Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[AlazkanAssassin]

What is stupid in Civ5 is that a mere boat can pass through boated enemy units and kill them without a fight. It should not be possible.

I think this is fixed in G&K. Embarked units fight back now.

 

[Thormodr]

From an update from Jon Shafer's At the Gates, he discusses what went wrong in Civilization 5 and what he's learned from it. It's a pretty good article in my opinion.

He explains why global happiness was wrong, for instance.

Revisiting the Design of 'Civ 5'

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts

A lot of these things are dealt with in At the Gates. For example, there is unit stacking as well as more transparent diplomacy. Looks like it shaping up to be a pretty decent game.

 

[Greizer85]

From an update from Jon Shafer's At the Gates, he discusses what went wrong in Civilization 5 and what he's learned from it. It's a pretty good article in my opinion.

He explains why global happiness was wrong, for instance.

Revisiting the Design of 'Civ 5'

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts

A lot of these things are dealt with in At the Gates. For example, there is unit stacking as well as more transparent diplomacy. Looks like it shaping up to be a pretty decent game.

You should make a separate thread for that article; it's a pity to see it buried in the rant thread as it's got some pretty good insights in it. It's a rare thing to see a leader of anything admit his mistakes and learn from them.

 

[Matthew.]

I think it is the same one linked from the "Jon comes back with a vengeance thread", so it already does have a separate thread.

 

[rschissler]

From an update from Jon Shafer's At the Gates, he discusses what went wrong in Civilization 5 and what he's learned from it. It's a pretty good article in my opinion.

He explains why global happiness was wrong, for instance.

Revisiting the Design of 'Civ 5'

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts

A lot of these things are dealt with in At the Gates. For example, there is unit stacking as well as more transparent diplomacy. Looks like it shaping up to be a pretty decent game.

That was an amazing article, the first I'd heard about it. I was impressed by how he acknowledged most of the flaws I've experienced with Civ V.

 

[Greizer85]

I think it is the same one linked from the "Jon comes back with a vengeance thread", so it already does have a separate thread.

Yes, my bad. However it's still not in the op of that thread, so the visibility is not optimal. Everyone who's debated the pros and cons of Civ V needs to see that article imo.

 

[PieceOfMind]

It baffles me that he would call using the slider "boring busywork". Because going through adjusting the tiles and citizens in every city is not boring busywork?

The slider in every civ game to civ4 has been arguably one of the most streamlined and quick-to-use features of the game. Its only problem I can think of is that it wasn't entirely intuitive to players how it worked, as the system of turning "commerce" into gold and science via the slider is often poorly understood (the classic demonstration being a newbie wondering how a civ with 50% slider was researching faster than another on 100%).

This is what I don't understand about some of Shafer's design goals... The reasons for some seem entirely at odds with his reasons for others. The UI may have looked more attractive and had better proportions or whatever, but it took more clicks to achieve similar tasks and the civilopedia is a massive step down in usability.
The monochrome icons for improvements and units are also a step backwards for usability - the use of colour is a powerful tool for improving distinguishability (a word?). Even Civ1 had better unit icons by that measure.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I agree with all of PieceOfMind's "rants" (really criticisms with solid reasoning for doing things differently from the previous games in the Civilization series). Really Civ IV was the first Civilization game with really solid game balance that did not allow the player to easily win with Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) that all previous Civs (I, II, III) suffered from.

In my opinion, Civ V would have been a far better game if it had been more of an evolution of Civ IV, fixing the remaining design issues in that game adapting to a hexsgonal map and revising the User Interface to things much easier to do. Along those lines would have been end user modifications of the "wizard" features that would change citizen assignments in the way the user wants rather that the limited ways the AI would do it. This implies far greater improvements to the AI as the single most important area for improvement.

I could go on much longer, but need cut this post short. I will say that when I first played Civ V, I was absolutely stunned by how extremely slowly my capital grew right after being settled. The elimination of Cottages was the next stunning revelation. Even building things seemed slow. Afterwards I came to understand that all these were related to the space requirements of the 1UPT (One Unit Per Tile) requirement which was the single worse conception adopted by Civ V, because it affected nearly every in the game, including the AI as well as the "tip of the iceberg" I mentioned above.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Deggial]

... I was absolutely stunned by how extremely slowly my capital grew right after being settled. ... Afterwards I came to understand that all these were related to the space requirements of the 1UPT (One Unit Per Tile) requirement ..., because it affected nearly every in the game ...

Okay, I don't want to argue 1UPT itself. Obviously enough, there are different oppinions regarding this design decission. I like it, others don't. I am totally fine with this disagreement.

What I really don't understand is the above conclusion. Can anybody explain it to me, please?

I mean: If it is true that it is crucial to limit the ammount of units due to 1UPT (and I do agree here!), WHY should this affect city growth and development at all? Simply raise the production costs of units! There is no need at all to touch buildings!

The same argument was laid regarding lowered tile yields. (Not in recent posts and not by the posters above. But I do remember having read it at the very beginning). I think, it was wrong all the same.

Please note: I don't want to argue wether or not cities grow (too) slow in CiV. If this is true, it is another design decision. (Maybe a bad one, in your opinion. Which is absolutely admissible!)
I only want to say that this has nothing to do with 1UPT and shouldn't be mixed with this all the time!

 

[Jayman1000]

My WWII mod is working fine with a custom 2 UPT mechanism. AFAIK the AI have no problem with stacks, base movement code is still coming from civ4. As mentioned the problem is for the human players as you'll have to write a new UI component to handle (big) stacks movement. Which is not impossible.

Cool, I'll want to try that, good to hear that some of the awesomeness of Civ IV can be brought in to CiV

What is the custom 2UPT called, and do you know how to get i, like link to mod/mechanism on these forums?

 

[rschissler]

Okay, I don't want to argue 1UPT itself. Obviously enough, there are different oppinions regarding this design decission. I like it, others don't. I am totally fine with this disagreement.

What I really don't understand is the above conclusion. Can anybody explain it to me, please?

I mean: If it is true that it is crucial to limit the ammount of units due to 1UPT (and I do agree here!), WHY should this affect city growth and development at all? Simply raise the production costs of units! There is no need at all to touch buildings!

The same argument was laid regarding lowered tile yields. (Not in recent posts and not by the posters above. But I do remember having read it at the very beginning). I think, it was wrong all the same.

Please note: I don't want to argue wether or not cities grow (too) slow in CiV. If this is true, it is another design decision. (Maybe a bad one, in your opinion. Which is absolutely admissible!)
I only want to say that this has nothing to do with 1UPT and shouldn't be mixed with this all the time!

Obviously, you don't see it. With more city growth and cheaper buildings you will have more gold and production. Which means you can buy or produce more units faster. So, more units for IUPT, which is what he was trying to avoid.

 

[Jayman1000]

Okay, I don't want to argue 1UPT itself. Obviously enough, there are different oppinions regarding this design decission. I like it, others don't. I am totally fine with this disagreement.

What I really don't understand is the above conclusion. Can anybody explain it to me, please?

I mean: If it is true that it is crucial to limit the ammount of units due to 1UPT (and I do agree here!), WHY should this affect city growth and development at all? Simply raise the production costs of units! There is no need at all to touch buildings!

The same argument was laid regarding lowered tile yields. (Not in recent posts and not by the posters above. But I do remember having read it at the very beginning). I think, it was wrong all the same.

Please note: I don't want to argue wether or not cities grow (too) slow in CiV. If this is true, it is another design decision. (Maybe a bad one, in your opinion. Which is absolutely admissible!)
I only want to say that this has nothing to do with 1UPT and shouldn't be mixed with this all the time!

I would advise you to read Sullas webpage about what went wrong about CiV:

www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html. Am I allowed to put links? If not I apologize. Im not sure if an equivalent forum post exist.

 

[Gedemon]

What is the custom 2UPT called, and do you know how to get i, like link to mod/mechanism on these forums?

It's completely integrated in the WWII mod ATM. I still hope to find the time to convert some of the mod's mechanism to the base game...

Or I may directly go for a larger overhaul mod, something I plan to do since the game is out.

Because, to stay on topic, I was not really *convinced* by the new game base mechanisms, like a lot of civ4 players, but, unlike most civ4 modders, it's what has given me the will to mod it (that and I was also very interested by its modding potentiality with Lua and SQL)

 

[the343danny]

"My original goal was for the AI leaders to act human. But humans are ambiguous, moody and sometimes just plain crazy. This can be interesting when you're dealing with actual, real humans, but I learned the important lesson that when you're simulating one with a computer there's no way to make this fun. Any attempt to do so just turns into random, unproductive noise.

I came to realize that while diplomacy is a unique challenge, it's ultimately still just a gameplay system just like any other. Regardless of whether your enjoyment is derived from roleplaying or simply a game's core mechanics, if your opponents' goals and behavior aren't clear then you'll have absolutely no idea what’s going on or what to do.

In Civ 5, you might have been lifelong allies with a leader, but once you enter the late-game he has no qualms backstabbing you in order to win. With this being the case, what's the point of investing in relationships at all?"

Quote from Jon Shafer himself in an interview for his upcoming game.

This was my biggest issue with the game, and AFAIK nothing has been done to really remedy the situation. Im somewhat hopeful for the next expansion, if it actually focuses on diplomacy like people are saying it would. Judging by the interview, it seems like he learned a lot from making Civ 5 and accepts that it was a disappointment to many and had many design flaws. Now only if he could go back in time and remake the game, I think he would do an excellent job.

Oh, and how he scrapped the commerce system and replaced it with only gold was a huge flop in my opinion. He still realizes the consequences of his actions though.

1UPT combat system would have been wonderful, had the battlefield been much larger. Combat which was a huge selling point of Civ 5 kind of was a disappointment in that regard.

 

[LegionSteve]

One bit I noticed in that article mentioned above:

Like other 4X games, diplomacy in ATG is built around your "relations" metric with other leaders. But compared with Civ 5, what goes into that number and what it does is very clear. For example, if you're at -5 with a leader, he'll never trade with you, while at +10 he'll always agree to help out in a war if requested. Rather than trying to decipher what the RNG (random number generator)-based AI is "thinking," your objective is instead to find as many ways as you can (afford) to boost that Relations number. Once you've done so, a variety of options for how your new friend can assist you become available.

In other words, his new game will be a lot like Civ 4 diplomacy.

Perhaps he finally figured out that some stuff in Civ 4 was done that way for a reason, and just ditching it all wasn't necessarily a good idea.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I would advise you to read Sullas webpage about what went wrong about CiV:

www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html. Am I allowed to put links? If not I apologize. Im not sure if an equivalent forum post exist.

Excellent read for everyone that wants to know what Civ V is really all about.

I read his previous version shortly after Civ V's release and it didn't seem quite as negative, but it still was extremely critical of the game.

His critique of the recent expansion pack is even more critical of nearly every fix which nerfed nearly every strategic/tactical means of beating the AIs, primarily because the AIs are so poor at 1UPT strategy/tactics. One of the ways of doing this was reducing the strength of Horsemen and increasing the strength of city defense so much that Horsemen could no longer capture cities without supporting seige units. This is just one of the ways that the expansion pack's changes frustrate the player's pre-expansion strategies for winning making a game that wasn't much fun to play to be virtually no fun at all to play. He concluded with saying that Civ V had its last chance and he's moving on to better things.

Jayman1000, thank you very much for the link to Sulla's revised critique of Civ V with the expansion pack! It was a very eye opening review from a very reliable game enthusist and reviewer.

Jon Shafer's admissions of mistakes are so shallow compared to Sulla's critique its hard to believe they are talking about the same game. Furthermore, Shafer should not have even mentioned the expansion as improving on his work, because that is a stark contrast with Sulla's appraisal that the expansion on the whole was a "disaster" (I'm not sure Sulla said disaster, but he might just as well have given his mostly negative comments on the expansion).

I highly recommend reading both articles at the same time to really draw good conclusions about Civ V and Jon Shafer's prospects for the future. Unfortunately, they don't look so good to me.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Browd]

Um, don't want to rain on your rant, but the linked Sulla article was commenting on the December 2010 patch, 3 months after the game came out. Not a commentary on G&K, the most recent patch or anything else since Dec. 2010.

 

[Jayman1000]

Um, don't want to rain on your rant, but the linked Sulla article was commenting on the December 2010 patch, 3 months after the game came out. Not a commentary on G&K, the most recent patch or anything else since Dec. 2010.

True, but the points are still valid, even though G&K did address some issues

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Um, don't want to rain on your rant, but the linked Sulla article was commenting on the December 2010 patch, 3 months after the game came out. Not a commentary on G&K, the most recent patch or anything else since Dec. 2010.

Thanks for that clarification. Sulla didn't clearly identify which Patch he was reviewing. I did indeed confuse it with the Gods and Kings Expansion which I should have realized was not the case, since there was no mention of the new Religion or Espionage subsystems.

So Sulla gave up on Civ V after the Dec. 2010 patch. That seems to actually make it even worse.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

True, but the points are still valid, even though G&K did address some issues

I'm curious. Did Gods & Kings actually nullify any Civ V rants or did it simply make them (slightly) more tolerable?

Sun Tzu Wu