I started playing civ 4 a few years ago after reading some reviews which said that 4 was the best. However, I got a Mac recently, and civ 4 doesn't work on it. So, I decided to try civ 5. I don't think I'm even going to finish 1 game because it is disappointing.
I want to say one thing which I really liked, however. Rome's 25% bonus to building buildings which already exist in the capital, plus their powerful classical units, incentivizes you to play like Rome historically did: conquer lots of stuff and then use the bonus to build your conquered cities back up. Also, the liberty + piety perks seem to be both historical for Rome, and good play choices. Liberty helps with early expansion, and then piety helps deal with the unhappiness of conquering so much stuff by building temples in all your cities.
I played only a little bit on what seems to be something of a tutorial map, and then started a game with Rome at level 5 difficulty on marathon and a huge map.
Disappointments:
1. I'm in the Middle Ages and only like half the world is settled. This seems immersion breaking and stupid to me. As soon as agriculture was invented, the settlement of the whole Earth should have started. You should have to fight to in order to claim more land already before you leave the Stone Age. This also makes wars seem totally pointless and stupid. Even in the unrealistic case where there is unclaimed land in the Middle Ages, then why fight at all when you could claim more land without fighting?
2. The arbitrary cap on civilization size from happiness debuffs: I read on an online forum that you usually either play as a tall empire or a wide empire. I thought, "well, I'll do both if I can." And then I run into the problem that it's nigh impossible to keep numerous large cities happy. For the last couple cities I placed, I paced it so that I was just barely over the happy/unhappy threshold, and I looked ahead in the tech tree to see if there's any way to increase happiness later. I didn't see any much opportunity in the late-game to drastically increase happiness. So, I see why players are forced to choose between wide/tall. It seems so arbitrary and limiting.
3. The way that units lose range between crossbows and musket men. It is another stupid and arbitrary feature of the game. My current defensive strategy is to hide an archer unit in my walled city and shoot at the enemy as they run about, then send reinforcements to pick off after they are weakened. But if I understand right (I have googled about it, but haven't researched musket men yet), my men will suddenly become incapable of shooting outside the city walls if I take crossbows out of their hands and put muskets in them. Why should getting an upgrade make my armies significantly inferior?
It's also annoying that I just placed my last 2 cities to get more access to iron, when it appears that no units will need iron soon. I was annoyed at this in Civ 4 too. Why do you need iron to make swords, but don't need it for rifles, cannons, tanks, or battleships? I guess it didn't make sense in Civ 4 either, but in that game, you aren't punished so severely for placing more cities than you need. But Civ 5 punished me severely for placing cities to get resources that I didn't need.
I think it's right that there are gameplay mechanics to limit growth. But it should be possible to get around them. Like in Civ 4, it was possible to spam courthouses or go communist to avoid city upkeep, or go monarchy and spam garrison units to get your happiness up. But there don't appear to be choices like that in Civ 5.
More about unit range: I read on a forum post that that the range reduction is a game-play mechanic to prevent range creep. Well, it's historical for there to be range creep, so why not allow range creep?
I did enjoy the battles on hexagons with the swordsmen and archers. I'd never played a game like that before. But I think the "stack of doom" from civ 4 is actually more realistic, however much people make fun of it. The reason is that you can fit a huge number of men into a small space. If I estimate that a man needs approximately a 2ftx2ft square to stand in, then a single square mile could fit nearly 7 million men. I don't know if there's been a single army in the history of the world that had 7 million fighting men at one moment. On a huge map on civ 4, I think there might be roughly 20 000 squares (estimating from guessing that maybe the map is 200x100 squares). That should mean that to represent the Earth, the huge map should have about 10 000 square miles (or 100 miles by 100 miles) per tile. But the largest army in the history of the world could probably fit in 1 square mile. So, there is no problem with being able to fit an arbitrarily large army into 1 tile. The collateral damage mechanic punishes you for doom stacks anyway.
Also, as much as I enjoyed being able to shoot enemies from outside the city walls, I don't think it's realistic. Realistically speaking, I'm pretty sure that +90% of the farmland around a castle or city would be well outside the range of archers on the walls of that castle or city. Invading armies should be able to ravage most of the country-side without fear of archers on walls.
So, I enjoyed the two unit types on hex tiles. But I think either they should have allowed range creep, or stuck with the doom stack. I really dislike the way that range is reset.
Note that it's not like I'm mad because I'm not winning. I currently have the highest score of the 12 civilizations on the map. I think I just might not finish because the game won't let me play the way that I want to play.
I've read a bit about how the expansion packs add a lot more features, but they don't seem to change anything about the game that I don't like.
I think I've just realized why I never liked going above prince difficulty on Civ 4 (to increase difficulty, I tried making the map crowded, or putting the AIs in teams of 2 with me alone, or making all AIs permanently at war with me). I don't want to win by a gimmick; I want my civilization to be powerful in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY. If I can manage it, I will out research them, I will out produce them, I will out diplomacy them, I will outbreed them, I will outbuild them, and I will make my people happy. Of course, it's not usually possible to do ALL of those things in a given game (otherwise the game would be very easy), but I will do as many as I can according to what circumstances allow. But the AI cheats so much on higher difficulties, you have to win by gimmicks. It seems unsatisfying to me that it's impossible to ever complete a wonder or found a religion on higher difficulties, and that the AI will always outproduce you, so that you have to game the diplomacy to win the vote for victory as a rinky-dink second-rate civilization. I don't want to win by a gimmick. I don't want to focus my whole civilization around achieving a totally arbitrary win condition, or do dirty little tricks to sabotage better civilizations on their way towards their own victory condition. I want my civilization to be badass in every single possible way, and it doesn't seem like Civ will let me do that. Civ 4 won't let me do it on higher difficulty levels because of how much the AI cheats, and civ 5 won't let me do it on any difficulty level because the civilizations are arbitrarily handicapped so that the map doesn't even get fully settled.
I want to say one thing which I really liked, however. Rome's 25% bonus to building buildings which already exist in the capital, plus their powerful classical units, incentivizes you to play like Rome historically did: conquer lots of stuff and then use the bonus to build your conquered cities back up. Also, the liberty + piety perks seem to be both historical for Rome, and good play choices. Liberty helps with early expansion, and then piety helps deal with the unhappiness of conquering so much stuff by building temples in all your cities.
I played only a little bit on what seems to be something of a tutorial map, and then started a game with Rome at level 5 difficulty on marathon and a huge map.
Disappointments:
1. I'm in the Middle Ages and only like half the world is settled. This seems immersion breaking and stupid to me. As soon as agriculture was invented, the settlement of the whole Earth should have started. You should have to fight to in order to claim more land already before you leave the Stone Age. This also makes wars seem totally pointless and stupid. Even in the unrealistic case where there is unclaimed land in the Middle Ages, then why fight at all when you could claim more land without fighting?
2. The arbitrary cap on civilization size from happiness debuffs: I read on an online forum that you usually either play as a tall empire or a wide empire. I thought, "well, I'll do both if I can." And then I run into the problem that it's nigh impossible to keep numerous large cities happy. For the last couple cities I placed, I paced it so that I was just barely over the happy/unhappy threshold, and I looked ahead in the tech tree to see if there's any way to increase happiness later. I didn't see any much opportunity in the late-game to drastically increase happiness. So, I see why players are forced to choose between wide/tall. It seems so arbitrary and limiting.
3. The way that units lose range between crossbows and musket men. It is another stupid and arbitrary feature of the game. My current defensive strategy is to hide an archer unit in my walled city and shoot at the enemy as they run about, then send reinforcements to pick off after they are weakened. But if I understand right (I have googled about it, but haven't researched musket men yet), my men will suddenly become incapable of shooting outside the city walls if I take crossbows out of their hands and put muskets in them. Why should getting an upgrade make my armies significantly inferior?
It's also annoying that I just placed my last 2 cities to get more access to iron, when it appears that no units will need iron soon. I was annoyed at this in Civ 4 too. Why do you need iron to make swords, but don't need it for rifles, cannons, tanks, or battleships? I guess it didn't make sense in Civ 4 either, but in that game, you aren't punished so severely for placing more cities than you need. But Civ 5 punished me severely for placing cities to get resources that I didn't need.
I think it's right that there are gameplay mechanics to limit growth. But it should be possible to get around them. Like in Civ 4, it was possible to spam courthouses or go communist to avoid city upkeep, or go monarchy and spam garrison units to get your happiness up. But there don't appear to be choices like that in Civ 5.
More about unit range: I read on a forum post that that the range reduction is a game-play mechanic to prevent range creep. Well, it's historical for there to be range creep, so why not allow range creep?
I did enjoy the battles on hexagons with the swordsmen and archers. I'd never played a game like that before. But I think the "stack of doom" from civ 4 is actually more realistic, however much people make fun of it. The reason is that you can fit a huge number of men into a small space. If I estimate that a man needs approximately a 2ftx2ft square to stand in, then a single square mile could fit nearly 7 million men. I don't know if there's been a single army in the history of the world that had 7 million fighting men at one moment. On a huge map on civ 4, I think there might be roughly 20 000 squares (estimating from guessing that maybe the map is 200x100 squares). That should mean that to represent the Earth, the huge map should have about 10 000 square miles (or 100 miles by 100 miles) per tile. But the largest army in the history of the world could probably fit in 1 square mile. So, there is no problem with being able to fit an arbitrarily large army into 1 tile. The collateral damage mechanic punishes you for doom stacks anyway.
Also, as much as I enjoyed being able to shoot enemies from outside the city walls, I don't think it's realistic. Realistically speaking, I'm pretty sure that +90% of the farmland around a castle or city would be well outside the range of archers on the walls of that castle or city. Invading armies should be able to ravage most of the country-side without fear of archers on walls.
So, I enjoyed the two unit types on hex tiles. But I think either they should have allowed range creep, or stuck with the doom stack. I really dislike the way that range is reset.
Note that it's not like I'm mad because I'm not winning. I currently have the highest score of the 12 civilizations on the map. I think I just might not finish because the game won't let me play the way that I want to play.
I've read a bit about how the expansion packs add a lot more features, but they don't seem to change anything about the game that I don't like.
I think I've just realized why I never liked going above prince difficulty on Civ 4 (to increase difficulty, I tried making the map crowded, or putting the AIs in teams of 2 with me alone, or making all AIs permanently at war with me). I don't want to win by a gimmick; I want my civilization to be powerful in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY. If I can manage it, I will out research them, I will out produce them, I will out diplomacy them, I will outbreed them, I will outbuild them, and I will make my people happy. Of course, it's not usually possible to do ALL of those things in a given game (otherwise the game would be very easy), but I will do as many as I can according to what circumstances allow. But the AI cheats so much on higher difficulties, you have to win by gimmicks. It seems unsatisfying to me that it's impossible to ever complete a wonder or found a religion on higher difficulties, and that the AI will always outproduce you, so that you have to game the diplomacy to win the vote for victory as a rinky-dink second-rate civilization. I don't want to win by a gimmick. I don't want to focus my whole civilization around achieving a totally arbitrary win condition, or do dirty little tricks to sabotage better civilizations on their way towards their own victory condition. I want my civilization to be badass in every single possible way, and it doesn't seem like Civ will let me do that. Civ 4 won't let me do it on higher difficulty levels because of how much the AI cheats, and civ 5 won't let me do it on any difficulty level because the civilizations are arbitrarily handicapped so that the map doesn't even get fully settled.
