Was reading through the Civ 4 presentation over at the apolyton.net forums, and while most things were very pleasing to me, two items stuck out as very very concerning:

To prevent Civilization from making the same mistake, Civ4 will not be condiserably more complex or bigger than Civ3, only different. Also, it will aim at a slightly different fan-base than previous Civ-games, though it should still appeal to (most) veterans as well.

One of the key phrases for Civ4 will be "Simplify, simplify, simplify", which means as much as streamlining the existing gameplay where possible.

The problem is, I've been PC gaming for 20 years now, when I hear "its gonna be aimed at a slightly different audience", I "KNOW" what that means... It means they are going for a radically different approach...Anyone share in my sentiments that this just sounds scary? I mean, while I can't picture Firaxis ever ripping off their hardcore fans, I can definitely see whoever their new publisher is putting pressure on them to release Civilization: Red Alert or Civilization: Renegade to sell a million more copies... This mixed with the whole "simplify" mindset just gets me wondering. Honestly, I thought Civ 3 was a little too simple, I wanted more options for doing things like more diplomacy and war options, and many more unit types. I can't help but think of Civilization being ported to the Xbox. Im concerned and I hope that in the near future Firaxis can lay my worries to rest :) Civ on...

I'll have to agree with you... I liked civ because of its relative complexity... :cry:

I can't even use my cute bow smilie here as a sign-off... :(

i don't see how this can possibly be bad, i mean, yeah we won't be getting a game for us. which is fine, because it doesn't make civ3 (or 2 if you like that one btter than 3) worse. If civ4 is different than civ3, then just don't think of it as a contiuatiion of the civ series, think of it as new game.

Why oh why simplify? The most addicitve game I have played is Nethack ( a really old dungeon crawler), which was a simple CONCEPT, but had a LOT of depth to it! (heck you could eat your magic rings or monsters to gain power) We need more depth, not less! Civ might want less micro-management, but this doesn't mean it should have less options or less ways of playing or less things to do!! Dag nab it!

Soren's comment about simplification refers to matters like micromanagement. 'Streamlining' means to cut down on some of the more frivolous things like pollution and corruption (in its current implimentation).

Soren said he wants to keep the complexity of Civ 4 the same as Civ 3. So for those of you who are worried about things being "dumbed down," you shouldn't be. Soren's philosophy is to cut down in some areas in order to add in others. Take out running around after pollution and add in something like religion or civics.

Anyways, I wouldn't be too worried. Until you've seen the game, you can't give it a fair assessment - it's still a year or more away.

There's no need to worry yet. I think that Civ 4 won't stray far away from the earlier civs. Soren was probably (okay, switch that with hopefully) only talking about micromanagement and bloody pollution and corruption.

^^ That's what I read into it as well. I don't remember talk about simplification, I remember something about "removing unfun elements", and talk about pollution (and corruption as well :confused: )

I took this to mean that they were aiming to remove a lot of the micromanagement elements (eg moving citizens from one tile to another to tweak an extra shield for a turn; waking 30 workers to go clean pollution etc) to allow you to concentrate on the actual strategic gameplay.

Actually ainwood, one of Soren's quote was "simplify! simplify! simplify!" ;)

Gee, you sure pay a lot of attention to things... I wonder what else you're neglecting... :mischief:

Simplification is good, but I like features, lots of features! If civ 4 does not have alot of new features compared to civ 3 then I will be very disappointed. :sad:

I'm not too worried either. I believe that they'll cut out the unfun stuff and replace it with more fun stuff. If I could be so bold, it's that they'll cut out micromanagement tasks and replace them with decisions that make you feel like you're really shaping your empire.

And frankly, I'd be excited about a game that's "drastically different". To a point -- but I'm not worried about Civ becoming an RTS or an RPG or eliminating diplomacy or war or something crazy. I trust these people. I'm just not sure that they'll make it drastically different in the right way, but i'm sure it'll be progress nonetheless.

I trust Soren's judgement.

I never bought Civ3. A neighbour lent PTW to me, but after playing it for a few weeks I didn't find it interesting enough to go out and buy it. With hindsight, it's hardly surprising that when they lost people like Reynolds, Coleman, Train, and Kaufmann, midway through the development cycle, they probably found themselves in a crunch situation from the word 'Go'.

OTOH, Soren has already leaked enough concrete info about Civ4 (Python and XML) to get me intrigued, so I'll probably end up buying it.

[/off topic] It has come to my attention that the "Today's Birthdays" list is ordered by age. Except that those members who have chosen to enter their birthday, but not their birthdate, get bumped to the front. A casual viewer could, therefore, easily come to the conclusion that today is Warpstorm's 60th birthday.

(This is by way of birthday greetings. ;) )
[/end off topic]

Give him some credit, he's only 58. ;) :p

It's sad that Civ 3 had less features than Alpha Centauri, a game which is several years older. Let's hope IV will bring back the revolutionary features of Alpha Centauri, and then some.

[QUOTE=MaXXXXXuM]I can't help but think of Civilization being ported to the Xbox.QUOTE]

not xbox!I hate xbox NOT XBOX!!!!!

The problem with turning a PC game into a console game (for the X-Box for example) is that typing even the smallest thing in becomes a great challenge. Have any of you played Morrowind or Halo? Just typing in my four-letter long name took about a minute.

My problem with getting rid of "unfun" elements is that it will make managing your domestic matters too easy. No one ever said running an empire was easy! Did anyone, ever, in history anywhere ever say that running an empire was easy? They should change the corruption system and they should keep rioting and pollution, but maybe they could change those to be more effective.

I'm hoping that they don't streamline it too much, because one of the fun things about civ is that you get to manage every single portion of your empire the way you want to, instead of having the AI do it for you.

I'm only a little worried though...simplicity and depth are two different things. Maybe not extremely different, but they're still different.

Some people want Civ4 to be more complex, some want it to be simpler. But I guess everybody wants less micromanagement. Perhaps they should introduce more options like: Pollution on/off, workers on/off, supply on/off etc.....

It usually becomes critical when a game is to be made "accessible for new players" and they add in 3D features and Roleplaying Elements.

These are the alarming marketing phrases, and I agree, "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" gives one the creeps, too.

I hope Trip's interpretation of Sorens philosophy is right. Dumbing down Civ would also be superstupid. But hey, I think they know what they are doing - they did a great job in transporting the flair of Pirates into the modern era, and yet it is still a very simple game and very "accessible". ;)

Just wondering Longasc, did you like what they did to Pirates?

I really ask what the mean with "new" players :hmm:.
Only that you don't need to be a Civ veteran to understand it, or a new customer group?

My problem with getting rid of "unfun" elements is that it will make managing your domestic matters too easy. No one ever said running an empire was easy! Did anyone, ever, in history anywhere ever say that running an empire was easy? They should change the corruption system and they should keep rioting and pollution, but maybe they could change those to be more effective.
Why do you think "unfun" has to equal "challenging"?

Playing a giga map and having 20 cities riot on the same turn, having to hunt them down and change their tiles in order to restore order is not fun. Having 7 tiles of pollution pop up in the middle of no where, causing you to miss a build by 2 shields is not fun. Capturing a size 19 city with 3 of the best wonders, a factory and everything else - but it produces nothing because of corruption - THAT is not fun.

Fighting a war against a human with Med Infs., Pikes, Knights, Trebuchets and Galleys is not easy. Why? Not because it's "unfun." It's because it was designed that way. There's no requirement that in order to make the game more difficult it has to be "unfun." That is completely wrong. If the game were way too easy then nobody would still be playing it three years after release. But you're saying in order to not be easy it HAS to be unfun. But if it weren't fun, nobody would want to play it anyways!

Fun value and game difficulty are, if anything, linked, but NOT through an inverse relationship. A game can easily be challenging and enjoyable without being unfun, or having unfun elements. Things like pollution, rioting and corruption are NOT what the Civ gameplay experience is based on. Soren is not about to neuter the series and make it a cakewalk. He knows what he's doing. He's removing the tedium in parts of the game so that more fun aspects like better combat, religion and civics can be added. And who knows, maybe even the diplomatic, economic and cultural engines will be improved?

I can't help but think of grand theft auto, where your windshield wipers and headlights come on automatically. Sure you might want to flick on your headlights at other times, but it's worth it to save on another button that could be used for something more productive. Nobody said driving was easy, but let's "assume" you can do stuff like start the car, turn on the headlights, and all those wonderful things. That way you're left with the interesting decisions -- where and how to drive, and what to do when you get there.

Managing workers, to me, is the equivelent of turning on your headlights. The players who know how to do it have an advantage. But really, when all is said and done, everyone can basically learn to do it, and at that point, it's a waste of time, energy, and effort. (And if it weren't automated, someone would obviously find a way to use it better than the AI. But that doesn't make it more worthwhile.)

Again, the issue isn't "managing" an empire. It's not a McDonald's, I don't give a **** about reprimanding employees for showing up late. It's about truly directing an empire, making those high level visionary decisions. To me that's way more interesting.

I think people are overlooking a fundamental equation in this whole factor that should make you all breathe alot easier, provided you aren't expecting massive radical change.

Civilization is a formula and a name for a game that sells really well. Its made tons of money. As games go, it is massively succesful.

Companies think in terms of money, and scrutinize the risks and advantages of doing things different ways **very** carefully. To massively change the Civilization formula, which has endured and sold very well right up to the present date, would mean that they'd figured out that this massive change would result in a huge increase in sales. The thing is, its very unlikely a new version of civ is going to capture all that much more market share than previous versions. It's already quite big, so there isn't much room for increase. What they are probably aiming for is to achieve the same, or slightly higher, market share as previous releases.

Logic would state then that you wouldn't mess *too* much with the formula of what civ is. You wouldn't radically change the game. My bet is what they will do is keep alot of the elements we are always talking about changing, at least in the default game, and probably alot of the things that were the same in all 3 versions will stay exactly the same in the 4th version. A couple of things might be on the chopping block (they had pollution in original civ, I think) but really not much and probably not stuff anyone is going to seriously miss. Alot of things from civ3 that weren't in any of the other 2 versions could very well be gone - I would expect that culture flipping, maybe some of the factors about cultural expansion, armies, and a pile of other stuff could be scrapped or reworked into new forms.

But mostly what I expect to see is a game where the fundamental constants present throughout all 3 releases are retained, and a new structure of additions is built atop that. Put it this way - I'm pretty certain the game will still have tiles, cities, settler/workers, military units, tile improvements and all that still and alot of it will probably work the same as it always has, I'd even guess that the city radius will still look pretty much the same, a 5x5 area of tiles with the corners missing.

I won't go freaking out until I have a real clue of how Civ4 will look, ie. when we'll have the first screenshots and designers' diaries or something. Which won't happen before early 2005 at best.

I for one have faith in what Soren Johnson will do. The guy was in the shade during Civ3's development, and then became the one to really understand the inner mechanics, what was wrong, what to fix through patches. I am very pleased - and I'll say it again : very pleased - to see his motto "simplify, simplify, simplify", which I immediately took the way he then said, that is : removing or reworking unfun/tedium elements (at least that's what he said so far). You can't imagine how it's annoying to hell to set a city on perfect tile assignment until a polluted tile shows up, ruining your careful thinking. :mad: It's unfun, it's completely unrealistic (come one, pollution as it has been in Civ 1, 2, 3 is dumb), so we're pretty sure it'll be gone in Civ4. Think of it as this : in Civ3 we have unfun pollution, in Civ4 we'll have better pollution AND the introduction of religion. I don't see where we lose complexity here. And there are plenty of other things : surely you want to commit suicide when a recently captured city in which you put 20 units suddenly flips back... making you lose the 20 units : it's unfun, completely unrealistic. :mad: Of course there is a culture flip utility somewhere, but we're not told how it works in the game, so we can't know how many units we have to put to be sure it won't flip. Still, this feature is crap. Removing it or rethinking it won't lose some complexity. And I hope the Civilopedia will give us inner mechanical formulae, like for culture flip, corruption and so on...

Until we see what Civ4 is made of, I have faith some crappy elements will be gone, and still think civ4 will on the whole look like Civ3. But I wouldn't mind some more radical changes, if it adds to the Civilization experience.

Why do you think "unfun" has to equal "challenging"?

Playing a giga map and having 20 cities riot on the same turn, having to hunt them down and change their tiles in order to restore order is not fun. Having 7 tiles of pollution pop up in the middle of no where, causing you to miss a build by 2 shields is not fun. Capturing a size 19 city with 3 of the best wonders, a factory and everything else - but it produces nothing because of corruption - THAT is not fun.

Fighting a war against a human with Med Infs., Pikes, Knights, Trebuchets and Galleys is not easy. Why? Not because it's "unfun." It's because it was designed that way. There's no requirement that in order to make the game more difficult it has to be "unfun." That is completely wrong. If the game were way too easy then nobody would still be playing it three years after release. But you're saying in order to not be easy it HAS to be unfun. But if it weren't fun, nobody would want to play it anyways!

Fun value and game difficulty are, if anything, linked, but NOT through an inverse relationship. A game can easily be challenging and enjoyable without being unfun, or having unfun elements. Things like pollution, rioting and corruption are NOT what the Civ gameplay experience is based on. Soren is not about to neuter the series and make it a cakewalk. He knows what he's doing. He's removing the tedium in parts of the game so that more fun aspects like better combat, religion and civics can be added. And who knows, maybe even the diplomatic, economic and cultural engines will be improved?

Well said, Trip. Pollution as it stands will be well done away with. As it stands, you have to: Find the city where the pollution message popped up. Then clean it, to be done efficiently pollution must be cleaned up by micromanaging workers, if you want it done in one turn. Then the game breaks away to another unit maybe halfway across the globe. You have to go back to the city, open the city window, and put a citizen back on the tile. THEN if the city was in WLTK, or production was just sufficient to build a Mech Infantry in 3 turns instead of 4, you have to sit there and rearrange specialists until you get things back to where they were. Takes a lot of time, most definitely unfun.

Thimgs like this will apparently be gone in civ4. Good riddance. As far as the game being redone for the benefit of console junkies, I don't think we are going to have to worry about that. They know where their fanbase lies.

I really cannot make up my mind about how I would feel if Civ4 turns out to be very similar to Civ3. For one thing, Civ3 was certainly fun, so Civ4 would by default be more fun as an "improved Civ3." However, would Civ4 really just be the next expansion pack for Civ3 then? In that case, I am still stuck with the same basic game Civ3 was, so why should I be excited to buy it, when I want Civ4 to be a truly new game and not another expansion pack, Civ3.7?

Therefore, I am rather suspicious of "Simplify! simplify! simplify!" especially if it is applied to game concepts (rather than primarily micromanagement). Again, a game that warrants a new name, Civ4, better be a new game.

I SOOO agree Trade-peror! If simplify to get rid of micromanagement so more advanced concepts can be put in, this is GOOD.

If simplify to get rid of complexity and depth = BAD.

And the frogert is also cursed...

Many people were worried that Civ 3 would be nothing more than Civ 2.5. While Civ 3 has many of the same bloody things as Civ 2 and 1 and while the basic gameplay is the same, civ 3 is its own game in its own right just as civ 2 was when it was released. I trust firaxis.

I think a major problem here is that people are mixing up 'Complexity' with 'Complicated'. The game could add a whole lot of features which add to the feeling of depth and complexity the game has, whilst adding NOTHING to how much more complicated the game is (especially in terms of MM).
THe intelligence/covert operations model I proposed in the Diplomacy thread is a perfect example of how to capture the complexity of international espionage and 'dirty tricks', whilst not forcing players to either move units back and forth, or even have to go to a screen and constantly initiate new missions-instead having it much of the detail going on 'in the background', and simply informing you of the results as they come to hand!

Many of the same approaches could be used to solve pollution, revolts and corruption as well!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I also agree with you T-P. Although I enjoyed Civ2, I always had this feeling that it was Civ1b. i.e. Civ1 with MUCH better graphics. SMAC seemed more like a REAL Civ2 (though futuristic), and Civ3 is a real 'civ 3'.

This actually does give me a great sense of hope-all in all-as Civ2 was 'marginally' better than civ1, wheras civ3 was MILES better than civ2-so hopefully civ4 will be LIGHT YEARS better than civ3 ;)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I wouldn't be worried about them simplifying the game to the point of being dumb. Any simplification is going to be a question of stuff that was unnecessarily complicated, boring, or annoying. I don't think anone is really saying "this is too hard :( please remove it".

And I wouldn't worry about them changing the game fundamentally, like towards an RTS, or an RPG. It will still be a turn based strategy game that spans history with many of the standards that we know and love.

I would, however, be worried about them shipping the same game as Civ 3 with 3D graphics and religion, and that's it. If religion is the only new feature they intend to add, then I'll be grossly disappointed. It's just not that compelling to me, compared to the millions of ideas on these forums. Drastically expand culture, economics, espionage, diplomacy, even AI, and then focus on religion if you can still make it fit.

In a hypothetical world where I am both clever and important enough to work on Civ4, if someone said to me 'simplify, simplify, simplify' I would make things simple in that you don't have to go through endless micromanagment in order to (essentially) become a better player (because better micromanagment = biggewr populations earelirer/quicker build times for troops/buildings, effectively another step on the ladder to winning by culture/conquering the world). There are other ways of testing how good a player is than if they can do micromanagement.

Simple doesn't have to mean anyone can do it. Simple means freeing up room for much better and more fun elements of the game.

And the frogert is also cursed...

But you get to choose your own topping!

As long as we can script the game, I am happy. With scripting, all the whingers can add those unfun things back in, like pollution, spearmen killing tanks, and pollution making you miss your wonder by one shield, and losing it to the biggest enemy.

And then finally, the forums can be in peace... ;)

These are the alarming marketing phrases, and I agree, "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" gives one the creeps, too.

I hope Trip's interpretation of Sorens philosophy is right. Dumbing down Civ would also be superstupid. But hey, I think they know what they are doing - they did a great job in transporting the flair of Pirates into the modern era, and yet it is still a very simple game and very "accessible". ;)

Do not worry. Trip is right. Simplyfying does not equal dumbing down, rather replacing something 'unfun' like pollution with new idea, less micromanagement needed, less time-consuming yet important part of the game (mysterious 'Health' system in this case):


There seems to have been a lot of consternation about the "get rid of unfun elements" quote. Perhaps I should clarify. We have identified the game pieces of Civ which have caused the most user annoyances (pollution, corruption, etc.). Instead of trying to band-aid these problems, we are mostly tossing them out and implementing better systems that will require less micro-management, provide better high-level control, and still create interesting gameplay challenges. Pollution for example, is being replaced by a more comprehensive "Health" system which has a large variety of positive and negative influences. There is no need to go into detail yet - even though I am sure you can imagine some of the factors - the important point is that we aren't just chucking the whole thing.

The take-home here is that we understand that cleaning-up pollution is not fun. We can fix that!
Sounds good to me!

Civ already has the capacity to accommodate different degrees of complexity. For a start, there's Chieftain to Demigod levels of difficulty. The city governors let you opt out of many management tasks and workers can be automated etc. World size and number of opponents can be changed. So, if you want a challenging game for the vastly experienced, masochistic, pedantic fanatic, play in demigod mode and micromanage all aspects of play with maximum computer opponents with maximum aggression levels. Maybe I am perverse because I am not much good but still keep trying the difficult stuff!

There will be no doubt levels of management that can be set in whatever preference system is inducted.

I am not too worried (yet) that the developers will hack the game into a lobotomy console romp.

I tend to think that certain management features will be avaiable in 'auto' mode, so the game
can appeal to both sugar-addicted arcade hamsters and seasoned old-school bearded players.

:)

Yes, I'm really worried, not only for the CIV series, but for the whole game industry! They are digging their own grave if they can't see that the customers are not one standard people only! People loving CIV is another segment then people playing Lara Croft!!!!! I'm sure alot of the CIV players just play a few titles. Take me as an example, The only games I play are Civ 3, Heroes 4, and Rome: Total war! Good Strategy games, great playability, but still complex, and turn based!

Please dont ruin CIV! It would break my heart! We need games for intelligent people too, not only entertainment for small kids, and dumb teenagers! ;)

They understand this, methinks.

But the thing that annoys me is that these marketing clowns want to sell to both genres and fanbases...

CIV should not have to be turned into a crappy hybrid game to make more sales!

But that is the way these slick-suited, pony-tailed market gurus think...

:)

The succsess of the CIV series is based on its originality, and great playability and feeling, not the marketing clowns that really not impress me with their simple analyzes of markets and people! Please dont give these people control over CIV, then it's sure to lose its charm in no time! That's one thing we can be sure about! ;)

If these people desided everything, we wouldnt have novels like "Lord of the Rings", movies like "Star Wars" or games like "Civilization"!

We would all be watching soap operas and reality shows, and playing shoot em ups, while listening to top 10 music! ;) What a boring world, but we are almost there, I'm afraid! ;)

Please let loose human creativity again, and fire those marketing clowns, at least most of them! ;)

I heartily agree!

These are creepy people who have never been true computer freaks or known good games like Civ, Daggerfall or Elite!

I know, for I have had to work with them in the past!

:)

perhaps Civ 4 should include the Marketing Clown unit, which, when it attacks a city, causes huge unrest, loss of gold, shields and science :)

perhaps Civ 4 should include the Marketing Clown unit, which, when it attacks a city, causes huge unrest, loss of gold, shields and science :)

Yeah, greatest idea ever! ;)

I seen enough of that in CTP!

:D

The problem with turning a PC game into a console game (for the X-Box for example) is that typing even the smallest thing in becomes a great challenge. Have any of you played Morrowind or Halo? Just typing in my four-letter long name took about a minute.

Play Civ1 on the SNES and you'll see it can work but it's slower for sure. But there isn't much typing to do in a Civ game, just the moving of units from square to square.

But the reality is that they want to crack the console market because that is where the money is, and so they want the game to appeal to console gamers. Maybe they'll add combos that you hit when you attack with your Horseback Rider. hit X+Y and R2 and you'll do extra damage. The new 3D world will scroll to a close up and then you can aim your archers arrow's at the targets. Maybe they'll add recreational activities like being able to play in a football game once you discover the technoloies PIGSKIN and CONSTRUCTION. They might blend all the different genre's into the next Civ game to make it appeal to everyone! :mischief:

Yikes! Let's not change this too much Firaxis!

Some people want Civ4 to be more complex, some want it to be simpler. But I guess everybody wants less micromanagement. Perhaps they should introduce more options like: Pollution on/off, workers on/off, supply on/off etc.....

You are talking about the key to making everyone happy: "Options" Everyone is happy when a game has "options." And if I ever ran a game company i'd make sure there would be options for everything.

Pah!

I spit on consoles!

The PC rules the waves, etc.

:D

You are talking about the key to making everyone happy: "Options" Everyone is happy when a game has "options." And if I ever ran a game company i'd make sure there would be options for everything.
There's only so far you can take this philosophy.

You could make the argument that people who don't want to have to manage hundreds of Workers could just put them on automation... but many players do not. Why? Because they can micromanage better than the AI can for the goals they want to attain. Even with a better Worker AI this will always be the case. What is the result? Players who want to do well, or in competitive games (PBEM, MP) are forced to micromanage in order to compete. This is especially bad in MP games when things degenerate into an RTS-type of game where he who hath the fastest fingers wins.

Obviously, that's not what Civ is about.

I thint that, once again, people are mistaking COMPLEX for COMPLICATED! Though they can be one in the same, they can also be very seperate entities.
Case in point is that, though it adds no further complexity (or depth) to the game, Workers in civ3 DO make the game a great deal more COMPLICATED (as a result of Micromanagment). OTOH, many complex social, economic and military concepts can be simulated in a game like civ WITHOUT making the game more complicated. You just give the player a few simple, streamlined controls, and leave the CPU to do all of the complex calculations needed to determine the outcome of the players decisions.
This system has the added advantage that, as many of the correlations involved in these systems are too complex for a human player to easily calculate, it also makes it very difficult (if not impossible) for a player to overuse micromanagement-as a replacement for strategy!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I've already thought about it well myself, and I fully agree on Trip and Aussia's latest posts. I sometimes mix my mind between "complexity" and "complicated-ity", but I can sum it up like that :

- A human is now generally weaker than an AI in chess. This game has very few rules, a small board, and so the AI can compute a hell lot of solutions in no time. The human doesn't take much advantage of its superior brain because calculation is in fine a great deal in chess. At least he won't try to calculate stupid paths !
- In a game like Civ, where rules are overwhelming, the human completely has the advantage, and every willing human will eventually beat the AI at a fair level after some training. :) That's because the AI cannot compute everything, it would take days for 1 turn ; so it wasn't told to do so, and instead rely on fixed strategy that the human can foresee and predict with his superior brain. The human uses his brain to sum up some large parts of the rules into a few concepts and strategies, and applies them with good result, all the more if he has a good knowledge of game mechanics, or even of history for a game like Civ !! :eek: Explain that to an AI ! ;)

I believe that chess is "complicated", and Civ is "complex". Sorry if I mistook both concepts once again. The human performs bad in "complicated" things, the AI performs bad in "complex" things.

I also believe that a game is better when more complicated than complex, otherwise it would be too easy to beat the AI. Worker actions add to the complexity of the game, not much to the complicated part (only micro-management, and there is already to much micro, even for workers). But players engaged in competitions or PBEMs have to deal with manual workers, otherwise the game makes a poor use of them, since it is more of a "complex" part. But I disagree with having options for everything, it will lower the value of the game. Otherwise games will be uncomparable between themselves, and the AI (if involved) or the RNG will strike badly.

EDIT (note on a game having to be more complicated to be good) : This is why Civ4 needs to drop out unfun elements like pollution and corruption as they were implemented in Civ3 !!! Those features add so much to complexity while not adding much to depth ("complicated things" ?). But we still need those concepts because it's Civ, and all nations had to deal with pollution (modern era) and corruption, because they act like some good counter-points to runaway strategies. They just suck in Civ3, hence the "simplify, simplify, simplify" motto. Do not take it as "the game will be less deep". It will be hopefully deeper in strategy than Civ3. Because Soren et al. are reworking tedious parts of the game that added too much to complexity, and hopefully will come with solutions adding to depth ("complicated" things). I'll have a hard time making myself clearer... :goodjob:

EDIT2 : Corrected mistakes about both concepts. :crazyeye:

Kryszcztov (how about Krys?), I completely agree to your differentiation of complicated and complex and its effects on today's computergame AI.

There is absolutely no problem in making a game complicated in a way like chess, and THEN the AIs would probably be able to outdo most humans.

But complexity is also part of the fun, variation is delight. But the more complex the game, probably the worse the AI, that is the problem.

The simplify, simplify demand is for me the reduction of boring tasks. I have an easy example what could make Civ4 easier, if the concept will be very similar to Civ3:

End of Turn and "News" Report at the beginning of every new turn.

-> tell me which Civ has new techs. No more need to check everytime the diplo screen.
-> list me what civs can possibly trade whatever ressource
-> show unit maintenance, building maintenance cost
-> list of disorderly cities

Furthermore, is it not unfun to check everytime which city might be rioting next turn?

Simply include an option that lists you cities that will riot next turn if you do not do anything against it and let me select and jump to the respective cities from this popup!

End of Turn and "News" Report at the beginning of every new turn.

-> tell me which Civ has new techs. No more need to check everytime the diplo screen.
-> list me what civs can possibly trade whatever ressource
-> show unit maintenance, building maintenance cost
-> list of disorderly cities

excellent suggestion, Longasc. I especially like the idea of a news report telling us which civ has what advance(and maybe telling us who they may have traded it to).