Is Civ5 more or less fun than Civ4/Civ3?

[Arrian]

One more thought:

When CivIV came out I was a zombie at work because I kept staying up until the wee hours of the morning playing. ONE MORE TURN.

Not so with CivV. I think the latest I've gone is something like 11:30. That's nothin' man.

Now, it's true that I now have a daughter and maybe that's made me more responsible. No, it's the game. In a wierd way I guess I should be thankful for it. If I was staying up like that my wife would be pretty annoyed at me by now.

-Arrian

[rah]

Whatever I do, the wife gets somewhat annoyed so I might as well do something to deserve it.
But Monday was our 25th anniversary so we must be doing something right.

But yes, V hasn't kept me awake that late.
AND yes boring land is a big issue. It took be quite a while to get over the whale not being great after civ II.

[LDiCesare]

If you're a builder, don't touch V. If you're a warmonger, you may play it for one or 2 games until you've learnt all there is to learn, and bet the ai at the highest difficulty level.
After that, go back to IV if you want to either build a civ, get a challenge, or play MP.

[mkorin]

I still say that out of the box it is better than Civ IV. You can't compare Civ V with only 1 patch to Civ 4 with 100 patchs and two expansions. The potential is a lot higher in V than IV. I really didn't like IV and find that I like playing V better. Of course, I am a warmonger. I don't see anyway I'll ever get a victory other than conquest. This is mostly because by the time I have built up enough to get another win, my endless armies had to do something and conquering the neighbor seems like a good thing to do.

[mkorin]

I also like a lot of the Wonders. They give great benefits without being a game loser if you don't get one.

[sirboxalot]

Had a chance to play some more... I'll be leaving it installed, but after getting every victory condition I'll probably be going back to Civ4.

I think the great thing overall about the Civ games is their longevity... It can still be quite fun to load up a game of SMAC or Civ2 (or freeciv!) after all these years. I'm sure Civ5 will see many many upgrades, expansions, patches and what have you. Hopefully the main focus will be replay-ability (as it is now, I don't see that much) without huge amounts of DLC extortion.

Also, why can't I change the name of my leader? Boooo!

[rah]

I didn't say it was worse than IV out of the box. In fact, in many threads, I've pointed out some of the issues IV had out of the box. Which is the main reason why I'm still optimistic. IV turned out great eventually.
But I've played many V games and the re-playability is limited in my opinion and have gone back to IV MP.

[ElDonReal]

It has too many bugs to be really enjoyable and by that I mean game rules that just don't work that way, like the trade route thing that I posted about. All kinds of exceptional cases that the programmers didn't think of and that are not implemented. Remember the minuteman not taking advantage of roads, that's another exceptional case.

Also I cannot get friend with the 1 unit per tile feature. Civ 5 tries to mix the tactical and strategical map and I don't like that. The problem with stacks was not that they had been there, the problem was that combat was still resolved unit vs unit instead of stack vs stack. By the time you have advanced to gunpowder there's also a lack of a ranged element and so the canon and artillery are just overpowered. The total war series provided a much more funny fighting scenario. It'd be better if Firaxis had built a battle simulator that would calculate the output of two armies or stacks clashing into each other.

[LzPrst]

Sulla made a very insightful case for the problem with 1upt and its resulting problems. If production is high then units will cover the entire map prohibiting movement. An example used, that is not ideal, but still very relevant is the size of the map. In Panzer General, which was the inspiration for the hex & 1upt, England was 600 hexes, in the earth map it is 6. There is not enough room to move around your armies. Which brings me to a possible solution. The maps should be bigger. Much much much bigger. One way to do it could be to split normal hexes into additional hexes for units only. So that in 1 city sized hex you could fit 6-8 units (each in a mini-hex within the main hex). This would create a strategic and tactical map modes, so normally you dilly dally on the strategic map, but in wars, you hit the tactical map mode button (or whenever you choose a unit) the hexes are shown split up for units, allowing for much freer movement and allowing for more production since more units can be put on the board without creating the carpet of doom. Furthermore, to avoid tedious micromanagement it could be possible to lock a group of units into a set formation and move them as a group on the strategic map. The only need for the tactical map would be when fighting enemies and setting up said formations.

Of course this would require a massive recoding of path-tracking, AI strategy, the map, and more. But I suspect it would make combat more interesting, could allow for more units thus allowing for production and flavor to be put back into the land. I suspect it would also make war more difficult, since armies will be unable to fight blitzwars in the bronze age.

[LzPrst]

additional: this could possibly also be done for hexes worked within a city, if each citizen worked not 1 hex, but 3/7ths of a hex, with each minihex providing for example 1 food, 1 hammer or 1 gold, then you could specialize cities easily. For example, 1 hill hex is divided into 7 mini hexes producing in sum 1 food, 2 gold and 4 production, but you can choose if you want just production or a mix. A plains tile would produce 3 food, 2 production and 2 gold. Grassland 4 food, 1 production, 2 gold. You get the idea, someone else can work out the balance and such. Tile improvements could provide percentile increases based on terrain. Farms = 50% food increase, (increased with tech), while mines provide 50% increase on production, so the benefit would depend on what your citizens are working. By putting 2 citizens into 1 hex (tech required), you'll get the final 1/7th as a bonus, encouraging larger cities.

Of course, I've just realized that these changes are not a patch, they are either an expansion pack or a complete remake of the game from scratch. screw it, I don't think it can be salvaged without huge redesigning...

[mzprox]

I've bought it first week, played 2-3 games and then put it away.. the whole game is uninspiring. I will give it a go when they implement pitboss, so I can see how it works in multiplayer. The game in sp much less fun than civ4

[Proteus_MST]

I for my part also would say, definitely more fun than Civ 3,
but less fun than Civ IV BtS

[OneFootInTheGrave]

hah - clicked on the forum, just to say - I do not play it anymore... back to IV after the first month... and at the moment I have less hope that they will fix it then I had when I played first few games... the game is seriously broken on very many levels, more I played and more I understood, less hope I had... this pretty much sums it up.

Otherwise I agree with Rah in principle except that I do not like 1UPT either... I like some other aspects of the new combat system, but 1UPT is a deadly boring killer on top of everything else... glad that IV is fun enough that I am OK to wait with it for VI another 5 years

also IMO less fun than CIV III when it came out... CIV III was at least a major change in many ways so it had more value to me personally, and I played it quite a bit, there was a lot more to explore in CIV III and no "dead" time while playing it, while V is mostly "dead" time, very few innovative concepts worth exploring (and what there is, is of limited value)... CIV V is the first major dumbing down of the series, and poorly implemented at that.

[Barnabas]

I know many of you never gave it a chance, but CIV III with all the expansions is actually a very fun game, I prefered its map over the CIV IV google earth thing

[wodan11]

I know many of you never gave it a chance, but CIV III with all the expansions is actually a very fun game, I prefered its map over the CIV IV google earth thing

Well, yeah, I played Civ III and enjoyed it. But I can't imagine going back from IV to III because of all the many improvements in gameplay. Certainly, something as superficial as the map isn't even close to a deciding factor.