DewFuel posted this in another gaming forum that I participate in, and I thought it was a pretty good writeup... I 100% agree with him:
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Here's my thoughts on it having played 2000+ hours on civ5 (G&K/BNW):
TLDR: game is very fresh and a lot of new features make it so that each play-through feels very different. Nothing is transparent in the game which makes planning very nebulous. If you're on the fence, skip until its patched/updated/expansion.
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The game is okay.
The good stuff:
I feel like everything is there, just that the implementation is really fudging poor. They need to streamline the interface and make things more transparent. I like how the districts work, and there's a lot of tension of what you can and can't get in each city. It makes choices more meaningful rather than the obligatory monument, water mill, granary build order that plagued civ5. Each city you kind of have to tailor to its local environment, and I like that. I also like how the game incentivizes the player to make certain things that they normally wouldn't make (caravans, military units) by boosting civics/tech.
The civics tree is nice. I like navigating through it. Eureka moments are very interesting early game, and gives some semblance of a build order. (i.e. Getting an early builder to make a farm/pasture/mine is very important). Theres a lot of cool stuff in the civics trees that work well, decoupled from the tech. I think they did a great job of pacing on the civics tree (aside from the first few civics you get.. They're kinda no-brainers). I LOVE how you can swap out policies as your cities change in focus. It gives a horsehocky ton of flexibility that was missing in civ5.
I love the new movement rules, and how terrain actually plays a role in where you position your units & cities. Upgrading costs are lowered (nice) and the combat is way more transparent than civ5. Combat feels good, and the unit upgrade system is very well done. Glad they made that more friendly. The natural wonders are VERY cool. I like how they're very different than civ5 and it makes the early game scouting/exploring fun. For example, some natural wonders will boost surrounding tiles with resources (science, culture, faith, double tile yields) and are not workable themselves. Some natural wonders are workable with unique yields (culture, faith). Overall, most of them seem useful and exciting to find. Sometimes exploration is a slog if the terrain isn't favorable, but moving in open fields for days is great with scouts. If you keep them alive, its easy to scout the entire map by the industrial era.
The bad stuff:
Eureka moments, while interesting and fun, feel forced most the times rather than an incentive. If you're not constantly boosting techs that you're researching, you're falling behind (human opponents), so it kind of dictates what your build order is. It makes for some interesting timings (start a tech/civic, finish it halfway, and pop the eureka moment to instantly get the tech. Its engaging and keeps the min/max players interested).
However, towards the middle game, they have horrible conditionals and are completely unattainable because there's better things to build than some horsehockey walls or a barracks that early.
I hate how it's so difficult to keep track of things in game, since everything is hidden into menus and sub-menus. Once you get to 6+ cities, it becomes unplayable. I think one of the problems is you can't set builders to automate. So as you get more cities, it takes up more time.
Quality of life implements, like no alert on fortification (so when a barb comes nearby you aren't alerted), are severely lacking that it is unbelievable. No way to check when border growth happens (or where it happens). I don't think there is an indication of when a city grows in population. How much marble do you have? 1? 2? 5? How are the amenities being distributed in my empire? If I settle a new city, how many excess amenities will it have? No fudging idea. Lets just make a city and see what happens.
Where's the strategic resource list on the main UI? Do I have iron/horses?
How many turns until my next great scientist? fudge if I know.
Why do I have to edit a config file to prevent auto-unit cycling?
Why do I have to go into the civlilopedia to find out how adjaceny bonuses work for districts?
Etc.
It's so difficult to keep track of demographics, and I don't understand why. Figuring out how many cities another civ has is nearly impossible. Trying to figure out who has what wonders or which policies enacted is impossible. The list goes on, but I won't fill in the spaces. Then there's small things that take away from the enjoyment.
The AI is unbelievably dumb which makes diplomacy a nightmare. I know civ5 didn't have great AI out the gate, but firaxis has 6+ years of experience in this, now. Once you get the hang of all the new features, they get so far behind in tech/civics (even on emperor) that it's not really a challenge. They're constantly building units in the beginning and raping city-states. I played 3 games so far, and in all the games, by the time turn 100 hit, at least 2 AI's were eliminated because of super-aggresive civs. I get you're a war civ, but goddamn.
I want to finally mention a minor gripe in that it doesn't feel like you're progressing through eras in the game. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm not getting the impression that I moved from era to era. In civ5, I can take a look at a map and have a reasonable estimate of what era its in and even what techs are researched. If you gave me a game speed, I could probably ballpark what turn it's at. Granted, I've played only 3 games, but each game I had moments of "oh wow, I can build the eiffel tower... Didn't realize I was in modern era".
I think firaxis did a great job of reinventing the game, making things interesting, and adding a lot of new flavor. It's terribly implemented, with a lot of key features missing, that hopefully get modded in by the community or added via patch/expansion.
I'm still gonna play it because civ is addictive, but I can't wait until things are much more transparent and streamlined.
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Source:
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=35566377#item_35566377
