Just got Civ 5 and now I'm wondering why Pro-Civ 4 people hate it?

[sendos]

Hello all. I just purchased Civ 5 and to be honest, the game blew me away. Battles make more sense, sieges are more balanced, early game expansion is better, policy system is much more flexible, there are logistics in the game rather than unit stacking on a tile and you can spend gold after currency rather than having to wait until you get universal suffrage (or build The Pyramids in BTS). However, I've only been playing it for 10 hours as the UK on Chieftain. In my next game, I'll increase the difficulty by 1.

On the other hand, I have a few minor issues with Civ 5:
- trade routes to capital are ominously cut off at times. I check the roads between the affected town and the capital, but usually see nothing wrong. I will try to look harder.
- City bombardment doesn't work for me. Croxis told me it's left click on target button, then left click on the enemy itself to bombard them. I just wish to confirm here.

Other than that, that is all.

 

[woooooooor]

1UPT is a terrible idea for a game like Civilization.

Battles in which soldiers are bombarding each other from what should be hundreds of miles away does not just make more sense.

 

[sadsquid]

To be honest, 1UPT is one of my favourite things from Civ V. I can't go back to IV because of it. It's just SO. MUCH. BETTER. Combat is way more fun and interesting.

Overall, I think I had a little bit more fun with Civ IV BtS at the time, than G&K now, but that had two expansions, whereas V has only had one, plus there's a few features from V (and G&K) that just make it hard to go back. Looking forward to One World (hopefully it's real )!

 

[Hustapha Thool]

confirmed...

sometimes if you have harbors and that route is cut off you will get the message, just check under the city names and look for 3 circles that form a traingle, then your trade route is active.

really, at least step up to at least prince,king preferably, you might lose but you will learn the game quicker.

it only makes sense in game play

 

[Menzies]

Because change is scary and most people who have the attention span to play a game that can take days, and actually like posting on forums are generally also the types that get very set in their ways. They are the same kind of people who called Civ IV and particularly warlords the worst part of the series so far as well.

Don't worry about them.

As for the trade routes, if your roads are outside your territory and another civilization claims that land, you will lose your trade route.

In terms of bombardment, there is a button to do that with units that can do it, that is Archers, Catapults etc.

 

[Breezin]

Because it ain't proper like V.

 

[Matthew.]

I used to play this game years ago called Lord of the Realms 2. It was a turn-based strategy game similar to Civ. The armies walked around in stacks of doom like Civ 4, but when they clashed the game went into a separate real-time screen heavily zoomed in.

I always thought of Civ 5's 1UPT as a mix of the two. You are playing the top-down strategy, but combat is on a tactical level. But I suppose some folk can't stretch their imagination enough to realize that no, you are not shooting arrows several miles. The units in Civ5 are just a representation of the battle taking place near that location, not actual indicators of size or distance.

 

[michaeljhuman]

I prefer Civ V over Civ IV.

* The graphics are better
* I did not like squares
* It feels more streamlined
* While no stacking, feels odd, due to the time and distance scales, it also makes combats more interesting; so do you prefer something that feels more realistic (which games are not no matter what) or something that makes battles more interesting?
* I did not like relgion in Civ IV; but I am learning to use it with G&K, so I guess that's a wash, heh

Change is often rejected. People who loved Civ IV sometimes could not make the change to Civ V. Civ IV is still totally playable on modern computers, so I guess that's the option. And it had a lot of expansions I think.

I am sure I am different than the norm somehow, but I find Civ V interesting and challenging. And it's changed a fair amount from the original version. So early reviews are probably not helpful is assessing it's current state.

There is ONE important thing I miss from Civ IV. Miss it a lot. Spock. They should have used Leonard Nimoy as their technology announcer again. I don't even listen to the current announcer I miss the old announcements so much.

 

[Stalker0]

Its important to understand that Civ V has now had a few years to be tweaked and polished.

When Civ V first game out, the gameplay felt much slower to me than Civ IV (both in the things I can do, and literally how quick the end turn button would get me to the next turn). Many of the subsystems were clunky, and the AI was simply horrible at handling 1 UPT.

Many of these issues have been alleviated over time, and the game is overall much better. I will say that Civ V's biggest longterm failing is that 1 UPT is such a better combat system...but the AI is so inept at handling it.

 

[sendos]

really, at least step up to at least prince,king preferably, you might lose but you will learn the game quicker.

it only makes sense in game play

Ok. I'll try a fast-paced game on prince next time. Just be mindful that it's my first time with civ 5. The reason why I didn't choose a harder difficulty was because I clicked on "play game" button, assuming it was similar to the "play game" button in Civ 4, and so I ignored the set up game completely. I won't do that again. Would you also recommend a bigger world? The random world chosen for me was small > continents (1 of them with 2 big lakes in the middle of the continent).

Speaking of difficulty, I hope I don't encounter the same issue I encountered in Civ 4: a vast difference in difficulty between chieftain and warlord. It's like completing grade 2 and then jumping to grade 5.

Another thing, where do I find victory conditions?

 

[gozpel]

I used to play this game years ago called Lord of the Realms 2. It was a turn-based strategy game similar to Civ. The armies walked around in stacks of doom like Civ 4, but when they clashed the game went into a separate real-time screen heavily zoomed in.

I always thought of Civ 5's 1UPT as a mix of the two. You are playing the top-down strategy, but combat is on a tactical level. But I suppose some folk can't stretch their imagination enough to realize that no, you are not shooting arrows several miles. The units in Civ5 are just a representation of the battle taking place near that location, not actual indicators of size or distance.

Lord of the Realms 2!

I played that too and what a great game that was. Move your Hero, get some sheep, expand and all.

Then the fighting was really clever, even if you had a stronger army it wasn't a win on a plate. You had to figure it out.

 

[Dr. D]

The Civ IV elitists crack me up. I'm a huge Civ IV fan myself, but I haven't even started it up since V came out. I was disappointed with V when we were essentially beta testers at release... it frequently crashed and it truly felt like something was missing, but I poured so many hours into IV that I was honestly done with it and there was no going back. There was nothing more to accomplish and it was time to move on.

Prior to G&K, V just didn't feel as epic as IV... it felt hollow to me. Despite being a dedicated Civ player since III, I didn't play a single game of V in 2012 until I got the expansion in July so I'll admit vanilla was lacking. With G&K, Civ has that "just one more turn" addictive feeling again.

My opinion? Both are fantastic. The IV elitists will say that V is dumbed down... I consider that to be a fairly biased and closed-minded jab. To me, "streamlined" is more appropriate. Not everyone will like all changes, myself included, but anyone who says Civ V is a joke either hasn't played it since those dark days of V's infancy or are so prejudiced against it that they'll never like V no matter what kind of enhancements are made to it. IV was great, but life is too short to play IV forever. I am enjoying V's fresh perspective.

 

[Funky]

Its been two and a half years and people are still bringing up the "they can't handle change" silliness...

Sendos, first of all as with most games it is a matter of taste wether you like them or not. But as your question seems honestly curious, I will try to explain what many Civ 4 players see as three of the biggest problems.

The first is 1UPT, with problems ranging from bad AI over scale absurdity to genre shift into a wargame. I won't go into the details here, as they have been discussed numerous times, instead I recommend this thread (among many others) for further information.

The second is the lack of historical plausibility. Social policies, the combat system, global happiness, city states, diplomacy, and to an extent the tech tree are no longer depictions of historical reality. Instead they are gamey mechanics, which work as a rule frame for the game, but have little to nothing to do with historical reality or are plausible as an alternate historical development. Therefore Civ 5 feels like a game, but not like the development of a nation which could have existed in our world. For those who want to merely play a strategic game with loose historical flavour this point might not matter. But for many people the Civ games were a lot more than just a game, they let you be immersed in the creation of an alternate, plausible history.

Third, the game lacks much of the complexity of Civ 4, where you had to work your way up, gradually increasing the difficulty from chieftan to warlord, from warlord to prince and so on, slowly accumulating more and more of the extensive knowledge and skill required to win at the highest levels. It took years till people could beat the game on Diety. The amount of knowledge required to beat Civ 5 on the hardest levels is substantially lower, which is the reason many players refer to the game as being "dumbed down", though I personally don't like this term.

In addition to these three points, the countless bugs and balance issues from the time of the launch, the evident sloppy and lazy programming and the extensive delusive hype by the developers before release (e.g. promising us a "big sloppy kiss") turned some people off for good. Many of the bugs have been fixed and the game has undergone some polish, but some people are still resentful.

Anyway, I hope I could bring some light into the matter. Just to conclude, I will answer questions, but I am not interested in a general debate over the two games and I don't want to convince anyone. As said at the beginning, tastes differ. If you like the game, be happy about it!

 

[gozpel]

I'm a huge CIV3 fan, but I'm not bagging the new installments.

CIV3 was great.
CIV4 was great after the expansions.
CIV5 is OK, but still very addictive.

There are so many things in CIV5 that is just wrong, but I put my blinkers on and play one more turn. I have scored 2500hrs on CIV5, a game I hated a couple of years ago. The patches made it playable.

But there's still a loooooong way to go, before they can make this game as good as CIV3 or CIV4.

CIV5 was broken from the beginning, with no backup plans, so now new hectic programmers sit there and are trying to change the game by the minute. This is why we get patches. Someone is doing their best!

 

[headcase]

I always thought of Civ 5's 1UPT as a mix of the two. You are playing the top-down strategy, but combat is on a tactical level. But I suppose some folk can't stretch their imagination enough to realize that no, you are not shooting arrows several miles. The units in Civ5 are just a representation of the battle taking place near that location, not actual indicators of size or distance.

I feel the same way. It's an abstract micro\macro thing. Civ has always had this with time (e.g. forests growing in the middle of battle), but Civ 5 also has it with space.

That said, it's unsurprising some people would prefer Civ4. I've tried to play Civ4 a couple times recently, but prefer 5 personally.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

There are a lot of valid criticisms of Civ V, but ultimately it comes down to this: video games are like cars. Buick were once THE car brand for professionals in America. They made great cars, but over time new ways of doing things developed in the industry, new tastes emerged, and economic impetus increased the standards of design. The folks at GM didn't heed the winds of change. Eventually, Buicks became synonymous with out-of-date old people. And old people die. They needed to appeal to new buyers. Buick had to completely reconfigure their design philosophy to stay relavent.

Civ IV is a great game, but if Firaxis kept releasing versions that are identical to Civ IV, with better graphics, they will please loyal fans, but diminish their market share. Innovation must be maintained, even if it gets rough. So they tried 1upt. It's kind of fun. It can break immersion a bit. Will it be in Civ VI? Only Firaxis knows.

 

[ignite]

- City bombardment doesn't work for me. Croxis told me it's left click on target button, then left click on the enemy itself to bombard them. I just wish to confirm here.

Select Bombardment on the left panel (or hit "B") and then left click on the target. You also need to set up prior to firing ("S").

 

[Zilkin]

Played Civ games since the first, and if there has been one constant it is that whenever new game comes out certain amount of people declare it the false prophet. It's like a law of nature really.

 

[joncnunn]

Played Civ games since the first, and if there has been one constant it is that whenever new game comes out certain amount of people declare it the false prophet. It's like a law of nature really.

True:

Civ III: Attacked for graphics to similar to Civ II. Also complaints about corruption for hammers in cities far away.

Civ IV: Attacked for too high system requirements. Also complaints about several people's favorite civ from Civ III not included in vanilla.

Civ V: Attacked for 1 UPT, dumb AI, and global happiness.

 

[The_J]

Played Civ games since the first, and if there has been one constant it is that whenever new game comes out certain amount of people declare it the false prophet. It's like a law of nature really.

Moderator Action: That's it.
And since I can't see that any fruitful discussion will be developed here, I'll close this thread, because I expect rather the opposite.
-> Closed.