I think I will go back to Civ V, but not for a good long while.
On the positive note I like the hexagon maps, single military unit/tile, ranged warfare, city culture expansion, and social policytree. There is much potential here.
On the bad side,
1) Diplomacy is boring and one dimensional. 95% of the time it's staying away from close borders, at which time the best of friends will attack.
2) Leader are basically the same with little difference. Might as well have fictional leaders, me against the red team, blue team etc...
3) The Ai stinks at offensive and defensive warfare. Building anything that helps military like a barracks is a waste.
4) The tech tree is mind-numbing boring.
5) City States at first were interesting but ended up dull and irrelevant (except they fought better than the AI).
6) Happiness is the most stupidly simplified thing in the game. Each Happy resource (and there a lot) give 5 happy faces spread empire wise. Why these cannot be split into something more like military resources (3 here, 2 there, etc) and alter the happiness aspect is beyond me. Why building do not work this also is beyond me (the Monestary and Mint are the only interesting buildings).
7) Golden Ages are good and bad. I like the numerous ways to get them and the advantages, but frankly it's way too easy to abuse them and keep the game in a continual Golden Age later in the game.
8) Great People are less "Impressive" meaning they do less, and I miss my zealotish Prophets. While it may appear nice to seperate the GP pathes, playing the percentages in Civ IV is missed. On the positive side here, GPS are just as valuable later in the game in V than in IV.
9) I miss the choices and late game changing aspects of Espionage and Corporations.
10) Worker improvements are limited to farms (on rivers), Mines (less efficient), Trading Posts (every land NOT on a river), and Lumbermills (eliminating chopping). With the exception of FArms (Civil Service and later Fertilizer) no improvements are changed over time or tech. THe strategy and flexibility of cottages are greatly missed as well are watermills, windmill, workshops, and railroading.
11) World Wonder seam soso and NAtional Wonders stink. NAtural Wonders seamed like a great idea but fell flat.
Unfortunately the above list of my complaints seam like major issues to repair, not simple patches. I understand the game is different, but it's a step back. The new features do NOT offset the gains.
Still, I will keep trying Civ V as it's patched.
Agree with a lot of this also about the positives:
1) indeed a huge step back
2)
They're probably different and there probably is a diplo model in place as Duckweed points out in his Walkthrough on the CiV forum. But you don't see anything of it in the diplo screen.
3) It's awful indeed
4) Not totally sure here, need to play more than 4 games to know.
5) I actually like the idea of city states, maritime should be rebalanced though. Also the Ai sucks again here as they don't compete in buying the states. Huge amounts of gold the ais have on immortal but i'm the one allied with almost all of them.
6) I like the happiness model as it is but your suggestion would make it more interesting still. There are maybe more buildings than in Civ4 but they all seem to give 15-25% on something or a fixed numeric output. Buildings in Civ4 seem to be more interesting but also here more playing on my part is needed.
7) I haven't been able to to that with the golden ages. As an expander my happy is always low so i don't get more than the first GA + the one for adopting rationalism
8)Agree, academy isn't that great. And 1 GS always gives 1 tech, i think that should be scaled like in civ4 but unlike civ4 where you could only shave 1-2 turns off a tech late game i think it should be a bit more.
9) Don't miss them as much probably since my play style doesn't really adapt to them, they were almost always more of an afterthought.
10) Cottages were a great idea in Civ4 really making for though choices in tile improvements, big step down indeed. On the other hand i always thought irrigated corns with 6 food output excessive, CiV is more balanced in that respect imo.
11) Agree on World wonders, not worth building unless you ran out of all other options
Atm Civ5 ,while interesting the first few games, has too many flaws atm so i think i'll quit for a while too hoping to return later (as i think there is potential in it)
Problem for me, i have played civ4 so much the past 5 years that is still don't think of going back, maybe it's time to try some mods like FFH2. So i'm actually playing SMAC and Heroes of might V now.
@obsolete short and to the point comment as always
.
/ TP) ?
