The big conclusions thread

[stix213]

I agree with some of the OP's observations after playing my first game.

Civ 4 required more thinking in general, which I liked. It required more attention to detail and allowed you to make mistakes if you weren't careful. For example, in Civ 4 (and all previous Civ versions) its crazy to just build a settler and go build a town 7 squares away without a unit like an archer to protect your new town. In Civ 5 the town is automatically defended to a basic level without you having to do a single thing. Just build settler and then build a town, nothing to concern yourself with.

Also, where the hell do you adjust the science to gold ratio? When I played Civ Rev on the DS I was worried they would remove that feature in Civ 5 as well, and it looks like I was right.

There is so much depth missing from Civ 5 I was actually considering going back to Civ 4 for a while again until the first major patch (I've found several bugs that are very irritating also), but when I declared my first war that all changed. The combat system is so vastly superior to the "biggest stack wins" system of Civ 4 that it alone makes playing Civ 5 worth while. Surrounded the enemy city with spearmen, with archers one more square back, and triremes in the water and pounded away. I had to move units around to make room to evacuate my damaged units from the front while keeping archers in range, etc, etc, until the enemy city fell. What fun

Much more exciting than moving your stack to the enemy city, bombarding the city defenses with cats until they hit zero, then charge with everything... rinse/repeat on the next enemy city.

I hope there is a lot more depth planned for the first expansion. This game has a lot of potential really. Oh and for god's sake please put multiplayer saves in this thing!

 

[Magnetron01]

I agree with some of the OP's observations after playing my first game.

Civ 4 required more thinking in general, which I liked. It required more attention to detail and allowed you to make mistakes if you weren't careful. For example, in Civ 4 (and all previous Civ versions) its crazy to just build a settler and go build a town 7 squares away without a unit like an archer to protect your new town. In Civ 5 the town is automatically defended to a basic level without you having to do a single thing. Just build settler and then build a town, nothing to concern yourself with.

Also, where the hell do you adjust the science to gold ratio? When I played Civ Rev on the DS I was worried they would remove that feature in Civ 5 as well, and it looks like I was right.

There is so much depth missing from Civ 5 I was actually considering going back to Civ 4 for a while again until the first major patch (I've found several bugs that are very irritating also), but when I declared my first war that all changed. The combat system is so vastly superior to the "biggest stack wins" system of Civ 4 that it alone makes playing Civ 5 worth while. Surrounded the enemy city with spearmen, with archers one more square back, and triremes in the water and pounded away. I had to move units around to make room to evacuate my damaged units from the front while keeping archers in range, etc, etc, until the enemy city fell. What fun

Much more exciting than moving your stack to the enemy city, bombarding the city defenses with cats until they hit zero, then charge with everything... rinse/repeat on the next enemy city.

I hope there is a lot more depth planned for the first expansion. This game has a lot of potential really. Oh and for god's sake please put multiplayer saves in this thing!

No multiplayer saves is just evil..

 

[BoydofZINJ]

My biggest two gripes:

(My biggest gripe is...)

WONDERS!

Before Wonders were game breakers. The right wonders would greatly enhance your civilization or prevent you from losing. Right now, it seems pointless to build some wonders. I mean... is Oracle used to THE MUST HAVE early wonder. Now, its.... so bleh... I skip half the wonders. it seems normal buildings are sometimes more powerful than larger wonders. When Wonders are just oversized buildings.... then WTH.

Then my other big gripe is religion and Corporations. In BtS and Civ IV, they made the game seem more realistic - except when you would combine odd civilizations with odd religions... like the American Natives being jewish or the Persians converting to Taoism. But, it was just a minor word to imply a larger religious overtone that, IMHO, was a very dramatic point of our real life civilizations. Even today, religions play an important aspect to our foreign and domestic affairs.


Overall, it feels watered down. FUN but watered down.

And what is up with the bad graphics and lag?


Now, with all that in mind, the hexagon map, the no garrisons needed to protect the city, and the troop combat seem much better and enjoyable, IMHO.

 

[slowjames]

I think it's a mistake to assume that a combat AI can never be as good as a human. Someone brought up recently that Civ has a lot more moves than a chess AI to consider, but I'm not sure that's a good analogy. For one thing, the variety of a chess AI's options are greater. For another, one's position on a chess board are a lot harder to evaluate except if there is a material difference.

In Civ, the evaluation function is a lot simpler. First off, it's highly regional. You don't really need to consider units more than ten hexes away from battle lines, maybe even less, to get a decent simulacrum of humanity. You also typically can't move individual units very far in a battle situation, and logistical movement can be conducted using a simpler "heat map" variety of weakness computation.

I don't think it's beyond human capability to write a good AI for a game like this, and I think we'll see that view confirmed by either modders or Firaxis themselves in the coming months.

 

[Arkalius]

I figured I'd throw in a few of my thoughts relative to this.

Great aspects

I pretty much agree with all of these.

Social policies

the upgrades don't have any downsides whatsoever thus never forcing a player to make real choices. Since whatever you do, it will be good. Or whatever you do will be a bit better than good. But never will it be a bad choice, or never will it be a choice truly defining your civ. This concludes in many civilizations feeling and being the same with only their unique abilities to differentiate them as every civilization will end up with the same social policies with only a few minor choices.

I disagree. The choices you are making are which ones to adopt. Granted, I haven't played enough to really see how this works out in general, but it seems to me that you are not going to be able to adopt everything. So, you have to make choices about which bonuses are going to be best for you, and by managing to fill out 5 whole branches you're rewarded with the opportunity to win the game for your efforts. There doesn't need to be some kind of penaly to go with the bonuses... in fact I think the game is built around the need to attain these bonuses as you advance further in the game.

In a sense, your choices with these trees does add more uniqueness to your civ, as it could evolve to be quite different than the choices made by other civs.

Where is the distance to capital punishment for instance? The policies don't effect the cost of placement of your cities at all. Even the civics in Civ 4 had more dept.

I never cared for the distance from capital penalty myself. Instead of there being costs associated with where your cities are, there are costs associated with how many cities you have (unhappiness).

However I will say I do miss the Civics system a bit. I think that system was really well-done and I miss having to make specific choices about how my civ's government is run. I'm hoping they expand the social policies system in future expansions to bring back some of those aspects.

No more cultural powers

Now it [culture] just seems to be another resource like gold to just simply buy things with the only downside that you cant buy everything at once. (which isn't a real problem since you can't buy anything negative or bad)

I kind of like this. I was never at all interested in cultural output (beyond what is useful for border expansion) or victories in Civ 4, but it seems something more worth grabbing in Civ 5 to me. Maybe it's just a playstyle thing... but I find the system easier to understand and make use of now.

City states vs religion

City states are more boring than religion. There is no logical reason why they removed religion and introduced city states.

I think there's no logical reason to assume one is meant as a replacement for the other... but anyway...

The execution of city-states at this point isn't flawless.

The same should be said about the religions in Civ 4...

Not only is there no real difference between the various city states aside from the city name. They can be 'bought' pretty easily, helping you win the game without ever having to deal with other civs. The assignments/missions they present to you are not very spectacular and usually not worth your time.

There are differences between the 3 types for sure, and with only 2 per civ that means you'll have to compete with other civs to get all of the benefits. The missions often give big boosts in influence, saving you lots of gold. Some of the missions I've been getting are pretty interesting and varied, such as acquiring a certain resource, connecting with a road, or getting a certain type of great person.

As far as religions go... while I mourn the loss of that aspect of the game, I don't think they were implemented particularly well in Civ 4. If you were unlucky, you could easily get screwed out of founding any religions, which could really hinder you in the early game. If you were lucky enough to found more than one, it could really give you a lot of benefits as well. The whole system felt kind of convoluted and tedious to me. Maybe they'll reintroduce this feature in a streamlined way in future expansions.

I can not seem to find out how long it will take for a tile improvement to finish when workers are already constructing it.

If you select the worker unit, it tells you what it's working on on the card at the bottom left, and how much progress its made/how many turns left. In the simplified view, an icon for the improvement is displayed, but greyed out, and a progress bar appears beside it as well.

There is no way knowing what techs the opponent has aside from the units and the wonders etc. not the biggest problem but it was nicer to know how well you were doing tech-wise without having to study the enemy closely.

I'm sure espionage is a feature they'll be adding in a future expansion.

There is really no way of knowing what the opponent is 'thinking', since you - cant see the pros and cons anymore they feel towards you. Plus you cant ask them how they feel about other civs?

While useful, having a list of numbers to quantify another civ's regard toward you always seemed a little too hackish to me. Can you so easily quantify how other people feel about you in real life? No, typically you have to interact with them to get an idea. Though, I do think it would be good if there were some more overt indicators of how other civs felt about you, and I agree on the lack of being able to see how they feel about others.

No techno-trading

I don't really get why this was removed? It made diplomacy more interesting since you had something to bargain with. At least they should have made techno-trading optional. Techno-brokering was a bad thing in Civ 4, but it would've been fun to see this as an option at least.

This confuses me... you admit it was a bad thing but you don't get why it was removed? May I suggest it was removed because... it was a bad thing? I think this feature gave too much of an advantage to teams or allied civs, as they could divide and conquer too easily. It was also a bit unfair to people who weren't in the know about how this all went down. Many players don't realize how bad it is to trade a tech to a civ on their turn, or that if you sell a tech to one civ, you better sell it to them all. I like the research project feature in this game, because it requires an outlay of resources and takes time, but still lets you get the benefit of a free tech.

There seem to be numerous graphic glitches in the game. Didn't they properly beta test this??

If the metric for a "proper" beta test of a PC game is the absence of any bugs, then I submit no PC game is ever "properly" beta tested.

The combat AI

The AI will never be able to be as good as a human of course, but this really shows now when it comes to tactical battles they don't understand the concept of choke points and don't calculate losses as you can easily use units as bait to lure the AI out.

I don't have a lot of experience with this so I can't really comment... but I'm sure (hope) this will improve over time

Civ wide happiness and no more health

Some may like it but I don't think its a good thing. It's adding to the dumbing down and the lessening of variables in the game. It really doesn't matter anymore where you place yours city aside from the potential growth and resources aspect. There are no more 'bad' factors which can make a city fail. With the civ wide happiness it doesn't really matter if a few cities are placed in crappy spots, you won't get punished for it any longer, making the game easier to manage. The same goes for removing health, go place your city in rough terrain, go built factory's, it doesn't matter anymore.. thus dumbing it down.

I think this is a mixed blessing... I always found managing individual city happiness to be tedious and not very fulfilling. It would absorb a lot of time going through each city from time to time to find the optimal configuration of workers to maximise happiness etc. With this more centralized happiness model, its much easier to handle and doesn't give you 20 different variables that you have to manage to keep things on track. I guess some people appreciate more complexity, and I didn't mind it myself, but I find the new system more enjoyable.

The removal of health/pollution is probably related to some of the other changes in the game. They probably couldn't figure out a way (in a reasonable amount of time) to implement this system given the other gameplay changes in a way that made it relevant without making it overly tedious or annoying. Maybe we'll see an implementation of this in future expansions.

Conclusion for now

Civ 5 is a stripped game. Which didn't have to be a bad thing. As Civ 4 was a stripped game compared to Civ 3 + exp. But the problem is the lack of depth and variables that made civ 4 fun are missing in civ 5. There is a great basis but it lacks the details and some of the fun-factor. In my views Civ 4 minus the stack of doom minus espionage + this combat system + tweaked city states + civ 5 graphics would've made a better Civ 5 than it now is. Hopefully the modding community will repair this hurt game.

I think it would be unreasonable to expect this game to be as rich and varied at release as Civ 4 is... especially considering how many big changes were introduced. To be honest, in most of the cases where some depth or feature was removed, I don't find myself missing it, and in some cases realize I like the updated version better. I think we have a lot of great things to look forward to as the devs start to see how people play the game in light of the changes and see where improvements can be made, and add new features. What we have here is a really great platform for turning this into the best Civ game in the series. I'm eager to see what the devs are planning for future expansions.

 

[Arkalius]

Civ 4 required more thinking in general, which I liked. It required more attention to detail and allowed you to make mistakes if you weren't careful.

I submit that what it required was a lot more tedium... I find the gameplay in Civ 5 to be more streamlined. I guess if you're just really into complex detail this can be disappointing, but while I don't mind it, I've found that I actually enjoy games that avoid piling on the complexity for complexity's sake.

in Civ 4 (and all previous Civ versions) its crazy to just build a settler and go build a town 7 squares away without a unit like an archer to protect your new town. In Civ 5 the town is automatically defended to a basic level without you having to do a single thing. Just build settler and then build a town, nothing to concern yourself with.

I like this. It was annoying that cities were such fragile entities by default. And now, since unit upkeep is a much larger aspect to your economy, it is a relief.

Also, where the hell do you adjust the science to gold ratio? When I played Civ Rev on the DS I was worried they would remove that feature in Civ 5 as well, and it looks like I was right.

I originally lamented this as well, but after playing I realize I don't miss it.

There is so much depth missing from Civ 5

There's some depth removed, but I think it has been streamlined and made more fun in some ways.

The combat system is so vastly superior to the "biggest stack wins" system of Civ 4 that it alone makes playing Civ 5 worth while.

Yes, combat is much more interesting. I almost always avoided war until modern era in Civ 4 because I found the combat in earlier eras rather tactically bland, but now it is much more varied because of the need to consider positioning of units etc.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I think it's a mistake to assume that a combat AI can never be as good as a human. Someone brought up recently that Civ has a lot more moves than a chess AI to consider, but I'm not sure that's a good analogy. For one thing, the variety of a chess AI's options are greater. For another, one's position on a chess board are a lot harder to evaluate except if there is a material difference.

In Civ, the evaluation function is a lot simpler. First off, it's highly regional. You don't really need to consider units more than ten hexes away from battle lines, maybe even less, to get a decent simulacrum of humanity. You also typically can't move individual units very far in a battle situation, and logistical movement can be conducted using a simpler "heat map" variety of weakness computation.

I don't think it's beyond human capability to write a good AI for a game like this, and I think we'll see that view confirmed by either modders or Firaxis themselves in the coming months.

It's surprisingly hard to do, especially for games with a major rock-paper-scissors aspect like Civ 5. Add in terrain and limited military intelligence and it's ever more challenging. The most gaping holes (senseless declarations of war, when the AI can't take a city, or over-generous peace offers) will be plugged. But I have yet to see a complex computer game able to change a poor AI into a good one.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I don't think it's beyond human capability to write a good AI for a game like this

People have been saying things like this for many, many years, and yet no one has ever gotten remotely close. It's easy to claim that "other people" should be able to do something. What's much harder is to actually do it.

Since Firaxis doesn't seem to have produced an AI even remotely as good as what was in Civ 4, expecting some sort of quantum leap far beyond Civ 4 to human-level capabilities never seen in any other game seems, at the least, optimistic.

 

[Lord Tirian]

People have been saying things like this for many, many years, and yet no one has ever gotten remotely close.

AFAIK, for most games the problem is rather: writing a good AI that runs in a reasonable time.

The game could totally just simulate the next couple of turns on "autoplay" and then find the best move according to the info available to the AI... but then, turns would more or less take hours.

Cheers, LT.

 

[DaviddesJ]

The game could totally just simulate the next couple of turns on "autoplay" and then find the best move according to the info available to the AI... but then, turns would more or less take hours.

No one has ever written human-level AI for this sort of problem even given supercomputers with thousands of processors. Mostly, you can do exponentially more work and only get a slight improvement in results.

It is certainly not untrue that running quickly enough is one of the problems with building a good AI. But it's still fair to say that the most fundamental problem is that no one knows how to do it no matter how long you take.

"Simulating the next couple of turns" doesn't help much if you are up against a human opponent that plays much differently than you expect. You can simulate what might look like a great move, but it leaves a gaping hole that your real opponent can exploit even though the "simulated opponent" wouldn't.

More generally, just trying to decide whether one result is better or worse than another is often the hard part. Not figuring out what will happen.

 

[Duo]

Nobody can even write a good AI to play Go... Now, I'm not prepared to rigourously analyse which is the harder problem, but there are at least as many "tiles" in your average Civ game, not to mention a whole lot more options.

 

[DonWaLd]

Another thing that I've been noticing over and over again is that the civilopedia seems extremely lacking in practical information. Right from the start I go to see what a plantation does for the resources it works, it says, allows you to work X resource. Nothing else. I try to see what promotions lead to other ones. No info, have to backtrack from the desired promotion w/ prerequisites. I look up happiness, no actual relevant info. I look up acquiring happiness, basically just says that certain buildings, resources, etc.. give happiness without any actual explanation.

There are a lot more I've come across but those were just the examples I had on the top of my head at the moment.

Also, is there something wrong with diplomacy? I am playing through my first game, (king, huge to test the waters) and I get attacked by Suleiman and Ramkhamhaeng; about 20 turns in to the war (355AD) I've captured 1 city of Suleimans (completely detached from his empire and built over by me) and am sending my 3 swords, 2 chariots, and 1 horseman in his and Siams direction and decide to see what they'll offer for peace. Suleiman gives me 5 cities, all of his strategic/lux resources and all his money for the next 45 turns. Out of nowhere, haven't even fought his army yet and he handed me all his cities. I mean.. go team and all but seriously WTH?

 

[tharg]

Good points.

Social policies

I was impressed initially, this seemed an interseting way to give a different character to each civ. Tying them in to a particular play style. However it needs tweaks. I would like to see more differences, and restrictions on taking multiple policies. At the least a restriction to one policy per era. Make them more expensive of longer.

City states vs religion

Eh! City states are a replacement for religion?

I must admit I am confused as to why they backed out religion.

 

[Ymir9]

So if the best thing about Civ V is 1upt and hexes, why doesn't somebody make a 1upt mod for IV with modified upkeeps, speeds, and production times for units? Ranged bombardment is already modded, and the new stacking rules should be simple.
Hexes and its combat benefits are a harder thing to replicate of course, but why not simply represent a zone of control around units, where enemy units who try to move into tiles to the sides and behind an enemy unit must skirmish with the unit to take the tile?

 

[lorno47]

The religion system sucked so bad :/ I'm about as happy it's gone as I am with SOD. The game does feel a lot slower though, I agree with that for sure.

 

[Imperitor]

I completely agree with all the points made in this review. Every time a new civ game comes out I'm always baffled how they manage to make it even more fun then the last one. I didn't get that feeling with this one. Not that it's a bad game but it feels like they streamlined it too much to try and appeal to a larger audience. I find myself clicking 'next turn' over and over because there are not as many decisions to make.

My biggest gripe with the game is that you can't change your social policies once you pick them. With civics you could change your strategies mid-game. Now you can't adapt as the game progresses.

The combat is an improvement. It's much more tactical now. Huge stacks of troops got a little ridiculous in civ 4 (although it was fun to march around the map crushing everything). The only thing I would like to see is the ability to stack 2 or 3 units in a city or fort. My troops are always stuck outside; unprotected.

Anyway that's just my 2 cents. I'll be waiting for some awesome mods.

 

[martinwgc]

I agree.
This seems to be a start point of a great game, but somehow feels unfinished/too simple. The 1 upt concept and combat are pretty good, the high unit cost is great, and the UI is very convenient. It's no longer a tedious game like Civ III and Civ IV, which is really a great thing. But..you can purchase units with gold? you can bribe city states with 500 gold and they become ally instantly? The common resources are nothing but 2 extra food? I had one game in which Siam is ally with two close city states, and I decided to go to war with it. I simply bribed the two cities with 500 gold each and guess what..they declared war on Siam with me! lol. Seriously these things are dumb.

 

[mrhell]

Best is to just play it without reading anything (good or bad). Decide for yourself, and don't let others' feelings taint yours.

That might normally be good advice, but with steam involved now, there's no selling this game to a sucker if you don't like it. You buy it, that money is GONE. Know for sure with this one before throwing your money down the toilet.

 

[zonk]

I think this is a reasonable first impression and there's really not a lot I'd disagree with.

I do think the new strategic aspect of warfare is going to win me over, especially once we get the proper dose of expansions and mods -- I always played more as a builder and hated stacks of doom -- so this sounds like it might be a great thing.

I also want to second the concerns about less micromanagement -- that was the beauty of the game. I played Revolutions on a friend's console - and my concern right now - I'm feeling more similarity to that than IV... which is a bad thing.

 

[Magnetron01]

I think this is a reasonable first impression and there's really not a lot I'd disagree with.

I do think the new strategic aspect of warfare is going to win me over, especially once we get the proper dose of expansions and mods -- I always played more as a builder and hated stacks of doom -- so this sounds like it might be a great thing.

I also want to second the concerns about less micromanagement -- that was the beauty of the game. I played Revolutions on a friend's console - and my concern right now - I'm feeling more similarity to that than IV... which is a bad thing.

I agree this sorta feels like Civ: revoltions 2 instead of a predecessor of civ 4