Civ 4 or Civ 5?

[CrispyCritter]

At this comparable point in Civ 4 (several hundred hours of game play), I was winding down my play. It just wasn't fun, Civ 4 was too broken. In comparison, there's still lots to explore in Civ 5 for me.

Civ 4 was too easy on the lower difficulty levels - no sense in playing them. But on deity, it was dominated by religion/wonders. Your entire game was determined by what religion/wonders you were lucky enough to be the first player to get to. It wasn't about the thoroughness of your basic strategy; you had to be the first one to accomplish one of a small number of goals. Racing unknown/unseen civs for game determining goals just wasn't fun for me. And how anybody can defend the vastly overly important game mechanism of religious finance is beyond me.

In Civ 5, there are no "must have" early milestones. Wonders are much less important in general. I still haven't figured out strong preferences for paths through the tech tree, or through the SP tree - everything still depends on the particular game I'm playing. Do I need early riflemen, or can I skip them completely and go top half? It's me reacting and trying to optimize this particular game.

There are lots of things wrong with Civ 5 - it was definitely released before it was ready. It still needs basic tweaks (diplomatic victories are ridiculous). But as a game that retains my interest because I do different things every time I play it, it still works for me.

I admit the possibility that perhaps Civ 4 became a much better game after I stopped playing it. I was there for at least two major rounds of tweaks, and I know there was more later. Just improving the AI may have made easier difficulty levels of Civ 4 playable, for instance. And the mods and later scenario releases would have been attractive if I had gone back to it. But I never did.

So at a comparable time after release, I find Civ 5 to be much more interesting than Civ 4 was. I think you folks who played years of Civ 4 are a self-selected group who underestimate the problems of Civ 4, at least in its early builds.

 

[bryanw1995]

Not trying to argue here (since this is all opinion anyway), but I'm not a "hardcore" Civ player, and I still prefer Civ 4 by far. I rarely venture above Prince or King, and I'm not an advanced strategy guru by any means. I'm effectively a casual player, just one that happens to be passionate about his favorite strategy game franchise.

So, by your description, I should be the target audience for Civ 5. But it's not fun, engaging, immersive, or replayable to me at all. Three weeks and I was bored to tears. I know there are plenty of people who love Civ 5 and have spent 300+ hours playing it, but when I see those posts I can't help thinking "doing what??"

I'm at 600 and going strong.

too bad they didn't have a game time counter for cIV... I'm afraid to guess. 10000? more? maybe the slower build times are easier to take b/c I was a marathon cIV player. I play mostly standard in ciV, mainly b/c it's easier to discuss games in the forums that way, but I do play a few epic games (maybe 25% or so).

for people used to standard cIV I'd probably play a mix of quick/standard until you get used to the game.

 

[bryanw1995]

They're patriotic and willingly to temporarily unite behind you to fight the foreign invaders. Or maybe the town they captured didn't support your rule and was actively destabilizing your regime. Maybe it was always at odds with the rest of your empire, always causing controversy and stirring up trouble.

You are forgeting that civ is abstract.

WHAT? the mongols invaded california???

 

[El Caballerion]

Remember... are you choosing just the vanilla games sans expansion packs? In that case, then CIV V is perhaps better than CIV IV. However, the expansion packs for CIV IV are far better than the minimal game that CIV V is.

CIV 4< CIV 5< CIV 4+ EXPANSION PACKS

 

[bryanw1995]

here's a good question: was civ 3 with all expansions/etc better or worse than the original cIV without any expansions? I think I smell a poll coming...

 

[attackfighter]

This is just silly. I've studied visual ergonomics and cognitive learning

Ah, an argument from authority; classic fallacy of defective induction.

and the most basic thing when you're creating a new design, whether it is a toaster or a computer game, is that the product should do what the user is expecting.

Toasters have nothing to do with computer games. Computer games are complex, there are always features in them that the user is initially ignorant to.

Why do gold coins come out of brown boxes when Mario jumps up and headbutts them? Is it realistic? No. Expected? Not for the unfamiliar.

You've made a blanket statement that simply isn't true.

For example, if a city has poor health in Civ IV, you can construct a hospital. Since most people already know that hospitals improve health, you don't have to look it up in the civilopedia. This is good design.

Actually a new user would have to look that up. A new user wouldn't even know what health is. Even experienced Civ 3 users would have to look it up the first time playing Civ 4.

You're applying double standards.

But, if let's say the broadcast tower gave you +2 health, it would be an example of bad design. Sure, you could come up with explanations such as "if kids watch football on TV, chances are that they start playing themselves and therefore their health is improved", but doesn't matter. It's not logical. The game doesn't do what the common user would expect it to do, and that causes frustration.

When I initially began playing Civ 4, I expected spearmen to be good only on defense and vice versa for archers. Did it frusterate me when I found out otherwise? Nope.

Again, you're make an untrue blanket statement.

It's not logical that people start reproducing when the enemy is burning down cities near yours.

If an enemy burned down the city next to me, and I expected to be next, hellz yeah I'd get me some.

It's not logical that some people on a tropical island can affect the global happiness of your empire. You can find all the explanations you want, but it's still not a behavior that the common player would expect from the game.

It's also not logical that garrisoning troops and "finding religion" would improve happiness. In fact, if our former Skymarshal is any indication, finding religion would merely leave you crippled in the grip of your husk-like diety as he sucks out your brains. And you call that happiness *pfffft*

Again, double standards. You're criticizing Civ 5 for a long time 'flaw' of the entire series.

It's common logic to anyone who has any experience in programming complex algorithms. Creating an intelligent AI is not hard, anyone with bacis programming skills could do it. What's hard (impossible) to do, is to create an AI that makes wise decisions within a few seconds. In Civ III and Civ IV, the AI just had to move his stack around. In Civ V, many units have 30+ movement options. And when moving large armies, the AI must think ahead and make room for certain units. It's impossible to do those calculations within seconds even on a modern computer, trust me.

Works fine in StarCraft.

City mainenance is perfectly logical. If you have any knowlege about countries such as China or old Soviet, you should know that the government has/had to invest large sums of money to keep the empire from falling apart. As the welfare increases, the income goes up and the corruption goes down. I thought this was common knowledge. I can't believe that anyone would think that this is illogical or even unrealistic.

Everything costs money in real life. In Civ, very few things cost money, why is it that the number of cities you have comes with an exponentially increasing price tag? It's illogical, just like everything else in Civ. You can treat it as a representation or simply a gameplay feature, but if you do you're applying double standards when you subsequently bash Civ 5 for it's illogical, yet justifiable happiness mechanics.

You can't even enter the north pole in Civ IV, so that's a rather bad example...

*whoosh*

 

[CivFanaticMan]

At this comparable point in Civ 4 (several hundred hours of game play), I was winding down my play. It just wasn't fun, Civ 4 was too broken. In comparison, there's still lots to explore in Civ 5 for me.

Civ 4 was too easy on the lower difficulty levels - no sense in playing them. But on deity, it was dominated by religion/wonders. Your entire game was determined by what religion/wonders you were lucky enough to be the first player to get to. It wasn't about the thoroughness of your basic strategy; you had to be the first one to accomplish one of a small number of goals. Racing unknown/unseen civs for game determining goals just wasn't fun for me. And how anybody can defend the vastly overly important game mechanism of religious finance is beyond me.

In Civ 5, there are no "must have" early milestones. Wonders are much less important in general. I still haven't figured out strong preferences for paths through the tech tree, or through the SP tree - everything still depends on the particular game I'm playing. Do I need early riflemen, or can I skip them completely and go top half? It's me reacting and trying to optimize this particular game.

There are lots of things wrong with Civ 5 - it was definitely released before it was ready. It still needs basic tweaks (diplomatic victories are ridiculous). But as a game that retains my interest because I do different things every time I play it, it still works for me.

I admit the possibility that perhaps Civ 4 became a much better game after I stopped playing it. I was there for at least two major rounds of tweaks, and I know there was more later. Just improving the AI may have made easier difficulty levels of Civ 4 playable, for instance. And the mods and later scenario releases would have been attractive if I had gone back to it. But I never did.

So at a comparable time after release, I find Civ 5 to be much more interesting than Civ 4 was. I think you folks who played years of Civ 4 are a self-selected group who underestimate the problems of Civ 4, at least in its early builds.

Most of the people who have a problem with Civ5 play Civ4 on lower difficulty, just to get that immersive feel. Civ5 seems like it was made more as a true strategy game at the expense of immersion. You almost are forced to try and win in Civ5 or you will be beaten. Civ5 is more for those who play to win, than those who play to immerse.

 

[Michael d' York]

Civ 4 Beyond the Sword...beyond all reasonable doubt!

 

[CornPlanter]

Ah, an argument from authority; classic fallacy of defective induction.

It's not an argument from authority, it's just guy explaining how he knows what he knows.

 

[Bad Brett]

There's really no point in arguing here. Some people are really obstinate about these things and wouldn't change their minds even if I presented tons of research on the subject. There's a flat earth society as well. And some people believe that Armstrong never was on the moon. It's pointless to discuss.

But I have to respond to this:

Works fine in StarCraft.

StarCraft is a RTS game where the CPU can run on 100% all of the time. The moves are calculated simultaneously. It's an iterative process where sudden turn of events will be taken into account immediately.

It may look something like this when you move a unit in a congested zone:

while (orderMovement == 1)
{
  if (space >= 1)
    {
      unitMovement = 1;
    }
  else 
    {
      unitMovement = 0;
    }
}

In Civ V, however, the AI have 1-2 seconds to do these calucalations, which also are a lot more complex. Let's take an example:

The AI has two units, a horseman and a warrior. The warrior is in the line of sight on an enemy archer that he can't reach, so decides to withdraw. In order to do so, the AI must first move the horseman. So, when it's time for the AI warrior to move, he must first call the horseman and tell him to move first so that a space opens up. However, when horseman moves, he discovers a cannon and his only chance to avoid the fire is to move back again. Now it's the warriors turn again. Option A didn't work. What is option B?

Then you add an archer to the equation that the AI wants to place where the warrior is standing. Add 50 more units. If you have any experience in programming, you'll understand that it's not impossible to do so many advanced calculations within a few seconds with today's technology. The AI can't take everything into account, because it would be too resource demanding. That's why you'll eventually see archers in front of the spearmen. And it won't change. Trust me.

 

[Khan Quest]

As I browse through the forums, as I find many threads like this one with people comparing the new civ with the old, some complaining about the new version and others defending it. When civ IV was released, I don't recall seeing this type of discussion. If there was debate, it certainly was not in this magnatude.

Forget reading into the detail of these debates, they probably won't make much sense if you are not familiar with both games. The sheer number of threads hosting such debates should raise a red flag that civ V is very contraversial. This fact alone should disuade you from purchasing civ V. Sure you may like it as some do, but the odds are that you will like civ IV better.

 

[AfterShafter]

First of all, I want to thank Attack Fighter for a very well thought out poll. The fact that Brett refuses to do anything but cherry pick one part of it and load his response with comparisons to flat earthers, post pictures of banana phones, and in general load up with empty rhetoric to support his case is beside the point.

But, the below is an utter joke.

There's really no point in arguing here. Some people are really obstinate about these things and wouldn't change their minds even if I presented tons of research on the subject. There's a flat earth society as well. And some people believe that Armstrong never was on the moon. It's pointless to discuss.

But I have to respond to this:



StarCraft is a RTS game where the CPU can run on 100% all of the time. The moves are calculated simultaneously. It's an iterative process where sudden turn of events will be taken into account immediately.

It may look something like this when you move a unit in a congested zone:

while (orderMovement == 1)
{
  if (space >= 1)
    {
      unitMovement = 1;
    }
  else 
    {
      unitMovement = 0;
    }
}

In Civ V, however, the AI have 1-2 seconds to do these calucalations, which also are a lot more complex. Let's take an example:

The AI has two units, a horseman and a warrior. The warrior is in the line of sight on an enemy archer that he can't reach, so decides to withdraw. In order to do so, the AI must first move the horseman. So, when it's time for the AI warrior to move, he must first call the horseman and tell him to move first so that a space opens up. However, when horseman moves, he discovers a cannon and his only chance to avoid the fire is to move back again. Now it's the warriors turn again. Option A didn't work. What is option B?

Then you add an archer to the equation that the AI wants to place where the warrior is standing. Add 50 more units. If you have any experience in programming, you'll understand that it's not impossible to do so many advanced calculations within a few seconds with today's technology. The AI can't take everything into account, because it would be too resource demanding. That's why you'll eventually see archers in front of the spearmen. And it won't change. Trust me.

I'm not even going to bother justifying much of this with a direct response. In his response to me, he did exactly what Attack Fighter said he did - an argument from authority. To quote him, "It's common logic to anyone who has any experience in programming complex algorithms." That's wonderful - Mr.basic-knowledge-of-programming came in and cut through all the crap that us veritable flat earthers are just too obstinate and dense to see. Praise be to him!

But, there's a slight problem. This game is the multi-million dollar project, with careers and reputations on the line, of game programmers. Heck, the guy who lead the whole thing, who came up with and sold the idea, was a major part of the development team for Civ IV's most ambitious expansion. Whoever Brett is, there's a snowball's chance in hell he is a more aware game programmer/designer than John Schafer, and probably not in comparison to many people on the team.

Your entire high-falutin condescending post relies on one premise: with basic knowledge of programming, I KNOW this and you are all too dense to see it - and the Civ V development team ignored this basic truth of programming and decided to go with an idea any idiot programmer knows CANNOT work. Now tell me, what doesn't measure up? Does anyone REALLY buy into Bret's line and run with the idea that not once during the pre-development these guys asked themselves the question, "can we make the AI smart enough to do a decent job with 1UPT?" And when they asked themselves this question, not one of these people who SURELY have basic programming knowledge said "Guys, let's cut the crap - we all have basic programming knowledge, we KNOW it can't be done." No, of course not - Bret's voice of experience somehow suggests they put the reputation of the Civilization series on the line for something he believes every single programmer working on the project knew they couldn't do. Again, I say, poppycock.

You want to sit here and call us obstinate, make sly comparisons between us flat earthers, and then lord some supposed basic programming truth that any child with knowledge of programming could figure out? Fine. But, before you do so, why not take the look in the mirror that an earlier poster suggested you do. You're looking SILLY, and if you genuinely intend to convince anyone but the people who already line up to agree with anything negative with the game, you'll have to do much better.

 

[AfterShafter]

As I browse through the forums, as I find many threads like this one with people comparing the new civ with the old, some complaining about the new version and others defending it. When civ IV was released, I don't recall seeing this type of discussion. If there was debate, it certainly was not in this magnatude.

Forget reading into the detail of these debates, they probably won't make much sense if you are not familiar with both games. The sheer number of threads hosting such debates should raise a red flag that civ V is very contraversial. This fact alone should disuade you from purchasing civ V. Sure you may like it as some do, but the odds are that you will like civ IV better.

Thing is Khan, these types of debates were very common after Civ IV's release, and they died down. I seriously doubt this will be any different.

I've told the guy - Civ IV is the safer bet right now. But, the people claiming Civ V has nothing or is utterly hopeless... Get over yourself, and separate personal dislike from an attempt from objective assessment.

 

[lschnarch]

Your entire high-falutin condescending post relies on one premise: with basic knowledge of programming, I KNOW this and you are all too dense to see it - and the Civ V development team ignored this basic truth of programming and decided to go with an idea any idiot programmer knows CANNOT work. Now tell me, what doesn't measure up? Does anyone REALLY buy into Bret's line and run with the idea that not once during the pre-development these guys asked themselves the question, "can we make the AI smart enough to do a decent job with 1UPT?" And when they asked themselves this question, not one of these people who SURELY have basic programming knowledge said "Guys, let's cut the crap - we all have basic programming knowledge, we KNOW it can't be done." No, of course not - Bret's voice of experience somehow suggests they put the reputation of the Civilization series on the line for something he believes every single programmer working on the project knew they couldn't do.

The funny thing is, prior to release you may have had a point in posting this.

Meanwhile we know that the combat AI is just braindead. It is still braindead, three months after release.
You only have to start the game and to play it for some moments to see this.

Starting with barbarians which are slaughtered by miraculously shooting settlements, continued by AI vs AI fights, ending in a complete desaster when having to fight the human.

The proof for Bad Brett's statement is in the very game we all have bought. Well, he did, obviously, and I did.
Therefore, I can estimate the value and strength of said AI. As having said, you just only have to have a look at it.
And as you don't have to be a chef by yourself to know if the dinner was good, you don't have to be a programmer by yourself to know if the AI does a good job or not.

It is just that simple.
And it has been anticipated. People here were discussing the problems to be expected months before release. And they were right.

From time to time common sense is more meaningful than highly paid programmers' overestimation of their own skills.

 

[Bad Brett]

You want to sit here and call us obstinate, make sly comparisons between us flat earthers, and then lord some supposed basic programming truth that any child with knowledge of programming could figure out? Fine. But, before you do so, why not take the look in the mirror that an earlier poster suggested you do. You're looking SILLY, and if you genuinely intend to convince anyone but the people who already line up to agree with anything negative with the game, you'll have to do much better.

What's interesting is that you don't have a single argument. The only thing you do is to insult me and question my credability. Fine, it's alright to do that - to a certain degree. But if you're discussing diseases with a med-school student, you may have to realise that he probably knows what he's talking about, even though he technically may not be a doctor yet. It's not about bragging or belitteling other people; It's about giving some background information about what you have learned.

I'm the first to admit that I probably wouldn't be able to program a better AI for Civ. I've done mostly math calculations and data processing software, so I'm no expert at programming AI's. But that doens't mean that I don't know what I'm talking about. I can estimate how long time it will take for a certain system to solve an equation system with n unknowns.

The thing is that you don't even need to be a good programmer to realise these things. It's just common knowledge. For example, the number of operations that is required in Gaussian Elimination proportional to n^3. This means that if you double the size of the matrix, it will take EIGHT TIMES LONGER to solve the problem.

In order to optimize software, you need to keep down the number of operations. That's why the AI cheats. That's why the AI can see things that you can't see. Because the code would be too complex, it would take too much time to solve the problem and be to difficult to handle.

It's very simple to explain and only common knowledge should be needed to under stand this. Example:

Good AI: Takes many things into account, slower
Bad AI: Takes few things into account, faster (hopefully )

Let's say the rather bad Civ AI takes 5 seconds to complete a turn. In order to improve it, Firaxis double the amount of information that the units take into account. This will make the AI better, but now the AI will require 40(!) seconds to complete the turn. Very few players are willing to wait that long, especially as the game already is rather slow.

In fact, there were rumours that the beta version had a better AI. You may recall the broadcast when Greg played the game... Even though he had a really powerful computer, the game run very slow at times. I would be surprised if they actually have a better AI available that they were forced to scrap in order to meet the system requirements.

 

[AfterShafter]

The funny thing is, prior to release you may have had a point in posting this.

Meanwhile we know that the combat AI is just braindead. It is still braindead, three months after release.
You only have to start the game and to play it for some moments to see this.

Starting with barbarians which are slaughtered by miraculously shooting settlements, continued by AI vs AI fights, ending in a complete desaster when having to fight the human.

The proof for Bad Brett's statement is in the very game we all have bought. Well, he did, obviously, and I did.
Therefore, I can estimate the value and strength of said AI. As having said, you just only have to have a look at it.
And as you don't have to be a chef by yourself to know if the dinner was good, you don't have to be a programmer by yourself to know if the AI does a good job or not.

It is just that simple.
And it has been anticipated. People here were discussing the problems to be expected months before release. And they were right.

From time to time common sense is more meaningful than highly paid programmers' overestimation of their own skills.

You're ignoring his claim. You talk about the game as it is now, you give examples of not having to be a chef to know if the dinner in front of you, but you ignore the fact that he's not just claiming that it's bad now, he's claiming that it utterly and completely impossible to make good. He says "That meal is fundamentally impossible to make good" and I say "It could have been better without the tarragon and needed a lot less salt - they'll improve it."

The thing is, he's telling us that a room full of chefs mixed together sauerkraut and marmalade and were stupid enough to think they could make it work, and we're akin to the flat earthers for being so stupid as to the basic principles of culinary to not see that that's what they did. His argument from authority - "Oh, *I* have basic programming knowledge" - falls pretty bloody flat in the face of more experienced people who thought they could do it. And the thing is, you talk about an overestimation of their abilities - did you hear Bret? He painted this as if it was just the most obvious thing that anyone who'd ever taken a programming course that failed it would know. He's not claiming they went on some risky venture, he's claiming they tried to do something that was outright OBVIOUSLY impossible.

You say "The AI as it is sucks now, so he's OBVIOUSLY right." - well guess what... A lot of things in the game are problematic now, and a lot of it is obviously fixable. A lot of things have been fixed in the past three months - there is NO denying that. A lot of things have been improved. A lot of things still need fixing, but... Things ARE progressing. This "it can never become acceptable" attitude is pure speculation and doomsayer mentality.

And, for the record, many people realize the AI has improved already.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=404740

The idea that the buck stops here and it could never be made even passable is speculation at best.

 

[AfterShafter]

What's interesting is that you don't have a single argument. The only thing you do is to insult me and question my credability. Fine, it's alright to do that - to a certain degree. But if you're discussing diseases with a med-school student, you may have to realise that he probably knows what he's talking about, even though he technically may not be a doctor yet. It's not about bragging or belitteling other people; It's about giving some background information about what you have learned.

I'm the first to admit that I probably wouldn't be able to program a better AI for Civ. I've done mostly math calculations and data processing software, so I'm no expert at programming AI's. But that doens't mean that I don't know what I'm talking about. I can estimate how long time it will take for a certain system to solve an equation system with n unknowns.

The thing is that you don't even need to be a good programmer to realise these things. It's just common knowledge. For example, the number of operations that is required in Gaussian Elimination proportional to n^3. This means that if you double the size of the matrix, it will take EIGHT TIMES LONGER to solve the problem.

In order to optimize software, you need to keep down the number of operations. That's why the AI cheats. That's why the AI can see things that you can't see. Because the code would be too complex, it would take too much time to solve the problem and be to difficult to handle.

It's very simple to explain and only common knowledge should be needed to under stand this. Example:

Good AI: Takes many things into account, slower
Bad AI: Takes few things into account, faster (hopefully )

Let's say the rather bad Civ AI takes 5 seconds to complete a turn. In order to improve it, Firaxis double the amount of information that the units take into account. This will make the AI better, but now the AI will require 40(!) seconds to complete the turn. Very few players are willing to wait that long, especially as the game already is rather slow.

In fact, there were rumours that the beta version had a better AI. You may recall the broadcast when Greg played the game... Even though he had a really powerful computer, the game run very slow at times. I would be surprised if they actually have a better AI available that they were forced to scrap in order to meet the system requirements.

Here's the thing... A lot of programming AI is composed of tricks - workarounds to skimp on programming power, pre-programmed patterns, etc. It's not purely based on making a thing that can really adapt to every conceivable situation - it's about making something that, when presented with situation X, doesn't necessarily consider every move and make the best possible response, but implements routine Y. The sagas of programming the AI's in many games has been putting in a myriad of X/Y scenario responses. This is how AI has been done, well, forever - and it has worked in countless other games. Perfect? No - but, it gets the job done. Civ presents an interesting challenge, no doubt, but is it impossible? *Maybe.* But guys who know a lot more on the subject than you or I didn't think so.

You talk about "common sense" and things that are supposedly obvious, and openly admit that you don't have the knowledge of programming AI that these people do - but then you assume that they DIDN'T have your common sense, IGNORE the obvious, and that they just went ahead anyways. Sorry, but during the design process of something like this, ideas are examined, re-examined, those re-examinations are re-examined, and they examine it all over again a few hundred more times. If this were as obviously impossible as you claim, the odds of it being missed are just silly to bank on.

And I'm sorry, when you started comparing people to flat earthers and adopted a terribly condescending attitude, you lost the right to make any claims about "name calling." High falutin fits exactly the way you're coming off. If you seriously want to start coming off as if you're hurt, you *really* need to take a look in the mirror - if you don't like getting it, watch your own tone and how you talk to people.

Anyways, Christmas Eve. Stop hating Civ and enjoy the holidays. I'm out of here.

 

[Bad Brett]

Of course there are pre-determined patterns and workarounds. That's why the chess AI can beat humans. But that's also why Civ IV was interesting even though the AI was rather poor. It worked because the AI wasn't intended to behave like a human player. Monty could do suicide rushes without hurting the gameplay, because you weren't actually competing with the AI's. You competed with yourself and the AI's were just there to make things more fun. There weren't designed to win, they were designed to give you a good time.

However, in Civ V the goal clearly is to make the AI act as a human player. Backstab you in the same fashion as a human would do etc. Less roleplaying, more challenge one may say. Fine. If the AI used pre-determined patterns here, it would be very easy for the player to interfere with these patterns. A humen player makes new decisions every turn, and an AI playing like a human must of course do the same. This is resource demanding and time consuming, and in my personal opinion, not even very fun.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Guys, you are getting a bit heated. I appreciate long and good discussions, but i'd also appreciate if you would not attack each other personally. Stay civil please.

 

[Khan Quest]

Thing is Khan, these types of debates were very common after Civ IV's release, and they died down. I seriously doubt this will be any different.

I did not say these types of debates did not occur after the civ IV release, I said I did not recall any which would imply that there were very few. Negative comments about civ V seem to me to be a dominant subject of the forums, if not THE dominant subject. Even a shill like you has to admit the magmitude of difference.

I've told the guy - Civ IV is the safer bet right now. But, the people claiming Civ V has nothing or is utterly hopeless... Get over yourself, and separate personal dislike from an attempt from objective assessment.

I am happy YOU told the guy civ IV was a safer bet, as your opinion should be held above all others.

I have two posts in this thead, offering my opinion to the thread starter, so he could consider many different opinions. You feel you need respond to every neagative post about civ V. What a shill.

It is ironic what you said here because it applies much more to you, get over yourself.