Civ V is a great game.

[Brutus66]

So, prince level is the "new noble". Great, I was so pleased with myself....

[Dinner]

Religion and corporations especially both sucked.

No.Lots of people liked those features.

[Wyrda Edocsil]

No. That you keep insisting that your opinion on religion is right and anyone who disagrees is wrong is childish and emblematic of your inability to admit you were ever wrong about anything (see the OP for a perfect example of where you were wrong).

The fact is, that a game with religions and corporations, and a game without, play differently; IMO, religions and corporations remove a large bit of strategy from the game. If you want to play with them, play Civ IV; if you're really desperate for them, mod them in. They are almost certainly not going to be added to Civ V in an expansion. Stop attacking Boris, and try to make an intelligent argument.

[Nikolai]

Some egomaniac on CFC was claiming he'd beat the game on the toughest difficulty level building nothing but archers and scouts...

MrGameTheory? He got soundly thrashed and lost at turn 47 in a MP match with a beta a few days ago, using that strategy...

Which doesn't work in SP either btw.

[Snotty]

Ive been trying to get people to play civ for 14 years. Some people would humour me and at least give it a go, but they never got very far before being thoroughly confused.

After 14 years I finally got a someone to not only play and finish a game, but also want to come back for more

Civ 5

[pdxsean]

They are almost certainly not going to be added to Civ V in an expansion.

Why would you say they wouldn't be added in an expansion? It seems to me that they absolutely will, I mean, why would they leave the religion/corp meme on the side of the tracks? Now, I loved religion and corps... I thought they were massive game changers and really took advantage of them to boost my civ. I'd love to see them in V, but if they don't show up that's OK too. I'm just curious why you would be so certain they won't show up in expansions.

[Jaybe]

Religions will not/should not be added to civ5 because: the previously 'disclosed' reason that their affect on diplomacy was skewed, predictable & open to manipulation; impossible to cover all religions equally (a 'minor' religion is not minor to those who belong to it); I rarely chose a religion in civ4 because religious neutrality was often diplomatically superior -- despite Organized Religion civic.

Corporations will not/should not be added to civ5 because: they became a big crutch, fun & exploitive whichever corp. you could get (and I generally got 2-3 of them while the AI usually got 0-2 of them together). If they became too expensive, get civilized jewelers or produce gold1.

We do not NEED religions, corporations or their equivalent at this point, and will not for another year, at least. Recall the civ4 Engineering tech quote.

--
At this point, with my limited experience (haven't started my 2nd game yet, though nr.1 lasted about 440 turns), I would like barrage & melee lethality reduced a little, while nerfing Bushido Code so that damaging their units has some effect. Perhaps minimum 70-80% instead 100% strength.

1 Wasn't THAT a shock in civ5, with just 10% production to gold conversion!

I played civ4 using a customized Hephmod Beyond mod, an extension of RevolutionsDCM mod. I played a modified PRINCE difficulty, with LARGE (like Deity level) maximum city maintenance to penalize my tendency for 40-60 cities in the late game. Huge maps, marathon speed. Usually won my games around turn 1000-1200 (of 1500 turns). HEY, I DON'T LIKE MY CHALLENGES TO BE MUCH BIGGER!

Oh, and I played as ROME!

[MxM]

No.Lots of people liked those features.

I suspect that you judge Civ V mainly by MP. I also suspect that you are good at MP in civ IV (the fact is that you do play enough competitively to care and complain). I also suspect that you are a "quick thinker" that you can do lots of relatively simple and repeating tasks efficiently in a limited amount of time without forgetting any of them. (I personally envy people with such ability - I am not one of those). I will go even so far as to say that you probably OK or good in RTS like Starcraft.

Now for you, it is in advantage to have many sliders, many different things such as religion, corporations, workers (without automation) and all other simple tasks that to many others is difficult to keep constantly in mind. You are good at micro and want to use this advantage fully in multiplayer.

But here is a problem. Civ was always a deep thinker game and single player game first, and multilayer with variety of micro tasks second. Civ V makes a good step in the direction of thinking game, the mechanics of the game requires more advanced strategic planing and so forth. The parts that are irrelevant and contrary to that (religion/corporation/sliders) are removed. This is why this game feels simplistic for you - it does not give you enough knobs for you to twinkle in limited time - it does not give you something to use for your advantage in MP.

I am not saying that you are not capable of the "deep thinker single player game" but here, I suspect, your abilities do not shine as much as in MP, and naturally you like it less because of that.

So, it is quite possible, that Civ V took a step back for you. But for majority of Civ players Civ V is very good iteration of the game.

And when other people say that Civ V is great and you say that it is not so, we simply talk about different things, and everyone is right.

My advice is try to enjoy single player game, and who knows, may be in time once you master the game, you will find enough knobs for you to tweak in MP, because Civ V still has lots of those.

Disclaimer: I understand that I may assume too much about you, but this is the impression I have gotten from your posts.

[pdxsean]

I liked the skew on diplomacy that religions provided, it helped make visible teams out of the AI players and really gave a real life feel to it, IMO. Then again, I played a religion-oriented strategy, rushing Buddhism and spreading it as fast as possible to all neighbors. This basically guaranteed me peace for as long as I wanted it, if I was fast enough. Of course the huge profits that could be had from religion was a major factor, and would prompt me to go for the later religions like Taoism or Islam.

Corps were a great late game motivator, I thought they helped break up the boredom of managing a large powerful empire. And since they were available to all, it was another "race" to be involved in. Plenty of profits and the ability to grow your cities even further when pre-corp they'd have topped out.

Although we disagree, I think the very fact that we do highlights religions and corps bringing additional depth to the game and opening up a lot of new strategies. Whether those strategies and depth are extraneous is a valid argument, and I'd like to see the ability to turn them off (or scale them down) if they are included.

For example, I don't care for city states at all in Civ V. They take up too much of my time and I never can keep any of them happy enough to make it worth their considerable expense. I just ignore them and let the AI deal with them, but it's good to know that if I wanted I could shut them off entirely.

[stbabylon]

For example, I don't care for city states at all in Civ V. They take up too much of my time and I never can keep any of them happy enough to make it worth their considerable expense. I just ignore them and let the AI deal with them, but it's good to know that if I wanted I could shut them off entirely.

Yeah? I felt that way to the first 2~3 games I started. Then in the 4th game I started appreciating them. This morning I started my 5th game (didn't finish any of them, due to discovering my new play-style ), and I'm using the CS tactic posted on the homepage of apo. I'm at turn ~80 now and recieving 8 food a turn in my *city from my two allies (they're next to eachother and both asked me to take care of the same barbhut. Lovellly )

[stbabylon]

For example, I don't care for city states at all in Civ V. They take up too much of my time and I never can keep any of them happy enough to make it worth their considerable expense. I just ignore them and let the AI deal with them, but it's good to know that if I wanted I could shut them off entirely.

Yeah? I felt that way to the first 2~3 games I started. Then in the 4th game I started appreciating them. This morning I started my 5th game (didn't finish any of them, due to discovering my new play-style ), and I'm using the CS tactic posted on the homepage of apo. I'm at turn ~80 now and recieving 8 food a turn in my *city from my two allies (they're next to eachother and both asked me to take care of the same barbhut. Lovellly )

[Proteus_MST]

The fact is, that a game with religions and corporations, and a game without, play differently; IMO, religions and corporations remove a large bit of strategy from the game. If you want to play with them, play Civ IV; if you're really desperate for them, mod them in. They are almost certainly not going to be added to Civ V in an expansion. Stop attacking Boris, and try to make an intelligent argument.

That´s what you think.
Maybe the people at Firaxis think differently.
After all they tried to include religion and IMHO the only reason what kept them from poutting it in was that there was too little time (till the deadline from the publisher) to get the AI to work correctlys together with religions.
With a future expansion pack and a little bit more time at hand for the developers to get the AI working with it everything might be differently

[quinalla]

Yeah, I'm really enjoying the game so far. There are some bugs, but every new game has bugs, at least with Firaxis I know they will work hard to get them fixed quickly. Just the new combat system alone makes this game so much more enjoyable for me, but I am so far liking most of the other changes too. And the new interface is taking a bit to get used to, but now that I have lived with it for awhile, there are definitely some things I like a lot. The way pop ups work is so much better IMO, instead of stealing your focus until you pick new production for a city in CivIV, you can do whatever you want and then get to the pop ups. I also like that it is easier to track current and past diplomatic deals.

The game does feel slower when building things though, it just seems to take a lot longer to make anything units or buildings, but with city states there is also a lot going on even on those turns when you would normally just be hitting next. I do think the maintenance checks and balances seem to be working fairly well so far, you do better specializing cities a bit more as it doesn't make sense to build every building in every city eventually. It also seems a lot slower to get to the point where you can cross oceans and meet the other civs when playing on continent maps, though I'll have to try rushing for that tech and see how that goes, and I don't have a good feel for the tech tree yet, but so far it seems like you can really go vertical a lot more than in Civ 4. I like that the AI offers you reasonable trades now and I like the new diplomacy options. Getting 10 turns to prepare to go to war with someone, being able to respond either with an angry statement or a "eh I don't really care" statement when the AI does something that should offend you. There are definitely some kinks to be worked out in diplomacy regarding agreeing to not settle close or grab tiles close and sometimes the AI's erroneous ideas about when you have broken this agreement, but overall the system is a lot better.

But the most important thing is it is fun to play and it does have the "just one more turn" feel for me

[MxM]

That´s what you think.
Maybe the people at Firaxis think differently.
After all they tried to include religion and IMHO the only reason what kept them from poutting it in was that there was too little time (till the deadline from the publisher) to get the AI to work correctlys together with religions.
With a future expansion pack and a little bit more time at hand for the developers to get the AI working with it everything might be differently

This is not the explanation I heard from Firaxis again and again. They did not like how religion dominates diplomacy, they wanted diplomacy to be more natural and dynamic, depending on many actions of player, not only which religion he founds. This is why religion was removed and CS were introduced. And I agree with them, I like this diplomatic model better, when you or AI starts war not because it just happen that you discover different technologies and thus found different religions, but because you are fighting for the resource - a city state.

[Thoth]

Religions will not/should not be added to civ5 because: the previously 'disclosed' reason that their affect on diplomacy was skewed, predictable & open to manipulation; impossible to cover all religions equally (a 'minor' religion is not minor to those who belong to it); I rarely chose a religion in civ4 because religious neutrality was often diplomatically superior -- despite Organized Religion civic.

The argument that "religions aren't/won't be in the game because they had to much effect on diplomacy" is nonsense given that a simple XML edit can remove the diplomatic effects entirely.