I was so inspired by your post (I agree with you opinions, for the most part) that I decided to grade the game feature by feature, to see how the game grades out for me (score for each feature is how much it adds to my enjoyment of the game):
-5 - I want to bang my head against the wall
0 - I could take it or leave it
5 - Fantastic addition
Total score of 0 or below, to me, means the game is not worth playing. Let's see how we do.
Part I - The Good
Hexes.
I like the hexes a lot. I like how they affect movement, I like how they affect warfare, I like how they affect city growth, I like how they affect the way the map looks. It all feels much more organic.
SCORE: 3 I like hexes, but I didn't particularly dislike squares.
City Growth
I really like how cities grow with culture now. One tile at a time is amazingly cool looking to see a city sprawling all over.
Agree completely.
Score: 5 for the concept.
Score: -2 for implementation. I should be able to direct city growth. If there is a source of gems two tiles away, my city should not be trying to acquire useless plains tiles first.
I also like being able to buy more squares, it's a nice added bit of planning. I do wish I understood how the prices were calculated better.
Score: 5 Agree completely.
New Combat/1 UPT
I really like the death of the SoD. I really like how ranged units actually have range. This is one area where Civ has gotten better with each iteration since 2 I think. I also like the red arrows for bombardment. Just a neat little thing.
I love the added tactical considerations of multiple terrain types and how to approach cities and developing choke points.
Now, some improvements could certainly be made, such as allowing units to stack as long as they have sufficient moves to get to an unoccupied tile. Basically, the 1UPT would be enforced before you could end your turn (as it is now when you generate a unit in a city with a unit already there, the End Turn button changes to Moved Stack Unit).
Score: 3 Agree completely.
Great general stacks with a land unit, but cannot while embarked? A civilian unit stacks with a combat unit on land, but an embarked unit (effectively civilian, since it cannot fight on water) does not stack with naval units? Feels like a good idea that could use improvement.
Cities Defending Themselves
I like cities fighting and defending themselves. I do think that cities need a buffing (I had a strength 23 city do a whopping 2 damage to a barbarian trireme, the picture showed the city firing missiles), and probably some offense-related buildings should be added to the game.
Agree completely.
Score: 5 For the idea
Score: -1 For the implementation
Natural Wonders.
I think the natural wonders are a nice little addition to the game. I like finding them and seeing the little pop up. I wish there were more (like say 20 types with only 5+map size modifier placed per game). It gets a little stale finding the same ones over and over. I would like to see these developed more, either with unique tile improvements you could make on them, or unique buildings designed to take advantage of them if they are in a city radius.
Score: 2 Natural wonders are kind of meh, especially since it seemed like they were promoting them heavily as a cool new feature.
Social Policies
I like the social policies. I like spending culture. In each game I find myself really thinking about which policy I want in terms of both immediate needs and long term goals. That to me is cool. Some of the choices have been fairly agonizing, because so many are useful. I also like that they are permanent, because it makes each decision matter that much more.
Score: 3
Here's where I disagree with you. Research benefits should stack, while social policy benefits should replace one another. There is no reason that I should run the same social policy in 4000BC and 2000AD.
Policy unlocking also needs to be reworked. Beelining to a certain tech is too powerful to unlock later policy trees. Later policies should have more pre-reqs. I can research education and acoustics before mining. Really?
Now, it might just be my playstyle, but so far Autocracy has struck me as being extremely useless. My last game was a Domination win on King setting, and I didn't have Freedom or Liberty trees at all, and I still thought Autocracy was a pile of crap.
Score: 0
Haven't played enough to evaluate all policies vis-a-vis one another, but in previous versions of Civ there were plenty of Civics/Governments that barely anyone used.
That's a matter of balance and tinkering.
Domination Victory Condition
I like how it's based on people controlling their capitals now. Much better than how 4 did it (I found the land mass requirement in 4 to be fairly prohibitive).
[...]
Score: 3
Good idea, but as you pointed out can be abused. You can build an army, wait for one civ to conquer the rest of the world, and when you take their capital you win?
Needs more thought to make it a little tougher.
Embarkation
Embarkation is great, because dealing with transports is a serious pain that really didn't add much to the game.
Score: 3
Good idea, but again, not fleshed out. My embarked tank can be destroyed by a single naval unit even if I have 4 destroyers around it, as long a there is a single path to that hex? Doesn't feel right.
Space Ship
I like how the spaceship is built and then transported to the capital to be assembled. It gives you a way to prevent someone from winning via the Space Race. However, there should be other ways of interfering, but that will be discussed later.
On the Space Race though I prefer older ways of doing it as a mission that had variable duration and success odds based on what you built. That gave you a way to try and pull a come from behind win by spending less time building if you didn't mind it being riskier.
Score: 2
Strategic Resources
Being required to actually have a supply to build units/buildings is great. I actually went to war over resources in one of my games because I wanted coal for factories. In 4 that wouldn't have been required if I had even one source. This is a huge improvement.
Score: 5 Agree completely.
I also really like how they are displayed across the top of the screen.
Score: 2 Agree completely.
Tech Trading
I'm glad this is gone. I actually turned it off a lot in 4 because I hate it. The research agreements in 5 seem pretty good.
Score: 3
Again, good idea, but I don't like random tech coming out of research agreements. The agreement should say something like "Let's research 'Physics' together". And if two civs cannot find a tech that they can research together, due to being in different eras, or missing prereqs, than no agreement should be possible.
Happiness Causing Golden Ages
This is cool. I like how it adds a reason to try and have large amounts of excess happiness.
[...]
Score: 3
Unhappiness Causing Penalties
This is cool too. -1 to -9 hurting growth, -10+ causing production/fighting problems. I like that it's more than just "no Golden Age for you!" Also decrementing the Golden Age counter is good.
Score: 3 For the idea
Score: -3 For the implementation
As discussed in multiple other threads, happiness is out of whack.
Notifications On The Right Hand Side
I like the UI here. I like the left-click to go to/right-click to ignore interface. I like how the "End Turn" button changes to "Choose Production", "Move Unit", etc. I also really like how you aren't forced to cycle through all your cities at the start of your turn. Doing it when I want during my turn makes me much happier.
Score: 3
Great Person Generation
I like how each type of Great Person is independently gone after. I like the additional control this allows in trying to get great people. Nothing aggravated me more than focusing a city on Great Engineer in 4, just to have that 5% Great Prophet chance hit.
Score: 3
Great General Being Intrinsically Useful
Moving the Great General around the battlefield to maximize his synergy bonus is neat. It adds a definite tactical feel to using the Great General. I almost think it might be better to make him a military unit though, to prevent him stacking. Yes I know he's defenseless, welcome to more planning on where to place your general and having to think about approaches to his position and how to protect him.
Score: 5
Love the new great general mechanics.
Advisors
Ahh, welcome back my minions. I really, really, really miss the animated advisors from 2. Man they were awesome. This is a step back in the right direction. One thing I will say though, is we should be able to dismiss messages from Advisor Council, I don't need to be told every time that So and So city has buildings useful to military units and we should build there.
Score: 0
No Sliders
At first, this one really caught me off balance. The first Civ with no sliders! But after playing with it for a while, I think it causes you to actually plan things out a little better, rather than being able to tweak a slider to adjust for stuff on the fly.
Score: 0
I am ambivalent about this particular feature, but in general, dislike the lack of fine grained control.
National Wonders Needing Something In Every City
I know some people are complaining that this limits your empire size or is too hard with larger empires. Personally, I like them, but I do think that maybe they should have benefits based on how many of the component items you have in your empire. Like, for example, the National College gives +50% to the city's research and can only be built if you have a library in every city. Why not make it +40% science +1% per city with a library in it (and have it get better if you add more cities later). Obviously not all national wonders would benefit (Hermitage would, Oxford University and National Epic wouldn't, etc) but oh well.
Score: 0
Spheres Of Influence
I like how making friends with city states on another continent causes the major powers on that continent to yell at you. Very Monroe Doctrine.
Score: 1
Gradations Of Diplomatic Replies
I like how when another leader comes to you with a disappointment or you turn down a request you can either say "Get Over It" or "I'm sorry this has caused a divide blah blah blah". More variations like this to try and make diplomacy more in depth are good.
Score: 0
Still nobody can figure out what it all means.
River Allowing Farms
This is a neat little tweak on the tile/improvement system. Sadly, it might be the only thing I like about the tiles/improvements.
Score: 0
AFAIK, you can build farms on non river squares.
AI Behavior, Oh The AI Behavior
I'm just talking about diplomacy and the messages you get for now.
Diplomacy as a whole gets a big fail.
Score: -5 For lack of transparency
Score: -5 For muddled UI
Score: -5 For pacts that mean nothing
Yes, I hate it that much.
Units next to another leader's units should not be treated the same as units near that leader's borders. It makes no sense to get yelled at for massing troops near another civ when it's really just a few of my troops near one of his in neutral territory.
Score: -5 For lack of transparancy
AI Behavior, Oh The AI Behavior, Part II
This time I'm talking about war handling.
[...]
Barbarians just sit there and take it. I'll use Archers to fire on Barbarian Archers, and then on their turn they do nothing. Why don't they fire back? Also, I'll use Crossbowmen to fire on a Barbarian Rifleman and the Rifleman just sits there and waits to get killed. Fight back already.
Score: -5
Agreed. Just yesterday, full health barb spearman just walked by my 1HP warrior who just destroyed his encampment.
[...]
The AI needs to learn how to mount an attack across the ocean.
Score: -1 Sea based AI were always week in civ. On the same difficulty level, I could win much easier on islands/archipelago in III/IV rather than pangaea. That's not to say it couldn't use improvement.
On Tile Yields, Resources And Improvements
Resources are too weak. In 4 I planned city sites around what resources I could see because the yields really mattered. In 5 they don't really.
Score: -3
Agreed.
I would love to see Natural Wonders get their own tile improvements or buildings.
Score: 0
Agreed, but there are more things to fix with higher priority.
There should be a way to claim resources outside your cultural boundaries. One thing I really, really miss from Civ3 was the ability to send a worker to a resource and build a colony on it, thereby claiming that resource for your civ. Other civs could come along and destroy your colony to build their own, and if a cultural boundary expanded to cover the resource an existing colony was destroyed and the resource belonged to the civ the just expanded to cover it. Bring this back!
Score: -1
A City built on a Resource should get the improved value for the tile.
Score: -1
There really needs to be a "Resource Overview" screen that shows all Luxury resources owned.
Score: 1 There is one, mouse over the happiness icon on the top bar.
I also think that city buildings giving different stuff based on resources needs to return, that was great in 4 as well. I think it's better the way Marble is implemented in 5, in that only the city working it gets the bonus rather than civ-wide bonuses. All resources having the potential to affect buildings would add another level of planning. Stuff like the Mint and Monastery are great examples. I want the "regular" resources to get some love though.
Score: -2
All good points.
Terrain heights don't seem to work as intuitively as I would expect. A Cannon has visibility 1. On a hill surrounded by 2 hexes of plains in all directions, it still only sees 1. I think hills should grant visibility +1 over flat (e.g. not Forest, Hills, Mountains) terrain.
The mouseover information for terrain it should show you movement costs and combat modifiers in addition to yield, title, and ownership. I have found the movement cost stuff in 5 to be really a pain in the butt to understand.
Score: -5
Yes, and it bothers me to no end. Especially lack of combat modifiers.
There needs to be a way to easily find resource tiles. The notifications for in your cultural boundaries are nice, but scrolling around the map to find others is a pain and NotFun. You should get notifications for every resource in explored territory.
Score: 0 Same resource map as civ IV. Zoom out and toggle it near the minimap.
On Cities and Buildings
In the list of buildings that grant Specialists, they should be organized by Specialist, not listed alphabetically. It's really obnoxious to scroll up and down to find the 3 Engineer slots.
Score: -1
There should be buildings to upgrade city offenses as well as defenses. I find the attack values for cities to be pathetic. The example I used before was a str 23 city doing 2 damage to a barbarian trireme with missiles. That boat should have been toast in 1 hit.
Score: -3
Agreed. If my unit can be promoted from Warrior to Mech Inf, why not attack power of a city?
Building maintenance seems awfully high. With all the stuff there is to do with gold, I think maintenance could stand to be lowered. Granted, it forces you to really watch what you build and in that respect it's a good thing. However, I think it is a little bit much right now.
[...]
Score: -2
Please, for the love of WhateverHighPowerYouBelieveInIfYouChooseToBelieveI nOne, let us sell buildings. Getting back 50% of the price you would have paid for it by buying it outright seems fair to me.
Score: -3 Sell, destroy, or upgrade. I like the idea of upgrading a building.
In the City View, when you go to build a building, every building available based on tech should be listed, not just ones you can currently build.
All units are listed, with unavailable ones grayed out (such as for missing a Strategic Resource). Buildings should be listed too.
Score: 0
I disagree. You don't want to scroll through a large amount of buildings during the early era when you can only build 2 or 3.
Research and Wealth building are woefully underpowered.
Score: -1
Agreed, but this seems easy to fix, unlike other features.
In the Civilopedia the entries for buildings should list what buildings they allow, not just which ones they require. In the same way that units show which units they upgrade to.
Score: -5
Civilopedia is a whole another topic. See the end of this post.
Puppet cities are ******** in what they do, I'm sorry but it's true. I've seen them build a garden without building money/science/production buildings. They build defensive structures when they are nowhere near the front lines. Too much focus on unit-related buildings.
Score: 0
This is more about AI in general. Although I don't think puppet cities should do optimal things. If you want optimal, annex them.
When you go to annex a city, the popup should tell you exactly what the happiness and culture hit is going to be (i.e. Are you sure? This will add 5 Unhappiness from the city, 3 Unhappiness from the population, and 300 Culture Points to the cost of your next Social Policy).
Score: -1
Great idea.
You should be able to pay a discounted amount to buy buildings/units currently in production (as you could in 2).
Score: -5
Another thing I miss
I miss the total buildings built listings (in Civ4: Info Screen [F9] -> Statistics). Also had total cities built/razed. Should added captured to the lsiting.
Score: 0
The Courthouse building is too much I think. I understand the desire to make annexing cost and all that jazz, but I think it's excessive. It costs 200 Hammers, making it the most expensive Classical Building (next are the Circus and Coliseum at 150 each). The maintenance is 5 gpt, again the most expensive (again, Circus and Coliseum are next at 3 gpt each). Those costs make it more expensive than any Medieval Era building, some are 200 Hammers, but none have 5 gpt as well. I do like that you can't buy it though.
Score: 0
Annoying but really a minor gripe
On Great People
First and foremost: the Tile Improvements [don't make the moderators take action]. I'm sorry, but I would never, ever use one. And that's just sad. I used Great Specialists in 4 (especially Great Merchant, mmmm food). If the Great Person Tile Improvement stacked with, rather than replaced, Worker Improvements, I would totally use them. They should not stack with each other though. This one change would take them from bad to good.
Score: -2
Great points.
I miss attaching Great Generals to units. I loved doing that in 4. And special promotions only available to units with a Great General attached were neat. Combat VI, Morale, etc. I like the synergy bonus they give to units in the area, that was a great addition, but I would love to see them bring back attaching with XP granted to the attached unit.
Score: 0
Plays into entire how to optimize new combat system.
On City States
There should be a lag between Ally status and a City State being willing to vote for you in the UN. I would actually say there should be an intervening election and you have to maintain Ally status continuously. I really hate it that I can see that there is 1 turn to the next UN Vote, so I can spend gold to get enough allies to win the vote. With the Aesthetics Social Policy in the Patronage branch giving minimum 20 Influence, ally status can easily be gained for 750 gold.
Score: -1
Doesn't bother me. What bothers me a lot, is how you can outbuy another civ. If a city state is already an ally of one civ, it should take a lot more money to make them an ally of another.
There should be more ways to gain Influence with City States.
Score: -3
Yes! That was the first thought in my head when I opened my first city-state screen. You can do their missions, but they won't even give you a mission unless you are their friend.
Each city state should have a list of tasks published that they desire that give variable levels of influence.
A Defensive Announcement should definitely give you influence with that City State, and rescinding it should cost you Influence, as should failing to declare war against someone that attacks them.
Score: -1
How is the rate of Influence loss calculated? It seems totally random and that is bad. This should be displayed with a base value (with explanation) and factors that go into the final result (like how Hammers are shown in the City Screen, and similar things).
Score: 0
Base rate is 1/t, and then there modifiers. I agree that it should be more transparent - problem for most parts of the game.
On Units
Support vs. Maintenance Costs are way out of whack.
Score: -1
Maintenance costs are too high. At one point I had 13 units (Musketman, Longswordsman x2, Cavalry, Cannon x2, Archer, Worker, Great Merchant, Great General, Great Engineer, Great Artist x2) and I was being charged 68 gpt. That's just over 5 gpt per unit, and most of those were civilians (I forget why I had all those people sitting around...).
Score: -1
Promotions such as Sentry (+1 Visibility) should work while the unit is embarked.
I miss the current units/total built/killed report (in Civ4: Info Screen [F9] -> Statistics).
You should be able to click on an enemy units to see information about it just like your own units.
Score: 0
Agreed, but these are relatively minor.
The unit display and mouseover in 4 was far, far superior to 5. In 5 you can only see 9 icons worth of information before the picture gets in the way (and one of those is taken up by the Embark icon post-Optics). The mouseover should give you comprehensive stats (like in Civ4, where if you had City Raider I, City Raider II, and City Raider III the mouseover said: City Attack +75%, and you could still mouseover the individual promotion icon for details on just that promotion). The XP and HP displays in 4 were better, the level is displayed (you have to mouseover the XP bar in 5 to get the unit's level). Also, ranges (like Artillery having Range 3) are not displayed.
Score: -3
On Other In-Game Topics, Such As The Map
Bring back Map Trading.
Score: 1
Nah, it's fine.
There should be a way to renew expiring agreements. It is extraordinarily disruptive to be exploring terrain to have Open Borders end on you with nothing you can do about it. The game could have you go into the diplomacy screen with the leader you have the agreement with, with that agreement already on the table, so you can reoffer it. If it's renewed you get a notification "An agreement where you provided Open Borders to Bismark has been renewed."
Score: -3
This is a big step back.
There should be a "Turns to next Golden Age" in the mouseover (based on current ) just like there is in the Social Policy culture mouseover.
This is not possible since happiness fluctuates turn to turn unlike culture (which only grows)
Bring back War Weariness. It's another factor in Happiness, City Building, Waging War. It should also be dynamic with progress of the war: Kill a unit, -.5 WW, lose a unit +.5, capture a city -1 WW, etc. You could (should) even have it relate to Social Policies. Autocracy is better for war than Freedom, etc.
Score: 1
It's fine rolled into happiness
The Advisors need to be a little smarter.
Score: -1
Advisors are generally not helpful so far. I turned them off after half a game.
The map should have a "Show City Radius" button, so you can easily see the 3-hex radius around cities, especially when selecting a Settler (Civ4 behaves this way). This makes city placement planning so much easier.
Agreed. Not enough to bother me though.
Ancient Ruins should only promote a unit to your current era plus one, to a maximum of Medieval Era.
[...]
Score: -1
Remove promotions altogether and give exp instead. As mentioned, early promotions are way too powerful (a single promotion is a game changer early.)
On Setting Up And The Aftermath
In the Advanced Setup options, things like World Age, Rainfall, and Sea Level should have mouseover help as to what each setting will do. This was in previous versions, I don't understand why it's gone now.
It would be nice if the Advanced Setup remembered what I did last game and plugged those values in as the defaults. I enjoy playing games where I tweak just one or two things from the last time I played, just to see what happens differently.
The Hall of Fame should note things like One City Challenge.
I miss the turn-by-turn replays. It was fun to watch a fast-speed replay of the game and see how everyone grew and shrunk during the game, things you couldn't see while playing.
I will now add a few points not mentioned here.
In general, the new interface is awful. Not 'worse than civ IV' which it certainly is, but just awful in and of itself. I've worked with user interface professionals, and ciV violates a lot of basic precepts.
Score: -5
Civilopedia is unusable. I was going to write more, but I think that sums it up.
Score: -5
Inability to stack or move through different units. It is now possible to block someone entirely in neutral territory.
I don't think it should be possible.
Score: -2
Really don't like the removal of 'distance from capital' penalty. Minimap now looks like a teenagers face, with different color zits all over the place, instead of a contiguous country.
If a civ settles a tile half a map away to take advantage of resources, there should be some logistic penalty, be it food, slower production, or corruption.
Score: -3
Now for some new features that I like.
2 base movement, slowed to one by various terrain features.
Score: 2
I don't think they went far enough. Since they reduced roads due to road maintenance, maybe base movement should be 3 in friendly territory in open space.
It takes too long to go anywhere if you play on large or bigger map.
I like how each civ trait has an individual name, rather than X is financial, organized. A very minor point, but I like it.
Score: 1
New cultural win condition
Score: 5
Total: -16
I will play it a few times and go back to civ IV, civ IV + mods and Starcraft II. Hopefully patches/expansions will make this game realize its potential.
