Sarkus
5401
Anyone else having issues getting the game to run on Steam? Even though I run Steam at startup and the game should be up to date, whenever I try and run the game I get an “incomplete installation” error code that links to an explanation that it is a problem at Steam’s end with its servers being busy.
I never had that problem but I do occasionally see weird notifications that Steam has “finished downloading” Civ5 or some DLC, even though there’s no new patch to download.
Sarkus
5403
It eventually did whatever it needed to do and let me play.
fenrir
5404
I just tried a quick game going for a cultural victory and unfortunately the AI is still a mess. It looks like it can prepare for an initial attack and take undefended cities but can’t really deal with any resistance. It does not protect its wounded units, doesn’t prioritize targets well, etc.
I can definitely see the (wasted) potential in the game but right now it’s more of a sandbox really, and the endgame is still a huge chore.
On the other hand no other Civ was really a competent wargame so maybe it’s just this design that brings this to light more than anything else.
Having played the Civ games from the original through today, I’ve always found that trying to play Civ like a grog plays a wargame only leads to frustration. I love the series, including V, but I’m more a builder and explorer, who likes the sandbox element. The AI never has always been good enough for me, because I don’t really approach the game as competitively as perhaps I should. I can readily see, though, that if you are a good strategy player, a good min/maxer, the game could be very frustrating in its AI goofiness I guess.
Sarkus
5406
I think Tom’s criticisms of the tactical aspects of Civ 5 are right on. If you are going to add a more tactical approach to the combat then the AI needs to be at least competent with it. That said, its not an issue that particularly bothers me as I tend to play Civ as a builder and go for non-military victories.
But there is something missing with Civ 5 and I still don’t know what it is. I’ve put less time into this version of the game then any other. On the surface all the elements are there, good and bad, that the series has always had. I could bitch about how the AI still will declare war for no apparent reason (such as in my trial game earlier today where the Romans, who I had no direct contact with and who were on the opposite side of a very large continent, declared war on me, then offered peace, and then broke that peace), but that issue has been there all along. For some reason Civ 5 fails to be even the sum of its parts for me. Somewhere in the minor and major changes they made with this iteration they lost that “something” that made me want to play a game or two every month or so at the very least.
@Sarkus: I fully agree. I think it’s simply too empty now. Too few buildings (you really end up having nearly all buildings in all cities), too few techs, too few different units and most importantly, too little to do on the map, too little exploration effect (I usually discover only three huts at most before I’m all surrounded by other civs or states). All of it just a tad too few, but it sums to an empty feeling. As if it is just the base engine where the gameplay will be added by addons. Except that addons have not been adding anything meaty, just civs.
And if you try to play it as a pure conquest type of game, then you stumble over the braindead tactical AI and the bland unit designs. Even the very old Empires got this right where you could choose between cheap and many destroyers or expencive but very few battleships. For example just always having two units of each sort - one quite cheap and one very powerful - would help a lot. Want to have a railroad gun? Build it, but it costs three times the amount of a normal artillery, can move only on railroads and when it shoots at an enemy infantry, it’s gone for good. Just adding this one unit could make for some interesting strategies.
fenrir
5408
Part of its emptiness could be just burnout. Let’s face it, Civ5 is a reasonably competent sandbox in the series and nits could be picked with other Civs as well, even Civ4. At the same time it’s still a Civ - a game I’ve played for too many years by now. A lot of the game exploration aspect is exploring game mechanics in addition to the world itself and no matter how many twists there are on the basic mechanics it still is the same core game. Not really a whole lot left to explore there. I don’t have the heart to say maybe it’s time to do something else since it’s Civ - I’ll probably pick up new ones out of nostalgia but I probably won’t get much game time out of them.
no, that’s not it. Whenever I pick up to play civ 4 again, I only stop again in the modern age because the game becomes too slow (turn times more then one minute are unbearable). I’d pay for civ4 to have near-instantaneous turn times… now, civ 5 has multithreading, but it’s just not it (civ4).
KevinC
5410
For me it’s stuff like religion. It added a different dimension to the game. Sometimes I’d have a poor productivity start so I’d shoot for a religion and try to convert my neighbor Isabella, otherwise she’s going to stepping on my throat in no time. I also enjoyed the big religious wars that could erupt.
Again, if I started out on some seafood rich coastal cities, on the flood plains, or otherwise had poor production but an abundance of food, I could focus on religion, crank out some priests, and prioritize certain wonders to get a theocratic economy rolling.
Religion wasn’t the end all or be all of Civ4, but for me it’s one thing that I miss in Civ5, because it could impact so many aspects of the game for me.
Religion was nice and I miss it, but I think the thing I really feel is missing in Civ V is the variable borders due to culture wars. I was always checking to see which way they were flowing, and that act of giving me something else to do and to pay attention to things that I otherwise might not was a pretty fun element to deal with.
That said, I really enjoy V. It’s far from perfect, but I’m okay with that.
Mazuo
5412
Really? Religion always felt much like a poorly developed gimmick in my Civ 4 games. A rush to be its founder for the bonuses and then ignore for the rest of the game.
I’ve heard others say the same, so I must have missed something with it but it always felt unnecessary to me and fairly meaningless which religion you or your opponents picked.
I agree, religion was one of the things that really didn’t work in Civ 4. It created artificial alliances and wars.
Jab
5414
There definitely feels like something is missing from Civ 5. I bought it the other day from the Gamersgate sale. I’m definitely not the best Civ player out there, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot to do.
I really like the one unit per hex change to the combat but I still find attacking cities to be a major pain in the ass. It feels like there is too much work that needs to be done to take down a single city.
As opposed to the completely sensical alliances and wars in Civ 5?
I think religion was every bit as fantastic, revolutionary, and canny a system in Civ IV as borders and civics were in Alpha Centauri. I loved how it modeled religion as an uncontrolled viral influence that you could ignore or try to harness at your own peril. It may very well be the last great idea Firaxis has ever had. :(
-Tom
Yes. Civ 5 declarations of war make sense in a good amount of cases. Unlike Civ 4’s Everyone hating you unless you abuse the system and stack positive modifiers.
I’ve never had another civ in Civ IV hate me without knowing exactly why. And, yes, the idea is that you can stack positive modifiers. That’s how the game is supposed to work, and religion is a huge part of that.
By the way, I find it telling that a Civ 5 apologist conflates gameplay and abuse.
-Tom
Civ 5 doesnt need aplologies. It needs less Civ4 luddites.
Strato
5419
You don’t have to abuse the system in Civ IV. The beautiful thing about Civ IV is it tells the player why an AI opponent hates them. But stacking the positive modifiers doesn’t make for a game that is suitable to a player’s strategy, especially considering other AI’s have other expectations of the player.
As an example with religion:
“Oh, join Islam, is good” might say Saladin. Then Isabella might come along and announce that I should join Christianity for it is the one true path. Yet, both religions may only be a small part of my empire, 1-2 cities out of 10 for example, which is universally converted to Buddhism that I founded. The choices there are: to convert to one other religion, keeping one leader happy, but pissing off the other, or staying with Buddhism, and annoying both the other leaders immensely, but keeping my civ happy on the whole.
Religion worked wonderfully in Civ IV as an added dynamic in diplomatic negotiation.
The thing that annoyed me with religion was this: The bonus for the same religion only applied to your neighbours, because of how religion was founded and spread.
Yet your neighbours were the civs who hated you most, because shared borders always meant tension.
The civs that didn’t hate your guts because of shared land had a different religion though, and hated you for that…
