Good riddance to religion and espionage in my opinion. If they're going to be reintroduced to Civ 5, they need to be completely re worked. I don't know how, so don't ask me, but religion had too profound an effect in Civ 4 and espionage not nearly enough.
Eating Some Crow
- Thread starter toccoto
- Start date
Hm, that's something at least - definitely a good sign. I didn't see anything like that pre-patch; I've only encountered the 5-year old kid moving units around cuz they make neat sounds.
What difficulty setting were you playing, if you don't mind me asking?Jharii
King
I'm not exactly pleased about having bought the game on layaway, but I'm hoping it will evolve into something more viable (for me) as Jharii mentioned.
Cross your fingers.
I guess I do have a different mindset when I purchase games, particularly strategy games that are supposed to offer complexity and challenges.
I am looking for potential + developer dedication. This is why I am an advocate of Elemental. Stardock will not let it fail. It's vision and scope are something that could be legendary in the TBS genre and Stardock's determination is second to none. Whether they pull it off or not is a matter of time.
I feel the same way about Civ5. The series is a classic, and I do not believe that Firaxis has any intention of it failing. Not to mention that if they destroy such a household name as Civilization (and to a lesser extent, Sid), they could never recover and their reputation would be ruined. They just won't let that happen, imho.
I don't think people who hate the game are bad. People know how they feel.
My biggest worries are as follows, and I admit I fell victim in part to all of these:
1. People are letting the negativity of the forums cloud their judgement. "If everyone thinks it's bad it must be." And really, the more time goes on, I find more and more of the complaints are unjustified and in some cases downright false. (There are still a lot of valid complaints, obviously. Ones that I share.)
2. People are unwilling to mod. Modding has always been a pain. Will it be compatible? What if they patch it? I don't want to change the game's balance because then I'm playing something that isn't the same as most people. Etc etc etc. Okay, I was totally like this. To the bone. But... I took a chance and played with mods. Dude, if Civ V got something right, it's the support of modding. Modding is fantastic. It's kind of like jumping into a pool, guys. It might look cold, forboding. But sometimes the best thing you can do is just jump in headfirst.
3. Balance. As in OMG this leader is more powerful than this one. This one has more bonuses than this one. I am going to say something right now that will blow all of your minds:
There is absolutely no reason and no need for the leaders to be balanced.
In fact, it's not about them being balanced. To an extent, for Multiplayer, they need to be in the same realm. But honestly? The more diverse they are, the better. Why? They lend themselves to different strategies and different ways to play. People who say they aren't 'immersed' in the game should seriously look at it in terms of leader traits. When I play Hiawatha, I feel like the forest is more important. When I play Babylon, I love to create a scientific mecca. When I play England, I love to play of water maps and create fleets of ships. Aztecs? I love to always be at war. If not with Civs than with Barbarians. Fueling my culture. An Aztec culture win is one of the most satisfying civ games I've played, regardless of iteration.
Anyway, yeah.
My biggest worries are as follows, and I admit I fell victim in part to all of these:
1. People are letting the negativity of the forums cloud their judgement. "If everyone thinks it's bad it must be." And really, the more time goes on, I find more and more of the complaints are unjustified and in some cases downright false. (There are still a lot of valid complaints, obviously. Ones that I share.)
2. People are unwilling to mod. Modding has always been a pain. Will it be compatible? What if they patch it? I don't want to change the game's balance because then I'm playing something that isn't the same as most people. Etc etc etc. Okay, I was totally like this. To the bone. But... I took a chance and played with mods. Dude, if Civ V got something right, it's the support of modding. Modding is fantastic. It's kind of like jumping into a pool, guys. It might look cold, forboding. But sometimes the best thing you can do is just jump in headfirst.
3. Balance. As in OMG this leader is more powerful than this one. This one has more bonuses than this one. I am going to say something right now that will blow all of your minds:
There is absolutely no reason and no need for the leaders to be balanced.
In fact, it's not about them being balanced. To an extent, for Multiplayer, they need to be in the same realm. But honestly? The more diverse they are, the better. Why? They lend themselves to different strategies and different ways to play. People who say they aren't 'immersed' in the game should seriously look at it in terms of leader traits. When I play Hiawatha, I feel like the forest is more important. When I play Babylon, I love to create a scientific mecca. When I play England, I love to play of water maps and create fleets of ships. Aztecs? I love to always be at war. If not with Civs than with Barbarians. Fueling my culture. An Aztec culture win is one of the most satisfying civ games I've played, regardless of iteration.
Anyway, yeah.
Anthropoid
Grognard fantome
In Civ4 (and 3) a coherent strategy for optimizing your use of terrain through city placement, city worker allocation (on tiles), tile improvements, as well as Pop allocation (specialists I think they were called) were IMO exceptionally engaging options that made for tremendous replayability. Granted, it put the player into a Godlike role that is perhaps not realistic, but there are many breaches of reality in a game like this, and I saw this particular breach as being key to great gameplay. Indeed, in some of my last posts here about Civ4 ROM, and History in the Making mods, I suggested that the landscape be made even MORE important in that pillaging cottages should have really important consequences.
It sounds like they have effectively removed city management from the game, and that to me sounds very simplifying and disappointing.
Other thing I have vicariously learned about reading about the game that sound concerning to me:
removal of religion and espionage (I agree it was not perfect in BTS, and agree that it could have been/could be improved on; but given the obvious importance that these social processes have had to ACTUAL real life human cultural evolution, i.e., CIVILIZATION, I think that simply removing their modeling as malleable strategic dimensions in the game, and presumably considering them to be 'background' processes, was a cop out)
removal of transports (another cop out; if you want more details, I'll quote myself in more detail from a post over at 1BC on this topic)
instead of a reasonable stacking limit mechanic they have just taken it to the absolute extreme of 1upt. That does not sound either realistic or fun. How can I strive toward any sort of combined arms doctrine or experiment with different permutations of military? (e.g., 1 archer + 2 infantry / Corps versus 2 archer + 1 infantry??) With the experience system in BTS, and stacking (although the unlimited stack was way out of line) one could create very effective and ingenious military compositions. It sounds like those strategic options are kaput now with 1upt.
Use of what seem to be tactical hex-map wargame dynamics at the strategic scale (flanking?, bombardment by rear-area missile units, charging?)
The time-space scale in Civ has always been way off kilter, and this has been one of my most persistent grumbles about the game. Indeed I'd say it was what finally caused me to lose interest in even highly modded versions of Civ4 (e.g., RoM and HiTM). It sounds like Civ 5 has done nothing to correct these fundamental scalar breaches of coherence, and indeed has made it much worse by inappropriately mixing tactical dynamics into the strategic level.
Improper and unrealistic power dynamics within and across units (e.g., settlers being impregnable?, units getting more powerful from being bombarded)
ADDIT: and @ the fellow who suggested "just dive in" and "give modding a go." If I had the time, I would LOVE to really work on a mod. But I don't have the time. Maybe eventually, when I retire.
Given that, I'll choose games that come closer to satisfying my expectations (of which there are plenty) and wait on Civ 5 because it simply doesn't sound like it has moved in the direction of greater detail, greater accuracy, greater complexity, more historicity, more immersion, more replayability, more strategic options, more brilliant articulation of game dynamics, more elegant balance between game-play and realism, better AI, better edification about actual human cultural evolution through game play. It sounds to me like it has moved away from every single one of those points, instead of moving toward any of them.
While I can entertain the idea that, the initial move away from them is part of a masterplan to create a working foundation to then take leaps and bounds far beyond our expectations of moving toward those goals, I don't prima facie see evidence that this is likely, though I do respect your opinions on the matter.
Jharii
King
I will say that city management seems less complicated, but I think that it really could be enhanced with a bit more tile and tile upgrade diversity. Again, it's one of this things that could/should really be expanded upon.
You know, the more and more I respond like this, I do understand how people can view the game as "not finished." It just does not have all of the bells and whistles that BtS had. I am not saying that I think Civ5 is unfinished, just not fully explored and expanded upon yet.
I think I am going to load up a game of vanilla Civ4 tonight or tomorrow and do some direct comparisons. It's been a couple years since I played, and I would be interested to see how I feel about both games after they are very fresh in my mind.
Just my two cents on the AI improvements. Last night I created a settlement near some sugar, but not quite close enough to it. I expected my borders to expand and grab it after a bit, I wasn't in a rush. Well, I wasn't paying nearly enough attention, and Russia ended up settling a few tiles away from the sugar, then either bought or expanded her borders onto it. Now, the AI has always been a little greedy about luxury resources, but I thought it was a pretty slick move. Of course, thats where the praise stops. Over the next 50+ turns, Catherine failed to put a plantation on it
Anthropoid
Grognard fantome
If it wasn't for the compulsory Steam, I'd join you in a heartbeat, but . . . not gonna give Valve my money at this point. Maybe (probably) never.
I did this a few days ago.. really the combat upgades in 5 makes it hard to go back if your big on war (i'm not) but outside of those there is alot more stuff to do for peaceful/builder types(me) in IV vanilla imho. Not to mention the difference in diplomacy.. the fact that you Don't have everyone backstabbing you makes building alliances much more useful/viable in Civ IV even if it is a bit more predictable. A huge part of being a peaceful/builder is making sure your not being attacked by 3 diff civs at the same time since your concentrating more on buildings etc. This is much harder to do in civ V.. and at times impossible because just because you "think" someone is your friend doesn't me they think they are.
City level doesn't exist anymore, in a lot of ways. It's an empire level game now. Everything points to this. From Global Happiness, to Martitime State Bonuses, to Social Policies.
Love it or hate it, city level strategy is being replaced with Empire wide strategy. Honestly, I do like that change. It needs more complexity, sure, but I would rather manage one well but together empire then have to nit pick on a lot of little cities.
Some people like the nit picking, and super intense planning of every city. It's not Civ V, at least not how it is right now. But at least for me, I plan my empire a lot more than 4. In 4, I planned a few really nice cities and I felt like I was set for the rest of the game.
Civ V, sure.. usually by turn 200 I am feeling pretty confidant I will lost or win, but I've had games change one a whim when 4 civs declare on me after a mis-managed war. Or fall behind in production because of an area not focused for production (Notice I said area, and not city. This is important. You don't need to spec a city for production. Spec an area, then steal the times as you need them for a wonder, otherwise disperse them out between neighboring cities. Obviously this is for a close city strategy.)
Love it or hate it, city level strategy is being replaced with Empire wide strategy. Honestly, I do like that change. It needs more complexity, sure, but I would rather manage one well but together empire then have to nit pick on a lot of little cities.
Some people like the nit picking, and super intense planning of every city. It's not Civ V, at least not how it is right now. But at least for me, I plan my empire a lot more than 4. In 4, I planned a few really nice cities and I felt like I was set for the rest of the game.
Civ V, sure.. usually by turn 200 I am feeling pretty confidant I will lost or win, but I've had games change one a whim when 4 civs declare on me after a mis-managed war. Or fall behind in production because of an area not focused for production (Notice I said area, and not city. This is important. You don't need to spec a city for production. Spec an area, then steal the times as you need them for a wonder, otherwise disperse them out between neighboring cities. Obviously this is for a close city strategy.)
Jharii
King
LOL. That's the opposite of me. I bought all the Civ4 stuff when they were released. And about 6 months ago, I bought it on Steam so I didn't have to worry about my disks and keys. It was on special for like $25, so it was a worthy investment.
Very true.. I'm actually one of rare people that would love to see an empire builder combined with a city builder in some mega game. Micromanagement on 2 levels.. ah dreams which will never bear fruit.
SammyKhalifa
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2003
- Messages
- 6,308
Nothing's ever as good as some people say it is, or as bad as others say it is. Nothing.
I actually would love that. Don't misunderstand me, I love Civ IV. I love city management. And a game that took something like the old Caesar series and mixed it with Civ would be amazing.
In the case of Civ IV and Civ V... I understand that frustration. They share the same name. People expect the same product. But I understand they aren't now.
And I don't play Halo hoping for Final Fantasy.
There's also a case of people finding something wrong in the game (such as as broken diplomacy), reading about it on the boards, and having confidence to post their own opinion about the broken diplomacy too. They realise their complaints are entirely justified and true.
Funny you said that.. because bouncing between ceasar IV and civ IV is what makes me crave for this type of hybrid city/empire builder so much. The fact that they released civ city: rome made me hope they would actually create something like this with Civ V. OF course i didn't expect it but man i was hoping.
SammyKhalifa
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2003
- Messages
- 6,308
But just because you think something is wrong, it doesn't mean that the product is the worst thing of all time and should be sent immediately to the trash bin. That's the jump people are too quick to make.
Toshiro126
Warlord
Hm, that's something at least - definitely a good sign. I didn't see anything like that pre-patch; I've only encountered the 5-year old kid moving units around cuz they make neat sounds.
I was playing Prince. I've been alternating back and forth between that and King while trying to learn how to balance happiness, science, social policies, etc.
Ironically, I have fewer reservations about giving Valve my money than I do about Firaxis & 2K Games at this point. My experiences with Valve have been pretty positive and I've found their products more than met my expectations. (I also don't blame Valve for Civ5 being connected to Steam - that was a Firaxis / 2K decision.) I was irritated by the inclusion of Steam at first, but I've since found it to be a pretty valuable service for me.
But that's just me - obviously it's personal prerogative, and we're going to have different experiences.
eviltypeguy
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2010
- Messages
- 234
Really? What makes you think it had low initial sales?
Clearly, the press doesn't seem to agree:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...d_Halo_Reach_Civilization_V_Top_US_Charts.php
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Analyst-Video-Game-Sales-Saw-Increase-in-September-160706.shtml
