Why didn't like you civ5?

[QuixotesGhost]

Just how I feel as well. In V, you really have to (ab)use your civ's unique ability, and the terrain is much more bland - there's not as strong variation in tile yield, at least not for a large part of the game. This leads to games where the decisions are largely decided by what civ you roll, which quickly becomes repetitive.

My biggest problem with V too. That you play the civ instead of the map.

 

[Civking5]

Just how I feel as well. In V, you really have to (ab)use your civ's unique ability, and the terrain is much more bland - there's not as strong variation in tile yield, at least not for a large part of the game. This leads to games where the decisions are largely decided by what civ you roll, which quickly becomes repetitive.

This could be said when the game was released, and it is changed greatly after patches. Repeating something that is not true or valid over and over again, doesn't bring any value to this argument.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This could be said when the game was released, and it is changed greatly after patches. Repeating something that is not true or valid over and over again, doesn't bring any value to this argument.

Yields have not been heavily tweaked since vanilla. Trading posts got nerfed down, but that's about it for serious changes to overall total yields. The relative power of a hex-to-pop is still vastly smaller than previous civ titles, so the game is indeed objectively less about the land. That might not be a bad thing necessarily though, because honestly civ has always had AWFUL spawn algorithms when it comes to fair/balanced starts. Having the game hinge less on land might be a good thing if they can't generated balanced land distributions.

One thing that has not "changed greatly" over patches is the rate at which the game runs on recommended specs, and the UI requiring more inputs to do the same thing as previous titles. The city spacing rule helped the 1UPT clutter issue, but it is still rather bad.

"Carpets" combined with being forced to wait between giving units orders is truly grating. Clicking end turn and having the game refuse to end your turn for 10 seconds is absolutely lethal to immersion (yet another thing they kept from civ IV, only they made the wait longer of course). The best part is, after you wait a while the button changes color and you can end the turn...but you had already given your last unit an order! Literally nothing changed between when you couldn't end turn and when you finally are allowed to do so!

What in the world took it so long to enable ending the turn?

- Nothing moved in that timeframe
- No AIs were having their turns so no calculations there
- Player wasn't giving any other orders
- Animations are off so nothing along those lines should be eating into processing power

Go ahead. Explain why civ V isn't a shoddy-programmed/bad mechanical product. Give us a good reason a player can't end his turn for 5-10 seconds when there are 0 remaining orders to be given. Explain why the user interface in a turn-based game can't keep up with player inputs on speficiations the developers *recommend*. Explain why it takes the AI 50 seconds to move a couple hundred units off-screen when in other games AIs can move 1000's of units off-screen in less than 1 on the same system.

But, I'm betting you can't come up with valid explanations for those things, just as others defending civ V vanillabetaexpansionretail (VBER) couldn't and can't.

 

[Civking5]

Yields have not been heavily tweaked since vanilla..

Absolutely not true. Let me make it clear one more time that this is NOT true in current state of civ5. The tile yields in civ 5 are directly connected to the buildings in the city. Buildings like granary, lighthouse, ports, forge, stone quarry, stable, etc are changing the tile yields. Beside some other buildings like circus, water mill, etc are tile dependant. Considering the fact that all this building also have a cost, makes the tile types and city placement very important in civ5.

 

[Civking5]

Yields have not been heavily tweaked since vanilla. Trading posts got nerfed down, but that's about it for serious changes to overall total yields. The relative power of a hex-to-pop is still vastly smaller than previous civ titles, so the game is indeed objectively less about the land. That might not be a bad thing necessarily though, because honestly civ has always had AWFUL spawn algorithms when it comes to fair/balanced starts. Having the game hinge less on land might be a good thing if they can't generated balanced land distributions.

One thing that has not "changed greatly" over patches is the rate at which the game runs on recommended specs, and the UI requiring more inputs to do the same thing as previous titles. The city spacing rule helped the 1UPT clutter issue, but it is still rather bad.

"Carpets" combined with being forced to wait between giving units orders is truly grating. Clicking end turn and having the game refuse to end your turn for 10 seconds is absolutely lethal to immersion (yet another thing they kept from civ IV, only they made the wait longer of course). The best part is, after you wait a while the button changes color and you can end the turn...but you had already given your last unit an order! Literally nothing changed between when you couldn't end turn and when you finally are allowed to do so!

What in the world took it so long to enable ending the turn?

- Nothing moved in that timeframe
- No AIs were having their turns so no calculations there
- Player wasn't giving any other orders
- Animations are off so nothing along those lines should be eating into processing power

Go ahead. Explain why civ V isn't a shoddy-programmed/bad mechanical product. Give us a good reason a player can't end his turn for 5-10 seconds when there are 0 remaining orders to be given. Explain why the user interface in a turn-based game can't keep up with player inputs on speficiations the developers *recommend*. Explain why it takes the AI 50 seconds to move a couple hundred units off-screen when in other games AIs can move 1000's of units off-screen in less than 1 on the same system.

But, I'm betting you can't come up with valid explanations for those things, just as others defending civ V vanillabetaexpansionretail (VBER) couldn't and can't.

After reading your wordy reply, makes me wonder have u played civ5 at all are just using others complaint? And if you played when was it exactly? For example, I see the word "carpet" repeatedly here used by civ4 fan boys, and we all know that where it comes from. Sulla's article about civ5 was in my opinion bias and full of exaggeration to show the potential problems in civ5, and most of it is obsolete sue to all changes in civ5. I played hundred of hours civ5 and never experienced a carpet of doom scenario.

 

[gps]

After reading your wordy reply, makes me wonder have u played civ5 at all are just using others complaint? And if you played when was it exactly?

Starting to walk on thin ice here. You might not like the answer...

 

[Civking5]

Starting to walk on thin ice here. You might not like the answer...

Lol, I know. But you have to admit the answer is important in this argument. Like someone here said he could defeat the game in highest level when it was released. Well, I challenge him go and try the game now at immortal level.

 

[Tatran]

@Civking5



Btw, you've mentioned another civ5 feature I don't like, resource bonus from buildings.
It's probably there to justify the non-significant multiplier output.

 

[Abegweit]

Lol, I know. But you have to admit the answer is important in this argument. Like someone here said he could defeat the game in highest level when it was released. Well, I challenge him go and try the game now at immortal level.

Just because they have plugged a lot of holes, it does not mean it's a better game.

The tile yields in civ 5 are directly connected to the buildings in the city. Buildings like granary, lighthouse, ports, forge, stone quarry, stable, etc are changing the tile yields. Beside some other buildings like circus, water mill, etc are tile dependant. Considering the fact that all this building also have a cost, makes the tile types and city placement very important in civ5.

This is a better argument but it's still not convincing. Tile yields should be tied to the tile.

You do tempt me to try the game again, if nothing else just to see if they really have managed to improve it. I thought it was hopeless - and still do. Kudos to you for making me at least consider the possibility that I might be wrong.

 

[Civking5]

@Civking5



Btw, you've mentioned another civ5 feature I don't like, resource bonus from buildings.
It's probably there to justify the non-significant multiplier output.

Haha, nice picture. Regardless, what is not like about linking tiles output to the buildings ( which by the way added in one the patches after the game released)? In my opinion this concept works beautifully now and makes the city placement interesting and important.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

After reading your wordy reply, makes me wonder have u played civ5 at all are just using others complaint? And if you played when was it exactly? For example, I see the word "carpet" repeatedly here used by civ4 fan boys, and we all know that where it comes from. Sulla's article about civ5 was in my opinion bias and full of exaggeration to show the potential problems in civ5, and most of it is obsolete sue to all changes in civ5. I played hundred of hours civ5 and never experienced a carpet of doom scenario.

Hmm. Let's see...I've only posted MULTIPLE VIDEO WALKTHROUGHS of Civ V.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, care to answer my points? Go ahead. Let's play the game where everyone waits and sees if you even bother trying instead of hiding behind *weak* credibility attacks .

It's not like those points have changed, either. One needs only to boot up youtube, go over to MadDjinn's channel (great LPer, by the way, with an excellent sense of humor) and watch. His specs are better than mine by a bit, but you see the exact same thing in his games and if he played a bit faster, it would be more dramatic.

I hear gods and kings is a bit better, but since civ V somehow disappeared from my steam games library list a couple months ago (now why might this be the *only* Steam game that isn't showing? I didn't delete it) I haven't considered the option of picking it up. Maybe I'll put in a support ticket with Steam just to see what they say.

But you have to admit the answer is important in this argument. Like someone here said he could defeat the game in highest level when it was released. Well, I challenge him go and try the game now at immortal level.

Actually no. Sensible people don't have to admit logical fallacies. Why don't you try actually addressing the points?

For the record, I respect Sullla but he and I do not see things the same way. Had you read his article carefully and compared his primary complaints with my primary complaints about civ V, you would notice that they are not comparable at all. He talks about depth and AIs and the intro and all kinds of crap I don't care about. I want a game that runs properly. That's very low on his list. It wasn't even a month ago I chewed him out (with a pretty amusing no-response for such an eloquent writer) on this very subforum for...

Saying he was "fine" with civ IV and civ V UI and engine! Not only are you using a logical fallacy, but you're explicitly wrong with it too! Pretty sad.

When I play this game w/o kmod I still see control inputs explicitly not working, buttons moving around before you push them, the game pretending buttons are pushed that are not, and a SLOW ENGINE. Civ V did not pioneer bad engine and controls; Failaxis had that locked down long before it entered development. However, it certainly carries their tradition. It's not like these problems are new to civ V, but civ V exacerbated more than a few of them.

 

[Windsor]

For example, I see the word "carpet" repeatedly here used by civ4 fan boys, and we all know that where it comes from. Sulla's article about civ5 was in my opinion bias and full of exaggeration to show the potential problems in civ5, and most of it is obsolete sue to all changes in civ5.

The expression doesn't come from sullla. But yes, sullla is biased. He even admits it himself, he was part of the Civ4 development and it affects his feeling for the game.

But the carpet of doom is alive and well. But there might be a difference in what we define as a carpet of doom. I don't need every single landtile to be occupied by a unit to call it a carpet. I just need there to be enough so large regions of the map gets completely clustered, that still happens (I played G&K in during the holidays).

 

[Civking5]

When I play this game w/o kmod I still see control inputs explicitly not working, buttons moving around before you push them, the game pretending buttons are pushed that are not, and a SLOW ENGINE. Civ V did not pioneer bad engine and controls; Failaxis had that locked down long before it entered development. However, it certainly carries their tradition. It's not like these problems are new to civ V, but civ V exacerbated more than a few of them.

I see what your saying about game engine. I think the game has improved greatly in this regard. However, I may not be a good source to discuss about issue of slowness. I have a relatively good new computer with liquid cooling and all that crap and can play huge maps without much slowness.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I see what your saying about game engine. I think the game has improved greatly in this regard. However, I may not be a good source to discuss about issue of slowness. I have a relatively good new computer with liquid cooling and all that crap and can play huge maps without much slowness.

There are 2 core issues here:

1. The majority of firaxis target market does not care about engine coding/movement, because most of them can not and/or do not give movement orders at RTS rates. If you don't give orders faster than one per 5 second anyway, you won't notice a 5 second delay between moving units for example. Same thing if you want to think a while before ending turn. Firaxis cut corners here and alienated a minority portion of their market. I happen to be in that minority, and it of course will annoy me.

2. A very high quality computer will help, however mine has recommended specs (or in some cases better) so in theory it shouldn't struggle.

The expression doesn't come from sullla

+1. Sullla uses it in his article, but he didn't exactly pioneer the term.

he was part of the Civ4 development and it affects his feeling for the game.

Interestingly, I was *not* part of civ IV development and joined the game late. That might be the sole reason I like it so much. I was in civ V beta and my outrage had its beginnings then already, but I abide my agreement on not going into details of beta stuff, aside from the assertion that the game was still in beta despite being sold at retail .

The carpet effect only has the potential for getting grating late game on higher difficulties, but it's as much a problem for the human if not more so; micromanaging delayed-response units with the complication of hex-swapping can be a big hassle, especially if said units are not on any strategic front and are instead just clashing with each other for space. Re-arranging fronts like this, even long before the battle, is needlessly tedious if they'd have planned better.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Bad:
Slow and ugly GUI
The same annoying music in every era
Useless trading posts instead of the fun of developing cottages
Farms that can be built in deserts, even in Ancient era
Walls and castles in Modern era... come on?!
No religions and espionage in vanilla civ5, so it's a step back even from vanilla civ4
Why was it necessary to throw away the Healthiness/Unhealthiness concept?

Good:
No more losing battles on 90% without inflicting any damage to enemy
No more Stacks of Doom

 

[Civking5]

The expression doesn't come from sullla. But yes, sullla is biased. He even admits it himself, he was part of the Civ4 development and it affects his feeling for the game.

But the carpet of doom is alive and well. But there might be a difference in what we define as a carpet of doom. I don't need every single landtile to be occupied by a unit to call it a carpet. I just need there to be enough so large regions of the map gets completely clustered, that still happens (I played G&K in during the holidays).

The issue of carpet is greatly exaggerated. It may happens occasionally very late in the game when the game is practically over and already decided. My point is disliking the game over an issue that rarely happens is not fair.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The issue of carpet is greatly exaggerated. It may happens occasionally very late in the game when the game is practically over and already decided. My point is disliking the game over an issue that rarely happens is not fair.

I wasn't referring to that ridiculous image of 2359870245 units on the screen though. Take a simple 10 or even 8 hex army and move it through variant terrain, and the process can be pretty annoying. REALLY annoying, if there aren't any tactical considerations because you're not at war yet and the game makes it take 4-5 times longer than it would for you to simply give the orders due to the delay before being able to select (and move) the next unit, and the delay before ending turn. Also the 1UPT unit swapping thing is a big annoyance.

I stand by the assertion that civ V needed more + smaller hexes to work in its current construct to its potential. A big part of the draw of 2 or 4+ move units is the ability to manipulate their positioning to an advantage, but once lines get too cluttered that ability (and the measures to prevent enemies doing so) disappears. I actually don't mind 1 UPT by itself, but it needs to run better. You are necessarily giving more orders per turn --> they need to happen in a timely fashion.

Useless trading posts instead of the fun of developing cottages

IMO trading posts vs cottage argument is interesting. At the fundamental level, they're quite different as improvements. It'd literally be more fair to compare trading posts to something like civ IV windmills instead of cottages.

Cottages are probably the most interesting improvement in all of the civ series ever from a design perspective; but do not mistake that for me saying that they're necessarily a good improvement. They brought an unmatched degree of city specialization to the game and forced players to mix "now vs later", which was further confounded by how broken tech trades are (RA are too, just slightly less so). The game was built around them. In civ V, you are decidedly more building-driven, and actually have similar "now vs later" considerations in that aspect. In civ IV, a heavy majority of buildings blow chunks, and some of them like the granary are so strong they become thoughtless .

Walls and castles in Modern era... come on?!

Civ IV used one extreme (excessively early obsolete dates...as if rifles can shoot through stone or something) and V the other (that anime robot can't easily overcome a wall).

IMO civ V made a mistake with how it handles cities. It switched the game into a more tactical feel; this should have been driven by more and variable terrain with space between cities for armies to operate. Instead, they went for a "city = powerful super archer" approach. If they wanted to give defenders some advantages, there were other ways that would have worked better and kept the tactical combat emphasis.

Why was it necessary to throw away the Healthiness/Unhealthiness concept?

Because they murdered tile/hex yields and made buildings a larger driver. Growth is slower overall too (you can't easily get pop 15+ cities in civ V by 1AD to 200 AD range)

If anything, resources are already too important in civ V. They're a huge gold engine and on top of that a central element in , which has effects on golden ages and potentially even . That's a lot to be tied to one mechanic.

V actually has a fair few amount of good design elements. I don't care about the graphics/music/whatever. The reduced impact of "rng = win or loss" is a HUGE upgrade in civ V for example. If it played better I might switch.

 

[Ghpstage]

I wouldn't go that far. There was very little if any disincentive pre-civ IV. Corruption and waste? How many cities would it take and what kind of distance would you need before anybody started caring about that? Even then, the city was at worst useless - you were never actively penalized for simply owning an additional city (maybe if you overbuilt buildings there).

The penalties in release period civ 5 were pretty laughable, at most they simply delayed the beginning of ICS a little, happiness could be pretty much ignored entirely afterall . My comment was based on that with worked tiles being feeble and a huge array of strong per city bonuses available there was active incentive to build as many cities as possible as close together as possible.
The only really similar thing I can think of pre civ 4 was how unit maintenance worked on a per city basis, i'm just not sure which was worse .

Obviously this has been largely fixed through patches, overfixed perhaps, but I find it hard to forgive such an epic cock up after publicly stating that they were going to prevent this.....

It's ironic that civ V "fans" call people out for mentioning that obvious tendency and saying we don't like it because it's different from civ IV (a favorite canned argument of fools). Why is it ironic? Because the "don't think just nerf" tendency is straight out of failaxis' civ IV patch policy, too.

That civ 4 shares these probems is certainly true, and if we look at just at some examples of poor thinking in both patching and implementations there are plenty of examples (AP, Cuirassiers on BTS release, overflow, barb galleys, spy culture to name just a few), and even before BTS with vassals..... its just amazing that the problem seems to be getting worse as time goes on!

 

[Windsor]

After browsing the Civ5 forums a bit, one thing that actually annoys the crap out of me.. the graphics. And especially those bloody unit icons (what's the point in fancy unit graphics when you need a big ugly unit icon?)

Does anyone think this look good?

Spoiler :

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

I gave this a deep though and I came up with this:

I simply don't like army-level tactical games. And civ5 became that and ceased being a civ game.
When I play a tactical game, it's always on a squad-level - xcom, jagged alliance, ufo, etc.
Other sort of games that I would play are again squad-level RTS: warcraft, red alert, and their clones
Other games are always 4X strategy games, moo, galciv, civs. these have only very little of tactics, or have it separated.

Special case is HoMaM.
This I consider a tactical game on a battalion-level (meaning closer to squad then army) with a very few strategical options, that are also separated (on the big map, you only move the army, capture resources etc, but dont actually build anything)
Very similar game to that would be conquest of the new world. there are probably more good games on battalion-level, but these are the only two I played


So since civ5 moved from a strategy 4x game toward a army-level tactical game, I don't like it. Even more so, because some 4x details became simplified.

AI inability to be able to play this battalion-level tactical game on a hex grid is a huge disadvantage.