Why didn't like you civ5?

[GKey]

I do understand your point, TMIT, however to me loving game - hardly can be described by tactical/economical/UI or whatever else aspect. You just feel it. And I definitely loved first two civilizations.

Speaking of underrated games: Stronghold was fantastic game for my taste from like any aspect (well, they could add some upgrades system a la Warcraft etc). Pity they never became a huge title in the market.

 

[alex15]

Speaking of taste, I always liked HoMM2 more then HoMM3. I actually liked HoMM5 with it rebuilt skills/abilities system, still don't have same feelings like these with HoMM2. Partially due to becoming older, I guess.

But of Civ1 and Civ2 - these were clearly brilliant for their time. If I understand correctly, you liked Warlords more at the same time, that would be your personal preference (even with all these better UI, been noted by you like bazillion times already).

What i dont like about Heroes of Might and Magic 2 is offencive opera soundtrack with insulting other people religion beliefes. I mean in Homm2 there is song in german saying "fool says there is no god, fool says there is no god"

There is no God in religions like Buddhism (buddhists doesnt believe in God) and putting "fool says there is no god" in HOMM2 soundtrack is insulting and calling millions of people fools only because of their religion beliefs inculding buddhists,atheists,pagans,animists,native cults like totemism etc.

Its okay to believing in God/or not believing in God but its not okay to insult other people only because they share different religion beliefs, especially in game soundtrack.

___
Respect to Civ4 authors, Civ4 have all - religion,paganism,free religion, no religion but ulnike HOMM2, Civ4 makers havent insulted anyone.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Speaking of underrated games: Stronghold was fantastic game for my taste from like any aspect (well, they could add some upgrades system a la Warcraft etc). Pity they never became a huge title in the market.

I am assuming you are referring to the newer stronghold, and not the one based on dungeons and dragons which was actually pretty interesting in its time too .

What i dont like about Heroes of Might and Magic 2 is offencive opera soundtrack with insulting other people religion beliefes. I mean in Homm2 there is song in german saying "fool says there is no god, fool says there is no god"

Which town was this? And why must one assume the song is directed at the player?

In the HOMM universe, there very clearly are gods. It's not like real life at all; you will occsionally have gods take a character and bring him back from the dead, curse him, etc. Heck, in HOMM III demons/angels will fight against/alongside you and sometimes even together. Whatever beliefs you might have in real life, it truly would be foolish not to believe in gods in HOMM universe because not only is there evidence of gods there, that evidence can smack you in the face and kill you .

 

[damerell]

There is no God in religions like Buddhism (buddhists doesnt believe in God) and putting "fool says there is no god" in HOMM2 soundtrack is insulting and calling millions of people fools only because of their religion beliefs inculding buddhists,atheists,pagans,animists,native cults like totemism etc.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've read for a while. It's the soundtrack; it's not like there's a little note on the box saying you're going to hell. (No, I'm not a God-botherer.)

 

[Pisskop]

What i dont like about Heroes of Might and Magic 2 is offencive opera soundtrack with insulting other people religion beliefes. I mean in Homm2 there is song in german saying "fool says there is no god, fool says there is no god"

There is no God in religions like Buddhism (buddhists doesnt believe in God) and putting "fool says there is no god" in HOMM2 soundtrack is insulting and calling millions of people fools only because of their religion beliefs inculding buddhists,atheists,pagans,animists,native cults like totemism etc.

Its okay to believing in God/or not believing in God but its not okay to insult other people only because they share different religion beliefs, especially in game soundtrack.

___
Respect to Civ4 authors, Civ4 have all - religion,paganism,free religion, no religion but ulnike HOMM2, Civ4 makers havent insulted anyone.

I was going to let sleeping dogs lie. . . but since others responded! What self-rightousness is this? All religions believe in a prime power or force of some kind. The Jews actually translate the Buddhist and Hindu faiths as believing in God ultimately. I fear it is this kind of thinking that tends to remove creative culture from games. . . or gets 'under God' removed from the POA; rather then simply not saying it. Im not sure I understand this push to remove religious references from anything, esp a game based upon religious theology or at a time when religons really ran the world.

 

[kenwyn]

Huh?! Where did this thread get WAY off track?
This is about why U didn't/don't like Civ 5... what's with all this other blather about other games... don't they have their own sites to discuss them?
As for RELGIOUS discussions, they certaily have PLENTY of sites of their own.
What's next, politics?

Focus folks, focus, this is a CIV site.

 

[jeffreyac]

OK, I haven't read ALL 10 pages prior to this - and forgive me if I'm off track of what we're taking about now...

...but my #1 issue with Civ V was global happiness - I couldn't get around the idea of building a courthouse on one side of my empire to increase the happiness on a city on the other side. Silly, I know, when you consider the amount of abstract I'm willing to accept on Civ IV because I LIKE that game, but for some reason I just couldn't get past that.

The 1UPT thing I was not a fan of, for lots and lots of reasons, but the happiness thing for me was far more grating.

...so, I happily went back to Civ IV!

 

[kenwyn]

It was just too big of a jump.

Computer power req'd + req'd to join some web-based site just to play MY game = bull.

Was really hoping for more with hex tiles & ranged & more"realistic" battling. Hi hopes, lo results.

Wonder how many of us "old timers" would be willing to pay a reasonable amount to have Civ4 polished up & AI smarten up (at least in how they fight) with a few more Civ's & leaders & scenerios kicked in? I certainly would spend $25 or so.

Meanwhile, anyone know where we can sell barely used Civ 5 Special Intro game set with figures still in the box?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Huh?! Where did this thread get WAY off track?
This is about why U didn't/don't like Civ 5... what's with all this other blather about other games... don't they have their own sites to discuss them?
As for RELGIOUS discussions, they certaily have PLENTY of sites of their own.
What's next, politics?

Too bad you missed the faster-than-light travel portion of derailment...in this same thread <3.

but my #1 issue with Civ V was global happiness - I couldn't get around the idea of building a courthouse on one side of my empire to increase the happiness on a city on the other side.

Only bad thing about the concept is calling it "happiness". Realistically, it's just another form of maintenance and serves the exact same purpose. It's also balanced badly, but that's not a problem at the concept level.

Computer power req'd

This was bad enough, but that they essentially lied to us on the box/advertisements about "recommended" and "minimum" reqs was even more grating. On minimum specs, it'd be hard to even play a map on "huge"...but that map size is a core feature of the game! Generally, minimum specs are what you need to use all of a game's content, at the lowest graphical/highest preformance options. Not in civ V though. Huge map + min specs would be a complete joke. I'm not sure it could even do it, but if it did it wouldn't be playable even to the more patient/casual person.

Wonder how many of us "old timers" would be willing to pay a reasonable amount to have Civ4 polished up & AI smarten up

Try kmod.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Which town was this? And why must one assume the song is directed at the player?

In the HOMM universe, there very clearly are gods. It's not like real life at all; you will occsionally have gods take a character and bring him back from the dead, curse him, etc. Heck, in HOMM III demons/angels will fight against/alongside you and sometimes even together. Whatever beliefs you might have in real life, it truly would be foolish not to believe in gods in HOMM universe because not only is there evidence of gods there, that evidence can smack you in the face and kill you .

Sorceress town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix4OCHntjt8

The lyrics are the first verse of Psalm 14 translated into German: "The fool has said in his heart there is no God."

Using Bible verses as texts has been a very common practice throughout Western music, even among composers who aren't religious. For a game doing an "operatic" soundtrack to emulate that makes perfect sense. And of course, as you said, in the context of a fantasy setting it takes on an entirely different meaning.

I wonder how Alex can stand to play Civ IV considering how all of the choral pieces from the Medieval era are highly religious in nature and are often themselves taken from the Bible

The reality is that heavy religiosity was a part of the Western Middle Ages and so anything trying to be medieval-y will also probably try to be religious-y. (And yes, I know the Medieval music in Civ IV is actually Renaissance, but you know what I mean)

 

[Jeros]

For Civ 6 I would love to see:

Hexes with units stacking up to SIX units per hex. Been thinking about sea transport and although I am not keen on it, the Civ 5 sea transportation mechanic would probably have to remain.

Ranged units can attack an adjacent hex without retaliation, and are the same strength as melee units for ONE defend per turn, all defends after that first one cause the ranged unit to have 50% strength, mounted units gain 25% extra damage vs ranged units. Ranged units do not suffer the 50% additional defense penalty when on hills or in forest/jungle.

Exceptions being WW1 era Artillery has a 1 hex range, modern missile artillery has a 2 hex range, SCUD missile launchers (would love to see these, slow, weak and prohibitively expensive but with huge attack potential) and missile cruisers have a 3 hex range.

Ranged attacks would randomly select a unit in a enemy stack to damage and some would deal additional damage to all units in a stack. Air units can select which unit in a stack to attack.

Would also like to see future units, railgun tanks, active camouflage tanks, cyborg troops etc.

Can we just have Civ: Call to Power 3?

 

[calad]

I wrote this to civ5 rant thread

I played civ5 for a long time to see how it has changed. Comparing to civ4 is it just me or why do I got feeling that absolutely nothing is happening civ5? I feel techs are researched ridiculous fast when comparing how slow it is to build buildings. Not mention wonders. It is utterly nonsense that ancient wonders like Oracle and Stonehenge are usually build in medieval era because they need so much production.

AI was totaly horrible. I had a really long war against Egypt. Guess did they protect their settlers and workers? I had to delete some workers because I simply had too many of them. When I was sieging their last city and looted all improvents AI only producted more workes, not at all military units. Had they producted them my war whould have been complitely stalemate.

I feel also that game is totaly broken when it comes to city states. Improve your economy when you produce +100 gold in turn. Then simply buy all citystates on your side. Free troops, free recources, bases anywhere in the world, lot of free culture, food, commerce and production and no any penalties from cities. In couple of games I simply did that and I was always most powerfull civ.

 

[dowd001]

I feel that Sulla's analysis of Civ 5 was spot on.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

In a nutshell:

1UPT Problem
1- 1UPT forced unit build times to be increased to avoid map gridlock
2- But you cannot make military units multiples of hammers more than buildings, so the solution was also to reduce production yields generally from tiles.
3- This had the effect of slowing down build times for buildings and units.
4- Plus, they increased science output relative to production (which has the effect of increasing cost of units relative to science)

All of that leads to a system where production is intentionally limited and science zips on through. The benefits of buildings large cities are marginal after cities reach a size of 6-10 or so. That, combined with the change to global happiness below, results marginal returns for building cities beyond a core size.

Global Happiness
1- They switched from controlling REX/ICS by having cities cost gold to having a global happiness.
2- In order to make this work, they made cities free but buildings cost gold. This means that building is now harmful to your city at times. Again, city building is demphasized.
3- But global happiness is controllable by policies, buildings and resources. Settle a city near a new resource and add a building and viola, no unhapiness from that city.
4- In addition, keeping cities small allows you to decrease the impact of global unhappiness. Again, demphasizing city building.

I also think that the switch from focusing on commerce to global happiness decreased the incentive to specialize or micromanage cities. No cultivating villages-towns, no building commerce or specialist cities. Production cities make some sense, but not really since you are really not churning out as many units in Civ 5. Every city formula is the same, regardless of your starting location. Sure, some variance around whether you build a lighthouse or a granary, or whether you have wine (and a monestary) or gold (and a mint). But in the end, cities are all cookie cutters. And the empire is a collection of all of the same cookies.

Just think about it this way. Say you build your production city on the periphery in Civ 4 and the AIs gang up and take that city. You now need to sue for peace to buy time to get a second production city running. In civ 5, all of your cities are the same so what does it matter if you lose one?

And that makes it easier to program an AI. The AI can be programmed to target and disrupt production and ruin your capacity to conduct a war. Not saying Civ 4 did that well, but they could have had that choice had the kept city specialization which would have decreased the AI problems with conducting tacital moves on 1UPT. Your empire in Civ 4 could be more vulnerable, whereas in Civ 5, its all scaleable. Destroy production, and you do not need a massive invasion. Or if you have one or two commerce cities paying for everything else, the AI could target and pillage those cities and all of a sudden, your empire crashes because it is out of cash. Again, make it possible for the AI to be successful.

The whole thing is just a series of choices the designers made that in the end were really bad choices in so far as they limited the dynamic content of the game and hamstrung the ability of the AI to be successful.

 

[Funky]

@calad:

Most of us totally agree with you and would have many more points to add. The reason you're not getting many responses is that we've been through these discussions so often before. This thread has 11 pages, the rants thread would be at 250 pages had it not been cut in half, and countless similar threads have come to existence over the past two and a half years. Like in a sinus curve, the debates about Civ 5 go through active phases, followed by more quiet phases after all has been said. When the silence has lasted a while, people feel compelled to rant again and recollect what a travesty this game is. At the moment we are in a silent phase.

Since there are still people who haven't played Civ 5 yet but will eventually do so, I don't expect this procedure to end soon, as there will always be new input by disappointed and shocked fans of the Civ series who feel the urge to vent their frustration on these boards. Fortunately for us, Civ 4 is still a great game, especially with its huge variety of excellent mods.

 

[Thorite]

Pure and simple - it was boring.Post #2 chronicles my first, and pretty close to last, game) :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=394243

And for all the reasons that Sullla pointed out.

 

[Thorite]

And I'm posting this just to make sure that Firaxis knows that I haven't forgiven them.

 

[civvver]

TMIT, I completely agree with you about the minimum specs/recommended specs. Civ5 is resource hog and really shouldn't be considering how poor the graphics look. But that said, it feels like people are complaining about civ5 while trying to run it on 5-8 year old pcs. There are no other current games that people expect to run on old pcs. When a new AAA title like skyrim or modern warfare 2 is about to come out you get tons of posts on tom's hardware asking, how will my 2 yr old pc handle skyrim? etc. No one expects to play those games (especially on highest settings) on old hardware.

Strategy fans are kind of different in that regard. Maybe it's because we cling to older titles so much so we expect our pcs to keep chugging along. I'm not sure.

Still, civ5 seems to have some serious programming issues. There should be no problem drawing 3d models... RTS games like starcraft 2 do it and draw moving models in real time. And you can play starcraft 2 fine on a dual core with an 8800gt as long as you turn off all dynamic lighting. Something is wrong in the core engine of civ5. There's also something deeply flawed in the AI calculations. I think they write it too much like a top down script, maybe so that it can be edited easily after by non-programmers? I can't say for sure, but it is lacking efficiency. At the very least it seems like they could be more clever and have AI calculations going on during your turn and then make adjustments during the between turn phases. I mean a lot of AI decisions aren't going to change unless something drastic happens. Like there are general decisions like I need more cities so I'm building settlers etc vs reactionary ones like oh crap a bunch of units just landed on my doorstep. Feels like some AI calculations could be spread out.

There are a lot of reasons I could speculate on about why 4x is declining like rise of mobile gaming, changing revenue models to dlc and subscriptions etc. But if I had to point at one reason I would say it's the on demand flavor of games today. Because games are so cheap and instantly available via steam, app stores, digital downloads etc a game has to grab your attention right off the bat or you'll probably move on. While in the past you might have gone to bestbuy and dropped $50 on civ, so if it had a steep learning curve you would stick it out because you were invested in it and it would cost you another trip and another $50 to get a different game. Now you get it instantly on steam for $7.50 on sale. If you don't like it, eh I'll just drop another $5 on some other instant gratification. So someone who has never played civ before gets 5 and is like this is so confusing, maybe I'll just go play batman or something. I mean I totally get it. I picked up both galactic empires on steam and haven't played them more than 5 minutes just cus I have to get into a learning something new frame of mind and sometimes you just want to play, not try to figure stuff out. I think that's why some other games are so successful like skyrim. It's so simple to pick up and play, yet there's so much to explore, the world has real depth even if the game mechanics don't. As a result those other games get great word of mouth/social media advertising while no one is talking about say fallen enchantress outside of strategy game forums.

Civ2 does get too much nostalgia going. It was a pretty simple game. Civ4 is infinitely better.

Finally, since this is actually titled why didn't you like civ5, here's why in two reasons:

One there is zero variation to gameplay and I think it has to do primary with the tech tree and not allowing tech trades. A gigantic part of civ4 was strategically picking your tech path. Are you going to get steel first for cannons, or are you going lib for free tech, or are you getting electricity to trade for backfill etc? There were distinct paths with distinct benefits. In civ5 distinct paths only last about 2 or 3 levels before you're researching an entire era to advance to the next. There are about the same number of total techs in civ5 and civ4 but there's no path variation in 5 other than I guess I'll get calendar one research choice before bronze working.

The second reason is civ5 is a game of penalties while civ4 was a game of rewards vs opportunity costs. Civ5 penalizes you for nearly everything, expansion, capturing cities etc. It's 5's way of keeping you in check. Too many cities kills your happiness and drops your production. The beauty of 4 was the only penalty was maintenance but even that was an traded cost because you could capture cities and then build wealth. Maintenance went up but so did empire wide food and production. The decisions were things like should I build a bunch of units to expand horizontally and then catch up vertically later? Not decisions like can I capture this city or will it kill my global happiness? Everything in 5 seems to be harmful and counter intuitive.

 

[gps]

Strategy fans are kind of different in that regard. Maybe it's because we cling to older titles so much so we expect our pcs to keep chugging along. I'm not sure.

True. Strategy games are not as short lived as other game genres. Which - from my point of view - is a good thing.I can walk into my local store right now and by stuff like Civ III or Civ IV Complete, Rome - Total War, Age of Empires I/II Collection or Rise of Nations for a few bucks. They are available everywhere around here new and shrink wrapped. Some of these are more than ten years old and still they sell.
Should be a clear hint to strategy game developers that it is well worth putting efforts and money into quality game design and proper QA and bugfixing. Because once you've established a product with a reputation it sells forever (speaking in video game terms)...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

TMIT, I completely agree with you about the minimum specs/recommended specs. Civ5 is resource hog and really shouldn't be considering how poor the graphics look. But that said, it feels like people are complaining about civ5 while trying to run it on 5-8 year old pcs.

If it meets "minimum specifications", all features in the game should run in a way that is playable.
If it meets "recommended specifications", all features in the game should run well.

If the specifications are higher, it's better to be honest about them than to lie to consumers outright, at least in theory.

When a new AAA title like skyrim or modern warfare 2 is about to come out you get tons of posts on tom's hardware asking, how will my 2 yr old pc handle skyrim? etc. No one expects to play those games (especially on highest settings) on old hardware.

And yet, these titles typically run *very* well on 2 year old PCs when they're turned to moderate or low settings. Civ V crawls like a snail on recommended settings even if you turn resolution and graphical quality to absolute minimums. There is a big difference here; those other "AAA" titles are actually programed to run like a game, while civ V is not.

One there is zero variation to gameplay and I think it has to do primary with the tech tree and not allowing tech trades.

The tech trade model of civ 1-4 is hands-down one of the most imbalanced features in 4x games and is easily the most imbalanced feature in the civ franchise that actually exists between games. Tech trades are trash. Micro optimization to get 400 beakers? Nah...trade for a 300% return on beakers...post multiplier! DERP! RA were one of the few things where civ V was a step in the right direction, although they were still overpowered while I was playing.

"Penalties" in V I don't care about, but they needed to make it so that they lead to dynamic choices. Instead, they've led to "tall empire with x cities then focus on y social policies"...unfortunately x and y are the same very very often.

V's pacing is atrocious, and its balance, user interface, and engine are all steps back. Useful design improvements like hexes and re-worked trades get drowned out because the thing doesn't run or play like a game made in the past decade, let alone the past few years.

 

[civvver]

Imbalanced tech trades made 4 fun though because it opened up a bunch of options. Research in 5 is so bland. Maybe it's also because there's no sliders.

But you're right, civ5 doesn't feel dynamic whatsoever. Every game plays out exactly the same to me and I get bored fast.

I think you're exaggerating civ5's performance issues. My pc is 3 years old, core i5, gtx 460 1gb video card, 4gb of ram, nothing that extravagant. It runs civ5 like a champ. Also runs all those other action titles on high settings. The pc I had prior was from 2006, amd athalon x2 dual core, an ati x1900xt 512mb video card and it couldn't handle civ5 at all. It could barely handle world of warcraft. Saying civ5 crawls on a 2 year old pc sounds incorrect to me, maybe if it's using on board graphics, but then it wouldn't run other games well either.