Khan Quest
Prince
I am a long time player - since Civ II, enjoying each new version except this one.
Ok, here is my rant
But first, this is what I like:
Hexes. Not a big improvement, but better.
Organic city border growth. I would rather see it grow faster at first, the slow down or stop unless more culture is added. It would also be better to have distance-from-city-core-tile penalties, mitigated by cultural influence.
Not stacking sort of. I would rather see penalties for stacking, both in the form of maintenance cost and combat effectiveness. (I once submitted a suggestion that included a live off the land for x number of units in a tile; additional units in that tile require exponentially more maintenance).
Unit adjacency benefits.
Quantified resources.
The five-tier combat success guidance verses exact odds.
Wow, that was a short list.
Now the rant here is what I dont like:
For starters, what everyone else said.
Dumbed-down, one-dimensional play.
Predictable, generic personalities. I miss the reviled Montezuma, push-over Gandhi, greedy Mansa, dangerous Shaka In civ V all leaders behave similarly. There is nothing unique about any rival civ from the game play perspective.
Soooo slooooow (yeah, and I bought a new system too).
Lack-luster wonders. These seem like little more than special buildings that offer some minor advantage, but no game changer. In civ IV, the wonders helped with strategy Island game? Go for GLH!, Specialist game? Pyramids rock!
Lack of city control I would rather select tiles to work than the tedium of sending a worker over to modify improvements and hope it changes how the city produces.
City builds take too long. Need units? No problem. Is three centuries too soon? Building a bank? Can you wait 100 turns?
City improvements are one-dimensional. In civ IV, I may see a need to increase happiness. Do I need a temple which also increases culture, or a market for the extra gold? Now, its ho hum, what gives the most happiness for the least cost in the latest city to have a production opening?
Meaninglessness of resource types. Luxury resources only need to be different than those of you trading partners. They can all be developed fairly early in the game and the sources are no longer clustered. No more lamenting a calendar heavy start, rejoicing over a gem start, or placing a city just so to work all four gem tiles.
City placement is almost irrelevant. Cities have to be far enough apart to eventually capture land, but close enough to eventually link up with roads. Then you just buy the tile(s) with whatever resource you need.
Unit types dont matter. There are bombarders and attackers. Ok, spears/pikes do more damage to horses, etc., but so what? There is little incentive to build anything but the currently most powerful unit. And they take so long to build, and are limited by the number that can surround a city that you have to go with what you have anyway.
Almost exactly the same promotions for all units. Open terrain or rough? This is more about luck where you happen to fight, and with so few units there is little point in specialization. In civ IV there always seemed to be a few units that I would nurture and hate when they got killed - CR3 units promoted to gunpowder units, woodsman 3 healers, etc. In civ V, with so few units, all are valuable, and must be used.
Ridiculous city-state production influence on the game. Barbarian camps should evolve into city states, which could eventually evolve into true civilizations. Two food to the capital and one to every city, or modern military units gifted every several turns? Sounds like magic. Game play is one thing but this is too far from reality.
And the artist Culture Bomb? Really? Really? Culture bomb is fine as a term for use in the forums, but it is just silly as an official term, and is really indicative of how the game design has devolved.
And one of the worst elements of civ V is conducting an overseas invasion. It is so tedious to line up all your in the order you want them to land, protected by warships then move them in formation , three tiles at a time And what a pain to escort, bombard and land units in the same turn.
Not too many people complained about the graphics so I will.
If your civ color is drab, your units get lost in the clutter. Now where did I leave those axeman?
Jungle is a dark green smudge. And trees, green cotton balls What happened to deciduous trees in tropical and temperate climes fading to coniferous and frosted coniferous in torrid climes?
Whats with the bland, wooden leaders? I miss Gilgamesh getting in my face. Let me guess the development was outsourced overseas
We got a new assignment. It says: Leaders Animation Algorithm.
Ok. What does Algorithm mean?
Maybe its short for Al-Gore-Rhythm. We are supposed to make the leaders bland and wooden
Ok, I know that was real bad, but I had to share my pain.
What happened to the wonder movies? Civ IV showed the construction of each wonder as a reward for the effort and sacrifice and to signify the grandeur of the project. I remember in an older civ how cool it was to see a newsreel-like wonder movie, complimenting the era in which it represented, and how it gratified the effort to build it. In civ V, its just a pop-up to click closed.
What Happened?
It appears that Firaxis hired some new marketing team to come up with a compromise design to appeal to both current customer base and new users more comfortable with game consoles. To operate on the consoles, the menu style was regressed, the animation simplified, and yes, the AI dumbed down. So now we have a game too clunky and one-dimensional for PC gamers, and too long and boring for console users. Ok, its boring for PC users as well.
Can it be fixed with upgrades or expansions? Not in my opinion. Stuff like religion, corporations, some favorite civs, etc., I expect, were purposefully not included so they could sell expansions. But, I think the underlying code base is too anemic for civ V to be fixable It cant be fixed without a complete rewrite.
Whats next?
Some hard core fans will buy the expansions; Firaxis will produce a few more titles following the new business plan, then in a year or two, go bankrupt or get sold to some other company. The certainly wont be seeing any of my dollars. (I'm back to playing Civ IV. I just bought StarCraft - I'll see how that goes...)
Firaxis, good luck with the new business model.
Ok, here is my rant
But first, this is what I like:
Hexes. Not a big improvement, but better.
Organic city border growth. I would rather see it grow faster at first, the slow down or stop unless more culture is added. It would also be better to have distance-from-city-core-tile penalties, mitigated by cultural influence.
Not stacking sort of. I would rather see penalties for stacking, both in the form of maintenance cost and combat effectiveness. (I once submitted a suggestion that included a live off the land for x number of units in a tile; additional units in that tile require exponentially more maintenance).
Unit adjacency benefits.
Quantified resources.
The five-tier combat success guidance verses exact odds.
Wow, that was a short list.
Now the rant here is what I dont like:
For starters, what everyone else said.
Dumbed-down, one-dimensional play.
Predictable, generic personalities. I miss the reviled Montezuma, push-over Gandhi, greedy Mansa, dangerous Shaka In civ V all leaders behave similarly. There is nothing unique about any rival civ from the game play perspective.
Soooo slooooow (yeah, and I bought a new system too).
Lack-luster wonders. These seem like little more than special buildings that offer some minor advantage, but no game changer. In civ IV, the wonders helped with strategy Island game? Go for GLH!, Specialist game? Pyramids rock!
Lack of city control I would rather select tiles to work than the tedium of sending a worker over to modify improvements and hope it changes how the city produces.
City builds take too long. Need units? No problem. Is three centuries too soon? Building a bank? Can you wait 100 turns?
City improvements are one-dimensional. In civ IV, I may see a need to increase happiness. Do I need a temple which also increases culture, or a market for the extra gold? Now, its ho hum, what gives the most happiness for the least cost in the latest city to have a production opening?
Meaninglessness of resource types. Luxury resources only need to be different than those of you trading partners. They can all be developed fairly early in the game and the sources are no longer clustered. No more lamenting a calendar heavy start, rejoicing over a gem start, or placing a city just so to work all four gem tiles.
City placement is almost irrelevant. Cities have to be far enough apart to eventually capture land, but close enough to eventually link up with roads. Then you just buy the tile(s) with whatever resource you need.
Unit types dont matter. There are bombarders and attackers. Ok, spears/pikes do more damage to horses, etc., but so what? There is little incentive to build anything but the currently most powerful unit. And they take so long to build, and are limited by the number that can surround a city that you have to go with what you have anyway.
Almost exactly the same promotions for all units. Open terrain or rough? This is more about luck where you happen to fight, and with so few units there is little point in specialization. In civ IV there always seemed to be a few units that I would nurture and hate when they got killed - CR3 units promoted to gunpowder units, woodsman 3 healers, etc. In civ V, with so few units, all are valuable, and must be used.
Ridiculous city-state production influence on the game. Barbarian camps should evolve into city states, which could eventually evolve into true civilizations. Two food to the capital and one to every city, or modern military units gifted every several turns? Sounds like magic. Game play is one thing but this is too far from reality.
And the artist Culture Bomb? Really? Really? Culture bomb is fine as a term for use in the forums, but it is just silly as an official term, and is really indicative of how the game design has devolved.
And one of the worst elements of civ V is conducting an overseas invasion. It is so tedious to line up all your in the order you want them to land, protected by warships then move them in formation , three tiles at a time And what a pain to escort, bombard and land units in the same turn.
Not too many people complained about the graphics so I will.
If your civ color is drab, your units get lost in the clutter. Now where did I leave those axeman?
Jungle is a dark green smudge. And trees, green cotton balls What happened to deciduous trees in tropical and temperate climes fading to coniferous and frosted coniferous in torrid climes?
Whats with the bland, wooden leaders? I miss Gilgamesh getting in my face. Let me guess the development was outsourced overseas
We got a new assignment. It says: Leaders Animation Algorithm.
Ok. What does Algorithm mean?
Maybe its short for Al-Gore-Rhythm. We are supposed to make the leaders bland and wooden
Ok, I know that was real bad, but I had to share my pain.
What happened to the wonder movies? Civ IV showed the construction of each wonder as a reward for the effort and sacrifice and to signify the grandeur of the project. I remember in an older civ how cool it was to see a newsreel-like wonder movie, complimenting the era in which it represented, and how it gratified the effort to build it. In civ V, its just a pop-up to click closed.
What Happened?
It appears that Firaxis hired some new marketing team to come up with a compromise design to appeal to both current customer base and new users more comfortable with game consoles. To operate on the consoles, the menu style was regressed, the animation simplified, and yes, the AI dumbed down. So now we have a game too clunky and one-dimensional for PC gamers, and too long and boring for console users. Ok, its boring for PC users as well.
Can it be fixed with upgrades or expansions? Not in my opinion. Stuff like religion, corporations, some favorite civs, etc., I expect, were purposefully not included so they could sell expansions. But, I think the underlying code base is too anemic for civ V to be fixable It cant be fixed without a complete rewrite.
Whats next?
Some hard core fans will buy the expansions; Firaxis will produce a few more titles following the new business plan, then in a year or two, go bankrupt or get sold to some other company. The certainly wont be seeing any of my dollars. (I'm back to playing Civ IV. I just bought StarCraft - I'll see how that goes...)
Firaxis, good luck with the new business model.
