This Game Sucks

[MRT144]

EyesofNight is such a narcissist that he deludes himself into thinking that his time is too valuable to feed his own narcissism through trolling, but yet, he can't stop trolling.

[Dinner]

Something which is really pissing me off in this game is that the automated explore option's AI is so ****ing retarded. Given 6 options on where to go, one of which is to trespass and upset a city state, 90%+ of the time the AI will trespass and worsen relations. That means I have to manually move every god damned unit because the AI is so ****ing useless.

[jobe]

To say that civ has a vast majority single-player base is like saying that china has mostly chinese people in its borders. The majority of the player base is a biproduct of the game design, not vice versa. IF the game had better multiplayer support, it would be a very strong multiplayer game, and frankly the multiplayer gaming community in general is extremely large and devotes much more time to gaming than single player casuals. Not to mention that a well balanced multiplayer game would still be as fun for singleplayer, while the opposite is not true in any way.

Exactly my thoughts as well.
It´s a self-fulfilling prophecy what Firaxis and 2K do here, claiming that civ is a SP game hence they don´t have to consider MP during design, development and testing.

Welcome MLL

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I was impressed with this review, and other of Tom's reviews. He misses some important points, for example Social Policies do have competing branches, so switching to one cancels the effects of the other. This is a pretty important thing to understand if you are going to criticize social policies as perpetual no-brainers. Given that, it's hard to take the grade of "C" as entirely well-informed. But if we take "C" to mean that this is a game with a lot of room to get better, then I agree.

But this is the great thing we know about Civ. It absolutely WILL improve. I think a grade of A is entirely possible, similar to what people (not everybody, of course) thought by the time the final patches went in to BtS.

I agree - great review. As I am in the rest of the world, and have not played Civ V yet - getting to know that civic concept was replaced by this type of execution of social policies. That is a design let down, pretty big one. But OK... not everything will be perfect... the dealbreaker however is that AI is not up to the new war style. I was initially concerned about moving 50+ units each turn to clean up in the end game, hoping that in the meantime they actually worked out individual AI, which does not seem to be the case either?!?... ah well, not that I am THAT suprised after all.

[yin26]

So far, the reason why I think the game 'sucks' is that there's no ability, as far as I can see, to tell the game that I never, in any condition of things, want to see Barbarians. They aren't fun to fight, they aren't fun to be forced to put sentries around so they don't spawn, and I never want to see them.

"No Barbarians" is an option in the Advanced Setup screen.

[Valkrionn]

Something which is really pissing me off in this game is that the automated explore option's AI is so ****ing retarded. Given 6 options on where to go, one of which is to trespass and upset a city state, 90%+ of the time the AI will trespass and worsen relations. That means I have to manually move every god damned unit because the AI is so ****ing useless.

That will be worked on. ****, I'll do it myself if I have to, annoys the crap out of me.

Exactly my thoughts as well.
It´s a self-fulfilling prophecy what Firaxis and 2K do here, claiming that civ is a SP game hence they don´t have to consider MP during design, development and testing.

Welcome MLL

Except it's not entirely true. A well balanced and fun game in MP does not automatically lead to a fun SP game.... Without the challenge of a human opponent, the same exact game that was fun can become boring. The two can be compatible, but it is NOT a 1:1 situation.

[Robert]

An SP game obviously needs a very good AI.
Programming an AI for a complex game like Civilization is pretty difficult. There are so many very different ways to win the game, to develop your empire, etc.

[Proteus_MST]

...
Except it's not entirely true. A well balanced and fun game in MP does not automatically lead to a fun SP game.... Without the challenge of a human opponent, the same exact game that was fun can become boring. The two can be compatible, but it is NOT a 1:1 situation.

Yep, it all depends on the AI of the game.
If a game that needs AI opponents for SP (and I assume most games with MP mode do)
has an AI that sucks (or needs to have massive advantages compared to the player to stay competitive)
then the game doesn´t sound like a really good game for SP

*Edit: Looks like Robert beat me to it

[Aro]

Nope. This game does not suck. The demo sucks, because ends after 100 turns. The game is wonderful... A bit crude, and soon we'll see a expansion pack and a lot of patches. It's ok to me.
9 hours left to unlock my game.

[DriXnaK]

Ah, so that's who Atomation is. I thought that name seemed really familiar and I have in fact seen it on C4F. Lets face it, if this game had been developed by Blizzard or something, it would work right out of the box and have everything we ever wanted. It's time to face reality here and just accept the fact that Firaxis is small time trash that is more intent on selling on name rather than on substance. I can't think of a single successful game company today that doesn't build their game with a significant amount of MP in mind. Sid Meier should have been given the boot a long time ago. I guess it's no wonder why everyone keeps jumping ship from that company.

[Fidel]

OK, friendly betas, how come that civilopedia is empty? How did you actually find about what pact of secrecy or cooperation pact mean? You just played...
Also, I am really surprised at the level of AI and the default settings. On Prince, AI is meek and not expanding at all. I crammed 9 civs instead of 6 and 18 CS instead of 12 on a small map. By 300 BC we had only two conquests of the CS (one was me, for fun) and one failed CS conquest. Splendid. AI never expands, it takes them ages to do so and usually they establish their cities halfway across the continent.

[rah]

The obvious answer is to go up some levels. The AI will expand more.

[DriXnaK]

Rah is a perfect example of how Firaxis chooses really poor beta testers. This is your MP beta tester right here people. lol A guy who never played competitively once in his life unless you count his weekend games with the other middle aged men of apolyton. How's that for competition? What a joke. I think this might actually be the game to kill the franchise.

[James Wolf]

I've been playing Civilization since the day (and all of the night) that the very first version came out. I do not like Civ V right now as much as I do Civ IV BTS, but that is likely to change after a couple of expansion packs come out for Civ V. It is a very good beginning with many excellent elements - it's a little simplistic at this point in time for my personal taste, but much more complexity can be added on later, as we all know. Give it time.

Hexes were four versions overdue anyway.

[Valkrionn]

Ah, so that's who Atomation is. I thought that name seemed really familiar and I have in fact seen it on C4F. Lets face it, if this game had been developed by Blizzard or something, it would work right out of the box and have everything we ever wanted. It's time to face reality here and just accept the fact that Firaxis is small time trash that is more intent on selling on name rather than on substance. I can't think of a single successful game company today that doesn't build their game with a significant amount of MP in mind. Sid Meier should have been given the boot a long time ago. I guess it's no wonder why everyone keeps jumping ship from that company.

What? All kinds of game companies choose not to focus on MP. Sure, the majority of strategy games do (and rightfully so, IMO, even if you may not get that from my posts ), but for a successful game company... Bioware? Bethesda? Neither have MP at all in their games, both are wildly successful when they put out games.

OK, friendly betas, how come that civilopedia is empty? How did you actually find about what pact of secrecy or cooperation pact mean? You just played...
Also, I am really surprised at the level of AI and the default settings. On Prince, AI is meek and not expanding at all. I crammed 9 civs instead of 6 and 18 CS instead of 12 on a small map. By 300 BC we had only two conquests of the CS (one was me, for fun) and one failed CS conquest. Splendid. AI never expands, it takes them ages to do so and usually they establish their cities halfway across the continent.

Empty? You do realize it has more detail than the civ4 pedia?

Yes, the pacts are undocumented atm, which is an unfortunate lapse that will be fixed. Essentially, they modify diplomacy over time. How much the ai's involved like/dislike you.