Klaus_von_Kroft
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2006
- Messages
- 3
Going straight to the matter at hand:
Things I Like
-Hexes: Fantastic implementation. It makes the world look more realistic and everything fits much better under this design.
-Single Unit per Tile: Wonderful. Gone are the days of horrible endless stacks of doom that only got even more horrible the further you progressed. Now you have to factor room and mobility into your playstyle; flanking and surrounding now is far more important.
-Strategic/Luxury Resources: Semi-depletable resources are an excellent idea, which makes them far more strategic than before. It is not enough just to build a city close to iron; if you want to conquer the world, then you will need to get that mine over there, and another one over there... and maybe capture that city while pillaging and plundering too. I also like the new "Luxury Resource Missions" implemented. Sometimes they can be pretty hard to accomplish, but it is good to have minor goals to strive to within the Great Game.
-Graphics: They look nice and polished. A bit too colourful at times perhaps, but then again Civ IV always looked rather dull palette-wise.
-New Voiceovers: As much as I respect Leonard Nimoy, his voiceovers were rather bad. The new voiceovers as quite enjoyable, particularly since now there is stress! ("The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT mineral rights!").
-Ranged Combat: While I keep shaking an angry fist at the Heavens every time I accidentally put a unit too close to an enemy city and they get bombarded into nothingness, the addition of ranged combat is one of the things I'm in love with. There is a certain elegance when your destroyer lives up to its name and obliterates everything on the coast with a series of cannonnades.
-Road Maintenance: It may be a small detail, but I enjoy this kind of things that force you to pay attention to the stuff you do. No more spamming the entire territory with roads.
-Golden Age Counter: I like the new system, making Golden Ages more of a subsystem on their own rather than a subsystem within a subsystem. Now there is a good reason to keep spoiling your people beyond the "We Love the King!" thing.
-Animated Leaders: Awesome! It's Civ I all over again, but one hundred times better. Hearing them talk in their native languages is much welcomed (and with much better accents than Civ IV's units. I always cringed at the Spaniard units yelling "Digenos que hay que hacer").
Things I Don't Like
-UI Functionality: Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the UI visually. But I find it quite lacking in terms of functionality. Everything seems to be buried under menus and I feel like I'm always missing something. Civ IV was sometimes a bit too disorganized, but everything was within arm's reach.
-Social Policies: Interesting in concept, but ultimately seems a rather simplistic version of Civics. There is still some lingering sense of the "Interesting Choices" principle, but it now seems more like a constantly upgrading set of talents than a social engineering tool where one had to carefully balance needs, bonuses and woes.
-No Religion: While I do understand the reasoning behind the removal (it made diplomacy too binary), I don't understand why instead of taking it out they didn't rework it. I mean, this is a game about human civilization, and there are very few things I can think about have had a bigger impact on history as a whole than religions. With all the good new ideas poured into Civ 5, I feel disappointed that they couldn't do more with religions and removed it completely. At least for me, they added a huge load of flavour to Civ IV, even if they made diplomacy rather cartoonish.
-No Espionage: I know a lot of people disliked it, but personally I find it a fundamental part of the Civ experience. I used it quite often, particularly when going for a small, diplomacy-focused nation. Its removal makes me feel the game is either about conquering people or befriending them, without the in-between gray area that Espionage allowed. Rather than removing it entirely, maybe they could have just given the option to disable it. I remember how poor Espionage was at the beggining of Civ IV and how they remade it later; perhaps this will be the case as well.
-Corporations: Just like Religions, Corporations were one of the things that gave most flavour for the game, particularly in a stage were different civilizations start to blend into very similar things without the deep cultural differentiation you see in the early game. I haven't read why they removed them, other than the fact they were based on the same subsystem as Religions, so I'm not sure what are the reasons, but I'm displeased seeing them gone.
-Oversimplification of Some Game Aspects: While I always enjoy a decrease in unnecessary complexity, I don't enjoy when it means I get to have less control on the details. While the removal of the sliders and health, to name a couple, do add to better accessibility and less micromanagement, I feel I'm loosing more than I'm winning with changes like that.
Conclusion
While it is still early to give a definitive conclusion, my impression right now is mixed. I really, really like most of the additions, but at the same time I really, really dislike most of the removals. I understand that a sequel is not an expansion, but you make sequels for one of two reasons: Either the previous game was so good that a new version is called for, or the previous game was so bad that a new version is needed. The Civ series are the former, and Civ IV in particular was very innovative in a lot of minor but significant ways; unlike Civ III, which was more of a deep-level revolution of the game's fundamental mechanics, IV was about adding more stuff to make the game better in every aspect. I feel that Civ V has a lot of what III did, but little of what IV did.
I will keep playing Civ V, but I can't avoid missing way too much stuff, so probably Civ IV will still be my main empire-building game. I'm mostly putting my bets in the modding community and expansions for long-term replayability, but otherwise I don't see my attention being kept by Civ V too long after the honeymoon is over.
Keep in mind this is a personal opinion; if you read my comments, you will notice it is mostly about what I like and dislike. I am well aware that a lot of people disliked Religions and Espionage, prefer SP over Civics, never cared for Corporations or prefer a less micromanaged game. To those people, Civ V will be quite appealing, since the new stuff is great (unless, of course, said person also dislikes hexes, depletable resources and single units).
As a final complaint: Julius Caesar acts like a wet noodle! Having spent my childhood reading Asterix, I would have expected a much more lordly and respectable tone.
Things I Like
-Hexes: Fantastic implementation. It makes the world look more realistic and everything fits much better under this design.
-Single Unit per Tile: Wonderful. Gone are the days of horrible endless stacks of doom that only got even more horrible the further you progressed. Now you have to factor room and mobility into your playstyle; flanking and surrounding now is far more important.
-Strategic/Luxury Resources: Semi-depletable resources are an excellent idea, which makes them far more strategic than before. It is not enough just to build a city close to iron; if you want to conquer the world, then you will need to get that mine over there, and another one over there... and maybe capture that city while pillaging and plundering too. I also like the new "Luxury Resource Missions" implemented. Sometimes they can be pretty hard to accomplish, but it is good to have minor goals to strive to within the Great Game.
-Graphics: They look nice and polished. A bit too colourful at times perhaps, but then again Civ IV always looked rather dull palette-wise.
-New Voiceovers: As much as I respect Leonard Nimoy, his voiceovers were rather bad. The new voiceovers as quite enjoyable, particularly since now there is stress! ("The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT mineral rights!").
-Ranged Combat: While I keep shaking an angry fist at the Heavens every time I accidentally put a unit too close to an enemy city and they get bombarded into nothingness, the addition of ranged combat is one of the things I'm in love with. There is a certain elegance when your destroyer lives up to its name and obliterates everything on the coast with a series of cannonnades.
-Road Maintenance: It may be a small detail, but I enjoy this kind of things that force you to pay attention to the stuff you do. No more spamming the entire territory with roads.
-Golden Age Counter: I like the new system, making Golden Ages more of a subsystem on their own rather than a subsystem within a subsystem. Now there is a good reason to keep spoiling your people beyond the "We Love the King!" thing.
-Animated Leaders: Awesome! It's Civ I all over again, but one hundred times better. Hearing them talk in their native languages is much welcomed (and with much better accents than Civ IV's units. I always cringed at the Spaniard units yelling "Digenos que hay que hacer").
Things I Don't Like
-UI Functionality: Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the UI visually. But I find it quite lacking in terms of functionality. Everything seems to be buried under menus and I feel like I'm always missing something. Civ IV was sometimes a bit too disorganized, but everything was within arm's reach.
-Social Policies: Interesting in concept, but ultimately seems a rather simplistic version of Civics. There is still some lingering sense of the "Interesting Choices" principle, but it now seems more like a constantly upgrading set of talents than a social engineering tool where one had to carefully balance needs, bonuses and woes.
-No Religion: While I do understand the reasoning behind the removal (it made diplomacy too binary), I don't understand why instead of taking it out they didn't rework it. I mean, this is a game about human civilization, and there are very few things I can think about have had a bigger impact on history as a whole than religions. With all the good new ideas poured into Civ 5, I feel disappointed that they couldn't do more with religions and removed it completely. At least for me, they added a huge load of flavour to Civ IV, even if they made diplomacy rather cartoonish.
-No Espionage: I know a lot of people disliked it, but personally I find it a fundamental part of the Civ experience. I used it quite often, particularly when going for a small, diplomacy-focused nation. Its removal makes me feel the game is either about conquering people or befriending them, without the in-between gray area that Espionage allowed. Rather than removing it entirely, maybe they could have just given the option to disable it. I remember how poor Espionage was at the beggining of Civ IV and how they remade it later; perhaps this will be the case as well.
-Corporations: Just like Religions, Corporations were one of the things that gave most flavour for the game, particularly in a stage were different civilizations start to blend into very similar things without the deep cultural differentiation you see in the early game. I haven't read why they removed them, other than the fact they were based on the same subsystem as Religions, so I'm not sure what are the reasons, but I'm displeased seeing them gone.
-Oversimplification of Some Game Aspects: While I always enjoy a decrease in unnecessary complexity, I don't enjoy when it means I get to have less control on the details. While the removal of the sliders and health, to name a couple, do add to better accessibility and less micromanagement, I feel I'm loosing more than I'm winning with changes like that.
Conclusion
While it is still early to give a definitive conclusion, my impression right now is mixed. I really, really like most of the additions, but at the same time I really, really dislike most of the removals. I understand that a sequel is not an expansion, but you make sequels for one of two reasons: Either the previous game was so good that a new version is called for, or the previous game was so bad that a new version is needed. The Civ series are the former, and Civ IV in particular was very innovative in a lot of minor but significant ways; unlike Civ III, which was more of a deep-level revolution of the game's fundamental mechanics, IV was about adding more stuff to make the game better in every aspect. I feel that Civ V has a lot of what III did, but little of what IV did.
I will keep playing Civ V, but I can't avoid missing way too much stuff, so probably Civ IV will still be my main empire-building game. I'm mostly putting my bets in the modding community and expansions for long-term replayability, but otherwise I don't see my attention being kept by Civ V too long after the honeymoon is over.
Keep in mind this is a personal opinion; if you read my comments, you will notice it is mostly about what I like and dislike. I am well aware that a lot of people disliked Religions and Espionage, prefer SP over Civics, never cared for Corporations or prefer a less micromanaged game. To those people, Civ V will be quite appealing, since the new stuff is great (unless, of course, said person also dislikes hexes, depletable resources and single units).
As a final complaint: Julius Caesar acts like a wet noodle! Having spent my childhood reading Asterix, I would have expected a much more lordly and respectable tone.
