Do people finally like Civ5 now?

[Windsor]

So, I decided to give Civ5 some more hours. What a complete waste. So to make this game remotely challenging Firaxis have apparently decided that the AI will always do an early rush on you. It just feels incredibly annoying and kills the early balance between expansion, science and safety since you need to plan for war from turn 0. And it would be nice if the AI did obvious things such as pillaging resources instead of just trying to brute force its way through(capable or not).

It's of course nice that RA-blocking, ICS and stuff like that is patched out, but patching flaws doesn't create good gameplay.

Accompanied by the horrible music and sound effects found in Civ5 this game still has a terrible slow pace and it's all about the stupid AI and it's bonuses. Cause the money you'll get from selling open borders, peace treaties and selling cities makes whatever your cities doing irrelevant. You just need that early production to get the initial units which you keep upgrading (those supercheap upgrades is still really strange and not good gameplay).

The so called "tactical combat" is still not present. It's just a puzzle. It never feels like two roughly equal armies trying to out-maneuver the other.

 

[Putmalk]

I think the game is okay, but the easy moddability allows me to test my ability to balance drastic changes made to the base game.

 

[Polycrates]

Yeah I started on the Civ series way back in Civ I, and for my money Civ V is now far-and-away the best overall game in the series - which surprised me because I loved Civ IV and prior to Civ V's actual release I always thought a new civ game would be a bit pointless.

When it was released, it was a mess of bugs and sloppy implementation and lack of balance, sure - but the underlying core was great and I always thought it had amazing potential if it just got polished up. And it has, thanks in large part to Thalassicus' balance mod paving the way, but also full credit to Firaxis for actually being prepared to go back and make large-scale changes to the game to get it where it ought to be. The gameplay balance in particular is now much, much tighter than it was, with only a couple of significant remaining issues (really just the research agreement/trade gold issue). Diplomacy and AI are still a bit wonky, sure, but they're perfectly workable now - and let's be honest, how many of these sort of games actually have good AI anyway? I quite like the more aggressive, backstabby nature of the AIs - keeps you on your toes - but I can see how others might differ.

So yeah it's at the point where it's really more about whether you prefer the design decisions of the previous civ games, or the new design decisions in Civ V. Some people hate the new direction, and so will never be happy with Civ V - fair enough. I personally think the new mechanics are almost universally fantastic improvements that offer a wealth of big-picture strategic options while mostly avoiding the tedious mire of rote micromanagement masquerading as depth that plagued some of the previous games. I gather it's on special at the moment, so if you find it at all interesting, I'd say it's certainly worth trying out.

And as others have mentioned, a game that still has such a huge number of people playing it a year after release is a pretty rare thing, so I'm clearly far from the only one who feels that way about it.

 

[Tatran]

Civ5 gives direct control to the player over things that were uncontrollable in Civ4. "We love the King day!" is now controllable, manageable, and has a solid mechanic behind it. The amount of precise control that you can exert over the creation of social policies gives the possibility to have a new experience nearly every game.

Sigh. The effect of "we love the king day" mechanic in your cities is almost zero.
Change the percentage to 100% then you'll see some growth during those 20 turns.
I've noticed only 2 experiences, always war when there are neighbours or always peace when being isolated.

 

[nokmirt]

Post #2 says it all bud. I know that from my own experience from the game, and I have played the game a lot. And it is fine to play, but you'll probably have a better experience with the Total War games, they are much more in depth. Although, there are problems with the AI as well.

What eats at me is that CiV could have absolutely blown away all predecessors, but they keep holding back. They try to add balance, but no new elements at all, and nothing to truly ehance the fun. I have even lost hope they''ll be bring out an expansion. To me this is a waste of what could have been a god of games.

 

[bhavv]

Agree with post 2.

Theres some enjoyment to be had, but when I want to play a great TBS game, I load up SMAC or Civ IV, not Civ V.

 

[Guardian_PL]

Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Buy RA. Sell borders. Shuffle some units around. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Upgrade an unit x 40. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Click end turn. Click end turn. Win the game. Yay.

Thanks but no thanks.

 

[danieladler]

There are many flaws remaining with this game. Multiplayer doesnt work, in my opinion mainly because its not turnbased. The AI is screwed up beyond recognition, but somehow you learn to deal with no possible diplomacy. CiV is about you against the world, in a world where diplomacy is a dead end. When you realize that, you can cope with it. There are also no naval battle, and the AI also doesnt know how to attack across water. But you have always Pangea. Land wars is much more interesting with 1upt. And if you want to go for any of the peaceful victories i guess it doesnt matter if the AI cant deal with oceans. Then you can just sit calmly on you island on deity level, winning easily with no enemy standing on your shores for thousands of years.

 

[danieladler]

Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Buy RA. Sell borders. Shuffle some units around. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Upgrade an unit x 40. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Click end turn. Click end turn. Win the game. Yay.

Thanks but no thanks.

hehe spot on! They should have an option that makes you auto-sell those borders and surplus luxuries.

 

[Noatz]

When I look at the amount of hours of gameplay I get from the various games I own, its immediately apparant that Civ 5 is certainly worth buying. Comparing it to Deus Ex: Human Revolution - which is a fantastic game and £30 well spent - its still a case of 280hrs of Civ 5 vs 50hrs of DE.

Its not without its issues of course, but it has improved various things from previous iterations. Namely no more stacks of doom is certainly a positive in my eyes and the AI (while predictable still and prone to some highly questionable plays) at least does now play in a somewhat unique style depending on what leader, and adopts a strategy of sorts to win the game.

 

[the343danny]

Its always been great with mods, but I'm just worried about the expansions because DLCs seem to be the main strategy for Firaxis. They wont be coming out unless a new game mechanic game changing or large enough to warrant a new expansion pops up.

It just seems as if there will be less improvements within the game (which is what I've been counting on) because of DLCs, but hopefully I'm wrong.

 

[babinro]

Any idea when another sale might roll around? The sale prices look quite reasonable. To be honest the sale price should be the regular price. 2-3 bucks for a small pack or 5 for a larger one is fair IMO.

Last year, Steam had a huge sale come Black Friday in the U.S. that lasted a week in November.

The next big sale of the year is always December 25th through Jan 1st. This will likely have the best deals offered all year and is recommended waiting for if you can occupy your time until then. I wouldn't be surprised if new releases like Skyrim were 15-25% off for that sale.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Its always been great with mods, but I'm just worried about the expansions because DLCs seem to be the main strategy for Firaxis. They wont be coming out unless a new game mechanic game changing or large enough to warrant a new expansion pops up.

It just seems as if there will be less improvements within the game (which is what I've been counting on) because of DLCs, but hopefully I'm wrong.

Well, they've definitely been improving the game. The DLCs seem to have helped that (given there are patches with each DLC..ie they have a money stream to justify patching time.) If they continue to patch it for free, then expansions are just a way for them to steal your money (unless the expansion does have a major game mechanic added)

It will never be perfectly patched however (BTS wasn't, Civ 3 wasn't, Civ 2 wasn't... Civ 1 was probablyfine, but that' because its gameplay was so simple.)

 

[Zurv]

civ 5 is.. "ok"... the best for me was civ 4 BtS (one of the best game ever!).. and that was all about multiplayer.

civ 5 multiplayer is worthless
many ppl that i know got the game and day one fired up multiplayer -- and never looked back at the game.

they need to stop putting out over priced addon civs and fix some multiplayer. At least add "show enemy moves"

(i also really don't like, as someone already posted, the auto-transport over water)

 

[headcase]

Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Buy RA. Sell borders. Shuffle some units around. Sell borders. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Upgrade an unit x 40. Sell luxury. Sell luxury. Sell borders. Click end turn. Click end turn. Win the game. Yay.

Thanks but no thanks.

Maybe it's like that on Diety. On Prince I don't spend a long time on this. Plus deals last 30 turns on regular speed so that can't be all you're doing.

One could say Civ4 is nothing but keeping a tech lead and bribing everyone else with techs, but that`s not true for everyone who played it.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

ciV still lives in "ok" territory. No other civ game (except maybe III) lives in "ok" territory. I will admit it has avoided going the way of MOOIII which is better than nothing.

 

[hmong337]

Honestly, I'm not really impressed by Civ5. It's "okay" at best. Civ3 is where it's at!!!

 

[oopsy poopsy]

Well, they've definitely been improving the game. The DLCs seem to have helped that (given there are patches with each DLC..ie they have a money stream to justify patching time.) If they continue to patch it for free, then expansions are just a way for them to steal your money (unless the expansion does have a major game mechanic added)

It will never be perfectly patched however (BTS wasn't, Civ 3 wasn't, Civ 2 wasn't... Civ 1 was probablyfine, but that' because its gameplay was so simple.)

This is exactly how it worked and it kind of annoys me that it may have been the intentional business model all along. General release equals open Beta and for a year you can sell 5 buck add-ons every 60 days that continue to draw interest in a problematic game because you are also continually improving/fixing it at the same time.

I'm not accusing anyone, 'cause I don't know that was done on purpose from the beginning, but it really feels like the entire first year of release was their last year of development, which was paid for by DLC while actually 5 sales paid for profit and start-up dev on 6. I know absolutely zero about software development so if that's me just being paranoid, so be it.

Basically if you're relying on past reputation to sell your initial release, there's isn't a lot of downside here. I would say you endanger your long-term franchise, but I doubt it.

 

[Guardian_PL]

(...)
Basically if you're relying on past reputation to sell your initial release, there's isn't a lot of downside here. I would say you endanger your long-term franchise, but I doubt it.

I'm not sure, but what I do know is that I won't ever buy a Firaxis Civ game again without a long probationary period. It's like with HoMM series, after the 3rd I thought that there won't be as glorious day as HoMMIV release but boy was I wrong!

Now when I see Ubisoft logo or HoMM6 trailers I only shrug. No chance I'm buying that crap. Of course, parents will buy them for their 10 year old kids, so I'm not preaching doom here, only stating my opinion.

 

[bokaj]

I love this game.