Civilization V - Units: Disappointment

At first I was very skeptical about 1 unit per tile, mainly because of realism concerns. But after looking through all these discussions on the forums, I've been convinced that it's a good move. A drastic move, but one that will finally take the combat away from the cities, and create possibility for much more interesting tactical scenarios.

(Though archers firing 2 tiles away is something that I have a hard time stomaching. Hopefully they will not be able to "pillage" terrain from a distance or "bombard" units in cities to soften them up. Perhaps archers should be a sort of support unit that boosts the strength of an adjacent unit under attack. Artillery, on the other hand, should be fully capable of doing damage over a distance.)

CivFanCCS said:

I see everyone here arguing over their own opinions of what they would or would not like to see in Civ 5, but it's pretty simple in the fact that everyone is going to want or not want something that ends up in Civ 5 so I suggest you do what I started doing about a year or so ago, and that is to pre-play games before buying. I love playing FPS but the way the industry went with really crappy story lines that could be dominated in single player mode within 3 hrs just sucked. I started waiting 1 month after release of a game to buy it and for quite a few reasons: First about 2001-2002 game developers started releasing beta software that was barely functional and needed at least 2 patches before you were able to enjoy the game without 5 exceptions in the first hour of game play. Secondly why not wait and ask others what they think before spending an avg. of $60 on a game you'll be disappointed with?

When it comes to trying to get a wide audience of civ fans I'm pretty sure thats not going to happen. People who play civ like long emense game-play that allows the player to have the most control. I have a friend who is a HUGE gamer, I mean he games everyday all day basically, every weekend and everyday after work and I asked him about Civ and why he doesn't play it. He basically said that Civ just doesn't interest him and that he's more of a character type player. (WOW/FINAL FANTASY) and first person shooter player. The idea of Civ doesn't interest him so no matter how fast or how easy the interface he's not going to buy civ, and I think alot of people are like this.

Just an opinion.

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When it comes to pleasing the "wide audience of civ fans", there is a simple solution...

Options!

For those that don't want Religion, disable it. If you like having espionage, turn it on. Want to have your civs start near real life neighbors, include it in the custom game. Plain and simple providing options will allow the audience to find the way that they want to play, not how the developers decide we should play it.

Thorburne said:

When it comes to pleasing the "wide audience of civ fans", there is a simple solution...

Options!

For those that don't want Religion, disable it. If you like having espionage, turn it on. Want to have your civs start near real life neighbors, include it in the custom game. Plain and simple providing options will allow the audience to find the way that they want to play, not how the developers decide we should play it.

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It's not that easy to just make religion an option. If religion is in the game, they'd have to do A LOT of programming to make it work, and it'd dramatically affect the human and AI. You'd have to program two different AIs, one for religion and one for without it. It's a pretty significant difference in the game, and the AI would play completely different with it and without it. I'd rather have them program one excellent AI rather than two subpar AIs.

Besides, the reason they cut religion is not because some people didn't want it. It's because it dominated diplomacy too much, and they're trying to make diplomacy more fun and less dominated by religion.

bonafide11 said:

It's a pretty significant difference in the game, and the AI would play completely different with it and without it. I'd rather have them program one excellent AI rather than two subpar AIs.

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Not if you make the AI dynamic instead of scripted. In other words, "If religion is not active, ignore religion decisions"

bonafide11 said:

It's not that easy to just make religion an option. If religion is in the game, they'd have to do A LOT of programming to make it work, and it'd dramatically affect the human and AI.

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Well, seems it wasn't that difficult to do for C3C. They had options to allow/disallow all victory conditions (domination, space race, diplo, conquest, cultural, wonder), linked starting positions, respawn, science leaders, culture conversions, VP's, and so on.

If you turn religion off, it's just not there anymore (like Civ 5 will be now), so human/AI are still on same playing ground. His point was, they should include things, and give player options of what they want in the game.

For the expert programmer's working at Firaxsis, I doubt it would be very tough for them to accomplish such a small task as a on/off switch.

If they bring religion back for an expansion, they should give players an option screen to customize their game (which they may have already).

With all the mod-ability they are talking about, do you really think they are going to hardcode all this stuff?

Besides, the reason they cut religion is not because some people didn't want it. It's because it dominated diplomacy too much, and they're trying to make diplomacy more fun and less dominated by religion.

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It did in Civ 4, this is not Civ 4. All versions have been dramatically different from one another. Dev's don't cut things when a few people don't like them. Dev's and Sid himself have made statements about these matters. More people want religion in than anything according to these forums, so that is not the case.

I thought Civ IV BTS was essentially perfect except for the fact that they needed to give us more modern and ancient shore units. Also I would have loved to see Siege Units such as Catapults fire at Sea Units again but have a small chance of hitting. I would have loved to see shore defences, Also in the modern age, you should have fixed AA and SAM defences which the AI should be programmed to try to hit and destroy. Also the idea of Radar buildings giving fighters and AA a slight boost, with the option of building a National Radar Defence Structure which could trigger the option of a shoot-down by fighters. Just some interesting ideas I would have put in Civ V. I also would have worked on land and air transports to put them in and make sure the AI uses them. All of these would have added up to the ultimate version of Civilization in my opinion...

I'd rather they take time and integrate a dynamic religion system into an expansion than shoe horn it into this game. They're rebuilding the AI, diplomacy, etc. from the ground up. I think they need to take a long time and figure out how religion, holy cities, missionaries, inquisitions, etc. can work to influence the game without breaking the improvements they have done.

As for the OP, it seems a little to early to say hooray or boo to these changes with any seriousness. It's fair to say "I don't like the sound of this" but it seems premature to say "i'm not going to play this game." We're not even in Spring yet, technically, Fall is a long way off. I'm waiting for some more information, but I'm quite optimistic.

As far as going down the road of capitalism, um, capitalism is a good thing. It means you made something people are happy to spend money on. That means you can make things like expansions and sequels, which gives your customers a product they want and you MORE money. The road of capitalism is to make something good because you have every incentive to do so.

Enable/disable options really don't work very well for core gameplay mechanics. Its not like you can have "1 unit per tile" as just a game "option", because the entire combat system is going to be designed around a 1 unit per tile system. Example: combat doesn't cause unit death. Imagine how painful it would be to get through a *stack* of units that don't die until you win 3 combats vs them on that fort in the mountain pass.

Similarly, they're not going to code up an entire Civ4-style religion system as a game "option", as it would be wasted work and would potentially mess up their new diplomacy system.

You can't abandon the necessity of making design decisions by making options.

What I find disgusting here is the number of people who are convinced that *their* way of playing is the only allowable one. Ergo, if someone dares to criticise or try to talk (usually peaceably and politely) about Civ5 with anything less than absolute fawning, we get the usual forum-trash for conversation. Ergo, "don't let the door hit you on your way out" junk. Here's a thought: engage the criticisms, accept that more than one viewpoint exists, and actually act like people who have some shred of manners. It would improve these (and other) forums substantially.

My personal viewpoint:
1) I liked the customizable Civics, a la Alpha Centauri, and dropping them is a shame. It was one of the few completely positive things from Civ4 that I liked.
2) Hexes are a good addition.
3) Ranged bombardment is a good gameplay option, but it stretches beyond credulity to have archers firing arrows across multiple hexes. Regardless of map size: if an entire city is one square, it is ludicrous to "visualize" an archer shooting an arrow further than the width of a city. Yes, it's "gameplay", but some of us have, throughout the line of Civ games, preferred the idea of at least pretending to try to balance gameplay with some sort of believability. Am I being literal? No, because I would allow artillery and missile-launchers range into another hex, and that may, too, be a stretch. Arrow firing from a bow, however, is too far. As always, this is my opinion, which (I know this will come as a surprise to some on here) we are ALL entitled to. We should all be able to come on here and express our thoughts intelligently without getting the forum-trash rising up with the "get out" junk.
4) Standalone editor. If they go through with what they've said recently, this stands to be a very positive thing. I missed a Civ3-esque easy-to-use editor, and hopefully the new standalone editor will also have simple-to-use changes to the rules (as Civ3 did). There's a LOT that could be improved on the Civ3 standalone editor, but it's a good place to start, and it remains a shame from civ4 that there was nothing comparable available to it (without cracking out the SDK and learning python and using the crappy in-game editor and...)
5) Dropping Spain for Siam, I find absurd, given their relative contributions to world history as a whole. Is this a game-breaker? Not in the least. I just find it... an odd choice.
6) I look forward to hearing how they're going to address religion, since its introduction in civ4 was something i also found positive. I would hate to see if dropped completely.
7) What do I want from civ5? The ability for me to play it and have it appeal to me, and for *you* to be able to play it and have it appeal to you. I refuse to stoop to the exclusionary, elitist claptrap that comes from "get out", "let the door..." and so forth.
8) The now-infamous one-unit-per-hex rule. No opinion, yet. It depends on how it's executed. For instance, if the idea is to have something akin to Civ3's "army" structure, where the single unit is the "army", but the "army" unit holds several units in it -- that would be absolutely fine. hell, it would be brilliant. I'd love to see a parallel tech-tree for "ideas" that would include military organization, and as you go up that tree it expands the size and power of your army (or some such).
9) Resources that limit production. Not too much of a problem with this, but at the same time, I would have preferred to see this be the thing that limits how many military units you can have rather than an apparently-arbitrary "one unit" rule (qualified, again, on how that actually is executed).
10) Civility. Might be too much to expect that on an internet forum, but one can hope.

Spyder1 said:

What I find disgusting here is the number of people who are convinced that *their* way of playing is the only allowable one. Ergo, if someone dares to criticise or try to talk (usually peaceably and politely) about Civ5 with anything less than absolute fawning, we get the usual forum-trash for conversation. Ergo, "don't let the door hit you on your way out" junk. Here's a thought: engage the criticisms, accept that more than one viewpoint exists, and actually act like people who have some shred of manners. It would improve these (and other) forums substantially.

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Wow dropping Spain for Siam? I don't know if they're going to go through with that decision or not, but I sure they hope they don't. Isabella and Ferdidand had major impact on world history once upon a time. Without them, Columbus would have never "discovered" America and who knows what would have happened then. As far as I'm concerned, seeing as how I haven't yet won two games and don't know much about the mechancis of Civ, I hope they do what they know is right, that is, include the good things from previous games and make some necessary changes. As far as Civ rev goes, while I thought it looked rather silly, it sparked my interest for the series. I think it served it's purpose; entice more people to the franchise. Also, one last crazy question. Would it be absoutely nuts if they put Hitler in for Germany, or is it just too soon? I mean, Stalin was pretty bad too, killed 10 million over a span of 10 years, but's it not heavily publicized. Hitler was evil, but the guy was a pretty darn good leader regardless, until he took command of his troops in WW2.

1) I liked the customizable Civics, a la Alpha Centauri, and dropping them is a shame. It was one of the few completely positive things from Civ4 that I liked.

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Social policies seem like they will be very much an Alpha-Centauri style civics system.

5) Dropping Spain for Siam, I find absurd, given their relative contributions to world history as a whole. Is this a game-breaker? Not in the least. I just find it... an odd choice.

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AFAIK we have no full confirmation of Siam in the game. We saw a comment about a Siamese elephant unit, but this could easily come from some kind of City-state-provided UU.
Describing the game as "Siam instead of Spain" is just likely to be inflammatory.

As someone pointed out, it seems that Siam is not a given as a civ. My apologies if I was in error asserting that it was -- I was judging that from the link here at Civfanatics for "civilizations" under Civ5. I hope it is an error -- not that I have anything particular against Siam, but from a world-history standpoint the contribution (or intrusion, depending on your viewpoint) of Spain is much weightier.

I appreciate the clarification.

Also, one last crazy question. Would it be absoutely nuts if they put Hitler in for Germany, or is it just too soon? I mean, Stalin was pretty bad too, killed 10 million over a span of 10 years, but's it not heavily publicized. Hitler was evil, but the guy was a pretty darn good leader regardless, until he took command of his troops in WW2.

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Yeah, but you're actually under-estimating Stalin's genocide against his own people in the 1930s (particularly the Ukraine). By 1933, Stalin's policies had killed 25% of the population of the Ukraine, including an estimated 3 million children.
To quote:

"Ukrainian historians put the figure at nine million or higher. Twenty-five per cent of Ukraine's population was exterminated.

Six million other farmers across the Soviet Union were starved or shot during collectivization. Stalin told Winston Churchill he liquidated 10 million peasants during the 1930s. Add mass executions by the Cheka in Estonia, Lativia and Lithuania, the genocide of three million Muslims, massacres of Cossacks and Volga Germans, and Soviet industrial genocide accounted for at least 40 million victims."


But hey, it's okay to include the worst mass-murderer of the 20th century as a leader, but not Hitler (ostensibly, evidently, because hitler's atrocities are more widely known, and Stalin's aren't -- which is its own discussion).


Choosing leaders should reflect (in my own opinion) what leaders actually had an impact on the flow of world history -- which means villains will show up, possibly even predominantly. Ergo, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.

What leaders they choose to offer won't affect my decision to buy or not to buy Civ5. Just following up on what someone else said.

I'm really looking forward to ciV. My Favorite Games are the Civ series (best turn based strategy), the Total War series (strong turn-based strategy and best real-time tactic) and the Panzer General series (best turn based tactic). Correct me if I used the terms strategy and tactic in a wrong way, but i guess this was the easiest way to point out the differences I consider important.


Since I got tired of the weak Diplomacy and monotony of the turn based part of the Total War games, I dreamed of a mix of Civ and the Total War series. To my opinion Civ's weakness is warfare, which is Total War's strong part. Unfortunately this mix is not gonna appear in the near future.


The second best game would be a mix of Civ and Panzer General. And in a way this is gonna happen upcoming fall! Civ is the best Strategy game ever. But thanks to SoDs, tactical warfare is not challenging at all. So I'm highly confident that the new / old hexagon and the "one unit per tile" system will change this.


Now I want to reply to some statements I read over and over:


1: Don't panic, the maps won't be crowded because of the following facts:

- unit production is limited due to the number of your ressources and the unit's upkeep costs. And I believe that the developers will find the right balance

- Cities do not have access to only 2 squares in each direction any longer, in ciV they have access to 3 hexes in each direction (Computer Bild Spiele 3/10)

- maps will very likely become bigger. In a crappy translated Interview with Jon Shafer on March, 17th, 2010 he said that there can be about 2500 hexes. Some say that this number is meant to be multiplied by X... Anyway, if the cities have access to 3 hexes it is logical to assume that the map will consist of more tiles than it did before. In Fact there will be more space between the cities, which means that there will be more space for units.

I'm really looking forwad to actually use terrain in warfare, not only to go from hill to forrest an vice versa until I use suicde cats/art and take city after city with my 1 billion men army, which is being healed by one damn busy medic unit

2: "Just one unit per tile is unrealistic!" and "A Unit of Bowmen can shoot over a distance of two tiles - that's just waaayyyy too far!" - LOL - if I started to write down every unrealistic element of Civ 4 right now, I would be able to buy Civ 6 right after I'm finished. No, seriously - each tile can stand for an area of any size. SOME things in Civ HAVE to be abstract. And I guess the absolute majority can live with these ones!


@ the developers: good job so far

Spyder1, the Hitler debate has been done to death already. Let's not turn this thread into another Hitler debate. Hitler is still a very sensitive topic, especially in Germany where they wouldn't sell the game if Hitler was in it, so that's why he'll never be in it. Besides, Bismarck left Germany in a much better situation than Hitler did.

bonafide11 said:

Spyder1, the Hitler debate has been done to death already. Let's not turn this thread into another Hitler debate. Hitler is still a very sensitive topic, especially in Germany where they wouldn't sell the game if Hitler was in it, so that's why he'll never be in it. Besides, Bismarck left Germany in a much better situation than Hitler did.

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Wasn't trying to open the debate, per se, but to comment that, when choosing the leaders of civilizations, they should choose leaders who made significant contributions to the "flow" of world history. By my measure, you can omit Hitler -- as long as you choose leaders who made equally-significant effect, as Frederick the Great or Bismarck.


To the other one:
"Just one unit per tile is unrealistic!" and "A Unit of Bowmen can shoot over a distance of two tiles - that's just waaayyyy too far!" - LOL - if I started to write down every unrealistic element of Civ 4 right now, I would be able to buy Civ 6 right after I'm finished. No, seriously - each tile can stand for an area of any size. SOME things in Civ HAVE to be abstract. And I guess the absolute majority can live with these ones!


OK. Go back and re-read my comment, it wasn't "waayy too far" per se, it was about the balance between gameplay and a modicum of believability. To me, it's unbelievable (not realistic or unrealistic) to have an Archer able to shoot over hexes; it's not unbelievable to have artillery do so. If one were to get lost in the "pure realism" argument and not look at the balance between the two (gameplay and believability), you'd never get a game done and it would look like my old "Advanced Squad Leader" board-game rules binder (yes, that does put a 'date' to how old I am; those who know the reference will understand it). I think the believability limit comes when something visually absurd takes place -- so, right beside a city which has a size of "20", let's say, and takes up one hex, or two hexes, you have an archer who can shoot literally "over" it's entire size. That's visually unbelievable, to me, and it ruins the "feel" of the game.
Am I saying that they should listen to just me? Nope. I prefer games that are open enough to encourage all types of gameplay. For instance, if Civ5 comes with an editor like Civ3 did, you could easily go in and change the nature of the archer's ranged attack to "zero" for me and "2" for you -- now we're both satisfied, and they've already done this in the past with Civ3's editor.

I also find the "absolute majority" comment to be rather amusing, if not ridiculous. As I prefaced my original post with, it would be wonderful it people would stop assuming the entire world agrees with them and actually talk (without insulting each other; without making wild assertions about "the world agrees with me!"; etc.) and debate the features and issues. I've offered up one perspective, in terms of unit gameplay/believability, for consideration and how it affects MY (not necessarily YOUR) gameplaying.

I agree, there is an element of disconnect that can take the player out of the experience. Sid Meier even mentioned in his recent speach/lecture at GDC about the "Unholy Alliance"<TM> between the developer and the player. That is the case here. With Civilization, we, as a player have to forgive a bit of creative licensing on the developer's behalf. That is why we are willing to accept some of the "unrealistic" points in the Civilization series. However, if the developers make things too unrealistic, then that takes the player out of the game, causing them to not care as deeply and, at some point, go someplace else.

Thorburne said:

I agree, there is an element of disconnect that can take the player out of the experience. Sid Meier even mentioned in his recent speach/lecture at GDC about the "Unholy Alliance"<TM> between the developer and the player. That is the case here. With Civilization, we, as a player have to forgive a bit of creative licensing on the developer's behalf. That is why we are willing to accept some of the "unrealistic" points in the Civilization series. However, if the developers make things too unrealistic, then that takes the player out of the game, causing them to not care as deeply and, at some point, go someplace else.

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Nicely put. What scares me about the details we're hearing about is simply this: that the balance is going way out of whack. Archers who can shoot further than the width of an entire city, among other things. i offered up some potential alternatives to the one-unit-per-hex rule above (think Civ3 Army-unit, conceptually-speaking). I'd love to have Civ5 actually be something that swallows up my time like Civ1-3 did (kudos to Civ4 for some things as I said above, esp. AC's customizable civics)... hence, talking about good/bad points and potential alternatives that will make things work.

Ah. I see. Here's the problem:

People are worried about change (let alone balance) at this stage because they're applying what (little) we know about Civ V dynamics and applying it to Civ IV.

This is an error because Civ V will have different mechanics from Civ IV, that make sense for that game and only that game.

People complained about the military system and fewer cities in Civ IV because they thought of it in terms of Civ III. Then IV turned out to be the best in the series.

Ho hum. I say we reserve judgment until we play it or get a better understanding of how the game works.