Civ5's Biggest Weakness

[J. Hercules]

"You'd like me to fill out that form in triplicate, you say? How about a Whale instead?"

 

[Akka]

The biggest weakness of Civ5 is going from a game based on "making you feel you're the leader of a civilization rewriting history" to a game based on "you're a player gaming the rules to win".

 

[HorribleHarald]

And WHY I can't change leader or city names? It was a part of amusement to change some letters to the funniest way. Now even that is taken away from me.

 

[SuperJay]

You can change city names by clicking the teeny little "Edit" link while you're in the city screen. IIRC it was right under the city name.

 

[HorribleHarald]

Ok, how about leader names? It's more important?

 

[GuiMauro]

we have a situation where when rome captures athens, the romans are suddenly unhappy. In reality they'd be exultant.

They set unhappiness as the new corruption.

By using your example: the roman citizens get unhappy because there is more competition for them to have a nice live
(meaning those greek citizens weren't turned into slaves to be abused, they were upgraded to roman citizens).


Perfectly compatible with real world:

What do you think that would be the average american happiness if they let the borders get open and all the Latins and Asians started flocking into american cities taking out jobs opportunities and decreasing salaries for everybody ?

 

[ClarenceSeedorf]

Unless I'm trying to launch a space shuttle I don't even see the point. I can pay for a diplomacy victory, and do research agreements to get there. If I'm going for domination I just pay the military city states for updated units. Social policies, same thing no need for science.

Sad player.

Do you even enjoy the principle of the game? Do you enjoy building an empire and managing it? The historical aspect of it all? The imagination you can have while playing the game.

To me it seems you only play for victory (and Steam achievements? )

ICS sprawl? You suck.
Moderator Action: Insults are not allowed in this forum.

 

[Akka]

Do you even enjoy the principle of the game? Do you enjoy building an empire and managing it? The historical aspect of it all? The imagination you can have while playing the game.

I like all these, which is precisely why I don't like Civ5.

To me it seems you only play for victory (and Steam achievements? )

That's precisely how Civ5 was designed about.

You're blaming the player for the flaws of the game. Wow. Sounds like the Civ5 AI, which blame the players for following their demands

 

[cf_nz]

I like all these, which is precisely why I don't like Civ5.
"To me it seems you only play for victory (and Steam achievements? )"
That's precisely how Civ5 was designed about.

You're blaming the player for the flaws of the game. Wow. Sounds like the Civ5 AI, which blame the players for following their demands

That's simply an assumption based on your personal opinion of the game. Regardless of how you feel the game was designed I can assure you it is entirely possible to play and enjoy Civ V without the need to win ASAP.

 

[lschnarch]

Sad player.

Do you even enjoy the principle of the game? Do you enjoy building an empire and managing it? The historical aspect of it all? The imagination you can have while playing the game.

To me it seems you only play for victory (and Steam achievements? )

ICS sprawl? You suck.

Would you mind explaining us about what kind of "empire" building you're talking?
What kind of management you feel being needed for doing so?
Which kind of "historical aspect" you see in Civ5?

Sad player, indeed.

 

[Akka]

That's simply an assumption based on your personal opinion of the game. Regardless of how you feel the game was designed I can assure you it is entirely possible to play and enjoy Civ V without the need to win ASAP.

No, that's how the game has been designed.
The developpers themselves said the AI were designed to aim for victory conditions and not be "immersive".
Now you can still play against the design and have fun, but that doesn't mean facts are just "my opinion".

 

[ClarenceSeedorf]

Would you mind explaining us about what kind of "empire" building you're talking?
What kind of management you feel being needed for doing so?
Which kind of "historical aspect" you see in Civ5?

Sad player, indeed.

If you don't like the game...go back to CiV. Nobody is forcing you to play a game which only makes you giggle.

 

[LordTC]

I'd be happy with happiness if instead of being called happiness it was called bureaucracy and if instead of being affected by luxuries it was affected by other things (communications technology, amount of land controlled by empire, number of cities, etc..) and there was a seperate happiness mechanism in the game (or maybe even if happiness was deleted entirely).

But as it is we have this weird hybrid of happiness and bureaucracy where you solve the problems of your empire being too big to control effectively with whales and silks. That just feels wrong to me.

I also think the military bent to the game is completely the wrong approach. The fact is playing CiV at a tactical level on the strategic map is silly. Longbows that can fire on all of Britain show how wrong this gets for instance.

I also think the tactical depth of Total War is basically impossible for CiV to match. The main advantage is the nature of empire building, the technology tree and the ability to choose what your citizens produce by choosing where to build your cities, etc. There is also a lot of value in the wide variety of map types although there are significant losses in the AI performance and I'm uncertain the tradeoff is worth it (Writing an AI that can play well on a world map, a pangaea, a continents map and an archipelago is much harder than writing an AI for a historical power based on their historical territories that can guide them towards taking their historical actions).

 

[Volstag]

And, using the "prevent growth" button, is to me the biggest game breaker in V. The whole point of the Civ franchise is to develope big, productive, thriving cities. In previous versions, there was no need to prevent growth

What? I used prevent growth in Civ IV all the time -- moreso than in Civ V.

-V

 

[Atwork]

As for building units, who does that? I can't see any point in devoting one city to unit production. By the end of the game it would have built what 6 units?

Not true. A good production city with a forge/harbor and the other production modifying buildings will pump units out at a good rate.....On epic speed, I had a city dumping out rifleman every 7 turns......not too bad really. Especially considering that the units from that city were coming out with 45 XP.

 

[Seanirl]

What I hate most of all is:
-The slower pace of the game.
-Road maintenance being annoying as hell, which also reduces the speed of the game since you're never going to be bothered making strategically important roads for military use.
- Culture being all messed up. Do cities even flip anymore? It all just seems weird.
- Social Policies having their price increased by more cities. Surely they could just make it so that a city would just increase the price by an amount that could be later offset by buildings in that city itself? Like... make each new city add 5 culture or something. Now I just don't feel like expanding at all... which is one of my favourite things in Civ.

 

[LordTC]

Can someone give me a historic example of a Civilization intentionally preventing growth in their own capital pre-1900 (ideally pre-1000 BC as its very common in the early game). I'm just not actually familiar with any, and its clearly strategically optimal to do so frequently in Civ, so I'm wondering if there is any historic rationale for doing so.

 

[The Tollan]

I think there was potential for implementing something that would make it possible for huge civilizations to disintegrate in a thunderous clashing of falling components. It would be great if a huge and large civilization could collapse and give way to several less powerful successors. I recall something like this could happen in past Civ games but mainly as a result of military events (which was not much of a balancing factor) and it was not very significant.

The global happiness, as it has been implemented, doesn't cause this though. Maybe rebellion..

I agree with the poster who mentioned the lack of vassals is quite annoying although I do not think it is the worst problem.

The extremely limited menu of diplomatic options is another large problem. However, it seems like future patches and expansions could increase the depth on the diplomacy system. The big problem might be fixing the AI's diplomatic behavior.

 

[Civsassin]

What I hate most of all is:
-The slower pace of the game.
-Road maintenance being annoying as hell, which also reduces the speed of the game since you're never going to be bothered making strategically important roads for military use.
- Culture being all messed up. Do cities even flip anymore? It all just seems weird.
- Social Policies having their price increased by more cities. Surely they could just make it so that a city would just increase the price by an amount that could be later offset by buildings in that city itself? Like... make each new city add 5 culture or something. Now I just don't feel like expanding at all... which is one of my favourite things in Civ.

I like the game overall. It has some flaws that I belive need to be, and will be, addressed in patches / expansion packs. The key thing that most of the critique seems to do is compare Civ V to Civ IV. Civ V was not desiged to be Civ IV. If you like the Civ IV mechanics so well, play it. The game is Civ V vanilla though. It doesn't currently have all of the features the game designers intended, but it will become a more robust game as expansion packs are released.

I agree with the last bullet in the quote. You should be able to win with any victory condition no matter what your style. If you want to win a cultural victory, you really cannot expand beyond about three cities. I prefer larger empires, so cultural victories are mostly out of the question.

I also don't think the AI is particularly effective. I play up through emperor, and I really haven't had an AI compete with me for a science victory or diplomatic victory. Moreover, I usually prefer to get my empire to about six or seven cities before going to war, and the AI obligies very well. It isn't as nearly as aggressive as it should be nor does it really try to win.

On the other hand, I love the combat system. Again, I don't think the AI is particulary effective at employing it, but the system is great. Warfare requires much more planning and unit coordination than in previous versions.

Each civ is given its own passive benefits. Some lend themselves to a particular type of play. For example, France and Siam are perfect for cultural games, yet they seem to expand like every other civ without focus. India is great for space race victories, but I've never been challenged by them during a space race attempt.

There are some mechanical issues, but the AI needs the biggest improvements. It looks like the upcoming patch will address some AI issues and also make the diplomatic system more robust.

 

[gaiko]

Amazing, nobody caught TMIT's very pertinent observation. A key difference is that Civ4 used distance as a factor to control expansion, and in this light the CivV control is superior, as overseas expansion is not inordinately penalized. Vassals were basically a workaround this limitation.

If you want to show understanding of the happiness mechanic in civ V, you do not compare it to happiness in civ IV. You compare it to maintenance and corruption. IMO the biggest problem with this mechanic right now is simply that it is called "happiness" - that throws people off. Its real function is simply another "expansion rate limiter".