The past week has been a fevered one, where my mood has followed an astronomical parabola. All because of Civilization V (5) being released and played until my computer, and mind become a withered husk.
I haven't played Civ 4 for a while. I put hundreds of hours into it, but I'm not a hardcore 'Civver' and eventually something shinier distracted me. But for me Civ has always been a well polished game with maybe a few tweaks needed. Yet always a plethora of options are available to succeed and there has been a flexibility within it's systems that allows you to shift your paradigm without too much hassle.
I dove into a session of Civ 5. Absorbed and delighted in the changes made to the foundation game. Hexes, great. One unit per tile. Awesome. Animations and graphics. Superb. But after a few hours I felt unsatiated, that the feast in front of me was made of paper, or clay, or some other item of undeliciousness. It was a strange feeling. It was like being invited to a heaven where I'd have 100 virgins, but all of them had herpes.
So I tried again. And again. Aaaand again (about 30 hours worth of again). Each time it has felt somewhat hollow and overall, unpolished. I even made a list of the things that really irked me but I'll focus on what I see as most important here;
Multiplayer implementation is terrible. For a series famous for 'tacking on' multiplayer, this iteration seems to be held together by old chewing gum and older prayers. No saving in game, lag to the hilt and animations turned off by default and unable to be tweaked. Not to mention lack of matchmaking or hotseat options. Needs severe reworking
Information and choices were meant to have been streamlined but seem to have been omitted in some cases and severely pared back in others. Why does another Civ not like me? No way to know. Why does this tile cost 70gp to buy and the one right next to it 250? No way to know.
Limitataion of choice. I like the idea behind the civics tree but it ends up being an immutable upgrade tree. The beauty of past games was being able to switch your focus onto a certain field where you may be lacking. Want to wage war? Tailor your civics to suit that period of the game. The options available are great but not allowing people to change them (hell make it cost culture!) removes a lot of the depth that the system could bring.
Overall focus on military aspects. I feel that every game I get into I'm being shoehorned into becoming a military superpower, it feels less like a Civilization Sim game and more like a Turn based Wargame. The mechanics of combat are great, but the AI is way too stupid to use the more tactical combat over previous iterations where it could stack 10-15 units and take you on because tactics were minimal, stack and rush isn't hard for the AI.
Diplomacy is terrible, once again bad AI shines through. There is no transparency to the relationships between Civilizations. I want to know if Montezuma hates Nobunaga so I can get them to go to war. As it stands I've got to go to every other civ and just ask them, might make them angry at me if I do but hell I wouldn't even know if it does because of the lack of information. Also, being unable to access key information (such as relative military strengths, technologies etc.) when someone asks to declare war or go into a defensive pact is annoying as hell.
Finally, the lack of options and information at start up. Things like allowing the razing of City States and Capitals would be a welcome option. Knowing just how changing the age of the earth in relation to map generation and so on.
Overall I feel this game was not sufficiently tested. It feels like a lot of good ideas and a few bad ones patched together without thinking how the game as a whole would work. I'm pretty disappointed overall with this game and it requires a heap of patching to get it up to speed.
If there has ever been a case of style over substance this is it. 6/10
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