Odd/Even Rule Starting to Emerge?

[Sava]

The original Civilization is, in my opinion, one of the greatest games ever made. So this is not necessarily going to be like the Star Trek movies. But it seems to me as if the new pattern with CIV games is that the odd numbered sequels are disappointing.

Civ 3 was absolutely the worst... without question. It was unplayable.

Civ 4 took a while for me to warm up to, but eventually became one of my favorite games. Though, it never did provide the fun factor or establish the same level of replayability as Civ 2 despite the amount of depth in Civ 4.

Civ 5's made the mistake of expanding the depth of military strategy (or rather, the potential of depth in strategy if the AI wasn't so completely inept), but making the rest of the game completely irrelevant.

Civ 5 doesn't feel like a building game. There's no exploration. No science. No religion. No diplomacy per se. It's built like a military sim... and it doesn't even do that very well.

The visuals are nicer, but ultimately unnecessary. I've got a good PC and can play top of the line games at max settings. But Civ was never a game where I needed to be immersed in an experience like that. Gameplay is paramount in Civ. In Civ 4, I'd turn the graphics settings pretty low just to move things along as quick as possible. Civ 2 was always about move, click, move, click for me.

The only good thing about Civ 5 is that it's forced me to take up SMAC again. I'm even going to rummage through my closet to find Civ 2.

It's time to play a decent Civ title.

Maybe they'll get it right with Civ 6.

[wodan11]

Try Planetfall mod for Civ 4.

[Skybird]

I really wished I would grow to love SMAC. Hasn't happened yet, sadly.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Civ V is worse than Civ III... at least for me.

I certainly got more hours of fun out of Civ III than out of Civ V, and it does not look like that will change

[wodan11]

I really wished I would grow to love SMAC. Hasn't happened yet, sadly.

SMAC or Planetfall? Because there are differences.

[Boris Godunov]

Civ 3 was absolutely the worst... without question. It was unplayable.

Once Conquests was released, it was actually decent. Still the weakest of all the Civ games, yes, but playable.

Civ 5 doesn't feel like a building game. There's no exploration. No science.

Uh, what? What do you mean? There's just as much exploration and science in Civ 5 as in any other Civ game.

No religion.

There's just as much religion in Civ 5 as in every other Civ iteration except 4. I don't feel the loss.

No diplomacy per se.

Yes, Civ 5's diplomacy is weak... but so is diplomacy in every other Civ game. They've never gotten it right, as far as I'm concerned.

The visuals are nicer, but ultimately unnecessary.

I understand the point, but one visual change was pretty significant and, IMO, is one of the best aspects of Civ 5: the hex tiles.

I agree Civ 5 isn't up to the standard of the complete Civ 4 yet, definitely. As much as I appreciate the idea behind 1UPT, the implementation doesn't work and the necessary costs of introducing it to the game make fixing it pretty daunting. And this is a part of what makes the AI so problematic, as it can't handle the tactics needed to be challenging.

Still, as with Civ 4, I will hope that the expansions and patches continue to fix things.

[Brael]

Once Conquests was released, it was actually decent. Still the weakest of all the Civ games, yes, but playable.

I have to disagree. I got far more hours of fun out of Civ 3, even before it's expansions than I've gotten or will get out of Civ 5 (short of a game changing expansion saving it).

There's just as much religion in Civ 5 as in every other Civ iteration except 4. I don't feel the loss.

Religion is something I could take or leave. In 5 city states are there to cause the same types of diplomatic issues that religion caused. The problem is, the diplomacy in 5 is so poor that this doesn't really emerge. In 4 if you both shared a religion you would probably be friends, atleast in the early game. In 5, you can both be friends with the same city states and not be friends with each other. Basically, the diplomacy fails so the purpose of city states never really comes into the picture.

Yes, Civ 5's diplomacy is weak... but so is diplomacy in every other Civ game. They've never gotten it right, as far as I'm concerned.

4 didn't get it perfect, but it's on a whole other level than other civ games. I would rank diplomacy as 4, 3, 5, 2 (not sure where civ 1 would rank, I barely played it).

Still, as with Civ 4, I will hope that the expansions and patches continue to fix things.

Some liked 2 before 4 was patched/expanded. Almost all fans of 3 loved 4 from day 1. Either way, there was still a consensus after a few months that vanilla 4 was the best civ game out there. We don't even have a consensus right now if 5 is a better game than 3. That says a lot.

[wodan11]

Almost all fans of 3 loved 4 from day 1.

Well THAT wasn't true. By a long shot.

Either way, there was still a consensus after a few months that vanilla 4 was the best civ game out there. We don't even have a consensus right now if 5 is a better game than 3. That says a lot.

Very true. But BtS set the "bar" much higher than Civ 3 did.

[Brael]

Well THAT wasn't true. By a long shot.

That's the way I remember it. The people that were playing 3 moved to 4 rather quickly. The people that were playing 2 took a little longer.

Anyways, it doesn't really matter which is the case here. The point is, we're debating right now whether 5 is better than 3 which is considered the worst in the series. There's not many people out there arguing that 5 is a good game, just that it either still has a chance to be a good game or isn't the worst game.

[wodan11]

That's the way I remember it. The people that were playing 3 moved to 4 rather quickly. The people that were playing 2 took a little longer.

"moved to" is not the same as "loved".

I distinctly remember a lot of negativity when 4 came out.

Anyways, it doesn't really matter which is the case here. The point is, we're debating right now whether 5 is better than 3 which is considered the worst in the series. There's not many people out there arguing that 5 is a good game, just that it either still has a chance to be a good game or isn't the worst game.

3 had some broken mechanics but I don't recall fundamental game design errors, which is what is claimed about 5.

[Brael]

"moved to" is not the same as "loved".

If people are playing the new game over the old once the newness wears off, they're clearly finding the newer game as a whole to be more fun. So people moving to civ 4 and sticking with it implies they found it to be a superior game to 3 fairly early on.

[Boris Godunov]

If people are playing the new game over the old once the newness wears off, they're clearly finding the newer game as a whole to be more fun. So people moving to civ 4 and sticking with it implies they found it to be a superior game to 3 fairly early on.

I"m still playing Civ 5 more than 4 now, even though I recognize that the finished 4 is definitely superior to what 5 is so far. That's because I've pretty much exhausted 4 while, despite its flaws, I'm still finding some interesting things in 5. And yeah, I am trying to get all the Steam achievements I can, so sue me... Even so, both on here and CivFanatics, posters have dredged up all over the "CIV 4 SUCKS!" threads that were all over the site when it was released. It was by no means universally accepted as better than Civ 3 at the time it was released, although technical issues had a lot to do with that.

Regarding religion, it's precisely the artificial diplomatic effects that made me not care for it. It made foreign relations far too predictable and exploitable. I think the aim with 5 was to make the AI more like a human playing a game against you than simulating real world diplomatic relations. In that regard, having two nations being friends with the same city-state but rivals with each other makes perfect sense. Hell, in the real world, it's definitely entirely possible to have two rival powers friendly with a smaller state, and they compete over its loyalty. Competing for influence over minor states is part of history. Now, was it implemented well? That's a different question. Frankly, I think that part of diplomacy is fine. It's the obscure actions and their consequences that are more frustrating. There should be more information as to what diplomatic actions will do to relations with other civilizations.

If Firaxis really wants to fix frustrations with Civ 5, for me the best way to start would be to solve the problem of the constant unit shuffling due to 1UPT. But I've no idea how they can fix that issue elegantly while keeping the 1UPT system at all.

[Brael]

So you're playing 5 because it's something different and you're finding it fun. A lot of people like me aren't even finding the game fun (then again, a lot are too).

And I remember the civ 4 threads well, civ 4 had a very rocky launch with technical issues and of course the game not shipping with a required dll so you couldn't even play the game without going to the forums, finding out what you were missing, and getting it. By 6 months in though it was a good stable game.

I have to disagree with you about diplomacy though, what you say makes sense from the point of view of realism, but city state relations are supposed to fragment the world and group people up with some allies according to what the developers said. Right now they don't do that because the AI for every civ is unpredictable when it comes to diplomacy. I could believe that some AI's are simply tricking you when it comes to being your friend, and that would be good because it gives them personality but every AI acts the same and will even attack when it's not beneficial. Remember the AI's in civ 4? They all acted at least a little different even the similar ones like Shaka, Monty, and Tokugawa had some behavioral differences (monty would totally ignore infrastructure, tokugawa was isolationist, shaka balanced units with infrastructure well). I just don't see it in 5. I see "moderately aggressive" and I see "highly aggressive" and I see "expand like mad" and "build very few cities". Every AI makes up one of those 4 possible combinations. Maybe I'm wrong here because I've never had a game actually last long enough for a diplomatic win to be a possibility but it doesn't feel like any AI's play to win diplomatically. In 4 that was a legitimate victory path for AI's, and they would work on it from the beginning of the game (more so after the AP was added, it wasn't there in vanilla or warlords).

In the last game of civ I played I had a neighbor to the east, I think it was the Russians. They were behind me technologically but I thought they made a good ally. I traded them resources, open borders, research agreements, and even just randomly gave them gold to help them out. Naturally, they loved me or so they said. South of us was the Arabs. The Arabs settled every tile of land and eventually declared war on me because I didn't let them get a tile with zero value north of me (I hate city spam like that so I just bought the tiles). They were supposedly on par with me technologically, of course they got crushed though. I think I lost 1 unit taking out 12 cities. The Russians joined me in the war too. As soon as the war was over, the Russians went right up to my capital city, piled in some tiles that weren't claimed by culture yet, and declared war on me.

It made absolutely no sense. If the goal is to mimic a human, then the first thing it should do is realize that a human is going to side with it's ally until either the player is at a point where you have to betray them to prevent them from winning, or where they stop being a benefit to you. In the case of that game it would have made sense for Russia to betray me and side with the Arabs, but to help against one enemy, then declare war on me right afterwards (especially right after losing their iron units... all their iron came from me too) makes no sense. That's not an AI being cunning, that's an AI getting a random dice roll to attack the player for no reason.

And one more point. Diplomacy should be mostly predictable. A skilled diplomat should be able to manipulate the political climate to be favorable to them. In a random system where AI's attack for no reason that can't be done.

[Ming]

Civ V's idea of diplomacy is "everybody will hate you eventually" no matter what you do. Granted, the City States can be bought, but that's not diplomacy.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

In my current game the bloke that kept attacking me hates me, one person is 'afraid', everybody else loves me. I never declared war, not even on city states. No fun, if you're walking around with riflemen and the enemy has pikemen.