Keep in mind the system isn't perfect, there still is room for improvement. In a game for instance Persia attacked me while I had no army. I was good friends with Alexander so I bribed him to protect me. Just a couple of turns later Darius came back crawling with a white peace treaty (i.e. nobody gets anything out of it), which I accepted. That's a definite improvement from vanilla, but only 15 turns later he was Friendly toward me (with a psitive modifier stating something along the lines of "nothing substantial has happened between us") and even accepted a Defensive Pact.
So some oddities are still there, but the system is much improved from vanilla.
Another interesting thing - say you have Declarations of Friendship with two civs that are at war with each other. If you accept the request of one of them to go to war with the other, you'll actually receive a small diplo penalty - "You broke your Declaration of Friendship with another civ!" or something like that. And the warmongering status is still there, if you declare too many wars you will get denounced for sure. So if you want to expand through conquest but keep your friends, don't have DOFs with your future enemies.
It will take some time to see what kind of an impact such relatively small but important changes have on diplomacy, but I definitely have found it a step in the right direction.
Whilst completely unrelated, and in my pretence to be a pseudo-intellectual I might as well state that I flat out disagreed with his review of the game, Journey. (yes that one)
I personally felt it was the perfect cure to those who had suffered fatigue in modern games that had been rampantly homogenised due to 'accesibility' decisions. Yet I was willing to accept his point of view even if I disagreed with him.
Maybe I like games that have you dress as a moving tentpole moving through a wide variety of locales just to explore it with a person who you feel like you've known for a lifteime whilst in reality, this person may not even speak the language as you. Scary thought, good game design. What more can I say? Maybe I'm easily impressed? Worth playing if you're burned out through the usual 'Ultra-realistic, modern gun-wanking 3'. Oh well, maybe Planetside 2 will satisfy those fetishes.
Right. That reminds me of one of my recent games. I was really trying to be the nice little friend to everybody, but then England grew all the way up to my borders and declared war, so I decided to take a few of their cities so they wouldn't try it again.
After that, no one really wanted to deal with me, even though England had declared war on me, and it was all just a reaction to their aggression.
That's not really fair or sensible. I've jumped in on Gods and Kings now, so I'll give it another go.
Sometimes I wonder if game reviewers are playing at higher difficulties. I have never had an enemy park its units under my ranged fire, nor have I had them try to take a city of mine without a concentrated, multi-unit effort. Play the game on King difficulty or harder and get back to us. Marching a general right up to your city? Maybe on Chieftain - but I only played chieftain on day 1 for about an hour to get a feel before playing the game as is intended - prince or harder (but prince gets a little too easy, imo). Most reviews I read of this game either focused on A) multiplayer, or B) AI. Now, I can't argue with the multiplayer. My g/f and I both love this game, but playing it with each other is impossible, and we've tried every fix. (And I mean EVERY - she's a web developer and I'm an electronics tech, NOTHING fixes the MP). Then there's B, the AI. I have never seen a single review that contained accurate information about the enemy AI, and this one is no exception. If the enemy is being an idiot and you're constantly winning with no trouble - have you thought about cranking up the difficulty a little? King difficulty or harder is a downright fun game. Difficult without being janky, and without any of the problems I've seen reviewers talk about. Now, the "fill the bucket, empty, repeat" dynamic. Again, this is a product of playing at low difficulty. When playing the game properly, you don't get to fill every bucket in the game at the same time and still expect to dominate your enemies. You have to pick a specific type of the two extra mechanics you want to specialize in: faith or culture. Of course you're always going to want to stay on the cutting edge of technology, but a library/university in your 6+ pop cities will take care of that. That's two buildings, so with your other many production turns, you can... produce units to stay strong enough not to get bullied (always necessary) and then focus on culture or faith buildings, set up a couple high production cities with barracks and armories and prepare to go to war, manipulate your opponents through diplomacy (not nearly as horrid as it's made out to be). Really, aside from the totally broken multiplayer, the game is a solid A - and from what I've seen the only people who disagree are those who have obviously never played on anything but chieftain and settler difficulties. Anyway, that's my two cents.
Sorry to knock a hole in your pat little theory, but I play one notch above the default middle level. What is that, prince, king? I forget the name.
And if you haven't seen the AI do conspicuously stupid things, you haven't played very long. It's one thing to claim those stupid things don't impact your experience, and that's cool. But it's something else entirely to pretend they don't exist.
I've played at least 100 hours of this game, probably closer to 150. I'm not pretending - I've never had an enemy general end a turn on a tile not covered by a unit, and rarely on the front lines even when there's units there. The most conspicuously stupid thing the AI does is build harbors in cities that don't really need them, and that's pretty much it.
Sorry, but no holes knocked here.
And, I'm not trying to instigate, but the game's default difficulty is chieftain - not sure if you're saying you play one notch above default or one notch above what the game calls normal. One notch above default would explain things, one notch above normal is King, and if you were playing there you wouldn't be having as easy a time as you're making out. Just imo, anyway.
Sorry you don't like the game or its expansion's mechanics. Again, I'd say play on King for more fun.
I think you should take a closer look at the AI Tom. Everything I'm reading from the Civ forums suggests that the AI is actually greatly improved, not necessarily from a diplomacy standpoint but certainly from a military one. Most people I've been reading have suddenly had to drop down a difficulty level because the tactics they've been using to exploit the AI's weaknesses haven't been working since G&K.
I play King. And if you're never seen the AI park under fire or march non-combatants into battle, you're not looking very close.
Again, you're welcome to like the game as much as you like, but to accuse someone of lying when they point out very real problems is, well, exactly what I'd expect from an angry poster in a comments section.
I can't really speak to whatever tactics people are using on whatever Civ forum you're reading, but I've spent about 30 hours taking a closer look at the AI in the add-on. It still doesn't understand the interplay of units, it still doesn't understand terrain, it still doesn't understand how to pull back damaged units, it still doesn't understand naval combat, it still doesn't understand air power, and it certainly still doesn't understand combined arms. And given that these things are the cornerstones of the combat system, I maintain that it can't play the military game unless it's given enough of an economic advantage to just overwhelm your smarter tactics with its production bonuses.
So what am I missing that I'm going to see if I spent another, say, another ten hours taking a closer look?
Angry poster in a comments section? lol. You're cute. Anyway, j'accuse! (or however you spell that). Regardless of whether you think this defines me as angry (I'm not) or that I'm wrong (again, I'm not) - I'll say again: I've never had an enemy park his attackers in my defenses while playing on King difficulty, nor have they ever marched non-combat units up to my cities. And considering your first reply began with "sorry to knock a hole in your little theory... hurrr hurrr" perhaps you should take a look at your own comments section persona before you go around calling people angry. Personally, I've never been angry on the internet, maybe it just doesn't matter enough to me. I do love commenting though, and it's easy when you type 108 WPM and especially easy when you know 10x more about the subject matter than the writer. :P Cheers mate.
Thanks for being the only critic that will actually call Civ 5 what it is... utterly disappointing. 4 was so much better. Someone at IGN must have received a nice gift basket.
@Tom, since when is diplomacy transparent in any universe? Is anybody ever really going to say, "Hey we want to declare war on you but we need 5 turns to get out soldiers ready."? Remember Teddy's advice, speak softly and carry a big stick. If you are about to invade someone, you will act all nice to them right up until the point you do. So I am not quite sure what you want with transparency, and how that helps make this a better game :-/.
In my opinion rules to a game need to make sense and it doesn't always match up to what typically happens in real life. I'm not sure how it worked in the ancient world where I can imagine more sneak attacks, but in more modern history there is usually an escalation up to the point of war. Can you think of an example where two nations that have friendly relations suddenly go to war because one nation back stabbed the other? I can't. Pearl Harbor is the best example I can think of and it wasn't like we were buddies with them prior to the attack.
That type of mechanic can only work in my opinion is the game has some type of 'badboy' status like the Paradox games. There needs to be some type of repercussion for back stabbing behavior. I find AI behavior that is closer to a rational country as opposed to a bloodthirsty human player more enjoyable. A bipolar AI is just frustrating.
This is not a review, it sounds more like the rant of a child with a temper tantrum who doesn't get what he wants. Instead of stomping his feet, he rates with a super low score (20 points under the second lowest score on Metacritic) in the hope that Firaxis will give him what he wants. Very immature and I'm amazed that he actually believes that Firaxis will listen to the insignificant opinion of an insignificant web site owner who runs an insignificant gaming site, instead of listening to what sites like IGN have to say and the thousands of people on their forum.
The fact that he even made a Tom Chick page on Wikipedia and that he continues to rate games with lower scores than anyone else, makes me believe that he's suffering from a serious attention disorder, most likely fueled by an increasing frustration about his career that never really took off and knowing that he's almost 50 years old.
I have no problem if someone is critical, but this expansion adds a lot of new stuff to the game and improves it in several areas and for him to focus only on what can still be improved, makes him a poor reviewer.
So I'm wondering. I've been playing Gods and Kings for the last two days. What's my sinister motive for not liking it? I think he's spot on. Instead of fixing the AI and the diplomacy, they've just added a couple of features from Civ IV. Which really begs the question, why not just play that instead?
Charging 30 dollar/euro for content that they could've patched into the game over the last two years, is nothing short of a ripoff.
Go suck a dick, twatface. Angry poster? If you're so insecure about sticking to your guns, why feel the need to constantly repost, unless you don't have the creative confidence to stand by your own opinion.
You know Tom, I love your unflinching reviews but I have to beg to differ with your opinion of Civ V and GaK.
By no means do I think Civ V is a perfect game (I haven't played GaK yet, I hope to get it as soon as I am able) but the weight you give its cons seem to be weighted heavier compared to its pros.
Bad AI? Sure. But then the Civ series has never - in my experiencing going back to the hoary days of DOS - been very clever. The closest I have ever seen to an amphibious assault were two transports of units in one Monarch-level game of Civ 3. Diplomacy with all the Civs have always been horrendous. I was not a fan of Civ IV's religion system because religion provided another barrier to good relations. Does the AI in Civ V make boneheaded mistakes? Of course. But my experience with the game (at least 100 hours worth) doesn't reflect the near-epidemic levels you're experiencing.
As an aside: by biggest issue with Civ V that keeps me playing it more is the clunky resource-hog engine that bogs down even on medium graphic settings.
My apologetics for Civ V come down to this: one cannot tear down Civ V without also tearing down 1 - 4 as well. And the problem is more endemic in the industry, the result of developers focusing more on eye candy than AI development. The only 4X game that actually developed its AI was Stardock and GalCiv 1 and 2. If only Firaxis would license their AI tech for their games. But I digress...
I really enjoy the elegant design of Civ V: one unity per tile, the switch to hex, the less-is-more approach to eliminate the bloat that each successive Civ that came before seemed to add. Choices matter now; you can be a competitive civ whether you have 2-3 well-developed cities or a sprawling empire; something previous Civs took for granted. Civ V is easily one of my favorites from the series.
