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

[jobe]

They grow without limit (referring to number of units overall);

The limit is your production capability and an able opponent who doesn´t let you do jsut anything for 200 turns. (=Multiplayer or high SP difficulty)

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.

They don´t even if you are into this reality thing (which seems absurd in a computer game beyond the at-least-some-historic-accuracy-for-fun-part). Start a civ4 game, go to demographics, see what the total land mass is, divide that by the number of tiles. There is a loooot of space to take any army on each tile.

Also it isn´t even defined how many people an "Archer" or a "Knight" is. And why should it?

How about you stop playing a Civ game started in 4000BC after 1-2 turns since you as the emperor just died a natural death after more than 100 years?

There really should have been SOME mechanism to restrict number of units in civ4!

There was. Production capacity. And why??

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.

In MP Civ4, for instance a 5v5 Ancient teamer, combat didn´t nearly look like that. If you want tactics, play Multiplayer, don´t try fixing a stupid AI or artificially create restrictions just to make it look like tactics in Single Player.
In Civ5 on Deity I just build a lot of units and go kill the stupid AI which doesn´t defend itself. In Civ4 it was the same, just on Deity the AI at least got some bonuses to put up a fight if you set it to "always war".

It´s time for the no-AI Civ game, MP only.

Also "some will say" many things.

@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.

That´s what the "stack attack option" was/is for. I hope the majority of people that say SODs are a "broken mechanic" are aware of this. Combat lasts seconds in Civ4 with 200 on 200 units, even if you micromanage stuff almost to the maximum. (Obviously taking cheating with reloads in SP aside.)

[Brutus66]

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).

It was inside my borders already. He left the settler in my territory and refused to move it. We were on the same team, so it was permanent open borders.

[rah]

I never said that SODs were a broken mechanic. I said that SODs can hide a badly programed AI for all those people that think the AI was programmed better in IV.
And yes, any MP player that doesn't use some form of stack attacks is probably really annoying his opponents by making turns take longer than they should be.
My combats are quite short, group all collateral units, attack, group all city attackers, attack, group all mop up units, attack, etc. Maybe taking a second to remove a GG from the city attacker group to add to the mop up group.

[rah]

It was inside my borders already. He left the settler in my territory and refused to move it. We were on the same team, so it was permanent open borders.

Yes, there should be a diplomatic way to ask him to move a unit (which should always be excepted by an ally. This would resolve a lot of the complaints over 1upt

[notyoueither]

I never said that SODs were a broken mechanic. I said that SODs can hide a badly programed AI for all those people that think the AI was programmed better in IV.
And yes, any MP player that doesn't use some form of stack attacks is probably really annoying his opponents by making turns take longer than they should be.
My combats are quite short, group all collateral units, attack, group all city attackers, attack, group all mop up units, attack, etc. Maybe taking a second to remove a GG from the city attacker group to add to the mop up group.

Well, the game was designed by an accomplished AI programmer. A lot of things were filtered through the lens of how the AI would be able to deal with them.

It is obvious that the same priority to AI ability was not given in CiV. This is fine IMO. For me it means that the difficulty level where I play most often for fun will go up a couple of notches.

[Brutus66]

I have been there, have you?

[Proteus_MST]

Even if you have no desire to change the ini prefs, usullay one hit on escape is sufficient...
it´s just that your key command only gets executed, after the necessary gamefiles have been loaded in the background.

[UltraSonix]

humm just installed the game and have to say that kinda like some long time apolyton people here, civ5 just feels weird (putting it nicely). Couldn't even figure out what the max size of a city was. Also can't believe ICS is back. BtS seems much better for me. BUT having said that it seems like there is heaps of potential for fixes etc later, especially for balance, AI, perfomance

haven't logged in for years - apolyton forums seems to be very quiet now? not many threads

[ElDonReal]

From having played two quick games on Prince and on Monarch I have not got a very good impression of the AI. It fights only half-heartedly and without proper idea.

[D4everman]

Well, I played 164 hours according to Steam, and I'm not a fan of the game. I'll wait to see if any patches fix it up in the next month or so, but I'm pretty much done with it. As someone mentioned upthread I won't buy another firaxis/2k game on release again.

[Fidel]

164 hrs playing the game you do not like? wow.

[Dinner]

I have 134 hours (though have of that is just having the game launched but not actually playing) and I have to say I'm disappointed with it right now.