Some of you don't want Civ V

[Ataxerxes]

I started with three and still think four is clearly better than three.

That said, I do agree five is making a lot of big changes and they won't all be great. @ the OP, the thing to remember is not everybody is complaining about the same things. Joe Poster complaining about hexes and Tim Poster complaining about the AI may like the other features but complain about the one feature they dislike. That said, I'm not supportive of moves like simplifying the game with regards to AI/diplomacy/etc... and I'm wary of how the war system will work out, but I'm excited enough for a new game.

I'm the same. Started with three (still play it) and like four a little better. I think V and IV will be like IV and III. I think it will be a very different game than the others. I'm partly excited and partly wary. It's hard to say how the game will be because we keep analysing one feature of the game. A big point will be how it will all fit together.

 

[largedarryl]

I've stated this before, game series usually do 1 of 2 things; remain the same and stagnate, or improve and change things. Now with every other series I've followed over the years, the only series that survive are the ones that constantly change an re-invent themselves. Civilization has been great at this, every iteration of the series has many changes (some better and some worse), but this is one of the main reasons I am always excited for a new Civ.

I can't wait to see what changes come to Civ V, I was so excited I already purchased my copy from Steam.

 

[Gary Childress]

I've stated this before, game series usually do 1 of 2 things; remain the same and stagnate, or improve and change things.

This is not true at all. I've seen a lot of games stay true to their origins and just get better. Close Combat has changed very little at its core engine and I have loved every installment that has come along. I've purchased almost every CC that has been made and have not regreted a single purchase.

War in the Pacific was really nothing more than an expansion of Uncommon Valor, again, loved both to death.

To this day I still love games like Star Craft, Panzer General II, Age of Empires II et. al. If a game company came out tomorrow with an expansion on these games based upon the same game engines I would scoop them up in a minute.

There are a lot of great games out there which have simply made humble improvements upon tried and true dynamics and have been very successful. When you hit a real winner sometimes it pays to stick with it, improve on it and make it even better, perfect it. I've seen a lot of games go that direction and they are often some of my favorites.

If you look at many skilled artists you see a pattern of development of a single theme or method which the artist perfects as his or her art evolves. You can always spot a Picasso, Monet, Rivera, or Pino just looking at the style and subject of the work.

Sid Meier OTOH seems to be borderline schizophrenic or something. He can't seem to stick to anything for more than a single installment lately. I really just get the impression he's desperately trying to recreate that first innovative moment in computer gaming history when Civilization first came of age.

Sure there will always be new fans of the new incarnations of Civilization who will rant and rave about how great the latest Civ is but there will also be a lot of die hard Civ veterans who will be disenchanted when their favorite installment of Civ is dumped by the wayside.

I see a lot of Civ IV fans are disenchanted by some of the changes in Civ V. I seem to recall many Civ IV fanatics being critical of Civ IIIers who thought Civ IV was a bastardization of their game. Well, now they know how it feels to see a game they love dumped by the wayside in favor of one man's vain attempts at commercial superstardom.

 

[Suho1004]

I started with Civ1 and have migrated to each new Civ game. The thing is, I've always done it rather slowly, although I've gotten faster as the years have gone on. Still, though, I don't think I've ever gotten a new Civ game within a year of when it came out (or at least six months--I really can't remember). I think Civ 5 will be a first for me in that regard, as I plan on getting it for Christmas.

As for Civ5 being totally different, I honestly have no idea how different it is going to be. I think at this stage in the game (so to speak), a lot of people are focusing on the differences. But there's still a lot of Civ that stays fundamentally the same. Still, I'm looking forward to a new game. I don't really want an improved version of an old game.

 

[Senethro]

I see a lot of Civ IV fans are disenchanted by some of the changes in Civ V. I seem to recall many Civ IV fanatics being critical of Civ IIIers who thought Civ IV was a bastardization of their game. Well, now they know how it feels to see a game they love dumped by the wayside in favor of one man's vain attempts at commercial superstardom.

Read this again and think about whether it is reasonable.

Hardcore fans are the worst. They love a thing so unconditionally that they love the bad as well as the good. CivIII players really do love bad terraforming, high offensive str unit spam, exploitable diplomacy and all the rest. It makes them entirely unable to move on.

You should never make games for hardcore fans (unless you're a super niche indie dev) as they don't want a new game, they want the games they already have. Better to just sell new games to new people and let the old fans fall by the wayside as they have often stopped buying games entirely as well as not upgrading their computers, complaining that games were better when they were younger and that noobs these days don't appreciate real games.

 

[Gary Childress]

Read this again and think about whether it is reasonable.

Hardcore fans are the worst. They love a thing so unconditionally that they love the bad as well as the good. CivIII players really do love bad terraforming, high offensive str unit spam, exploitable diplomacy and all the rest. It makes them entirely unable to move on.

You should never make games for hardcore fans (unless you're a super niche indie dev) as they don't want a new game, they want the games they already have. Better to just sell new games to new people and let the old fans fall by the wayside as they have often stopped buying games entirely as well as not upgrading their computers, complaining that games were better when they were younger and that noobs these days don't appreciate real games.

I buy new games. My computer is a quad core. I don't love the bad things in Civ III. I would like to see Civ III expanded and improved.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I buy new games. My computer is a quad core. I don't love the bad things in Civ III. I would like to see Civ III expanded and improved.

And you started by playing III, right?

'Cos after coming from II, III always seemed pretty crummy to me, with very low replay value. It had some good concepts introduced but not very well realized. I've seen many others who also view it as the weakest of the four.

Do you really think the four Civs are REALLY that different? Step away from the details and they have the same core concepts. You're not going to confuse a civ game with, I don't know, Tetris or a First Person Shooter. I for one would feel pretty ripped off if they just kept making CivI over and over and over with fancier graphics. It would be like coming up with better and better oil lamps instead of thinking of using electric lights.

 

[nzcamel]

The civ community being divided when a new version comes out is nothing new. Some people refused to make the jump to Civ 3 way back when. Looking at the GOM, some people STILL prefer to play Civ 2. Personally, I wasn't a big fan of 3, and moved from playing mostly 2 to playing all 4. I know that there were others who felt the same. And the community survived.

I'll give 5 a chance. If I don't like it, I'll stick with 4, and maybe catch up with everone else on Civilization VI!

I can relate to this. I started with Civ 2, and yet found that Civ 3 was an improvement in all areas that I cared about....except the crippling corruption that your cities got once they were built a bit of a way away from the capital; or on a another continent. The graphic improvemnts were a big plus, and I definatly loved the earthern tones to Civ 3.

Which was probably the first thing to bug me about Civ 4. The earthern tones were gone, replaced with bright highlighter colours! Admittedly they did away with the worst of that through patchs and expansions (can anyone remember the original vanilla leader relationship screen? Fugly!!)

The 2nd thing to bug me was the city maintenance that was crashing my ecconomy once I hit around 7 cities! However I read a few blogs on the topic and quickly appreciated that if I pushed on through my ecconomy would recover.
The up sides to this were all in my favour. As much as I spread cities like penut butter in Civ 3, I had always built most of them up, rather than leaving empty shells around the place.
I did it because I thought they gave me strength that way. And because that was more what would happen in a good civilisation in real life. So I loved that faceless empty city spread stratergies were being destroyed in Civ 4.

That and I loved the culture explosion in Civ 4. It's like it gave a lot more excuses to stop along the way and smell the roses. Every city was much more customisable. I mean sometimes I come to the end of an epic game of Civ 3 or 2, and I'd be saddened to realise that all I'd done (even in victory) was largely repetatively build cities everywhere. And they all were pretty much the same. Irrigation & mines, mines and Irrigation. Boring...

As a history buff I love the accuracy; and the introduction of religion to 'explain' different civilizations bias'es towards each other was very accurate in Civ 4. The racial explanation used in Civ 3 was (better than none in Civ 2, yet) less accurate. Just look at the Caucus region of Europe where white Europeans are politically aligned against Russia etc, with their fellow racially different muslims to the south.

I could go on for a while. I already hear of things that are talked about being in, or out, of the game that i don't like. My point is though that we need to give Civ V a go. At first there's things that will bug you. But you may find that other improvements well outweigh the losses. And if you're really lucky they'll get rid of some of the stupid stuff - like fluro leader relations screens - later anyway. I do believe in BTS it's a nice earthen tone..

 

[largedarryl]

This is not true at all. I've seen a lot of games stay true to their origins and just get better. Close Combat has changed very little at its core engine and I have loved every installment that has come along. I've purchased almost every CC that has been made and have not regreted a single purchase.

War in the Pacific was really nothing more than an expansion of Uncommon Valor, again, loved both to death.

To this day I still love games like Star Craft, Panzer General II, Age of Empires II et. al. If a game company came out tomorrow with an expansion on these games based upon the same game engines I would scoop them up in a minute.

There are a lot of great games out there which have simply made humble improvements upon tried and true dynamics and have been very successful. When you hit a real winner sometimes it pays to stick with it, improve on it and make it even better, perfect it. I've seen a lot of games go that direction and they are often some of my favorites.

As much as I can agree that several game series are as great now as they were then they come out, that doesn't change the fact that unchanged graphically superior games are released, fanbase sizes diminish.

Using StarCraft/C&C as examples, there are plenty of games out there that attempt to duplicate the experiences and they always fail. Starcraft is one of the most played games today, and it is over 10 years old. There are only 2 RTS games that I can think of that have had any success, Sins of a Solar Empire and Supreme Commander. Now both of these games made similar evolutionary changes to SC/C&C that they delivered a different experience.

I just want to drive at your points about Starcraft, Panzer Dragoon, Age of Empires, etc. There ARE several games out there that are nearly direct copies of these games, but they are never as successful because the users experiences are not different. The key about new games is a new experience, without that new experience there is no reason to change. Hence the reason why you and I and many other gamers continue to play games 10+ years old (I still play Fallout 1 & 2).

I will concede that shooter games can somehow circumvent this argument because graphical updates DO change the experience.

On a side note, why would you us an art analogy? The movie industry is a better comparison, sharing many parallel's to the current gaming environment. And movies show perfect examples where sequels keep giving diminishing returns compared to the original.

 

[arstal]

Preaching to the choir never expands your base.

The problem is that it's hard to make a good change, and easy to make a bad change. You really have to balance the two out. This is why the expansion pack model is good- it allows them to fix the bad changes.

 

[Olaf_The_Great]

Back when Civ IV came out, many people complained about it being 3D and how they would stick with Civ III. Now, many (the same people?) complain about Steam and how they will stick to Civ IV.

I guess history repeats itself. But then, we DO need something to discuss about until the games comes out.

Well, I played the heck out of Civ4, even though I dislike it's art style compared to 3.

 

[LiDDiS]

I wont be getting it right away now. I'll wait a few months and see what they're doing with the DLC. If it's a one time thing for the special edition and they release expansion packs like normal fine, I'll get it. BUT if the DLC is a continual thing, trickling out new civs and scenarios for ridiculous prices, screw them. I have totally lost interest in CiV because of this .

 

[Gary Childress]

And you started by playing III, right?

'Cos after coming from II, III always seemed pretty crummy to me, with very low replay value. It had some good concepts introduced but not very well realized. I've seen many others who also view it as the weakest of the four.

Do you really think the four Civs are REALLY that different? Step away from the details and they have the same core concepts. You're not going to confuse a civ game with, I don't know, Tetris or a First Person Shooter. I for one would feel pretty ripped off if they just kept making CivI over and over and over with fancier graphics. It would be like coming up with better and better oil lamps instead of thinking of using electric lights.

I started with Civ I back in 1994 (IIRC). I got Civ II and loved it even better. Then Civ III came along and I was a little apprehensive at first but grew to love it even better. Civ IV came along and I've tried to get accostomed to it but I just don't like the game dynamics. Wonders don't do much, resources aren't all that valuable. There just seem to be nuances to the game that just don't add much to it, things like religion and such. Too many things with Civ IV just don't seem to add much to the gaming experience. I'll admit that there are many similarities to the whole Civ line of games However, the latest ones seem to me to be more like attempts to change the face of the game and not attempts to improve upon what was already great.

In any case Civ 5 is fine. Sid can make what he wants of it. I'd just like to see Civ III improved and I'll be happy. I don't like the fact that Civ III has been abandoned.

 

[LiDDiS]

CIV III is old enough they should just entrust the source code to some modders, sort of like they did with C2P

 

[Auncien]

OP I mean no disrespect but you sound like a marketing flyer for the game. None of us knows anything about the game or its quality firsthand yet. We don't know if it's really groundbreaking. We don't know if it's a reworking of the series. We've seen a few screenshots and we've experienced the first wave of the marketing machine. I'm looking forward to it but I just want to make the point that people are likely only expressing concerns over its characteristics because they want that Civ feeling when they play a game of Civ V. "Trust but verify."

 

[Rusty Edge]

Reading a number of these threads, there are a lot of you that simply don't want this game, you're against 1upt, hex tiles, a lack of tech trading, religion and a good number of other new features. I'm gonna say it right now, Civ V is going to divide the Civilization fanbase into 2 groups, those that prefered the old style civ games and those that welcome the changes in Civ V.

Civ V is more than just a sequel to a Civ game, it's a complete overhaul to the concept of the Civilization games from what I can tell, it's a bigger leap than the series has ever had, and I'm afraid most of you seem to expect Civ IV 2.0, and you're not going to get it.

You can't think of Civ V in any sense of it's predecessors, it's a whole new beast with completely new mechanics. If nothing else, I hope this thread makes people realize that they are going to be playing a completely different game in September, not a mod, not and expansion, not even just a graphical upgrade. This is a new engine, new AI, new combat system, new resource system, new tech system, new diplomacy system, nothing is carried over. In the end, the only things tying Civ IV and V together will be that they are both turn based, both made by firaxis, and both allow you to control a Civ through history, that's where the similarities will end.

Thank you, I'll get off my soapbox now...

1) Civ has always been and for the forseeable future shall continue to be a tile -based game. It affects movement, combat, borders, city placement and improvements.

2)Actually , I've discussed and requested many of the announced changes on the ideas and suggestions forums last year. If it has the promised "unprecedented modabillity", we should be able to fix whatever I may not like.

The thing is, I didn't imagine that these changes might come with a premium DLC marketing model which could fracture the Civ gaming community and make a mess of modding. I want the new game . I'll gladly pay the cash price, but I don't know if I can accept the non-monetary cost.

 

[Naokaukodem]

StarCraft 1 to StarCraft 2: SC2 is StarCraft, but with enough substantial game play differences to make it certain SC 1 will not die anytime soon.

Hu-hu. Sorry, but Starcarft 2 is the archetype of 1.5 games.

There is so much to improve in Real Time Strategy games. But Starcraft 2 do not care. In fact, it just particularly cares to propose an experience very similar to Starcraft 1. Some mad clickers shouldn't be disappointed. That, makes Starcraft 2 a shame... IMO.

 

[tom2050]

I love Civilization. Won't like the 'Wares' that are forced with it. But I'll say this for sure. Civ3 is a classic. 5 won't be as much of a classic as 2 and 3 were. That doesn't mean it won't surpass it in other ways.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Civ should have learned something from the Europa Universalis 1- Europa Universalis 2 transition (i am leaving 3 out, since i dislike it). It was basically the same game, but with more of everything, and in this way no one, and i mean no one, sticked to eu1 after eu2 came out. This is how games should, in my view, progress.

I *completely* disagree. That is a one way ticket to a bloated turdboat with 10-year-old mechanics. This is a conservative way to make more $$$ without any risk of alienation. If it doesn't move the series forward they can sell it as an expansion pack. Nobody sticking to EU1 is not an achievement, that means that they took absolutely no risks. I would say that is a pretty good indication that they released an expansion pack as a sequel.

 

[plasmacannon]

The graphics look good, we all know that.
Some of the other new game changes could be welcomed improvements as well.

If the game requires Steam to use or register the game, or to activate it, then, I won't waste my money on buying it.

I started with Civ2, bought it's 2 expansions, bought Civ3 and its 2 expansions, bought Civ4 and its 2 expansions.

I use a LAN at home, for me, and my 2nd computer for a friend to team up with me vs many AIs.
I shouldn't need Steam's permission to access my own network games that I purchased.
Nor, do I want it to deny me the ability to install my purchased game onto a new computer, simply because, I have already registered it on the older computer.
Nor, do I think I should have to spend $100 on the first copy (after expansions), and another $100 on a 2nd copy of a game, just to be able top play it on 2 computers over my LAN.

If any of this is required in Civ5, I will stay with Civ4 and its 2 expansions.
And, just buy Starcraft 2, when it comes out next month.
I will be disapointed, but, what can I do, I don't make the game.
I CAN choose not to play it.
sadly, this appears to be what is happening though.

As far as the Civ3 discussion was going, I though the graphics was a decient improvement of Civ2. I unfortunately lost the ability to create custom units and graphics like I did in Civ2 (someone probably made a mod somewhere, but, I only signed on here after I had Civ 4 already, so, Civ3 was irrellivant by that time). Civ3 just sucked when you built cities an the game only let you have 1 production on that new city. That was a stupid idea, for game designers to limit the fun their fans have with the game that was created, and they bought. The promotions were a good idea for their time.
Civ4's Spy addition was a good idea, but, to eliminate the concept entirely? Loses depth. Fewer units? Loses my interest.
I'll read the reviews and complaints others will have in September, when, the game comes out and then I'll know if I want to actually invest in a game that I can enjoy, or know I was right to not get caught up in the hype that preceeds every new game created, where, they think theirs is the 2nd coming of christ that we all can't live without.
I grew up in the DOS days, we didn't have the internet initially, and games were still fun.
With the mas explosion of consule game created over the years, the PC games need to keep their fans, not chase them away.