Is civ5 worth buying it?
- Thread starter wazzzuup
- Start date
Hehe, I saw you posted the same thread in the civ 5 forum now too, wazzup. And the reactions are as predicted by someone in this thread. What for me and for many others was a big slap in the face, a dumbed down game full of flaws that is unbearably boring, is a great game for others. As none of us knows what kind of games you like to play, at the end of the day only you yourself can decide if you like it or not. Don't say we didn't warn you though if you do try it! And if you decide to purchase, at least wait for a Steam sale offer.
I actually agree with you on all accounts. (Including the stuff I didn't quote for brevity.) My explanation was meant to be factual, not opinionated. Those are the facts, as I understand them, as to why Hexes not Squares.
And I disagree with you about the sarcasm of the favourite school subject. I'm a math major.
I love math, and I loved algebra, and I love calculus based subjects. Hence why my understanding was math based.I am sure there are people who love both, should be found in the other forum. I love each of the Civ versions with the exception V. From I to IV is ongoing refinement of the original (brilliant) game concept. This is how it should be in a game franchise. In V they tried to turn the game into a (btw. badly implemented) hex tactics game. Too bad I am not interested in hex tactics games. Never was, never will be. And even if I were I am pretty sure there are better hex tactics games than Civ V...
I don't know. All I see in V - as soon as the board fills up - is a confusing and cluttered mess. And the tiny, indistinguishable people plus the troop icons they need to add to compensate sure don't improve the situation. The only time the hex grid in V looks really good is at the start of the game. While the graphics in IV are far from beeing flawless, they are not ugly and the game situation is much more clearly represented. In a game of strategy clarity of game situation should have priority over aesthetics. In that context V fails miserably.
Yes absolutely - if you can get it cheap! It shows quite drastically what a brilliant game IV actually is and makes you apreciate it even more...
UnforcedError
Settler
I was one of those idiots who bought Civ 5 as soon as it came out but it turned out to be very dissappointing. A lot of my original complains have already been addressed here and I fully agree with most of them. I don't think it actually deserves the title "strategy game" anymore.
Yes absolutely - if you can get it cheap! It shows quite drastically what a brilliant game IV actually is and makes you apreciate it even more...
That's actually a very good point! Since I played Civ 5 I have been able to appreciate Civ 4 a lot more and have experienced a comeback to the game (especially in the still pretty active multiplayer and with new mods) which I had thought I had played to death. My great dismay playing Civ 5 also caused me to search for deep complex strategy games out there, which led me to the Paradox games (in my case the brilliant Crusader Kings 2).
So yeah, if you see it that way Civ 5 is definitely worth trying out!
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UnforcedError said:
I'm a member of your club
Funky said:
Great game and EUIII is very much worth playing
I only fire up V to play a VOTM now and then. It's the only way I can stay focused on a game by having a set goal. Otherwise, the game is just so boring.
wazzzuup
track $tar
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Ghpstage
Deity
Have you considered watching a video so you can see how little there is to do in civ 5, how many more clicks you need to make to accomplish much less, how dreadful the AI is and how awful core mechanics are?
Except that in no way addresses the issue with square movement that diagonal movement is more efficient than horizontal or vertical movement.
There was no algebra in what you quoted, so I don't see that there could be any less.
LeHam
Prince
I'll be fair: Civ V is not a "bad game." Compared to Civ IV, yes, I would say it is inferior, but standing alone it's not "bad."
I think the most glaring problem is the concept of "Global Happiness." In Civ IV, in order to control City growth and also to make sure Empires did not ruthlessly expand like in Civ III, they had two major mechanics.
The first was city-based Happiness and Healthiness. Each city had its own Happiness and Healthiness. If your city was too big and you did not manage it well, too many citizens would become unhappy and your city would be unproductive. If your unhealthiness outweighed your healthiness, your citizens would become sick and your city's growth would grind to a halt.
On an Empire-wide scale, there was Maintenance. Each city had a Maintenance cost based primarily on how many cities you had total and how far away that particular city was from your capital. This way you couldn't expand as much as you wanted without developing your cities, because your economy would crash.
These two mechanics encouraged players to build up and develop their cities and infrastructure (worker improvements) rather than expand constantly. And it worked pretty well.
Fast-forward to Civ V. For some inexplicable reason, they decided to completely do away with these two mechanics and instead replace them with one: Global Happiness. Now, building a Circus in one city apparently increases Happiness in a city on the other side of the world. Apart from being unrealistic, this means you can have a few cities pump out happiness buildings and not even worry about the rest. Also, if your empire is unhappy, it's supposed to have negative effects, but I've never really noticed it much, and there's overall there's not much stopping you from expanding at your whim.
Taking away city-based happiness and healthiness and maintenance makes the game less interesting, I think. It results in less choices to make, and you rely less on smart management of your empire. It makes Civ V less intellectually stimulating for me, and it's boring.
Now Civ V players talk about building "Wide" or "Tall" Empires. A Wide empire is very spread out, with much less city and infrastructure development, whereas Tall empires are very built up, but not very big. Social Policies are probably the best improvement over Civ IV, BUT their cost increases for city you build, so Tall Empires won't get many. So, you can either A) not expand, which isn't fun, or B) Expand and not get Social policies or build up your empire much, which also isn't fun. It's a lose-lose situation.
I could go on and on, like how sometime I can't build a city on the coast because you need to build cities FOUR TILES APART, but I've already rambled enough. It's really a case of them trying to fix something that ain't broken. It's an old engineering motto: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And that's exactly what they tried to do in Civ V.
I think the most glaring problem is the concept of "Global Happiness." In Civ IV, in order to control City growth and also to make sure Empires did not ruthlessly expand like in Civ III, they had two major mechanics.
The first was city-based Happiness and Healthiness. Each city had its own Happiness and Healthiness. If your city was too big and you did not manage it well, too many citizens would become unhappy and your city would be unproductive. If your unhealthiness outweighed your healthiness, your citizens would become sick and your city's growth would grind to a halt.
On an Empire-wide scale, there was Maintenance. Each city had a Maintenance cost based primarily on how many cities you had total and how far away that particular city was from your capital. This way you couldn't expand as much as you wanted without developing your cities, because your economy would crash.
These two mechanics encouraged players to build up and develop their cities and infrastructure (worker improvements) rather than expand constantly. And it worked pretty well.
Fast-forward to Civ V. For some inexplicable reason, they decided to completely do away with these two mechanics and instead replace them with one: Global Happiness. Now, building a Circus in one city apparently increases Happiness in a city on the other side of the world. Apart from being unrealistic, this means you can have a few cities pump out happiness buildings and not even worry about the rest. Also, if your empire is unhappy, it's supposed to have negative effects, but I've never really noticed it much, and there's overall there's not much stopping you from expanding at your whim.
Taking away city-based happiness and healthiness and maintenance makes the game less interesting, I think. It results in less choices to make, and you rely less on smart management of your empire. It makes Civ V less intellectually stimulating for me, and it's boring.
Now Civ V players talk about building "Wide" or "Tall" Empires. A Wide empire is very spread out, with much less city and infrastructure development, whereas Tall empires are very built up, but not very big. Social Policies are probably the best improvement over Civ IV, BUT their cost increases for city you build, so Tall Empires won't get many. So, you can either A) not expand, which isn't fun, or B) Expand and not get Social policies or build up your empire much, which also isn't fun. It's a lose-lose situation.
I could go on and on, like how sometime I can't build a city on the coast because you need to build cities FOUR TILES APART, but I've already rambled enough. It's really a case of them trying to fix something that ain't broken. It's an old engineering motto: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And that's exactly what they tried to do in Civ V.
LeHam's post made me think about something else that affects empire expansion in Civ 5: one unit per tile. Granted, I haven't played Civ 5 much (got bored real quick), but it seems like without the threat of death stacks, expanding the borders of your empire seems like it would be "safer" because there is a severe limitation on the army size of any civilization on the map which reduces the threat of an invasion? I can't suggest that I could adequately break down what I mean, but I hope that the general idea is understood. I also accept that I could be completely wrong about all of this. It was just something that crossed my mind when I *did* play a few games.
Yep. Me. However, having played Civ5 for a while now, I don't think I could go back to Civ4. The thought of SoDs is just...bone-chilling...
Note that Civ5 does have religion (which is implemented much better than in Civ4, I'm sure many would argue, though perhaps not many in this forum).
If anyone liked Civ5 vanilla a little, they'll like G&K a lot. If you hated the underlying mechanics of Civ5, well, they're still there, but it's simply not the case now that Civ5 is a 'broken' game. It's entirely legitimate to prefer Civ4, but it's a matter of personal preference nowadays, and not some objective fact. Just as I wouldn't go back to Civ4, I wouldn't go back to Civ5 vanilla either (like I'm sure most people wouldn't go back to Civ4 vanilla). A great many people prefer Civ5. They're probably not going to be found in this forum, because if they were playing Civ5, they'd be in the Civ5 forums.
Civ5 can often be picked up pretty cheaply, so in that sense it would definitely be worth it. There is also a free demo that you could try out.
I think that's fair comment. What I feel, mostly, is that Civ IV is the game Civ I always wanted to be. Every previous Civ has been building up to Civ IV. Civ V is a new game based on the same idea. Like it or don't like it; but there's no sense in criticising it because it's not like Civ.
It's not that V is a bad game in itself, but so many elements that were in IV which really made that iteration shine have either been severely dumbed down or completely removed.
Especially diplomacy has really taken a step back in V. It's much more opaque and you get penalties for the most ridiculous things, like settling anywhere near an AI. Never mind that you aren't even touching their borders, they will still denounce you and make everyone else follow suit. Not to mention getting a penalty for trying to win the game...
I also really dislike the limited options you have for expansion. Global happiness really doesn't make sense to me, as it penalizes the player for trying to expand into what would in previous iterations be considered otherwise good locatitons. Generally, unless you have an abundance of happiness or are claiming a new luxury or a critical strategic resource, it's not worth expanding. I much preferred IV's model where every city simply had to pay for itself. That, in my opinion, was well balanced as it alleviated the ICS-madness of III as founding new cities and keeping up with expansion was still generally worthwhile throughout the game(unlike V), but you still had to take into consideration what the immediate cost would be.
In short, managing a four-city "empire" really doesn't feel very much like classic Civ.
Doing away with the SoD I consider positive, although 1UPT feels too extreme. At least allow a few units to stack on the same tile, especially as the AI is still bad at warmongering. In IV it could at least somewhat make up for that weakness with greater numbers.
I still enjoy V every now and then, but I can't help but feel it's targetted at a much more mainstream audience. Some of the reduced focus on tedious micromanagement would be welcome in IV, such as better governor controls, but overall I'd stick with IV if I had to choose between the two.
Especially diplomacy has really taken a step back in V. It's much more opaque and you get penalties for the most ridiculous things, like settling anywhere near an AI. Never mind that you aren't even touching their borders, they will still denounce you and make everyone else follow suit. Not to mention getting a penalty for trying to win the game...
I also really dislike the limited options you have for expansion. Global happiness really doesn't make sense to me, as it penalizes the player for trying to expand into what would in previous iterations be considered otherwise good locatitons. Generally, unless you have an abundance of happiness or are claiming a new luxury or a critical strategic resource, it's not worth expanding. I much preferred IV's model where every city simply had to pay for itself. That, in my opinion, was well balanced as it alleviated the ICS-madness of III as founding new cities and keeping up with expansion was still generally worthwhile throughout the game(unlike V), but you still had to take into consideration what the immediate cost would be.
In short, managing a four-city "empire" really doesn't feel very much like classic Civ.
Doing away with the SoD I consider positive, although 1UPT feels too extreme. At least allow a few units to stack on the same tile, especially as the AI is still bad at warmongering. In IV it could at least somewhat make up for that weakness with greater numbers.
I still enjoy V every now and then, but I can't help but feel it's targetted at a much more mainstream audience. Some of the reduced focus on tedious micromanagement would be welcome in IV, such as better governor controls, but overall I'd stick with IV if I had to choose between the two.
Ambidexter
Edjumacated Idjit
CivIV is a strategic game, CivV is a tactical game. I prefer strategic games and there's better tactical games available.
Civ is a heavy time consuming game.
And civ5 adds waiting turn times + shuffling units + using range attacks +
checking the diplomacy screen every turn to see if the AI has gold for RAs.
Very repetitive.
There are some excellent civ4 mods available,
but you'll need a very powerful machine and a whole lot of free time.
(Even a C2C Dual map will take 40-50 hours. All because of the gigantic tech tree.)
In Rise of Mankind (RoM) and in Caveman to Cosmos (C2C) cities can work 3 rings
and can become very big.
The Tsukiji Fish Market was probably the craziest wonder I've seen;
10 new seafood resources in the city the wonder was built.
Neglecting health, happiness and/or building too many cities will cause revolutions.
This can happen when you refuse to pay :
And civ5 adds waiting turn times + shuffling units + using range attacks +
checking the diplomacy screen every turn to see if the AI has gold for RAs.
Very repetitive.
There are some excellent civ4 mods available,
but you'll need a very powerful machine and a whole lot of free time.
(Even a C2C Dual map will take 40-50 hours. All because of the gigantic tech tree.)
In Rise of Mankind (RoM) and in Caveman to Cosmos (C2C) cities can work 3 rings
and can become very big.
The Tsukiji Fish Market was probably the craziest wonder I've seen;
10 new seafood resources in the city the wonder was built.
Neglecting health, happiness and/or building too many cities will cause revolutions.
This can happen when you refuse to pay :
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