As grandad1982 suggests, Shafer has not been at Firaxis for well over a year now. He's at Stardock.
Boredom with CIV5 demystified
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As grandad1982 suggests, Shafer has not been at Firaxis for well over a year now. He's at Stardock.
Ahem. Apart from being that fan he's talking about (How do you do?), this example goes some way further to make me doubt the OP knows what he's talking about. Tolkien is none of the sort. His style of writing particularly shuns minute detail, making it notoriously hard to tell much about, well, clothing, architecture, armament - pretty much anything. Hints and leaving much to the reader's own imagination is his literary trademark.
Now, it's really interesting to note that the amount of detail in a book can be compared to the amount of micromanagement. And CiV turns out to be much more Tolkienish in that respect.
I always wonder, why measured and well-founded analyses like this are left uncommented.
Is it Lieu's total post counter that says "new member"? Is it his abstaining of bold pretensions or his moderate conclusions? Is it, because his statements are just not the common "bash with the crowd"?
I don't know.
But I know that I totally agree to this post. Thank you, Lieu. I would love to read more posts like this at this forum.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
The reason noone has responded to Lieu's post is because:
1: He starts the post of by saying matters are too complex to discuss, going against the entire ideology of a forum.
2: He presents much loved features like religion, sliders and CIV diplomacy as negative aspects, doing so will get you declared insane by any lover of CIV.
3: He stays away from solid conclusions, not giving any would be debater much animo to work with.
4: The post is quite long, has a very daunting middle paragraph and has a lot of dead weight, common knowledge or unnecessary sentences.
Not sure where the "bash with the crowd" comment came from but there are more defenders of this game on this forum then ranters, if anything he has a very common opinion that most readers won't really disagree with, if you want to accuse anyone of crowd mentality, look at yourself please.
1: He starts the post of by saying matters are too complex to discuss, going against the entire ideology of a forum.
2: He presents much loved features like religion, sliders and CIV diplomacy as negative aspects, doing so will get you declared insane by any lover of CIV.
3: He stays away from solid conclusions, not giving any would be debater much animo to work with.
4: The post is quite long, has a very daunting middle paragraph and has a lot of dead weight, common knowledge or unnecessary sentences.
Not sure where the "bash with the crowd" comment came from but there are more defenders of this game on this forum then ranters, if anything he has a very common opinion that most readers won't really disagree with, if you want to accuse anyone of crowd mentality, look at yourself please.
The OP, on the other hand, is largely devoted to one's musings about how great games should be done, followed by a favourable illustration from CIV... and then, absurdly, an invitation to draw your own unfavourable comparisons with CiV. Somewhat underargumentative for a critical analysis, don't you think?
The closest he ever gets to listing factual defects is simply claiming that anyone can analyze the first 100 turns and, arguably, see how little meaningful powerful choices there are. While it is perfectly possible (though time-consuming, just as it is to prove his point with tangible examples) to demonstrate the opposite, it is rather more interesting and rewarding to analyze his notion of a meaningful choice. Judging by his positive example of old techs and Wonders (notice the prevalence of the epithet 'powerful'), for him these 'choices' are but a number of gambits. And the much-praised reward they yield are pushing the player ahead of the opponents. Now, are there not tech/Wonder-based gambits in CiV? Even more so with the addition of SPs. Where is the argument, then?
The closest he ever gets to listing factual defects is simply claiming that anyone can analyze the first 100 turns and, arguably, see how little meaningful powerful choices there are. While it is perfectly possible (though time-consuming, just as it is to prove his point with tangible examples) to demonstrate the opposite, it is rather more interesting and rewarding to analyze his notion of a meaningful choice. Judging by his positive example of old techs and Wonders (notice the prevalence of the epithet 'powerful'), for him these 'choices' are but a number of gambits. And the much-praised reward they yield are pushing the player ahead of the opponents. Now, are there not tech/Wonder-based gambits in CiV? Even more so with the addition of SPs. Where is the argument, then?
I said there was a lot to the subject, not that it shouldn't be discussed. My point is that I wasn't trying to make any definitive claim, just touching the surface. I just think the OP came to strong conclusions without enough argument.
I love Civ4. I guess I should declare myself insane
It is a great game and any arcane mechanics are still part of its character, which we all get attached to. Look at this site's name! I never mentioned what Civ4 did right, which is a lot. Incredible game. We can go back another step or two to Civ3-Civ2 and look at ridiculous ICS and corruption feeling bad, as if corruption was solely meant to make your cities worse the more you have, yet ICS was still the best thing to do. Then Civ4 moved on to maintenance, the mechanics of which are infinitely better, then Civ5 moved on to a dedicated "expansion" resource: happiness.The slider, for example? A cool concept for decision-making with your economy, but what did it mean in practice? If you wanted to win in the most effective way, you almost never wanted your commerce to turn into culture, and the same with espionage points. Science > all; find a way to run the highest % science possible and you're done. The only reason you had 20% on gold was because you had to cover some costs. Any kind of excess gold? You don't want that. Run the science slider higher because you NEED science above all else.
The whip is simply crazy overpowered left in current/previous form
On the first point, exactly. Certainty of conclusions is related to the completeness of the discussion. How is less certainty a bad thing? Easy ammo usually means you are clearly wrong in some aspect, maybe because one overstepped one's argument and made obnoxious claims
We could discuss flaws(read: areas of improvement) of Civ all day, but I do love the games.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
I think you're the first one to call it a critical analysis, and if you did not understand his point about early game choices, please read it again, all of the techs and wonders he lists have far greater impact on the game then their CiV counterparts, all in the name of "streamlining" the game.
He should not even have to list the games many defects because they have been extensively documented in many threads, if you're unaware of them, go lurk some more.
Not to mention that knowin the mods here, if he had listed them all it would likely just have been merged with the rants thread or deleted for not being nice enough to CiV.
Also he never stated that CiV has NO meaningfull choices, just a lot less of them, thanks to the streamlining AKA simplification.
As far as effective builds go, CiV is very picky, if you want to war, the only really effective way unless you want to wait till rifles is iron units, unless you never played CIV, you should know you had a lot of choices as far as armies went, depending more on your execution then get unit x, crush everything else.
And your "What he really means with meaningfull choices" bit was pointless, what you call "getting ahead of the other players" he calls meaningfull rewards for making good choices, giving me the impression you did not properly read his post, point being, because there are far less gambits and things like SP's and wonders give more general boosts then in CIV, a lot of the creativity you could put into CIV is lost, demystifieing the boredom the title talks about.
Oh and Grandad and Cami, glad to hear Shafers off the team, here's to hoping they use their ill-gotten DLC money to get Soren back.
He should not even have to list the games many defects because they have been extensively documented in many threads, if you're unaware of them, go lurk some more.
Not to mention that knowin the mods here, if he had listed them all it would likely just have been merged with the rants thread or deleted for not being nice enough to CiV.
Also he never stated that CiV has NO meaningfull choices, just a lot less of them, thanks to the streamlining AKA simplification.
As far as effective builds go, CiV is very picky, if you want to war, the only really effective way unless you want to wait till rifles is iron units, unless you never played CIV, you should know you had a lot of choices as far as armies went, depending more on your execution then get unit x, crush everything else.
And your "What he really means with meaningfull choices" bit was pointless, what you call "getting ahead of the other players" he calls meaningfull rewards for making good choices, giving me the impression you did not properly read his post, point being, because there are far less gambits and things like SP's and wonders give more general boosts then in CIV, a lot of the creativity you could put into CIV is lost, demystifieing the boredom the title talks about.
Oh and Grandad and Cami, glad to hear Shafers off the team, here's to hoping they use their ill-gotten DLC money to get Soren back.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
Lieu, I got the impression from the first paragraph that you felt no meaningful answers could be gained from this discussion, hence the meaning of life analogy.
You have a point about the science slider, but can you really say CiV has less of a focus on science? There isn't a single VC that does not require heavy science unless you want the AI to build the UN for you.
The uncertainty of your conclusions is not a bad thing, just explaining to one of your fans why noone is discussing about them, I prefer solid conclusion if only for entertainment value but you're completely in your right to abstain from them.
I have no doubt you love the franchise, otherwise you wouldn't even be here, if you'd like to discuss the games problems we should probably find another thread though because this one mostly deals with the ideology that made the latest iteration into what it is.
You have a point about the science slider, but can you really say CiV has less of a focus on science? There isn't a single VC that does not require heavy science unless you want the AI to build the UN for you.
The uncertainty of your conclusions is not a bad thing, just explaining to one of your fans why noone is discussing about them, I prefer solid conclusion if only for entertainment value but you're completely in your right to abstain from them.
I have no doubt you love the franchise, otherwise you wouldn't even be here, if you'd like to discuss the games problems we should probably find another thread though because this one mostly deals with the ideology that made the latest iteration into what it is.
I don't think there's any less focus on science. It's always vital. Civ5 just has a different system for it.
I disagree that ideology had much to do with why a lot of people find Civ5 worse. And streamlining? Simplification? That's just not the case. There's a difference between "making less punishing" and "making less complex". Generalise punishment to "crazy outcome" perhaps.
Maybe science is a good example. With "lazy" play, in Civ5 it's kind of hard to go that wrong with science. You'll have an ok amount. In Civ4, if you didn't execute "the set-up" for your economy, your science would be complete trash. If ahead of time you didn't set up your cottages, plan for science cities, expand just the right amount, aggressively tech-broker, etc, it would make for an, I don't know, x10 difference in tech factor or something? It was pretty fickle, taking into account the micro details of the systems. So you had varied consequences, certainly. That's great. But maybe they didn't come via the best form. We can always make a better game, right?
Anyway, Civ5's science is just a complex of a system, but tied to your economy/cities in a different way. The consequences, though, are much less fickle. I guess it can harder to differentiate play. The system might be better in itself and have a lot of advantages, but when you "fix" things it seems to passively reduce the range of effects. People don't seem to like that part of it
Of course then, the point of "fixing" mechanics is you have a better base to work with, so you can surpass the original set of actions>effects and make some really nice gameplay. But this process is NOT simplification. I'd say it would be nice if Civ5 had more of these "big plays", gambits, meaningful consequences, etc and I think Civ5 is sound enough to accomplish this through patches/mods/expansions making modest additions. Wonders could be so much more, but also, how much of this is due to the AI? Their bonuses remove a lot of potential plays and their weaknesses necessitate certain plays to take advantage of them.
I just really don't subscribe to the idea that design of Civ5 has anything to do with ideology, simplification, streamlining or otherwise dumbing down. Not in the way those terms are used around here.
Care to prove your claim? At least, it's verifiable. Compile a list of Vanilla (that's it, apples vs apples, please, no oranges!) CIV gambits
and I will make a CiV one.
Derpy Hooves
Grand Inquisitor
As far as science went in CIV the AI just had more options it knew how to use, take tech trading vs research agreements for example.
What you say about the AI's current bonusses necessitating highly streamlined play is, sadly enough, true, as far as I understand it this is all because of it's terrible combat AI, interesting how a bad combat AI can screw up so much more then just the combat.
Not sure about your last point though, CiV seems to be following the "corporate" effect, big studio comes in, buys the smaller studio and suddenly everything has to be accesible for new players with relatively little regard for the smaller amount of hardcore fans. Blizzard got screwed by Activision and Firaxis by 2K. Mass focussed projects like WoW or facebook Civ give me an even stronger belief their shareholders are suddenly much, much more important to them.
And Elenhil, do I want to compile a massive list for a game I have not played properly in years on my mobile phone while you compile one totalling about 5-7? God no.
We could try vice versa if you want but please reads Lieu's last post, at the end even he states CiV is very lacking in effective opening gambits.
Oh and it might not be all that relevant but the apples oranges metaphor does not work, CIV BTS was the final product, CiV + DLC's is it's equivelant.
Unless ofcourse you believe there will still be an expansion, but as even the studio said they will only do DLC and them refusing to answer any questions and while normally a expansion gets anounced 6 months after release, we're 18 months in now.
What you say about the AI's current bonusses necessitating highly streamlined play is, sadly enough, true, as far as I understand it this is all because of it's terrible combat AI, interesting how a bad combat AI can screw up so much more then just the combat.
Not sure about your last point though, CiV seems to be following the "corporate" effect, big studio comes in, buys the smaller studio and suddenly everything has to be accesible for new players with relatively little regard for the smaller amount of hardcore fans. Blizzard got screwed by Activision and Firaxis by 2K. Mass focussed projects like WoW or facebook Civ give me an even stronger belief their shareholders are suddenly much, much more important to them.
And Elenhil, do I want to compile a massive list for a game I have not played properly in years on my mobile phone while you compile one totalling about 5-7? God no.
We could try vice versa if you want but please reads Lieu's last post, at the end even he states CiV is very lacking in effective opening gambits.
Oh and it might not be all that relevant but the apples oranges metaphor does not work, CIV BTS was the final product, CiV + DLC's is it's equivelant.
Unless ofcourse you believe there will still be an expansion, but as even the studio said they will only do DLC and them refusing to answer any questions and while normally a expansion gets anounced 6 months after release, we're 18 months in now.
The OP was on the right track with looking at these opening "gambits," i.e. concrete early strategies that you can use to get a leg up on the competition. Here is a pretty exhaustive list of the gambits in CiV's first 100 turns (am I missing something?)
Warrior rush (tends to only work on low levels)
REX
Sword Rush
1 or 2 city NC
Great Library slingshot
Beelining Education and setting up renaissance RAs
Liberty slingshot to Chivalry/Longswords
Fast Scholasticism (nerfed in current patch)
Legalism trick for civs with a UB
This list compares unfavorably with Bibor's list, and Bibor's list is not exhaustive. 100 turns is a long time! You mention SPs, but it's telling how few concrete decision forcing strategies the early SP's lend themselves to. I suppose a Tradition pop booming strategy is another possible gambit, but I have yet to find a situation where this is really better than free stuff from Liberty. Bibor only mentions techs/wonders and leaves out things like axerushing.
I think it's really illustrative to go down the tech trees of CIV and CiV and consider how much more interesting each tech in CIV is. There are indeed interesting, game changing techs in the early part of CiV's tech tree, but it drops off and by the Medieval you are starting to get into the part of the game where you are no longer going "ooh I really want to get that tech." I mean has Physics in CiV ever been been a game changer? How about Banking, Printing Press, Metallurgy, Scientific Theory? In the second half of CiV you are no longer researching techs, you are just pushing up a long progress bar towards the end of the game. In contrast in CIV I can look at 90% of the techs at least through the Industrial and think of a situation where that particular tech made my game stronger. In part this is just a numbers game. Every single tech in CIV does at least two things while far too many in CiV do only one.
This post has turned a bit into rant post which wasn't really my intention. CiV is an OK game. The point I wanted to make is that Bibor does identify where CiV falls down, which a lot of criticisms have failed to do. Many criticisms of CiV in these forums such as streamlining or blaming 1UPT have suffered from a version of the conspiracy theorist's fallacy. They want to blame on "ideology" or a single point of design philosophy what is better blamed on incompetence. Well, I mean, incompetence is far too harsh. Making games is hard or so I hear. The makers of CiV were less competent, or were rushed, or made some unlucky decisions that screwed other things up, or whatever. The end result is that CiV just doesn't have enough interesting stuff in it. The techs are less interesting, the wonders are less interesting, the effects of the SPs are not necessarily as interesting as the economy transforming civics in CIV. CiV doesn't have all the little minigames that keep the player occupied like irrigation chaining, religion spreading, canal building, or the whip. I mean jeez the whip, you could write whole PhD dissertations on the proper use of the whip. I doubt this is result of streamlining or some corporate conspiracy to dumb our children's minds. It's just less. Less effort, less polish, reversion to the mean.
jeffah3539
Leviathan
While I don't think it is a conspiracy, I do think it is certainly indicative of the direction of gaming. Here is an interesting article that I think demonstrates many of the faults of the new gaming business and development model: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_cowclicker/
I think it is telling that Brian Reynolds, the man who designed Civilization II, the original Colonization, and Alpha Centauri; and was a founding partner of Firaxis before leaving to become CEO of Big Huge Games, where he led the design of the solid RTS Rise of Nations, is now the Chief Game Designer for Zynga East.
There is a small war developing in the world of game design and it appears that the traditional gaming companies and gamers are losing. Gaming companies are focusing much more now on ways to monetize their fanbase than on how to develop a quality product and I think it shows.
Maybe this a trend in gaming more generally but you have to get from there to argue that this wider trend has somehow influenced CiV 5's design. Maybe it has, but it's a lot harder to see than some people claim. The paucity of traditional strategy games, or at least the relative paucity compared to other parts of the industry which have been booming is a better illustration of this trend. CiV 5 is a big, complex, and very traditional PC game. The new XCOM looks to be the same. If you can't see that I think you've lost some perspective.
jeffah3539
Leviathan
The thing is CiV isn't that big or complex. 50% or more of the game consists of hitting the button in the bottom right part of the screen to scroll through messages or end your turn. You could win 90% or more of your games just by doing whatever the advisers tell you to do and letting your governors run your cities. In their quest to rid the game of as much micromanagement as possible in order to appeal to new or more casual players it seems they also removed nearly all of the management.
For example, in my most recent game I decided to use the RA slingshot to Chemistry from the RA War Academy article. However, I got so zoned out from repeatedly clicking the button I accidentally finished researching a Medieval tech which caused my RA costs to jump. At that point I realized I hadn't even really been playing a game. I was just a zombie sitting at my PC clicking a button.
If I had made a mistake so glaring on something so important to my overall strategy in CIV I would have been punished and the game would have become much more difficult. I might have even abandoned the game knowing that I wouldn't be able to recover, or at least reloaded a prior save to correct my error. In this game, it didn't even bother me. I knew the game was already won no matter what I did. I checked the autosaves and saw I had one from 5 turns prior, but I didn't want to go back and redo the 5 turns of clicking I had just done so I just kept pushing the button until the game was over. In that regard the OP is right: the game doesn't reward good play or punish bad play, it just rewards you as long as you keep clicking.
For example, in my most recent game I decided to use the RA slingshot to Chemistry from the RA War Academy article. However, I got so zoned out from repeatedly clicking the button I accidentally finished researching a Medieval tech which caused my RA costs to jump. At that point I realized I hadn't even really been playing a game. I was just a zombie sitting at my PC clicking a button.
If I had made a mistake so glaring on something so important to my overall strategy in CIV I would have been punished and the game would have become much more difficult. I might have even abandoned the game knowing that I wouldn't be able to recover, or at least reloaded a prior save to correct my error. In this game, it didn't even bother me. I knew the game was already won no matter what I did. I checked the autosaves and saw I had one from 5 turns prior, but I didn't want to go back and redo the 5 turns of clicking I had just done so I just kept pushing the button until the game was over. In that regard the OP is right: the game doesn't reward good play or punish bad play, it just rewards you as long as you keep clicking.
No, you can't compare a game which final version saw some 4 years of patching and improving with that of only one year. And even if there will be no expansion to CiV (which you really can't reliably claim), each major patch introduces new content and rebalances older ones, which add to the number of gambits. Or will you now say that there will be no patches with new features either?
P.S. Regarding Vanilla CIV gambits: the burden of proof is on you.
Formivore, the problem with your list is that it underestimates the gambits you did manage to list. Take "Beelining Education and setting up renaissance RAs". There is so much more to that. Make it
Liberty free GE > Porcelain Tower +25% RAs + free GS > Astronomy 100% Rationalism RAs (plus +50% science from Observatory) and you will more than scratch the surface of one hell of a science gambit. Add to it the possibility of building HS along the way and the free GP will take you even further ahead whatever way you use him. You make it sound as a poor trick instead.
So it is neither deep nor exhaustive. You fail to mention resource settling for early 200+ gold, which is a good way of getting these one-city into two-city "National" gambits. And if it's Marble, you'll still get the Wonder bonus without ever wasting your research on Masonry - a powerful early Wonder snatching strategy.
And you've omitted ICS, which is a gambit in it's own right (just like OCC is, golden age and SP-wise).
And Mercantilism-Big Ben-Militarism high-ratio gold-military conversion machine.
And Museum + Legalism culture gambit.
And Honour culture-farming (speaking of how irrelevant SPs are for gameplay choices).
Now, your techs rant. There are not a few pros on this forum that will surely tell you that instead of researching all the 'boring' late half of the game techs you should've already won the game. As for you seeing no point in beelining any of them - tell this to the various Riflemen/Stealth Bomber etc. rush proponents.
And, frankly, I do not see how can one compare a tech tree stuffed with units, buildings and wonders from two major expansions with a vanilla one. Next you should compare BtS with vanilla CIV and find the latter, well, bland. Too few units, buildings, and Wonders. And you know what? No espionage and corporations either! What a shallow game.
Liberty free GE > Porcelain Tower +25% RAs + free GS > Astronomy 100% Rationalism RAs (plus +50% science from Observatory) and you will more than scratch the surface of one hell of a science gambit. Add to it the possibility of building HS along the way and the free GP will take you even further ahead whatever way you use him. You make it sound as a poor trick instead.
So it is neither deep nor exhaustive. You fail to mention resource settling for early 200+ gold, which is a good way of getting these one-city into two-city "National" gambits. And if it's Marble, you'll still get the Wonder bonus without ever wasting your research on Masonry - a powerful early Wonder snatching strategy.
And you've omitted ICS, which is a gambit in it's own right (just like OCC is, golden age and SP-wise).
And Mercantilism-Big Ben-Militarism high-ratio gold-military conversion machine.
And Museum + Legalism culture gambit.
And Honour culture-farming (speaking of how irrelevant SPs are for gameplay choices).
Now, your techs rant. There are not a few pros on this forum that will surely tell you that instead of researching all the 'boring' late half of the game techs you should've already won the game. As for you seeing no point in beelining any of them - tell this to the various Riflemen/Stealth Bomber etc. rush proponents.
And, frankly, I do not see how can one compare a tech tree stuffed with units, buildings and wonders from two major expansions with a vanilla one. Next you should compare BtS with vanilla CIV and find the latter, well, bland. Too few units, buildings, and Wonders. And you know what? No espionage and corporations either! What a shallow game.
Well I've heard this one many times before. It's easy to see accessibility as "streamlining" or dumbing down or whatever, but making the game better for a subset of people does not have to take away from anyone else's experience. Elenhil has good arguments on what is there, not things picked from Civ4 that are gone.
I said it would be nice to have more
Civ5 is not lacking at all except for the the effect of the AI, in my opinion.The decline of gaming is a myth
Now, sure, there are always going to be horrible companies like Zynga. Publishers are larger and more visible now. But on the whole, developers are just doing their usual thing. There is no "traditional vs casual" or anything going on. Rose-tinted goggles are a pretty powerful thing.I basically agree with this. There is a lot of great depth to Civ5 - it's the reason I play. But then at the same time there is Jeffah's recount of being in-game and bored to hell. Clicking through the game, end-turn button focused, gets the job done I guess, but it's not terribly strong either. Maybe it's the danger of collapse and the effects of making a mistake that he notices. For me, I tend to focus on what's missing and what I could be doing differently to reach a new highpoint.
That's just a hypothesis, but wouldn't it be a good thing, in any case, to make consequences more visible? Civ4's graphs were fantastic - every measure of your empire displayed over time to chart how you were doing vs the other civs. Recently I forgot to start a Civ5 game with InfoAddict and it took a huge chunk of tangible feedback away. Why has this not been added to demographics yet? What about comparing game-to-game? Milestones? Promoting comparisons to your neighbour, like it's a competition? Because by default you don't have to do any of this. Just deal with the pop-ups and hit end turn.
Actually Sid designed civI under impression of a board game. Which is designed by Francis Tresham. Ironically that everyone knows Sid and no one even mentioned Francis. So yeah I don't think Sid is that good.
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).
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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