Boredom with CIV5 demystified

Sabrenity said:

But I strongly disagree that CiV is poor designed. It has very good resource concept. Now we have actual resources instead of slider. Gold is, naturally, gold: balance point no longer sits at zero (30% slider, that's what Lieu mentioned), it's a value. By playing good you acquire more gold which allows you to rush/buy more things. This is how resources should work. And you can easily add new resources eg espionage points or whatever you like - just let special buildings/policies generate them - without need to balance slider values and/or forcing player to deal with obscure mechanics.

There are also improvements in balance (whipping), combat (no SoD) and micromanagement (eg global happiness). Yes, global happiness may be a bit casual, but come on, when you are making a game for wide masses (compared to EU/Victroia/etc) you need to keep up with the time. Twenty years ago it was ok to check every single city for unhappiness but now I'm to annoyed to do that. But I still want to play good, I know how to micromanage but if I do that every turn I will be bored after 50-75 turns and quit game (that's why I abandoned many games in civ4 around medieval era). Global happiness does same thing and is more convenient. It's like checkpoints in shooter games - come on, I will anyway reload game if I die.

The problems of civ5 - in my opinion - are poor choices given and AI designed 'to play like a human' (come on if I want to play with human players I will go online and play there).

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I genuinely like some of the ideas put into CiV that you mentioned. It just wasn't developed into a coherent final product.

Global happiness is a good idea but it doesn't work for limiting ICS which is the role it is intended for in CiV. I think happiness would have worked better if it just limited vertical growth. If they had kept the maintenance from CIV as the limiter to horizontal growth (too many cities damages your economy and research) and combined it with CiV's global happiness then the system would work much better.

I like the numerical strategic resources as it never made sense how one oil resource could supply an entire modern military in CIV.

The elimination of the slider has positives and negatives. You mentioned the positives so I will mention the negatives. The slider represented investment in your empire. You could either choose to focus on the short term and invest in gold for unit upgrades or rush-buys or culture for a culture victory, or you could focus on the long term by investing in research. Many people complain that you would always put the slider at the max research while still staying profitable but that isn't really true. I loved playing high-risk culture games in CIV where I turned the slider to 100% culture as soon as I Lib'd Nationalism and had to live in fear that a fast-teching AI would attack my backwards army with their more advanced units. Many times you would do the same thing for Domination or Conquest wins with going 100% gold so you could rush and upgrade a massive army for a lightning conquest.

Whipping wasn't the greatest mechanic but it represented a choice between a high short term gain or a stronger long term benefit. The problem comes from it not really penalizing your long-term growth enough in CIV. Cities just regrew their population too fast and the whipped buildings were too useful to not whip. I think whipping in CiV would be a far more interesting mechanic due to the slower growth of cities and global happiness. It would be an interesting balancing act if whipping infrastructure in a new frontier city might cause your capital to stop growing.

The SoD wasn't the greatest combat mechanic but it represented what Civ games were about. Civ isn't a tactical war game. It is a grand strategy game about developing an empire to wage total war. Whoever has the best empire will build the most effective army and win the war. Armies were a direct reflection of your technological, economic, and productive power. That just isn't the case in CiV. I remember a mod from CIV that tried to address the SoD problem (I think it was Total Realism) by adding a "Crowded" promotion to units which reduced their combat strength if there were too many on a tile. A system like this would be massively better than the current 1UPT system in place. It would make maneuvering much easier (especially for the AI) while still preventing the SoD. Heck, even just allowing 2 units per tile would massively improve the combat in this game.

jeffah3539, yes, my post was mainly addressed to Bibor's first post. I tried to show that with new resource system you are rewarded for playing good (eg good player will have more gold and can afford more RAs). And Jon tried to get rid of the most annoying CIV things and made CIV more -hm - intuitive? There are also mistakes and poor design choices but in general CIV has good design concept.

Bibor makes great points about design choices, but there's something else that mario had that civ V does not have, and neither does civ V:

Every time you give the game an instruction, it does exactly that instruction. It never moves against your controls. The controls always work. And the game actually runs decently at the specs it was designed to run.

Civ V does not have those things. It's been over a year and it still doesn't have them. Neither does civ IV. 2k claims that TBS isn't a popular genre? Maybe that's because the flagship titles of today don't know how to program simply game controls and streamline how it runs. There are 0 (0!) modern TBS with controls and gameplay that run flawlessly. In a recent interview sid mentioned UI conventions, which was indeed "terribad" considering that no main-line civ game has ever used sound UI conventions, ever.

jeffah3539, yes, my post was mainly addressed to Bibor's first post. I tried to show that with new resource system you are rewarded for playing good (eg good player will have more gold and can afford more RAs).

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Yes, and you play exactly that way every time in optimized play. Always sell luxuries for gold, always farm gold and buy RA. Divergent strategies aren't overly common. Bibor's point stands. As long as you know what cookie cutter to do, much of one's success depends on what his land gives him.

And Jon tried to get rid of the most annoying CIV things and made CIV more -hm - intuitive?

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- Hm - he failed? I don't think jon knew what were the most annoying things in previous civ titles. It's pretty annoying for the UI to lie for example and for units to move against orders, and guess what's in both IV and V? It's pretty annoying when the AI is designed to be griefers, and that's in both games too.

There are also mistakes and poor design choices but in general CIV has good design concept.

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That much is true. Too bad they forgot to add an actual game to their design concept.

I would like to note that I'm mainly defending CiV design concepts because from reading first post I have impression that CiV suffers mostly from bad game designer. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that game designer's work is to make "rules" for the game. Optimizing code and making beautiful interfaces are jobs for other people. I don't know how many people worked at Firaxes, if Jon was responsible alone for game design, coding and interfaces then, yes, he failed ultimately.

Yes, and you play exactly that way every time in optimized play. Always sell luxuries for gold, always farm gold and buy RA. Divergent strategies aren't overly common. Bibor's point stands. As long as you know what cookie cutter to do, much of one's success depends on what his land gives him.

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But it is not "game doesn't reward you" point. It's "lack of content" point with which I'm totally agree. It's like complaining that tetris (another magnificently designed game) doesn't reward you because it just removes bricks.

Game also punishes you - try to build a lot of cities and watch that nice red unhappy face. Build too many units and say hello to negative gold. Don't build military at all and get steamrolled by AI.

- Hm - he failed? I don't think jon knew what were the most annoying things in previous civ titles. It's pretty annoying for the UI to lie for example and for units to move against orders, and guess what's in both IV and V? It's pretty annoying when the AI is designed to be griefers, and that's in both games too.

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Stack of doom, for example, was non-transparent (and thus annoying) mechanic. You can never know how much units do you need in stack - because you can stack unlimited numbers. Now you can look at map and say, okay, this city hides behind a bottleneck, I need two units to defend it but that one in open territory needs four of five. In total CiV has more intuitive mechanics than CIV: you earn gold and can rush production from the beginning; you earn culture and can unlock social policies; your armies' sizes depend on map etc. Agreed with poorly designed diplomacy.

That much is true. Too bad they forgot to add an actual game to their design concept.

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I can't say that we don't have "actual game" in CiV. An example of such game is initial release Elemental: WoM - it either was poorly designed and there was nothing at all in it. IMHO, there are "just" not enough powerful gambits (or content) in CiV for hardcore players - because civ games are all about grabbing right tech as fast as possible. Casual players can enjoy it and they are enjoying it - according to http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ CiV sits on the 7th place.

Sabrenity said:

I would like to note that I'm mainly defending CiV design concepts because from reading first post I have impression that CiV suffers mostly from bad game designer. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that game designer's work is to make "rules" for the game. Optimizing code and making beautiful interfaces are jobs for other people. I don't know how many people worked at Firaxes, if Jon was responsible alone for game design, coding and interfaces then, yes, he failed ultimately.

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The rules of the game and bad design choices are by far the worst problem of the game, at least on single player. Bugs and slightly clumsy UI would be minor problems if the game was designed better.

I had high hopes for civV, but couldn't finish one game. I subconsciously know the reason, op say it out loud.

I have a few questions:
1. how do you know of the level of involvement of Sid in the games? Maybe Sid introduced concepts like religion, maintenance, cottage growth, 1pt etc. The other guys just implement those those concepts and balance it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it need more work.
2. Why does Sid has to put his name on every game? he is like the only guy who does that, even in CivI, where he was a little known nobody.

Some suggestion for making the game better, I believe the future of Civ is better:
1. Tactical combat. 2 armies met in global map, and a tactical combat window opens.
2. Very different Casual mode/Core mode. In Casual mode cottage don't grow, wonders offer less bonus, no religion, diplomacy simpler, maintenance less demanding, etc.

Geez wait for the new expansion would ya?

Tecibbar said:

1. how do you know of the level of involvement of Sid in the games? Maybe Sid introduced concepts like religion, maintenance, cottage growth, 1pt etc. The other guys just implement those those concepts and balance it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it need more work.

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He was neither directly involved in Civ4 nor in Civ5.

Tecibbar said:

2. Why does Sid has to put his name on every game? he is like the only guy who does that, even in CivI, where he was a little known nobody.

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2K owns the brand, that's why.

Yeah Sid Meier has about as much to do with the recent iterations of Civ as Tom Clancey does with Splinter Cell.

And Elenhil, there is no burden of proof, you just listes a couple of strategies that are NOT gambits, if they fail you will most likely be fine because you don't invest much in them, and their gains are so generalized they work with about any strategy.
In CIV, if your gambit failed you where in a pretty bad shape, in CiV you just lose a bit of gold or production time, resources that are very easily gained.
Ofcourse the expansion might change that but the new religion system looks more like another policy tree then CIV religion.
And let me reiterate, I will not waste hours of my time making a list of CIV gambits, do it yourself if you have the spare time to research a game you clearly know very little about.

If that is your definition of a gambit (which itself is somewhat unorthodox - you're not in 'pretty bad shape' in chess if the opponent doesn't accept your gambit, and that's the origin of the term), then call mine strategies, not gambits. But then Bibor's are not gambits either. The term does not matter. I was talking about strategies that 'reward' the player - what a regretably minor part of the OP was about. I tried to show that there is quite a number of high-reward CiV strategies for the first 100 turns of the game. You claimed there were gazillions more in CIV, but refused to prove it. Sapienti sat. Your premonitions about the upcoming expansion are about as relevant to this discussion as your prediction that there won't be one, only more DLCs.

Given that there are not only tons of new units, Wonders, techs, and buildings announced, but also two new layers of gameplay, and the gameplay benefits are inherently limited in any Civ, whatever its version, any new content will inevitably make powerful synergies with both itself and the old content. That is elementary structural analysis. People may whine for as long as they like, but introducing this amount of stuff without making new 'gambits' is, strictly speaking, impossible.

The OP talked about the CiV gambits giving very general bonusses and not punishing the player for failure, these are the terms we're discussing, not chess. Bibors however are, you mess up, hefty price, if you succeed you get a specific boost that is incredibly strong if well used.
As I said before, none of the strats you listed are very strong, apart from warring and abusing the AI there ARE No high reward CiV strategies.

It amuses me how you think making lists will do any good for the discussion, as several people stated before me, there are more CIV gambits, I don't have to waste hours reaffirming this, and your disbelief just proves you never really played CIV.
Quote latin if you really think it will do any good for your argument but you never proved anything with your list apart from the fact that there are multiple openers, not gambits, you know about chess right? Remember how a gambit requires a sacrifice?

And as far as Gods and Kings goes, I wasn't predicting, this can easily be concluded from the released information and screenshots. I understand your sentiment, when I first read about it I was enthusiastic as well, but then I actually started to read about the planned changes. Your problem is a lack of relevant knowledge, which seems to have been your main issue in the rest of our discussion as well.

Derpy Hooves said:

Yeah Sid Meier has about as much to do with the recent iterations of Civ as Tom Clancey does with Splinter Cell.

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I could be mistaken but Sid programmed CivRev ; And you can see where his vision of the franchise is with that game. A city builder game with combat overlayed overtop and no real diplomacy. In many ways, CivRev is Civilization I v2.0

The idea of what a Civilization game can be was reinvented with Civ3 by Soren Johnson; with concepts of trade tables, rational valuation of goods, trading, and international diplomacy. Most fans who post here today got their start with Soren's vision of Civ, not Sid's.

Civ3 invented a really flexible macro framework for real diplomacy to play out, even if the AI was later exposed when it would dow repeatedly on another Civ due to an MPP tangle. For the most part it works as a pretty robust simulator of empire 4x games. There are games like EU with far more involved diplomatic games, but the nice thing about Civ is that in the Civ context, EU is a scenario level game. Civ as a franchise has always excelled at creating broad ideas, and frameworks and letting the AI and players populate the histories.

Firaxis would undoubtedly create a much richer experience by just focusing on one period, one era, or a few empires in a locked map. But that's not what Civ is about.

I do agree that Civ as a game has always targeted the lowest common denominator of 4X players, and in forums outside CivFanatics, Civ is the only 4X game that's talked about favourably by gamers who would just feel just as home player the next bro-shooter.

In that sense, Shigeru Miyamoto, master of the accessible non-offputting games would have much in agreement with Sid Meier. Both were cut from the same cloth of game designer/visionaries that saw their markets as people willing to give their games a try. These days, people too often shut off their brains because a genre is not in their comfort zone. We didn't have that back 20-30 years ago.

Derpy Hooves said:

The OP talked about the CiV gambits giving very general bonusses and not punishing the player for failure

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Actually, he didn't. He talked about it being punishing to go back on your strategic decisions in CIV - his self-declaimed fifth golden rule of gameplay design. Or, rather, its direct application to Civ. Just why should that be a golden rule is at best arguable.

Now, even should I accept his terms, its nonapplicability to CiV is groundless. You do mess up if you fail to snatch GL, underexpand in pursuit of cheaper national Wonders/SPs. Ill-performed slingshots are far more punishing as there its no tech trading to capitalize on your achievement. Any kinds of rushes are as dangerous as their counterparts (arguably even more so as there is no emergency whip/drafting to resupply your army). Also mind the relative scarcity of hammers - which makes any kind of spending error more costly. And so on, and so on. On higher difficulties even basic things like build order
can turn disastrously wrong when DoWed flatfooted.

Now, to OP's examples. Wonders: Just how much more damaging was loosing a race to an early Wonder? No 'Mids? Go try another type of economy. No Great Lighthouse? Well, you couldn't've already settled all your cities with water-dominated BFCs by then, could you? Anyway, no doom and gloom there.

Technologies? You can't fail to get one. So, where's the painful downside?

Which leaves us with only one thing - resources. Settling in a wrong place does trends to cripple your city. More so in CIV than in CiV? Possibly. Here you go, I am utterly defeated and should burn - nay, eat my heretical writings!

So, even on these terms, where's the sacrifice in his examples? There is one lonely example - choosing a type of economy. Are there more? Pray, list but a dozen if CIV was that gambit-infested.

several people stated before me, there are more CIV gambits, disbelief just proves you never really played CIV

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Did it ever occur to you that refusing to succumb to an unsubstantiated item of 'general knowledge', however widespread, may be a sign not of a lacking mind, but of a critical one? Or, to put it in plainer terms, I do not give a fiddler's fart to what people say unless they produce some evidence.

Your first point is wrong, please read the OP again.

And your examples are pretty bad, you forget the importance techs had, whereas CiV has a sort of tech stick where you will have to get them all relatively soon, they all lead to the same path, there are not a lot of them, whereas the CIV has a proper tech tree, if your taking a tech you better make good use of it because it has a load of branches. Add to that the religion techs and the far more strategy focussed wonders and policies and it is a simple FACT that CIV gave you far more strong strategies and gambits.

And no offence but if warfare and hammers are really a problem for you in CiV I think you might be a bad player, in which case your entire opinion of relative strategy strengths can be completely disregarded due to a warped sense of strategic importance. I mean christ, even with 20 to 1 odds the AI can barely lay a finger on any of my units, and what's the last time an invasion did anything but occupy land while you bombarded them to death?


Maybe all of us are just idiots following a opinion I've never seen directly discussed or your just wrong, you're the one who likes lists and numbers right? Shouldn't our opinions > your opinion by sheer force of numbers?
Also, in a board where most of the people like the game, arn't you the one following the herd?

And again you cry for proof, nowhere in any of our posts has ANY objective proof been presented, not sure if you're familiar with discussions like this but all of what you think would be proof are just subjective opinion, even if I made a list of gambits they're as much open to debate as yours, if you didn't agree you would just reject it because you don't agree, which is the only way to test this kind of "proof", proving it's subjective nature.
You know, like I rejected your examples, only difference would be that I would have to research CIV for a couple of hours while you just had to name a handful of obvious strategies because CiV is a dumbed down casual variety of the franchise that would be considered "confusing" if people had to make choices with actual consequences.