Simple Question

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I stopped playing Civ 5 back in October, when it was nearly unplayable -- i.e. there were just two or three obviously OP strategies (maritime food, horses, etc.) that broke the game. Have the official patches since then made it a balanced, playable game on par with Civ 4, or is it just intrinsically/structurally flawed?

Thanks for the feedback! :king:
 
For me the patches have made a huge change. Didn't like the balance when originally released, it seemed domination victory was only way to go.
To me it feels much more balanced now, but others might disagree. I suggest you give it a try
 
On a scale of 1-10 where 5 is "playable" I would say it was at 1 in Oct and currently at 4.5
 
I wouldn't compare Civ 5 to Civ 4, they are too different in their design.

Civ 5 has improved massively since October. However, the UI is still terrible. I still think global unhappiness is a really bad idea. The intelligence of the AI has increased though, from 'brick' to 'amoeba'.

Edit: Should add that diplomacy has changed a lot since the original release. I actually like it the way it is now, although there is still more they could do with it. Some people still hate it though.
 
I stopped playing Civ 5 back in October, when it was nearly unplayable -- i.e. there were just two or three obviously OP strategies (maritime food, horses, etc.) that broke the game. Have the official patches since then made it a balanced, playable game on par with Civ 4, or is it just intrinsically/structurally flawed?

Thanks for the feedback! :king:

It has improved a bit...they added and changed a bunch of features that should have been in the original. However, it's still fairly boring. I always play small continent and win domination before 1600...anything larger and it becomes horribly boring for me. The AI is still moronic, but at least it isn't quite as fickle and you can make friends.
 
In terms of balance, the two things you mentioned -maritime and horses- have been nerfed. Horsemen got -2 strength, all horse units (aside from a few UUs) got a -33% penalty to city attack, and maritime bonuses got hit hard, although their capital city bonus didn't drop by as much as the yield for your other cities.

Of course, the community has found plenty of other ways to break the game in the mean time. You've got RA blocking, where you put over 25% (or is it 33%?) beakers into a tech, after which point it will no longer be chosen as a research agreement tech. Block off a few paths and sign a bunch of RAs at the same time and you'll slingshot from Metal Casting Rifling in a turn. And the ironworking line is the new overpowered tech line; get ironworking fast so find a 6-yield deposit and go to town with longswords.

War is still probably the strongest strategy out there, largely because puppets are still culture- and gold-producing supercities. And their AI is much better now as well. One big difference on this front though: wide empires (meaning lots of cities) have been brought back and tall empires (meaning a few very high population cities) have been buffed, to the point that nobody agrees on which is better. So they're both probably pretty good. :p Still, it's commonly agreed upon that both are weaker than puppet empires.
 
The game is way more playable these days. The stratergies that you mentioned have in fact been toned down in a big way and there are other win cons!
 
@OP

you probably won't find the game on par with IV but its playable and...well...its playable:undecide:
 
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