Can Civ5 become the best Civ of all time once it is fully polished?

[Akka]

The problems with Civ5 aren't only about polish, but are about a fundamentally boring and over-stylized basic design.
When the very principles of the gameplay's philosophy are bad, no amount of polish will completely fix it.

 

[AriochIV]

Bug fixes and balance tweaks can make Civ a much better game than it is right now (after three or four games, the novelty wears off), but to have a chance to be better than Civ IV will probably take an expansion (or two), in my opinion. There's just too much work to be done to expect that 2K/Firaxis will do it for free.

 

[Ayt]

Who knows. This poll has no reasonable answer.

 

[polypheus]

The problems with Civ5 aren't only about polish, but are about a fundamentally boring and over-stylized basic design.
When the very principles of the gameplay's philosophy are bad, no amount of polish will completely fix it.

Ultimately its going to come down to how moddable Civ5 is. If the very basic flaws of the game are simply too hard-coded and can't be fixed (for instance the global happiness issue, etc), then indeed Civ5 is not fixable and can never be truly a great Civ game.

 

[charon2112]

this is one of those interesting polls with twice as many negative options than positive...greatly increasing the odds that the negative will have more numbers.

 

[Thormodr]

this is one of those interesting polls with twice as many negative options than positive...greatly increasing the odds that the negative will have more numbers.

Usually when people vote on polls they click on the thread and then vote. People don't read through the thread, ponder all the options and then deeply consider their votes. It's human nature.

The reason you have so many negative opinions is because, *shock* *gasp* ciV is not a very good game. Not because of some grand conspiracy theory.

 

[Feanor73]

Certainly not.

There are some very deep design flaws in Civ5 that are not fixable by just some better combat AI or rebalancing of buildings.

 

[_Mk_py]

No.

Nobody doubt it will became a decent game when polished but the engine is seems to be inadequate to handle much of previously seen features.

 

[mrt144]

Even with the diplomatic and military AI limitations --- I can safely say that I'd been absolutely thrilled if they'd have taken BTS, changed to a hex map, implemented 1UpT... and maybe added SPs in addition to govts.

I think the BTS end-game tedium was really just unit bloat (by the point turns start taking minutes, it is tedious to have hundreds of units to move). 1UpT resolves that largely, IMHO.

Agreed completely. Having cultural values (Social Policies) would have been great. End game tedium was largely a function of so many units movement but 1upt hasn't resolved this provided there are enough units on the board.

 

[Countmonte8242]

First, let me say that Civ 2 was the best of the series from start to finish. It was the most addicting version of the game throughout every era, the expansions were superb, and it had the most character out of any of the games. Yes, Civ 2 with its 1995-97 graphics had more character than 3 or 4. Civ 4 was the most complex version of the game and very addictive in its own right, but it failed to be the all around best version due to the fact that it felt like such a huge chore to finish games out. The early eras of Civ 4 were the best, but the modern era's inability to be fun killed its chance to be the best all around.

I do agree that there is little to no hope for Civ 5 to be the best. Some of the changes seem irreparable right now barring the devs swallowing their pride and making sweeping changes. But they really can't do that cause then they risk alienating the minority? that seems to actually love the game. These are the radical changes that to me have ruined any potential for the game:

1. 1 UPT. Its a failure. Makes things extremely tedious, and slows the NPC turns way down to boot. They could have fixed stack of doom problems with other solutions.

2. Global happiness. An artificial leash to curtail expansion. Expansion has always been one of the fun things about previous Civs. It moves glacially in this game, and simply isn't fun.

3. Removal of the slider. How did it make the game better? What was wrong with it? The entire economic system of this game is pretty screwy right now, starting with the huge difference in value between gold and lightbulbs (a discrepancy amplified by the fact that gold buildings have no upkeep while lightbulb buildings do.) I'm sure it'll be balanced more in the future, but it all stems from the fact that they removed the slider, and they're not going to put it back in.

4. Embarcation. Call me old-fashioned, but after playing I just don't like it. There was always something to be said for the strategy of finding the time to build your transport ships. Now you can only build attack boats as escorts for your embarked troops, but even if you do so have fun trying to defend and move them all lol. Hell, call me really old fashioned but I long for the days when you could send your triremes into the ocean with the risk of getting lost at sea.

5. The graphics are soulless to me. Such high requirements and not only did they not improve things by them, but they are some of the more uninspiring graphics of the series to date, for my taste at least.

6. The great person changes from 4 are a step in the wrong direction. Instead of trying to make great people more versatile, they have made them less.

7. Bonus resources have been nerfed hard. You planned your cities around them in 4 because they meant something; here they hardly make any difference whatsoever, if any at all (hi sheep). This is extremely boring to me.

8. The entire city defense concept. Now I can send a settler somewhere, build a city, and suddenly these former settlers have the power to kill multiple battle units? Again, I see nothing wrong with the old system. Give me the ability to stack units in cities and let them defend it.

Thats just off the top of my head at the moment. I haven't played a game in a few days. Sure, some of the changes are good. Hexes, ranged combat, some more building specialization. By all means, I hope a few of those changes make it into Civ 6. But aside from that hopefully Civ 6 will be based more off 2 and 4 and forget a lot of the above from 5. Til then.... I think I may be going old school when I feel the need for some Civving. Maybe a Civ 5 miracle patch will change my opinion in the future, but until then, eh.

 

[SidMeierGroupy]

Entirely reasonable response, Countmonte. Agree wholeheartedly.

(edit)
Sorry, but the OP's original question deserves one immature response.
Question:

Can Civ5 become the best Civ of all time once it is fully polished?

Answer: ha-ha-ha.

 

[Maxor127]

I don't think there's any way Civ5 can become better than Civ4. The basic game mechanics of Civ4 were a lot better and more enjoyable. The only thing Civ5 has going for it is combat and 1UPT. I doubt they'll ever make an expansion that has Civ4 gameplay with Civ5 combat. So we'll be stuck with the flawed gold/culture/happiness system until Civ6.

 

[polypheus]

I don't think there's any way Civ5 can become better than Civ4. The basic game mechanics of Civ4 were a lot better and more enjoyable. The only thing Civ5 has going for it is combat and 1UPT. I doubt they'll ever make an expansion that has Civ4 gameplay with Civ5 combat. So we'll be stuck with the flawed gold/culture/happiness system until Civ6.

Except that 1UPT combat as it exists now is even worse than Civ4 SoD combat. Too few units and wars are way too short and decisive. Too many units and every tile is filled and you get clogging and slogging through Waves of Doom (WoD) or a big carpet of doom whatever term you prefer.

Really what does Civ5 have that is a breakthrough concept (such as Culture, Religion, Civics, etc)?

1. Its NOT 1UPT. That is just fundamentally broken.
2. Its NOT social policy. That is just a simple linear, rigid forward progressing system with no interesting choices.
3. Its NOT global happiness system. That just dumbs it down and makes no sense.

People keep saying that Civ4 also had issues at launch. But its issues were mainly bugs and such. The actual core design and concepts were great from the start. Religion though flawed was still fun and great in mods. New transparent diplomacy was great. Great People were great. City maintenance vs Building maintenance was great. Civics were great.

But Civ5 took away all that was great in Civ4 and replaced it with...crap.

But even worse is the fear that the crap simply is unfixable unless they make major changes to Civ5 in expansion packs which is simply VERY unlikely. I hardly think it can be fixed with modding.

 

[drachasor]

Except that 1UPT combat as it exists now is even worse than Civ4 SoD combat. Too few units and wars are way too short and decisive. Too many units and every tile is filled and you get clogging and slogging through Waves of Doom (WoD) or a big carpet of doom whatever term you prefer.

You already have a thread to talk about your Bifurcation Fallacy all you want. The fact is that this is solely a polish issue. There's a huge amount of space between a half-dozen units in a combat and a "Wave of Doom" where every space is covered. It's ridiculous that you think this is a serious critique, especially since it is pretty much only based on the highest difficulty levels where the AI has loads of everything with little idea of how to use it.

 

[r_rolo1]

Who knows. This poll has no reasonable answer.

Signed under.

 

[Geddy]

There is no way this can be fixed.

For Civ 6 they can get rid of that kid who managed to do the impossible...... screw up Civilization.

Sid himself said that only 10-15% should be changed each version. Taking out major features ignores and insults all the work that has come before him. You cannot look at Civ 5 as a "new" game, it should have taken the best of Civ 4 and added and improved features. Their starting point should have been Civ 4. (like all the other versions, so to speak).

Well done Schafer, you did the impossible .... ruin a 20 year game frachise.

 

[Jediron]

Certainly not.

There are some very deep design flaws in Civ5 that are not fixable by just some better combat AI or rebalancing of buildings.

My vote

NO, it will never be as good as IV and III.

 

[r_rolo1]

Bah, don't be so harsh on good ol'Trip He has done a decent job ... but he started out of bad premises, namely the idea that you can base a SP game on MP experience without having a very good AI.

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

there should be an option: Civ V is good but Civ 3 is best

 

[DarkSchneider]

It would require an expansion at the very least. An expansion to add back in all of the solid Civ IV features they took out. They also need to either remove global happiness or scale it to fit the map size, as there seems to be no incentive to expand.

I don't understand why they took out so many Civ IV features. Once you've coded them and balanced them that's most of the work right there.

The only 'feature' I enjoy in Civ IV that wasn't in the previous versions is hexagonal tiles... that's very sad really.