While I disagree with you on what Civ V offers on the whole (especially the combat element), I agree that the micromanagement/play-to-the-rules-rather-than-the-concept approach to the Civ series is and always has been a turn-off for me. It is, as you point out later, what drew me to EU3. EU3 has micromanagement, but it's....I dunno...I think of it as "conceptual" micromanagement, rather than "mathematical" micromanagement. It's less about manipulating equations to spit out the "optimal" result, and more about understanding the concepts that the mechanic is trying to approximate. Some stuff is still "mathematical," and folks who dig that kind of thing will likely still do quite well, but there's less worry about maximizing hammers, beakers, coins, etc.
I agree 100%. And I think the reason is that the Paradox games are almost as much simulations as games. They really have a goal of accurately modeling the forces that shaped a particular time period, so they can throw in all these special mechanics that are accurate for that period but which wouldn't make sense at other periods in history. Hell, fifty-seven or so expansions later, Paradox are still adding mechanics to EU3 because their regular ones didn't quite model one part of the world in the one time period it covers. So yeah, when you delve into the nitty-gritty the details make a lot more sense (though they are still abstracted to an extent), so it doesn't feel nearly as jarring or mechanical.
Likewise Dwarf Fortress as the extreme example, because it's first-and-foremost a psychotic-midgets-underground simulator; and because the focus is, relatively, so limited (and because he's slightly insane) he's abstracted precisely nothing so going into the details feels right.
Whereas you really can't have a mechanic for income/production/science/warfare/whatever that comes anywhere near to accurately fitting for the whole of human history, because it's just too long and too varied. You just can't. So your mechanics are necessarily broad and abstract, and the closer you make it fit for one period, the more obviously it's going to not fit for others. And Civ has never had the goal of being a historical simulator - which is obvious right from the point where they dump every nation into the world simultaneously with one settler at exactly 4000BC. It's a game broadly based on historical development, not a sim, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that - as long as they don't start pretending otherwise.
Hence you have 1 pop working one tile for n food, hammers and gold and generating x science towards your goal of inventing animal husbandry while your warriors take 20 years to move 1 square - none of it makes any real sense, never really has, but they're perfectly good gameplay mechanics. So with more detail and "depth" you're just adding more and more abstractions. So with religion, for example - EU3 needs religion in meticulous detail, because it's a necessary part of modeling the sociological forces that drove the actual conflicts and developments and overall climate in that period. And it's more a background part of the modeling that you have to take into account, but don't really have to actively do anything much with. Whereas Civ religion - it was a nice mechanic for driving alliances and conflict along another axis, and I'm not opposed to its re-addition in some different form at some point, but really it was mostly about how much time you could be bothered wasting stuffing around with those bloody missionaries.
With Civ, I think realism be damned - it's more about whether a mechanic is fun and adds interesting, meaningful choices or whether it just adds another set of fiddly little things that distract you from the big picture of running an empire *cough*espionage*cough*. I'm being too harsh, I loved BtS to bits, but I did find that sometimes I'd look up and realise "oh, it's 1000AD" and re-evaluate what I was doing because I'd been too stuck in the little mayoral stuff to notice the broad passage of history. With Civ V, I find I'm always in that broad passage of history/grand decisions headspace, and I think that's a good thing.
I can see where, to a degree, Civ V sort of moved away from that, but I just don't think that the execution lived up to whatever the design goal was -- to the extent there was a coherent goal, that is. I find that, for example, buildings don't give much bang for your buck, so you end up not needing to min/max, but more because you're not really...doing anything that would require it.
Agree to an extent, but that's more a balance thing I think, which is why Thal's excellent Balance mod has already essentially fixed this with just fairly minor tweaks (I realise not everyone considers a mod a fix though).
I wish that Civ V was as you described it, but to me, it's as if they stripped out the micromanagement elements more by accident (by making more stuff less useful to build, so you always have plenty of resources to spend), and not filling that gap with much else. It's a lot of (in my experience) clicking "next turn" and just waiting for something to happen. So, for me, they (inadvertently? On purpose?) got rid of much of the micromanagement, but it hasn't been replaced by grand "The empire shall do XYZ. This I decree!" decisions. It's just less stuff to do. Also, while I didn't like the micromanagement element of the earlier Civ games, there were still more consequential decisions to be made. Do I build this, or do I build that? To some extent, the game mechanics that gave rise to micromanagement were an effort to make those choices meaningful. So, sure, you can build [building A], but if oyu do that, you'll probably waste production that could've gone into [building B] instead. But [building A] takes less time to make and grants a lower bonus, while [building B] takes far longer, but has a huge bonus. The micromanagement developed as a way to make those choices LESS impactful and to game the system (which was already gaming you by having a finger on the scale, so to speak). Another reason why I find EU3 more entertaining -- the AI doesn't "cheat."
I think of Civ V as more streamlined than simplified, and I'm not just playing semantic silly buggers. Take buildings - yeah there were more buildings in Civ IV, but you still ended up pretty much always building the same buildings in the same order in all your cities (which became a chore and a half in the late game, especially if you conquered a lot). Whereas with Civ V, every building is a much more substantial choice. You can't afford to build a marketplace everywhere, so you have to be sure you're really going to get more benefit from it than from a granary/library/swordsman before you plonk it down. Yeah, the balance is still off and some of the buildings are pretty rubbish (again, Thal's balance mod is brilliant here), but I like the bigger decisions. I like that you can't build everything everywhere, even by the end of the game. To me, that's
more choice.
I quite like that you have to do less, that they've gone for a paradigm where everything that isn't a
real choice is something you don't have to do. I don't see that as dumbing down at all, quite the opposite. Whether that's a worthy goal or not is of course a matter of taste. And have they achieved it? I think mostly yes, but that's me and I know plenty disagree. And to be honest, I find plenty to do (and I play on epic speed).
Exactly, but no.
Exactly in the sense that Civ isn't about historical realism, and other franchises are (which is why they're broken into smaller eras). No, because basically I disagree with how Civ V ends up approaching this. If that was the design goal, I think it's laudable. However, I find the execution lacking. That's just my personal take on how the game plays. I definitely appreciate your post, though, and agree with a lot of what you had to say.
To me, Civ games have always felt rather like board games that just make use of the advantages of a computer (maybe because I started with Civ I, which pretty much was exactly that), and I say that in a good way.
I dunno, maybe it's just the hexes and 1UPT and the strategic view and the whole art deco style, but Civ V just feels board-gamey to me - and I might be way off base, but it feels deliberate.
Which is why it's such a shame that the diplomacy is so rubbish right now, because a board-gamey sort of game is exactly the sort of thing that can use lots of political wheeling and dealing and machiavellian backstabbing and all that.
Anyway thanks guys for the thoughtful, civil discussion; I've wasted too much time writing way too much here and I'm off to play some civ V
