What Is Your Opinion of Civilization 5 As of Today

[atreas]

I have played all of them, and of course there are things that I like and things I don't like - but overall the impression about GnK is that it is one of the very best of the series, maybe the best.

I don't want to go into arguing on details - I happened to LOVE the sliders since I like strategy and I want control. BUT I cannot forget the countless arguments inside this very forum about the numerous micromanagements you needed to do (overflow was HIGHLY bugged, even when it somehow existed), both on sliders, city productions, etc. I love that these are mostly over. One other thing was that in previous editions of CIV there was always one civ that was HIGHLY OP (Rome, Inca, etc.) while now I can't say that even China or the other strong civs is so far superior comparatively.

I prefer the policies than the CIV4 flavors of civs - they were too binding IMO. And I like religion as it is now. I cannot say the same for espionage - on that I prefer some other versions by far.

I was completely against culture flipping, as this is against historical reality - NEVER existing. Land is conquered by war, period.

The battles in GnK are improved compared to vanilla, but I still think they are extremely simplistic due to the non-stacking of units. Of course, not in the way that stacking was working in the previous "official" editions. IMO only "Test of Time" had a really sophisticated stacking mechanism.

But overall I can say I love GnK and I hope BNW will be even better.

 

[sumodaz]

It would possibly be my perfect game if they could perfect AI. Still, i've played over 500 hours, more than any other game I have ever owned, so I can't complain. Not sure none stacking units will ever work properly though. I've been playing a bit of Fallen Enchantress recently and I like the idea of stacked units on the main map, which takes you to a battle screen with none stackable units, could work for Civ 6?
I still find the game a little simple and too easy to defeat the AI once you know how it plays. I just want to be scared for once by an attack. I'm very much looking forward to BNW it's definitely moving in the right direction.

 

[Malachi256]

Civ 5 is a very good game. The major flaws that keep me from really praising it as one of "the greats" are:

1. Mediocre AI. While it has gotten better, there are still constant instances during every game where I'm left thinking, "well that's just stupid," when regarding AI decisions. Add to that the poor naval and air-power AI, and whole aspects of the game are pretty much fail.

2. Slow turns. Before there was the excuse that my machine was old - it was. It's not anymore, and turns still take a long time. This really ruins the game for me in a lot of ways.

 

[wigwam]

Then why do we add the current iteration of CiV5 (with GKs and all the patches) in the comparison with CiV4? Make the comparisons of both in a vanilla state. Lets see...I couldn't play the game without a crass every 10 minutes till the first patch arrived

See what I did? The days of vanilla gaming judging (without DLCs,patches and expansions) are long past (around 15 years ago to be exact).

I just did compare the vanilla games. In the post you just quoted.

The thing is that vanilla Civ 4, while it certainly shipped in a better state than vanilla Civ 5, was fundamentally also an incomplete game; it rolled back lots of features that'd been in Civ 3, including some (e.g. espionage) that many fans consider core components of the series.

They've never iterated on the complete, expansions-included previous versions of the game. Shipping feature-incomplete products is a time-tested business tactic, not something they did in order to "dumb down" Civ 5.

 

[kkapalk]

I know a lot of people feel that civ 5 has been dumbed down, they also seem to hate the 1upt. But I honestly find it a pleasure to play. I love the religion, the detailed AI leader figures, social policies and definitely prefer 1upt to the stacks of doom. I have played it for six months now and still find it great and refreshing to play. There are a lot of civilizations to choose from and plenty of maps. Such things add variety to the game. I do think the beautiful graphics add a lot to the appeal of the game. I know there is much more to a game than graphics, but it does definitely help when units and terrain are pleasing to the eye. I do agree that the AI cannot be trusted via diplomacy, and long term friendships are hard to come by. But us humans play exactly the same, backstabbing for our own goals. All in all it is a great game in my opinion,and will get even better with Brave New World. Maybe civ 4 was a much deeper game, I really don't know as it just didn't click with me and I got bored with it very fast. Each to his own, I suppose.

 

[pilot00]

They've never iterated on the complete, expansions-included previous versions of the game. Shipping feature-incomplete products is a time-tested business tactic, not something they did in order to "dumb down" Civ 5.

On that we can agree, even though I believe depth wise vanilla 4 was ahead of 5, but thats more or less opinion based.

and definitely prefer 1upt to the stacks of doom.

That to me is the best thing in V and I hope it becomes a cornerstone for future iterations. Albeit with a couple of tweaks.

 

[PreLynMax]

Yes I read it carefully, but I cant see any real justification, except the statement that it was flawed
The mechanics were not working as you describe. The mechanic allowed you to make minute adjustments to empire management. You were not forced to focus anywhere if you didnt want to (I had games where I didn't touch the slider at all). However you were fully capable of adjusting priorities to compete in a certain area if needed, or avoid a catastrophic situation. You had budget and instead of using it for rush buying no brainer decisions you had to actually invest in long or short term gains. With all the accompanying risk OFC.

As I said in another thread, I find it bizarre that people want their choices made before them....

Except they didn't work. You either had to keep the slider at a specific percentage, or be left behind. Unfortunately, tying science to commerce was an extremely bad idea. I didn't feel like I was given "choices" in the matter, I felt force to keep up with land and military and lose science, or get ran over by the AI's cheating military (and the RNG, which was another bad idea). I like the idea of rush buying things in Civ 5, and actually had the budget to do so, because science wasn't draining my gold.

Upgrading units was impossible, and you had to spend valuable turns building newer units because you won't have the gold to do ANYTHING. And when I have reached the Renaissance era on Marathon/Huge maps, I have at least 30 units to upgrade! And each upgrade was 135-160 gold a piece... and I usually have enough to upgrade 1-2 units at the least. So in the XML, I had to take extreme measures by reducing all military units' production in half, AND reducing all maintenance by 10%.

Without the slider system, you would be more prepared to avoid a catastrophic situation. You don't get choices, it's a restriction that disguises itself as a feature that severely limits how you want to run your civilization. And that's why it was dropped in Civ 5, and that's why it should never, ever be welcome, nor implicated in any future Civ game, ever.

 

[NBAfan]

I'm not sure 5 as a whole is greater then 4 quite yet (probably will be with BNW). But 5 is a really good game, and definitely isn't dumbed down.

This is a poor argument that has been blown out of the water repeatedly. When people say "Civ 4" they mean Civ 4 BTS, because that was the latest iteration of the game. When you start designing the next iteration (Civ 5) you don't just forget that BTS existed! It is perfectly reasonable to expect Civ 5 to grow from where Civ 4 BTS left off...not blindly return back to Civ 4 vanilla as a jumping off point.

That depends. If the game is just building on the last one and isn't trying to drastically change things, then it should be compared to its full predecessor. But Civ 5 didn't build off Civ 4, and tried a different direction, so the comparison isn't that good.

 

[PhilBowles]

Except they didn't work. You either had to keep the slider at a specific percentage, or be left behind. Unfortunately, tying science to commerce was an extremely bad idea.

I never minded the slider, but bear in mind that it was a Civ I mechanic, not a Civ IV one. It was inherited wholesale by Civ IV, which added extra variables to the slider, but the "commerce vs. science" slider was designed in a very different era, as a simple empire-management mechanism in a much less complex and less mechanically sophisticated game than either Civ IV or Civ V (and one that didn't feature concepts like unit upgrades or Civ IV's city maintenance system). It was also a mechanism that plenty of Civ-style games equal to or greater in depth than the original did perfectly well without (Master of Orion, for example).

Simply put, whether or not you like the slider is at a tangent to the issue of depth in the game - "Civ V doesn't have a slider, so must be dumbed down" is a crude argument that could be applied equally to everything from Master of Orion to Galactic Civilizations to Europa Universalis - it has to be looked at in context of the management mechanics these other games (and Civ V) use in place of a slider system.

I like the idea of rush buying things in Civ 5, and actually had the budget to do so, because science wasn't draining my gold.

Personally I could do without rush-buying, or at the very least without the unrestricted rush-buying we have now (any number of buildings per city per turn, for instance). Gold was too irrelevant in past iterations of Civ (as long as it's not in the red for too long, you're good, having excess does basically nothing), but Civ V has more ways of making it relevant, including an AI that will willingly trade gold for desirable items, research agreements, tile purchases, unit upgrades, and city-state influence.

 

[Aristos]

Simply put, whether or not you like the slider is at a tangent to the issue of depth in the game - "Civ V doesn't have a slider, so must be dumbed down" is a crude argument that could be applied equally to everything from Master of Orion to Galactic Civilizations to Europa Universalis - it has to be looked at in context of the management mechanics these other games (and Civ V) use in place of a slider system.

Europa Universalis III has 7 sliders, not one. Not counting the policy sliders, which are... 10?

 

[fatusblobus]

Greetings.

Felt this was an appropriate place to enter the forum dialogue.

My opinion is that Civ 5 is a great strategy game.

After the G&K expansion, gameplay improved considerably.

Things that I like about the game....

1. Military.

1upt is a brilliant addition to the civ franchise.

The combination of Ranged units, mounted units, melee units, and customisable promotion paths allow you to have a wide variety of strategies both against human and AI players.

The different types of military units combined with the terrain of your combat zones also influence the strategic placement of military units for both attack and defence.

The introduction of 100 HP in the G&K expansion also improved the gameplay.

2. City management.

The maintenance costs of buildings forces you to make strategic advances in your building choice, particularly on higher difficulty levels. Combined with a very limited production time, this makes it very difficult until the really late game to spam buildings.

Instead, I have found that long term city planning strategies such as designating one city to build military units (place near Iron, place manufacturies around it, build buildings to give military promotions,) coupled with one science based city, (jungle tiles, academies, on river for population growth rather than production priority), and a financial centre (treasury, luxury resources, trading posts) is a good way to go.

3. Tech tree and inflation.

The balance of the tech tree is near perfect, with the increase in science to fund new technologies as well as the increase in production to build new units advancing at a rate such that runaway tech leaders do not often happen. (Although one time France AI won a space victory in 1831, but that was an exception to the rule.)

The tech tree also offers long term research plans that allow certain areas of tech to be left for long periods of time while developing huge advancements in other areas. This allows for different approaches to both domination attack strategy (land units, naval units, mounted units) and non-aggressive strategy (economic prowess, or technological prowess?)

4. Social policies.

The social policy tree system also allows for a lot of variability in play style. Foor example, A non-aggressive civ trying for a cultural victory surrounded by aggressors may just be saved by completing the universal suffrage policy, allowing them to field a larger army for defensive purposes. Combining this with oligarchy from the tradition tree allows for a non-agressive no maintenance military force.

5. Diplomacy

The unpredictability of the AI and their willingness to betray you to further their own agenda makes for a far more humanlike experience in the single player game.

The AI military strategy may need some improvement, since they don't really understand strategic placement or terrain benefits, but a large attack force combined with a sudden reversal of friendship can leave your empire ravaged before you have time to respond.

The AI can be reasoned with and bought off, and also played off against each other, under the right circumstances. The fact that they remember your agressive advances against other civs also serves as a limiting factor in the expansion of your empire.

6. City states.

The introduction of city states opens up a new and interesting dynamic and allows for several strategic maneuvres against your opponents, such as donating military units to them to fight your enemies, resulting in a proxy war that can weaken a stronger empire as they lose troops but don't come near your empire.

7. Late game

I like the way that the technology advancement obsoletes certain city attack strategies, forcing you to rethink your attack plan mid game.

Here's a good example from a recent game I played as the Dutch. Having conquered North America in the medieval era, I started a long term naval plan to conquer the Romans in Asia. I brought in 3 Galleass from the Renaissance era, got them up to +1 Range and Logistics promotion, then upgraded to Frigates. Along with that, I build yourself 2 or 3 Sea Beggers (Dutch UU.)

It's time for naval domination. I send my ships across continent and start taking down Roman coastal cities one after another. And then.... the enemy discovers flight, places 3 bombers in a city which outrange your ships by 4 tiles, and bang, my navy is gone in 2 turns.

8. Modding community and Mods.

There are so many amazing mods made by dedicated enthusiasts that improve the game in so many ways that there's no time to list them all here. Suffice it to say the mods have been listed here on the forum and talked about already.

Things that aren't so good.

1. Turn times.

This game is carnage on the hardware, particularly on large and huge maps. Late game huge earth can take a full half hour to load if there are a few civs with airforces and naval fleets.

2. DLC.

DLC makes multiplay difficult. The cost for all the DLC is very high if you want to get everything. Currently I only have Vanilla + G&K, would love to try some more DLC but for the sake of playing a couple of scenarios or an extra Civ with no real game features, I say, stick with the modding community.

3. Multiplayer.

Lag, disconnectivity issues, inability to save games, poor servers and unfriendly server interface, to name a few things that are wrong with the multiplayer.

4. Lack of excersise and shirking of responsibility of adulthood.

The goodness of this game means that things I should have done months ago remain unfinished.

Very long first post, and thanks civfanatics for being a good forum.

 

[brewgod]

Hello Fellow Die Hard Civ Fans,

The biggest killer for me with Civ 5 is the speed of each turn. I just keep auto turns on and walk away at times. Civ 4 is quick and wish Civ 5 was like this. With the speed of I-7 Intel chips and Graphic Cards there is no excuse. Hopefully Civ 6 will fix this bug and actually make turns go faster than ever before and have us feel like we really need to watch each turn. Just think hitting the red button or icon to finish turn and once a mouse clicks on it your next turn is ready. Almost no time for AI.

Brew God

 

[pilot00]

Except they didn't work. You either had to keep the slider at a specific percentage, or be left behind. Unfortunately, tying science to commerce was an extremely bad idea. I didn't feel like I was given "choices" in the matter, I felt force to keep up with land and military and lose science, or get ran over by the AI's cheating military (and the RNG, which was another bad idea). I like the idea of rush buying things in Civ 5, and actually had the budget to do so, because science wasn't draining my gold.

Upgrading units was impossible, and you had to spend valuable turns building newer units because you won't have the gold to do ANYTHING. And when I have reached the Renaissance era on Marathon/Huge maps, I have at least 30 units to upgrade! And each upgrade was 135-160 gold a piece... and I usually have enough to upgrade 1-2 units at the least. So in the XML, I had to take extreme measures by reducing all military units' production in half, AND reducing all maintenance by 10%.

Without the slider system, you would be more prepared to avoid a catastrophic situation. You don't get choices, it's a restriction that disguises itself as a feature that severely limits how you want to run your civilization. And that's why it was dropped in Civ 5, and that's why it should never, ever be welcome, nor implicated in any future Civ game, ever.

I am sorry friend but this is leads me to believe that you just didn't use correctly the tools you were given and that you hadn't understand them enough. I had tons of games in 5 where my gold was not enough to fully upgrade a single unit. Is that a problematic mechanic or did I managed my game erroneously? I think the latter, either that or I was extremely unlucky. By the same regard I almost never had the issues you had in CiV4. Was I lucky back there? Perhaps I was but perhaps I had understood the mechanic better. It did never forced me to run my CiV either way, in fact it helped me run it smoother by balancing my outputs to get the best I needed according to the situation. A common misconception was that the slider did the work for you. Nop that was not the case. You did the work by using a tool.

3. Tech tree and inflation.

The balance of the tech tree is near perfect, with the increase in science to fund new technologies as well as the increase in production to build new units advancing at a rate such that runaway tech leaders do not often happen. (Although one time France AI won a space victory in 1831, but that was an exception to the rule.)

The tech tree also offers long term research plans that allow certain areas of tech to be left for long periods of time while developing huge advancements in other areas. This allows for different approaches to both domination attack strategy (land units, naval units, mounted units) and non-aggressive strategy (economic prowess, or technological prowess?)

While I agree with some of you other points...Are you sure we are talking about CiV 5 in that particular point?

7. Late game

I like the way that the technology advancement obsoletes certain city attack strategies, forcing you to rethink your attack plan mid game.

Here's a good example from a recent game I played as the Dutch. Having conquered North America in the medieval era, I started a long term naval plan to conquer the Romans in Asia. I brought in 3 Galleass from the Renaissance era, got them up to +1 Range and Logistics promotion, then upgraded to Frigates. Along with that, I build yourself 2 or 3 Sea Beggers (Dutch UU.)

It's time for naval domination. I send my ships across continent and start taking down Roman coastal cities one after another. And then.... the enemy discovers flight, places 3 bombers in a city which outrange your ships by 4 tiles, and bang, my navy is gone in 2 turns.

This shouldn't happen in the first place (3 bombers destroying an entire fleet in 2 turns). However how does the fact that you use a navy to establish a beach head makes CiV5 different than the rest?

 

[NBAfan]

Hello Fellow Die Hard Civ Fans,

The biggest killer for me with Civ 5 is the speed of each turn. I just keep auto turns on and walk away at times. Civ 4 is quick and wish Civ 5 was like this. With the speed of I-7 Intel chips and Graphic Cards there is no excuse. Hopefully Civ 6 will fix this bug and actually make turns go faster than ever before and have us feel like we really need to watch each turn. Just think hitting the red button or icon to finish turn and once a mouse clicks on it your next turn is ready. Almost no time for AI.

Brew God

Yeah, Civ 5 is poorly optimized.

 

[mystikmind2005]

What i think;

Civ 5 brings back bombardment from civ3, but with city bombardment, brilliant!

tile unit limit was strategically interesting to me for a while but in the end just becomes too much of a chore - heavily dislike. They should grade tile unit limit with map size, the smallest maps allowing the most number of units per tile.

The modern unit limit for resources could be strategically interesting but not the way it is done now, it needs more units per resource, also i don't think the AI handles it well?

For me, civ 5 is the least playable one of the whole series.

 

[Kamehameha]

I like Civ 5 and it is my favorite out of all the civs. I think there could be some more units that come with it though as an add on or something. I think a combat medical unit should be available on a DLC or something. Where you can move them to a tile with a unit on it and make it heal twice as fast, and an engineer unit that's not a mod, that can build are bases so if you're fighting a war and you need air support and a carrier can't get close enough and a building a city would take too long. It could defiantly use some improvements but so far it is the best one i'v played yet.

 

[useless]

I stared at the screen for a few hours, my attempts to engage with the game proved successful at first, however i began to suffer mental anguish when i was physically limited by the fact that the One Unit Per Tile rule was implemented in the 5th game, which mean i could no longer stack units, which made me feel wrong and uncomfortable.

Other problems came from the fact that traits were removed, with each civilisation/leader's unique trait's being a pale, shallow imitation of the beloved system in CIV 4. Fair enough Protective was an absolute abortion in practise, but i believe in my brain that it was a fairer, better system.

Diplomacy is a lie in this game, sure after the patch (can't remember which one) they made it possible to actually understand what motivations there were behind the AI's almost unfathomable hatred for you, but it just shows how unpolished, rushed out, sloppy and frankly ill-thought out and incomplete this game is.

I loved CIV 4, i loved it more than Amy Winehouse loved the bottle, but i cannot recommend, endorse or even tell people to give CIV 5 a try, it would be morally wrong of me to do so. The game is far removed from what CIV games should be like; CIV 3 and 4 were amazing games with their own problems and positives, unfortunately CIV 5 is akin to a drunken fumble that no one talks about or puts out of their memory due to shame and embarrassment, in a similar way hopefully CIV 5 will be forgotten and CIV 6 if it ever happens will be better.

Moderator Action: Please stop the trolling. If you wish to make an argument, please do so with civility, not with incivility and sarcasm.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[tomtom5858]

I stared at the screen for a few hours, my attempts to engage with the game proved successful at first, however i began to suffer mental anguish when i was physically limited by the fact that the One Unit Per Tile rule was implemented in the 5th game, which mean i could no longer stack units, which made me feel wrong and uncomfortable.

"I stared, then whined when I realized I couldn't use Stacks of Doom anymore."

Other problems came from the fact that traits were removed, with each civilisation/leader's unique trait's being a pale, shallow imitation of the beloved system in CIV 4. Fair enough Protective was an absolute abortion in practise, but i believe in my brain that it was a fairer, better system.

Ah, yes, giving everyone a unique trait instead of two from a pile is so pale and shallow.

Diplomacy is a lie in this game, sure after the patch (can't remember which one) they made it possible to actually understand what motivations there were behind the AI's almost unfathomable hatred for you, but it just shows how unpolished, rushed out, sloppy and frankly ill-thought out and incomplete this game is.

You had me until you started whining about how bad CiV is without providing any information on why. "Diplomacy is like I'm dealing with other humans that want to win, I don't like it, mommy make it better "

I loved CIV 4, i loved it more than Amy Winehouse loved the bottle, but i cannot recommend, endorse or even tell people to give CIV 5 a try, it would be morally wrong of me to do so. The game is far removed from what CIV games should be like; CIV 3 and 4 were amazing games with their own problems and positives, unfortunately CIV 5 is akin to a drunken fumble that no one talks about or puts out of their memory due to shame and embarrassment, in a similar way hopefully CIV 5 will be forgotten and CIV 6 if it ever happens will be better.

"Whine whine whine, CiV isn't Civ 4.5 "

Moderator Action: Please report posts rather than responding to them, especially in this manner. You only make yourself a troll in the process.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[pilot00]

This site, is becoming a troll fest of epic proportions by the day it seems

 

[beetle]

After I tried Civ III for a month, I went back to playing SMAC/X. Same thing with cIV. BtS and the GotM archives kept me off SMAC. CivV Vanilla (CivVv?) was too boring and I returned to BtS and the lovely GotM backlog. G&K is good enough that I have not regressed.

My only real complaint, as others have pointed out, is that maps larger than standard are too slow to be playable.

IMHO, City States are a nicer game mechanic than Vassals and/or Colonies, but I am greedy. Why could not CivV have both?