Dennis Shirk acknowledges fan disappointment and Civ5 development problems

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't have an issue with this. I love how the Civ3 AI was built up over 2 years of continuous patching and the AI we had in 2003 was superior to the vanilla version.

Civ is a complex game, a lot of design decisions do not become apparent until there has been serious playtime.

Frankenstein helped with the testing of IV which smoothed the release version. And even the best launch still left a lot of people unhappy with Vanilla civ4. But those issues were eventually patched also. With 5, Frankenstein appears to have been hampered as Shirk admitted due to Steam implementation. It's a shame.

You missed the point. It's not useful to quote me then talk about something different from what was quoted. I'm not talking about design decisions, I'm talking about basic things you'd expect in any title that gets a decent review.

Civ IV has some glaring basic gameplay flaws. Right now. V has mysteriously copied some of them over, too .

When a major review publication mentions the word "bug" 0 times and doesn't even give a passing mention to control hotkeys that don't work, the review publication fails instantly. This happened with both civ IV and V, but V was more apparent.

A shame really, because often practicality for experienced players is sacrificed in the attempt to make things appealing for newbies. Mind you, Civ4 wasn't a saint of the old school by any means...

Games that actually know how to formulate a control scheme can come up with something fluid for advanced players. Neglecting this kind of thing is especially perplexing when you consider the relative difficulty of it compared to, say, perfect balance or an awesome AI.

Yeah, I agree. My point was though that the GUI does appear to be better in terms of those blatant explanations. Hopefully, a happy co-existence of keyboard shortcuts and are clearly explained UI will eventually result.

Don't hold your breath. Control/shift/alt click still do not work consistently...in civ IV. With that kind of history I'm not liking the odds for civ V, especially given the minimal attention being shown to streamlining the controls for faster play thus far...