Boredom with CIV5 demystified

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Sorry, but this can't be said for Sid's work, not even within the limits of the gaming industry.

Considering Sid's near legendary status (deserved or not), I think the gaming industry would beg to differ. You've done a decent job of supporting your arguments, but I think this particular statement of yours is demonstrably false.
 
But that's my point. You couldn't drive a Model-T 100k miles either. It wasn't a good car. But it did make clear what a car could be.

Or, take a more Civ-related example: the cannon used against Constantinople. It didn't really accomplish much in the battle. It wasn't a good cannon. But it was still important historically.

Do you see what I'm driving at?

I understand you completely. Ford T was an awesome car for its time, but the feats it could accomplish were limited by numerous factors. Civilization had an impact in game design concepts etc. but not as big an impact as Civilization 2 had. Which was made by completely different people.
 
Considering Sid's near legendary status (deserved or not), I think the gaming industry would beg to differ. You've done a decent job of supporting your arguments, but I think this particular statement of yours is demonstrably false.

Are we talking about the same game industry, the one that produces one really good game every 5 years? (Excluding several companies). Just take a look at scripts, dialogues, they are written by morons for 5-year olds. Lets make a cool army game. It features either 1st Recon or Marines. Wow! The depth, the concepts, the fantastic new worlds. Halo universe is the peak! Yeeee-haw!
 
Are we talking about the same game industry, the one that produces one really good game every 5 years? (Excluding several companies). Just take a look at scripts, dialogues, they are written by morons for 5-year olds. Lets make a cool army game. It features either 1st Recon or Marines. Wow! The depth, the concepts, the fantastic new worlds. Halo universe is the peak! Yeeee-haw!

But you said "within the limits of the gaming industry". And within those limits, Sid is unquestionably an Asimov, or a Tolkien.

And there's a lot of crappy sci-fi being published these days too, but that doesn't diminish the importance of trail-blazing authors.
 
A few months back I installed CIV one. The first barbarian hut I encountered spawned three Horsemen 4 tiles from my capital. One wandered off, the others promptly killed my one militia and game over

Were you forced into this situation? It sounds like you took an entirely avoidable risk that you ought to have been aware of. You either thought the risk was worth it, didn't play to win or were punished for a careless mistake.

Civ2 was quite a bit more polished, but it was also the most conservative sequel in the series... I can't really associate anything groundbreaking with it.

I mostly agree about the assessments of civ4 and 5 though.
 
Asimov wasn't a particularly good writer and neither was Tolkien. What matters is that both these writers knew how to create fictional worlds that can become so real in hearts and minds of other people. Sorry, but this can't be said for Sid's work, not even within the limits of the gaming industry. CIV franchise still haven't polished out the combat system. After 20 years of development and multiple different platforms. And warfare is 50% of every CIV-like game. That's terribad.

CIV1 was a godawful game. We remember it for the civilopedia, the tech tree and other goodies, but not for the strategy game its supposed to be. There's no need to be romantic or sentimental about it. It tried to hide its very limited strategy concepts by ways of animated capture of cities, building your palace and whatnot. Pirates! suffered from different problems: there was much to do but little to really accomplish, not in a "oh this is now wrapped up" way. The remake was much better, but still not very replayable.

You state that Asimov and Tolkein, while not being particularly good writers, knew how to create fictional worlds that became very real in the hearts and minds of other people. You tell us not to be romantic or sentimental about Civ 1, that we remember it for the civilopedia and tech tree etc. I, and I suspect many others, played endless hours of Civ 1 because it allowed us to imagine that we were building and leading a vast empire to conquer the world or colonize space. The imaginary world was very real in our hearts and minds at the time. I've been playing video/arcade/computer games since Pong, believe me when I say that Civ was pretty groundbreaking. There's a reason beyond sentimentality it's on many people's list of greatest games of all times. They didn't call it a widowmaker (the first iirc) for nothing.

Other than that, I largely agree with your assessment of Civ IV vs. V.

Btw, you say you're in Croatia, did you go to school there? Your written English is great and your writing style is pleasant to read. I'm not being snarky.
 
First off - interesting post, Bibor. I don't necessarily agree with all your points, but that's irrelevant; at least you made them clearly and substantiated them.

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?

I can't speak for Bibor of course, but here's what I took from those points:

If I perform badly, doesn't the AI beat me?
No, not necessarily. Badly enough, sure - if you lose your first settler, you might have trouble later. But in my experience, you don't need to play particularly well to win, you just have to avoid shooting yourself in the foot for 200 turns, largely because the AI can't figure out 1UPT / hex-based tactics.

If I perform great don't I win?
Yep, but you don't need to perform great at all. You don't even need to have a particularly good game. Just survive for a few ages, don't do anything stupid, and then build a spaceship while the AI opponent who dominates the world and has ten times your military idly plays with its toes. :)

If I perform okay don't I risk the AI beating me?
On higher difficulty levels, maybe. Obviously this is all relative, but it's all just variations on the same point here; there's just not much of an engaging challenge at the moment.
 
First off - interesting post, Bibor. I don't necessarily agree with all your points, but that's irrelevant; at least you made them clearly and substantiated them.



I can't speak for Bibor of course, but here's what I took from those points:

If I perform badly, doesn't the AI beat me?
No, not necessarily. Badly enough, sure - if you lose your first settler, you might have trouble later. But in my experience, you don't need to play particularly well to win, you just have to avoid shooting yourself in the foot for 200 turns, largely because the AI can't figure out 1UPT / hex-based tactics.

If I perform great don't I win?
Yep, but you don't need to perform great at all. You don't even need to have a particularly good game. Just survive for a few ages, don't do anything stupid, and then build a spaceship while the AI opponent who dominates the world and has ten times your military idly plays with its toes. :)

If I perform okay don't I risk the AI beating me?
On higher difficulty levels, maybe. Obviously this is all relative, but it's all just variations on the same point here; there's just not much of an engaging challenge at the moment.

thanks SuperJay .... I think I see the point with performing Great ... you don't have to "excel" to receive the "outcome" associated with it, and there in lies the problem (where as in Civ 4, you had to play "great" in order to win....)

I'm not sure I understand "badly" ... but I think I'm clearer on the original post

BTW ... did you change your picture/icon (did it use to be lightning?)
 
thanks SuperJay .... I think I see the point with performing Great ... you don't have to "excel" to receive the "outcome" associated with it, and there in lies the problem (where as in Civ 4, you had to play "great" in order to win....)

Right, certainly at the higher difficulties you do have to play very well to win. With Civ5, most of us seem to be winning on higher difficulties than we ever did in Civ 4, because we can get away with being a lot more sloppy. The shift in levels of difficulty with arbitrary labels isn't inherently wrong, but it indicates that the relative level of challenge on each difficulty has certainly decreased.

And the AI didn't exactly excel in Civ4 either, but ironically the stacks could more readily camouflage its shortcomings. Now that we're dealing with 1UPT, its limitations are more apparent.

BTW ... did you change your picture/icon (did it use to be lightning?) [...and] what does tl;dr: mean ?

Ha, yeah, was procrastinating at work earlier and started tweaking my avatar. And "TL;DR" is internet slang that people with short attention spans use to say "Too Long; Didn't Read" in a snide, condescending manner. :)
 
what does tl;dr: mean ?
Too Long; Didn't Read (with an optional summary following). In practice, it means either (a) that the person who wrote tl;dr doesn't have the attention span to take in a sustained argument, or (b) the original post could have said what they needed to say in far fewer words. You can decide which in this case.
 
But you said "within the limits of the gaming industry". And within those limits, Sid is unquestionably an Asimov, or a Tolkien.

And there's a lot of crappy sci-fi being published these days too, but that doesn't diminish the importance of trail-blazing authors.

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?

I'm not sure I understand "badly" ... but I think I'm clearer on the original post

To put it into a more streamlined set of thoughts on what makes a good computer game:

An average player is expected to master the basic controls over the designed environment (i.e. the game). An average player is expected to make mistakes during the course of the game. An average player also shouldn't expect to beat the game. In a well designed game the player knows when he's being average. Why take away the thrill of getting better in it? The punishment for these mistakes should be motivational enough so that the player gradually learns how not to make them. He should still be able to make them in the future if he's careless or tired. As the player gains more control over the basic functions of the game, new, more hazardous game choices should open up. These new choices should be more complex than the basic ones. Penalties for failing in these more complex choices should be greater than those for basic choices. Game designers can add as many levels of complexity as they wish, each level being more difficult, more rewarding but also more punishing. The game successfully ends only if the highest level of difficulty is mastered. In game terms, an average CIV player should be defeated somewhere in Renaissance. He did build an empire, but it didn't stand the test of time.

For the player not to get lost in the process of beating the game, the learning curve must be balanced out and important decision-making must be frequent. To maintain player skill properly, a game must never loose the punishment/reward system on any level. When these player decisions are made on multiple levels, they enable fantastic successes or catastrophic failures. The more the player is confident in his skill, the more levels he plays on, the risk is becoming greater and thus the thrill is being stronger. Intelligent game design will always enable the player to "fall back" to a lower level game (to fewer penalties and bonuses), but the thrill of greater rewards will always push him back to multi-level gameplay. However, "falling back but still leading to victory" should be really enabled only for people who risked a lot (spent some time successfully in multi-level gameplay) and now need to sort some things out. A brief change of pace is always welcome.

The strength of Civilization 4 was that multi-level gameplay was enabled from start (say, the Polytheism gambit) for those who wanted it, while the basic level gameplay was still available and just as important.

The utter failure of Civilization V lies in its inability to keep up with player's mastery of multiple levels. Actually, Civilization V has only a handful of levels. After you reach the top level (which is ridiculously simple, especially for veteran civ players), the game inevitably ends in victory. Civilization V is not the only game with this problem, New Vegas has the same issue. After the first five locations you're sitting on 1500 caps and the only thing you need to do is to literally walk (no fighting) to a friendly base and grab a (free of charge!) sniper rifle. The challenge ends right there. 2 hours into the game.
 
Great original post Bibor (et seq), for several reasons:
  1. You made me watch Sid's lecture, which completely de-deified him for me!
  2. You do some convincing if provocative analysis.
  3. You successfully explain why I feel the way I do when playing these different games.
  4. You (and the lecture) inspire to game design myself in the hope I could do better.
Thanks!
 
A few months back I installed CIV one. The first barbarian hut I encountered spawned three Horsemen 4 tiles from my capital.

So? CIV 1 doesn't have to be better than any game around now. It just had to be better than any other game around at the time. It certainly did that and was a great game. CIV 2 was a better game in almost every way to CIV1, and after seeing 2 you couldn't go back to 1, but to be honest CIV1 was more fun to play!

Now play the first 100 turns of Civilization 5 and try to find game-defining decisions you made. There are few, if any. And this problem just copies itself to the next 100 and next 100 turns, until the game is over.

I'd change that to saying that you're making very dull decisions. You can certainly mess up your game by picking the wrong policies, misjudging your army, or missing out on a wonder but you often see the results of your decisions much later. By then the old decision isn't interesting, can't be corrected, your nation is bogged down with inertia, and the whole game feels leaden.
 
@Bibor Ok first what is it with this... Sid Meier is not a great game developer??? This has to be the single most ignorant statement I have ever seen posted on the internet regarding developers. You even admit Sid has designed the 4x genre almost single handedly but thats not a great game developer? Seriously, you may want to go educate yourself on the net or in books or somewhere about the history of computer gaming. Furthermore, this thread really is a direct insult to Sid Meier and as a result it should be closed but i'm not a moderator. You even insult the first Civilization, I have never heard anyone claim Civ I was godawful. Complete ignorance in action. It was the game where everything was born from! Oh but you know your stuff? Haha really? Checkout how long Sid Meier has been doing this stuff, its his life and you can at least respect the man for that!

So your a CIV player? Why? If it was not for Sid Meier, you would NOT have your CIV to play! Just remember that before you feel the need to insult the man's work, company and name on a public forum. Here you go... educate yourself because in the 18 years you claim, its obvious you must have missed the boat...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier
 
In game terms, an average CIV player should be defeated somewhere in Renaissance. He did build an empire, but it didn't stand the test of time.

Great thread, very much in agreement with your analysis (can't comment on civ1 though as I never played it). Civ really does need to put more emphasis on the test of time aspect.
 
EDIT:
Oh, and the reason why AI combat sucks (and it does) in Civilization V is not because the concepts are bad on their own, but because there's that funny little thing called AI LIMIT. Some things the AI just can't handle. Not now, not ever. Ever maybe being a strong word. Good game developers know this and work around this problem, hiding AI decision-making weaknesses by game design.
Human vs. AI was never about a battle among equals, it was about introducing minigames that entertain the player (and helping the AI at the same time). A good example is World of Warcraft. One player versus 5 dumb AI enemies. But the 5 AI enemies interact with each other and the player enters a minigame of who to take out first, who to CC etc. A minigame that promptly makes the player forget how dumb the AI is. Stripping the player of built-in AI capabilities and turning them into variables for the human was always the key for good AI designs. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but not in Sid's games.

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...
 
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