really mean anything. Friendships far too volatile.
- Poor control of trade. No real method of making your resources count.
- Annoying load-screen narration.
- Annoying and unskippable intro movies.
Conclusion
I am very harsh with my ratings and so would give this a 2/5. I will be able to bump this up to a 3/5 with some kind of WW2 scenario, probably. Or alternatively with mods, it can also get to a 3/5. For now, vanilla Civ 5 is only really a 2/5.
To give you an idea of my experience, I started off playing on the easy difficulties, on a huge random map as either Rome, Russia or China. I found these early games too easy because I would expand like crazy and eventually dominate them. It may be worth mentioning at this point that i haven't yet reached the Future era.
So I bumped up the difficulty to medium and found it still too easy. I then tried to play on the huge "Earth" map, but was grossly disappointed. Italy consisted of merely 8 tiles.
Finding the early eras somewhat unrewarding, I bumped up the difficulty to Prince then King, on huge random maps, but this time starting at the Industrial era. However, the other Civs would all gang-up on me. Some civs would have superior technology to me VERY early on, which leads me to believe the difficulty slider merely buffs the ability, not intelligence of the opponents.
I then tried 1 more time, on the same map settings and difficulty, but was placed in a medium sized continent of my own. Interesting i thought. Unfortunately it became rather boring. The other civs were too busy fighting among themselves and totally ignored me. I was free to do all the research I wanted and it because obvious this was going to be too easy.
So i'm stuck at the moment. I would have enjoyed a team-islands type game but the AI seems incapable of seabourne attacks. My next step is to perhaps play a WW2 scenario since that may solve the problems regarding early-era dissatisfaction and ganging-up. A tech, unit and building overhaul mod would be welcome too.
