Civilization 5 Announced

[HouHou]

Yes I have. I could never go back to stacks of doom. I could never go back to how the maps worked in Civ4. I could never go back to square tiles. Someone else may feel differently, and that's fine. Do I agree that Civ5 would benefit from more work? I do.

100% agree, especially concerning the maps. I played a start where the landmass split in two, and the only way to go from one mass to the other was through a marsh with a barbarian encampment right next to it. The whole "you shall not pass" vibe I got was awesome.

But even for absolute population size, Sulla's argument regarding the power of maritime city states might be correct. ...Having more cities has their own cost though, so yes, it's not that easy and more experience is needed. But factor in that there are other (sometimes luck dependant) ways to befriend city states which do not cost gold, and this could get broken fast. I admit I haven't crunched the numbers on that issue yet, but my gut feeling says that "food is king" in that sense as well.

I can go with this. But saying things like "might be correct" and "gut feeling" is a FAR cry from saying things are "ridiculously broken" and that the beta testers should be shot for their incompetence. If people really want to break, BREAK IT, don't theorycraft it.

Why not? A lot of the game mechanics and fundamental principles are known, so you can point out flaws in these mechanics using facts and logic. Feel free to prove me wrong.

OK. People are saying Civil Service is overpowered, and the Civil Service slingshot doubly so. I wanted a relaxing game, so I went down to Emperor difficulty with Ramsses. I got Stonehenge, GL + Civil Service. Easy victory right? Wrong. The barbs were owning me left and right .

In contrast, in my China immortal victory I didn't get Civil Service until something like ~0 ad. So no, I don't think Civil Service is really a great tech .

[Speaker]

Have you been to Gamestop lately? The PC gaming section is this tiny little thing in the back corner, where once it dominated the store. The market has moved to consoles, where the big boys are things like Playstation 3. With HDTVs now as good as monitors, and even the top consoles so much cheaper and simpler to deal with than a decked out gaming computer -- and a host of other reasons -- it is pretty rare for a title to be developed only for the PC these days. That's Civ5, though: it's a PC game, through and through.

There is a school of thought that says that balance is overrated. I'm not from this school, but it exists. Civ4 got a lot of emphasis on balance, but for Civ5 it's a different priority set. And from a business standpoint, there is logic to this. The game has to compete with all the other games out there, including the console market. It cannot sell only to veterans of the previous titles. There must be new customers attracted to the game and brought in if the franchise is to expand. This approach sacrifices the best interests of the hardcore fans for an effort to serve the needs of a wider audience set. Put another way, the emphasis is on being maximally friendly to and inviting to new players. And a lot of strides are in place in this direction: interface improvements, changes to some of the most complex or confusing elements of past Civ titles, and that sort of thing.
But if you have a list of complaints about the game, I'm not the one to take them to. Not my job, not a task I'm interested in taking up. This is my Civ community still (not "I own it" but "I am home here") as well as my Diablo community, and I will be looking to relax and play both games here with friends old and new. That's all.

Thanks for clearing this up, Sirian, and I'm glad that you are willing to lay all the cards out on the table. You will hear no more complaints from me about game balance. I don't like the design decision, but I do understand it, having recently visited a Gamestop to buy Starcraft 2, which took me about 10 minutes to actually find. With this philosophy in place, I definitely would not have enjoyed testing Civ5, and am glad I did not.

[sunrise089]

After Metroid: Other M's reception, I don't understand why you guys all say that video game websites are "advertisement-dependent".

Then again the Metroid series is in a different genre than the Civilization series and is less well known, too, so probably not the best comparison.

Ok, first "video game websites are 'advertisement-dependen.'" is a simple fact. Now we're also suggesting that they let their advertisers buy-off their reviewers, but that's a separate point.

Second, oh yes, the very poorly know Metroid series. I don't think people have paid attention to those games since the 8-bit era

EDIT: I reply to this silliness and miss Sirian's long reply

@Sirian - I won't go line by line since it's mean and we're coming from two different angles. I do think you could have done fine financially by selling to the Civ4 audience, since THAT game seemed to do fine financially. Aside from that, I remain disappointed by what I see as an insistence of defending the developers regardless of finished product, but you're right, listing complaints here won't fix that.

[Yazilliclick]

Nevermind

[Sullla]

I hate to disagree with Sirian, but I don't accept that line of argumentation. Believe me, I'm as sad as anyone to have watched the PC gaming sections shrink into virtual irrelevancy over the past decade. But to state, "game balance wasn't a priority, Civ5 has to appeal to new audiences"... it's a cop-out, a mere excuse. It's dodging the issue. There's no reason why you can't have a polished, balanced game that *ALSO* brings in new audiences, has a streamlined interface, etc. They are not mutually exclusive outcomes.

We know this because Civ4 was able to walk that line pretty successfully five years ago. Sure, there were some flaws on release (infinite anarchy exploit, settling on visible horses, etc.) but nothing like what we're seeing with Civ5. I can't tell you how many people I've found in real life circles, people who are not "serious gamers", who have told me they love Civ4 and found it easy to pick up and play. My friend's dad, who is in his 60s, raved about the game and wanted to know all about the development process. Civ4 was a huge commercial success, and it proves the lie that a game can't focus on both accessibility for newcomers and balance/polish for veterans. I do not accept that, and I am not accepting the excuses that others are making for the design team. (Please kindly compare the state of Civ4 MP and Civ5 MP on release for a good example.)

Leaving aside the issues with city states, there are a couple of other balance issues I've come across that you guys should be aware of:

- Upgrading units is extremely powerful, probably game-breakingly so. It's significantly cheaper to rushbuy a warrior and upgrade it to a swordsman than to rushbuy a swordsman. Given how expensive units cost in general, building cheap units and then upgrading them appears to be the way to go. I'm seeing other players doing a pseduo-Civ3 upgrade trick with warriors and chariots into swordsmen/horsemen with devastating effects. Plus every unit keeps all previous promotions (so an upgraded scout still has the terrain movement bonus) and there appears to be no loss of experience on upgrading. Upgrading units is more powerful than building them! I don't think that this was intended.

- Unit maintenance costs are really wonky at the moment, and there's no feedback on where or why the money is being lost. Individual units costing as much as 12 gpt, and completely irrelevant of the type, so everyone is deleting their workers en masse to save costs. Maybe this isn't broken, but it could use some reworking.

- Happiness does not scale by map type. This effectively breaks the game on Huge maps, as there are giant stretches of empty land that cannot be settled, because the happiness resources still provide the same value. Remember how corruption in Civ3 and maintenance in Civ4 were lowered on larger maps? There's no scaling in Civ5 at the moment.

It reflects how there are a lot of holes in this game at the moment. We can throw around words like "broken" or "design decision" as we wish; I just feel this game is very far from being polished right now. I believe that the design team should have caught a lot of this stuff while testing - how something like ROP rape slipped into the release version seems incredible. I'll try to stop harping on this, I just don't feel that the testers should get a free pass.

And yes, I would have no problem going back to Civ4 right now. That's coming from someone who could never have gone back to Civ1/2 after Civ3, and never gone back to Civ3 after Civ4. (I never did, actually, not even one game!)

[sunrise089]

Sullla, do scouts upgrade to combat units? If so that seems crazy-powerful if they keep their mobility promo.

[gingerbill]

- Upgrading units is extremely powerful, probably game-breakingly so. It's significantly cheaper to rushbuy a warrior and upgrade it to a swordsman than to rushbuy a swordsman. Given how expensive units cost in general, building cheap units and then upgrading them appears to be the way to go. I'm seeing other players doing a pseduo-Civ3 upgrade trick with warriors and chariots into swordsmen/horsemen with devastating effects. Plus every unit keeps all previous promotions (so an upgraded scout still has the terrain movement bonus) and there appears to be no loss of experience on upgrading. Upgrading units is more powerful than building them! I don't think that this was intended.

- Unit maintenance costs are really wonky at the moment, and there's no feedback on where or why the money is being lost. Individual units costing as much as 12 gpt, and completely irrelevant of the type, so everyone is deleting their workers en masse to save costs. Maybe this isn't broken, but it could use some reworking.

- Happiness does not scale by map type. This effectively breaks the game on Huge maps, as there are giant stretches of empty land that cannot be settled, because the happiness resources still provide the same value. Remember how corruption in Civ3 and maintenance in Civ4 were lowered on larger maps? There's no scaling in Civ5 at the moment.

See these are the type of complaints and problems that are worth hearing and help everyone if they are fixed. This is the type of complaint i would think anyone would agree is valid and good. But there are so mnay silly trivial complaints , and even loads of complaints that are just plain wrong.

I'm enjoying CIV5 and sirian is 100% correct that they have to attract new customers . Streamlining and making things simpler always scare the veteran players into thinking its automatically a bad thing . The CIV series needed that type of thinking from the devs , they took alot of chances on this game and i appluad them , they had the balls to try new things. I doont see how trying new things translates into 'not caring' . If the didnt care they would release the same old formula with a couple of changes. What they did was make a new game , fair play to them as they have tried something new.

There are alot of great new idea's in CIV5 , some of them are excellent and really improve the game but the haters just brush them aside. I think if firaxis do improve the AI with a patch and fix the major bugs then this will be a great CIV.

[scooter]

But there are so mnay silly trivial complaints , and even loads of complaints that are just plain wrong.

For instance?

I'm enjoying CIV5 and sirian is 100% correct that they have to attract new customers .

Attracting new customers at the cost of alienating series veterans is a losing proposition. A friend of mine who's never bought a Civ game before (RTS guy) recently asked me if he should buy Civ5 because he was thinking about it. I told him don't do it. Either spend his money on a different series or get the complete Civ4, but I told him not to get Civ5 at this point. The way to attract new customers is to release a solid game, which apparently hasn't happened yet.

[Krill]

MP is unplayable. Why? Because you can't tell which tiles your opponent has units on. The city name/production bit obscures most of the tiles around the city. And there is now helpful tooltip for what is on which tile.

Horsemen as 4 move units, with no double move timer meaning they can move from 8 tiles away...and spearmen generally don't do that well against them, but better than most other things. And ranged units, well, when you can kill without the need to use a melee attack in the early game all you need is 1 unit for ZoC defense and a billion archers behind to kill units from a distance. Bonus here is you never take any damage so you never need to heal, which takes ages when not in your land.

And the starts? In one game, I got 2 cotton and a dyes in first 2 rings, and 1 deer in the third ring that I had to buy tiles to get. Another player got 2 sugar, 2 deer, irrigated wheat, marble and horse in his inner 2 rings. Sirian...you said you were let loose on the map scripts. I take it that the casual gamers will enjoy getting the crap starts such as those? :rolleyes:

[Txurce]

And the starts? In one game, I got 2 cotton and a dyes in first 2 rings, and 1 deer in the third ring that I had to buy tiles to get. Another player got 2 sugar, 2 deer, irrigated wheat, marble and horse in his inner 2 rings. Sirian...you said you were let loose on the map scripts. I take it that the casual gamers will enjoy getting the crap starts such as those? :rolleyes:

I think Sirian said he worked on having most starts be good. Isn't that more fun as well as more balanced than the old occasional crap starts?

On a separate note, I was curious as to what any of the beta-testers thought was the real cause for something like ROP rape or unprotected workers during war slipping through the cracks (or sieves). It must have been noticed before, and it has been fixed now... so why wasn't it fixed earlier?

Serious responses only, as they used to say in the classifieds.