Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Civilization V vs Civilization IV v Civilization III - A brief set of thoughts

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  

  • Civilization V vs Civilization IV v Civilization III - A brief set of thoughts

    Having played Civilization I, II, III, and IV constantly since they were first released, and through the various incarnations of Warlords, Beyond the Sword etc., but having never played Civilization Revolution, I was looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to the release of Civilization V.

    I cannot remember the last time a PC release found me waiting in the damp chill of autumn air outside my local game store before opening, but Civilization V managed it. I know I could have bought it on Steam, but old habits... Having played the new version for the past few days, I would make the following observations:


    Civilization V reminds me of a camera I once bought - it had an "auto" mode, which did pretty much everything, and which did not need any great experience with photography to use. Clearly, it was doing a great deal behind the scenes, - and I wanted to know what it was doing, but was frustrated that I could not figure it out. With Civilization V, it is similar: The turn-by-turn element is presented as simple, elegant, and most of the important information can be seen at a glance. But it does not go into enough detail for me. As a veteran player, I want more, not less.

    Civilization V, I feel, forces a certain gameplay on me. In Civilization IV, I have more variety on how to play, but in Civilization V I think I have to build armies early, or the barbarians will become a major issue. I have to adopt certain policies in early gameplay, as the benefits of a few outweigh others in a developing civilization. I must micro-manage my workers, or they do something silly. The early choices in Tech are now massively simplified as religion does not play a part, and this seems to give less choice early on as to what direction to take.

    Some common-sense programming standards are missing; when I click edit, to change a city name, the focus is not on the name change box until I click it. And hitting return afterwards does nothing, I have to click on accept. This lack of attention to detail does point to a rushed release, and, more importantly, it is a lower standard than I would have expected from Firaxis and Sid. My choices on the graphics menu are not always remembered on re-launch, but some are. This seems random, like some sort of annoying sub-game where you have to choose items in the correct sequence to get them to stick.

    I actually like the zones of combat and one-unit-per-tile restrictions. It forces you to think about terrain, and the strategy of 3 and 4 tile bombardment, whilst using faster forces in reserve. However, you can end up with grid-lock during large and busy campaigns, especially if many civilizations attack you. This can lead to a severe lack of movement options, so that you are forced to pull out some units. And that big red bombardment arrow is out of place, I would have expected it to be the color of your leader, but beyond showing you where you are going to hit (and you knew that anyway, as you just chose the tile), it has little purpose.

    The leaders screens are great design-wise, and in DX11 they look brilliant, but the responses are laughable - if I hear "would you be interested in a trade agreement with England" one more time, I will go to war. Seriously Firaxis, if that is the best you can do, leave them out. Marvin, the Android from the text-based Infocom HHGTG twenty years ago, had a better range of vocabulary and responses. The diplomacy feels shallow in Civilization V, like an afterthought, but I do like auto-expiration after thirty turns. It makes you to cultivate relationships. You have to renew them, otherwise you go to war, depending on how badly you need those relationships.

    The [current set of reported] bugs frustrate enough to ruin the experience. Whilst I can recall that Civilization IV had a few issues on launch, I cannot recall them being this severe, or wide-ranging. Civilization V feels like a release that is rushed, and not exhaustively tested on enough hardware platforms. The trouble is, it now ruins the experience for me. In each turn, I am dreading another issue, rather than focusing on the game itself. The most recent annoyance is a cease-fire with the Siamese nation that steadfastly refuses to expire for either side, despite both parties having enough weaponry facing each other to provoke annihilation. The other things which makes me sorry for the release is how few people on various forums are raving about this release. Surely, they should be talking about the game in a positive light, rather than having to report bug after bug.

    The AI again struggles with large wars over continents and shows a distinct lack of imagination, especially with ships and aircraft, leaving them sitting in unimportant locations, ready to be taken out. The AI also does take strategic or luxury resources as much it could. However, since I have not yet played at the highest difficulty, I reserve judgment on the AI until I will have done so.

    The "advisors" are laughable - worse than the over-acted, strangely likable characters from Civilization III. They now look exactly like the rest of the interface, more like a console port than a PC game. It is Civilization, but "dumbed down" and simplified, perhaps that is the intent? I cannot see what benefit that brings, except for really inexperienced players to the genre.

    Civilization V is a bitter-sweet experience overall. If you look "under the bonnet" there are some detailed and intricate mechanisms at work; however, they are often just out of reach, you can see what is happening, but not change it with enough granularity to really make the game experience unique. On the surface, its far too basic in my opinion - as my 10 year old son observed the other night - why do you just keep clicking on "change production" and "next turn" - where is the fun in that?

    Graphically, Civilization V is great in DX10/11, and to be fair not terrible in DX9 with the fog of war tweaked. However zooming feels like a retrograde step as well. Zooming out completely to see the full planet is missing, and I miss it. Also zooming in is less detailed, it ends further away than Civilization IV. I would have expected a much higher detail of zoom, especially when zooming in, after all "black and white" managed that years ago.

    For me Civilization V should have been the pinnacle of the evolution of the Civilization series, but somehow, even though I keep playing, it feels a step back. I wanted more in every sense, not a re-working, and not a change in the strategy. With modern computers, and that the only processor intensive tasks are the graphics and the AI, I expected really customizable units, not only down to the name, but also colors, standards, and individual upgrades, that manifest themselves not just with combat capabilities but graphically as well. I wanted to see much more city-details. I wanted to zoom into the streets, and perhaps manage trade quarters, commerce buildings, and ports. I wanted to control the local government and see how the military controlled rioting, in graphical detail. I want vassal states back, but with the ability to mutiny, and broker deals behind your back. I want rogue states, which threaten the peace of the whole planet, and which have to have sanctions laid against them. I want to terraform and customize the landscape after the technology is available. I want mountains to be something more than useless. And I want religion back, for all it represents both good and bad in the Civilization, it is part of the inherent ideology of our world; perhaps an early choice would be nice where a civilization can choose to embrace it or not. And is it beyond the scope of the game to consider late-game satellite colonies, space stations and moon bases? After all, this game is about exploring of what is and what could be.

    Overall, I am disappointed. I keep playing, because I like Civilization V, and I feel I owe it to the obvious skill and dedication of the programmers to see if it gets better, and to find out what is round the next corner. So in that sense, it is addictive to me. But it could have been so much more, and better.

    But there is one good thing: This will encourage competition. If Civilization V represents anything, it is what can happen without challenge or review, the perfect world of the monopoly. Without any competition, the designers have simply had to create something they feel works and will sell in 2010. Something that they are happy with, and that meets the designs of their brief. Sid / Firaxis cannot be wrong after so many successive and successful titles. They saw off the competition years ago when Call To Power started pushing up the daisies. Without the spirit of competition, without the drive to be the best in a field of many, you get stagnation, a lack of innovation and dearth of new ideas. But, sincerely - thanks to Firaxis and the designers, the field is now wide-open once more for a third-party to step in and declare "we can do this better". And that can only be good for the rest of us.

    Attached Files

    • quinalla
      #65
      quinalla commented
      Editing a comment
      Originally posted by Skybird View Post
      V reminds me of a camera I was once bought - it had a "auto" mode which did pretty much everything, and which didn't need any great experience with photography to use. However, clearly it was doing a great deal behind the scenes - and that was what I wanted to get at, and was frustrated I couldn't. With V, its a similar experiance - the turn-by-turn element as presented is simple, elegant and most of the important information can be seen at a glance. But it doesn't go into enough detail for me, as a veteran player - I want more, not less.
      Keep playing, a lot of the detail is hidden in unexpected places, though there is some things that are not revealed anywhere like how maintenance for units is calculated.

      V seems to force certain styles of gameplay on me - in IV I seemed to have more variety on how I was able to play, however I find in V I have to build armies early, or the barbarians will become a major issue. I have to choose certain policies to adopt in early gameplay, as the benefits of a few outweigh others in a developing civilisation. I must micro-manage my workers, or they do something silly. The early choices in Tech are now massively simpified as religion doesn't play a part, and this seems to give less choice early on as to what direction to take.
      Haven't experienced what you are talking about as far as barbarians, probably depends somewhat on the map type. I agree policies need a serious balancing pass for sure. Micro-managing workers is how I always plan in Civ games because they never do things quite right, but I'm sure there is room for improvement in the worker automation, they improved it a ton from Civ IV release from what I saw the few times I did use it. They do need to add an option to make automated workers leave existing improvements though. While I miss religion too, to me the only thing that added to the early tech game was the question of "Do I go for an early religion or not?" which isn't that big of a change.

      Some common-sense programming standards appears to be missing; when I click edit, to change a city name, the focus is not on the name change box until I click it - and hitting return afterwards does nothing, I have to click on accept. This kind of lack of attention to detail does point to a rushed release, and, more importantly, it is a lower standard than I would have expected from Firaxis and Sid. My choices on the graphics menu are not always remembered on re-launch, but some are? This seems random, like some sort of annoying sub-game where you have to choose items in the correct sequence to get them to "stick"?
      Yeah, I noticed these bugs too, hopefully they get fixed in a patch soon. My biggest bug complaint is the way it autopaths units. I'll tell a unit to attack something right next to it and it will step to the side first and then attack, wasting movement points for no reason and screwing up my strategy to make the 1UPT work best.

      I actually like the zones of combat and one-unit-per-tile restrictions. It forces you to think about terrain, and the strategy of 3 and 4 tile bombardment, whilst using faster forces in reserve. However, you can end up with grid-lock during large and busy campaigns, especially if there are multiple civs attacking, which can lead to such a severe lack of movement options you are foced to pull some units out. And that big red bombardment arrow is, well, odd - it looks out of place, I would have expected it to be the colour of your leader, but beyond showing you where you are going to hit (and you knew that anyway, as you just chose the tile), it seems to have little purpose.
      I too like the 1UPT as well, but I also agree it may be a tad too restrictive when trying to move big armies, especially around "allies". I like the bombardment arrow myself as it is a way to verify visually before selecting where you are attacking.

      The leaders screens are great design-wise, and in DX11 look brilliant, but the responses are laughable - if I hear "would you be interested in a trade agreement with England" one more time, I will go to war. Seriously Firaxis, if that is the best you can do, leave them out. Marvin the Android from the text-based Infocom HHGTG from twenty years ago had a better range of vocabulary and responses. The diplomacy feels shallow in V, like an afterthought, but I do like auto-expiration after thirty turns - it makes you really have to cultivate relationships so they will be renewed, or go to war of they won't, depending on how badly you needed them.
      While diplomacy needs improvement, I find it to be much more interesting than previous civs. It was too easy to make friends for life with civs in previous incarnations, now they play to win. The only thing I have discovered diplomacy-wise so far that I don't like is civs you liberate being immediately angry with you because you are a warmonger or whatever. There should at least be a certain number of turns where they are happy with you as long as you aren't aggressive towards them before they start sliding back into worrying that you are taking over the world.

      The [current set of reported] bugs are frustrating enough to ruin the experience. Whilst I can recall that CIV IV had a few issues on launch, I can't recall them being this severe, or wide-ranging. V feels like a release that is rushed, and not exhaustively tested on enough hardware platforms.Trouble is, it now ruins the experience for me - each turn I am dreading another issue, rather than focussing on the game itself. The most recent annoyance is a cease-fire with the Siamese nation that steadfastly refuses to expire, for either side, despite both parties having enough weaponry facing each other to provoke annihilation. The other things which makes me sorry for the release is how few people on various forums are raving about this release - surely they should be talking about the game in a positive light, rather than having to report bug after bug?
      CivIV was just as buggy at release, if not moreso, than CivV. Remember the end game units that didn't work at all and how you couldn't play on any map of size in the end game without turns taking FOREVER and then eventually crashing. Forums are always like this at a release of a game, not sure why you think differently People always tend to post more with complaints than praise, that's just how it works.

      The AI - again it struggles with large wars over continents - and shows a distinct lack of imagination, especially with ships and aircraft, leaving them sitting in unimportant locations, ready to be taken out. It also doesn't really make the most of opportunities for taking strategic or luxury resources, although I haven't yet played at the highest difficulty settings, so I will reserve judgement completely on the AI until I have.
      Yes, the AI definitely needs to be improved for combat. It is mediocre at land combat, I haven't seen it do any air combat yet but I am guessing is bad too, and horrible at naval combat. This is the most important thing I think they need to work on ASAP.

      The "advisors" are laughable - worse than the over-acted if strangely likeable characters from Civ III - they now look exactly like the rest of the interface - more like a console port than a PC game. Its Civ - "dumbed down" and simplified, perhaps that is the intent? I can't see what benefit they bring, except for really inexperienced players to the genre.
      The advisers are for newbies. Though sometimes their advice (shown as the colored symbol) on which tech to take is decent. They were helpful for me on my first game a couple times, now I just want them off. But this is such a minor thing to me, I really don't care about them.

      As for the rest, some good suggestions, some things that wouldn't really work in a Civ game, though maybe in a mod. Play the game a bit more and/or wait for the big patch that is surely coming for AI combat among other things and come back to the game. Unfortunately, not too many gaming companies seem interested in doing strategy games, so no, I don't think this will open up much competition unfortunately

    • Jaybe
      #66
      Jaybe commented
      Editing a comment
      some things that are not revealed anywhere like how maintenance for units is calculated.
      Did you know, if you hover over the Unit Costs in the F2, it tells what they are?
      I just discovered it last game.

    • omegakent
      #67
      omegakent commented
      Editing a comment
      Waiting for the first expansion pack in order to buy Civ5.
      I've been playing Civ since 1994. I've got literally stuck with Civ1 for some years.
      Then, I met Civ2, and at first, I liked it, due to hit points improvement, but get bored about the extremely wide and deep tech-tree, tired of the micromanagement of caravans, angry because the "caravans to wonder" issue, and despaired of the hellish restrictions for warfaring when in representative governments. Hopefully, I met Civ2 few months before Civ3 release.
      And I loved Civ3, and I love it yet. The tech-tree was simplified, or at least, reorganized; trading caravans dissapeared at all :not the best solution for extreme micromanagement, but a good temporary one; war was not more restricted in representative governments, but instead have impact in happiness and, thus, production. And, overall, it added some nice improvements on strategic resources, and national borders, while diplomacy became an important active element in the game. I've got stuck with it for years.
      I met Civ4-BTS. I use to read the Manual before playing, so I became intrigued about in-game religions and alignments. I liked the possibility to trigger multiple golden ages, and some improvements in combat system. But when I put my hands on, it became a deception. Mainly because diplomacy nonsenses and religious influence. So I left Civ4, and return to my beloved Civ3.
      I expected so much for the release of Civ5. I've got the manual as soon as it was released, and took a while to study it. I became surprised about the turning from rombic tiles to hexagonal tiles, and liked it. Absolutely unexpected for me was the 1UpT, and I became intrigued about it, expecting a much fluid game, with emphasis in troops movements and thumbing down defensive strategies. But what I liked the most was city-states -minor AI-controlled civilizations.
      However: does it have any sense all the city-states with such a pathetic AI, as you and the critic describe?
      I won't put my hands on Civ5 until a expansion pack with extensive AI improvements is released.
    Posting comments is disabled.

Article Tags

Collapse

Latest Articles

Collapse

  • Civ V, Multiplayer - the future
    by ·Imhotep·


    Now Civ V is out for roughly 5 months and a lot of people have stated their opinion about the game. Some have expressed that they are content with the game, and that they have a lot of fun with it. Others - and seemingly the majority of players - have stated that the game is a failure in most aspects, and that they have put it aside after a few months or weeks even. I'm not going to give judgement on who is right on this matter, I'll just describe my own view on the game in general and most of all in regards to an aspect I have deeply loved with Civ IV - the Multiplayer side of the game.

    ...
    February 6, 2011, 07:40
  • Civ5 Patch update 3/Dec/10
    by Jaybe
    Following several weeks of a lack of patch-related news, Firaxis' community managers have informed us of additional changes to the game. Click read more to see details. ...
    December 3, 2010, 17:43
  • News about the upcoming Civ5 patch!
    by Robert

    Greg "2K" Laabs has posted a new list of changes for the upcoming patch on the Official 2k Forums. This patch will focus on AI and Diplomacy. "First up is news about what the primary direction of the next patch is going to be: AI and Diplomacy. This is not to say that these will be the only parts of the game under the microscope, but it will be the focus. We're constantly looking at feedback on all parts of the game though, so keep your reports and feedback coming!" Greg posted. There's no ETA of the patch yet.

    Click Read More for the entire list of updates.

    ...
    November 11, 2010, 11:23
  • Free DLC for D2D customers scheduled for December 2010
    by Snakpakk

    Snakpakk, Community Manager of Direct2Drive, posted in our forums in response to his questions about the 'free DLC' for D2D customers:

    "Here is the deal on the Civ 5 DLC:
    The Mongols Civilization and Scenario Pack- is a free gift from 2K for all the Civ fans out there. Due out October 25
    The Babylonian Civ pak- gives none Deluxe version owners the ability to play as Babylonians (deluxe owners already have this) Due October 25th for $4.95

    If you pre-ordered from D2D then your free DLC is due out in December. Sadly I don't have details on that yet but keep a eye on D2D's main page for the announcement. Hope this helps clear the air.

    -Walter
    D2D Community Manager"
    Good news for everyone who bought civ5 through Direct2Drive! And the speculation about the December DLC release

    ...
    October 19, 2010, 18:02
  • Genghis Khan released as FREE DLC on October 25th!
    by Robert

    The first DLC for Civilization V will arrive on October 25th and distributed through Steam! A free new civilization and leader, Genghis Kahn of the Mongols, will be released together with a Scenario Pack for free! As a gift in answer to the "Civ Fanatics" who are "very well organized". Perhaps in response to the many troubles people had with Civ5 so far. That gift is highly appreciated!

    According to a screenshot on joystick.com the Mongols ability is: "Mongol Terror", which means: "Combat strength +30% when fighting City-State units or attacking a City-State itself. All mounted units receive +1 movement points"
    The Mongols have two unique units; the well known Keshik and the Khan.

    ...
    October 18, 2010, 15:32
  • Civilization V vs Civilization IV v Civilization III - A brief set of thoughts
    by Skybird

    Having played Civilization I, II, III, and IV constantly since they were first released, and through the various incarnations of Warlords, Beyond the Sword etc., but having never played Civilization Revolution, I was looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to the release of Civilization V. I cannot remember the last time a PC release found me waiting in the damp chill of autumn air outside my local game store before opening, but Civilization V managed it. I know I could have bought it on Steam, but old habits... Having played the new version for the past few days, I would make the following observations:

    ...
    October 16, 2010, 17:33
Working...
X