Civ V , underwhelming?

[Generals3]

I would first like to point out i do enjoy Civ V and certain of its new good features ( hex, combat , shiny graphics and City States (though i feel like those lack a lot of depth))

But i feel underwhelmed while playing. I remember in Civ IV where i used to have big empires, big armies and big cities . Now i get small empires, tiny armies and small cities .

And this is taking a certain epic feeling away , many turns i end up doing nothing because improvements take so long to build . The armies are so small i feel like a Sergeant leading his squad instead of General leading his armies while at war . And when managing my empire i feel like a leader of a micro country instead of an emperor managing his empire.

I wish they increased the production rate of units/improvements/wonders .
And also , like someone else mentioned in an other topic i feel resources are very underwhelming as well. And on top of that i have that feeling all my cities are small , i remember having lots of cities with 20+ pop in Civ IV , now i'm stuck with cities having 10-15 pop max . Which makes me wonder why cities can use tiles further away in Civ V .

What do you guys think ? is it only me or is Civ V truly underwhelming

 

[May Day 10]

its not you. While Id say the majority enjoy the game... a lot of folks have the same viewpoints as you. Me, personally, I have gone back to playing Civ IV, but thats my preference.


I only see 2 improvements over Civ IV Vanilla IMO. One is hexes, and the other is embarking... although I feel embarking could be implemented a little more creatively (build a Naval Base they can launch from)

2 other features which many have lauded are the 1upt and the combat, which I dont particularly enjoy.

 

[digitalcraft]

But see, you have to understand that the numbers for the city size in Civ 4 were tens of thousands of people and the numbers in Civ 5 are millions! The cities are way bigger.

(I'm just kidding, what I really mean is the numbers don't really relate to each other or any real-world size)

 

[amboo]

I agree, it's pretty underwhelming (for a civ game), still fun though

 

[Generals3]

But see, you have to understand that the numbers for the city size in Civ 4 were tens of thousands of people and the numbers in Civ 5 are millions! The cities are way bigger.

(I'm just kidding, what I really mean is the numbers don't really relate to each other or any real-world size)

I understand your point but nevertheless , everything is a lot smaller than it was in Civ IV number wise . I can't look at my huge empire or armies anymore , a lot of tiles are unused and so on.

 

[zellfaze]

Aye. The entire game is a bit "small."

There is some talk on the 2k Games forums about modding some of the pacing stuff to make the game a little bit more epic. They want to turn down the amount of time for improvements, buildings, and units, and increase the amount of time for techs.

 

[Wulf38]

This is essentially the same way I've come to feel about the game. When I start a game of Civ5, I enjoy it at first, then around the half-way mark I suddenly lose the will to keep playing. After puzzling over this since the game came out, I've figured out why: because in Civ5, peaceful expansion and development is boring.

I like the direction Civ5 went with warfare, and in fact I have a lot of fun with the game as long as I'm constantly waging war. As soon as I decide to step back and take some time to develop my economy, the malaise sets in. Low tile yields make me feel not rewarded for developing my land, and most of that yield just seems to pay the bills rather than resulting in profit. I'm progressing through the tech tree, but it doesn't feel like my cities are progressing with me. I see empty space around my core cities, but I feel no incentive to go settle it. And to avoid unhappiness, all those cities that I conquered in my wars are puppets. It feels like I succeeded only in expanding the Autopilot AI Empire, instead of expanding MY empire.

In contrast, when I play Civ4, I just love managing the progression from small outposts of civilization in the wilderness to an empire stretching from sea to sea, full of bustling cities, each one a well-specialized and efficient piece of my grand war machine.