Boredom with CIV5 demystified

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Great thread. Bibor, you really have a way of articulating (and understanding) the finer points of game design - you should really consider entering the field by creating a mod or something. I'd definitely try out whatever you produced.
 
So true... You could see it in E:TW and N:TW as well. HUGE games, that wanted to do SO many things with graphics, naval combat, huge land battles, giant strategic map and all that. But guess what? AI couldn't handle ANYTHING in those games, so they came out atrocious! Totally unplayable...!

The same thing is in CiV. The game design didn't hide AI limits...

All we wanted after STW and MTW was better AI, but they jumped the shark into pretty pictures and my second favourite franchise was gone. Reloaded Shogun and enjoying a 9 yo game! (but the AI needs improvement!)

CiV: same thing - pretty pictures but can't play the game and doesn't make an enjoyable game. Lets just go back to Civ4 and make a better AI, and start considering Civ6, if the franchise survives till then.

(and Civ1 on the amiga was fun! just took ages between turns)

Good thread and good discussion, except for a couple of silly posters refusing to read the message.
 
All we wanted after STW and MTW was better AI, but they jumped the shark into pretty pictures and my second favourite franchise was gone. Reloaded Shogun and enjoying a 9 yo game! (but the AI needs improvement!)

CiV: same thing - pretty pictures but can't play the game and doesn't make an enjoyable game. Lets just go back to Civ4 and make a better AI, and start considering Civ6, if the franchise survives till then.

(and Civ1 on the amiga was fun! just took ages between turns)

Good thread and good discussion, except for a couple of silly posters refusing to read the message.

TO be honest, I have only been bothered about three game franchises over the last 20 years. Championship/Football Manager. Civilization and Total War.

For me, TW died with M2TW, and Civ has just died at 5. However, it did make me go back and install the Europa Barbarorum mod for R:TW, if you have not played, I highly recommend you do.
 
Does anyone think that Sid Meier is going the way of Peter Molyneux in terms of game creators?
They draw some parallels in that they came up with some groundbreaking concepts back in gaming history, yet seems to miss the mark in recent times.
I don't know in depth history of these two fellows so I am curious if anyone else has some input.
 
The thing is, Sid Meier is not a great game developer. No, really, he isn't. Yes, he's famous, he has some really cool games that bear his name, games like Civilization, Alpha Centauri, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates etc. But he's not a great game developer. What he is good at is finding great game developers.
I'd say he's a very talented "game conceptor", that is he find good concepts for games.
Without letting nostalgia getting too much in the way, I can safely say that Civilization I was a godawful game.
Hu, no, sorry, you're just being ridiculous here.
Unlike Blizzard, Sid Meier nor Firaxis never really understood how or why their games work, which is bizzarre, considering Sid almost single-handedly (lol) defined the 4X genre. Unlike Blizzard or Black Isle or DMA/Rockstar (etc.) a game having a Sid Meier's label is not an assurance of quality. But the man knows how to sell himself, that's for sure.

[...]It would be silly of me to go into an in-depth description of this game, but the basic principles are very important.

The four basic principles around which Super Mario is built are these:
1. For doing okay (having skill) you're neither being awarded nor punished.
2. For performing badly you're punished.
3. For peforming great you're rewarded.
4. For having non-essential talents (exploration, persistence, memory) you're being awarded further.
Too bad Blizzard, that you give as an example of this, has completely forgotten every single of these rules lately in WoW...
 
I cut Civ 1 some slack because it defined a genre.

I have come around to the idea that Sid Meier has lost his touch. Civ Rev was a disappointment, and he's focusing on a Facebook game that's guaranteed to be a FarmVille clone. He signed off on a poor game (Civ 5) with his name on it.

Unfortunately, it may also be that we're seeing the same thing in games that we saw in commercial radio stations here in the US. There is a huge market for extremely simple and easy games, just as there is a huge market for generic pop music. Companies found out that having a bunch of radio stations playing slight variants of the same music was more profitable than having the same stations playing different music from less popular styles. I think that game companies, led by folks like Sid, are adopting the same philosophy: you make more money by churning out mass market, almost identical games that are very easy and simple than you do by developing complex ones.
 
I think that game companies, led by folks like Sid, are adopting the same philosophy: you make more money by churning out mass market, almost identical games that are very easy and simple than you do by developing complex ones.

BINGO! We have a winner!

Great OP.
 
This makes a lot of sense to me. In movie terms, I'd say that Sid Meier is more like a producer than a director. Since civ V has a totally different "director" there's no reason it should be the same, except for its name.

Civ 1 was a great game for its time, and a huge step up from the other strategy games of its era, but it doesn't stack up at all to modern tbs games. Even civ 2 just blows it out of the water, and civ 2 is extremely similiar.
 
I also absolutely disagree with the I can safely say that Civilization I was a godawful game part. I also think that Sid, at some point, was really good at envisioning computer games.

But for me he is more like George Lucas, who had one stroke of genius (Star Wars, even though he "borrowed" many aspects from other movies) but overall just served everybody better by staying in the back and when he couldn't resist anymore (SW:Ep I-III), it was a mess.

Imo Firaxis is just a company with not very skilled programmers and designers. It's not just the bugs, balance, GUI or features, it's also in the little things, like the fact that when I press F1 in Civ4, it does not remember my previous settings. From a programming perspective, this is extremely easy to do and certainly would have made things a lot easier for me. There are hundreds of examples like this starting from Civ3, which is why I did not buy Civ5 and wasn't surprised that a company, that was now even led by somebody not up to the task, would make matters even worse.
 
I struggle with these statements, maybe you can qualify your meaning......

If I perform badly, doesn't the AI beat me?
If I perform great don't I win ?
If I perform okay don't I risk the AI beating me?

Not sure if I'm understanding the intent or not of this ...

If I perform badly, doesn't the AI beat me?
Ah, no? You'd have to be trying to lose, not just playing badly (unless you're way out of your league in difficulty, wich is going too far).

If I perform great don't I win ?
Sure, both why bother? You can win effortlessly, and get the same reward.

If I perform okay don't I risk the AI beating me?
Again, no. The AI can't bare itself to do a little more effort and beat an average player clicking away.
 
TO be honest, I have only been bothered about three game franchises over the last 20 years. Championship/Football Manager. Civilization and Total War.

Same here.

For me, TW died with M2TW

Completely agree.

and Civ has just died at 5

I can't defend it against the well written criticisms like Bibor's, but I don't want to give up on it yet.

However, it did make me go back and install the Europa Barbarorum mod for R:TW, if you have not played, I highly recommend you do.

I might just do that. Do I need to buy the expansion - can't remember what it was called, barbarian invasion or something?
 
I might just do that. Do I need to buy the expansion - can't remember what it was called, barbarian invasion or something?

Nope, just RTW 1.5. Somehow this mod not only increases the map, increases and reskins the number of units, but somehow improved the AI.
 
A known name does not equal lasting influence. Paris Hilton is a known name, Dizzy Gillespie is a lasting influence. Asimov is my favourite sci-fi world-builder, Heinlein is my favourite sci-fi writer. I could draw a similar paralell with Tolkien and Zelazny. All dead except Paris Hilton. Call that fair.

Sid Meier is a known name in the gaming industry. Everyone who's being persistent and doing some things right gets that benefit. Eventually. But Silvester Stallone is not Clint Eastwood. Not for a long time now.

The discussion I brought up about Sid Meier is not about diminishing his factual work, I'm just pointing out that his influence in making the Civilization series is vastly overrated. If he's the overseer he's not overseeing. What good is his title then?

No one has, nor ever will, refer to Paris Hilton as a "legend". Sid Meier is so named in pretty much every gaming industry article I've ever seen his name in. You may dispute whether or not he deserves that status, but to deny that he has it is to deny reality.

It would be like me saying Frank Lloyd Wright is not a legendary architect. I may think he's overrated, and that some of his famous works (like Fallingwater) are actually examples of terrible design (which Fallingwater is, it started falling apart before it was even finished). But even if I don't think he deserves the status he's accorded, it would be absurd for me to claim that he isn't actually accorded that status, when obviously he is regarded as such, whether I like it or not.

And you yourself gave evidence of Sid's lasting influence - the GDC'10 talk. Simply being "known" probably isn't going to get you the keynote slot. Again, you can dispute what he had to say or if he really deserved such billing. But he and his games are still an influence on the industry, and on the developers working in it. Denying that is just silly.
 
No one has, nor ever will, refer to Paris Hilton as a "legend". Sid Meier is so named in pretty much every gaming industry article I've ever seen his name in. You may dispute whether or not he deserves that status, but to deny that he has it is to deny reality.

The emperor's new clothes.
 
The emperor's new clothes.

Maybe so. Sometimes perceptions are their own truth, independent of their subject.


Edit: To put that another way, Sid's influence on the gaming industry is not dependent on his skill as a developer.
 
I feel IV is a better game but I'm also someone who likes Civ V and I have to say your "decisions in the 1st hundred turns" comparison of Civ IV and Civ V carries a lot of weight. Very well thought out and very well put.
 
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