The Final Analysis?

[Akaoz]

Very well written and I, unfortunately, agree with him on most points.

I guess I'm done with this game untill the expansion. I have no faith the game can be salvaged by patches. That said, I guess it depends on who they get to lead the development of the expansion. Maybe they could give that job to Sulla?

 

[Dale]

Nevermind about gameplay (or not being Civ IV BtS v.2), from a technical standpoint, it's already enough to make me feel unimpressed with this product.

1) Bugs; full of them, CTDs, crashes, freezes and sudden disabling of functions, not very uncommon in this game. Granted, previous Civs suffered similar problems too, but to think they never improve their game stability at launch after all these years is really unimpressive.

2) Poor optimization; Honestly, the animations in this game are few and far between, yet I do not understand why this game would tax my system more than Crysis would. Massive slowdowns by late-game are so prevalent that one might think it's part of the game.

3) Non-functional MP Platform; Steam, hotly debated in its use and I don't want to further ignite the debate, but one advantage Steam was supposed to give is a standardized game setup for all players of the game, so why can't I use Mongolia in MP, since it was released for free and everyone online was forced to update to obtain it?

Babylon, Spain and Inca DLC was advertised with the "Multiplayer" tag in the Store but it can't be used? This is fraudulent advertising and Steam and/or Firaxis should be held accountable over this.

Speaking of patching...

4) Botched patching process; latest hotfix produces more CTDs than previous versions and it outright deletes the "CivilizationV.exe", a genuine first in the Civ-series, no wonder it got nominated for GotY in another thread...

Apart from point 3 above, there are many people who have not experienced points 1, 2 & 4 at all since release day. I'm not denying they don't exist, just that they are definitely not universal.

 

[JohnnyW]

Apart from point 3 above, there are many people who have not experienced points 1, 2 & 4 at all since release day. I'm not denying they don't exist, just that they are definitely not universal.

I've experienced 1 & 2. I haven't played much since the patch (guess why...game isn't any more exciting), so I haven't experienced 4. I tried one MP game and guess what? It crashed. Haven't tried since; so I've experienced 3 as well.

 

[alacheesu]

A very good read. I agreed with basically everything (except the part about multiplayer, I haven't tried that myself).

 

[Mustakrakish]

Couldn't read the whole thing, too tired right now. But damn, I agree about the part about Catherine being "friendly" while she obviously is hostile, or should have been hostile and backstabbing Iroquois etc. The whole thing just doesn't make any sense and really really hurts my head.

Perhaps Sullla is right about more information visible would probably just reveal them AI's to be completely insane...

Anyway that's how far I've read it for now...

 

[Venereus]

Thanks, Sulla. That must have taken some work and is a very good article. Nice to know I'm not insane about Civ V.

 

[flyboy22]

I just never get that feeling of needing to play one more turn...

This sums up my feelings of Civ V perfectly.

 

[jjkrause84]

Nice one Sulla BUT.....

YOU DIDN'T MENTION FINAL FANTASY TACTICS! BLASPHEMY! It, too was in 1997 and was/is phenomenal.

Otherwise, great article.

 

[JBConquests]

I didn't read everything as I am too tired to make it through it all. From the parts I read, Sully has some good points but went off the deep end with them. If he would have just reigned in his wild theories a bit the article would have been awesome.

Comments like:

Yeah, let's do everything possible to cripple the human player to make up for the fact that the AI has no f-ing clue how to play this game. Gee, that sure sounds like fun, doesn't it?"

I seriously doubt the poor AI was the motivation for nerfing everything. Perhaps game balance was the motivation? The changes the last patch did to horsemen was completely appropriate.

That last screen shot showing a ton of units, why does anybody want to build that many units? I don't play on the highest skill level - only King but is that really necessary? Geez, with 3 or 4 Rocket Artillery protected by 5 or 6 Mechanized Infantry/Tanks I can take out 50 AI units. Why would you need all that? Looks like he just needs to clean up old units.

 

[Venereus]

I didn't read everything as I am too tired to make it through it all. From the parts I read, Sully has some good points but went off the deep end with them. If he would have just reigned in his wild theories a bit the article would have been awesome.

Comments like:



I seriously doubt the poor AI was the motivation for nerfing everything. Perhaps game balance was the motivation? The changes the last patch did to horsemen was completely appropriate.

That last screen shot showing a ton of units, why does anybody want to build that many units? I don't play on the highest skill level - only King but is that really necessary? Geez, with 3 or 4 Rocket Artillery protected by 5 or 6 Mechanized Infantry/Tanks I can take out 50 AI units. Why would you need all that? Looks like he just needs to clean up old units.

No human player builds a Carpet of Doom. Only the AI does, and it has no choice since it gets a lot of units for free because of the higher difficulty bonuses it gets.

 

[charon2112]

A good article, and I can't say there's much I disagree with.

 

[JBConquests]

No human player builds a Carpet of Doom. Only the AI does, and it has no choice since it gets a lot of units for free because of the higher difficulty bonuses it gets.

Hmm, the common thread I see is that the AI needs to be improved and more balancing tweaks need to be done.

I think that 1upt and tactical combat is a great idea but the rules haven't been refined enough. More needs to be done to limit unit production. Those units whose numbers are not tied to resources like Iron need to be limited in some way. Perhaps total # of units can only be some % of population or some other factor. I think it is reasonable to say that the country of Kuwait cannot field an army that is the same size as China's no matter how rich Kuwait is.

Also, I think he misrepresented many points. Yes a powerful city should be able to build units much faster than a new city. I think they do, the last game I played I had a size 20+ city which had 60+ production a turn. I had a smaller city 5 or so which only had about 10 production a turn. That is a significant difference. That size 20 city was worth 4 - 6 of these small cities.

I did agree with all his points concerning how stupid the AI is.

I did agree with all his MP comments though I will say that local MP works better than online. I have played through several local MP games.

The diplomacy is certainly better but and I agree with his comments regarding it being almost impossible to befriend an AI or having AI's be able to support you, vote for you, and become close allies. However, most of his other comments regarding diplomacy I disagree with. Since when is it required to be able to explain an AI's actions??? How many world leaders can have their actions explained? I live in the US and I can't explain the US's actions most of the time. Would the AI's be able to explain your actions as a human player?? I doubt it.

 

[fcolmenarez]

Screwy enough, I've never experienced 1 & 2 and 4... But I still believe the game has some major warts. I've had lots of fun nonetheless. But that's maybe because I went away from Civ for quite a while and I'm still learning how to play optimally in Civ V.

 

[Sullla]

I didn't dispute that, read my comment. I said that Civ 5 is not BtS v2, which from all of his writings on Civ 5 is exactly what he wanted. He canes Civ 5 for NOT being BtS v2, which is unfair. Yes, Civ 5 has it's own share of problems, but not being BtS v2 is not one of them.

I'm sorry Dale, but this is simply not true. At no point in time have I ever said I wanted Civ5 to be "Beyond the Sword version 2" or whatever name you might call it. I would prefer that you didn't go around claiming to speak for me when I said no such thing. I've made many comparisons between Civ5 and Civ4 because one is the direct sequel to the other, and Civ4 simply executed a lot of the same game mechanics in a better way. But I've also made many comparisons between Civ5 and Civ3, and even the original two Civilization games as well. My complaint isn't that Civ5 tried to innovate the Civ formula, it's that the new game mechanics put in place don't work very well. I mean, good intentions only take you so far.

Because I've had a couple of people ask me about this, I'm going to work on an article describing how I would design a new Civilization game, in the fantasy scenario where I was put in charge. Obviously not going to happen, but I can dream, can't I? Let me assure you, the result wouldn't look very much like Civ4. At the very least, I'd like to do a complete rework of the combat system and research mechanics, among other things...

 

[cf_nz]

I've made many comparisons between Civ5 and Civ4 because one is the direct sequel to the other <snip>

At the risk of being picky I'd actually consider that a false interpretation. Civ V is the next version in the series rather than a direct sequel.

 

[civ-wrecked]

I agree with most of what Sulla said. Interestingly, because of his article and his strategy, I tried Civ V again and stopped in the middle of the game out of boredom again.
When I play strategy games, I like to have as many choices and for the choices to have as much significance as possible without deciding the outcome of the game outright. Civ V seems to make sure that there are as few choices as possible and the choices are of little consequence as possible.
After the patch, besides the fact that the choice to delay using the culture points until a later era to pick a better social policy (more suitable to the current strategy) has been removed, even the choice of delaying the upgrades of your troops is disallowed. The Civ V team should lighten up a bit. It's not like I try to cheat by not upgrading the troops right away, I just don't know when/where they will be used so it's better to wait until they are actually used to upgrade and make them work better. It's pretty much a Civ tradition. Upgrading them right away might force me to produce enough troops with different upgrades so they, as a big group with different upgrades, they can be used anywhere. But that would take away another choice: having a small army.
I don't think all these bad ideas come from Firaxis though. Fundamentally (and probably simplistically), I think there are two groups of Civ players: the expert Naysayers and the for-fun Yeahshouters.
The expert Naysayers are those who like to compete, mostly in MP games but occasionally against the AI. They are the real experts of the game and like to show their knowledge of all the features that are OP and cause the game to be unbalanced (and cause them to lose some games). Their main purpose is to compete and win the game so removing the unbalanced features is more important to them than having more varieties for fun.
Their ideas are more reactive and along the line of "SOD sucks, let's find some way to prevent it". "Some of the wonders are too powerful, let's make them less consequential", and nerf and nerf and nerf, as Sulla observed. Most, if not all of their ideas are based on the word NO to start with. Defenders of the 1UPT would say something like "But it's better than the SOD. What's so smart about winning with a SOD ?", not how fun (or unfun) it is to move dozens of units around individually with them bumping into each others and every other units along the way.
The Yeahshouters have more joie de vivre and play the game looking for fun experience like getting the Pyramid, StoneHenge, Great Library, CS slingshot or at least the Oracle, free tech with Liberalism,etc that make them feel like they've made good decisions that contribute significantly to the final outcome of the game. A good game must have enough of these positive reinforcements to keep people captivated and not walk away.
In other words, the game should be designed around the Yeahshouters (someone posted a URL from gamasutra which essentially saying the same thing but in a more more professional tone and with data to back up the reasoning) by adding enough innovative and fun thing for people to do at regular interval, unfortunately, the Naysayers tend to be more influential in game design decision.

When Civ III came out, I also hated it but realized that the design reflected all the "deas the expert players had been complaining about Civ II (I'm a lurker on all the Civ board). Civ IV was an innovative surprise and not just a kneejerk smorgabord of "Let's not allow them to do that" ideas.

Before Civ V came out, I guess I was the only person who wished that they would simply make it like Civ IV rather than trying to "fix Civ IV" the same way they designed Civ III to fix Civ II. When I played Civ V I had that deja vu feeling of Civ III again. I just learned that Jon Shafer worked on Civ III. That explained it.

 

[trivilization]

At this point I think it would be best to just limit everything. Seriously. Maximum 5 cities per civ (conquered cities must be destroyed), 10 pop each, and 30 units on Standard map size with double these figures for Huge. That solves ICS, carpet of doom, and gives the AI an easier time at pathfinding and alleviates some 1upt problems. Hope to see this in the next patch

 

[Islet]

Apart from point 3 above, there are many people who have not experienced points 1, 2 & 4 at all since release day. I'm not denying they don't exist, just that they are definitely not universal.

Conversely, I can make the same claim; there are many people who have experienced #1, 2, 3 & 4 since release. But throwing claims back & forth would not make for a very engaging discussion.

Here is a professional review site that actually bothers to detail technical issues and how the game looks at each graphics detail level for every review it makes. The score is generous, but the text is not.

The lack of polish in presentation of the product is also glaring. Civilopedia giving wrong information, use of triangles to represent promotions, non-informative Civilopedia entries are the name of the game.

It's saddening to see a flagship series like Civilization have an entry like Civilization V.

 

[bryanw1995]

Sulla is right about the 1upt problem. 1UPT was the first thing Fraxis told us about Civ5, it was what the developers praised highly as the new big improvement. 1UPT was obviously what Civ5 was built off of, and it just doesn't work with a Civ game.

yes, but about 85% of the forum that voted on 1upt over the past few months was in favor of it, and that's even after all the complaining/whining/moaning. just b/c it doesn't work for YOU doesn't mean that it doesn't work for civ games in general.

 

[blind biker]

yes, but about 85% of the forum that voted on 1upt over the past few months was in favor of it, and that's even after all the complaining/whining/moaning. just b/c it doesn't work for YOU doesn't mean that it doesn't work for civ games in general.

You really do have issues remembering numbers, don't you? It is 78%
But the interesting thing is, while 78% say they prefer 1UpT, only 36% are sticking with Civ V, the rest has already gone back to Civ IV, considering going back to Civ IV or leaving Civ behind altogether. That tells me that while people might want 1UpT, they aren't ready to face the drawbacks 1UpT brings with it. Therefore, 1UpT must die, there is no other way forward for Civ.