Well, sure, if you don’t care what words mean. But I happen to think that’s an important part of having a conversation.
When we say Civ 5 is “broken”, we mean that an important part of it doesn’t work as intended. That’s pretty different from “unplayable”. But by all means, knock yourself out searching the thread for people calling it “unplayable”. I’m sure most of us who don’t play Civ 5 will happily disagree with them. We can probably even find some statistics on Steam to make a case that the game isn’t “unplayable”.
-Tom
Yup. Playing the game wrong and also having trouble understanding words.
Your condescending tone never really gives me the idea that you’re terribly interested in any kind of conversation on issues where your mind is pretty much set.
But since the AI didn’t significantly change in the last patch, there’s really nothing new to discuss that haven’t already been covered. I’ll just let you rant on in your boat.
The aesthetics of Civ V easily surpass Civ IV, (and would do so unconditionally were it not for Baba Yetu), and the game does a fine job with it’s musical scores and clean art-deco UI style.
Even Civ IV is something of a step sideways from the government choices in Civ III and a step backward from the policies of Alpha Centauri. The Civ Rev style of single tile based culture creep is an interesting addition to the series, even if it perhaps doesn’t quite work as well in practice.
Civ V’s system seem geared to constrain, where Civ IV refinements would make Goldilocks proud, but Civ V’s issues are encompassed by AI problems alone; nor is the sum of it’s accomplishments zeroed out by an AI that lacks the ability to deal with a one-unit per tile system, imo.
I’m not sure how you figure I’m ranting. My point was very simply that no one is calling Civ V is unplayable. Your weird issues with my “tone” don’t really have anything to do with that fact. The game is perfectly playable for a lot of folks, even though some of us also feel it’s broken.
In other words, you don’t need to invent problems about the game that no one claims it has.
-Tom
If it came across that way, I apologize to Chris and anyone else who took it that way; I should know from experience that tone isn’t conveyed properly on the net and sarcasm can sometimes be the worst. If the conclusion itself had changed since the original, I had missed it while I was responding to specific points made in replies while referencing the original post. I’ll accept that we all don’t see eye-to-eye on the use of the stats and the original conclusion and leave it at that.
Oh, what do you know. I only had to go one page back.
Perhaps I’m not the one willfully misrepresenting what the other side is saying.
If I’m doing it by accident, that’s another matter and I’d apologize for that. I agree when Rezaf and others say that we simply just want different things from the game. But like Rywill I take offense at the tone in some posts and the suggestion that those still enjoying the game simply just want a pretty sandbox.
Hans, reading comprehension. Get some. Alstein isn’t saying the game is unplayable. He’s saying – somewhat awkwardly – some folks don’t want to play it. In fact, if you’d care to read his actual post instead of just hitting CTL+F and typing “unplayable”, you’d find something other than the slight you’re so anxious to perceive.
In fact, it’s funny that he was responding to you insisting that you didn’t think the AI was fine. You want other people to understand your position, but you have no qualms mischaracterizing someone else’s position. The internet’s a hell of a thing, man.
-Tom
Not to derail the “conversation” too much, but I gave a couple of tiny Emperor games a go earlier today and was surprised how much the game has changed (although if I followed the patch notes I shouldn’t have been surprised that the opening has changed completely). I’ve yet to try a King game, but I think I might be knocked down a notch by the latest patch. The Emperor AI keeps a good expansion and tech pace with their bonus and they manage their armies well enough (artillery in back, horsemen and combined arms to stop any one unit steamroll) that I can’t completely negate their bonuses with better maneuvering.
In other words, what do you have to say about how broken the Civ tactical AI is since the latest patch?
Language lesson for you, Tom. When someone says that a game is “broken” or “unplayable”, they mean that the game is critically flawed. Which is… hey! That’s exactly what Alstein said. Remember your post about “caring what words mean”? Yeah… it applies here.
Drop the attitude, Tom. You haven’t earned it, and it clouds your reasoning.
In fact, it’s funny that he was responding to you insisting that you didn’t think the AI was fine. You want other people to understand your position, but you have no qualms mischaracterizing someone else’s position.
He didn’t mischaracterize it at all. He was dead on, and you’re being undeservedly condescending.
I’ve been playing on Emperor. Still broken. Sorry. Sometimes it just gets lucky with unit placement, but the AI still really has no clue in general. It runs archery and siege units right by my melee units, gets horsemen stuck in melee ZOC for no reason, runs heavy units through water so I can shoot at them with no fear of attacks next turn, and sometimes just ignores my wounded units to sit around doing nothing. If anything, now that cities don’t have overlapping fields of fire, it’s easier to steamroll an enemy civ than before the patch.
The condescension just dripping from your posts isn’t helping your point.
I, for one, never let hyperbole get in the way of a good arguement. This could also be why debating is not my strong suit.
PeterK
5013
Aside from whether or not the AI can handle 1 military unit per hex, I just don’t like the mechanism. I can understand wanting to get rid of stacks of doom, but I’m not convinced this was the right way to go about it. There’s got to be some kind of middle ground.
rezaf
5014
I don’t get why people are still arguing about the semantics here.
Alstein clearly said the game was unplayable fore SOME PEOPLE, not unplayable per se. A book in braille will seem broken and unreadable to some people, but that doesn’t mean it actually is.
And no, this isn’t a snark remark meant to imply people not agreeing with Civ5’s brokenness are blind, it’s just a comparison.
I already wrote that the people who place so much emphasis on the topic are probably the ones that play Civ5 “wrong”.
@Rywill: I’ve been through explaining the phrase, and it was purely about the modding aspect of Civ5. And I maintain my position - to say it again, just regarding modding.
@PeterK: Yeah, I do like games like PG, but I think the system doesn’t suit a game with Civ’s scope. On the other hand … have you tried Kael’s (or one of the other) mod to remove the limit? I think it doesn’t exactly improve the game all that much, either.
rezaf
What Rezaf said was what I meant: that the poor tactical AI would make the game unplayable to some people, most of which have played many Civ games before.
Also, Civ being on Steam, opened it up to many new players, most of whom aren’t that skilled with the game due to not playing it for years and years- for those people- the AI being poor wouldn’t matter as much.
To again compare to Street Fighter IV: SFIV, like nearly every fighting game out there, has a really, really terrible AI. Most fighting game veterans shun singleplayer entirely due to this, outside of training mode/unlocks, since playing such a lame AI is boring. New players, who weren’t into fighters before (too young/haven’t played in years)- will be challenged still by this inferior AI. The reason I keep using SFIV as a comparison, is that many SF grognards criticize SF4 for much the same reason TBS grognards criticize Civ V, and sing the praises of an earlier game (usually ST or 3rd Strike for FG grognards, Civ IV for TBS grognards) instead.
It’s perfectly fair to criticize Civ V for being a game that the AI just can’t handle. That said, for some people a flaw in a game can be a much bigger deal then it is for others.
Citation needed.
Or… I think the grognard Civ players have always been a very vocal minority - otherwise Emperor and Diety difficulty would be in the middle and not at the top when picking what difficulty to play at.
Well, look who I’m dealing with. If I were to post that the sky is blue, Hans and Anax would jump in to tell me they didn’t like my tone of voice, that I don’t want to have a conversation, and that my tie is ugly. And I don’t even wear a tie. Forum baggage sucks.
But it’s a simple point that really shouldn’t need much help, i.e. those of us critical of Civ 5 are well aware that the game plays just fine for some people. No one is saying the game is unplayable. So why are some of those people so weirdly defensive about criticism towards the AI? “Hey, it’s fine for me!” is all good and well, but it’s got nothing to do with the complaints we’re leveling about how the AI can’t handle the game as it was designed (i.e. focused on tactical combat).
And, uh, yeah, those Polynesians are really something else…
-Tom
Tom, it’s easy for those of us who do enjoy the game and want to talk about it to get annoyed with the same 3-5 people who have to come into this thread and shit all over it every time it gets bumped.
Also, I have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who feels unfairly victimized in what has unfortunately become a rather hostile thread.
KevinC
5019
That was well said, Alstein. I play TBS games like Civ for the strategic challenge, I’m not really into it as a casual city/empire builder game or anything like that. For me, Civ5 is much, much more of a wargame than the previous ones. War was never my favorite part of the previous games, but I’d be okay with the focus except that the AI plays the war aspect of Civ extremely poorly, as has already been documented a million times in this thread and elsewhere.
Still, if it was just poor tactical AI, I could probably still enjoy it. It’s that in combination of many other design decisions I personally don’t care for (global happiness, removal of health, removal of religion, poor diplomatic system, 1UPT problems) that made this iteration the only member of the Civ franchise to find itself uninstalled after a few weeks.
I love that they took risks, I love that they tried something new, it just doesn’t work for me. I’m still hoping that maybe someday an expansion makes this game worthwhile to me… and for the love of God, still no mods/animations in multiplayer? I could swallow something like that from a studio on a shoestring budget, but not a AAA title like Civilization. I mean they figured that shit out in previous iterations, what’s stopping them now?
Gah. I should know better than to pop into this thread, I’m a swirling maelstrom of negativity when it comes to Civ5. At the end of the day, I hope the game is successful and that other companies can release TBS games and be profitable.
But the quantitative difference between an AI that isn’t very good and an AI that is non-existent is worth deliberating when you argue over the meaning of words. A “broken” AI in a Civ game is an AI that doesn’t build units and doesn’t build cities. An AI that isn’t very good and doesn’t offer a challenge might be considered “broken” but such a conclusion depends upon the observer; to an expert Starcraft player, every non-cheating AI is “broken” in any RTS game, but to a new player, the AI might provide adequate challenge on the higher difficulty levels of Civ V despite it’s tactical incompetence. The question becomes then what percentage of players are affected by it’s shortcomings, and which is imo not just academic.
