Is it just me, or is CIV V not really very good?

[binTravkin]

negative happiness + tradingposts thing

It is possible to build trading posts as the almost only improvement and have a negative happiness and buy stuff instead of building it.

Ming, unless I've missed some crucial point here, the happiness resources are for all the empire, so the more cities you have, the less they impact happiness in each of the cities.
Also, the happiness buildings are quite limited, so the large cities that are now possible with 3-tile radius seem quite unattainable.
Do you know - the commerce branch bonus that gives +1 happiness for each luxury resource, does it do so for the number of resources you have, or just +1 for each type of resource?

[binTravkin]

Just checked.
It does seem that the maximum amount of happiness, which is attainable per-city is a bit over 20 (assuming you have horses for circus).

On top of that you need to add per-empire bonuses, split by city count.
This means that the maximum amount of worker (not specialist) citizens in a city you can afford without going in negative happiness is somewhere between 25 and maybe 35, since most cities only have 1 unique luxury resource nearby.
Perhaps you can squeeze out a little bit more there and there, but you can barely reach the 37 happiness needed to cover all the tiles in a 3-tile radius.

Add to that foodbox filling which becomes quite hard somewere in the teens and the really large cities (40-50 citizens) which seem amazing for me, don't seem to be currently possible in game.

I am not factoring in CS with their gifted luxuries since I consider them a greatly disbalancing factor and will further on play with them off.

[MxM]

With conquest, all you need to do is take all the capitals, not all of the civs cities. I had a medium size empire and had a small but high tech army on a island map. You just move right up off the coast to their capital, declare war, and take the cap in just a turn or two, before they can respond... repeat on each civ... done deal.

Yeah, that's definitely an exploit on island map. Due to AI not responding to this tactics (it will agree easily for piece, and other AIs do not "worry" that they lose, so they allow you to take their capitals one by one). This should not be allowed in highest difficulty. After couple capitals captured in this way, couple AIs should declare war to you at the same time, and this is simply not happening now.

Unhappiness is easy to deal with unless you try to actually take and keep tons of cities. But I've played games with 20 to 30 cities and haven't had happiness problems. See Rah's city state strategy. If you are getting happiness resources from 10 to 16 city states, you can even afford to sell all your resources for cash, and still be happy
You might have to rush build an occasional happiness building every once in a while, but happiness isn't all the big of a problem in the mid late game unless you haven't planned for it. Big empires are very possible.

May be it is easier on standard map size (may be unhappiness is adjusted) but I am playing on small map, Pangaea, and I have 12 cities, 4 of them are puppets, and the year is around 1600 and there is simply NO WAY for me to have happy population except having gold age and build lots of happiness buildings. I am Greece, so I am allied to half of the existing SC, and I have all possible but 2 luxury resources on this map (2 belongs to another civ and it does not want to trade it). Without golden age, I am already negative in gold, like -20. Sure, I can downsize my army and keep just couple military units to break even, but it is dangerous! But then I still need to build happiness producing buildings and those are expensive! And this is Prince(!!) level!

Right now I have 2 options to win - either go and conquer everyone (I think I can do it with AI being so pathetic in tactical combat) but I do not want to. Or continuously generate great people and trigger gold age, which I am trying to do. I could focus on piety to make my life easier, but I was trying get dipo victory, so I am focusing on patronage, being Greece and all...

So, I do not know why my experience is so different from yours, may be it is map size, or something else, but large happy empires are not possible for me. Which actually I think is a GOOD THING, but right now I do not see much negatives in being unhappy empire, which I should. So conquest is still the best option for me to win, which should not be so due to unhappiness. At the same time there are two Civs of roughly the same size and they are doing quite well (one of those is India, paradoxically).

[Fidel]

Yeah, that's definitely an exploit on island map. Due to AI not responding to this tactics (it will agree easily for piece, and other AIs do not "worry" that they lose, so they allow you to take their capitals one by one). This should not be allowed in highest difficulty. After couple capitals captured in this way, couple AIs should declare war to you at the same time, and this is simply not happening now.

except that on island map they do not bother to build navies and all it takes if for HP to build a couple of squadrons to decimate invasion fleets (if there are any) and good arty to finish it off.

[rah]

There's what, 15 or so happy resources x4. Map wonders, world wonders. And there are social policies that halve city portion of unhappy, cut in half specialists, connected to capital, garrisoned, extra happy, double happy from luxuries from CS. That's a heck of a lot of unhappy without ever building a building. Try the Egyptians, the tomb is one that doesn't have any maint, and provides culture to boot. I've had decent sized empires where I was running +80 happiness, or +50 selling off my resources. With a little more practice you'll find that money is the problem, not happiness. Granted when I'm steam rolling I do buy some happy buildings to make up for when a hand full of cities are burning. And since you should be running max specialists, I don't think any cities will ever be working much more than half the available tiles. (ok, maybe OCC)

[MRT144]

the amount of exploits in this game ruins it

1. You can ignore happiness and just roll everyone provided you have enough gold income. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=382812
2. You can slingshot to renaissance in the BC era. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=382651

These are just two obvious ones.

[Dinner]

May be it is easier on standard map size (may be unhappiness is adjusted) but I am playing on small map, Pangaea, and I have 12 cities, 4 of them are puppets, and the year is around 1600 and there is simply NO WAY for me to have happy population except having gold age and build lots of happiness buildings.

I've had like 15 cities on a small pangea map with no unhappiness problems. All you have to do is expand aggressively early making sure you grab most of the luxury resources and strategic resources (food resources are pretty worthless as they only provide a small food bonus to just that one city instead of a health bonus to your entire empire as in Civ4). With control of most of the luxury resources you can sell the duplicate copies for cash and then just the cash to buy CSs which provide such large bonuses they will put you at least an age ahead of the AI and make your people even more unhappy. Heck, even rush purchasing buildings (mostly happiness or culture buildings) doesn't even cost that much so with an empire of that size you can buy one building ever couple of turns or so.

[rah]

the amount of exploits in this game ruins it

1. You can ignore happiness and just roll everyone provided you have enough gold income. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=382812
2. You can slingshot to renaissance in the BC era. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=382651

These are just two obvious ones.

How does it ruin the game? Just don't use them.
And by definition any winning strategy is an exploit.

[MRT144]

How does it ruin the game? Just don't use them.
And by definition any winning strategy is an exploit.

Just don't use them? A well designed game shouldn't force the onus of playing without cheesiness on the player themselves especially if the overall objective is to win.

And an exploit is a viable strategy that abuses the mechanics of the game that wasn't intended by the creator of the game. Do you really think 1200 BC Acoustics was an intended slingshot? Come off it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=385379

Do you think 1100 bc riflemen were intended?

[Fidel]

Selling surplus luxuries for cash works only for a while, later on you can only barter, AIs are short on cash and will not give you cash only.
Food resources are too weak in this game, it is almost that you do not care much when you see them...just eye candy.

[rah]

Just don't use them? A well designed game shouldn't force the onus of playing without cheesiness on the player themselves especially if the overall objective is to win.

And an exploit is a viable strategy that abuses the mechanics of the game that wasn't intended by the creator of the game. Do you really think 1200 BC Acoustics was an intended slingshot? Come off it.

Then by your definition, every version has been broken since every release has had similar items. I assume later patches or versions will address these, just like they have in the past.
A game is only ruined if it's no fun. What is fun for the player is his own definition. If a player has fun taking advantage of exploits fine, more power to him. If not, don't use them.
I think back to civ 1. and settler farms to get free palaces to sell for unlimited money. Or the non-unit generator in two. (three I didn't bother much with) and think of the sling shots in vanilla 4 that were all tweaked by BTS by changing a few of the prereqs. It wouldn't take much to do that in V. And a lot of these exploits leave you quite vulnerable early, so there's a risk involved so some may really be strategic choices. Of course if you don't get away with it and just restart the game till you do, there's not much we can do for you.

[MxM]

I've had like 15 cities on a small pangea map with no unhappiness problems. All you have to do is expand aggressively early making sure you grab most of the luxury resources and strategic resources (food resources are pretty worthless as they only provide a small food bonus to just that one city instead of a health bonus to your entire empire as in Civ4). With control of most of the luxury resources you can sell the duplicate copies for cash and then just the cash to buy CSs which provide such large bonuses they will put you at least an age ahead of the AI and make your people even more unhappy. Heck, even rush purchasing buildings (mostly happiness or culture buildings) doesn't even cost that much so with an empire of that size you can buy one building ever couple of turns or so.

I did exactly that, and as I said only 2 resources available on the map I do not have. May be later, as my civilization develops and I build bank in each city I will be able to afford to build more happiness buildings, but right now I stuck to no population growth.

[binTravkin]

Rah, I had all the things you mentioned, except CS, factored in.
25-35 happiness is what you going to get per city.
With that piety thing -20% unhappiness, you can get it past 40.
Basically, what I am saying is that the achievable happiness amount per city is smaller than the maximum possible worker count given the new radius. And then on top of workers you could also have specialists..

I don't need practice, this is cold hard math I am using.
Perhaps I have overlooked something and I am not factoring in CS, but it does seem that the maximum achievable happiness per city shouldn't be that low.

[MRT144]

Then by your definition, every version has been broken since every release has had similar items. I assume later patches or versions will address these, just like they have in the past.
A game is only ruined if it's no fun. What is fun for the player is his own definition. If a player has fun taking advantage of exploits fine, more power to him. If not, don't use them.
I think back to civ 1. and settler farms to get free palaces to sell for unlimited money. Or the non-unit generator in two. (three I didn't bother much with) and think of the sling shots in vanilla 4 that were all tweaked by BTS by changing a few of the prereqs. It wouldn't take much to do that in V. And a lot of these exploits leave you quite vulnerable early, so there's a risk involved so some may really be strategic choices. Of course if you don't get away with it and just restart the game till you do, there's not much we can do for you.

Maybe it's the severity of the sling shot that bugs me so much. Civ 4 had some notorious sling shots but none that is as severe as having rifles in 1200 BC.

That and how supposed limiting mechanics aren't doing their job. Capping happiness at -10 and the idiotic scaling of the effects of happiness make it less harmful than it should warrant. This makes me think of Warhammer Fantasy Battles fifth edition vs. sixth. Fifth was unbalanced and had a lot of ludicrous powerful cheesiness. Sixth was more evenly balanced and rounded.

[Modo44]

If a player has fun taking advantage of exploits fine, more power to him. If not, don't use them.

It's pretty obvious that there are serious balance issues—so many that people literally stumble upon easy-win strategies (note the plural, if you please). Calling those design problems "exploits" sounds delusional. Yeah, they'll probably get fixed sooner or later, but how about not putting the blame on people who bought the unfinished product?