Civilization V!!

[LeftEyeNine]

If you're gonna make an arcade-style management game based on civilizations, fine, would be an alternative taste.

If you skim up Civilization series and call it the newest of it all, it's an insult.

Huge disappointment so far. And I'm pretty sure that it's been made so in order to make room for the expansions. And this is another way of offense too.

[Lemur]

If you skim up Civilization series and call it the newest of it all, it's an insult.

Hmm, not sure I agree. At the very least, the move to hexes and the lack of stacks makes for a more strategic game than previous Civs. I'm kinda digging it.

[LeftEyeNine]

No culture ? Oh, yes we can unlock policies by collecting cultural points.

No religion ?

No espionage ?

No leader-specific civilization features ?

Brushed diplomacy which only presents City-state driven Super-mario-like collect-it-all interstate relationships as something new ?

I thought this was a civilization simulation, not a lightweight web spinoff of Civ series.

Another victim to the console age; thanks, Sid, for the nice dirk you've thrusted into our Civ-crazy hearts.

[frogbeastegg]

I want Civ 4.5. Select features from 4 and from 5, with a pinch of Alpha Centauri.

From 5:
*Hex map and world generator - best civ maps I've seen by a long way.
*Combat system.
*Gold/research split instead of the slider.
*Ability to upgrade units for a reasonable price.
*AI which can't magically tell what military you have, and can be fooled by FOW and unit placement.
*Game pacing: early game lasts longer, late game is less tedious, units don't become obsolete on their way to their first battle.
*No road/railroad spam.
*Viability and strength of small empires.
*Cities can defend themselves against weak forces so no need for garrisons.
*Gold is useful and there's a lot of ways to spend it.
*Legendary start mode for resources. Mmmmmm, tasty.
*Weakened resource hammer/food/gold output means that city placement now calls for consideration of wider factors.

From 4:
*DIPLOMACY!!!!
*AI which isn't as dumb as a rock after a series of sleepless nights.
*Transparency on mechanics. You know why your unit upkeep is costing you that much, etc.
*Detailed breakdown of player/AI status: score, techs, cities - the works. I want to know where I am and where they are.
*AI leaders with personality.
*Leader screens which don't take ages to load and drag me out away from the game screen.
*The flexibility of the civic system.
*Religion.
*Wider range of resources, more 'use' from food resources.
*I want my end game summary window thingy back!
*The full collection of civs and leaders.
*Traits. The single, solid unique ability given by 5 is unbalanced, inflexible and not so fun.
*Great people construct buildings inside the city, not on a tile outside.
*Sense of awe.
*Big, fat paper manual filled with useful reference tables and info.
*Wide range of options for things like worker automation, etc.

To work on from both:
*A tech tree where every option feels useful and there are no filer techs a la 5 but where there's more options a la 4.
*Happiness. Global is nice and yet there's a few things about local I miss ... neither is fully satisfying.
*Wonders. I don't want an uber button. I don't want a boring building. I don't want some to be awesome and others to be weak.
*City states/minor civs. The idea is nice, the execution is always lacking.
*Culture victory. Booooring! Spam wonders and culture buildings, wait for points to pile up, win. Nice idea, now make it fun to do.
*Diplomatic victory. As above except chuck gold around, win.

From Alpha Centauri:
*Tech and wonder descriptions which don't make me hammer 'ok' in order to close the window and escape the tedious narration.
*This had the ultimate execution of faction personalities. Steal it - now!

Things I don't want to see unless they are massively changed because I've never found the implementation to be fun:
*Espionage
*Corporations
*City spam
*Large empires - make it doable in a way which doesn't weaken small empires. Make it function as a choice, not a min/max sum.
*Social policies. Too one-way and inflexible, I always end up choosing the same things, not exciting to use.
*Corruption

Things were either 4 or 5's version would be ok:
*Culture
*Unit promotions
*Unique units
*Barbarians, although I have a minor preference for 5's camps over 4's cities.

[TinCow]

I played a test game up to about 1AD, then started a normal game and played until the late industrial era but didn't finish. Then I tried a multiplayer game with Scienter, which we abandoned relatively quickly once it became clear how buggy MP is.

Civ is my favorite game series ever, and I am extremely disappointed in this game. It is, frankly, pretty boring. I haven't touched it in a week and far prefer to spend my time playing Minecraft and Borderlands. Hopefully patching will spruce it up, but I doubt it. If I want to play Civ now, I'll go play Civ IV instead.

[al Roumi]

Civ is my favorite game series ever, and I am extremely disappointed in this game. It is, frankly, pretty boring. I haven't touched it in a week and far prefer to spend my time playing Minecraft and Borderlands. Hopefully patching will spruce it up, but I doubt it. If I want to play Civ now, I'll go play Civ IV instead.

I'm of the same mind. I played a few hundred turns of an easy game by way of introduction (the frog methodology for aclimatisation) on release and then tried another blast of a new game last night. After 2 hours (on Prince) and mid way through the medieval age, I was quite bored and went back to sociological experimentation in dwarf fortress.

I just feel like the Civ5 experience is pretty thin -compared to Civ 4 anyway. It's polished for sure but it just doesn't grab me by the balls like Civ 4 does. I don't feel very engaged, it's almost too easy to do things. Want to make friends with a city state, spend some cash: bam. Barbarians pose no-where near the challenge they do in Civ4 -maybe because you no longer need to garrison cities but probably also because I've only seen barbarian brutes and triremes. The challenge in civ4 for me was always to get enough bronze and axemen early enough to deal with the "awakening of the wilds" when barbarian cities appeared.

When I played the demo I thought the polish was good as it made things accessible and kept you informed, now I think it's polished because there isn't much depth behind it. I don't find myself making anywhere near the number of long-term challenging decisions I did in Civ4, e.g. balancing useful tech with religious to make sure I had a religion early enough not to face the fairly crippling unhappiness you get. The tech gamble just doesn't seem like a big deal in civ5. City planning also seems so simple compared to civ4, little balancing of food vs reources seems to be required -or at least its not so harsh/specialising as Civ4.

Then again, given my tolerance for things like Dwarf fortress (a current fad, if you hadn't noticed), I may count as one of the weirdos who like games that give them a headache.

I hope the expansions add depth becuase at the moment I'd almost rather play Elemental.

[TinCow]

Then again, given my tolerance for things like Dwarf fortress (a current fad, if you hadn't noticed), I may count as one of the weirdos who like games that give them a headache.

Nice of you to mention DF, actually. I've been considering getting into it lately, but have been turned off a bit by the constant reports of just how steep the learning curve is. I have a pretty high tolerance for high-difficulty and high-complexity games, so DF itself seems like something I'd enjoy, but I don't feel like I have the time at the moment to spend an entire week learning how to play a game before it becomes fun. Is it really as hard to learn as the reports say, or are those reports generally written by pansies with no stomach for hardcore PC strategy gaming?