Civilization 5 Rants Thread

I suspect we are talking too soon about how it will compare to Civ as if history may be repeating itself. As you wrote before, the developers listened to feedback so it may not be as bad as you originally feared?

I certainly won't turn my nose up at a new HOMM game. I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes to pass.

Its not too soon, beta testers already played the game for 3 months, both Civ5 and Homm6 is 1UPT (Homm was always 1UPT), so it is more similar to Civ5 (for example ranged attack) than to Civ4, I believe Civ fans are mostly also fan of Homm, these are both famous and emblematic series with world map, city building, economics and tactical combat. I would really be interested in the oppinion of old Civ fans and about what do they think about the latter one in the light of what happened to Civ5.
 
Well, still, it is the only hope remaining, and it may happen, just think about FFH which is a completly different game as compared to the BTS base game. The problem I see here is why would a community member invest such a huge amount of time instead of creating games based on Civ4 dll as usual. The only reason colud be the "better" graphics, if the graphical engine is really better than its predecessor (gameboy?). However I am not convinced about this. For example you may have experienced the zooming problems also mentioned in this thread. So it may occur that the graphical engine itself is a step backward, in which case Civ5 is a total failure. The only feature - I mean real feature - in Civ5 are hexes. Big deal... It is not worth to migrate to Civ5 - investing years of modding work - just because of hexes.

I think Civ4 modding has greater resource limitations and wasn't really designed with creating mods like FFH in mind. Lua is probably a better modding language than python. Civ4 took 3 odd years to get the level of tools and the game evolution that allowed people to make FFH type mods.

I believe their intent was the game to be much easier to mod, the game design much easier to play and easier for multiplayer. While I much prefer Civ4 for SP, I found it harder to get good MP games going in Civ4, MP games tend to be fairly even in Civ5, largely due to how easy the game flows. Sadly, that is a big problem for SP because the AI isn't remotely competent.

Civ5 shifted away from making the macro level decisions and strategy to more the micro level of strategy, the biggest shift from civ4 to civ5 is the 1 unit per hex, it made the actual battles you have more meaningful. This is fundamentally where the game breaks down for SP, the AI is not advanced enough to handle strategic combat well. It was never an issue in Civ games before but now the importance of a really strong combat logic AI is critical and Civ5 lacks it in spades.

I think once the SDK is fixed and the DLL comes out we will probably see some mods which bring back some of the complexity of Civ4 and will see a project like the BTS Better AI mod which tackled some of the more severe failings of the AI.

While at present this seems to suggest if you want to do a big mod you should do it in Civ4, the really complex mods take a long time to produce and there is a lot that can be done now and would need to be done. I would still do a big mod for Civ5 because the tools will come. Civ4 was great but as a game it is over, they are not going to keep adding to it. We are bound to see some major expansions for Civ5, more tools, etc.

In it's current state it blows but if you want to make something big you need to look long-term. Once Civ5 has the tools and new expansions come out I think Civ4 will go the way of the dodo and a lot of work done for a Civ4 mod might go to waste.
 
I think Civ4 modding has greater resource limitations and wasn't really designed with creating mods like FFH in mind. Lua is probably a better modding language than python. Civ4 took 3 odd years to get the level of tools and the game evolution that allowed people to make FFH type mods.

I believe their intent was the game to be much easier to mod, the game design much easier to play and easier for multiplayer. While I much prefer Civ4 for SP, I found it harder to get good MP games going in Civ4, MP games tend to be fairly even in Civ5, largely due to how easy the game flows. Sadly, that is a big problem for SP because the AI isn't remotely competent.

Civ5 shifted away from making the macro level decisions and strategy to more the micro level of strategy, the biggest shift from civ4 to civ5 is the 1 unit per hex, it made the actual battles you have more meaningful. This is fundamentally where the game breaks down for SP, the AI is not advanced enough to handle strategic combat well. It was never an issue in Civ games before but now the importance of a really strong combat logic AI is critical and Civ5 lacks it in spades.

I think once the SDK is fixed and the DLL comes out we will probably see some mods which bring back some of the complexity of Civ4 and will see a project like the BTS Better AI mod which tackled some of the more severe failings of the AI.

While at present this seems to suggest if you want to do a big mod you should do it in Civ4, the really complex mods take a long time to produce and there is a lot that can be done now and would need to be done. I would still do a big mod for Civ5 because the tools will come. Civ4 was great but as a game it is over, they are not going to keep adding to it. We are bound to see some major expansions for Civ5, more tools, etc.

In it's current state it blows but if you want to make something big you need to look long-term. Once Civ5 has the tools and new expansions come out I think Civ4 will go the way of the dodo and a lot of work done for a Civ4 mod might go to waste.

Yes, and unfortunately I have already experienced a slowdown in development of Civ4 mods. The FFH-FF-Erebon seems to be inactive. This really makes me angry and wish Civ5 would have never been released. Ofcourse if the dll source is released than Civ5 can have big and complex modules and may reintroduce MUPT for those who liked it the same way 1UPT can be introduced at any time in Civ4 - to me doing 1UPT on the main map is a nonsense, i donot even remember a single 1UPT mod for Civ4. But so the graphical upgrade within Civ5 was simply not that significant as to justify migrating mod building to Civ5, its rather a psychological phenomenon that people donot want to go back or to stick to something older even if there is no rational reason in doing so. Ofcourse modders are waiting for the DLL source - but imagine - what a surprise it will be if the source will never be released! In this case they will go back to Civ4 - and then how much time will have been wasted? I have no idea whether the source will be released or not, this is something very mysterious - nobody talks about it, nobody knows anything about it...
 
Yes, and unfortunately I have already experienced a slowdown in development of Civ4 mods. The FFH-FF-Erebon seems to be inactive. This really makes me angry and wish Civ5 would have never been released. Ofcourse if the dll source is released than Civ5 can have big and complex modules and may reintroduce MUPT for those who liked it the same way 1UPT can be introduced at any time in Civ4 - to me doing 1UPT on the main map is a nonsense, i donot even remember a single 1UPT mod for Civ4. But so the graphical upgrade within Civ5 was simply not that significant as to justify migrating mod building to Civ5, its rather a psychological phenomenon that people donot want to go back or to stick to something older even if there is no rational reason in doing so. Ofcourse modders are waiting for the DLL source - but imagine - what a surprise it will be if the source will never be released! In this case they will go back to Civ4 - and then how much time will have been wasted? I have no idea whether the source will be released or not, this is something very mysterious - nobody talks about it, nobody knows anything about it...

I suggested awhile back in this thread that we start a petition for the source code. Dennis Shirk posted and assured us that they were working on it and that it would be released in the future. They didn't put a date on it but I figure at least 6 months to a year and likely longer. They need to finalize the code for Civilization 5 and as we all know, things are still in a state of flux.

EDIT: Here it is on page 35 (Post 687):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=401228&page=35
 
I suggested awhile back in this thread that we start a petition for the source code. Dennis Shirk posted and assured us that they were working on it and that it would be released in the future. They didn't put a date on it but I figure at least 6 months to a year and likely longer. They need to finalize the code for Civilization 5 and as we all know, things are still in a state of flux.

EDIT: Here it is on page 35 (Post 687):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=401228&page=35

Ohhhh, interesting, Ive never seen that post - but what does he mean by mods using or not using the dll... How can a mod run without the dll? Whats in the dll then...? There is something wrong here... Uhmmm and btw 2 months passed since then, any news Dennis?
 
What Shirk is talking about is releasing the source code for the core DLL. No one can mod the DLL yet.

By comparison, the source for the core dll for civ4 was released approximately 6 months after the game was released.
 
What Shirk is talking about is releasing the source code for the core DLL. No one can mod the DLL yet.

By comparison, the source for the core dll for civ4 was released approximately 6 months after the game was released.

Yes, but I didnt understand the hotload part. Maybe it means, that there will be a default dll and when a mod is loaded it will use its own dll if it wants which contains the modified version of the full dll (game) instead, as opposed to overwriting the official core dll - this would sound like a feature. So, I hope this is the case and not that the dll source is simply an other high level abstraction like lua just using C++ while the game core itself, like AI code will be excluded.
 
Yes, but I didnt understand the hotload part. Maybe it means, that there will be a default dll and when a mod is loaded it will use its own dll if it wants which contains the modified version of the full dll (game) instead, as opposed to overwriting the official core dll - this would sound like a feature. So, I hope this is the case and not that the dll source is simply an other high level abstraction like lua just using C++ while the game core itself, like AI code will be excluded.

I agree it'll be interesting to see what exactly is meant by the hot-loading part. To me it just sounds like the core DLL will not be necessary to load to reach the main menu screen, with the mod menu etc. Loading up the DLL would happen at the time of a save-game load or launch of a new game.

Apart from that guess, I can't say I know much about how civ5 handles mods. I do hope we have at least as much access to the features of the core DLL as we did for civ4 though, especially AI.
 
I guess when the developers realized they had not figured out a way to make the AI any more intelligent they just threw in happiness / unhappiness to keep human players from progressing. :(

Moderator Action: merged into rants thread - ori
 
I start with the rant now: For me this is mostly intresting because I want to know, that is it Civ5 alone which succumbed to the casual streamlined society or all old-timer, tradition based monumental games will inevitely face this unfortunate demise dictated by industry trends, and so we will be left with nothing new to play...

Well, my prediction since about a month after Civ5's release is that Civ5 will end up like HoMM4. There are many parallels:

1. Both games started their design process with the notion that the previous game in the series had reached that series' pinnacle of complexity and that a new approach needed to be taken in order to attract new customers.

2. Both games departed radically from their predecessors in ways that led to substantial design problems: In HoMM4, the "hero group"-armies, the hero-less armies, and the new hero evolution paths wreaked havoc to game balance; in Civ5 1upt required a total rebuild of the game mechanics, of which many ended up broken.

3. For both games, these changes led to an AI that was substantially weaker than that of the previous game, which led to a lot of criticism. For both games, the predecessor's AI was considered to be the best so far in the series, while the AI in the new game was seen as a severe step backwards.

4. In both games, in order to have enough time and resources to design and implement these radical new concepts, a substantial portion of the predecessor's content was left out of the new design. HoMM4 was the first HoMM game ever that had less factions and less creatures than its predecessor. Civ5 lacks religion, espionage, many trade and diplomacy options, meaningful improvements besides trade posts, etc. Both games were perceives as substantially less complex than their predecessors.

5. In both games, previously free systems were forced into arbitrary decision trees. In HoMM4, players suddenly needed to make exclusive choices about which creatures to train in their cities, choosing one path made the other path permanently unavailable for that city. In Civ5, the previously free and complex civics system was replaced by forced decisions about the non-revokable, permanent focus of one's civilization. In both games, this decision was heavily criticized and was not grounded in the game's atmosphere and feel, the change was seen as an unwelcome artificial limitation of the players' options.

6. In both games, lots of resources went into creating a new visual presentation of the game, without much success. HoMM4 marked the transition from (extremely well done) 2d graphics to new 3d graphics, and the new graphics were clumsily and amateurishly done. In Civ5, a new engine was programmed from scratch - as a result, the game's visuals struggled in many respects, and weren't seen as much of an improvement over Civ4's (less animations, amateurishly looking rivers on release ...).

7. Both games were rush-released in an atrociously broken and unfinished state. In both cases, the publisher of the series had changed, and the new game was the first of the series over which the new publisher had full control.

8. For both games, large amounts of the fanbase lost hope with the new game and went back to the previous one. In the HoMM fanbase, only a very small minority regards HoMM4 a better game than HoMM3. Civ5, in recent polls on CivFanatics, trails far behind Civ4 and sometimes even struggles securing the third place. The Civ5 forums consistently have less views than the Civ4 forums. Civ4 sales have resurged after the release of Civ5, and newcomers often get recommended to buy Civ4 instead of Civ5 unless they don't want their game to be very complex.

9. For both games, the modding community never reached the heights that it did in the previous games. HoMM4 mods never added much content, the largest mod for it is a balancing effort which addresses many issues that never got solved by the official patches - whereas for HoMM3, modders added tons of new content and game mechanics, including a new level of creatures, a (previously non-present) experience system for all creatures, new abilities, and even a whole scripting engine. For Civ5, we cannot say conclusively (yet) what modders will be able (and motivated) to do with it, but so far, the modding community is developing very similar to that of Homm4: Many people losing hope, or finding that the game just isn't worth the effort to mod it extensively, and the modders' main focus is fixing broken mechanics instead of adding new and more complex ones.

If this analysis is correct and if there are indeed many parallels between HoMM4 and Civ5, then what can we expect for the future of Civ5? Well, the prospect is rather bland. HoMM4 received enough makeshift fixes to make it playable for the people who liked the new approach, so that expansion packs could be released. The fundamental gameplay issues that made the game worse than its predecessor were never addressed. The publisher declared these new ideas to be the next best thing since sliced bread, as long as the game was being sold. Later, when the marketing for HoMM5 started, the same publisher made an effort to point out how different the new game's mechanics were from HoMM4 and that many "missing" elements from HoMM3 would be reintroduced. The effort was only partly successful. While most players enjoy HoMM5 far more than HoMM4, many still regard HoMM3 as the best of the series. On a small scale, modding for HoMM3 still continues. New factions are being developed, and a promising effort to write a new (open source) engine may finally overcome the limitations that the original engine has. Personally, I'm more excited over new releases of that engine than I am over HoMM6. I guess I'm not the only one. HoMM6 might end up being an enjoyable game (and I'll probably buy it in a year or two, when prices have fallen and the public beta / release is over), but given the direction the publisher has taken, it's unlikely to have the depth that I'm looking for.

My prediction for Civ5 is that it will develop on a very similar course. The fanbase will continue to favor Civ4, while the publisher will call it a great sucess, until the day when the marketing for its sequel starts. From this point onwards, we will hear how much Civ6 "improves on the shortcomings of Civ5", which are suddenly acknowledged as if the publisher hadn't hyped them for years. Civ6 will not reach the complexity of Civ4; instead, in an effort to re-attract some of the old fans while not losing the new ones, it will be in the middle between Civ4 and Civ5. Many hardcore fans of the series will still prefer Civ4, for which a few mods are still actively developed. Civ5 will mostly be seen as a failure, or (at best) as a transition between Civ4 and Civ6. Civ6 will be successful in attracting most of Civ5's fans and a good deal of Civ4's fans, though for many, Civ4 will still be the pinnacle of the series.

Of course, the whole previous paragraph is speculation. However, as someone who's monitored the business for a couple of decades now, I'm confident that it isn't baseless speculation at all - I think I accumulated enough experience with similar situations to at least risj an educated guess. And I fully plan to return to this post in a couple of years and check whether I was right. :)
 
Well, my prediction since about a month after Civ5's release is that Civ5 will end up like HoMM4. There are many parallels:

1. Both games started their design process with the notion that the previous game in the series had reached that series' pinnacle of complexity and that a new approach needed to be taken in order to attract new customers.

2. Both games departed radically from their predecessors in ways that led to substantial design problems: In HoMM4, the "hero group"-armies, the hero-less armies, and the new hero evolution paths wreaked havoc to game balance; in Civ5 1upt required a total rebuild of the game mechanics, of which many ended up broken.

3. For both games, these changes led to an AI that was substantially weaker than that of the previous game, which led to a lot of criticism. For both games, the predecessor's AI was considered to be the best so far in the series, while the AI in the new game was seen as a severe step backwards.

4. In both games, in order to have enough time and resources to design and implement these radical new concepts, a substantial portion of the predecessor's content was left out of the new design. HoMM4 was the first HoMM game ever that had less factions and less creatures than its predecessor. Civ5 lacks religion, espionage, many trade and diplomacy options, meaningful improvements besides trade posts, etc. Both games were perceives as substantially less complex than their predecessors.

5. In both games, previously free systems were forced into arbitrary decision trees. In HoMM4, players suddenly needed to make exclusive choices about which creatures to train in their cities, choosing one path made the other path permanently unavailable for that city. In Civ5, the previously free and complex civics system was replaced by forced decisions about the non-revokable, permanent focus of one's civilization. In both games, this decision was heavily criticized and was not grounded in the game's atmosphere and feel, the change was seen as an unwelcome artificial limitation of the players' options.

6. In both games, lots of resources went into creating a new visual presentation of the game, without much success. HoMM4 marked the transition from (extremely well done) 2d graphics to new 3d graphics, and the new graphics were clumsily and amateurishly done. In Civ5, a new engine was programmed from scratch - as a result, the game's visuals struggled in many respects, and weren't seen as much of an improvement over Civ4's (less animations, amateurishly looking rivers on release ...).

7. Both games were rush-released in an atrociously broken and unfinished state. In both cases, the publisher of the series had changed, and the new game was the first of the series over which the new publisher had full control.

8. For both games, large amounts of the fanbase lost hope with the new game and went back to the previous one. In the HoMM fanbase, only a very small minority regards HoMM4 a better game than HoMM3. Civ5, in recent polls on CivFanatics, trails far behind Civ4 and sometimes even struggles securing the third place. The Civ5 forums consistently have less views than the Civ4 forums. Civ4 sales have resurged after the release of Civ5, and newcomers often get recommended to buy Civ4 instead of Civ5 unless they don't want their game to be very complex.

9. For both games, the modding community never reached the heights that it did in the previous games. HoMM4 mods never added much content, the largest mod for it is a balancing effort which addresses many issues that never got solved by the official patches - whereas for HoMM3, modders added tons of new content and game mechanics, including a new level of creatures, a (previously non-present) experience system for all creatures, new abilities, and even a whole scripting engine. For Civ5, we cannot say conclusively (yet) what modders will be able (and motivated) to do with it, but so far, the modding community is developing very similar to that of Homm4: Many people losing hope, or finding that the game just isn't worth the effort to mod it extensively, and the modders' main focus is fixing broken mechanics instead of adding new and more complex ones.

If this analysis is correct and if there are indeed many parallels between HoMM4 and Civ5, then what can we expect for the future of Civ5? Well, the prospect is rather bland. HoMM4 received enough makeshift fixes to make it playable for the people who liked the new approach, so that expansion packs could be released. The fundamental gameplay issues that made the game worse than its predecessor were never addressed. The publisher declared these new ideas to be the next best thing since sliced bread, as long as the game was being sold. Later, when the marketing for HoMM5 started, the same publisher made an effort to point out how different the new game's mechanics were from HoMM4 and that many "missing" elements from HoMM3 would be reintroduced. The effort was only partly successful. While most players enjoy HoMM5 far more than HoMM4, many still regard HoMM3 as the best of the series. On a small scale, modding for HoMM3 still continues. New factions are being developed, and a promising effort to write a new (open source) engine may finally overcome the limitations that the original engine has. Personally, I'm more excited over new releases of that engine than I am over HoMM6. I guess I'm not the only one. HoMM6 might end up being an enjoyable game (and I'll probably buy it in a year or two, when prices have fallen and the public beta / release is over), but given the direction the publisher has taken, it's unlikely to have the depth that I'm looking for.

My prediction for Civ5 is that it will develop on a very similar course. The fanbase will continue to favor Civ4, while the publisher will call it a great sucess, until the day when the marketing for its sequel starts. From this point onwards, we will hear how much Civ6 "improves on the shortcomings of Civ5", which are suddenly acknowledged as if the publisher hadn't hyped them for years. Civ6 will not reach the complexity of Civ4; instead, in an effort to re-attract some of the old fans while not losing the new ones, it will be in the middle between Civ4 and Civ5. Many hardcore fans of the series will still prefer Civ4, for which a few mods are still actively developed. Civ5 will mostly be seen as a failure, or (at best) as a transition between Civ4 and Civ6. Civ6 will be successful in attracting most of Civ5's fans and a good deal of Civ4's fans, though for many, Civ4 will still be the pinnacle of the series.

Of course, the whole previous paragraph is speculation. However, as someone who's monitored the business for a couple of decades now, I'm confident that it isn't baseless speculation at all - I think I accumulated enough experience with similar situations to at least risj an educated guess. And I fully plan to return to this post in a couple of years and check whether I was right. :)

An excellent summation Psyringe. :)

Your vision of the future is certainly quite plausible and the parallels you drew are very reasonable.

Of course Civ VI may never get made as apparently TBS games aren't contemporary anymore. :crazyeye: If it does though, I'm sure they'll be doing some hasty backpedalling to try to lure all of the disgruntled long time fans back and ensure the game goes back to its roots.
 
Haven't you heard? Civ6 will be a FPS game, as turn based games are outdated.

It will be just like paying some 50$ to play 'Afterworld' mixed with 'Defense' over and over again but with ruskies and arabs instead of robots and spiders.

OMG I'm so excited!!! GOTY!!!
 
Haven't you heard? Civ6 will be a FPS game, as turn based games are outdated.

It will be just like paying some 50$ to play 'Afterworld' mixed with 'Defense' over and over again but with ruskies and arabs instead of robots and spiders.

OMG I'm so excited!!! GOTY!!!

Ah crap. You stole my idea! :lol: After reading what EA is going to do to the Syndicate franchise, I suspect that is what will happen here. Civ VI will be a FPS so those GIANT DEATH ROBOTS can look even more real. :rolleyes:
 
After X-Com and Syndicate, this would hardly surprise me.

Making a game is bloody expensive -> can't afford a miss, play it safe and go for streamlined mass appeal -> The game itself can't stand out because of this -> need to grab attention with fancy technology, gimmicks and heavy marketing -> getting a game out becomes more bloody expensive.

Escalating costs, deteriorating quality, originality and integrity. The customer base adjusts to the industry, no longer capable of genuine enthusiasm or recognising quality without the hype machine.
 
HoMM6 might end up being an enjoyable game (and I'll probably buy it in a year or two, when prices have fallen and the public beta / release is over), but given the direction the publisher has taken, it's unlikely to have the depth that I'm looking for.

I dont know, as I follow the events BlackHole did not backstab their fanbase. The game does cut some content from Homm5, but far less than Civ5 from Civ4. Also no inherently dumb idea like 1UPT on main map have been introduced and the new features sound like real features, not just lame hacks like city states. Furthermore the graphics is a great improvement and the game engine became faster. In Civ5 graphics is at most a very-very minor improvement or even a step back, and the game became even slower.
 
I have been playing Civs for over 20 years now, starting with #1 on Atari. So, overcome with nostalgia and after having had a good month I finally decided to download Civ V on Steam. Initially I thought there was something wrong with me head, but thanks to this thread I can see now that I'm quite sane thinking: "What a waste of £30 odd quid" and "What a constipation to wait 5 years for this turd"...

I can only echo most of the sentiments posted here, to sum up: -off the top of my head- I don't like: :mad:
1. claustrophobic gameplay which does not make me feel like a Grand Ruler controlling a vast Empire and Massive Armies, lack of immersion and intrigue
2. sprawling cash-cow saint city-states (hate 'em and wish I was one) and puppet fail
3. demented schizophrenic diplomacy
4. no vassals, no spies, no sabotage
5. no religion or political doctrine influence
6. indestructible capitals
7. dumbed-down trade and no international trade routes
8. loopy and inverted global happiness
9. 1UPT and AI combat decisions (-face palm- archers shooting, say 20km?!)
10. 1GPT road tax
11. the look, feel and functionality of the interface
12. resource-hogging and buggy graphics
13. £££ for poor quality DLC
14. policies mechanics (good concept but half-baked execution)
15. some other horrible new rules / design decisions limiting options or plain defying logic

To be fair, -scratch scratch- I like: :D
1. hexes (octagons please in Civ VI)
2. ranged bombardment (awkward but can and has been modded in Civ IV)

The Stacks 'o Doom replaced by the Carpet 'o Doom. Yay!

Like someone brilliantly observed in a post above, the game plays like a board game, and not that good too. I have to add that I still own Civ The Board Game (actual real cardboard) and it is less tedious and more fun to play than this computer iteration.

So yes, I think I shall go back to the excitement of Civ IV BTS Revolutions for now. What really bogs my mind is that Firaxis/2K/WhoeverIsCurrentlyOnTop and Civ franchise has such an excellent, outspoken and vibrant community as a resource to make the game really outstanding, especially as nowadays there's really nothing to compare it to. Instead, it seems to me that Civ V has been designed by The Marketing Department and coasts on the phenomenon of it's predecessors. Such a shame to see it go that way. I hope the excellent modding community will breathe some life into it after a couple of years and will keep it going, for me it is time to adapt and move on with the times: Call Of Duty 4, bring it on!
 
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