Is CiV actually re-playable?

[dexters]

No, CiV is not replayable. You can only pretend it is. Civs do not differ much, and actually there is usually only one best way to win. (going wide and spamming GSs)

Of course you can have "replayability" if you play prince. Spam wonders, build mounts, adopt commerce. But at deity and especially in MP you wont survive if you do this.

Apart from a lot of minor and moderate balance issues, I think that the key problem in lack of replayability is that civs are too generic. I dont propose anything like starcraft, but several major UAs with few minor UAs (several UB/UU/UIs would be good as well) per each civ could lead to much greater replayability.

There's a good argument to be made that semi-tall/wide empires are hands down the best way to do well in Civ5. There's a good discussion going on in the ideas forum to allow for more varied 'good' empire building.

But most of your points seems awfully general and inaccurate. People in this thread have posted wins with small empires on high difficulty settings.

and the comment lack of Civ uniquement is weird. UA's and 22 UU/UB or UI give the Civs plenty of variety. I tried out Bablyon recently and it's a completely different early game than the other Civs. Early UUs of Babylon even make Honor SP worthwhile for culture farming.

 

[Iberian]

There's a good argument to be made that semi-tall/wide empires are hands down the best way to do well in Civ5. There's a good discussion going on in the ideas forum to allow for more varied 'good' empire building.

But most of your points seems awfully general and inaccurate. People in this thread have posted wins with small empires on high difficulty settings.

and the comment lack of Civ uniquement is weird. UA's and 22 UU/UB or UI give the Civs plenty of variety. I tried out Bablyon recently and it's a completely different early game than the other Civs. Early UUs of Babylon even make Honor SP worthwhile for culture farming.

I suggest you take a trip over to the Deity HoF and look at the scores and the wins. All the best scores are Dom for obvious reasons and most of the wins are Dom.

Sure you can win another way. Just like you can run the 100m backwards.

The early game isn't that unique but at least here there are a lot of choices to be made. Problem is unless you pick the Romans/Greeks/some civ with an early UU it is mostly the same choices unless you drop the difficulty to Immortal or Emperor. This is where a lot of the fun of game is. Playing with an AI that only mostly cheats and playing the early game. I know I have a lot of saved games I never go back to once they are past the mid game. This isn't a CiV issue this is a Civilization issue. Even in Civ 1 there was a lot of time in mop up mode, hunting down that one stupid tundra city they built in the middle of nowhere.

In short I find the replayability in playing to the uniqueness of the Civs. The farther from domination the strat the lower the difficulty setting I play. (I have never played below king so I don't really know if those are fun since the AI may be really bad without bonuses.)

 

[qemist]

I suggest you take a trip over to the Deity HoF and look at the scores and the wins. All the best scores are Dom for obvious reasons and most of the wins are Dom.

So what you're complaining about is the scoring system. I wouldn't let the HoF bother me. I expect most entrants cheat.

The early game isn't that unique but at least here there are a lot of choices to be made. Problem is unless you pick the Romans/Greeks/some civ with an early UU it is mostly the same choices unless you drop the difficulty to Immortal or Emperor. This is where a lot of the fun of game is.

There's no law that says you have to play on deity.

Playing with an AI that only mostly cheats and playing the early game. I know I have a lot of saved games I never go back to once they are past the mid game. This isn't a CiV issue this is a Civilization issue.

It's pretty much every single-player strategy game. The outcome will be obvious to an experienced human player long before a victory condition is reached. The only way to fix this is (a) make it stupidly random or (b) make the AI as good as a human player.

 

[Iberian]

So what you're complaining about is the scoring system. I wouldn't let the HoF bother me. I expect most entrants cheat.

I mentioned the scoring is high for obvious reasons but that wasn't my point. My point is that the dominate way to win is with domination. To win another victory condition is playing with a disadvantage. Every other victory condition is more difficult than a domination victory. This leaves the game with a lot less replayability.

There's no law that says you have to play on deity.

Which is why I wrote the most fun is to be had at levels Immortal and Emperor.

It's pretty much every single-player strategy game. The outcome will be obvious to an experienced human player long before a victory condition is reached. The only way to fix this is (a) make it stupidly random or (b) make the AI as good as a human player.

Again I also wrote to this point when I mentioned it has plagued the Civ series since the begining. There are exceptions though. In some Civ versions there were often real space races where you weren't sure you were going to win till the end. Domination victories though will always have mop up.

 

[dexters]

I suggest you take a trip over to the Deity HoF and look at the scores and the wins. All the best scores are Dom for obvious reasons and most of the wins are Dom.

Sure you can win another way. Just like you can run the 100m backwards.

The early game isn't that unique but at least here there are a lot of choices to be made. Problem is unless you pick the Romans/Greeks/some civ with an early UU it is mostly the same choices unless you drop the difficulty to Immortal or Emperor. This is where a lot of the fun of game is. Playing with an AI that only mostly cheats and playing the early game. I know I have a lot of saved games I never go back to once they are past the mid game. This isn't a CiV issue this is a Civilization issue. Even in Civ 1 there was a lot of time in mop up mode, hunting down that one stupid tundra city they built in the middle of nowhere.

In short I find the replayability in playing to the uniqueness of the Civs. The farther from domination the strat the lower the difficulty setting I play. (I have never played below king so I don't really know if those are fun since the AI may be really bad without bonuses.)

Haven't the best scores usually been dom wins?

Civ scoring in general is on land, pop, sometimes happiness and other smaller factors. Dominations will get you the most pop and the most land so it usually gets you the best scores.

Civ4 has normalization to adjust for difficulty level but dom wins on the same difficulty is still the easiest way to get a high score.

Anyways I think you've missed the point. You should read the discussion in the suggestions forums about making a more stratetigcally fun tall game .

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I figured I would have a harder time adjusting to Civ5 since I've logged over 600 hours on civ4 (maybe more like 1000 ).

However, I started on Warlord and after 5 games of just destroying the AI to an unspeakable level, I had to up the diff to Prince. It's a pretty big jump. Nothing so grandiose as having to lose a bunch of times to adjust... I just wasn't kicking as much ass as I was on Warlord. I'll probably have to move up to King soon just to keep the game interesting.

However, I must agree about the victory conditions. There isn't too much variety there and the AI doing mass DoW as you approach victory is obnoxious as well. To cure your blues... definitely move up a level. Just adjust your military accordingly. Don't forget, you shouldn't be able to have 1 unit for most of the game, then suddenly build a bunch of tanks/artillery/paratroopers and have a grand ole time.

Haven't the best scores usually been dom wins?

Most of the time, the deity HoF domination wins happen on duel, tiny, or small pangaea maps. There is some variety, but you can see the score dips low when they play on islands, continents, fractal, etc. Of course, this is not meant to diminish the skill of a deity player on ANY map (after all, I'm a lowly Prince player ).

 

[dexters]

obnoxious maybe, but neccessary in a vast majority of games. And OCC is completely viable as a strategy in this game so it's not impossible to keep them off your back.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I don't find it necessary in any game except for [perhaps] the games where an AI is close to a victory type of their own (rare). All it does is force you to expend a lot of or on units. The AI is pretty terrible at war in the first place. I've yet to lose because of mass desperation DoW. If the developers want to have a mechanic whereby the AI is able to try to stop your victory, DoW would NOT be the answer. Perhaps another mechanic that hasn't been thought of yet would work better.

I'm not the only one who thinks this needs a fixing. Plenty of people are posting extreme displeasure with the absurd desperation DoW and cascading diplo relations in the end game.

OCC is viable, but the AI should still DoW as you reach the culture/science/diplo victory.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I mentioned the scoring is high for obvious reasons but that wasn't my point. My point is that the dominate way to win is with domination. To win another victory condition is playing with a disadvantage. Every other victory condition is more difficult than a domination victory. This leaves the game with a lot less replayability.

That doesn't necessarily affect replayability, you just have to want to go for different victory types for the sake of winning with those victory types.

I think that brings up valid points, but they are different points.

 

[Agamemnus]

I have a slightly different problem than the OP and I'd like to add it to the discussion. I recently finished a single Marathon game with the max civs and colonies via conquest on King. My problem is mostly the waiting...

I really get tired of waiting for the AI to finish its turns, and I don't like how the AI constantly hates me for no reason in Civ5 and never deals with me properly. (even with the VEM mod) I do like reloading because I make a LOT of mistakes sometimes, and I like redoing certain plays (eg: invasions) to see if I can do them better. One little change can turn a while war around! From Civ3 onwards, I think my play style is just tiring, though, because of the loading/saving (even with an SSD) and long turn times.

For that reason (waiting), I think I have actually *enjoyed* Civ 2 much more than Civ 3, 4, or 5, even though the others had better graphics and slightly less managing-too-many-cities-and-workers repetitiveness. I really liked doing the scenarios in Civ 2, especially those standard ones WWII and Rome. I loved trying all the different positions, both strong positions and weak ones, in order to find exciting new ways to conquer the map. I miss Civ 2. (One of my Civ 2 disks -- I think there was one with developer videos or something -- is actually unplayable now.)

 

[baldfalk]

Most normal people jog when walking becomes too boring.

 

[tdqtiger]

1) Play at higer difficulties. It's been said a million times, but it's the best cure for the problem.

2) Make everything random at setup, other than difficulty and speed. Not knowing what kind of map you will have, where you start, who you are facing, or who you even are makes it interesting. (It also makes it harder. It seems like you are trying to avoid that, but easy=boring.) The whole point of Civ is to take lemons and make lemonade.

3) Don't try to exploit flaws in the game. Example: Back in the days of Nintendo (I'm showing my age here) one of the first games I got was Bases Loaded II. There was a glitch in the game, where if you threw behind a runner on a pickoff attempt, he would try to steal. Any time a runner got on base, all you had to do was throw behind him to get him to steal, and then catch him in a rundown. I went undefeated for a whole season (84 games) by doing that. When I stopped doing that and played the game straight up, it was a lot harder and a lot more fun.

 

[Iberian]

obnoxious maybe, but neccessary in a vast majority of games. And OCC is completely viable as a strategy in this game so it's not impossible to keep them off your back.

Really? Find someone who has a save of them winning a cultural victory standard or pangea map with standard settings on diety and OCC. I don't think it has been done yet.

 

[Camikaze]

Really? Find someone who has a save of them winning a cultural victory standard or pangea map with standard settings on diety and OCC. I don't think it has been done yet.

There was this, although the game has been drastically altered since. See this recent thread.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I'm not sure about imm but it can happen on emp if you start on your own continent and don't expand beyond it.

No doubt. Even on immortal with isolated start you have good chance to minimize potential DoWs. You'll still get few phony ones but that's about it until late game at least. In centered start the story will be substantially different.

Current game: China, Immortal, Pangea, Standard (speed & size), about half of the spaceship parts built with no one having Apollo yet. Got 3 cities sandwiched between Denmark and Ottomans and had so far one DOW at the start from a overeager Bismarck and one from Japan on the other side of the map (probably a bribe) which he soon after traded for peace and Friendly again before I even saw one of his units. All the nations are friendly toward me and Denmark prefers to bash Bismarck instead of wiping me out (which he could, according to the advisor). I do have a defensive force that could hold Denmark off, should he decide to change his mind in the last turns.

Sounds like you've succeeded where most of us failed. If you manage to have no or 2 DoWs per game consistently on higher difficulties, you've cracked the formula. Please make a writeup/ strategy article/LP. Many people would love to learn from you, including me.

 

[wannabewarlord]

Sounds like you've succeeded where most of us failed. If you manage to have no or 2 DoWs per game consistently on higher difficulties, you've cracked the formula. Please make a writeup/ strategy article/LP. Many people would love to learn from you, including me.

Ok, now you're being sarcastic

I wrote "Seriously, I play immortal and I get games with no or very few DOWs".
I didn't say consistently, I just said it happens, and quite a few times as well. It can be the other way around, no doubt. My culture game with France just after I won the China one had quite a few DOWs more. Isabella was a pain in the butt and Cathy joined the hen's club just to be bashed by Isabella afterwards. Talk about a b1tch-fight

I usually play with very few cities. I have yet to find a way to make a wide empire. I just don't get around to build settlers and if I do, happiness becomes an issue. Sure, puppeting when on a world domination spread is easy (does that count as wide?), but by myself I hardly build more than 3-4 cities. I won space with China with 3 tall cities, I don't need a wide empire, tbh. Although I would love to learn how to play wide for a change. If only just to change my playstyle a little (speaking of replayability )

 

[oscogmo]

Play Hotseat

single player is great but there really is only one way to play Civilization if you want the full experience and that's hot-seat with a friend, forget simultaneous games online with no animations Hotseat is the ultimate way to play,,,

single player is for practice only, once you get past the beginner stage its time for a real game, Hotseat !!!

 

[qemist]

I mentioned the scoring is high for obvious reasons but that wasn't my point. My point is that the dominate way to win is with domination. To win another victory condition is playing with a disadvantage. Every other victory condition is more difficult than a domination victory. This leaves the game with a lot less replayability.

So what if it's more difficult to win wome other way? you want the game to be easier? Anyway, I find science victory the easiest. It may be my passive playing style, but once I have supremacy building the spaceship parts takes less time than conquering the world.

Again I also wrote to this point when I mentioned it has plagued the Civ series since the begining. There are exceptions though. In some Civ versions there were often real space races where you weren't sure you were going to win till the end. Domination victories though will always have mop up.

Aim for a science win instead then. I really don't understand your complaint.

 

[qemist]

No doubt. Even on immortal with isolated start you have good chance to minimize potential DoWs. You'll still get few phony ones but that's about it until late game at least. In centered start the story will be substantially different.

I agree a non-isolated start the chances of not being dowed on emp and above are negligible. I think some people are talking BS on this forum.

 

[Ex.plode]

The replay value is really high, mixing up the CIV's you play as and raising the difficulty will keep you entertained for a very long time.