Civilization 5 Rants Thread

Yeah, I discussed the razing part when the game first came out and argued that razing a capital was realistic. Carthage was the prime example I gave.

As for being an unworthy sequel, I agree 100%

Perhaps they will get things right in Civ 6.

 

The way I see it, once you get past the obsolete graphics, the stacks of death, the generic religion system, the vassal system, the pollution and the unhappiness hampering your progress, and the worse-- the slider system, you tend to miss Civ IV a little. I could barely get past Noble on Civ IV, and now I'm sitting around Emperor and Immortal on Civ V. I can't say Civ IV is better than V, in fact, even if Civ V is post G&K, Civ IV yields itself a better game overall, but the frustrating and irritating core mechanics of Civ IV makes me go back to V over IV.

 

Does it say anything to game designers? the obvious consumer/user behavior patterns in these forums?

I go away from Civ for sheeze, what? A year. Last time I popped my head in here, Civ V had just come out and there was an air of veritable insurrection here on the forums.

Lucky for me, I had a nasty intuition about Civ V (the whole Steam mandatory thing is really what sent up red flags for me) and never bothered. So I'm back to reinstall Civ IV and BTS on a new HD and I'm both amazed but not-surprised by what I see here.

The "quarantine thread" which the mods in their questionable wisdom decided to create to try to keep the negative vibe down to a dull roar, has easily 10 times as many views as most other threads in Civ V General discussion.

To the designers and producers of Civ V: Good job! I have no doubt your competitors LOVE you these days.

 

What's wrong in CiV being in Steam according to you?

 

Wrong? absolutely nothing ( well, depending on your point of view). However, some of us ( myself included) have an epic hatred of it.

 

Confirming that being forced to use a 3rd party platform for playing video games is pissing me off beyond recognition.

With one of the BTS patch they even removed the cd check! Now that's something I appreciate as a consumer, anything that reduces the loading time!

 

Yes, the 'hatred' part i sensed in the post i responded to (red flags), that is why i requested to amplify that opinion. Personally, i'm alright with steam - i could download CiV and play it instantly, even offline.

 

I prefer to buy a pakaged game in a brick and mortar store. I had a great experience when I did do with Civ III and Civ IV, but with Civ V, the game wouldn't work without signing up to a third party gaming service (Steam), a requirement that I probably wasn't even aware of when I purchasd the game. The whole installation and configuration experience of of using Steam is one will never what to experience again in my life. It took many days to get the Civ V installation configured to reduce Steam's "control" to a barely tolerable level. Unfortunately, I was not able to eliminate it completely. I still don't understand why Steam needs to run at all to allow Civ V to work. Isn't CD verification enough; what's the point of buying the game in a real store, if one has to sign up to distribution vendor anyway?

Civ V << Civ IV

Sun Tzu Wu

 

Of course, they claim that it's about preventing piracy, but the fact is that there was a steam-free version on the Internet just a few days after the release. I've heard stories about people that bought a copy just to support Firaxis and then downloaded the cracked version instead, to be able to play withou Steam.

So what's the deal with Steam? It's a marketplace. You are shown ads for other games (it keeps track on when and how you play your games). You can buy DLC. And they can skip the beta testing entirely because with Steam they can auto-patch the game as soon as the community discovers new bugs.

And finally, if you for obvious reasons don't like this crappy game, Steam will stop you from selling it. Because even though you thought that you bought a game by grabbing a box in your local game store, you actually just rented it. Steam can anytime, without warning, shut down your account, and stop you from playing the games that you though you owned.

To me, it's just adware/spyware.

 

No it can't.

 

Um, yes actually, it can. this has happened before. check their forums.

I also agree with others. There is absolutely no sane reason to involve a 3rd party into the mix, let alone making the system requirements so frigging high end.

 

If I buy a cup of coffee in a bookstore, I do not expect to be required to drink it in the bookstore.

Likewise, if I buy a EULA to use a piece of gaming software, I do not expect to be required to use it contingent to my having an account to a 3rd party or worse, repeatedly networked to said 3rd party, or even worse, constantly networked simply to activate and use the software.

If Steam worked like Gamersgate I'd be all over that shiz.

 

So do you usually steal coffee cups from bookstores?

But all jokes aside, there probably was a notice on a box warning about us being obliged to use Steam for verification and further use, so, who's to blame? (bought CiV in store, downloaded G&K) Can't say i wasn't surprised either, but that lasted around 3 seconds, before i reminded myself it's 21st century and we are made to (politely) think of ourselves as 'consumers' instead of just 'people'. So, yeah, i slowly pull my wireless modem out of it's socket when i sense Steam is about to sell me something i don't want to have.

 

It is not about the 'notice' of the conditions of the EULA, or lack thereof. It is about the conditions of the EULA.

 

Just in case anyone was still wondering: With Steam you dont buy any games. You do not own the game you "buy". What you pay for is a license to play the game, so you basically rent/subscribe for it for an unspecified period of time. And yes, Steam may, in its sole discretion, chose to revoke your license/subscription for any reason or no reason they see fit. However, one could question why they would ever want to do that (bar explicit abuse/online cheating), since that would be a sure way to stop customers paying for new licences for new games.

All in all I am happy for my Steam account. I don't need to actually own a game. I guess if Steam ever goes out of business or for obscure reasons choose to close my account or revoke my licenses.... well, then I'll be mighty unhappy and change my point of view. I just don't see this happening anytime soon. When/if it happens it will probably be more than a decade from now, and by that time I dont guess I'll be playing those games anymore(probably not even Civ IV, however hard that may be to comprehend ;-))

As to Civ V, it's pure crap. Why anyone can keep interest in it for more than 5 hours is truly beyond imagining, even with mods! No amount of modding could ever fix the rampant problems in Civ V. With Civ IV you can mod it almost without limits without getting hampered much from the games core engine/design. And that's one of the most important differences between Civ V and Civ IV, and the reason why I consider Civ V a permanent software failure that is non-fixable and non-patchable.

 

A few months ago I bought software and instead of getting a box + disk,
the seller gave me the receipt with a download link.


For a week now I've been trying the civ4 C2C (Caveman to Cosmos) mod. An amazing mod.
But it's not really a game anymore; it's more like a journey through history.
It's big, maybe too big, and very time consuming.

 

I'd figure I'd note that Gabe has said before that in the event steam has to be shut down, he'd release keys for all the games.

I wouldn't be worried about steam. Origin, on the other hand...

 

here's a small game rant. i just played with Inca on emperor and very early i bought a Slinger to escort a settler who encountered a barb with only 25% of his health. i know the slingers are much weaker in melee but since it was at 25% health i figured he could last. nope. the barb 1-shot and killed the slinger and took my settler. that is just STUPID that they are that weak! a barb with 25% health embarrassed that fool.

(couldnt find the thread about the worst UUs so i posted that here.)

 

Been wanting to play that particular mod for awhile now. I just havn"t figured out how to get it to work

 

Just extract it to your BTS/mods folder as with any other mod. I just downloaded this mod yesterday and gave it a try. The big problem with these huge mods is that you really need giant maps to play on at marathon or even snail speed if you want to make use of all the additional features. Otherwise you just end out with half the world land once you get to the middle ages. However, with a map like GEM (which is included in and altered for the C2C mod), the turn times get much too long by this time. On normal BTS i can play GEM with 1 to 1:30 minute turn times in the middle ages and five minutes in endgame (modern era), which is ok, since your own turns usually take ten to fifteen minutes. With mods though the turn times are easily five times as long, which is obviously unplayable.

It's a real shame for all these great and overwhelming mods, but unless you have an absolute powerhouse as a computer there is no way to get the full benefit out of them.

EDIT: I should add, C2C is still worth downloading, be it only for the altered Baba Yetu title song. Brilliance at its best.