Civilization 5 Rants Thread

Civ 4 General Discussion. This is the place for complaining about the fifth installment, not debating specific issues with earlier versions (which is what I was saying).
 
Agreed, comparing Civ V with previous titles is fine on this thread but try to keep the focus on Civ V.

The Civ IV general discussions forum is for posts whose primary focus is Civ IV.
 
So, where is a better place for discussion of what Civ 4 offers over all the others of the series?

As mentioned, the Civ 4 forum is good for that. For me, Civ 4 and Civ 5 each provide their own enjoyment in different ways... both good games.

This thread is reserved for people who are perfectly happy playing other iterations of Civ and don't play Civ 5 yet still find the need to complain about it years after the fact for some reason using hyperbolic, myopic, outdated arguments. :goodjob:
 
This thread is reserved for people who are perfectly happy playing other iterations of Civ and don't play Civ 5 yet still find the need to complain about it years after the fact for some reason using hyperbolic, myopic, outdated arguments. :goodjob:
Nah this is the place for those people who have seen the light, appreciate a truly great game and aren't taken in by the piffle that passes for entertainment these days :D
 
I am not convinced that 64 vs 32 bit is the bottle neck.

It most certainly is. Why do you think there are no humongous maps in Civilization 5? Why do you think Jon Shafer extolled the beauty of his personal 2 city civilization? 32 bit is way too limiting. 64 bit takes the shackles off.


I would guess they are focused more on iOS than anything else. But hey, iOS is 64 bit! My prediction is that VI is simplified V to accommodate touch. What you are hoping for might have to wait for Civ VII! But I am not clear what you are looking for...

I agree with you here. They'll likely focus on touch which will further "dumb down" things to accommodate that. What I am looking for is a quality iteration of the Civilization series and they need 64 bit in order to do that.

It is the minority who would characterize Civ5 as a disaster. If nothing else, it sold extremely well. From the mod perspective, “disaster” is not hyperbolic, but otherwise I think you would be well served by being able to better articulate your disappointment. But hey, this is a rant thread, and you are entitled to your opinion.

Civilization 5 sold well because it is a Steam exclusive. Civilization 5 pissed off a lot of long time fans of the series who invested a lot of money over the years. I've been buying Civ products since 1992 and bought every Civ product up until the first expansion for Civilization 5. It was a disaster for long time fans. For casuals, I suppose it was a boon.
And if you are talking mods, Civilization 5 utterly pales in comparison to cIV. Not even close.
Yes, I am entitled to tell people why Civilization 5 is a terrible game. This is the designated place to do it. If you think this is the place to defend Civilization 5, you are incorrect. :)


I think “better” encompasses weak features when they are missing in the alternative.

So, where is a better place for discussion of what Civ 4 offers over all the others of the series?

Anyway, Derek Paxton (aka Kael) knows what he's talking about as far as game design and modding. Fall from Heaven is a masterpiece. Anything like that being made for Civilization 5, perchance? ;)

Here he talks about 64 bit:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/stardocks-derek-paxton-explains-how-new-64-bit-engine-can-revitalize-strategy-gaming

Some quotes from the article:

“If I know that my game is going to support 32-bit, some people are going to play my game in 32-bit mode. I know that I can’t design more stuff in my world, no more can be accessed at once than what fits on a 32-bit amount of memory, which is about two gigs. ....You can never go outside of those boundaries,” Paxton says.

The issue is that 32-bit systems are out of memory addresses. In order to use physical memory, a program needs to be able refer to different slots on the RAM. A 32-bit system only has 2^32 addresses that it can use, which translates to roughly 4GB of memory.

“A simple analogy would be phone numbers,” writes Soren Johnson, whose new Mohawk Games studio is working with Oxide. His game, codenamed Mars, will be the first studio outside Stardock to license the engine for use.

“With seven digits, only 10 million phones numbers are possible. Add three more digits with area codes and now 10 billion numbers are possible. 32- vs 64-bit is similar, but more extreme. ...With 64 bits, it's so much higher, I can't do the math in my head. If your game needs more than 4GB of active memory, 64-bit is the only option without paging to your hard drive or some other (slow) caching method.”

“Now being able to say ‘Listen, we’re not running on 32-bit anymore at all’ means that I can design a game that uses more than 2 gigs of memory. Suddenly ...we don’t have to worry about universe size because we may go above the 2GB limit. We don’t have to worry about modders creating new ships, we don’t have to worry about the amount of detail on all the ships, and all of the planets and all those assets that we have in the game, because we can go beyond those boundaries. We can design for the game we want, rather than trying to fit inside a box that feels like its shrinking year on year.”

So, if they want a truly great game they need 64 bit. If they want to limit themselves then by all means keep the antiquated 32 bit. I do hope Firaxis has the vision and ambition to make the right decision.
 
I've been buying Civ products since 1992 and bought every Civ product up until the first expansion for Civilization 5.


Are you saying that you never bought the first expansion for Civ V? Because if so, then we are talking about two different things here...Civ 5: Brave New World is 10x better than vanilla.
 
Are you saying that you never bought the first expansion for Civ V? Because if so, then we are talking about two different things here...Civ 5: Brave New World is 10x better than vanilla.

I have watched a number of You Tube videos by Marbozir. I've watched him win a domination and science victory and am watching him gunning for a culture victory now, I believe. So, I have a pretty good idea about the expansions since Marbozir is very good at explaining why he does what he does and the strategy behind it. He is also very honest when he sees something suboptimal.

While the expansions do address some of the problems caused by 1UPT and the horrific diplomacy as well as the late game snoozefest they are merely building on a rotten foundation. The house may look pretty respectable once the remodeling is done but the house is still in sorry shape.

This does make me sad as I do like some of the civilizations they added. The Huns, Indonesia, Morocco, Sweden, etc. all look pretty interesting. I like quantifiable resources as well as some of the aspects of Religion in the game. While not totally necessary to gameplay, culture has been fleshed out in an interesting fashion.

Maybe in Civ VI they'll have a solid foundation from the start and then they can build upon it with some of these creative ideas. One can hope. :)
 
The Huns are literally the opposite of a civilization. I don't understand why they're in.

I mean, bringing out relative nobodies like Sweden, Venice or Brazil is one thing, but the Huns didn't even have cities.


(I'm kinda of eager to try out 1UPT, though. Sick of gigantic stacks swatting my dudes aside like freakin' Godzilla.)
 
It most certainly is. Why do you think there are no humongous maps in Civilization 5? Why do you think Jon Shafer extolled the beauty of his personal 2 city civilization? 32 bit is way too limiting. 64 bit takes the shackles off... So, if they want a truly great game they need 64 bit. If they want to limit themselves then by all means keep the antiquated 32 bit. I do hope Firaxis has the vision and ambition to make the right decision.

Thanks for that very interesting material. I think that is all correct, and now you have me anxious for VI and 64 bit! However, it’s tangential to the larger point I was thinking but did not articulate: You can have a terrific 8 bit game and a terrible 64 bit game.

CivBE demonstrates Firaxis cannot tell a compelling story.

Well, I like to role play in my games. The AI is supposed to assist and compliment that role playing experience. It is essential for me, anyway.

I agree completely. I get more of that from V than I ever did III or IV. I think it is the main reason I played V so much more than III or V. The merits of 64 bit over 32 does not touch this aspect of the game.

What I am looking for is a quality iteration of the Civilization series and they need 64 bit in order to do that.

Aside from bigger maps, better scale, and ability for the user community to develop mods: What are the game play aspects that will make a quality iteration more like IV and less like V?

Civilization 5 sold well because it is a Steam exclusive.

Citation please? I got V and GnK in a box. V is also available via the Apple App Store. There are plenty of V players whose only Steam game is V. I think V did as much to raise the profile of Steam as Steam did to sell V.

Civilization 5 pissed off a lot of long time fans of the series who invested a lot of money over the years.

Well, it is not like that investment went to waste. New versions of games don't obsolete the old ones like happens with OS or application updates.

I've been buying Civ products since 1992 and bought every Civ product up until the first expansion for Civilization 5. It was a disaster for long time fans.

Civ III was a disaster at release, and then IV and V repeated the pattern. I was about as angry as anyone, and smart enough to wait on GnK before buying V, but obviously Firaxis has figured out that their market will pay full MSRP to beta test. At this point, having pulled the same trick three times, I can't fault Firaxis, they are a for-profit company after all.

I understand the modding community feeling betrayed. I understand that there is some movement for formal complaints regarding the on-going problems with multi-player support.

For casuals, I suppose it was a boon.

Ah yes, the serious gamer complaining that their passion is now polluted because it accessible to the proles. More paying customers is good for us. Short of the very serious lack of mods, how is SP IV any more nuanced and sophisticated than V?

Yes, I am entitled to tell people why Civilization 5 is a terrible game.

Agreed. I have heard you assert that V is terrible, I have not heard you say why. (Okay, aside from that the maps are too small.)

This is the designated place to do it.

Agreed.

If you think this is the place to defend Civilization 5, you are incorrect.

Wait, challenging assertions in rants is OT?
 
Challenging rants is on topic to rants threads. Disagreements should be kept civil though.

See post #1 by Ori.
 
*snip*

Agreed. I have heard you assert that V is terrible, I have not heard you say why. (Okay, aside from that the maps are too small.)

*snip*

Wade through this entire thread and you'll get your answer. :)
 
Anyway, Derek Paxton (aka Kael) knows what he's talking about as far as game design and modding. Fall from Heaven is a masterpiece. Anything like that being made for Civilization 5, perchance? ;)

Here he talks about 64 bit:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/stardocks-derek-paxton-explains-how-new-64-bit-engine-can-revitalize-strategy-gaming

Thats a great article, really. However I don't agree with this statement: “It isn’t that the SimCity devs aren’t good at their jobs,” Paxton says. “They are probably some of the best in their field.” But fidelity and performance are approaching a crisis point for strategy games that aspire to high production values.

I believe that SimCity 4 was much more complicated when it came to actually building and managing your city. And had MUCH larger maps. While the SimCity 5 devs might be very good ( I wouldn't deny that) they have simply chosen a game engine that sucks (imo) for a city building game like SimCity (If I had to rage about it the tiny city sizes would be the single most damaging gameplay feature to SimCity 5). Almost no matter how awesome and genius your devs is a bad engine is practically a dead end that cannot be overcome. It requires the construction of a completely new engine. This is not unlike CiV in my opinion.
 
Thats a great article, really. However I don't agree with this statement: “It isn’t that the SimCity devs aren’t good at their jobs,” Paxton says. “They are probably some of the best in their field.” But fidelity and performance are approaching a crisis point for strategy games that aspire to high production values.

I believe that SimCity 4 was much more complicated when it came to actually building and managing your city. And had MUCH larger maps. While the SimCity 5 devs might be very good ( I wouldn't deny that) they have simply chosen a game engine that sucks (imo) for a city building game like SimCity (If I had to rage about it the tiny city sizes would be the single most damaging gameplay feature to SimCity 5). Almost no matter how awesome and genius your devs is a bad engine is practically a dead end that cannot be overcome. It requires the construction of a completely new engine. This is not unlike CiV in my opinion.

A bad game engine will doom a game, I agree.

I think that the people that designed the game engine for Civilization 5 did the best they could. The problem was that they wanted AAA graphics and all the bells and whistles on a 32 bit engine. Humongous maps were automatically ruled out as the game engine couldn't handle it and they tried to placate the players by saying that 2-3 city empires were so wonderful. They also repeatedly dodged the question of map size leading up to the game's release, I recall.

There can be a happy end to the story, however. If the developers are wise and have forethought they'll design Civ VI to be run on a 64 bit engine. That will solve a multitude of problems and won't handicap the game from the very beginning. There can be humongous maps and AAA graphics. They won't have to compromise the design to accommodate the constraints of the game engine.

I've even heard Ed Beach say that he really wanted terraforming in the game but it just wasn't possible with the game engine.

Here is a quote from the article:

Beach says that if there's anything left over that he might have wanted to include in Civ V, after a full game and two expansions, it would be the ability to zoom out to reveal a globe-shaped world (a feature lost when Civ moved to a custom game engine) and the ability to terraform. The original design for the Dutch civ called for them to be able to reclaim land from the sea, but this proved to be impossible within Civ V's existing game engine.

"That's a little tip of the iceberg for what was left here. There are so many places to go," Beach says, hinting, perhaps, at what fans might be able to expect from an as yet unannounced (or even acknowledged) Civ 6.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/6/27/4453070/civ-the-making-of-brave-new-world
 
Great article, thanks! You really have me looking forward to 64 bit. I really have to wonder how that will work out for us with the commercial tension to make the game work with touch on iPads.

The bits at the end, right after the part you quote, are very telling. I am not sure why some folks keep hoping for another expansion. Emphasis added:

As for Civ 5, Firaxis is confident that, after seven full years, it's put the game to bed as finally and completely as it could have.

"If you look at Civ 4, it's still getting played ... Civ 3 is still getting played. It's a model that makes sense," Beach says. "Part of the strength of the community is the way that, even once we wrap up working on one, they know it's going to have been brought forward over many years of gestation, and it's going to be in a really solid place.

"[Fans are] going to be happy sitting with [Civ 5] for a couple of years until the next one is ready to roll out."
 
Well there are a couple of complaints I have with CIV V.

- The foremost is Diplomacy. It needs to be improved much more. To borrow some ideas from Paradox's games. Not to penalize Warmongers so much. To give more options to Diplomacy overall.
- 1 UPT needs some improvements. Although having bigger maps would still deal with some issues. Because probably when they made a jump from CIV IV to V the map size stayed the same and so it meant less movement space with 1 UPT. So maybe with mentioning that 64x idea for CIV VI could work. And also Ranged Units need a nerf and Melee ones a buff.
- Espionage that needs to be better. In BE its relatively good with more options and Intrigue system. So something similar could be used in CIV VI.
- More techs and that eras last a little bit longer so you can immerse yourself more in the atmosphere of a given era. hehe :D

But the Diplomacy definitely needs the most fix. Generally I would like CIV VI to try somethings different and new on its own, but still borrow some ideas from both CIV V and previous titles. But generally I love CIV V, a really epic game every time you play it. That and EU IV are pretty much the only games I play these days, can't wait for HOI 4 as well as Victoria III (eventually, really like Victoria II although I still don't understand half the things I am doing). CIV V if I want a whole human history and EU IV if I want a better diplomacy.(although the combat system in EU IV really
sucks with those stupid Dices).

P.S.: Kudos with the fact they rush games too much these days. Too many Alphas, Betas, Early Accesses. I want the old system went I waited for New Games and Expacs for years, but at least they were complete.
 
The foremost is Diplomacy. It needs to be improved much more. To borrow some ideas from Paradox's games.

Is the diplomacy any worse than what we had with III or IV? I understand that some games have better casus belli, so for those of us not familiar with Paradox games, can you expound a bit on what you are looking for? It was artificial, but I personally think the diplomacy in SMAC worked better than III, IV, or V.

Not to penalize Warmongers so much.

I respectfully disagree, and I must be wrong since the Halloween patch reduced the penalty. Really, it should not be reduced much more. But it could be more clever (casus belli, again).

when they made a jump from CIV IV to V the map size stayed the same

I thought the tile count actually went down? Then 1UPT makes battles need more room, and workable tiles per city increased too. So everything feels smaller even when if tile count is comparable. Agreed, more tiles would be better.
 
The Huns are literally the opposite of a civilization. I don't understand why they're in.

I mean, bringing out relative nobodies like Sweden, Venice or Brazil is one thing, but the Huns didn't even have cities.


(I'm kinda of eager to try out 1UPT, though. Sick of gigantic stacks swatting my dudes aside like freakin' Godzilla.)

Sweden was a large Empire for hundreds of years, spanning most of the Baltic Sea.

Venice was a major, major power for centuries in the Mediterranean sea.

That's really something you should know.
 
Great article, thanks! You really have me looking forward to 64 bit. I really have to wonder how that will work out for us with the commercial tension to make the game work with touch on iPads.

The bits at the end, right after the part you quote, are very telling. I am not sure why some folks keep hoping for another expansion. Emphasis added:

Yeah, a move to 64 bit would give me hope for Civ VI. :)

I believe Civilization 5 has finally been put out to pasture. Perhaps a patch here and there but that's about it. That's fine by me as they seem to be working hard at Civ VI. Bring it on, I say! :D

Here's a quote from a thread that was asking whether Civilization 5 was going to be 64 bit:

With 32-bit theres a total of 4GB addressable memory. That includes graphics card and what have you. That is why you hear some people saying that you only really get 3GB of memory. The graphics card eats up part of the addressable memory.

Limit for 64-bit:
2^64 = 18.446.744.073.709.551.616
18.446.744.073.709.551.616 / (1.024 x 1.024) = 16EB

Windows doesn't have a version that supports 16 exabytes of addressable memory, nor do I think that you could even fit that much into a computer physically at the present time.

With mods and crazy big maps, 64bit is most welcome!
 
Top Bottom