Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[Civking5]

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

Most of the points are not valid to the point as I mentioned earlier in this forum, I would see Sulla's rants obsolete.

 

[Civking5]

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

Sun Tzu Wu

Question like this makes me wonder, have u played the game at all or you r just ranting? Because people obviously smarter than you say that civ5 is bad bad bad.

 

[mrt309]

Question like this makes me wonder, have u played the game at all or you r just ranting? Because people obviously smarter than you say that civ5 is bad bad bad.

I really understand how you like civ 5 and i can see it from your nickname too. You really want to defend it. It's a very nice game but not as good as we (some civ fans) expect it to be. There are so many posts under this topic explaining what is wrong about the game. Even Jon Shafer admitted some of them. I play it almost everyday. Actually i try to play but diplo is broken and 1 upt thing makes it tedious when you have more than 6-7 units. I simply can not get that being a mighty leader feeling. I just get the feeling of being a squad leader. A civilization game must be something else.

Edit: by the way waiting for the next expansion with a little hope.

 

[Jabberwockxeno]

Ugh, I need some feedback. Figured I'd ask here before I made a thread.

Ever since Gods and Kings, I've been annoyed at the rock paper scissors thing going on with swordsman spearman and horseman.

Basically, the swordsman line is cramped and filled with units that have no equalivents, and it causes half of the units to be around for a very short amount of time. (Longswordsman, great war infantry, and musketman/rifleman to a degree).

But then you have infantry staying around for a super long period of time. I've always wanted to make a mod that pushes plastics back and changes infantry to act like a cold war era unit. But at the same time, the other stuff (longswordsman and co) still present a problem I want to solve.

However, this all makes me think. The more and more I look at it, the more and more things I want to correct. But is it worth it? Is it really that unbalenced to begin with?

A part of me just wants to remove great war infantry, and landship, maybe the planes, too.

I need some people to bounce ideas off of.

 

[SouljahAtWar]

Moderator Action: *snip*
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Jabberwockxeno, I see you actually play the game, I'm sorry you don't like the new units. I'd suggest playing a slower game speed if you are having trouble keeping up with upgrading units. I rather like the swordsman-longswordsman/musketmen-rifleman upgrades, it feels like I am advancing through time. And if you don't like the new G&K units, you can always uninstall G&K and play the vanilla game. I find G&K a vast improvement, enough so that it eclipses and eventually, with more balance and enhancements, obsolete Civ 4.

 

[Funky]

Moderator Action: *snip*
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Actually the Civ 4 rants thread was started a few weeks ago by an envious Civ 5 fan. And the only one who ranted was himself.

There's really no point in comparing Civ 4's initial technical issues and the occasional odd voice criticizing the gameplay when it came out with the overwhelming mass of complaints, rants, and insightful analyses of what went wrong, produced by the shock and horror over Civ 5 throughout every forum, sales platform, and review site around the world.

 

[terveurn]

I have played all versions of Civ from the very beginning - I found the best version so far is Civ II

Tried Civ III and hated the graphics, the game played sucked and all in all, was a bit cheezy - dumped the game after 1 week and went back to Civ II

Tried Civ IV when it first came out - again, game play sucked, the AI kept crashing and went back to CIv II

Been playjng Civ V now for almost 6 months - found it to be a whole bunch better then Civ III & IV would not mind going back to II, but II does not work on my current computer and I would have to unpack the old computer to play (wish Sid would release original versions of his games for modern computers)

Each version of Civ has a lot going for it (and each version has bits that suck) hate of V that you can not stack units (but just imagine what a AI can do with a stack of units as well -- been there and done that in Civ II)

I think allowing units just to embark on the ocean is stupid (in Civ II you had to build transport ships which carry, 6 units) - I hate that you can not use your air units to scout (ie go out a distance from the shore look around and return) this just flying point to point with out telling what is below the unit is stupid

I also think this range of sight is stupid - once you find where a city is and your artillery has already hit the city at least once, does it make and sense that if you scout can not longer see a city (or target) that you no longer can attack it (same with a air unit bombing a city - the city is not going to move yet you can not attack because you do not have eyes directly seeing the city)

 

[Jabberwockxeno]

Moderator Action: *snip*
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Jabberwockxeno, I see you actually play the game, I'm sorry you don't like the new units. I'd suggest playing a slower game speed if you are having trouble keeping up with upgrading units. I rather like the swordsman-longswordsman/musketmen-rifleman upgrades, it feels like I am advancing through time. And if you don't like the new G&K units, you can always uninstall G&K and play the vanilla game. I find G&K a vast improvement, enough so that it eclipses and eventually, with more balance and enhancements, obsolete Civ 4.

It's not I don't like them, I just don't like the pacing.

In all other aspects, I love G&K. But I'm anal about consistency, and sadly, the warrior /swordsman/longswordsman unit tree is NOT consistent with the other unit trees. I see what they tried to do: simulate the ways warefare changed in the real world, down to a T. The thing is, the typical civ game does not follow history.

IMO, they should have stuck with keeping it generalized and have each unit be a progression of small arms tech, not tech and tactics. Actually, I just got an idea.

Fuse great war infantry with rifleman, move musketman to be the rennasiance era unit, and push infantry and rifleman back so infantry is cold war era (which, is what SHOULD have gotten a new unit, not the 1st WW era, as there was much more change in both tactics and weapons tech, as well as a bigger gap in unit evolution).

This would solve much of it.

Now, how do I handle landship and such...

Also, another thing I just realized. If you compare the knight, longswordsman, and pikeman, the knight is weaker than the longswordsman. I always assumed that it was stronger, because of the whole Spear units beat horse units, horse units beat sword units, and sword units beats spear units thing.

So, is it not actually a rock paper sissocers thing? Or should I be comparing units from different era since they all aren't unlocked at the same time?

 

[Civking5]

I really understand how you like civ 5 and i can see it from your nickname too. You really want to defend it. It's a very nice game but not as good as we (some civ fans) expect it to be. There are so many posts under this topic explaining what is wrong about the game. Even Jon Shafer admitted some of them. I play it almost everyday. Actually i try to play but diplo is broken and 1 upt thing makes it tedious when you have more than 6-7 units. I simply can not get that being a mighty leader feeling. I just get the feeling of being a squad leader. A civilization game must be something else.

Edit: by the way waiting for the next expansion with a little hope.

My nickname selection was more than a happy accident than meaning anything else ( civking were already created when I made the name, and you may find it interesting that i played mostly civ3 in last couple if weeks). Although I am a big supporter of civ5 and one thing that annoys me is baseless criticism from people who don't play the game or never did since it released and constantly refer to others posts as the reason why they hate the game. It is fine if you play the game and criticize it for the purpose of improving it , but ranting like this in the civ5 forum to bash the game is a waste of time for everybody. I say remove this thread out of civ5 forum to some where else for any one who has suggestions, dreamers, any one who is angry of his/her mom, etc...

 

[Brian Shanahan]

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.

His article read more like him trying to say "everything about civ 5 is awesome, even the stuff which isn't implemented properly", while demonstrating that, in fact, the game is a perfect example of Fromage par Neelix, when getting into the gritty details of the problems of the game.

 

[Camikaze]

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

Sun Tzu Wu

Yes, it nullified some Civ5 rants, but largely those Civ5 rants that were not about the core underlying mechanics of the game. It didn't change those core underlying mechanics (it didn't replace 1upt with limited stacks, it didn't remove the diplo AI, it didn't get rid of social policies and bring back civics, etc.), so if an individual's rants were about those things, G&K would understandably not satisfy them. But for those who were happy enough with the design ideas, just not so keen on their implementation, the general consensus was that it was a marked improvement.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Moderator Action: *snip*
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

I find G&K a vast improvement, enough so that it eclipses and eventually, with more balance and enhancements, obsolete Civ 4.

And maybe with enough work they'll make MOO III a good game too.


I'm sorry but from reading the reports of T-Hawk on the game (who's quite partial to it as an intricate jigsaw puzzle type game), and looking at the total lack of attention by serious players of civ, I can safely say that G&K is not improving the game (in fact the religion is just another gamey win more mechanic) and is just adding another layer of busywork to a game which was already 100% busywork.

The only way 5 will ever rival 4 as a game is by ditching 1UPT and returning the game to the series' roots, which were building an empire and using grand strategy (either peace or war) to ensure its survival over a long period of time. Atm 5 is just an inferior wargame, as it meshes 1UPT with a map and economy mechanics which are fundamentally anathaema to 1UPT rules and needs.

 

[Sonereal]

The only way 5 will ever rival 4 as a game is by ditching 1UPT and returning the game to the series' roots, which were building an empire and using grand strategy (either peace or war) to ensure its survival over a long period of time. Atm 5 is just an inferior wargame, as it meshes 1UPT with a map and economy mechanics which are fundamentally anathaema to 1UPT rules and needs.

Ah yes, the Call of Duty School of Game Design. I'm sure that's what the genre needs, a new game every year only slightly different than the one released last year.

Or, better yet, the same game released every five years that bears a striking similarity with a game released five years ago.

Sometimes, it really does boil down to wanting Firaxis to just doing Civilization IV Redux instead of actually doing something new.

 

[ohioastronomy]

There were numerous deep critiques of the game at release. The "you just want Civ 4.5" put-down was tired and pointless the week after release, and it hasn't improved with age.

The critique is that the Civ series has never been terribly good as a wargame, and the map scale is totally inappropriate for a tactical game. The AI is bad at tactics (true here as elsewhere), so it isn't even a *good* tactical game. But it did extract huge costs in the game - in particular, in terms of making the city and empire building much more boring to avoid unit over-production. The lead designer of Civ 5 was a coder, not a designer, and was grossly inexperienced; this led to a series of bad and arbitrary design decisions. (I always hated, for example, not being able to decide which tile the city could expand to without paying cash; this violates the entire ethos of the series, where you can make all of the relevant decisions in a city. And it was done for aesthetics - a clear example of a designer not understanding what people enjoyed in the game.)

If you play other games you can see that there were plenty of solutions to the sort of issues that 4 had. You could limit units via (meaningful) maintenance costs, or a manpower limit, or many other choices. Stacking limits could be meaningful if intermediate in scale.

Total War is a better wargame; GalCiv has much better AI and is a better challenge. Endless Space is a fast alternative with a superior AI. Europa Universalis is a better simulation, and as far as I'm concerned a better wargame and empire builder. What Civ had was clever city and empire building and enough of the other aspects to make a good game.

What they need isn't Civ 4.x; it's going back to thinking about what made Civ fun for players with different game styles and designing something as versatile as the earlier versions were. That is *not* the same thing as demanding the same thing as those versions.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Ah yes, the Call of Duty School of Game Design. I'm sure that's what the genre needs, a new game every year only slightly different than the one released last year.

Or, better yet, the same game released every five years that bears a striking similarity with a game released five years ago.

Sometimes, it really does boil down to wanting Firaxis to just doing Civilization IV Redux instead of actually doing something new.

Doing something new is great, if it actually works and is fun to play.

However, 1UPT neither works at the scale of Civilizations throughout the Ages nor it is new. 1UPT is a rather poor adaptation of the same game mechnism in Panzer General II. It worked well in Panzer General II, because there were only two sides, the player was on the offensive side and the computer needed only to play defensively and moved units only occassionaly to do so. Futhermore, Panzer General II was a purely tactical game and the Civilization series is everything from Grand Strategy, Strategy, Logistics through Tactics in numerous game areas that allows one to win a game anywhere from being totally peaceful to all out war with victory conditions to match.

The Gods and Kings expansion fails in its new Religion and Espionage subsystems which _seems_ to be cobbled onto a design that never planned for these two game additions. The AI might finally now work the way it should have on its initial game release in Sep. 2010 (two years too late). The Civ V espionage subsystem in particular is extremely limited in what the user can do to directly affect a wide number of areas of the game, which Civ IV BtS excelled at.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Aaron90495]

Doing something new is great, if it actually works and is fun to play.

However, 1UPT neither works at the scale of Civilizations throughout the Ages nor it is new. 1UPT is a rather poor adaptation of the same game mechnism in Panzer General II. It worked well in Panzer General II, because there were only two sides, the player was on the offensive side and the computer needed only to play defensively and moved units only occassionaly to do so. Futhermore, Panzer General II was a purely tactical game and the Civilization series is everything from Grand Strategy, Strategy, Logistics through Tactics in numerous game areas that allows one to win a game anywhere from being totally peaceful to all out war with victory conditions to match.

The Gods and Kings expansion fails in its new Religion and Espionage subsystems which _seems_ to be cobbled onto a design that never planned for these two game additions. The AI might finally now work the way it should have on its initial game release in Sep. 2010 (two years too late). The Civ V espionage subsystem in particular is extremely limited in what the user can do to directly affect a wide number of areas of the game, which Civ IV BtS excelled at.

Sun Tzu Wu

How can you criticize Gods and Kings, having said a day ago that you *haven't played it*?

"The AI might finally now work the way it should have on its initial game release in Sep. 2010 (two years too late)."
You basically just admitted that half your argument is wrong. Why keep criticizing the game if the AI is good now? Yes, it was broken at release, but that's not the game everyone's playing now.

"The Gods and Kings expansion fails in its new Religion and Espionage subsystems which _seems_ to be cobbled onto a design that never planned for these two game additions."
First of all, it doesn't seem cobbled in (to most people). Perhaps you should play it before making such a statement? And also, I might note that not all aspects of Civ IV fit perfectly, as many make it out to be; Corporations, among other things, come to mind.

And at this point, 1UPT works pretty well. It's not perfect, but yours and others' statements that there aren't any high-level players because they've all gone back to Civ IV just isn't true. Take, for example, MadDjinn, who happens to be one of the highest-level players out there. He recently said that Civ V + G&K is possibly good enough to switch from CIV (sorry, can't find the quote right now, but I'll post it if/when I find it).

I know this is the Rants Thread, and pardon me for barging in, but aren't rants supposed to be mostly based in reality? There are so many people on here that are criticizing Civ V Vanilla, which A) released more than 2 years ago (and WAS quite broken), and B) is an entirely different game than it is now.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Civ V isn't Civ IV, despite Civ IV vets wanting it to be exactly that. Despite the fact that the new system *overall* works quite well now, most people in this thread DO want it to be Civ 4.5. The game took some bold steps forward, and for the most part, they've paid off. It took a while to get to the level it is now, but it pushed the Civ series forward that some Civ 4.5 wouldn't have done.

I'm not even arguing that Civ V is better than Civ IV; it just seems like most of the people in this thread think it's a worthless piece-of-crap game, which simply isn't true.

Mods, sorry for barging into the Rants Thread

 

[iamdanno]

How can you criticize Gods and Kings, having said a day ago that you *haven't played it*?

"The AI might finally now work the way it should have on its initial game release in Sep. 2010 (two years too late)."
You basically just admitted that half your argument is wrong. Why keep criticizing the game if the AI is good now? Yes, it was broken at release, but that's not the game everyone's playing now.

"The Gods and Kings expansion fails in its new Religion and Espionage subsystems which _seems_ to be cobbled onto a design that never planned for these two game additions."
First of all, it doesn't seem cobbled in (to most people). Perhaps you should play it before making such a statement? And also, I might note that not all aspects of Civ IV fit perfectly, as many make it out to be; Corporations, among other things, come to mind.

And at this point, 1UPT works pretty well. It's not perfect, but yours and others' statements that there aren't any high-level players because they've all gone back to Civ IV just isn't true. Take, for example, MadDjinn, who happens to be one of the highest-level players out there. He recently said that Civ V + G&K is possibly good enough to switch from CIV (sorry, can't find the quote right now, but I'll post it if/when I find it).

I know this is the Rants Thread, and pardon me for barging in, but aren't rants supposed to be mostly based in reality? There are so many people on here that are criticizing Civ V Vanilla, which A) released more than 2 years ago (and WAS quite broken), and B) is an entirely different game than it is now.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Civ V isn't Civ IV, despite Civ IV vets wanting it to be exactly that. Despite the fact that the new system *overall* works quite well now, most people in this thread DO want it to be Civ 4.5. The game took some bold steps forward, and for the most part, they've paid off. It took a while to get to the level it is now, but it pushed the Civ series forward that some Civ 4.5 wouldn't have done.

I'm not even arguing that Civ V is better than Civ IV; it just seems like most of the people in this thread think it's a worthless piece-of-crap game, which simply isn't true.

Mods, sorry for barging into the Rants Thread

Well said. If what you want in a civ game is civ 4 BTS, then why not go play that. Civ 5 will never be civ 4. End of story.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Actually, I do have the Gods and Kings expansion. Bought it sometime last Dec., if I recall correctly.

I was just trying to have an open mind about Gods and Kings, when I asked whether it negated any old Civ V rants. I thought perhaps someone might provide a link to an in-depth reviewer that changed his negative opinion of Civ V based on Gods and Kings improvements to the game. I would still appreciate such a link.

I don't happen to like the City State concept much. Not sure why an "One City Challenge" AI should be handled differently than a multiple city Al. To advance in Faith, one needs to find Religious City States which seems to depend on one's luck in rolling a map with nearby Religion City States plus luck in exploring in the correct direction, ideally a minimum path to the nearby Religion City States. If there are no nearby Religion City States, re-roll, because getting Faith without their help is too difficult, when the goal is winning ASAP using a Faith based strategy. Espionage in Civ V G&K is simply a huge disappointment - one's options are extremely limited in Civ V compared to Civ IV both in how soon in the game Espionage can be used and the flexibilty of the possible missions and targets.

I'm not looking for clones of the Civ IV Religion and Espionage subsystems in Civ V. I'm actually expecting something much better, but not finding it.

My focus is in competitive play, so unecessary RNG is a very bad thing to have. The RNG of the map roll is important for the positions and types of City States. This can probably never be controlled adequately. Thus, I'm not very happy with Civ V and even G&K was a disappointment. Regarding the AI, it is now as good as it should have been two years ago; we are now two years behind in the AI using 1UPT effectively. Civ V will still be two years behind in 1UPT AI, when Civ VI is released.

I'm sorry that my previous rants didn't explain things very well.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Afforess]

In my opinion, our Civ 5 rants have been vindicated. Jon Shafer admits many of the Civ 5 decisions were mistakes.

 

[Lord Dante]

Personally, I like the 1upt set up. Its more realilistic. Just as in real life, the land dictates how many units you can place in a give area. However, I can understand the way people feel about it being so limiting, since the game areas are proportionally far smaller than the real world. So, I think there should be a compromise. Instead of stacking units, I think 3 or 4 units (of the same terrain type: i.e. only air with air, only land with land) should be able to stack to form some sort of battallion, platoon, or fleet. This way, the unproportional amount of hexes wont be so limiting, while at the same time it eliminates the unrealistic stacks of doom and keeps the real world-esque battle tactics still prevelant to the game. This was just an idea that I was mulling around with, but I think it is a reasonable middle ground for combining both real-world and efficiency.

I also want transport ships to be brought back. It just makes more sense. While I think the old 3 unit limit was a bit tight, I think an amount of 5 would be pretty sufficient. But what I really want is for ships to be able to sail up rivers into the inland. While it might be a challenge in terms of getting the hexes right, it just makes sense to me, since cities on rivers (like Paris, London, Washington) are all technically "inland" but still serve as major ports. Plus, it would give new aspects to naval warfar, as even inland river cities might not be safe.

Speaking of warfare, I think the building of units is a bit unrealistic. I think when a unit is built, it should cost the builder half a population point, because just as in real life, military personel come from the population, and if they die, so does a part of your population. If this was done it would put a realistic limit on armies, and make all players, AI and human, think twice before going to war, as any losses not only make your army weaker, but also make your nation as a whole weaker.