Why are people comparing Civ V vanilla to Civ IV BTS?

[vandyr]

Because people really just want Civ IV: BTS part 2.

A new Civ game only comes out so often. I WANT them to start fresh, start with the basics. Then build upon that with expansion packs. Civ IV: BTS was nowhere near basic, and personally, I didn't care about espionage and corporations. The expansions are there to add things, and should be considered optional extras. So, start with the basics, make them work right, then add new features and complicate things through the expansion packs. If thing's start out already overly complicated, two things could happen:

People who like the more simple approach will be elimenated from the sales. There are vast amounts of people that hated how complicated Civ IV became. I know people love Civ V but couldn't really get into Civ IV because of it's complexity.

people could be thrown off, because it would take ages to learn the game. Even with Civ IV, it's easier to start out with Vanilla, learn the basics, then move on to more advanced stuff in BTS. With a basic Civ, especially one that is as drastically different from all others like this (5), we get some time to learn the game properly, then when it's been patched up, tweaked and stuff like that, a proper expansion pack that adds new elements and features will be easier to enjoy.

Also, if Civ V was Civ IV but with 1UPT and hexes, people could call it a rip-off and wonder why the hell not just play Civ IV.

Which is what I ask of you people who are so desperately clinging to Civ IV:BTS - why don't you just play that if that's all you want? What exactly did you want from a new Civ game?

This

 

[r_rolo1]

It's not like they have to forget all the progress of Warlords and BTS. They already implemented those gameplay mechanics and saw how they worked out before developing Civ 5, so I don't see how it would make sense to ignore all that when judging Civ 5. Why not compare it to Civ 1 while we're at it? What I'm interested in is how this game compares to other releases in the same series that I can also choose to play, not how it should be rated on some arbitrary scale of how good a 1.0 release is. That becomes a lot less meaningful when you're on the fifth incarnation of reinventing the same gameplay anyway, if you ask me.

Quoted for wrongness. Theoretically that should had been truth, but the fact is that they even forgot lessons from civ III altogether, even more of civ IV. Quick examples: you can't disband buildings in a game where buildings cost cash, so you can't even take down buildings of conquered cities ... even civ III got that one better; or the various kinds of blocking you can do in the game that were reason of rage/exploits in civ III ( you can't move a worker for a tile occupied a foreign military unit, for a quick example, regardless of who owns the tile ... say, if you want to deny a resource to the Ai , OB + move a scout to resource tile and the Ai can't improve it until you move the scout out. Neat, isn't it ? ). This not mentioning they basically made tabula rasa of all the lessons learned regarding diplo systems ...

 

[aziantuntija]

We're comparing Civ V to Civ IV BtS because that's the game we were just playing. Civ V isn't a replacement for Civ IV vanilla, it's a replacement for Civ IV BtS.

I just started to read this thread and i just have to stop here and write a comment.

How many people do you think owns BTS? Well i dont know it myself but i must say that Civilization IV sold much more and is much more famous than BTS, therefore most PC players in the world doesnt even necessarily know what is BTS. So how can Civilization V be a replacement for not so famous BTS and not for Civilization IV?

Long story short: You are wrong Arioch

 

[charon2112]

I suggest removing resources and happiness too, more streamlined and efficient, better design

resources and happiness aren't redundant, so why remove them?

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

For anyone who still doesn't understand why some of us don't like Civilization V the way it is, read this thread carefully. The responses here make it very clear that accusing the discontents of being merely afraid of change is rather dishonest or dim.

@dcace1983:
I don't believe Firaxis will be able to fix this game with patches. In Civ4, their patches introduced some new bugs (overflow, anyone?), altered the gameplay a lot (increased barb galley, for example) and didn't touch the inability of the AI to even attempt a victory other than culture or space and also didn't fix some horrible interface glitches.

So no, the game will not be fixed. Maybe this or that will, but only an expansion will be able to address some issues and I'm not really sure it will. The interface in 5 is way worse than in 4 and the latter was malfunctional. Pretty graphics don't make something good automagically.

 

[vandyr]

For anyone who still doesn't understand why some of us don't like Civilization V the way it is, read this thread carefully. The responses here make it very clear that accusing the discontents of being merely afraid of change is rather dishonest or dim.

@dcace1983:
I don't believe Firaxis will be able to fix this game with patches. In Civ4, their patches introduced some new bugs (overflow, anyone?), altered the gameplay a lot (increased barb galley, for example) and didn't touch the inability of the AI to even attempt a victory other than culture or space and also didn't fix some horrible interface glitches.

So no, the game will not be fixed. Maybe this or that will, but only an expansion will be able to address some issues and I'm not really sure it will. The interface in 5 is way worse than in 4 and the latter was malfunctional. Pretty graphics don't make something good automagically.

Sounds like a matter of opinion to me. I prefer the Civ 5 interface. I suppose your thread could be read back to you in reverse.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Sounds like a matter of opinion to me. I prefer the Civ 5 interface.

I guess. IMO, it is not very functional because it makes it hard to get a clear glimpse of what is going on, it forces you to overuse your mouse and things pop all over the screen, making it very disorganized and polluted. But it's only my opinion. If you have any reasons for preferring the new game's interface, why don't you state them, instead of coming up with such elegant comments?

I suppose your thread could be read back to you in reverse.

 

[jjkrause84]

Does anyone else think the argument that, "Oh, no Civ5 really IS deep and complex....you just can't see the complexity!" is a little too close to the emperor's new clothes?

 

[TommyVern]

Because a majority of people are stupid and don't understand that things take time.

TLDR: "OMG I WANT IT AND I WANT IT MY WAY NOW, WAAAHHAHHHAHAH"

 

[vandyr]

I guess. IMO, it is not very functional because it makes it hard to get a clear glimpse of what is going on, it forces you to overuse your mouse and things pop all over the screen, making it very disorganized and polluted. But it's only my opinion. If you have any reasons for preferring the new game's interface, why don't you state them, instead of coming up with such elegant comments?

I like the look of it and the immediate availability. Its easier to interface with. Civ 4 interface was about having 9,000 buttons plastered all over the screen that I rarely used because I didn't know what they were for and didn't care to know. I also found the mouseover pop ups in the Civ 4 UI to be far more obtrusive than anything in Civ 5, namely the horrific attempts at locating a single unit in a stack, etc. Not to mention, for about 90% of the Civ 4 command windows, the screen couldnt' be moved and there was no way to actually look at anything going on in your empire to make a better decision about what you wanted to choose, which isn't the case in Civ 5.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Because a majority of people are stupid and don't understand that things take time.

TLDR: "OMG I WANT IT AND I WANT IT MY WAY NOW, WAAAHHAHHHAHAH"

Please, read the rest of the thread and you'll see that nobody is saying that.

 

[jjkrause84]

Because a majority of people are stupid and don't understand that things take time.

TLDR: "OMG I WANT IT AND I WANT IT MY WAY NOW, WAAAHHAHHHAHAH"

Things do take time......and the devs have had 5 years, no?

 

[fantsu]

I compare Civ 5 to Civ 2. And quess which one is better?


Anyways. Civ 5 is great game, just like all the others.
But... I still can't understand how they failed so badly with this one.
They didn't learn anything from earlier mistakes, they even made new ones.

The games balance is totally broken, most of the buildings, units and pretty much everything is totally useless. I think the reason they have hid all the info from players, is because they hope that we don't find all the errors they made.

Now I know they will fix most of this, but this game still don't have potential at all compared to ANY other Civ game ever made (any other Civ PC game at least).

Pretty graphics isn't just enough. Maybe someone can make a MOD for this game changing the graphics to look more like earlier Civ games, and lets see who likes to play the game after that.

 

[charon2112]

I much prefer the V UI. It's much less intrusive.

For anyone who still doesn't understand why some of us don't like Civilization V the way it is, read this thread carefully. The responses here make it very clear that accusing the discontents of being merely afraid of change is rather dishonest or dim.

@dcace1983:
I don't believe Firaxis will be able to fix this game with patches. In Civ4, their patches introduced some new bugs (overflow, anyone?), altered the gameplay a lot (increased barb galley, for example) and didn't touch the inability of the AI to even attempt a victory other than culture or space and also didn't fix some horrible interface glitches.

So no, the game will not be fixed. Maybe this or that will, but only an expansion will be able to address some issues and I'm not really sure it will. The interface in 5 is way worse than in 4 and the latter was malfunctional. Pretty graphics don't make something good automagically.

 

[r_rolo1]

@Lord Olleus

Yup, civ V has a more complex system overall, and , if properly developed , will be a better game than IV. The big issue is that little "if" For now IMHO , it is competing with III: has potential , but it still needs tons of work.

@charon2112

Ok, less intrusive ... but completely unergonomical and badly thought in a lot of areas ( who had the briliant idea of separating the specs slots by building , and worse, put those buildings by alphabetic order ? ). Overall I prefer Civ IV one: sure , sometimes it is a PITA, but atleast things are well organized most of the times.

 

[MkLh]

Btw for those who missed it/have bad memories

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141327

There were plenty more of the same ilk. Civ 4 was a horrible game on release, it really was bad.

That thread is about technical bugs, Civ4 didn't run at all comps and so on. Civ5 is criticized for its gameplay issues and lack of depth. Completely different cases.

 

[May Day 10]

I loved Civ IV Vanilla and only recently started playing BtS

The problem with Civ IV Vanilla for me was my computer would freeze when playing a Wonder Video

 

[jjkrause84]

Erm, no, not me anyway.

Civ5 is more complex of Civ4 in the sense that there are more interconnected game mechanisms.

In civ4 you had food (includes population and health), happiness (including luxury resources), commerce (including gold and science and culture), diplomacy (including religion), production (including strategic resources) and civics. Those were all the game elements and they were pretty much independent of each other, apart from the fact that research was of over arching importance and needed to unlock all the other features.

In Civ5 you have the same building blocks but much more interaction between them. In my definition of the word complex, it means that Civ5 is more complex than Civ4.

Can you clarify your case? How are these elements "more interconnected" in Civ5 and, also, can you explain how more interconnectivity translates to complexity (I only ask that because at face value an equal argument can be made in reverse)?

You seem to have a point to make here but stopped short of actually explaining it.

 

[fantsu]

Erm, no, not me anyway.

Civ5 is more complex of Civ4 in the sense that there are more interconnected game mechanisms.

In civ4 you had food (includes population and health), happiness (including luxury resources), commerce (including gold and science and culture), diplomacy (including religion), production (including strategic resources) and civics. Those were all the game elements and they were pretty much independent of each other, apart from the fact that research was of over arching importance and needed to unlock all the other features.

In Civ5 you have the same building blocks but much more interaction between them. In my definition of the word complex, it means that Civ5 is more complex than Civ4.

Can you explain this "interaction" at all? I understand it so, that if you build some useless buildings (like hospital) it'll sure interact with other things too, by ruining your game? But other than that?

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Reading these forums up until the release of the game, it's apparent that some people had already made up their mind that V was "dumbed down", when in reality it's every bit as complex as IV, you just need to learn how to play. My experience with boredom has been the exact opposite. With IV, I often experienced late game boredom...at that point I had every building built in every city, and the game boiled down to hitting end turn until I either built the spaceship or won a score victory. With V, I have to think much harder about how I want to win, buildings take longer to build, so I need to plan which ones I want where. I have found with V, the late game boredom is lessened.

I can't state this enough, removing redundant features like health, espionage, corporations isn't "dumbing down"...it's just good design.

I'm not sure how you play because for me a win is guaranteed before 0AD thanks to how crippling the combat AI is.

By then the game has been decided. It's just slow but guaranteed ride to victory for next 1500 years or so.

And it was definitely lot more interesting to keep up the science rate in IV. In V, all I do is... build cities and I'm pretty much guaranteed to be advancing well in science. They had the right idea of connecting the happiness-population-science-gold into one neat system. But the execution has major problems (like maritime city state and bad building maintanence cost balance) that no matter what kind of victory I'm going for, all my cities go through exact same build pattern (except for 1 wonder building city), which is building monument-market-library-colesseum-bank (I might build colesseum right after monument if it's late game and I just need more happiness). Too many buildings are just horribly useless (like most of the defense ones) and with happiness creating a very easy to reach population cap, there is hardly any way to deviate from a functional playstyle, and to top it off, the functional playstyle is way too easy to pull off.