[quote who="Baleurion" reply="306" id="2787350"]No, it's an awesome and amazing game right now, day 1 after launch. Its polished, its beautiful, the gameplay is amazing and deep. Dont judge all gamers to be blind idiots who cant judge a game for what it is. I'm absolutely in love with civ5...[/quote] Up until that last line, I honestly wasn't sure if you were talking about Elemental or Civ 5.
[quote who="Nesrie" reply="303" id="2787289"]Elemental has flaws, but the game is more than just functional, it's playable and fun...[/quote] You see what I did there? [e classic];)[/e]
I will say this: I'm amused by all the posts I'm seeing in various Civ 5 forums saying things like, "This will be an awesome game once they fix issue X, Y, and Z with a patch/expansion." But that's O.K. because it has Sid Meier's name on the box, so of course it deserves a top rating. If only Elemetal were so lucky. [e classic]:D[/e]
[quote who="Eiralin" reply="294" id="2786410"]...while Civ has it's flaws, it's fixable with tweaks and a powerful modding community. Elemental still needs the basic FRAMEWORK to be fixed before modders can do anything but patch the biggest holes.[/quote] I think it's somewhat ironic that someone made the exact opposite observation earlier in this thread.
[quote who="esomonk" reply="9" id="2785834"]I'm kind of pissed when elemental lost points in reviews for crashes then this game gets a free pass.[/quote] There could a good reason for that: a lot of major publishers send out prerelease copies of games to reviewers with the understanding that they won't report on things like bugs and performance issues because "We'll fix it before release," so they end up writing a review for a mythical bug free version of a game that doesn't accuratel
[quote quoting="post"]There are a lot of people in the various Civ5 forums reporting their games crash after only 10-20 mins.[/quote] I think a lot of that is that the Civ 5 graphics engine is a beast and really needs a system meeting the "recommended" specs to be happy.
[quote who="shadowtongue" reply="25" id="2784550"]Hexs are better than squares for tactical combat...[/quote] People keep saying this, but I have yet to see anybody actually make a case for it. The only argument I've seen is that a hex grid supposedly eliminates the diagonal movement "advantage" of a square grid, but since strategy games don't actually care how much distance a unit visually covers then this is a moot point. So what is the actual argument in favor of hex gr
[quote who="FadedC" reply="286" id="2784669"]I read his review before making the post you responded to. He does not complain about the game being dumbed down.[/quote] He also discusses the "streamlined" social policy feature which is basically a tech tree with unlockable permanent bonuses as well as the "streamlined" diplomacy feature which he compared to Civilization Revolution. Then there's the complete excision of the religion and espionage dynamics. In short, Firaxis
[quote who="AnnihilatorX" reply="11" id="2784299"]And how is chess relevent?[/quote] Because it's possibly the finest turn-based strategy game ever created and gets along just fine with a square grid. More to the point, a hexagonal grid is not inherently superior. [quote who="AnnihilatorX"]Hex's superiority lies with realistic equidistance movements and engagement. In most square based games you can always cover more ground by running diagonal in a square setup.[/quote
[quote who="FadedC" reply="278" id="2784424"]I don't understand the complaints of steamlining or dumbing down for Civ 5. I've seen a number of claims of that, but no actual examples.[/quote] See Tom Chick's review.
[quote who="Filthgrinder" reply="277" id="2784386"]But then it hit me, like it does every time I play Civ....it's a damn "pop up" game. It holds your hand with popups reminding you of everything. "Excus me, you have something to do here. Oh, joohoo, over here please!". It just ends up being incredibly annoying and insulting.[/quote] As I understand it, the in-game advisors are set to nanny mode by default, but they can be disabled in the options.
[quote who="GaelicVigil" reply="262" id="2783568"]The real measure of a game is several years after release when it starts to take on "classic" status. In another 5 years, we'll have Civilization 6 and Civ 5 will have gone the way of the Dodo.[/quote] My prediction is that Civilization IV will be the go-to Civilization game for many years to come. From what I've read, Firaxis a bit too much "streamlining" when they designed Civ V.
[quote who="AnnihilatorX" reply="5" id="2784249"]All TBS games I've played, hex always offer more strategy base on unit position, adjacency bonuses, etc.[/quote] Because chess would totally be a better strategic game if it was played on a hexagonal board.
Most of us here are familiar with Tom Chick's lukewarm review of Elemental: http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/elemental_the_review.php Here's where it gets interesting, he is apparently equally unimpressed with Civ V: http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?pager.offset=0&cId=3181540&p=1 " Some of
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="240" id="2782956"]The reason Elemental got terrible reviews is because it deserved them...[/quote] You've said that you were too close to the project to see the flaws. I think the opposite is true now: you're still too close so all you're seeing are the flaws. To put it another way, Elemental wasn't as good as you thought, but neither was it as bad as you think. My opinion is that the reviews were unreasonably harsh, perhaps because Elemen
[quote who="falconne2" reply="237" id="2782791"]That's because those problems are occasional frustrations that distract you from a well designed game. They are relatively minor and the gameplay is so enticing you're frustrated if something delays your play at 3am.[/quote] If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were talking about Elemental. [e classic];)[/e]
[quote who="Eiralin" reply="230" id="2782677"]Here's my caveat... if Civ5 has huge CTD issues and a general hue and cry of lack of polish and features, I'll eat my hat. Hell, I'll BUY a hat just to eat it.[/quote] As I told mentalinstra, feel free to visit the various Civ V forums and confirm my observations for yourself. Oh, and enjoy eating that hat. [e classic];)[/e]
[quote who="mentalinstra" reply="231" id="2782722"]You're wrong.[/quote] No I'm not. You can visit various Civ V forums if you want to confirm for yourself the kind of widespread criticism that Civ V is receiving. Ironically, it's similar to many of the same criticisms that Elemental has rightfully received (believe it or not, I've seen several posters say that Civ V feels rushed and unfinished), but because it's "Sid Meier's Civilization V", most people are giving it a fr
[quote who="Nesrie" reply="228" id="2782519"]Civ IV had all these issues, and was still praised and enjoyed by many (not all)....[/quote] Exactly my point. Elemental has been brutally criticized for things that reviewers gleefully overlooked in Civ 4 and now Civ 5.
Judging by some of the things I'm reading on various forums, Elemental actually isn't too far off from Civ 5 in terms of polish and completeness. Lots of stability, performance, and balance issues being reported as well as complaints about the game being overly simplified and inferior to its predecessors, particularly Civ 4 which is starting to look like the pinnacle of the series. I honestly think the biggest problem with Elemental is that it didn't have Sid Meier's name
ColonelFlagg: Interesting comments. I got that same impression from several reviews despite the fact that the reviewers were eager to gloss over the game's shortcomings and slap a 9.5 on it anyway. The general consensus is that there are fewer options for shaping and guiding your civilization ("dumbed down" is a phrase I'm seeing a lot in the forums), not
Happily, I can report substantial performance improvements with this latest version. The game is actually playable from the 3D view now and no longer dives into single digit frame rates whenever I'm looking at a city. I still prefer the cloth map because I think it's a much clearer presentation of what's happening in the game world (for instance, you can tell at glance whether or not a building is currently under construction), but at least now I can enable 3D for close up views s
[quote who="ozzlok" reply="8" id="2757092"] Quoting Novaburst, reply 5It is obvious the lower level teleport weren't meant to teleport the sov + stack. And only the later is. If that is so then that plan by stardock is almost rediculous. Who has their soverign running around the map early on without support troops? And if you run into serious trouble you would be expected to teleport your sov back and leave those troops stranded or left to die. That could be a huge waste of gi
You have to remember that those old screenshots are representative of when tactical battles were real-time, but that changed during the beta. Turn-based battles with hundreds of individual units would be annoying to the point that I think most players would just as soon auto resolve everything. The only way to get an "epic" look is if each unit was represented by multiple characters, so you would effectively only have a dozen units on the screen but seemingly hundreds of individua
[quote who="nobalkain" reply="1" id="2770046"] Its not bad, I just don't like having to do so in order to win.[/quote] That and the fact that late-game can get really annoying when you're trying to manage and protect a dozen cities. In Civ 4 I end up just turn on the auto-governor because I can't be bothered with it. That to me is not a desirable solution.