Civilization V- Might actually be good now. Stay tuned.

[naum]

AC was a great game, but it was just too easy.  Easier than Civ2, even without the faction abilities, and without cheese (e.g. infinite population booms, farming native mind worms, using any of the expansion pack factions).  The core mechanics (happiness v minerals) and the AI were just like Civ 1-2, you could do the exact same basic strategy in AC as you did in Civ 1-2.  As a result, since I'd played the shit out of Civ I, it didn't take long to get to the point where it was almost impossible to lose an AC game, which was my same experience with Civ2.  When I tried the same old Civ 1 tactics in Civ 4, I got my ass handed to me over and over.  The genius of Civ4, imho, is that it felt like Civ but (mostly) broke city spam strategies, made you specialize towns, vastly improved the AI and did a number of other things which combined to make it both fun and quite hard.  I've still never beaten it at the max level, and I've played the everloving shit out of it (just like 1, 2, and AC). I freely admit that I am a complete freak about these games though. 

Love(d) AC, but this is true ^^, about it being too easy.

Seriously, do not know why they even had an "easy" setting as you could blindly proceed and win easily.

Still, I found it fun and challenging enough at the higher difficulty settings, even if simply to play in the sandbox of terrain transformation and social engineering.

[rk47]

Fall From Heaven made me love the game more than necessary. It's the reason why it stayed in my Win7 machine while Civ V didn't get reinstalled.

[dusematic]

What went wrong?

[Megrim]

God, someone needs to teach me how not to suck at Civ4. as;lks;lfkgdfhs

[dusematic]

Start with building a warrior/scout, then two workers, then a settler.  Usually you should always tech bronze working first.  Your first worker can then chop trees until your second worker is built and you have researched whatever resource improvement techs surround your capital.  Your next priorities are going to be  animal husbandry and iron working.  You'll also want Monarchy for the +1 happiness per unit garrisoned.  This will allow your cities to grow as large as need be.  A good conservative strategy is to fan out and settle until you have 5 cities and then conquer your neighbor.  A good rule of thumb is to have 2 workers per city.  Research pottery sooner rather than later and cottage spam with a priority on rivers.  If you're playing offensively to conquer you'll need siege engines.  If you're playing defensively make sure to research feudalism for the Longbow.  Longbows will make your cities impregnable until gunpowder.

[Muffled]

Jesus, I've just donated four hours of my life to those Pitboss game threads on Sulla's site.

Duse, what have you unleashed aaaaaa

[rk47]

Reading through Sulla's side I kinda felt sorry for the devs. But hell, they deserved it. The game launched with very cheese tactics and flawed designs yet many reviewers gave it very, very high marks.
Seeing no good patches but $5 map DLCs told me I shouldn't hold my breath for Fall from Heaven III.

[naum]

What went wrong?

This ^^. Particularly (besides the game just lacking soul),…

1) One Unit Per Tile: Yes, the largest change in Civilization 5 is ultimately its largest design flaw. This will be a controversial point, as I know a lot of people really enjoy the new combat system, but it has to be said: the One Unit Per Tile restriction is the core problem with Civ5's design. Everything is based around this restriction. Everything. It determines how city production works, it determines the pace of research, it explains why tile yields are so low. Civilization was completely rewritten from the ground up to make use of the One Unit Per Tile limit on gameplay. Luddite has written the best summary of how and why this system doesn't work, so I'm going to let him explain further before I continue:

"I believe that these problems stem directly from the decision to make civ V a one-unit-per-tile (1UPT) game. 1UPT allows a lot of flexibility in how you arrange your army; however, it only works if your army has empty space to move in. It requires an army smaller than the map. 1UPT led to small army sizes, which led to lower production and faster science, which led to the broken economy system that this game has now. The combat in civ V was based on panzer general, but that doesn't work well in a civ style game. I tried to explain why that is in this post: (In PG, England is about 500 hexes. That's enough room for very large armies to maneuver around in (and even so, things get pretty congested when you're fighting over london). In Civ V, England is only 6 hexes! What am I supposed to do there? That's not even enough room to build a proper city! The English channel is only 4 hexes and one hex wide, so you can shoot across it with archers. Poor Italy has it worst though- only 2 hexes for the Italian peninsula! And the mediterranean is only 1 tile wide! Now that's an earth map, but the same sort of problems happen on any map I play. Tight spaces, bottlenecks, absolutely no room to maneuver. Civ V warfare is just a traffic jam.)

Clearly this was a decision made early on, since it's such an important part of the game. At the same time, they wanted to keep the "civ" feel to the game, where you settle new cities, build improvements and city buildings, and go in to the city screen to adjust your citizens. Combined, this meant that they had to limit the total number of tiles in the game, and so they tried to force army sizes to be very small. A typical civ 4 army of ~50 units would be incredibly annoying to manage in the Civ V style, so they wanted to encourage armies of only 5~10 units. I hope this succession game showed how clunky warfare becomes in this game when the army sizes get large (I enjoy the early wars with small army sizes). The AI can't handle it, and the player doesn't enjoy it.

In order to do that, they had to limit production. You can see that in the decreased yields- production and food yield have been decreased compared to civ 4, whereas the food required to grow a city was greatly increased. The early units like warriors don't take very long to build, but the cost of units quickly increases. The high upkeep costs for units, buildings, and roads factor in to this as well (see my sig: Civ5 is the first Civ game that is about NOT building instead of building. Don't build troops since support is so high, don't build buildings because support is too high, don't build roads because.... yada yada yada). The idea was, I think, that every new military unit would take about 10~20 turns to build, just enough to replace your losses while you continually upgraded your original army. As a result, your army size would stay almost constant throughout the game.

I was really excited about the move to hexes, but wondered about the ramifications of the one unit per tile restriction -- and it seems that the developers never thought it out, as the AI was never coded properly to deal with it, scale of the game was borked, etc.…

…giant stacks in end game suck the fun out, but there could have been a better mechanism employed to "restrict" or cap stacking -- like "supply" factors or other model tweaks (i.e., progressive military maintenance/upkeep costs).

The author nails it -- game will go down as a failure (or mediocre at best) with "great potential", and the failure of developers (or I should say publishers) to treat the game with the reverence of a AAA title the franchise merits.

I returned post-patch, and unlike previous Civ releases where I could depend on post-patch releases to make the game enjoyable, this one was a waste of money.

[dusematic]

For what it's worth, here are two posts  I made on the official forums within approximately one week of the game's release date.  The basic problems with the game were readily apparent. But, to quote Sulla:

   

I have heard many people claim that Civ5 has "potential". An interesting word, potential. In my experience, when an online community starts to bandy around the word "potential" in discussing a game, it's a sure sign that the game has proven to be disappointing or underwhelming. Sure, Civ5 has tons of "potential" to become something great. But so did Civ: Colonization, and so did Spore, and so did Empire: Total War, and so did Sim City Socities, and so did Master of Orion 3, and so did all of the other mediocre strategy games that came out and crushed everyone's hopes. The timeline of a bad game always seems to follow the same pattern. The buildup to the game's release is full of excitement and anticipation, building to a fever pitch on launch day. The game comes out, and the fanbase is euphoric! For a few days, anyway. Then the stories start creeping out. Too many bugs detracting from running the game. The second game isn't nearly as interesting as the first, and the third is just plain boring. Influential, long-time community members start posting that the game lacks depth and isn't as good as past games in the series/franchise. These claims are hotly debated, and forums turn into polarized camps of "haters" and "fanboys". After a month passes and the initial excitment begins to wear off, more and more of the fanbase begins to lose interest. Some of those who initially defended the game begin to join the critics. A mantra begins among the faithful, "wait for the patch!" Patching will surely solve these issues and salvage the game. The wait for the patch becomes interminable, and more fans drift away to other games. Then finally the patch arrives, hallelujah! Only... the patch makes marginal improvements, and nearly everything remains the same. More fans drift away, and the waiting for the next patch cycle begins.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Well I guess they wanted to add depth to combat but went the wrong way by making it like the panzer general series. I'd say they should have made it more like Dominions 3... You have a stack (limited in size by logistical supply), you can deploy them as you want on the field, and then set a tactical order for them (defend, generala dvance, hold for flank, etc.). Maybe even offer a little cinematic of the then automated battle with the units participating.

[Muffled]

Setting an order of battle and adding a second layer combat screen would enormously lengthen a turn in the later eras.  I would prefer a solution based on de-emphasizing micromanagement of combat in the interest of swinging the game back towards building and global strategy.  Pointless to hash it out though, I don't see any reason to expect a new Civ worth playing for a good while.

[Stormwaltz]

They should have just implemented Dale's Combat Mod from Civ IV.

[Merusk]

I'm glad I never got into "high end" civs play.  I'm still enjoying IV and V both for different reasons. /shrug.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Setting an order of battle and adding a second layer combat screen would enormously lengthen a turn in the later eras.  I would prefer a solution based on de-emphasizing micromanagement of combat in the interest of swinging the game back towards building and global strategy.  Pointless to hash it out though, I don't see any reason to expect a new Civ worth playing for a good while.

Well you wouldn't have to do it. Your own units could have a default order and deployment set by the AI as it saw fit for the situation depending on situation and composition. The player would be free to further fine tune it is he saw fit, for those who were interested in more detailed combat (presumably the same people for whom they added one unit per hex in the first place).

[Mrbloodworth]

What went wrong?

That does not seem to reflect the last patch.

[koro]

The piece is about a year old.

[dusematic]

What went wrong?

That does not seem to reflect the last patch.

How so?  The game still sucks.  It's fundamentally broken design.

[Mrbloodworth]

What went wrong?

That does not seem to reflect the last patch.

How so?  The game still sucks.  It's fundamentally broken design.

The piece is about a year old.

[Azazel]

What went wrong?

That does not seem to reflect the last patch.

When was the last patch? I picked this up relatively recently and was having a decent time of it (I'm not a Civ purist or anything, just a casual player) but then it just crashed out on what I presume was a diplomacy screen. Did that twice, so I haven't dared/bothered to play it again. I'd be proper pissed off if it cost me more than $8.

[Reg]

The diplomacy screens have never worked at all for me. They don't crash my system but the graphics don't show up properly either.  Civ V is garbage.

[Megrim]

Start with building a warrior/scout, then two workers, then a settler.  Usually you should always tech bronze working first.  Your first worker can then chop trees until your second worker is built and you have researched whatever resource improvement techs surround your capital.  Your next priorities are going to be  animal husbandry and iron working.  You'll also want Monarchy for the +1 happiness per unit garrisoned.  This will allow your cities to grow as large as need be.  A good conservative strategy is to fan out and settle until you have 5 cities and then conquer your neighbor.  A good rule of thumb is to have 2 workers per city.  Research pottery sooner rather than later and cottage spam with a priority on rivers.  If you're playing offensively to conquer you'll need siege engines.  If you're playing defensively make sure to research feudalism for the Longbow.  Longbows will make your cities impregnable until gunpowder.

Thanks! See, I get most of the early parts (god knows i've watched and read enough guides)... but the mid-game and late-game stuff tends to elude me. I play BTS on Noble at the moment, and if the game involves anything other than a straight tech-race to the endgame I just flounder. For example, waging war well enough to conquer a couple of nearby (less advanced and less developed) civs because I either don't know how to optimize my military production well enough, or just lack the correct strategic analysis.

[Mrbloodworth]

I don't have any of the issues you guys seem to have. Screens and graphics work just fine, even when I am host for 4 hours. Last patch was Dec 19, 2011 (steam).

[MuffinMan]

If you're having problems with the diplomacy screens try switching which DirectX you're running. I used to crash in 11 but it stopped when I tried running it in DirectX 10 mode instead.

[Reg]

I tried that. It makes no difference. Civ V is literally the only game I have graphic problems with. It doesn't stop me from playing and luckily the game is boring enough I have no particular desire to play anyway.

[Malakili]

Civilization V - Gods and Kings

http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civilization-v-expansion-pack-announced

Tons of New Stuff. I know I just mentioned it, but I want to draw attention to just how many new things we've got here: 27 new units, 13 new buildings, 9 new wonders, and 9 new playable civilizations. Among the new civilizations are the Netherlands (William I, Prince of Orange), the Celts (Boudicca), and the Mayans (Pacal the Great).

Religion. That's right; quite possibly the most requested major addition to the game is coming in the Gods & Kings expansion. Using the new "Faith" resource, you'll be able to found your own religion and grow it from a simple Pantheon of the Gods to a world-spanning fully-customized religion.

Reworked Combat System. The expansion has a reworked combat system along with an AI that places more emphasis on balanced army composition. Among the changes to the combat system is the addition of melee naval units, which will force you to really rethink the way you execute your naval assaults.

Enhanced Diplomacy, with Espionage. In addition to being able to establish embassies with your rival civilizations, spies will now be an important part of how you conduct your foreign affairs. Surveilling foreign cities, stealing advanced techs, and garnering influence with city-states are some of the things you'll be able to do with this new powerful mechanic.

New City-States. With religion being added to the game, it only made sense to introduce Religious city-states which will interact with your religion in special ways. In addition, Mercantile city-states will be attractive for those of you who love to grow your civilization's treasury. All city-states will use the greatly expanded quest system, making city-states more dynamic and diplomatic victories more challenging, while decreasing the importance of gold when dealing with city-states.

New Scenarios. Three new scenarios will be coming in Civilization V: Gods & Kings. Experience the fall of Rome, explore the medieval era, and my personal favorite: a unique scenario in a Victorian science-fiction setting.

Look for your friend....but do not trust a hope.

[Mrbloodworth]

oooo, fancy!

[Paelos]

It does sound nice, but I'm not going to pay them to fix their game at this point.

Almost all of that stuff (exception being the playable civs and scenarios) is basically a glorified patch list.

[Malakili]

It does sound nice, but I'm not going to pay them to fix their game at this point.

Almost all of that stuff (exception being the playable civs and scenarios) is basically a glorified patch list.

Seems like good material for a Steam sale to me.

[WayAbvPar]

I would have been just as happy if they added religion and espionage and removed city states completely. They really make it game-y.

[Mrbloodworth]

You can turn off city states.

[WayAbvPar]

Yes, but the entire game is balanced with them in mind. Turning them off cripples or completely invalidates all sorts of wonders, social policies, etc.

[Ingmar]

It does sound nice, but I'm not going to pay them to fix their game at this point.

Almost all of that stuff (exception being the playable civs and scenarios) is basically a glorified patch list.

So the exception is just the huge chunk of stuff that makes up the majority of the content in the expansion? 

[Teleku]

I'd say adding in something as massive and game changing as religion (fully customizable ones at that) is also expansion material, not something you patch in.

[Ingmar]

And in fact it is no different than what they've done before. Corporations in Beyond the Sword, for example.

[Paelos]

Religion is something that should have been in there Day 1. They pussed out and didn't put it in after Civ 4 already introduced it.

Fixing diplomacy and fixing the combat AI should also be a patch, not an expansion feature.