An Evaluation: Why CIV 5 is an absolute atrocity.

Too funny - I never thought of that - that I would have to wait 10 years per turn for everyone to take their turn on multiplayer. This inevitably would make CIV 5 - a long game - an impossibly long game to finish.

 

Not most. Generally speaking, big franchise games never release a demo before retail release. This is because it is assumed that the fan base will seek out information and gameplay videos on their own. This gives them more time to do last minute polish on the actual game. I get the impression that a Civ demo has basically the whole game in it, crippled in specific ways. They were probably scared that an early demo would get hacked by pirates and made into a mostly functional Civ V that would then result in people pirating the game to get it early and not buying it.

Starcraft II's demo codes came packaged with the game, 2 per box. I don't think you can say Blizzard wasn't confident in Starcraft II as a product, considering they had 4 months of beta where 10s of thousands of people were playing the game.

 

Precisely, but CIV 5 had no public beta testing.......hence why it suffers from lack of optimization, numerous glitches, graphical bugs, etc.

And so little information about the game was revealed prior to the official release. It was almost like a game shrouded in secrecy because it was shipped from North Korea, or maybe, just maybe that Firaxis didn't want the CIV fan base to know the extent of features that are removed from the series. Tell me I'm just being paranoid.

 

Maybe if they ran a Beta through Steam...oh wait, STEAM IS SO EVIL!!!

 

I didn't read all of this, but I read the first post about the issues... and I agree with some. After a couple games, I am less and less interested in City States. I have this urge to just wipe them out. They just sit there in my space and just sit. What's the point? How are they historical or logical at all? A city state within the borders of a country? Please... when has that happened?

No movies at the end? I haven't finished a game yet, but that pisses me off. That's one of my favorite thing... the "Oh Yes!" moment that I get to share with my kids so they can see why daddy wasted half his life and got no sleep this weekend.

UGLY map tiles. Ugly. Ugly. FUFUFUFUGLY!

 

So basically Civ V's greatest sin is that its not Civ IV. Both games are outstanding in their own right, as are the rest of the Civ games.

 

kill them all d:

 

Well we have Monaco, Singapore and Vatican City in the modern era and ancient Greece had Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth.

 

Well, currently there is a turn timer in online MP, there is like about one minute of time to do everything you need to do in a turn before time runs out automatically. The turn timer increases according to how many units/cities you have. So far it works pretty well, excluding the long load between each turns.

And personally I believe online MP is the future of Civ.

I'm saying this because I had the privilege of playing a FFA 6 player quick/small ancient era game that had no leavers, disconnects and crash for 3 hours until it finally ended. And I must say those 3 hours were some of the best experience I have ever had with a CIV game.

There is just no comparison between a human player and computer AI. Human players usually have no trend to predict their behaviors, and diplomacy in a 6 player FFA game plays an extremely important role. You don't want to be the top dog in the game and provoke the rest of them to gang up on you. It was extremely intense private messeging players, trying to form some kind of non-aggression or defensive pact, trying to find out which player has ill intentions towards you, which player intends to expand, etc. And when players are engaged in wars, they will private messege you back asking for assistance, and you form strategies with them involving flanks, diversions, etc.

It was just absolute pure fun. After playing that game with 5 other humans I just couldn't bring myself to play a single player game with the robotic stupid computer AI anymore.

And let's be honest here, today the trend of gaming is definitely going online competitive multiplayer. No programmed AI can ever match the unpredictability and intelligence of a living thinking mind. I seriously think that the SP heavy orientation of CIV is really dragging its potential developments and popularity amongst the more conventional and competitive RTS crowd, which proven by Starcraft 2, is a humongous population.


CIV MP will work if Firaxis actually invest their time and effort into implementing some specific system to reinforce it. For example, there can be a faster than "quick" pace setting to shorten the game.

 

This. I don't understand why at all. That beta should have been all over this website among all the modders and serious enthusiasts who eat, breath and live Civ. This game suffers from inadequate feedback and QA.

 

That seems to be the gist of it. Its almost like people are angry that the game requires new strategies and tactics. Whatever, as the launch subsides and the game gets more content, thats when it'll be judged fairly.

 

Precisely what? StarCraft 2 had no public beta testing, and even with extensive testing still has a few bugs, glitches, and incompatibility problems. Guess what? Computers screw stuff up, they've done this for decades.

There was quite a bit of info about Civ 5, actually, if you bothered to go find and read the previews. Jeez, you're just so often so wrong.

 

I really don't understand why Firaxis went with Gamespy for MP instead of Steamworks matchmaking. It's a free matchmaking system ready-made for them and they were using Steamworks anyways.

 

Mindboggling, right?

 

I just don't have fun playing it.

I restarted this post like 5 times trying to find a neutral way to articulate myself without sounding like a hater. I just feel insulted. This game was so smart. I loved the micromanagement. I felt like it had a balance that was the result of many versions worth of fine-tuning. I can't help but feel that somebody made the choice to forget the core fan-base and go for a larger, casual scene. The fact that a CIV5 game can be won in less than 20 hours leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm down for that 100 hour game. I look forward to spending a month on-and-off working through a map. That's what CIV always was for me. The fact that I've almost finished my second game in less than a week is just...surreal. It's just so simple; which could/can be good, but I feel like it lost the balance. And many things just don't make real-world sense to me anymore...

Why does the University increase science based on how many jungle tiles you have? Somebody please explain. How did things like this seem ok to the developers?

I'm not trying to insult people that like it, but I really agree with the original post; I just really feel disappointed. I assume Firaxis wanted CIV to be much easier to pick up and play. I think this explains the new interface and simplifications. But I think they went too far. I feel like I got a version of Tetris that only drops 4-block lines...

I'll continue to play CIV4 until some mods/patches make me think otherwise. In the meantime I'll consider the $50 I spent on it an 'investment'...

 

There are probably less than a hundred people who want Civ games to last 100 hours. If games ONLY lasting 20 hours is considered casual to you, then I guess this game is for casuals.

 

Agreed. I'm enjoying Civ5 and glad for three things: removal of cottage economy, removal of religion and the removal of espionage (at least in its BTS state).

 

Games on Marathon in Civ 4 rarely lasted 30 to 40 hours...

 

I guess you aren't familiar with the concept of "enclave."

Furthermore, you're complaining about city-states being unrealistic? Seriously? What is the metric for realism here? It certainly can't be Civ 4 "my entire army got killed by a bear," now can it?

 

I had a typo, my apologies. The fact is SC2 actually had a private beta test through invites, but the extent of that private testing was so big and involves thousands of players from all over the world that it definitely felt like a public beta test in reality.

But I will have to disagree strongly with your statement about SC2 having a few bugs and glitches. Sure no game is 100% bugs free, but SC2 is 99% or extremely close to bugs free when it comes to the polished extent of the game.

Keep in mind that when SC2 was first launched, it was already a major electronic sports event involved in large professional tournaments around the world, thus it was compulsory for the game to be bugs and glitches free.