Who has come back to Civ IV after playing Civ V?

[SewerStarFish]

Add me to the back from Civ V group. Heck I was so disenchanted I played some Civ III and sadly had more fun with it.

 

[Darth Caesar]

I have!

 

[jeffreyac]

Have a longer writeup that I'm hopefully going to get around to posting on the subject - but the short answer is, me too!

I really do want to like Civ V, but there's just too much I like about IV over V. I do want to stress that I'm not giving up on it, though - I'm going to look in on the updates and available mods every couple of months, and see what develops as the game matures (after all, to be fair, Civ IV has had a lot of extra work put into it - maybe V will also develop well with time!)

But, yeah, until then, I'll get my Civ fix from IV.

 

[Morningcalm]

I've come back to IV, though I still play V for the pretty aircraft attack graphics.

But yes, strategically, culturally and satisfaction-wise, IV takes the cake and eats it too. V, on the other hand, sits in a corner, crying for patches.

 

[cman2010]

I plan to go back to civ 4 after christmass im just to bussy now for civ 4 but after 60hrs of civ 5 im board with it, I never played bts as I was to bussy when it came out but have gold edition of civ 4 and have allready ordered bts so I will be all set for what I hear is the best civ game ever.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I plan to go back to civ 4 after christmass im just to bussy now for civ 4 but after 60hrs of civ 5 im board with it, I never played bts as I was to bussy when it came out but have gold edition of civ 4 and have allready ordered bts so I will be all set for what I hear is the best civ game ever.

You're in for a treat! BTS is much better than Vanilla and, you're right, is the best Civ game ever. I think most of the current CivIV posters tried CivV and didn't like it. I'm the oddity - I read some of the reviews when it first came out and was persuaded not to buy it.

I believe that the Civ franchise is trying to gear more for the casual market and the harder-core players on CivFanatics aren't their main focus. A lot of emphasis on graphics and less on really immersive gameplay. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[Bloodstone]

I believe that the Civ franchise is trying to gear more for the casual market and the harder-core players on CivFanatics aren't their main focus. A lot of emphasis on graphics and less on really immersive gameplay. Hope I'm wrong.

Unfortunately your not wrong. They did the same thing with the Railroad Tycoon series. The last incarnation of Sid's hugely successful series moved totally away from the game play that made it so successful and moved to the eye candy of pretty graphics, massive on-line play, and consul machines. We can only hope that the fact that it's open to MOD's might make it a more palatable option, but I don't know if we're going to stem the tide of them moving away from PC's and look to make their huge money from the younger consul game crowd.

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

Thankfully I was able to avoid the expense and annoyance of owning and trying to play Civ5 thanks to threads on this web site.

 

[nebux]

the only thing that i miss from civ 5 is hexes rest it's all crap

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I gave up on it, and the Civ5 forum altogether, a few weeks ago.

I think it says something about maturity of the posters in this thread, (most of whom are long time Civ fans), that we can have a discussion of why we were disappointed, and what we didn't like about 5, with out all of the flaming and name calling that you see in the Civ5 forums.

It's very refreshing to see a civil discussion about this. I had high hopes for Civ5, and I was looking forward to modding it. I was disappointed from the get go, but I thought that if I stuck it out, it would grow on me. I even started a couple of threads in the Civ5 forum for rational discussion. I can accept the bugs (to a degree, the game is new), and I'm willing to wait for some patches to fix the game and make it better, but I don't think that they can make it less boring.

And make no mistake, the game is b.o.r.i.n.g! I've had more fun watching paint dry.

Edit: From JeffreyAC:

Have a longer writeup that I'm hopefully going to get around to posting on the subject - but the short answer is, me too!

I'm looking forward to reading that.

 

[plasmacannon]

I couldn't buy Civ5, because, I am too wise.
Ever since at least Civ2, Civilization has 2 expansions and a number of patches.
I wouldn't buy a car, then wait for the doors, glass and mirrors to become available for me to fully appreciate my car.
I bought Civ4 after it was out for 2 years, and began playing with warlords and BTS all in one game.
I don't enjoy wishing for a complete game, just only want to buy it when it is done, or not at all.
I will be ready for Civ5, when, Civ5 is ready for me.

I am up to Monarch level on Civ4, and still enjoy the "weaker" Empires.
I'm putting off the stronger ones for the tougher levels.

 

[Lobox]

Back to Civ4, so frustrating to play Civ5 that I like to pull my hair.
Its boring, crashes and has other flaws, played 78 hours before I gave up.
Useless junk is what the game is.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I agree with many of these comments.

I pre-ordered Civ5 back in July, played it a few times, but just got completely bored with it very quickly, for much the same reasons as others have given.

I work as a computer programmer so could look at Civ5 with two hats: As a player I found it dumbed down and not at all intellectually stimulating. As a computer programmer I was shocked by seeing basic user interface mistakes that - frankly - if I'd made them, my employer would almost certainly (and rightfully) view me as incompetent.

So I'm completely back playing Civ4.

 

[i_imperator]

I'm playing both, I'm still sticking with Civ IV more now though coz (a) I've been playing that longer (been playing BTS for over a year now) and i am better at it and (b) A single civ V game can take up to 5 hours to do on a small map. I like the changes in civ V, but i just don't have the time to play it as much as i like, coz of college.When the x-mass holidays arrive, i'll have more time to play it. I'm not complaining about Civ V though, i think it is a good game that has a lot of potential, and i love the changes (such as city states, thank god they got rid of the terrible Vassal State system). The biggest critizm Civ V is getting at the moment is that its not civ IV, a lot of people thought the same thing when Civ IV arrived.

 

[Laskaris]

I am a veteran gamer in my mid-thirties, with strategy games and RPGs being my favourite genres. I extensively played the very first Civilization almost twenty years ago, but while I loved that one, I went on to strategy games from other producers since then. Especially the ones by Paradox Interactive. In recent years, I have been playing a lot of Europa Universalis III with the excellent Magna Mundi mod.

My interest in the Civilization series was recently rekindled by the release of Civilization V. A gaming buddy got it and I played it for a bit at his house, but I did not buy the game myself because I was somewhat underwhelmed and I could see from the comments on the web that many of the old followers of the series are disappointed as well. I also don't like Steam. However, playing a Civilization game again inspired me to buy Civilization IV BTS, and I am loving it. I am currently checking out the mods for it, like Rise of Mankind.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The biggest critizm Civ V is getting at the moment is that its not civ IV, a lot of people thought the same thing when Civ IV arrived.

While that may be one criticism, I don't think it's the biggest criticism. I think the problem with Civ5 is that they've changed things in a way that makes the game worse rather than better.

To give a couple of examples:

1. The one-unit-per-tile rule. That was something that I think many civ4 people - including myself had been asking for for a long time, so superficially it was to be welcomed. But then when Civ5 actually arrived it turned out that Firaxis had apparently not thought through how to implement the change. I'm sure for example that almost noone who asked for that change intended that you'd be prevented from improving a tile because a civ you've got open borders with has a unit there. Or that Firaxis wouldn't make the effort to program an AI intelligent enough to fight with the new rules. If Firaxis had considered these types of issues I imagine Civ5 wouldn't have been so unpopular.

2. The new way of changing 'civics' with culture seems nonsensical. In Civ4 it worked quite well, and - importantly - it was slightly realistic. It made some sense that you couldn't swap to a new civic until you'd discovered the knowledge for it. In Civ5 they've changed from a system that worked to a new system that is no better, and is actually less realistic to boot: How can the amount of culture you've acquired so fundamentally determine which civics you can use? It makes almost no sense. So why make the change?

3. City states. Great innovative idea. But ruined by the fact that it's so formulaic. For example, you give the state a prescribed amount of gold, you get certain benefits for a fixed number of turns. The whole dealing with city states thing is not much more than manipulating a simple (and boring) mathematical formula. Admitted parts of Civ4 are a little formulaic but -on the whole - nowhere near that bad.

Those are the kinds of things that put me off, and I get the impression from the forums I'm not in a minority

If I was to summarize, I'd say that the problem with Civ5 isn't so much that they've changed Civ4, it's that they've changed things that there was no need to change And even where there was a need to change something, they didn't think it through. Civ4, when it was released, gave the impression that Civ had been changed to make it better. To me, Civ5 gives the impression that they've changed Civ for no other reason than for the sake of changing things.

Contrast with Civ4 where they changed loads of things from Civ3, but in almost every case, you could see a good reason why the new system was better: More realistic, more exciting or subtle gameplay, etc.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Those are the kinds of things that put me off, and I get the impression from the forums I'm not in a minority

I think that the minority are the people that actually enjoy Civ5.

 

[gunkulator]

I couldn't buy Civ5, because, I am too wise.
Ever since at least Civ2, Civilization has 2 expansions and a number of patches.
I wouldn't buy a car, then wait for the doors, glass and mirrors to become available for me to fully appreciate my car.
I bought Civ4 after it was out for 2 years, and began playing with warlords and BTS all in one game.
I don't enjoy wishing for a complete game, just only want to buy it when it is done, or not at all.
I will be ready for Civ5, when, Civ5 is ready for me.

I am up to Monarch level on Civ4, and still enjoy the "weaker" Empires.
I'm putting off the stronger ones for the tougher levels.

Wow, you must have been reading my mind. I bought Civ3 when it came out and it was very buggy and not a lot of fun. It really wasn't worth playing until the last expansion came out. I learned my lesson and waited until BTS for Civ4 and from what I've read here, that was a good decision. There's still enough good game-play left in Civ4 for me to wait for Civ5 to get better.

 

[plasmacannon]

Wow, you must have been reading my mind. I bought Civ3 when it came out and it was very buggy and not a lot of fun. It really wasn't worth playing until the last expansion came out. I learned my lesson and waited until BTS for Civ4 and from what I've read here, that was a good decision. There's still enough good game-play left in Civ4 for me to wait for Civ5 to get better.

Thanks.
And, they will make Civ5 better.
The last thing any game manufacturer wants is the status of having their game "Bomb as badly as MOO3".

 

[Ulrek]

Well I came back due to the fact that i was sick of having to deal with the games problems. like the AI being easily stepped and blown in to pieces without much time trying.

And the fact that along with a few other annoying things. having to give orders to each unit before being allowed to end turn. that really burns to me more than other things. like the MP problems.

-Ulrek-