The combat is actually interesting in Civ5, I'm not sure how someone could call it boring compared to "build vast army and move them all over the map together" Civ4.

You've got it right. Since it still requires Steam, I am still unable to touch it. But, since it's nearly unanimously agreed that the game sucks, I'm probably glad for that.

Because I can no longer build a vast army and move them over the map together!

YMMV, but I loved those huge armies.

About time is all I have to add.

Does look impressive though.

There was no strategy or tactics though, just steamrolling. Civ5 may have slightly lowered the tactics in cities and such, but it massively expanded them in combat. Fair trade if you ask me.

My main issue with 5 was the broken AI at launch.

I could probably write essays in reply to that question, but I'll try to keep it short. ;) The main reasons why Civ5 bores me are: less choices, too much focus on warfare, inept AI, too much focus on "winning", horrible interface.

The way I enjoy Civ games most is this (taken from my usual Civ4 games): I mod the game to a super-huge map with about 30-40 civs, more technologies, more units, and a better UI (BUG mod) and AI (Better BtS AI mod). I then play the game very slowly. I name my units (especially when they won decisive battles), I name landmarks, I used to enjoy looking at the statistics (there was a mod tracking statistics for every single unit). When I meet other civs, I act in an historically plausible way even if that isn't the best way of winning the game - while I like to win the game, I wouldn't enjoy it that much doing so at the cost of my immersion. I try to understand the personalities of my AI adversaries and react in a historically plausible way towards them, having all the data about why they like/dislike me helps a lot with that, in the same way as the numbers of pen & paper RPG characters help me to tell plausible stories about them. I regularly browse through my cities and just enjoy looking at them and imagining the life there. I like to have _tons_ of possible decisions to make at every point in the game, I like to juggle with dozens of different plans and concepts at the same time, and Civ4 is one of the very few games that allows me to do that with the degree of complexity that I enjoy most. I rarely choose slavery as a civic (even though it's often superior strategically) because I don't want my citizens to be slaves. When entering a war, I often try to keep it short, wars are more boring to me than building up a civilization. The stack-based movement system helps a lot with that since it allows troop movements and fights to be quick, so I can focus on the parts of the game that I enjoy more. My games usually take about 3 weeks; it's possible that I discover during the second week that the game is unwinnable (since my games are so huge, a runaway civ on some of the many other continents is a possibility), but that doesn't impede my enjoyment. I then set my goals the same way a real historic leader would do under such a situation, and continue to enjoy being a part of an unfolding vast and complex alternate world history. When the game has ended, I particularly enjoy watching the history replay, reliving that history - this takes about 6 hours usually (since I really read it completely and keep track of the changes in all parts of this huge world) and is always a part I look forward to.

From my perspective, Civ4 was a great base for such a gaming experience. It wasn't quite complex / slow / detailed enough, but mods changed that. In any case, Civ4 seemed to have been developed with basic ideas that supported my preferred playstyle very well, and it's a playstyle that very few other games have ever managed to cater to. (That's one of the reasons why the wargamer department wasn't too fond of Civ4 btw, it didn't really cater to them.)

Civ5, however, seems to have ripped out (or at least severely reduced) all things that I enjoy, and replaced them with stuff that I either don't like or don't care about. 1upt puts much more emphasis on warfare and tactical movement, but at the same time the AI is so bad that it doesn't become challenging, so I spend a lot of time fighting boring battles. Diplomacy has been severely reduced, there are no stats and values that help me telling my stories and immerse myself in the alternate history, everything is kept under the hood and for the most part the AI's decisions seem very irrational. The AI will backstab you because it tries to win the game instead of you, which destroys immersion since the whole "winning" part has little historical plausibility. There are much less choices available at any given point in the game, I never get to the feeling that I can juggle dozens of decisions at the same time. Instead, you typically make one decision at an early stage and are then locked into it. On top of all that, the UI is a chore to work with, getting necessary information turns into a clickfest and getting additional information (that would help my immersion, as explained above) isn't available at all.

Now, it's interesting that you draw a connection to other 90s strategy games, because when compared to games like Master of Magic or Alpha Centauri, you can see that Civ5 inherited the bad parts of those (bad AI that can't really play the game), but not the good ones (lots of features, lots of different things to do). In the 90s, 4x strategy games added lots of features, but it was impossible to write an AI that could actually understand them. Civ4 was a pretty successful attempt at writing a complex 4x game with a competent AI (though there's of course still room for improvement). Civ5 seems to have been designed as a game that reduces non-warfare complexity in favor of enhanced tactical gameplay, which then failed because the AI wasn't able to play the game.

It's good to hear, I'm looking forward to it's release. The religion and the new countries are interesting. (As you can guess from my avatar, I really like Civilization V.)

I liked the events in the Beyond the Sword expansion, too.

Will I be able to make Scientology the state religion and declare myself Operating Thetan?

I love Civ 5. (It is my first Civ game.)

It's nice that they are expanding on the diplomacy. That has been a major weak point for the game. Hopefully that turns out well. And I really hope that the AI gets improved.

And the other features sound cool, too. I'm excited to see the new Civs, buildings, etc. And I'm excited to finally play with religion.
I'll probably pick it up if it is a fair price and they can deliver on their promises.

Adam, Civ4's really cheap (including all its expansions). Have you given it a try?

Yeah, Civ 4 is IMO the most complete and compelling game of the series. It's just got everything X4 fan could wish for.

For conquest games I prefer V for diplomatic games IV for just messing around III and for playing when I'm bored SMAC... a new SMAC based on the new engine without the idiotically OP Japanese would be interesting (my only complaint about V combat is the Japanese racial)

It is on my wishlist, but I still have about 75 unplayed game on my backlog. I promised myself that I wouldn't buy any games (excluding indies) until summer.

Which means I will probably get around to playing it about this time next year...

Wow Psyringe. While I admire your attention to detail it really does come across as bordering on the edge of going mentally insane.

Congratulations anyway. I enjoyed reading your post.

Sanity is overrated anyway. ;)

On a more serious note: I do realize that my preferred playstyle wouldn't be enjoyable for everyone. But it probably demonstrates why certain types of players find little to like in Civ5. Generally, the Civ series has always managed to cater to very different playing styles, ranging from a "conquer the world and win the game" approach to an "enjoy being part of a complex unfolding alternate history" approach. One of Civ4 biggest achievements (imho) was that it managed to cater to all these approaches. This had been a concern for the game's design from the design, you can get a glimpse at the underlying theory from Soren Johnson's Googletech talk about AI programming.

Civ5 was designed by Jon Shafer, who had criticized Civ4 harshly when it was released. And he did have a point back then because Civ4 vanilla didn't cater well to warfare-oriented players (which seemed to be his main focus). However, when he then designed Civ5, he simply failed to understand that there are people who play the game in a very different way than him. For example: For a simulation/roleplay oriented player, the visible diplomacy modifiers in Civ4 help with immersion, since they allow a better understanding of what's going on in that leader's "head". For Shafer and his "win the game" approach, the numbers were just gameplay numbers that could be exploited by gaming the system, so he removed them in order to increase the challenge. Now, for a simulationist/roleplayer, gaming the system wouldn't have even occurred as an option, because he's not totally focused on winning anyway, and by gaming the system he would reduce his own enjoyment by performing historically implausible actions. But Shafer didn't see this, he simply didn't realize what his design approach would take away from players who played the game in a different way than him. The exact same point can be made for an AI that "tries to win" by backstabbing you once it sees that you're near a victory condition. For a "win the game / enjoy the challenge" gamer, this is decent design - but for a simulationist/roleplayer, it takes away the immersion, because it makes the other leaders react in historically implausible ways.

Civ5's main design weakness is probably the almost exclusive focus on "challenge" gameplay, while at the same time designing combat in a way that makes it impossible for the AI to provide a challenge. So he ignored certain groups of players from the get-go, and even to the group he focused on, he managed to cater only in parts. Which explains why the game is seen so critical by the franchise's fanbase.