Sulla's first Civ V walkthrough

Give it a rest dude.

 

I think saying it is CivRev 2.0 is as accurate as saying Sulla is mad because Civ5 is not Civ4 2.0... i.e. both are terribly wrong!

 

It's not like Sulla is saying it is a terrible game guys. In fact, he specifically says it isn't. The issues he highlights are not without merit, and it wasn't done in a particularly whiny tone.

Again, if you want to complain about Civ5 and actually influence people, *this* is how you do it. Little jokes about CivRev 2.0 and lolololmyarchersh00tsrealfar don't amuse anyone.

Anyhow, this was a good read. Hopefully the future for Civ5 is as bright as I think it is, but launch is definitely going to be remembered as a rough period for the game.

 

well, i'm getting a new pc this week-end to play CivV...

I'm really hoping i won't be disappointed by the game, but there are a lot of message of deception...
From the video i've seen, it just seem "easy"...i can't say it's broken yet, but...

well, will do my own review.

Good notes: most of the improvement (interface, balance) seems easy. Just the AI seems harder to correct, but i'm no programmer!

 

Civ4 wasn't great for me, much more like mediocre. BTS is great though.

My feelings about them:
-Civ1 is a favourite
-Never cared about Civ2 and Civ3 too much
-Civ4 was promising but lacked exciting gameplay because of weak and overpacifistic AI
-Civ4-BTS is a favourite again

 

Seems like i won't buy Civ5. Maybe an expansion and/or a new BetterAI mod can correct it right in the future.

 

I agree with Sulla's complaints about the game and still recommend it. Its not a polished release that is all... its still a great game that needs some patch work to fix a bunch of issues, but even while its somewhat unbalanced and a little buggy you could be getting in to the groove of it. I do not regret buying this game, even spending the new release top dollar for it. I don't buy a lot of games at release but I do support Firaxis, and even their theoretical misses are better than the quality of most game developers hits. I am confident Civ V will come into its own in time.

 

Civ4 wasn't great for me, much more like mediocre. BTS is great though.

Civ4 had a lot of great ideas, but combat was always such a chore in the later stages of the game. As in, not fun at all.

 

I'm very disappointed by how poorly the AI currently performs, and by the unplayable state of Multiplayer at the moment. (I know MP isn't a priority for many of you, but it is for me.)

Seems like you need at least one or the other for the game to have staying power. Either a good AI or good multiplayer.

 

I agree with most of the critisism to Sulla and as a tester for Beyond the Swords I also wish they put some more time and effort into quality assuring civ5 before releasing it.

With that said I have to give credit to Jon Schafer for some seriously inovative ideas and most of the gameplay ideas I LOVe, the problem lies in the implementation.

I love science as its now tied to population, more realisitic and fun, Also the way gold actually is quite relevant is good.

The hapiness system as it is now is really good.

I dont like the way you can only field small armies without crippeling your economy in the modern times (they cost so much you cant afford say more than 10-20 with 6-8 cities) Why I dont like that is not because im just a warmonger, but because the new combat system begs for big fights over large lines of battle. I know this would mean the system specs is higher with mroe units on the battlefield at any given time, hopefully this will come in expansions when peoples hardware are better. And I hope and wish the combat AI will be better. And yes this is harder to do without the stack of doom but I dont feel its impossible to make a good AI for games like panser general, battle of wesnoth etc.

I totaly agree with sulla that the resources system is messed up, why would i want a a sheep when i can have a farm thats better? I dont really see how this passed quality testing.. yikes.

Also the multiplayer system is "streamlined" a jargon word by marketing that basically in this case = not used much time on at all and kept as simple as possible. I hope they will look at this in expansions. Either a better AI or better mp, preferably both, or this game will not have a longitivity at all.

I wish I had time to write more but as a busy law student my contributions to civ5 will be much less then what it was for civ4.

 

I actually don't mind the way sheep/cows (are there pigs? don't know if I've seen any pigs) work in this game. Sure, a farm eventually gives you (at best) 4 food regardless of access to fresh water once you've teched up enough, but never discount the importance of the +1 production a pasture gives you. Livestock resources provide your cities with great (okay, "good") multi-purpose tiles. Also, it seems like sheep usually spawn on top of hills, though I'm sure that's not always the case. You can only build a farm on said hill if it is next to a river, but with the pasture you get a +2/2 tile that provides just enough food for another pop point and a fair amount of production to boot. (a "fair amount" considering the slower production of CiV, that is) Even when you do have the choice of building a farm over some livestock, I'd take the extra hammer over the extra apple any day.

 

Excellent work Sulla! This is how game reviews should be made in the first place and not the commercial crap gamespot and pals give us nowadays!

That said, a 1000+ games civ4 player here (and having a gf truelly hating civ, good job! )

But unfortunately Sulla's review/walkthrough outlines perfectly that we're not dealing with mere gamebalancing (and performance) issues here. Cleary we are talking about some serious 'by design' mechanics that are faulty.

Let me pick one: the social policies. IMO it currently takes to long to pick new policies. By the time i get to mid game i'm still only got some starter policies and as we all know at that point it in honesty really doesnt matter so much anymore from a strategical point of view.

But what's worse, the early game periods are just not that fun due to the long building times. I always used to play on Epic, but that's just not bearable. In other words, there is compared to CIV4 less focus on the cities and progress itself. Why for instance should i build a barracks, armory, heroic epic (WHY the need for barracks in all cities) if i only going to build relatevely few units (and by building i mean ofcourse buying as i don't want to waste to much not building buildings with these built times).

Not WANTING to be to negative going to start a game now actually and waste 6+ hours and not finishing )

 

??? By 400BC, I had completed all of the Patronage policies and had started on some other ones before AD. Really powerful early game. The Industrial ones will be great too if I can unlock those early enough. By late game, yes, it won't matter a whole lot.

 

Great job, Sulla. I remember your walkthrough from Civ4. As a matter of fact I was curious and wanted to see how you approached it in 2005, so I went back and reviewed it. Since you had been on the development team you knew a lot about the game and used your knowledge to introduce us to what was new. The entire review was very upbeat and enthusiastic about all of the new game mechanics. Nothing like the critical review we now have with Civ5. Anyone who is interested can find the Civ4 Walkthrough here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=132711&highlight=sulla's+civ4+walkthrough

I purchased Civ5 and have played one game and the demo. I’m a long time gamer, all the way back to Civ1. I certainly agree that Firaxis has a lot of work to do to make the gaming experience more enjoyable. It’s disappointing that with the experience they gained in making BTS such a good game, that they seem to have dropped the ball with Civ5. The game just doesn’t have that compelling feeling that kept me up until all hours of the morning playing “just one more turn”.

I remember the manual for Civ4 had an acknowledgment page at the back for all of the people from CivFanatics, Apolyton and the other fans, who had contributed to its development and testing. I don’t know whether that same procedure was used in Civ5. I purchased it from Steam so I don’t have a manual, but by going to the fan base and adopting their recommendations, Firaxis produced a superior product in Civ4. The same procedure was used for BTS. Perhaps it was used for Civ5 but it is hard to see how so many odd game play decisions would be made if the fan base had been consulted. Perhaps Firaxis should quickly adopt some of the suggestions made by Sulla, and other more thoughtful reviewers, and release a comprehensive patch ASAP.

EDIT: I see that a digital manual is available on Steam. I downloaded it and see the usual cast of characters was involved in play testing. Perhaps Firaxis didn't listen to them in its rush to meet its September deadline.

 

I was thinking about this after having played a bit of Civ 5 (and lots of Civ 4). Perhaps us old-timers are thinking of it from a Civ4 perspective.

The beginning game feels dreadfully slow because everything takes forever to build.

The beginning games feels boring because the decisions aren't so critical, and you don't dominate based on whether you managed to micro to Oracle-slingshotting Civil Service.

The usual Civ4 behaviour of REXing in the beginning doesn't work because it prevents you from racking up social policies.

So, some of the subjective feeling may be due to the beginning game being less critical to play than it has been in the past.

Of course, there are still some major issues that do need to be fixed, like the huge power of maritime citystates, and ancient ruins turning your Warriors into Riflemen.

 

Ok, I've seen this said several times. Let me provide an example using one of the standard starts (#turns): Scout (6) > Worker (15) > Workboat (4) > Stonehenge (18) (no bonuses). Is that not comparable to Civ4 perhaps even a little faster since you can still grow while building Worker?

 

True, but the lack of chopping and whipping makes a difference.

Also, I think that Wonders are relatively cheap in hammers in Civ 5, relative to normal buildings - so Stonehenge is relatively quick, while constructing buildings seems slow to me.

 

but it also takes at least 20 turns to build a library or granary, which you could get up in about 5 turns in Civ 4.

 

that's all subjective, it all depends on the hammers you're producing. A library in Civ IV could also take 50 turns if you have 1 hammer.

 

That's the point though, the number of hammers even a *high* production city can have a significantly smaller than the average Civ4 city. Remember, though, that this is a comment being made by someone who actually *does* enjoy the game-I just think they need to re-tweak some of the in-game effects.

Aussie.