Civilization 5 Announced

[luddite]

Oh, and here's a good joke. There's a bug which makes it so research overflow doesn't count. So once they fix that bug, research will be even faster than it is now.

[Mr. Svinlesha]

Yeah, really nice write-up as usual, Sullla. You do a great job with those, and I always really enjoy reading them.

I think it's a shame you're so harsh on V, though. I agree with most of your criticisms, but I'm still finding the game to be fun and challenging....

It's just that, in some hard-to-put-your-finger on sense, this game isn't really Civilization. It's more like a some kind of fun "Civ clone," a sort of console version of Civ ported over to the PC. I've tried to figure out why it doesn't feel like Civ, and for me it comes down to:

1) Art Deco. Don't get me wrong, I like it and it's pretty. It's just, I mean...Art Deco?

2) No sliders. No possibility of flexibly managing your civilization or adjusting its various outputs to different situations or changing circumstances. I thought the core idea of Civ as a game is "managing an empire," am I wrong? One would expect that successive iterations of the game would evolve towards more and more managerial detail, not less. (There are of course lots managerial decisions to be made in Civ V, it's just that I'm kinda used to sliders -- they've been around since the beginning, haven't they?)

3) Lack of detailed in-game info. You point this out time and again: none of us even know what a Pact of Cooperation or a Pact of Secrecy actually does. You can't tell how your army stacks up against an opponent's prior to declaring war. No graphs. Etc, etc. For me, Civ is about micromanaging (or at least, having the opportunity to micromanage). In Civ IV, elite players micromanaged every single hammer and sheath of wheat. Think about the detail of info your R&D department was able to cull just from reading the charts during the Apolyton game. None of this info is available to the player in Civ V as far as I can tell.


Of course, not every iteration of Civ is going to hit the sweet spot the way Civ IV did, and there's something to be said for innovation, trying out new ideas and thinking out of the box, which I do think the developers of this version have done (in spades!) and I give them a lot of credit for that. I imagine that writing code for an "intelligent AI" is devilishly difficult (not to mention code for all the other stuff, getting game balance right, and so forth), so I cut them some slack.

Actually, I did want to address one point you've made in your write-ups a number of times now that I disagree with, which is your claim that Maritime CS's are overpowered. I don't quite know why, but you seem to have been unusually lucky with them. In the three or four games I've played thus far the map has only had two (or maybe three) Maritime states at all. In my last game for example there was only one such state on my entire starting continent, hostile to me and tucked in behind England about as far from my starting position as it could get. I was unable to establish alliance with a Maritime state at all until I had navigation and found one on the next continent, sitting next to France. Shortly after I established an alliance with it Napoleon declared war on it and gobbled it up, leading to war between us...

In my current game, same thing. Scarcity makes these states more strategically valuable and leads to some interesting game dynamics. I think you just have been unusually lucky in finding so many parked next to your civs in these games you've posted. (Or maybe I've just been unluck?)

Oh well. It's Saturday morning here in Sweden, so I'm gonna go play some Civ.

:catapult:



Catch ya later!

[Serdoa]

Regarding maritime city states I think it is not a question of being near them or not if they are overpowered. Because that should not matter. If it does matter (like in Civ5) then we can already conclude that they are overpowered.

[uberfish]

Yeah I sell luxuries to the AI a lot too. Especially when I'm OCCing and don't need them. Civ AI has never played the same game as the player on high difficulty levels anyway. I think CS are intentionally powerful because you can end up in bidding wars with the AI over them (or just have your investment negated by the AI conquering it). Really it should be a scaling or % bonus though. I like percentage, it makes sense that a city-state could supply you with better seeds that improve crop yields rather than shipping infinite quantities of seafood around the world pre-refrigeration.

I really probably will end up modding this game.

Diplomatically, the AI really hates city razing - take out one civ razing its cities and they'll all be calling you an evil warmonger. I think you are "supposed" to be puppeting the ones you don't want. The diplomatic system really suffers from the lack of transparency which civ4 had. Sure you get the leaders occasionally calling on you telling you they don't like what you're doing, but I want to know why China keeps asking for a pact of secrecy against Russia and what a pact of secrecy even does in the first place.

[pling]

Give SevenSpirits a cookie! I've found myself using the exact same tactic; this is the new tech trading, based around exploting city states instead of brokering techs. Here's something I wrote up that talks a little bit more about this (and sundry other things): http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/immortalegypt.html

As always your write-ups are interesting (and useful!) to read, Sullla - it's a shame you don't seem to be enjoying the game, tho. From reading this thread & your write-ups, I'm getting the impression that it's only coz I'm more at the casual-player end of the spectrum (persistent rather than good, if you see what I mean) that I'm having fun with the game :/

One thing I noticed in what you say that hasn't matched my experience:

Strangely though, you can only have one outgoing luxury of each type. I later had three sources of ivory, and after trading one source away to an AI, I could not send away my other excess luxury to anyone else.

I'm sure in one of my games I had 5 sources of Gems, and traded 4 away to different AIs simultaneously. Am I misunderstanding what you meant there? Or is it maybe difficulty level dependent (that game of mine was on Warlord, I'm really not a hardcore player )? I'm pretty sure you can't sell an AI something it already has & I'd thought that was the reason why some trades were possible & some not.

I also wonder if those Pacts of Co-operation are part of why everyone turned against you? Did you have one with Arabia when you declared on them? Which would make you a dirty back-stabbing traitor from the AI POV ... Not sure if that is how they work, but it was something I wondered from my own games

[DaveV]

Sullla,

Interesting read, as usual. I'm not sure whether you ever go back and edit these stories after you post them, but if so, I found this quote a little :

I was continuously deluded with requests for Pacts of Cooperation and Pacts of Secrecy, most of which I agreed to.

I imagine you meant "deluged".

[Adlain]

you know somthings wrong when i conqured russia in the 1700`s with 1 Musket and 1 cannon on Prince (4 cities) Granted i was Japan - but that is still far too easy - not to mention i fought off Germany`s whole army with 2 Infantry and a now much experiance cannon.

[Sullla]

Thanks for the suggestions; I also think it was the razing of cities that made the AI hate me. The notion of "army size ratio compared to size of civ" is also an interesting one - wonder if that one is true as well?

For me, the maddening thing is not losing games (who cares, it's Single Player) but being forced to guess what's really going on diplomatically through trial and error. I'm pretty irritated that Firaxis is making us jump through these hoops with Civ5. Why couldn't the diplomacy be more transparent? Sigh.

[spacemanmf]

It's just that, in some hard-to-put-your-finger on sense, this game isn't really Civilization. It's more like a some kind of fun "Civ clone," a sort of console version of Civ ported over to the PC.

Yeah, it's sort of in between Civilization: Revolutions and Civ 4. I played Civ Rev on the PS3, including some fun Saturday morning games with a couple of mates. But after a few weeks it just made me crave the precision and depth of Civ 4.

I think it is similar for Civ V. It's just a different game that, it seems, is not meant to stand up to the same deep scrutiny that Civ 4 was/did. It therefore must be aimed at the casual player.

Maybe I am all Civved out, but I am finding a bit boring and cumbersome (and almost craving the precision and depth of Civ 4) after just one game (which I have yet to finish).

I couldn't resist buying it, but I don't think I will be getting into it too much. (Probably a good thing - better to go out and enjoy the sunshine, etc.)

[luddite]

Thanks for the suggestions; I also think it was the razing of cities that made the AI hate me. The notion of "army size ratio compared to size of civ" is also an interesting one - wonder if that one is true as well?

Different AIs get mad at different things. These threads from CFC shine some light on the diplo system:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=385288
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=386065

Apparently Hiawatha really doesn't like it when you conquer cities. Other AIs don't care so much (I conquered and razed at least 10 cities in my last game, but Nobunaga never seemed to care at all.). And I guess signing research agreements and pacts of cooperation helps a lot, too.