CiV Worth a purchase now that patches/mods are out?

[Uncle Anton]

Ok got a question that I can't really Search for, because this is going to be something individual to me I guess... I'm not trying to troll or start a sh!tfight of a thread... I'm just going to explain my situation, then ask for some honest (but reasoned) feedback.

Longtime fan of Civs 1-4. Loved Colonization, didn't bother with Civ4Col tho.

About to get a new rig which will allow me to play CiV - i7 950 with a GTX465 EE Superclock and 12Gb RAM, so I'm not anticipating issues meeting the specs

I'm a fan of Steam, so I have no problems with playing CiV this way.. I'm also just sick and tired enough of Stacks to be prepared to entertain the notion of 1UPT.

Thus far I've stayed away from CiV a) because my current laptop probably wouldn't run it well anyway, b) it seemed from all accounts to be shovelware upon release, and c) some of the more questionable design decisions hadn't been mitigated by mods.

Now that there's been a few pretty decent patches, and a few good mods are coming out for it, is it worth the purchase? or is CiV completely irredeemable? Wut Do Gaiz?

Reasoned feedback/opinions either for or against appreciated.

 

[builer680]

Opinions about the game aside, meeting or exceeding spec requirements has not been much help for many, myself included.

Turn times and load times can be extremely long (several minutes) no matter what your specs, especially on Standard to Huge maps.

 

[The_Quasar]

It improves every patch, and should improve even more with the interesting looking imminent patch.

The very fact that you're fed up with Stacks should help you to enjoy 1upt in ciV more. However, the AI is fairly basic, and prone to silliness from time to time, as it's harder to program 1upt AI, as it's more like programming chess. Already, though, it's much better than SoD. Instead of just building a large stack, you have to think.

So I would say yes, go on and make your purchase, and enjoy it! Play one level up from what you did in civ IV.

 

[SpearMan153]

Hey another Aussie - like the lighthorseman reference btw

I got civ5 for christmas which was 2 big patches in and am really enjoying playing the game

there is another big patch due out any day which looks to have many good changes so your timing is good - maybe wait a few days and see the feedback on the new patch

patch should improve diplomacy which is one of the weaker areas in the game at the moment (I find it ok but flaky) and most importantly for me turn times should be improved. Also a lot of work in the patch on various balance issues.

combat ai is weak but I don't find it too terrible compared to other civs

the fact you don't like stacks increases your chances of liking it also there seems to be a trend that the higher level expert civ4 players tend to like civ5 less

1upt works less well on the higher levels as the larger number of units increase the traffic jams issues inherent in the 1upt system (carpet of doom) and poor combat ai negates the ais production bonus making for an easier game.

I find it hits my civ button others not so much

 

[Camikaze]

Completely worth it. Only $35 (I think) at ozgameship.com, so it's not like it's a major purchase. The entertainment value should be more than $35, assuming you don't intensely dislike it. Of course, it's possible that you will, but I don't think it's terribly likely you would if buying the game now.

 

[Babri]

to OP : Did you tried playing the demo ?

 

[vincentz]

if you dislike it for what it have become, then no amount of patches will fix it.
However if you like the "new way" then go for it. Just dont expect it to be a "step up" from civ4.

 

[LegionSteve]

For me the main problems are the combat "AI" and the complete lack of balance in every aspect of the game (science v production v money, buildings, civ abilities, great person abilities, victory conditions, everything). The "diplomacy" doesn't really bother me because I ignore it.

The next patch will have a hell of a lot of balance changes. Hopefully that will improve the game a lot. They also claim to have fixed diplomacy (again) but last time they said that we got denouncement chains, so wait and see.

That leaves the biggest problem which is that the AI can't play the game at all. In my last game an AI declared war on me, when I had swords and archers. For a few turns nothing happened. Then they invaded my land with ... a warrior+settler. One of my cities injured the warrior and it ran home. The settler continued to march across my land until it got captured. This was on, King or Emperor level I can't remember. If watching the AI do stuff like that would annoy you, don't buy it.

The thing is, Civ games have never had good AI. Now I don't like the idea of stacks, and the concept of suicide catapults is as dumb as anything, but they did an ok job of hiding the rubbish AI in Civ 4. With 1UPT the rubbish AI is cruelly exposed, and I don't believe they are capable of fixing it even if they had the will to do so. They never have in any Civ game before. Most of the AI improvements in Civ 4 came from the community, and it still does some dumb things.

So that's how I feel about Civ 5 at the moment, hope that helps in some way.

 

[Leif Roar]

Hard to say, really. It doesn't seem that liking earlier Civilization games is a good indicator of whether you will like Civ V or not. It does appear that "builders" are more likely to be negative than "warmongers", but it's not a firm rule.

I'd suggest that you play through the demo 4-5 times. If it still holds your interest after that then the game will probably be worth it for you, but if you quickly tire of the demo then I don't think the released and announced patches will salvage the game for you.

 

[Polish]

Have been playing since the get-go. Definately worth the cost of admission. The patches have made it better and will continue to do so. There are some really good mods also. Have gotten way more than $50 bucks worth of entertainment value.

 

[Drawmeus]

It's a gamble. Lots of people like it, lots of people don't. It has gotten better and is continuing to get better, but on the other hand if you don't like the basic design (hexes, 1UPT, empire-wide happiness, etc) then the improvements aren't going to salvage it for you.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

AFAIC, it's really just a coin-toss but i don't know the reasonable extent of your wallet.
Think of it this way, 100$ per 100 hours of gameplay these days is never enough.
Which is why replayability factors such as regular Patching *and* MODS makes 500+hours on top of the above worth either an empty wallet now or exponential Fun in the Thousand$ range for a long time.

 

[forty2j]

About to get a new rig which will allow me to play CiV - i7 950 with a GTX465 EE Superclock and 12Gb RAM, so I'm not anticipating issues meeting the specs

I've heard that due to some concurrency issues, it reaches a point where your rig is "too good" and starts to slow down again. Maxing out hardware doesn't quite work with this particular game at the moment.

I like the game a lot. Yes, the combat/tactical AI can be goofy, and yes, diplomacy needs more help (and it's getting some in the next patch, though it won't be anywhere near "done" yet), but I definitely prefer the feel of the game over Civ 4. There's less to manage, but I consider that a plus.

 

[Drawmeus]

I like the game a lot. Yes, the combat/tactical AI can be goofy, and yes, diplomacy needs more help (and it's getting some in the next patch, though it won't be anywhere near "done" yet), but I definitely prefer the feel of the game over Civ 4. There's less to manage, but I consider that a plus.

This is roughly my own opinion of the game. I would like a little work done on the Builder side of the game (something that happened last patch, is happening next patch, and will probably happen again the patch after that), but I don't want the complexity amped up overall and I already prefer it to Civ 4.

 

[Roto-Router]

@OP, I've seen positive feedback on game performance from people with GTX46x series cards. I can't speak to the performance impact of faster CPU, though I actually get decent performance with my 4-year-old Core2 Duo setup (& recent DX11 video card), so if you haven't purchased the machine yet you might want to give some thought to price/performance.

I don't know if the available demo reflects the patches they have released since last September; there were some pretty significant rule changes made from the first release to now, so you might find that you hate the demo but would like the game in its current state. There are good mods for most things you would want so I wouldn't sweat it too much even if you don't like some aspects of the vanilla game. I highly recommend Thal's Balance Mods, the City-State Diplomacy Mod, and there is an exciting looking comprehensive religion mod in development. All of these together start to get close to approximating the Civ4 experience, without the SODs that you hate.

Plus...35 bucks ain't that much. With Steam sales you should be able to get it for less. I paid full price in September (USD 60, including the Babylon DLC), which is roughly the price for a nice dinner out for 2 in my area: still a pretty good deal given the several hundred hours I've put into it.

 

[zomg]

Hard to say: some love it, some hate it.

Its definately had some needed improvements and I've gotten >100 hours out of it so far, so I give it a big thumbs up.

When you say it was shovelware by all accounts, I have to think that negative comments really weigh heaviest with you because the reviews were remarkably positive.

But like I say, some people wont see the forest through the trees and if something that they liked in civ 4 isnt there they hate it. A lot is going to come down to how quickly you embrace the happiness concept.

Its a different game, bottom line.

 

[Uncle Anton]

@SpearMan153 - Hehe thanks mate.... Used to drive M113's back in the day (proud to say I had nothing to do with sinking any )

@Camikaze - Thanks for the tip on that mate... $35 price tag pretty much sells it and makes it a no-brainer... region pricing really honks me off, so at the $79 price available on Steam it was a bit of an iffy call (not Steam's fault of course, they don't set the prices... but just because entertainment industries decide to try and fleece Aussies doesn't mean I have to accept it).

@LegionSteve - I hear ya. Truth be told and with Rose Coloured Glasses removed, the community was what made Civ4 as great as it was. I suspect it will be the same here too...

@Roto-Router & Leif Roar - Thanks for the tech info guys. I'd have been getting the computer I did (Got it and put it together last night) regardless, but I'll keep an eye on those performance issues.

Cheers to everyone else for your thoughts. I guess with all things weighed up, yep it's a gamble - but at $35 I reckon it's worth a punt.

Rest assured if there's any Nerdrage to be had or vaguely obscene outpourings of geeklove, one way or another I'll be splashing it all across these forums... just like everyone else.

 

[Jatta Pake]

Go ahead and buy. I'm a Civ 1 - 4, Colonization, Alpha Centuri fan too. I'm not sure if you will still be playing it in two months though. The waters are a bit too shallow for my tastes.

Things I enjoy:

* Graphics are fun
* No road spam over every tile
* Hexes are cool and fun
* One Unit Per Tile were an interesting concept
* Social Policies are fun
* Tedious tasks are eliminated

Things I don't enjoy:

* Depth of strategy choices and balance. Others go into detail but you can beat the game easily by using cheesy "infinite city sprawl" tactics and manipulating city growth to keep cities small.
* Multiplayer seems broken - I was looking forward to play by email

Hardcore fans worry that the overall design lacks enough umph to ever make this a great game regardless of mods and patches. I don't know modding, but it seems like this game has the potential to be great.

The game hasn't given me reasons to stay up past bedtime like previous versions. Maybe I just need to play at harder settings than standard. (I never played difficult settings did on previous versions as standard was always hard enough for me). I don't fear the AI.

If I ran Firaxis, I would hire some of the fantastic modders from the Civ community to reformat the game with a HARDCORE variant allowing unit stacking and other fundamental changes.

 

[Camikaze]

@Camikaze - Thanks for the tip on that mate... $35 price tag pretty much sells it and makes it a no-brainer... region pricing really honks me off, so at the $79 price available on Steam it was a bit of an iffy call (not Steam's fault of course, they don't set the prices... but just because entertainment industries decide to try and fleece Aussies doesn't mean I have to accept it).

Just note that you'll have to wait a week or two for shipping.

 

[Uncle Anton]

Just note that you'll have to wait a week or two for shipping.

Roge. Love that the shipping is free.