Just made the jump to Civ 5: Impressions

The thing is, in that particular game, by the time the world congress banned my salt and truffles, I was in a game ending war and already had something like 40% of the world's landmass and population. My military was enormously powerful and I was raining fiery death down upon everyone else. I don't see how anyone could have stopped my people from using salt, or any other drug.

I like to imagine that being that the rest of the world still has the moral authority to convince your citizens that salt is evil.

What this game needs is a “defy world congress” option. The happiness/gold hit would have to be severe though.
 
Civ 5 is just less exciting. whether it's due to the negative influence of 1upt or not, it just feels flat, stale, unexciting. Mainly this concerns tame incremental growth. Everything is just +1 here or there. Wonders that don't feel that wondrous. A long list of policies and religious bonuses, but none of them feel special or stand out. As one progresses through the game, there's not much to look forward to.

Compared to previous Civ games, including CivRev, they had stages in the game where you felt a jump in power and control, opening up more possibilities. While there were fewer civics, each one vastly changed the way you play the game. Wonders and even common buildings that promote a certain strategy and encourage you to want to build them.

I can explain why that is. After playing Civ5 for years then coming back to RAND mod for Civ4, the latter is sooooo much better than BNW because the number of meaningful decisions per turn is just right, and the game is not trying to be something it isn't.

The trick is not whether the game is "epic" or "immersive" or whatever you people want to call it, but that the decision density of the game has to be correct and flow evenly throughout the game. The decision density means that every turn, the amount of decisions have to fit with people's memory capacity AND be meaningful too. That is the recipe.

So every turn there has to be 4-7 meaningful decisions. Less than that and players get bored. More than that and players feel overwhelmed and loose focus. Problem with Civ5 is that the decision density is all wrong because of bad game design.

The game design is bad because Civ5 is trying to be a strategy game when the whole Civ tradition before that is actually sandbox. If Civ6 wants to be a strategy game, it needs to realize what makes a game a strategy game. In a top notch strategy game, every decision is visible to all players. Nothing is hidden BUT the decisions are committal (there is no easy way to reverse them). So it doesn't matter whether you're opponent sees your decisions because you are committed to a strategy and cannot go back. This is why Chess is one of the best strategy games ever invented. But in BNW half of the games decisions are invisible (the build game), and are often not committal just additive. No wonder the game plays blandly.

What I really like about Civ4 is that it is a genuinely honest sandbox game. Civ5 is just a bad strategy game and a cut down sandbox game where they cut-down the game to save money and improve sales. Sorry.

For me the landmark Civ games of all time are RAND Civ4 because it is vintage sandbox and Rise of Nations which showed the world that tiles on the map are unnecessary for a civ game and that city buildings are placed on the map rather than icons in the city screen (so that the build order is visible). I fear that Firaxis is not learning from these land marks and are instead focusing on how to maximize profit for Civ6.

Hello peeps. Not really participating in the discussion, but those two posts are echoing my own words so strongly that i had to say it. Chinese American said it all, and glider1 game design theory is interesting. I would have said more prosaicly "there's not enough things to do". But I think it is more tied to war : in previous Civs, if you wanted to win easily or beat the highest difficulty levels, you had to pass through war. Now with tall play you can skip it literaly. It's not really a bland problem about the number of dicisions in a given turn, because are they really controllable ? Designing a game with that in head would be a nightmare. I think it's more tied with the game whole philosophy since Civ1.

You have basic units, you move them, you go explore, you go fight very basicly. A little later all this snowballs and you can stroke the fact you rule a whole civilization in a new world. You start small and simple, and the whole thing snowballs into a civilization. I tried several times to underline what this snowballing was due to. For example, borders : they have to draw themselves with time, not being apparent and straightjacketing since the start. They have been there only because of players complaints AI was going through our territory, but we could have make without explicit borders with nothing ! The big fat crosses were our territory. So forbid the BFC to other civs units unless there is a ROP ! As simple as this. I think this snowballing, not only in term of gameplay mechanics, but in term of feeling principally, is due to the frontier it exists between simple and basic and the notion of civilization and world. This example of self-constructing frontiers (Civ1 & 2 only) is representative. I've told it several times but it seemed too unsignificant.

This philosophy brings the different civilizations in the game in conflict. They've started small, basic and simple, and then they have grown into competitive neighbour civilizations fighting each others. (whereas still composed of basic and simple elements easy to assimilate) That, is the former idea of the game. Unless you change this philosophy, you could not have a totally satisfying game if you change only parameters likes "tall play is proeminent". There still will be a lack somewhere, hence this lack of things to do. Keep in mind that I'm talking about flavor and feeling here, letting completely aside the aspect of challenge. Challenge is good for some "elite" of some kind.

The only point of Civ5 is the challenge. Is that really how Sid Meier envisionned his game at start ? That's for sure how nowadays sado-masochists envision the gameplay, but I'm not a part of it. Definitely not. That's why I play less and less. Not sure it's a question of age only. Anyway it would be pretty hard to judge about it from my very own place, because from there, everything changes constantly, one can't know perfectly itself that's a neverending quest. But I have a hint that's because of "hardcoregaming" terminolgy and its misinterpretation. "Hardcore gamers" are not elites. They are only the core of the gamers. Is the core of the gamers elitist ? That's another story, but looking at myself in the past, I would definitely say : NO !
 
I would agree that sandbox games and strategy games are not the same thing. An example of a sandbox game is Spore, an example of a strategy game is Starcraft, or maybe a better example that's closer to Civ would be Rise of Nations.

I wouldn't necessarily agree that previous Civs were sandbox games. They sort of straddled the fence. Soren Johnson said in an interview that they toyed with competitive AI and decided that most players didn't want it, and wanted a passive AI that would let the player win, thus the stock AI for Civ 4 was sandbox AI, it sat around and let you win.

However, years later BTS came out and the community developed all kinds of "better AI" mods, and of course you could check the aggressive AI option, and play against an AI that really made winning difficult. Of course it still role-played.

I then played a mod called Kmod, and I set the game up so that there was no tech trading allowed and all AI personalities were randomly determined. I also de-activated diplomatic victories. I created a game that was super competitve, the AI did not role play at all, and in every single game the AI tried to win, almost always by conquering neighbours and becoming really powerful.

This was really fun for me in a way, it was the closest I got to ever feeling like I was playing in multiplayer (and I did used to play a lot of MP back in the day)
But I noticed it did something to the game. As has been pointed out, Civ has been, at least to an extent, somewhat of a sandbox game. When I adjusted the game settings to make the AI so super competitive I found that 70% of the game options were no longer useful. Many of the buildings in the game had to be ignored, the same went for most of the wonders, and many strategies such as founding a religion were pointless in that super competitive environment.

I would say that a game can be a strategy game with a competitive AI, while still allowing the player the freedom to choose from among many different options for victory, it just takes very good game design.

One thing I can say in high praise of Civ 5 is the advantage to the defender. 1 UPT and the fact that battles are not usually decided in 1 turn makes healing more important, and units heal faster at home. Also, 1 UPT makes defending the home turf easier, and of course cities having the ability to bombard is a huge factor here too.

In Civ 4 there was almost no advantage to the defender, which made the game limited in that you couldn't really play against a competitive AI and not completely focus on the military. At least you can do that in Civ 5. Again, all in all, Civ 5 isn't nearly as bad as many made it out to be. I do think they failed on the combat system, though. It's a nice concept and it could have gone somewhere interesting but they didn't finish the job. It's an unfinished combat system that the AI can't use and it becomes really boring for the human player in the late game, with lots of units to command.
 
One thing I can say in high praise of Civ 5 is the advantage to the defender...1 UPT makes defending the home turf easier,
From my own experience and from what I've seen in some 'Let's play civ5' vids it's the opposite.
The civ5 AI simply uses its massive amount of units to steamroll any opponent and destroy it within 10 turns.
The strength differences between units always favors the more advanced civ which is in most situations is the aggressor who started the war.
So, the defender is outnumbered, has no room to defend because of 1 UPT and probably has units with less strength.
At least in the previous civ iterations units win or die, in civ5 most units survive a battle and
can start healing in the next turn and can be replaced by a healthy unit.
 
From my own experience and from what I've seen in some 'Let's play civ5' vids it's the opposite.
The civ5 AI simply uses its massive amount of units to steamroll any opponent and destroy it within 10 turns.
The strength differences between units always favors the more advanced civ which is in most situations is the aggressor who started the war.
So, the defender is outnumbered, has no room to defend because of 1 UPT and probably has units with less strength.
At least in the previous civ iterations units win or die, in civ5 most units survive a battle and
can start healing in the next turn and can be replaced by a healthy unit.

Well, to me your arguments sound strongly in favor of a defensive bias with 1UPT, exactly what you are trying to counter-argument... (?)

Main factors being the surviving units (in previous iterations it was do or die, hugely favoring the more advanced/more numerous stack), and limited combat width... these two factors allow the defender to exchange space for time, to update his units and/or build more.

On top of that, cities defend themselves. With MIN_CITY_RANGE = 3, cities create killing corridors, favoring defense even more (to the point of imbalance, which in this last case could be resolved by increasing inter-city distances).

In summary, it's all defense man.
 
From my own experience and from what I've seen in some 'Let's play civ5' vids it's the opposite.
The civ5 AI simply uses its massive amount of units to steamroll any opponent and destroy it within 10 turns.
The strength differences between units always favors the more advanced civ which is in most situations is the aggressor who started the war.
So, the defender is outnumbered, has no room to defend because of 1 UPT and probably has units with less strength.
At least in the previous civ iterations units win or die, in civ5 most units survive a battle and
can start healing in the next turn and can be replaced by a healthy unit.

In practice (and assuming the AI/player is playing well), the aggressor will avoid situations where it won't win, so the aggressor will usually win no matter what. But if the aggressor would in theory lose a "fair" battle, with equal technology and unit strength, then the defense is being favored by the system.
 
It's all defense.
Maybe on paper, but not in reality.
Watch these vids of Marbozir 'Let's play civ5 as Rome on Deity'.
Spoiler :

The Inca's demolished every enemy within a handful of turns and they were the most advanced civ the whole game.
Marbozir had zero chance to do anything military to stop them.
Btw, I've seen the same patterns in my own games.
One civ gets out of control early, becomes a monster already half way the game and
is dominating in every area, science, gold, controlling city-states, etc until the end.
Marbozir was struggling the whole game for happiness and gold with only (iirc) 7 cities
while the Incas had at the end 60 cities, were controlling almost every city-state and had 200k gold.
That's not fun in my book.
 
But if the aggressor would in theory lose a "fair" battle, with equal technology and unit strength, then the defense is being favored by the system.
The AI defense strategy doesn't work in civ5.
Either the defender is outnumbered or the attacker has superior/more advanced units and in most battles the attacker has both.
More advanced units are much harder to kill unlike in previous civ versions where the weaker units still had a chance to win.
(Remember the civ4 longbows on hills.)
And that explains why the defending AI is reduced or eliminated in no time.
Again, see the replay of Marbozir's 'Let's play civ5 as Rome on Deity'.
The Dutch, Assyria and Shaka were gone fast.
 
Well, 1upt most certainly favors defensive strategies, but the problem is that an AI cannot organize a proper defensive line with terrain, cities, and grouped range. The system is designed to make a defender the clear favorite in his own land, but the AI cannot utilize it.
 
Maybe on paper, but not in reality.
Watch these vids of Marbozir 'Let's play civ5 as Rome on Deity'.
Spoiler :

The Inca's demolished every enemy within a handful of turns and they were the most advanced civ the whole game.
Marbozir had zero chance to do anything military to stop them.
Btw, I've seen the same patterns in my own games.
One civ gets out of control early, becomes a monster already half way the game and
is dominating in every area, science, gold, controlling city-states, etc until the end.
Marbozir was struggling the whole game for happiness and gold with only (iirc) 7 cities
while the Incas had at the end 60 cities, were controlling almost every city-state and had 200k gold.
That's not fun in my book.

If there is a runaway civ it's your fault, you let them do that! Bigger is always better :c5production:

In all books is written: Deity isn't made to be FUN (ask Marbozir)!

As for 1upt: unit movement and placement is important instead of rolling brainless SOD here and there. Great Wall FTW (let inca come)!!!
 
That's not fun in my book.

...and that's why it's deity. Generally speaking, lower levels don't play out the way you are describing. I'd say that a defending civ that is an era behind an attacker can typically hold its own if the number of units are equal on both sides. But yeah, if you're trying to defend and an attacker is flooding your land with units which are a couple of eras more advanced than you, then yeah, you're gonna get stomped.
 
Of course to win at Deity shouldn't be easy, you have to earn it, but that's not what meant.
The smaller civs aren't competitive enough when it comes to war.
One short war and they are either reduce to a few cities or completely wiped out.
They are useless for the rest of the game, no gold, no resources.
In previous civs you could support them with techs, units, etc.
I've tried a few times to help a leader in civ5, but when my army arrived the civ was already gone.
I see this pattern over and over again where the human player ends up with one huge annoying AI.
 
I fail to see how that's a problem.

I think Tatran wants to preserve some diversity at deity level which I can understand. We must make a choice. Do we want a sandbox game or a strategy game? You cannot have both. So from Tatran's point of view (which has a sandbox component), having only one huge AI to fight at the end is lame. From your point of view, (which has a strong strategy game component) there is no problem with the game resolving down to one monster AI because it is compatible with a strategy game.

In Civ6 we are going to have to make a choice. Do we want a sandbox game or a strategy game? Civ5 started out as a strategy game and then became a hybrid strategy/sandbox game with a whole bunch of problems (like a lack of detail on micro-managing and a user interface designed for a strategy game not a sandbox game).

I'll say it again. The best ever sandbox game is probably Civ4 RAND mod (lots and lots of lucious attention to detail). The best ever strategy civ game is probably Rise of Nations (everything including the build order is exposed to all players on the map and all choices are filled with opportunity cost). Use those two as your bench marks if you want to understand the dichotomy between sandbox and strategy gaming.
 
I have my own understanding of what is a strategy game and a sandbox game based on how people usually use them but it seems to not be exactly what yours is based on that post and your previous one in this thread. So I have no idea what you're really trying to say here sadly. If anything I don't agree that civ games are one or the other but somewhere in the middle (at least for since civ4) and how much strategy you want to get out of it comes from the difficulty slider (or a better AI or multiplayer).

What do you mean by "more diversity" ? What I read from Tatran post was that sometimes (and that's not true that it is always the case) the AI eat some opponents and become a runaway being a threat to the player. I don't have a problem with that because otherwise no AI are a threat to the player. If however the AI was better when playing small then all AI would be a potential problem, but that is an AI issue not a design issue. Right now the biggest factor in AI performance, if they don't become huge, is only whether or not they picked Rationalism...
 
The AI's world congress proposal choices are nearly always notoriously terrible. They love to try banning your luxuries (this option seems to have been put in by the devs for the sole reason of trolling us)

The whole happiness mechanic is there to troll us.

or embargoing city-states when there are far better things they could be putting up to vote.

My personal favorite is how Korea always wants to pass arts funding...

Arts funding often seems unaccountably popular. Case in point. Seven bozos out of eight think it's going to improve their winning chances and the one who voted "no" is a laggard with zero chance. It seems to me they're kidding themselves.

I've seen conference host bozo vote to ban one of his own luxuries then immediately propose repealing the ban! (This may have been because when he originally proposed to ban the luxury he didn't have it, and the AI is too inflexible to vote against its own proposal.)
 
Of course to win at Deity shouldn't be easy, you have to earn it, but that's not what meant.
The smaller civs aren't competitive enough when it comes to war.
One short war and they are either reduce to a few cities or completely wiped out.
They are useless for the rest of the game, no gold, no resources.
In previous civs you could support them with techs, units, etc.
I've tried a few times to help a leader in civ5, but when my army arrived the civ was already gone.
I see this pattern over and over again where the human player ends up with one huge annoying AI.

It's just because of leaders' "personnality". It's a terrible idea. To have a fair game, all leaders should have the same "personnality". AI in some Civ games can be pretty good in building an army early (middle or late) and rushing the other peacefull AIs. Firaxis tautch them how to be nearly as good as a human player doing so. (with bonuses helping for sure) So it's ridiculous how in Civ5 some AIs won't even develop (very few cities) whereas they have Attila next door. There's a lack of concern from them. It's like it's the first time they play and don't know Attila, never read anything on him or like in real life don't have informers or spies.

Either you give them informers, either you make them know every AI personnality and how to adapt to it, either you scrap personnalities and make everybody a potential warmonger. (simplest way to program) For example they shouldn't wonder rush early if they have Attila next door, or a landlocked Rome with Iron. Question of good sense. (and information)

Those are the only means to eliminate huge steamrollers and weak useless civs, considering we want. But the fact that we want or not is relevant on how you perceive the game. Either it's mostly an experience, what glider1 calls a sandbox, and you want it to be balanced (at least as much balanced than in real life), either you see only the challenge, and in that case moving up small cubes in place of armies wouldn't disturb you, no more than any flavor or any sort, and go with the challenge adapted to the poor AI that can't defend properly with archers, because if it did, the game would be impossible in Deity with all those AI bonuses. (so AIs would have have less bonuses in Deity right from the conception of the game)

It's also a matter of how we want to play and what type of game we want to play. Do we want plenty options to make each experience funnier ? Or do we want only 2 ways to play (Tall vs Conquest... eventually) ? I've said in another topic that a sure way, if not the only one, to play Deity Civ5 was to care only about internal city/citizens management. You can (must ?) totally ignore the AIs. (beside eventual defensive wars you have to prepare yourself by building... a couple archers. :D) Well so, is that the kind of game we want ?

Sure, if there would have been more options, those options could proove for some to be "too powerfull", "umbalanced" and that kind of junk. It may be fairly too easy to win a game for Let's Players. But all the other players ? Shouldn't they have more possibilities to have a better entertaining game ? No matters what difficulty you play on, if you can have a sense of cool stuff, like defending other civs by various means, or by mimicking real life History in another world that would feel real and you would have a knowledge about, or else by doing something completely crazy (on your sense), well it's right there the goal of a game like Civ. (and the point of the story & tales forum)

Then you could play another game and have a totally different but not less fun position, or if the game has not so many options (because it's only a game after all) you could go a difficulty level up to have a certitude on not repeating endlessly the same things. Something that pushes you to continue and live NEW experiences AT YOUR EXPENSE. (because you still don't know how cool is that game) Those new experiences are better obtained by having a competitive AI that you can measure yourself with. That there's a sort of "tie" between you and the AI that forces you to try to gain advantage. Those are the most fun experiences IMO. Like re-creating fierce (cold) wars, etc. and use the numerous options you have in order to try to get an edge.

It's the purpose of difficulty levels in Civ IMHO. That every player, according to his experience of the game, his personnal ability, his tolerance threshold, can live entertaining situations that he can feel because it's not just "too easy" or "too hard". But Civ5 just has not enough options and is too gamey, it just sounds like a small reality show with people killing each others. (or waiting to be killed)
 
I have my own understanding of what is a strategy game and a sandbox game based on how people usually use them but it seems to not be exactly what yours is based on that post and your previous one in this thread. So I have no idea what you're really trying to say here sadly. If anything I don't agree that civ games are one or the other but somewhere in the middle (at least for since civ4) and how much strategy you want to get out of it comes from the difficulty slider (or a better AI or multiplayer).

What do you mean by "more diversity" ? What I read from Tatran post was that sometimes (and that's not true that it is always the case) the AI eat some opponents and become a runaway being a threat to the player. I don't have a problem with that because otherwise no AI are a threat to the player. If however the AI was better when playing small then all AI would be a potential problem, but that is an AI issue not a design issue. Right now the biggest factor in AI performance, if they don't become huge, is only whether or not they picked Rationalism...

Excellent points Acken, the difficulty slider is a bit like a sandbox to strategy game converter. At low difficulties we can play around with the options and create a story (like playing in a sandbox) and at higher difficulties drill down to a necessary strategy (like playing chess). The problem is, that the slider does this very poorly, because you cannot help to increase the difficulty as you get more exposure to the game. So the irony of Civ5 is that the more hours you spend, the more the game pushes you into the narrowing options of higher difficulties.

To help explain it better, take a game like EU4. That is a sandbox game independent of difficulty. It is always a sandbox game. Civ is a mixed bag that doesn't know what it wants to be any more. It was clear in the early days that it was sandbox, but in Civ5 they made the explicit decision to go strategy gaming.

The reason why Firaxis decided on strategy gaming (where the game is cut down to the simplest form so that a finite number of strategies can be played off against each other for opportunity cost) is that a strategy game is much cheaper to design, build and deploy. A sandbox game must evolve from version to version, mostly never removing detail but adding to it. If Firaxis had decided on a sandbox game, they would have needed to iterate each version of civ rather than redesign it from scratch. The problem is that sandbox games are very expensive, because the developer has to support so many detailed options that takes a lot of time and money to maintain. Firaxis want cheap options to maximise profit it is becoming clearer to me.

Here is the crunch though. For the people that think BNW is a great strategy game, you are kidding yourselves. Why? It is like saying that a company say Ferrari have designed an amazing sports car but with no engine. The engine in Civ is the AI. Without a seriously working engine, you don't have a great strategy game. It does not really exist. This is made worse by the multiplayer problem. To the people that think that BNW is a great sandbox game, I'm afraid you are kidding yourselves too. There is not enough to do, and when there is something to do, it is too tedious to do it.

I have put 700 hours into Civ5 but most of that time was modding the game. If I were to count how much time I actually put into it unmodded, I think it would be less than 50 hours, which shows me that Civ5 is in no-mans land, neither a sandboxer or a strategy game.

That is why in Civ6 we are going to have to make a choice. Because sandbox games are expensive to make and for us to buy. Are we willing to pay Firaxis for a highly detailed game with lots and lots of luscious options? If we are very lucky, perhaps this time Firaxis will not re-invent the wheel, but evolve Civ5 into an even more rich and deep game, but I fear they cannot do that, because the design of the game under the hood is half baked. The AI code is a mess and they have to totally convert the game to 64 bit as well. Don't get your hopes up for Civ6 unless you are willing to pay good money for it.
 
Excellent points Acken, the difficulty slider is a bit like a sandbox to strategy game converter. At low difficulties we can play around with the options and create a story (like playing in a sandbox) and at higher difficulties drill down to a necessary strategy (like playing chess). The problem is, that the slider does this very poorly, because you cannot help to increase the difficulty as you get more exposure to the game. So the irony of Civ5 is that the more hours you spend, the more the game pushes you into the narrowing options of higher difficulties.

I can't agree with that or I can't see it as an issue if we're talking about truly nonsensical options. If your purpose is to get the most optimal times then yes you're limited but there is no problem in playing how you feel like, and if it's too hard to play like this just slide the difficulty down if playing for fun is more important than playing right.

To help explain it better, take a game like EU4. That is a sandbox game independent of difficulty. It is always a sandbox game. Civ is a mixed bag that doesn't know what it wants to be any more. It was clear in the early days that it was sandbox, but in Civ5 they made the explicit decision to go strategy gaming.

I agree with EU4 being a sandbox game. I disagree that Civ5 is different than Civ4 (unmodded) in that aspect. I haven't played a ton of Civ4 but the same problem at higher difficulties seen to arise in that game from what I've witnessed in LPs, a limited set of options. It's true that Civ4 has a little bit more options depending on what your situation is but that is more a problem with balance in Civ5 than a truly conscious decision from Firaxis to make Piety suck at Deity. If anything, an unbalanced game is more a characteristic of a sandbox game than a strategy game.

Here is the crunch though. For the people that think BNW is a great strategy game, you are kidding yourselves. Why? It is like saying that a company say Ferrari have designed an amazing sports car but with no engine. The engine in Civ is the AI. Without a seriously working engine, you don't have a great strategy game. It does not really exist. This is made worse by the multiplayer problem. To the people that think that BNW is a great sandbox game, I'm afraid you are kidding yourselves too. There is not enough to do, and when there is something to do, it is too tedious to do it.

I have put 700 hours into Civ5 but most of that time was modding the game. If I were to count how much time I actually put into it unmodded, I think it would be less than 50 hours, which shows me that Civ5 is in no-mans land, neither a sandboxer or a strategy game.

I don't know many people that are really concerned by wanting one or the other. I can understand some problem raised, like 1UPT being boring or +1 bonuses being bland but I don't see people holding it up as being the top game of these 2 extremes. It's a mixed bag, and to be honest all the episodes of the series I've played are also.

That is why in Civ6 we are going to have to make a choice. Because sandbox games are expensive to make and for us to buy. Are we willing to pay Firaxis for a highly detailed game with lots and lots of luscious options? If we are very lucky, perhaps this time Firaxis will not re-invent the wheel, but evolve Civ5 into an even more rich and deep game, but I fear they cannot do that, because the design of the game under the hood is half baked. The AI code is a mess and they have to totally convert the game to 64 bit as well. Don't get your hopes up for Civ6 unless you are willing to pay good money for it.

CivBE is a disaster so count on me for not having my hopes up and being wary of their next game :p
 
Civ is a mixed bag that doesn't know what it wants to be any more. It was clear in the early days that it was sandbox, but in Civ5 they made the explicit decision to go strategy gaming.

I don't think that's so clear. Didn't some Civ I/II players complain that Civ III/IV were too sandboxy? Not that those arguments are necessarily more valid than yours. Just pointing out that the statement is debatable.
 
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