How satisfied are you with Civ5?

[Jerrymander]

Civ5 has been out for over a week now, and I'm sure the majority of the posters in this forum have bought it and played it. How well did the gameplay of Civ5 meet your expectations from the hype created by Firaxis? Was the game more fun or less fun than you anticipated it to be? Was the game frustrating? Buggy?

Note: I'm not asking about anything non-gameplay related, so no posts complaining about Steam or anything else (as the main focus), please.

 

[smellymummy]

to be honest i saw no hype at all for this game. civ5's release came as a complete surprise to me about a week and a half ago

that being said, I had no expectations as some might of had following the development for months. so no disappointments, and I've been enjoying it a lot. so for a new civ game I'm having as much fun as when the others came out over the years

as for bugs, not all that much. there was one game i quit because of some stupid resource bug but otherwise.... its brand new, new games are always like this.

i remember often i've read people post on forums (after digesting all the game hype) stuff like "if they put the beta for sale today i would buy it!@!#@11!!bbq!"

funny how now, today those same drive by posters put up "wtf i want a finished game not a beta!!!@#Wtf!!one!"

in any case very satisfied

 

[ond_magiker]

It's mediocre. Somewhat fun playing, but there's no doubt that fun/time < 1.

If they fix the gameplay bugs, balance issues, boring buildings, diplomacy (at least make it less opaque), and AI it will be somewhat satisfying. Obviously the game needs more civs and leaders, but that will no doubt come with time - at a cost, but hopefully not before the main problems are sorted out.

If they add a few more good elements like religion, espionage, civics (social policies aren't civics, they're advanced personality traits), or make city states really interesting it might very well become a completely satisfying game. Perhaps even better than IV.

 

[afa2000]

Underwhelmed. It feels like a beta to me. A lot of potential, but not good enough at the moment. It seems that devs hold all the good stuff, so they can release it at further expansions.

 

[MadRat]

Underwhelmed. The more and more I play the combination of crappy AI and cheats is getting on my nerves. Civ 4 was harder but Civ5 is just soo frustrating - you commit hours to a game just to see the AI do something either so completely boneheadedly stupid or completely unfair that is just makes the game pointless to continue.

Rat

 

[Patholos]

Mediocre.

Poor implementation of new concepts, plus some gutting of the prev have made me sit on the fence.

Just waiting till they iron out and "streamline" it some more

 

[Mac2411]

Mediocre, but I believe it will improve. That said, the bottom line is that this game was not ready for release. There are a lot of bugs that were or should have been open and obvious with even the most superficial of testing. For example, the peace treaty bug which can put the kibosh on a game after an investment of several hours or the Ancient Ruins bug which has caused me (and probably others) to turn that otherwise fun feature off. (Because of various bugs, I've still not even finished a game.) Let's not even get into the currrent state of the game AI. Of course, I believe many games are released in this state these days, including previous versions of Civ.

 

[Fernaske]

For me it's functional, but could have been greater if they took a little more time to polish all the rough edges.

 

[Janig]

smellymummy I wrote that I would pay for a beta and I have no regrets.

Ive been aware of Civ5 since March and Im happy with the product I have now. With large foundation design changes such as hexes and 1upt the AI was always going to require more work. The AI isnt good enough yet, but beyond that I agree that the core game is really good. After many hours of playing civ4bts I was desperate for civ5 to be streamlined, we got that, and now I look forward to seeing some clever ai moves.

Re bugs affecting core gameplay Im aware of some bugs out there, so I use my awareness to avoid them ingame. I havent encountered any unavoidable bugs that actually affect my gameplay.

 

[UKScud]

I'm sure that once the modders get to it and six months to a year has gone by they might make something of it, but until then at least Civ4 is a complete game. I've played a fair number of games all the way through now, and underwhelmed is the best description of how I'm feeling..there is no real immersion to speak of, and I'm done with the way that developers feel they can get away with releasing half-completed versions of games...I've felt the same way for a couple of other games over the last couple of years..I thought the Civ franchise was better than that...very disappointed.

 

[Makesh]

Halfway between completley satisfied and somewhat satisfied.
I've really enjoyed playing ciV. The major differences in gameplay really makes the franchise fresher, diplomacy needs to be improved a bit, but Firaxis should fix that and some bugs in time. I was getting bored of cIV, so V was a nice way to mix it up.

Also, as soon as I put ciV into my comp, I told myself, "Do NOT compare this to civ 4!" I think that helped because there was no was ciV could live up to mine (and everyone's) wildly high expectations. I just thought of it as a completley different game and didn't make any comparisons to 5 and 4. So far, that philosophy's made the game quite enjoyable to me

 

[Kiwi Tyrant]

Somewhat satisfied.

Did'nt hear alot of hype here in New Zealand, but hey, when you are 100 turn's behind the rest of the developed world, what do you expect....

I've had the game for 6 day's and have put in 80 hour's of gameplay (perfect timing of work holiday's on my behalf). I like change's including the hex's, 1upt, ranged combat, border spread, city state's, social polices, road maintenance and some rival civ interaction. The blatant exploit's dismay me. I've played since Civ1 and am relieved this turned out not to be simply another tweaked Civ4 expansion. I never got to play the 'demo', but like other's, I feel I am now testing the 'beta' for Frax. The platform is there for a good strategy game, but until the AI is fixed, I'm finding I am being drawn away to mixing up my game time with abit of ETW, SC2, Bloodbowl and Fps.

Only once it's fully completed and looking polished and smart, I will ignore those stain's on it's dress and give it a another thorough rockin'....

 

[Sneaky Snake]

I'm between somewhat satisfied and complete. My main gripe is having to reload the map many times to get a good start(aka, no "Regenerate Map" feature).

 

[Drake L. Dragon]

I'm between somewhat satisfied and complete. My main gripe is having to reload the map many times to get a good start(aka, no "Regenerate Map" feature).

Actually, you can use World Builder in order to decide where you and your enemies want to start on any map.

 

[Ktulu]

Finally had my first day to well, play all day . I have to say I'm coming around and starting to like the game. I'm more of a builder than a warmonger, so I haven't really run into the combat AI issues yet.

There are two reasons I still think the game is mediocre.

1) The interface if lacking in so many areas. The lack of information is frustrating, but this is slowly being addressed by mods.

2) And because of #1 diplomacy sucks. Everytime I need to make a diplomatic decision I have no access to any information (and I'm not talking about civ4 +/- stuff). It's a pain in the ass just to look up who has resources to trade. There are also way too many screens which prompt you for some diplomatic action, but don't give you any information about your decision. Frustrating. Then there's the random insults every X number of turns...

Anyway, there's a base for a really good game here. Eventually this will match BTS, it's just gonna take a while. The game was rushed, for evidence all you need to look at is the lack of items in the options menu and the stuff that's accessible in the ini files. Says a lot about their time constraints when they can't provide an in game interface for some basic options contained in the ini file(s).

 

[snoochems]

Civ 5 is a great game that is spoiled by a general lack of polish, and numerous bugs, exploits, and some questionable game design choices.

Nothing that can't be fixed with a patch or three, and a few mods.

 

[Disreg]

Underwhelmed.

I actually like all the major changes (including 1 unit per tile and social policies), it's just the general lack of polish, all the stuff that got removed (esp. religion and spying), the terrible performance (3-4 mins wait time per turn with 4gb of RAM? Really?), the drawings in place of wonder movies, the random mystery diplomacy, the epic list of bugs and most of all the the weak cheating AI.

 

[kuukkeli]

Underwhelmed (actually had hard time choosing between Completely Dissapointed and this). Some nice features, lots of bad implementations and far too little to do besides pushing those units accross the board. Still giving it a chance though - at least then I know what mods to use when the time comes.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

How satisfied are you with Civ5?

Ask me again in a week or two. I have my opinion (and you've read it a couple of times), but I'm giving some time to put some suggestions to the test.

 

[Chaotic42]

I'm pretty disappointed. The UI is horrible, the game design choices are mostly bad, and the game is buggy as hell. I will never buy another Civ game or game released by Firaxis/2K until well after release.

I've also lost whatever trust I had in several game reviewers.