A belated and considered view of civ 5.

[KingMackem]

Well, 10 days after the release in Europe and 60+ hours of my life gone, I can take a breather and reassess civ 5. Before I continue any further I would just like to say that I enjoyed the game.

I decided to play on Prince (normal aye?),refusing to start any lower.

First game I played (Romans) my strategy was heavily influenced by Civ 4. Consequently, I was (deservedly) spanked rotten in the Middle Ages. My empire crumbled stupendously fast.

In my second game (Egyptians) I tried to fully focus on my civ. I built a beautiful little 8 city country on a standard map. I micro-managed the arse off my civ. I embraced peace and the city states about me. I gave time, love and effort into every single city and every single unit, trying my utmost to maximise every aspect of civ 5. Thebes was a wonder power house. It was the envy of the world. Conclusion? I got spanked again. At least I made it to the rennaissance this time.

In my third game, and after following the advice of you good people on this fine forum, I chose the Greeks. I've been reading a lot on this forum since the games release so heeded a lot of your advice. I built trading posts everywhere, didn't build anything in my cities except happiness, culture, science (only when reaching a 6) and money. The result? I won without really giving a what my civ was doing. I barely focused on my cities, just setting them to build a theatre or some such which would take about 506453210 turns. I'd completely ignore them except when I had far too much money and just bought a few building. Money, money, money. In the end I was on nigh on 500 a turn... stupid. Units were supplied from friendly CS (including the odd specialist which I just used for golden aging [the other uses of specialists pales in comparison]) with which I completely conquered my continent far too easily. I made every other city on my continent a puppet and won with my original 7 cities. Anger issues do not seem to have any effect at all as long as you keep it below 10. Even above 10 for a short while seems ok. So your growth is stunted? Who cares? So your army doesn't fight well? By the time I had such unhappiness the enemy was crushed anyway. Anyway, it's only short term 'cause the cities you've conquered just build happiness anyway and you get added luxuries from new territory.

I could've easily won a domination or a cultural victory given time. Probably could've done a science as well but diplomatic got there first. My conclusion and the point of this I hear you ask? Here it is, I have thoroughly enjoyed playing civ 5 this past week but without a shadow of a doubt, the game has been dumbed down to a point at which a 12 year old could play and win. It seems that you are rewarded for not caring about your civ and just letting the ai do things for you, i.e. governor choosing what tiles to use (I have never done this in any other previous installment!). Clearly Firaxis are trying to embrace the wider audience. Unfortunately the wider audiance is full of ignorant swine. Look at the state of Nintendo as of late. Doing well financially but in my opinion aims at the casual gamer and thus is crud.

I've been playing civ since the second installment. The other installments I played for years. Only the gods could tell you how many hours I've put in in total for the other versions. Unless something spectacular happens to civ 5 with dlc or mods I don't think I'll be playing it 5 years from now.

Just my thoughts. Now back to civ I've got an urge to conquer the world as our Liz. I apologise If I upset a fanboy or two.

 

[delra]

They screwed up this instalment very badly. AI, happiness system, buildings and production, city states, also vast majority of units and wonders - almost all broken by design or balance...

I'm still playing it.. because it's a CIV and I've played those since Amiga times. But well, it's not as much fun these days as it used to be 2-3 instalments ago...

 

[Andoo]

Might I suggest moving up a difficulty or two? TP spam with CS heavy is a good strategy as long as AIs don't possesse strong enough army to overpoewr you and pick CS one by one. Also the Egypt from your second game might have been a great success as a builder game if you had maintained decent amount of army or befriended a militaristic CS.

 

[delra]

It doesn't work that way. I kept moving up until I hit Deity. AI is same dumb, only spams units so fast you can't really build an empire but all you do instead is exploiting combat system. If you can't have an economy, any wonders and buildings, can't even expand cities because of how broken happiness is, where's good old strategy game Civilization in it?

It's like playing against aimbotters in Quake...

 

[King Jason]

Honestly I play without city-states now. It makes the game vastly more balanced. Which is weird since CS are easily my favorite of the newest features... but I can't bring myself to play with them anymore... Once you get the gold flowing, the returns from city-states are just too insane.

With no city-states, I need to actually build my military and I actually construct farms to fuel my growth.

My only hope is that the A.I. in the game realize there are no city-states in the game and don't waste any policy purchases on Patronage... if there are any A.I. that invest in patronage..

 

[Roxlimn]

For what it's worth, spamming Warriors to take enemy cities also worked remarkably well in Civ IV, which was therefore, also a dumbed down Civ game.

 

[EscapedGoat]

Well, 10 days after the release in Europe and 60+ hours of my life gone, I can take a breather and reassess civ 5. Before I continue any further I would just like to say that I enjoyed the game.

I decided to play on Prince (normal aye?),refusing to start any lower.

First game I played (Romans) my strategy was heavily influenced by Civ 4. Consequently, I was (deservedly) spanked rotten in the Middle Ages. My empire crumbled stupendously fast.

In my second game (Egyptians) I tried to fully focus on my civ. I built a beautiful little 8 city country on a standard map. I micro-managed the arse off my civ. I embraced peace and the city states about me. I gave time, love and effort into every single city and every single unit, trying my utmost to maximise every aspect of civ 5. Thebes was a wonder power house. It was the envy of the world. Conclusion? I got spanked again. At least I made it to the rennaissance this time.

In my third game, and after following the advice of you good people on this fine forum, I chose the Greeks. I've been reading a lot on this forum since the games release so heeded a lot of your advice. I built trading posts everywhere, didn't build anything in my cities except happiness, culture, science (only when reaching a 6) and money. The result? I won without really giving a what my civ was doing. I barely focused on my cities, just setting them to build a theatre or some such which would take about 506453210 turns. I'd completely ignore them except when I had far too much money and just bought a few building. Money, money, money. In the end I was on nigh on 500 a turn... stupid. Units were supplied from friendly CS (including the odd specialist which I just used for golden aging [the other uses of specialists pales in comparison]) with which I completely conquered my continent far too easily. I made every other city on my continent a puppet and won with my original 7 cities. Anger issues do not seem to have any effect at all as long as you keep it below 10. Even above 10 for a short while seems ok. So your growth is stunted? Who cares? So your army doesn't fight well? By the time I had such unhappiness the enemy was crushed anyway. Anyway, it's only short term 'cause the cities you've conquered just build happiness anyway and you get added luxuries from new territory.

I could've easily won a domination or a cultural victory given time. Probably could've done a science as well but diplomatic got there first. My conclusion and the point of this I hear you ask? Here it is, I have thoroughly enjoyed playing civ 5 this past week but without a shadow of a doubt, the game has been dumbed down to a point at which a 12 year old could play and win. It seems that you are rewarded for not caring about your civ and just letting the ai do things for you, i.e. governor choosing what tiles to use (I have never done this in any other previous installment!). Clearly Firaxis are trying to embrace the wider audience. Unfortunately the wider audiance is full of ignorant swine. Look at the state of Nintendo as of late. Doing well financially but in my opinion aims at the casual gamer and thus is crud.

I've been playing civ since the second installment. The other installments I played for years. Only the gods could tell you how many hours I've put in in total for the other versions. Unless something spectacular happens to civ 5 with dlc or mods I don't think I'll be playing it 5 years from now.

Just my thoughts. Now back to civ I've got an urge to conquer the world as our Liz. I apologise If I upset a fanboy or two.

You seem to have fallen prey to the "everything was much better before" sentimentality.

"Dumbed down" - I don't see it, sorry. I played Civ 1 as a 11-12 year old - and beat the game at decent difficulty levels by just conquering the world. Was Civ 1 "Dumbed down" then? The fact is, every single CIV game has been EASY if you play for Conquest. Conquest is easy, because you can basically just spam military units and take cities - Conquest makes a multi-faceted game one-dimensional and - well, easy!

it seems from your anecdote that you simply fell prey to poor strategic play and lack of focus in your first couple of games. Why did you deserve to win these games if you had no strategy beyond carefully micromanaging your cities?

In Civ 4 the dominant strategy was Axeman rush + cottage economy. That was way worse than TP spam, because each cottage gave a stupendous amount of gold over time. At least trade posts are fixed income and you are sacrificing something else.

Regarding the "ignore happiness" strategy, well, you could ignore happiness in earlier civs as well, in fact I often did in earlier instances as well. Hell, often i had anarchy in my cities for turns if I could not solve the problem there and then)

However now happiness is global, and the penalties are probably something that will be balanced if they are not severe enough. The game has been out for 10 days... it will evolve.

 

[Etheric]

You seem to have fallen prey to the "everything was much better before" sentimentality.

"Dumbed down" - I don't see it, sorry. I played Civ 1 as a 11-12 year old - and beat the game at decent difficulty levels by just conquering the world. Was Civ 1 "Dumbed down" then? The fact is, every single CIV game has been EASY if you play for Conquest. Conquest is easy, because you can basically just spam military units and take cities - Conquest makes a multi-faceted game one-dimensional and - well, easy!

Well there is a lot more to Civ than Civ I. The "dumbed down" is more of a comparison to Civ IV I think than anything else which had so much depth. The buildings got extra bonuses if you had certain resources for example. At high levels it was also necessary to specalise your cities. One for a great person farm, one to pretty much do nothing but build units. With the ability to change government types and civics then you can fine tune how your empire functions.

Now what do we have
1/ Global happyness.
2/ Pretty generic buildings
3/ Fixed civics, pick one and you are stuck with it.
4/ No tax slider
5/ Less unit types (?)
5/ A lot less units (as they are a lot more expensive, and valuable)
6/ No religions

So a lot of things that make the game a lot simpler to play. The one thing that is more complicated is the combat. Feels dumbed down to me, compared to Civ IV in any case. Fine if you want to compare to Civ I, then no. But a lot of people thought that Civ IV got the city management pretty spot on, even if the combat was a bit bad (as the AI did not build enough siege).

In Civ 4 the dominant strategy was Axeman rush + cottage economy. That was way worse than TP spam, because each cottage gave a stupendous amount of gold over time. At least trade posts are fixed income and you are sacrificing something else.

Well cottages were certainally necessary, like trade posts are in this one. It is the only way to get enough trade to pay the bills.

My dominant strategy for immortal level play was ot use the persians and the unique unit (the immortal) to take out one of my neighbours then tech to cannons THEN go on the rampage. You can't axe rush higher levels, and Deity you would fail horribly. You should go and read Kossin's writeups for Deity level play.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=347980

Regarding the "ignore happiness" strategy, well, you could ignore happiness in earlier civs as well, in fact I often did in earlier instances as well. Hell, often i had anarchy in my cities for turns if I could not solve the problem there and then)

Well it is sub optimal to do that. In previous versions of CIV it used to bring the government down if you had unhappy cities for too long, but they changed it as it needed too much micromanagement. Also the fact that the city you have just conquered is unhappy is not a reason to bring down the government.

I don't think I have EVER ignored happyness, fine you can whip off the exess population for example, or let them starve, but I was very concious of which cities were happy etc.

Clearly in this one you can pretty much ignore 0 to -9 as the penalty is not severe. The problem for -10 is the combat penalty, which is nasty.

However now happiness is global, and the penalties are probably something that will be balanced if they are not severe enough. The game has been out for 10 days... it will evolve.

Well hopefully the AI will get better. It is hard to get good AI out of the box as you have to have the game more or less finished before you can write the AI. I guess having AI that plays to win rather than role playing AI is a good thing, as it makes the game harder. If they have the resources to make roleplaying AI as well that would be cool though, so we had a choice.

Anyway we see, I have warmed to the game a bit, but I hope you agree that the city building part has been simplified significantly compared to Civ IV, which for me is a shame.

 

[gareththegeek]

Sometimes less is more; I would not say that Chess is less of a strategic game than Civ IV because it has less pieces or rules.

I think (although CiV has its problems atm) that they have 'trimmed the fat' and created a game no less strategic but with less fiddly mechanics.

Just my 2p's worth.

 

[Celevin]

Every Civ game came out with a rough start, especially those made after the Internet was so wide spread. Civ5 easily has the best base to work with of the lot, as it runs fast in the later eras, has hexagons, 1upt, an amazing policy system, an amazing unit upgrade system, and more.

Balance and AI can be achieved after. This is the most solid foundation of the series.

 

[gareththegeek]

Every Civ game came out with a rough start, especially those made after the Internet was so wide spread. Civ5 easily has the best base to work with of the lot, as it runs fast in the later eras, has hexagons, 1upt, an amazing policy system, an amazing unit upgrade system, and more.

Balance and AI can be achieved after. This is the most solid foundation of the series.

+1 that

 

[KingMackem]

Andoo-
"Also the Egypt from your second game might have been a great success as a builder game if you had maintained decent amount of army or befriended a militaristic CS."

Good call on militaritstic CS. My neighbouring CS were culture and maritime. Did build up a force for myself but had a huge border with an aggressive neighbour. Tried to defend key points with forts and the like but he out-teched me in the end. The rest wasn't pretty...

King Jason-
"Honestly I play without city-states now. It makes the game vastly more balanced. Which is weird since CS are easily my favorite of the newest features... but I can't bring myself to play with them anymore... Once you get the gold flowing, the returns from city-states are just too insane.

With no city-states, I need to actually build my military and I actually construct farms to fuel my growth."

Sir, I do believe that you have nailed it. It is a shame though. CS are one the better aspects of Civ 5.

EscapedGoat-
"The game has been out for 10 days... it will evolve."

I hope so. Don't get me wrong, I like the new civ and want it to reach the dizzy heights of its predecessors. I loved all previous installments but that doesn't mean I'm unwilling to embrace the new. Favourite Civ was 3 but that didn't stop me from loving 4. I'm game for a new era... just disappointed in what we've got. I hope it gets sorted by people with far greater intelligence than I.

gareththegeek-

"Sometimes less is more; I would not say that Chess is less of a strategic game than Civ IV because it has less pieces or rules.

I think (although CiV has its problems atm) that they have 'trimmed the fat' and created a game no less strategic but with less fiddly mechanics."

But that's my point. Unfortunately it is now possible to win without any strategy. There is no strategy in building the same generic buildings time and time again in each city. Happiness, gold, science, culture, culture, science, gold, happiness. Gone are the joys of a granary or a forge. The ai's become a shambles at times. There's no strategy to international relations. Enemy ai can just be ignored most of the time. I conquered a whole continent with no more than 10 units. I didn't even want war. I just thought, 'sod it, may as well. Got these units from CS that are doing nothing but eating up my gold.' Hey ho, I don't know.

Also, when I want to play chess, I play chess. When I want to play Civ, I play civ. Civ isn't and shouldn't be chess. It's better

Celevin-
"Every Civ game came out with a rough start, especially those made after the Internet was so wide spread. Civ5 easily has the best base to work with of the lot, as it runs fast in the later eras, has hexagons, 1upt, an amazing policy system, an amazing unit upgrade system, and more.

Balance and AI can be achieved after. This is the most solid foundation of the series."

Again, I hope so.

 

[Roxlimn]

All the Civs could be won with no strategy.

There is no joy in building Barracks-Granary everywhere. It's just fiddling with the same bits over and over and over.

You can conquer a continent in Civ V with 10 units. 10 units in Civ V is actually a pretty huge army. It stands to reason that you can conquer the entire game with it.

 

[dexters]

I like the global happiness in concept, but it is still too opaque. I indicated in another thread where I had a 14 happiness swing over a few turn. From +9 to -5.

The game doesn't do a good enough job of telling you what might be causing it. It just happens. It feels like i'm reacting and playing happiness firefighter all the time. It gets tiring.

The real issue is the your population will eventually want ALL the luxuries. Realistically, the AI will usually control 2-4 luxuries exclusively, and that's assuming the human play a successful conquest game/diplomacy game on their side of the map to secure the rest. And it gets increasingly difficult to give it to them. AI knows its value and will demand unacceptable terms for 1 lux. And if you don't provide your cities with those dyes/furs/ or whatever that is owned by your mortal enemy which you can't possibly invade, without destroying your economy, you lose the WLTKD benefits and they starting whining. The luxury whining is a terrible mechanic to have. They need to fix it.

And the current penalties are severe. Reduced growth and production.

The salient difference is this. You could do pretty well controlling 8/10 luxuries in Civ3/4. The extra happiness multipliers for buildings w/ luxuries helped. in Civ5, you can control a whole list of them, be missing 1-2 and you'dlose WLTKD and be forced to pay or invade someone for the last 2.

It's a good impetus for war, if they didn;t make is so that your economy and happiness also take a hit as a direct result of war. it's a catch22 of the worse kind.