I agree with most of the critcisms about the game development. It seems to me that they did get lazy and didn’t bother with lot of detail or sufficient testing. And I agree with the linked article that selling small releases of new Civs is a bad business model.
There is a lot to like. There is also a lot that is disappointing.
heh- well that was interesting. I was playing as the Egyptians and having a war against Darius.
Darius had previously wiped out America. I just took New York and liberated it. I expected some gratitude from Washington. No way.
He denounced me next turn.
I don’t really get all the hate for Civ V. It is no more broken than IV was on release and IV got plenty of huge balance patches as well. It’s another case of people comparing a game with X-packs and balance patches against the sequel and forgetting how broken the previous one was on release day. Anyone remember how much III sucked? Now there was the rotten apple in the series.
Now a legit criticism is that V seemed to have been ‘streamlined’ too much and is almost a reboot trying to get new people in. That is always a bit insulting to long time fans of the series, but the patch seems to be making the game harder and so we’ll see after an X-pack or two where the series is going.
I can’t see any hate. I can see valid criticism.
And I think there is a flaw in the patch- at least I assume it is a flaw.
Construction of destroyers now depends on combustion rather than electricity. However, after electricity and before combustion you can no longer build frigates. You are stuck with either ironclads or caravels. Or any frigates you may have constructed beforehand.
When people say it’s ‘appalling’ that a major patch is released it’s pretty much hate. I’d have a hard time naming a strategy game that didn’t issue major tweaks after release. I can glance at my ‘strategy’ category on Steam and see a half a dozen games that have received similar huge patches. I mean this isn’t Elemental War of Magic broken where they’re rebuilding the entire game more or less.
I’m not saying it’s a great game or a perfect game. I’m saying that people just seem to be looking for an excuse to dislike it. Game goes unchanged? Why are they not updating it? It’s broken! Game gets changed? It’s been updated. They admit they made a terrible game!
I got my money out of it. I imagine most of the people posting in a thread about a patch at this stage probably did as well. After a few X-packs we can wait until 6 and go through the same cycle with whatever they changed for that and talk about how polished V was.
This is a much more drastic change than most strategy games ever receive, so it is somewhat unusual. I’m not a civ 5 basher though, I rather like the game. The worst parts to me are the way happiness works in regards to war and the way the cities end up feeling so samey. All the land ultimately comes out to be roughly equal for everything - in civ 4 you’d build a city somewhere and think “due to this location, this will be my cultural or trade or production powerhouse”, you’d put a lot of care into where you put cities and what they do - with civ 5 everything ends up being the same and you can just make every city into a generalist city because rarely does it matter that much.
But the combat is so, so much better and combat is a significant fraction of the game. The interface is good, some of the streamlining elements are good (I like the way golden ages and great people work for example).
I don’t know if they’re releasing big expansion packs in the future, I haven’t heard about it if they are. That’d give them the best chance to address the game’s flaws by adding new features.
There is never going to be an expansion pack. What you see, with the little $4.99 one-civ downloads and occasional patches, is all you’re ever going to get.
Is there official word to that extent anywhere? Seems like a bad business plan - previous civ games have a pretty good history with people buying their expansions. I wish shitty DLC wouldn’t infect every damn game out there.
Quoth RickJay:
Well, an aircraft carrier seems to be an aircraft carrier, and possibly the same for battleships (though either might still include implied screening units, I suppose).
And hexes are a step backwards, not forwards. The goal, basically, is to make circles look like circles. People look at hexagons vs. squares and think the hexes look better, but really, you need to go a little further than that. A square grid also has corner connections in addition to edge connections, which means that, if implemented correctly, your “circles” are octagons, not squares. Civ III implemented this partially, and IV got it fully right. Once they got it right in IV, there was no need to meddle with it further.
Squares suck. Moving diagonally is effectively being able to get 2 moves in certain directions. It’s inelegant and can be unbalancing in certain situations where diagonals can be used over straight lines.
Hexes move the same amount in every direction, and allow more units to border each other in a logical way. War games have been using hexes pretty much exclusive for as long as they’ve existed. They’re a vast improvement - going back to civ 4 and playing with the squares feels awkward.
That’s easily enough fixed by making a diagonal move cost 1.5 times as much as an orthogonal move. Which I’m pretty sure is the way Civ IV did it. That’s what I meant by “implemented correctly”.
Not really sure that works well with most units having 1 movement point per turn anyway, or even 2.
I’m not even sure what the case is for the square grid is that you’re willing to make compromises for. Hexes feel more intuitive and natural and just generally all around better IMO.
Getting a bit further into the game, it seems to have become even buggier ©.
As well as the difficulty with the frigates above, I have now encountered a few difficulties that I hadn’t seen prepatch.
Colours changed (the normal purple for “Adopt Policy” became brown) and I couldn’t get into the diplomacy screen- it kept giving me the Social Policies screen. I got out and reloaded and then one of my island cities which had a lighthouse was only getting one food resource for some of the sea tiles. This eventually corrected itself with me having to do nothing.
Also, although it has not been mentioned in the list, I think they may have corrected the railroad modifier. Previously I wouldn’t have to connect all mainland cities to get the modifier- I just had to have one city with a harbour connected by rail to the capital and any coastal city with a harbour automatically got the modifier. I think that may have changed.
I thought that was intended, how else would it work?
Thought what was intended?
Harbors connect railroads, otherwise you couldn’t get railroad bonuses on continents other than your capital.
I’ve never seen anything about what was intended, but I thought that harbour/rail/capital was the case for off shore cities. I don’t know if that was intended for cities on the same continent.
Anyway, from what I saw beofe, that was no longer happening for cities on the same continent. I had cities with a harbour etc but they weren’t getting the modifier. That may have just been a blip in that particular game though.
(I could check now but I know if I load a game I won’t get my housework done 
)
I don’t believe Civ IV did that, no. And as has been pointed out, no matter how many moves a unit has, that still wouldn’t really work. A unit with 1 move can still move further; a unit with 2 is stuck. No matter how you slice it, diagonal moves will be of different value than horizontal or vertical moves.
Civ 5, in my humble opinion, absolutely was right to go with hexes. It was a great idea.