The 1 thing that just kills me while playing this game

[mva5580]

I can tolerate the questionable AI. I can tolerate some of the questionable decisions in terms of the Wonders, certain civ's being overpowered, stuff like that.

But the pace of this game absolutely kills me. I loaded it back up last night after playing Civ IV for the last 2 weeks, as I wanted to try out the new patch. And I just cannot believe how different the 2 games are in terms of pace. In IV it always feels like there is a decision to be made, something to do. But in V within 15 minutes, I can't help but feeling like I'm selecting "Next Turn" more than I'm doing anything else. It just seems like everything takes forever to produce, and there's way too much waiting time.

I can't imagine this will be something that's ever changed, so it might be something that I just have to end up accepting. I like the rest of the game, I really do. But it just feels like it is sooooooooooo slow in developing.

 

[Helmling]

Yes, but why?

I'm thinking the build times for everything are too long and the removal of local happiness just makes it so we don't have to monitor cities as closely.

 

[attackfighter]

I felt the same way, but for both games not just civ 5. The only time I really feel like I'm consistantly doing something is when I'm at war, and niether game really places much empthasis on war.

 

[mva5580]

I understand that it somewhat exists in IV as well, but it just seems to be so much less of a factor. In IV I feel like there are consistent decisions to be made in terms of what to build next in a city, what to assign your workers to, pop-ups that show up in terms of diplomacy with other Civ's, choosing your next tech, etc. It just feels like there is so much more flow to the game than there is in V.

It just seems like everything takes forever to develop in V. Does changing the game speed help this any?

 

[PAnz3r]

changed the game speed! you probably play marathon and at this pace it's really really slow , costruction of all things becoming grimmy boring century span project D:

try to play at epic...i've your feel after starting the first game...after i change the speed and i can enjoy the game ( on this side )

 

[Slowpoke]

I can't even think of playing on epic O.O I'm gonna try out quick sometime and see if that's more to my liking. Although honestly the game really isn't balanced very well outside of standard speed I've noticed.

 

[ohioastronomy]

The mechanical wait between actions is the major factor. Hitting "next turn" and waiting 2 seconds is very, very different from hitting "next turn" and waiting 10 seconds. I've returned to Civ IV as well (Fall From Heaven is an absolute delight), and the opening also has dead time. It just goes by a lot faster.

Civ IV also had many, many more tech and building options - your task is to prioritize the numerous buildings and whether to construct them or not.

Neither is a good wargame, but since I have never played Civ as a wargame that doesn't matter much to me. But Civ V is a very shallow city/empire building game, and that does matter to me.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I can't even think of playing on epic O.O I'm gonna try out quick sometime and see if that's more to my liking. Although honestly the game really isn't balanced very well outside of standard speed I've noticed.

It's also poorly balanced at the smaller and larger map sizes. That's completely unsurprising given the arbitrary flat bonus structure in the game; 75 happiness from 15 luxuries is quite different on a small and a huge map. My son loathes Civ V because he enjoys huge/marathon games and they're unplayable. I prefer small games and small/normal speed sort of works for me (or it would if the underlying design appealed to me, which it doesn't.)

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I only agree with this partially. I think that it can be annoying how long it can take to build things (though it doesn't always take long for me since I typically play on the "quick" game setting) but I would still take it over the way it was in Civ 4 any day of the week where each turn could take painfully long to finish during the middle-late game because you had so many cities to manage. You may be cursing the "slow pace" at the moment, but odds are that you will be thanking god for it by the time you control half of the damn world.

 

[Fabien]

I personally fail to see any noticable difference between Civ4 BTS and Civ 5 in this regard and I played both on the normal settings. Sure you had some more clicks for setting up buildings in Civ4, but that's about it.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I personally fail to see any noticable difference between Civ4 BTS and Civ 5 in this regard and I played both on the normal settings. Sure you had some more clicks for setting up buildings in Civ4, but that's about it.

We have a consistent pattern: people who play with smaller maps and faster speeds experience far less slowdown than people who play on larger maps and slower speeds. The extra lag is an annoyance at standard map size/normal speed. It's crippling at marathon speed/huge map.

 

[Sneaks]

I would say Civ V is far less micro on a general King setting than IV, which is exactly how the designers intended it. IV had a very strong and devoted community, but there was far too much micromanagement to appeal to the "casual gamer" that Firaxis/2k was hoping to grab with V. With less decision making, the game moves faster towards resolution, often in a far more linear manner. This does not necessarily apply to those that play in a min/max high level style, where each citizen is individually placed, but as an overall strategy, it is a much sleeker and more streamlined beast.

 

[Humakty]

It's also poorly balanced at the smaller and larger map sizes. That's completely unsurprising given the arbitrary flat bonus structure in the game; 75 happiness from 15 luxuries is quite different on a small and a huge map. My son loathes Civ V because he enjoys huge/marathon games and they're unplayable. I prefer small games and small/normal speed sort of works for me (or it would if the underlying design appealed to me, which it doesn't.)

No scaling of luxuries with map size ? Is this confirmed ? This is a major game breaking flaw indeed !

 

[Fabien]

We have a consistent pattern: people who play with smaller maps and faster speeds experience far less slowdown than people who play on larger maps and slower speeds. The extra lag is an annoyance at standard map size/normal speed. It's crippling at marathon speed/huge map.

Do you mean slowdown because of loading times or time you spend doing obvious things? (moving workers, switching tiles etc?) . On normal maps I have basically don't have to wait in between turns, each round takes less than five seconds to finish for the AI. I've always spent most of my time optimizing cities in the beginning and then managing my army in the later game (especially in Civ BTS I spent around 80% of my time rearranging my units).

Well, what can I say, the game has about the same feel as Civ BTs did in terms of length (~~ 25 Hours per full Game), but then again, I only played standard maps with standard serttings. Maybe Epic is really different now.

 

[SuperJay]

With less decision making, the game moves faster towards resolution, often in a far more linear manner. This does not necessarily apply to those that play in a min/max high level style, where each citizen is individually placed, but as an overall strategy, it is a much sleeker and more streamlined beast.

Indeed... and isn't it interesting that while being more stramlined and supposedly moving faster with less decision making, it's also more boring because there's so little to do? Boring to me, I mean; obviously thousands of other players enjoy it just fine, and (I presume) don't mind clicking Next Turn a few dozen times in a row while whole ages pass by unnoticed.

It's a weird dynamic, this "streamlined but slower" situation with Civ5. I don't really know who that appeals to or how it's appealing; I'd assume more casual or newer players would want MORE to do to stay engaged and interested.

 

[vandyr]

I felt the same way, but for both games not just civ 5. The only time I really feel like I'm consistantly doing something is when I'm at war, and niether game really places much empthasis on war.

Same here. Never understood the complaints about "next turn" when I did the same exact thing in Civ IV.

 

[lschnarch]

The problem with Civ5 is that playing on smaller maps *you* don't have anything to do, which makes it boring.
Playing on bigger maps makes the AI turns so slow that once again you feel bored.

The game suffers from really bad programming, as it seems.
Only that many units to control, only that many buildings to create, only that many techs to select for research.

Nevertheless, the calculation time takes much much longer than in Civ4.

 

[vranasm]

the problem has a name and that is "slavery"

slavery offered you one luxury and that is convert local food to hammers.

in ciV we have global gold to hammers which doesnt work the same way (or the conversion ratio is much much lower then slavery)

I prefer slavery way of doing things and that's reason I didn't touch CiV for 3 weeks and the new patch doesnt bring enough new things... all I saw is bunch of nerfs for game that is boring to play in dev's intented style of play.

 

[Fabien]

It's also poorly balanced at the smaller and larger map sizes. That's completely unsurprising given the arbitrary flat bonus structure in the game; 75 happiness from 15 luxuries is quite different on a small and a huge map. My son loathes Civ V because he enjoys huge/marathon games and they're unplayable. I prefer small games and small/normal speed sort of works for me (or it would if the underlying design appealed to me, which it doesn't.)

Well, you're not guaranteed every ressource in a game anyway and the main source of happiness comes from buildings which of course scale with the numbers of cities anyway. Now that the buildings provide even more Happiness per maintenance you'd see fewer problems with that as well.

For me the happiness resources are mostly to balance the unhappiness gained from the number of cities so to speak. as the game progresses you'll have to rely more on buildings anyway, since you can't afford to trade all your ressources from the AI - they seem to know when to ask for outrageous prices .

 

[tnick777]

Civ BTS used to be HUGE maps MARATHON speed.

Now I quit those games after 12 turns on this cuz it's just boring.

Everything I do is quick - standard games now..