Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[Anthropoid]

The only solution: search out the "Indy" or smaller developer/publisher games and buy those, while denying the "AAA" big boys your bucks

Crusader Kings II: (finally after lots of patches) pretty much lives up to its potentials

Game of Dwarves: haven't played it but it looks good

The Operational Art of War III: very old hardcore military strategy game, but it evidently got a recent "patch" (was published like 10 years ago!!) that virtually turns it into a new game.

Forge of Freedom: fantastic Civil War strategy and tactics game

Ageod titles, Slitherine titles, even some very recent Firaxis titles such as XCOM Enemy Unknown.

There are LOTs of other promising options for good strategy games that are either (a) truly modern, or (b) ~8 years old and still quite playable with mods (Roma Surrectum 2.5 Mod for Rome Total War; Stainless Steel 6.4 for Medieval 2 Total War, etc.). Play those! Support those communities!

Over the long haul, the corporate suit guys with the financial backing can SEE when there is a dearth of fan-enthusiasm and in the long haul they are likely to forego the form-over-function strategy, except of course where it is intentionally targeting a particular demographic (such as younger gamers) who are not likely to pay much difference anyway.

And of course, there is always Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword with Mods, my personal favorite (though I rarely play it) being Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn

 

[DavisonACT]

I like V - but have a rant or two. It's computations seem to take longer than they should. And 'next turn' doesn't always seem to mean next turn.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I like V - but have a rant or two. It's computations seem to take longer than they should. And 'next turn' doesn't always seem to mean next turn.

Please clarify your rant about "next turn". What exactly is your rant regarding "next turn"?

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[salty mud]

I think he means the annoying thing where you press end turn but the turn doesn't actually end, rather the game is waiting for you to move a unit.

 

[DavisonACT]

I think he means the annoying thing where you press end turn but the turn doesn't actually end, rather the game is waiting for you to move a unit.

That's the one. Sometimes I get 'end turn' and press it, but the turn doesn't end - it just asks me to move one more unit. So I do, 'end turn' comes up again, I press it - and lo and behold it asks me to give orders to a worker. 'End turn' comes up yet again and finally it does actually move the game forward to the next turn.

 

[Draginol]

The challenge Civilization 5 has with its end of turns is the path-finding. 1 unit per tile is a pretty tough job, especially late game, to deal with.

 

[DavisonACT]

The challenge Civilization 5 has with its end of turns is the path-finding. 1 unit per tile is a pretty tough job, especially late game, to deal with.

I have played many, many hex-based wargames over the years where this has not been the case - just saying

And it happens from very early on in all games I have played so far ...

 

[Smokeybear]

That's the one. Sometimes I get 'end turn' and press it, but the turn doesn't end - it just asks me to move one more unit. So I do, 'end turn' comes up again, I press it - and lo and behold it asks me to give orders to a worker. 'End turn' comes up yet again and finally it does actually move the game forward to the next turn.

Yeah, that's one of those "it was fine once, then they went and broke it" things. I distinctly remember in the past, when those situations came up, it would immediately whisk you to the location of the worker or unit that still needed to be moved, so it was pretty obvious that you still had to do something. Now, you click on 'end turn', and it does nothing. Just sits there, and if you don't specifically check to see whether it is actually processing the next turn, or just sitting there stupidly waiting for you to make another (unannounced) unit move first... you can daydream about your next moves for a very long time before you finally figure out it's not going anywhere... grrrr.

 

[Jatta Pake]

My rant:

Civ5 G&K Fall Patch is taking up waaaayyy too much of my time. It is too darn fun and I'm not getting my chores done.

I want more DLC! Where are the Zulu?!?!?!?!?! It's like ordering a steak dinner and getting only the potatos.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

How can I justify coughing up $5 for a new Civ 5 civ when I can mod a new civ into Civ 4 in under an hour? Or maybe just dl any of the dozens of free ones on this site...

 

[Smokeybear]

How can I justify coughing up $5 for a new Civ 5 civ when I can mod a new civ into Civ 4 in under an hour? Or maybe just dl any of the dozens of free ones on this site...

New civs should be a free download, at least from here on- it's not like they're a huge amount of work, and lord knows they get enough cash from the game + expansion sales. It's about like a restaurant charging extra for the after dinner mint.

 

[Funky]

Unfortunately, instead of showing Firaxis discontent for this rip-off business model, people actually beg them to release more DLC. Sad, really.

 

[Moriarte]

Did showing discontent ever help you?

It's not that sad when you think about how much money they make out of thin air. Quite funny, actually. Next version will be called iCiV and you'll have to pay 10 cents every time you log in . When that day comes even i will stop playing video games.

 

[Funky]

Did showing discontent ever help you?

If showing discontent translates into not buying any DLC, then it will certainly help. They will hardly release further DLC if nobody buys it. Instead, Firaxis is rewarded for ripping off their customers by the same customers requesting even more DLC, which is indeed very sad for the consumer's side of the gaming world.

DLC doesn't even have to be bad per se. Crusader Kings 2, for example, released the DLC "Sword of Islam" a few months ago, which allowed you to play as a Muslim ruler, as well as introducing an extensive overhaul to the islamic world. What Paradox did, is include every single change in a free patch they released at the same time as the DLC. The only thing the DLC actually did was let you play with a muslim ruler if you so desired. Everything else was given the customers for free.
This assured for example that multiplayer games could be played despite certain players not having the DLC. It also meant that players with no desire to play a muslim ruler still got all the benefits of the DLC without having to purchase it. This is a good example of what I call consumer-orientated DLC. One feels that Paradox has the consumer and his needs in mind. Firaxis' model, on the other hand, charging 4,99 for single Civs, is a good example of greed-orientated DLC. One feels that all they have in mind is $$$.

 

[Camikaze]

I like V - but have a rant or two. It's computations seem to take longer than they should. And 'next turn' doesn't always seem to mean next turn.

If you've told a unit to move for three turns or something, it won't execute its move on subsequent turns until you ended your turn, so that you have an opportunity to change the order should you so desire. However, if you press 'next turn', and then these pre-ordered moves execute, but result in the unit still having movement points available, rather than wasting those movement points, you have an opportunity to use them up.

So the alternatives are either to execute pre-ordered movement before you've had a chance to change the order, to let the movement points go to waste (IIRC, there's a bit of a bug with workers doing this sometimes), or to perform checks on all units to see if they will have movement points remaining after they've completed their pre-ordered move, before they actually perform it, which would be quite resource intensive. So anyway, that's why it does it. Hopefully that makes a bit more sense.

 

[Sucha_Soorma]

I rarely post on this board. Bought every Civ since Civ2, but Civ5 was so awful, I did not purchase the Gods and Kings. The greatest PC game ever has been destroyed. What I can't fathom is how people actually enjoy Civ5? It's a complete and utter nonsense of what the other civs had been.
I and many friends bought Civ5 on day of release, but quickly found it to be extremely poor.
Our only hope can be that sales for the expansion were much worse compared to past expansion sales, that 2K and Firaxis actually realise the error of their ways.
It's like the Roman Empire collapsing, followed by the dark ages... we can only hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel and a Civ6 emerges building on Civ4 and ignoring the civ5 madness.
What is also surprising is that no other publisher has seen the drop in quality and noticed that there is now a big gap in the market to try to build a game like civ.
Another thing that has surprised me is how good the reviews for this game were, and many reviewers claiming to be hardcore civ players, I guess they were bought out by the publishers?

Final piece of rant - it's sad that the moderators have controlled all negative comments on this forum.

 

[DavisonACT]

If you've told a unit to move for three turns or something, it won't execute its move on subsequent turns until you ended your turn, so that you have an opportunity to change the order should you so desire. However, if you press 'next turn', and then these pre-ordered moves execute, but result in the unit still having movement points available, rather than wasting those movement points, you have an opportunity to use them up.

So the alternatives are either to execute pre-ordered movement before you've had a chance to change the order, to let the movement points go to waste (IIRC, there's a bit of a bug with workers doing this sometimes), or to perform checks on all units to see if they will have movement points remaining after they've completed their pre-ordered move, before they actually perform it, which would be quite resource intensive. So anyway, that's why it does it. Hopefully that makes a bit more sense.

Thanks, and that sounds ok in theory - trouble is it seems to do this unit by unit. So as mentioned above, 'next turn' pops up - oh - that scout has 1MP left. OK, gave it orders, 'next turn' prompt pops up - oh - that bowman still has 1 mp. Rinse and repeat - when it should just cycle through everything that still has mp left before saying 'next turn'.

 

[Socratatus]

I rarely post on this board. Bought every Civ since Civ2, but Civ5 was so awful, I did not purchase the Gods and Kings. The greatest PC game ever has been destroyed. What I can't fathom is how people actually enjoy Civ5? It's a complete and utter nonsense of what the other civs had been.
I and many friends bought Civ5 on day of release, but quickly found it to be extremely poor.
Our only hope can be that sales for the expansion were much worse compared to past expansion sales, that 2K and Firaxis actually realise the error of their ways.
It's like the Roman Empire collapsing, followed by the dark ages... we can only hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel and a Civ6 emerges building on Civ4 and ignoring the civ5 madness.
What is also surprising is that no other publisher has seen the drop in quality and noticed that there is now a big gap in the market to try to build a game like civ.
Another thing that has surprised me is how good the reviews for this game were, and many reviewers claiming to be hardcore civ players, I guess they were bought out by the publishers?

Final piece of rant - it's sad that the moderators have controlled all negative comments on this forum.

The thing is since Steam (i hate to go on about it), publishers and Devs get bad data about the success of the game compared to others. For example, since Steam prevents ALL returns and resales (or makes returns extremely difficult), it makes it look as if the game is a run away success.

But it`s really hard to vote a protest when you can`t return a bad game since as soon as you pop the `Steam` game in to play since it must be registered and once registered you MUST keep it, even if only staying Offline. To `play`, you must `keep` no matter what. In the normal world of commerce you can return an unsatisfactory product after trying... Not so with steam now.

Of course, from what i see on the forums now compared to years before, there seems to be a new demographic that don`t care about things making any sense at all as long as it looks and sounds `awesome`.

 

[DavisonACT]

I rarely post on this board. Bought every Civ since Civ2, but Civ5 was so awful, I did not purchase the Gods and Kings. The greatest PC game ever has been destroyed. What I can't fathom is how people actually enjoy Civ5? It's a complete and utter nonsense of what the other civs had been.
I and many friends bought Civ5 on day of release, but quickly found it to be extremely poor.
Our only hope can be that sales for the expansion were much worse compared to past expansion sales, that 2K and Firaxis actually realise the error of their ways.
It's like the Roman Empire collapsing, followed by the dark ages... we can only hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel and a Civ6 emerges building on Civ4 and ignoring the civ5 madness.
What is also surprising is that no other publisher has seen the drop in quality and noticed that there is now a big gap in the market to try to build a game like civ.
Another thing that has surprised me is how good the reviews for this game were, and many reviewers claiming to be hardcore civ players, I guess they were bought out by the publishers?

Final piece of rant - it's sad that the moderators have controlled all negative comments on this forum.

This is a rant post - so how are negative comments controlled? I have also been on the Civ IV section of the boards and been roasted for suggesting V is not so bad - the mods let everything run as they should.

Also felt obliged to correct one part of your rant:

"In my opinion it's a complete and utter nonsense of what the other civs had been."

I got roasted for having the temerity to suggest that personal opinion was not universal truth.

I have no problem with people hating on V, I DO have a problem with people saying I must have a screw loose for liking it more than IV.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

That's because it's not better then 4, nor will it ever be.