Civ5 actions lack "bang for the buck"

[Chryso]

Many actions in the game seriously lack "bang for the buck", in that you don't get much out compared to your investment. Tile improvements feel very underwhelming, and it doesn't seem to matter much which you improve first. That wheat/rice/corn/other special field in Civ4, you were so eager to get up ASAP. Here? +1 food base, additional farm? You don't get more than if you just improve another basic grassland/plains you are using.
I wouldn't also mind having more weight on the improvement and less on the basic land, so improvements counted more. That way you would feel you got more bang for your buck when building improvements. Now the feeling if finishing one is just so underwhelming.

Wonders also feel underwhelming. One free tech for The Great Library? Really? I will build it and it will be one fire-and-forget effect? After that it is just filler. And then again THE SAME for Oxford University (come on now, did you run out of ideas?)? No more proudly scrolling through that city of yours, looking over all the nice bonuses. No more putting together cities, considering seriously which city will have which wonder, to enhance their strengths, like in earlier civs, where you would have Oxford University in cities, that specialized in science.

Chopping forests seems underwhelming too. It is not like you can sacrifice your forests to quickly build an important building, or to produce units to ward off a danger. The amount of wood seems small compared to Civ4, and again it feels like you are not getting much out of your action.


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I want my choices to matter more, and Civ5 seems to have your choices have lesser weight, which results in a less rewarding experience. I often find myself bored, because the actions I take seem more or less irrelevant - I would reach the goal anyway.
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Other complaints:
My economy depends on upkeep of buildings, why then can't I sell/destroy buildings again? I may actually under the current system ruin my economy by building buildings that I don't need, or that I won't need in the future - for instance as the empire grows, maybe I no longer need to have the capital being specialized in building units, and could sell/destroy barracks and other unit-enhancing buildings. But no, I will be stuck with those forever.

 

[rabidveggie]

Your complaints have merit. I don't see much strength in resources any more, they are all so similar.

 

[fantsu]

There is 3 types of resources.
Bonus, strategic and luxury.

Sadly one of these (bonus) is almost useless. Bananas? Cattle? Deer? Sheep? Wheat?
Who really needs those? They are just +1 food. Just settle quicker and you are rewarded more.
Fishes... well it can be nice.

 

[milk steak]

Wheat is actually a little different since it gets benefits from Civil Service and Fertilizer.

 

[Any_One]

I agree completely with everything you said. They said in the lead-up that they decided on this consciously - something like "rather than punishing the player, we just want them to have varying degrees of bonuses" especially with relation to SPs and this philosophy seems to pervade the entire game. But instead of making it more "fun" like they theorised, it just becomes completely boring as 1) you don't have a lot of options beyond war anyway and 2) even when you can do something it just doesn't seem to matter what you pick - they all improve your empire a similarly tiny amount. Perhaps they could double tile improvement (on resources) yields or something (but keep base tiles the same) to make not improving something have more impact. You almost don't even need workers except for luxury resources as it is.

I think maybe this game suffers from "over-balancing" - though there are supposed to be many unique options in it, they are all so balanced to the point that they are all basically equivalent, which in itself is actually a pretty amazing feat considering how much is in the game. But this isn't chess, and for interest's sake it's good to have some options "unbalanced" in some situations. This is not to say that the game should not be balanced - just think of it like a scale balance: you can have a little on either side (ie. not very strongly diverse options) and it will be balanced, or you can have much larger weights on either side (ie. much more specialised options that can be useless if you employ them in the wrong situation) and yet the scale will still be balanced. At the moment there is only a couple of grams on each side.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

In truth, the only resource they've made more interesting are Strategic Resources-but that's only by dint of their units=# of units you can build with them. I really felt that they had the opportunity to make *all* resources genuinely interesting, but have instead failed miserably at that goal.

Aussie.

 

[Wulf38]

I want my choices to matter more, and Civ5 seems to have your choices have lesser weight, which results in a less rewarding experience. I often find myself bored, because the actions I take seem more or less irrelevant - I would reach the goal anyway.

This nails it. Although Civ5 has some new and interesting ideas, and does a few individual gameplay mechanics better than its predecessors, the overall experience is bland because everything just feels so irrelevant to the outcome of the game.