An Evaluation: Why CIV 5 is an absolute atrocity.

[jjkrause84]

I just don't get where you're coming from.

You seem to be saying that it's more realistic to have full despotic control over exactly how the nation's resources get split up between science, culture, production, military, and cash reserves, on an annual basis. And that just makes no sense to me. I mean, it sounds like English, it uses English words and sentence structure, but when you put it all together it just makes no sense.

Let's take an example: "(think of the many great state culture projects around the world....what would Paris be like without it's endless monuments and statues?)" Well...yes. You have that. You can build civic structures and adopt social policies that model that phenomenon. And I just don't understand how you can claim that taking those steps is less realistic than the French President taking last year's budget, sliding science from 60% to 40%, and culture from 20% to 40%.

No, not at all.

Your tax revenue is not "all of your nation's resources"...it's just what you collect in taxes and yes....I do think you should be allowed to spend taxes in any way you want. Building monuments etc. is great and important (you're sort of taking the wrong thing out of my comment about Paris)....but it is not the same as controlling a budget. I am not at all kidding when I say that there is NOTHING in the game more realistic than getting to decide how you spend your tax revenue. "sliding science from 60-40%" in the real world means approving or disapproving the expenditure of federal money on x, y or z research project. Obviously yo ucan't do this on a project by project basis in Civ but you can still have a 'macro' control over how much government spending goes to fund research versus espionage vs. how much is kept as a surplus ('zero' for a long time now...but not always throughout history!).

This should be quite a simple concept to understand. Your slider is one component in how you allocate your tax revenue (not the only one, mind....but a crucial one).


EDIT: If you want to knwo "where I'm coming from"....I'm coming from a desire for Civ to act like nations and not merely gameplay components.

 

[GreyIago]

No, not at all.

Your tax revenue is not "all of your nation's resources"...it's just what you collect in taxes and yes....I do think you should be allowed to spend taxes in any way you want. Building monuments etc. is great and important (you're sort of taking the wrong thing out of my comment about Paris)....but it is not the same as controlling a budget. I am not at all kidding when I say that there is NOTHING in the game more realistic than getting to decide how you spend your tax revenue. "sliding science from 60-40%" in the real world means approving or disapproving the expenditure of federal money on x, y or z research project. Obviously yo ucan't do this on a project by project basis in Civ but you can still have a 'macro' control over how much government spending goes to fund research versus espionage vs. how much is kept as a surplus ('zero' for a long time now...but not always throughout history!).

This should be quite a simple concept to understand. Your slider is one component in how you allocate your tax revenue (not the only one, mind....but a crucial one).


EDIT: If you want to knwo "where I'm coming from"....I'm coming from a desire for Civ to act like nations and not merely gameplay components.

Here is a funny story:

The government doesn't do much research IRL. Private institutions do more research.

I just don't understand the fascination with sliders...at all. They were annoying. Now I have to balance buildings, city set ups, etc. Yeah, I'm going to go with "I enjoy thinking more than clicking and dragging."

 

[MentatYP]

Yeah, so far, that's really my biggest complaint with Civ 5. Scrolling is slow and feels clunky. I get around 5 seconds lag when diplomacy pops up while loading the leader screen. I have an i7-930 with 12 gigs of RAM and a 1.5 Gb GT 230.

GT 230??? That made me do a double-take with the rest of your system specs. That is one underpowered card to go with that CPU and RAM. I have much less CPU and RAM than you but with an ATI 4870 and don't have any graphics issues.

 

[ZXTT]

No, not at all.

Your tax revenue is not "all of your nation's resources"...it's just what you collect in taxes and yes....I do think you should be allowed to spend taxes in any way you want. Building monuments etc. is great and important (you're sort of taking the wrong thing out of my comment about Paris)....but it is not the same as controlling a budget. I am not at all kidding when I say that there is NOTHING in the game more realistic than getting to decide how you spend your tax revenue. "sliding science from 60-40%" in the real world means approving or disapproving the expenditure of federal money on x, y or z research project. Obviously yo ucan't do this on a project by project basis in Civ but you can still have a 'macro' control over how much government spending goes to fund research versus espionage vs. how much is kept as a surplus ('zero' for a long time now...but not always throughout history!).

This should be quite a simple concept to understand. Your slider is one component in how you allocate your tax revenue (not the only one, mind....but a crucial one).

EDIT: If you want to knwo "where I'm coming from"....I'm coming from a desire for Civ to act like nations and not merely gameplay components.

So you think the Federal govt is regularly firing 10/20 or more percent of its millions of employees and hiring the equivalent with a different skill set? And they're shutting down all research labs in the country one year and firing them all up the next without skipping a beat?

Really, govts can make only minor changes from year to year. You want a country to go from spending (a made up number) 5% of GDP to 6% on research, then plan on spending a long, long time as you gradually ramp up education (have to train teachers, build new schools, revamp curriculum first), starting in say high school and also invest in research infrastructure. That's all before you start any actual research. Civ V's method of growing your pop and building research buildings over many turns seems to simulate reality far better than the "turn an oil tanker on a dime" method game designers have gotten us used to.

EDIT: Not trying to pick on you jj, but I think the sliders are simply a game mechanic and can't really be justified as realistic.

 

[jjkrause84]

You guys fail to understand.

This is governemnt SPENDING...doesn't mean "the government" is doing it all with government employees, government buidings, etc..

- Yes private companies do most of the research in general as well as for the government (I should know, I've actually done it!).....the government still pays for all the work it commissions though! I wish they'd pay a little quicker but that's a whole other matter....


- With this in mind there is no wholesale hiring/firing even needed. How on Earth did you get that idea from my post? Money is allocated to different research projects. All this requires is that you sign a cheque....DONE. With that one cheque tax money has been used to further science (i.e. it took a proportion of the budget..soemthing that is represented in a slider, albeit crudely)


Obviously the slider was a simplification, but it at least allowed control over your budget (as I keep saying)...control we no longer have.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

No Commerce, Research and Culture Sliders

Commerce, Research and Culture used to be interlinked in building your empire. Any of these resources can be distributed freely using sliders to let players develop their nations in the exact way they want.

In CIV 5, commerce, research and culture are completely separate entities. And the only decision players can make is to decide how much of each resource to produce.

This is an IMPROVEMENT on Civ 4.

It makes the planning much more important

City States

I really question the point of implementing City States. It may be fun to interact with them and build a good diplomatic relationship with them, but more often than not it's much easier, simpler and faster to just conquer them and take their resources than to waste gold buying their friendship.

The importance of City States as allies in war times is extremely limited too, considering that now military units cannot stack, and City States have such a small territory, their army size and strength naturally become very restricted.

Disagree, may be too small of an improement, but Definitely an improvement.

No Leader Personality Traits

It provides a historical and semi-realistic flavors to each leader. And although some traits provokes controversies and debates amongst historians for their accuracy, it's part of the fun too.

One Leader Per Nation

Is it really that much to ask for to have at least two leaders, even for a Vanilla pack?

These are the same thing
Leader=Civ now... Leader 'traits' are the Civ traits.

I also view this as an improvement, in the same way that moving from 30+ civs to 18 civs and 28 city states is an improvement





There are some other REAL problems.
Build+sell unit>Build gold
Buy+upgrade<buy advanced
Poor display of unit maintenance.

 

[jjkrause84]

EDIT: Not trying to pick on you jj, but I think the sliders are simply a game mechanic and can't really be justified as realistic.

Oh, no....I don't think you're picking on me in the least.

I don't understand why you see sliders as a game mechanic and not a representation of tax revenue. Obviously it's a bit loopy (if we go by Civ4 values...what gov'mt spend 60-80% of its income funding research!?) but at least it fills that basic function of government. As I explained a few posts earlier it could have een greatly improved and expanded upon in Civ5, rather than being thrown out.

 

[GreyIago]

You guys fail to understand.

This is governemnt SPENDING...doesn't mean "the government" is doing it all with government employees, government buidings, etc..

- Yes private companies do most of the research in general as well as for the government (I should know, I've actually done it!).....the government still pays for all the work it commissions though! I wish they'd pay a little quicker but that's a whole other matter....


- With this in mind there is no wholesale hiring/firing even needed. How on Earth did you get that idea from my post? Money is allocated to different research projects. All this requires is that you sign a cheque....DONE. With that one cheque tax money has been used to further science (i.e. it took a proportion of the budget..soemthing that is represented in a slider, albeit crudely)


Obviously the slider was a simplification, but it at least allowed control over your budget (as I keep saying)...control we no longer have.

The government does provide some money for research...but for things not fully defense related private interests foot the larger bill.

 

[shiba Homer]

Here is a funny story:

The government doesn't do much research IRL. Private institutions do more research.

Only if you are America(n).

 

[GreyIago]

Only if you are America(n).

Yeah, because I'm positive private institutions give all of their profits to the poor in other parts of the world.

 

[ZXTT]

Oh, no....I don't think you're picking on me in the least.

I don't understand why you see sliders as a game mechanic and not a representation of tax revenue. Obviously it's a bit loopy (if we go by Civ4 values...what gov'mt spend 60-80% of its income funding research!?) but at least it fills that basic function of government. As I explained a few posts earlier it could have een greatly improved and expanded upon in Civ5, rather than being thrown out.

Because govts simply don't change their spending that fast. It's hard to cut spending in a particular area because the recipients will fight hard for retain what they're getting. And whether the researchers are employed by the govt or not, my point still stands: they don't appear out of thin air and then disappear at the govt's whim. Vegas lounge singers don't switch to nuclear physicists on Jan 1 because of a slider.

Beyond that, the optimal strategies for gold/research tend to be running the slider at 100% gold for a while (like when building a new research building in a bunch of cities), then 100% research. This is just silly and it requires the player to do it or else find themselves in a less optimal situation than they could have been. It's like steroids in sports - if one competitor is using it, then everyone has to use it or be at a disadvantage.

From that, you could conclude that a slider that moved one notch per turn and had penalties to anything being changed would be OK. I'd be happier with that, but then it's not clear to me that there's any gameplay value beyond what Civ V is doing.

 

[Breunor]

I'm getting a feeling of deja vu!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=196162&highlight=CIV4+terrible

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[novaya]

City states, quite frankly, were fun the first few games - but I'm finding them increasingly annoying... Diplomacy seems to revolve around them now... who is protecting who, who's allied... with a CITY STATE! They've become far too big a cog in the grand scheme of empire diplomacy. Hey, it's just 3 days -- but it seems a lot more wars and diplomatic actions revolve around someone doing or not doing something to a city state than they do interaction between empires. RoM (or whichever smaller mod RoM incorporated them from) conceptualized them better, frankly.

This, right here, is my biggest problem with Civ5.

The inclusion of the city-states has made the actual empire-players absolutely worthless, given the dumbed-down diplomacy. City States require/demand/request far more than any empire with which you interact and are more prevalent than them, to boot.

Most of the game, you're dealing with City State wants and needs, rather than with those "fabulously rendered" proper civilization leaders, and -- at that point -- what's the point of an animated Catherine or Napoleon? I'm engaging "Lhasa" or "Almaty" with far more frequency.

CIV 5 fans point to the "transparent" diplomacy of Civ 4 as being bogus -- the plus/minus game -- but Civ 5 just ported that into City States, making your clout with them more important than direct empire relations.

Add that to the fact empires may be 5-7 cities at most, and it throws the entire game out of wack. City States need to be greatly reduced in influence and prevalence to make the game more balanced in favor of the actual civs you're supposedly playing against.

 

[Vanadium]

I miss random events and the chance of a resource popping on my mine.

I don't miss espionage although I will miss being able to see all the computers land and the buddy im playing withs land because of my espionage score.

the sliders i miss and don't miss. it means having to plan better for sure.

the one tile per unit i find I'm ok with when going to war ...and not ok when im trying to move workers and settlers around in a tightly packed landmass (annoying as hell)

the fact that my system runs everything on low settings ....well i remember when civ 4 broke my computer however many years back that was and I was still playing civ 4 up until a month ago.

i find the diplomacy AI lacking (and that's being generous) i didn't think it was that good in 4 ...but this is worse.

Theres probably more things I can think of but I'll go with that for now ...for the record I'm playing civ 5 with a buddy right now and drinking some beers over vent and having a blast. Just like we did with civ 4 for many years.

 

[May Day 10]

This, right here, is my biggest problem with Civ5.

The inclusion of the city-states has made the actual empire-players absolutely worthless, given the dumbed-down diplomacy. City States require/demand/request far more than any empire with which you interact and are more prevalent than them, to boot.

Most of the game, you're dealing with City State wants and needs, rather than with those "fabulously rendered" proper civilization leaders, and -- at that point -- what's the point of an animated Catherine or Napoleon? I'm engaging "Lhasa" or "Almaty" with far more frequency.

CIV 5 fans point to the "transparent" diplomacy of Civ 5 -- the plus/minus game -- but Civ 5 just ported that into City States, making your clout with them more important than direct empire relations.

Add that to the fact empires may be 5-7 cities at most, and it throws the entire game out of wack. City States need to be greatly reduced in influence and prevalence to make the game more balanced in favor of the actual civs you're supposedly playing against.

This is a terrible aspect of this game. These city-states pretty much dominate the entire diplomatic landscape. I didnt imagine this at all

 

[Vanadium]

oh yeah and I hate to nit pick ....you can reduce the city states in the options to pretty much nothing if you so choose ...

granted they made them a huge part of the game so you want to keep them in ....but if you find them overpowering the "real" civs you do have the option to remove them or even lower the amount of them.

 

[Moss]

oh yeah and I hate to nit pick ....you can reduce the city states in the options to pretty much nothing if you so choose ...

granted they made them a huge part of the game so you want to keep them in ....but if you find them overpowering the "real" civs you do have the option to remove them or even lower the amount of them.

This is what I do in my games...usually to about one city state per empire playing, sometimes lower. They were cool right away, but are kind of a annoying with all of the demands as others have said.

The other option is just conquering them...which provides some nice benefits.

 

[Scizor2120]

Yeah, so far, that's really my biggest complaint with Civ 5. Scrolling is slow and feels clunky. I get around 5 seconds lag when diplomacy pops up while loading the leader screen. I have an i7-930 with 12 gigs of RAM and a 1.5 Gb GT 230.

Other than that, I've been enjoying the game way more than Civ 4.

A GT 230, whatever that is, is a terrible card. Why would you have a $50 GPU with a $300 CPU and $300 of RAM?

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

It is rather a shame that Civ V uninstalls Civ IV, isn't it?

 

[aukrest]

I find it funny that everything that was stated as a bad thing or "wrong" change I was already used to, and honestly enjoy very much in Civ3.