Civ V expansion announced

[T-hawk]

1) The sense of either idiot game reviewers or pure payola due to the absurdly good reviews that seem to be talking about a totally different game.

The reviewers aren't idiots. Civ 5 was pretty well designed to appeal to them. One game doesn't deeply expose Civ 5's problems, and one game is all most reviewers ever do before moving on to the next title. They don't care if the tech tree or tactical warfare or worker management or bad AI goes the same way every time; that's as normal as Final Fantasy XX having the same plot on every playthrough with the same unintelligent monsters. They don't care about the balance cracks like research agreements; either they never figure it out or they get a nice big advantage to feel good about and congratulate themselves for being strategically clever. Civ 5 has just enough new stuff to make the reviewer's job interesting, and its relentless focus on "small" with few cities and few units lets them get it over quickly. Heck, the whole concept of "play the entirety of human history" is still a pretty swell hook. And it sure sparkles all shiny. I can totally see where mainstream reviewers for a mass audience praise it.

So in a sense, yes they are talking about a different game. They're talking about the game of experiencing Civ 5 for the first and only time, on some easy level of difficulty, with prior total exposure to the Civ franchise of maybe two games each of Civ 3 and Civ 4. They are most certainly not talking about comparing how Civ 5 runs out of steam while you're hardcore-optimizing your 8th playthrough on the top difficulty to how Civ 4 stood up through 50 plays and still never yielded a Deity victory.

[Brian Shanahan]

Isn't that true for everything computer, always?

I mean, I'm not exactly a civ5 fan, probably won't be buying any DLC or expansion. But this isn't unique to the franchise and thus doesn't seem a fair complaint to me. Heck, I bet civ4 + expansions was on the order of $100, and could now be acquired under $20 (and the only reason it would cost that much is that civ5 bombed).

I bought the complete edition of Civ 4 for €20, though that was in 2009 well after all the expansions were released.

[Brian Shanahan]

We know why: Because Jon Shafer wanted to make a sequel to Civilization 3.

Thought he wanted to make a sequel to Panzer General?

Sorry for spam posting.

[Yazilliclick]

Funny reading how much people actually want to hate something. If the expansion fixes most/all of the problems then that's great. Also buying the game after they do that supports them doing so. If they don't fix all the problems then they don't and you can continue to ignore and look for other games.

[Thoth]

There are thousands of games I strongly dislike that are still loved by others. Civ V is one of them. There's no need to mock it so hard. Yes, they are putting out an expansion for a game we think is crappy. Yes, we wish they would have made a game we like instead, we really thought they were going to do so, and now we wish they wouldn't keep chasing this other thing and would get back to what they did before, which we liked a lot better.

But the constant whining about every move they make casts our community in a poor light. I know I've been guilty of it too. We have such an easy target, and it's nice to laugh about (at) really atrocious game design decisions, because what else can we do? But it's been a long time and we should have moved on by now.

It will probably be a fine expansion for the people who like the base game. The bits they've previewed look interesting and better than BtS's additions on first glance. Obviously it will not "fix" the game for us because the objections we have with it run too deep. (For me, the main problem with the game is is actually that it doesn't have good multiplayer support yet. Most of the other problems (having to micro all your units individually every turn, terrible AIs, abusive strategies) are specific to playing the game single player.)

Constant whining? About a product that people have paid real money for? And are thoroughly disapointed in? There is a need to mock it so that we don't get handed this kind of garbage for our hard earned entertainment dollars ever again.

Firaxis and other game companies exist to serve our needs/wants. Not the other way around. If a game company serves up a steaming pile of turds in place of a game and wants our money for it, they deserve to be called on it.

Whatever happened to expecting a quality product for my money?

I think there would be much less *whining* if the game wasn't as strongly marketed at fans of the franchise who very much liked CivIV. This is "the big sloppy kiss" ( or whatever that infamous sentence was exactly ) syndrome that will just not go away. There was a lot of PR hinting at incremental development, nice complex gameplay and more of the old nice stuff, just better. There was a lot of spin and marketing people flying around promising bullshit in official capacity, and that's what makes people still bitter, so long after the release.

I'm pretty sure the reaction and aftermath would be completely different if the game was from the start presented honestly as a completely new take on the franchise.

But that would not sell as good, would it?

Whining my ass. Civ 5 sucks donkey balls.

Call a spade a spade.

Even if this turdpile was presented as a "whole new take on the franchise" it would still be a shitty game.

This as well. Taken apart from from its predecessors the game is okay, but not amazing. An honest attempt at something completely different. However, not what reviewers (I only have the PCGamer review close to hand right now) nor marketing promised.

If Firaxis wanted the game to be "taken apart from it's predecessors" it should have called it something else (like Civ rev II).

As things stand, this heap of garbage gets to be judged as a member of the Civ franchise.....and it's an Epic Fail on that standard.

If Firaxis wants my money, they can bloody well produce a game with fun gameplay, and not some shoddy crap with fancy graphics.

Funny reading how much people actually want to hate something. If the expansion fixes most/all of the problems then that's great. Also buying the game after they do that supports them doing so. If they don't fix all the problems then they don't and you can continue to ignore and look for other games.

I don't want to hate this game. I want to love it. I've been playing Civ since the days when I played Civ I on a greyscale laptop. But Civ V is sufficiently shitty that it will not see any of my money any day soon.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I have to point out that 90% of players can not beat EMP. That level is okay because the AI does not cheat outrageously. Throw in the fact that there are no other TBS ( @ element) games so Civ5 starts with a 7.0 out of ten and then the shinny graphics and obviously new features and you have at least an 8.0

If you are able to beat EMP or not will have such a big infulence that the reviewers would have to effectvily go with two scores-- they choose the easy way and went with the 90%.

I think the big problem is that everyone is underesimating how good their are. Game reviewers do not always give out high scores; see FF14.

[antisocialmunky]

I have to point out that 90% of players can not beat EMP. That level is okay because the AI does not cheat outrageously. Throw in the fact that there are no other TBS ( @ element) games so Civ5 starts with a 7.0 out of ten and then the shinny graphics and obviously new features and you have at least an 8.0

If you are able to beat EMP or not will have such a big infulence that the reviewers would have to effectvily go with two scores-- they choose the easy way and went with the 90%.

I think the big problem is that everyone is underesimating how good their are. Game reviewers do not always give out high scores; see FF14.

Paradox? Oh you mentioned graphics... I see.

[LKendter]

Wait and see on this.

I still don't like many of the other things such as paying per road tile. Civ4 was great as I stopped the debate if a library was worth in this city.

Civ5 went backwards for me and back to having debate every road?

[Rowain]

Constant whining? About a product that people have paid real money for? And are thoroughly disapointed in? There is a need to mock it so that we don't get handed this kind of garbage for our hard earned entertainment dollars ever again.

You are mistaking YOUR opinion (or those of the most people here ) for the opinion of all the buyers.

You see I still think WoW to be a shitty game with shitty graphics that destroyed a lot of what MMOs were before. Nevertheless a lot of peple enjoyed it enough to make it a huge success.

[Brian Shanahan]

You are mistaking YOUR opinion (or those of the most people here ) for the opinion of all the buyers.

I think you're confusing objective assessment for subjective opinion. By any objective measure you can apply, Civ 5 is a shitty game, not quite as shitty as some games, but pretty low down the barrel of rotten apples at the same time. Just because some (I don't consider 11k currently playing on a steam only game, with a daily peak of 29k {and these pretty consistenly even for the game over its life so far} to be many) people play it, and some small few continue to be vociferous in saying the like it, doesn't mean it is by any means good. To use a Godwin to make an analogy, lots of people did vote for Hitler without any coercion throughout his period as Reichkanzellor.