Civ 5: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

[Horizons]

Moderator Action: <snip> If you have nothing to say, say nothing at all.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Sommerswerd]

He said whut-whut, in the...

That wasn't very nice

 

[Horizons]

Wow, the moderators here are ... puritanical.

Moderator Action: PDMA
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Jediron]

Better AI means more calculations, means more waiting times. People hate waiting, so no, AI will stay dumb (rather more dumb then more "intelligent"). That's what i think.

 

[BobeBrown]

The people who like civ 5 i bet have not played CIV4 mods.

I could name 10+ mods that are way better than CIV5.

 

[Dirk1302]

Down atm.

There is some hope, i basically like the new combat system, social policies and some other stuff. Civ V doesn't have to be like Civ4 so i'm not unhappy with splitting of gold/science for instance, makes for something new at least.

But to name just a few issues ....

The games is far too easy, i'm a pretty good civ player but i shouldn't win on immortal in my 4th game or so.

Diplomacy is a huge step down compared to Civ4. It's totally unclear what pacts mean and do. Sometimes the ai seems fairly happy with me, sometimes not. But it's often unclear what i've done to anger/please them. It was this way in civ1-3. In civ4 this was solved in a very pretty way and now we're back to the dark ages of fuzzy diplo, very disappointing.

The Ai is very bad, i expect this to be solved. If not i feel this game is worthless

Many things need to be rebalanced

Personally i don't like the graphics much either, very nice on the eye but not very clear. I basically play with strategic view on all the time which is just a step down from civ4.

Interface isn't so good either. "A unit needs orders", why do i have to click on this? I'd like a short-cut that takes me to the unit/city that needs orders.

Something which i don't see mentioned as often:
You can't see which tiles are worked on the map afaik (or do i miss something here?), have to go to the city screen and open a menu there. This would have been very easy to implement like in Civ4 and it makes a huge difference. I'm puzzled why this hasn't been done.

And there's more as pointed out by others.

I have often defended Firaxis in the past against people who felt Firaxis hadn't put enough work into Civ4. Despite some flaws i believe Civ4 is totally great and i feel Firaxis has worked hard to achieve this.

This game might be great too in the future but i feel it shouldn't have been released in it's current state. I trust Firaxis to solve the issues however.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Better AI means more calculations, means more waiting times. People hate waiting, so no, AI will stay dumb (rather more dumb then more "intelligent"). That's what i think.

I can tell you've never been an AI programmer, but to be fair I haven't either (actually that's a lie, I made an AI for a very simple game called Hex, ironically enough ). Often improvements that can be made to an AI in a game take just as many or even fewer calculations. And often when they do take more calculations, it doesn't make much difference to the overall time taken because the extra time is insignificant compared to some other significantly more time-consuming task.

So, a much stronger AI may make turn times 5% longer instead of something like 50%. Have a look at the performance of the Better AI mod for civ4 if you want a real example. Almost always the very small sacrifice in turn times is worth it for the improved AI logic.

 

[Charvel1]

The people who like civ 5 i bet have not played CIV4 mods.

I could name 10+ mods that are way better than CIV5.

In your opinion.

I've played CIV4 mods and I like CIV 5 much better.

 

[LPent]

I have played, and have been a huge fan of civ since it was first available on the amiga. I loved every new version...until now.
I admit the stuff that is there is good, like the grid, embark, policies, etc. (and yes I like the no-stacking as well, although I guess it should have been made optional)
But what I hate, truly hate is what they left out!! Where are my spies? My trade routes, corporations, religion, etc.?
Why did they leave it out instead of improve them? The game has taken huge steps backwards in terms of features. I don't understand how that validates a version?
When BtS came out I had such high hopes and enthusiasm for 5, more diversity in play, more realism, more expertise. Where has it all gone? I feel like I am playing civ-1 again (warfare only) with better graphics.

Stuff could have been made optional on a per-game basis if it was becoming to complex.

 

[Sommerswerd]

They might have felt that a modular system, ie giving the option to include religion, spies etc., would have made balancing too complex. I know that Civ 4 gets all messed up when you turn espionage off