Why do people hate this game?

[Alastriona]

In my current game I've just freed a city state fro my enemy. First action after I liverate them? They ally with my enemy and declare war on me. THAT is why people hate this game!

 

[Clement]

In my current game I've just freed a city state fro my enemy. First action after I liverate them? They ally with my enemy and declare war on me. THAT is why people hate this game!

Yeah thats the reason for me too, just can't co-operate or be friends with any of the Civilizations.

 

[OneFootInThe...]

New to the forums, so hi to you all.
New to Civ as well, so I can't really compare Civ 5 to the previous ones. I noticed that a lot of people disliked it, though I personally find it extremely addicting and worth the price. So why the hate? Not trollin', just curious.

I am sure that as a newcomer it would give a lot to explore and be happy with, and I think this is what Firaxis is banking on...

The problem with Civ V is that out there there are millions!?! of experienced civ users who were in love with Civ during the whole 20 years of the franchize existance (or even a part of it) ... and to us - ie Civ oldimers, this new civ, which is a "once in 5 years" event - is very poorly implemented.

We have no problems with changes per se, but problem with poorly implemented changes. After you spend thousands of hours with a certain product (be it a game, or some otehr thing in life, OS, car, camera etc... ) you get an idea what it is about and what is good about it.

CivV removes a LOT of what was good with the excellent previous iteration, and some other points are hopelessly broken... but as a long time users, we are still hanging around in hope that someone is reading what we write, and will take it on board...

For you as a newcomer, once you get bored with Civ V, and if you are really "hooked" that will happen after a few hundred hours for sure - you can than graduate to Civ IV... for the rest of us, we played Civ IV already and were ready for something new and interesting... Civ V is new, but the "interesting" bit fades away after 10 hours or so... and all the glaring inconsistancies/missing points/pure bad decisions in game design come to make us complain, as this is all we can do at the moment.

 

[SuperJay]

Also, since you're asking for "reasons for the hate", there's this odd problem that valid criticism about the game's shortcomings keeps being marginalized and derided by trying to sweep it away with generalized "the critics just wanted another Civ4" comments. You can see this in this very thread. I don't think it's very respectful towards fellow forumers to continually misrepresent their opinions this way, and I think this technique does indeed contribute to the "hate", since of course the critics then feel compelled to clarify that this is NOT the sole reason of the criticism.

Agreed, completely. It's kind of sickening, the way valid critiques get marginalized by the "you just wanted Civ4" BS.

And I don't "hate" Civ 5, I just find it boring.

I've been a fan since Civ1, and this iteration just isn't that challenging (and I'm not even a very good player) or engaging or replayable. I've never been bored by a Civ game. Every playthrough feels more or less the same, but my cities and units are a different color.

So, whatever. It's a streamlined version of a franchise I used to enjoy that's designed for a target audience of players new to Civ or players that tried Civ Rev and wanted something a little more challenging, but not too difficult. I'm not one of those players, so it makes sense that the game doesn't hold much appeal for me.

 

[TheWiseLeon]

I think someone summed it up quite well before in that some people feel let down after the sublime Civ4 BTS. While I like some of the changes, when I began playing Civ V I 've found it pretty underwhelming so far compared to what I had been hoping/expecting, considering how good of a game BTS was. Hopefully this will change with some expansions and mods.

 

[Pantastic]

Wow you sure blew a hole right throught all the arguments against Civ 5 there using incorrect generalised nonsense... well done!

I like the way you call it 'incorrect' and 'generalised' without actually pointing out anything incorrect or overly generalized. If I feel really enthusiastic I might make a similar list using direct quotes of complaints, but that's really pretty cumbersome and hard to read, and I doubt that would stop groundless dismissals.

Do us a favor and quit copy/pasting the same nonsense to every thread and actually write something worth reading. If your just gonna copy/paste all your responses your not really adding anything are you?

It must have really hit home for you to get that angry and that confused over basic math. One (the copy/paste) is not equal to 903 (my number of posts) or whatever lesser number of ones you'd class as responses. It looks like a valid list of civ5 complaints to me, if you can tell me any that haven't been made I'll be glad to take them off, but just getting angry that I listed several together isn't making any kind of valid argument.

 

[Fistalis]

I like the way you call it 'incorrect' and 'generalised' without actually pointing out anything incorrect or overly generalized. If I feel really enthusiastic I might make a similar list using direct quotes of complaints, but that's really pretty cumbersome and hard to read, and I doubt that would stop groundless dismissals.



It must have really hit home for you to get that angry and that confused over basic math. One (the copy/paste) is not equal to 903 (my number of posts) or whatever lesser number of ones you'd class as responses. It looks like a valid list of civ5 complaints to me, if you can tell me any that haven't been made I'll be glad to take them off, but just getting angry that I listed several together isn't making any kind of valid argument.

Linking together posts from random users which are undeniably opposing in nature and claiming them all to be valid is rather silly. If you don't agree with people fine but its rather poor tactics to link together informed/uninformed/possible troll posts and claim them all to be valid. Write your opinion rather than stealing others posts in an attempt to discredit detractors as a whole.

And if you think i'm angry over a forum post then you apparently put much more value in random anonymous peoples words then I ever could. Was it your intent to inflame people? If it was it was a failure.. and pretty much against forum rules.

 

[Zogar]

On these forums this seems to be by far most common reason. Almost always people's idea of fixing anything here is changing Civ V to exact copy of Civ IV.

You are completely off the mark. People don't blame civ 5 for being different (some do, but not a lot). People blame civ 5 because the new mechanics make for horrible gameplay, full of bugs, exploits, broken mechanincs, not speaking about the lack of depth.

I personnally don't care they changed a lot of things, but I do care it doesn't work / don't leave me with 'one more turn' syndrom.

 

[Osetjka]

I am sure that as a newcomer it would give a lot to explore and be happy with, and I think this is what Firaxis is banking on...

The problem with Civ V is that out there there are millions!?! of experienced civ users who were in love with Civ during the whole 20 years of the franchize existance (or even a part of it) ... and to us - ie Civ oldimers, this new civ, which is a "once in 5 years" event - is very poorly implemented.

We have no problems with changes per se, but problem with poorly implemented changes. After you spend thousands of hours with a certain product (be it a game, or some otehr thing in life, OS, car, camera etc... ) you get an idea what it is about and what is good about it.

CivV removes a LOT of what was good with the excellent previous iteration, and some other points are hopelessly broken... but as a long time users, we are still hanging around in hope that someone is reading what we write, and will take it on board...

For you as a newcomer, once you get bored with Civ V, and if you are really "hooked" that will happen after a few hundred hours for sure - you can than graduate to Civ IV... for the rest of us, we played Civ IV already and were ready for something new and interesting... Civ V is new, but the "interesting" bit fades away after 10 hours or so... and all the glaring inconsistancies/missing points/pure bad decisions in game design come to make us complain, as this is all we can do at the moment.

Agreed completely. For me the glare of something flashy and new faded away after the first 3-4 games, many of which I didn't finish due to broken elements (AI rage quits, blob of deaths, etc). What's left is a shell of a game that's either missing features or has fundamentally broken ones in place of old time-tested civ mechanics.

Liked your comment about graduating from ciV to cIV. Sad but true.

 

[Balerune]

New to the forums, so hi to you all.
New to Civ as well, so I can't really compare Civ 5 to the previous ones. I noticed that a lot of people disliked it, though I personally find it extremely addicting and worth the price. So why the hate? Not trollin', just curious.

You would have had to play Civ IV I believe to understand fully. This is not a war game. If you want a war game there are many, many much better ones out there. This series was about building (as the intro still says) a civilization to stand the test of time. There are many more factors beside war which influence the ability to survive. This game was about the real life struggle to survive; it always tended towards realism in that way. If you got Civ IV and played Rhye's and Fall mod which was included in beyond the sword you'd get the flavor because winning does not easily depend on your ability to outfox the AI in combat, in fact (as has been noted numerous times) combat in the Civ series was always rather poor but the various ways to win were traditionally always on equal footing making the ways to win numerous and the scenarios that players made tended to reinforce different play styles including the "combat only when necessary." The biggest mess up in this game (and there are many) is the diplomacy between player and AI. I have come to believe that hype aside all the AI are the same except that some take longer to attack you than others. In Civ IV the personalities were much more distinct. A peaceful AI would hardly ever attack but would thru diplomatic means attempt another solution to win the game (which meant that you had other considerations besides worrying about the AI army)and with the loss of corporations which could really throw a new element into the game the ability to control thru economics was lost. Now it is just watch the cute animations and .... well... I wouldn't want to get banned. As has been said numerous times the depth of the game is gone. Again, try civ IV or read the forums and you'll see what I mean.

 

[jlambvo]

Ok, I have to ask... when on earth did Civ IV get deified for it's rich, realistic, non-gamey AI, air-tight balance, and lack of exploits?

That's why I finally threw in the towel on the thing. I tried starting up a game again a few weeks ago, and despite enjoying the atmosphere and sense of discovery in those opening turns (which is a major hook missing for me in V so far, the new art/sound/music direction feels more like the Empire: Total War), I was quickly reminded why I'd stopped playing. There is nothing remotely in character, consistent, or human about AI players.

The AI in Civilization has *always been a complete farce.* Maybe it was better at cheating its way to pumping out army stacks and buying up techs, and so presented something of a challenge. You can't be completely serious in contrasting IV and IV's computer players regarding arbitrary diplomatic decisions and obstructionism. Half of "diplomacy" in IV was being forced to reverse engineer how to play the numbers and produce a desired effect. Maybe once you learn that and build some narrative fantasy around why it happens, it seemed to be smarter?

Don't even get started on the exploits and patterns that just became part of the normal fabric of gameplay.

V is also being compared to all Civ IV features up through the final version of Beyond the Sword. You're talking about a game that *continued to be developed* for at least TWO YEARS after release, and was maintained through 2009. Four years of essentially public testing and iteration after the Vanilla release. It takes time to develop stuff.

 

[TheWiseLeon]

I agree Civ V needs time to be developed in the same way Civ 4 was, but as a sequal, I was hoping Civ V would contain at least as much content as BTS. Sadly, I personally don't think this is the case, but I live in hope it will be over the coming months/years. I'll certainly still be playing Civ V in the meantime.

 

[Tridus]

To answer, I'll simply quote the designers:

And yes, as BtS pleased the hardcore fans, they decided to make 5 appeal more to those who might have loved Rev and wanted something more--but who may not be ready to leap into Civ 4's complexity.

I liked the complexity, and they deliberately went away from that to make something that appeals to the simplistic and boring Civ Rev players. Thus, it's no surprise that I don't like 5.

 

[Akka]

On these forums this seems to be by far most common reason.

Actually, the only times I've ever seen the argument "I don't like it because it's not Civ4" on these forums, it's when a fanboy tries to discredit the "haters" by putting this in their mouths.

Actual complains are nearly always about some very definite flaws, and not the "nostalgia factor" - which is just an overused red herring.

 

[SuperJay]

Actually, the only times I've ever seen the argument "I don't like it because it's not Civ4" on these forums, it's when a fanboy tries to discredit the "haters" by putting this in their mouths.

Actual complains are nearly always about some very definite flaws, and not the "nostalgia factor" - which is just an overused red herring.

Bingo. The fervent supporters really seem to be getting more and more unreasonable, and apparently feel very threatened by opinions that don't align with theirs. It's odd.

 

[Aristos]

Bingo. The fervent supporters really seem to be getting more and more unreasonable, and apparently feel very threatened by opinions that don't align with theirs. It's odd.

No, it is not odd. Remember that many of them really want to be part of the "elite" that plays civ (I put this in quotes because that is the way many people think, they feel less because they play console games and FPS, and want to be "comparable")...

So, when they see a harsh critic, they take it personally, because when I say "Civ0.5 has been clearly dumbed down", they read this as an attack to their ego, because now they are finally playing that feared complex game that someone is calling "dumbed down"... it's all mass psychology, and remember, Firaxis made a decision to appeal to the "mass market" this time, so it is that type of psychology that you will see here defending the undefendible (spelling?)...

 

[SuperJay]

So, when they see a harsh critic, they take it personally, because when I say "Civ0.5 has been clearly dumbed down", they read this as an attack to their ego...

Seems that way. I've seen several circumstances where people talking about the game get attacked by someone who takes their opinions as a personal insult, when the people that are disappointed were simply discussing their perspectives - without even using inflammatory terms like "dumbed down." And then out of nowhere comes a fervent supporter who is so angry over someone else's opinion of a video game that they resort to personal attacks, even though the subject of conversation had absolutely nothing to do with that individual.

Ironically, I see more and more anger and hatred coming from the fervent supporters than I do from the supposed "haters."

(And it's "indefensible," if you were truly curious. I usually wouldn't presume to correct anyone's spelling, but you seemed to ask. No offense intended.)

 

[kiwitt]

Civ5, heir apparent,
the modern atomic version of the new millenium for nuclear fisson gamers of tommorrow

I hope you are right.

However, the Total War Series, lost it's way when it went to Rome:Total War, by radically changing it's way. I played Medieval:Total War for years (even buying a backup install CD, I was so addicted to it), that when Rome came out, I had high expectations and even had hope the Medieval II and Empire would fix things. They didn't and the franchise died for me.

I have played wargames for decades and this included playing on hex maps and counters (so hexes is not new), I like a complex game, where you can create complex strategies. The world and it's civilisations and wars are complex and should not be "dumbed-down", just to make it easy.

Take a look at my mod ... it is extremely complex. And as I say not for the faint-hearted. If Civ 5 was trying to be like a "wargame", they failed if they thought making it simpler.

On a side note: I am now considering loading Hearts of Iron 3; which I bought a few months back.

 

[Hormagaunt]

New to the forums, so hi to you all.
New to Civ as well, so I can't really compare Civ 5 to the previous ones. I noticed that a lot of people disliked it, though I personally find it extremely addicting and worth the price. So why the hate? Not trollin', just curious.

If you've never played a game like Civ before then this, Civ 5, is wondrously complex.

It's got lots of variation in units.
It's got lots of things for those units to do.
It's got a huge tech tree that must be learned to build those units.
You've got to decide how your civ will grow, culturally. Will it be traditionalist, or free thinkers, or authoritarian, or what? (And some choices preclude others, so you need to plan ahead.)
It's got a large help document with loads of information about how things work.
It's got a whole world to explore (with opponents who will quite happily hand you your head).
You've got people who will bribe you, others who will threaten you, and still others who want you to do things for them.

All in all, it's a complex, hard-to-quickly-learn world. And that's a *good* thing.



If you have played Civ before (i.e., Civ 4), then...

There are many, many fewer units than there used to be.
The tech tree lost about 20 entries; it's been severely pruned.
The wonderful movies that popped up when you built world wonders are gone.
Religion's gone.
Corporations are gone.
Espionage is gone.
The Civilopaedia's gone, replaced by a help file that's got about one quarter of the information it should have. If that.
The 3D active world is gone. (In Civ4 the trees grow, they wave in the breeze, you can see if you're using a mine because it's an active mine, the farms are lit if they're active, lumber's being cut at the mills, so on and so forth.)
Construction units can no longer be given multiple orders.
Telling a unit to travel half-way across the world no longer works with any certainty.
Military units can no longer be told to escort civilian units and keep them safe.
Building any area improvement other than Trading Posts is almost a waste of effort.
Specialized terrain isn't worth aiming for; if it's in your city area that's nice, otherwise, so what? (In Civ4 getting those areas was *important*.)
World wonders aren't very wonderful.
Keeping each city's inhabitants happy and healthy just isn't needed any more.
Selecting a set of civics, then changing your mind and refocusing your civilization can't be done anymore. (Like, no more theocracy! Up with religious freedom!)
The AI is totally clueless when it comes to combat.
The AI is totally insane when it comes to diplomacy.

This is not to say that some improvements haven't been made. (Remember, improvement is in the eye of the beholder; I think the following are improvements.)

The board now uses hex tiles.
Units have zones of control.
One unit per hex (by type; one military, one civilian).
City-states.
Embarkation of units rather than transports. (I'm wishy-washy on this one.)
Ranged combat units.
Cities can defend themselves.


So, if you've never played this sort of game previously, it's good because of the complexity you've not encountered before. That may be why you like it; it's harder, it engages your brain more, makes you think about all the possibilities.

If you *have* played prior versions, though, you're comparing what's there now with what you used to have, and for most of us there's far *less* complexity than we want. We were expecting even more complexity than Civ 4, and we're severely disappointed.

(Remember that "we" here means "me, and those who feel the way I do".)

 

[pazmacats]

New to the forums, so hi to you all.
New to Civ as well, so I can't really compare Civ 5 to the previous ones. I noticed that a lot of people disliked it, though I personally find it extremely addicting and worth the price. So why the hate? Not trollin', just curious.

I hate it because I wasted my time looking forward to it. It's just another marketing bubble with nothing but slow code inside.