How satisfied are you with Civ5?

[Toulouse]

Underwhelmed describes it perfectly.

 

[MkLh]

Mediocre. Shallow in almost every way compared to its predecessor. Buildings, wonders mostly useless and expensive, resource tiles poor. Many serious balancing problems, bad AI, confusing diplomacy, not good UI, altogether unpolished. However 1upt is a good thing, and the game still has longer playing time than an average computer game.

 

[zonk]

Underwhelmed, but sliding fast towards completely dissatisfied....

The features that CiV added aren't wearing well --

I'm growing to hate City States to the point of playing without them (but then, they're such a big feature in V that it almost becomes a matter of what's the point of playing V).

Social Policies still have some cachet, but this is mainly because I have used all the trees yet.

1UpT/hex, I like -- but it really needs the AI fixed to be worthwhile.

Just traipsing through my memories of Civ releases...

I --> II
Pure Nirvana. Everything bad about I was fixed.

II --> III
Frustration - some bad things from I crept back in, and it took a while for the new features to click with me.

III --> IV
Wonder - and requirements frustration. Loved the game, hated that my just barely rec spec PC couldn't really play it.... but there was no doubting that it was tons better gameplay.

IV --> V
Hate to say, but boredom...

I've never gotten bored with a Civilization game this quickly... Maybe fixing the AI changes that, but this feels more like old NES Super Mario Bros.... the whole goal is to "beat the game", and once you do - there's not really much in the way of replayability. Right now, it feels like I'm just playing out the string -- haven't yet unlocked all the SPs, so I've probably got another game or two to do that -- but having a hard time seeing, absent expansions or mods that put a lot of stuff back in, how V becomes the game that I literally call in sick to work to play because I'm on a 30 hour Civ bender.... as I did as recently as last month with IV (technically, RoM/AND).

 

[cephalo]

I think that in some ways, Civ5 is the best in the series, but it seems like it is a bit thin on the content. I feel like they worked hard to avoid clutter, and the result is a design that is maybe a bit too streamlined. Once you understand the game, you're basically done with it. It needs more dirt.

 

[dragomaster]

somewhat satisfied becous they have made nice changes like 1ups and hexes, and not fully satisfied becous they don't work in a good way at the moment.

 

[tybris]

Somewhat satisfied with civv, obviously lots of room for improvement, but I remember not being very satisfied with civiv until BTS. Moreover, when comparing it to all video games that are not civiv it's simply superb. For example, consider how lame and unexciting Spore was. Or those thousands of throw-away games that get released every year.

The hex is the game's biggest strength and biggest weakness. It feels much more like fighting a war, except there's no opposition. It requires the AI to actually take smart decisions at a micro level, rather than just out-producing the opponent. Given that civilization is unimaginably more complex than chess, that could be a tough cookie. You can't just solve it with probability and heuristics like you can in an RTS. A wrong move and you expose your city/army. On the other hand, even the original civ had half decent AI without stacks of doom.

I sometimes get the feeling that the experienced old-timers that put together civiv have been booted or are playing with trains and this is the work of the young guns that put together civ revolution. Lots of small, but crucial details are missing. You'd think someone in the company would know how to add a "minimize" feature? The fact that you could smoothly minimize was one of the simple things that made me really appreciate civiv. System requirements are obviously a joke. Graphics look the same or worse except during battles and zooming is hardly possible. It also seems like they're actually relying on a modding community to fix stuff (no clock!? config files!?), which seems like a really bad idea. The modding community will not be so excited about an unfinished game.

The game is more streamlined, no more power wonders like the spiral minaret or the three gorges dam, cities are much easier to conquer. That means there's no point at which you can be satisfied with your efforts and stop, which makes it more addictive at first, but also less satisfactory. I've been spending a few hours on it every night, but now considering uninstalling for a while.

Aside from the early crashes the bugs did not bother me that much. I did not have any trouble maintaining a large empire. Just trigger golden ages (e.g., using great people) and manage your workers. I never had automated workers in civiv either. I'm sure many of the things people complain about have to do with relearning how to play.

For me the most important thing is that it's not civiv. It's a worthy addition to an already awesome series that needs some polish, but I'm sure it will end up providing years of entertainment, just like all the other ones.

 

[Janig]

Thats strange tybris because my computer is below the minimum specs and Civ5 minimizes super smooth for me - no source but i read that civ5 is optimised for geforce gpus. If you want a clock press shift+tab.

I agree with your overall sentiment, Im still thoroughly enjoying 3+ hours per day. Today the AI surprised me a little, I was ancient/classical rushed by Oda Nobonga on emperor and I had to really focus to get a stalemate. The war really set me back despite me having quite a strong military. I guess the AI saw the potential for my success without interference.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I'm dissatisfied overall. I feel that my sweetie wasted $60 for the time being.

My biggest complaint is that the AI is more stupid than a blonde who has locked herself in her own car and can't get out.

Add to that the numerous bugs and performance issues, even on my computer, and an information depriving interface, and it becomes just meh.

I'm leaving it on my hard drive, but it probably won't be played for a long while.

 

[Ayt]

I'm mildly surprised at the vote spread. Even taking mediocre as a negative response, there are still more positive responses than negative. Interesting...

I'd say it is a bad thing when you are on a site called Civ Fanatics and the newest Civ game is barely getting 50+% positive reception.

 

[Grimberht]

overreacting much?

I dont think so... and I remember how Vanillia CIV IV got the same kind of reception. I realize too that it cant compete with the deepness of BTS which is the result of severals years of work and community involvement.

That's said, the result here is pretty bad, there is A LOT to improve. I wont go into all this cause complains arnt real hard to find around here, and I dont think I would add anything more that has already been pointed out. One thing is clear tho they need to step up, cause for now I feel like they plainly stoled my money with a game that doesnt deserve the name it wears!

When I'll get any good news about the game getting over its "beta" stage, I'll come back to take a peak at it... but until then I'm back to SC2 and Firaxis will have to win me back cause I wont buy anything from them anymore.

 

[Cueball]

Underwhelmed is a good way to describe it. I'm still hoping patches and expansions will save this game, but I've only played 3 games and I'm already thinking about going back to BTS.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Personally I wanted a new game, not Civ IV.V (again). I can't imagine that they sat down with the Civ IV (or indeed BTS) code and just tried hacking it into Civ V...and as anyone who's written any software longer than the obligatory 2-line 'Hello World' knows, with major re-writes (no matter how much testing you do) teething problems are inevitable. And that is all they are...teething problems with a new game. Maybe they could have alleviated some of it by doing an open beta or some such thing, but they didn't...get over it, patches (or mods) will arrive.

As someone who has written software a lot longer than 2-line 'Hello World' I'm not sure I'd agree. Teething problems certainly can and often do happen, but there are certain kinds of problem that scream 'inadequate testing'. Two of the things I encountered were:

1. Civ5 wouldn't run at first. It just kept crashing immediately with no explanation. Turned out the problem was I only had DX 8 installed. I'd say for a big project team to miss checking something as obvious and serious as that borders on total incompetence. I mean - how difficult is it to write a bit of code that says 'check if the correct version of DX is installed and display a dialog telling the user if it isn't'?!?!?

2. A couple of the in-game notifications had very obvious grammatical errors in them. Again that's the kind of thing that should've been caught with the most elementary alpha testing.

There are bugs that I'd accept it's reasonable for a new commercial piece of software to have but those would be bugs where either (a) something unexpected happens in situations sufficiently rare that competent testing might plausibly have missed them, and (b) bugs where the consequences are so minor that you could argue it's not worth the effort of fixing them. The kind of issues we're seeing in Civ5 are in a completely different league from that.

I'd also question the description of Civ5 as a 'new' game. It shares a huge amount in common with Civ4: Cities, units, leaders, civs, wonders, diplomacy, etc. etc. Enough in common that it would seem odd to me if competent project managers didn't choose to start with the existing codebase in developing Civ 5 (assuming of course that the existing codebase was well written and maintained...)

 

[Tyrael]

Disappointed. I really don't have fun playing the game because of all the waiting. Wait half a second holding down right mouse before you can move. Wait 2 seconds to complete the move. Wait 3 seconds after ranged attacking for the game to realize a new unit needs orders now. Wait 3-15 seconds between turns starting on turn 1, or up to a whole minute while other AIs war each other and you have to watch.

PLEASE somebody mod in quick moves, don't watch enemy moves, and quick combat for both your turn and enemy turn (I don't want to see my combat since I know who is attacking who, but I want to see the enemy's attacks so I know where I'm being hit from.)

 

[Warguy2007]

Civ 5 has too many bugs and it is not creative compare with CIv 4 and Warlord. The map made by world builder is full of bugs.

The opening trailer is so annoyed, and when you chose a nation, an old man sound reading something like reading a funeral will. It's so frustrating. Civ 4 has very good music and dubbing. Civ 5 voice are so terrible.

I was dissapointed with Colonization already, and now I am really disappointed with 2K.

Civ 5 needs a huge patch to polish the game.

Moderator Action: Merged your thread/post into a thread on the same topic.

 

[entwood]

I think this poll may have missed having an interesting selection; those who did not buy yet, but probably eventually will, after several official patches, plus some mods like an unofficial patch and others. Maybe I will buy in a few or 6 months if things get better.

I learned my buy-as-soon-as-available 50 dollar lesson with Empire Total War. A lot of new games, wait 6 months to buy, there will be patches, and maybe the game has come down in price a bit also. It is hard to wait, I know, but I am getting more disciplined about this.

 

[entwood]

I'm dissatisfied overall. I feel that my sweetie wasted $60 for the time being.

My biggest complaint is that the AI is more stupid than a blonde who has locked herself in her own car and can't get out.

Add to that the numerous bugs and performance issues, even on my computer, and an information depriving interface, and it becomes just meh.

I'm leaving it on my hard drive, but it probably won't be played for a long while.

Yes, Lemon, we are still waiting on that CIV IV mod update.......

 

[WuphonsReach]

Underwhelmed - it's about a 6/10 for me with very little replay value after a week. If it was as good as Civ4 was (even prior to Warlords), then I would be stretching my schedule to fit it in. Instead, I find that I'm just not inspired enough to create a hole in my evening to boot it up.

Which I think is pretty accurate - end-users are not happy with it over at Amazon. 256 ratings and the average is a miserable 2.4 out of 5 stars with 46% giving it a 1-star rating. That's not good.

Steam #s are dropping as well. First week peak players was somewhere around 55k +/- 3k. It's starting to tail off already (better on the weekends, but it's not growing at all). Amazon sales rank still has it at #21 in video games, but that's down a bit already this week.

 

[AriochIV]

I think the problem with most of the glowing reviews of Civ V is that they didn't play the game for more than a week.

After 30-40 hours of play, I was somewhat satisfied with the new gameplay, though I was aware of the shortcomings of the new design.

After 100 hours of play, I'm pretty dissatisfied. The shortcomings make pretty much every game play the same, and the incompetent AI poses no challenge at all to offensive military operations. The only thing that keeps you from dominating the globe by the medieval era are the limitations on happiness and unit upkeep. It's miserable to see half-empty maps at the modern era.

 

[charon2112]

I've had the opposite experience, after much more than 100 hours, I am liking it more and more...The more I learn, the more I like it.

I think the problem with most of the glowing reviews of Civ V is that they didn't play the game for more than a week.

After 30-40 hours of play, I was somewhat satisfied with the new gameplay, though I was aware of the shortcomings of the new design.

After 100 hours of play, I'm pretty dissatisfied. The shortcomings make pretty much every game play the same, and the incompetent AI poses no challenge at all to offensive military operations. The only thing that keeps you from dominating the globe by the medieval era are the limitations on happiness and unit upkeep. It's miserable to see half-empty maps at the modern era.

 

[mrboogie]

Completely Satisfied. I got new Civ game that's better than its predecessor like it has happened with every sequel. (Of course I respect different opinions, these are all just opinions after all.) Every Civ after II needed some time and patching to iron out small bugs and balance problems and this time it's not different. After 50+ hours of playing the game just keeps getting better the more I start to understand its mechanics and design choices.

I know Firaxis will offer good support for their games and I'm looking forward for every patch and even more about incoming expansions that will definitelly fuel my urge to keep on playing even more.