Civilization 5 Rants Thread

Has Civilization V improved to the Beyond the Sword level or it's on its diapers yet??

I'm storing the game until an expansion or mod or SOMETHING brings Civ V to the Beyond the Sword level... I heard about a Gods and Kings expansion but I think that just incorporated religion, right?

Anyways is there already a decent patch or mod that makes me feel Civ V better than Beyond the Sword???

Thanks for suggestions!
 
I don't know how you classify "still on diapers," but I imagine most of the posts that follow will encourage you to check out Gods and Kings and the variety of changes it brings to the game alongside religion.
 
I don't know how you classify "still on diapers," but I imagine most of the posts that follow will encourage you to check out Gods and Kings and the variety of changes it brings to the game alongside religion.

I refer to diapers meaning in it's original basis like it was released. For example in Civilization IV I consider the original Civ IV game like the one at ''diapers'', and the expansions being the development of the original basis until the ultimate development at Beyond the Sword. If you compare, it's what's happening with Civ V: it's on its original basis yet as Civ IV on it's original release... it needs to be more developed to reach an ultimate development like Beyond the Sword.

At my opinion, Civ V as the original released is too simple compared to Beyond the Sword as predecessor... I'm still waiting for an expansion, for that development on Civ V that really makes it better than the previous Civ 4 at its ultimate development; or at least a mod made by someone.
 
Civ V AI still leaves a lot to be desired. I wouldn't call it being in diapers so much as drooling in the fetal position and pooping units all over the place. Of course the idiot is getting rather well dressed (religion, balance fixes etc), but at the end of the day it remains a drooling dingus. There are also a few near game-breaking (according to SOME) exploits still around, namely the DOW-gold steal exploit and the city-selling exploit. The expansion is cheap enough now though that personally I'd simply buy it and try it out. I'd say you'll get enough novelty value from the added trinkets that it easily justifies the meager cost.
 
anybody else rage quit when your holy city gets converted by a RA partner? I have one RA partner the whole game. I was 3rd to get a religion but last to an enhancer (only 6-8 fpt from Idols and a shrine). I want to rage-dow and take his prophet who is trying to get into my cap from the coast. but id lose the RA (and have to defend on a naval front--which im not equipped for) and i lose culture/production/gold from my religion and gain +2 happiness from a garden and desert folklore where i have no deserts. its going to be about 8cpt and 6gpt and 11% production in my cap.

and to add fuel to the fire, i had been battling about every 3 turns losing control of one of my cities to obnoxious pressure from the AI that had RTexts and 20 cities to my lonely 3. I had just taken Itinerant Preachers and bumped my pressure to slow it down. and out of the blue i see this prophet swimming to my cap.

it's immortal/pangea/standard and i have a DREAM defensive spot but i spent a lot of turns getting that religion and i will for sure lose it altogether. the one city i have left will succumb to pressure in about 10 turns and i wont be able to get an Inqu (my first one available) for another 20 turns.

im stepping away from it to see i want to gut this out. it wont cost me the game but it is so angering that i will have no fond memories of this session. even when i win i will be angry about it and just delete the save anyway.

grrrrrrr!
 
Well, since there was a sale, I went ahead and upgraded to Gold for only 5 bucks, and thus got to play a game with G&K finally.

Much like my feelings toward the core game, there were things I liked and things I didn't. Overall I enjoyed the game better with the new mechanics, but there were still too many things I disliked from the core game for me to be able to say it fully addressed my most serious complaints.

Diplomacy feels better than it did now, but it still doesn't always make what I would consider intuitive sense. Some of the reasons why remaining from the core game include:

  • When a peace treaty expires, you still have all of your trade agreements and you're not at war, but there's no option to renew the peace treaty, and nothing that say "at peace" or "not at peace." There's absolutely zero feedback to let me know if the expiration of this treaty means we're in some new sort of status, or whether we reestablish peace simply by entering into any form of trade agreement, or what (and that would make no sense, since the trade agreements I already had during peace are still active after peace expires anyway.)
  • You can sign defensive pacts, but your allies won't join into a war unless you're attacked without provocation. They can be friendly to you, have declared their friendship, have open borders, and have a defensive pact for centuries, but they will never, ever (seemingly at least) agree to join a war against an opponent no matter what you offer them.
  • Those who dislike you are still far too difficult to appease without giving up happiness resources or important strategic resources, which is a huge risk because since there's no way to tell if this act on your part will make them like you better (and often it seems to have no effect whatsoever for that matter,) you might be giving up the ability to produce crucial units to defend against them declaring war on you.
  • Nations will seem to absolutely hate you despite giving them things. Then several turns later they suddenly love you. Then they begin contacting you almost constantly to renew agreements. (The addition of renegotiating deals is actually convenient, but it seems CONSTANT and gets really annoying.) Added to that is the fact that the game tells you when deals expire only intermittently. I've had defensive pacts expire without the game ever telling me at all until they contact me and ask me to renegotiate.

The addition of religion is initially very cool. I like having it back in the game in any form, and the ability to sort of customize religions is a really interesting system. But there are two things I found myself disliking about it.

  • Spreading religion seems to only make countries angry. I couldn't see that I was gaining any sort of influence with them by converting them to my religion, just the benefits you get from beliefs and enhancements that stem from the number of cities in other nations that have your religion.
  • It's the same complaint I have about culture in Civ V. Namely, I never feel like I'm really influencing other states, just adding benefits to my own. That feeling of spreading and influencing and becoming more powerful just feels stagnant because it ultimately boils down to little more than a buff depending on which beliefs you select.
  • My religion doesn't feel like my own in the way that, for example, customized units do in Gal Civ 2 (or even Alpha Centauri for that matter.) It feels like a set of buffs. And there are so few that it feels very sterile and like a spreadsheet as opposed to a unique set of religious beliefs.

That said, I'm pleased overall with the inclusion of religion. It adds another dynamic to the game - if a muted one from a strategic applicability standpoint - and lets me feel more like I have a unique civilization and culture than I did before.

The things I would like to see happen that would finally eliminate nearly all of my most serious complaints with this game would be:

  • Influence over other players from culture with city flipping being brought back or, in the alternative, cities more likely to be offered in peace negotiations if they are near your borders and you have high culture near them.
  • A new cultural victory that isn't tied to policies but total cultural influence over other nations and the world in general.
  • A way for the game to measure the overall "governance state" (if you will) based upon the specific composition of your policies, and for AI to have different attitudes toward you based on that state (i.e. if they're one state they don't like or do like such and such a state, etc. This brings back a simulation of the old government type and civic type mechanic.)
  • Bring back tech trading.
  • Allow permanent alliances.
  • Increase the duration of defensive pacts.
  • Make the attitude of defense pact allies increasingly negative toward states at war with you as the war wears on, so that there is the possibility they will join the war, or be receptive to an invitation to join the war eventually.
  • Create a diplomatic state called "peace" and another called "no status" (for the state you're in when peace treaties expire) and show these on the diplomacy overview screen.
  • Increase the number of beliefs we can select from when enhancing our religions, and as with policies, generate a "religion state" that describes the nature of our religion, and determines other states attitude toward us based on either their policies or their own religion if they have one.
Doing all of this would literally make the game one of my favorite Civ games of all time. As it stands now though, unless "One World" turns out to be real and institutes something along those lines, then my conclusion for the time being is that I enjoy and will play V but prefer IV.
 
  • Spreading religion seems to only make countries angry. I couldn't see that I was gaining any sort of influence with them by converting them to my religion, just the benefits you get from beliefs and enhancements that stem from the number of cities in other nations that have your religion.

Nice post. :)

Just to note on this point, other civs will be angry with you for spreading your religion if they already have their own. But if they don't have their own, you'll get a positive modifier. The number of available religions is less than the number of civs, so there'll always be some you can spread to without causing anger (unless they've been eliminated!). There are some clear annoyances with this system though, in that a civ can be perfectly happy to accept your religion, and then suddenly turn around and denounce you because they've just spawned a Great Prophet and founded their own.
 
anybody else rage quit when your holy city gets converted by a RA partner? ... the one city i have left will succumb to pressure in about 10 turns and i wont be able to get an Inqu (my first one available) for another 20 turns.

Been there, and was furious like there would be no tomorrow. Was Inca and my religion was under siege from west by buddhism (siam) and east from islam (egypt). Egypt sends a GP and suddenly my holy city has just one believer of the True Faith and it was the only place with my religion. I could not create missionaries or inqu, but I was saved by a prophet 15-20 turns later (prophets are of your religion even if you have no followers left) that made the True Faith majority again in my holy city. The RA finished a turn later and I let the wrath of God rain upon Egypt and then Siam. The religion battle was more or less lost but managed to get my 5-6 founded cities converted to True Faith eventually.

Rage quit was tempting but saved by prophet.
 
[*]Spreading religion seems to only make countries angry. I couldn't see that I was gaining any sort of influence with them by converting them to my religion, just the benefits you get from beliefs and enhancements that stem from the number of cities in other nations that have your religion.

My impression is that they get angry if you "actively" spread your religion (missionaries and prophets) and they already have a religion. A "passive" spread of religion (IP, RT) + pressure does not seem to anger them.

However I have no problem that they get angry, I get angry when they do it to me too, especially "active" spread. It is casus belli for me - an AI should expect cannons knocking on their door very soon.
 
Hear is one for the developers - I want more meaningful messages when I talk to the other AI.

Like when a AI that you thought was a friend suddenly tell the world that you are a warmonger - I would love to send him a message like - go pound salt up your ass !

Like when an AI says "my what a tiny army you have (when in fact you have a huge navy) - I would love to say "And your mamma is so ugly"

Like when an AI says "oops thought I was talking to a barbarian" I would love to say "if my dog looked like you, I would shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards"

We need meaningful diplomatic messages !!
 
Hear is one for the developers - I want more meaningful messages when I talk to the other AI.

Like when a AI that you thought was a friend suddenly tell the world that you are a warmonger - I would love to send him a message like - go pound salt up your ass !

Like when an AI says "my what a tiny army you have (when in fact you have a huge navy) - I would love to say "And your mamma is so ugly"

Like when an AI says "oops thought I was talking to a barbarian" I would love to say "if my dog looked like you, I would shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards"

We need meaningful diplomatic messages !!

I don't think many people would like this. There are already people who are complaining why terms such as the civ with " pointiest stick" is used instead of more mature terms.
 
Been there, and was furious like there would be no tomorrow. Was Inca and my religion was under siege from west by buddhism (siam) and east from islam (egypt). Egypt sends a GP and suddenly my holy city has just one believer of the True Faith and it was the only place with my religion. I could not create missionaries or inqu, but I was saved by a prophet 15-20 turns later (prophets are of your religion even if you have no followers left) that made the True Faith majority again in my holy city. The RA finished a turn later and I let the wrath of God rain upon Egypt and then Siam. The religion battle was more or less lost but managed to get my 5-6 founded cities converted to True Faith eventually.

Rage quit was tempting but saved by prophet.

i decided to play it out. i got angry, dow'd arabia, took the prophet and made peace with my other war (america). i took 3 of her cities including Mecca with about 5 wonders. also had machu pichu in a 2nd city i took. i decided id try for oil (planes and naval warfare) and just go domination. i had 24 aluminum and 4 oil, haha. so i went back to sci efforts. the wars set me back at least 30 turns though. it was late and Cathy was a huge runaway she started building parts at t250. by t298 when i won with mine she still had 2 left to get. no one was near a culture vic and UN never got built.

i needed to sleep it off but the anger was still there when i took the game back up. taking his cap did make me feel better though. but a late win like that angered me again. if it's not sub270 it doesnt feel like anything went right. oh well.
 
Has Civilization V improved to the Beyond the Sword level or it's on its diapers yet??

Civ 1 still beats it in all departments, including graphics, but especially in AI.
 
Civ 1 still beats it in all departments, including graphics, but especially in AI.

To be fair, Civ 5 has the better water textures than Civ 1. Apart from that you are right of course that Civ 1's graphics are much better than Civ 5's muddled mess of weird colorful circles and strange icons scattered throughout the landscape.
 
To be fair, Civ 5 has the better water textures than Civ 1. Apart from that you are right of course that Civ 1's graphics are much better than Civ 5's muddled mess of weird colorful circles and strange icons scattered throughout the landscape.
That's one of my biggest complaints too! Without those ugly icons, it's a challenge trying to distinguish one unit from another.
 
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