The most common complaint against Civ 5 now which I've seen is that it's much more casual: the 'marathon' game speed, which in Civ 4 would have lasted 2-3 weeks at least for a full game now lasts more like 1-2 days. A lot of the mechanics are simplified (unified happiness, removal of health, etc) and there are a lot more strategies which universally tend to work, rather than needing to think about what's needed in a particular situation. The diplomatic AI has also been accused of acting more like it's playing a game, rather than actually being those leaders (for instance it would - at least in previous versions - often declare war on its 'trusted ally' for no apparent reason, because they'd become too powerful). Naturally, whether these things are good or bad does depend rather on taste, but came as a large shock to the more experienced civilisation players, who understandably were expected something a little more in depth than Civ 5 turned out to be.

What cannot be denied, though, is that Civ 5 was the first game to implement DLC, at a rather poorer cost to content ratio than the expansion packs of it and previous civilisation games, meaning there's rather less content available without buying said DLC. It's also a fact that they only released the full modding tools which Civ 4 had for the game two years after its release, regularly promising it was nearly there in the meantime, leading many to accuse them of withholding it so they could sell their DLC without mods providing nearly identical content for free. That means that the people who might have modded it were rather driven away, and the modding scene hasn't really developed to the level of Civ 4's (which is still going strongly, ironically helped by the lack of modding support in Civ 5). Finally, of course, Civ 5 is the first Civilisation game to be Steam based.

You'd be surprised how much hate there is for Steam on the civilisation forums. It's actually stronger than over here, in general!

Is that acceptable as a list of things which aren't objectively better or worse, but worth considering, and things which are objectively worse?

I finally managed to make it work. I guess they "fixed" it. Unacceptable but nothing I can do. Firaxis wants to sleep with DRM.

As for 5 and 4, My main issue with 4 was religion. I want the simplified version of religion in the previous games 3 and below. Which is why I barely played 4, it made me sick.
5 improved it but then went on to release DLCs which basically you need if you want to play the full game, but added an obligatory religion similar to 4, which I fraking hate. At least in theory since I haven't played 5 yet with the DLCs installed. I will over the next few days.
I would perhaps accept it if there were more options. Have a non religious government/state, even if you have to have certain limitations, but give you the option to ban it in your empire.
Also, why no love for ancient religions...I don't like that. Either you implement religion or don't.

Test of Time was/is my favorite. Yes lots of limitations compared to the newer games, but, you could actually colonize another planet and even have war with aliens. Too bad they removed it from the sequels.

That's actually one of the things civ v did right, in my opinion. I hated the 'doom stack' combat in civ iv and it was one of the reasons i didn't play it much.

You don't need to get religion in Civ V. I've had a few games where i had little to no religion and still won. I just let an AI convert my cities and later take control of their holy city.

You can blame DRM or you can blame the douchebag who DDoS attacked Steam.

Well, if the DRM ain't there, the DDoS attack will not even hurt the gamers.

Completely agree :
- lack of arguments is not constructive
- I far prefer the 1 unit per hex, the main reason being that stacking a lot of units on one hex just encourages the 'barbaric approach'. It has a 'cheap strategy ' vibe. Additionnaly, playing versus AI in Civ4 is very tedious because of that.
And also, the DRM not being here, he could play without worrying about (or being bothered by) the state of the servers.
Edit : I realize I just reformulated your point :s

Over the years I have bought 100s of games from Steam and other online stores (already have about 1500 games on discs), and....part of me wouldn't mind too much if there was a cataclysm in the whole industry with having at least a couple of the largest stores with DRM out there just...collapse. It would do hell of good in the long run (though it would completely frak us in the short term).


Anyway, that probably isn't going to happen so, yeah.

+1

Glad to see i'm not the only to think that. :D

I may give V a try again, but there is no way I will give them more money for it. I pre-ordered the game hoping that it would be Civ4 with prettier graphics and more options. Instead I get this stripped down version of 4. There is more to my hate for V than the hex based with no stacks of doom. However, I did not feel like wasting my time and those that like V with a rant. It was just a snide comment that I didn't want to spend too much time on.
Thanks to pi4t for listing most of the gripes about the new Civ.

I'm not too fond of the religion in 4 either, but otherwise it is a great game that I wasted thousands of hours on. There were ways to mute some of the religion for the game, but it would have been nice if there was an option to turn it off completely. It's been a while since I played 3, I may have to install it and give it a go. Although, I am not sure I am ready to be sucked back in to the world of, just one more turn.


Edit: Just realized it's been three year's since V came out. I sure hope they are hard at work on VI. Though, I will not be pre-ordering this time.

Still waiting for the moment when my money are meeting a sale. I usually miss those. On steam sales i've got meself the Gold Upgrade for Civ5, now i only need Brave New World expansion to start enjoying it.

There are still some things that i like better in CIv4: culture works better and a town can revolt against its owners if it likes your culture/economy more. I disliked in 4 the doomstacks, but i usually managed to get a bigger army than the AI's, so it didn't bothered that much. Diplomacy seemed to me better in 4. I think my ideal Civ game would be a combination of 3, 4 and 5...

I admit that 5 got better with every expansion that got out. I hated the game initially. With G&K, i've seen that underneath all that is a rough gem. And from what i've seen at a bud of mine that got the whole package, after Brave New World we can talk about a real Civ game.

How much was the Gold upgrade during the sale? It's currently $20, which is a tad steep for someone like me that didn't like the original. If it were to be in the $5 range perhaps I would be coaxed to upgrade it.

Was exactly 5 $ ( caught the flash and was 75% ). Gamefly had it even cheaper , but it was right before me getting paid .

GreenManGaming also has some nice sales from time to time, so you might watch that site too. Also Amazon had amazing discounts ( better than Steam, really ).

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for the Spring Sale...or whatever the next sale is.

Hoping that the Spring sale won't coincide with a broke period for me. Really want that second expansion. Brings a lot on the table and gives Civ5 the right to wear the name proudly.

It's true that Civ V is a bit more casual. I would not call that objectively better or worse though, as it's a matter of "which audience do you target?". To some degree, it has gone back to a more Civ 2-like state of complexity. With the expansions though, Civ V got a good amount more depth, something that it did lack before them. So while a bit less complex, it does feel like Civ V is at least as deep as previous Civ titles.

As for the AI, yes, it does feel a bit more gamey in how it works, and yes, that does remove a bit of the immersion. It is smarter though (the Civ series has never really had a great AI. Better than Total War, mind you, but the Total War AI does not stumble over its own shoelaces simply because it has not yet figured out that it should wear shoes).

As for the DLC, I won't deny that many of the small DLCs were rather expensive for what they gave you. That being said, they are entirely optional, and it never did feel like the game was lacking content that was cut due to DLC. The extra civilizations are only really needed if you are actually interested in those specific civilizations, there are plenty of civilizations to pick from without them.

There were not a whole lot of things that were objectively worse in your list :P And most of the issues that Civ V had when it was new has been fixed. The AI could still need more work (but so could the Civ IV AI), and the game is not as well optimized as it should be (chalk that one up to "things Civ IV does objectively better").

Religion in Civ V works in an entirely different way to how it worked in Civ IV. In V you get to chose what your religion's focus will be, and it impacts how it interacts with the surrounding world. As you get to design your own religion, you might very well do one based on an ancient religion (or why not Discordianism?)