Civilization 5 Rants Thread

[kingchris20]

Civ V is the best, the hex map is much better than the square of old. I hate unit stacking as well, this solved many problems I had with civ iv

 

[rschissler]

Civ V is the best, the hex map is much better than the square of old. I hate unit stacking as well, this solved many problems I had with civ iv

Oops, I think you meant this for the raves thread.

 

[sufficiency]

Lost my Deity game because Alex beat me in spaceship by A SINGLE TURN. Yes, A SINGLE TURN.

I can probably go back and try to save one turn somewhere, but honestly, I am so mad right now.

 

[calad]

I was looking steam store and I found this on civ5 main page:

About the Game

The Flagship Turn-Based Strategy Game Returns

Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the dawn of man into the space age: Wage war, conduct diplomacy, discover new technologies, go head-to-head with some of history’s greatest leaders and build the most powerful empire the world has ever known.

INVITING PRESENTATION: Jump right in and play at your own pace with an intuitive interface that eases new players into the game. Civ veterans will appreciate the depth, detail and control that are highlights of the series.

BELIEVABLE WORLD: Ultra realistic graphics showcase lush landscapes for you to explore, battle over and claim as your own. Art deco influences abound in the menus and icons in the most well-designed Civ ever developed.

COMMUNITY & MULTIPLAYER: Compete with Civ players all over the world or locally in LAN matches, mod* the game in unprecedented ways, and install mods directly from an in-game community hub without ever leaving the game. Civilization V brings community to the forefront.

WIDE SYSTEM COMPATIBILITY: Civilization V operates on many different systems, from high end DX11 desktops to many laptops. Enjoy unlimited installations on multiple PCs with your Steam account and take your Civ V experience with you everywhere you go.

ALL NEW FEATURES: A new hex-based gameplay grid opens up exciting new combat and build strategies. City States become a new resource in your diplomatic battleground. An improved diplomacy system allows you to negotiate with fully interactive leaders. Custom music scores and orchestral recordings give Civ V the level of polish and quality you expect from the series.

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE: 2K Games is donating a total of $250,000 to four education based charities, and users' choices will determine how the money is dispersed: simply select your choice from the pre-selected charities during the install process.

Usually I simply ignore advertisement of game. In old times when I had to go to shop and select game from the shelf I learned quickly game´s cover is too often full of partly misleading, selected information and sometimes outright lies.

I can only wonder who wrote this originally. Half of about the game is anything than it, why they have to promote social responsibility? I am looking a game, not chance of charity.

Community and multiplayer section is not simply true and believable world dont mention at all graphic bugs and frozen animations.

And wide system compatibility. Is it really a worth to mention or especially promote? It should be common sense that game can operate in different systems nowdays.

Once again I had to admit to myself that the most important part of information is part that is not mentioned.

Firaxis, why do you go so low? In the long time dodgy marketing like this only alienate old and new players, making them more sceptical. People are not that stupid you know.

There goes our flagship.

Moderator Action: Merged with the rants thread.

 

[Ajuga]

Except every company ever markets in this fashion.
That's what marketing is. Making your product look good/better (compared to competition) so you buy it.

Only really gullible people fall for marketing like this (which is more than half the consumers out there).

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Civ V is the best, the hex map is much better than the square of old. I hate unit stacking as well, this solved many problems I had with civ iv

Showing the idea process of the civ 5 fans, "I like the game, because it solves a problem that was only a problem because I was too lazy*. Who cares if we break every other mechanic on which the game rests in order to make this fix?"


*SOD was never really a problem, you could split your stacks, have a hammer of siege and melee/gunpowder and a rapier of cavalry units at the same time, split your stack to three or four mini stacks and many other tactics, each of which was better than the SOD option for conquering the AI. And don't even get me started on the utter stupidity of SOD's when playing other humans.

 

[kingchris20]

Showing the idea process of the civ 5 fans, "I like the game, because it solves a problem that was only a problem because I was too lazy*. Who cares if we break every other mechanic on which the game rests in order to make this fix?"


*SOD was never really a problem, you could split your stacks, have a hammer of siege and melee/gunpowder and a rapier of cavalry units at the same time, split your stack to three or four mini stacks and many other tactics, each of which was better than the SOD option for conquering the AI. And don't even get me started on the utter stupidity of SOD's when playing other humans.

Lazy?! I believe it takes much more skill to dominate in civ V. It takes quite a bit of effort to take a single city in civ V (given no huge technological advantages), just due to the fact that you are limited to a single unit per hex...........civ iv, ahh just send the 20 unit stack..problem solved


That said, it is much easier to defend in Civ V........(of course with G&K, they made it a little harder to defend on coastal cities against a strong navy.....but still easier in comparison to civ iv)

Spoiler :

single unit hex map was change for the better

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Lazy?! I believe it takes much more skill to dominate in civ V. It takes quite a bit of effort to take a single city in civ V (given no huge technological advantages), just due to the fact that you are limited to a single unit per hex...........civ iv, ahh just send the 20 unit stack..problem solved


That said, it is much easier to defend in Civ V........(of course with G&K, they made it a little harder to defend on coastal cities against a strong navy.....but still easier in comparison to civ iv)

Spoiler :

single unit hex map was change for the better

I disagree. The Civ V AI is barely able to handle 1 UPT tactics. There can only be one unit defending a city, thus it will be trvial for a human player to destroy that unit and the city's inate defense.

In Civ IV on the other hand, the AI is able to control stacks both for offensive and defensive purposes far more effectively. An AI's capital can be defended by several dozen units, often including some seige units which the AI usually uses effectively to severely damage the non-seige units.

Even the designer of Civ V admits that 1UPT was a bad idea. He recently noted the problem of no enough room on the map for all the units that would normally be produced. To reduce this to a manageable level, both production and growth (since more population means potentially working more plots with Hammers) had to be heavily nerfed. This also drastically reduced production for both buildings and wonders as well.

The need for low production even forced the lack of sliders, because there can't be an easy way to increase production via the sliders, since that would again flood the map with 1UPT units.

1UPT was a huge disaster that negatively affected nearly every subsystem and thus effectively killed Civ V. While many players did buy Civ V, very few are actually playing it.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Deggial]

I can not believe how often this false reasoning is repeated and that it obviously seems to be accepted as accurate meanwhile. Honestly, I am a little bit tired of this fight and didn't want to take part in the combat any more. But maybe a last effort...

First of all this:

Even the designer of Civ V admits that 1UPT was a bad idea. He recently noted the problem of no enough room on the map for all the units that would normally be produced. To reduce this to a manageable level, both production (so he said, yes) and growth (where did he say this?) (since more population means potentially working more plots with Hammers) had to be heavily nerfed. This also drastically reduced production for both buildings and wonders as well.

And this is, what Shaffer really said:

"On the whole, I would say that the combat mechanics are indeed better in Civ 5 than in any other entry in the series. But as is the theme of this article, there's a downside to consider as well.
...
To address this, I slowed the rate of production, which in turn led to more waiting around for buckets to fill up. For pacing reasons, in the early game I might have wanted players to be training new units every 4 turns. But this was impossible, because the map would have then become covered in Warriors by the end of the classical era. And once the map fills up too much, even warfare stops being fun." J. Shaffer, Revisiting the Design of 'Civ 5'.

Yes, he said he slowed down the rate of production. But did he refer to the general production rate or only the production rate of units? And even if he referred to general production (which I believe he did, unfortunately for my argumentation ):
1) Was this a necessary/the only solution to the overcrowding-issue? And...
2) Is this still true?

Ad 1)
I don' t think so! There are several different solutions that come into my mind:

a) Increase production costs for units only.
I presented this argument already and it was countered by the reply that, with cheaper buildings, the building-queue would be emptied sooner and be freed for new units. This counter-argument is quite solid. Never the less, if you really want, you could just introduce some more buildings that keep your cities busy enough.
b) Increase unit upkeep.
Make your military so expensive that you don't want to have a carpet of doom drowning the terrain. This is a very easy and comprehensible way to solve the problem
c) Introduce a fixed unit per city cap.
This cap might be expanded with new technologies and SoPos to allow bigger armies. While this is a straight forward solution, it is a little bit too artificial for my taste. But it would definitely work!

So, here we have three easy solutions to prevent unit numbers overtop the banks. Do you really think, an experienced team of game designers incompetently missed all of them?
The implication is, that the generally slowed production might have been a bad decision. But a decision that had NOTHING to do with 1UPT!

ad 2)
Is this true at all? Is production actually incredible slow in Civ5?

This might have been true when Civ5 was launched (with Shaffer's design). But since that time, G&K and several patches did wonders on production. Honestly, I really don't feel slowed down unreasonably, when producing buildings in Civ5!
What is so terrible about an early shrine in 7 turns? Are 13 turns for a granary too much?
Sure, a newly founded city needs to grow before things speed up and if this city has no productive tiles in it's reach, building stuff will take forever. But this is exactly how it should be!
And after a really short time, producing early stuff (buildings AND units) is mostly a matter of few (1-4) turns.

And because production is enhanced now and 1UPT is still in place, the implication is that 1UPT can not be the reason for all your accuse it of!

----

1UPT was a huge disaster that negatively affected nearly every subsystem and thus effectively killed Civ V.

Yea, but go for it! Continue your argument Ad nauseam.
I really feel that you (not specifically you, Sun Zu Wu, but all those followers of this argumentation in general) successfully turn the tide in your favor!

I just makes me so sad...

 

[Funky]

@Deggial:

It's ok that you like the game. Really. With all due respect though, your argumentation is severly flawed, the "solutions" you offer very poor, and your conclusion erroneous. The reasons have been laid out by myself and others ever so often, that I really don't feel like doing it again (I too am tired of these discussions). If you are interested, search for the appropriate threads and read yourself. But it may be better for you just to play the game if you can actually find enjoyment in doing so. Just please don't try to wave away all the well-founded and highly appropriate criticism with such superficial statements and halfhearted arguments, at least not in the rants thread.

 

[Deggial]

@ Funky:

It is not about liking or not liking the game. It is about false quoting and superficial argumentation. And this is against what I rant! (So I feel in good hands in the rants thread )

If you don't like 1UPT, blame it for the real issues!
Choke points and the traffic jams they cause, for example. (I see them as tactical challenge. But you are right, I like the game. So this is a matter of taste and I can't blame anybody to see it different).
Or allied units blocking your own troops.
I don't deny there are problems and if you take them to your heart, they very well might spoil the game for you.

But regarding 1UPT and production, I never did read a convincing argument! (I am interested and I did follow all the appropriate threads!)
They mainly repeat only what Sulla once brought up - and I believe that he was wrong in the first place.

My main argument (and I never saw it confuted and definitely don't see why it is halfhearted) still is:
There are a bunch of possibilities to keep unit numbers in control.
Possibilities that have nothing to do with production.
So, please STOP blaming 1UPT for lowered productivity (assuming that this is the case at all)! They are not related per definition!

---

You don't like my proposals? Okay, you don't have to.
What about this:

- Quantify bonus resources just as strategic resources. Cattle could come in lower numbers, wheat in higher (or vice versa) and so on.
- Bonus resources are ubiquitous, so there is no danger of having an over-limiting shortage of them.
- Let bonus resources act as general "supplies" to fuel your total number of military units - just as strategic resources do, but less specific.
- Effect: Not only that your unit numbers are under control, but city placement is even more important than it is now. There could be "high production cities" to build up your army but that can not maintain it. And there will be rich and food heavy "supply-cities" to feed your men.
- Additional possibilities: You could even trade for additional bonus resources and new buildings might add some others. SoPos could add free units. And so on and so forth. The game designers have full control over the balance here.

I think this is a win-win situation, isn't it?

 

[Civking5]

Showing the idea process of the civ 5 fans, "I like the game, because it solves a problem that was only a problem because I was too lazy*. Who cares if we break every other mechanic on which the game rests in order to make this fix?"


*SOD was never really a problem, you could split your stacks, have a hammer of siege and melee/gunpowder and a rapier of cavalry units at the same time, split your stack to three or four mini stacks and many other tactics, each of which was better than the SOD option for conquering the AI. And don't even get me started on the utter stupidity of SOD's when playing other humans.

So you would call a game good if it is designed in a way that it is filled with chore like tasks? The most important factor in game is that it should be "fun", and talking about "laziness" in regard to a GAME is really insane.

 

[Civking5]

@Deggial:

It's ok that you like the game. Really. With all due respect though, your argumentation is severly flawed, the "solutions" you offer very poor, and your conclusion erroneous. The reasons have been laid out by myself and others ever so often, that I really don't feel like doing it again (I too am tired of these discussions). If you are interested, search for the appropriate threads and read yourself. But it may be better for you just to play the game if you can actually find enjoyment in doing so. Just please don't try to wave away all the well-founded and highly appropriate criticism with such superficial statements and halfhearted arguments, at least not in the rants thread.

This is funny. This is one interesting way of posting. Talking in a manner that you know everything about civ games and seeing all other's flawed argument ( which is outstanding for itself for a person who has not played civ5 at all), and then referring to other threads that are " well founded" opinions. Let me make something clear for you, there is no well founded posts here rather than other's opinion and criticism based on the poster experience ( something that again u don't have with civ5).

 

[Dr. D]

My rant is that this thread is in the Civ V forums to begin with. I don't have a problem with the premise of the thread because the game is surely far from perfect and has its flaws... and yes, I think everyone who has played the game has been given a reason to rant from time to time. Vamphaery had a great well-written rant a page back. My problem though, considering my opening statement, is that the defining majority of the rants are made by people who don't even play the game. I say this based on the things I read here that are considered to be "facts" about the Civ V game mechanics which are laughably false to anyone who has either A) played this game recently or B) has put any reasonable time into the game to see how it works.

"To have a religion, you need to be lucky enough to be allies with a religious city-state." False, there are so many ways to accomplish this. "A capital can only be defended by one unit." False, this statement can only be made by someone who has never tried to take a coastal city with galeasses or battleships taking pot shots at your hapless units, nevermind the units that surround the city. "Build times take forever." All I have to say to refute this is to open Civ V, click on 'start new game', settle a city and see that it takes 5 turns to build a scout... I rest my case. I'm not saying the game is difficult, but if we're going to come off as stating concrete facts about why the game is so bad, let's at least have played the current incarnation of the game and given it enough time to give a valid argument.

Sadly, one person recently posted in this thread saying they won't try Civ V because of the things they are reading here. Now, it wouldn't be a problem if these rants were well thought out responses by people who have played the game, but based on the things I have read, that is not the case, and the casual bystander who has not played the game wouldn't know the depths of fallacy surrounding many of these rants. Though not everyone ranting is a Civ IV fan / V hater (as I said the game DOES have its rant-worthy flaws), I'm trying to figure out why the majority of the posts in this thread are in the Civ V forum and not the Civ IV forum (where most of the ranters are coming from). If I have a problem with, say, McDonald's, I don't hold weekly meetings inside the McDonald's screaming negative things about their menu and passing them off as fact that are simply not true. In reality, I would be asked to leave the premises. Likewise, I don't know why Civ IV fans feel the need to come into the Civ V forums to poopoo on things here. It just doesn't seem like the healthiest conversation to me. If I'm a Civ IV lover (which I am, I'm just not monogamous in my Civilization relationships ) and a Civ V hater, I think I'd rather have my conversation with those who agree with me in my own territory rather than trying to bash the game for bashing's sake in someone else's backyard, and I'm sad to say that's exactly what this thread has devolved into.

Long story short, I enjoy reading a good old-fashioned Civ V rant... I'm just tired of reading "facts" about the game that are so outdated that it's obvious the ranter is just going off of tired old material. If we're going to rant, let's talk about something like how the game discourages expansion, one of the X's in 4X. Now that would be a rant if I ever saw one.

 

[ork75]

My rant is that this thread is in the Civ V forums to begin with. I don't have a problem with the premise of the thread because the game is surely far from perfect and has its flaws... and yes, I think everyone who has played the game has been given a reason to rant from time to time. Vamphaery had a great well-written rant a page back. My problem though, considering my opening statement, is that the defining majority of the rants are made by people who don't even play the game. I say this based on the things I read here that are considered to be "facts" about the Civ V game mechanics which are laughably false to anyone who has either A) played this game recently or B) has put any reasonable time into the game to see how it works.

"To have a religion, you need to be lucky enough to be allies with a religious city-state." False, there are so many ways to accomplish this. "A capital can only be defended by one unit." False, this statement can only be made by someone who has never tried to take a coastal city with galeasses or battleships taking pot shots at your hapless units, nevermind the units that surround the city. "Build times take forever." All I have to say to refute this is to open Civ V, click on 'start new game', settle a city and see that it takes 5 turns to build a scout... I rest my case. I'm not saying the game is difficult, but if we're going to come off as stating concrete facts about why the game is so bad, let's at least have played the current incarnation of the game and given it enough time to give a valid argument.

Sadly, one person recently posted in this thread saying they won't try Civ V because of the things they are reading here. Now, it wouldn't be a problem if these rants were well thought out responses by people who have played the game, but based on the things I have read, that is not the case, and the casual bystander who has not played the game wouldn't know the depths of fallacy surrounding many of these rants. Though not everyone ranting is a Civ IV fan / V hater (as I said the game DOES have its rant-worthy flaws), I'm trying to figure out why the majority of the posts in this thread are in the Civ V forum and not the Civ IV forum (where most of the ranters are coming from). If I have a problem with, say, McDonald's, I don't hold weekly meetings inside the McDonald's screaming negative things about their menu and passing them off as fact that are simply not true. In reality, I would be asked to leave the premises. Likewise, I don't know why Civ IV fans feel the need to come into the Civ V forums to poopoo on things here. It just doesn't seem like the healthiest conversation to me. If I'm a Civ IV lover (which I am, I'm just not monogamous in my Civilization relationships ) and a Civ V hater, I think I'd rather have my conversation with those who agree with me in my own territory rather than trying to bash the game for bashing's sake in someone else's backyard, and I'm sad to say that's exactly what this thread has devolved into.

Long story short, I enjoy reading a good old-fashioned Civ V rant... I'm just tired of reading "facts" about the game that are so outdated that it's obvious the ranter is just going off of tired old material. If we're going to rant, let's talk about something like how the game discourages expansion, one of the X's in 4X. Now that would be a rant if I ever saw one.

Thank you, sir, for your utter awesome .

In the meantime, back to C2C. Frankly, after playing that and RFC I can't see how anyone could play the BtS base game.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

As a reminder, the purpose of this thread is stated in post #1:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9969267&postcount=1

This is really not a discussion thread of the pros and cons of Civ V.

Nor is a thread for speculating on the Civ V playing experience of posters or similarly irrelevant topics.

In any case, recent arguments in support of Civ V lack references to credible reviews and when such references are made, the arguments are tenuous at best.

Please consider the audience of this thread. Anyone trying to make the argument that Civ V is a good game (lacks few fundamental flaws) is unlikely to succeed, even if all the facts were in their favor. Most readers of this thread have given up on Civ V long ago. God and Kings made no fundamental changes to the game's design, so players that were unhappy with that design will continue to be unhappy regardless of how many ways one rehashes the arguments for and against certain Civ V design elements and subsystems.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Vamphaery]

You know, after playing Civ V for weeks, I just fired up Civ IV for the sake of comparison. All I can say is, WOW. With the high res texture mod I had installed, the game still looks great. I definitely prefer the Civ IV UI and just the overall "feel" of the game, from the opening theme music creating the feeling of the epic journey humanity has taken, to the sense that somehow the future era isn't quite as optimistic as those before it.

The thing that REALLY shocked me however, is that Civ IV on my crappy Windows XP Pro PC even on the largest map possible, in a game well into the future with every scrap of land colonized by myself or the AI, loads in less than half the time Civ V does on my brand new quad core, 10,000 RPM HDD Windows 7 system. I know the game is older and perhaps not as intensive, but really? The load times already seemed crazy to me in Civ V, but now they seem almost inexcusable after seeing Civ IV load again. Turns take nothing like the time they do in Civ V either. (And it almost feels unfair to compare BtS to G&K, with one being two expansions in, and the other having only one to date.)

Somehow my relationship with the AIs feels more complex and nuanced in Beyond the Sword than anything that happens in Civ V. In Civ V it's like I'm just constantly playing a game with them. In Civ IV it does a better job of creating the illusion of longstanding relationships and grudges. Someone described the AI diplomacy in Civ V as "schizophrenic," and I am inclined to agree with that assessment.

The only things I found myself missing in Civ IV were the hex grid, and the lack of unit stacking. Yes, I think I actually find that I prefer the single unit per tile system more enjoyable strategically than the stacking of past Civ games. I do enjoy the customization of religions and social policies, but they are no replacement for the impact on my relationships with the AIs that religion and civics gave me from where I sit. I've never once had an AI contact me and tell me they disliked my government type in Civ V. I miss that.

All in all... I am almost tempted to go back to Civ IV. But war is so much more fun in Civ V, that I guess I'll keep playing it and hope that One World (if it's real) will make diplomacy more nuanced and satisfying. If it does, it will go a long way toward making me enjoy the game fully.

 

[Tabarnak]

The thing that REALLY shocked me however, is that Civ IV on my crappy Windows XP Pro PC even on the largest map possible, in a game well into the future with every scrap of land colonized by myself or the AI, loads in less than half the time Civ V does on my brand new quad core, 10,000 RPM HDD Windows 7 system. I know the game is older and perhaps not as intensive, but really? The load times already seemed crazy to me in Civ V, but now they seem almost inexcusable after seeing Civ IV load again. Turns take nothing like the time they do in Civ V either.

There is a lot of difference of loading time if you disable movements. More than 100% of gain. In mp games it only takes 3 seconds when we reach the industrial era for cs and barbs calculations(approx 1 sec until the ren. era). It's all about AI moves. With no cs and barbs it's almost instantanous. Disable movements and animations and the loading time will be much faster...and your games too.

I always disabled animations even for civ4. Much better.

 

[Vamphaery]

I had already done that. STILL considerably longer than IV. And that's just the turn times. The LOAD times when loading a game are also significantly longer. Painfully so.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Lazy?! I believe it takes much more skill to dominate in civ V. It takes quite a bit of effort to take a single city in civ V (given no huge technological advantages), just due to the fact that you are limited to a single unit per hex...........civ iv, ahh just send the 20 unit stack..problem solved

Much more skill? This was a game that was being regularly beaten by many on the highest setting, with no gimping of the AI or buffing the human start, almost from the very beginning. With Civ 4 you still have to be very lucky or be giving yourself a big advantage in order to beat Deity (unless you're a top, top SP player)

The terrible AI (which is utterly incompetent at actually playing the game) is the main reason why this situation happened, and it still remains in the game, thus meaning that any attempt to make it harder (which was all nerfing strategies, not improving the game or AI) or more difficult to win fails and hard.

The biggest obstacle to winning Deity remains the utter boredom from continuously clicking end turn.