So I've played through several games of Civ V at this point. On the one hand, I agree with a lot of the detractors, there are some solid concerns I have with the game. On the other hand, I agree with the others that there are way too many insults and outlandish complaints as opposed to legitimate discussion.
I have seen a few threads like the lunatic one that attempt to impose some civil discussion, and I will do my best to support that by including my thoughts here. My goal is to highlight the parts of Civ V I do not like, and try to explain in a concrete manner how it is so. In an attempt to be balanced I will also describe some of the features I really do like.
1) Game Slowness
I join with a number of other complaints about the game's slowness between turns. Turns can take 10 seconds, and animations can drag that out to 20 seconds or more in certain cases. Civ IV had its issues with slowness as well, mainly during the modern era turns. The difference I have noticed here is that the slowness starts off right at the bat, even after the first few turns the delay kicks in.
There is a second factor that makes this particularly bad. In Civ IV, I had the ability to turn off animations, to implement quick turns, factor that would allow me to compensate if my system was having trouble. The same features do not currently exist in Civ V.
Now strategic view may be a way to get around this. I haven't enjoyed the strategic view interface but I recognize that could just be getting used to it, and ultimately it may provide some speed increases. I do however feel the quick turn features should be put back in the game.
While this issue is a big one for me, I realize that optimizations can be implemented in later patches that could help with the issue.
2) Slowness with certain aspects of the game
This has nothing to do with game speed optimization, but more that certain aspects of the game feel like they are running at different speeds. One of the more common complaints is that buildings feel like they take too long to build. I share this view, not just from a man I really want this building to finish feeling, but also from the fact that because buildings take a long time to build they don't feel as worth buying as units and other things.
I think part of it is that buildings are expensive; I think the other part is lumber stripping doesn't seem to be the end all be all strategy now, which makes getting your initial infrastructure in place that much more difficult (this isn't a criticism, just an observation).
Another aspect I'm noticing is with culture and worker improvements. Initial improvements take a while since you can't stack workers. However, once you get your workers in place (and I'm talking about 3-4 workers, not a huge number) I find they move right along. In fact, I have found in all 3 games I've played that my workers run out of things to do. I get all the land improved, build my trade routes...and then my workers hang out.
I do buy land on occasion, but even then I am quickly settling everything I need to, which makes me think culture spreading is just a bit too slow.
I am playing more with build extra road routes, both within my system and to other areas, as roads aren't so expensive you can't build them in other places. But for right now, this area seems a bit slow.
I can also state less from a factual standpoint and more from a perception one, that standard game speed feels much slower than in Civ IV. In Civ IV, it was always epic and marathon games for me, I couldn't stand regular games I felt like it was over before it started. Right now Civ V regular speed feels like between epic and marathon Civ IV in certain aspects.
Overall, these problems are the easiest to patch if Firaxis chooses to do so, or even a quick mod can do it. A slight change to cost here, a small alteration to culture production here, etc.
3) AI issues
A lot of people have talked about this one, and I don't want to get into the vague discussion about how good the AI is with combat. What I will instead note are the obvious problems I am seeing with the AI.
Auto Explore and City State Trespassing Right now, units set to auto explore completely ignore city state borders, which angers them and lowers your influence. If there was an option for this I wouldn't mind it, as if I'm playing a warmonger I'm fine having my units go where they please. But if I'm playing peace, I want the AI to respect that.
City Governors: This one is not as big a deal to me, and in fact the micromanager within me might even prefer it. The city focuses don't always focus as hard as I would like them to. I will tell a city to go food focus, but they will ignore a 3 F 1 P 1 G tile for a 1 F 1 P 4 G tile sometimes. This may be that the AI is given some priority to other aspects, so again this one is not the biggest deal to me.
Culture Tile Choosing Hehe, we all knew the second the AI started choosing tiles for us, there would be complaints
In general, the tile choosing is pretty good. However, once in a while I will notice some oddities. For example, one time I had a tile that was 1F1P1G and other one that was 1F1P. Neither was near a valuable resource so that to me wasn't a factor. However, the AI chose the 1F1P tile. I will try to take some screenshots if I see this one again, but these are some glitches that can be smoothed out.
Workers Deleting Previous Improvements Not so much of an AI issue as simply a lack of options for me to select. I want the option to keep existing improvements.
4) UI Issues
A lot of anger has been about this one. I am going to do my best to explain with actual examples my issues with the UI.
Production Queuing In Civ IV this was very easy to do. With some control clicking I could fill up my queue quickly. In Civ V, queuing is very click intensive. I have to open up the city screen, activate the production queue, click that I want to add something to the queue, then click on the thing I want to add. I will say that move items around the queue is much easier now. Now, I personally don't mind the production queue set up the way it is for newer players, I just want a hotkey workaround for me. Maybe if I hold down the Q button while click on a unit it adds it to the queue..or something like that.
Checking the status of a worker In Civ IV, a mouse over told me how many turns are left. In Civ V I have to click on the worker to check. Its one more click in a game with a lot of clicks. Again, I don't mind that clicking on the worker gives me the info... I just want my mouse over as well.
Alerts about when a new tile has been culturally acquired This one is my own pet peeve. In Civ IV, when a city acquired a new border of culture you got a big announcement. Now, when a new tile is picked up, there is silence. I really want the map to show new tiles in pink or something, or put it on the mini map, or even one of the announcements put on the side bar. That way I can tell my workers to get to work!
R key both creates roads and toggles resource displaying. This one actually comes up a fair amount.
Diplomacy 5 gold per turn bug As noted, I consider this one a flat out bug. Right now you are limited to a maximum of 5 GP per turn when you make a deal. Not a problem....except when I make a deal I can type in any number I want. If I put in 50 GPT for example, the AI will accept....and then I find out I only got 5 GPT.
City Screen visual of workers I am actually noting this one as a complaint I have that shouldn't be a complaint. Right now I don't like the way the city screen shows me where my workers are working. I'm having trouble getting a quick view of where my workers are at. But honestly...when I really thought about it...this is me being resistant to change. The UI shows me everything I need. I can see all my workers, all my tiles, I can see the ones the AI has chosen and the ones I chose, and I can see when another city is working tiles that my city could be working. I've got everything I need; I just don't like that its different. So I'm saying this for all those who have the same complaint, we should just play more games and see if we get used to it.
5) Lack of information
Like many fanatics, I'm a nerd at heart. I heart numbers as they say. However, I recognize that many people who play games are not, and they are intimidated seeing numbers and stats everywhere (Alpha Centauri was particularly bad about this).
A lot of people have complained that they don't have all the numbers right on the screen. This part I can deal with in the interest of my non nerd breatren. What I will complain about is not having the information at all.
I'll give an example...how fast does a road make your unit in Civ V? For a casual gamer, all he needs to know is road = fast!. But as a more number based guy, I want to know. Is it still 3 squares per 1 MP? How about when I get machinery, is it now 4 squares per 1 MP? How about with railroad?
So I went to the Civilopedia expecting to find the secret numbers buried in here. That would be perfect, its tucked away from the people that don't care, but still available for those that do. Except...I couldn't find it. Looked at roads, looked at movement. All I could find is that moving on a tile of road only consumes a fraction of your MP.
I have a number of examples like this. How many extra happiness does having an occupied city cost me? I can see the number that shows it for all of my occupied cities, but what about each one?
I would also like to be able to see into my puppet states, as any good puppet lord does, so I can make some judgments whether I should leave him a puppet or fully annex him.
Over time the community will compensate for this. Someone will post the charts on unhappiness and move speed and pacts of cooperation etc. So it will be less of a complaint with time, but certainly a complaint now.
The Good Things
So with all my complaining out of the way, I did want to note a few things I really do like about the new game.
1) We Love the King Day This small little aspect has such a great effect on diplomacy. It makes me reach out to city states and my fellow civs and do some serious trading. Normally would I shell out 500 gold just to be allies with a city state for a few turns, and a friend for a few more? Probably not unless I had a lot of patronage. But when it gives me a 25% growth burst in 1,2..sometimes 3 cities for 20 turns. Absolutely!!
2) Happiness = Golden Age. Golden Ages to me got better and better through Civ IV, and I feel they finally nailed them in Civ V. I love that more happiness is a good thing. Its funny because resource trading is the opposite of what it was in Civ IV. In Civ IV, I could care less about gaining a wheat or a gold at times...especially late game when I had fixed my happiness problems. But I would sell my Grandma for your iron! In Civ V, I will swindle and sell out to gain those luxuries, because happiness is always useful.
3) Embarkation/Naval Combat. Once you get over the distinct difference from previous games, it just is a better system. Naval combat is finally important, colonization is now no longer such a big headache, its just a win win.
4) 1 UPT. Even though it has its little headaches at times, I really do enjoy combat right now.
So that's my piece. Feel free to comment, but please keep it civil and constructive.
I have seen a few threads like the lunatic one that attempt to impose some civil discussion, and I will do my best to support that by including my thoughts here. My goal is to highlight the parts of Civ V I do not like, and try to explain in a concrete manner how it is so. In an attempt to be balanced I will also describe some of the features I really do like.
1) Game Slowness
I join with a number of other complaints about the game's slowness between turns. Turns can take 10 seconds, and animations can drag that out to 20 seconds or more in certain cases. Civ IV had its issues with slowness as well, mainly during the modern era turns. The difference I have noticed here is that the slowness starts off right at the bat, even after the first few turns the delay kicks in.
There is a second factor that makes this particularly bad. In Civ IV, I had the ability to turn off animations, to implement quick turns, factor that would allow me to compensate if my system was having trouble. The same features do not currently exist in Civ V.
Now strategic view may be a way to get around this. I haven't enjoyed the strategic view interface but I recognize that could just be getting used to it, and ultimately it may provide some speed increases. I do however feel the quick turn features should be put back in the game.
While this issue is a big one for me, I realize that optimizations can be implemented in later patches that could help with the issue.
2) Slowness with certain aspects of the game
This has nothing to do with game speed optimization, but more that certain aspects of the game feel like they are running at different speeds. One of the more common complaints is that buildings feel like they take too long to build. I share this view, not just from a man I really want this building to finish feeling, but also from the fact that because buildings take a long time to build they don't feel as worth buying as units and other things.
I think part of it is that buildings are expensive; I think the other part is lumber stripping doesn't seem to be the end all be all strategy now, which makes getting your initial infrastructure in place that much more difficult (this isn't a criticism, just an observation).
Another aspect I'm noticing is with culture and worker improvements. Initial improvements take a while since you can't stack workers. However, once you get your workers in place (and I'm talking about 3-4 workers, not a huge number) I find they move right along. In fact, I have found in all 3 games I've played that my workers run out of things to do. I get all the land improved, build my trade routes...and then my workers hang out.
I do buy land on occasion, but even then I am quickly settling everything I need to, which makes me think culture spreading is just a bit too slow.
I am playing more with build extra road routes, both within my system and to other areas, as roads aren't so expensive you can't build them in other places. But for right now, this area seems a bit slow.
I can also state less from a factual standpoint and more from a perception one, that standard game speed feels much slower than in Civ IV. In Civ IV, it was always epic and marathon games for me, I couldn't stand regular games I felt like it was over before it started. Right now Civ V regular speed feels like between epic and marathon Civ IV in certain aspects.
Overall, these problems are the easiest to patch if Firaxis chooses to do so, or even a quick mod can do it. A slight change to cost here, a small alteration to culture production here, etc.
3) AI issues
A lot of people have talked about this one, and I don't want to get into the vague discussion about how good the AI is with combat. What I will instead note are the obvious problems I am seeing with the AI.
Auto Explore and City State Trespassing Right now, units set to auto explore completely ignore city state borders, which angers them and lowers your influence. If there was an option for this I wouldn't mind it, as if I'm playing a warmonger I'm fine having my units go where they please. But if I'm playing peace, I want the AI to respect that.
City Governors: This one is not as big a deal to me, and in fact the micromanager within me might even prefer it. The city focuses don't always focus as hard as I would like them to. I will tell a city to go food focus, but they will ignore a 3 F 1 P 1 G tile for a 1 F 1 P 4 G tile sometimes. This may be that the AI is given some priority to other aspects, so again this one is not the biggest deal to me.
Culture Tile Choosing Hehe, we all knew the second the AI started choosing tiles for us, there would be complaints
In general, the tile choosing is pretty good. However, once in a while I will notice some oddities. For example, one time I had a tile that was 1F1P1G and other one that was 1F1P. Neither was near a valuable resource so that to me wasn't a factor. However, the AI chose the 1F1P tile. I will try to take some screenshots if I see this one again, but these are some glitches that can be smoothed out.Workers Deleting Previous Improvements Not so much of an AI issue as simply a lack of options for me to select. I want the option to keep existing improvements.
4) UI Issues
A lot of anger has been about this one. I am going to do my best to explain with actual examples my issues with the UI.
Production Queuing In Civ IV this was very easy to do. With some control clicking I could fill up my queue quickly. In Civ V, queuing is very click intensive. I have to open up the city screen, activate the production queue, click that I want to add something to the queue, then click on the thing I want to add. I will say that move items around the queue is much easier now. Now, I personally don't mind the production queue set up the way it is for newer players, I just want a hotkey workaround for me. Maybe if I hold down the Q button while click on a unit it adds it to the queue..or something like that.
Checking the status of a worker In Civ IV, a mouse over told me how many turns are left. In Civ V I have to click on the worker to check. Its one more click in a game with a lot of clicks. Again, I don't mind that clicking on the worker gives me the info... I just want my mouse over as well.
Alerts about when a new tile has been culturally acquired This one is my own pet peeve. In Civ IV, when a city acquired a new border of culture you got a big announcement. Now, when a new tile is picked up, there is silence. I really want the map to show new tiles in pink or something, or put it on the mini map, or even one of the announcements put on the side bar. That way I can tell my workers to get to work!
R key both creates roads and toggles resource displaying. This one actually comes up a fair amount.
Diplomacy 5 gold per turn bug As noted, I consider this one a flat out bug. Right now you are limited to a maximum of 5 GP per turn when you make a deal. Not a problem....except when I make a deal I can type in any number I want. If I put in 50 GPT for example, the AI will accept....and then I find out I only got 5 GPT.
City Screen visual of workers I am actually noting this one as a complaint I have that shouldn't be a complaint. Right now I don't like the way the city screen shows me where my workers are working. I'm having trouble getting a quick view of where my workers are at. But honestly...when I really thought about it...this is me being resistant to change. The UI shows me everything I need. I can see all my workers, all my tiles, I can see the ones the AI has chosen and the ones I chose, and I can see when another city is working tiles that my city could be working. I've got everything I need; I just don't like that its different. So I'm saying this for all those who have the same complaint, we should just play more games and see if we get used to it.
5) Lack of information
Like many fanatics, I'm a nerd at heart. I heart numbers as they say. However, I recognize that many people who play games are not, and they are intimidated seeing numbers and stats everywhere (Alpha Centauri was particularly bad about this).
A lot of people have complained that they don't have all the numbers right on the screen. This part I can deal with in the interest of my non nerd breatren. What I will complain about is not having the information at all.
I'll give an example...how fast does a road make your unit in Civ V? For a casual gamer, all he needs to know is road = fast!. But as a more number based guy, I want to know. Is it still 3 squares per 1 MP? How about when I get machinery, is it now 4 squares per 1 MP? How about with railroad?
So I went to the Civilopedia expecting to find the secret numbers buried in here. That would be perfect, its tucked away from the people that don't care, but still available for those that do. Except...I couldn't find it. Looked at roads, looked at movement. All I could find is that moving on a tile of road only consumes a fraction of your MP.
I have a number of examples like this. How many extra happiness does having an occupied city cost me? I can see the number that shows it for all of my occupied cities, but what about each one?
I would also like to be able to see into my puppet states, as any good puppet lord does, so I can make some judgments whether I should leave him a puppet or fully annex him.
Over time the community will compensate for this. Someone will post the charts on unhappiness and move speed and pacts of cooperation etc. So it will be less of a complaint with time, but certainly a complaint now.
The Good Things
So with all my complaining out of the way, I did want to note a few things I really do like about the new game.
1) We Love the King Day This small little aspect has such a great effect on diplomacy. It makes me reach out to city states and my fellow civs and do some serious trading. Normally would I shell out 500 gold just to be allies with a city state for a few turns, and a friend for a few more? Probably not unless I had a lot of patronage. But when it gives me a 25% growth burst in 1,2..sometimes 3 cities for 20 turns. Absolutely!!
2) Happiness = Golden Age. Golden Ages to me got better and better through Civ IV, and I feel they finally nailed them in Civ V. I love that more happiness is a good thing. Its funny because resource trading is the opposite of what it was in Civ IV. In Civ IV, I could care less about gaining a wheat or a gold at times...especially late game when I had fixed my happiness problems. But I would sell my Grandma for your iron! In Civ V, I will swindle and sell out to gain those luxuries, because happiness is always useful.
3) Embarkation/Naval Combat. Once you get over the distinct difference from previous games, it just is a better system. Naval combat is finally important, colonization is now no longer such a big headache, its just a win win.
4) 1 UPT. Even though it has its little headaches at times, I really do enjoy combat right now.
So that's my piece. Feel free to comment, but please keep it civil and constructive.
