Money has been tight lately, as most of you can probably understand in our current economic climate. Having always been a TBS fan, I had to make a decision as to which game I would buy this fall. I've been anticipating Civilization 5 and Elemental for quite some time, but I had to go with the latter, and I still don't regret it.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting pretty tired of the Civilization series. It's starting to remind me of Madden: Release the same game, add a few features, and call it the best thing since sliced bread. I've played every one of them, and every spin off since Civ 1 and the whole tour through history bit is getting a bit long in the tooth for me.
So I'm left with Elemental, which kind of feels like the old pick-up truck your dad gave you. It doesn't exactly run all that great, needs a new set of...well, everything, and doesn't impress your friends all that much. So would I rather take the old pick-up truck that can potentially take me to places I've never been before, or do I stick with Civilization, my shiny ten-speed that's always been safe and reliable my whole life?
I've read all the reviews, seen all the crap hit the fan, and even felt a bit of disappointment in the past few weeks. However, there's something about this game that just gets me excited, something unique, and something I don't feel very often with games. Even with all of the bugs and problems this game has, it has something special that I can't quite explain. With Stardock's commitment to improve things, I am giddy with anticipation as to where we will be led in the next few months and years. It's expecting the unexpected with Elemental that is holding my interest. It's hoping that perhaps one day Elemental will defy it's launch in a way that we have never seen before.
I'm sure that Civilization 5 will get reviewed really well, I'm sure it will be everything that everyone has hoped it would be. I'm sure it will be polished, stable, and relatively bug-free. I'm sure, at the core of it all, it will still feel like the Civilization we've grown to love. Unfortunately, this is where I become bored. I'll take the old pickup-truck, but I'm not sure why.
Perhaps Trinity had the answer: Because you have been down there Neo, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.
Nah...most Civ mods don't come anywhere even close to the scope and scale of Elemental. Take Fall From Heaven 2 for example, it still felt near identical to the vanilla game with some different fantasy races thrown in. The mechanics in Civilization don't translate well to a fantasy game where technology is not the focus (like FFH2 tried to do). I've played FFH2 quite a bit and it doesn't even come close to Elemental.
And yes, it is much harder to mod Civilization to be something other than history because it takes full conversions to do that. There are going to be less fantasy full conversion content than Elemental because Elemental builds the modding mechanic so seamlessly into the game itself.
I just tested Civ 5 demo.
I was inpressed over how solid it felt. You could feel the quality.
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.
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. I've played the game and I've found it to be deeper and more complex then the previous version. Almost everything I used to do in Civ 4 I still do in Civ 5, and there is quite a bit of complexity added to military and culture. I think many of the people complaining about streamlining are still basing their opinions on an old preview article that talked about making the game more accessible, which ruffled some feathers.
This isn't to say that the game may not have some issues. The AI complaint appears to be unfortunately be quite valid, and I much prefer the old diplomacy sytem and interface. But the game is certainly not dumbed down in any way. The culture complaints I think are way off too....5 of the 8 cultural systems are incompatible with one of the others so it's not just a matter of picking cool abilities and forgetting about them. Plus the abilities you pick are quite important so which way you go can have a pretty significant effect on gameplay.
Well I've heard that the AI and diplomacy is actually far worse in Civ 5 than Elemental. I've also heard that the late game is a mess.
It's not worse. AI is bad in waging war, because it doesn't seem to grasp the idea of tactical combat. Diplomacy is weird. Major civs pull some crazy stunts and it's hard to tell whether they like you or not. On the other hand, diplomacy with minor civs is perfect and very transparent.
But compared to elemental, it's all mindblowingly advanced. AI in elemental fails on every possible aspect, not just tactical combat. And diplomacy is not just bad, but virtually non-existant.
Comparing civ5 to elemental is actually quite insulting. Civ5 has it's problems, but it's a well defined and finished game, with clear design concepts. Now you may not like those concepts, but as a product it's very decent. Elemental on the other hand is a mess of unfinished concepts that will take months to sort out and balance. I was actually far more excited about elemental than civ5, because there are so few fantasy empire builders, but right now, civ5 is simply more entertaining on every level. And mark my words, modding in civ5 will take off very soon, but elemental will have to wait quite a while for it's major mods, because the core concepts of the game will be heavily altered in the future, so any serious mod development is pointless right now.
As I understand it, the in-game advisors are set to nanny mode by default, but they can be disabled in the options.
See Tom Chick's review.
+1, well put
I've played civ5, it disappointed me so much. I don't know why I lost "one more turn" fun at civ5, but clicking "next turn".
This whole thread is comical.
I read his review before making the post you responded to. He does not complain about the game being dumbed down. In fact some of his complaints relate to the game being too confusing (too many numbers, etc.) and not always giving him the information that he needs. Though I don't find the numbers at all confusing.
According to the comments in his review the low score is almost purely based on the bad AI, something I can understand having an issue with. He also dislikes the diplomacy system which I can understand as well. As I mentioned above though i strongly disagree with his problems with the culture system and i do not think he fully understood it and it's implications.
Civ 5 does appear to have a bad combat AI. But it's not anywhere close to being bad at the level of elemental AI. The diplomacy system on the other hand is not innately bad, it's more of an information/interface issue. Again it's definitely better then elemental but there is room for improvement.
You have to understand that an AI could be described as bad or even as awful and still be worlds better then the elemental AI. I'm not even sure what an AI far worse then the elemental AI would look like. Maybe if it started attacking it's own cities.
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 removed a lot of features from the series but didn't replace them with anything. Some people seem to like this simplification, but the general consensus I'm seeing is that the series has been "dumbed down".
So few words, so much correctly stated.
You and I agree on so very little here, but if this ends up being the case (simplification in the granddaddy of all TBS games?!?!?) I'll be a very sad panda.
Hmm you may need to go back and reread the review. He never called either system streamlined, in fact much the opposite. He called the diplomacy system confusing and hard to understand which is the opposite of streamlined. It contains more options then the civ 4 diplomacy system but it has a poor interface and a lack of information. As for social policies he just said he didn't like the way they work, and he complained about what he viewed as an unnecesary complexity of having a 2nd research category....again the opposite of streamlined. As I said though your social policy decisions do have a much longer term effect then previous games and the rules for researching new ones are quite a bit different then technology.
They removed religion (which added very little to the game) and they added much more complicated battle rules, more complicated culture, more complicated rules on resources, and the new addition of city states. If your reading a lot of people saying that the game is dumbed down then I suspect that many of them (like you) are talking without having actually played the game.
Note that I'm not saying that there aren't reasons to dislike the game. I'm just saying that claiming it's dumbed down is just wrong.
I got Civ V yesterday and while I'm impressed with the game it just doesn't bring me into the gameworld like Elemental does. In Elemental I have an immediate connection to the gameworld with my sovereign unit. Secondly, I can design my own units which is very cool, albeit somewhat limited. Elemental has more revolutionary features then Civilization V.
That being said, Civ V is much more finished then Elemental is. The graphics are much better, terrain looks nicer, and plays smoother. But for me it's the revolutionary features that attract me.
I thought Civ V was going to steal me away from Elemental, turns out I was wrong.
Civ 5's AI is god awful. It's probably even worse than the fake (by the numbers) AI we get in Elemental. At least I can trust an AI in this game to be my friend, trade with them, share the same family as them, etc. And I know well my enemies in this game. In Civ V it seems like everyone hates you even your "friends". I've lost wars in Elemental. But I'm finding it very hard to lose them in Civ V. I was out teched, out resourced, and outnumbered by one civ. And still win the war because the AI finds it very tatical to zerg his entire army one by one into my unit blocking the way between a little valley surrounded by mountains. Don't take your army and go the long way around by the coast or anything.... Or soften me up with archers forcing me to move to you or run away. Just keep trying to kill me on that hill as I get enough time to reinforce him and crush you quickly afterwards!
People complain how this game has sluggish fps, Civ V's is even worse. The graphics aren't that amazing, I'm not seeing why I need a 4GB computer with a 512mb graphics card and a quad core processor. Apparently that blue line they drew in microsoft paint that they're calling a river requires much more power than I thought.... Next time I draw with the pencil in paint I'll try to remember not to blow up my computer by drawing *gasp* two blue lines!
The sad thing about it all is both games had a pretty bad start. But everyone is going to praise Civ V for being amazing while continuing to trash this game. When they both suffer from the same exact problems.
CAVEAT: I've only put about an hour of "fiddling around" time into Civ 5, so I have yet to see some of the more potentially braindead combat AI and diplomacy issues, so I'll address neither in comparison to Elemental (which is godawful in both respects) except as meta issues.
My own personal experiences are quite a bit different for each game, and from what little I've seen Civ5 is lightyears ahead of Elemental in many ways.
Crashes and Instability - Until Elemental 1.07, I ALWAYS got a crash to desktop when alt-tabbing with Elemental. Since then I've gotten fairly consistent out of memory errors doing so (and during fairly long games). In addition, late stage games start to slow down pretty painfully on my still pretty snappy system (i7 920, 6g, GTX 275 with the most recent drivers). I've seen nothing close to this for Civ, though I need to push towards a longer running game to see if it holds out. I do enjoy your snarky comment about the "blue line they drew in microsoft paint" in reference to a river in Civ. Civ's graphic are so far beyond Elemental that I guess you'd refer to the latter's attempt at inland water to be "bad ASCII art" or the like
UI - Civ's works. It'd definitely way too spoonfed compared to Civ4 (for my TBS dollar) and a bit too much in your face, but it's in complete opposition to Elemental's bland, confusing and in some places missing "UI".
Combat - To be honest, I was never happy with Civ's way too abstracted view of combat in general and it seems to have taken a distinct turn for the worse with the hardcore overpowering of artillery or the AI being too interesting in just rushing you one at a time akin to those cheesy martial arts flicks from the 70s and 80s. That said, it's still Einstein compared to Elemental's Special Ed. Short of abusing mechanics (such as the outdated 10 damage to all enemy targets minion spam), the AI is pathetically easy to beat in any combat situation unless I somehow forgot to bring a single caster. Or hell, even a horribly overpowered melee sovereign (pre 1.08 perhaps, still not sure on that).
Game Mechanics - The base framework for Civ (building, research, culture, etc.) are still working pretty damned well. Show me any one part of Elemental that works on it's own (magic, combat, building, diplomacy, AI, unit design, dynasties, questing, resources) let alone as part of a greater whole.
To sum it up, people who want to compare Civilization V's issues with Elemental's need to do 1 of 2 things.
Either admit that you're hopelessly in love with Elemental and can't get past the rose colored goggles. If this is the case, embrace it and just wait for Stardock to just make a great thing better (as has been posted by any number of people).
Or realize that 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. Elemental *MIGHT* someday be a great legacy game like MoM (or to a lesser extent AoW) and we'll look back on this time as the dark ages before the great enlightenment. And while I'm regaining more and more hope that it's coming (given a number of pretty heartening and posts about specific issues by devs and Frogboy), it's still going to be a long road to recovery.
I think it's somewhat ironic that someone made the exact opposite observation earlier in this thread.
Well I think saying it suffers from the same problems as elemental is a huge exageration. That's like saying someone with the flu suffers from the same problems as someone with the bubonic plague. Both have unfortunate issues but one is far worse then the others.
And it's not just the professional review scores that are way better then Elementals. The metacritic average user score is 9.0, which is even significantly higher then starcraft 2 (granted I suspect it to dip down to SC2 range with time). Meanwhile elemental has an average user score of 6.0. So the people in general agree, not just the reviewers.
And regarding stupid AI decisions in civ, yes that's very stupid. It doesn't hold a candle however to some of the idiocty in elemental. Someone posted a strategy on how you can win impossible/impossible in elemental (at least in 1.07) without ever leaving your starting town, building any buildings, casting any spells, or building more then a single catapult. Civilization at least plays the game, and sometimes it seems to play it well and other times the terrain confuses it and it play horribly.
I've gone back to Elemental from Civ 5. Civ 5 isnt a bad game but it does feel like something is missing and im not 100% sure what. It has some great upgrades from Civ 4, the combat is so much better and i like the social policies which kind of "level up" your civ. Having said that some things, like the social policy bit do feel a little bit like mini games, the city states im a little half and half on. In one instance i really like the idea of them, and in the other i think its just a case of them complaining at you and you giving them 250 gold to shut up.
While Elemental is pretty much Beta at the current time, and im dissapointed in the way it was released i feel it has more potential than Civ 5 does at the moment. That said i dont feel either game has been released in a great state. There are some obvious problems with Civ 5 that should have been caught long before its release.
Couldn't agree more with you DrAngry.
Been playing Civ 5 for a few days, I like it but it feels very repetativ. Game after game feels the same, as if I am playing reruns all the time. It does not take long to find a pattern in the research/production, and stick to it.
Elemental feels, and gives a more diverse experience in my opinion. Thanks to Sov creation, learning spells, random research and map items, player controlled battles, imbue heros etc etc.
Both are good for what they do, but I think Elemental will give players a more varied and enjoyable game-play over time.
Also tried Civ 5 the last couple of days. As much as I want to love Elemental, but...
Civ 5 is fun with a clear vision when it comes to design and with basic game mechanics that are actually working, although there are slight frustrations along the way (Combat AI, Performance, Diplomacy). Elemental is only fun at game setup stage and when dreaming about the vast possibilities of the game that fizzles quickly when the actual game starts and annoys you with a constant stream of frustration, because of crucial game mechanics that are not working at all and therefore are bound to be edited and changed in the upcoming months. I chuckled when I read comments about Civ 5 being worse than Elemental.
Even though I will watch the progress, I switched to Civ 5 and return to playing Elemental once the core mechanics are working correctly.
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