Is civ 5 a step in the right direction or the wrong direction.

[taulph88]

So far, my only complaint is the AI in terms of diplomacy. At least in Civ III & IV there were ways to bring the AI civs back to becoming happy with you. In Civ V, once they're angry, they're angry for the rest of the game. Can't do anything about that. I still don't get what "denouncing" really does. Is it really a "buffer" war, a quasi war, or a preemptive to war? Or is it just a slap on the wrist and a red flag that I'm in danger of going to war?

My other side complaints are small. Great people, their uses, the national wonders, building maintenance, roads/railroads, social policies. Not worth turning each topic to a paragraph so I'll stop there.

Happiness isn't really a problem to me, and I'm on the Prince difficulty so far. What sucks that for tile improvements, you have to chose only a few to keep your economy strong. Other improvements turn out to be a waste.

Heh, 1UPT is actually working to *my* advantage and not the AI. So I'm grateful to them for giving me the instant gratification that I'm kicking their butts. I just wish that after war they'd think rationally and not go in a frenzy and randomly tell others to go after me while they're in a conflict with them at the same time. >_< So yes my only complaint is for AI diplomacy, everything else is.....okay.

 

[ButSam]

I think Civ 5 is 2 steps in the right direction 1 step in the wrong direction...but that's a net right direction vote.

Don't like how espionage & religion were removed.

Really like 1UPT.

Miss some of the more intricate diplomacy options.

Prefer the hexes.

Think it would be easy to make Research Agreements more functional; like the general premise of benefiting both sides but I think it should be beakers per gold spent on RA + percent of partner's research points, not a free tech.

Like Social Policies better than Civics, but would rather have a combined Social Policies and Civ3-style governments...perhaps you have to be in a certain government system (or one of a few certain government systems) to enact certain Social Policies? And governments could have some overarching benefits as well. But you could use governments as the deciding factor on what policy trees are unlocked instead of arbitrary mutually exclusive policy trees.

For example -- Monarchy allows Piety branch but not Rationalism branch.

Overall, to me, it's a net positive -- but with room to improve and a couple of lessons learned from previous civs that should be put back in.

 

[jbevermore]

Like Social Policies better than Civics, but would rather have a combined Social Policies and Civ3-style governments...perhaps you have to be in a certain government system (or one of a few certain government systems) to enact certain Social Policies? QUOTE]

I've often thought this. Social policies is good to represent a nations culture, but governments do come and go on a much quicker basis.

 

[nokmirt]

Depends what part of Civ 5. I mean, hexes are about 5 steps in the right direction, I can't even play civ 4 anymore.

I love hexes and when I look at 4 it just seems so obsolete, that I am having trouble playing it again.

 

[The Exile]

Blast it all. I hit the wrong button. I meant to hit "wrong direction". >.<. Distinctly the wrong direction, indeed . . .

 

[RD-BH]

A complex step toward the imaginary.
Perhaps next patch will factor out i.

 

[Toulouse]

1 UPT is unrealistic, not fun (i.e. lacking in "epicness") and not even implemented properly by Firaxis in CiV

 

[Zechnophobe]

First, what is wrong with 'hater'? I mean, that's the category I fall into, and honestly use it to describe myself. It's just concise and simple. Especially if you don't pair it with the obviously derogatory 'fanboy' which should never be used.

Second, Goods and Bads:

Good:
Hexes - They do look nice, and don't create weird tile interactions
Concept of City States - These could still be awesome, they just need to be scrapped and redesigned from scratch.
No Tech Trading - There hasn't been a tech trading system yet that didn't feel exploitable.

Bad
Research Agreements - Actually, they still didn't get this one right. Good job boyos.
1upt - Sadly it just doesn't work. It is insane that an army of decent size must coat the entire surface, evenly, of a continent. It also breaks the size paradigm of the game.
Implemented City States - So incredibly bad. No diplomacy, not worth conquering, stupid quests.
Global Happiness and Removed Health - Yawn, land exploitation is now boring.
non-volatile Tile Yields - That is, you never find tiles that area all that much better than normal. This is boring, and makes exloration and expansion less fun.
Trade route annihilation - Open borders and roads... are worth exactly what now?
No Boats - It seemed like a good idea, but at the very least, this system is horribly broken.
Social Policies - I mean, I like the idea of having other things that define my empire... but Civics were a better way to do this. Not just different, BETTER.
Science from Population - Combined with exponentially slow growth, makes the game so slow and boring. You don't get spikes of science from things. No way to get massive tech gains by swiping some great territory. No reward for early made cottages or other styles of developed tiles.
Removal of Leader Traits - Leaders no longer have anything in common. You can't discuss 'spiritual' leaders, and how to play them, or the advantages of being industrious.
Removal of differing starting techs - Every game plays the exact same way at the start. YAAAAWN.

Sigh, I guess I still hate this game.

 

[RD-BH]

"Hate" originally meant to love less.
However, modern usage has taken "hate" to new extremes.
Now with "hate" crimes it has become a very negative, unwelcome word indeed.
May I recommend "don't like" as a substitute?

 

[jbevermore]

"Hate" originally meant to love less.
However, modern usage has taken "hate" to new extremes.
Now with "hate" crimes it has become a very negative, unwelcome word indeed.
May I recommend "don't like" as a substitute?

Problem is that nowadays people really do take emotions to an extreme.

So something they enjoy is "THE GREATEST THING EVER I"LL BURN YOU IF YOU DISAGREE"

And something they dislike is the spawn of Saddam and the Devil a'la South Park.

I loved the thread title for that reason, a rational discussion of Civ V's good and bad points and how it moves the series forward. I wish people would take it down a notch, but nowadays that's just not going to happen.

 

[jagdtigerciv]

First, what is wrong with 'hater'? I mean, that's the category I fall into, and honestly use it to describe myself. It's just concise and simple. Especially if you don't pair it with the obviously derogatory 'fanboy' which should never be used.

Sigh, I guess I still hate this game.

One might say -- you're MAD.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Let's move the thread back on topic, please. No need to discuss the terms 'haters' and 'fanboys'. Best to just steer clear of them and talk about whether Civ5 is a step in the right or wrong direction. Thanks.

 

[LackBox]

What was added between VANILLA Civ IV and V:
1upt
...
Social Policies instead of Civics
...
Unique Abilities instead of 2 traits from a small list
...
RAs
Limited Number of Strategic Resources

Confucius says:
If you say that snow is white and you are right, I could say that snow is not black and be right.
If you say that you sold a bull for money and you are right, I could say that you bought money for a bull and be right.
If you say that Civ5 added civ abilities and you are right, could I say that Civ5 abolished traits and be right?

The other statements quoted are equally questionable.

 

[thadian]

This is a step in the wrong direction.

First of all, i will avoid getting started on the DRM scheme and Steam with all of the complications it brings and the fact that steam offers NO BENEFIT to players whatsoever. all it is - is a webstore your forced to have on your computer as a punishment for Civ V.


DLC: Ever since DLC became popularized by other games, i was hoping that the worst scenario would not happen: The game was sold as a barebones crap pack with each civ sold seperately, removing many civ's that have been a part of civ from day 1 - just to make you buy them - and they overvalue everything they sell and try to make you buy map pack + civ instead of 2 cvs for 5.00.

DLC means that instead of getting REAL content you can just expect each content to suck. I believe the game was made with about 30 civ's and they "chose" which ones to remove and sell seperately later - and instead of putting them up all at once and trying to offer a good deal, they release them in ridiculous increments and overcharge.


Also im sick of corporate lackeys posting hate against everyone who despises being sold a piece of crap for 50 bucks - and being told
"you can upgrade it into a better piece of crap for 5.00 per upgrade".


Also, Civ V leaves me wondering if Civ will exist over the long haul. Every civ game from here on out will be a naked, crapy vanilla unexpaned game.

In fact, lets market it now:

Civ 6: Here we have a brand new game with 3 map sizes (tiny, duel, huge) and 5 Civs.

Each extra map size, civ, the ability to have golden ages and all wonders sold seperately.



Also, i hate Songhai and Siam being used in place of Malinese and Khmer. It would be little different than releasing Nubia instead of Egypt, Tuscany instead of Rome, Gaul instead of Celts/France, or the Confederated States of America instead of the United States of America.


Lastly - all the buildings suck and the modders did better jobs than the actual dev team. In most of the games i won, i built no wonders and few buildings which i hate because im a builder. when i make buildings i get a lot of maintenance and lose for it.

There is ONE thing they did right however:

They let you buy with gold without having to be in a certain civic, policy, religion etc.

 

[RD-BH]

...
There is ONE thing they did right however:

They let you buy with gold without having to be in a certain civic, policy, religion etc.

1) Could you elaborate on why this is a step in the right direction?

2) Do you miss the other rush elements? (ie slavery/draft)

3) Do you find it odd rush buying prior to researching economics?

 

[_hero_]

Judging by the poll results I think it's safe to say that it's basically a step sideways. I think Civ 5 laid the groundwork for a great civ game in Civ 6. Civ 5 will teach a lot of lessons about things like hexes to the devs. The changes were perhaps the most radical of any of the civs. The leap from Civ 4 to Civ 5 was pretty substantial compared to Civ 3 to 4 or Civ 2 to 3 or 1 to 2. It naturally came with many bumps in the road. That is the learning process.

 

[Save_Ferris]

This thread is nearly even, but that doesn't make me think it's a bad game, because in the end, it's every individuals' opinion that counts. And, while I respect with the opinions with those who do not like the game, all I want is some casual discussion with those that do.

Fireaxis managed to please about 50% of people with Civ IV, and another 50% prefer Civ V. I'm personally glad that everyone now has a civ game that they like.

 

[_hero_]

Trade route annihilation - Open borders and roads... are worth exactly what now?
Social Policies - I mean, I like the idea of having other things that define my empire... but Civics were a better way to do this. Not just different, BETTER.
Science from Population - Combined with exponentially slow growth, makes the game so slow and boring. You don't get spikes of science from things. No way to get massive tech gains by swiping some great territory. No reward for early made cottages or other styles of developed tiles.
Removal of Leader Traits - Leaders no longer have anything in common. You can't discuss 'spiritual' leaders, and how to play them, or the advantages of being industrious.

A major complaint about the previous civs was that roads were lame. You built them in every tile because you had nothing else to do. IMO it's better to force them into specific routes, that said I don't like how they did trade routes at all. But I like discouraging road spamming.

I like both social policies and civics and don't see why they couldn't perhaps have both. Let social policies represent, rare, very strong unchangeable elements of a society, and civics be changeable minor tweaks which the leader can enact based on the present crisis. You should be able to mobilize your country for war in times of war, for example. At the same time, there are historically, elements of nations which are very stiff and slow to change and the civic element of Civ 4 just didn't reflect this.

The tech tree really isn't slow at all in this Civ. Before the last patch people were getting ridiculously early space ship victories. It feels to me like the eras move on par with previous civs. Maybe there are fewer techs, I don't know, but the issue isn't science from population IMO. It has plenty of faults but the slider method was worse, especially in BTS when you had espionage on a slider too. It created chaotic empire shifts. Common strategy was to stockpile gold until you got some key civic or wonder built, then shift the slider to 100% science to "rush" a tech, then whip it down to 0 and stockpile gold again to crank some new advanced troop. That was really cheesy and didn't feel like an empire at all.

I always thought the leader traits were really boring. For one thing, it became obvious very quickly that they weren't balanced in vanilla and the leader traits tended to pigeon-hole certain civs into a strategic corner before the game even started. Granted, the UAs aren't entirely balanced either and somewhat do the same thing, but the uniqueness makes every civ special. You're other complaints were mostly about stuff being dull, yet here you're complaining that each civ is unique. Leader traits would make this game more boring. I suppose they could keep UAs and add leader traits in an expansion, possibly paving the way for multi-leader civs though.

 

[thadian]

1) Could you elaborate on why this is a step in the right direction?

2) Do you miss the other rush elements? (ie slavery/draft)

3) Do you find it odd rush buying prior to researching economics?

1. Gold is the universal means. it doesn't reduce population, cause anger or do anything else to punish you for using it - except NOT having the gold for something else if you use it in that way. Waiting until some pre-requisite is senseless and makes early gold kind of useless. Why do i even have gold i can't spend?

2. I miss the Civ 3 (maybe it was a civ 3 mod) that let you use a slave (worker class) unit to rush like a great engineer with much less hammers. Killing a living worker feels more engaging than reducing a city population. I never liked "Whipping" in the latter way because i see city go to size 3, back to one, back to 3, back to one... its moving sideways, even though it gets you ahead it just feels sideways.

3. It feels proper. People have used collataral to make aqquisition long before the concept of economy. Waiting for economy policy makes me refer to every situation pre-economy where i HAVE the gold and can't use it. it feels a little strange in the sense i feel a newfound freedom - like turning 21 and going into the liquor store.


Im also confused by all the overflow and non-overflow. EVERYTHING SHOULD OVERFLOW. i lose a lot of games because of mismanaging overflows. Im not stupid or anything, i just get confused a lot on pre-builds+pre-chops + pre-researches... I will get better at this, but the game needs to let everything overflow because if not its like in civ 3 where before end turn you have to micromanage every specialist and worker to min/max, and i just feel i shouldn't have to resort to it.

 

[TyBoy]

Whenever people rip on 1upt it seems like the realism or scale of it always comes up and people advocating 1upt mostly just love the tactical implications or the way it lets you reasonably use ranged units. It always really bothered me how unrealistic stacks were. You had this army that magically had pikemen on the front line when attacked by horses, crossbows on the front line when attacked by melee and maces on the front line when attacked by archers. There was no way for an attacker to leverage any kind of positional advantage as the stack of doom hopped from one forest/hill to the next never giving up the advantage until it was on your city.

I think they made a definite step in the right direction reducing the strength of tile defenses so that a defending army has a decent shot at engaging attackers in the field if they want. I'd have liked to see them take it even further and completely eliminate tile defensive bonuses. I think they would make much more sense as a multiplier on the fortification bonus. I don't see how you can really say that a troupe of warriors that just arrived on a hill without fortifying has any particular advantage over another troupe of warriors trying to attack them on that hill. Given the turn-based nature of the game it might even be reasonable to say they're arriving at about the same time.

Edit: Far more than anything they got right or wrong with the gameplay going from 4 to 5 they messed something big up in the programming or optimization. I saw this big deal made out of civ 5's ability to use multi-core CPUs and high end GPUs when it was coming out. However, my ~1 year old computer which runs an end-game civ 4 turn in no time at all is taking several minutes to run a mid-game civ 5 turn on a small map. I find it hard to believe that any kind of graphics could be to blame unless it's somehow rendering then discarding every single unseen thing that happens on the map. I suppose the tactical calculations from 1upt must be to blame because most of the other elements of 5 are no more complex than 4. When I'm fighting the AI I'll sometimes see the ai move a unit into a tile with another unit then decide the best place to send that unit is back to the tile it came from. I can only imagine the kind of iterative decision making that's leading to actions like that. It makes civ 5 barely playable while at the same time the gameplay is so much better than 4 that I can't really go back either.