Civilization 5 Announced

[Gaspar]

I mean that's the thing. This game is so utterly dead I don't even check CFC anymore - all this is news to me. I'm probably more hooked on Civ than I've been since the first, say, 6-8 months post vanilla Civ4, and I literally couldn't care less what's going on in 5. The picture Sullla posted is unsurprising - the game is so undertested, underdeveloped that he could post a picture of the Mongols having nothing but their starting settler wandering in the desert trying to find a place to plant their capital on turn 150 and it wouldn't startle me.

Its not just casual gamers who are playing Civ5 still - its braindead gamers. I have a friend who's poked around with all the Civ games but never got hooked. He grabbed Civ5 shortly after it came out and gave up after a short while over two things that have nothing to do with the gameplay:

1. He had to dig into the XML to shut the annoying opening movie off.
2. He had never seen a less-graphically impressive game that ate up more CPU than this ever before.

Those are two relatively minor issues, but EVERYTHING about this game is sloppy. Its so easy to say that they can fix this or they can fix that, even if you disagree with the premise many of us have come to that 1UPT + Civ is a fundamental disconnect that can never be solved, by the time they fixed all the things terribly wrong with the game it will be time for Civ6. And there's nothing in Firaxis' history that indicates they'll apply that level of patience. I have no doubt there will be a stream of crappy DLC available for the next 8 or so months, followed by a fall release of a crappy Expansion Pack, and then the same trend followed for another year or so. At the end of that time the AI will still be unbelievably bad, the game will still chew up all your available CPU for no actual pay off, countless other bugs will be not fixed/reintroduced/not fixed again and all of this still ignores the fundamental fact that they designed an empire building game that is all about not building anything.

I mean, its just a terribly put-together game. It has some fun ideas (Social Policies, um, some streamlining in GPP generation, um... the combat system isn't bad in a vacuum where you ignore the impact it makes on the rest of the game, I'm sure there's a couple others that I'm forgetting because I haven't touched it in months) but it isn't just a bad or sloppy game, its a really, really bad and really, really, sloppy game. I seriously can't imagine any scenario where I ever play a game of Civ5 again, and that's really sad, since Civ is one of my two or three all time favorite game franchises.

[Dantski]

Strategy game of the year...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/01/11/pc-gam...-awards/4/

[Speaker]

It’s no surprise that Civilization V wins this award—Civilization has been one of the PC’s definitive names in turnbased strategy for almost two decades, thanks to the deep, addictive turn-based experience that you just can’t get anywhere else.

With Civ V’s reinvention in particular, Firaxis has demonstrated that the series—and the entire genre of turnbased strategy—is teeming with new ideas. Its revamped tactical combat addresses a long-standing weakness of the series and made the inevitable wars between nations more engaging; its colorful graphics and redesigned interface reach out to gamers intimidated by complexity, grab them by their eyeballs and, before they realize what’s happened, pull them into all-night gaming sessions that don’t end until one nation rules the world; and its in-game mod browser opens up the world of user-made content to gamers who would’ve otherwise never known where to look for it or how to install it.

Wherever the series goes next, we’ll be able to look back at Civilization V and say that it took us somewhere new and enthralling.

This review is so terrible it's funny.

EDIT - Oh, ha.

SC2 is GOTY and realtime strategy game of the year, and Civ is strategy game of the year. We feel that turn-based and realtime genres are different enough that they can’t really be compared to one another, and thus demand separate categories.

How many turn-based strategy games are there even out there?

[Brian Shanahan]

How many turn-based strategy games are there even out there?

Civ and Elemental, unless there's one that flew under everybody's radar.

[Sullla]

Wherever the series goes next, we’ll be able to look back at Civilization V and say that it took us somewhere new and enthralling.

I suppose this is technically true, although not in the way that this magazine intends.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Strategy game of the year...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/01/11/pc-gam...-awards/4/

Bullet point for Jon's resume and back cover quote for Fireaxis!

Do people still buy games in boxes at video game stores anymore?

[antisocialmunky]

How many turn-based strategy games are there even out there?

Played Greed Corp but that's the only one I can think of.

[joncnunn]

Actually you don't need to go to XML to shut off opening movies. It's instead a setting on the UserSettings.ini file under my games / Civ V. Actually this is similar to how you shut off the movie from IV.

The thing is though that V needs so much time starting up that if you do turn off the movie, your then going to be treated to a completely black screen for over a minute while it gets up.

I've not really noticed CPU usage for this; but I'm always on full screen mode when playing any of the civ games.

Now as to actual game play though: Sulla is dead right about there being too many penalties; I'm actually a bit suprized there aren't Dark Ages in Civ 5 instead of Golden ages the way there are so many other penalties.

The section I'm personally most critical about in Civ 5 though is:

Granary merely provided two extra food instead of 50% food basket. (Extreme nerf compared to previous entries)
It takes too long for the city to fill two rows of hexes even with Martime allies even if it is the capital and your traditional and have a granary.

As to the third row of hexes, that will only get used if there's a resource, but in most cases your better off building another city closer to that resource.

Slow as molasses population growth naturally leads to : Smaller cities, fewer local hammers, long build times, non use of specialists even in late game, and tighter city spacing.

Trading Posts:
This improvement is allowed in almost every terrain type; that's way too much as this is crowding out the other improvements. Just to restore balance it needs reduced the following ways:

Building these need to chop down the forest like mines & farms. Should probably drain the marsh as well but not as important. Probably shouldn't be able to be built on hills at all to restore mines to their proper place on hills.

AI personality:
It seems like the AI is programmed not to like anyone if they are neighbors. While it is very much like human behavior to go settle a far town right next to somebody else's core empire and then tell them not to settle so close to you, that's not fun to see in an AI. The AI seems to be using some combination of the number of cities you have + the distance between their closest city and yours.
Which means if you build too many cities your neighbor will declare war on you even if they'd be best friends. Only way out of this once they declare is to go conquer them.
At which point you have even more cities and so whoever was on the far side of them is now going to be upset that you are too close to them. This cycle will then repeat until your the only player left on that landmass.

Calling up just for insults: Human like, yes. Fun to see in an AI, NO. Save the insult for the actual declaration of war.

He grabbed Civ5 shortly after it came out and gave up after a short while over two things that have nothing to do with the gameplay:

1. He had to dig into the XML to shut the annoying opening movie off.
2. He had never seen a less-graphically impressive game that ate up more CPU than this ever before.

Those are two relatively minor issues,.

[MJW (ya that one)]

1. If you check out the "favorite firaxis quotes" thread at CFC there is a quote from Jon that says Civ5 has been recived poorly by the fans. This does not count as "winning" because he never expicitly says Civ5 is a bad game and he does not say too that he was responisble. I think Jon will never say he is responable (or say he is NOT responable) for what happened so I have to resign my bet.

2. There is a BS MP hack if you check out a thread at CFC. They don't cause OOS. Poor performce indeed!

[Lord Parkin]

I hadn't noticed this thread before... quite amusing reading through it. Only played Civ5 for about a week after it came out myself, haven't played it at all in the 3-4 months since. I thought there might have been a patch or two to slightly improve it by now, but considering the tone in this thread I'm not sure that's the case. Maybe I'll check it out sometime in the next month or so if I have the time. (Man, it's sad to say that about a Civ game.)

Nothing much to add, but I'll subscribe and keep watching this thread in the future.