Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[Iranon]

Every single person in this thread will come back to CIV V after its 2nd expansion pack and final patching as the crown jewel of the franchise and then rant about the shallowness of CIV VI.

Every single one of you.

Utter tripe. Before the release, my reactions to announcements about Civ5 game mechanics were "How on earth are they going to make that work? I don't know if this is made by geniuses or idiots".

Just reading the manual confirmed that any genius was confined to marketing, and that whoever called the shots in game design had no clue how to play their own creation. I wonder what happened in testing, because it was obvious to me how the game could be broken in half before I even starting up the demo.

Now, the worst exploits were patched out but that's bandages on a severed limb. You can't inject good game design into something developed carelessly with little regard to robustness, depth and how the game would be played on a higher level of ability.
Just like you can't inject elegant maths into Civ4 without a complete rewrite.

People permanently stuck in a "First version was good, last one was the best yet, struggling to get into the current one so it must be bad" mindset exist. Like fanboyism and most shallow likes/dislikes they are easy to identify and filter out.
I have read thoughtful in-depth condemnations of Civ5 by people who obviously understand and care deeply about good game design. If similarly cerebral defences exist, I'm unaware of them.

 

[ThERat]

why should I come back here and hail Civ 5 even if Civ 6 stinks even more (which is hardly possible).

Civ 5 is the worst part of the series. I am still playing C3C and having tons of fun. Civ 5 is so broken beyond repair, I will never ever hail it.

 

[Ashwind]

Every single person in this thread will come back to CIV V after its 2nd expansion pack and final patching as the crown jewel of the franchise and then rant about the shallowness of CIV VI.

Every single one of you.

LOL at all the non rants in the rants thread.

CiV weaned me off the whole civ series. No longer play them. But I enjoy coming back here to read the forum. Cause it is actually more enjoyable to read the bickering than playing the game.

Long live whatever.

 

[gps]

Every single person in this thread will come back to CIV V after its 2nd expansion pack and final patching as the crown jewel of the franchise and then rant about the shallowness of CIV VI.

Every single one of you.

Dream on!
Let's wait and see how the mood in the fanbase will be four weeks after G+K hits the market, all facts are out and the euphoria and the hype has cooled down to reasonable levels. And then let's wait and see if there will ever BE a second expansion. The way in which Firaxis at the moment is almost giving away Vanillla V for free to get a few more people to buy G+K in my eyes bears sign of marketing desperation. If you have to sell the main game for 5 Euro to make people buy the 30 Euro expansion - I'd say there's something severley rotten in the state of Denmark...
And I am really not malevolent to this part of a franchise I invested quite some time over the last twenty years or so - and which has improved severly during that time. Why should I??? Nevertheless there is no denying a LOT went wrong with how V was designed, created and published compared to it's mostly brilliant predecessor - and it's astonishing to see how some people manage no matter what to mentaly twisting a half-baked 1UPT mechanic into strategy players reference, and the maniacly autistic AI behaviour into perfectly reasonable human-like interaction.
It's great you enjoy this game so much, but I was never much with this game, so in a strictly verbal sense I can't even "come back to" it. And if there aren't several medium to huge size mircales around the corner I probably wont. And that should be enough rant for today...

 

[Neomega]

What many don't remember is that Civ IV was pretty widely accused of being more shallow, dumbed down, casualized, etc etc, upon its release - and it came a *long* way from vanilla to BTS. May not come quite as far - though it may - but, a comparison of early life cycle Civ V to late life cycle Civ IV isn't the most even comparison.

I don't remember it, because it did not happen, "widely" or even "pretty widely". There was a small group of people that thought Civ 3 was better, but by and large, Civ IV was welcomed with open arms.

And I have a good memory, and I have been here (or Apolyton) since Civ II.

Every single person in this thread will come back to CIV V after its 2nd expansion pack and final patching as the crown jewel of the franchise and then rant about the shallowness of CIV VI.

Every single one of you.

Dream on. Look at the size of this rants thread, and think about the stupidity of your statement. Then don't post here again, troll.

And I know the rants about Civ IV did not last for this long.

I also know that civ IV was played a lot more, by a lot more people, for a far longer time.

Right now, 54 in civ V C&C, 113 in civ IV C&C. When civ IV came out, civ III C&C was almost abandoned, and civ IV C&C exploded with fan made content.

40 in Civ IV general discussion, 96 in civ V general discussion

Again, after a year, civ III was more like 10 - 15 and civ IV still would have hundreds in the general discussion section. Hundreds.

Civ IV is 8 or 9 years old, it shouldn't even stand a chance against civ V like that.

And, yes, because I was a modder, I payed attention to what was popular when civ IV came out. Civ IV shot straight up, and civ III was almost abandoned.

Did not happen this time. So both of you can quit with the delusions that somehow the release of Civ V is like the release of Civ IV. It is not, it has been a colossal failure for the fan base, and the complaints are far more numerous and loud, and there is far less interest in modding or discussion of strategies etc.

Moderator Action: Accusing other members of trolling is considered trolling in itself. Please refrain from doing so in future.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Everyone calm down.

If you do not wish to rant, then please do not use this thread. If you do not wish to read rants, then preserving this thread as a place where people can rant means it's not all over the rest of the forum.

If you do not like something someone has posted, then don't reply to it, firstly, and if you think it's breaking the forum rules, report it. Do not attack other posters under any circumstances, whether you think they've provoked you or not.

 

[Funky]

<snip>

Moderator Action: Public discussion of moderator action removed.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

It should also be noted being able to rant about Civ5 without really offering any constructive input in a forum designed to discuss the game is a privilege not a right and consider it an awesome privilege to be able to deploy vile insults, backhanded compliments and blood curdling rhetoric against a game in a forum dedicted to said game. In most cases that could be classified as trolling or behavior needing moderation (ie: removal from the forum) .

While I'm still here I can't hold back on commenting on this, because it contains several false assumptions on various levels.

First of all, you dismiss the tons and tons of meaningful constructive criticism found in this thread by refering to it as "vile insults" or what have you. Yes, there are posts in this thread that don't exceed the level of saying "this game is total trash". While I totally agree with such statements, the vast majority of posts and discussions go into great depth to explain how and why certain aspects of the game are far from optimal and many offer interesting alternatives. Nowhere in the Civ 5 section have I seen such inspiring and elaborately written criticism of the game as in this thread (don't let my post count fool you, been a long-time lurker). Of course if you view anything negative said about the game as "trolling", as you put it, it may be hard to identify meaningful criticism at all.

Secondly, you speak of privileges. Aside from the fact that the right of free speech offered by Western democracies is most definitely a privilege, I fail to see how I am benefitting from any kind of privilege. The critics of the game get shoved into the ghetto of this so-called "rants thread", a name which in itself is detrimental. I kind of got used to it over time, but even in our own ghetto we contantly have to deal with civ 5 lovers who stop by to tell us how narrow-minded we are for not liking the game because we didn't get civ 4.5 or whatever other of the various reasons that keep recurring. Long, well-thought out arguments, e.g. how the implementation of 1UPT fails in civ 5 due to it's impact on other areas of the game like long building times are usually responded to with comments like "everything is better than stacks" or similar intellectually stimulating remarks. If you consider these things privileges, I'd rather be bound to a more mundane forum life.

Third, the forum is not dedicated to civ 5, but to the Civilization games in general. Obviously the civ 5 section attracts people who like the newest installment. However, I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect people who for instance loved Civ 4 to express both their disappointment in Civ 5 and their criticism of the game in the Civ 5 section (afterall, it's about Civ 5!). What you indicate is that no kind of criticm should be announced at all, because it may hurt the feelings of the people who are so dedicated to the game.

Fourth,

There was for example not a Civ4 rants thread, even though not everyone migrated to 4 with open arms.

What do you think are the reasons for the absence of a rants thread for Civ 4? Could it be that despite some bugs most people were actually very pleased with the game design? On the other hand, why do you think a 93-page rants thread exists for Civ 5? Could it be because there are some serious inherent flaws in the game design? No, I guess it's all just a conspiracy of disillusioned 40-year-olds who enjoy to harrass those who like the game by repeatedly saying how bad it is...

And finally,

The irony perhaps is that many years later, I get to rant about flaws in Civ4 whenever I have to defend Civ5 from unfair criticisms and insults from people who clearly haven't played a patched version of the game and those who hold 4 in such high esteem they can't see past their unwillingness to adapt.

I am not surprised to read about yet another unjustified accusation on my own front porch (remember, this is our ghetto!). This is the rhetoric I was referring to above, when instead of arguments by the visitors to our rant thread slums, all we get is the use of the same strawmen over and over again. FYI I played the fully patched version of the Civ 5 and was utterly disgusted at what Firaxis did to my favorite series. That does not mean that I hold Civ 4 in such high esteem, as you suggest, as it did contain some flaws that I was hoping Civ 5 would deal with instead of dumping all the brilliant desin decisions alltogether.

 

[Tambien]

I fully agree with Funky's remarks.

 

[Charlie_B]

Just thought I'd pop in here (since the relevant thread has been closed) to express my incredulity that Civ now has 'break your save game' as a default setting. How stupid is that?

 

[Iranon]

There were plenty of misgivings about Civ4.

- It had an unaceeptable techncial problems. The ones that made it barely playable to some were fixed, some persist: the interface is imprecise and sluggish, play quickly and it'll mess up your orders.
- It seemed limited in scale to some. Default speed and size can be changed. If it's about limits on expansion... infinite city sprawl is still strong in 4, I liked that it was no longer effortless and that a compact well-developed empire could keep up.
- It lacked some goodies (limited espionage etc). Likely to happen when you compare a mature predecessor + expansions to a new game. Not indicative of actual quality of the game, and this wasn't a complaint I made against Civ5.
- Many didn't like the aesthetics (I still don't, there just more important things to me in a strategy game)
- My biggest issue was clunky and misleading maths behind many mechanics. I'm surprised this complaint wasn't raised more often, even though veteran players were getting basic things very wrong after years of intense play.

Despite its flaws, Civ4 turned out an honest and deep strategy game with a high decision density. The expansions actually included some filler and some tacked-on features that were lacking the elegance of the base game... but between better AI and more strategic options the game became deeper.
I hope Civ5 was a cynical attempt to sell a sweet-sounding concept without care whether it would actually work. The alternative, that this is the best genuine effort they could come up with, is scary.

Now, hearing frequent rants about things you like ("How can you eat, watch, play, listen to, date, or otherwise enjoy that piece of junk") may be tiring but bundling them here makes it quite easy to escape them.

Also, I'm not asking anyone to stop enjoying the game... just pointing out that it deserves to be a guilty pleasure if you make any distinction between "I like this" and "this is good".
Civilization 5 is offensive to me for the same reason films like King Arthur and Troy are. Slick superficially satisfying schlock has its place... but pretension that'll hurt genuine artistic reimaginings is evil.

 

[Bechhold]

Who needs to play a Marathon game when you have the 6/14 patch it can 5 minutes 24 seconds just to reach turn 52...

 

[Buccaneer]

The deification, mythology and revisionism of Civ4 continues.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Everyone calm down.

If you do not wish to rant, then please do not use this thread. If you do not wish to read rants, then preserving this thread as a place where people can rant means it's not all over the rest of the forum.

If you do not like something someone has posted, then don't reply to it, firstly, and if you think it's breaking the forum rules, report it. Do not attack other posters under any circumstances, whether you think they've provoked you or not.

Moderator Action: 4 posts deleted, because they didn't follow this post.

 

[Jayman1000]

... and the wind whistled through the empty streets. A debater carelessly pops out his head of a nearby Windows, looks to each side making sure no one sees, takes a deep breath and yells....

CIV V IS CRAP. DOWN WITH 1UPT!!

 

[Bad Brett]

My favourite game reviewer "Spoony" is obviously a huge fan of the Civilization series (if you don't know who it is, check him out, because he's hilarious).

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/06/20/e3-2010-coverage-civilization-5-interview/

Anyway, that was way before the game was relased, and since he seems like an intelligent guy, I can't imagine that the would like Civ V after actually playing it. Spoony is famous for bashing bad games and movies in an incredibly entertaining way and I would love to see him take on Civ V.

If you're also fans of Spoony, you should really do what I did, and send him a request to cover this game.

 

[MoonFlare]

I want him to bash XCOM:EU when this miserable dumbed down piece of crap comes out.
I shifted my focus from Civ5 to Firaxis. They are the main problem. A bunch of amateurs who bite off more than they can chew. Latest patch proves it. And what about Sid Meier? He's nothing more than a delirious old fart who cares about nothing but making games "accessible" and creating facebook games for housewifes.

 

[Lyoncet]

I may be wrong, but I believe Sid Meier's involvement in the Civ franchise has declined over the past few games and he has rather little creative oversight.

 

[mrt309]

First of all this game is not panzer general, it is Civilization!

This warfare fetishism has devastated a great strategy game. They wanted the game to be something it can not be. 1upt might be a good idea for some other strategy games but it is a terrible idea for a strategy game like civilization since there is also 1cpt (city per tile) and there isn't enough tiles for moving units easily. Now the ai pumps out many units without enough space and can not control them well. It looks really funny. What a big mess.

Production takes way too long. City improvements are useless. Diplomacy is very poor. So i could never get that managing a big empire feeling. I don't mind battle field strategies in civilization, i just want to outproduce my enemies, tech fasther than they do, make a few friends diplomatically and build an empire.

I haven't played the game since i uninstalled after the first day i had bought. I am planning to give a chance to the new expansion and then i will see.

 

[Esoteric Arcane]

Mrt309. I hope so as well.

 

[Funky]

I must stop by again to post my thanks to everyone here who recommended Crusader Kings II. After it had been mentioned here several times, I finally got it a few days ago and am absolutely stunned. Now THAT is a strategy game! So deep, well thought-out, and fun to explore all the different layers of the game and literally thousands of ways to play. After 12 hours I have still just scatched at the surface.

To everyone who wants to try a real strategy game, I highly recommend this game to you, just as others did before me. It's so relieving to see that there are still companies out there which design games that involve thinking (this one pretty much of it!).

I hope promoting this game isn't against some kind of rule again. For me it was my path out of the civ 5 rant thread ghetto into a shiny new world of depth and meaningful decisions, so I just feel obligated to tell others of this path as well.