Review of CIV5 for fanatics

[Bibor]

Not true and a common misunderstanding.

Science only was forced to invent practical applications for their already existant theories. Only a hand full of projects were forced with massive investment of money and ressources.
The actual advancement in the war mongering countries were set back heavily during the war.
Peace is the time when science prospers. During peace you got a much higher overall investment in science and thus more overall advancement, not just a few technologies with practical applications.

When you research iron working you can plop out the best swordsman unit the era gives. That doesn't sound like a theory to me.
One might argue if we are still using jet propulsion airplanes (Me-262) developed in 1943 or are we using super-advanced jet propulsion airplanes. For me personally, the newest Airbus is just a copy of a copy of a copy of Me-262 until something truly revolutional replaces it (like an anti-gravity ship or something similarily impossible as a jet airplane was back in 1943).

You spend your peace earned money in buying these units and barracks you now need -> your country goes bankrupt.
You did not save some money? Well, poor you. What did you do with it, when there was no war? <,<

On relations with city-states, buying tiles etc.?

You tried to analyze the fabrics of the game so hard, yet you fail to see, that there is still the glue we had all along back from Civ I to today: your empire, your cities and citizen. They are still there and awaiting your orders to shift along your command. Just because Civ IV created another layer of "glue" which not one of the titles in the series resembles this strong, and this was taken away now, does it mean the "glue" was taken away? No it was only made thinner to be more fragile and unforgiving, more vulnerable to your strategy.

In Alpha Centauri you can do a lot of stuff, or buy everything with energy.
In Railroad Tycoon you can do a lot of stuff, or buy everything with money.
In Pirates! you can acquire all resources, or rushbuy them with money.
In Heroes of Might and Magic you can do a lot of stuff, or rushbuy with gold.
In Colonization you do a lot of stuff or buy everything with money.
In CIV4 you can produce a lot of things, or simply buy everything with money.
In all MMOs you farm everything by yourself OR almost everything with money.
...

Or to use CIV4 thinking again: you teched paper, traded around maps, got 1000 gold. Spent that gold on running the slider at 100% science. Developed a new tech, traded it around, got 3 techs and 1000 gold. Then you spent that money to rushbuy a very important wonder.

Original investment: Paper.
Returns: 4 techs and a wonder.

 

[wilebill]

First impressions:

City Screen Needs Fixing, Amen. User Interface on the whole looks and feels like a console game user interface. Very pretty, but heck, I like the UI on Civ III Complete better. Perhaps the reason it looks like a console UI is to make it easier to create a console version of Civ V?

Not so much Civ V as CivWars I. Rise of Nations Thrones and Patriots kept coming to mind as I played. RoN was by Brian Reynolds who was the lead dev on Civ II, and it was in many ways Civ II as RTS with wonderful graphics and a first class user interface. I like RoN and still play it to this day. It is so cute! For an extreme flame lure, let us say this is more like a turn based version of RoN than a continuation of the Civ series per se.

I will stick with Civ V and see how it goes. I sense the game has great potential, but I am not smart enough to see what that potential is.

I have a Vista box that exceeds recommended specs, but had to start using DX9. No big deal. It runs nice and smooth. Like that.

 

[Lancor]

When you research iron working you can plop out the best swordsman unit the era gives. That doesn't sound like a theory to me.
One might argue if we are still using jet propulsion airplanes (Me-262) developed in 1943 or are we using super-advanced jet propulsion airplanes. For me personally, the newest Airbus is just a copy of a copy of a copy of Me-262 until something truly revolutional replaces it (like an anti-gravity ship or something similarily impossible as a jet airplane was back in 1943).

That may be true to some degree, but as long as you haven't visited at least once a modern avionics seminar at college, I dare to doubt your opinion there.

On relations with city-states, buying tiles etc.?

All of it? Nobody is forcing you to do this, to win the game. Long term strategy may be the key, in opposition to just get this one thing 1 or 2 turns early.

In Alpha Centauri you can do a lot of stuff, or buy everything with energy.
In Railroad Tycoon you can do a lot of stuff, or buy everything with money.
In Pirates! you can do a lot of stuff, or buy most of it with money.
In Heroes of Might and Magic you can do a lot of stuff, or rushbuy with gold.
In Colonization you do a lot of stuff or buy everything with money.
In CIV4 you can produce a lot of things, or simply buy everything with money.
In all MMOs you farm everything by yourself OR almost everything with money.
In CIV5 you can do a lot of things, produce a lot of things, or simply buy everything with money.
the list goes on.

-fixed

 

[Bibor]

-fixed

Haha, yes. But in CIV5 you can't "pool" or liquidate your other resources into money. Or at least I didn't find a way yet (no conversion of culture or tech or production into gold and vice versa).

 

[Lancor]

Haha, yes. But in CIV5 you can't "pool" or liquidate your other resources into money. Or at least I didn't find a way yet (no conversion of culture or tech or production into gold and vice versa).

And that is a bad thing, because? You have to actually think about things and don't just turn a slider? :x

Oh and wait: Changing your building queue from a library to a factory isn't trading science for production?


It's all a bit slowed down and more like chess, less like RTS.



Edit:
Sorry I don't want to insult or sound like a fanboi. (althoug I maybe do)
But I just don't like 2 things: Hate for new things/change and disrespect against game developers, blaming them things before you actually think through them for a while... Have you actually seen the commitment of some of the guys who created Civ 5?

 

[Davor]

I only played the demo before it keeps crashing on me. I have to agree with you 100% about going into a city and looking twice for information. Before it took me 1/2 a second to see how many turns it will take to see when my next city growth is, and how much production time is left before completion. Now, I have to search for it. Yes it's there but is't there. Maybe because I am on the demo, but it just seems like it's missing something. The one more turn feeling is definently not there. Just like Civ III.

Maybe the Civ series is like Star Trek Movies. The odd numbers are not good, and the even numbers are good.

I swore I played this demo before, but wasn't shure till I read this

First impressions:
let us say this is more like a turn based version of RoN than a continuation of the Civ series per se.

So Civ V is RoN TBS. I just can't believe Sid is hurting that bad without Brian Renyolds. Just imagine if Brian Renyolds stayed with Firaxis and how the Civ series would have been then.

Then agian, I havn't herd from him in over 5 years, so what happened to him? He needs to come back to Civ and make it the best game again. Civ V might become a good game with patch, (just like 3 and 4, not great games untill 10 patches later) but it will never become the best game of all time like Civ 2 or Alpha Centauri was.

 

[Andoo]

Hmmm.. interesting my opinion on the new gold system is exactly the opposite. In cIV, imo gold was merely the leftover which wasn't tranfered over to the beakers. So it had to be either science or the money. In CiV, gold sort of got seperated from science and now it's a neutral resourse like hammers that can be stockpiled. And then you can use this gold in numerous ways to solve whatever problems you have, aka, glue. Lacking military? Purchase military peaces, upgrade units. Lacking science? Buy science treaty and purchase scientific structures. Lacking growth? Get another juicy hex and purchase Grana ry or bribe to State-Cities to join your empire. But then again, this is only an opinion coming out of a demo player..

 

[Technoviking]

Yes, the biggest tech advances happened in the 20th century happened from 1940 to 1945.

That's not entirely true.

A lot of money was spent on putting theories or hypotheses to the test, but most of the research had been done before the war even started. A lot of what was tried and tested was done so at a much greater expense than would have been required outside of wartime.

Regardless, much of it did result in practical applications of said research, which is why you might feel technology and research thrives during wartime.

Arguably, the greatest technological advances in the 20th century came towards the end of the century, which was by far the most peaceful part of the century.

 

[Haggbart]

3. THE ECONOMY

Okay, what the hell? Remember the "glue" thing I was talking about? The one thing that holds the whole system together? Well, they killed it. Lets wind the clocks back a year (TM by Joker). In Civ4 we had an economy based on commerce, production based on hammers and population numbers based on food. The economy was the backbone of research, support, culture, espionage and everything not-hammer and not-food. By manipulating the tax slider and by improving, changing and optimizing the economy, people were able to radically change (and thus adapt) their civilization to the current state of affairs (war, peace, golden age, space race etc.).

In civ5 we have research, gold per turn and culture. All separate entities. Which is okay, for a real-time strategy. But this is not an RTS, this is supposed to be a turn-based empire management game. A game in which tax, inflation and allocation of governmental funds should be a given. Even if we can get used to this, I still can't find a good reason to remove the "glue". Ever.
Imagine playing Railroad Tycoon and being forced to pay for railroad tracks in "red dollars", for stations in "blue dollars" and for stocks in "green dollars". Devs, it simply doesn't work. It has been proven over and over again for over three decades now.

The slider was really flawed. I've made this point in another post, and I'll say it again.
Civ is a STRATEGY game. Now, you could use the slider to tranform commerce into different entities. And the conversion rate for the different entities would change when you for example build a library or a theatre and so on. AND you had the specialist-option. Now, how many can honestly say that they would know the exchange rate of commerce into beakers at any given time, and compare that number to the number of beakers provided by a science specielist? If not, how could you make a STRATEGIC decision?

You can STILL adjust cities by toggling specialists and tiles worked, the only difference is now you know exactly what you're choosing between. You will have to weight the option of using a citizen to work a tile to increase food, eventually making your city bigger, increasing gold, which now has more alternative uses, increasing production to make new units or buildings (which again give bonuses to other entities) or use the specialists to create for example science and Great Scientist points. So instead of moving a slider, you make hands on decisions at every city - making it much easier to make cities specializing (of course you could do that in Civ 4 with running mostly scientists, making the slider pretty much obsolete).

But of course, cottage spamming required extreme strategic sense, and removing it is "dumbing down" the game

 

[kaltorak]

Bibor just became my hero. I agree on everything.

Great post

Science based on population? come on, that makes it totally transparent. Havent played much, but it really doesn't feel like I am managing science.

 

[jtwood]

I agree with so much in this thread, but these two stand out to me:

Are green/blue/yellow dots really better? NO THEY ARE NOT!

Coming from Normal/Epic in Civ 4 -> Epic in Civ 5: costs have since skyrocketed, so now constructing buildings feels like making a national wonder, and wonders (50 turns in my best Prod city? Ouch). Units take about 4 times as long too.

After a day of playing, I'm starting to feel less "addicted" already. I'm not so sure I'll be able to keep up interest over the long term. Of course, they already have my money, so they'll probably take that as positive reinforcement of their plans (and not a sign that they simply waited for freaking ever before releasing 5).

 

[VikingMaekel]

Bibor just became my hero. I agree on everything.

Great post

Science based on population? come on, that makes it totally transparent. Havent played much, but it really doesn't feel like I am managing science.

Oh but you can, once you start building libraries and being able to assign specialists to the library it makes that much more difference.

For example, lets say we have 8 cities with an average of 5 citizens = 43 beakers (+3 from the palace)

Now in one city you have a library = +2 beakers so total of 45 beakers
You now assign 2 specialists in that city to the library = + 2 beakers
That's about a 4,5% increase in science out put, I find it to matter so much more and so much more significant. At the same time though, you lose either gold, production and/or food in the process. The glue as mentioned by the OP in Civ V are your citizens.

In Civ IV if you assigned specialist it seemed like it didn't really matter, unless you went full out on assignments. And it was so much easier just to slide the slider over to "moar science!!!1!1!!" In Civ IV I balanced the slider so that I had max science and minimum gold, once science was far enough along I could choose, max gold or max culture. At that time I was usually big enough so that I earned ludicrous amounts of gold or make freshly conquered cities pop borders every turn (or get full spy props on an enemy in a single turn). It didn't require lots of planning.

As far as I can see by playing, Civ V requires more planning.

 

[zomg]

I think what this civ lost in complexity of "civilization" development it makes up for with strategic planning. Good trade for me. Though the AI needs tweaks, at least its functional. I'm sure there will be patches.

 

[squadbroken]

Or to use CIV4 thinking again: you teched paper, traded around maps, got 1000 gold. Spent that gold on running the slider at 100% science. Developed a new tech, traded it around, got 3 techs and 1000 gold. Then you spent that money to rushbuy a very important wonder.

Original investment: Paper.
Returns: 4 techs and a wonder.

So in short, you're mad that you can't cheese the system (or haven't figured out how to do so).

 

[VikingMaekel]

So in short, you're mad that you can't cheese the system (or haven't figured out how to do so).

Completely agree

 

[remconius]

@ Bibor - I agree to a lot of things you say, I am also not in synch with civ 5 at all yet. At the same time a few remarks from my side to put things in perspective:

1. Civ 5 is not Civ 4. It works in a different and also interesting way. We all need adjust and get used to it. Learn the mechanics and master them. Comparing makes to what you had makes it more difficult to adjust.

2. The civ slider was not the best part of previous civ games. The strategy to run science as high as you could afford unless you needed cash for upgrading units, or solving unhappiness was flawed to say the least. And I never put a % in espionage. Not to mention 100%, 0%, 100% 0% strategies... And then there was the trade techs for cash to be able to run 100% science at a loss. Even to the point that there was no point of building banks and markets. Now you have to decide what to invest in, and the payback comes over time, not instantly...

3. Economic flexibility as mentioned is in the working of tiles and assigning of specialists which is a more subtle shift of focus.

4. Blue, Red and Green Dollars For one, culture is not something you can buy. You need to invest and generate over time, buildings are very good for that. Science also means having the infrastructure (libs and unis) and people working there to generate development. Again can be modelled with creating buildings and specialists.

5. The Glue is still there, your people, because you have to tell your people what to build, what to focus on, where to work, etc.

All in all, there are a lot of changes. And I am not saying civ 5 is better than civ 4. Maybe will it will never be. But at least, its an interesting version of civ that deserves the benefit of the doubt and will probably bring a lot of fun and enjoyment.

 

[Bibor]

So, I played over 250 turns as Nabucco today. What a dissapointment. I almost fell asleep at the PC. As someone said, CIV 5 is a pretty average game.

I had 3 cities, one in a great spot, two in so-so spots (including the capital). They never got past pop 10, even with the +1 food from Civil service and with a fully developed city radius. So much about "running specialists". One of the cities was an amazing production city, which means it could build a colosseum in 17 turns. By the time I got into Renaissance my coastal city with 2 hills mines finally produced a lighthouse (preceded by a monument). It had 4 food resources (plains sheep, fish and two plains wheat) yet it never got past 10 pop either.

I had the luck of getting Belgrade to "allied" and it supplied me through the game with some pretty advanced units (I got two knights, a trebuchet, two crossbowmen and two spearmen). I took another city-state with 2 archers, a spearman and a warrior.

Gandhi, my southern neighbour managed to build a grand total of 3 cities. The second one was at least 25 hexes to the northwest of his capital, east of me and south of Siam. Why he built it there, I have no clue. His planted his third city around the 220th turn.

I capitulated Siam that had 5 cities with 9 units (3 archers, 1 swordsman, 2 trebuchets, 2 horsemen, 1 spearman). I took their capital and they gifted me 3 cities, all their money and surplus resources, leaving them with one lone city (that I took out 15 turns later because Rammeses wanted them dead).

I figured conquering an annoyed neighbour will help my civilization. Right. The gifted cities plummeted my happiness into -17 (I had only 5 cities before that) and I took them all as puppet-states. My colliseums took over 20 turns to build in my highest production cities.

Diplomatic situation was rather interesting. Rammeses and Darius didn't want to hear even about open borders (they demanded like 170 gold to open borders), and I could forget research pacts. I didn't border their nations, I didn't attack their beloved city-states, yet they kept mocking me from time to time (I had higher score than them). Gandhi was dependable, but ridiculiously weak. I met nappy on another continent later and he was very polite. The Ottomans and British not that much.

I couldn't get a hold on extra happiness resources. Rammeses had 5 surplus fur that he didn't trade to anyone (clearly a good strategic choice by AI) because he demanded silver, marble and 300 gold for a 30-turn agreement. Right.

Tech-wise I was just clicking. Didn't even bother to check what the techs give because there's no point. What good is a building that takes 30 turns to build? Ten of those buildings won't do me much good. Oh, the marketplace was nice. +25% commerce. Lets see what city should I put it into. Oh wait, this gold city gives 8 gold and it will only take 30 turns to build the marketplace. Yeah baby! For 2 gold per turn. Clearly a great investment!

Where's the excitement? I honestly don't know. There's no "finally macemen", "finally trebuchets", "finally I can spread irrigation", "finally I can make a GP farm with Caste", "finally I can build a caravel", "finally workshops are worthwile", "finally representation", "finally gunpowder", "finally railroad". There's also no tech race, no land grab race, no espionage wrestling, no religion spread conflicts, no "circle the globe first" race, no liberalism/communism/music/sci.method/economics race.

:-(

 

[hardcore_gamer]

There's also no tech race, no land grab race, no espionage wrestling, no religion spread conflicts, no "circle the globe first" race, no liberalism/communism/music/sci.method/economics race.

:-(

Wait, are you saying that it isn't possible to circle the globe anymore?

 

[Bibor]

Wait, are you saying that it isn't possible to circle the globe anymore?

You can still circle the globe obviously, but no movement bonus or info



Basically, you win this game on Prince as soon as you build your first city. Obsolete claims pretty much the same for deity (and he plays the 100-turn demo :O).

 

[Esham]

The game is dumbed down a bit and made more graphically appealing.

You would be kidding yourself if you didn't expect the game to move in this direction. More appeal = more sales.