Sullla Discovers the Major Fault Behind Civ V: The Death of Civ?

[Defianc4]

Tried it out, and until they fix the core gameplay mechanics, I think Civ V is toast. If they fix the core gameplay mechanics, after wading through all the other bugs and finish coding basic features they stopped doing at the halfway point.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/liberteordre.html

 

[Thormodr]

Thanks for the link. A very enlightening article indeed.

Some highlights:

This was so well written that I wanted to repost it here for a larger reading audience. Well said! Due to all of these factors, having more cities is invariably a good thing in Civ5. More cities are always better. In fact, anyone who posts that you should pause or halt your expansion doesn't fully understand how this game works. You should always be expanding in Civ5, constantly, relentlessly, and never letting up, because each additional city makes your empire stronger.

My Great Scientists claim Archaeology and Biology as the free techs. It should be clear from this picture why I wanted three Scientists, to avoid having to research the expensive Scientific Theory tech. And while it's a little hard to see here, I've literally skipped everything I don't need on the rest of the tech tree. My military remains in the stone age, and I can't even see iron! Although again, since I have access to horses and knights, I can still fight without any real difficulty. Seems like a mistake in design to put the horse units elsewhere on the tree.

Check out the picture above to see how I have exactly enough science to do the tech in two turns. Remember, Civ5 currently does not have any research overflow, which means that you must constantly micromanage the discovery of each new technology to avoid massive wastage. (Physics costs 440 beakers to discover. If I were to produce 215 beakers/turn, it would take me three turns to discover the tech, and I would waste 205 beakers.) This is my single biggest irritation with Civ5 at the moment, and bizarrely it is not listed as a fix coming in the first patch. To be honest, I find it embarassing that lack of beaker overflow could even slip into the release version of the game. No one caught this during testing of the game???

This is one of the biggest faults of Civ5: the resources have such low yields they become all but irrelevant, and the basic terrain itself is all that matters. It doesn't help either that grassland hill = plains hill = tundra hill = desert hill, and ditto for every forest tile, and grassland = floodplains without distinction between the two. There is a feeling of... sameness about the terrain in Civ5, where everything just sort of runs together. In Civ4, it *MATTERS* where you place your cities, what the terrain looks like, and what resources cities have in their radius. I don't get that same feeling at all with Civ5, which isn't a good thing.

Overall, the mass city strategy is overwhelmingly the best choice in terms of how to play Civ5 optimally. However, it's also extremely boring and formulaic. In past Civ games, I loved managing subpar terrain and squeezing out everything possible from the land. I wasn't getting the same pleasure from this game. There's... just nothing to it. Maritime states provide the food, then throw down trading posts. Rinse and repeat everywhere until you win the game.

There's no planning involved here, no careful consideration of what I need to be doing a dozen turns down the road. If a situation comes up, I simply throw money at the problem and it solves itself.

The lategame in Civ5 is in very poor shape right now. Techs need to be significantly more expensive, and buildings/units significantly cheaper. And that would only be a start to solving the problem, because we can't even see the real balance issues due to research and production being so very badly out of sync with one another. Oy. This is a real mess.

As I said, the AI has absolutely no counter for the mass expansion strategy. If you have land to expand into, you should always win the game playing this way. And I believe that that will hold true on Deity as well

The only threat - the ONLY threat - to the player winning by diplomacy is if the AI conquers too many of the city states, which only happens on high difficulty (Emperor or above) and is more a matter of chance than anything else. I've seen plenty of Deity games reported where the AI either can't reach or doesn't bother to attack city states, leading to extremely easy diplo wins. Is this really what we've come to with Civ5? Literally purchasing yourself a victory?

Sullla, an extremely well respected member of the Civ community essentially took ciV to the woodshed. Wow!

The comments at the end are very interesting as well. ciV literally gets ripped apart and with good reason. *Yikes!*

 

[dannythefool]

So what's up with all the "Sulla discovers breaking flaw" threads everytime he posts a report? I thought it was widely known that more cities are always beneficial, and I certainly remember a thread about the Forbidden Palace in combination with Planned Economy. It almost sounds like you have some personal issue with the game

For the record, part of the problem is the stupid AI again. It's very rare than an immortal AI in the position that Hiawatha is in this game doesn't have enough gold to buy enough city states to sabotage a diplomatic victory, but they don't seem to do that. AI on higher difficulty levels is no trouble at all unless they absolutely have to expand into your territory.

Btw., Forbidden Palace+Planned Economy is only powerful for medium-smallish empires. The more citizens you have, the less the impact of the lack of unhappiness from number of cities. This is why Gandhi's UA is so powerful, too. Nothing of what Sulla does in this game is broken by itself; the problem is more why he wants to play as he does. For example, science being based directly on your number of citizens is a strong incentive to have a large population, but there is no cost associated with it if you know what you're doing.

 

[Chibiabos]

For the record, part of the problem is the stupid AI again.

That is one serious issue -- but there are others mentioned in the article that a lot of Civ V players agree with. Techs are too cheap, buildings and units waay too expensive. Check out his final screenshots showing that he can research any end-game tech in about 4 turns each. He skipped a lot of techs, but could completely fill out the rest of his tech tree in about the same time as building 2 buildings in one city. This is another serious issue, at least as serious to many of us as the weak AI.

His end article arguments are that city spamming shouldn't work, but it does because "bonus" resources and tile improvements (especially mines, farms and pastures) are way too weak, making conservative expansion rather pointless for achieving diplomatic or science victories which is another serious issue in the game, again as serious to many of us as the weak AI. We get it if you're a war monger and you want a war game but are disappointed at the weak AI -- that's terrible, it is a serious problem, but it is not the only serious shortcoming of the game.

 

[Thormodr]

So what's up with all the "Sulla discovers breaking flaw" threads everytime he posts a report? I thought it was widely known that more cities are always beneficial, and I certainly remember a thread about the Forbidden Palace in combination with Planned Economy. It almost sounds like you have some personal issue with the game

For the record, part of the problem is the stupid AI again. It's very rare than an immortal AI in the position that Hiawatha is in this game doesn't have enough gold to buy enough city states to sabotage a diplomatic victory, but they don't seem to do that. AI on higher difficulty levels is no trouble at all unless they absolutely have to expand into your territory.

Btw., Forbidden Palace+Planned Economy is only powerful for medium-smallish empires. The more citizens you have, the less the impact of the lack of unhappiness from number of cities. This is why Gandhi's UA is so powerful, too. Nothing of what Sulla does in this game is broken by itself; the problem is more why he wants to play as he does. For example, science being based directly on your number of citizens is a strong incentive to have a large population, but there is no cost associated with it if you know what you're doing.

I for one found it very interesting as I had fond, fond memories of Sullla's walkthrough for cIV, just before it was released. It was positively glowing and got so many people excited about the game.

Contrasting that with this is like night and day:

I've received many messages from different people requesting that the tone of these reports be less negative. Well folks, I'd really like to do that. Truly, I would. But I have to be honest to myself when writing, and I feel that I would be doing a disservice to the reader if I claimed I was having fun when I really wasn't. I don't hold any resentment towards those who are enjoying Civ5; more power to you. I'm obviously not enjoying the game very much though, and I do think that the core design is flawed on some very fundamental levels such as the ones listed above. I'm confident that this game can and will be improved through the patching process; Firaxis will correct the bugs, put in the correct documentation, and fix some of the more glaring imbalances. But will that be enough? There's only so much that they can do through patches, and you'll never see a reworking of the game's core happiness/research mechanics, which are what I view the biggest issues. I'll keep an eye on the community, and hope that things will get better in time. Honestly though, this is probably the final Single Player report I'll be writing on my website for Civ5, and at present there are no plans for a series of competitive Epics games for Civ5 at Realms Beyond.

The game has been essentially ripped apart and has been exposed for what it really is.
The truth is there for all to see.

Honestly though, I don't have a personal issue with the game. I, like all Civ fanatics want to see an awesome ciV. Pretending nothing is wrong or downplaying any problems by saying, "It just needs minor tweeks or it'll be awesome in a patch or two." is wishful thinking. Hopefully this work by Sullla will inspire real, thorough change with the core game mechanics. That's the real value of this article. We all deserve much, much better.

 

[eireksten]

I didn't see anything new in that "report" either. And none of it can't be fixed relatively easy.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

And none of it can't be fixed relatively easy.

Well, we'll find out next week if that is true, won't we.

In the meantime, I hate to say it, but Sulla is right. The game in its present state is a shadow of Civ IV -- a pretty shadow, of course, but one that should never have been released in this state. I won't be buying a 2K game for a long, long time, and then only after it has been out for a couple of months.

 

[Thander]

It almost sounds like you have some personal issue with the game

It should be pretty clear if you have looked at his walkthroughs. In Civ 4 every decision had a pretty big opportunity cost. For instance, city locations you needed to make sure you chose a good spot for a city. Bad locations were almost useless. Compare this to Civ 5 where all cities, no matter what, are almost equally good. You might take care choosing good locations for a few key cities, but the vast majority of your cities are small, cheap cities whose sole purpose is producing a little bit of science and gold.

As a player the goal is always to find the most efficient way to win the game. That's the whole point in strategy games. You look at your options and choose the "moves" that give you the best advantage. It just so happens Civ 5 has one set of moves that eclipses any other strategy.

Sure, you can handicap yourself by only building cities rarely, but players shouldn't have to do that. The game should be balanced so that any set of moves has roughly the same efficiency. I think Firaxis will achieve this eventually (or modders will), but it will probably not be until after an expansion or two.

 

[Andoo]

I come to agree with most of the flaws that Sulla and many other criticized in the report. But without abusing the flaws so extensively like he did in his reports the game is very fun and your choices definitely mean something. When those flaws and unbalances that force you to make formulaic decisions out of the game I can see Civ5 becoming another Civ4BTS. I have much respect for the veteran civ players who can catch those flaws and I'm just not sure why Firaxis didn't hire them or beta tested with them before release.

 

[dannythefool]

That is one serious issue -- but there are others mentioned in the article that a lot of Civ V players agree with.

Sure, nothing he writes is wrong. It's just that also nothing he writes is new, so posting links to his reports every time he writes one leaves a strong impression of abusing Sulla's reports for some personal goals.

Techs are too cheap, buildings and units waay too expensive. Check out his final screenshots showing that he can research any end-game tech in about 4 turns each.

I don't need to see his screenshot, in the last game I finished I had over 1800 bpt and all techs were down to three turns (before Future tech started increasing again with every time I researched it.)

Speaking of that, the game I'm referring to wasn't on Immortal because it wasn't my choice; it was on King. But there is no difference between difficulty levels above Prince in this regard. Higher difficulty only means the AI gets bonuses, but from King on, as far as the player is concerned, everything is the exact same. So another part of the problem is that the game doesn't actually become harder when you increase difficulty. In Civ IV, if you post a strategy that works on Noble or maybe on Monarch, people will laugh at you. If you do the same with Civ V, you have very good chances it'll work all the way up to Deity.

His end article arguments are that city spamming shouldn't work, but it does because "bonus" resources and tile improvements (especially mines, farms and pastures) are way too weak, making conservative expansion rather pointless for achieving diplomatic or science victories which is another serious issue in the game, again as serious to many of us as the weak AI.

Sure, but again, it's not a new observation. He has hardly discovered a new game-breaking flaw; this forum is full of players complaining that all tiles are the same, all city spots are worth the same, etc.

We get it if you're a war monger and you want a war game but are disappointed at the weak AI -- that's terrible, it is a serious problem, but it is not the only serious shortcoming of the game.

The AI isn't only weak at warfare. I'm pretty sure Hiawatha could have bought at least some of the city states that Sulla was allied with. It's very rare that the AI doesn't have enough gold for that on Immortal. The entire strategy Sulla was following depends on the AI not even trying to counter it.

 

[eireksten]

Well, we'll find out next week if that is true, won't we.

No, we likely won't. There are simply too many plain bugs for them to fix before they can really get going on fixing gameplay specifics (like crashes and the ever-/never-ending trade bugs). Even though these things can be fixed relatively easy, they'll still take some time to sort out (you don't want to introduce worse problems in the process). The tech tree will not be changed. Overflow on research haven't been mentioned in the fix list. The AI will only receive minor tweaks.

Any way, even if the game is flawed in many ways, I still manage to have some fun with it. And there's no reason to think the flaws can't be sorted out. So death of Civ? Not close.

 

[Thormodr]

I come to agree with most of the flaws that Sulla and many other criticized in the report. But without abusing the flaws so extensively like he did in his reports the game is very fun and your choices definitely mean something. When those flaws and unbalances that force you to make formulaic decisions out of the game I can see Civ5 becoming another Civ4BTS. I have much respect for the veteran civ players who can catch those flaws and I'm just not sure why Firaxis didn't hire them or beta tested with them before release.

The truly scary thing is Sullla, who is immensely respected in the Civ community and would know better than almost anyone, feels that the problems are fundamentally in the core game and likely won't ever be fixed. He is not optimistic at all.

He didn't do anything outrageous either and he didn't even play optimally and he still destroyed the game with relative ease. He didn't even do anything that cheesy at all. It wasn't a question of one bug or one or two loopholes. If anything, he played the game exactly as it should be played. Weighed the pros and cons and made the easy decision because there weren't any real tough decisions to be made. That's not encouraging at all.

 

[Collic]

All the points are valid and well made. They may not be new but the effectiveness of the strategy, and numbers to back it up, highlight the current imbalances in the game. For that reason I'm glad people like Sulla are making walk-throughs like this and I very, very much hope the guys at Firaxis get to see it and take the criticisms on board. He doesn't pull any punches, but he doesn't make baseless or insulting statements either.

Hell, even just allowing cities to grow faster past the 10 mark, while not eliminating this style of play, would make it less attractive (the basis is getting the highest pop you can, the fastest you can after all) and make a lot of people happier with the game.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

When those flaws and unbalances that force you to make formulaic decisions out of the game I can see Civ5 becoming another Civ4BTS.

I think part of his point is that they would have to make changes to some very central mechanisms of the game (see last page of the review). Not only would that take a lot of time, they presumably would then have to rewrite the whole AI to take that into account, rebalance units and buildings, etc.

To be fair, we'll have to wait for the first three patches. But to be honest, I'm getting to feel like Sulla -- ready to write off this game and return to Civ IV for the next five years until Civ VI comes out.

 

[Collic]

I think part of his point is that they would have to make changes to some very central mechanisms of the game (see last page of the review). Not only would that take a lot of time, they presumably would then have to rewrite the whole AI to take that into account, rebalance units and buildings, etc.

To eliminate it as an effective strategy, yes, but to make it less attractive, I would say no. For most of us we wouldn't even think to try and push the game to these extremes, most players will approach the game in the way it's presented to us by the designers.

The problem is currently that the conventional way of playing isn't attractive enough. That's my (admittedly optimistic) take on it, anyway.

 

[Thormodr]

I think part of his point is that they would have to make changes to some very central mechanisms of the game (see last page of the review). Not only would that take a lot of time, they presumably would then have to rewrite the whole AI to take that into account, rebalance units and buildings, etc.

To be fair, we'll have to wait for the first three patches. But to be honest, I'm getting to feel like Sulla -- ready to write off this game and return to Civ IV for the next five years until Civ VI comes out.

Exactly right. It doesn't appear that there is going to be a quick fix when the core game play is broken and they aren't about to go to all the time, trouble and $$$ to fix it either. They'll just roll with what they have with a few tweaks and minor adjustments along the way. Cash in on a few DLCs as well.

Hope I'm wrong but I don't think I am sadly.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Thanks again Sulla for an enlighting read and thanks to Defianc4 for posting it. I have been on the fence for a while about buying this game, checking out the forums for info and have to say getting more and more disappointed for every article i read. This article pretty much did it for me. I will probably never buy this game. Sorry Firaxis. You blew it!

 

[drachasor]

I didn't see anything new in that "report" either. And none of it can't be fixed relatively easy.

Eh, exactly how is the ICS problem going to be fixed easily?

AI and diplomacy can be adjusted, and build times can be dramatically lowered (though then we need more buildings and lower maintenance). However, I am not seeing a simple solution to ICS at all.

 

[Andoo]

The truly scary thing is Sullla, who is immensely respected in the Civ community and would know better than almost anyone, feels that the problems are fundamentally in the core game and likely won't ever be fixed. He is not optimistic at all.

He didn't do anything outrageous either and he didn't even play optimally and he still destroyed the game with relative ease. He didn't even do anything that cheesy at all. It wasn't a question of one bug or one or two loopholes. If anything, he played the game exactly as it should be played. Weighed the pros and cons and made the easy decision because there weren't any real tough decisions to be made. That's not encouraging at all.

And that is the part that I don't agree with him. He did emphasize on mass expension with low population while focusing on commerce to buy powerful CS's(which is admittedly an overpowered strategy). For example he prefered 0/2/2 hills over 0/3/0 hills when he could do the opposite. It's easy to obtain 80+ hammers with production in mind when his best city was producing about 40 hammers. He simply didn't do that because that doesn't have much point since he was dominating the game with his strategy anyway. If it did matter however, the game would be much different.

 

[eireksten]

Eh, exactly how is the ICS problem going to be fixed easily?

AI and diplomacy can be adjusted, and build times can be dramatically lowered (though then we need more buildings and lower maintenance). However, I am not seeing a simple solution to ICS at all.

You don't see a way to nerf infinite city sprawl?? That could be done in a million different ways, and isn't even close to being the worst problem to fix, the way I see it. The AI needs a bit of work, however, and I'm guessing quite a few other parts of the game will need tweaking to make it fit with the AI. But hopefully they'll put some effort into it.