Civ 5...still a bit silly?

[Deggial]

Granted, the sentence is immersion breaking and therefore a bad choice. The game mechanism itself is valid and I am a little bit sad, that it is abandoned in G&K. Just change the sentence to something like "We are rivals to the same goal" and everything would be fine!

The real issue I have (soon: had) with this negativ modifier is, that it appeared too early in the game. At turn 10, it is impossible to evaluate, which is the palyer's goal! The simple solution would have been, not to use this modifier until turn 100 (for example).

 

[Snownova]

So no one thinks Civ 5 is ANY sillier than previous Civs? Really?

[That's not to say previous civs aren't silly in some ways....it's that the tone has become far more flippant/tongue in cheek than it ever has been before]

Civilization Revolution, silliest of them all.

 

[Raiki]

Civilization Revolution, silliest of them all.

I still hold a soft-spot in my heart for that game. It's what got me into Civ proper. And I still wish that some of the leaders in that game had been chosen for Civ V, rather than the ones that actually were. I'm looking at you, Washington. And you, Ramesses. And you Oda. And I like Wu Zetian, but I miss Chairman Mao.

On a more serious note, what I really miss is the progressive Unique Abilities based on technological era. That would be a great addition to CiV.

~R~

 

[Gatsby]

. . . but it HAS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY! Were you around for CivilizationIII's "Civ of the Week?" Every iteration of Civ has boasted of its leader screens leading up to release, since CivIII at least. I remember every week waiting to see what new leader goes up on the preview site, and wondering what they will look like. It was kind of a thing to get excited for, and it's always been a selling point and an emphasis for the developers--to say otherwise is revisionist history. I also remembering if my graphics card would handle it. And what's more, I don't remember anybody having an issue with the practice until the release of V. If their priorities are screwed up NOW, then they were also screwed up when they tried graphics improvements (including on the leader screen) for every single previous generation of the game before now as well. If I were you, I'd hold back on CivilizationII until we see what this "Wonder Videos" thing is all about and how much it detracts from the meat of the game.

Yes I followed the Civs of the Week too, they were a lot of fun and also a great marketing strategy. I followed them for Civ's 3-5, and I remember thinking how jaw-droppingly amazing the Civ5 leaderheads looked when I first saw them. I also remember thinking "if Civ5's leaderhead graphics are such a vast improvement over the leaderhead graphics in previous Civ games, then how much more awesome must Civ5 be as a whole compared to its predecessors?" Of course, that's what the marketing people wanted the fans to think.

The problem with Civ5 isn't so much the fancy leader graphics themselves; the problem is that the leaderhead graphics clearly had so much more effort put into them than the gameplay itself. This relative disparity of development effort was considerably greater than it was for any previous Civ game. The reason that many people have an issue with the practice now is because they feel like they were tricked with flashy leaderhead previews into buying a game that turned out to be nowhere near as good as they thought and hoped it would be.

 

[Gatsby]

And here, my opinion is: No it's not - and leader screens *are* an evidence for this opinion. (Feel free to disagree, of course.)

--

.......

But by only relaying on other peoples opinions (reviews, posts, even play-throughs) you have to face the fact, that everything is filtered by *their* perception of the game. If they don't like it, they will emphasise especially their dislikes.
Maybe (and I want to stress it again: MAYBE!) you might find CiV way more pleasant, when playing it yourself.
Maybe you might find out (as I did), that - for exampel - the GDR doesn't has as much impact as feared, as it simply doen't show up in your games, because you finish them way earlier.
Maybe you might feel the silly "pointy sticks" as negligible, as this info window shows up only two or three times in a game.

But I really don't want to convince you to love this game. Do whatever you feel is right. I just think, that judgements as your "crass and infantile" are a little bit unfair to the game, if spoken without own experience...

Peace!
Deggial

I will take you up on that offer to disagree, for the reason I outlined

Maybe I would find Civ5 to be a better experience than I expect. But based on the considerable evidence I have seen so far and the fact that I was hoping for a more sophisticated immersive Civ5, I am not all that willing to pay $30 or more and be forced to install Steam on my computer to find out.

 

[Gatsby]

@gatsby: If you want to criticise Civ 5 for being too much like the other civilisation games, you're doing a great job.

Putting effort into graphics/leader screens. Common
Silly bits. Ubiquitous
Unrealistic future technology. Cure for cancer anyone? It's a cliche (like a GDR) that's completely unrealistic (like a GDR)

There's silly and there's asinine. Like I said silliness in a game can be fine, even good. It just seems like the silliness of Civs1-4 is to the "silliness" of Civ5 what Monty Python is to Two And A Half Men.

The big difference between cure for cancer and GDR is that a great deal of real-world effort has gone into former while virtually none has so far gone into the latter (and for good reasons).

 

[Guandao]

I still hold a soft-spot in my heart for that game. It's what got me into Civ proper. And I still wish that some of the leaders in that game had been chosen for Civ V, rather than the ones that actually were. I'm looking at you, Washington. And you, Ramesses. And you Oda. And I like Wu Zetian, but I miss Chairman Mao.

On a more serious note, what I really miss is the progressive Unique Abilities based on technological era. That would be a great addition to CiV.

~R~

Cleopatra is a poor choice for Egypt. She was of Greek descent and lost her kingdom to the Romans.

Mao Zedong is a poor choice for China. He had many disastrous policies and only represents Modern Communist China.

 

[fuzzatron717]

and killed 50 million people

 

[Pazyryk]

This...

is more serious than this...

Just sayin...

 

[King Flevance]

The graphic aesthetics don't have supremely over the tone of the game. Civ 5 has the silliest flavor text and game features than the other Civ titles. As I said earlier you may as well throw in alien attacks at this point.

 

[Peng Qi]

Silly mouseover text=alien attacks. Got it.

 

[Abraxis]

Don't make me politely ask you to stop bagging on our CN Tower and then apologize profusely for the trouble!

Thank you for pointing that out, I just wonder if you weren't a bit too confrontational. I hope this won't cause any distress on the part of OP or any others whom may be reading.

It is a nice tower we have and I hope you all can appreciate it... if you wouldn't mind

 

[BobDole]

Yeah, but in Civ 4 it never said this when hovering over an AI civ's attitude towards you;
"They are worried you might be trying to win the game the same way they are!"

This is the biggest abysmal mistake of the feel in Civ 5. The game treats itself as a game, the tooltips even refer to it as that. NO immersion value what so ever.
It's akin to having the characters in Game of Thrones refer to themselves as "heh, as an actor i find this line of dialogue to be amusing".

It should NEVER be done. Not in a movie, nor in a game.
The first time i saw that tooltip i instantly was put off, regardless if the rest of it had a nice feel.
It's just such a huge blunder and i cant believe it was not patched out, you actually need a MOD to edit 1 text entry to remove this. Not to mention the "lulz pointiest sticks cuz we are kidz" text. What happened to logical "Most militaristic civs" text? That actually, u know, lets you know WTH it is you are looking at.

Civ IV had this too, you know..."No thanks, we'd much rather win the game" or whatever it was, which is what the AI would use as a justification when they didn't want to trade you something that would help you win late in the game or whatever (usually regarding spaceship stuff). Sure, not quite on the same level as Civ V, but still....this is a game, I'm OK with the AI realizing that key fact, as long as it's done fairly, which it wasn't in V. If civs didn't complain about the player trying to win the game so early, and if it didn't have as major of an impact on diplomatic relations, no one would've really complained too much I bet.

 

[King Flevance]

Silly mouseover text=alien attacks. Got it.

No. Fountain of Youth and El Dorado = Alien attacks. Both of these are things out of stories, not factual things. Both are also encroaching on the balance of the game despite being completely fictional additions. The game is moving out of the area of "making history fun" and into the area of "making fun of history." I don't care for the silly flavor text, but I don't care about it either.

As I said earlier, this is the first time the silly stuff has effected the actual gameplay and not just merely added on the side. This is also the first time Civ has taken folklore/legend and added it as an actual part of history.

 

[Peng Qi]

I don't see either of those two things being significantly more gamebreaking than some of the BTS random events. I particularly liked it when a dozen spearmen spawned next to my capitol on turn 10.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

The graphic aesthetics don't have supremely over the tone of the game. Civ 5 has the silliest flavor text and game features than the other Civ titles. As I said earlier you may as well throw in alien attacks at this point.

Seriously? You don't remember the dialogue from the previous civ games then. You're romanticizing the past works.

 

[Gucumatz]

No. Fountain of Youth and El Dorado = Alien attacks. Both of these are things out of stories, not factual things. Both are also encroaching on the balance of the game despite being completely fictional additions. The game is moving out of the area of "making history fun" and into the area of "making fun of history." I don't care for the silly flavor text, but I don't care about it either.

As I said earlier, this is the first time the silly stuff has effected the actual gameplay and not just merely added on the side. This is also the first time Civ has taken folklore/legend and added it as an actual part of history.

To be honest - I think they are pretty cool wonders to have for the various historical/legendary purposes they had over time.

I think the real problem is how powerful they are - not that they are in game.

 

[jjkrause84]

Silly mouseover text=alien attacks. Got it.

No, I think the poster meant that El Dorado = alien attacks....

 

[King Flevance]

I don't see either of those two things being significantly more gamebreaking than some of the BTS random events. I particularly liked it when a dozen spearmen spawned next to my capitol on turn 10.

I agree that some of the random events in BTS were broken too. I actually modded out the barbarian uprising one as it was way too much of a imbalancing event.

If someone likes these things, that's cool. That in no way effects my relationship with the game. What I find strange is someone not willing to concede that these things being in the game makes the game more silly than previous iterations. I see no reason to defend that stance. The game is more silly than other versions because of this. The fountain of youth and El Dorado are legends/stories. So are UFOs, Atlantis, Dragons, etc. Including these things shift the tone of the game. Civ has ALWAYS set things like this aside in silly scenarios and kept them out of the main game. Civ 5 put these in the main game AND GDRs from a forum joke. The game IS more silly than before.

I don't like that I have to mod Civ 5 to get a game that keeps fantasy out of human history. Thats my draw to civ, fantasy games are everywhere. While these couple things may not make Civ exactly FfH hard fantasy, it does make it soft fantasy. So for me this means I have to mod the Civ title to play Civilization. If they want to make wacky stuff use scenarios, or better yet make a new IP. Don't use the Civ title to create a fad and then "return to its roots" 15 years from now when the fad is milked dry. I'll see them in 15 years if thats the case. If they can remember how to make a decent game at that point. Civ 5 was already the first time I didn't pre-order a Civ title since 92. (excluding Civ Rev but including CTP.)

 

[SammyKhalifa]

You know, I was playing an earlier, less "silly" version of Civ just the other day, when a lion ate an entire caravan of people fully-supplied to build a city from scratch. Thank goodness it wasn't a "silly" game I was playing.