Civilization V

[Telefrog]

I have this weird dysfunction with the Civ games. I’ll start a game and play it hardcore that day for hours. I’ll come back to it a day or two later and have no urge to continue. I’ll just start a new game. I think it is a combination of wanting to start my next game better and me enjoying the world discovery phase better then when everything has been uncovered and it bogs down into the diplomacy/wargame part. I rarely finish a Civ game. Although I must say that now that the stack of doom mechanic is gone I am enjoying the combat a lot more. Am I weird or do other people go through that, too?

You’re not alone. I go through full games to get each of the victories a couple of times, but after I’m satisfied, I usually just start games than let them hang in limbo.

The discovery/early phases of the game are my favorite parts of Civ.

[Benhur]

I have this weird dysfunction with the Civ games. I’ll start a game and play it hardcore that day for hours. I’ll come back to it a day or two later and have no urge to continue. I’ll just start a new game.

That’s exactly what I do. I’m at a point now where I’m about to hit the modern era in a 250+ turn game and all I want to do now is start a new game.

[JMR]

^^^^
Dude, I’m in the same boat as well. I just love to explore and and expand in the early game. Uncovering fogged tiles, attacking barbarian forts, initial contact with new civs, I just love that stuff. By the mid era and onward I my interest wanes as I merely click through the turns until I eventually halt that game and begin a new one. The neck beards may have an axe to grind but so far I feel satisfied with my purchase.

[Jason_McCullough]

I guess the answer is to program an AI that can challenge a guy who’s spent thousands of hours playing and writing about it. Are you listening, Jon Shafer?!

I should elaborate: the (apparently?) bad AI is only one issue, it’s not fatal. It’s all the other annoying shit that makes me want to wait a while - road system mechanic problems, maritime food strangeness, end of turn slowness, the giant-step-backwards interface.

Sure, the baseline here is a bit high - how incredibly good and polished Civilization 4 got with all the expansions and patches. But, uh, why would you release a sequel that ignored half of that? Most of the stuff mentioned has nothing to do with a casual focus.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

This is despite me having a fairly fancy and recent Quad Core processor.

Running the game is going to use all the cores, but the AI itself is unlikely be multithreaded, and thus is limited to one core. It’s not impossible to make use of muliple cores in an AI (see my earlier comments about pathfinding for multiple objects), but it’s rarely done. Given how relatively unsophisticated the tactical AI appears to be, I sincerely doubt they even looked into this.

[Blackadar]

I should elaborate: the (apparently?) bad AI is only one issue, it’s not fatal. It’s all the other annoying shit that makes me want to wait a while - road system mechanic problems, maritime food strangeness, end of turn slowness, the giant-step-backwards interface.

Sure, the baseline here is a bit high - how incredibly good and polished Civilization 4 got with all the expansions and patches. But, uh, why would you release a sequel that ignored half of that? Most of the stuff mentioned has nothing to do with a casual focus.

Sorry Jason, maybe I missed something in this 100+ page monstrosity of a thread, but what are you talking about?

1. What’s wrong with road maintenance? It’s not hard to understand and requires you to really consider your strategy (and budget). It also makes harbors one of the most important buildings in the game.

2. What maritime food strangeness?

3. I see that some are talking about end of turn slowness, but on my 3 year old PC with 2G of RAM I’m not seeing any more than perhaps 10 seconds per turn on standard sized maps. What sized maps are you playing on and how slow is it?

4. As for the interface, I guess that’s to each his/her own. I think it’s a vast improvement over prior TBS games, even if it needs a couple additional 2nd tier info screens.

So for #1-#3 above, can you explain further?

[Gus_Smedstad1]

1. What’s wrong with road maintenance? It’s not hard to understand and requires you to really consider your strategy (and budget). It also makes harbors one of the most important buildings in the game.

In earlier games, it was typical to build a road network which let you take advantage of interior lines. This is prohibitively expensive in Civ V. Railroads are worse.

This would be more of an issue if the AI players were more of a threat. As it stands, you can pretty much not worry about having a defensive army if you’re large enough to worry about road speeds.

2. What maritime food strangeness?

Maritime city states provide up to +3 food per city, per city state, and +5 in your capital. A single city state can provide your empire with 30+ food if you’re large. The bonuses stack, so the per-city benefit gets absolutely amazing when you have 3-4 maritime allies.

Personally, I enjoy it, but it’s true that in a game that is extremely stingy with bonuses (+15% hammers from a windmill oh boy oh boy), it stands out.

[Blackadar]

In earlier games, it was typical to build a road network which let you take advantage of interior lines. This is prohibitively expensive in Civ V. Railroads are worse.

This would be more of an issue if the AI players were more of a threat. As it stands, you can pretty much not worry about having a defensive army if you’re large enough to worry about road speeds.

Yeah, but this was very much gaming the system in Civ IV IMO. You could get pretty much anywhere in your empire in short order with road spam, encouraging yet more of the killer stack mentality.

Now, you plan your road network to maximize your defense capabilities. Much like the Romans and the US Highway system.

Personally, I’m glad to see the end of the road spam. In fact, I’ve found myself taking out roads to reduce expenses a couple of times, even if it hinders my defensive capabilities somewhat. I love that it adds another tactical consideration rather than just the usual ugly road spam of past Civ games. For example, if you push your units close to the border, you’ll piss off your neighbors. But if you keep them back somewhat, you’re taking a risk that you can’t push them up fast enough to react to an attack. So you have to strike a balance. I think that’s a great improvement over mindlessly building roads on everything.

Maritime city states provide up to +3 food per city, per city state, and +5 in your capital. A single city state can provide your empire with 30+ food if you’re large. The bonuses stack, so the per-city benefit gets absolutely amazing when you have 3-4 maritime allies.

Personally, I enjoy it, but it’s true that in a game that is extremely stingy with bonuses (+15% hammers from a windmill oh boy oh boy), it stands out.

But that’s both a positive and a negative. First of all, you had to spend the money to get status with that city-state, which isn’t cheap. Secondly, more food = more population = more unhappiness. What it really allows you to do is to convert your cities to production/gold output rather than food output. But if you’re not careful, that extra food will hurt your civilization and not help it. It’s a mighty big bonus, but it’s also a double-edged sword. Or am I misunderstanding something?

[Sir_Digby]

^^^^
Dude, I’m in the same boat as well. I just love to explore and and expand in the early game. Uncovering fogged tiles, attacking barbarian forts, initial contact with new civs, I just love that stuff. By the mid era and onward I my interest wanes as I merely click through the turns until I eventually halt that game and begin a new one. The neck beards may have an axe to grind but so far I feel satisfied with my purchase.

Same here, I really dig the game up to the Renaissance, once I hit the Industrial Age it becomes a chore and I end up making a new game.

You guys know what that means, right? We need a mod. :D

[razarok]

How do ‘great person’ generals work?

The tooltip says that my general increases nerby units attack.

What is nearby? Next hex over, or does the general need to stand in the same hex as the affected unit?

[James_Johnson]

I have this weird dysfunction with the Civ games. I’ll start a game and play it hardcore that day for hours. I’ll come back to it a day or two later and have no urge to continue. I’ll just start a new game. I think it is a combination of wanting to start my next game better and me enjoying the world discovery phase better then when everything has been uncovered and it bogs down into the diplomacy/wargame part.

Oh, I’m with you there too. I played Civ5 for 40 hours last week according to Steam (I was up very, very late – well beyond quarter to three) and haven’t touched it this week other than to see how viable a one-city Cultural victory via a super-warlike Aztecs is on difficulty 6 (answer: really depends on your starting goodie huts).

So far I’ve done the Conquer + Grease Citystate Hands + Liberate a defeated Civ to win via the UN and a three-city Bollywood Cultural win with Gandhi. My remaining goals are a one-city cultural and a science win, as I want to play around with those playstyles so I don’t keep winning the game at the last minute (2040 on Epic both times, which means about 20 turns left).

[James_Johnson]

How do ‘great person’ generals work?

The tooltip says that my general increases nerby units attack.

What is nearby? Next hex over, or does the general need to stand in the same hex as the affected unit?

It’s a radius of two hexes, I think.

[Balasarius]

Also, whats up with imageshack? It was ocne so easy and simple to upload stuff. Now I get “you are not registered” popups, and some links only link to reduced size pictures you have to click again…

Use imgur. It’s like 100X better. It can, however, be slow at times due to its popularity.

[Dan_Theman]

It’s a radius of two hexes, I think.

Yep, two hexes.

Of note, be sure to camp your general with a unit, lest he be caught unawares by a roving band of barbarians.

[Jason_McCullough]

Sorry Jason, maybe I missed something in this 100+ page monstrosity of a thread, but what are you talking about?

This linked previously does a good job describing it; there’s a lot of core stuff in the game that smells like half-baked mechanics. On the road systems, maintenance and cost is fine, that’s not what I was talking about:

I’ve moved on now from Sidon to Thebes, where the entire Egpytian military consists of one warrior and one scout. Ummm… I guess that ranking list from earlier was correct! The one unit per tile mechanics work pretty well, aside from the giant caveat that the AI has no idea how to use them right now. Unfortunately it opens up some Civ3 silliness once again, such as unit blockades in neutral territory. Better be careful about signing Open Borders with the AI civs, because they will walk on your road network, and then you can’t use your own roads! That really feels like a step backwards to me. I also think that the restriction of one worker per tile is silly; there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to pair up workers if I think it’s best. If I want to run the risk of having 4 workers on the same tile get captured, why not? The rule should be one COMBAT unit per tile, which achieves the desired goal of the designers without running into some of the tedious micromanagement issues with workers right now. (Workers cannot pass one another on a road if one is improving a tile, for example, which is really silly.)

Did they actually announce making the game more accessible/casual as a goal? I’ll be damned if I can see it, other than the advice popups.

[pg1]

I’m mostly played out with it after about 4-5 full games. I suspect after patches and expansions or maybe mods it’ll see a lot more play from me. I love a lot of the changes but it is really a mixed bag for long term play for me anyways. I like the focus on forcing less cities and units but maps just feel wrong when large parts of them are unsettled. That doesn’t feel like civilization at all. Love to see a mod which let cities use even more tiles and spread faster and farther. I think Sulla made a lot of good points and obviously observed a few things that should be fixed for sure. The pop up on what do with cities from a peace treaty needs fixing. The key to beating the AI seems to be getting many city states allied (the AI doesn’t seem to really do this nearly as much) and beating the AI in wars. Both of those the AI seems terrible at and are what I feel the two most important parts of the game.

I also love the early game and exploration partly because everything is unknown at that point. It is also because I could maybe lose the game still. After the turns start rolling in it becomes pretty obvious I’ll win or don’t have any real threats. And yeah the amount of time it takes between turns is odd especially at the start of the game. The only time Civ 4 starts to chug is when I’m playing some giant map with lots of cities and millions of AI units running all over the place.

[barstein]

Hah, put me in the same club with Ninyu, Benhur, JMR, Sir Digby and James Johnson. Did this with Civ IV a lot and when I started doing it with Civ V, I really began to wonder if there was something wrong with me. We need a mod indeed! (But what would that mod do, exactly?)

[Blackadar]

This linked previously does a good job describing it; there’s a lot of core stuff in the game that smells like half-baked mechanics. On the road systems, maintenance and cost is fine, that’s not what I was talking about:

That seems really, really nitpicky. But okay…

[roBurky]

This linked previously does a good job describing it; there’s a lot of core stuff in the game that smells like half-baked mechanics.

I read that American Empire article, and the guy seemed to be enjoying his game all the way through, even if he likes to complain that things are different to how they used to be.

[Hans_Lauring]

Me, I like Civ 5. It certainly seems like Civilization to me. Sure, there are a few things I miss from Civ 4 – I kinda liked religion, and while I didn’t love health, I did like having resources of more “flavors” than what we have in Civ 5. But these omissions are more than compensated for by new features that I would really miss if I went back to Civ 4 now: city-states, social policies, hexes, one-unit-per-tile, the ability to “purchase” new city tiles.

In particular, Civ5 has that same “multiple ongoing projects” feel that keeps me up for “just one more turn.” What addicts me is that I’ve got several tasks I’m trying to accomplish at once, and I delude myself into thinking that I will stay awake just long enough to see the outcome of ONLY one. So I stay up a few more minutes to see what happens with X – but by the time X is resolved, I’m wondering what’s going to happen with Y and Z. Civ5 still has that multifaceted gameplay: constructing tile improvements, building Wonders and buildings, commissioning units, choosing research, fighting wars, engaging in diplomacy, bribing city-states, buying new city tiles, fussing with specialists, plotting grand strategy. In Civ 5, as with all its predecessors, any one of those things will keep me going for just one more turn.

This is exactly how I feel.
Civ V isn’t perfect and I miss some things from Civ IV as well as there’s things that seem a bit too streamlined (that I hope an expansion will build on), but the things you mention are things I like so much, I’d loathe to just go back and play IV.

Your last paragraphs also explains very well why Civilization V retains the core of being a Civ game and why I don’t seem to be getting enough sleep these days.

Personally, I’m glad to see the end of the road spam. In fact, I’ve found myself taking out roads to reduce expenses a couple of times, even if it hinders my defensive capabilities somewhat. I love that it adds another tactical consideration rather than just the usual ugly road spam of past Civ games. For example, if you push your units close to the border, you’ll piss off your neighbors. But if you keep them back somewhat, you’re taking a risk that you can’t push them up fast enough to react to an attack. So you have to strike a balance. I think that’s a great improvement over mindlessly building roads on everything.

But that’s both a positive and a negative. First of all, you had to spend the money to get status with that city-state, which isn’t cheap. Secondly, more food = more population = more unhappiness. What it really allows you to do is to convert your cities to production/gold output rather than food output. But if you’re not careful, that extra food will hurt your civilization and not help it. It’s a mighty big bonus, but it’s also a double-edged sword. Or am I misunderstanding something?

No, that is exactly right. Road spam in previous Civs was ugly and gamey and this works better. I’m glad I don’t have a million late game workers covering mu entire empire first in roads then railroads - that it is a bit silly that some units can’t pass each other is something they could work on.

It sounds like Jason isn’t dropping the game after playing it, but dicounting it based on a handful of vocal critics. His loss.