My Thoughts On Civ5: - The Good and Not so Good (LONG)

[Thormodr]

It's like the bonus's (cows, wheat etc) where only added in for make the map less boring. They serve no other purpose really.

I feel the same way. It's a big disappointment.

 

[Archwizard]

You have a lot of good points here. I'm finding that civ 5 is definitely a fun game. If they could solve the many polishing issues then it could be a great game.

In the end I agree. I like the underpinnings of the game. It should serve as a great base upon which to build. After all, Civ4 was a good game, Civ4: Warlords kind of sucked, and the Civ4: Beyond the Sword rocked all our socks.

Maybe for Civ5 we won't have to go through the Warlords phase....

 

[Egnarts]

I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned this yet...

How about the fact that you can't use any tile improvement you want on a tile with resources? If I want to farm the cows instead of herd them I should be able to, same goes for luxury resources, if I have 10 cotton and I rather get an extra gold from one tile by building a circus I should be able to.

Btw, I have used the tile improvements from great people on two occasions, both were going for cultural victory, that tile would give my cities about 20-30 culture/turn. But other then that, I agree.

 

[Archwizard]

Good writeup. I'll just respond to a few points.

Thanks! And I'll do the same.

We still have some work to do to understand diplomacy. Factors may include: your military strength, your happiness, your culture, how close your borders are, your actions regarding city-states, etc. I wish they would just make the modifiers transparent as in civ 4. The hidden modifiers don't make the game more fun.

I agree, they hide too much. I wish they would tell me WHY another civ likes/hates me. I'm fine with no numbers, but if I don't know why they're upset, how can I fix it?

I've seen this too. I think it happens when the barbarian is in an encampment? The barb AI needs to be programmed that camping its camp isn't always the best move.

Yes that is true. I just started an Emperor game where a barbarian warrior came off the encampment to kill a wounded warrior of mine. However, I also had an archer run into a camp with an archer on it, and he just sad there and died a pincushion's death without firing back. No sense at all.

At least since they made this change the UI shouldn't bother calling terrain things like "Grassland, Hill" and just call them "Hill".

That's how it was in 2. I really liked it when they made hills more interesting by basically making "hills" a modifier for the underlying terrain (I think that was new to 4, can't remember hills in 3 well enough). They did the same to river, jungle, forests, etc. Everything modified the underlying tundra/desert/plains/grassland terrain type. It made sense and worked well.

I really liked the improvement system in civ 4. Cottages, workshops, etc. That's something I'd love to see in an expansion (or just a mod).

I agree. Windmills, watermills, workshops, etc. And the best thing was every single tile improvement was modified at some point by techs and civics. This added a whole additional level of planning. Which improvements did you want for which stage of the game? Did you change over to watermills after electricity because you got +1 coin? Did you choose the civic State Property because those watermills you built will get +1 food? You get the idea.

Just letting us destroy the buildings without giving us gold would be a welcome feature. If they do a gold return it needs to be balanced with building wealth (which probably has a too low exchange rate at the moment).

Maybe, re: destroying them. And I talked about the building wealth thing, it is woefully underpowered.

I can't understand why "Unit Supply" is even in the game when there is unit maintenance. It just seems to take up some useless screen space on the Military Overview window. Unless it's somehow a factor in the unit maintenance costs??

Who knows re: factor, they don't tell us how maintenance is calculated. And supply I think could work, especially if units needed to be supplied based on era. Basically Ancient would be 1, Classical 2, Medieval 3, etc. It'd be nice to have to think about it. Things that you don't have to think about at all are a waste of space.

The game is actually saving .Civ5Replay files in Replays folder. The file size scales with map size and turn count. So maybe this info is there, they just didn't get around to making the game use this.

Well that's good to know. Hopefully we'll see this in the future.

Keep the discussion coming, I'd like to hope people that have the ear of people on the dev team will notice us in here.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I disagree on:

1. Map trading. The game focuses very much on exploration - natural wonders, gifts from city-states. Consider open borders as exploration-focused alternative of map trading (in the same way as research agreement replaces tech trading). I'm really fine with it and I used it this way.

2. On GP buildings.
- Playing Babylon after you have free Great Scientist with Writing, you'll gain much more if you settle him instead of discovering Philosophy.
- The same is true of you have early Great Merchant.
- For Great Artists it's almost always the best usage.
- For Great Engineers that's a preferred usage if you don't have wonders to build.
- For Great General it could be useful sometimes depending on strategy.

3. Building maintenance. I think it's done intentionally and it works very well for city specialization.

4. Amount of gold from wealth. If it would be 40% or so, it would become the major source of gold, since it's too easy to do. With 10% you need to be very bad with money to use it. The same for selling buildings (though I'd enable destroying building without any money return). I think "No easy way" is a good motto for many Civ 5 features.

5. War weariness. I see no need in Civ 5 for it.

Agree:

1. Attaching GG to units would be good, but only to move them together.

2. Tile yelds. I understand what currently the game is balanced for low output, so there's no space for variety, but I think nothing prevents the game from increasing building and maintenance costs for rebalancing.

3. Interface needs a lot of work.

4. Formulas are too opaque.

 

[BjoernLars]

You make a lot of good points. Most of these would definitely polish up the game!

 

[Laurwin]

I agree that something definitely feels wrong with the game at the moment.

Currently playing as China, warred a little bit, teched and recovered, eventually I conquered myself a rather sizable empire and went on to play to modern era.

Tile yields massively ********, together with the golden age effect. FARMED HILLS shouldn't in my humble opinion be better tiles than mines or such. Lack of terrain bonus on top of the tile improvement kind sucks as well, especially when dealing with the land food resources, which truly suck currently. It's kind of demoralizing to find out that with all your future tech, robotics and nanotechnology you still make the same 3 hammers (?) from a hill mine that you made during the classical era.

In Civ4 you had state property workshops, guilds and caste society, railroads which increased hammers. I guess GEs can build those but why would you do that when you can just rush build something much more valuable like a wonder, not to mention GEs are harder to get anyway

You should get more hammers out of improvements perhaps depending on tech, maybe even depending on the resource output of a strategic resource (e.g. a 2 iron mine provides 2 extra hammers, but an 8 aluminium mine provides 8 extra hammers, or something like that)

it would make sense from the real life standpoint because mineral wealth of mines varies, some areas are highly rich in a certain minerals, and those mines would be expanded to provide more of the said resource. This type of feature existed in BtS in the form of corporations, resources mattered somewhat because the more you had iron, the more you got hammers essentially.

Maintenance costs are quite high in my game as well, even with the reduced maintanence from social policies,

 

[fed1943]

Very good post.
I agree.
This game is a great idea, still somewhat poorly implemented.

 

[Nutteria]

Few things that IMO are glaring problems past the AI and the circus tents we call markets or the fluid semi-static thing we call rivers/roads/railroads(srsly are their terrain designers that bad at overlooking this ) :

1) Unit maintenance and supply lines.IMO here is the big thing firaxis missed out.I whould love to see small maintenance to units that grades over eras(something we currently have but with abysmall costs) but that maintenance should rise the further you exapnd your armies off your cultural border.OFC sertain wanders/buildings/autocracy(srsly the most undertuned civic) should help you in that regard.Also there is a need for resource readgustment - cmon tribushets require Iron but knights/pikes dont?! also modern armor not requiering oil and iron is just stupid.

2) Tile improvements and special tiles : Happyness tiles must be nerfed - +5 is just too much(maybe a civic can make that but not at basic level).At the same time tiles with food(ie sheep/cow/fish/etc) should grant not extra production but culture and/or science.Sound strange at first glance but if you think about it a starving civilization whould strive to fullfill its basic demands like FOOD in order to think about art/science/direct GP generation bonus.THis change imo will make for faar better tactical play, city placement, victory presuits - the list of sweet stuff is long.

3) Selling/destroying buildings is a tricky one in my mind.It is unintuitive and against history for the most part you have to agree so what I think is a good solution is a building upgrade-ing.Example here is that we have ancienct theater that evolves to colliseum to oval theater(example) to stadium.The overall weight of the maintenance will increase by not AS MUCH as currently we see while the + happynes will stack.In the end you can have still one building that provides + 10 happyness and costs 7 maintentance opposed to 4 buildings that provide 10 extra happyness for 12 gpt.As for destroying/selling I have a different idea - why not lending it of sorts.
So you sell it for X amount of gold to the city and pay less GPT but also getting less value for it with some interesting spinoff in the socialism policy.

4) THe AI behaviour - IMO the biggest problem with the AI is that it persues victory.Sounds strange? - let me elaborate a bit.
In my mind all the ultra strange AI decisions like sudden war or peace giving citys when pressed or making strange demands relates directly to the fact that the AI wants to achieve victory.But at some point when it calculates that it can not achieve this via method x(example domination) it drasitcly changes pace persuing say cultural victory and in that transition it becomes easy pickings for AIs and players alike.IMO AIs should NOT play to win after sertain sitations are met but try to aid in every way possible the AIs that still have a shot at a win against the player without waving the white flag.This imo can greatly imrpove the AI vs player exp. and in the long term esp on the higher difficulties.OFC if you are buddy-buddy with Ghandy for 1k years he should help you in every way(trading resources donating money or army constant research agreements etc etc) to win against your opponents.

Hope you can discuss some of my views that build above the OP report.

Cheers.

 

[Diamondeye]

First of all; glad to see another who really seems to like the game off the bat. I agree with many of your points (and I actually treated the Great General as a seperate military unit the first times I used him until I found out I could stack him

That is certainly part of it, but there are hexes in the same "ring" that cost 50, while others cost 100 and I have no idea why. And thanks!

I *think* That rough terrain costs double. Proximity to city is a factor (it seems like more than two spaces away means huge cost; 1-3-6 multiplier or something of that sort), as is amount of tiles already bought (you will notice other prices increasing when you buy a tile). I'm not sure if tiles taken by culture adds to this, I am guessing not.

 

[Diamondeye]

Finally someone who has reasonable critique instead of the usual !

I agree with most of what you're saying, I might point out what I don't agree with, later.

 

[War Chicken]

I agree to most of your points in both posts. Civ5 is a great game that has some big startup problems - I hope many of them will be taken care of with patches soon.

One thing that particularly bugs me is missing in your list, tho.
While previous instances of Civ the units close to each other moved after one another, in this game the game activates a unit across half the map even there are three other units close by waiting for orders, regularly. On my lame ass PC this causes the game to lag because the game has to redraw all the terrain. Even without this the unnecessary scrolling is... well unnecessary.

It's even more annoying if your unit just got a new level. But the UI scrolls away to the next unit. So you click the promotion-available button, to make it scroll back, give the promotion, and then hit the next unit button. Why not keeping a unit active that made a level waiting for the promotion to be given. If the player doesn't want to give that promotion yet, he can still click "Unit needs orders" to choose the next one.

I really hope to see this changed in a future patch.

 

[Moss]

Moderator Action: I merged both of your threads, it's probably best for everyone that your full review is in one place so people don't have to go to two different threads to read it.

 

[Zogar]

I was kinda skeptical at the long list of the good things of civ 5 compared to 4, especially since I tend to say the game is crap, but I actually agree with most of them. That made me understand why i'm still playing the game despite all its problems.

- 1 upt : starts from a good idea, is a complete mess and destroyer of the game once you have 10+ units. Would be better to make killing stacks easier than limit to 1 upt.

- Social policies : I don't really think autocracy is crap. I think I would need it to win in immortal by conquest (if i don't get crazy at the 1upt and ditch the game). It would have been helpful in my emperor win too, but I wanted cultural victory too and I had started the opposite policy. But they need tuning, true.

- Conquest Victory condition : The new way is not good, you can rush the victory too easily against AI. Even two cities does not seem enough to me. But every city is boring too, especially if they are not in the same island.

- Happiness : not overly fond of the new system, hampers expansion too much.

- Advisers : I didn't use them at all...

 

[Archwizard]

I disagree on:

1. Map trading. The game focuses very much on exploration - natural wonders, gifts from city-states. Consider open borders as exploration-focused alternative of map trading (in the same way as research agreement replaces tech trading). I'm really fine with it and I used it this way.

Yes, and I've used them this way too. It's just a little aggravating to try and explore a large continent controlled by other players. CS would not give you any for finding them via map trading. I don't know about the natural wonders, seems harsh to lose out on .... On the whole though, map trading is a minor concern on the list.

2. On GP buildings.
- Playing Babylon after you have free Great Scientist with Writing, you'll gain much more if you settle him instead of discovering Philosophy.
- The same is true of you have early Great Merchant.
- For Great Artists it's almost always the best usage.
- For Great Engineers that's a preferred usage if you don't have wonders to build.
- For Great General it could be useful sometimes depending on strategy.

-Well, I only got the regular edition, so I don't have Babylon.
-Great Merchants I can almost see, except that the trade mission is worth so much gold (basically 850-1100, when you consider the cost of the influence they get you). When you think about the small difference between the trading post and the GM building (especially if you are going with Rationalism, you lose out on +1), I just can't see using it as a tile improvement instead of the trade mission.
-GA I use for either culture bombing resources I cannot otherwise get at (very handy for stuff in the middle of a dang desert) or to keep Golden Ages alive.
-I just hold onto Great Engineers to rush a wonder. Getting 800-1000 hammers all at once it almost certainly worth more than the extra 2-4 per turn over a mine.
-Absolutely, the Great General without a doubt has the best building, if the map allows for it. But the synergy bonus to fighting is almost always better, the citadel doesn't move with you.

3. Building maintenance. I think it's done intentionally and it works very well for city specialization.

I think on this one we may just have to disagree.

4. Amount of gold from wealth. If it would be 40% or so, it would become the major source of gold, since it's too easy to do. With 10% you need to be very bad with money to use it. The same for selling buildings (though I'd enable destroying building without any money return). I think "No easy way" is a good motto for many Civ 5 features.

Sure, 40% might be too high, I'm just throwing out numbers. And I just don't like features that are essentially useless. And again, I prefer things that are modified by game choices, like having +20% base which you can use wonders/social policies/whatever to make better. That way if you want to actually use wealth building you have to make choices (which presumably force you to lose out on other things) to do it.

5. War weariness. I see no need in Civ 5 for it.

I strongly disagree here. There is almost nothing to discourage war right now. Fighting seems to be way more prevalent in 5 than in previous ones. Maybe if diplomacy felt like it mattered more? But even then, I liked war weariness as a way to limit the length of wars, or to force decisions on how to manage it to keep a war going.

 

[Archwizard]

Finally someone who has reasonable critique instead of the usual !

I agree with most of what you're saying, I might point out what I don't agree with, later.

I look forward to it. It is always my hope that reasonable discussions help people explore the game and help the devs refine it with patches, or give them ideas for expansions. Or help the mod community build stuff.

 

[Archwizard]

I agree to most of your points in both posts. Civ5 is a great game that has some big startup problems - I hope many of them will be taken care of with patches soon.

One thing that particularly bugs me is missing in your list, tho.
While previous instances of Civ the units close to each other moved after one another, in this game the game activates a unit across half the map even there are three other units close by waiting for orders, regularly. On my lame ass PC this causes the game to lag because the game has to redraw all the terrain. Even without this the unnecessary scrolling is... well unnecessary.

It's even more annoying if your unit just got a new level. But the UI scrolls away to the next unit. So you click the promotion-available button, to make it scroll back, give the promotion, and then hit the next unit button. Why not keeping a unit active that made a level waiting for the promotion to be given. If the player doesn't want to give that promotion yet, he can still click "Unit needs orders" to choose the next one.

I really hope to see this changed in a future patch.

This is a very good point. I agree that it's pretty disruptive the way it is.

 

[sesaMe]

the positive points seem to be very carefully thought out and made me realise that i like many elements of civ5. some of the negative points seem badly articulated. you really miss war weiriness? Oo

 

[Archwizard]

the positive points seem to be very carefully thought out and made me realise that i like many elements of civ5. some of the negative points seem badly articulated. you really miss war weiriness? Oo

How are they badly articulated? I thought I was fairly clear about why I miss war weariness.

 

[SkepticalSinner]

Great post!!

I think you summed up my feelings almost exactly.