Civilization 5 Announced

[Sareln]

"Barbary Corsairs: 50% chance of converting barbarian naval unit to your side and earning 25 gold."

I was looking at civic ideas for my civ clone and wondered where this came from.

Sounds nice and flavorful. If you were designing a single player game that you wanted the player to explore, rather than defeat, and could guarantee that it would be useful it's not horrid.

But Civ it fails both counts here.

[Aretii]

Howdy. Some of you may remember me; I joined this site last fall, just before the release of Civ 5, but then withdrew from the community as a result of academic pressure not giving me much time and Civ 5 just not being a very compelling game.

I recently finished school and have settled into something resembling post-graduation equilibrium. So I come back to RB to ask: Is Civ 5 any good yet?

[NobleHelium]

Civ 5 will never be good.

[Sullla]

It's basically the same game as it was last year; some patch changes, some bug fixes, but essentially the same thing. If you liked it then, you'll still like it, and if not... don't expect to come away feeling differently.

[sunrise089]

It's basically the same game as it was last year; some patch changes, some bug fixes, but essentially the same thing. If you liked it then, you'll still like it, and if not... don't expect to come away feeling differently.

Not to tease, since I really respect his opinion, but Earthstrike still plays Civ5 MP and tells me he heard that there are major changes and improvements coming any day now

I hope for his sake the MP is fun and does get improved, but I have quite the boy-who-cried-wolf feeling too.

[Aretii]

Well, then, guess I won't be redownloading it from Steam. Shame, really; I was rereading some old CIV SGs and was shaking my head about how disappointing 5 turned out, when it occurred to me that I hadn't touched it in over a year and it might have been patched up. It took CIII about eight months to get close to balance, after all.

[Brian Shanahan]

Well, then, guess I won't be redownloading it from Steam. Shame, really; I was rereading some old CIV SGs and was shaking my head about how disappointing 5 turned out, when it occurred to me that I hadn't touched it in over a year and it might have been patched up. It took CIII about eight months to get close to balance, after all.

Difference with Civ 3 and 5 is that 3 had ideas which were worth patching up to a decent level (though they never did with some, and later introduced some more unbalancing ideas), but Civ 5 never did this.

I was worried about 1UPT when it was announced (put a tactical sim on top of a strategic engine) , but was persuaded it would work. Turned out my worries were right on that score. Then you get other things like insane, stupid AI, horrible use of computer resources (how did we get a game looking no better than the previous, and in some cases a lot worse, and turn it into something that was top of the range only?), bad mechanics, design flaws, and you get what IMO is a totally unredeemable game. What little I could recommend would be hexes (though had no huge problem with tiles) and policies (while badly implemented they have promise). It also decided to get rid of a lot of things in 4 that should have been kept and improved on. I'm thinking things like religion and spies which needed a bit of tweeking in religion's case (often diplo is too religious, not enough distinction between them), and a lot of work in espionage (overpowered missions, underpowered missions, bad mechanics, impossible to catch in MP, SB poisoning every well every turn, etc.)

So you've got a horrible game, slimmed down, and badly implemeted. At best patching is going to fix the last only (and often Civ 5 patches were more interested in nerfing strategies the designers couldn't anticipate) so you've still the horrible game, slimmed down, which will remain without a complete redo of the philosophy and rewrite of the game mechanics (i.e. releasing a different game).

Sorry for the ramble. I kind of get that way.

[Aretii]

Difference with Civ 3 and 5 is that 3 had ideas which were worth patching up to a decent level (though they never did with some, and later introduced some more unbalancing ideas), but Civ 5 never did this.

I was worried about 1UPT when it was announced (put a tactical sim on top of a strategic engine) , but was persuaded it would work. Turned out my worries were right on that score. Then you get other things like insane, stupid AI, horrible use of computer resources (how did we get a game looking no better than the previous, and in some cases a lot worse, and turn it into something that was top of the range only?), bad mechanics, design flaws, and you get what IMO is a totally unredeemable game. What little I could recommend would be hexes (though had no huge problem with tiles) and policies (while badly implemented they have promise). It also decided to get rid of a lot of things in 4 that should have been kept and improved on. I'm thinking things like religion and spies which needed a bit of tweeking in religion's case (often diplo is too religious, not enough distinction between them), and a lot of work in espionage (overpowered missions, underpowered missions, bad mechanics, impossible to catch in MP, SB poisoning every well every turn, etc.)

So you've got a horrible game, slimmed down, and badly implemeted. At best patching is going to fix the last only (and often Civ 5 patches were more interested in nerfing strategies the designers couldn't anticipate) so you've still the horrible game, slimmed down, which will remain without a complete redo of the philosophy and rewrite of the game mechanics (i.e. releasing a different game).

Sorry for the ramble. I kind of get that way.

Don't apologize for the ramble; it was an educational one. I didn't start playing CIII until it had been out for a number of years (I think I started right when PTW came out? What a joke of an expansion pack that was, in hindsight).

On the plus side, poking around RB and CFC to see if Civ 5 was worth coming back to made me realize how great of a game CIV was - I played it when it came out, but never got into it more than extremely casually due to school. As we speak, I am downloading CIV Complete Edition from Steam (50% off!) and am going to try over the holiday weekend to stumble my way through a game I haven't touched in five years. I'll probably post my return game over on CFC's Stories and Tales so I can get feedback and help catching up on what I've missed (especially since I never played either expansion).

[MJW (ya that one)]

A certain recent devlopment makes an exp pack/massive patches very unlikely. There will be very few Civ5 content from now on. I suggest detopping the thread in a month or so.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vie...Com-Remake

[kalin]

I haven't touched Civ5 in a very long time, so I took a look at civfanatics and it seems like they made lots of changes. I have a question for whoever may know: is multiplayer playable? In particular, would a 3-4 player game work? Last time I tried it was very slow and crashed so often that it was basically unplayable.

Thanks,
Kalin