I think I know why Civ V isn't fun (compared to Civs I-IV)

[Generals3]

But how come a lot of warmonger type players complain that Civ5 is not good war game either?

Because the AI can't handle 1UPT and certain things are totally broken (subs getting sunken by cities throwing stones , fighters getting hit by swordsmen etc.)

 

[Jediron]

3. You can't afford to build every building in every city because there are just that many buildings, and they all cost maintenance. Even if the build time were there (and it can be), the maintenance will kill you.

So. what you telling me is that economy sucks in CIV 5.

Take a city, any reanable sized size these day (and 100 years back) have schools, libs, markets, banks, a church. a majors office and lots of "collosium like"" structures (football/tennis/bowling/etc/etc) . If not, then it ain't a city, but a village.
New cities are fully filled with these kind of buildings right from the start.
Because, beside cost to build and maintance, some of them they make money too. It's also good for employement. And sure; while the itself have hardly any production at start; production comes from other sources, factories and such. From other places.
In that sence, it's quite normal City A and B, helps to build ANY kind of structure, in City C.
That ain't happening in CIV 5. Ow wait, it does; all you have to do is make cash.

 

[hclass]

hclass:
1. It depends on your Civ trait, policies, and how much happiness you can muster. It also depends on what you mean by "big." I've had a Civ with 13 cities, all of which had population 15 or more, with the biggest being size 27, attended by 4 other cities sized 20+. I had about 30 excess happiness at the time, which would have allowed me two more cities at size 14. Is that large enough for you?

In Civ3 and 4, when I play conquest and when I win (I normally will), I usually cover the whole huge map with cities, that means, by the time prior to victory (just before I strike the very last opponent city), I have say about 100 plus cities... is this no more possible in Civ5?

2. Generally, the expensive era-appropriate buildings take 8-15 turns to build. Techs take 10-ish, being 5-7-ish in the modern era. Plenty of time to build buildings and still have time left over for other things. Have to get the cities up to size, though. Small cities have crap for production.

But that is in modern era only, right?
So what do you do in the earlier eras...???
I know every unit counts and you can't build units in quantity to simply win by outnumber your opponents... so few units, few buildings, few cities, what else should one busy about during the early era? Are you simply keep hitting the next turn button?

3. You can't afford to build every building in every city because there are just that many buildings, and they all cost maintenance. Even if the build time were there (and it can be), the maintenance will kill you. That's one of the supposed drawbacks of puppet cities at the moment.

A Renaissance era military-focused city should have Forge, Barracks, Armory, Monument, Temple, and maybe Walls (so your military machine won't get taken out). That's pretty hyper-focused. Attendant buildings are Granary, Water Mill, Library, and Market - for growing and to take advantage of size, but nonessential.

A well-planned production city should be able to build all those buildings on its own and still have enough time to churn out enough units that you can afford not to upgrade if your gold output is needed elsewhere (in other words, churning 6-10 era-appropriate units per era).

That sounds very conflicting, isn't it? Because every city has to be designed for certain purpose through selecting specific type of buildings to build, but then, it is normal to keep early cities throughout the game... I mean, are those early cities will eventually developed into city with all kind of buildings or you just keep minimum required buildings in a city throughout the game and simply use it as army pumping out machine...???

 

[da_Vinci]

The workaround for that is to never load a saved game from within the game menu. Always exit the game first - sucks, I know, but I would expect this to be one of the first bugs they fix.

You can load a game from outside the game? Or do you mean you have to go to the pre-game opening menu?

What I miss is being able to load from the save file in the directory (or on the desktop) ... is anyone able to do that, and if so, how?

dV

 

[Veshta]

It lacks fun because there is nothing to do and very little to think about while playing. It is as if the devs are holding the players hand throughout.

Mandatory resource improvements, simplified tech tree, largely useless buildings, bland wonders (a few exceptions) etc. Even if the AI was sorted so it could compete in combat, the game still wouldn't engage in the same way as previous Civs did.
There are no large sacrifices/compromises to consider other than maybe policy choices but you can win without ever choosing a single one .. just imagine playing Civ4 without changing civics, you'd be utterly annihilated.

Unfortunately I cannot identify one single thing that would 'make it all better' as it is the combination of the universal healthcare (happiness), "sameness" resources plus the utter and complete gold focus that all games seems to boil down to.
Fixing the AI, diplomacy and what not will not make it more fun but could potentially make it more challenging which I fear is all we can hope for.

 

[troytheface]

Fact- Buying Tiles and working City States is more active then not buying tiles and dealing with city states

Fact- Beta testers? a Beta tester tests a game. I am playing a game. I am not testing anything other then how to build in the tundra and desert on emperor and win.


the evidence is clear- Civ5 player of the new tommorrow

 

[Theodorick]

It's bad because civs never "forget" the past. Their relations with the player slowly go down until they are all against you. At that point there is pretty much nothing you can do to get peace. The rest of the game will forever be war. In real life there are periods of war and peace. After enough time has past former "enemy" civs will become more friendly, maybe even allies. Civ 5 doesn't simulate that.

Good point. I was honestly annoyed when India still hated me 2000 years later just because I conquered a city state he was allied with. I know some people like holding grudges, but this was just excessive.

 

[hclass]

I remember those early days after Civ3, Civ4 or their expansion packs are released:

1. People are complaining about hardware bugs.
2. Some got unhappy of certain feature not right.
3. Some got unhappy of missing features or new features.
4. Some being frustrated for the release is not complete in certain area.
and so on.

However, in the past, player complains all shared one common thing, each individual was complaining about a single (or even in the worst case a few) feature/problem.

I haven't experienced before, so many players come to this forum and write overall bad after-play experience about a newly released Civ game. I got a feeling, this time Firaxis has gone too far. No doubt, Civ5, is still following the tradition, that is, it also has all the problems as listed above (it will be a surprise to me, if it is not), but it also has something new, something BIG that makes me really worry...

The problems are not regarding bugs - because that can be patched sooner or later nor it is about individual flawed feature, because that can be solved by modding.

The real problem is: many complains seems to relate to something deep in the mechanism of the game... I mean it is all about the Civ5 design has changed things that are so fundamental until it is beyond the scope of patches or mods... sigh!

 

[ohioastronomy]

I can give you an un-fun example from the game I just dumped - which happens to be the game of the month, so I probably won't be submitting an entry. Monty asks me to join him in attacking Liz..fine. So I do, capture a city...and then he hates me. I move up to finish off Liz, and as I am doing so Monty declares war on me. I turn around to deal with him...and after I destroy his armies and start on his cities Napoleon declares war on me. Mind you, Napoleon was itching for a war with Monty.
Now they are incompetent, of course, so I am not losing - in fact, I will own the entire continent by about 900 AD. But the point is to build a spaceship, and that is what I was trying to do. Not "endless chain reaction wars". Maybe I made a mistake in the black box diplomacy, but this garbage business of jumping on players is ultra-annoying.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I just looked back at some of my comments from 2005.

I hammered Civ IV for similar reasons. I think I've decided that the CIV games are always much better after the first and certainly second expansion pack.

Basically we're all beta testers for the expansion - which will be ace.

Hopefully, but I don't know if all of the problems with Civ 5 can be addressed simply by adding more features to the game. Some of the issues are directly related to the core game, so unless Firaxis is willing to change the core of the actual game via patches many of the problems will continue to exist.

 

[DarkSchneider]

In Civ3 and 4, when I play conquest and when I win (I normally will), I usually cover the whole huge map with cities, that means, by the time prior to victory (just before I strike the very last opponent city), I have say about 100 plus cities... is this no more possible in Civ5?


But that is in modern era only, right?
So what do you do in the earlier eras...???
I know every unit counts and you can't build units in quantity to simply win by outnumber your opponents... so few units, few buildings, few cities, what else should one busy about during the early era? Are you simply keep hitting the next turn button?


That sounds very conflicting, isn't it? Because every city has to be designed for certain purpose through selecting specific type of buildings to build, but then, it is normal to keep early cities throughout the game... I mean, are those early cities will eventually developed into city with all kind of buildings or you just keep minimum required buildings in a city throughout the game and simply use it as army pumping out machine...???

The way the game is structured it is impossible to have a lot of large cities. The total happiness limit for your empire is shared across all cities, and the only way to increase it after you've exhausted the benefits from luxury resources is to build Colloseams and the like. Even in the modern era you can only build buildings that will increase your per city happiness by 13 each (on average) So if you build a lot of cities you will be looking at cities in the 13 population range.

 

[danisans]

It lacks fun because there is nothing to do and very little to think about while playing. It is as if the devs are holding the players hand throughout.

Mandatory resource improvements, simplified tech tree, largely useless buildings, bland wonders (a few exceptions) etc. Even if the AI was sorted so it could compete in combat, the game still wouldn't engage in the same way as previous Civs did.
There are no large sacrifices/compromises to consider other than maybe policy choices but you can win without ever choosing a single one .. just imagine playing Civ4 without changing civics, you'd be utterly annihilated.

Unfortunately I cannot identify one single thing that would 'make it all better' as it is the combination of the universal healthcare (happiness), "sameness" resources plus the utter and complete gold focus that all games seems to boil down to.
Fixing the AI, diplomacy and what not will not make it more fun but could potentially make it more challenging which I fear is all we can hope for.

Fact is that every new Civ always introduces doubt, on my part at least, that the game mechanics and balance are any good, where I start thinking then that the previous version was better. After a while, I learn to like it and an expansion pack comes along by then and makes the game really good.

The thing is that Civ V is the first time I have played a Civ game where my obsession level is low and my boredom factor pretty high. It just seems like evrything you do has a positive and negative factor to it that evens things out. Makes every action feel unsubstantial. But my biggest issue is the mashing of the Next Turn button. I am in a Civ V game in the year 1910 and I am still mashing that Next Turn button. I have nothing to do. I went and connected half of my cities with railroads and it just sank my economy. Now my workers are all sitting idle, my cities are all producing Markets, Mints and Stock Exchanges and I had to cancel my plan to go to war with Germany until I get my economy back on track. I am going to be just clicking Next Turn through the Industrial era, and I will need to upgrade all those units that are built only to sit there protecting against an invasion that never comes.

And that just one example. It just seems that whenever I do something fun in Civ V, I pay for it (economy tanks or unhapiness skyrockets). I invade 2 Greek cities, all five Civs on the other continent gets pissed at me, refuses to trade with me and my lack of luxury resources tanks my hapiness rating... I compensate by becoming allies with City States, those CS are now eating up all my gold and civs are getting even more pissed off at me... I expand my territory to get more resources and be less reliant on City States, my culture goes down the drain, having to wait a 100 turns before getting a new Social Policy and forced to build nothing but Coliseums to get my hapiness back on track, which when it does will create a crash of my economy because of the maintenance cost of all those "Happiness" buildings.

It seems that the best approach to have in Civ V is play a quick game, expand to no more than three to six cities and wait for something exciting to happen before you win a Cultural victory. I would try it but it just sound way too boring to me.

 

[hclass]

The way the game is structured it is impossible to have a lot of large cities. The total happiness limit for your empire is shared across all cities, and the only way to increase it after you've exhausted the benefits from luxury resources is to build Colloseams and the like. Even in the modern era you can only build buildings that will increase your per city happiness by 13 each (on average) So if you build a lot of cities you will be looking at cities in the 13 population range.

So, you are saying it is possible to build more than 100 cities, however, most of them will have a population of the most 13 heads, right? Thus, for these cities, they would occupy/work less than half of the tiles o max city radius. Why would they want to increase the radius of city then?

 

[hclass]

The thing is that Civ V is the first time I have played a Civ game where my obsession level is low and my boredom factor pretty high. It just seems like evrything you do has a positive and negative factor to it that evens things out. Makes every action feel unsubstantial. But my biggest issue is the mashing of the Next Turn button. I am in a Civ V game in the year 1910 and I am still mashing that Next Turn button. I have nothing to do.

Two things from the above:

1. It reminds me of one of my thread regarding "rewards" given in a game - how important it is to make Civ an interesting game. The thread title is something like "I just want Civ5 to be a joyful game" if I recall it correctly. That thread was posted not long before the release of Civ5 and people have disagreed with me for what I emphasized. For them I just wonder how do they feel while playing Civ5 like you have described.

2. Your description of your feel while playing Civ5, make me want to cry angrily... (I consider myself very loyal to Civ game though I crictises Firaxis most of the time, I just want to make them better... sigh!)

 

[DarkSchneider]

So, you are saying it is possible to build more than 100 cities, however, most of them will have a population of the most 13 heads, right? Thus, for these cities, they would occupy/work less than half of the tiles o max city radius. Why would they want to increase the radius of city then?

You can get a few more than 13 heads with the right social policies, but it is still very limited. Also there is a hard cap on the number of cities you can actually build. If you go over that number the game will crash on the following turn. It appears that number is 70 and it is a known bug.

Also note that to get the 13 people per city all cities need to build the 3 three +4 happiness buildings, and every city that can build the +3 happiness building must build it.

 

[hclass]

You can get a few more than 13 heads with the right social policies, but it is still very limited. Also there is a hard cap on the number of cities you can actually build. If you go over that number the game will crash on the following turn. It appears that number is 70 and it is a known bug.

Also note that to get the 13 people per city all cities need to build the 3 three +4 happiness buildings, and every city that can build the +3 happiness building must build it.

Have you watched the video of how World Trade Center collapsed?
Your description above have made me feel like I was on the top flour during that event...
The sky is falling, the end to my favorite game... bye bye!

 

[Roxlimn]

In Civ3 and 4, when I play conquest and when I win (I normally will), I usually cover the whole huge map with cities, that means, by the time prior to victory (just before I strike the very last opponent city), I have say about 100 plus cities... is this no more possible in Civ5?

Possible, but there are trade-offs, and there is the city number bug. I don't consider a cap of 70 cities to be a real limit. Your opinion may vary.

But that is in modern era only, right?
So what do you do in the earlier eras...???
I know every unit counts and you can't build units in quantity to simply win by outnumber your opponents... so few units, few buildings, few cities, what else should one busy about during the early era? Are you simply keep hitting the next turn button?

No. It depends on what you mean by "numbers" but you can have an army of up to 8 units easily in the Ancient and Classical Eras, and it goes up from there. You can easily outnumber the AI on King, but on Immortal and above, the passive bonuses are too strong for you to do so.

1UPT means that in an army of 10, you can't have more than 6 melee units or you will have units that can't attack because they don't have space. An army of 16 is actually somewhat bordering on the unwieldy, and perfectly possible in the Medieval Era.

That sounds very conflicting, isn't it? Because every city has to be designed for certain purpose through selecting specific type of buildings to build, but then, it is normal to keep early cities throughout the game... I mean, are those early cities will eventually developed into city with all kind of buildings or you just keep minimum required buildings in a city throughout the game and simply use it as army pumping out machine...???

Generally, you are best advised to maintain specialization. A production center won't have much in the way of gold, so putting Markets and Banks in it is kind of a waste of hammers. It can also be somewhat small, so libraries are low priority, and you build a University only if it's sufficiently large and you're trying to avoid making units.

As the eras pass, each city spec gains buildings that it wants. For a military buildings, that's typically production boosters and XP boosters.

 

[Ogaburan]

Civ III had a lot of new features and concepts that kept the pace moving along.

First i want to say i agree with 98% of you original post.

Just for me, and it seems many others, Civ 3 was a fluke. During that time i preferred CTP.

CTP was 10 times better, and it seems firaxis noticed and changed things.

 

[avakki]

I think I play a different game than the opening poster

 

[SuperJay]

So, you are saying it is possible to build more than 100 cities...

Just FYI, no, it is not possible. The game cannot handle the player having more than 70 cities. Try and build or capture your 71st city and your game will crash, forcing yout raze cities and forego any further expansion unless you want to abandon that save and start over.