Civ V by far the worst game in the series?

[NobleJms]

I am so angry with Firaxis and the Civ5 development team right now. I feel like I've paid 50 bucks to be their beta tester. I've played deep into three games now, and two of them have been stopped by insurmountable bugs. The first one was in my second overall game where at a certain point towards the end of the game no matter how many times I reloaded and tried to do it differently, the game would simply throw a windows error and terminate. The latest one happened today on my third game where I was nearing a domination victory, only to find that I could not declare war on one of the two remaining civs, despite our peace agreement expiring over 100 turns previous.

And these two game killing bugs are just the nails in the coffin for games that have been riddled with frequent reloads trying to avoid other bugs. Research agreements that simply expire without a tech. AI Civs being unable to make peace with an allied city state because they are at 'permanent war' with each other. Numerous inaccuracies between the civilopedia and the game mechanics. Resource agreements which resulted in me trading not one, but all of my resource of a given type. Permanent open border agreements that cannot ever be canceled. Complete crashes on reloads. The list goes on and on, and I can see from this forum that there are many that I have not even encountered yet.

Also Civ 5 is essentially a much smaller game then Civ 4 vanilla was. Fewer Civs, leaders, units, techs, buildings, wonders, maps and almost everything. Policies are bigger then the older government structure, and city states have been added, but a lot more seems to have been taken out then put in. Religion? Espionage? Gone. Victory movies? Gone. Turn by turn end of game and in game graphs. Gone. Even statistics? Yeah, gone too.

 

[Windoze]

never had any problems finishing games. maybe you should get a better PC, it's a highly demanding game and you need a decent machine.

 

[Gamemaster77]

I never have played a complete game yet but am yet to experience any sort of bug. Are you sure you guys aren't just playing with really old computers?

 

[Windoze]

u mean him, i dont have any bugs either lol.

 

[Gamemaster77]

u mean him, i dont have any bugs either lol.

Haha, by you guys I meant people complaining of game breaking bugs.

 

[Windoze]

haha they are probably trying to run it on a MAC =p rofl

 

[CivRalph1]

Problem #1 is from having too many cities. Took me a long time to find that one pasted somewhere. When it comes time to kick everyone in the teeth just burn everything to the ground that you can.

Other than that nothing else has popped up that is not easily worked around.

On that note why the heck can't I raze every city the ground? That's just stupid.

 

[Taygeta]

I never have played a complete game yet but am yet to experience any sort of bug. Are you sure you guys aren't just playing with really old computers?

Like older computer equals more bugs in the code... Right.
I am so sick of hearing "experts" who claim that CiV needs a computer that was made during last year...

It depends. A computer that is around 10 years old has hard time running even CIV IV. My PC is from 2003/2004 (old business desktop @ originally 2.7ghz - now P4 3.2ghz) and it is running CIV V very nicely.

I only had one bug/crash, in the middle of AI turn - And that is all.

Of course, in low memory enviroment, bugs run more free and game slows down to a crawl. I have a buddy that has a pretty new PC, bought from a big store. It had only 512 mb RAM in it. Even in that kind of faster PC, CiV would run like sh*t.

 

[777]

I think V is best in the saga. I love how it looks, I like the gameplay and it's more interesting than ever. Few stupid things but hey, even Tie Fighter wasn't perfect game.

It's not just Firaxis problem that they launch game with bugs. I think it's pretty common software engineering now days, hence the internet and live updates. Competition is tough and launching full product at in desired time makes hard to do clean software. Give them couple of years more time and they would do better software.

Consumers doens't have a clue how rough business computer software business is.

 

[tom2050]

never had any problems finishing games. maybe you should get a better PC, it's a highly demanding game and you need a decent machine.

I never have played a complete game yet but am yet to experience any sort of bug. Are you sure you guys aren't just playing with really old computers?

See, these are the kind of comments that make no sense at all... A bug in the game has nothing to do with the computer running the program. If the system can't handle the game, it doesn't magically create bugs in gameplay. Graphical issues are different, which could cause game crashes due to specific graphics cards, but we don't know if those are the cause or not. And those would still be faults of Firaxis.

And the people that say they have encountered no bugs at all, either straight up don't know a bug when they see one, or aren't telling the facts. I didn't notice any bugs during the first 50 turns at first either.

For being in the age of information at our fingertips, I am not sure if these people just ignore information on purpose, or if it's something else I am not going to say here.

 

[Thormodr]

Ignoring the fans and dumbing down the game for the mass market makes this the worst iteration of ciV.

It's buggy, unbalanced and frankly isn't fun at all.

There's no immersion where I can get lost in a game and really feel like I'm telling a story.

I consider it the worst in the series for these reasons.

 

[JoxerNL]

-Delete
already said everything i had to say in your other thread which was exactly the same

 

[The Hyper Duck]

As of today, I would be inclined to agree.

That being said, there's still plenty of time for Firaxis to make things right. I bought Civ III on release and it had plenty of problems, but it did end up becoming a respectable game. Not my favorite in the series, but fun nonetheless.

One thing I will agree with is the number of bugs is completely unacceptable. I am not referring to graphics glitches/crashes which may very well be related to computer specs/config, but rather things like the eternal peace bug and the infinite strategic resource bug (where you end up with a billion horses or what-have-you after a trade ends). I have started a total of four CiV games - 2 of them were rendered unfinishable because of the eternal peace one, and I have encountered the strategic resource bug a couple of times as well. These bugs are blatantly obvious, and beta testing should have noticed them given how common they seem to be, and how game-breaking they are.

Other than this, the only other major problem is the AI, but that's a doozy. There are other aspects of CiV I am not a fan of (the happiness system and the way the AI ignores it on higher difficulties, and the general feeling of streamlining/simplification/loss of "flavour" that seems to be a common theme in V), but these are more personal preferences than actual problems with the game.

 

[Bhoy]

Usually I would argue that it's just fanboys who will defend the game at all costs - but I am a massive fanboy, I played an average of about 10 hours a week of Civ4 BTS right up until Civ5's release.

You have to tweak Civ5 a lot to make it have a playable game. The additions such as city states are pointless because I have to lower them to a maximum of about 5 to allow processing time to be reduced.

I have a PC which is less than a year old, which is way above recommended specs and which has all the buggy issues noted above and many many more.

 

[kiwitt]

I think it's pretty common software engineering now days, hence the internet and live updates.

I agree.

Dos -> Later Dos versions
Windows 3.0 --> Windows 3.1
Windows 95 (4.0) --> Windows 98 (4.1)
Windows 2000 (5.0) --> Windows XP (5.1)
Windows Vista (6.0) --> Windows 7 (6.1)

Now given that there were almost 3 years between each major update ... you can then compare; ...

Civ 1 to Dos
Civ 2 to Windows 3.0
Civ 3 to Windows 95
Civ 4 to Windows 2000
Civ 5 to Windows Vista

Each major generation had issues to begin with, but the generation did not come into it's own until it was updated significantly as described above. So for us in Civ, that means expansion packs. i.e. Civ 4 + Warlords/BTS is like Windows XP SP3. So we need to see Civ 5 like Vista which was not well liked initially (although I found it OK), but when it was essentially updated to Windows 7 (which was built on the Vista foundation), it became a popular creation.

So essentially we are comparing Windows Vista (Civ 5) to Windows XP SP3 (Civ 4+Warlords+BTS). Give it time and it will become great.

Btw: I am still playing Civ 4, but will move to Civ 5 when it is updated signficantly.

 

[LordByron]

Playing direct X 9 version avoid crashes.
Direct x 10-11 is buggy as hell

 

[lietkynes]

I am so angry with Firaxis and the Civ5 development team right now. I feel like I've paid 50 bucks to be their beta tester.

You have every right to be angry. I am also tired of companies releasing games full of bugs. It's not only Firaxis or Civ5, it's a growing trend with many companies and games. They release a game that is not finished, use the players as beta-testers and slowly fix the game in the next months. While I appreciate the commitment to keep working on the game for years after release, the game should be finished when it hits the stores.

Problem is there is not much the customers can do. Personally, after the poor experience with Worms Reloaded, I am never buying anything from Team17 again. And to be honest I am never buying a game from Firaxis at release also. I pre-ordered out of blind faith and eagerness to play the game, but I should have waited the first few patches.

 

[kgoodrid]

I think there are things to like about Civ V, but I'm definetly not happy with the bugs, broken parts, and some of the design decisions.

My biggest overall gripe is that this is Civ V! Five! They made some radical changes to the game, which is ok, but in doing so they seem to have gone back to square 1 for balance, AI, and other things that should be non-issues. After 5 games, knowing how to make a good AI and a balanced game should be easy. Obviously staff changes over time, and we are talking about two decades worth of time, but that is no excuse for such a massive drop. When I play a high level of difficulty, it should be difficult because of good AI, not insane bonuses.

I think Tom Chick put it best when he said that they have made some interesting changes, but failed to make an AI that knew how to use them.

 

[SillyGoat]

There is a simple solution to the problem of corporate scumbags like 2k and Firaxis selling cruddy unfinished products.

Stop buying them.

Instead of pre-ordering the next unfinished game/expansion, send an email to them explaining that you won't be buying their cruddy product until it's finished.

So long as there are enough fools willing to buy these shyster's products, they will continue to sell and market in the current fashion, it does make money after all.

Imagine the difference if Firaxis/2k had gotten 10,000 emails saying "no, we won't buy your product until you finish it" instead of 10,000 pre-order cheques.

The power to change the gaming industry is in our hands. It's time to use it.

Stop pre-ordering games. Start demanding quality. You are the customer, you have the right to a decent product for your money.

If the makers of computer games don't understand this, then it's long past time we educated them.

 

[vincentz]

Maybe a stupid question, but what excactly is it that require that much systempower in Civ5?
I have 2 computers and only 1 of them can install it, and that one is running it REALLY REALLY slow.
I'm not talking about wait between turns, but the use of the user interface and moving units. But hey! Its a turn based strategy game...... Turn based..... So its not supposed to use it on AI calculations. The graphics looks a LOT worse than civ4 with everything at min. setting, so its not because of that either. Is it because its Hexagons instead of Squares??? Is it because the userinterface uses a lot of Circles instead of.... Squares??? My computer is already 2 and a half years, so I guess thats way to old for a game that practically doesnt have an AI, have horsehockey looking graphics, an extreme slow responding userinterface and has had surgery where they removed the heart and other vital organs.

No really, please if you know why its running so slow please let me know. You can just state the facts without ranting like I did. I'm just a fanboy who lost his precious...