EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
I made a big, big mistake yesterday: I revisited Civ IV to see if my feelings for it were any different. Now ...
Let me say that after my initial shock at the changes ("it's new, and I don't like new things, kids these days"), Civ V has grown on me. There are things I really, really like and that are important steps forward: 1upt, ranged combat, hexes, social policies, the beautiful graphics, the limits posed by strategic resources, the new way culture expands, and so forth. They put a lot of thought into these things, and I like them, and I miss them with Civ IV already. The game has grown on me.
However, there are simply still too many problems to fully enjoy it. The braindead combat AI is the most obvious (and I live in dread that current technology is simply not up to the task of making this part work). There is too little information about everything, be it from the menus or mouseovers. The victory screen is dangerously close to parody -- no graphs and no map replay. Some things feel like their heart wasn't into it and they were merely going through the motions, especially the non-wonderous wonders and the useless food resource tiles.
In this state, I cannot recommend the game, unless you are a really hard-core Civ fan and want to follow the changes as they come (yes, that means me). I won't be recommending it to my friends -- yet. Sorry.
For a while at least, I'm going to go back to (ugly) square tiles and (mindless) SOD combat until Firaxis has reworked the game. I am neither giving up on Civ V nor will I delete it -- my children love watching the little people marching through the forests, for one thing. More seriously, I have high hopes that it can turn out to be at least as good as Civ IV. But make no mistake, I think it needs lots of work, including changes to game play, and I'm not sure Firaxis is willing to invest the resources required. I'm afraid they'll do some minor balancing, and then we will be stuck with two imperfect games for the next five years.
I probably won't be around here very much until the patches come. Thanks to everybody for the discussions, I've learned a lot from you guys.
Let me say that after my initial shock at the changes ("it's new, and I don't like new things, kids these days"), Civ V has grown on me. There are things I really, really like and that are important steps forward: 1upt, ranged combat, hexes, social policies, the beautiful graphics, the limits posed by strategic resources, the new way culture expands, and so forth. They put a lot of thought into these things, and I like them, and I miss them with Civ IV already. The game has grown on me.
However, there are simply still too many problems to fully enjoy it. The braindead combat AI is the most obvious (and I live in dread that current technology is simply not up to the task of making this part work). There is too little information about everything, be it from the menus or mouseovers. The victory screen is dangerously close to parody -- no graphs and no map replay. Some things feel like their heart wasn't into it and they were merely going through the motions, especially the non-wonderous wonders and the useless food resource tiles.
In this state, I cannot recommend the game, unless you are a really hard-core Civ fan and want to follow the changes as they come (yes, that means me). I won't be recommending it to my friends -- yet. Sorry.
For a while at least, I'm going to go back to (ugly) square tiles and (mindless) SOD combat until Firaxis has reworked the game. I am neither giving up on Civ V nor will I delete it -- my children love watching the little people marching through the forests, for one thing. More seriously, I have high hopes that it can turn out to be at least as good as Civ IV. But make no mistake, I think it needs lots of work, including changes to game play, and I'm not sure Firaxis is willing to invest the resources required. I'm afraid they'll do some minor balancing, and then we will be stuck with two imperfect games for the next five years.
I probably won't be around here very much until the patches come. Thanks to everybody for the discussions, I've learned a lot from you guys.
