CIV 5, 10 months after release

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Fabiano79 said:
Ok, let me put this way.

MP on civ IV was not perfect, far from it, but it worked. On ciV dont.

Why on Civ IV we could play online and now we "have to change de civ series format"? I dont get that.

It was really fun put together 4-5 friends on a small map and let the backstab begin. Or 2-3 friends on the same team trying to beat a team of Ai on high dificulties...I miss that. And, cmon, its 2011! Everygame has online options. Its dumb make a game right now that doesnt work MP.
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Maybe they haven't hired a multiplayer programmer yet. With all the budget cutting and resource squeezing 2K Games did, I'm hardly surprised.

The position was advertised in November 2010.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-398322.html
 
The "delicious" irony is that Steam was brute-forced down the throat of so many people with the main argument that "because we use Steam, there is plenty of tools to better handle multiplayer that we don't have to develop, hence we have more time and ressource for the rest.
And the result is an obviously rushed game with nearly nonfunctional multiplayer. That was really worth it ! :sarcasm:
 
Derrick CB said:
There are several fundamental problems with civilization V. Yes, that's right. Fundamental. Meaning, the game is bad from the core; built upon a rotten foundation; built upon sand; not as a good as previous games in the series.
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Right, but there is still one more hope though: the source dll, if ofcourse it will be ever released. With the source dll, as far as I understand the core game can be rewritten from scratch. Given that the graphical engine is not inferior to Civ4 - (although not significantly superior either) - the community may be able to rewrite the game from scratch.


So I shall begin:

1UPT is the biggest problem with the game, a fundamental and major one at that. Everything revolves around it. And it is an extremely flawed mechanic. Combat is not anymore tactical than in cIV. Stacks of doom were not really tactics friendly, but hey, the focus of the game is to build an empire, not wage war. War is but one piece of the puzzle. Everything else (buildings, wonders, economy, culture, science, improvements, etc) is just as important as combat. An improvement in combat would be nice. When I say this I mean it would be nice if 1upt actually was an improvement and did not have to drag down all of the other components of Civilization.
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I agree, SOV is not the best solution either, but it is far superior. Better alternative to SOV would be sub level tactical map, or the ability to pack and unpack an army, and voila, you have tactics without impacting other gameplay aspects.

Civilization is built on a large scale with large empires. Many troops are produced. But now, they cant all fit into the map if you produce enough of them. If too many are produced the entire map gets filled with these things. Therefore, the only logical step is to reduce production costs so that such large numbers of units (as seen in previous civ games) are not produced. Early game combat works out nicely. However, as the game progresses the player will acquire more troops, this is simple enough to understand. Everyone's empires get larger, logically you will need more troops to conquer these empires. This is when carpets of doom emerge. They are no more tactical than stacks of doom. The only difference is that you have to personally move each and every unit at a time. Incredibly time consuming! Traffic jams form left and right. It is tedious, annoying, overbearing, and cumbersome. Think about what happens every time you run into a mountain or a hostile troop. What about the treacherous naval invasions?
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I agree, and would also add that the mentioned carpet hides terrain details, and creates an awful look and feel. Your city surroundings is all messed up, important geological and commercial features are replaced by a canopy of tunes. And yes, micromanagement of units add significantly to the boredom factor, even Civ5 fans should admit this. This has nothing to do with civ4 micromanagement of cities which was never-ever boring.

This is not merely my opinion. It is a statement based on the subject of human nature. It is not fun to sit there each turn slowly moving forward unit after unit. It is tedious and overbearing. 1UPT is a fundamental problem. And profoundly and negatively affects the whole game.
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I agree, I think your posts are rational and objective, whereas Civ5 fans, save for a minority, have no constructive counter argument. Mostly their answer is phylosophical: influence of mass marketing in game sector, psychological sugestions to tune yourself to the new "streamline" community, games for some reason cannot be compared, etc... nothing factual Ive heard so far.

Buildings: Because troop production is reduced, so must building production. Yields are reduced and building maintenance is introduced (if the players are able to build all of the buildings then they will have more time to build troops which will result in the map being clogged up). Maintenance costs are implemented on everything (including troops) as another way to try to reduce production.

Yes, in this game it is more beneficial to build nothing than something! It ceases to become a question of "what will be best for my empire?" and becomes a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils.
Cant build that! It will destroy my economy.
Cant build that! It will destroy my economy.
Cant build that! It will destroy my economy.
Ooh. This won't harm me too much. Let's go with this.
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Exactly, I had this same feeling, however patches may have somewhat balanced this aspect.

This is a direct result of 1UPT. Everything in the game must be altered and sacrificed to make room for 1upt.
AI: they are very bad using 1upt. The only solution to this problem would be the emergence of the fabled super patch that will fix all woes regarding the subject. I dont buy it. Simply, enough the AI cannot handle 1upt. Problems which were covered up with stacks of doom were placed in the spotlight with 1upt. The solution to this problem is only mythical.

So much had to be given up for 1UPT. It largely consist of the rotten foundation on which the game is based.
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Although blaming 1UPT alone is oversimplification of matters, but I agree, that it is a fundamental cause of the overall boredome and emptiness.


The next piece of the rotten foundation is global happiness. In Civ 1,2,3, it was corruption. In civ 4 it was maintenance (a feature which was effectively the best of these limiting factors out of any of the games. Corruption would always be over powered because regardless of how many poorly placed cities you had, a city would still be of use no matter how corrupt they were. In cIV, maintenance mandated that civs could not expand too quickly. If you did, your economy would stagnate. Rather, each city was an investment. Eventually, they would be paid off and late game empires would still be huge. Maintenance.). In ciV, that limiting feature is global happiness. Global happiness is a failed mechanic. What global happiness tries to do is make sure that no civilization will ever have more than a handful of cities. If you play the game according to the mechanics which regulate it, your empires will never be huge. They will be small and so will the feeling of the game. However, you can bypass this. Spam cities. Keep them small. Build a coliseum and some wonders. The mechanic does nothing in effect, besides ensure that your empire is composed of a bunch small, unhappy, cities. Many others will simply be puppets. This is a flaw. And to go further it is not a fun mechanic either. Being forced to either have a tiny little civ or a sprawling, sparsely populated country is simply not fun.
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Yes, though technically it is nontheless possible to create very large cities, doing so must be avoided if the goal is to win the game. In Civ4 small and large cities were just a matter of personal choice, these were both valid strategies, however in CiV5 there simply to much inherently discouraged strategies, makes gameplay one dimensional. Global hapiness is simply a bad idea, Ive never heard pro arguments here, except for macromanagement is better than micromanagement which is fundamentally wrong since the charm and uniqueness of Civ series always lied in the micromanagement aspect which is mainly responsible for the "just one more turn" feel.

Of course, not to mention the ever so many penalties (again) you get. If you try to build a real empire all that happens is that you get stuck in one of those depressing unhappiness depressions. Yes, your entire empire literally becomes depressed. Everyone is unhappy. You're unhappy and your virtual people are unhappy. Why must it be this way?

These fundamental problems cannot be worked around. The only solution is to tear the house down and start fresh.
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Yes, and interestingly Civ5 is one of the first game I played which encouraged destroying your own buildings as a sort of a "strategic choice". Imagine how bad and sensless it feels to destroy your own buildings, instead of watching your empire grow and prospere.

And I can add several other problems, just few now, maybe more later, note these are not fundamental problems, which cannot be fixed or modded:

1) City states: very oversimplified, feels like tamagochi, I have to feed it so it be happy withe me. It also "talks" to me, but always the same stuff: kill barbarians, destroy this and that civ, irritating. Even complete elimination of CityStates would be an improvement, or better, change it to something youseful.
2) Small units: It doesnt add to realism that there are more than three units in a hex, but the miniature armies are unpleasing to the eye, details which make units unique are hidden, your like watching a bunch of ants crawling around.
3) Lack of idle animation: the whole map simply feels dead.
4) Technology tree: simply unrealistic, some prerequisits felt like its a joke, probably it is just made this way to "balance" the game, but this should have been made the other way around: creat realistic thech tree and do the balancing somewhere else.
 
I totally agree with what Derrick CB said.

And what I also feel what is one of the baddest design decisions ever: Nomore beeing able to name ur own empire, to create ur own leader.
I don't understand why they had cut this out. just because of the stupid annoying loading-screen-leader-infos?? Or for the animated leaders??

Now i really never ever in no Civ before played with preset leaders/empires. It just lacks that "Thats MY empire" feeling.
You don't identify yourself with beeing this leader of this nation.
crap.

I really hoped, no i really was sure that Civ V, with all it's newness, would bring even MORE customization options! Options like evben choose the skincolor, flags,cultural style and so on!

how wrong was I!



I really can'T play this game anymore. It's just no Civilization agme anymore. It became something different, like some stephen king back-from-the-dead animal, who acts kinda strange, and you just don't feel like its ur pet anymore....
 
poncratias said:
I totally agree with what Derrick CB said.

And what I also feel what is one of the baddest design decisions ever: Nomore beeing able to name ur own empire, to create ur own leader.
I don't understand why they had cut this out. just because of the stupid annoying loading-screen-leader-infos?? Or for the animated leaders??

Now i really never ever in no Civ before played with preset leaders/empires. It just lacks that "Thats MY empire" feeling.
You don't identify yourself with beeing this leader of this nation.
crap.

I really hoped, no i really was sure that Civ V, with all it's newness, would bring even MORE customization options! Options like evben choose the skincolor, flags,cultural style and so on!

how wrong was I!



I really can'T play this game anymore. It's just no Civilization agme anymore. It became something different, like some stephen king back-from-the-dead animal, who acts kinda strange, and you just don't feel like its ur pet anymore....
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Excellent point. You can't personalize your Empire anymore due to all these fancy graphics that we didn't really need.

It also doesn't feel like Civ to me either. :sad:
 
@Bitula, poncratias, and Thormodr:
Thank you for your sensible responses rather than completely ignoring the point.
:hatsoff:
 
Hate the game as much as you want but you do know you can customize your empire and leader by pressing "edit" in the setup screen right?
 
I think he was largely referring to the lack of ability to role play with civ v because of its stiff feeling and poor design.
 
BenAxiom said:
Dennis Shirk about a month ago :) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10678832&postcount=687
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:sad:
Spoiler :
........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

:D

Moderator Action: This post is considered spam. Please ensure your posts have some content to them.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
mtrein said:
Sorry, but I still don't see anyone saying anything about releasing the source code... Unless you actually believe that DLL will give you access to the source code of Civ5 :mischief:
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In one of the modding threads someone said, that the developers are working on releasing the source, and actually it was kind-of-a promised that it will be released, ofcourse Iam also skeptical, normally it should have been already released. And yes, the dll is the source code of the game excluding the graphical engine, audio and some other minor stuff (if it is analogue to civ4 core dll). So for example you cant change hexes to squares, but you can reintroduce unit stacking, add religion, corporation etc, possibilities are huge. I also agree with the leader animation critics, it makes modding very difficult, I imagine how hard it is to produce such complex animated 3D art, community members probably wont do that, simply replace the animation with a 2D picture. So all this animation added nothing for fanatics, only for casual players, because its fun to watch these for a while, but then it becomes boring and irritating. Oh and I would also add to the list of screwed features: puppeting. Then why not just adding an autoplay button, you just click it and the game will play instead of you while for example you are eating your dinner... This it the next logical "game marketing step", from micromanagement we go to macromanagement and from macromanagement to passive gameplay.
 
mtrein said:
Sorry, but I still don't see anyone saying anything about releasing the source code... Unless you actually believe that DLL will give you access to the source code of Civ5 :mischief:
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When they talk about releasing the DLL, they mean releasing the source code of the DLL. The DLL itself is released already. It's in the game folder. :mischief:
 
I found Civ V terrible at the release, but now I'm ok with it. Patches made it enjoyable. It's still less rich than Civ IV, but...
It's going in the right direction. Hexes and one unit per tiles were, after all, awesome gamedesign decisions.
Contrary to popular belief, diplomacy is not nonexistent, it's just hidden behind texts and reactions. You can figure it out by trying some trades and stuffs like that (hint : if someone doesn't want to trade with you, they hate you). In the long run, Civ V diplomacy will be more interesting than Civ IV.

At the same time, DLC policy is horrendous (won't buy Civ VI) and the UI is nearly as bad as Civ IV unmodded. Lack of religion is troublesome because civilizations without some religion is unthinkable, but the game wasn't really dumbed down otherwise. Basics are still here, and there's even some new variety.
 
I'm skeptical about diplomacy improving. I don't see anything to indicate it'll be better than Civ IV's diplomacy. It's true Civ V's diplomatic system can barely get worse though. The fact of the matter is, AI are too aggressive, and are willing to overturn a history entirely composed of peace to take some land from you (or try in vain to, ha).
 
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