Civ 5, a fine game and yet not Civ 4 BtS

[j_buckingham80]

I have been playing Civ 5 now for the past 6 days, and Saturday and Sunday, really got into the game. I enjoy it, and think it is quite a bit of fun.

At the same time, I think there should be room to appreciate a great number of opinions on the game. I don't regret purchasing Civ 5 and don't plan on going back to Civ 4.

Yet, Civ 4 BtS was a great game. I enjoy corporations, religion, even espionage was fun, racing to get Railroad to build Mining Inc.

But, there are things about Civ 4 I won't miss, I liked religions, I liked some of it, I didn't like the "race" to polytheism, I didn't care for the if you've got mysticism you've got a leg up. I didn't care for the if you've got gold next to your capital you're set, if you've got sugar you're not in good shape.

Civ 4 BtS has a lot of great things about it, but I remember when Civ 4 first came out I hated cottages, then I finally got it, and then I loved the city on Flood Plains with 5 Towns, Universal Suffrage and the Levee. Powerful! But Civ 4 wasn't perfect, there were some unbalanced aspects of it, Gold and Gems were so powerful early, that it felt like on Immortal or Emperor without them you were fighting an uphill battle the whole game.

First the first time in a long time, I feel like the map in Civ 5 is a little more even, there are good spots and there are bad spots but there are few Great spots, a little more real in that sense. I've been liking it, and believe that I will enjoy for years to come. Still I look forward to the next expansions and growth as Civ 5 develops.

Civ 5, it's not perfect, but then again neither was Civ 4, or even Civ 4 BtS. They're both fun, and that...is the point.

 

[duxup]

IMO Civ IV was taken about as far as it could go and many of the issues inherent to Civ IV were not fixable as they were part of the core game. I got a lot of fun out of Civ IV but I was also done with it a while ago (well maybe I'll take it for a spin a few years from now). I'm sticking with V as well.

 

[UKScud]

I'm kind of starting to feel this way too...they both have points in their favour.

I'm not going to be throwing away my copy of Civ4 yet. Civ5 is a long way from being the "complete" Civ experience that Civ4 became, but in time I'm sure that in time it'll be much better. Is it just as immersive...yeah, but in a different way, I can't quite put my finger on it.

The other thing I can't quite make my mind up about yet is whether Civ5 is "lite", to use a phrase I hate. Is it dumbed down? Certainly the game mechanisms are simpler, and you certainly have less control over your empire (I liked the sliders, and some of the micromanagement that went with previous versions...but is the absence of such dumbing down? And I hate puppet states...doing nothing but leeching on my Treasury) but on the other hand there are still some strategic decisions to be made, which is good. Am I missing larger armies...a little...I've yet to use much in the way of modern units to date, and no air units yet at all. I've won two games without needing to develop these units. Maybe time to put the difficulty up a notch? 1upt I like, hexes I like...these are both steps forward.

I suppose a clearer picture will emerge in time. Till then I'll play both when the mood takes me.

 

[mva5580]

I'm not going to totally judge V until it gets some support. Civ IV after patches and expansion packs was, to me, an amazing game. Probably my favorite game of all time. But even then, the combat system is soooooo much better in V. It's just a damn shame that the AI doesn't appear to be capable of using it at this point.

If this game gets the same amount of post release support as Civ IV, then the potential is there for it to be at least as good as Civ IV. But if a lot of the stuff in Civ V "out of the box" is supposed to be this way for the long haul (vague diplomacy, AI combat tactics, tech tree issues, length of production slowing down the game, etc) then I will most likely find myself at some point going back to IV.

It's not a bad game at the moment, but it's made to look worse than it is considering what it's being compared to. They have their opportunities to patch things up and I just hope they're up to the task.