Civilization 5 Announced

[Zed-F]

Sirian, I remember very well what a mess Civ3 was when it released. I find it unacceptable that a game releasing nine years later, from the same studio, would allow themselves to repeat such a sloppy, unpolished game... especially since Civ5 literally reintroduces the exact same exploits which were corrected in the Civ3 patching process. (I mean, ROP rape? Buying cities for gold? Come on.) Look, I don't want to slam the testing group, but it doesn't look like Firaxis learned anything from their own past releases in this series - and no, that's not good enough!

Perhaps not -- perhaps Firaxis should be somewhat (or a lot) embarrassed at the state they released the game in. Would they have preferred to fix the game up more before releasing it, given the opportunity? Very likely; I don't know any developers who are happy to release buggy and incomplete code. But they had a window in which their game needed to be released, and so released it was. Whether that was a result of poor project management or something else, it's water under the bridge. Yes it is less than ideal, but it's the way things are, so we have little choice but to deal with the situation as it stands (for the moment) and hope for a better future for the game.

You cast your vote when you bought the game. You cannot now un-cast it. The only thing you can do, if the game really disappoints you that much and continues to disappoint as patches are released -- i.e. you don't see incremental improvement -- is to vote next time Firaxis offers an opportunity by declining to purchase their product.

The reason I bring up this fairly obvious point is that I'm starting to hear a little more negativism than I would have expected from one of the leaders of the Civ community here. Accepting that the game is not as fun as you would like, you have dived into the game mechanics to find out why and what sorts of problems need to be changed. So fine, many changes are needed, and this has been in some sense acknowledged. You've said you're not sure the problems can be solved without a complete economy rewrite, but you are not the game's developer and they may have ideas and resources you don't. Are you going to give them a chance to fix it, or are you going to walk away?

Think about what my one rules change suggestion above would do for the current state of the game. With the right updates, the future could be very bright for Civ5, even for some of its worst critics.

The latter is what I'm hoping for, and I'm willing to be patient -- I haven't yet bought the game, I haven't yet cast my vote -- so taking a wait and see approach is very appropriate in my case. I don't want what Civ5 is right now, but the reduced micromanagement compared to Civ3-4 is up my alley and I am still open to the possibility of purchasing the game when it has been spruced up (but not before.)

[v8mark]

Perhaps not -- perhaps Firaxis should be somewhat (or a lot) embarrassed at the state they released the game in. Would they have preferred to fix the game up more before releasing it, given the opportunity? Very likely; I don't know any developers who are happy to release buggy and incomplete code. But they had a window in which their game needed to be released, and so released it was. Whether that was a result of poor project management or something else, it's water under the bridge. Yes it is less than ideal, but it's the way things are, so we have little choice but to deal with the situation as it stands (for the moment) and hope for a better future for the game.

You cast your vote when you bought the game. You cannot now un-cast it. The only thing you can do, if the game really disappoints you that much and continues to disappoint as patches are released -- i.e. you don't see incremental improvement -- is to vote next time Firaxis offers an opportunity by declining to purchase their product.

The reason I bring up this fairly obvious point is that I'm starting to hear a little more negativism than I would have expected from one of the leaders of the Civ community here. Accepting that the game is not as fun as you would like, you have dived into the game mechanics to find out why and what sorts of problems need to be changed. So fine, many changes are needed, and this has been in some sense acknowledged. You've said you're not sure the problems can be solved without a complete economy rewrite, but you are not the game's developer and they may have ideas and resources you don't. Are you going to give them a chance to fix it, or are you going to walk away?

I think this is unnecessarily confrontational. Criticising something that does not meet expectations is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, especially when the arguments are thought through and fair, which is something the RB community prides itself on. From what I've seen of Civ5 so far, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect better than this from the Civilization franchise.

If a game is not fun, it is not fun. That's all there is to it - it isn't a moral test, where those who are enjoying the game are the good, positive, virtuous, trusting people, while those who whine and criticise are doing it for their own sake. It's just that, clearly, the game isn't fun, and that's the message that whoever's posting wants to get across.

The fact that people then come on to attack not the argument but the poster and speak in pointless platitudes ("What game is released in its finished state these days?", "you're just unhappy that it's changed from Civ4, go back and play that", "I don't think the game's been dumbed down - after all, simple things can be more complex; look at chess") just descends things into a flame war, and no-one gets anywhere. CFC is full of those type of posts right now, which makes it all but unreadable. I'm pleased RB isn't like that, because it's just about the only place that isn't.

[Adlain]

Perhaps not -- perhaps Firaxis should be somewhat (or a lot) embarrassed at the state they released the game in. Would they have preferred to fix the game up more before releasing it, given the opportunity? Very likely; I don't know any developers who are happy to release buggy and incomplete code. But they had a window in which their game needed to be released, and so released it was. Whether that was a result of poor project management or something else, it's water under the bridge. Yes it is less than ideal, but it's the way things are, so we have little choice but to deal with the situation as it stands (for the moment) and hope for a better future for the game.

You cast your vote when you bought the game. You cannot now un-cast it. The only thing you can do, if the game really disappoints you that much and continues to disappoint as patches are released -- i.e. you don't see incremental improvement -- is to vote next time Firaxis offers an opportunity by declining to purchase their product.

The reason I bring up this fairly obvious point is that I'm starting to hear a little more negativism than I would have expected from one of the leaders of the Civ community here. Accepting that the game is not as fun as you would like, you have dived into the game mechanics to find out why and what sorts of problems need to be changed. So fine, many changes are needed, and this has been in some sense acknowledged. You've said you're not sure the problems can be solved without a complete economy rewrite, but you are not the game's developer and they may have ideas and resources you don't. Are you going to give them a chance to fix it, or are you going to walk away?


The latter is what I'm hoping for, and I'm willing to be patient -- I haven't yet bought the game, I haven't yet cast my vote -- so taking a wait and see approach is very appropriate in my case. I don't want what Civ5 is right now, but the reduced micromanagement compared to Civ3-4 is up my alley and I am still open to the possibility of purchasing the game when it has been spruced up (but not before.)

I think this is unnecessarily confrontational. Criticising something that does not meet expectations is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, especially when the arguments are thought through and fair, which is something the RB community prides itself on. From what I've seen of Civ5 so far, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect better than this from the Civilization franchise.

If a game is not fun, it is not fun. That's all there is to it - it isn't a moral test, where those who are enjoying the game are the good, positive, virtuous, trusting people, while those who whine and criticise are doing it for their own sake. It's just that, clearly, the game isn't fun, and that's the message that whoever's posting wants to get across.

The fact that people then come on to attack not the argument but the poster and speak in pointless platitudes ("What game is released in its finished state these days?", "you're just unhappy that it's changed from Civ4, go back and play that", "I don't think the game's been dumbed down - after all, simple things can be more complex; look at chess") just descends things into a flame war, and no-one gets anywhere. CFC is full of those type of posts right now, which makes it all but unreadable. I'm pleased RB isn't like that, because it's just about the only place that isn't.

I agree with what v8 said, also why should sullla be held to a higher standard than anyone else?? Yes he is highly regarded within the civ community and somone who reports and comments may carry more weight than others - but he is also a paying customer and allowed to voice his critisims in a constructive mannor (as he has done and is doing) if he so wishes. Ffs it's attitudes like "but he's a leader of the community so cannot speak his mind occasionally" that make people not want to contribute to the said communities in the first place IMHO.

[Pandajuice]

Agreed with V8 and Adlain. Sullla is just a person like anyone else, and in fact, I trust his opinion about Civ more than anyone else's because of the work he has done over the last 10 years and his vast experience with the games. His glowing feelings about Civ4 and his wonderful reports made me want to play that game, but conversely his criticisms about Civ5 and audible frustrations in his reports make me not want to play this one, which I greatly appreciate because I'd be pretty angry at spending $50 for a game that seems as broken as this one currently is. Saying he should keep his mouth buttoned simply because he's a pillar of the community is insane when many of us look to him (and others) for their valued opinions.

What frustrates me about this whole thing, and going back to what Sullla alluded to in his last post, is that they had the formula all but perfected in Civ4. Many people would find themselves hard pressed to criticize the balance and design of that game in any way, so it's totally bonkers that they have seemingly started from scratch having completely forgotten about what previously worked and what didn't. Why were such fundamental game mechanics changed with no thought given to potential exploits or balance issues? Did they not once go back to Civ4 and think about those formulas? I'm baffled.

[uberfish]

The underlying problem with ICS in civ 5 is it's completely unintuitive (and thus bad design) that deliberately keeping cities small when they have the means to grow would be a good idea in a game of empire building, any solution needs to address that. What if colosseums were based off a percentage of the number of citizens rather than a flat +4?

[Zherak_Khan]

Sullla isn't just a person like everybody else. He is somebody who quite obviously loves the Civilization series and has invested an unusual amount of time in it and been rewarded with many a fun game. He's a person who has given the RB community countless of great scenarios to play. I think his dissappointment is understandable, though I probably should not try to speak too much for him.

Particularly, it is important to see where his criticisms are coming from! It is quite different to dislike some of their implementations or wishing the game had more interesting visuals or finding 1UPT focuses too much time on combat and so on and so forth. All of these are essentially matters of opinion. He's most vehemently criticizing all the outright nonsense bugs in the game which he can find on his first three playthroughs of the game and abuses which the longtime members of the Civ-community remember from god knows which Civilization (3? 2? 1!?). Venturing into uncharted territories and stepping wrong is understandable and excuseable, that's what happens. Design decisions have unforeseeable consequences. For instance, the broken ICS is not one of the things I most strongly criticize Firaxis for. Crazy diplomacy is in my opinion a poor choice, but it is understandable. What really irks me are:

- outright bugs obvious from less than 5 playthroughs and can be expected to crop up in most any game (research pacts, infinite horses)
- incredibly poor documentation (gives a boost? what kind? when the Aztecs get 3 culture per kill, you actually mean half the unit's strength? and by +2 science per trading post, you mean 1? and the Sidney Opera House requires a coastal city?), again not particular examples but typical of the game as a whole
- ridiculous balance issues (War Chariot -> Knight from Ancient Ruins, I gave him Blitz and he single handedly conquered the whole world (Continents!) in an Immortal (!) game. I kid you not, he captures a capital in a single turn.

These aren't minor oversights. This is a high school student who has copied and pasted together his paper from different sources and never read it through, and when you correct it you find not minor typographical errors, but there are entire paragraphs which are out of context, sentences lacking verbs and the thing as a whole doesn't communicate anything. You aren't angry that he's unintelligent or a poor writer, you are angry because he's not been bothered to go back and read through his own text one single time before handing it in. Because he's lazy.

Somehow, I get more angry writing this and it seeps into my post. Sorry if the tone is excessive.

Regarding the opening movie: I hoped that was just the game's way of enteraining you while loading the game, after all we've seen in in Civ1 and Col1. But I'm positive that the loading time is now less than 15 seconds, and that it earlier took more than 1 minute. Maybe you had to press ESC after it was done loading while it was still playing the movie? I have no idea. .ini-edits helped me at least. (Why does it take so long time to load a simple menu? Why not delay the worst of the loading to stack it up with the map generation, so I can do a set of push-ups meanwhile?)


PS: The only simple way to solve ICS as-is is having the unhappiness per city be linear, as in 0 + 0.5*cities, instead of a flat 2, which draws about even at 8 cities. It is not a good solution, though.

[Kylearan]

Venturing into uncharted territories and stepping wrong is understandable and excuseable, that's what happens. Design decisions have unforeseeable consequences. For instance, the broken ICS is not one of the things I most strongly criticize Firaxis for. Crazy diplomacy is in my opinion a poor choice, but it is understandable. What really irks me are:

- outright bugs obvious from less than 5 playthroughs and can be expected to crop up in most any game (research pacts, infinite horses)
- incredibly poor documentation (gives a boost? what kind? when the Aztecs get 3 culture per kill, you actually mean half the unit's strength? and by +2 science per trading post, you mean 1? and the Sidney Opera House requires a coastal city?), again not particular examples but typical of the game as a whole
- ridiculous balance issues (War Chariot -> Knight from Ancient Ruins, I gave him Blitz and he single handedly conquered the whole world (Continents!) in an Immortal (!) game. I kid you not, he captures a capital in a single turn.

These aren't minor oversights. This is a high school student who has copied and pasted together his paper from different sources and never read it through, and when you correct it you find not minor typographical errors, but there are entire paragraphs which are out of context, sentences lacking verbs and the thing as a whole doesn't communicate anything. You aren't angry that he's unintelligent or a poor writer, you are angry because he's not been bothered to go back and read through his own text one single time before handing it in. Because he's lazy.

Thanks, that sums up my feelings towards Civ V very well. I still like the game and have fun, but thinking about the obvious mistakes they failed to notice and lessons from previous Civs they ignored makes me angry. (And as someone who also teaches students at university, I like and can relate to your analogy. )

[luddite]

Incoming balance changes announced!



No seriously, they announced the current changelist for the next patch (date still unknown) and it fixes several important bugs. I just thought it was pretty funny that that was apparently the one critical balance change that made it in. Good news everyone! Now, as your infinite cityscape stretches out to the horizon, your horsemen burn all that lies in their path, your enemies run around like beheaded chickens who will pay whatever it takes for the latest luxury fashions, and half your empire's food is supplied by glorified fishing villages... now, instead of never hiring a 1-hammer specialist, you can never hire a 2-hammer specialist instead.

hahaha your description of the patch is great.

I'm sure they'll work hard to try and "balance" the game, but like others have said, most of the major problems are not things that can be solved by tweaking numbers. Things like:
-happiness is generated locally but consumed globally. Lots of SPs give a per-city bonus, and cities also claim extra land. Basic buildings more effective than advanced buildings. All of these lead to ICS, regardless of numbers
-1UPT plus deity bonuses plus typical civ map scale. 1 unit per tile quickly becomes 1 unit on EVERY tile. I can beat deity but it is extremely tedious.
-turn based gameplay, while giving some units the ability to attack and run away or attack at range (basically the same thing). These units are extremely powerful compared to "normal" units. So horsemen conquer all.

The only way I can see to address all of this is to scrap 1UPT, and remove global happiness. Let each city grow to as high as its happiness limit. ICS will be removed simply because it's more powerful to have a few large cities rather than many small cities, whereas now you can have both.

[v8mark]

The only way I can see to address all of this is to scrap 1UPT, and remove global happiness. Let each city grow to as high as its happiness limit. ICS will be removed simply because it's more powerful to have a few large cities rather than many small cities, whereas now you can have both.

In essence, the solution is to make Civ4 again then!

[luddite]

In essence, the solution is to make Civ4 again then!

Brilliant argument! I've never heard that before ever when someone tried to criticie civ 5!