So what exactly is the beef with Civ V?

[Al B. Sure!]

It's not Civ II MP, just improved. All Civ II needed was tweaks and better graphics as they evolved. Instead, they decided to just screw it all up.
Civ II was mostly just Civ I, but with MP capabilities and scenarios. They had a winner and gave it up.

You're letting nostalgia get the best of you.

And Al, social policies look good on paper, but are terrible. If you country is religious in -3000BC, then by god it will stay religious in 2000AD. I expected something like policies of SMAC, not this bull****. There was no need to completely scrap the policy system of Civ4.

As opposed to the old Civ stand-by of switching between Communism and Democracy with a turn of anarchy whenever it's convenient? The current system is no more realistic but it makes your Civ more RPG-like and potentially unique every play-through, especially with the equally RPG-like religion system.

[Elok]

I didn't buy it because Every. Single. Thing. they said they were changing sounded stupid. I guess hexes could go either way (they solve a "problem" I never cared about while removing an axis of movement), but the rest:

1. The whole empire is always equally happy/unhappy. This is silly.
2. The whole empire, for some reason, is made happier by discovering landmarks. This is sillier.
3. The GDR. Silliest.
4. Of all the new elements they could have introduced, they put in city-states. Because we didn't have enough sulky-AI-coddling with actual countries, and we were all just itching to play a game that could simulate San Marino.
5. I'd like to buy a complete game, not half a game followed by eighteen DLC packs on the installment plan.
6. The evolving social policies thing did sound like it would constrain your freedom annoyingly.
7. Instead of each leader getting a unique pair of powerful game-changing traits, each leader now gets a unique silly gimmick. Rome used to build a lot of wonders and crank out great generals and settlers; now they're the guys with a strong incentive to build lots of **** in their capital. Montezuma doesn't have stronger infantry, cheap temples and no anarchy anymore; instead, he gets a little bonus from killing things. This does not sound like an improvement.
8. If you want to make combat tactical, you're wrong, because Civ is a strategy game. But if you go ahead and do it, just make a frigging combat minimap already, instead of awkwardly pasting tactical actions over a world map that can't accommodate it.

There's probably more, but that'll do.

[rah]

For me it was that they removed all the wow out of the game. There are no supper terrain hexes. The wonders were watered down. The traits were watered down. The buildings were watered down. Everything takes too long to build and then costs maint. Yawn. And While I originally liked the idea of 1upt, it was really poorly implemented. And finally, the worst AI EVER. I did like the social policies but they kept screwing that up also.

[Hauldren Collider]

3. The GDR. Silliest.
There's probably more, but that'll do.

This is kind of a silly complaint. The GDR is more expensive than the culture victory building. By the time you build it, you could have already won in other ways. It's really just a gimmick for the endgame if you feel like goofing off.

[MOBIUS]

5. I'd like to buy a complete game, not half a game followed by eighteen DLC packs on the installment plan.

This is why I didn't buy Civ IV until BTS came out.

I didn't even look at Civ III.

[Elok]

This is kind of a silly complaint. The GDR is more expensive than the culture victory building. By the time you build it, you could have already won in other ways. It's really just a gimmick for the endgame if you feel like goofing off.

In case you didn't notice, that complaint was mostly just there to have "silly-sillier-silliest." And there's not much sillier than restive mobs being kept down by the knowledge that Ayers Rock exists. Only the GDR would do.

[Felch]

As opposed to the old Civ stand-by of switching between Communism and Democracy with a turn of anarchy whenever it's convenient? The current system is no more realistic but it makes your Civ more RPG-like and potentially unique every play-through, especially with the equally RPG-like religion system.

No, as opposed to the SMAC model which was ****ing awesome.

[Elok]

You know what would be really RPG-like? If barbarians randomly dropped historically-named weapons, like "Scimitar of Timur" or "Leif Eriksson's Axe." Then you could equip them to Great Generals. Oh, and the GGs would have appropriate perks like the Americans' Gettysburg Crush, which randomly inflicts four score and seven points of damage on critical. And when you take the enemy's capital, you have to storm the palace in a special Diablo-style map that lets you loot priceless artworks to sell for bonus gold. This would add an awesome tactical level to combat and be very interesting and new.

[Asher]

Where's the beef?

[MOBIUS]

You know what would be really RPG-like? If barbarians randomly dropped historically-named weapons, like "Scimitar of Timur" or "Leif Eriksson's Axe." Then you could equip them to Great Generals. Oh, and the GGs would have appropriate perks like the Americans' Gettysburg Crush, which randomly inflicts four score and seven points of damage on critical. And when you take the enemy's capital, you have to storm the palace in a special Diablo-style map that lets you loot priceless artworks to sell for bonus gold. This would add an awesome tactical level to combat and be very interesting and new.

We could call it World of Civcraft.

[Lorizael]

You know what would be really RPG-like? If barbarians randomly dropped historically-named weapons, like "Scimitar of Timur" or "Leif Eriksson's Axe." Then you could equip them to Great Generals. Oh, and the GGs would have appropriate perks like the Americans' Gettysburg Crush, which randomly inflicts four score and seven points of damage on critical. And when you take the enemy's capital, you have to storm the palace in a special Diablo-style map that lets you loot priceless artworks to sell for bonus gold. This would add an awesome tactical level to combat and be very interesting and new.

You're a terrible person.

[MikeH]

It sounds more fun.

[Ming]

Anything would add fun to the game.... they stripped most of the fun out and made it boring.
When ever there was something you could take advantage of and help you to victory, it got watered down... the whole game has been watered down.

Give me BTS. It's still entertaining, and fun for MP.

[dannubis]

I enjoy the SP in CiV more than the slugfest that is CIV BTS.

[kentonio]

I enjoy the SP in CiV more than the slugfest that is CIV BTS.

Why? It's boring as ****. Do you ever even feel vaguely threatened in Civ 5?