is this game worth playing yet(civ 4 fan)

[Exchequer]

I pre-ordered this game when it came out and was really excited after playing civ 4 like a freak for 5 years. then i got into the game and after playing (when it was new) was utterly disgusted.
people who werent big civ 1-4 players seem to love it and the veteran civ players hate its simplicity.
they seemed to just dumb down the whole engine. in civ 5 it seemed like all you had to do was spam cities and they would be profitable no matter what. there was no science or economy penalty for over expansion and the whole concept of keeping city-states free didnt seem to pay off at all.
i would start out with a decent size country and army and be making a profit for about 2 hundred turns. then after not expanding or training new units i would see my profits just randomly start to drop until i was forced to delete military units and then just resign once i had no army left.
i havnt played the game since it came out and was just wondering if there were any patches or any mods that would address the majority of the complaints. i have a gift card and was thinking of trying out the expansion pack and was wondering if i would just end up annoyed again.

Your rant is only true if you play on the lower difficuty levels. As soon as you start playing on normal (Prince) or higher you will quickly end up in a situation where you have (too) high upkeep cost. Early (over)expansion can really kill your game. Furthermore due to restrictions in happyness it can also be hard to keep your empire happy. Especially if your cities keep growing.

Profits do not randomly drop. You can check your income/expenses it the tool tip. Maybe you had not noticed but each road costs 1 gold to maintain. Therefore the road spam from civ1-4 is a bad strategy. Furthermore "A harbour has an upkeep cost of 3 gold/turn for every city that has one (including the capital). ". If you build 10 harbords then yes your profit will drop .

As you can see unit/building/road/city spam will not work.

Regarding the base game
+New combat is great. You really have to think strategically. Protect weak catapults and "puzzle" to assemble your units perfectly.
+no more unit balls
+Graphics
+Happiness is now a global resource (so you dont have to spam the temple)
+resources no longer require road connection
+hexes make more sense
+cities have a range of 3 hexes surrounding them (so bigger than previous games).

-There is a lack of infographs
-There is no earthmap in MP
-There is no mod support in MP (could solve the above...)

Gods and Kings:
+changed tech tree
+new wonders
+new units
+new leaders
+religion (in addition to food,production,gold, science and culture this is a similar resource)

Unlike civ4 religion is something that is created by chosing bonusses from a list at certain stages. The first player to chose has the largest choice.

Patches:
+enemy ai improved
+worker automation greatly improved (they no longer suicide)

Mods:
I use 3 mods in single player
-Infographics (adds a lot of graphs)
-city limits (visualizes city range)
-mod for 2x faster air combat

 

[krasny]

In my opinion, the only things Civ 5 does better than Civ 4 are combat and building / road maintenance.

Why am I still playing Civ 5?

Because modern era combat with Civ 4 stacks of doom is such a horrible experience I can't bring my self to go back to Civ 4.

To be realistic (not the foremost objective in the Civilization series) there should be stack of doom until the modern era then 1UPT onwards.

 

[Funky]

modern era combat with Civ 4 stacks of doom is such a horrible experience I can't bring my self to go back to Civ 4.

While for me this isn't as big a problem as for you, I agree in that if Civ 4 has a weakness, it is modern era combat. Especially against warmongerers like Montezuma who can have stacks of hundreds of units on the highest difficulties.

 

[strijder20]

While for me this isn't as big a problem as for you, I agree in that if Civ 4 has a weakness, it is modern era combat. Especially against warmongerers like Montezuma who can have stacks of hundreds of units on the highest difficulties.

The main problem isn't the stack itself. The problem is the obvious solution to it.
Four tactical nukes (3000 hammers) and that 400 unit stack of 120.000 hammers is gone. That's just too easily abused.

+New combat is great. You really have to think strategically. Protect weak catapults and "puzzle" to assemble your units perfectly.

And scream in agony when you have to move your 25-unit army through a one-tile mountain pass. Bonus points when the enemy actually has some ranged units waiting for you on the other side.

+no more unit balls

Carpet industry is booming though.

+Graphics

Completely agreed, they did a great job.

+Happiness is now a global resource (so you dont have to spam the temple)

No, only the colossea And that's realism aside (Imagine Londoners being happy because a new stadium is built in Sydney).

+resources no longer require road connection

Requiring to actually hook up resources and have a route leading to it makes more sense though. Getting to use my wine tile when there's an enemy unit sitting on it and enemy units on every surrounding tile makes me think of intricate tunnel complexes under my country or classical era teleportation devices.

+hexes make more sense

Yes, units being able to move 1.414 times faster when going diagonally is a bit weird. Leads to more complicated and natural border patterns/mountain ranges/coastlines too.

+cities have a range of 3 hexes surrounding them (so bigger than previous games).

That's not exactly a positive point, is it? It's like saying 'Buy Civ5, it has hospitals which give +5 food! Much better than Civ4's 3 health'.

 

[ork75]

To be fair, moving a very large (25 units is quite big for most of the game) army through a mountain pass is very difficult and easily defended. Thermopylae (think 300), for example. Think one unit of spears holding back about 30 because only one can fight at a time. Try to have a plan rather than just rushing into wars.
I think that the added tactics and realism is a good thing, actually.

 

[BIOGENETIC]

Short answer: worth playing, not worth buying for full price

I was an average (as opposed to hardcore or casual) player of Civ4.

G&K is a HUGE improvement over vanilla Civ5. The mechanics that pissed me off (city states, puppets, national happiness, social policies) are still there, but the game is much less "broken" - you no longer need to puppet the majority of the cities you capture, you can't dominate your continent with a 4-horseman rush, certain policy trees are no longer useless, etc.

I still claim that Civ4 is a better approximation of reality and provides better immersion while Civ5 plays more like a virtual board game. Both have their fun aspects and drawbacks.

 

[Exchequer]

Hmm I must add... I played without G&K DLC and after 100 turns it turned out that:

1) the "large" map appeared to be much larger (too large actually I could fit at least 10 cities, my last G&K was max 4 cities on large with 9 players)
2) Units have 10 instead of 100 hp (forgot about that).
3) Archers no longer intsantly die from warrior attack
4) The ai is much"dumber". While I had 5 cities the two ai I had encountered had only two cities (2x2). Whilst there was a huge empty playing field between us. Furthermore he "ambushed" my friend with a general and 2 warriors whilst my friend had swordsman and upgraded archers.

I guess you really need G&K.

edit:
Large G&K map (inland sea): http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9692/civlargegk.jpg
Large vanilla map (continents, map north snow has not even been discovered yet!) : http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/3663/civlargevanilla.jpg
G&K Huge map (ai very active): http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/3180/pressureciv.jpg

 

[vonSharma]

I just posted in Xanthippus' post but I will summarize

I have been a civ addict since Civ3. I held out on Civ5 until last week (all the negative reviews kept me away but it seemed the tide was turning). I basically only care about strong AI play and I feel this has delivered. I also feel there is a ton of nuance and much more finesse and thought that must go into decisions like building more units and even cities. I recommend it as someone who has sadly played probably hundreds, if not thousands of hours of civ.

 

[pspboy7]

I think your mind on Civ5 is already made up. If you haven't jumped the band wagon by now, you're not likely too. No offence.

I went from 4 to 5 pretty much from the get go, and I hardly touch 4 any more. I just find that 5 has more potential and more to offer technically speaking. It should be noted they are similar games of the same line, but very different games mechanically speaking. It should also be noted that Civ5 is the current product and will be improved, at least until Civ6 comes out, all the while Civ4 get only the support of it's fans (mods). Old school is great, but still old school nonetheless.

 

[Pisskop]

How is the ai now? Not only in terms of 1upt but for teh religions and expanding. Before G&K I'd use an archer, on Emperor (and gasp even a little on diety) to defend a city and often have rifles before they got knights out. Killed the mood.

How is diplo, their teching, their expansion (i.e. hiwatha expanding like a rabid monster, Babylon not at all) and their tact?

 

[Rellin]

I just started playing again a couple weeks ago. Bought at release, played 60 hours, didn't touch again. Was not big into Civ4 either, but loved Civ3. Anyway, I am loving it right now. I bought the G&K expansion and DLCs on the Steam sale for cheap, and I am glad I did. I just made the move from Emperor to Immortal and am getting my ass kicked, which is not really fun tbh, that is why I am on this forum right now, to try and find some tips on this difficulty change.

 

[Camikaze]

How is the ai now? Not only in terms of 1upt but for teh religions and expanding. Before G&K I'd use an archer, on Emperor (and gasp even a little on diety) to defend a city and often have rifles before they got knights out. Killed the mood.

How is diplo, their teching, their expansion (i.e. hiwatha expanding like a rabid monster, Babylon not at all) and their tact?

Much better, though certainly not perfect. Their teching paths are generally more focused, and thus faster, and you're far more likely to actually lose a city now if you're not careful, though it doesn't take a military genius to win it back if you have the numbers. The AI competently handles religion and espionage, and the diplo is better than it used to be, though still probably somewhat lacking. There's no real objective standard by which to measure the AI, though, given it entirely depends on what you expect out of it; lots of people found the vanilla AI fine, and similarly, a number of people probably find the G&K AI still too frustrating.