Reviews of Civilization 5

[esemjay]

This is a really good analysis, especially since I thought Esemjay was a big Civ V supporter. I'm not so sure the AI is as "fixable" as he says though, for combat at least. It will take a much more radical approach than a simple mod to fix. Maybe Firaxis will be willing to modify the 1UPT somewhat, but I don't think so, especially since it would be humiliating for them to do so.

I'm playing a game of Civ4 right now, and I'm leaning more and more towards the idea of "X Units per Tile".

During the course of this Civ4 game that I'm playing, I'm starting to realize where a lot of my issues are coming from. Civ5 maps feel smaller, because armies take up too much room; while Civ4 maps feel enormous because armies take up no room whatsoever.

I have had games where I had enough room in one tile that I started to wonder how they all fit there. As in... hundreds of units in one massive Stack of Doom. I feel that 1UPT was a leap in the right direction- but as with any leap, they ran the risk of overstepping the goal. And that's exactly what they did. Instead of 1UPT, units should be given a percentage of a tile, and you can stack units on that tile until it's full. Sure, it'll put you in situations where you have artillery protected by infantry... but that's how it actually works. Artillery isn't just posted up on a hill by itself with no protection; and the game should reflect this.

I'm confident that, given the number of talented and determined modders on this forum, a lot of the controversial steps that were taken by Firaxis will be fixed once the DLL becomes open-source.

 

[civfan99]

I'm playing a game of Civ4 right now, and I'm leaning more and more towards the idea of "X Units per Tile".

During the course of this Civ4 game that I'm playing, I'm starting to realize where a lot of my issues are coming from. Civ5 maps feel smaller, because armies take up too much room; while Civ4 maps feel enormous because armies take up no room whatsoever.

I have had games where I had enough room in one tile that I started to wonder how they all fit there. As in... hundreds of units in one massive Stack of Doom. I feel that 1UPT was a leap in the right direction- but as with any leap, they ran the risk of overstepping the goal. And that's exactly what they did. Instead of 1UPT, units should be given a percentage of a tile, and you can stack units on that tile until it's full. Sure, it'll put you in situations where you have artillery protected by infantry... but that's how it actually works. Artillery isn't just posted up on a hill by itself with no protection; and the game should reflect this.

I'm confident that, given the number of talented and determined modders on this forum, a lot of the controversial steps that were taken by Firaxis will be fixed once the DLL becomes open-source.

good points im holding out for a great mod or some heavy expo to fix this .

 

[rschissler]

I'm playing a game of Civ4 right now, and I'm leaning more and more towards the idea of "X Units per Tile".

During the course of this Civ4 game that I'm playing, I'm starting to realize where a lot of my issues are coming from. Civ5 maps feel smaller, because armies take up too much room; while Civ4 maps feel enormous because armies take up no room whatsoever.

I have had games where I had enough room in one tile that I started to wonder how they all fit there. As in... hundreds of units in one massive Stack of Doom. I feel that 1UPT was a leap in the right direction- but as with any leap, they ran the risk of overstepping the goal. And that's exactly what they did. Instead of 1UPT, units should be given a percentage of a tile, and you can stack units on that tile until it's full. Sure, it'll put you in situations where you have artillery protected by infantry... but that's how it actually works. Artillery isn't just posted up on a hill by itself with no protection; and the game should reflect this.

I'm confident that, given the number of talented and determined modders on this forum, a lot of the controversial steps that were taken by Firaxis will be fixed once the DLL becomes open-source.

It would be nice if Firaxis would say "We scewed up and this is how we are going to fix it! Fixing the game is more important than our vanity." However, I'm not so sure Firaxis has the courage to do so. Modifying the 1UPT to say a maximum of 4UPT would make a huge difference. For example, you or the AI, could stack a defensive unit, an offensive unit, a artillery unit, and another offensive or defensive unit. and that would create incredible stategy and make the AI much more formidable. Naysayers: no that doesn't mean there will be four times as many additional units in the game. Changing 1UPT has to come from Firaxis though, not a mod.

In the same vain, I think road maintenance should be reduced or eliminated. Not having roads creates too many problems with combat. Especially since I think the only reason they wanted to reduce roads was to "make the game look prettier."

 

[Wreck]

I'll second most of what esemjay said in #11.

In particular, the awful AI is despiriting to me. They very intentionally changed the game to splay out the combat onto the map. This had the obvious effect -- or should have been obvious -- of requiring not just giving an AI a few more processor cycles, but a radically new and better AI. Programming a combat AI is hard. Really hard. Concepts like military mass which are inherently fuzzy are very tough to program. For all its simplicity, Civ4's system was much better in that it allowed even a fairly stupid algorithm to conquer, at least sometimes, with enough units. That is:
(1) form all units into large stack
(2) pick city to attack
(3) move stack to city
(4) use siege to get walls to 0
(5) attack city with stack
In Civ5, I have been conquered, but only when the AI had many units to my few, and a large tech lead.

As an old AI guy, let me add an opinion on this: Firaxis will not be able to really fix the Civ5 AI. They will be able to at least stop the most egregious problems (i.e., an unsupported siege engine wandering into your domain). They should be able to program the AI to pillage when it cannot win a siege. But they won't be able to produce an AI that is anywhere near as relatively competent at conquest as the Civ4 AI was. 1UPT basically precludes this. And that is one large reason I am rather pessimistic about the long-term success of Civ5. An intolerably bad AI is a game-breaking feature, and I don't see them getting out of this particular hole.

Also, let me add several more distinctions between gamers and pro reviewers for the OP.

First, I think the hardware requirements to play this game are a turn-off to many normal strategy gamers, but not reviewers. They have high-end computers to play FPSes. We mostly don't. I bought a new machine to play Civ4, and a new machine to play CivV. So I am more invested.

Second, I think graphical prettiness matters more to reviewers than gamers. I admit the graphics are very nice and I would not want to go back to Civ4. But! I might -- and after 10 minutes I don't think I would notice anymore.

Finally, I think that most reviewers care much less about historicity in games, or at least in Civ. To me, one of the key things about Civ is that it be at least plausible as a historical simulator. So, when Firaxis changes the game in a way that is at least arguably fun, but which violates my suspension of disbelief, that's a problem for me.

To take an example: nowhere, ever, in all of history would a unit sieging City A be subject to bowshot not just from City A (which is good and true), but from some other city nearby -- City B. Cities have always been much more distant than two bow shots. Yet Civ5 not only allows this, it is almost routine within the AI civs. I can see how this makes for interesting tactical problems. I have solved such problems a lot when playing this game. However I dislike it as a historical matter -- it is silly.

And this also gets back to 1UPT. It is because of 1UPT that they implemented ranged attacks.

 

[Chose]

To me, one of the key things about Civ is that it be at least plausible as a historical simulator. So, when Firaxis changes the game in a way that is at least arguably fun, but which violates my suspension of disbelief, that's a problem for me.

I really like what you said here. I download the demo last night and played about 50 turns. The graphics are nice and I found the game to be quite fun. I understand that gameplay often trumps realism, but realism adds to the overall experience, and for me make its more enjoyable. It seems Civ V did too many things that were unrealistic, it now feels less like a historical simulator and more like an RTS or something.

 

[esemjay]

I really like what you said here. I download the demo last night and played about 50 turns. The graphics are nice and I found the game to be quite fun. I understand that gameplay often trumps realism, but realism adds to the overall experience, and for me make its more enjoyable. It seems Civ V did too many things that were unrealistic, it now feels less like a historical simulator and more like an RTS or something.

*Cough*Giant Death Robot*Cough*

 

[Hormagaunt]

Second, I think graphical prettiness matters more to reviewers than gamers. I admit the graphics are very nice and I would not want to go back to Civ4. But! I might -- and after 10 minutes I don't think I would notice anymore.

If my experience is any gauge, you'll be pleasantly surprised. You'll start it up (in a fraction of the time) and you'll suddenly have this clean, uncluttered view. You'll go "oh, yeah, that's what's going on", and you'll be comfortably back in the zone. Time from seeing your settler to being comfortable, about 10 seconds.

To take an example: nowhere, ever, in all of history would a unit sieging City A be subject to bowshot not just from City A (which is good and true), but from some other city nearby -- City B. Cities have always been much more distant than two bow shots. Yet Civ5 not only allows this, it is almost routine within the AI civs. I can see how this makes for interesting tactical problems. I have solved such problems a lot when playing this game. However I dislike it as a historical matter -- it is silly.

Given that a hex is about 200 miles across (for the Huge Earth map), I don't fret about things like that. If you want to feel better about it, think of it as attacking a star fort, where two arms of the fort can both bring weapons to bear.

 

[Hormagaunt]

I have had games where I had enough room in one tile that I started to wonder how they all fit there. As in... hundreds of units in one massive Stack of Doom. I feel that 1UPT was a leap in the right direction- but as with any leap, they ran the risk of overstepping the goal. And that's exactly what they did. Instead of 1UPT, units should be given a percentage of a tile, and you can stack units on that tile until it's full. Sure, it'll put you in situations where you have artillery protected by infantry... but that's how it actually works. Artillery isn't just posted up on a hill by itself with no protection; and the game should reflect this.

How do they all fit in? Easy! Huge Earth map. In Civ4 it's 128 squares across. In Civ5 it's 128 hexes across. That means in both cases, they're about 190 miles face-to-face. For Civ4, that figures out to 36,100 square miles per square. For Civ5, that's about 31,250 square miles per hex. In Civ4, if you had 500 units in that one SoD, each unit had 72 square miles of room all to itself.

Personally, I don't think 1UpT is the correct answer to SoD. Your "storage area" is a better solution, but it's really just putting limits to a SoD. And if you're going for reality, you could still get a SoD that's in excess of 1,000 units. Which means you might as well not bother. If you're going for realistic unit density.

I wonder how it'd work out if we simply went for SoD + ZoC?

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

How do they all fit in? Easy! Huge Earth map. In Civ4 it's 128 squares across. In Civ5 it's 128 hexes across. That means in both cases, they're about 190 miles face-to-face. For Civ4, that figures out to 36,100 square miles per square. For Civ5, that's about 31,250 square miles per hex. In Civ4, if you had 500 units in that one SoD, each unit had 72 square miles of room all to itself.

Personally, I don't think 1UpT is the correct answer to SoD. Your "storage area" is a better solution, but it's really just putting limits to a SoD. And if you're going for reality, you could still get a SoD that's in excess of 1,000 units. Which means you might as well not bother. If you're going for realistic unit density.

I wonder how it'd work out if we simply went for SoD + ZoC?

Good post. I'd like to ask one thing though, that people stop using the term SoD and use the terms Stack or (even better) army. When you have units that represent different combat arms they come together in armies. It destroys any illusion of realism to have a group of catapults occupying thousands of square miles to the exclusion of anything else. It destroys any illusion of realism to have a unit of catapults operating 200 miles from the other elements of the army. "Stacking" ie using mass and different combat arms together synergistically is an idea that should be almost as natural as breathing for the warrior.

The problem with Civ 4 wasn't armies. It was the implementation of combat between armies. The solution thus wasn't 1upt any more than not breathing is a solution to air pollution. Armies mass largely because numbers matter in combat. How much do numbers matter? In a battle between two forces of completely identical soldiers who can all fire upon one another with equal effect, the chance of prevailing is equal to the size of the army squared (eg an army of 5 men vs an army of 4 men would prevail at a ratio of 25 to 16 or 25 out of 41 instances).

Civ 4 resolved combat as a series of duels instigated by the attacker who would choose his "champion" who would then meet the defender's "champion". This gave an enormous advantage to the defender while significantly blunting the advantages of the attacker. Why would the attacking army wait politely in the wings while the defender's pikemen sauntered over to meet their cavalry? They wouldn't! They'd try to use any numerical or tactical advantage they could. In Civ 4 the extreme defender advantage plus the extreme power of artillery (very unrealistic until the 19th-20th century), plus the lack of any supply rules led to the SoD as a logical conclusion.

There are two tried and true ways to go to resolve combat at this scale. Basically these boil down to:

1) Calculate the various factors involved in a clash between two forces and roll the dice to decide the outcome. This can be quite complicated and need not be a loser automatically dies result. Most battles in history did not end in routs and I see no reason why most battles in Civ should either. Neither should one side automatically remain unscathed. Both forces have overall goals (like trying to keep an army intact for Washington vs the British, or holding Byzantium at all costs for the Byzantines) which could significantly impact the combat results, even to the extent that the victor might not choose to hold the field of battle if their objective was simply to bloody the opposing force.

2) Bring the combat to a tactical map for resolution. A lot of choice here in terms of how elaborate this can be. The Total War games make this the main emphasis, while in games like Titan the tactical battles are typically resolved in a couple of minutes. Most computer games that offer tactical battles offer #1 above as an option.

Personally I'd prefer #1 as it is more in keeping with the scope of the rest of the game. Plus it allows the AI a better chance to prevail over the human who can typically gain a significant advantage in tactical combat. But I'd be perfectly happy with #2 if there were an option for #1. Tactical combat is fun for a lot of people so why not?

Here's another thought. Not all turn based games have separate phases for each player, they instead use simultaneous resolution. Examples include simple grand strategic games like Diplomacy and complex operational games like War in the Pacific. You give your orders and hit end of turn and watch the fur fly. There are several advantages.

1) It's more realistic that underlings control combat and such rather than the emperor.

2) Multiplayer games progress much more rapidly, as everyone makes their move at the same time. The same could be true for single player, as unused computer cycles could be preparing the AI turn as you prepare yours.

3) AI empires lose a significant disadvantage as your generals are no better than theirs.

This would allow the player to focus much more on grand strategic elements, though I realize that a lot of players enjoy the (heretofore) crappy wargame elements of the Civ series. I don't enjoy them personally, I enjoy the other elements of the game.

 

[lschnarch]

Good posting, although I am really not sure if the simultaneous turn approach would be really fun.

 

[Wreck]

Jolly Rogerer, I agree with you completely in terms of what to do. #1 all the way! But as for the term SoD -- it's called that (and not "army") exactly because of what you point out: it does not act as an army. People are aware of the silly ahistoricity of the combat resolution for stacks, because it is controlled by them and inescapable. Hence the whimsical name for a ahistorical tactic induced by a badly-thought-out rule.

 

[Pistolage]

The thing that ruins Civ5 for me is the awful AI. As I play more and more, I notice it.

The AI doesn't know how to play its own game. It's disappointing, and I hope Firaxis/2k fixes it soon.

Until then, I've gone back to Civ3 Conquests.

 

[sketch162000]

I'm playing a game of Civ4 right now, and I'm leaning more and more towards the idea of "X Units per Tile".

During the course of this Civ4 game that I'm playing, I'm starting to realize where a lot of my issues are coming from. Civ5 maps feel smaller, because armies take up too much room; while Civ4 maps feel enormous because armies take up no room whatsoever.

I have had games where I had enough room in one tile that I started to wonder how they all fit there. As in... hundreds of units in one massive Stack of Doom. I feel that 1UPT was a leap in the right direction- but as with any leap, they ran the risk of overstepping the goal. And that's exactly what they did. Instead of 1UPT, units should be given a percentage of a tile, and you can stack units on that tile until it's full. Sure, it'll put you in situations where you have artillery protected by infantry... but that's how it actually works. Artillery isn't just posted up on a hill by itself with no protection; and the game should reflect this.

I'm confident that, given the number of talented and determined modders on this forum, a lot of the controversial steps that were taken by Firaxis will be fixed once the DLL becomes open-source.

I like the idea of limited UPT as you know. One thing that I'm confused about is some people's desire to cling to 1upt and "make it work," however. Why? I don't know if you would have any insight on that...

 

[esemjay]

I like the idea of limited UPT as you know. One thing that I'm confused about is some people's desire to cling to 1upt and "make it work," however. Why? I don't know if you would have any insight on that...

1UPT is a brilliant mechanic. The failure within Civ5 arises when you realize that there just never seems to be enough room to maneuver. Not only is there never enough room to maneuver, there's never enough room to store a military.

The fact is, there just aren't enough tiles on a map. The game would need between 3 and 6 times as many tiles as it currently uses in order to make 1UPT a truly viable mechanic in Civ5; because, as it stands, 1UPT has two primary functions in combat.

1. Area Denial You can block an enemy from huge swaths of land, by putting a relatively small military 1 tile apart from each other. You don't need a strong military to accomplish this. In fact, the larger the military- you can just blockade off entire sections of continents with 5-10 units.
2. Optimistic Mechanic Projection You can, literally, use these mechanics to your advantage all the time. 1 well placed unit in a "neutral" border can severely hinder someone because you have an open-borders agreement. You can place 3 units in a line along a road, and their military comes grinding to a halt.

The reason I say that you would need 3-6 times as many tiles is that, generally, you could achieve relative success with 3-6 units on one tile in previous titles. By forcing you to only put one of these units on a tile, and then not expanding the number of tiles on a map, the game has (essentially) force-scaled every map down to 33% or even 16% of it's "effective" size- which is why (as I mentioned in another thread) maps seem so small to people who tend to field large military's.

Given that scaling the map up 600% would decimate the "minimum specs" required the play the game, I don't see this solution happening anytime soon. I have an upper-middle end computer, and can handle Civ4 maps up to "OMGinormous" before the performance hit becomes apparent; I can't play Civ5 above "Standard" because the game starts out with a performance hit in those cases.

That leaves two options:

1. Leave It Alone Treat 1UPT like olives. Some people love it right off the bat... others detest it with such a burning passion, that were Satan himself the target of their fury, he would be burnt to a crisp. The people who love 1UPT would continue to love 1UPT, the people who hate it would go back to other Civ's.
2. Add More Tiles I don't imagine that people who love 1UPT would be adverse to more tiles to get your 1UPT on. At the same time, I don't imagine that people who HATE 1UPT would be that upset if you could just get more units into advantageous positions, instead of a blanket of 5 units that cover the entire Arabian Peninsula.
3. Limited Stacking While not a perfect solution to either party, it addresses the need for additional space- replacing the need for more tiles by making each tile more spacious. You would avoid the performance hit of adding more tiles- and gain a negligible performance decrease during unit movement. 1UPTers would lose 1UPT, replaced by Limited Units per Tile (LUPT). At the same time, UUPTers would not get the Unlimited Stacking... but, really, who can't handle Limited Stacking? It's not like the AI will be ignoring stacking rules and throwing swarms of riflemen, 500 deep, at you. You maintain the "spirit" of 1UPT, while neutralizing the problems it brought along with it.

In my opinion, LUPT is the way to go. It'll need some regulations, and units should take up different amounts of space. For example, artillery and tanks should take up a lot of space, while infantry should take up relatively little. By posturing 1 artillery on a tile with 1 infantry (Not Mech Infantry, I mean Infantry) you can fill up a tile- maintaining the "vulnerability" of the artillery without sacrificing the reality... that we don't actually have artillery sitting around in the open.

To answer your question, however, for a while I didn't want to change 1UPT. It was neophilia. UUPT was old and everyone had their run with her... then 1UPT showed up and I wanted to master it. Then... I mastered it. Then... I wanted to believe there was more to it. Then... I realized there wasn't.

The truth is... 1UPT is just 1UPT. Which would be fine... if there were more tiles on which to get my 1UPT on. Unfortunately... there aren't. In fact, it actually feels like the map is smaller... like there are less tiles to move around on. I've called off entire invasions because I didn't feel like dealing with the limitations imposed on me.

I wanted so much to like 1UPT as it is... and I tried to find reasons to like it... but eventually the reasons to dislike it comes out on top. Which, for me, is really unfortunate. I like a lot of the mechanics in Civ5 enough, that I don't want to go back to Civ4... but I dislike 1UPT enough that I just don't feel like going to war. For a warmonger like me... it's incredibly f*****g boring to sit around and try to get a diplomatic victory.

"Make it work" is a noble goal- and in my mind it's probably the best goal. However, given the constraints of the average computer- Civ5 would have to look like Civ3 or even Civ2 to make 1UPT an option without killing people's machines. Why take a step backwards? LUPT is a pretty easy compromise.

-- Esemjay

 

[code9]

Didn't people talk about limited stacking even before civ5? Didn't the design team of Civ5 read this? Why didn't they try it out?

 

[lschnarch]

Didn't people talk about limited stacking even before civ5? Didn't the design team of Civ5 read this? Why didn't they try it out?

Because the lead designer, Mr. Jon Shafer, was fan of an old game named Panzer General.
PG *is* an 1upt game, and 1upt works in that game.

So why shouldn't it work in Civ? I mean, c'mon.... PG(2) was released in 1996, iirc.
So, with the technology and knowledge of 2010, you shouldn't face problems to make it work for Civ too, would you?

Wrong.
As pointed out by Esemjay and quite some other posters, it's the scale.
Look at a map of PG, indentify the real-world area depicted in that map and now compare it with a Civ5 map.
Where in PG a hex was maybe 1km², in Civ5 it's around 200 km². And you have one (1!) archer in that hex. But he happily shoots two hexes far.

This map distortion has been discussed in the forums already half a year prior to release, because it was just so obvious.
And Mr. Shafer now has left the company. Any more questions?

 

[Nares]

People hated the "cartoon" graphics

The graphics crowd also gets to me. They demand these high end graphics that developers ultimately cave into developing for because it produces the prettiest screenshots for the best advertising.

But it ultimately causes so many issues for users and developers alike that the game becomes swamped by the graphics.

Meanwhile, it's the "cartoony" games like WoW, LoL, or as you feel CIV, which find the time to put the gameplay ahead of the graphics, while also making the game more accessible to a greater audience by keeping minimum system requirements down and performance high.

I can't recall a recent title which put graphics first that actually succeeded. I can think of several which failed tremendously. Like you, I can rememeber when a certain game released. Not CIV, but WoW. Outside of server and client performance issues which were (mostly) resolved within six months, the chief complaint was with the game's graphics. Guess what; the game had amazing content (until the post-development team started working on it), and could actually be played by millions of users, which only enhances the value of a online game.

Sorry for the off-topic rant about graphics. For what it's worth, I'm sure the topic of CiV reviews has grown stale here.

This map distortion has been discussed in the forums already half a year prior to release, because it was just so obvious.

Spacial disproportion is a matter of personal opinion, not of gameplay.

You're not complaining about the scale of cities in comparison to the map size, even though they're likewise unrealistically and completely disproportionate.

If 1UPT implementation fails here, it has more to do with having no practical limits on unit counts than it does with the unrealistic scale of ranged units.

That leaves two options:

1. Leave It Alone Treat 1UPT like olives. Some people love it right off the bat... others detest it with such a burning passion, that were Satan himself the target of their fury, he would be burnt to a crisp. The people who love 1UPT would continue to love 1UPT, the people who hate it would go back to other Civ's.
2. Add More Tiles I don't imagine that people who love 1UPT would be adverse to more tiles to get your 1UPT on. At the same time, I don't imagine that people who HATE 1UPT would be that upset if you could just get more units into advantageous positions, instead of a blanket of 5 units that cover the entire Arabian Peninsula.
3. Limited Stacking While not a perfect solution to either party, it addresses the need for additional space- replacing the need for more tiles by making each tile more spacious. You would avoid the performance hit of adding more tiles- and gain a negligible performance decrease during unit movement. 1UPTers would lose 1UPT, replaced by Limited Units per Tile (LUPT). At the same time, UUPTers would not get the Unlimited Stacking... but, really, who can't handle Limited Stacking? It's not like the AI will be ignoring stacking rules and throwing swarms of riflemen, 500 deep, at you. You maintain the "spirit" of 1UPT, while neutralizing the problems it brought along with it.

That's three options, not two.

Nitpicking aside, you left out a fourth. Implement more enaging and more effective unit limits, either through resources, maintenance, some other method or a combination of several methods.

Currently, only unit maintenance is a practical limit on the number of units you have out at any one time. Resources are only a gimmick used to limit certain types of units, namely midieval units.

 

[CivFanaticMan]

I don't own Civ V and I have not played it. I joined these forums when civilization IV was coming out. For those of you who were here during that time, you will probably remember a lot of hate for Civ IV when it came out. People hated the "cartoon" graphics, they complained about the new combat system, they complained about all the bugs, pretty much anything new or different someone would have a complaint about. Some said Civ III would always be the remembered as the best in the series, and that it would always dominate the forums. But as time wore on, patches and expansions game out, and Civ IV has proved itself to be a great game, it took over the forums, and I think it is much better game than Civ III. It is a much more deep rich game, with religions, civics, land improvements, variable tech tree, promotions and much more.

Now that I have been here for another release it does not surprise me that Civ V has gotten a lot of negativity. I think this is common for a new release, especially from a community that loves the old game and probably does not want to see change (not to mention the whole steam thing). It is funny because I specifically remember several people saying that Civ IV just gets boring after a few weeks/month, and that Civ III never got old. Now the same thing is being said, just replace Civ IV with Civ V and Civ III with Civ IV. However, there does seem to be more of a negative vibe than Civ IV got.

All that being said, I just don't understand the huge difference in the opinions of the players and professional reviewers. Civ V has received universal acclaim from the professionals. All the big name gaming sites gave positive reviews. But there is huge negativity from amazon reviews and from these forums. Furthermore, if you look at user ratings from metacritic or ign, they are somewhere in between.

I said all this to lead into my two questions:

1.) Why is there such a big discrepancy of the reviews of professionals and the opinions of regular gamers?

2.) Do you think the hate will dwindle away as it did for Civ IV, or is Civ V truly a bad game?

I can most closely compair Civ5 to Sim City Societies. It's different, its easier to understand, its easier to play. I fear Civ has the same fate as Sim City, because a true Sim City has not been released since Sim City 4.

Civ5 feels abnormally different. I don't like the direction Fraxis is taking the franchise. Sim City has almost died out, because EA tried to mainstream it with Societies. Civ5 has been mainstreamed. Civ5 has backstabbed a lot of fans. Sim City is probably in a much worse situation thanCiv is, but I still fear the same fate.

Look at what people say about Sim City and Sim City Societies now, look at both sides of the argument. They are almost the same as arguments seen on the forums.

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

Jolly Rogerer, I agree with you completely in terms of what to do. #1 all the way! But as for the term SoD -- it's called that (and not "army") exactly because of what you point out: it does not act as an army. People are aware of the silly ahistoricity of the combat resolution for stacks, because it is controlled by them and inescapable. Hence the whimsical name for a ahistorical tactic induced by a badly-thought-out rule.

The post I was replying to gave an alternative system using stacks / armies and used the term SoD. As the poster was imagining a new and better system it seems better to use the term stack or army rather than SoD as I assume that the same poor design elements present in Civ 4 would not be present in this future design. What I'd like to see avoided is the conflation of the idea of stacking with the Civ 4 SoD, stacking works well in many instances. I think the bad rap stacking has taken in the Civ community because of Civ 4 is partially responsible for the 1upt debacle.

 

[Wreck]

I think "stacking" should have a bad rep. Look, I played Squad Leader as a kid. In SL, you stacked units -- literally made a physical stack of them -- because units were represented as physical pieces of cardboard. When sited together, even if used as a group, they could not be merged into a larger unit. Cardboard does not support easy merging and splitting.

We have computers to mediate our games now. Data structures are easily manipulated. The only reason for anything one might call a "stack" is that you want to keep multiple groupings that are in the same place separate. But we don't want to do that for most military units most of the time -- we want to merge a zillion small units into one big army. Well, Civ (to its discredit, I think), has not gone this way. It should.

I want armies in civ. If you have anything in your computer game that you naturally want to call a "stack", you're doing it wrong. You should never want to say: I had a big stack of units in a tile. You might want to say: I had a few armies in that tile.