Boredom with CIV5 demystified

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Bibor, I have also played since civ1 (using a dos emulator on a mac originally, with 2 min turns) though I can't say I've played 100s of games (probably more like a dozen) over the last 20 years. I won't address your personal critique of Sid Meier. I think there is a lot of merit in your arguments about good gameplay, but I think the assessment below is not quite accurate. I think it is (at the risk of causing insult) a shallow impression that may deserve some further consideration:

Lets look at the first 100 turns of the game and tell me which of these wonders, techs or concepts have a greater impact on your game.

The Pyramids - very powerful SE
The Great Wall - very powerful Classical tech stealing
The Oracle - powerful slingshots
Great Lighthouse - very powerful early economy
Writing - powerful early tech pace
Alphabet - first to be able to trade techs
Polytheism, Meditation, Monotheism - first to found an early religion
Iron Working - powerful early rush warfare
Literature - powerful tech trading tool
Construction - powerful early warfare of a different (balanced) kind
Good resources in BFCs - very powerful early growth, production or commerce
Neighbours, their attitudes, religion and location - they will define your game for the next X turns

You can argue which of the stated wonders/techs will have a greater impact. Yes, you will argue. ARGUE. Because you can. Because all these can be ARGUED about. Because they are worth arguing about.

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.

Now I have to admit that I had the same exact thought after playing civ5 through a couple times. I still think you are basically right about a few aspects of the game. However, I've come to appreciate the basic difference between decision making in civ4 and civ5. In civ4, decisions have immediate, obvious effects that are (in most cases) easily corrected or reversed later. The research slider is the extreme example of this, but the same applies to many other aspects of civ4 including wonders/buildings/sling-shot-strategies and so on that you list above (for example, playing tech-trade-catch-up in mid game could almost always offset a late start in research, at least up to Immortal difficulty). Decisions in civ5 have longer-term or delayed effects that are not so obvious (or of no effect at all) in the short term. For example, focusing on culture buildings/wonders early (or the border-expanding Angkor Wat) has little immediate impact (one could just buy that valuable tile for 50gp anyway so why bother?) but it has a large effect in late game: no need to buy tiles for 300gp; "filled" borders out to 4 or 5-tile radius so you don't have to worry about encroaching civs; continued policy advancement, and so on. The same can be said for research focus (no obvious early effect, but it is essentially impossible to make up a late tech deficit in civ5 unlike civ4), commerce focus, military focus, and so on. It's pretty hard to build all available buildings in civ5 (much harder than in civ4) so you have to make these decisions early, and they do have large consequence on how the game plays out later.

So, if you like deep decision making where the payoff/consequences are not immediately obvious but have large long-term effect, play on and give it a second chance. If you want rewards/punishments to be immediate and obvious, civ5 is probably not the game for you even after the rough edges are patched up. If you've already played more than a few games and haven't observed what I described above, then it is probably time to move on. (By "move on" I'm not saying don't criticize. By all means you should criticize, vent your rage, then take your losses as a good citizen-consumer [I'm sure you've done it before], and move on to another game.)

I'm not saying civ5 is without serious defects. ICS-as-optimal-strategy is the one that bothers me the most. Perhaps it's rougher even than civ4 at initial release, although that was a lot worse than people tend to remember.
 
The above post is the first and only defense of V that I have seen that makes any sense at all. Congrats. Not sarcasm.

Your final point is correct, however. This is not the kind of game that appeals to moi. Even though I can see the rationale, I can still disagree w/its implementation and view it as sufficiently ahistorical to the point of failure. Rapid change occurred so often throughout history that the idea of long-term change as the only and final arbiter isn't convincing. Can you think of an example of an historical civilization/state/polity that instituted such longrange planning? Policies enacted centuries before that continued without change? Every time I think I've found one, a little more thought reveals that changes did occur. Closest I came was China and its Confucian system, but even that was challenged by popular Taoism in its various guises, often in the form of outright peasant revolts, by the transformation to NeoConfucianism, and finally, the total repudiation embodied by the Maoist revolution. In history, CHANGE is the norm, the rule. Constants are nowhere to be found, and a Civ game that uses political/cultural constants just doesn't work--for me.
 
Bibor, I have also played since civ1 (using a dos emulator on a mac originally, with 2 min turns) though I can't say I've played 100s of games (probably more like a dozen) over the last 20 years. I won't address your personal critique of Sid Meier. I think there is a lot of merit in your arguments about good gameplay, but I think the assessment below is not quite accurate. I think it is (at the risk of causing insult) a shallow impression that may deserve some further consideration:



Now I have to admit that I had the same exact thought after playing civ5 through a couple times. I still think you are basically right about a few aspects of the game. However, I've come to appreciate the basic difference between decision making in civ4 and civ5. In civ4, decisions have immediate, obvious effects that are (in most cases) easily corrected or reversed later. The research slider is the extreme example of this, but the same applies to many other aspects of civ4 including wonders/buildings/sling-shot-strategies and so on that you list above (for example, playing tech-trade-catch-up in mid game could almost always offset a late start in research, at least up to Immortal difficulty). Decisions in civ5 have longer-term or delayed effects that are not so obvious (or of no effect at all) in the short term. For example, focusing on culture buildings/wonders early (or the border-expanding Angkor Wat) has little immediate impact (one could just buy that valuable tile for 50gp anyway so why bother?) but it has a large effect in late game: no need to buy tiles for 300gp; "filled" borders out to 4 or 5-tile radius so you don't have to worry about encroaching civs; continued policy advancement, and so on. The same can be said for research focus (no obvious early effect, but it is essentially impossible to make up a late tech deficit in civ5 unlike civ4), commerce focus, military focus, and so on. It's pretty hard to build all available buildings in civ5 (much harder than in civ4) so you have to make these decisions early, and they do have large consequence on how the game plays out later.

So, if you like deep decision making where the payoff/consequences are not immediately obvious but have large long-term effect, play on and give it a second chance. If you want rewards/punishments to be immediate and obvious, civ5 is probably not the game for you even after the rough edges are patched up. If you've already played more than a few games and haven't observed what I described above, then it is probably time to move on. (By "move on" I'm not saying don't criticize. By all means you should criticize, vent your rage, then take your losses as a good citizen-consumer [I'm sure you've done it before], and move on to another game.)

I'm not saying civ5 is without serious defects. ICS-as-optimal-strategy is the one that bothers me the most. Perhaps it's rougher even than civ4 at initial release, although that was a lot worse than people tend to remember.

This is just not true.90% of decision in Civ V have immediate, obvious effects.Build building get +X happiness immediately,need to expand city-buy tile,need units-buy them,build 4th city-no cultural victory,get some social policy-immediate impact and so on...
 
That sentence is there by design. If you can't get past it, you're not really ready to hear what I had to say. I really dislike people who can't enter a discussion without fanaticism talking most of the talk.

I wish I'd come up with this tactic. So many threads could have been derailed.
 
So, if you like deep decision making where the payoff/consequences are not immediately obvious but have large long-term effect, play on and give it a second chance. If you want rewards/punishments to be immediate and obvious, civ5 is probably not the game for you even after the rough edges are patched up.

Your final point is correct, however. This is not the kind of game that appeals to moi.

<snip>

In history, CHANGE is the norm, the rule. Constants are nowhere to be found, and a Civ game that uses political/cultural constants just doesn't work--for me.

These two posts should be stickied. It's the heart of the divide over Civ V perfectly encapsulated into two well-reasoned and respectful viewpoints. AAAHHH, civility feels good.:goodjob:

As a sidenote, (not trying to get a final jab at Civ V, I swear) Civ IV allowed for both types of decisions whereas V practically forces only one type. This, if anything, was apparently the major failing of the game.
 
I didn't mean to imply (although I may have) that desire for immediate effects is a bad thing. That's just personal taste. Really, I do agree that civ5 could probably be made a little more enjoyable if more choices had a bigger, more immediate and obvious effect. Also, my argument is not universally applicable -- there certainly was long-term cause-effect in civ4 as there is short-term cause-effect in civ5.

This is just not true.90% of decision in Civ V have immediate, obvious effects.Build building get +X happiness immediately,need to expand city-buy tile,need units-buy them,build 4th city-no cultural victory,get some social policy-immediate impact and so on...

Yes, you build a building and get an immediate effect (+2 culture, whatever) just as in civ4. I'm saying that many of those effects are of little gameplay consequence in the short run. By "consequence" I mean: What is the state of your borders? What is the state of your Treasury? What is the state of your technological advancement? What is the state of your army? The OP is basically right -- in terms of any of these questions, at least for the first 100 turns -- it makes almost no difference what you build. You could have built Stonehenge and temples to push borders, or markets and banks to buy border expansion. In late game, however, the consequences are severe. For some examples, these things are possible in civ5 (for player of "good" skill) but not in civ4 (again, for a player of "good" skill):

  • I'm at the top in technological progress, but I'm broke.
  • My income is wonderful (>100 gp/turn without golden age), but someone is going to beat me in the spacerace.
  • I have many cities (or a have a few huge cities (40+)) but I'm not at the top in tech advancement.

And so on.
 
In late game, however, the consequences are severe.

What late game ? I have found it all too easy to win before even reaching mid-game. Worse, I have found it all too easy to see that I was going to win and too dull to bother with the tedium of plugging on to victory.
 
The only part that I disagree with in this thread is that Civilization was a good "concept" that Sid thought up.

Avalon Hill's boardgame "Civilization" was released in 1982. It featured turn-based expansion and tech trading and a novel warfare system. The only thing Sid added was a random map generator with fog-of-war.
 
The only part that I disagree with in this thread is that Civilization was a good "concept" that Sid thought up.

Avalon Hill's boardgame "Civilization" was released in 1982. It featured turn-based expansion and tech trading and a novel warfare system. The only thing Sid added was a random map generator with fog-of-war.

I forgot about that game, but there you go people.
 
I forgot about that game, but there you go people.

Creativity is almost always a new spin on existing ideas.

You might as well say that the only true painter was the first caveman to draw something on the wall, and everybody who's put oil to canvas since is just a no-talent copycat.
 
What late game ? I have found it all too easy to win before even reaching mid-game. Worse, I have found it all too easy to see that I was going to win and too dull to bother with the tedium of plugging on to victory.

Well, I feel your pain there. But really, can't you say the same about civ4? I can say that I started 100s of civ4 games (perhaps 1000s, I hate to admit). I probably finished 6 of them. The best defense I can give for civ5 is this (although it is a weak one): the boring end is much quicker. Firaxis should hire me as a salesman, no? (As I indicated above, the ICS thing seems like an unforgivable error in civ5, if that is what you are referring to. If you are holding yourself back from ICS and still winning without effort, I suggest you bump the difficulty up.)

Rapid change occurred so often throughout history that the idea of long-term change as the only and final arbiter isn't convincing.

In real life, civs can turn on a dime. That's not very well modeled in any civ game, and I have a feeling people would mostly hate it if it did. However, those changes can be precipitated by either recent, long-ago, or long-sustained decisions (or a combination of these). The change may be fast, but that doesn't mean that the decisions leading to the change were recent.

Can you think of an example of an historical civilization/state/polity that instituted such longrange planning?

No. You got me there. It's easy to find examples where they should have. It's easy to think of examples where they didn't in reality but if they had, the world would be different. I guess that is where I come in as a player. What if the Islamic world had continued it's early emphasis on scholarship? What if Rome (or any other of the great empires) had continued its push toward world domination?

However, there have been sustained policies that had (usually unforeseen) consequences (either good or bad) much later. In fact, these long-term consequences may be the exact opposite of their immediate effect. Two examples of that are: 1) desertification and 2) deregulating banks at the same time that you put all banking risk on the government/taxpayer. (OK, the latter is just gratuitous politics on my part and not that "long term." However, the point is that not all decisions have an immediate effect like moving the slider in civ1-4.)

Policies enacted centuries before that continued without change? Every time I think I've found one, a little more thought reveals that changes did occur. Closest I came was China and its Confucian system, but even that was challenged by popular Taoism in its various guises, often in the form of outright peasant revolts, by the transformation to NeoConfucianism, and finally, the total repudiation embodied by the Maoist revolution. In history, CHANGE is the norm, the rule. Constants are nowhere to be found, and a Civ game that uses political/cultural constants just doesn't work--for me.

China is a pandora's box full of examples of both long-term consequences and short-term massive change. I would say that it's present condition (both good and bad parts) does trace back to Confucian system (at least in part) and it's sustained, unrelenting bureaucracy over long periods.

I guess that my ideal civ game would embody both long-term cause-effect but also turn-on-a-dime transformation. That's a tall order. I don't think any civ game has dealt with the latter (although some mods do). Civ5 does better than civ4 at the former, in my opinion, but I agree that this is hard (perhaps too hard) to perceive and this makes the turn-end hitting boring after a while as the OP described.
 
I always enjoy reading your posts, even though often times I don't agree with them Bibor. In this case, I can't really comment on Sid Meier's game design skill because I simply don't know him but it's probably no coincidence that he doesn't design games anymore and instead is Creative Director (limitations breed creativity, yes? so maybe he should direct more!)

Your strategy to adjust your target audience worked it seems. Congratulations. At any rate, I agree with your game design points but I would like to add a point you may not be acutely aware of: A lot of players do not want a game but want a toy. What is the difference?

In my own personal view, I would put it like this: You play a game. But you play with a toy. To be a bit less concise, in a game the important point is to win, and finding a or the best way to win. With a toy, the whole point is playing. The most prominent example for a toy that's called a game is probably The Sims. A "game" and franchise held dearly by millions of players around the globe and one of the most financially successful games ever made.

The example of The Sims lets me explain the difference between what is typically refered to as (hard-)core and casual players:



A casual player starts The Sims. He generates a character, spends some time to choose his looks and gears, his strengths and weaknesses. He tries to get it right. Then he goes into the game, he sees all those cool buildings he cannot yet afford but thinks "someday, maybe I will be able to afford one of those."

So he buys something cheaper, builds a nice little house and some basic things. The game tells him he needs money so he opens the newspaper and finds a job. He only gets low-paid things but it doesn't matter: He will improve, no worries. Off to his first workday. In the evening he gets home, chills a bit before the TV screen, when a neighbour rings the doorbell. Casual player thinks: "Wow! Other people! I gotta invite them and see what they do and say." When the night is over, he may have a new friend or mortal enemy.

The next days and weeks he continues playing, starts improving his skills. He gets a better job and more luxurious furniture. Then he throws a party to celebrate this and the woman (or man) of his Sim's dreams knocks at his door! How awesome she looks, how sweet is the sound of her voice! Invite her in, and don't be too shy. After all, the worst that can happen is that she'll slap you and later you'll just try to be even nicer to her.

Casual gamer finally gets his flame to be conceptive to his amoureux approach. This time, when he lets his sim kiss her, she enjoys it and kisses back. Casual gamer is happy, his sim is happy, and some days later she moves in. New money, more furniture, a new bed. Now you control 2 sims. They both works so soon Casual gamer can afford a bigger house! Great! Move in and some days later (lol), a child arrives! Now you can play three sims.



A Core gamer starts The Sims. He uses the default character and just clicks "Next". Now he needs a house. Cool, there are some pre-built ones he can buy. No need to waste time with frill, click and buy this one. The game tells him his sim needs a job. Core gamer looks into the manual or, lacking that, an internet forum to find out which job works best with his Sim's skills and allows him to get as much money as possible as soon as possible.

Core gamer returns to the game and chooses said job. He gets back in the evening and improves the skills he needs to advance in the job. Then a neighbour knocks at his door. Core gamer thinks "what the hell is that supposed to mean?" He opens the door, is asked whether the neighbour can come in and curtly invites him in on manners only, then ushers his guest out again so he can work on his skills.

After a few days, he has a top job. Time to spend his money on things. What does improve the feelings of his sim best? Again, internet forums or experimentation. In the forums, he stumbles upon the fact that a spouse is an excellent way of making your sim happy.

Core gamer thinks: "What do I have to do to get a spouse as quick as possible?" He invites a likely candidate, looks at her statistics, checks the internet again to figure out the best approach. He has enough money to buy better gear and gifts so he gets his wife quite quickly. He moves into a new house but there's more to see: They can have offspring. Offspring begotten, he plays a few more days. And now comes the big difference:

Core gamer asks himself: "So when do I win? Wait, I don't win at all, ever? What the hell is the point of all this stuff then?"



So, if you took time to read my rambling stories, there you have it. There are two different basic kinds of players, who want to play two different kinds of "games". There are people who are both, depending on situation, game and mood. There are people who are only one of them. There are people who are more on one side than the other, but the fundamental thing is: I think there are a whole lot more gamers who are mostly casual than gamers who are mostly core.

And this means that good toys are more financially successful than good (in my dictum) games.

And this means games only exist as an economical niche.
 
I forgot about that game, but there you go people.

I actually played Avalon Hill's Civ way back in the day, early/mid 80's for me. Awesome game (or is that sentimentality rearing its ugly head?), and probably part of Sid Meier's inspiration. However, the Civ computer game was so much more. Remember when they actually released the Avalon Hill game as a computer game? I do, I bought it. I might have played it twice.
 
I didn't mean to imply (although I may have) that desire for immediate effects is a bad thing. That's just personal taste. Really, I do agree that civ5 could probably be made a little more enjoyable if more choices had a bigger, more immediate and obvious effect. Also, my argument is not universally applicable -- there certainly was long-term cause-effect in civ4 as there is short-term cause-effect in civ5.



Yes, you build a building and get an immediate effect (+2 culture, whatever) just as in civ4. I'm saying that many of those effects are of little gameplay consequence in the short run. By "consequence" I mean: What is the state of your borders? What is the state of your Treasury? What is the state of your technological advancement? What is the state of your army? The OP is basically right -- in terms of any of these questions, at least for the first 100 turns -- it makes almost no difference what you build. You could have built Stonehenge and temples to push borders, or markets and banks to buy border expansion. In late game, however, the consequences are severe. For some examples, these things are possible in civ5 (for player of "good" skill) but not in civ4 (again, for a player of "good" skill):

  • I'm at the top in technological progress, but I'm broke.
  • My income is wonderful (>100 gp/turn without golden age), but someone is going to beat me in the spacerace.
  • I have many cities (or a have a few huge cities (40+)) but I'm not at the top in tech advancement.

And so on.

I do not agree with this.
For what difficulty you are making this post?Must be Emperor at least.There is only one thing to think in advance and this is "Can i beat AI in battle?" If you can ,then everything else does not matter.To make war does not penalize you in any way and this is big problem for me.Like you say:
"I'm at the top in technological progress, but I'm broke."-declare war
"My income is wonderful (>100 gp/turn without golden age), but someone is going to beat me in the spacerace."-declare war
"I have many cities (or a have a few huge cities (40+)) but I'm not at the top in tech advancement."-declare war
 
Your strategy to adjust your target audience worked it seems. Congratulations. At any rate, I agree with your game design points but I would like to add a point you may not be acutely aware of: A lot of players do not want a game but want a toy. What is the difference?

Fantastic post, and illustrates quite clearly (and humorously) what a lot of us feel. It's pretty much what I meant when I said that I loved Civ 1 because it let me imagine guiding a Civilization through the ages, while being challenging at the same time (to me at least). I am definitely the player in the middle when it comes to games like this, I usually refer to it as a "sandbox" type game, where I am playing for a challenging but not optimal win in which I have room to basically roleplay.

Unfortunately, Civ V seems to have stripped out a lot of the "toy" elements as well as those that Bibor is talking about.
 
However, there have been sustained policies that had (usually unforeseen) consequences (either good or bad) much later. In fact, these long-term consequences may be the exact opposite of their immediate effect. Two examples of that are: 1) desertification and 2) deregulating banks at the same time that you put all banking risk on the government/taxpayer. (OK, the latter is just gratuitous politics on my part and not that "long term." However, the point is that not all decisions have an immediate effect like moving the slider in civ1-4.)

1.) If I understand desertification correctly, it is not a sustained policy itself by anyone, but merely a result of several practices that have or have not changed throughout history. In any case those policies are not permanent.

2.) If you are talking about Reganomics, that was pretty much only twenty years ago...a short time compared to the rest of the game. I'm not well versed in my banking deregulation history, so forgive me if you are going back further than that. :) If people don't somehow excuse the current mess of the economy, the laws will probably change eventually. It's not like anything is in stone to say that all banks must be deregulated forever. That's exactly the message you get from SP's.

I guess that my ideal civ game would embody both long-term cause-effect but also turn-on-a-dime transformation. That's a tall order. I don't think any civ game has dealt with the latter (although some mods do). Civ5 does better than civ4 at the former, in my opinion, but I agree that this is hard (perhaps too hard) to perceive and this makes the turn-end hitting boring after a while as the OP described.

Agreed. The difference between what we would like to see and what happened in Civ V is that we want long term cause and effect. The devs instead gave us permanent decisions.
 
This is a bit of a ramble, but for you tl;dr trolls, I agree with the OP:
I will disagree with the toy statement - a game like civ has clear boundaries/rules and very clear end game/victory/loss conditions. Toys generally have boundaries/rules (how you manipulate them, and the context they were designed to be used in), but I mean, there is no end game/loss condition in playing with a soccer ball. Now take that soccer ball onto a field, with opposing teams, a 90 minute deadline and this is now a game.

Now where I could agree with the toy statement is that in theory you can 'play around' with the various 'dials and knobs' in civ without necessarily trying to win the game. But you are still in the context of a game. Now if you turned on infinite resources/money/whatever THEN you are seeing civ in more of a toy context (maybe with the addition of the world editor).

However, the purpose of this discussion definitely focuses on the game aspect of civ 5. I agree with the OP, the game is too streamlined. I can only deduce that they actually removed more 'toy' from civ 5 in order to make the game more accessible to casual gamers. What's interesting is that by removing more avenues of success, thus making the game 'simpler' and more 'accessible' (what a horrible horrible word), they opened the game up to simpler and powerful exploits.

In fact I'm 99% sure they did this, I've worked/am working for major game publishers and they are all rabidly jealous of facebook game billionaires (ie: zynga) and want to inject this 'casual dna' into hardcore games in the hopes it will turn core games into huge cash cows, preferably without paying for advertising/marketing :) Let us bow our heads and be grateful Take2 didn't decide to provide leader clothing customization in exchange for microtransactions...

Now, seriously speaking, I don't get the rush I used to get in earlier civs when reaching for certain slingshot strategies. I mean how many times have I clicked 'build pyramids' and rushed to my local church, lighting candles and praying the AI isn't one step ahead of me. I also hate the fact that I can build tons of cities but it's no longer practical or advantageous to even build ANY buildings in most of them. Battle feels tedious, diplomacy is silly, the AI leaders don't have any 'character' anymore (god I used to love to hate Izabella). I can't even really switch my strategy in a panic when I realize I'm up against something I didn't anticipate, there's just no real alternative to switch to!

The cultural tree is possibly one of the most damning design decisions in civ 5. They still used the civ 4 metaphor for generating culture, but hilariously enough, the more points you get, the more flexible you can be in changing your cultural 'character', but what's the point since you will not be actually be able to play as a militaristic, scientific etc leader since you've dedicated your resources to a cultural victory! So if you're not going for a cultural victory, you can really only focus on one path and you're locked into that play style. And thanks for closing off other paths when you choose their polar opposites... yeah that makes total sense, i'm a dictator, I can do whatever I want.

Let's also not forget the game was shipped 6 months early...

I want to love you so bad civ 5 but you're so so dull.
 
This is a bit of a ramble, but for you tl;dr trolls, I agree with the OP:
I will disagree with the toy statement - a game like civ has clear boundaries/rules and very clear end game/victory/loss conditions. Toys generally have boundaries/rules (how you manipulate them, and the context they were designed to be used in), but I mean, there is no end game/loss condition in playing with a soccer ball. Now take that soccer ball onto a field, with opposing teams, a 90 minute deadline and this is now a game.

Now where I could agree with the toy statement is that in theory you can 'play around' with the various 'dials and knobs' in civ without necessarily trying to win the game. But you are still in the context of a game. Now if you turned on infinite resources/money/whatever THEN you are seeing civ in more of a toy context (maybe with the addition of the world editor).

I actually usually read TL;DR as "too lazy, didn't read" ;)

I'm not saying Civ5 was meant to be a toy, what I would say is that game designers see successful games (that are actually toys in my usage of the term) and try to emulate these, but often without understanding the fundamental concept of what a toy is meant to be.

I like playing with toys, I also like playing games. And some games actually achieve to be both. Unfortunately, Civ5 achieves only to be neither. If it was a good toy, putting me into a position that I could actually believe myself to be leading an empire to glory, or if it offered enough gameplay variability that I could try a ton of different strategies and have fun in many different ways with them (but mostly winning because it's not very challenging), I would be happy. If it was a good game, challenging on an intellectual level, allowed me to test and hone my skills and strategies and discuss them with others on the forum, I would likewise be happy.

I am, however, not very happy with a game that has a very small set of very powerful strategies which all don't have a lot of flavour and can be found out fairly easily. I do admit I had some fun for a while trying to beat my own aims (like 10 size 20 cities before turn 200) but that was unfortunately the only way to get a real challenge into the game.
 
Alpaca,

I understand your post very well. I will add World of Warcraft as example. That game lied about being casual when in fact it was Core. But it lied about it so well that in the end it started believeing it was casual, so it really turned into casual. Because, in the end, casual is where the money is.

I have a very close friend who is a casual gamer. And he annoys the crap out of me. Not because he's a casual gamer, but because he's casual in everything. I played World of Warcraft for more years that I dare to say aloud and I have a pretty clear picture of what kind of people are casual players. They are casual in everything. They can't be bothered with anything. They learn over five years what others learn in a month.

Yes, those kinds of people exist in the world, they make up the majority of it. If money is what you want, you'll plug your game into the pool of mediocrity and you'll get your money. For now.

For now, because, see, the world is changing. Jobs like being lift boy or telephone operator are becoming more and more scarce. Mediocrity is dying out. It is being replaced by machines. Quite literally.

Facebook and Farmville and MMOs are a one-way street and a very dangerous one, because they lead to a huge mirror which will make people realize what they really are: mediocre. And once every moron has pictures of his wife and kids on Facebook, people will start looking for new ways to make themselves unique.

If 2k wanted to tap into that market, they chose the wrong game and they did it in the wrong way. Civilization is a turn-based strategy game that plays best in single player. How those corporate frakheads expect to turn around these facts and demand a Civilizationville from Firaxis is beyond my understanding. The only social network Civilization has are these forums and Apolyton, and these existed way before Facebook was even born.

But I know this: if I play a computer game, I don't want Sims, I don't want an MMO and I don't want any form of mediocrity. I'm paying for the game exactly not to be a mediocre waste of time. If the developers are not happy with the profit they are making from the Civilization players worldwide, maybe they should start looking for another job. I'm pretty sure they were not starving all these years.
 
Unfortunately, I'm not sure that demanding games for a demanding audience are commercially viable: they are horrible customers anyway. If they like it enough, they may be happy to play it for years before they feel the need to move on to your next title. if they don't, they may pick some independent alternative that you never heard of before, because they won't only consider high-budget high-presentation titles.

Much safer to avoid alienating the casual and semi-casual audience... mechanics that are intuitive only to people who don't think about them, the illusion of a challenge (satisfaction when 'overcome' without the risk of frustration), the works. This audience is more predictable and large enough to justify the production budget you need for the spectacle and gimmicks that will guarantee your sales.
 
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