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

[Thoth]

True enough... Vanilla Civ IV wasn't all that good. It had a lot of bugs, a dumb AI, and a lot of inbalance.
Warlords was a step up, and then BTS came out. A few patches later, and we finally had a great game.

While there are some problems with Civ V now, it has the potential to be a great game.

In the meantime, does Firaxis/2k expect us to do the job that the beta-testers should have done? ie: Tell them that they have a buggy horribly imbalanced POS of a game that makes Civ3 look decent by comparison?

Civ4 had it's issues on release (and still has some mechanics that I'm not fond of) but it was still a far better game than the cruddy, buggy, imbalanced piece of garbage that is called Civ5.

It's better than Moo3. That's about the only positive thing that can be said about this game.

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever buy a Firaxis/2K game on release.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

they were having fun... but I just wander with what?playing another game... OK so the interface is poor... but the gameplay is :ugh:

On standard map size, mid game ~ 30 sec+ between multiple turns (Quad core 9550, 4gb ram, SSD, 8800GTS), luckily auto-turn ends do not require you to do anything but wait until some unit/city finishes something, when not in war... but the overall lack of speed makes me give a command and I am thinking to read a book in the meantime...In total, it does not feel like I am making the decisions as I am playing, but I am making decisions while waiting:

From time spent playing I think it is roughly:

50% waiting for the turn(s) to end

30% making your 1UPT units move around during war/whatever... where you need to micromanage them to the death, esp if you suddenly need to move to the other side of the empire :shudders:

10% micromanaging all the same requests from city states, and likewise from normal civs... but those at least are responsive when you say "goodbye"...

5% micromanaging cities, and rebuilding those build queues in the same order once they expire

5% having fun with ummm I exactly forgot to remember with what... probably workers building stuff manually, selecting science and looking at social policies...

conclusion: I am a masochist for trying to play this again. I guess 20 years of civ conditioning is not easy to overcome... for me Civ IV vanilla was a LOT better when it came out than this. Even Civ III was a lot better than this despite of all the flaws the game had.

Still, I am suprised though by this end of turn waiting time, and am wandering is it the same for others too?

[Jaybe]

I'll play civ5 but I will NOT go back to civ4 (BtS). Call me fanboy if you want, in which case I would call you a reactionary -- one who cannot tolerate dramatic change.

Civ5 may have several-second interludes between turns, substantial abstraction between tactical combat (1upt), a pedia that is sorely lacking in info that is expected, etc.
It also has an AI which is handling substantially more involved (and different) decision trees than 4, hasn't the unit overload of 4's late-game, and will surely improve with updates & mods (e.g., better AI). It is also refreshingly DIFFERENT after five years of civ4!

[egavactip]

Unfortunately, it is not refreshing in any way.

[Steve Clark]

I agree somewhat with my old friend, Jaybe. I will find it hard to go back to Civ4 except to play more of Road to War or Age of Discovery II. I think there are some elements in Civ5 that are truly exciting, among them are hex-based 1upt and Social Policies - both offering more decision making than SoD and Civics of Civ4. However, the game is ridiculously easy and very winnable without putting forth much effort. Civ4 was NEVER like that, even out of the box. I hope they will provide an AI that can handle 1upt and remove many of the overpoweredness or gross imbalances. not to mention changes needed in research and revamping diplomacy.

[binTravkin]

No Civ 5 for me.
I'm quite convinced it's not a good game at all.
If you have not enough proof, just see the late game Blobs of Death / Swarms of Death in AI territory.

[rah]

So the blobs of death make the game too hard for you. I guess I'm not getting it since you said earlier that the game was too easy. If it's the concept of the blobs of death is what bothers you, I'd prefer that over the 200 unit SOD, which was just absurd.

The AI is currently being tweaked and the reports have been positive.

[notyoueither]

No Civ 5 for me.
I'm quite convinced it's not a good game at all.
If you have not enough proof, just see the late game Blobs of Death / Swarms of Death in AI territory.

You won't play it, or you won't buy it?

[Fidel]

The AI is currently being tweaked and the reports have been positive.

reports from the hq?

[jobe]

So the blobs of death make the game too hard for you. I guess I'm not getting it since you said earlier that the game was too easy. If it's the concept of the blobs of death is what bothers you, I'd prefer that over the 200 unit SOD, which was just absurd.

Honestly I need to understand one day ..

What exactly is wrong with stacks, whether doomish or normal ones ?
I always wondered, but never asked before.

[Jaybe]

Honestly I need to understand one day ..

What exactly is wrong with stacks, whether doomish or normal ones ?
I always wondered, but never asked before.

They grow without limit (referring to number of units overall); they overcrowd a tile, like population density of Mumbai, to the point that units which represented battalions or brigades must become companies or platoons to maintain any sense of scale. There really should have been SOME mechanism to restrict number of units in civ4!

Some will say that huge unit stacks destroy any strategy. What they really mean it destroys tactics though civ games are supposedly STRATEGY games, though the 'godlike' powers of the player grant whatever powers the game provide. Strategy would involve 'go to this city and take it rather than the actual dance steps involved.

[Ming]

SOD's do not destroy tactics... while it may make tactics easier than say a unit per square game, there is still tactics with SOD's.
There is both strategy, and tactics... and unfortunately, the AI sucks on the tactics. Everybody is saying how the AI can't do battle in Civ V, and they would be correct. But the AI wasn't very good at battle in Civ IV either... They relied totally on overwhelming force, not tactics, pretty much what it does in Civ V... they just send a bunch of units at you.

Everybody says that in Civ V, the AI doesn't use ranged units correctly, and that is so very true.
But think about Civ IV for a minute. One of the fixes when warlords came out (I think that's when they made the change), collateral damage units could no longer kill units or take cities. Yet they NEVER fixed the AI to know that fact. There was nothing funnier than watching the AI land 3 or more units on an island to attack one of your cities, and they would ALL BE collateral damage units. And no additional units would show up.

So yes, the AI sucks at combat in Civ V... But it did in Civ IV as well.

[Brutus66]

I tried playing the game a little differently tonight. I set it up with two teams of four civs each, on a West vs East large map. My finding was that the AI makes lousy teammates. They settle every last bit of available land, and when there is no more they just leave their settlers standing wherever. The Arabs left a settler standing in my territory, and thats where he stayed for the entire second half of the game. Unfortunately, that hex happened to be where a source of uranium appeared, and I was never able to develop it.

I thought things would get interesting when war was declared, but it didn't last very long before someone on one side made peace with somebody on the other. Every time I made a DoW, it would last about ten turns before somebody would make peace again. I nuked the enemy continent, I started to land stuff on their coast, and bingo, peace treaty.

I ended up having the highest points of any individual civ but still lost the game because the other civs on my team scored so poorly - the score in a team game is apparently cumulative. What a waste of time.

[Jaybe]

Unfortunately, that hex happened to be where a source of uranium appeared, and I was never able to develop it.

For future reference, that is what a great artist is for: culture bomb it and all adjacent hexes are yours (if I recall correctly you have to place the artist in or adjacent to your borders).

[Fidel]

@jobe: SOD combat in modern era was for me the least fun part of the civ. Huge stacks would just smash into each other and for 15 minutes i would just slam one unit after another into a towering AI SOD (or vice versa). Extremely boring.

On another note, AI really has a huge surplus of settlers and keeps building them even during the war. An average war will net you 5 settlers from AI (if I am correct, immediately converted into workers).