An Evaluation: Why CIV 5 is an absolute atrocity.

[PiTiFUL]

Yup pretty good summation of what I feel about this version of CIV... every release of CIV added more complexity to the experience and now they decide to take a huge leap backwards... with the simpler gameplay and the new UI, I bet within 6 months a console release announcement... or it could just be that the whole focus was on the new combat system and everything else just got pushed aside.

Some thoughts on the list...

No Tile Animation... not just improvments but the city too, at a glance you could tell what a city had because when you built a building it showed up in the city. The whole CIV5 world is dead, where CIV4 was so alive... even the sound effects are less, and wheres the lions, wolfs and bears just another thing that got cut.

One thing I really like about 5, maintenance costs for roads, I like that tweak... and the fact that combat isnt a to the death battle.

I wish they had kept the gameplay from 4 and just added in the new combat system and tweaked the other systems to work better... but they pretty much scrapped the whole thing and started from scratch, ah well, cest la vie, its 4 for me.

I mean, all of these cut features people whine about really were inconsequential in Civ4. Religon was paperthing and superficial, epsionage was really just annoying and unfun, corporations where inconsequential, Hamlets? please...

Heh seems a lot of people are in agreement, guess most people just want a plain and simple game, no need for thought or multiple levels of strategy, just click away and finish a game in a day (inconsequential = dont know how it works, dont know how to utilize it, takes too much effort and time)... I personally loved bankrupting a country with my corperations, after 08 it seemed even more apt, just another way of winning, or converting countrys to my religion and using my influence to start wars, sending out my spies to disrupt an opponent thats getting an edge on me, or if all else fails, WAR!!!... now its pretty much all down to combat, this is PG with CIV elements, not CIV with PG elements.

EDIT: have to agree on the unessesary use of the word atrocity, but isnt that the way of the world these days, everyone seems to have to take it to the extreme... well dunno about you folks across the pond but the states has gone bat **** crazy... well at least wackos are the only ones getting air-time, leaving that impression.

 

[JoyG]

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

That's exactly the point: we have less things to do. On the player perspective, Civilization series is/was neither a wargame, nor a game of management: it is/was both (or even more). Now we have a more complex and varied model for the wartime side of the game; but as for other stuff, the game as been simplified. Please don't get me wrong: under the hood it might be not simplified (what your computer is doing), but it's simplified in what you can actually do, in what you play.
So now you play nice wars, but you can mostly forget about economy, politics, government and society.

Yes, players can build new stuff as usual, and now there is (again) some maintenance. The maintenance cost of your research building can be interpreted as the research founds. In this abstract view point, players "manage" their buildings: they don't cut or raise some agency founds, but they bulldoze or build buildings. That's quite gross and of course not the same. More important: you do little other than to build stuff. On the other hand, 50 or 100% balance on research is highly unrealistic.
Over-micromanagement isn't fun. Doing nothing isn't fun too (unless you want only a wargame and to focus yourself 90%-100% to the wartime aspect, like many RTS).

Now: we are managing an empire. The player should take into account many different factors and different expenses to balance such empire: if he or she needs money for his/her army, for his/her welfare, for his/her (damn genres) infrastructures, for... he or she can't put too much money on research. Civ V does that in some way, but it does that for you. I mean that beside the building planning, in practice your role ends. The player has little to do. This is OK if you are searching for a wargame, and you are mostly interested in war; but what about for a game that is called Civilization? Civilization is about history, culture, technology, politics... not just war. Now religion is gone, government is... well, can I become a Monarchy, then a Republic, then change back or get another government? No. In Civ V there are those "perks", that you can't really change. Is Germany still fascist? Is slavery still an USA social policy? I guess no. What's wrong with a pool of option to unlock gradually and in which you can choose some options instead of others? IMHO current social policies are somewhat funny, but where is my Marie-Antoinette, where are my revolutions? Both French and American revolution were milestones in our (human) history. Yeah, it's unrealistic to change radically everything every few years: maybe let's spend culture points to move a slider a little per time (some point for each tick), a revolution at some point, and an option for martial laws (plus disadvantages).
As for the economy, the player could add more founds to research or to military expenses:
- More the money to the army, more the maintenance, more the equipment efficiency (you know, 3rd world countries might get good jet fighters, but without maintenance and training they are crap, and without wages, the morale goes down).
- The player could improve his or her research buildings efficiency by choosing how much to raise the founds (help the poor NASA!).
- Also money for education (culture bonuses), luxuries/welfare/old-age pensions/social security (happiness bonuses), industry (production bonuses), international assistance (improved relations), health and human services (your citizen live longer, reduced child mortality... bonus in city growth and workers, maybe in city defenses as well)
With the human services and welfare taking more money as you population grows and military expenses as the technology improves.

Let's add some fine tuning, some control, something to do.

And religion add something to do beside war. Me and other had fun with religion in Civ IV, other didn't; anyway religion in the real world was a very important factor in our history, religion chief were powerful people and, yes, religion sided countries with the same religion against countries with different religion (crusades anyone?). Not much different to what ideologies did after: international relations during Cold War were basically sided in two blocks. Religion in Civ V is somewhat present as temples and social policies, but its role is very marginal now. Why not to implement religion in a better way than Civ IV instead of to remove it?

IMHO Civ V is a nice wargame, but as Civilization it lacks something, both in the management compartment and in depicting these historic events/factors that influenced humanity (religions and government changes). Add a management expansion and you have the best Civ so far, plus both wargame and manager people happy.

Just my 2 cents

 

[Zwief]

And I just bought my Asus gaming laptop a year ago for school. Thought it was pretty decent too. I bet if nvdia released new drivers I'd be in better shape. the game froze then crashed for the first time for me just a moment ago. FPS were all over the place lol

 

[digitalcraft]

It's also strange how each civic has all bonuses and no penalties. Go go communist democratic mercantile theocratic monarchy!!

 

[Bigend]

I agree with the OP's comments, especially about it being oversimplified. Also:

- How come it is possible to buy tiles before the concept of currency has been thought of? This should be impossible to them.

- Can they please get rid of that annoying popup telling me what year it is.

- The technology quotes have changed from timeless, often humorous, insights in to mystical claptrap.

- The music selection is boring, and the voice actor announcing the techs sounds bored also.

- There is no movement or animation in the cities or tiles so it doesn't feel like you are spreading life and activity, but the opposite.

- The unit icons have a "crowd" of people. This makes it hard to tell from a distance what they are. The IV units also had the good feature of the men looking ragged when they were damaged.

- Tone: the whole tone of the game is too grandiose, right from the intro movie to the boring music, to the mystical quotes. Yes, the idea of the march of civilization is a grand idea, but the people actually doing it were not sitting around philosophizing and contemplating their navels. They were fighting, trying to get enough to eat, beating back the elements and making whoopie. This game should not have a "vibe" of peaceful contemplation and grandiosness, but excitement and struggle. I think this is why there is no "one more turn" thing anymore because you are not in there with them, but just an outside observer.

- GUI: The buttons on the screen are way to big. This is a PC not an iPad, they don't have to be large enough for big fingers to tap. And the right mouse button is underutilized. Almost the whole interface could be done with this on a PC. And my 1920x1080 screen feels like 1024 worth of information.

- Can't save games auto name?

- When a barbarian approached undefended London I thought I was done for. But he just pottered around outside it for a while and let me catapult him to death over several years. I don't know what this was but it didn't feel like a battle to the death. Where are the consequences of my stupid decision to leave London undefended? Consequences/stakes are what make an exciting movie and an exciting game.

 

[Zwief]

Game froze on me again.... I think I'm gonna wait till they fix it our put it back on the shelf for good

 

[Venger]

I think what this boils down to - is that Civ5 is a far less complex game than Civ4. I don't think this is arguable really. Fewer units, leaders, civs, events, game concepts, screens, movies, data, options... in some ways, it reminds me of a version of the Caesar games, with a dash of Civ:CTP. I do think the game is poorer for alot of the omissions, but there is enough of a solid game here to have hope that continued polishing gives us a satisfying, if different, game from Civ4.

 

[Zwief]

Hey, I'm having trouble uninstalling it, it doesn't work when I click delete content in steam and I can't find when uninstalling it by the control panel

 

[Bigend]

I think what this boils down to - is that Civ5 is a far less complex game than Civ4.

Yes I think you are right, this is the "fundamental" difference, i.e. the difference that explains most the others.

As to their reason for this simplification, we can only speculate. Perhaps they were thinking of future console/ipad versions.

 

[Venger]

As to their reason for this simplification, we can only speculate. Perhaps they were thinking of future console/ipad versions.

I fear this is the reason, and it is inexcusable.

Remember, when Civ4 came out, computer gaming was very strong. Now, it is very weak. Consoles have the market share. So, the interface, simplifications all seem deliberately designed to be translatable to other platforms in order to maximize profitability. No wonder movies? Less production cost, less XBOX disc access. The oddity is that the code itself is so resource hungry it would never run properly on anything BUT an advanced PC...

 

[BrainEater5000]

This is a satire, right?

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law

 

[GreyIago]

It boggles the mind that people call this less complex than CivIV vanilla.

 

[Zwief]

It boggles the mind that people call this less complex than CivIV vanilla.

Meh, I've decided for a patch that fixes the bugs, makes for better optimization, better A.I So I say we all pop in Civ IV and III back into our disc drives. lol nothing beats nostalgia

 

[Stormfather]

Odd- I agree with many/most of your points, but I don't feel like the game is an atrocity. It's not as fleshed out as Civ4 + Warlords + BTS. But I feel that, hands down, it blows Vanilla Civ 4 out of the water, and hope it has great expansion support like it's predecessor (and not nickel and dime one civ here on map there releases.)



Absurdly Lacking MP Support

No arguments here. I'm not a MP fanatic, so this isn't a gamebreaker for me, but I appreciate the issues people are having and I don't see how/why these issues weren't addressed before the game hit the shelves.

No SP Scenario

While there are no scenarios, I don't think it really amounts to 'sloth and greed,' just a design tradeoff made at some point in the game's development. To be honest, with a few very notable exceptions, the Civ 4/exp scenarios were pretty terrible. They got better with time Final Frontier comes to mind), but if something's going to be as poorly executed as some of Civ 4's scenarios, I'd rather see them cut and the development time invested elsewhere. That being said, I would have liked to see the almost mandatory World War II and ancient Mediterranean scenarios, but their mysterious absence by no means ruins the game.


No Tile Animation

Tile animations were an innovative method to allow you to 'eyeball' your empire and make sure the governors weren't doing something stupid. Their removal is an inconvenience, but not really an 'atrocity.'


No Religions

I agree with you on this point- they were clunky, but had a lot of potential. I'd hoped that BTS would have fixed it, but they merely ignored it/compounded it with the less flavorful/interesting corporations (Sid's Sushi? Really?). I'd have loved to see an improved religion/corporation feature, but I wasn't surprised to not see them- I just hope that when they inevitably come in an expansion pack, it's well done.


No Espionage

Espionage was expansion material in IV and I don't think it's surprising it wasn't included in Vanilla Civ V. However, with no religion, no corporations, and no espionage, your options are a bit limited in comparison to Civ 4 + Warlords + BTS. But is it 100% fair to compare a game with 2 years of expansion packs to a Vanilla game that got it's first patch today?


No Civics

Social Policies do have a drawback- the investment of building culture to unlock them. It takes a lot of culture to keep a steady stream of Social Policies opening, especially in an expanding empire.

Their inflexibility feels artificial to me. We all know examples of societies going through periods of enormous social change and coming out irrevocably altered- the American Civil War, the rise and subsequent fall of Fascism in Germany, the rise and subsequent fall of Communism in numerous countries... I'd like to see anarchy and revolution become possibilities.


No Hamlets

Trading posts look like little circuses, and my sense of aesthetics misses towns. The evolution of cottage to town was a cool feature, but was internally balanced with the leading strategies. The fact that they're now static (+2 commerce, +science with a social policy) can be seen as streamlining, or a step back, depending on your viewpoint. I don't mind it, but I do mind the graphic.


No World Wonder Movies

I didn't care about the movies, to be honest. A static splat-screen is good enough for me, considering I'll close it within a second of its appearance anyway.


No End Game Cinematics

Same as above- the reward of winning is enough for me. What does bug me is that it seems (not 100% sure) that if you go into the advanced settings, the win doesn't get registered in the hall of fame.


No Commerce, Research and Culture Sliders

Deciding how much of each to focus on while developing your cities is still a decision, and to me a much more interesting one that adjusting a slider up and down. The slider felt like a throwback to the earlier games, and I don't miss it.


No Random Events

Random events came with an expansion pack, I believe, and there weren't an awful lot of them. I agree that they added a breath of life into your empire, but before they return I'd like to see the variety greatly improved.


User Interface

I dislike the new UI, not sure if it's my dislike of change or a real issue with the layout. I do know this for sure- I don't like that research is either hidden or taking up 1/8 of my screen, I don't like how the city interface (particularly working hexes) is set up, etc.


City States

I like City States, and hope to see them expanded on in the future. I think that there are too few quests considering a game can have 20 or more city states: conquer my rival, build me a road, acquire this luxury resource, buy me ice-cream, find a specific civilization, find a natural wonder, build a wonder, get a great person, kill these barbarians, kill those barbarians, save me from these invaders... I think that's it. I'd also like to see a way to abandon a quest- If Dublin is my ally, I'm not going to burn it down for Edinburgh, no matter how long the option stays on the table. But now I can never really interact with Edinburgh, besides shoveling them gold. Still, I feel that the pros outweigh the cons ten to one.


Framerate Problems

Can't really comment on this- haven't experienced it.


No Leader Personality Traits
One Leader Per Nation

But we do get civ-specific bonuses, which I think are a natural progression and improvement. I'm sure there will be expansion packs adding more leaders, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some new system of differentiating them appear/reappear.

IIRC, Vanilla Civ 4 had 18 civs, 8 of whom had two leaders. Civ 5 has 18 civs, with 18 leaders (discounting Babylon). A step backwards, by any reckoning.



What CIV 5 managed to do right:



Hexagonal Tiles

I agree- a huge improvement.

No Military Unit Stacking

I agree- another huge improvement.

Strategic Resource

I agree- yet another huge improvement. I love seeing an army of pikemen, led by a small core of longswordsmen. I love the fact that I can't get complacent after finding one horse/iron/oil. Etc.

Fully 3D Leaders with Spoken Native Language

Again- cool, but to me, not worth scaling back from 26 to 18 leaders.




And the one you missed...

The only thing that I honestly resent about Civ 5 is the fact that diplomacy is pretty much gone. Sure, I can trade with people, and usually make a small fortune doing so- 8gold/resource/turn really adds up, but the fact that I can't make a meaningful alliance with anyone anymore really bothers me. I loved the diplomacy in Civ 4, always looked out for my allies, manipulated other people into wars, etc. I feel like that's all gone now, and that, to me, is the only thing that really, really sucks about Civ V.

 

[Bigend]

The only thing that I honestly resent about Civ 5 is the fact that diplomacy is pretty much gone. Sure, I can trade with people, and usually make a small fortune doing so- 8gold/resource/turn really adds up, but the fact that I can't make a meaningful alliance with anyone anymore really bothers me. I loved the diplomacy in Civ 4, always looked out for my allies, manipulated other people into wars, etc. I feel like that's all gone now, and that, to me, is the only thing that really, really sucks about Civ V.

One of my favorite things in Civ IV was supporting my allies. If they come under attack, gifting them units more advanced than their enemies, and watching them turn the tide. I was really hoping for more dipo in Civ 5. And more consequential.

I do think the idea of City States has potential in this area, because in the real world there are small states that will never rule the world on their own but can still be useful allies. But the current implementation needs more work, probably only by people playing and giving feedback will they know what improvements need to be made.

 

[Ragnor]

The only things I can agree with the OP on are Multiplayer and the tile animations, with the UI to a lesser degree.

Multiplayer is barely playable. Military units stop moving when tasked with a multi-move route and go to sleep, never to wake up unless you manually move them. Performing a mission for a city state gives ally status to a team member that did absolutely nothing toward the mission. Ending turn locks you out of anything at all even if your teammates are still going. Can't accept deals from them, can't move the units mentioned previously that have gone to sleep. You can change citizen focus, but have to remember how many times you've clicked because while it will change the tiles when everyone's turn has ended, it doesn't update the graphic until that occurs. Not to mention that in order to save when you want you have to resort to cludgy keyboard shortcut and file manipulation workarounds. The lack of the option for animations makes no sense, the world feels have dead with teleporting units. It's made us wonder if anyone even tested multiplayer at all before release.

The tile animations and UI provide a barrier to information. Sure, you can find things out, but they're one or more layers deep in the UI, whereas previously they were there at a glance.

 

[Bast]

It boggles the mind that people call this less complex than CivIV vanilla.

To be honest, from what I've seen only combat has become more complex.

What they should've done was incorporated 1upt, no units in cities concepts into Civ IV and created more civilizations and leaders and religions and corresponding units and made an expansion of Civ IV. I would've bought that. But not what I've seen so far.

 

[Zero_Class]

Dude I am a die hard Civ IV fan. Civ IV is in my top ten best games ever made, but you have to come to terms with something man. This is not a third Civ IV expansion. This is Civ V. Is it perfect? No. Is it an atrocity? No. Is it a damn fine game that given time and patches will become even better? Yes. Just keep in mind that Civ IV on day one had it's fair share of problems. Also this may just be me, but I think the paintings used for wonders and victories is actually really cool and satisfying.

 

[Nucleic Acids]

Yes I think you are right, this is the "fundamental" difference, i.e. the difference that explains most the others.

As to their reason for this simplification, we can only speculate. Perhaps they were thinking of future console/ipad versions.

I am really, really sick and tired of console bashing as the reason for why everything supposedly sucks nowadays.

 

[GreyIago]

To be honest, from what I've seen only combat has become more complex.

What they should've done was incorporated 1upt, no units in cities concepts into Civ IV and created more civilizations and leaders and religions and corresponding units and made an expansion of Civ IV. I would've bought that. But not what I've seen so far.

So why did you buy CivV if you wanted CivIV? Was CivIV your first Civ game? Did you not notice how each iteration of the game was practically a restart to "try something new"?

I mean, really. Go install vanilla CivIV and play it without patches or expos and we'll talk.