Utter disappointment

[groogfish]

Civ IV got very old very quickly. Lots of detail but quite easy to beat.

Try again on a harder difficulty

And you never played multiplayer obviously. I, for one, am not "quite easy to beat".

 

[Shorkaa]

I don't think Civ V is that bad, i like the new stuff, with a bit of modding it will be excellent.
And yes, I know thats not the point of a full-priced released game, but after playing it for a while, I have to say you get used to most of it.

 

[Bad Brett]

I'm so tired of the argument "Civ IV was just as buggy when it came out blah blah". This community has done an incredible job of finding bugs and suggesting improvements. Just because the game engine is new, shouldn't mean that the fans have to point out the same bugs a second time.

For example, you can't see how many turns a worker has been building an improvement and you can't see what kind of improvements that are available on other tiles then the one the worker is currently located at. I expect this kind of information to be improved for every game, without having to wait for the patch. Just because Civ IV had issues at the beginning, doesn't mean that it's okay for this game to have it. Firaxis have done a really poor job so far and I can understand that many people are upset.

 

[MadRat]

I am enjoying the game; but there are a few criticisms I have developed over the past 2.5 days.

1) Graphic glitches on terrain improvements (they dont always update until you re-zoom or move a unit)
2) Railroads are BUTT UGLY - you can even tell them from roads sometimes.
3) Wonders are now so bland - just clones of one another really. I just cant get exited about something that gives me +x to some great leader and culture. Wonders were supposed to be game changing now they are so ho-hum..
4) Minor civs are nice at the start but they have no real end game value other than geographic speedbumps. Perhaps if some late game mechanism existed to get some value out of them or even have them join your empire - GIVE THEM SOME CHARACTER.
5) I havent seen the AI use naval units or even embarked units (but playing on chief some throwaway games)
6) Diplomacy is very bland. They don't really offer much in terms of trade just spam open access and requests for war/
7) No MAP trading????????????? Exploring sea zones is fine- but do you HAVE to make me explore by unit in AI traffic jam central??
8) bring back the civ graph !!

Rat

 

[groogfish]

For example, you can't see how many turns a worker has been building an improvement and you can't see what kind of improvements

You can actually, it's just hidden. Click on your worker and go to the action he is doing as if you are going to build it a second time and it will tell you how many turns to complete that project in the lower left hand corner. It probably wasn't designed like that but it's a way to get around.

I don't think Civ V is that bad

I'll admit, it's fun for single player even though it is a barb war. Only because the fighting animations are fun to watch. But being fun doesn't mean it did its job. The Legend of Zelda OOT was fun and Oblivion was fun, but Oblivion wasn't claiming a sequel to Zelda. Civ V is a completely different game in my opinion. I think what makes Civ IV so great is that the possibilities are so vast it's literally all your brain-power vs mine (after a 3 hour game my head is very warm ). Civ V seems like much less brainwork. Just placing a few cheap units in certain areas will defend your entire nation from an army and I can go back to playing a slower version of simcity.

Nerds' Civ:
Civ 1 -> Civ 2 -> Civ 3 -> Civ 4

Laymans' Civ:
Civ Revolution -> Civ 5

 

[May Day 10]

I played the game some more last night. Started off on the new "Noble" level and continued my 1st game. This is "Prince" and is supposed to be the standard difficulty and no advantage is given.

On Civ IV Noble I struggle mightily and win about 10% of my games. I always come close, but cant quite close the deal. Its a great challenge and I try to integrate many tips from the experts here to build the perfect Empire.

So Prince on this game. No strategy, I dont know what I am doing really and at about 1 AD I have a nice lead going. I have lost control of my workers a few times and they have wandered outside my borders for no reason, wasting many turns.
It seems boring too. It seems there arent many things to do. I dont see how there could possibly be nearly as many angles to play as Civ IV.
Combat seems to be just a series of ranged warfare so far. I just bombard until nobody is left, then I march in.
This game offers a very small fraction of depth that Civ IV allows for. Unless modding and expansions almost completely revamp the game, I dont know if I can get into it.

 

[Womf]

Try again on a harder difficulty

And you never played multiplayer obviously. I, for one, am not "quite easy to beat".

I play a lot of multi-player with friends and such at home but not much on-line ( and I don't claim to be that good at it ).

However , my point isn't bashing Civ IV ; what I am trying to say is that I welcome a real change.

If it isn't as good as Civ IV then so be it , I can play something else but I would rather get something that attempts to be totally new even if it suffers from initial issues.

 

[apotheoser]

I don't understand the complaint about social policies having no downside, Civics really didn't have much of a downside.

Of course they did. In Civic Category A, you could only pick Civic 1, 2, or 3. They were mutually exclusive If you picked Civic 1, it meant you were deciding to forgo the bonuses from Civics 2 and 3. If you just discovered a tech for Civic 2, then taking Civic 2 meant you gave up the bonus from Civic 1. That's the downside - for example, going from Monarchy to Republic might increase your unit maintenance costs a lot.

Now, there's no downside to new taking new Social Policies. Taking a new available one doesn't mean giving up any existing value. It's a pure upgrade - you're simply choosing between permanent upgrades.

Before, it was possible to make a really damaging choice that would cripple your civilization, or to be caught with the wrong civics and need to change them which meant 1-2 turns of civil disorder, which matters in a crisis. Or to need to change them for diplomatic reasons.

Those were learning moments when you learned something about strategy and planning. Now, all you can do is choose a somewhat less efficient upgrade than before. There's obviously a "best" way to play, but there's no real moment of learning this, nor can you experiment as much in the same play-through. Choices are permanent and less flexible.

So overall, the current social policies are inferior to Civics and governments.

 

[zomg]

Of course they did. In Civic Category A, you could only pick Civic 1, 2, or 3. They were mutually exclusive If you picked Civic 1, it meant you were deciding to forgo the bonuses from Civics 2 and 3. If you just discovered a tech for Civic 2, then taking Civic 2 meant you gave up the bonus from Civic 1. That's the downside - for example, going from Monarchy to Republic might increase your unit maintenance costs a lot.

Now, there's no downside to new taking new Social Policies. Taking a new available one doesn't mean giving up any existing value. It's a pure upgrade - you're simply choosing between permanent upgrades.

Before, it was possible to make a really damaging choice that would cripple your civilization, or to be caught with the wrong civics and need to change them which meant 1-2 turns of civil disorder, which matters in a crisis. Or to need to change them for diplomatic reasons.

Those were learning moments when you learned something about strategy and planning. Now, all you can do is choose a somewhat less efficient upgrade than before. There's obviously a "best" way to play, but there's no real moment of learning this, nor can you experiment as much in the same play-through. Choices are permanent and less flexible.

So overall, the current social policies are inferior to Civics and governments.

There is a downside to picking a social policy, you have to choose to have one and go without the others until you get more culture. In old civ you could flip flop around everytime you felt like it (go to war - theocracy/vassalage/etc, peace - all the top picks). It was pretty stale. Now you have to actually decide what path to choose and stick with it. Some paths are also exclusive, so you really need to think ahead. The implications change the whole character of your civilization so have to think it out in advance.

It has a great side effect of giving civs actual personality instead of everyone just having the same government. Admit it, there was very little thought with civics involved once you played through a few times.

 

[Disgustipated]

I play my brother's copy at his house. The game seems kind of boring. I'll probably still buy it.

But the lack of depth is disconcerting. Why can't I even found out what my score is compared to other civs (easily). It used to be right on the main screen, now I have to dig for it. All the nifty F screens seem to be gone pretty much.

 

[Balerune]

:suicide:

This game is an utter disappointment and I can't believe I shelled out $49.99 for it. I want my money and I want my Civ 4 back. It's not that this game is awful. It's ok... JUST ok, but when it's supposed to be a sequel to Civ 4 then there's a VERY high bar set.

Let's face it... nothing was added to this game. It's a reduction of all the Civ 4 concepts and it feels like Civ 4 For Kids. What exactly is new here besides additional restrictions? You can move in fewer directions; you can't stack; you can't build as many units because you can't stack; they removed religion. Oh, so they added city states. I like the "Independents" in Rhye's and Fall much better. The city states just end up being conquered... eventually.

The Great Wonders? Not wonderful... actually pretty boring with little overall gameplay effect. The interface is absolutely terrible to manage all the numbers and metrics with your civ because they hide all the buttons and numbers that were in Civ 4. Really though... aren't all the numbers and readouts all part of the fun of this game?? There's so little thought or strategy needed to play this. Every unit is it's own transport, so the ocean is just one big highway for all your units since most can move faster (or as fast) over water.

There's no sliders to shift funds from the treasury to research. Expansion simply causes unhappiness, which is easily fixed and it slows down your social progress... snore!

I've seen people on here comment that "oh, everyone said this about Civ 4." No, actually, I didn't. Civ 4 was far, far superior to Civ 3 and I never felt like Civ 4 overly simplified the core experience of playing a Civ game. The expansions did add a lot to it, but it was a great game right out of the box. I love Civ games and must say I was obsessed with playing Civ 4 for years now. I could never look at Civ 5 again and not look back.

What a disappointment! An utter disappointment. I've been waiting 5 years for this? Civ For Kids? Really??

Yes, and I waited for this........:suicide:

 

[apotheoser]

There is a downside to picking a social policy, you have to choose to have one and go without the others until you get more culture. In old civ you could flip flop around everytime you felt like it (go to war - theocracy/vassalage/etc, peace - all the top picks).

But you couldn't - that was the point of anarchy/civil disorder. The more often you gave up 1-2 turns of research and production, the worse off you were. The whole point of the system was to only change infrequently. You are not going to win if you're giving up your production, research, and gold income every 20 turns (or at least, you're not going to win against good players).

Now you have to actually decide what path to choose and stick with it. Some paths are also exclusive, so you really need to think ahead. The implications change the whole character of your civilization so have to think it out in advance.

There aren't very many exclusivities compared to entire categories in Civilization 4.

And you don't have to stick with them. Even just unlocking a new policy gives bonuses, so if you unlock one, but there's a better one to unlock later, that's fine. You just pick the best bonus available. If that means figuring the later bonuses in the chain, that's fine, because you'll still be able to get the other bonus later. You're not choosing "what bonuses do I want" as much as you're choosing "what order do I want my bonuses in".

It has a great side effect of giving civs actual personality instead of everyone just having the same government. Admit it, there was very little thought with civics involved once you played through a few times.

Exactly the opposite. Just look at what the lead designer for Civilization 5 said about social policies versus civics:

The thought process we want to promote is "What cool new effect do I want?" rather than the feeling of needing to perform detailed analysis to determine if switching is a good idea."

See? He's literally saying "we wanted to remove some 'thinking' and add more 'cool'".

Also, how does it "give civs actual personality"? I have no idea what social policies any other civilization has, unlike civics. Nobody treats me differently because I have different social policies, unlike civics. AI doesn't react differently to one another based on differing social policies, unlike civics.

Diplomatic repercussions were one of the most important features both in civics and the predecessor of civics, social engineering from Alpha Centauri. By getting rid of diplomatic repercussions you're eliminating an entire aspect of downsides. See what we're talking about now?

Social policies are more like unit upgrades than they are civics.

 

[neomanrex]

I could argue but wikipedia already did for me.

They really should offer Reason and Logic classes in high Schools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

By the way this has nothing to do with My opinion on Civ V. I like it quite a bit while admitting some nitpicks (hiding info, worker stuff, and I admit the rodes and rivers could look better.)

On the other hand Complex =/= strategy much the same as Success =/= Intelligence.

 

[apotheoser]

Having reason and logic doesn't help overcome confirmation bias. People have a conclusion, and then they use reason and logic to explain how favorable information confirms their conclusion, and also use reason and logic to explain how unfavorable information should be ignored. All very reasonable and logically, of course.

 

[mrt144]

Between the simplification/ruining of civ itself, the unnecessary and frankly offensive requirement to use 3rd party bloatware for no practical reason whatsoever, and the completely ridiculous, amateurish errors in the demo, this is obviously not a franchise that is being taken seriously anymore. It's just an easy cash cow every 4 or 5 years. Even if only 75% of the previous users buy it, it's still money in the bank.
I'll be throwing it away, and spending more of my time at the animal rescue I run, working in my local town council, and putting more work into my short films. In other words, no loss to me whatsoever.

Steam isn't bloatware, even if you think it is per your misguided and wrong definition.

 

[apotheoser]

Haha, no practical reason like automatic patching and having savegames available from any computer in the world.

Also mrhell sounds like a complete tool. OH YEAH IM NOT PLAYING THIS GAME, IM GOING TO GO DO WORTHWHILE THINGS.

If you were going to play a good version of Civ 5 instead of doing those things, I feel really bad for you.

That said I agree that, in some ways, Civ 5 DOES constitute the "simplification/ruining of civ itself".

 

[mrt144]

Social policies are more like unit upgrades than they are civics.

I'd argue that social policies should have been named "cultural values" or "societal values" instead of policy. That at least frames the concept of what they were shooting for in terms of evolving a civ based on your decision making a bit better.

I really do miss government types though. You should be able to have a societal value that cherishes the queen and still run a parliamentary system. It also provides a layer of more dynamism for the civ itself. The best part about the civics in Civ IV is that there were no absolute right answers, only situationally correct answers.

I understand where the developers are coming from in terms of what Soren did with Civ IV by taking the "no huge downsides, only differences" but it's kind of stunted the flavor of the game to me.

 

[neomanrex]

The point of confirmation bias is "only" focusing on information that confirms your initial claim while "ignoring" information that doesn't. It's the main reason people believe in ghosts, bigfoot and UFO's.

(ie things that aren't really there).

Same as this thread.

Not to mention the whole tone of your post was confrontational to begin with.

By the way I mostly disagree with every point you made, but based on the fact that you've entrenched yourself there's really no point in arguing.

I mean, let's be honest, this post wasn't meant to discuss anyway. You started it to put people in there place about how you feel about the game.

 

[apotheoser]

I mean, let's be honest: you don't really understand confirmation bias.

 

[neomanrex]

Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses *regardless of whether the information is true.*