An Evaluation: Why CIV 5 is an absolute atrocity.

[ohioastronomy]

Do people really think that "I didn't use this, so I'm glad it is gone" is going to convince anyone?

Remind me to rejoice when something that you like gets axed. Except, of course, that I have sufficient empathy not to do that.

 

[SuperJay]

It robs a lot of the enjoyment of ... micromanaging from the game.

Those are two words I never expected to see in the same sentence.

 

[SuperJay]

Remember what the slider is....it is a representation of your national budget. You get 'x' amount of gold a turn and can spend it ANY WAY YOU WANT. That's great! Wanna run a deficeit? Go ahead! Wanna fund culture over science? Go for it! Wanna make huge budget cuts and reap a huge profit so you can upgrade your military? Cool!

You now no longer have a national budget....you have an allowance.

You seem reasonable - can you explain this further? You can still spend your money however you like, you still earn X gold per turn... you can still emphasize culture over science by spending that money... what am I missing? The sliders didn't enable you to spend money you didn't have, did they?

 

[ohioastronomy]

You seem reasonable - can you explain this further? You can still spend your money however you like, you still earn X gold per turn... you can still emphasize culture over science by spending that money... what am I missing? The sliders didn't enable you to spend money you didn't have, did they?

The two ingredients now come from very different pools and you have limited options to convert one to the other. The slider approach made it much more feasible to switch from one path to the other. This is one area, at least for me, where I do think that the new approach is interesting, in the sense of making you commit more firmly to one path or the other.

 

[SlothMD]

Agreed. Religion in Civ4 was a neat idea that wasn't implemented very well. Churning out missionaries just to send them all over and consume them spreading the gospel felt completely artificial and didn't really fit into the game well at all. It played like a separate layer that just got slapped on over top of the existing systems, not integrated within them.

That was half the game. Religion, espionage...

 

[SuperJay]

The two ingredients now come from very different pools and you have limited options to convert one to the other. The slider approach made it much more feasible to switch from one path to the other. This is one area, at least for me, where I do think that the new approach is interesting, in the sense of making you commit more firmly to one path or the other.

True, I see what you're getting at now. I guess I like the more deliberate system - this is supposedly empire-building, right? Changing your mind on a whim probably shouldn't pay off, or even really be possible. Maybe that's why I don't miss the sliders.

(This is why I can't help laughing at the ppl complaining about Civ5 being 'oversimplified' or 'console-ized' while simultaneously complaining about 1UPT and the removal of SoDs, zero-sum combat, and sliders. These changes make the Civ5 deeper, more intricate. It requires more thinking now, but somehow it's 'oversimplified' compared to Civ4? Riiiiiight.)

That was half the game. Religion, espionage...

Hmmm... you may be on to something! And go figure, both features omitted from Civ 5!

 

[andrewlt]

That was half the game. Religion, espionage...

And they were both terrible additions to the game.

Religion was a micromanagement nightmare that made diplomacy as predictable and subtle as a club in the face. In almost every Civ 4 game I played, every AI in a continent would have the same religion and be peaceful with each other. A lot of time, the AI civs in smaller continents would eventually adopt the dominant religion in the larger continent, too. The only exception were leaders like Montezuma who have become legendary among people on this forum.

Espionage never belonged in a civ game. The abilities that it brought felt like spells cast by mages in a fantasy TBS. They tried to make it fit into civ's more historical setting, but the abilities were still too fantasy oriented.

 

[ZXTT]

The two ingredients now come from very different pools and you have limited options to convert one to the other. The slider approach made it much more feasible to switch from one path to the other. This is one area, at least for me, where I do think that the new approach is interesting, in the sense of making you commit more firmly to one path or the other.

Feasible yes, but not really like the real world, promoting micromanaging and particularly unrealistic practices such as performing no research until enough cities have built a new research boosting building and then spending all the saved gold on research. When you look at it, the game play becomes more formula than strategy when this kind of thing is allowed.

This always struck me as silly. It takes time to build up research capacity in the real world and it's expensive to make dramatic changes. Not that the new way is necessarily perfect, but to me it seems preferable to the old way.

 

[ZXTT]

That was half the game. Religion, espionage...

Since we weren't playing a game called "Religious Spy Wars", that was a problem...

 

[jjkrause84]

You seem reasonable - can you explain this further? You can still spend your money however you like, you still earn X gold per turn... you can still emphasize culture over science by spending that money... what am I missing? The sliders didn't enable you to spend money you didn't have, did they?

Well, I'll try.

You really don't spend money in the same way. I said it better in the thread I started but if you think of sliders as a representation of a national budget then it lets you decide each turn how much of your income you want to spend on what. Like any government you can prioritize research funding or military growth or 'culture' (think of the many great state culture projects around the world....what would Paris be like without it's endless monuments and statues?). You no longer get to adjust your budget every "year" (turn) which I find unfortuante. Now, Civ5's forcing you to plan ahead is probably a great game mechanic in that it makes Civ5 a better strategy game (you have to think ahead, etc.). However, this improvement comes at the cost of a fundamental activity of governance: setting a budget and changing it as need be.

Imagine if they'd not only kept but vastly improved the slider for Civ 5? If they made it so you couldn't (or at least probably "wouldn't") just put all your spare gold into science as most peple did in Civ4 (I liked to keep some in reserve, but I know players who didn't). You could have maybe:

Science

Culture

Happiness: (you know, state fairs and the like...military parades and coronations....all the things that make the plebs happy )

Military: Your military spending could limit the number of units you have in the same way population does now and at the same time. Sure the US could put 90 million men in uniform....but could it pay to keep them fed and equipped and in the field? I know military unit upkeep already does this....I'm just throwing out random ideas/possibilities

Espionage (Assuming it is brought back at some point)


Now having to chose your spending across all those different variables and still retaining money to build up a surplus....THAT would be fun and interesting and add a HUGE level of customization and complexity (good complexity...not the bad kind ).


Well, that's how I see it anyhow....

 

[JoeMacUnGee]

I enjoy Civ V more than I did Civ IV, mostly because combat doesn't require managing hundreds of units anymore, and I won't be going back.

This. 1UPT was a BRILLIANT change.

I actually enjoy the game quite a bit. I played THOUSANDS of hours of CIV. I'll likely do the same with CiV.

 

[jjkrause84]

As for religion....

I once dated a girl whose favouorite part of the game was getting a bunch of religions and spreading them to everyone (that and diplomacy/trading). I don't think she ever "won" but that was never the point for her.


Obviously this is no argument for the inclusion of religion...just saying that not everyone found it boring. Heck, I admit I enjoyed it (nat as much as she did...but still!)

 

[ZXTT]

(This is why I can't help laughing at the ppl complaining about Civ5 being 'oversimplified' or 'console-ized' while simultaneously complaining about 1UPT and the removal of SoDs, zero-sum combat, and sliders. These changes make the Civ5 deeper, more intricate. It requires more thinking now, but somehow it's 'oversimplified' compared to Civ4? Riiiiiight.)

Because there are strategy games that specialize in this kind of click-fest, where one has to make many minor decisions that don't really amount to much and few big decisions that matter. I'm especially thinking of some of the European strategy games. Some people enjoy it and that's fine. I don't really, and so it pained me to find the Civ games degenerating into the same thing. Civ V returns more to the kind of game I like, but will retreat from being the kind of game that others prefer.

They don't have to claim the game has been "console-ized", though.

 

[Zwief]

I have a decent gaming laptop that should handle this game with no issues, 4 gigs or ram, 9800 gs 512 mb, good cpu, and it still lags like a . so i just hate the optimization. I'm going back to civ III. lol


Moderator Action: There are ways to say anything without needing to trigger the autocensor. Use them.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Centurio]

This forum is full of whining. I should probably go back to playing the game. It is one thing to say, "I was let down by Civilization V's lack of some features" but quite another to use the word "abomination". In my opinion, the Nazi Death-camps were an abomination. Maoism was an abomination. The Trail of Tears was an abomination. The acts of terror perpetrated by African terrorist groups on innocent civilians are abominations. An innocuous and generally (to many) enjoyable video game is not an abomination.

 

[Zwief]

yeah, its just a let down.

 

[duckofspades]

Absurdly Lacking MP Support

No improvements at all from CIV IV: No dedicated servers, no matchmaking, constant lag issue, framerate problems, no online ladder and rankings, no unit animation, random crashes, no way of reconnecting a game, no way of joining a mid-game through invite.

No reason to play MP at all.


No Civics

Civics was another extremely well-thought out feature that was added in CIV IV. Not only did it add flavors to each nation (Communism vs. Capitalism, Emancipation vs. Slavery, Universal Suffrage vs. Police State), it provides long term tactical options as well as short term flexibility to players to adapt their empires based on the current circumstance. Deciding and changing Civics was always a weighty decision because each one of them have their pros and cons. It makes each nation unique because rarely do two empires have the identical set of Civics.

In CIV 5 Civics are replaced by Social Policies, which is fundamentally a ladder of perks with bonuses that you can upgrade one at a time. It may still be strategic to decide on which branch of policies and perk to upgrade, but because of the fact that they are permanent and you cannot change them, they offer absolutely no tactical flexibility to players. All branches and perks add some kind of bonus to your empire with no negative side effects, so the decision of choosing which one to upgrade also becomes less significant.

.

The game does represent negative choices in socail polices. If I take the perk to build wonders 20% faster and you don't. Then you build 20% slower then I do. So you do sacrifice something.
As far as not being able to reverse you choices. To a degree you can. I can go up on tree and then take the oposite on, losing the other one. Granted not all tree's work like that. A nation can't just click a button and be good at war cause they need to be. The game is far better making you hold to past choices.


As far as multiplayer go's I got to give it to you. For me it's the no hotseat option. In anycase all of the MP issues will get fixed within a month im sure.

 

[MentatYP]

It robs a lot of the enjoyment of short term planning and micromanaging from the game.

It certainly does, if that's your bag.

The more I think about it the more it seems like there could be a nice middle-ground compromise somehow. I just can't think of one right now.

 

[SlothMD]

You really don't spend money in the same way. I said it better in the thread I started but if you think of sliders as a representation of a national budget then it lets you decide each turn how much of your income you want to spend on what. Like any government you can prioritize research funding or military growth or 'culture' (think of the many great state culture projects around the world....what would Paris be like without it's endless monuments and statues?). You no longer get to adjust your budget every "year" (turn) which I find unfortuante. Now, Civ5's forcing you to plan ahead is probably a great game mechanic in that it makes Civ5 a better strategy game (you have to think ahead, etc.). However, this improvement comes at the cost of a fundamental activity of governance: setting a budget and changing it as need be.

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%.

 

[andrewlt]

I have a decent gaming laptop that should handle this game with no issues, 4 gigs or ram, 9800 gs 512 mb, good cpu, and it still lags like a . so i just hate the optimization. I'm going back to civ III. lol

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.