Is Civ5 more or less fun than Civ4/Civ3?

[planetfall]

I've been reviewing some reviews on C5, and not sure if it is the tiime to try this or not.

I pretty much enjoy Civ4, especially sneaking territorial gains thru culture. From what I have read so far it seems like with current C5:

-- many stability issues, even with latest patches. {Reminds me of the stuggling releases of Civ4}
-- focused culture/religions are replaced by nameless influence
-- no exciting new units; still mostly ground with a little air and water thrown in to confuse players

So basic question: Is it fun yet, or better advised to wait for first expansion pack?

Is xml editing still available as an option? It is only with customization that I enjoy Civ4?

Thanks for your feedback.

[sirboxalot]

Having fun with it so far. I miss religion, and am having a hard time managing my cities (how the hell does one set up a specialist with this new city screen??), while the new military strategy and units system is pretty rad.

It's a pretty huge change from the previous games (coming from someone who's been playing since Civ I) but I'm sure it'll see many changes and patches that we all love/hate/whatever.

The one thing I completely disagree with is DLC - I'd rather pay for a full on expansion a la Warlords/BtS rather than get extra maps (and civs!!) for a few bucks a pop.

[planetfall]

So you must use DLC and they are trying to remove hard media for releases and upgrades?

[mkorin]

I like it better than Civ 4 hands down. Civ 3 was so long ago, it really isn't a fair comparision.

[LzPrst]

i don't feel like playing civ4 anymore, but civ5 does not have great appeal either. I just get bored with it in the midgame. it seems everything is just a linear walk from stone age to space race without any variation. every era is the same but with a slight upgrade in units and buildings. in every era you just upgrade your buildings and units and continue on the exact same path as you've been on for the last 100 turns. there is way too little variation and flavor to interest me. already regretting I didn't save the money and hold out for the first expansion pack.

[Ming]

That does seem to be one of the real problems... no real choices. Every time a "new" approach is developed, it gets nerfed.
Many of the wonders seem not so wonderful, and none of them are game breakers... like in Civ IV, where a few wonders changed your whole approach to the game. Everything seems to take too long to build, and then really isn't all that worth it when you are done.
In Civ IV, the race to the key wonders had you on the edge of your seat... now, I'll sigh, and not really care, since the wonders aren't all that important. Plus, at the higher levels, you don't get many anyway

There are a lot of things I like about Civ V... however...

[Jaybe]

I don't buy all this "civ 5 is too linear" BS. I say it all depends on which SP path you choose, and since you can no longer stockpile your SP earnings (unless you use the "cheat" advanced game setting), you can end up making a short-term choice instead of long-term.

Many of the wonders seem not so wonderful, ...

And many of the wonders ARE wonderful, even if they aren't game breakers.

--
At the same time, I agree there are many frustrating aspects to the design & implementation.

[Ming]

"Many"... I guess I just don't see it. Far, Far more of the Wonders in Civ IV were really wonders. And many more of them were effective across your whole empire. A wonder that generates a single great person and some extra culture doesn't seem so wonderful to me. Most of them seem no better than a building, and simply take too long to build.

But granted, at the higher levels, it doesn't really matter, since if you take the time to build wonders, somebody will be building units and roll right over you

[Pugman]

I'll say this: I played Civ 4 BTS thousands of hours. I've yet to complete a game in Civ 5. I have tried...many times. I absolutely cannot get into it. The Civ depth is gone and it just bores me silly.

[YC4B4U]

I have found it (after two games and 50 hours) a refreshing change. It is somewhat dumbed down I believe from IV, but I don't mind that. Definitely enjoy the ranged combat, introduces a little more tactics than sending in a stack of death.

The graphics are so much more pleasing - and now that I have updated my video drivers it doesn't crash every 10 - 20 turns...

Diplomacy is more interesting - I can demand things now! It was also nice that everyone denounced me for wiping out a civ.

At this stage I would recommend the game.

[Alkemist69]

planetfall asks: Is xml editing still available as an option? It is only with customization that I enjoy Civ4?

ModdersGuide.pdf on kael.civfanatics.net/files/... total modability.

[LzPrst]

There are several issues with the game, first of all balance, some civs have ridiculously useless traits compared to others. UB's as well are vastly varying in value and use. The Iroquis longhouse for example. Superb if you have lots of forests. But as it is a prerequisite for other production-increasing structures, you also have to build it in cities with no forests if you want factories later. That's a 2 gold maintenance that you will be paying for nothing in cities without forests.

Also, the terrain has no real flavor. Flood plains in civ 4 gave a bonus and had a catch to them. Jungles provided good terrain once chopped, but required an investment in workers. Hills meant great production, grassland was good for farming making pop-rushing or specialist strategies interesting, etc etc. In civ 5, you can plot down a city just about anywhere, throw up some farms and trade posts and be bored for 4000 years as there are no further improvements to build, oh wait, I forgot lumber mills, +1 production, same as hills, why bother?. No windmills, workshops or watermill allowing for specializations. In civ 5, with improvements, all terrain becomes practically the same. Hills with farm, 1f, 2h. Forest with mill, 1f, 2h. Hill with mine 3h, WOW!! that's a huge difference between 1f, 2h. (sarcasm). the added bonus from rivers and farms is a good idea, but there should be more things like this and more variation in terrain.

Also, the citizen management is really messy once cities reach a certain size. Now I just hit "production focus" or "gold focus" rather than bother with moving them about manually. Which takes away that particular feeling of optimizing and choosing paths for a city. Now it is just choose between growth, production or gold. The other alternatives are practically irrelevant for the first half of the game, and even later hardly make any real changes. So city administration is choose between food, hammer or cash. Not a lot of depth...

Teching just reveals new upgrades for your linear buildings and units, none of them have any effect on the game. Also, the upgrade way of organizing city improvements mean that there are no choices to make in building them. I'll just be sitting around upgrading all my buildings the entire game.

There are no real paths to choose from in strategy, and military conquest is by far the easiest and most accessible victory condition. It is the only way I have finished the game because going to Alpha Centauri is so far away, and the AI cheats with tech (and signs research agreements all willy-nilly while constantly ganging up on the player) making it easier to just kill them rather than try to get to the end of the tech tree first. Besides there are no way to improve tech other than getting more population, how do I catch up with the AI that has no happiness restrictions? Why bother when smash and grab the enemies' capitals is easy as pie? Why sit and culture it up, when you have to have a military and defend against the insane AI anyway? Why not just go kill him? Happiness? Ok, I'll raze his cities, capture the capital and throw up my own cities on the ruins. After a few games I realized that there was never any reason not to just wipe out every civ I met, since they would continously be declaring war on me at random times. The reason for not doing so was merely because I got bored or I had to defend against 2-3 more AI's on some other front. Though I like to develop my cities, some have shown that the ICS is by far a vastly superior strategy and constantly used by the AI, so why bother?

City states is a nice touch, but somewhat unbalanced.

Hexes are a great idea and it works graphically very well.

Diplomacy has some interesting features, but they don't work! I tell Ghandi not to settle near me, and 20 turns later there are 2 cities smack on my border. I am told that I am stealing land from civs on another continent whom I have no cities even remotely near. All of this and more has been discussed other places.



In summary, this game is not good enough. I realized this after reading several harsh and critical post-patch reviews that made me aware of exactly why I was feeling so miffed when playing. Look at the discussion forums here and at civfanatics, the discussion is over whether the game is worthless or if it can be fixed with future patches. Not that there is any active discussion here at all. The strategy section is abandoned after the first few exploits found (eternal golden age for Persia for example), since there is no real strategies anyway. Most of civ traits are focused around war, greatly diminishing actual flavor since this is not a war game, it is an empire-building game. Do I play Japan to get a bonus from wounded troops, or do I play China to get a better GG effect? Or maybe Germany to get those wonderful extra warriors from barbarian camps... yeah...

I think it was Soren Johnson who said when making civ4, 1/3 old, 1/3 improved and 1/3 new. Civ 5 is all new, very little of it tried and tested and ultimately it fails.

edit: p.s. I would NOT recommend anyone to buy civ 5.

[rah]

While I'm not quite so negative and believe that future changes can MAYBE fix this, your early comments really sum it up. There's nothing really special when it comes to land. It's all boring. Civ 2 where whales were king or Civ 4 rivered cows. Or tiles that are actually good after you improve them. A square went from 2 food to 5 food, not 2 to 3. Yawn. And that theme seems to run through out the game. Wonders aren't really that wonderful anymore and take forever to build. The maintenance on building is so crushing that you end up with nothing to build in some cities. You can't afford extra troops or marginal buildings, so you go through periods where you're just plain bored. They even nerfed the library because it was seen as too powerful. (excuse me) Diplo wise, the same. Boring, every game (like you mentioned) goes the same way. Don't settle near me and then they settle stupidly right against you then complain about the troops that are now near them. What the ****.
There is no WOW in the game. And MP is just not there yet.
But I do like the hexes, city states, social policies (as long as they don't continue to nerf them), and Iupt so I remain optimistic that in a few years it will be better. It did take awhile on IV for MP and a lot of other issues to be fixed.

Since I usually just played SP to test out strats for MP, I'm not really playing much V anymore. Fortunately IV is still fun.

[self biased]

it sounds like they wielded the knife a little too deep in some areas, and borrowed AI from Civ 2.

[Arrian]

Just chiming in to say I totally agree that the land (and thus, its development) is boring.

Wonders... well yeah, they're less wonderful, but that (to me) is far less of a problem than the land being uninteresting. Dude, the land IS CIV, as far as I'm concerned. Ok, that's a bit much, but it should be a big deal.

City-states is an interesting concept. I'm not sure they're balanced right, but they *are* a neat idea, so points for that. Of course, so was culture in CivIII, and they didn't get that right until CivIV. But I digress.

-Arrian