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

[hclass]

Yes, City States don't provide food, science (nope, absolutely no policy in the Patronage tree for that), or culture.

Yes, you do. However, you are not me.

By the way you have described Civ4 religion and corporation and the way you have skipped my sentences in quotes, I know:
Either
1. You have never played Civ4 before but you pretend you have.
Or
2. Until today (well, Civ5 is out), you still don't really clear about the two elements mentioned.

Yes, I have read all the complaints, and they should be trashed. Just like how I dumped my car in the river when it broke down. How am I gonna fix such a problem anyway? Might as well go back to public transportation.

Why didn't you trade-in that broken car and get a new one? Recycle man, recycle!
No wonder the part of river flow through my backyard nowadays has little water, that must be blocked by your dumped car...

Elaborate. Right now it sounds like you're just throwing words into sentences haphazardly.

No. I am sorry, people has elaborated enough. I don't think there is any way one can elaborate better than this for example:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388657

I don't know, those Spaceship Factories shaved a dozen turns of my science victory. Maybe you just don't know how to use them?

But how do you shave a few turns in constructing any building including the so called Spaceship Factories?

You sound like those people who keep insisting on seeing Obama's birth certificate.
*begins to wonder if he is being trolled*

Umm... I am not American... however I do know who is Obama.
Just curious, what makes you relate someone insist on "seeing Obama's birth certificate." to a troll?
You seem like to relate irrelevant matters together... anyway I enjoy learning Obama's birth cert is a mean to summon trolls... eh eh eh

That settles that then.

Yes! and Ya! You are right this time, lets damn the Civ5 programmers... dman damn.

Yes, they are tactical choices.

Great, we finally have one thing we both can agree!

I would still prefer them to be difficult.

I think you still don't catch my point.
It doesn't matter whether it is strategic or tactical choice.
I mean, whether or not you find something difficult, that depends on both:
1. The complexity or quality of factors that you need to take into account.
2. Your brain power.

I find it odd that you are looking for difficulty in a paid game...
Man, you probably still remember what is my job. I am paid to solve problem, to ease customer's pain by software. I have never before, imagine someone will paid to be in trouble...

And tactics eventually segue into strategy in the long run ("Right now, should I build libraries or buy tiles for Trade Posts? Which would give me more research over the course of 200 turns?").

Wrong!
In order to acheive victory, you must plot strategically well and then act tactically well. Not the reverse.

 

[Biz_]

everything you do in civ5 is actually more important because you cannot quickly react to enemy activity

no slaving
expensive units
little espionage

high upkeep/maintenance means you cannot just "do everything"

 

[Jediron]

Biz, what you say goes both ways. The AI cannot quickly react also, on your activity.

The reason this CIV fails for me, is very simple:

Whatever conquest type you go after, nomatter which, if that one isn't achievable, you can ALWAYS win it militairy. The only thing you have to make sure, is have a decent "army" ready. Then it's just a matter of time. Lure him in ambushes, weaken them, and when that's done, take over his cities. The AI battle-ai sucks major, if you know how to fight; victory is yours, even if the odds are 10/1.

There is no challenge for me anymore. Why bother going for Spaceships, Cultural or Diplomatic when a little voice is telling me; don't worry, if this fails; crush them ?

This is exactly what sets it apart from other CIV's. You really had to put effort in one type of stragey, if that failed, chances were good that you failed to win. And, that's what i call a "challenge".

 

[Jonathan]

I've played my way through Civ 1, 2, 3, 4. The odd thing about Civ 5 is that I like most of the changes, individually, but as a whole the game seems so boring that at the moment I can hardly be bothered to play it. Where is the addictive quality of previous versions?

One identifiable problem, mentioned by others, is that building things seems too slow and research too fast. Some units become obsolete before I get around to building them. But this can't be the core problem.

The game is too long and too complicated for my taste; but it always has been, and that didn't stop me playing it in the past.

I'm not sure what the problem is. I hope Firaxis can find some way of fixing it, otherwise I'm going to find myself doing more work and earning more money in future. Gasp.

 

[lschnarch]

When looking at the military advisor screen why can't I click on a unit to activate it?

That was one of my complaints as well and I was corrected.

Actually, you can select the units, but not from where you (and I did so, too) would expect it.
You have to select the military overview from these arrows in the upper left corner. Select the military screen there, and then from there you can select your units.

Not sure though, if there the unit's names are displayed.

 

[Jediron]

Another reason why i think it is so boring: the worker

In CIV 5 it take ages (emperor/huge/marathon) to produce them. 53 turns to finish 1 worker. I mean, what is this ? You drop a city, instantly with your settler but it takes 53 turns to produce a lousy worker ? So, all those turns, the only thing you do, is exploring the map with a warrior and a, 19turns to produced, scout. Oke folks, there you have it; 19+53= 82 turns for in total for a maegre scout+worker. Forget War, that's gonna take a zillion turns longer. Boring ?

To make matters worse, if that ain't painfully enough; trillion turns later (1600BC) i have about 9 cities (6 conquered, some of them puppeted and some more razed) yes with the might horse rush, the only thing my core-cities (three) advise to build are....workers!
Ow, well. That ain't so bad, i hear you think... Well, considering the fact that there are already 10 a 12 workers busy, all my core and conquered city's have more or less ALL improvement land. (i mean, i use half my workers already to lay roads over quite some distance to link up with the conquirered cities) it seems bad enough to me.

To me it feels like: you get crap advice when you need some good advice (build advisor) and too much advice when you don't (battle-advisor). The battle-advisor is so good, i rather call it a exploit; while it takes all the suprise out of the fighting. Keep a eye on those numbers, and you can't loose.

Anyway, workers take way too long to build. It feels like you are training Astrounuts all the time. All i need is a few pair of hands that can handle a shovel, now why should that take SO long ?

 

[MM1nd]

You're saying that +5 happiness per resource type is "mild"? I've had 20+ happiness per turn from luxury resources - enough to pump up my Golden Ages and give me a huge edge over the AI. There's also a social policy (I forget which one) that gives you another +1 happiness for duplicate luxuries. You can really compensate for a huge civ that way.

Actually I found my empire limited by gold rather than happiness (as in use gold via bulding maintanance to compensate for happyness). Interestingly enough, happiness in reverse can be used to compansate lack of gold (as in ~+100gpt in golden ages). Golden Ages are to easy to enter and overpowered. On Prince level with that golden age civ, which one was it again, it is entirely possible to have an almost never ending golden age from the midlle ages to the end of game (GP, Wonders, Civics, regular golden ages). A permanent golden age allows to play the game civ IV style: lots of bulidings, huge armies, large empire - it is still possible.

Yes, I could play on an easier level where my advanced tech and military might would keep almost any civ from wanting to attack me but that is boring as well.

You should think so, but AI is terrible in judging military strength. By cannon age my civ had conquered the world with the exception of England. I had about 4 cannons and 2 horse units (cant remember which) leftover from that crusade, so I decided to leave Elisabeth alone and concentrate on recovering my economy. From then on England scored about twice my points on military score. Come modern ages Elisabeth decided that it would be wise to wage war, probably besaing her decision on above score. Unfortunately she was still in ship of the line/musketman age. The six units mentionend above together with city bombardement (but without the help of garrison units which were hopelessly old anyway) were enough to fight back the first wave of the invasion. Few turns later i had a small fellet of destroyers ready to prevent any further invasion. Sort of anti D-Day. Bottom line: She shold have known beforehand that the technology gap left not a chance for her to win this even though I hat virtually no standing army. Compare civ IV: Techology edge is useless as my invasion army of marines and artillery is vastly outnumbered and finally taken out by hordes and hordes of Cavalry. IV had no better AI but the AI had by far more free Units.

Many said no one can afford constructing every type of buildings in a city.

Do not know about other continents but as for europe this has actually been the goal of german politics ever since WWII and especially after the fall of the iron curtain. This is quite different from the UK or France and currently theatres and public swimming baths die like flies, but they used to be in every city ~>25k people. So every building in any city is not without precedence.

But those new strategies were fun to implement, you just had to not be set in your old ways. With Civ V, I am seeing possible winning strategies but they all seem boring to implement (I like to play large sprawling Civs with lots of culture and winning on Domination).

This and every strategy actually feels more like an exploit of bad balancing or AI rather than a well thought through strategy. Conquered the World? Just an exploit of weak AI. Dominition Victory (after owning the home continent)? Its a matter of landing few units on neutral territory (aka city states) declare war and march throgh to the capital without ever looking left and right. Possible since "emprires" are usually small and capital cities (aka starting positions) are usually adjecent to city states. How is that a victory condition? Permanent golden age (see above)? This leader trait is so overpowered. And so on and so on.

Which hex this will be, is decided by the engine - and these decisions aren't very good.

and the puppets building random junk

This precisely is the problem with the game. They no longer "bother" the player with decisions which actually were the only way to gain an edge over "bonussed" AI in older instances of CIV. The player is artificially crippled to AI level wise. In late game IV you had at least three cities finishing whatever they were doing every turn. This was 3 forced decisions every turn and made the game feel a lot more interactive than it is now. The "Next Turn Button" syndrom comes not from long building times but from the small number of cities whose building activities the player controls at all. There is a large gray zone between IV total building control and V no control at all. Think for example 5-year-plans, under order regimes etc. Hell that would be a Mod I'd like to build.

Only one good choice for each Great Person type: Golden Age for all, except Great Scientist (lightbulb).

I especially hate how the GP improvement makes you loose the improvement that existed on the tile. This merges very well into the other criticism voiced in this thread. GP Wonders etc. were fun because they were powerful and had no downsides. IMHO they were a way for the game to reward the player for doing well, rather than a serious strategic component.

Some units become obsolete before I get around to building them.

Strangly enough most buildings seem to never expire. Having stables (as in bonus for horse units) around at a time where horse units were obsolete, was odd in IV. The problem is still there if not worse in V (and AI advisors recommend bilding them. Side question: do AI players use the same advisor logic). Also building an (effective) city wall in modern times semms to be completely out of place. My impression from Hollywood (*g*) is that urban warfare has changed a lot over the years from "get inside the walls and the city is yours" (Troy) to "streets are the new guerilla" (e.g. Black Hawk down).

Forget War, that's gonna take a zillion turns longer. Boring ?

Yeah reminds me of my first (then unbiased) V game. Its 600BC when meeting the first AI player and 1200 AD when the first real war is fought. WTH? Turned out that it was quite an odd map though. Could not reproduce this later.

 

[Jediron]

You have spoken well.

You should think so, but AI is terrible in judging military strength. By cannon age my civ had conquered the world with the exception of England. I had about 4 cannons and 2 horse units (cant remember which) leftover from that crusade, so I decided to leave Elisabeth alone and concentrate on recovering my economy. From then on England scored about twice my points on military score. Come modern ages Elisabeth decided that it would be wise to wage war, probably besaing her decision on above score. Unfortunately she was still in ship of the line/musketman age. The six units mentionend above together with city bombardement (but without the help of garrison units which were hopelessly old anyway) were enough to fight back the first wave of the invasion. Few turns later i had a small fellet of destroyers ready to prevent any further invasion. Sort of anti D-Day. Bottom line: She shold have known beforehand that the technology gap left not a chance for her to win this even though I hat virtually no standing army. Compare civ IV: Techology edge is useless as my invasion army of marines and artillery is vastly outnumbered and finally taken out by hordes and hordes of Cavalry. IV had no better AI but the AI had by far more free Units.

Exactly. And that's the reason 1 UPT does not gonna work. I strongly believe, that Fireaxis are just uncapable of making the AI more intelligent. The only thing they can do; is give the AI even more bonusses to cope with that. And then what ?

 

[zahinsa]

Civ 5 reminds me a lot of the first version of Civ 3 where they botched the corruption level to the point where a city 10 squares away from your capital couldn't function anymore and then they had to back off and give the option to have a normal corruption level. In Civ 5, it seems that they got the city building vs. research completely wrong. The current balance basically forces you to play a militarist nation because it far easier to build units than buildings and wonders. My first game without mods eventually bogged down because it takes so long to do anything that I've just started killing the AI one at a time, I can't deal with the slow pace of the game anymore. The mods have made the game more playable (another common thread with Civ 3, the game only become interesting once more mods were available).

I like a lot of the changes they've made, some I don't. Resources definitely need some work and more of them. The civic policies are very interesting (SMAC-like), hexes are cool, the combat is better than past games, the city bombardment is nice etc...Mods are going to fix this game.

 

[Jediron]

Well, the CIV III corruption model wasn't so bad to deal with, compared to what i experience in CIV 5. I mean, you still could settle lots of cities, and with the forbidden palace even more. The fighting, was fun however. That makes the difference.

 

[zahinsa]

I think you're remembering it as being better than it actually was in the very first release of the game. You could settle tons of cities but the corruption level at your fringe cities basically made it impossible to do anything. In their model, SF, LA and the west coast should still be in the stone ages. I have to say that once the shine wore off this game (Civ 5), the game play was very disappointing. The mods are saving the gameplay for me, I can't wait for the really big mods.

 

[danisans]

Well, the CIV III corruption model wasn't so bad to deal with, compared to what i experience in CIV 5. I mean, you still could settle lots of cities, and with the forbidden palace even more. The fighting, was fun however. That makes the difference.

But in the original Civ III, conquering distant lands was a pain. No point taking over cities because they would take 300 turns to complete the simplest of buildings and they had a tendency to flip. My original strategy in Civ III was to raze every distant city (i.e.: other continent) and leave only one occupied city for my troops to heal in. But then I would have a distant conquered city (with a pop. of 1) flip back and I would lose the 20 units that were healing in or guarding that city. Frustrating. So I would just raze all cities on the other continent with waves of kamikaze troops. Not the way I wanted to play. This was somewhat fixed with Warlords. And in Civ IV, they introduced a severe diplomacy/unhapiness penalty for razing cities to minimize that exploit.

Civ V is similar to vanilla Civ III in regards to razing. You have to raze or create puppet cities so your unhapiness stays in check. But lots of puppet cities in time can cause issues with your econony because you don't control the build queue and they keep building high maintenance buildings. So, like vanilla Civ III, I am back to razing everything in site from 1850 on. I don't know if razing affects my relationship with other Civs (hard to tell since most of the Civ IV diplomacy stats and info was removed in Civ V... probably to hide the fact that most AI controlled Civs are irrational and can flip on you on a dime for no good reason). I have very little worthwhile trade going with other Civs in Civ V anyway, so I don't really care about diplomacy. Diplomacy and trade in my games mostly involve City States.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

By the way you have described Civ4 religion and corporation and the way you have skipped my sentences in quotes, I know:
Either
1. You have never played Civ4 before but you pretend you have.
Or
2. Until today (well, Civ5 is out), you still don't really clear about the two elements mentioned.

That's your argument? "You're wrong because you're wrong"?

By
No. I am sorry, people has elaborated enough. I don't think there is any way one can elaborate better than this for example:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388657

This guy is complaining that warmongering is hard, yet others say the game focuses on warmongering too much. What.

I have a lot of counterpoints to that too (but sadly not the time). He's complaining about inflexible victory conditions. You know, I'd rather leave the old Civ IV Diplomatic Victory behind (aka Domination Lite). He has a point with the Civ V victory just buying off City States. Maybe you'd have to do a mission for their vote instead of just offloading metric tons of gold to them.

But how do you shave a few turns in constructing any building including the so called Spaceship Factories?

Workshop +20% production towards buildings. And the other production bonus buildings.

You seem like to relate irrelevant matters together

I see the concept of similes escapes you. Oh well.

Great, we finally have one thing we both can agree!

Credit where credit is due.

I find it odd that you are looking for difficulty in a paid game...

Yeah, I mean why are there high difficulty levels? And games like Heart of Iron and Victoria and Europa Universalis, who would pay for such games that are hard to get into anyway?

Wrong!
In order to acheive victory, you must plot strategically well and then act tactically well. Not the reverse.

That's like saying experimental science doesn't drive theoretical science forward. Both contribute to each other. You have no idea what you are talking about.

You know what, I grow weary of this. You don't like the game and I am the opposite. I understand that not all games can appeal to all audiences.

 

[logintime]

Another reason why i think it is so boring: the worker

In CIV 5 it take ages (emperor/huge/marathon) to produce them. 53 turns to finish 1 worker. I mean, what is this ? You drop a city, instantly with your settler but it takes 53 turns to produce a lousy worker ?

THANK YOU. I don't understand why settlers are so cheap, but workers take such an agonizingly long time to pump out. It just makes the opening game slow to a crawl, which is not conducive at all to fun.

 

[danisans]

THANK YOU. I don't understand why settlers are so cheap, but workers take such an agonizingly long time to pump out. It just makes the opening game slow to a crawl, which is not conducive at all to fun.

It is true that workers take a while to build early on. It was weird to see me well into my game with three cities and yet no workers. But considering the few improvements I could build early on with a worker and the limited bonuses they gave (I could get all the food I needed early on with a Maritime City State), I did not feel the need to build a worker until roads where available.

From Civ II to Civ V, the BC years always involve a lot of Next Turn button mashing. The introduction of Bears and Wolves in Civ IV (Beyond the Sword?) was just a sad attempt to keep us entertained until the game kicks into high gear. Honestly, I think Civ V is the one that presents the most entertaining start to the game because you have a lot of cash on hand to buy stuff such as tiles or the favor of a City State (compared to previous versions where you were pretty much dirt poor early on).

 

[ssh08]

It is true that workers take a while to build early on. It was weird to see me well into my game with three cities and yet no workers. But considering the few improvements I could build early on with a worker and the limited bonuses they gave (I could get all the food I needed early on with a Maritime City State), I did not feel the need to build a worker until roads where available.

From Civ II to Civ V, the BC years always involve a lot of Next Turn button mashing. The introduction of Bears and Wolves in Civ IV (Beyond the Sword?) was just a sad attempt to keep us entertained until the game kicks into high gear. Honestly, I think Civ V is the one that presents the most entertaining start to the game because you have a lot of cash on hand to buy stuff such as tiles or the favor of a City State (compared to previous versions where you were pretty much dirt poor early on).

thing is, the entire game is just a bunch of next turn button mashing this time. i just played a game on prince where i won a space race in 1964 with 3 cities. the AI never even bothered to DOW on me the entire game, and i just chilled there with my 3 cities and 3 units, getting to the future era before the others hit industrial. i could never get that far ahead in civ 4 on noble

 

[hclass]

You know what, I grow weary of this. You don't like the game and I am the opposite. I understand that not all games can appeal to all audiences.

Just one last reply to you (you seem to get very emotional up to this point...)
Didn't I tell you right at the very beginning that I haven't even bought the game and have not tried it yet? I am sorry, I shouldn't have told youo only now...

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

thing is, the entire game is just a bunch of next turn button mashing this time. i just played a game on prince where i won a space race in 1964 with 3 cities. the AI never even bothered to DOW on me the entire game, and i just chilled there with my 3 cities and 3 units, getting to the future era before the others hit industrial. i could never get that far ahead in civ 4 on noble

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?

 

[andrewlt]

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.

 

[logintime]

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.

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