Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[truenarnian]

I am bewildered as to why people don't like Civ 5, but to each their own. I'm glad this game has found a market because it's my favorite of all the games so far.

But it's not perfect:

Why is there no simple display for which cities my religion has spread to? I never know where to sent my prophets/missionaries without scanning the map manually on zoom to see what cities are subject to what pressure.

Why are the civs so Eurocentric?

What's with the religion selections? No Shamanism, Sun God worship, Animism, etc? That so many of the civs devault to Christianity just makes no good sense.

 

[Civking5]

I don't understand why this tread is in civ5 general discussion at all especially because almost all the haters in this tread generally love civ4, and their posts are full of insult to anyone who likes civ5. My suggestion is to remove this thread to civ4 forum so the haters can praise more their beloved civ4 over there. Now, dont get me wrong I like civ4 too, in fact, I have both civ 4 and 5 installed on my desktop, and play either one depends on my mood. However, I am very happy with civ 5 because it is so different than civ 4, and not just advanced civ4 with more fluff.

 

[Civking5]

To add my previous post, read alchemind's post above this page, it just plane ridiculous.

 

[markusbeutel]

I don't understand why this tread is in civ5 general discussion at all especially because almost all the haters in this tread generally love civ4, and their posts are full of insult to anyone who likes civ5. My suggestion is to remove this thread to civ4 forum so the haters can praise more their beloved civ4 over there. Now, dont get me wrong I like civ4 too, in fact, I have both civ 4 and 5 installed on my desktop, and play either one depends on my mood. However, I am very happy with civ 5 because it is so different than civ 4, and not just advanced civ4 with more fluff.

This thread is here because if it weren't, you'd be inundated with countless rant threads in the general discussion forum. People that don't like Civ V have just as much a right to voice their opinion as those that like the game, (and it's the game they're ranting about, not its players), so you should have no reason to feel insulted, and you have no right to insult the posts of others.

And your post isn't a Civ V rant. Doesn't belong here - the mods have said as much countless times. There's a raves thread you might be interested in, but you might have trouble finding it, (although your odds of finding it are far better seeing as all of the rants are coupled together in this one thread).

 

[lollibast]

I don't understand why this tread is in civ5 general discussion at all especially because almost all the haters in this tread generally love civ4, and their posts are full of insult to anyone who likes civ5. My suggestion is to remove this thread to civ4 forum so the haters can praise more their beloved civ4 over there. Now, dont get me wrong I like civ4 too, in fact, I have both civ 4 and 5 installed on my desktop, and play either one depends on my mood. However, I am very happy with civ 5 because it is so different than civ 4, and not just advanced civ4 with more fluff.

I just love posts of Civ5 likers that start with " I don't understand". And as to your suggestion, why not remove yourself from the rants thread rather than the thread from the forum.

Meanwhile on another battlefield: G&K religious system sux and it's plain useless. The effort you put into it is in no relation to your gains. Actually, what are your gains when you have to choose perks that allow you to spread it more effectively. From my experience, you fare better if you just ignored it completely. Founding a pantheon is ok, gives you a nice boost in the early game but once you get missionaries and worse, GPs purge your own religion just accept it, be happy about the AI's waste of energy and go on. (assuming you really are playing civ5)

 

[LDiCesare]

From the demo, I think G&K religions can have some uses, like buying ancient era units, or getting more culture. It's a lot of micromanagement (CivV-wise) for that, however, and I feel like you can spend a lot of time managing religion if you play this way. Still, Civ IV religion system was not very realistic and could be summed up as +happiness + heaps of gold. I think the Civ V system is not that bad but indeed it has a lot of buildings you build with faith that let you have more faith so you can get even more faith.

 

[Funky]

@Rvil Plum:

I admire your optimism in expecting a good future civ game. However, after the desaster of civ 5 my hopes are very slim. In fact, it's not just civ 5, it's the general direction the franchise has taken over the years which you mention yourself, with games like Colonization, Civ Rev and Civ Facebook. And I've heard that civ 6 is supposed to continue the trend towards "accessability". At this time these are just vague rumors of course and may mean nothing, but in the last years there has been simply no evidence indicating that the current trend will be halted, let alone reversed.

Maybe I don't understand this Kickstarter thing you mention correctly, but it definitely is not the gamer's responsibility to throw in money to Firaxis for a better civ game. This would be true if the company hadn't produced an epic fail, and it is a lot more true after the company's current employees have proven to be incompetent and the direction of the series geared towards simplicity. I for one have no trust left at all in Firaxis, and it is their responsibility to change this. If they prove the pessimists like me wrong by producing a really epic civ 6, I will change my opinon. But once again, I wouldn't count on that happening.

Now on the positive side, the gap that has been created by turning civ into a mainstream casual wargame has already been filled. Despite the trend among most companies towards accessability and dumbing down of their games, there is still a big market left for the 30+ generation or I should better say for people who enjoy deep complex games which require thought and meaningful decisions rather than adrenaline producing clickfest games. Paradox Interactive has filled the gap and if you don't know their games I suggest you check them out. The ones I am familiar with are Europa Universalis 3 and Crusader Kings 2 which are both absolutely excellent and incredibly complex (in a good way). Their other games are similar from what I've read.

Sure, I also miss civilization occasionally, having spent 10.000s of hours with the different versions over the last 20 years. But I also miss playing ultima 6 and 7, battle isle, silent service, betrayal at krondor and even a game like Dragon Wars from 1988. Time changes and we should allow ourselves to adapt to new games. In the RPG genre, Skyrim is a absolutely astounding game, especially when well-modded (and the mod community is simply awesome). Strategy-wise we have the Paradox games. We definitely have alternatives. They may not bring back the magic of Ultima 6 or Civ 2 (or 4, for that matter), but that, I guess, is just the flow of time.

 

[LDiCesare]

Kickstarter is a site that funds game companies. The companies present a project, and, if you like the proposal, you can pledge money on it. Then Kickstarter gets the funds and the developpers get to work. for instance I like this one: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity - So game vendors think 2D iso RPG's are out of date? Well, there's a market of at least $2M for it, thus it can be done.
I think the idea was for someone to fund a Civ IV++ project over there. I don't know which studio would do that however. Indie civ game projects exist or have existed, but there is little hope there either as it's far easier to start off an existing engine and games like CtP2 or CivIV, with the code source released, are more interesting to mod than making a whole new game.
The issue is not whether there's a market for another civ game, but who would be ready to develop it, and who would you trust to develop it?

 

[Funky]

To add my previous post, read alchemind's post above this page, it just plane ridiculous.

Excuse me for jumping in to alchemind's defense, but he has simply displayed the evident disparity between official reviews and players' ratings of games. This disparity cannot be denied and to call it ridiculous is ignoring the facts. I wouldn't even call it a conspiracy theory. Everyone knows that gaming companies and magazines are dependent on eachother. Companies need good ratings for their games. Magazines and sites need money from advertisements and access to pre-release game versions. Obviously they work together to support eachother, I mean this is really no secret. Instead of randomly attacking other posters (and straying off-topic in the process), why don't you go play civ 5?

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Goddamn, this thread is for ranting. Everyone who doesn't should leave it alone!

 

[LDiCesare]

Even official reviews tend not to favor Civ V that much. Open Steam, look at Civ V. There's a 90 metacritic score associated to it. Curiously, Civ IV has 94...

 

[Brian Shanahan]

From my opinion, we approximatively have 80% and 20% over all civfanatics members.

No what you actually have is 80% fanboys:20% realists over the spread of the civ 5 portion of the forum.

Considering that after the panning the game rightly got early doors, most normal players will have abandoned the game completely, and concomitantly this portion of the site, the headcount here is wildly off for comparison to total site membership. For example compare the Civ 4 and 5 SG fora, Civ 5 has 6 SGs ongoing over the last 12 months of which only 3 seem to have gone farther than the planning a game stage. Compare the Civ 4 SG forum, which has four games that have had posts in October 2012, suggesting that by far the strongest part of the community is playing Civ 4 and ignoring Civ 5.

 

[Goodfella]

No what you actually have is 80% fanboys:20% realists over the spread of the civ 5 portion of the forum.

Considering that after the panning the game rightly got early doors, most normal players will have abandoned the game completely, and concomitantly this portion of the site, the headcount here is wildly off for comparison to total site membership. For example compare the Civ 4 and 5 SG fora, Civ 5 has 6 SGs ongoing over the last 12 months of which only 3 seem to have gone farther than the planning a game stage. Compare the Civ 4 SG forum, which has four games that have had posts in October 2012, suggesting that by far the strongest part of the community is playing Civ 4 and ignoring Civ 5.

There is also a huge chunk of cfc users in the OT section and polls suggest that most of them dislike civ V.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

There is also a huge chunk of cfc users in the OT section and polls suggest that most of them dislike civ V.

I'm keeping away from OT. Want my blood not to boil this time around.

But thanks for the reminder. I'm a number on the first of those polls, where IIRC Civ 2 won, by a country mile.

 

[Alchemind]

Even official reviews tend not to favor Civ V that much. Open Steam, look at Civ V. There's a 90 metacritic score associated to it. Curiously, Civ IV has 94...

Metacritic is actually a standard example of corporate influence as anything else. 90/100 proclaims a great game while the user reviews differ at 6.9, an outstanding difference considering the hype and what Civ 5 was to live up too.

To add my previous post, read alchemind's post above this page, it just plane ridiculous.

I'm not exactly sure of why it's so ridiculous when the evidence is so prevalent only one has too look at the front page of IGN and view the banner ads of the market pressure involved to understand the scope of why games like Civ 5 are consistently and conveniently lied to us by reviewers.


Someone earlier in this thread actually mentioned they won't buy Civ 6 until it is proven by fans to be good, and not some distant media entity with other vested interests, and I can only hope others feel the same.

 

[Revent]

Frustrating thing about CiV has more posts than the raves thread

 

[Funky]

Frustrating thing about CiV has more posts than the raves thread

This thread actually used to have over 200 pages. Then one day half of the pages were gone. The first posts and recent ones are still there, but there are big gaps now, whole weeks are missing that were there before. The moderators apparently removed big chunks of it several weeks ago. I won't accuse them of wanting to make the amount of rants appear smaller, it was probably just to gain forum storage space. A short notice would have been nice though. Not that it really matters, I doubt many people are going to read through the entire thread...

Moderator Action: Please, no public discussion related to moderator actions.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[lollibast]

This thread actually used to have over 200 pages. Then one day half of the pages were gone. The first posts and recent ones are still there, but there are big gaps now, whole weeks are missing that were there before. The moderators apparently removed big chunks of it several weeks ago. I won't accuse them of wanting to make the amount of rants appear smaller, it was probably just to gain forum storage space. A short notice would have been nice though. Not that it really matters, I doubt many people are going to read through the entire thread...

they (if they did, not accusing anyone) could've deleted the raves thread instead, but then that wouldnt have openend a lot of storage space . maybe the missing pages show up next to some ballot cards in a Florida landfill

 

[Funky]

maybe the missing pages show up next to some ballot cards in a Florida landfill

...along with a confession of the real murderer of Kennedy, a notice of what happened at Area 51, and the code for a decent civ 5 AI.

 

[cugel]

"and the code for a decent civ 5 AI."
In fact I have got to admit that I thought the Huns were doing well in a Craterlake map as the first opponent. They were quite friendly unlike their normal behaviour. I had to build close to my second opponent, the Romans, because they were close to a floodplain with a lot of horses and iron. And so, as the Greeks, I had to build a lot of forts to protect Sparta, my second city. At a certain moment I make an open border deal with a Hun that has been behaving perfectly. When I see an army move past Athens, on their way to Sparta and the Romans, I'm slightly worried, but as they don't molest my hardly defended capital, I think they are on their way to attack the Romans, but halfway between my two cities the Huns declare that they have fooled me and are now attacking me. I just survive the double war, because I had been building a strong army against the Romans, but I thought it a nice piece of deceit. Nifty.
I shouldn't be posting this in the rants thread except to modify my earlier critique, on page 109, slightly.
I still think this game eats way to much time and is slightly monotomous after having played it a good bit.