So sad because of what Civilization turned to.

[Gandomyr]

One can only see how the master mind, mr. Sid Meier (bowing and taking my hat off to him) didn't involve himself as thoroughly as he did in the previous games of the series. While this post may be considered as a "whine", all I am doing is pointing out things that didn't manage to get in the final version of the game. And it isn't right, seeing as things like the ones you will be reading next, are present in previous Civilization games. I'm not asking for the impossible, I'm only asking for what has been delivered to us in the past to be delivered to us again in these days.

With these things in mind, here comes my list of features that could've ended being a part of Civ5, but they did not:

- trading technologies - for many years, this was the bread and butter of the Civilization games; removing this I think it was rather pointless;

- health system (I didn't find plagues in the game and now Hospitals add health);

- an appropriate trade system, implemented only until Civilization II Gold and Alpha Centauri, where there would be trade units (caravans), trade techs and trade options in the diplomacy dialogues; trade used to mean more than just a road connecting two cities - and the player could choose with which civ would start doing trade;

- a pollution system - in older games the nuclear technology used to bring a huge disadvantage with it, which required player skill and the proper using of ecological system to counter it;

- a form of logistic on water - As the game is now, every unit can embark and start sailing on water; and not just on shallow waters, but on oceans and deep waters, too. There is no time cost or price of resources / production that would make a tank embark on a boat and cross a sea. Either if we are talking about simple ships or made upon steam technology, or newer. Those ships have no building cost and now there is no point in having transport ships in the game. A minus for the strategy in this game.

- espionage - no point in commenting on this, there are other threads here that do that; and we all know what espionage used to be in previous games, so there's no point in talking about it;

- religion - yes, I know... now there is Social Policies. But, you see... this is different. There are no religious units in this game, and I mean non combat units that used to have some meaning in the game, not just some crusaders or some other fighting units.

- government forms - Again, there is the Social Policies panel... but that doesn't have an effect as important as the civic decision the player used to have in previous games; some social policies are even useless for a few ways of playing the game. They do help with the cultural victory, though.

- some means of controlling the income, taxes, luxuries and money spent on research - this used to be a very important feat of the previous Civilization games, and this one lacks it totally;

- happiness used to have a more important saying in the matter. Right now, the way the game is made, it doesn't really matter if some backwater city is full with unhappy citizens, as long as the people in the capital are happy. Happiness used to be specific on every single city, not just on the nation as a whole.

- an informative interface / HUD. I guess that developing a game for consoles made some developers forget how are things done on the PC. The interface is huge, even with that option checked that minimize it. Huge interface, huge fonts... We are PC gamers, we play this from the front of the monitor, not from 4 meters away from the television display. And since we're talking about interface (and control)... for god's sake, what have you done with the right click mouse button? The right click button used to be the most informative tool in a Civilization game. It was like that since the beginning of the series. This shouldn't have changed.

- in previous games (Civ4) culture used to have a nicer role: it expanded the city's/state's borders. And it was a nice way in turning enemy territory into your own. Doing this required a lot more strategy than buying a land tile. Needless to say, in Civilization V you can't turn enemy lands into your own unless you conquer a city. Culture as it is now has lesser importance in Civilization V than it had in its predecessor.

- talents. Later in the previous games you could learn to turn some people into various enhancing things... like librarians, doctors, scientists, etc. This was a really nice feature that now lacks. It's pointless in discussing about the strategic importance of that feat... everyone can figure it out for themselves.

- speeding up production of a building - no comments here. We all know what was like building a Wonder in the same time as some other civilization that was ahead of us, and spending some precious money (saved just for times like this) to even out the odds.

Now, don't get me wrong... I appreciate the new additions we received in the new game, such as hexes, city-states, social policies, strategic resources used in the production of the units (number of resources = number of units, and every resource counts), not stacking units anymore (giving more strategic importance to every combat unit on the field)... But the new things we got, compared to the old things we lost... It just doesn't cut it.

And I'd like to end this post with a quote from a user review...

I rate this game based on its wasted potential. On its own terms, it should be a good solid product once bugs and technical issues have been fixed. In any case, Civ 5 clearly shows that there isn't much life left in PC gaming. The dumbing down of the game's design (see other user reviews on this) and the big-button, console-style interface scream of an effort to avoid complexity for the sake of mass-market appeal. The assumption on which the game was designed is presumably that the majority of players cannot handle or do not wish to be forced into overly complex or difficult choices. What's left is a simplistic war game that lacks originality and atmosphere. Nothing in its design really distinguishes it from simple strategy games of the 1990s, even though the technical possibilities of 2010 should have allowed for something much better. Expansion packs and DLC might restore some of the missing features, but why spend money on these if Civ 4 already contains everything in one package?

And I know it's not wise to say this on the publisher's forums... But, yes. I saw how Civilization V received great praise from all the game press sites... but to me those are just marketing stuff, meant for selling copies of a game, not really analyze it. This is not a post intended to be read by the publishers, this is something meant for the devs to read, since they designed the game the way it is. So that they will know how to make Civilization V a better game or, better said, a real Civilization game, as we all know and love. So that both publishers AND gamers would be happy with the final product.

Thank you.

P.S. Could mister Sid Meier get himself involved in game developing again, and amaze us all with how a strategy game should really be like? No offense, but this is Sid Meier's Civilization in name only. To me, this is NOT a Sid Meier game. And I should know, I played them for the last 15 years.

[Planthos]

One can only see how the master mind, mr. Sid Meier (bowing and taking my hat off to him) didn't involve himself as thoroughly as he did in the previous games of the series. While this post may be considered as a "whine", all I am doing is pointing out things that didn't manage to get in the final version of the game. And it isn't right, seeing as things like the ones you will be reading next, are present in previous Civilization games. I'm not asking for the impossible, I'm only asking for what has been delivered to us in the past to be delivered to us again in these days.

With these things in mind, here comes my list of features that could've ended being a part of Civ5, but they did not:

- health system (I didn't find plagues in the game and now Hospitals add health);

- an appropriate trade system, implemented only until Civilization II Gold and Alpha Centauri, where there would be trade units (caravans), trade techs and trade options in the diplomacy dialogues; trade used to mean more than just a road connecting two cities - and the player could choose with which civ would start doing trade;

- a pollution system - in older games the nuclear technology used to bring a huge disadvantage with it, which required player skill and the proper using of ecological system to counter it;

- a form of logistic on water - As the game is now, every unit can embark and start sailing on water; and not just on shallow waters, but on oceans and deep waters, too. There is no time cost or price of resources / production that would make a tank embark on a boat and cross a sea. Either if we are talking about simple ships or made upon steam technology, or newer. Those ships have no building cost and now there is no point in having transport ships in the game. A minus for the strategy in this game.

- espionage - no point in commenting on this, there are other threads here that do that; and we all know what espionage used to be in previous games, so there's no point in talking about it;

- religion - yes, I know... now there is Social Policies. But, you see... this is different. There are no religious units in this game, and I mean non combat units that used to have some meaning in the game, not just some crusaders or some other fighting units.

- government forms - Again, there is the Social Policies panel... but that doesn't have an effect as important as the civic decision the player used to have in previous games; some social policies are even useless for a few ways of playing the game. They do help with the cultural victory, though.

- some means of controlling the income, taxes, luxuries and money spent on research - this used to be a very important feat of the previous Civilization games, and this one lacks it totally;

- happiness used to have a more important saying in the matter. Right now, the way the game is made, it doesn't really matter if some backwater city is full with unhappy citizens, as long as the people in the capital are happy. Happiness used to be specific on every single city, not just on the nation as a whole.

- an informative interface / HUD. I guess that developing a game for consoles made some developers forget how are things done on the PC. The interface is huge, even with that option checked that minimize it. Huge interface, huge fonts... We are PC gamers, we play this from the front of the monitor, not from 4 meters away from the television display. And since we're talking about interface (and control)... for god's sake, what have you done with the right click mouse button? The right click button used to be the most informative tool in a Civilization game. It was like that since the beginning of the series. This shouldn't have changed.

- in previous games (Civ4) culture used to have a nicer role: it expanded the city's/state's borders. And it was a nice way in turning enemy territory into your own. Doing this required a lot more strategy than buying a land tile. Needless to say, in Civilization V you can't turn enemy lands into your own unless you conquer a city. Culture as it is now has lesser importance in Civilization V than it had in its predecessor.

- talents. Later in the previous games you could learn to turn some people into various enhancing things... like librarians, doctors, scientists, etc. This was a really nice feature that now lacks. It's pointless in discussing about the strategic importance of that feat... everyone can figure it out for themselves.

- speeding up production of a building - no comments here. We all know what was like building a Wonder in the same time as some other civilization that was ahead of us, and spending some precious money (saved just for times like this) to even out the odds.

Now, don't get me wrong... I appreciate the new additions we received in the new game, such as hexes, city-states, social policies, strategic resources used in the production of the units (number of resources = number of units, and every resource counts), not stacking units anymore (giving more strategic importance to every combat unit on the field)... But the new things we got, compared to the old things we lost... It just doesn't cut it.

And I'd like to end this post with a quote from a user review...



And I know it's not wise to say this on the publisher's forums... But, yes. I saw how Civilization V received great praise from all the game press sites... but to me those are just marketing stuff, meant for selling copies of a game, not really analyze it. This is not a post intended to be read by the publishers, this is something meant for the devs to read, since they designed the game the way it is. So that they will know how to make Civilization V a better game or, better said, a real Civilization game, as we all know and love. So that both publishers AND gamers would be happy with the final product.

Thank you.

P.S. Could mister Sid Meier get himself involved in game developing again, and amaze us all with how a strategy game should really be like? No offense, but this is Sid Meier's Civilization in name only. To me, this is NOT a Sid Meier game. And I should know, I played them for the last 15 years.

Thanx a lot for taking time to write this thread! I couldn't have said it better myself. Totally agree, mr Sid Meier should get this right away.

[milter]

One can only see how the master mind, mr. Sid Meier (bowing and taking my hat off to him) didn't involve himself as thoroughly as he did in the previous games of the series. While this post may be considered as a "whine", all I am doing is pointing out things that didn't manage to get in the final version of the game. And it isn't right, seeing as things like the ones you will be reading next, are present in previous Civilization games. I'm not asking for the impossible, I'm only asking for what has been delivered to us in the past to be delivered to us again in these days.

With these things in mind, here comes my list of features that could've ended being a part of Civ5, but they did not:

- health system (I didn't find plagues in the game and now Hospitals add health);

- an appropriate trade system, implemented only until Civilization II Gold and Alpha Centauri, where there would be trade units (caravans), trade techs and trade options in the diplomacy dialogues; trade used to mean more than just a road connecting two cities - and the player could choose with which civ would start doing trade;

- a pollution system - in older games the nuclear technology used to bring a huge disadvantage with it, which required player skill and the proper using of ecological system to counter it;

- a form of logistic on water - As the game is now, every unit can embark and start sailing on water; and not just on shallow waters, but on oceans and deep waters, too. There is no time cost or price of resources / production that would make a tank embark on a boat and cross a sea. Either if we are talking about simple ships or made upon steam technology, or newer. Those ships have no building cost and now there is no point in having transport ships in the game. A minus for the strategy in this game.

- espionage - no point in commenting on this, there are other threads here that do that; and we all know what espionage used to be in previous games, so there's no point in talking about it;

- religion - yes, I know... now there is Social Policies. But, you see... this is different. There are no religious units in this game, and I mean non combat units that used to have some meaning in the game, not just some crusaders or some other fighting units.

- government forms - Again, there is the Social Policies panel... but that doesn't have an effect as important as the civic decision the player used to have in previous games; some social policies are even useless for a few ways of playing the game. They do help with the cultural victory, though.

- some means of controlling the income, taxes, luxuries and money spent on research - this used to be a very important feat of the previous Civilization games, and this one lacks it totally;

- happiness used to have a more important saying in the matter. Right now, the way the game is made, it doesn't really matter if some backwater city is full with unhappy citizens, as long as the people in the capital are happy. Happiness used to be specific on every single city, not just on the nation as a whole.

- an informative interface / HUD. I guess that developing a game for consoles made some developers forget how are things done on the PC. The interface is huge, even with that option checked that minimize it. Huge interface, huge fonts... We are PC gamers, we play this from the front of the monitor, not from 4 meters away from the television display. And since we're talking about interface (and control)... for god's sake, what have you done with the right click mouse button? The right click button used to be the most informative tool in a Civilization game. It was like that since the beginning of the series. This shouldn't have changed.

- in previous games (Civ4) culture used to have a nicer role: it expanded the city's/state's borders. And it was a nice way in turning enemy territory into your own. Doing this required a lot more strategy than buying a land tile. Needless to say, in Civilization V you can't turn enemy lands into your own unless you conquer a city. Culture as it is now has lesser importance in Civilization V than it had in its predecessor.

- talents. Later in the previous games you could learn to turn some people into various enhancing things... like librarians, doctors, scientists, etc. This was a really nice feature that now lacks. It's pointless in discussing about the strategic importance of that feat... everyone can figure it out for themselves.

- speeding up production of a building - no comments here. We all know what was like building a Wonder in the same time as some other civilization that was ahead of us, and spending some precious money (saved just for times like this) to even out the odds.

Now, don't get me wrong... I appreciate the new additions we received in the new game, such as hexes, city-states, social policies, strategic resources used in the production of the units (number of resources = number of units, and every resource counts), not stacking units anymore (giving more strategic importance to every combat unit on the field)... But the new things we got, compared to the old things we lost... It just doesn't cut it.

And I'd like to end this post with a quote from a user review...



And I know it's not wise to say this on the publisher's forums... But, yes. I saw how Civilization V received great praise from all the game press sites... but to me those are just marketing stuff, meant for selling copies of a game, not really analyze it. This is not a post intended to be read by the publishers, this is something meant for the devs to read, since they designed the game the way it is. So that they will know how to make Civilization V a better game or, better said, a real Civilization game, as we all know and love. So that both publishers AND gamers would be happy with the final product.

Thank you.

P.S. Could mister Sid Meier get himself involved in game developing again, and amaze us all with how a strategy game should really be like? No offense, but this is Sid Meier's Civilization in name only. To me, this is NOT a Sid Meier game. And I should know, I played them for the last 15 years.

Very good work, i was trying to remember what i was missing in civ5 as i didnt play civ4 for a while now.

Now it's so obviously that there are so much concepts gone. So sad.

[Pekish79]

you are looking only at what supposily negative ignoring all the thing that are actually positive and add a lot to the game

plus a couple of things are not true

a) you still can steal territory with culture bomb

b) you still can assign people to the buildings library etcetc and this show how little you actually tried to understand the game

a lot of building allow you to apply a worker to the building itself that is exactly the same concept... but with certain limitation you cant make all scientist in a city that doesnt have any reserch building... and it makes sence


the Game is not perfect CIV-V can get better with time and expasion there is lot of room for improvment but the base is better then it's ever been!

i agree i miss pollution and i miss a better trade system, AI is "different" but could still use some improvment, for sure, but some other things i really dont miss them... spy for example or cargo-boat

if it seems too "water down" try to play Emperor lvl or higher and you will see you are forced to go in depth of the game concept to actually succeed.
I never played CIV V less then Emperor and never will because when it is too easy i tend to ignore many aspect of the game since i can win easily even if i mess up lot of stuff even without having a real strategy

[Gandomyr]

I admit, at that time I didn't know about that. Played the game for the last few hours and discovered those, too. It's just that assigning people to the buildings works different than in the past. It's... refreshing, I guess. I'm glad I was wrong about that.

Also, I'm not ignoring the positive facts. It's just that most of them I found'em out to be in the combat field.

It's all a matter of preferences, in the end. I enjoy spies and cargo boats... you don't. I respect your point of view and I can only hope it is mutual. To me it seemed like taking out of the depth. And I guess that's what I always liked about these games... the amount of depth. To me anything that removes depth from the game is bad. But that's just me.

The game has enough depth on the combat level. It's challenging enough, it's difficult, even. And now, with the removal of stacking units, it's actually realistic and enjoyable. So no complain there.

But I do think the game lacks depth on the more "domestic" side. Happiness, forms of government, religion... the "civil" things. You see, this was for me the beauty of the game. You just couldn't have an easy win just by focusing on one aspect of the game. Somehow, you had to gain a balance in economics, trade, combat, science, religion and happiness. Skipping any one of those would have some bad results. And that wouldn't be apparent at first sight, but only after 50 or more turns, when it's already too late and fixing things would require a lot of strategy.

[dsteve3]

I have to say that I disagree.

I think the term we are polarised around is "abstraction."

To what degree should Civilization represent the various aspects of actual civilizations? Obviously, they can't include everything. They have to condensce certain phenomenon down to generalizations.

I'm glad they got rid of 'religions.' That is a very complex aspect of social evolution, and the Civ games have always boiled it down to systems which only make sense from a Western point of view. Every religion in the world has been affected and changed by (virtually) every other religion. As well, each religious movement in any specific period of history has impacted those particular cultures in very specific ways. Civ IV just did not cover that, even with the various implications of Social Policies.

Specialist populations still need some work, as they aren't being represented properly, but again in this instance, less is more. In practice, it took 10 000 years to develop the strains of grain that fueled the birth of agriculture, but once they were established, the power of population densities became focused around the work of Specialists. Specialist pops should come AUTOMATICALLY with each tile-working pop, not FROM them. A city with a pop of '10' should have 10 tile workers AND 10 Specialists.

But what do the Specialists do? That really is the focal point of an intricate look at how societies evolve, and they should NOT be very mobile. Nor should they be so 'specialised' that they ONLY do one thing or another. They were multiple commuties of highly competitve elites, who more often than not misrepresented their own value or purpose in order to monopolise power structures.

Militarily, I would like to see Civ abstract further again. In the earliest stages of history, a Civ should only be able to field a single large formation, consisting of only two or three different types of soldiers, and they should NOT be chits or sprites that can be moved around. An army does not spend a century moving across the map.

A Civ's forces should be latent in the capital or along a single front. Secondarily, there should also be native Militias in every city, that are raised whenever an enemy (or "barbarian") manifests. The fact that cities defend themselves is a significant advancement. The fact that the "barbarians" don't automatically charge the cities is also a huge improvement.

As a Civ advances, they develop more elaborate soldiers, formations and command structures. The actual deployment should remain somewhat abstracted, or should be made into a 'mini-game' that pops up when two Civ's decide to go at it. But overall, the thing that holds this game back the most is the LACK of abstractions.

Abstraction is not taking away intricacy from the game, its reflecting diversity in a more dynamic fashion. Ya can't always bring all the features from previous incarnations, and ya can't get fixated on that. What we need to look at is how to represent features in our game in a way that represents the choices that we want to make, while balancing the lesser evils with the greater gains.

[goya]

prepurchased the game, have been playing it since release date and i'm disappointed to... they've dumbed down the game to the point it's not much fun...

felt strong enough that i registered for this forum in hopes of getting changes made and luckily i found this thread...

by civ v i would have expected a full 3d game, where you could fully zoom in and out, rotate, not just pan... more like other sim games have evolved. looks like they have taken some steps forward and more stepbs back. hopefully civ vi

sure it's nice to have easy / friendly mode for beginners, but this is civ and there are lot of old players that you don't want to alienate / lose... not to worry for now since there is no real competition, but if they make it too much like kid game, the adults will just keep playing the old version until they don't work no more, just look people still play chess, been around for a good while...

in addition to the above, here are some ideas

they should put back in all the things that they removed...

add option where users can select gameplay civ5 or civ4, including support for all the above

they should add separate option to enable / disable stacking

also, have an improved multiplayer server browser. should add ping time and allow sorting name/players/ping, maybe have filter to hide empty/full/high ping games

finally the new ui is both a positive and a negative, i'm not sure where to get started.. maybe i would recommend that they look at other sim games... there appears to be a clash of themes or look and feel. i rather have popups and status / toobars / widget sets. i play a lot of sims and their ui works out. i wonder why civ v is a step back, a bit of a mess... with different styles... something like an after thought...

can't wait for patch/addon/expansion that begins to address above issues...

until then i may go back to civ iv

[Gandomyr]

What I forgot to add to that list in the OP... I'm changing that, though... trading technologies. While it's true that this doesn't happen as easily as *gives technology*, as the game suggests... It is possible, even for the ancient era. It would make sense that some tribesman would teach another tribesman how to light up a fire. Or hunt. Or anything else. In more advanced eras it could be just exchange of some technological plans, or blueprints, so the former way of trading technology, by actually giving it to other nation, makes more sense. Why would they remove this feat... I really don't know.

As Pekish79 kindly pointed out, some things aren't totally left out of the game... they're still there, only in some other form. But, this... lacking of technological trade... I really don't know what to say about that.

[Xmas]

- trading technologies - for many years, this was the bread and butter of the Civilization games; removing this I think it was rather pointless;

I have to admit I rather like the research agreement mechanic, but I also agree that tech trading should be possible. It shouldn't be instant, though.

For example, it could be part of a normal trade agreement over 10 turns, where you get 10% of the research necessary for that tech every turn (and if you''re researching the tech at the same time, the contract can end earlier). Alternatively, it could be an agreement that doubles your research only while you're researching the traded tech (you're effectively learning, not researching).

- health system (I didn't find plagues in the game and now Hospitals add health);

Given that health would most likely only affect growth, which is already controlled by food and happiness, I'm not sure what it would add that the other two don't already do.

- some means of controlling the income, taxes, luxuries and money spent on research - this used to be a very important feat of the previous Civilization games, and this one lacks it totally;

I found that shifting the focus of your cities achieves this quite nicely, and is actually a better system than some global tax/research/luxury rate.

- speeding up production of a building - no comments here. We all know what was like building a Wonder in the same time as some other civilization that was ahead of us, and spending some precious money (saved just for times like this) to even out the odds.

I think it's good you can't buy wonders or projects. If you want to accelerate those, you should focus your city population (and buildings) on production, which is a similar trade-off.

The purchase system is indeed somewhat broken, however, as there is no reason why you should be able to buy an entire unit/building but not pay for the completion of a half-finished one.

[RenegadePeon]

- trading technologies - for many years, this was the bread and butter of the Civilization games; removing this I think it was rather pointless;

I'm somewhat 50/50 on this change. I like that I don't ever have to worry about being surprised by a civ when they magically have advanced technology, but at the same time, I enjoy meddling in foreign affairs and gifting technology to enemies of my enemy.

- health system (I didn't find plagues in the game and now Hospitals add health);

This was a good mechanic to remove. Redundancy is annoying. We really only need one mechanic to hinder population growth. Simplifying this was a good change.

- an appropriate trade system, implemented only until Civilization II Gold and Alpha Centauri, where there would be trade units (caravans), trade techs and trade options in the diplomacy dialogues; trade used to mean more than just a road connecting two cities - and the player could choose with which civ would start doing trade;

I never liked that my new civilization would start in the stone age when the capital city had tanks. I like that all settlements share technology without having to have a road.

- a pollution system - in older games the nuclear technology used to bring a huge disadvantage with it, which required player skill and the proper using of ecological system to counter it;

I don't think this hurt nor helped the game.

- a form of logistic on water - As the game is now, every unit can embark and start sailing on water; and not just on shallow waters, but on oceans and deep waters, too. There is no time cost or price of resources / production that would make a tank embark on a boat and cross a sea. Either if we are talking about simple ships or made upon steam technology, or newer. Those ships have no building cost and now there is no point in having transport ships in the game. A minus for the strategy in this game.

I agree. I think sea travel should be reworked. It is almost as easy to invade someone via land as it is via sea, which shouldn't be the case. The ocean tiles should work in a way that they make choke points more viable.

- espionage - no point in commenting on this, there are other threads here that do that; and we all know what espionage used to be in previous games, so there's no point in talking about it;

I, too, feel that the more subtle arts of destruction should be present in this game.

- religion - yes, I know... now there is Social Policies. But, you see... this is different. There are no religious units in this game, and I mean non combat units that used to have some meaning in the game, not just some crusaders or some other fighting units.

Personally, I don't miss it. Then again, I didn't like religion in Civ 4 and thought it was a useless mechanic.

- government forms - Again, there is the Social Policies panel... but that doesn't have an effect as important as the civic decision the player used to have in previous games; some social policies are even useless for a few ways of playing the game. They do help with the cultural victory, though.

To be fair, though, this is supposed to be a somewhat different game experience than Civ 4. It is beginning to seem like you just want Civ 4. I don't want Civ 4 with prettier graphics and it usually annoys me when a sequel does that.

- some means of controlling the income, taxes, luxuries and money spent on research - this used to be a very important feat of the previous Civilization games, and this one lacks it totally;

Well, now research is tied to population size instead of income. It definitely makes it difficult to be as technologically advanced while still going for the cultural victory. I personally think the penalty to policies for having a large empire should be looked at.

- happiness used to have a more important saying in the matter. Right now, the way the game is made, it doesn't really matter if some backwater city is full with unhappy citizens, as long as the people in the capital are happy. Happiness used to be specific on every single city, not just on the nation as a whole.

Agree. Maybe have two happiness meters: a local and a global. Cutting off luxury supplies was the only means to actually "seige" a well defended city. That is no longer possible in Civ 5. However, with the new mechanics of Civ 5, it may no longer make sense to have a local happiness.

- an informative interface / HUD. I guess that developing a game for consoles made some developers forget how are things done on the PC. The interface is huge, even with that option checked that minimize it. Huge interface, huge fonts... We are PC gamers, we play this from the front of the monitor, not from 4 meters away from the television display. And since we're talking about interface (and control)... for god's sake, what have you done with the right click mouse button? The right click button used to be the most informative tool in a Civilization game. It was like that since the beginning of the series. This shouldn't have changed.

I agree. The more information, the better.

- in previous games (Civ4) culture used to have a nicer role: it expanded the city's/state's borders. And it was a nice way in turning enemy territory into your own. Doing this required a lot more strategy than buying a land tile. Needless to say, in Civilization V you can't turn enemy lands into your own unless you conquer a city. Culture as it is now has lesser importance in Civilization V than it had in its predecessor.

In my opinion, culture is more important than ever. In civ 4, you still had 4 victories: mililtary, technology, cultural, and dipomacy (religious or UN in Civ 4). However, cultural and diplomacy paths did not yield the intermitten benefits that military and technology paths yielded. The military path to victory gave you more land and cities... to build more military. The technological path gave you ways to dramatically improve your cities and military might, giving you better defense along the way. Now, the cultural path did give you more land, but that land was useless most of the time (with the rare exception of taking control of an important resource) since you couldn't work it most cases. So in general, the cultural victory never gave you improvements and usually happened abruptly. The diplomatic victory was the same. Nothing happening along the way and then abruptly gaining the votes (size) necessary to win. In Civ 5, these paths now give you benefits while you attempt to achieve them, such as policies from culture and very decent benefits from city-states. I really like this change that Civ 5 has done in this respect.

- talents. Later in the previous games you could learn to turn some people into various enhancing things... like librarians, doctors, scientists, etc. This was a really nice feature that now lacks. It's pointless in discussing about the strategic importance of that feat... everyone can figure it out for themselves.

I did like that about Civ 3. I am not sure how this would be implemented into Civ 5. It seems Civ 5 completely used the Civ 4 system of specialist.

- speeding up production of a building - no comments here. We all know what was like building a Wonder in the same time as some other civilization that was ahead of us, and spending some precious money (saved just for times like this) to even out the odds.

As mentioned before, this is a good change. Use specialized cities. The good thing about not having the ability to spy is your opponent cannot really locate which city to focus against to completely cripple you.

Please don't take this post personally. Your opinion is just as valid as mine. But with so many comments attacking this new installment of the civ series, I feel some of us should defend it so that others reading this forum don't get the wrong idea. I think there are legitimate complaints about Civ 5. But I feel the majority of complaints regarding Civ 5 is that it isn't Civ 4.

[Gandomyr]

Not going to attack it, on the contrary. I'm thanking you for sharing your opinion. Even if on some points it differs from mine. But that's natural. The fact that you disagreed on some of the things AND agreed to others proved to me that you have an open mind and not just disagreeing for the sake of doing it. Your arguments are valid, especially since this is all a matter of opinion, after all. We're all civil and keeping an open mind here.

Only one think to say. You said the developer did good by removing some mechanics (health, pollution, religion). For me this is not a good thing. Yes, some things may had been a little redundant... but to me they had their use and made the game more complex. I'm not saying Civilization V is not complex... god, no! I just say it could've been more and better at it. Complexity. To me this is all Civilization was about. As it is now, Civilization V is the less complex and has the fewest mechanism in the entire series. If I would be fourth grade, guess it would be the perfect game. As it is... don't know. Still lacks. And by complexity I don't want to say more difficult. There was someone on this tread (Pekish79) that recommended raising the difficulty. But it's not about that, it's about complexity.

Also. One more thing I forgot to add on all the other posts. To me, Civilization 4, with all its addons and feats, is as closest to perfection as a Civilization game can be. And I know I'm not the only one thinking that. What I want to say is that maybe a new Civilization game wasn't that much required right now. Later, over 2 or 3 years, yes. Maybe. However, how about Alpha Centauri 2? Me and a friend of mine use to tell a joke about it. Seems the shuttle a the end of Civ3, 4 and 5 were never made right, they never reached Alpha Centauri (since a sequel to that game never came). Jokes aside, I think we have a fair amount of Civilization and a lesser amount of other Sid Meier games. And I'm really happy they made a remake of Pirates! and Colonization. I can only hope Alpha Centauri 2 is on the way. That, and improving Civilization V - since this one is already out and, no matter how our opinions may differ, we all agree on one thing: this game needs improvements!

[KingYosef]

Great points made, I agree totally.

[IXJac]

My opinion is somewhat different. I wasn't looking for an update of Civ IV. Civ IV is still a perfectly playable game, with a rich supply of expansions and mods. In fact, my initial response when I heard about Civ V was "why?" As the poster above commented, Civ IV was pretty much the perfect end state of the original Civilization concept. Aside from some repolishing and repackaging, I didn't think it could be much improved on, and had no intention of buy a game that was just a prettier Civ IV.

Instead, the very fact that Civ V is so different, and takes things in a new direction (that obviously some may not like) is the very reason I bought it. It's a new experience. And so far, I'm finding it stands up well on its own merits. There's several rough edges, but the fundamental experience is sound.

So, I can understand those people who don't like the new direction - but then you still have the previous game(s). Not like they come with an expiry date.

[Saczva]

i saw you claim civics were more complicated, strategic and important in the long run than social policies and lol'd irl

[Saczva]

"- happiness used to have a more important saying in the matter. Right now, the way the game is made, it doesn't really matter if some backwater city is full with unhappy citizens, as long as the people in the capital are happy. Happiness used to be specific on every single city, not just on the nation as a whole. "

what? are you playing on settler?

[bushviper336]

well i have to say civ 5 is the best one yet....they got rid of the stacks of doom which is awsome...n they made range units hey actully have range.

though im somewat dissapointed with not being able to ally with other factions n just with the city-states it by no means is gonna make me go back to civ 4...

i hated the religon in 4 policy in 5 is ok not thrilled but better then the goverment. the AI is still retarted tho. wat i hate is i cant right click on any picture of units/ buildings to get the civopedia up w\o the dam thing crashing on me (so wish they fix that soon). oh n the 69 city limit....

other then that the game is going in the right direction like some1 else said with patches n xpacks will be even better