Sulla's first Civ V walkthrough

[Delgar]

Balanced review, I would think, but it does seem that he is speaking very much from a Civ IV point of view.

I would ask that Sulla play for cultural victory in his next game, using the non-cheesy (no selling cities to AI!), small empire route. I would like to hear his comments on that.

 

[ston]

I don't understand your complaint. You can do that. Just choose to puppet it, then you can always change your mind later. You realize you can annex/raze whenever you want right? You can raze or annex a captured city 3000 years after the conquest if you want.

How do you raze a city that you've turned into a puppet? The only choice you have AFAIK is to annex if afterwards.

 

[Cymsdale]

How do you raze a city that you've turned into a puppet? The only choice you have AFAIK is to annex if afterwards.

You annex the city and then press the raze button on the city screen.

 

[splinter9]

You annex the city and then press the raze button on the city screen.

Which is, in effect, what happens when you choose raze straight after conquest, since you still get the city and have to wait until it disintegrates and take the happiness hit until it's gone.

 

[Unionfield]

Sulla is right on the money. I've honestly started to think that most companies, save for maybe Blizzard, skip generations in trying to make good games. CivII was great, CivIII sucked. CivIV was great, CivV, well, it's not good.

This occurred to me when I was thinking about Stardock's recent troubles. GalCiv good, Demigod bad. Sins of a Solar Empire good, Elemental bad.

 

[ston]

You annex the city and then press the raze button on the city screen.

Ta

 

[Ahriman]

I disagree with him about wanting Civ Traits back (they were fun in Civ3 & Civ4, but eventually got too bland & samey) but I do agree with him that some traits are almost downright useless compared to others. I'm really surprised that these balance issues ever made it through play-testing without being picked up! I also concur on the issue of the military AI-I had at least one occasion where my lone archer unit was able to wipe out some barbarians, without them *once* being threatened by said barbarians.

I agree that Civ balance isn't fantastic, but it isn't rubbish either. Every Civ has at least something very nice.
Civs are balanced at the Civ level, not at the individual ability level.

Ottomans have a rubbish ability, but Janissaries are fantastic - and they retain their advantages when upgraded to rifles/infantry/mech inf!!
Sipahis also very nice. Insane pillage mania, and unlike other cavalry units they stay useful into the late game for pillaging purposes alone.

 

[Ktulu]

I don't understand your complaint. You can do that. Just choose to puppet it, then you can always change your mind later. You realize you can annex/raze whenever you want right? You can raze or annex a captured city 3000 years after the conquest if you want.

That's all fine, but the issue is more of a user interface one and it plagues the game in other areas. The game pops up a dialogue box asking you to make an immediate decision yet it gives you absolutely no information (or the ability to access info) regarding your decision.

The same thing happens in diplomacy. A civ pops up asking you to join some pact, but you can't access any information that can help you decide if you want to agree to the pact.

 

[Buccaneer]

This is one thing I'm really hoping to overhaul (& hoping that Firaxis pick up on it). In the mod I'm hoping to do, the benefits of City-States will only accrue to those cities which have pre-existing buildings to exploit them. So, for example, a city won't get the Maritime Benefit *unless* it has a Granary or a Water-Wheel & a Militaristic City-State will only grant its benefit (in my mod it will be bonus XP) to cities that have a barracks or an Armory. I'm also hoping its possible to reduce the importance of Gold in winning their influence (so Gold might only grant a quarter or half of the current influence) & instead base influence off many & varied types of appropriate missions you can perform for them.

Hope that makes sense.

Aussie.

That makes sense to me.

 

[Paragon]

Nice article, though all the comparisons to Civ4 made me think that you just wanted a new Civ4

Firaxis has always stated with the Civ franchise, that they put in 1/3 of the same, 1/3 improved/altered, and 1/3 new stuff in each iteration of Civilization. I think that's what happened in Civ5 too.

As for multiplayer, I can concur with others in this thread that it works fine. Like the rest of the game, it needs some balancing and bugfixing, but its not worse than SP. Autosave each round and it will be fine, and sure the missing leaderheads is annoying, but playing the game is no worse bug-wise than singleplayer in my experience (I play 50/50 SP/MP).

 

[ButSam]

Sulla is right on the money. I've honestly started to think that most companies, save for maybe Blizzard, skip generations in trying to make good games. CivII was great, CivIII sucked. CivIV was great, CivV, well, it's not good.

This occurred to me when I was thinking about Stardock's recent troubles. GalCiv good, Demigod bad. Sins of a Solar Empire good, Elemental bad.

Microsoft: Windows 95, very bad. Windows 98, tolerable. Windows NT, bad. Windows Me, bad. Windows 2000, bad (but at least stable). Windows XP, decent. Windows Vista, very bad. Windows 7, bad (but better than Vista).

The quality of the product is inversely proportional to the number of people expected to instant-buy the product without consideration of other options.

 

[Paragon]

ButSam is right, but the bad financial times aren't helping matters either. These large publicly traded company's need bottom line now, and aren't always good at building long-term customer loyalty when it's their jobs at stake right there and then.

 

[mirkwooduk]

I remember Sulla's walkthrough on civ4 it was great and really set the scene whilst we waited for the release in Europe
It was about creating a story telling a tale whilst taking you through all the features
It was remembered fondly on Lemmys thread as he did a similar but humorous walkthrough this time around with civ5
So I was looking forward to reading it but found that this time Sulla has become a critic and when you read it he has basically told us it's broken and he gives this time a completely different analysis which if I had read before buying this game like I did with 4 he may have put me off

I don't know whether in the five years he has now become an ubber player or he's just hot he was not involved in the development but whatever he seems to have lost the romance this time around
Lemmys thread told it as Sulla did last time - it's a fun game and despite all the crap thrown at it on these threads what stands out is that everyone is spending hours playing it so it can't be that bad
For myself I am not a great player but get by and enjoy the game for the reasons Sulla laid out so well on civ4 the reason we all enjoy it the addiction the just one turn getting angry with bismark (or montezuma) and watching him plead when the tabled are turned
Yes there are things that need looking at like the AI in combat but overall I have enjoyed it like I enjoyed civ4
But even civ4 had a shelf life once you played it enough times it got boring to be buying every building and those endless turns as giant armies crawled about taking city after city

Well I for one say bring back the old romantic Sulla and let all the others complain and whing

Now just one more turn and I can get that city in the north and take the wine improve my happiness and ...oh just give a glass

 

[Gerurun]

I'm not sure what multiplayer problems he's talking about since I've played dozens of games since release with only relatively minor issues.

 

[Mivo]

As for multiplayer, I can concur with others in this thread that it works fine.

It doesn't work "fine" for any of my colleagues and friends who tried it. It barely works for me, and it feels like an alpha test for pre-production network code. Incomplete and unstable. Usually you can't even get a game started.

 

[Paragon]

It doesn't work "fine" for any of my colleagues and friends who tried it. It barely works for me, and it feels like an alpha test for pre-production network code. Incomplete and unstable. Usually you can't even get a game started.

I'm sorry you are having those issues. I can only speak for myself that everything has been pretty smooth in MP (and can see others posting the same too).

 

[Aneurism]

Sulla,
This is the most honest review out there for Civ5. I agree about 95% with all of your opinions on the game. Especially the lack of easy to read stats! Excellent work!

One other thing I noticed was that some units are randomly ignored for a couple of turns even when they have full movement and are not automated, or have been given multiple turn orders. Weird.

I miss the clock option in Civ4 it was a nice little feature that would be super easy to implement into Civ5.

Myself I have played 1 1/2 full games and despite agreeing with Sulla's criticism, I am still liking Civ5, and I am a bit more optimistic on its future... patching and expansions should round out the game and fix its current bugs and unbalanced exploits. I chalk it up to a bit of a rushed launch. Only time will tell, and in the mean time the Novelty factor is more than enough to keep me going.

All of this makes me wonder how it is possible that big gaming sites, such as IGN and others, all have these praising reviews, while the problems in this game are so easy to detect. Do those gaming sites have ANY credibility left? It seems they maintain good relations with studios by submitting positive reviews. I wonder if they even tested the game at all...

It does make you wonder...

 

[ButSam]

Good point as well, Paragon. Lots of uncertainty right now, bad economy, and uncertain tax liabilities in the USA for next year -- businesses have to plan for the worst and hope for the best. That could be why it seems a lot less playtested, and why AI seems less capable...

 

[vandyr]

I couldn't finish reading it...which is sad, because I loved Sulla's older stuff, but this was basically a big complaint (with pictures) that Civ 5 isn't Civ 4 2.0.

 

[fantsu]

I couldn't finish reading it...which is sad, because I loved Sulla's older stuff, but this was basically a big complaint (with pictures) that Civ 5 isn't Civ 4 2.0.

True. It isn't Civ 4 2.0, it is Civ Rev 2.0.