Civ V: Presentation & Reception

[Heliocentric]

Stacks of doom got owned hard by siege weapons, stacks of siege weapons got owned by cav, omnistacks fail because the bottom falls out of your economy when a transport launches an amphibious assault on your back line.

In all honesty Civ 4 had rubbish ai too, that's where stacks arose from.

[PeteC]

The problem of Civ 5 is the streamlining of the tech-tree.

It is boring.


In every single Civ-game, I loved specializing, I loved the different abilities of the different cultures clashing, the different preferences, and even the trade between researching a dead-end technology for an immediate benefit, or planning long-term and hope that I will survive long enough for the race to the next technology breakthrough.

It was glorious.

Civ 5 is boring. Boring. Boring. The removal of dead-ends and the limitation to only three barely branching paths means that every civilization will, around mid-game, have exactly the same technological advances as everyone else on the map.

Boring.

Couldn't agree more. The Civ franchise has been one of my favourites but Civ V has been a let down for me. Civ IV was a hell of a timesink that would have me playing well into the early hours of the morning trying out new strategies. I'd use a cottage economy in one game, maybe focus on religion in another and perhaps get a specialist economy gong in another. All these would take me a different path down the tech tree and every game would play out differently depending on what victory I was going for, which economy I be trying out and who my neighbours were. Not so in Civ V. Every game feels the same.

I actually really liked Civ V for the first few games but it got stale very quickly as I'd be doing the same things every time, and as you say, we'd all have the same techs no matter what victory I was going for. There's a lack of strategy and far too much focus on warfare (the battles being one of the weak points of any Civ game).

It saddens me a little as this is the first in the series that makes me feel this way. I still hope they'll bring out a big expansion that will add more gameplay elements like Beyond the Sword did. Maybe that will make it interesting for me as the current DLC model they're using is pretty much useless to me. I'm hardly going to buy new civs to add to a game I no longer play.

[Heliocentric]

Sword of the stars tech tree.

And if you look carefully you'll see each race had only a certain percentage chance of having any technology, technological certainty isn't very exciting.

[PeteC]

Despite my gripes Civ V must be doing something right. It always seems to be in the top ten most played games on Steam.

[Heliocentric]

despite my gripes civ v must be doing something right. It always seems to be in the top ten most played games on steam.

one more turn

[Vexing Vision]

Don't get me wrong, I loved what Civ 5 did to the combat. Combat became interesting again, and hexagonal spaces had me extremely excited.

But just as PeteC says, it's fun for the first two games. And then you do the same thing over and over and over again. There is no real variety for gameplay of the different nations at all, past the first 50 turns.

Civ 5 is exciting on tiny maps which last no longer than 80 turns. But it is not even remotely as fun and as grand as any of its predecessors - at least to me, because I value replay-ability above everything else: Meaningful choices, several different winning tactics.

[Drinking with Skeletons]

Didn't mean to start a "Why Civ V is good or sucks" thread, but I'll bite.

I find Civ V to not be any more or less repetitive than Civ IV. The different powers make each civ quite different. Playing as Egypt or India creates a very different experience than playing as Mongolia or the Aztecs.

And the idea that the tech tree is always the same? My teching always begins by looking at nearby resources; the happiness from luxury resources is too important to ignore. After that, it's a matter of how I'm playing or how I need to play to respond to the other civs. If I'm trying to be aggressive and/or expansionistic, or am near an aggressive civ (or just want to keep a potentially tough civ like Japan from gaining much power) then rushing for iron is a smart move, either to build up a strong army for offense or defense or just to deny the resource to other nations. If I'm happy with how things look on the security front, I'll generally focus on research or culture, with some economic research thrown in to keep my coffers up. If I'm leaning on city states, the economy may take center stage with culture to supplement cultural city state bonuses. A high number of coastal cities may push me to get early harbors or gamble on colonizing another continent, a dicey proposition that can pay off big or be a big waste of time, research, productivity, and money.

Diplomatically, some leaders are warmongers and some pacifists, just like in Civ IV. They're a bit easier to keep at bay if you have a decent-sized army, however. Making declarations of friendships with civs can keep things calm, and I've noticed positioning makes a difference; if you're between two of your allies whose relationship is starting to degrade, your presence in the middle (and presumably the assumption that you are likely to back the defender) will tend to keep them from waging war. If you are a warmonger, your allies will take note and eventually gang up on you. Some might call that schizophrenic, but the fact of the matter is that in Civ you probably are going to turn against them sooner or later, so militaristic players who join up in diplomatic blocs are basically just creating alliances against themselves.

I'm not nearly good enough at Civ (can't consistently win at Prince level) to speak about the failings of the AI, but there aren't many strategy games that have truly effective AI. It doesn't seem any worse to me than Civ IV, so take that as you will.

[buemba]

Civ IV had Baba Yetu, Civ V does not. Therefore Civ IV is better than Civ V.

Also, in V can you ever gain cities by overwhelming them with the sheer power of your culture? I know you can still gain expanded borders, but I don't think I ever managed to convert an enemy's city to my side unless I attacked it.

[PeteC]

Civ IV had Baba Yetu, Civ V does not. Therefore Civ IV is better than Civ V.

Also, in V can you ever gain cities by overwhelming them with the sheer power of your culture? I know you can still gain expanded borders, but I don't think I ever managed to convert an enemy's city to my side unless I attacked it.

Nah, culture flipping cities over to your side has been done away with which is a shame. In fact the way culture worked in IV is another thing I prefer over V. Great Artists were a lot more fun to use.

But yeah, Baba Yetu was awesome. As was Leonard Nimoy. And the victory movies. And the way you could see what tiles were being worked without going into the city screen (smoke coming from the mines, plantations producing bananas and so on). and having a workable defense against nukes...etc, etc

[Heliocentric]

Great Artists were a lot more fun to use.

The culture nuke was awesome.
Find a developed but culturally impoverished enemy town, send a boat(s) with colonists are a few great artists and a little military protection.

Deploy the town, and then the artists in the town. Your 1 man towns boarders consume nearby enemy town and will even convert the cities defenders.

Even better deployed from fog of war, maybe on a nearby but tiny island.