Can we discuss real criticism?

[Flavorable]

I'm loving Civ 5, but I have my issues with it.However, I haven't found the place to voice them, I haven't yet found a thread that has intelligent discourse about actual issues, as most of them are plauged with pointless whining and complaints that pretty much add up to:

"Its not exactly the same as Civ4"

"It deosn't have as much content as a 5 year old game with 2 expansions and countless mods within the first week of launch."


Now, this isn't the place to debate those things, because every other thread seems to be the place to do that, so lets talk about practical flaws here instead.

AI
-Really needs work on how it handles combat. This is a given, and its dissapointing it fails considering it was so hyped.

Unit clutter
-Civ 1-4 looked very clean, Civ V does not. Unit scale may add to the combat presentation, but it also causes very irritating visual clutter that makes me wish the strategic view was more detailed.

Worked tiles
-I have no idea what tiles are being worked unless I go into the city screen, for a game that focuses on streamlining information, this is pretty annoying.

Memory leak?
-Maybe its just me, but the framerate definitely gets worse even if I'm not advancing eras.

Worker tile info
-When moving my worker, I can't see possible improvements for the destination tile before I confirm. Really annoying, as I used that all the time in Civ 4.

Multiplayer needs alot of work
-But thats obvious, and I'm sure we'll see the same treatment we got for Civ 4, hopefully faster though.

Barbarian spawns
-It doesn't matter if its one dark tile in the middle of your civ. The barbarians still have a chance of spawning there.

Intro skip
-Really, its an incredible into, I really loved it, but I've already seen it, and it takes a while to skip. Why can't they take it out on consecutive replays and just have it be a menu option?



Feel free to add your own issues, provided they don't fit into the top two categories.

 

[Thrallia]

Future moves
-Seeing where your units are moving when you click on them

As for the Intro video, I think the reason you can't skip it early is because it is taking the place of the loading screen, and won't let you skip it until the game finishes loading.

 

[DrPepper836]

You can skip the intro btw. Enter key. I do it all the time.

 

[HamTard]

The intro is a loading screen in disguise.

\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\UserSettings.ini

SkipIntroVideo = 0

change to

SkipIntroVideo = 1

This results in starting the game producing a black screen for 15 seconds while it loads the game. It then goes straight to the main menu.



I agree with unit clutter (they need to add the option to represent units with 1 figure like Civ IV had in the options) and making worked tiles more obvious.

As for barbarians, I kind of like that they never seem to go away. It means you can always just rank up your new units on barbarians instead of building barracks and armories.

 

[Shillen]

You can skip the intro btw. Enter key. I do it all the time.

Yep, I was struggling with it too until I found the magic button. Usually it's mouse button, escape or space bar. First game I've seen where you have to hit the enter button. Course now I found out how to disable it in the ini and all is good.

 

[DalekDavros]

-When moving my worker, I can't see possible improvements for the destination tile before I confirm. Really annoying, as I used that all the time in Civ 4.

On a related subject, I'd like to see what the improvement will do listed on the tool-tip for resource tiles (rather than just being listed on the worker menu).

In fact, I think tool-tips need to be improved in general:
- In the civilization select menu, the tool-tips don't say what the UU/UB do.
- In the diplomacy drop-down menu, there isn't a tool-tip for your current level of influence with a city-state.

 

[Stalker0]

Here another thread for some intellectual discussion.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=382321

 

[BlackSpy]

Useful thread this, hope it can stay this way.

And happily, these all read as pretty patchable fixes. Nothing profound that going to need an expansino to put right.

 

[Rince]

Thanks for this thread. This is exactly what is needed to improve the game.

About the combat AI however, it is probably difficult to improve it without specific examples of when it fails. Maybe screenshots and savegames would help?

 

[need my speed]

Well, to start with, have ranged units behind melee units, and on hills or things, not in forests for example. And they shouldn't give up literally everything they have for peace.

 

[lemmy101]

See, this I can get down with. I applaud you for this thread.

I love Civ 5, and all of these issues are mere niggles for me in the grand scheme of things, but the issues I've had:

* I can't help but miss the replay at the end of the game showing the progression of all the Civs through the timeline. I really miss that and am not sure it's something that would be moddable in. But at least they have 'just.... one more turn' but I'd like to have the option of doing this when I lose, too. I'm sure that last one will be easily moddable however.

* I'm also missing options such as 'autoed workers leave old improvements' as in the late game I like to automate my workers after I've already laid down my improvements, so I can just manual them if I need to change anything. Under this game, they would then go and tear down farms and I'd end up with starving cities, or they would replace trading posts with lumber mills when I need the money. Etc. Along with the trespassing scouts in city states, I feel automation could generally use some tweaking. No biggie, and perfectly moddable however.

* Multiplayer, I've had no issues with. A proper save game option would be nice. Also giving the option of unit anims etc but defaulting them to off seems fair to me.

* Queuing workers. It may be possible to do waypoints, but I've not been able to figure it out if so. In Civ 4 I queued up about 4-5 improvements and walk tos at a time, much speeding up my worker management.

* More information about victories. I'd like to know that an AI opponent has finished all the policy trees and going for the Utopia project. Maybe I just missed it, but I got surprised by an AI culture victory in my first playthrough.

I'm sure there are others, but they escape me right now.

Overall I feel the first patch should look to addressing all the issues that those that are not content with the game have, as I'm sure it will. With hope it can bring some more positivity to the forum. I can live with all the above issues for as long as need be, and can probably tweak most of them myself with a mod.

 

[Sir Killalot]

I think the single unit per tile is a poorly considered choice where more options were available. As far as I understand, this was chosen to eliminate the stack-of-doom from civ IV, and I totally agree to that, but why not limit it to 3 or 4 per tile? or 2 for that matter. Damaged units can't be protected by others this way and also, there's no way to make a more heavily defended tile like fortresses with multiple garrisons.

Furthermore I concur with al the previous criticism about overview, unit actions insight and lack of 'easy micromanagement' concerning production of cities and such.

I'm getting the impression that the makers intended to make the game more easy to play, but they distroyed the real grown-up Civgame with it, and made it a kids game.

All in all, when I played it, I was deeply disappointed in how the overall game was. I'm an avid Civ player from the first hour. I played Civ 1-4 till my fingers bled, and each time there came a new Civ, I was stunned by the improvement in gameplay, graphics, strategics and management detail. But this... this is a poor excuse for a Civgame. I'm just baffled and deeply, deeply disappointed. How could they make something like this and call it Civ?!

 

[Flavorable]

You know Lemmie, that you can save in the Steam cloud, right?

 

[lemmy101]

You know Lemmie, that you can save in the Steam cloud, right?

On multiplayer? Oh cool.

 

[lemmy101]

I think the single unit per tile is a poorly considered choice where more options were available. As far as I understand, this was chosen to eliminate the stack-of-doom from civ IV, and I totally agree to that, but why not limit it to 3 or 4 per tile? or 2 for that matter. Damaged units can't be protected by others this way and also, there's no way to make a more heavily defended tile like fortresses with multiple garrisons.

Furthermore I concur with al the previous criticism about overview, unit actions insight and lack of 'easy micromanagement' concerning production of cities and such.

I'm getting the impression that the makers intended to make the game more easy to play, but they distroyed the real grown-up Civgame with it, and made it a kids game.

All in all, when I played it, I was deeply disappointed in how the overall game was. I'm an avid Civ player from the first hour. I played Civ 1-4 till my fingers bled, and each time there came a new Civ, I was stunned by the improvement in gameplay, graphics, strategics and management detail. But this... this is a poor excuse for a Civgame. I'm just baffled and deeply, deeply disappointed. How could they make something like this and call it Civ?!

Just curious what difficulty you played on? I think you'd be surprised if you went one level above your comfort zone you may find a particular hidden depth in this game that's not apparent otherwise, mainly because it comes from an area that was present in Civ 4 too just didn't have the same level of focus on it. I only discovered this after losing badly. ;D

I found, personally, that the new maintenance system and slider removal meant the amount of strategy and depth in what and if to build in each city was so much much greater that it ever than Civ 4.

I'm confused about what 'easy micromanagement' applies to. I mean, we still have citizen allocation, specialist buildings, worker improvements and everything. Which things in particular do you feel have been simplified?

The usual candidates in my experience are Global Happiness, Slider removal or the Maintenance system but I honestly feel these add complexity in indirect ways, more than remove it. If this makes sense.

re: 2-3 units per tile. While I can imagine that this too would have improved the game over stacks of doom massively, I wonder if having a set amount per tile that is anything more than one (or one per type [military/civilian]) would have been more confusing as to have actually helped matters. There is a certain elegant element now to the combat system that's borne of 1UPT. There's a warrior in front of me, with a spearmen to the left, a horseman to the right, and two archers behind them. Being able to read the battlefield with one glance without the possibility that there are additional military units hidden within those tiles.

 

[dannythefool]

I found, personally, that the new maintenance system and slider removal meant the amount of strategy and depth in what and if to build in each city was so much much greater that it ever than Civ 4.

I think the greatly expanded ways to throw gold at problems are actually a slider in disguise. You can still choose to focus your economy on research (invest into research agreements), or on culture (buy tiles, buy culture buildings), or on making money (just don't spend it). There's no espionage, obviously, but I don't really think the slider is missing.

I'm confused about what 'easy micromanagement' applies to. I mean, we still have citizen allocation, specialist buildings, worker improvements and everything. Which things in particular do you feel have been simplified?

Since you mention citizen allocation: This *has* been simplified. But in a good way! We can set it up manually and then lock those tiles and let a governor run the rest. Of course that means there's less micromanagement, but only because the game doesn't insist that you make an all-or-nothing decision between full micro-management every single turn or no management.

re: 2-3 units per tile. While I can imagine that this too would have improved the game over stacks of doom massively, I wonder if having a set amount per tile that is anything more than one (or one per type [military/civilian]) would have been more confusing as to have actually helped matters.

In CivRev, you can have three units form an army that then becomes its own unit (just stronger). Maybe something like that would have been an option. E.g. move one normal unit on the same tile as another of the same type, get an option to create an army. Armies in CivRev are ridiculously strong though, so I'm not sure if more than two units would make any sort of sense. Another thing is that in CivRev, you can have stacks, so creating the army is not always beneficial - sometimes number of units matters more than their strength. In Civ V it would be army all the way automatically as soon as you have enough units to fill up the front lines.

 

[Johan de Witt]

Well, to start with, have ranged units behind melee units, and on hills or things, not in forests for example. And they shouldn't give up literally everything they have for peace.

Isn't it real hard for an AI to know the difference between front and back? I mean, most of the time it should just be distance to enemies, but with no visible enemies and cities all over the place, I could imagine the AI struggling to understand the situation. (Mind you, I have no knowledge of AI-technology. That's why it's a question)

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

Civ V Pro:

no unit stack (limited to certain number would be better)
City states (great!)
Global happiness (god sent! no need to scan each city every time u reach hap cap to relocate workers)
no health cap (great cause in Civ4 felt it was redundant to happy cap and added no real strategy)
Lock workable tiles (IF only I could do it with cottage lands in civ4!)
seperate specialist gene pool (anything that lower randomness in long term strategic decision is good)
Building maintenance (more thinking into city production is good thing!)
Pop up window on the top left screen that list available units
Conquering a city without annexing it.

Cons:
Dull colors with small icons (Frankly I prefer working on the strategic layer. I favor clarity over realism in a strategy game)
Dig hard for info(why do I need to speack with everyone every turn to get his atitutde towards me?)
Lack of info (inter players atitude / tech infos / possible trade screen...)
Can't queue workers orders (like city building production)
Can't stack non military units (need to micromange workers logistics in order for them not to end on the same tile at the end of every turn is terrible)
Worked terrains unvisible unless in city screen mod(as mentioned in previous posts)
Lack of strategic depth compared to Civ 4. Let me explain:

in Civ4, You explore the map, you look at your neigbhours and you work your way accordingly. eg: not enough luxury resources, you have options of : pyramid (representation)/Religion (temples)/sling HR civic/happiness specific building multipliers.... you have agressive neighbours (be a religious zealot & use religious blocs/Whip army quickly/axe rush) etc... Science (Cottage or Specialist economy)... in Civ4 the map dictates your strategy. You make informed decisions and adapt your strategies accordingly. Here is where playing skills kicks in and gameplay provide satsifaction . In Civ5, you decide before hand what strategy you need to take from the begining (how dull is that) , develop your play accordingly and pray it worked out. At the end, you realise the amount of options were limited.


Civ5 is a good game not an ill born child. But in no way it is the successor of Civ4 BTS and in this sense, it felt short of my expectations.

 

[dannythefool]

Isn't it real hard for an AI to know the difference between front and back? I mean, most of the time it should just be distance to enemies, but with no visible enemies and cities all over the place, I could imagine the AI struggling to understand the situation. (Mind you, I have no knowledge of AI-technology. That's why it's a question)

It's not actually that hard to understand the difference between front and back. The game understands the borders of the land that you rule, it could understand the land that you control with your military in a similar way. However there are some other factors, like understanding how to move your entire army efficiently while preserving an idea of a front line and a safe area behind it for your ranged units. I'm not quite sure the AI tries hard enough, either.

 

[bhavv]

AI combat is terrible. They just march their troops straight to the nearest enemy city. Shooting them down with archers is a piece of cake. When they are badly wounded, they dont even withdraw, they just keep running back and forth around your city waiting to be killed, just like the braindead barbarians.