Civ 5 criticism – looking beyond the detail

While I do think this game has a solid foundation and will continue to improve with time I find a significant amount of criticisms to hold merit (I tend to think most of the problems probably can be fixed even if it takes an expansion to do so and if the technical problems, such as crashes, very slow turns, and lagginess are left aside there is a playable and interesting game at the moment though it is has severe balance issues). One question is how long this process of fixing the game will take. I think it depends on how much the patches change. That will determine how much the first expansion must be devoted to fixing the game relative to adding new content. The game has good long term potential though its initial state has many flaws.

One argument that is interesting is the one that it takes too long to do anything. This is a serious issue any in Civ game because it causes several problems. Generally, you are going to want to have some buildings in your cities and a decent chunk of units to play the game with. It should be reasonably possible to have several units and some buildings in the ancient and classical eras. I haven't play tested Civ 5 enough to entirely determine the extent to which this is the case though.

I also agree with the person who said that the game seems to be overly hostile to having a reasonable amount of roads. Although you could just endure the upkeep costs it really is better to have the utter minimum amount. This does have the positive benefit of reducing the ridiculously large advantage the defender had in past Civilization games. I think perhaps a reason should be given to increase the number or roads somewhat beyond the present number. It should not be like the past games but a little higher than now. I don't think the reason for more roads should be based on resources though.
 
Agreed. "Boredom" is just another way of saying "I don't know how to play the game".

The fact is that CivV is an unfinished game released too early. It is as simple as that. That explains the bizarre combination of interesting features (and yes, gameplay) and yawning gaps and game balance issues. One example is resources. First of all, it is simply not true that "all resources are the same". This comment, seen over and over again, shows that the commentator has not even bothered to do a second order analysis of the game. Gold and silver enable the Mint in that city, and wine and incense enable the Monastery. The effects are additive for each of these resources. The same goes for Forge; requires Iron. That other resources "don't do anything" just strikes me as a missing feature.

And that is just one example. I could fill up this thread with similar examples.

I don't agree. I've played over 65 hours of Civ 5 now; and way too many times I've looked up at the time and realised I have to be to work in a few hours. It still has that "one more turn" feeling for me.
 
Within that Russian doll of micro-steps, within mini-steps, within small-steps within bigger ones lies a multi-layered system of goals and, when completed, rewards.

That's the point.

Civ4 was a game of rewards.
Civ0.V is a game of punishment.

I agree that the whole thing has a feel of "not" about it. Not gonna do that. Not gonna build that. Not gonna bother to do anything but build an "army" of half a dozen units and capture the nearest city or two. But I'm not gonna annex them - that's for sure.

As said above: a game of punishment.
You are successful in war? => Your people become unhappy
You have a growing city? => Your people will become unhappy and you feel to not being able to fight this unhappiness.
You have finally, after so many turns finished your urgently needed happiness building? You are getting punished by the costs.
You finally want to attach that city far outside of your empire? You will literally pay for it.
You have founded another city? Your empire will be less happy and the next social policy will come even later.
You want to do anything? You have to wait endlessly...

You want to play the game? You will be punished at each corner of it.

1) Not much happens in any given turn.
I agree. As above, you are getting punished just for playing.
Other things:
- Techs are boring. I often have 5+ options and want none of them.
- Buildings are boring. I often have 5+ options and want none of them.
- Winning is boring. You just get a picture. No replays, no video, no watching the culture of empires expand across the map and disappear as they are defeated.
Not to forget that it takes literally ages to train any troops. Sometimes you may be almost as fast in building a "wonder" as you are with training a new unit.
Now, how stupid is that?

The closest thing to that in Civ 5 is the promotion system, where getting high level promotions like logistics and blitz can make a huge difference in the strength of your army. Unfortunately that just makes it even more of a war game.
The most interaction in 4x games is with warfare.

But even that they have messed up.
Not only that the high advertised "4-lvl-AI" is stupid as stupid can be, you face major problems in moving your units around.
And when they have finally made their way from the other side of your empire to where they are needed, there will be a scout from your "friend" sitting in the way, effectively protecting the mutual enemy.

And let's not even start talking about the completely flawed "accessible" UI.
Honestly, who ever did the design of the UI should be publicly executed. Stupidity each and everywhere, and terms like "human-engineered software" obviously are completely unknown to the Firaxians.

Some good ideas are to be found, but the realization is a complete desaster. The whole game is a desaster and thus qualifies for the worst "Civ" game ever.
 
I think a big problem is the game isn't different enough. This is number 5 in the series now, I mean, how much can they change before coming up with a completely new game instead?

That's why the game is boring (and it is). There's not enough that is different from Civ4, combined with the fact that Civ4 has expansions and Civ5 is 'back to basics'.

There are other games out there, such as EU3, that suffer from some of the points raised here (slow for things to happen, punishing) but are still fun. Why? Because they're far more in-depth. You have deep mechanics for diplomacy, warfare, colonization, trade, espionage, dynasties etc.

This release should have at least had a complete overview of the AI and diplomacy, but they're pretty much the same since Civ3. Honestly, after playing other games out there (Paradox games, such as EU3, Victoria 2, etc) that have so much more depth in this field, it really makes it difficult to come back to the Civ series. Even something along the lines of Call to Power 2's diplomacy model would have been a vast improvement, and added a whole new layer of depth to the game.

In short, this release needed something new, something fresh, in order to stay interesting. It's just the same old (mostly) with some rule changes and better graphics.
 
DaveDash:

Well, it IS supposed to be Civ. If they went off the deep end, it would be something more like EU, and that's way too much fiddling for my tastes. Civ IV BTS is already stretching the limit for me. I don't like to play the high diff games in Civ IV because it involves way too much micromanagement and exploitation of quite obviously gamey mechanics. I like it when I'm playing it fast and loose.


lschnarch:

All games have options for pros and cons. Civ V makes your options quite obvious. More obvious, in fact, than your options in Civ IV.
 
In many ways, yes it was. But Civ IV offered a different and rich game by the replacement of the micromanaging aspects with religon, promotions, et al.

Too much micro-management may not be fun, but apparently too little is even less so.
It's not really the amount of micro-management but rather the kind. It depends on whether the micro-management leads towards better game-player or not and whether I can play better than the AI through micro-management.

Here's one example of the kinds of things they eliminated in Civ4. Previously if you had 40 beakers left to research a tech and your civ was making 60 BPT, the extra 20 beakers were lost. The way to deal with this was to adjust the research slider down and then spend a lot of time cycling through your cities hiring scientists here and there so that your output was exactly 40 beakers. Then after the tech was researched, you would go back through the cities and fire everyone. This was a pointless waste of time. In Civ4 the extra beakers overflow to the next tech and thus you no longer have to worry about it.

Unfortunately this is back in Civ5. Worse you don't have a research slider and so it's even harder to deal with it than it was in III. I have to think that this is a bug but apparently a fix is not to be included in the upcoming patch.

Some more examples of micromanagement in Civ5 that weren't in Civ4 should suffice to illustrate the point.

1. If I want to move a worker past another that is currently working a tile, the most efficient way to do is actually to wake the one that is working and move it. Then replace it with the other one.

2. In Civ4 if I want to take a city, I march my stack up to the walls and start bombarding. I can do this using unit grouping commands if I want. If Civ5 I have to move each unit individually positioning it carefully in coordination with the other units I have for the attack.

The first case is annoying and pointless. The second one is interesting and adds hugely to the tactical depth of the game. It, after all, is what Shafer was aiming for when he designed PG5. While it's obviously too bad that the AI has no clue how to do it, this bit of micro-management certainly adds a lot to the game. It is, in fact, PG5's best feature by far.
 
And I'll compare Civ V to BTS after there are expansions to Civ V. Until then, to me, it's just Civ trying to do something different. Which is fine with me. Everyone's complaint is that Civ V is not Civ IV, but if I wanted to play Civ IV I would play Civ IV. I don't want to pay for the exact same game with updated graphics. I want something different. But I do want more in Civ V. I think we can all agree that the main problem is that there is not enough in Civ V, which is why I will wait to be super critical of it.
Nope. I'll compare Civ5 to BtS. After all, I compared Civ4 to C3C. Why wouldn't I? Isn't the next game supposed to be a step up from the previous one?

This being said, my real complaint with Civ5 is not that it is a poorer playing experience than BtS (although it is) but rather that the problems with the game are go right to the core of it. Brindle really nailed it a few minutes ago.
I think i know, Civ5 is the first Civ game that is about NOT building instead of building. Don't build troops since support is so high, don't build buildings because support is too high, don't build roads because.... yada yada yada
Indeed. And how can this possibly be fixed?
 
I think i know, Civ5 is the first Civ game that is about NOT building instead of building. Don't build troops since support is so high, don't build buildings because support is too high, don't build roads because.... yada yada yada
There's no such thing as a free lunch. ;)

Can you find the use in having a military? Infrastructure for transportation and trade routes? Uses for monuments, granaries, barracks, factories, harbors? Thinking in extremes will probably not result in a very good outcome (or it should not). Your empire needs, or can use, most of those things to a degree. But not definitely yes to all, all the time. Not every building in every city. Like in Civ4 more (in number of cities or distance to palace or unit upkeep) was not optimal either.
 
2. In Civ4 if I want to take a city, I march my stack up to the walls and start bombarding. I can do this using unit grouping commands if I want. If Civ5 I have to move each unit individually positioning it carefully in coordination with the other units I have for the attack.

The first case is annoying and pointless. The second one is interesting and adds hugely to the tactical depth of the game. It, after all, is what Shafer was aiming for when he designed PG5. While it's obviously too bad that the AI has no clue how to do it, this bit of micro-management certainly adds a lot to the game. It is, in fact, PG5's best feature by far.

Wait, there's actually a Panzer General V now? Looks like I bought the wrong v5 product then...
 
Been thinking about this more today. Came up with the following picture to try and describe the difference in feel between Civ 4 and Civ 5 for me. It's not perfect - I dashed it off quickly between dinner and walking the dog - so don't tell me I missed an age or a victory condition or something. It's oversimplified, but captures what I think partly anyway:



The three arrows (blue, green, red) represent three different decision making paths through the game. For example in the beginning do I build a monument or a settler?

What I'm trying to capture is that those choices felt more crucial in Civ 4 - early build order led to radically different outcomes. In Civ 5 it feels like - I'll build the monument first, then the settler - or maybe the other way round, it won't make too much difference.

One choice doesn't radically increase the cost of another path. It's just a slightly different way of getting to nearly the same outcome.
 
It is well-known that Civ 5 has significant economy and balance problems. It is also well-known that previous Civ games had significant balance problems until corrected by not just one, but multiple patches. It is also well-known that previous Civ games, most notably Civ 4, were significantly improved by later expansions.

Given these three widely known pieces of knowledge, I don't understand what the point of continually starting new topics on this same subject is.

There is probably an inverse-square ratio (at minimum) about the passions people feel on a topic and their ability to act rationally. These posts are just a sign about how much people care about this franchise. Having any quantifiable outcome result is a bit beside the point, the benefit comes from being able to express themselves. Besides which, the forums would be a bit dry reading is we kept our feelings in check 100% of the time!
 
Didn't you know... :p
I do now!

I thought the series was totally dead after PG4/3D and that SSSI had gone under. Now I'll have to convince the wife we need to fund the game budget a little more this month. Unless I can hide the $50 in our Halloween candy expenses...
 
Oh, so it would be better not to have any expectations at all, despite the "Civilization" in the name of the game? Let's face it, it was virtually impossible not to have expectations when Firaxis announced they'd move from squares to hexes, 1UPT, ranged units attacking from range properly, animated leaders that talk in their own language, etc. Civilization is a series that has inspired great loyalty, analysis and discussion. Like many others, I had certain expectations for Civ 5--that it meet a certain bar of quality, and it didn't. I was disappointed. So are you saying I was wrong to have expectations for Civ 5?


An honest mistake. It is true many seem to have wanted Civ IV-esque, but not everyone. I like some of the new features (combat mechanics too, though I wish there was a way to move multiple units at once)--however, some gameplay mechanics as they are just lack polish. Civ IV vanilla had more polish than Civ V vanilla, in my opinion, and so when people like me say "Civ IV vanilla was better," it's not that we necessarily want Civ 4.5, it's rather that we want a game of similar high quality. Civ IV had its bugs from launch, and some balance issues, but key gameplay mechanics weren't as heavily questioned as Civ V's have been.
I think it's probably very difficult not to have expectations in many instances, particularly with a lot of the marketing hype there is. However, I fundamentally believe that in the case that the game doesn't live up to 'your' expectations, it is 'your' (the gamers) fault. My comment wasn't solely directed at you, it just seems that on so many occasions I've seen angry threads because 'Game X is what I wanted/expected'. As I see it the game was never designed to meet 'your' expectations, therefore it's changes of succeeding are already quite low. By all means make constructive criticism and suggestions on how you feel it could be better but directing blame at the developers is childish at best. There is always the ability to mod the game to tweak it to better suit you tastes. Edit: I should point out that I am referring to expectations around feature rather than a game being bug-free.

By the way, I would also like the ability to move multiple units at the same time, you can, kind-of but it doesn't always behave particularly well.
 
Agreed. "Boredom" is just another way of saying "I don't know how to play the game".

The fact is that CivV is an unfinished game released too early. It is as simple as that.

No, the fact is some individuals believe that it was an unfinished game released too early. I am not one of those individuals.
 
I couldn't agree more with the person that said Civ 5 is a game of "don't do this, don't do that". In Civ, I WANT to be able to build every possible building, build legions of units and build a damn road on every damn tile if I should so choose!

All of my games end the same. It gets to be 1950 and I'm just entering the Industrial Age. I quit and start over because it's way too late in the game and the turns take 30 minutes to complete. There is something definitely wrong with the timing of this game.

Also, I hate how the game LOCKS you into a victory. All previous civs were fluid. You could start on one path, and then flip to another half way through the game and still have a chance at winning the game.

In Civ 5 you can't do this. You HAVE to commit to a victory path from the very first turn. It usually depends 100% on the leader you pick too. If you pick Napoleon, obviously you HAVE to do a culture victory. If you pick Elizabeth, you HAVE to do domination because of the unique bonuses you get. Just try to flip victory paths and see what happens. Start as Napoleon building a few number of cities to try to get as many civics as you can and then switch to building dozens of cities and a big military. Eventually, it will take you FOREVER to adpot new policies and you will go bankrupt due to exanpansion. Similarily, try being England and start building a hundred cities. Now try to go for a culture victory. UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE!

What they did to civics is atrocious too. This just further reinforces the inability to switch victory paths. If you DON'T go the culture path, forget about civics. You'll never be able to adopt enough!

This game is Civ for kids.
 
I do now!

I thought the series was totally dead after PG4/3D and that SSSI had gone under. Now I'll have to convince the wife we need to fund the game budget a little more this month. Unless I can hide the $50 in our Halloween candy expenses...

You just need to find a store that bundles free candy with a copy of Panzer General :)
 
I couldn't agree more with the person that said Civ 5 is a game of "don't do this, don't do that". In Civ, I WANT to be able to build every possible building, build legions of units and build a damn road on every damn tile if I should so choose!

All of my games end the same. It gets to be 1950 and I'm just entering the Industrial Age. I quit and start over because it's way too late in the game and the turns take 30 minutes to complete. There is something definitely wrong with the timing of this game.

Also, I hate how the game LOCKS you into a victory. All previous civs were fluid. You could start on one path, and then flip to another half way through the game and still have a chance at winning the game.

In Civ 5 you can't do this. You HAVE to commit to a victory path from the very first turn. It usually depends 100% on the leader you pick too. If you pick Napoleon, obviously you HAVE to do a culture victory. If you pick Elizabeth, you HAVE to do domination because of the unique bonuses you get. Just try to flip victory paths and see what happens. Start as Napoleon building a few number of cities to try to get as many civics as you can and then switch to building dozens of cities and a big military. Eventually, it will take you FOREVER to adpot new policies and you will go bankrupt due to exanpansion. Similarily, try being England and start building a hundred cities. Now try to go for a culture victory. UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE!

What they did to civics is atrocious too. This just further reinforces the inability to switch victory paths. If you DON'T go the culture path, forget about civics. You'll never be able to adopt enough!

This game is Civ for kids.

It amuses me that multiple people are claiming that Civ V is bad and incomplete for completely opposite and mutually exclusive reasons.
 
That other resources "don't do anything" just strikes me as a missing feature.

Coal/Uranium enable you to build different types of factories, and Uranium is required to build specific units (Nukes I believe).

I don't recall what the Whales resource allows though.

I think if I had to complain about anything regarding resources, it would be that terrain doesn't matter much as long as you can get a Maritime CS ally or you already have a few cities.

Terrain should matter more, and I think that when you see a 'wheat' garssland tile, somehow the fact that it's 'wheat' should matter.
 
It's not really the amount of micro-management but rather the kind. It depends on whether the micro-management leads towards better game-player or not and whether I can play better than the AI through micro-management.

Here's one example of the kinds of things they eliminated in Civ4. Previously if you had 40 beakers left to research a tech and your civ was making 60 BPT, the extra 20 beakers were lost. The way to deal with this was to adjust the research slider down and then spend a lot of time cycling through your cities hiring scientists here and there so that your output was exactly 40 beakers. Then after the tech was researched, you would go back through the cities and fire everyone. This was a pointless waste of time. In Civ4 the extra beakers overflow to the next tech and thus you no longer have to worry about it.

Unfortunately this is back in Civ5. Worse you don't have a research slider and so it's even harder to deal with it than it was in III. I have to think that this is a bug but apparently a fix is not to be included in the upcoming patch.

Some more examples of micromanagement in Civ5 that weren't in Civ4 should suffice to illustrate the point.

1. If I want to move a worker past another that is currently working a tile, the most efficient way to do is actually to wake the one that is working and move it. Then replace it with the other one.

2. In Civ4 if I want to take a city, I march my stack up to the walls and start bombarding. I can do this using unit grouping commands if I want. If Civ5 I have to move each unit individually positioning it carefully in coordination with the other units I have for the attack.

The first case is annoying and pointless. The second one is interesting and adds hugely to the tactical depth of the game. It, after all, is what Shafer was aiming for when he designed PG5. While it's obviously too bad that the AI has no clue how to do it, this bit of micro-management certainly adds a lot to the game. It is, in fact, PG5's best feature by far.

I agree, and not wanting to beat a dead horse (at least this issue), all I meant was that Civ V's attempt to simplify has taken too much of the point of playing the God game away.

The game has good points and hey, we all knew there'd be some things that we didn't like -- but quite simply, I played Civ II, III and IV obsessively when I first got them; I haven't played Civ V in 3 days.
 
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