Plan of patches?

[Johan de Witt]

Indeed. The problem is when they change a long franchite of games that pleased you, to please the other type of players.

I had that with the Total War games. I absolutely loved Shogun: Total War 1 and Medieval: Total War 1 but I hated all the other games in the series.

 

[spider1]

The sad part is the devs don't even admit there's anything wrong. It's still a good game, but the "diplomacy" is just a joke.

The civs should have a diplomacy "flavor" and stick with it unless provoked to do otherwise. In my current game my closet neighbor was the Mongals, and they DOW'd me without warning. I would expect that from Khan, but NOT from Guandi. That way if wanted war, you could select the warring civs as your rivals and if you wanted peace select the more peaceful ones.

To me any game of Civilazation should be highly customizable from the start up menu, or if you like suprises go with all the defaults.

 

[Becephalus]

kaltorak- That just isn't true. You are mis-characterizing the diplomacy, either because you don't understand it, or you choose to disregard it and then are confused why everyone hates you.

I just played a game as the Ottomans where:
I first built 5 cities, got DoW from Egypt for being weak militarily.
Built up and fought him off, but couldn't advance with no iron so I peaced out.
I built tons of wonders, most people were still firends with me.
Took out a CS, most people still friends.
Germany DoW my friend, so I kill Germany.
Now people are getting worried about me, Siam Dow.
I take out Siam and two CS.

So at this point I have taken out 2 civs and 3 CS and am double the size of most of the players. I still have two relatively reliable friends (on another continent).

 

[Misterboy]

I always saw Civ as a "build an empire that will last through the centuries" kind of game, not just war. I value diplomacy as well (though I am a little warmonger, I tend to wage wars on AIs that block my expansion). I've read some posts here about the AI being oriented to win and thus making backstabbing and other sneaky tactics the norm, making up ridiculous excuses on the way. I don't like that... I would admire having AIs on somewhat good terms with each other, gang up against a leading civ, but I wouldn't like having to constantly fear that getting ahead would somehow trigger a World War just because the AIs won't come to terms with the fact that they had their chance and they missed it... They ought to assess how far away I am from victory, if I still have some way to go carefully plan alliances that would try to stop me from getting there but still, close friends shouldn't just backstab me like that... Because if they do there is no point really playing nice, I would just try to steamroll everyone from the start and never care for anything other than the domination/conquest victory...
And the devs have gotten it wrong if they think that we players play to win... I just play to enjoy myself, winning is just a bonus, a confirmation that all those plans and schemes and strategies of mine were indeed effective. I enjoy far more a tied game where I have to think my every next move than a game were I press enter just to get it over with.

As I've stated in other threads; my experience of Civ 5 seems to be very different from certain, very vocal, posters. I play like you... I war when I'm up against constraints, but I don't consider myself a warmonger at all. I have seen a backstab or two, but it's fairly rare (and you can almost always tell when it's coming... because you'd do it if you were in that AI's position). I almost always have friends throughout the entire game.

The Diplo, by and large, makes sense. There are some weird behaviors, but I think many posters blow it way out of proportion, and tend to be too accustomed to Civ 4's ability to completely manipulate the AI.

And the tactical AI is very good. They've made vast improvements. It's not perfect, but it blows the Civ 4 AI out of the water... because it has too. Civ 5 is far more complicated tactically.