1202 Hours Played...A Few Observations

[ckhenson]

I finished another game today and noted that I have now played over 1200 hours of Civ V. I've owned each Civ game since Civ II. You could call me an addict. I've enjoyed the changes that Civ V made to Civ IV but I really feel I'm missing game play that made Civ IV a little bit deeper and more enjoyable. Here are some of the notes I've made during game play recently:
1. I miss espionage. You can't steal technology any longer, you can't trade it and you can't discover it through conquest. So if you get behind in the tech game you have to invade and fight to prevent from losing the Space Race. And you have no way of performing reconnaissance of enemy territory. Satellites let you see the territory but you can't investigate a city. I want my spies back.
2. Temples don't promote happiness? Even for non-believers religion is the "opiate of the masses". Since happinesss is now a function of your empire at large, at more difficult game settings you need all the help you can get to keep your people happy. Temples should give a happiness bonus. Otherwise I skip the build unless I need the culture bump.
3. Bring back cathedrals. See #2. Also, cathedrals should provide a serious culture bump.
4. Aircraft can't provide reconnaissance? And when have any of you ever performed an "airsweep" against an AI opponent and come up against opposition? I would eliminate the airsweep and give my aircraft a recon role.
5. Railroads don't provide a productions bonus? Then why build them. Sure I can move reinforcements quickly but why would I want the expense otherwise? If they do provide a bonus I'm not seeing it.
6. I use to be able to bombard/bomb tile improvements. If I can destroy improvements with my infantry and mobile forces, why not with my artillery and air/naval forces? Scorched earth people. Make an aggressor pay for his crimes against humanity. I miss being able to moonscape enemy territory.
7. I'm sorry but the entire diplomacy model is broken. Denouncements and friendships are capricious and without any seeming logic. An AI opponent begs for my friendship only to denounce me the next turn. No matter how I beg and bribe I can not raise a relationship above "Guarded". Defensive Pacts are worthless and never asked for or enforced. Get rid of them and bring back alliances. The AI opponent never asks to trade and is completely incapable of haggling. The game quickly degenerates to me against the planet. That's not much fun.
8. I am really enjoying the new combat system. The AI can be a worthy opponent at times. I do not miss the stacks of doom. I love the hex based maps and the art work is very nice. Hopefully more unique units/skins will be available for each of the nations. A German battleship should look like the Bismark. An American tank should look like a Sherman.
9. Multi-player, including hotseat, seems to be working well. And it's easy to setup and runs fairly quick. Kudos. I'm getting more people to play and am thankful for it. A human opponent beats the AI any day.
10. I would like to use a mod. I know there are some good mods out there. I'm not sure how to download and install them. I've tried and haven't gotten one to work yet. Perhaps a more detailed step-by-step instruction should be included somewhere?

I invite your thoughts and comments. There's always room for improvement and I hope that Firaxis welcome feedback.

[schull]

I put thousands of hours in previous civs, but this one, a couple of hundred and I bought it when it was first released! I just started playing a bit after nearly a year of leaving it aside. I think this Civ is a major downgrade, a lot of functions in CIV2 were better than in CIV5. I agree with most of your points, but just wanted to mention that the railroads provide a +25% production bonus to cities if they are connected to your capital (not sure if just for buildings or for everything). This was broken for the longest time so prolly you missed it since whatever patch fixed it.

Personally I feel this version was seriously dumbed down, and I can't stand it. Last Civ I buy, they've lost my business permanently unless they reverse most of the changes they made from 4 to 5. And don't even get me started on all the DLC :o

[ckhenson]

I feel your pain on the DLC. I don't like being nickeled and dimed. And I hated the way it took 2 additional releases of Civ IV to make it a more complete (and fixed) game. Looks like they didn't learn from that at all. Hey Firaxis, it's called market research! Ask Netlfix how that's working for them right now.

Yes, the game is dumbed down and I don't know why. Were they thinking of porting this game to the X-Box?

[Saladin9000]

I finished another game today and noted that I have now played over 1200 hours of Civ V. I've owned each Civ game since Civ II. You could call me an addict. I've enjoyed the changes that Civ V made to Civ IV but I really feel I'm missing game play that made Civ IV a little bit deeper and more enjoyable. Here are some of the notes I've made during game play recently:
1. I miss espionage. You can't steal technology any longer, you can't trade it and you can't discover it through conquest. So if you get behind in the tech game you have to invade and fight to prevent from losing the Space Race. And you have no way of performing reconnaissance of enemy territory. Satellites let you see the territory but you can't investigate a city. I want my spies back.
2. Temples don't promote happiness? Even for non-believers religion is the "opiate of the masses". Since happinesss is now a function of your empire at large, at more difficult game settings you need all the help you can get to keep your people happy. Temples should give a happiness bonus. Otherwise I skip the build unless I need the culture bump.
3. Bring back cathedrals. See #2. Also, cathedrals should provide a serious culture bump.
4. Aircraft can't provide reconnaissance? And when have any of you ever performed an "airsweep" against an AI opponent and come up against opposition? I would eliminate the airsweep and give my aircraft a recon role.
5. Railroads don't provide a productions bonus? Then why build them. Sure I can move reinforcements quickly but why would I want the expense otherwise? If they do provide a bonus I'm not seeing it.
6. I use to be able to bombard/bomb tile improvements. If I can destroy improvements with my infantry and mobile forces, why not with my artillery and air/naval forces? Scorched earth people. Make an aggressor pay for his crimes against humanity. I miss being able to moonscape enemy territory.
7. I'm sorry but the entire diplomacy model is broken. Denouncements and friendships are capricious and without any seeming logic. An AI opponent begs for my friendship only to denounce me the next turn. No matter how I beg and bribe I can not raise a relationship above "Guarded". Defensive Pacts are worthless and never asked for or enforced. Get rid of them and bring back alliances. The AI opponent never asks to trade and is completely incapable of haggling. The game quickly degenerates to me against the planet. That's not much fun.
8. I am really enjoying the new combat system. The AI can be a worthy opponent at times. I do not miss the stacks of doom. I love the hex based maps and the art work is very nice. Hopefully more unique units/skins will be available for each of the nations. A German battleship should look like the Bismark. An American tank should look like a Sherman.
9. Multi-player, including hotseat, seems to be working well. And it's easy to setup and runs fairly quick. Kudos. I'm getting more people to play and am thankful for it. A human opponent beats the AI any day.
10. I would like to use a mod. I know there are some good mods out there. I'm not sure how to download and install them. I've tried and haven't gotten one to work yet. Perhaps a more detailed step-by-step instruction should be included somewhere?

I invite your thoughts and comments. There's always room for improvement and I hope that Firaxis welcome feedback.

Okay,let's start:

1)Completely agree.But if I remember well the espionage was in the Beyond the Sword exspansion right?
I believe that for now,CiV V is just a beta.I hope that in the future some expsansion like Beyond the Sword that had Civs,wonders,buildings and some add-on to gameplay(like religion and spies) will come.
I hope at least,because i'm sure that they are listening to the fan right now on the Net and the will work for it.

2)Temple do not promove happines cause in CiV V they are buildings for the culture,and in some way i agree.For the happines there are other buildings.
Well i believe that if they put a happines bonus for the temple it won't hurt.But without the religion system it pretty pointless.

3)I miss that too.But without the Religion System you cannot build cathedrals,cathedrals are for Cristianity.In CiV IV it was fantastic to build mosque,buddist temple or Shintoist Palace or Cathedral but they depends on religion.

4)Agree

5)They provide the most stupid kind of bonus.25% of production if you connect them to the capital.
And if they are on the other side of the ocean?Bhò.
And why i cannot build a road to connect my capital to the capital of the nearby civs in order to improve relations?There aren't road tha take from Rome to Paris today?There aren't road beetwen two country?
Bhà.

6)Agree

7)Super Agree

8)Let's wait for a big add-on.

9)I haven't play online yet,but i would like too.

10)Easy,check mod on the Net,download,install and make it work in the menu on CiV.Find something you desire and download it.
For example i'm full of mod that add wonder,buildings,maps and some change in the gameplay.

[jasonirma]

I will definitely call you a "Civ Expert"...but I just kinda wanted to do the math. You've spent >50 days (24/7) in playtime on Civ5? Assuming at most 12 hours of play per day that actually works out to >100 days of continuous play. I have never found a game (well, maybe Half-Life 1 and 2) that I've sunk more than 100 hours on.

[Matthew.]

I will definitely call you a "Civ Expert"...but I just kinda wanted to do the math. You've spent >50 days (24/7) in playtime on Civ5? Assuming at most 12 hours of play per day that actually works out to >100 days of continuous play. I have never found a game (well, maybe Half-Life 1 and 2) that I've sunk more than 100 hours on.

The game has been out for over a year. 1200/365=~3.25. Considering each "game" can take around 6.5 hours (depending on settings, size of map, civs, etc.) that is a game every other day. Not *too* demanding for a gamer.

I'd probably invest just as much, however I cannot get over how poorly the AI plays the game. On normal difficulty, one can start on their own continent and just click through the 400 some rounds and none of the AIs will win (except by "points"). I'm not expecting Deep Blue quality, just damn, the AI should at least be able to get a cultural victory. You don't need to do anything but sit there with all your specialists on culture buildings. The AI cannot even manage that.

Also, the higher difficulties are a joke. Instead of programming the AIs to play the game, the game just gives each civ stupid amounts of bonuses (read: cheats). And even then, the AI still struggles for a win by anything other than points. I have had civs with three times as many points as me (covering entire continents with 15+ pop cities every four tiles) and I still manage to get a science win before they hit the modern era.

[GleaKhan]

100% agree with OP

+rep

[raacztomi]

Hi
I just came back from an actual CivIV game of mine out of curiosity. I left CivV several months ago, because of many reasons, probably the most annoying was the hight power need of it, my ancient MacBookPro (ca. 2008 winter model, it was an antique 1.5 years old when I got CivV) was running on high fan all the time. In exchange I got totally unnecessary tiny-tiny animations and frequent 'stamped' objects traveling with the screen on scrolling. Not to mention that the navigation was never ever close to be smooth. For a strategic game?! So hight power need? Unnecessary. (and the simplified views are awful).
Maybe the situation is better now, but the trust is gone, I rather enjoy a well known game instead of experimenting more with a strongly mixed experience another. All the many updates during the times (I bought the CivV in the first week and started to struggle with its performance and stability inside virtual machine) and the many many changes in details was not for me. I was highly disappointed with the quality, performance, not to mention some gameplay details - however these last were tolerable if everything else is nice.
I miss the hex map now. I miss the flexible city management in the turns. I miss very much. I miss the better UI. And there are several other smaller things I couldn't count now - I was really far from being as systematic as chkenson. Still, I feel better now. My computer is not roaring anymore when I play and my girlfriend stopped complaining about it. And there are several small things worried me - like the way too rigid unit stacking, I thing it is overshooting like this, despite of the necessity.
Please enjoy it! You, who sill enjoy it.
It was just a point of view, from an old CivI junky.

[CRedding]

Haven't played this game much.
This is my first of the series and I only have 30 hours on it, but...

-I really dislike the planes. By the time I reach the techs where I can start producing fighters/bombers, they're utterly worthless. Missiles practically replace them, I find them more convenient and efficient to use.

-Atomic/Nuclear bombs are beyond ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. They're too easy to use. I unexpectedly landed on a continent and decided to build a small city since there was pearl and marble within reach. Next thing I see, and entire flipping army pops out of the Fog of War. Two turns later, the army's dead. Why? I bought a Nuke and used it. They're too cheap, especially since by then my nation is producing about 1k gold per turn and I have like 80k ready to use.

-Giant Robot: Another ridiculously OP unit. By the time I'm capable of producing them, I give up. It's like: "Oh yay! All of my units are now utterly worthless since I can just build a Robot army of three to take out an entire city and it's army."

D:

I normally play on Prince and King(Or whatever the difficulty after Prince is) and IMO, this game needs to be harder near the end game.

[ckhenson]

I'm still playing. I really enjoy turn based games. Even with all its faults, Civ V is still the only game of its type out there that I've enjoyed and stuck with. I've played Elemental and Gal Civ II and keep coming back to Civ. Hopefully we will see a return to some of the better elements of past iterations?

[SapphireBullets]

Temples do provide Happiness bonuses if you go for the Peity path.

I played Civ 4 after Civ 5 and while there's some Civ 4 elements I liked and wish were included in 5 overall I think I like 5 a lot more.

Some of the missing elements (like aircraft recon) seem to be weird oversights.

[SeniorBirdman]

The over 5200 hours of Civilization V is the number that Steam shows on this computer for me. Not included is time on another computer. I am a new kid on the block as far as this Forum is concerned, but I am 74 years old, retired from the USAF with a Command Pilot rating, and also have a USAF Navigator rating. Some of you may think that I am blowing smoke. After retiring from the USAF, I became a civil servant. I retired from that. I have plenty of time to retreat to my computer room. It is above a three car garage, and my wife has great difficulty climbing the sixteen steps necessary to get up here. Two sons recently built a nice L shaped ramp in the garage so that she can more easily get into the house ( no longer has to climb three steps ). Bottom line, Civ V is how I pass a lot of my time, whether my eyes are open or closed. As another Forum poster stated, you can rack up hours with Steam as long as your game is turned on.

Probably like most of the gamers, I rarely look at the game manual for any game. Today, I opened the game manual and looked at the Table of Contents. I was interested in Mods. The ToC led me to pages 194 and 195 (if my memory is working OK ). There, I found how to rate a Mod, and fill the Connosuier (sp?) square. I now have a 92% rating, with 14 of 176 to go. If you do go there and read what to do to get a Mod and still feel you need more info on downloading and playing a Mod, I highly recommend using Google and searching for "Civilization V Download a Mod". Previous posters have put some light on this topic, but I have found it to be very good at telling you what to do step by step. There are plenty of opportunities to not do it right; but, it is not one, two, three strikes you're out at this game. Hope that this has been helpful.

[gingerbill]

I completely disagree with people saying CIV5 is dumbed down from CIV4 . I find CIV5 a better game (after the 2 big patches) than CIV4 and every bit as detailed and complex .

[Friendliest]

I invite your thoughts and comments. There's always room for improvement and I hope that Firaxis welcome feedback.

Civ V is 2 steps forward and 40 steps back. (The least of which is it seems to run terribly even on kick-butt hardware.) I doubt there will be any recourse. Firaxis did a terrible job and this guy (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/106343-Lead-Designer-of-Civilization-V-Calls-It-Quits) ruined the game.

Yes, they let some kid modder make the game and turn it into his own personal toilet of arbitrary bad design ideas ... with, perhaps, scattered little corn nuggets of "improvement"? (Sry, bad game deserves a bad analogy. :P I do not apologize! ;))

He works at stardock now, so I'd stay far the heck away from any of their new games!

I have only recently acquired the game, as I had to wait for a fair price from these DLC-happy, functionality-gutting highway robbers, but I have followed it closely since before release and it has given a foul odor since day zero. I have "fun" playing it, but am assailed by frequent "WTF" and "oh really this is supposed to be better?" moments, ...not to mention "this is what could have been", if only they had combined and improved on the best of all the games that had come before -- but especially Civ IV, the most evolved form of the art that will ever be, and truly, one of the best games ever -- instead of doing this dumbed-down, "flattened", "reboot" garbage.


I read this (http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/20/civilization-5-update-aims-to-fix-multiplayer-squashes-bugs-and-exploits/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0) news bite and was excited that maybe some fixes and sanity were coming ... then sadly realized the patch is already out, and we all have the latest and "greatest" version. :(

[BuilderFTW]

If you are looking for a fresh experience in civ 5, I would recommend multiplayer in civplayers(http://www.civplayers.com). The league minimizes quitting, allows players to rejoin after drops and provides satisfying competition in a way AI cannot.

Also check out my you tube channel for civplayer mp games played in league(civ5) https://www.youtube.com/user/CivBuilderFTW?feature=mhee

btw, I have 1,088.6 hours of civ and the game feels as fresh as ever!!
BuilderFTW

[Impfac]

In addition to the huge gameplay let down you've already detailed, I'd like to remind the publishers that CIVILIZATION V IS STILL BROKEN!!

I've played thousands of hours of every civ, but even after all these patches I'm still fighting with graphical glitches, loading bugs, hangs, etc. It's pathetic :o

[TomKQT]

I completely disagree with people saying CIV5 is dumbed down from CIV4 . I find CIV5 a better game (after the 2 big patches) than CIV4 and every bit as detailed and complex .

Well, it isn't as detailed and complex.

Civ IV had happiness, health, religion and corporations per city.
Civ V has only happiness and only per empire.

But I personaly don't think it's bad, Civ IV had IMHO too much micromanagement.

[exoriority]

stealing tech from dominated civ seems awesome!

Yeah not enough reward from cleansing them from the earth.

[Friendliest]

I find CIV5 a better game (after the 2 big patches) than CIV4 and every bit as detailed and complex .

"every bit"? really? ^complete nonsense!^

to all who say it's not dumbed-down: maybe you just don't know civ, and u'r not really qualified to even have your opinion taken seriously? i have to start to consider that possibility. cuz there just seems to be this impenetrable lack of understanding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect). maybe ppl need a dumbed-down explanation of why it's dumbed-down.

new mechanics are fun and all - civ iv BTS didn't exactly spring fully formed from civ 1 - but they just changed too much. imo a bunch of whiny modders "got their hands on" the real game, "fixed" their personal pet peeve particulars they thought were "broke", and filled in the rest with a strategic model that is about on a par with a free-to-play browser game. and now we all have to suffer this niche rendition of what they think is "better". it's a disgrace, frankly. where is sid meier when u need him?

and not that complexity is a hallmark of "good", but detail is, and this game lacks it.

optimization is also a hallmark of "good", and this game lacks that, too - hard-core!

my peeve of the moment: what excuse do these guys have to abandon all previous progress in the world of computer software interfaces since about 1982? orly double-clicking doesn't load a save game? orly u can't click with mouse to place the cursor in the save game box? surprised [HOME]/[END] worked, but would not be at all surprised if such common - basically mandatory - keys like [TAB], [ENTER] did not work on this screen. it's not a matter of creativity or artistic license or anything like that; it's a matter of: there are already established "best practices" as well as pre-existing components in windows to handle these exact tasks, so why go out of the way to make your own -- thus wasting time and money that could be put into stuff that would actually make the game cooler -- when all you're going to do is make a shoddy imitation that doesn't even work as good as built-in components? (yeah, ok, there has to be a mac version ... I'm pretty sure the mac environment has their own notion of "common dialogs (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=mac+common+file+open+dialog&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1930941l1931297l1l1931418l4l3l0l0l0l1l122l3 16l1.2l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1600&bih=1080&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=_oMeT92RJebe0QGLookG)" too...)

why does right-clicking dismiss a city-state popup but doesn't dismiss any other popup? why does the game pause for every "significant" action -- "a unit needs orders" etc. -- but doesn't pause to make sure u don't miss a chance to bombard enemies? for that matter, when u have clicked "end turn", and the game insists on reminding u "a unit needs orders", why can u not also move any other unit with remaining movement points, at that time? u could very well change ur mind about fortifying or whatever, once u realize that u had another unit yet to move. only took me a couple hours to realize what a needless annoyance this was, and these guys are professionals who worked on this game for like 2 years! :/ if the entire game is going to revolve around the magic "end turn"/"choose production"/"choose research"/etc., button, why isn't there the eminently logical option to automatically advance from city to city, task to task, when there are multiple tasks queued. (every?) previous civ(s) had this, but now we have to click the stupid "choose production" every time. for that matter, the [ENTER] key works to end turn, it should work to just pop-up whatever screen is referenced by that button at a particular moment. ...yeah, it took me about 3 turns to realize what a painfully obvious idea that is, but do u think we'll ever see it in the game? apparently they really like clicking that button! O_o (no, honestly, I'd sooner bet that they force u to click cuz they want newb-users to feel "engaged" in any artificial way possible.)

poorly-thought-out, discombobulated foolishness like this is what makes the difference between a great game -- created by people who are skilled at what they are doing, and care about getting great results -- and a game like Civ V. (where is jakob nielsen when u need him?! :P)

why regress so much from previous civs? no good reason.

no other civ has ever hard-locked my computer to the point where i have to hold the power button to shut it down/recover. no other civ (or strategy game, period) has ever kicked my GPU temps so high the fan runs higher than during a shooter.

bottom line: shoddy product by people who "just don't get it" when it comes to computer software let alone games. I'm all for new paradigms, but this is more like "stick it back in, it's not done yet."


bonus issue: why, when they apparently put so much "thought" and "hard work" into putting the non-english-speaking characters voiceovers into their respective native tongues, does George Washington sound like 2/3 bill clinton and 1/3 john wayne (instead of a proper british accent i do say pip pip cheerio?) yeah, I know why they did it. but it's wrong. shouldn't be that way. :P (...and why does the voice actor read stuff like "is this trade agreeable to you?" with reversed inflections that sound like a valley girl, instead of how normal people talk?)

yeah, i've played the game like 20 hrs. i could go on, u know?

[TomKQT]

...

Wow, that's a lot of hate. I'm really not sure whether it's about Civ5 or all Civ games or all Civ games but Civ1?

Anyway, if you listed your major problems with Civ5, then I think you actually praised the game. Because those are all just absolutely minor things, mostly related to controls (and accent of voiceovers).

If course if the problems (albeit minor) are there, the game isn't perfect. No game is perfect AFAIK.
But if you make such a long negative post about a game and all you are talking about is that the game is not using some PC control standards, then I think it's actually good for the game.


About about CivV being dumbed-down compared to CivIV - yes, as I said it is simpler, there is much less micromanagement. But many people see this as a good feature of the game. It obviously didn't happen because Firaxis was lazy or incompetent to make a complicated strategy again. The decided to make a little bit different Civ game. They gave accent to something else and simplified other aspects. That can bring new players to the series.

I personaly loved CivIV. But later in the game, with all the datadiscs, it really was a lot about micromanagement for the sake of micromanagement. In every single city you had to take care about (of course besides the standard stuff like food, production, science, wealth, culture, specialists...):

- Health. Treated by tile improvements (per city), buildings (per city), wonders (per empire or per city).
- Happiness. Treated by tile improvements (not really sure about this one, it's been a long time), buildings (per city), wonders (per empire or per city).
- Religion. Micromanage monks spreading religion(s) and then build religion-related buildings (per city) or wonders (per city or per empire).
- Corporations. Almost the same as religion.

The result?
Problem: City A is unhappy.
Solution: Build a happiness building in city A.
Problem: City B is loosing food because of low health.
Solution: Build a health building in city B.
Problem: City C is unhappy.
Solution: well, you know...

That is a complex strategy with really a lot of features, but all based on few basic principles with similar solutions. And all that multiplied by the number of your cities.
In my opinion excessive micromanagement, in my opinion not directly increasing the fun.

And Civ5 isn't only simpler, there is for example more tactics and strategy related to unit movement and battles.

[ckhenson]

If you are looking for a fresh experience in civ 5, I would recommend multiplayer in civplayers(http://www.civplayers.com). The league minimizes quitting, allows players to rejoin after drops and provides satisfying competition in a way AI cannot.

Also check out my you tube channel for civplayer mp games played in league(civ5) https://www.youtube.com/user/CivBuilderFTW?feature=mhee

btw, I have 1,088.6 hours of civ and the game feels as fresh as ever!!
BuilderFTW

I'll do that, thanks. The AI is a poor opponent. Not nearly as crafty and devious as a human opponent can be.