My only hope for Civilization 5 is the source code. Supposedly it will get released some time in 2012. Perhaps modders can save the game where the developers and greedy 2K Games failed.
I think it all boils down to human psychology. We like McDonalds, because we know what we get. If you were from out of town and wanted a hamburger, where would you got? To "Don's Hamburgers", "Peterman's Chicken and Hamburgers" or "McDonalds"? Most people would probably go to McDonalds without even looking at the menu. Because we (humans) don't like to make choices.
This is inaccurate. When confronted with choices, most people will go with a choice wherein they have previous experience.
Yeah, but the previous experience can be that you've heard about it, but never actually tried it. This is why there are commercials. I've never tried KFC, but I'm pretty sure I would choose it anyway if was going to try fried chicken fast food and even though I have friends who hate it.
I've never tried KFC, but I'm pretty sure I would choose it anyway if was going to try fried chicken fast food and even though I have friends who hate it.
This whole "archer swimming across ocean" thing is pretty ******ed. Civ 5 really just feels like they tried to make "Civ 4 for dummies".
I think the terrains art style and the UI suck. Civ 4s terrain was more appealing, even civ revs terrain is better looking than civ 5s.
1) Their effects are too boring: buildings that enhance the same attribute all function in the same way.
I'm not asking for them to be as complex as Civ4's - while all those modifiers in Civ4 are cool, they do make the game appear more intimidating to beginners,
so "making the game more accessible and streamlined" is an acceptable reason for not following the Civ4 example. However in all previous Civ games including SMAC, even when several buildings serve the same function, the ways they work tend to vary, adding "design wrinkles".
See above example.
2) The long building progression lines such as the Monument line or the Library line are new to Civ.
In previous Civs, only a few buildings require other buildings, and the progression doesn't go deeper than 2 layers (A -> B). Civ5 introduced longer lines of 3, 4 or even 5 layers, and the buildings in a line, as discussed, function using the same formula, with the only exception of the line.
Library -> University -> Public School -> Research Lab
Monument -> Temple -> Opera House -> Museum -> Broadcast Tower
Colosseum -> Theatre -> Stadium
Market -> Bank -> Stock Exchange
Workshop -> Factory -> Solar Plant / Nuclear Plant
Hospital -> Medical Lab
Barracks -> Armory -> Military Academy
Walls -> Castle -> Arsenal -> Military Base
As a result, they - that is to say, the majority of buildings in Civ5 - seriously lack flavour, and may as well be called something like "Science Lv. 1" "City Defense Lv. 2" and so on, since that's in fact what they are, with nothing else interesting about them.
Because the difference between building a University to boost science and building and Observatory to boost science in Civ 4 was so profound? Or the difference between building a Market/Bank/Stock Exchange (oops, there's a 3-building line!) in C3C was that profound?
3) Of course there're a lot of details to easily make fun of:
Just as there were with any previous games.
In Civ 4, Jewish people needed to build many Temples in order to build one Synagogue -- how many Jewish Synagogues are there in the world as opposed to fully functional Jewish Temples?
Such haphazard building naming and design harm more than the game's fiction and atmosphere; they also dressed what's actually a simple system in unintuitive terminology and run contrary to the goal of making the game more accessible.
See above.
Also, remember building aqueducts in Civ 3 in a city in the middle of a 20-square desert?
You seem to be idealizing past games.
Ha, I knew I should have actually spent time doublechecking before writing that post. I was surprised when someone on this forum said "Civ5 wonders are boring, unlike Civ4", yet went on to make the same mistake.Or the difference between building a Market/Bank/Stock Exchange (oops, there's a 3-building line!) in C3C was that profound?
You seem to be idealizing past games.
Perhaps the word should be "attribute" rather than "modifier". Using your example of science buildings:What do you mean, "all those modifiers?"
Library: +25% science
University: +25% science
Observatory: +25% science
Laboratory: +25% science
Tell me, did you perhaps confuse your games?
Such haphazard building naming and design harm more than the game's fiction and atmosphere; they also dressed what's actually a simple system in unintuitive terminology and run contrary to the goal of making the game more accessible.
Perhaps the word should be "attribute" rather than "modifier". Using your example of science buildings:
Library: +2 , synergy w/ Creative
University: +3 , synergy w/ Philosophical
Laboratory: +1
And then there are things like Forge (+25% , +1 , from resources, synergy w/ Industrious) and Factory (works w/ power, +1 , +2 from coal and oil, synergy w/ Organized).
EDIT:
So does my complain boil down to Civ5 removing whole systems like and traits, yet didn't add enough interesting new systems (so naturally there wouldn't be buildings that make use of the new systems)? Maybe.
This whole "archer swimming across ocean" thing is pretty ******ed. Civ 5 really just feels like they tried to make "Civ 4 for dummies".
I agree with this a lot. In the first four Civs, the Granary was what you built in order to preserve food upon growth. Now, that has been switched with the aqueduct, and the granary has a completely new function while the old "traditional" function of the aqueduct has been eliminated.
I don't have a problem with eliminating the function of allowing city growth past a certain point or of adding the function of a building which provides food.
But, it seems very awkward to me to switch the functions of the buildings like that. It's cognitively difficult to get used to.
Perhaps they just felt that the abilities that they assigned to the granary and the aqueduct should t be available at the points that the techs are available, and there isn't anyway around it.
I'm having a hard time articulating why this bothers me, but the general thrust of my complaint is that, in general, similar things should have similar functions across the various incarnations of the game.
In that case, I would note that making buildings with multiple attributes is something they moved to Social Policies -- Factories can boost research, Universities can make you happy, Temples increase gold, etc.