The AI is really the big problem. Everything else if a fairly minor problem overall and can be fixed with a simple patch. But fixing the AI will be quite a bit more difficult and is what is most likely to prevent the game from reaching greatness.

Why should we be punished for city spamming?  I call it empire building.  It is one reason why I enjoy games such as this.  I understand balance.  And I am happy for systems which require me to make choices.  If I build and conquer my way to a huge empire, then I expect that I am going to have to make certain decisions and sacrifices in order to maintain it.  I'm cool with that.  A huge empire has more gold, science, and culture producing oppurtunity than smaller nations.  So yeah, add some systems to balance the runaway civs so nations of any size can be competive if they are crafty enough.  But don't punish or otherwise discourage large empire building in an empire building game.  In my opinion, systems such as Wonders requiring Improvement X to be built in N% of your nations cities is not a good way to balance large empries.  City specialization is fun.  Attempting to build costly universities in poor production cities, not so much.

When I first read the term city spamming, it was near ten years ago and was in relation to Civ3's AI spamming out 1 pop cities in absolutley worthless terrain.  Cities with nothing but jungle terrain etc. Before mid-game, there would be no unsettled land.  In that context I understand the term city spamming.  Large numbers of worthless cities = city spam.  But building and conquering your way to a huge empire of moderate to high worth cities is not, imo, city spamming.  It is playing the game to the fullest.  Balance it sure.  Punish the player for playing the game in the way the want, no way!

Wait, what? You beat game at 'easy' and claim that its... too easy?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=390729 quote from John Shafer about the upcoming patch, whenever it gets released. More info to follow. Yes, 2k pushed it out the door. Yes, it is unfinished. Yes, the code stinks and needs work.

It should begin to be a good game in about a year. Yeah, I've got it. Sorry I do.

At the moment Civ III with mods is a better game, overlooking the graphics. Civ 4 BTS is a much better game and, just me, I really like the Civ IV graphics better. But they may improve the graphics somewhere along the way.

After trying my best to like the new combat system, I am sorry to report that I like stacks better. SoD FTW! But this can be fixed with mods.

Umm... I'm not advocating that the amount of cities in Civ V is off the wall or anything. Just that the "must have ___ in each city" wonders, the 3 or 4 of them (and I believe they are also all National Wonders, anyway) are one of the ways to give medium and small empires a way to catch up, to a limited extent, huge empires.

Large empires will still way outproduce, probably outscience, and certainly be able to field a much larger army. The National Wonders are a small way to balance it out a bit. If you aren't really city spamming, and instead playing aggressively, I'm 80% confident that puppets don't count against you if they lack the building. Puppet states enable large empires by minimizing unhappiness penalties and city micro while maximizing the scientific and commercial output of the cities. Puppet states are a way of rewarding player choice. 

So, you're only being punished if you either city spam (forced to make universities in low production cities) or if you annexed a large amount of cities. 

Calling people names does not add to the discussion, just shows your personal lack of class and good upbringing.

Can you read with understanding? Let me reiterate in case long sentences are a problem for you: "I am not talking that the game was too easy to win, but the AI just does not seem like it has any direction". I had the game pretty much won by turn 140 or so. But that is NOT the point.

After I made sure no remaining empire is a threat I went for a scientific victory and empire building. I left every other empire to its own devices. They did not try to expand, they did not try to compete with each other, or me - they did absolutely nothing. Diplomacy was a joke, a guy with bunch of pikemen and 3 cities made off-the-wall demands with the army of my BattleMechs at his gates, making a paceful resolution impossible, even though I really, really wanted to make it work.

AI, even on an easy level should still behave, well, intelligent. Otherwise it is taking away from the realism of the game. And what do you get on higher difficulty? AI cheats with stats, but still behaves retarded, taking away form the realism of the game.

You can balance any game so it is unwinnable, but that does not make it a challenge. It just makes it feel rigged. Good AI would give you a run for your money while on an equal playing field. After that many years of gaming industry they made enormous progress with graphics, but 0 progress with AI development.   

OK, I will do as you say. I was planning to do a large map first to see how the game plays with lots of room for expansion, but I suspect that with lack of empire management tools in the interface it would just annoy me to death.

My first game did show that after an initial phase, where micro-management really matters, there is no higher level, where you can do imperial management first, and micro-manage is special cases only (like border towns). It would help A LOT if it was possible to set a construction queue in a city with some rules how to behave when new buildings are availble (if it is there - I did not find it).

I am going to try the Price level and see what happens.

My intent to reply to your "punish city spamming" posting was to discuss this city spamming phenomena I've been seeing across the TBS genre.  These are empire building games.  What is the problem with building large empires?  The only problem I see is from a balance standpoint.  You don't want the formula for success to be reduced to 'who builds the most cities the quickest'.  But you don't punish large empire building either.  You reward it while at the same time balancing it such that successfully managing a large empire is a challenging achievement.  You should gain an edge for doing it well.  As should you pay a penalty for doing it poorly. I support game systems which allow for the risk/reward of going big.  At the same time I support balance that allows victorious opportunity from empires of any size. 

I've yet to read anything of substance explaining why city spamming (building lots of cities) is a bad thing for empire building games.  I think the term is misapplied.  I think it originally related to AI spamming out loads of cities in worthless and resource devoid locales that can't even support an initial population growth. Then the term developed to describe a balance exploit.  And now people seem use it to blanket imply that building large empires should be a bad thing.  

There are times where building a city in an otherwise worthless local is critical when doing so to gain a valuable resource or to plug a hole in your borders.  These cities shouldn't pay for themselves and should be a drain on the empire.  They provide something you need. So you balance that need with a cost.  But the X Improvement in every city is the wrong way to go about this I think.  I think it is a major fail to balance an empire building game in this way.  There are other ways to achieve this particular balance.  I'd rather deal with a modified Civ3 corruption mechanism than have to work around an X Building in every city method.  But I think there is something better out there.  Something relating to global logistical support tied to economy and luxury. 

And particularly in Civ5; the options you present as a way of assuaging the requirement is at this point broken.  Puppets drain the empires economy by spamming pointless buildings which increase the empires per turn maintenance costs.  And they use up critical resources in the building of units which further pressures the player to extend out to pick up more resources.  The arctic iron city is a bigger deal in Civ5 than it was in previous Civ games.  You can only build so many units per resource.  Having puppet states wantonly consuming these limited resources only adds to the need to extend out to collect more.  

Furthermore, a small empire is penalized just as much as the larger empires.  And chances are that the smaller empires will be even more pressured to go out and found a production poor city to pick up a vital war resource so they can survive against their aggressive neighbors. The 'require x building in every city' requirement just makes no sense to me.  It even makes even less sense since these are National Wonders vs World Wonders. 

I dont like city spam simply because its so hard to manage, you know because most games can't do interfaces very well...

If civ had a real city interface I would spam until the cows come home (I don't know why the cows arn't home tbh but whatever).

I was playing on huge maps on my notebook. I've got some graphics glitches sometimes, but otherwise performance was good. Oh, and occasional OOMs, but it autosaves.

I havent played CIV V and wasnt going to comment on this thread, but you just convinced me

I have followed strategy gaming for many many years and clearly remember the forums of MOO III, CIV IV, Elemental (not hard to remember, hehe), Kings Bounty just after launch. In all cases there are whiners, but in some of them the whining is very justefied.

The CIV IV forum was flooded by people having graphical issues after launch and people were angry. STILL, the game was not described as too easy, hollow, shallow and simplified. There were endless discussions between people who would only believe that the game was best won through pursuing religion and people who went for differnt tech slingshots. Where are these discussions for CIV V?? I read forums (Apolyton, Celestial Heavens, Civfanatics, Kings Bounty and Elemental) every day, and CIV V seems to be pretty badly received compared to expectations.

Well note (to both you and the previous poster) that I never said that civ 5 was a great game or that it was as good as previous Civ games (at least in it's current form). 3 stars is probably pretty fair. It has the potential to be a great game, but the AI problems kill it.

However outside of AI the other problems it has are comparible to previous games. Every version of Civ has had people who thought it was awful for one reason or another, and none of the things people complain about in Civ 5 are any worse. But when you add Civ 5's AI problems to the mix, it makes it harder to enjoy the good things about the game and easier to focus on the bad things.