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

[SuperJay]

Its true; I've razed more cities in three weeks of playing Cv5 than I did in nearly five years of playing Civ4.

Absolutely true here too. Scary thought.

And I agree with AndrewLT too; Civ5 raps you on the knuckles any time you start to deviate from the True Path, which is a very different experience than previous Civ games, which felt much more open-ended and filled with possibility.

 

[remconius]

@hclass: why all the discussion?

Just buy the game or continue play civ 4? It's up to you!

Believe me, there are large number of people (who dont spend their time here) enjoying the game already.

 

[Caroxo]

Every civ was a major breakthrough in strategy gaming. civ I was, well, the first. nobody had ever seen something like that. then civ II gave us the isometric, pretty colors and cool icon-like units. Civ III brought the game to the new age of gaming, using all the advances the industry had achieved over the years. and then there's the masterpiece. Civ IV is one of the best, more complex, deep, gigantic games ever. from the graphics to the AI, the complexity of the tech system and the kind of parallel mini game with religions to the civics system or the resources wars. but all good things come to an end, and so Civ V, the game that could only be available in cellphones that nobody would notice. the game that traded the complex, immersive gaming for a 2 hours ammusing distraction for 8 year old children. the game with crappy graphics, limited longevity, boring as hell and above all disapointing. i've played civ from the first one, the one with no roman numbers in front of it, and this is not one of those "i'm old school and you kids suck" kind of thing. "old school", "new school", it doesn't matter. this civ sucks in any school. I don't know how, i don't know why, but it seems they killed the franchise...

 

[ssh08]

Aren't space races always a lot of button mashing, waiting for those things to get built? What can they put in to make it interesting? A building minigame? Have the AI declare war on you automatically?

in other games you had to fight for resources you didnt have (aluminum), or fight for space for more cities so you could build the pieces faster. i went that entire game without an oil or aluminum, and just one uranium deposit, and i wasnt worried about it because i was so ridiculosuly far ahead. i was nt very good at civ2 and civ4, but i had fun because of the challenge. now i just walk into the game on a higher level than usual and sleep my way through a win. i could have won a diplomatic or cultural victory before the time limit too if i had felt like it

 

[DarkSchneider]

I started a new game on a small map and the happiness cap seems a little more balanced. Someone made an interesting point in that it's odd to play a Civ game in which you never compete with the AI for territory. In Civs I-II REX was easily the best strategy. Once they fixed corruption in Civ III expanding was important at least in the very beginning, and you generally tried to fill all of the space around your starting area. In Civ IV there were a lot of special resources that allowed you to jump start your city growth so you needed to get those choice locations before the other Civilizations did. In Civ V there is actually incentive to not expand at all past your first 5 cities or so. Aside from luxury resources to up your happiness cap, any spot is as good as virtually any other. Virtually every piece of terrain gives you 2 food/resources when undeveloped, and 3 food/resources after it is developed. A special resource on the tile only increases that by 1. You can be well into AD and still have no shared borders with any computer player.

 

[Doctor Phibes]

in other games you had to fight for resources you didnt have (aluminum), or fight for space for more cities so you could build the pieces faster. i went that entire game without an oil or aluminum, and just one uranium deposit, and i wasnt worried about it because i was so ridiculosuly far ahead. i was nt very good at civ2 and civ4, but i had fun because of the challenge. now i just walk into the game on a higher level than usual and sleep my way through a win. i could have won a diplomatic or cultural victory before the time limit too if i had felt like it

I've ended up with lakes of oil and mountains of aluminium and won without using any of it. The only resource that has irked me is coal because I like factories and coal is oddly scarce, but you don't really need those factories to win, just pleases me to work up awesome productive capacities.

 

[Jayman1000]

If only the Worldbuilder could help make things interesting, Unfortunately it cant. Worldbuilder is unwieldy, non-userfriendly(user-hostile would be more correct) and even right out ugly to behold. When making rivers I have to rest my hand for a couple minutes every 5 minutes. If you tried making rivers in the Worldbuilder you cannot but agree.

I hope an expansion will be made or similar total game conversion mod that brings all the good things of Civ, including a super-duper all-in-one Worldbuilder, back to the people of Civ!

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

in other games you had to fight for resources you didnt have (aluminum), or fight for space for more cities so you could build the pieces faster. i went that entire game without an oil or aluminum, and just one uranium deposit, and i wasnt worried about it because i was so ridiculosuly far ahead. i was nt very good at civ2 and civ4, but i had fun because of the challenge. now i just walk into the game on a higher level than usual and sleep my way through a win. i could have won a diplomatic or cultural victory before the time limit too if i had felt like it

"Force player into a war". Noted.

 

[logintime]

If only the Worldbuilder could help make things interesting, Unfortunately it cant. Worldbuilder is unwieldy, non-userfriendly(user-hostile would be more correct) and even right out ugly to behold. When making rivers I have to rest my hand for a couple minutes every 5 minutes. If you tried making rivers in the Worldbuilder you cannot but agree.

I haven't used the Civ5 worldbuilder, but it's still that bad? I remember Civ4's worldbuilder being mostly okay to use, but the rivers wildly annoying to map out.

 

[Jonathan]

I think the biggest problem is that previous Civs reward players for making certain decisions while Civ 5 punishes players for making certain decisions. The game is all about punishment and not much on reward.

You get punished for annexing cities. You get punished for expanding. You get punished for growing your cities. You get punished for building later buildings (since they're almost all crap compared to their production and maintenance costs). You get punished for puppeting unless you avoid certain technologies beforehand. You get punished for building roads Almost every thing I can do feels like a punishment that I just go "Screw it, I'm just going to burn all the AI cities to the ground." That's about the only fun left in the game.

I was just about to say something like this myself. Whenever I do something that seems like an achievement to me, I get punished for it in some way.

Exception: when I explore the map, I don't get punished, I get rewarded. Hey, this is nice. I wish other aspects of the game were like this.

I won't complain about the charge for road maintenance, because (a) you also get rewarded for building roads between cities, and (b) it stops the craziness of building roads in every possible place as in previous versions of the game.

 

[Thormodr]

Its true; I've razed more cities in three weeks of playing Cv5 than I did in nearly five years of playing Civ4.

Yup. Me too. I can count on one hand how many cities I razed while playing cIV. I razed quite a few in ciV until I got utterly bored of the game.

 

[lschnarch]

Yup. Me too. I can count on one hand how many cities I razed while playing cIV. I razed quite a few in ciV until I got utterly bored of the game.

That seems to be a direct consequence of the fact that Civ0.V actually IS a god game - but just for Mr. Jon Shafer.

Being in power, he decided in all his wisdom to put mechanics in place to punish any player deviating from HIS (Mr. Jon Shafer's) divine idea of how such a game should be played.

And since Mr. Shafer is a "3 cities have to be enough"-player, all the rest of the world shall play in the same way. Or else...

 

[Blackadar]

I am still on my first full game of Civilization V...

Sorry, stopped reading right there. It's not a good lead in to a post. It doesn't invalidate your opinion, but passing judgment on a game you haven't even completed (which takes 4-6 hours) seems a bit hasty. Not everything you say is incorrect, but there was so much incorrect or overblown in your entire post that it's obvious you haven't played all that much. For example, that Colosseum that takes you 60 turns might take my cities 10 to build (or 1 to buy).

I want to address your last statement:

I feel the reason that Civ V isn't as fun as the previous versions is because there aren't any 'good' actions you can take that don't have significant drawbacks.

That's a fair statement. But for some of us, that's one reason we like Civ V. Most decisions in life aren't all positive or negative. What I like about Civ V is that it continually challenges you to balance and plan ahead. No longer can I turn my entire Civilization around on a dime with no repercussions. Many decisions require a choice of A or B and not A and B. I like that kind of decision making...apparently you don't. To each his own.

And since Mr. Shafer is a "3 cities have to be enough"-player, all the rest of the world shall play in the same way. Or else...

When you make a blatantly false statement like that, you invalidate your entire post.

 

[lschnarch]

When you make a blatantly false statement like that, you invalidate your entire post.

From here:

Generally, my preferred playstyle is to go with around 3 cities,

 

[Andvare]

Then what is the point of a bigger (compare to previous Civ) city radious?
Why don't they simply reduce the city radious so that everyone is forced to build tiny city?

I don't know.
You probably aren't going to have all of a city's radius worked in any era. But with the tile yields as they are now, you probably won't want to either.

Depends on what?
What is the relation between Tech research speed and building time since Civ players now has no control on them...

An Egyptian player with a certain social policy and marble actually builds wonders faster than most buildings (80% production bonus IIRC).
But build times versus tech times are horrid. You tech several techs while building only one thing. In my last game, the only thing I build faster than I teched, was a scout...

What about old cities?
In Civ3 and 4, I normally have those early cities fully developed (in term of max population and buildings allowed) just before or at the beginning of modern era, so now what happen in Civ5?
Can I have many cities with full population grown and all building constructed at the end of the game?

No.

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

The AI sucks. It really do. Not only is the AI Total War like aggressive (you are weak, you must die), it don't know how to use the new combat rules, often just walks it's vulnerable units into a killing zone, doesn't protect anything, zerg charges, and gives away settlers and workers like they were candy.

The wargame has the potential to be better than CivIV's, but only when/if they fix MP and when/if they fix the A"I".

The suckiness of the AI and total lack of balance means that this is, by far, the easiest Civ game so far.

Yeah, I'm fairly disappointed.

 

[Blackadar]

From here:

Yet you're not forced to play that way (in fact, it's often sub-optimal), hence the "blatantly false statement" part.

 

[rrhal]

I miss having states capitulate to me. Vassal states would speed up the process of beating down an opponent. Maybe having a little more input into how the governor of your puppet cities - focus on military, gold, culture, great people, science ...

The OP is right about the wonders - for the most part there's no urgency in building them. Some of the wonders are handy for a cultural victory.

 

[SuperJay]

I was just about to say something like this myself. Whenever I do something that seems like an achievement to me, I get punished for it in some way.

That's how I'm feeling, too. It leads to some really weird contradictions. Like "yay, I won the war, defended my homeland and protected my people! Oh wait, now all my citizens are pissed because I was so successful."

 

[JudgeDeath]

That's how I'm feeling, too. It leads to some really weird contradictions. Like "yay, I won the war, defended my homeland and protected my people! Oh wait, now all my citizens are pissed because I was so successful."

Learn to play Civ V, instead of trying to play it like Civ IV and then complaining when it doesn't work.

There are things that are wrong with V, but being limited to three cities is not one of them. Yes it's harder to grow, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Here's a shot of part of my Empire in my last game. As you can see, growing beyond 3 is not only possible, you can get good gold and happiness (and science) while you do it.

 

[SuperJay]

Learn to play Civ V, instead of trying to play it like Civ IV and then complaining when it doesn't work.

Hahahahaha, right, okay. Because the clearly the obvious response to "this is weird, my citizens love losing wars but they hate winning them" is "LE4RN 2 PLAY N00B."

Whatever nonsense you're writing about 3 cities and expansion has nothing to do with my post. Maybe you're confused and responding to someone else, or having trouble with reading comprehension. Can't tell, but good luck resolving your problems.