It’s been a good long while since Civ V was released, as well as a bunch of patches to try and fix some of the terribad problems that the game had on its release. So I’ve gone back to playing it as I’m STILL waiting for a decent internet connection to get my MMO fix. After quite a few hours of game-play I thought that I’d share with you all what I truly hate about this abomination to the glorious Civilzation franchise. Lets start from the beginning, literally:
The opening video intro thing:
The opening video is lush in graphics and visual and audio effects and low in making any sense whatsoever. So you start off with some old fart in a smoky tent, and then he tells you that you’re going to be a Viking, no no wait, you’re going to be an Egyptian, oh crap sorry you’re actually going to be a Turk, ha ha we fooled you, you’re actually going to be Japanese …
The worst thing about this? It’s also the loading screen so you have to sit through it every single fucking time you go to play the game. The trick is to sit at your computer with your left hand mashing the ESC button to death and your right hand hitting every mouse clicker that you’ve got. Sometimes it breaks before you get to the Viking bit, usually you’re left sitting there waiting for the pain to end. Shoot me now.
The Time between Turns:
I worked out that on an average game played to its full term you will spend over two hours of your life sitting there waiting for the computer to finish its turn. I have a brand new top of the range computer that does everything from darn my socks to jerk off the dog at the speed of fucking light, so there is no excuse for this miserable use of resources. Whoever wrote this code should be made to play Final Fantasy 14 for the rest of their miserable life. It might be okay if the AI was any good at strategy but, well this leads me on to my next point …
The AI “Strategy”:
It doesn’t exist. If the AI suddenly declares war on you and you have a miserable 5 units to its 50, you will still win. Every time. It will march its armies up to within range of your cities, (helpful tip: placing your cities within three hexes of each other gives you interlocking fields of fire that is just about impossible to get through in one piece), where you can casually blow them to pieces with whatever it is that you’ve got. Even more funny is when they sail an expensive unit to within range of your cities. I have never lost a city to the AI, never ever ever and I am at war a lot because …
The Diplomacy System is a load of Shit:
You would think after five shots at the titles that the makers of this game would make some small effort at diplomacy. Put it this way, if you never attack another Civ and only defend yourself against attacks you will be labelled a warmonger. That’s nice, isn’t it. The thing I really hate about diplomacy is that every now and then the AI will pop up with a screen showing a leader telling you how much they hate your guts. This serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever to the game. Oh look, hey Catherine is telling me how much she hates me again but hey, at least I get another look at her tits. You don’t get to trade maps or techs any more either, so all you can do is sell your luxuries for a huge stack of gold and then declare war on them so you get all the trade back, hahaha, that was well thought out of the designers, not.
Game Balance:
There isn’t any. If you want to win just play France. If you want to lose play America. All of the other civs are on one fence or the other. I suppose you could play some of the brand new civs like Korea but you can only do that if you give them more money. At least when drug dealers want you to get hooked on their product they give you some decent shit first before jacking up the price.
You have to pay road and rail upkeep now:
Really, it’s true. For every little square of road that you build they charge you a gold piece per turn, every single turn. This is beyond bizarre. This is a prime example of a rule that is not fun at all in any way. Why did they do this? Because they didn’t like the look of the other Civ titles with roads on every space available. So their reaction to a graphics problem is to make a major game changing play that punishes the player for wanting to like, actually link his cities up to trade. Please go and fuck yourselves. Oh and add upkeep costs for buildings to this as well. Why, for the love of Buddha, why?
Only one unit per tile:
This ludicrous rule means that if you play on a water map with islands and you get stuck on a small island then you are totally screwed due to the fact that you’re limited to one unit per hex. Try manoeuvring that lot around when an enemy attacks. Oh wait, they can’t even land because I have units in every single hex. Well, that was a pretty easy attack to defend against, wasn’t it. It is really quick to build things in this game as well. It’s nothing for an early city at the beginning of the game to knock out a top wonder in 16 turns. So how long does it take to knock out a warrior? About 6 turns. Well, think about it; they had to give us something to do as all strategy has been taken away from us and if they hadn’t put in these build decisions the game would only consist of you sitting there pressing the Enter button and waiting for 30 seconds. So low production costs and one unit per hex … yes, you’re right – it takes exactly three fifths of fuck all to fill up your entire map space with units. And they thought roads on every hex looked bad?? I suppose that this would be okay if the AI was good at strategy …
Yeah. Remember how earlier I said that the AI sucked at this? Well it’s doubly stupid at moving its own pieces around. The developers have been hiding behind the white lie that it’s very hard to get an AI to be good at this, but tactical simulation computer games have been around for quite a while and they’re quite a bit better than this miserable excuse for an opponent.
There is much more wrong with this game, (the happiness system can go and suck my cock), but this is all I’m good for right now. This game is an abomination. Avoid it at all costs. And pity me as it’s all I’ve got to play at the moment.
September 13, 2011 at 7:29 am
It was going for $12.50 on Steam last week, and I narrowly avoided picking it up. I played the hell out of Civ 1 (or 2?) on the SNES way back in the day. My only other experience with Firaxis games was Alpha Centauri, which I played for approximately 300 hours. I couldn’t tell you why, specifically, or why I had the gut reaction to not buy any other Civ game since then, but there it is.
September 13, 2011 at 7:58 am
I’ve never played Civ in any form and now I never will but your piece made me chuckle, great writing
September 14, 2011 at 11:37 am
The early Civ titles are really great. Just avoid the latest one like the plague.
September 13, 2011 at 9:14 am
Here’s how you disable the movie.
http://filenetworks.blogspot.com/2010/09/fix-civilization-5-crash-black-screen.html
September 14, 2011 at 11:36 am
My deepest thanks. Mind you, if it’s this easy why the hell couldn’t they have put this in themselves?
September 13, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Ya, had I read this on Friday I could have saved myself 12.50. I’ve only put around 2 hours into the game and I’m already bored…. too much waiting, too little strategizing, and yes, the lack of unit stacks is fucking stupid. Can’t have a worker and a settler on the same tile? What a pile of b.s.
September 14, 2011 at 11:39 am
Yeah the no worker/settler on the same tile is ludicrous. No more moving a settler/military unit/worker together to set up a new city. Just leave the worker trailing along behind where all the barbarians can get him …
September 15, 2011 at 12:33 am
I agree with almost all of your points, with two small exceptions. While I agree that there’s no real civ balance, I think there’s a lot of winners beyond just France.
Secondly, I like the one unit-per tile rule. Before, stacks of death were just pointless, game-ending computer strategies that irritated me to no end. Now, cities can hold their own, and city location matters because a city with less hospitable tiles around it (like mountains) can be a defensive advantage. Before, even if it only had 1 tile of access, you could be mobbed by a million units.
Everything else, though, I think you’re spot on about. The slowness is ludicrous, as is the “loading” screen cinematic. The diplomacy is beyond detestable; I would really like to see a game develop a strong diplomacy system that was built on more than bribery, threats, and good exchange.
September 15, 2011 at 7:49 pm
4 was better than 5, but I think you’re a bit too hard on 5, possibly because you’re interpreting “different” as “bad”. One unit per hex makes combat more tactical, rather than being based on my stack of siege units blowing up your stack of anything, and then I take your city. Diplomacy isn’t great, but from the sound of it, you don’t fully understand it. Civs are trying to win the game now, so they get mad if you’re blocking their way with things like taking their wonders (realistic, given that this makes me mad too) or their city states. As for the warmongering, are you really being defensive or are you using the “I got attacked so I get to annihilate whoever did it” excuse?
I think you just have no sense of perspective. Civ V isn’t great relative to the other Civ games. But it isn’t an awful game. Go buy Homefront. Then you will know what a truly awful game really is.
September 18, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Shit, man, i actually liked V. Granted there are a few silly things, (like warriors counterattacking my B-17 by throwing flaming brands miles into the air and hitting it for 10% of its total health =/), but overall, the game is pretty good.
The road upkeep cost makes building roads a more strategic decision, rather than just plastering them on every fucking tile. I particularly like the limitation on strategic resources; e.g. a single source of coal gives you the ability to produce X ironclads or Y factories, not just infinite amounts of powerful units off onesmall source.
The diplomacy does indeed suck, but it has sucked in every single Civ title in the history of ever. In V it at least seems to be a little more logical. No longer will a foreign civ go from loving you to hating you just because you did absolutely fucking nothing to it, ever.
And i have no idea what you’ve been smoking, but America is fucking awesome. Minutemen keep that explorer bonus when they upgrade, you know. And B-17s essentially get two free promotions. Cheaper culture and gold costs for acquiring tiles means you expand faster and you can spend gold to race another civ to a strategic resource. France, on the other hand, gets what? Extra culture production before the discovery of steam power? Meh.
Also, your comment box is fucked up. It seems to have overtype enabled and i can’t figure out how to turn it off.
September 19, 2011 at 1:16 am
I don’t even know what overtype is. I’m going to respond to all your posts in a brilliant post sometime soon I hope.
September 19, 2011 at 2:52 am
Overtype is when, when you go back and try to change something in a sentence (like a spelling error), instead of the new characters you’re typing in moving the rest forward, they overwrite them.
September 19, 2011 at 2:54 am
And i look forward to your forthcoming brilliant post. I miss having intelligent discussions. It’s good to be back.
September 26, 2011 at 5:29 am
Hi Adam why not just play civ 4? I have every civ looking at me and the only ones I play are civ 2 and 4, both being awsum sauce. Civ 5 is just a console game the designers should have left it on their x boxes where it belongs.
September 26, 2011 at 2:11 pm
You have some legitimate points, but some others are outright ignorant.
1. Intro: yeah, it’s annoying. But then you say you have a new computer and you have to sit through the whole thing. My i7 laptop with 8 GB ram usually loads the game by the time the guy opens the tent flap…
2. AI turn time: agreed. It’s what stops me from playing the game today, esp at high difficulty when every computer has 50 units and you have a bunch of city-state allies that give you vision of all those units.
3. Strategy: AI is bad (really bad) at moving units, it’s ok at doing everything else. It declares war on you “randomly” because it considers your cities easy pickings/you have resources they want/you just pissed them off by settling a city close to them 100 turns ago (yeah, the last one is pretty dumb). Then you own them with a mountain and 3 artilleries. One unit per square was the best addition to Civ series ever.
4. Road and rail upkeep: QQ more? a) It’s realistic to pay road upkeep. b) Having roads cover the entire map IS dumb. c) I don’t remember a game where roads broke my bank.
5. Balance: I think finding imba things and exploiting them is the way you’re supposed to beat higher difficulties. Because how else do you expect to fight AIs that get +200% bonus to virtually everything? Civ balance: yes, some are better than others, but in fact MOST of them are actually good. Initially I thought Babylon was OP, but after beating a game with them a couple times, I tried others and by now I’ve successfully beaten Immortal with Babylon, Persia, Siam, Arabia, Polynesia, Greece and France.