Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[Iranon]

Earlier Civ games: Precise tactical play can give one a considerable advantage, but with enough material "point stack at city" works and the AI wasn't too braindead for that.
Previous hex/1UPT games: Usually not open-ended; careful design of individual levels could set up interesting challenges despite weak AI.

Few developers would dare to waste resources on good AI when they could be spent on something shiny. But if you can't do it, make sure you don't need it.

 

[Naokaukodem]

It's pretty obvious that most people complain about the bad AI. They claim that it can't handle 1upt and therefore ruins the whole experience.

While this may be true, I suddenly realised something:

The bad AI in earlier Civ games didn't bother me

The "bad AI" is not the thing that bothers me in Civ5. I don't even see why people complain about it, sincerely. If the AI does a bad move, you to exploit it. One day I played a multiplayer game. I was very surprised when I realised that the player I was at war with quited... long before I notice it ! I thought that he had some bad moves, but I was inputing them to bad management. I had a hard time with that AI though.

This to say that having an AI that does not do any error would be boring as hell, unfun and frustrating.

Most people would say that this is perfectly normal, that we become more picky as we get older. But not, that's not the case, at least not for me.

Coming to think of it, I've never had a problem with these "exploits"

Same for me. And, I presume, same for most players. The complaining dogs over here have a big mouth, but finally they are not that evil.

I think the big difference is that conquering stupid AI's isn't fun in Civ 5. The sandbox is gone. It's just a repeative process.

It's due according to me to the fact that we already played Civ series a lot, and that this series has emphasised combat a lot since Civ3. We are simply bored to reapeat the same thing over and over.

This is also, according to me, because cities can't be taken fast enough in Civ5. We have to soften city defense first. There is less a feeling of brutality.

I'm no longer that great architect that designed great empires that I could admire for hours. Now it feels like I'm playing a board game, like I'm buying Hotels in a game of Monopoly.

It's due to the fact that we are greatly limited by happiness in order to plant new cities IMO. It's a bad thing IMO.

 

[Mopean]

I played Civ5. I built 2 cities. I got extremely, mind-numblingly, BORED. I quit after.

Its by far the most boring Civ game in the series so far. I do not regret uninstalling it (after a couple more attempts) and going back to Civ3 at all.

Though I admit, it may be due to the way that I play Civ that I find Civ5 to be so atrociously horribly boring (I can't stress how boring I found it. I couldn't get to building a third city without asking myself, "What's the point?" and quitting) and not so much the flaws in the game.

I must say, legitly, features I really dislike so far are the very dull diplomacy(Yea, that's very nice you move and speak German, but... where's my diplomatic options?), the arbitrary city states (though some of them are cool), the one unit per tile (What the ? Whose idea was that?), the interface, and the fact that the Civs don't really have bonuses or advantages, they just have some random bonus and some unique stuff. Don't really get it.

And where are some of you getting performance problems at? As much as I dislike Civ5, my low-end dinosaur computer ran it very smoothly on I think Medium-Highish settings, so that's not really a problem with it.

I admit I do really like the hexagon tiles. If they did anything right in Civ5 it was the hexes rather than squares. Being able to be attacked from six directions? Pretty cool, actually. It also means that units don't travel a bit faster going diagonally, which is nice.

 

[BIOGENETIC]

Well, I only have 10 hours into the game as opposed to a few hundred in Civ IV, but I'm already feeling somewhat let down. The game has its moments, the graphics are beautiful, the interface is sleek, the art style is modern and appealing, but the gameplay just isn't there for me.

Most of the feeling stems from the loss of realism and the subsequent impact on roleplaying. There's no reason to pretend that Civ IV was supremely realistic when armies take 25 years to move a few hundred kilometers and leaders stay alive for thousands of years, not to mention countless other unrealistic aspects of the game, but the feeling imparted upon me is that Civ V takes away many mechanics that made a lot more sense in Civ IV.

1) National Happiness. I don't like it at all, especially compared to Civ IV, where each city had its own happiness. Why does conquering a city suddenly piss everyone everywhere else in my empire off? If I build a Colosseum in Berlin, how does that fix problems in Hamburg?

2) City-States. Their bonuses are seemingly overpowered (especially Maritime) and their missions are stupid. So I give the tiny city-state of Singapore 500 gold, and it can suddenly provide every single city in my sprawling 20-city empire with additional food? Is this cost-effective? Is it consistent with the prudent decision-making one would expect of the highest level of government? How is such a feat logistically feasible anyways? Some of the missions are frankly bizarre. Vienna had a serious dispute with Sidon and now wants them eliminated? They're on the opposite sides of the continent! What kind of argument could you have possibly gotten into with someone so far away? Also, I highly resent the fact that city-states are hard to take out militarily and seem to get the latest military units quickly after you do. This is in addition to the strange impulse I get to take them all out because their black boundaries on the mini-map annoy me when in such close proximity to my own.

3) Social Policies. After the novelty wore off, I realized that they were basically tech trees like you would find in RTS games or skill trees like you would find in RPGs. Compared to the Civ IV government mechanics, social policies make a lot less sense. I need to be "liberal" to assist my expansion? How does one policy lead to the other? Why does having a lot of cities impede my speed in discovering new innovations in government?

Those are the three major ones. I think I started this post as an attempt to elucidate my disappointment in writing, as I did spend time and money on this game and am still trying to figure out the answer to the question: "why aren't I having fun?" Also, there is the sadness associated with feeling that one of your favorite game series has gone astray. I got it going from Final Fantasy IX to Final Fantasy X (and again from X to X-2), and just recently I picked up Diablo 3 and am SUPREMELY disappointed with it, but that's another thread on a different forum

So yeah, just shelled out $80 on games in the past two weeks and have been met with utter disappointment. Anyone else pick up D3 and think it's garbage? Kids these days...

 

[Jayman1000]

Well, I only have 10 hours into the game as opposed to a few hundred in Civ IV, but I'm already feeling somewhat let down. The game has its moments, the graphics are beautiful, the interface is sleek, the art style is modern and appealing, but the gameplay just isn't there for me.

I must have spent more than 1000 hours on Civ IV I think... Still im not bored... The replay value is simply immense, like no other game I have ever seen in fact. The truth is that while Civ IV offered a wealth of diversified possibilies, dare I say endless possibilities, CiV does the exact opposite. There are just not really any exiting variables to modify. To change CiV to something great you would have to modify actual game engine itself. You would have to make an entirely new game. A Civ VI... if it ever comes.

BTW Diablo 3... yes I totally agree with you... what a bore. Made it to inferno act 2, which is still to hard for me... all I can do now is farm inferno Warden... its just the same, and the same, and the same... so you mentioning Diablo 3 in a CiV context is not that far off..

 

[gps]

2) City-States.

Fully agree with everything you said. City states are strange, surreal and forced upon game mechanic that has no parallel in any of the other civ games. It does not make much sense from a historic point of view, feels totally out of place to have two different sorts of AI entities to act totally differently in terms of diplomacy - and is just bad. Why would any state-like entity ever in human history not try to and have ambitions to expand??? It just does not make sense and breaks immersion. And the way you can get a diplo victory by just bribing CS is cheesy in a way not even Apostolic Palace win was in Civ IV.

 

[Jayman1000]

If I have to say a positive thing about CiV it would be ressources for units, I am thinking of copying that exact mechanic to my Civ IV mod. It never made sense that you could field a million swordsmen or ironclads, just by having a single iron ressource, and it have annoyed me alot. The unit per ressource idea, and having resource plots with diverse amounts of ressources is a sound idea. Luckily you Civ IV can be modded to almost any extent so its no problem really, I'll just go implement it .

Unfortunately for CiV unit per ressource is one of the only positive CiV things and the negatives sides are just too many and to intrusive and dominating, like so many have described in this thread.

 

[Funky]

BTW Diablo 3... yes I totally agree with you... what a bore. Made it to inferno act 2, which is still to hard for me... all I can do now is farm inferno Warden... its just the same, and the same, and the same... so you mentioning Diablo 3 in a CiV context is not that far off..

I was never a hardcore fan of Diablo or anything, but I did enjoy the first two installments and was considering getting Diablo 3. Your comment made me look into the Amazon user reviews, where I was shocked to find more than half of the reviews rating the game with a single star. The criticism is surprisingly familiar: dumbed down, internet dependency, linear, boring gameplay, buggy, little to no replayability, and some other stuff that gave me a deja vue. Reading some of the reviews, I felt I could merely replace "Diablo 3" with "Civilization 5" and get the same reviews I had read previously on Amazon on Civ 5. To be fair, in one aspect Diablo 3 seems even more horrendous; while for Civ 5 getting a full game experience by buying the Civs and wonders left out in the vanilla release via DLC is optional, for D3 you apparently are forced to spend more money to be able to complete the game by purchasing items from the so-called auction house.

Anyway, baffled with the similarity of the user reception of the games, I wondered what the "professional" reviews had to say about the game and went over to metacritic. And, just as I thought, I was confronted with raving reviews, some giving the game a 100% rating. The overall score based on 76 reviews is 88%. The user reviews on metacritic, however, are even worse than the ones for Civ 5, with almost double as many negative ratings as positive ones and an average score of 4 out of 10.

All this tells me two things, both of which raise my concern. First, this definitely proves that gaming magazine reviews cannot be trusted and many of them are outright lies and obviously bought. Now, we knew this already after the raving reviews of Civ 5, but this new case indicates that the method of promoting a game by lying to potential customers is not the exception, but the rule. This should not be taken lightly, as, in my opinion, it constitutes a scandal.
Second, it seems to be becoming a popular marketing strategy for the gaming industries to take well-established franchises and basically ruin them by releasing dumbed down versions of the game that are poorly designed and no fun to play, to grab the fast cash.

Is this the future of computer gaming? Being tricked into buying ******ed games by corrupt reviewers, games that have the sole purpose of getting the consumer to spend even more money by purchasing DLC? I wish I was optimistic enough to say "not with us, even the mainstream, the kids and the casual gamers aren't that stupid". However, I'm afraid that from an economic standpoint this marketing strategy is actually quite fruitful.

 

[WiseMan999]

I was never a hardcore fan of Diablo or anything, but I did enjoy the first two installments and was considering getting Diablo 3. Your comment made me look into the Amazon user reviews, where I was shocked to find more than half of the reviews rating the game with a single star. The criticism is surprisingly familiar: dumbed down, internet dependency, linear, boring gameplay, buggy, little to no replayability, and some other stuff that gave me a deja vue. Reading some of the reviews, I felt I could merely replace "Diablo 3" with "Civilization 5" and get the same reviews I had read previously on Amazon on Civ 5. To be fair, in one aspect Diablo 3 seems even more horrendous; while for Civ 5 getting a full game experience by buying the Civs and wonders left out in the vanilla release via DLC is optional, for D3 you apparently are forced to spend more money to be able to complete the game by purchasing items from the so-called auction house.

Anyway, baffled with the similarity of the user reception of the games, I wondered what the "professional" reviews had to say about the game and went over to metacritic. And, just as I thought, I was confronted with raving reviews, some giving the game a 100% rating. The overall score based on 76 reviews is 88%. The user reviews on metacritic, however, are even worse than the ones for Civ 5, with almost double as many negative ratings as positive ones and an average score of 4 out of 10.

All this tells me two things, both of which raise my concern. First, this definitely proves that gaming magazine reviews cannot be trusted and many of them are outright lies and obviously bought. Now, we knew this already after the raving reviews of Civ 5, but this new case indicates that the method of promoting a game by lying to potential customers is not the exception, but the rule. This should not be taken lightly, as, in my opinion, it constitutes a scandal.
Second, it seems to be becoming a popular marketing strategy for the gaming industries to take well-established franchises and basically ruin them by releasing dumbed down versions of the game that are poorly designed and no fun to play, to grab the fast cash.

Is this the future of computer gaming? Being tricked into buying ******ed games by corrupt reviewers, games that have the sole purpose of getting the consumer to spend even more money by purchasing DLC? I wish I was optimistic enough to say "not with us, even the mainstream, the kids and the casual gamers aren't that stupid". However, I'm afraid that from an economic standpoint this marketing strategy is actually quite fruitful.

I would just like to point out a (IMO) good and in-depth review of D3 by Sulla. Its here: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/

 

[Revent]

I managed to take out an Empire on the difficulty above Prince with Just 3 warriors. Erm. That's just not fun. It doesn't have the rush to it. Like where in IV, you have to quickly build units, quickly send them over and it all ends very quickly. Here, it's painstakingly boring and just doesn't have that rush sense to it anymore. I had three warriors outside the guy's city and what does he build? workers that I steal (three times!)! It's so frustrating! I really miss the SoD. The SoD was about crushing your opponents, destroying them mercilessly with your huge army. But here, you take 3 units and surround a city and take it. Voila. Just not as thrilling. Plus, the movement becomes annoying. The micromanagement, the social policies, just aren't as good as the government stuff in IV. There's no religion so diplomacy just isn't as good. City states always want the same thing and it's so annoying and pointless. In the modern world, we have no city states from what I know. I don't know who come up with this terrible idea. Micromanagement is a lot of hassle and work, but the reward of it is the increased flexibility in what you do. Civ V is just toned down for the everyday player. Not for someone who's intense. I'm going to stick to IV I think. V is just appalling. There is just too much to change and one expansion may not be enough.

 

[Revent]

I remember playing the first Civilization when I was 6 in 2000ish and I LOVED this game to bits. I grew older, moved to boarding school and completely forgot about Civ for a while. Years later, I came across Civ III and I LOVED it to bits. I played for bits. I remember those rage moments when I was at war, etc...It was amazing! I then grew on to Civ IV in 2006 and it was mindblowing. It was so much fun and this was despite me not understanding the full mechanics of the games as a little kid. (I only understood the mechanics of the game recently after actually reading the guide ) But it was fun. I loved playing on Noble and then getting owned I loved owning on the lower levels lol. But this game is absolute garbage. It infuriates me because they could've done so much better. I for one, will not buy the expansion pack for Civ V. I don't think much of this game.

 

[Revent]

Regarding social policies, this is a quote they said: 'The thought process we want to promote is 'What cool new effect do I want?' rather than the feeling of needing to perform detailed analysis to determine if switching is a good idea.'

WHAT IS THE POINT OF STRATEGY GAMES IF IT IS ABOUT COOL EFFECTS!?!?!?!?! ARGH

 

[Iranon]

This attitude shows through pretty consistently, and it's a reason I consider the game distasteful rather than just mediocre.

Not "how do we make a good, deep strategy game" but "how do we make something that feels like one, without the confusion/frustration true depth can cause".
Inelegant, dishonest, patronising.

 

[kcd_swede]

I managed to take out an Empire on the difficulty above Prince with Just 3 warriors. Erm. That's just not fun. It doesn't have the rush to it. Like where in IV, you have to quickly build units, quickly send them over and it all ends very quickly. Here, it's painstakingly boring and just doesn't have that rush sense to it anymore.

My problem with it is that you don't sacrifice very much to build up the necessary army. CiV you are always at max tech rate, always producing max gold, and always building something (slowly). You can focus on one single aspect of the game (gold) and buy anything else you need... tech, resources, units, buildings, food (CS's), culture (CS's).

The goal in CiV seems to be to maximize everything simultaneously. There isn't any choice in that (or rather, there are only right and wrong choices rather than alternate paths to the same goal). The need to adapt strategy to the map or the opponents is eliminated completely --along with replayability.

There are still feel-good moments when you accomplish something difficult or figure out how to make good use of a game mechanic. But once you do that, you can do the exact same thing next time and it will give the same result. This becomes boring in a strategy game like Civilization.

Sure, in Civ4 you can play every game the same if you want to. In Civ5, youi can play every game different if you want to do sub-optimal play.

 

[Jayman1000]

I was never a hardcore fan of Diablo or anything, but I did enjoy the first two installments and was considering getting Diablo 3. Your comment made me look into the Amazon user reviews, where I was shocked to find more than half of the reviews rating the game with a single star. The criticism is surprisingly familiar: dumbed down, internet dependency, linear, boring gameplay, buggy, little to no replayability, and some other stuff that gave me a deja vue. Reading some of the reviews, I felt I could merely replace "Diablo 3" with "Civilization 5" and get the same reviews I had read previously on Amazon on Civ 5. To be fair, in one aspect Diablo 3 seems even more horrendous; while for Civ 5 getting a full game experience by buying the Civs and wonders left out in the vanilla release via DLC is optional, for D3 you apparently are forced to spend more money to be able to complete the game by purchasing items from the so-called auction house.

Anyway, baffled with the similarity of the user reception of the games, I wondered what the "professional" reviews had to say about the game and went over to metacritic. And, just as I thought, I was confronted with raving reviews, some giving the game a 100% rating. The overall score based on 76 reviews is 88%. The user reviews on metacritic, however, are even worse than the ones for Civ 5, with almost double as many negative ratings as positive ones and an average score of 4 out of 10.

All this tells me two things, both of which raise my concern. First, this definitely proves that gaming magazine reviews cannot be trusted and many of them are outright lies and obviously bought. Now, we knew this already after the raving reviews of Civ 5, but this new case indicates that the method of promoting a game by lying to potential customers is not the exception, but the rule. This should not be taken lightly, as, in my opinion, it constitutes a scandal.
Second, it seems to be becoming a popular marketing strategy for the gaming industries to take well-established franchises and basically ruin them by releasing dumbed down versions of the game that are poorly designed and no fun to play, to grab the fast cash.

Is this the future of computer gaming? Being tricked into buying ******ed games by corrupt reviewers, games that have the sole purpose of getting the consumer to spend even more money by purchasing DLC? I wish I was optimistic enough to say "not with us, even the mainstream, the kids and the casual gamers aren't that stupid". However, I'm afraid that from an economic standpoint this marketing strategy is actually quite fruitful.

I must say that I agree with you completely. You mention several important, and shocking points. Though I think I should have seen it coming, thats the punishment for not being a sceptic and riding along with the hype, and the publishers know it. And I agree that it is a scandal. Trashing highly respected franchises into the mud just to cash in on the quick money is just awful. I am never gonna trust 2K Games or Firaxis again. If I consider buying their games I will first read extensive user experiences and reviews to get a good opinion of what the game is; not just believe all the hype (read: lies).

I just fell over the CiV wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_V and I saw that no mention of the extensive critisism it has received is even mentioned in the Wiki. I dont know much about how to add stuff to Wikipedia or where to start, but I clearly can see that there is missing a "Criticism" section covering this issue that so many many Civilization fans are experiencing and discussing. If there are someone reading this and talented in Wiki and with documentation skills I encourage you to update wiki.

 

[Revent]

My problem with it is that you don't sacrifice very much to build up the necessary army. CiV you are always at max tech rate, always producing max gold, and always building something (slowly). You can focus on one single aspect of the game (gold) and buy anything else you need... tech, resources, units, buildings, food (CS's), culture (CS's).

The goal in CiV seems to be to maximize everything simultaneously. There isn't any choice in that (or rather, there are only right and wrong choices rather than alternate paths to the same goal). The need to adapt strategy to the map or the opponents is eliminated completely --along with replayability.

There are still feel-good moments when you accomplish something difficult or figure out how to make good use of a game mechanic. But once you do that, you can do the exact same thing next time and it will give the same result. This becomes boring in a strategy game like Civilization.

Sure, in Civ4 you can play every game the same if you want to. In Civ5, youi can play every game different if you want to do sub-optimal play.

Exactly! There's really just one or two ways to play! Next to no flexibility! That is NOT what a strategy game should be about. Level 5 difficulty and I am able to take out a whole Civ with just warriors is pathetic! Especially on this level of difficulty! The game has been simplified too much! This is coming from someone who was struggling on chieftain in Civ IV less than a month ago!

 

[HeavyTwenty]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10678832&postcount=687

Jul 12, 2011, 11:02 PM
No petition is needed. We are actively prepping the DLL, and hope to have more for you shortly once we have it in a good place (and it's almost ready for beta). Our next step is prepping the engine to hot-load the DLL, rather than restarting the entire game when we want to load a mod that uses the DLL.

I come back to these forums every few months to see whether the DLLs have been released. Almost a year after that post and still no results. My faith in Firaxis Games is gone and I can't buy the God&King expansions until they restore it. Their lack of support to the modding community has led to me to discover and love Paradox games (in particular Crusader Kings II).

/end rant

 

[AfterShafter]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10678832&postcount=687


I come back to these forums every few months to see whether the DLLs have been released. Almost a year after that post and still no results. My faith in Firaxis Games is gone and I can't buy the God&King expansions until they restore it. Their lack of support to the modding community has led to me to discover and love Paradox games (in particular Crusader Kings II).

/end rant

Paradox Interactive, you mean. Awesome games - others should look into them if they're disenchanted with Firaxis these days.

 

[Jayman1000]

Paradox Interactive, you mean. Awesome games - others should look into them if they're disenchanted with Firaxis these days.

Agree! Paradox Interactive is my 'new' quality company, no doubt about that. Both the already long lasting Europa Universalis and the new Crusader Kings II are very very well done, especially Crusader Kings II. It has SO much content, complexity and detail and re-playability that is only parred by Civilization IV (IMO).

 

[marx666]

I came to Civ V recently. i played Civ II but no higher. should I dump Civ V and try Civ IV? Is Civ 5 really that inferior? I have played about 20 hours on Civ 5. It's just so different than previous iterations. and IMO not in a good way. I dont know.