Disgusted.

[KanyeNW]

I'm going to have to agree with a lot of Putrid's points.

The simple fact is that the economy is ridiculous in this game (as of now). Trading posts are so over-spammed that any other improvement is (for the most part) useless in the mid to late game, unless you want to be in the hole 100 gold per turn.

Whatever happened to cottages? I simply cannot understand why they would take those out in favor of trading posts, which are simply bland both in the way they work (flat 2 gold increase) and in the way they look (least streamlined improvement graphic in the game IMO).

In addition, mines are pointless without a resource. They never get improved the entire game, and always give a minor +1 production. In other words, why build them?


I do enjoy this game though, I like the direction they've gone in, and I'm positive that future patches will cement this as the best civ game ever. But with that said the guys at Firaxis simply need to fix the economy in this game, as it is in dire need of adjustment.

 

[Lord Tirian]

If you dont like it, go buy a console....

Where games just don't get a patch at all! (well, when consoles started to get internet, they started to have patches, too)

Cheers, LT.

 

[BlackMage]

That's cool. I would probably save the word 'appalled' for something like the Great Leap Forward, but that's okay.

 

[planetary]

Yes, there are bugs. Yawn.

 

[RX2000]

Where games just don't get a patch at all! (well, when consoles started to get internet, they started to have patches, too)

Cheers, LT.

Yea they get patches every now & then, but nothing like PC games.

 

[Blitz66]

I feel pretty much the same as the OP.

This game reminds me so much of Railroads! it disturbs me. That title destroyed the series, and I fear for Civilization with this incarnation.

The hex system and 1upt are amazing. But outside of that, I'm struggling to enjoy this game as much as I have all the Civilization games I've played since the first one on DOS.

I was going to play all day today, my last day off for the next two weeks. But because of horrible bugs where peace treaties and open border treaties become permanent (have you felt the frustration of permanent open borders with 1upt yet? It makes you want to smash things when Napoleon is using all the tiles in your territory to store is military units and you can do nothing to stop him), money and happiness that is horribly difficult and maintain while building an army and empire (it seems like the focus of this game is to create small focused nations. I want to build an EMPIRE), and graphics, that while incredibly awesome to look at, tax my computer so much that the time between turns is agonizing, not to mention the freezes and stutters late game on a large map just from moving from unit to unit, I think I'll be playing either a Total War game or a Paradox game.

It seems to me that over all, Fireaxis, and 2kgames decided to go for mass appeal, rather than stick with the formula that made Civ games great. They made the same mistake with Railroads! It makes sense for them of course, because they want to make money.

Hopefully this game gets patched decently soon, lest it become just another game on my shelf I never play.

 

[JohnRM]

I never purchase a game without the expectation that there won't be bugs and certain things about the game that will need to be addressed later in subsequent patches. However, it would seem to me that nobody had ever actually tried playing the finished product before it was sent out. How could you miss some of this stuff? How could you miss the fact that you couldn't trade world maps? How could you miss the fact that you're broke going into modern times? Cause nobody bothered actually testing the game out when they thought they had it finished. I can understand that they wanted to mitigate the huge surpluses accumulated in past incarnations, but this is absolutely ridiculous. I don't quite yet feel as though I've wasted my money, but this all needs to be fixed, and soon.

 

[Matlaz]

Have to agree with most of the OPs arguments there and completely with Blitz66. Even though I like how the UI has become more intuitive overall, it really seems like they're going for mass appeal. Sometimes when I'm playing CivV, I get the feeling that I'm playing a console game. I wouldn't be surprised if Firaxis will port this game to the PS3 and X360 for some EZ cash.

Hex system is step forward, and together with the "one military unit per tile" system it gives quite a tactical edge to the military aspect of the game. However, I think this very concept is making the game 'unbalanced' in the sense that economy, diplomacy and culture get a tad harder to accomplish. I can imagine that some people would like to go for a Diplomatic victory. It would be handy to know in what terms you are with the other Leader AIs and I'm missing that as well.

All in all, the game as it is right now, has many bugs/glitches that shouldn't be in there. I'm a developer myself (not in the game sector, but still). I know the workload you get presented and how time is a scarce thing, which makes you need to make compromises. I also know very well that there is no such thing as a bug-free piece of software. But there are really some small glitches that are not addressed, making you wonder if they have a QA team at all. For instance, you gotta love how Queen Elizabeth of England and Catherine of Russia are addressed with the prefix "Lord" in the AI window.

Another example of how unstable the game currently: I'm in a Huge Earth map, mid-late in the game and I like to build to expand my empire. I'm at the point where I have 69 cities and when I conquer/found another city, the game either crashes on the next turn or would crash when I load the save game. The only thing I can do is raze another city when acquiring a new one if I want to finish the game. Looking on the Internet it seems that a lot of people are dealing with the same problem. For the record, my rig overspecs the Recommended requirements, no reason to question my computer hardware.

Personally, I'm not to keen on the "deliver 90% now, patch the other 10% later" approach that most game companies are inclined to adopt, because it makes you relying on Firaxis' goodwill to actually get what you should've had in the first place. I
did learn my lesson with this. Before I buy my next game, I will download a pirate version and test it before buying, no matter what "gold" title. If the game industry wishes to evolve in such a way, I, too as a consumer will change my old purchasing habits.

I'm also someone who rarely buys games (I bought the game Friday). I've played Civ4 for years, and I had the same expectations about Civ5. Even though the game has a good potential to be an excellent game (and it'll probably will with the upcoming patches and expansions). But right now, the state how this game is, I feel I got ripped off by Firaxis.

(Sorry for the negativity and long post! )

 

[snoochems]

I had a super-frustrating experience. Was playing an Epic game, and towards the end, the game would just crash, usually when taking a city. Worse still, save files would corrupt, and would fail to load without crashing to the desktop. (I was 5 turns away from building the Utopia project... took me half a day to finish the game)

 

[TheDisco]

I have a close to high end machine and late game graphical problems are an issue. I don't have a problem with turns taking longer, that's normal and was the same with Civ 4, but the way the graphics keep re-rendering and freezing are signs of an unfinished product.

I don't get this re-rendering/freezing issue so most likely you have a GPU issue. For me I couldn't run the opening movie but otherwise I run at max graphic settings and 1920x1200 mode. Absolutely smooth. Only a slight pause when a new leader is encountered but I could probably reduce that if I lowered the graphic settings for leaders but it isn't bad enough to do that yet. And by the way I have a pretty minimal system I think (5 year old old Pentium 4 - 3 GHz processor with a recently installed NVidie Geoforce 9500GT).

 

[JohnRM]

Personally, I'm not to keen on the "deliver 90% now, patch the other 10% later" approach that most game companies are inclined to adopt, because it makes you relying on Firaxis' goodwill to actually get what you should've had in the first place. I did learn my lesson with this. Before I buy my next game, I will download a pirate version and test it before buying, no matter what "gold" title. If the game industry wishes to evolve in such a way, I, too as a consumer will change my old purchasing habits.

Yea, between having been sorely disappointed with Mafia II and between somewhat less, but still disappointed with Civilization V, I just can no longer justify purchasing a game until well after it has been available and played out. I am going to have to read up on the forums from other buyers to see if the game is worth buying. I've already pre-ordered Black Ops, but that is going to be the last. If this trend continues, I am probably just going to stop games period. I love playing, but I refuse to be ripped off like this.

 

[lynxxyarly]

One of my complaints is not most.
My system:
Win7 ultimate x64
Intel core i7 860 Lynnfield @ 2.8 GHz
4GB DDR3 @ 1333
Two GeForce 9800GT SLI Bridged, both at x16 PCI Express.

The issue, from what I see, is your 9800s. They are essentially 8800GTs which is tech that is going on like 5 years old. You don't have the core shaders to handle this game very well.

I'm running 2 gtx 260 core 216s in sli and The game handles smoothly throughout the whole game (so far - huge map type) I just reached the industrial era and short of the game locking up on occasion I haven't had any graphical slow-down.

My machine is a decent bit dated from yours, save the video cards:

core 2 quad q9450 on the lga 775 socket
nvidia 780i sli board with ddr2 ram support only
8gb of ddr2 ram
2x gtx260 in sli

and the rest is inconsequential for this specific post.

With that said, my system runs the game just fine. To be fair, though, this quad core proc I have truly is/was a beast before it's time.

EDIT: for reference point on video cards, I use toms hardware graphics hierarchy chart: Your 9800gt fits in about 6 tiers down from the top of the line. Generally a tier is roughly 1 years worth of tech.

EDIT2: As of right now, SLI is not working in this game. So effectively you are running 1 9800gt. I just did some testing myself because I honestly just forgot about sli with this game. I forced alternate frame rendering 2 for this game and it didn't like it. I also pulled up evga precision to monitor gpu usage and it confirms with usage that sli currently isnt being used. Have to wait on official patch for nvidias drivers to do this, I presume. For what it's worth, setting sli to 'alternate frame rendering 2' is what I do for games that don't have official SLI support and it's worked just fine, save for this game. It's the first that didnt like it.

 

[WuphonsReach]

SLI has been confirmed by Firaxis (over on the Take2 forums) to not be working... so disable SLI before you fire up Civ5 is the recommendation. There's a plan to patch in better support down the road (according to rumors). I'm having moderately good luck with a single GTX 460 1GB in DX9 mode at 1600x900 on WinXP.

There are definitely a lot of bugs in the release. Some are fatal crashes. Other are game balance issues that make things just "not fun". There's also some typical early-release performance issues where they have not trimmed out the fat in the critical areas to gain speed back.

Love the 1UPT, but they needed to make movement rate higher and attack ranges a bit larger to compensate. I would like to see ranged units like Archers start with range 2 and later tech units like mortars (or whatever the equivalent is) range 3. Siege engines should be range 3 to start, going up to 4 or 5 at late-tech levels. Movement should be 3 tiles/turn as a base. Cities should be able to hit a radius of 3, if not right away then whenever they get gunpowder-based weapons.

It needs patches... and not just a few. I think there's going to need to be regular patches well into the Christmas season if they don't want bad word-of-mouth to kill holiday sales. The "shiny" factor will have worn off in another week and people are going to start complaining more and more.

 

[Chong Warrior]

Yeah it's the graphics. You have a very unevenly matched system with the powerful i7 and below average 9800GT. They might be in SLI but two cards will never work aswell as a single more powerful card.

I've only got a dual core E8400 @ 4ghz with a single GTX260 (216) and the game is stable in DirectX10 mode (Win7 64)... though I do get the weird red marks mentioned every now and again.

 

[Inhalaattori]

I have to agree. The game is full of bugs. I have played only one game of Civ V with quick game speed and I have encountered several horrible bugs.

It seems they really didnt have time to test their game.

 

[King Sausage]

Why no worker automization options(like dont overwrite my existing improvements)

Well, there is a "AutoWorkersDontReplace" option in the usersettings file, which I'd imagine does the trick (I can't say if it works, as I rarely automate anything as I know better than the AI what I'm aiming for. In Civ4, I'd often chuck it on in the late game to fill in any gaps and railroads, but here, I'd much rather have the cash for disbanding it than leaving it going around doing fairly irrelevant things.)

There isn't any corresponding option in game, which is a bit weak.

 

[Devolved]

In addition to smiles and frowns I have noticed a "Hostile" note in the mini-diplomacy window. It would be nice to know which countries have a defense pact, but maybe none of my AI civs have made one, and there is actually an announcement.

I'm not even sure how to tell who *I* have a defense pact with. I look up the information in the diplomacy screen and sometimes see pacts showing under all the other Civs. I don't know if they're supposed to be pacts with me because *I* don't remember agreeing to them. There are even Defensive Pacts with hostile nations who refuse to even trade with me.

I generally assume that whatever is in that screen is fiction, until a hostile nation lands troops beside one of my coastal city without a war being declared. So I look it up and sure enough, it has Open Borders listed for them. But when I look at my active agreements, there isn't any with that nation at all. Huh?

I'm mystified with diplomacy in this game. Not with the general concept of the AI reacting negatively to some of your actions, but being unable to get a clear grasp of the current political landscape. The information screens really aren't telling me anything I can trust.

And then there's the Diplomatic Victory. I built the U.N., nearly bankrupted myself buying off every City-State that remained, finally got the chance to vote, and still failed to gain enough votes to win. I read that Civs will vote for themselves and City-States will vote for whomever they have the highest rating with, or the last Civ that liberated them. So with four Civs left (including myself) and six City-States, I ended up with 8 votes, and the other three Civs got 1 vote each. Great! That's a sweep! Nope. I need 10 votes to win. How I'm supposed to get two of the other Civs to vote for me is beyond me. Two of three are perpetually hostile, and the other one, with whom I've managed to keep good relations through a number of agreements over the course of the game, of course voted for himself.

I gave up and just let the turns run out to score a win on points.

Either their are some pretty severe bugs in diplomatic mechanisms, or there needs to be a lot more clarity in the information that's being provided. By the way, Defensive Pacts? Pacts of Secrecy? What in the world do these things do? I can't find any information on them at all. I just click OK because they don't start wars and should keep the AI off me for a while. I've no idea why though.

 

[digitalcraft]

I'm not even sure how to tell who *I* have a defense pact with. I look up the information in the diplomacy screen and sometimes see pacts showing under all the other Civs. I don't know if they're supposed to be pacts with me because *I* don't remember agreeing to them. There are even Defensive Pacts with hostile nations who refuse to even trade with me.

I generally assume that whatever is in that screen is fiction, until a hostile nation lands troops beside one of my coastal city without a war being declared. So I look it up and sure enough, it has Open Borders listed for them. But when I look at my active agreements, there isn't any with that nation at all. Huh?

I'm mystified with diplomacy in this game. Not with the general concept of the AI reacting negatively to some of your actions, but being unable to get a clear grasp of the current political landscape. The information screens really aren't telling me anything I can trust.

And then there's the Diplomatic Victory. I built the U.N., nearly bankrupted myself buying off every City-State that remained, finally got the chance to vote, and still failed to gain enough votes to win. I read that Civs will vote for themselves and City-States will vote for whomever they have the highest rating with, or the last Civ that liberated them. So with four Civs left (including myself) and six City-States, I ended up with 8 votes, and the other three Civs got 1 vote each. Great! That's a sweep! Nope. I need 10 votes to win. How I'm supposed to get two of the other Civs to vote for me is beyond me. Two of three are perpetually hostile, and the other one, with whom I've managed to keep good relations through a number of agreements over the course of the game, of course voted for himself.

I gave up and just let the turns run out to score a win on points.

Either their are some pretty severe bugs in diplomatic mechanisms, or there needs to be a lot more clarity in the information that's being provided. By the way, Defensive Pacts? Pacts of Secrecy? What in the world do these things do? I can't find any information on them at all. I just click OK because they don't start wars and should keep the AI off me for a while. I've no idea why though.

Conquer two of them and 'diplomacy' is much easier.

That's the general rule in this game though. Beat everyone down militarily then choose the arbitrary win type you want the win screen to display.

 

[Carver]

Call To Power III, anyone?

 

[pagh80]

Call To Power III, anyone?

Yes please!
I just loved the two games, and for their time, they were ahead of civilization in terms of innovation.

I have never understood why they never got popular.