Lunatic Irish Woman Seeks Sensible Civvers for Productive Discussion.

[Shurdus]

Hollering like a bunch of Mollys.

Agreed that people should have a bit more patience. Civ4 needed two expansion packs and lots of patching to become great, and expecting civ5 to be better right from release is expecting wy too much.

 

[GustavBjorklund]

Call me whatever you want but overall the games feels very consolized.

What does this even mean?

 

[Schuesseled]

It seems like the UI, particularly in the city screen, could be condensed into one overall screen. Is there anything that central hex grid space is used for other than allocating citizens? If not, why do we have to tab to do this? Everything being in tabs is bad UI, to me. There's also no quick and easy way to tell the exact hp of a unit or how much time a worker has left on a construction.

You can get a rough idea of unit hp by looking at its health bar, if you want an exact number you can hover over its health bar, quick, easy, simple.

To find out worker progress you can do it two ways, first way is the strategic view, on strategic view, improvements in construction have a progress bar, so you can easily tell the progress of all constructions. If you want to know the exact amount of turns left, click on a worker, (in either view) and down in the bottom left where there stats pop up is another progressbar, this time with the number of turns left.

 

[mike_cf]

[off]
Let's say Ford unveils model T. 2 years later Ford releases model T revision 1 which adds airbags. A bit later Ford releases model T revision 2, which adds a cd player. 5 years later Fords unveils model T2 the latest and greatest, which is kinda like model T but with a new shiny look and GPS.

What would you do:

1. Praise the model T2 for having GPS and the new slick look.
2. about T2 not having the beloved airbags/cd player.
3. Expect that T2 will improve on T by keeping the things people liked and adding 1-2 new features.
4. Expect that T2 is a revolution (no pun intended) and thus the Ford brand is used only for marketing purposes, T2 being the 'next generation' of cars bearing little resemblance to T but with cool features willing to appeal to a new market.
[/off]

 

[Interslice]

Easier way is to just set the mouseover popup delay to 0 seconds.

 

[CaptainBinky]

[off]
Let's say Ford unveils model T. 2 years later Ford releases model T revision 1 which adds airbags. A bit later Ford releases model T revision 2, which adds a cd player. 5 years later Fords unveils model T2 the latest and greatest, which is kinda like model T but with a new shiny look and GPS...

If you consider what's been done to other game franchises with sequels - making turn-based games real-time, turning them into FPS games, basically stripping the whole thing down to being recognisable by brand-name only then in that context the Civ franchise is a shining rarity.

Whether or not you approve of the changes, it's still Civ. If you deleted all the other Civ games and Firaxis had decided to update the original DOS game, you'd say, "wow, it's different, it's got a shed load more depth and it's HEX?!?! But, well, it's still Civ. Although I miss the palace construction ".

I know it's not really much of a plus point to say, "yeah, but all other sequels are much worse", but it's kind of a damage limitation argument. I personally love it to bits but if you don't, well, at least appreciate that while they didn't strike the right tone for you, they've still done a bloody good job taking the franchise forwards even if its exact flavour isn't quite to your taste.

edit: I've just realised that you didn't entirely clarify whether or not you approved. I got the sense from your post that you were talking about option 4

 

[mike_cf]

I haven't played ciV yet so I can't say aye or nay. However I take option 3

 

[Xentropy]

Such is why it's pretty much an impossible task trying to please everyone - I have pretty much the exact opposite opinion, I find it much simpler managing a huge empire with the new interface - it's part of the reason I like it so much.

Common event in Civ: You have a 15-city empire, and plenty of coal already hooked up from learning its locations a couple dozen turns ago. You discover the tech for Factories!

Civ4: Open city, Ctrl-click factory, right arrow, ctrl-click factory, etc, once per city. Voila, at the top of each queue, good to go.

Civ5: Click city, make sure checkbox for queue is checked if not already, click add to queue, click factory, click up-arrow to move factory from last to second-to-last, move mouse up to the second-to-last position, click the up-arrow in the new position, move mouse up, click up-arrow again, maybe once or twice more depending on how long the queue is. Whew, one city done. Hit right-arrow to move to the next city, click factory, and play the up-arrow game again.

Instead of one key+click, you have to click at least once per item currently in the queue, and each click is in a different location on the screen since there's no quick "move to top" and you have to move items one slot at a time.

That said, I don't mind the LOOK of the Civ5 interface really. It's just the functionality that's a pain in the ass because of a few bad decisions. It's completely solvable by hotkeys that don't exist yet. Some shift-click/ctrl-click/etc type hotkeys for queuing would go a LONG way. And hotkeys have the added benefit of not confusing newbies at all while simultaneously giving veterans methods of pressing one button instead of 6-8 mouseclicks all over the screen. Here's hoping some hotkeys can be added in a PATCH and not an EXPANSION, since an expansion will probably be a year off.

Edit: People complaining about not being able to see unit health and worker turns left to work tiles as easily as Civ4 need to move the hover-tooltip slider (it's called "Map Info Delay") all the way left, or at least down to 0.5 seconds or so. The default 1.5 seconds is a lifetime to have to hover for that info, but with it moved over to half a second or so, it works pretty much just like Civ4. The hover tooltips (NOT the stuff that appears way at the bottom right, these appear directly under your cursor) include turns remaining for workers, hitpoints of units, and so on without having to actually select the unit.

Sample of the tooltip that shows up at your mouse if you hover over a busy worker:


And here's the setting you want to move to a lower amount of time so you aren't feeling like you should make a sandwich while you wait for the tooltip to appear after hovering:

 

[CaptainBinky]

Fair point, it takes longer. But I find in Civ V that the decision whether or not to have a factory / opera house / any expensive building in a city gives me pause for thought rather than the blanket "I can build this building now, so I shall build one everywhere" in Civ IV.

So I don't find it an issue.

 

[cracked]

1. The game is brand new, and needs some further tweaking by Firaxis (and modders).
2. The UI is different, and will take some "getting used to."
3. The game itself is somewhat different from what we as Civ4 players are used to.
4. The developers have left out a number of things that might have made the game better. (see below)
5. It is not Civ4.


-LM

1) The game is brand new and will need some tweaks. That's an obvious one. I'm going to delay buyng the game for the moment until they get most of them sorted out.

2) Can't answer that one. What I would say is that cIV, while a bit all over the place, was very easy to use and having to go into menus when creating build lists seems like it will be truly painful, even on the first few turns.

3) Of course it's going to be different. They can hardly justify charging people for a new mod for cIV. You'd all be up in arms about it.

4) Refer to 1st answer.

5) I wouldn't want to buy it if it was. What would be the point? Refer to third answer.

Things that bug me is having to have steam on the computer to run it. And that's pretty much it. Would have liked to be able to play it on my laptop. This is another reason for delaying buying it, will wait until I can build a new pc on the cheap. I suspect that patches will improve things and updating automatically mught not be such a bad thing.

 

[AlexandrosV]

I agree with the author of this Thread and i've just sign up to express my opinion (beeing a merely reader untili now).

1) CALM DOWN! It's just the second day after release and the game works fine in a polished way. The only thing that needs tweak it's AI (that has a really more challenging quest here than CivIV), but HEY do you really remember how was IV at release date, without exps? BTW i think AI hasn't been really reviewed completelly by the community: i've read of a raging AI demanding tributes and going to war often... but i'haven't experienced that. In a game i've played i was near Caesar (not the most peaceful personality i guess) and he had more units than me, but he didn't demand anything and he didn't declare war on me, instead we have a pact of cooperation and he agreed not to build cities around me... maybe it just depends on the strategy that AI choose, considering resources, place to build cities, etc.
To the other point of view the AI civs seems to be more tech advanced than me (Monarch difficulty).

2) Why focusing on minor issues? I mean, you really didn't play CivIV because it' gorgeous UI... and the familiarity you have with its interfarce it's because you have played it for nearly a decade! Most agree with the concept "we have difficulties to like V because we are used to IV", but then just put this concept apart and starts making comparisons... The ONLY thing that i don't really like its city production icons... i think that colored icons are not stilistically nice, nether more representative. BUT come on, it's a minor issue, you know.

3) Diplomacy: leaving apart UI... (and the fact it's not very clear how you can understand what AI thinks of you) i can see more options now in diplomacy. You can do a pact of cooperation (that is not just a right of passage like in IV), you can do a pact of secrecy, tecnology... it seems more to me... what do you miss of IV? Tech trading, i mean, it was very unrealistc and just a way you could remain at tech level of an high difficulty AI. The important thing it is that new concept has been introduced, the fact that you have to discover how it works and how it's reported in stats, could possibly add longevity at the game (imho).

Just think at this: The devs could just make minor tweaks to CIV, graphics, some tech and put it on the market, making a lot of money with few costs... you'd buy it, enjoyed it for a couple of months and than put it away, just because YOU ALREADY HAVE PLAYED THAT GAME! They took the challenge to make something new, something that, with some fix and addons, can last for years. I think that they deserve support!
I like CV it's seems a raw diamond to me. It's fun just now (just a little balance issue and AI tweaking) and in a couple years (with exps, just to add a little more depth) it could be the greatest grand strategy game for the next decade!

 

[Xentropy]

But I find in Civ V that the decision whether or not to have a factory / opera house / any expensive building in a city gives me pause for thought rather than the blanket "I can build this building now, so I shall build one everywhere" in Civ IV.

I've only played 2.5 games so far, so maybe there's something odd about the games I played, but so far I've had to play the build-it-everywhere game at least half a dozen times per game, particularly in the later game (if you're in the modern era and you aren't at war, you're booming, so you want factories everywhere, relevant plants everywhere, and so on).

That actually reminds me of another major issue with the UI that hopefully gets fixed in a patch. You can't use the city list in the Economic View to jump to the city. In my first game, I had 12 cities and only one coal resource to cover 7 factories. I wanted to use the econ advisor to build factories in my 7 most productive cities. While I could sort the list by production (and as a minor secondary annoyance, the first click sorts from LOW to high; 99% of the time I'm sorting I want high to low, so as usual in this interface's common theme, two clicks every time instead of one), I couldn't then just go to the chosen city and build. I had to close that screen, FIND that city on the map, then build the factory (including the hunt-the-up-arrow whack a mole game as previously mentioned), then close that city and go back to the economic advisor again, where the list would be back to order-built, I'd click the production column header twice again, find the second city's name, and so on... alternatively I could write the list down or alt-tab out and type it up into a notepad window, but something as simple as jump-to-city should really already be there.

 

[Gorey]

Civ4: Open city, Ctrl-click factory, right arrow, ctrl-click factory, etc, once per city. Voila, at the top of each queue, good to go.

It was even easier than that, you didn't even have to enter the city screen. Just CTRL+Click all the city bars, then control click the factory.

 

[Gorey]

Why focusing on minor issues?

because as you said it's only the second day.. and its way too early to decide whether things like global happiness, city states and other new mechanics are good/bad. So im sticking to the obvious.

 

[Shurdus]

It was even easier than that, you didn't even have to enter the city screen. Just CTRL+Click all the city bars, then control click the factory.

It was even simpler than that. You could alt-click one city bar and then ctrl-click the factory. If you wanted to exclude cities you could go to the overview menu, select the cities you wanted to build in and ctrl-click the factories from there.

 

[Venereus]

Wow, the arrogance. Please tell us your thoughts on why exactly the AI is designed for "people too ******ed to play Civ", or how it's the "lowest common denominator". Do you understand the function of a user interface? What exactly is wrong with it and why?

I find it very easy to use, no action is complicated and all of the information is easily accessible.

My complains about the UI are all over this thread. Anything I didn't say myself, Gorey did for me. Read the thread for that, if you haven't already.

Now, about the AI. There's this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=381956

And combat. Wich I haven't really tried myself yet (not much in the demo), but it's hard to believe it's going to be better than what's been described so far. It seems to be really hard to get a good AI for hexes and 1upt tactics.

 

[Gorey]

Civ4 needed two expansion packs and lots of patching to become great, and expecting civ5 to be better right from release is expecting wy too much.

And how can firaxis just completely ignore 5 years worth of improvements & additions .. only to release what is essentially a new vanilla incarnation? Which needs expansions to bring it up to snuff. Hell even basic features that Civ 4 had on day 1 are absent in Civ 5 (playing mp3's from custom music folder, placing signs on the map, a clcok etc. etc.)

But yes i agree.. expecting Civ5 to be great on release day in this day and age of patches/expansions might be a tall order. But i do remember the days of PC gaming where you bought a finished game (Late 80's, early 90's).

Not saying patches/expansions are bad... but it sure has made some people lazy when it comes to their initial releases (see Silent Hunter 5 - a broken unfinished game that modders have to fix due to no support).

Maybe im just getting old and jaded, and view everything with an air caution and skepticism. Or maybe im just passionate when it comes to civ. Let's face it, people complain because they love something. If they didn't love it, they wouldn't bother.

 

[CaptainBinky]

And how can firaxis just completely ignore 5 years worth of improvements & additions .. only to release what is essentially a new vanilla incarnation? Which needs expansions to bring it up to snuff. Hell even basic features that Civ 4 had on day 1 are absent in Civ 5 (playing mp3's from custom music folder, placing signs on the map, a clcok etc. etc.)

This is getting dangerously close to a circular argument here but some (most, many, who knows?) of us are really really happy with how it is. I'd play this, what you call "vanilla", version of Civ over any of the previous versions even taking into account all the mods and expansions available for them.

You might be in the majority with your views... but you also might be in the minority, possibly even a very small minority given the market size, so the problem we have is this phrasing that the game is objectively "wrong" or "simple" or whatever rather than just subjectively.

...and that's what mods are for - tailoring the game to suit your own personal preferences, something that couldn't possibly be done in-house given that if you actually got everyone to list their little loves and hates about the game, you'd end up with an enormous list where everything conflicts with something else. The solution is to build a firm foundation on which mods and expansions can get to work on and this is exactly what they've done - even going to the lengths of providing unprecidentated modding tools (from what I can tell at this point). This is brilliant, frankly.

 

[Gorey]

This is getting dangerously close to a circular argument

Yes it is, but im enjoying the civil discussion.

So lets move on shall we?

Production.

Seems like it takes forever. Is 1 hammer bonus to mine's the right approach? Or is it just that building hammer costs have skyrocketed? Seems like the game just doesn't want me to build anything. I was nearly 100 turns into my demo and i hardly built anything. I think i bought more than i built. I had already traversed a nice portion of the tech tree and had access to build all sorts of things, yet i was still struggling to build a monument or granary

/discuss

 

[CaptainBinky]

Hmmm... can't say that I generally have many problems with production. My problem is that I can't afford to build something rather than it taking too long, but then I never seem to start the game next to some convenient silver or gold