A theory on why ciV has been so divisive to the community.

Thormodr

Thormodr

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I am not accustomed to starting threads on these forums. I think I've only started a handful in my 5 years so I don't do this lightly.

As everyone has seen, ciV has met with mixed reviews on these forums. Some people like it and some people hate it. Personally, I don't like it but I couldn't out my finger on why exactly.
I pondered why that could be and then I saw a thread on 2K Games that had been pointed out by another poster on these forums.

The poster's name on the 2K Forums is Mr. Fusion and he has a theory on why ciV has been so divisive. I found his reasoning to be excellent and found it explained things very well to me. He talks about a god game design philosophy and a board game design philosophy. He contends that Civs I through IV were designed with a god game philosophy in mind while he says ciV was designed with a board game design philosophy first and foremost.

So, I'd like everyone's opinion on this theory. I'd appreciate it if people didn't devolve the conversation into "ciV is crap!" or "Go back to cIV!". I'd like people to discuss the competing design philosophies first and foremost. Please keep it civil.

Here is the link (you will need to go to the top of the page):

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1196337

Here is his post:

Spoiler :
I think I've finally put my finger on why Civ V is dividing the fan base... and it's nothing to do with old-timers vs noobs, consoles vs PC or fear of change. What I think it's actually all about is this:

** Civ V has been created from the ground-up using board-game design principles, but Civs 1 to 4 were designed using god game design principles **

I really think it's the totally different game design ideals of each game type (and the extent to which players agree/disagree with those ideals) that is fueling 99% of disputes between players.

God game design principles:

* In god games, designers aim to create a believable miniature living world for us to play with.
* The playability/enjoyment for the player is in finding and tweaking the details and watching cause and effect principles in action. In other words, it's about letting the player experiment and 'play' with this alternative world to see what happens.
* The rules of god games are adapted to fit around the constraints imposed by real-world considerations and the setting of the game world (historical in this case). So the immersiveness of the game world comes first, the 'game' (what you need to achieve in order to win) comes second.
* The fun of god games comes from the "what-if's" and the seemingly unlimited possibilities for developing new strategies to achieve a better result next time. It stems from god-games creating an environment where it's not totally clear exactly how to win. Put another way, it's more about competing with yourself - the satisfaction of progressively optimising your performance in order to win better/smarter.

This is how the Civ series has been designed until now. This has been the expectation and accepted 'Civ way' of doing things. The design team were all about adding little touches to create more immersion and believability in the miniature world they created. They wanted everything to feel alive and somewhat unpredicatable - and for us to have access to play with every little aspect in order to win the game in a very organic way.

...So look at this list and think about Civs 1,2,3 and 4. It should be clear that Civs 1 to 4 were designed by people from the God-game school of design.

Now compare that to the principles of board game design...

Board game design principles:

* Board games have no interest in recreating/simulating any form of reality - it's all about creating a FUN GAME based on an abstracted theme.
* Board game designers are experts in distilling complex themes down into a few hard but logical rules that act as nicely defined limits of the game.
* In board games, LESS IS MORE. The best board games are those where the theme can be nicely represented by, and abstracted into as few rules as possible - but still allow huge scope for alternative strategies to be employed within them.
* The fun/challenge of playing board games is developing strategies to master these limited rules and compete against others.
* Board games are not about experimentation and what-if's as much as applying the rules to achieve a definite victory over competitors.

Civ V was designed by Jon Shafer - who I would strongly suggest comes from the board-game school of design.

So I don't think this was some evil plot to destroy Civ - but just the result of somebody being put in charge of design who had a totally different set of gaming values to those who came before.

The end result is a VERY different Civ game to what a lot of people expected. What we're seeing on this very forum are the two different camps: those with 'board game brains' vs those with 'god game brains'. The 'board gamers' think it's an improvement because, to them, less is more and the whole concept has been made far cleaner, more defined and focussed. The God gamers, on the other hand, are just seeing destruction and a reduction in their choices. They are wondering where all the details and experimentation options have gone, see the changes as making the game less realistic and less like the miniature living world they wanted to play with.

Whether this was right for Civ remains to be seen. Was this just an experiment - or the start of a different string of Civ games?

Personally, I really hope Civ V was a one-off and that Firaxis return to the god-game school of design for Civ IV. Board games are great - but PCs are capable of creating worlds with far less restrictions.

For those of us who love god-games, the magic of Civ WAS the immersion in the details of the world, the experimentation and deliberate vagueness of the rules. The game felt bigger than us. We loved it because it was so flexible, so alive and so huge, giving us the ability to try things, make mistakes and so learn what works.

I do like board games too, however - and when I now play Civ V as a board game, I suddenly see the changes as being less malevolent and the game changes as a whole making sense - from that design perspective.

So now I've rationalised the design of the new Civ in my mind, I'm no longer angry. I think it was a design mistake, yes - but certainly not an act of vandalism - or an industry-wide "dumbing-down" in gaming as I (like many Civ fans) initially thought.

I'm interested to know what others think about my theory.
 
I agree with everything that man says, I have been of the opinion that this game felt a little more board gamey. I thought it might be fun if you and a bunch of friends approached it as an axis and allies type game online.

Though i had not put that much thought into the idea, this guy hits the nail on the head, he's exactly right!
 
Also subscribe, a very clear analysis. We've got several threads discussing the vices and virtues of past Civ games (not just Civ4) on this forum and one thing generally that people do value about them is the world building aspect, how they function as immersive narrative.

I'm not against board strategy games, but not as a substitute for Civ.
 
I don't think this is it at all honestly. And he completely misunderstands "god games" as he calls them.

No game is aiming to represent reality, just the same as every map. To be useful a map needs a certain amount of abstraction. To be fun a game needs abstraction.

Now you might quibble with the particular amount of abstraction chosen, but I don't feel Civ 5 is remotely close to baord game level (I have played a ton of board games, and even board gamey computer games, civ 5 reminds me of them not at all

A map on a 1:1 scale is useless because ti is the same as the object it is representing. Ditto a game. Games are ALWAYS about picking a level of abstraction and attempting to make a framework for interesting decision making.

Civ 5 does that and does it well, better than Civ 4 IMO (E.G. Espionage: A, didn't belong in the game, B was not fun, C was extra useless clutter, d didn't actually matter to the core game).

Unfortunately Civ 5 seems to be a little unfinished and needs a lot of polishing. I might remind people that this is VERY common in the computer games industry, regrettably.
 
Becephalus said:
I don't think this is it at all honestly.
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to agree with Becephalus. ciV is just different to cIV and I don't think its a 'boardgame' vs 'computer game' philosophy.

It could be worse, look at the shift between fallout 2 and 3. Now that is a fan war!
 
It doesn't feel like a board game to me either even with Shafer's admitted love for them and Panzer's hexes.

Civ V still feels as much like a god game as before. Somewhere along the way though a lot of the new concepts just aren't fleshed out enough, hexes seem to be there just for the hell of doing something different. The lack of fine tuning your civilization works to disengage you from wanting to sink your teeth in and play just one more turn. The loading times of saved games, the endless need to sit through part of the opening 'movie' add to the annoyances of playing an unfinished product. The ambiance seems off too, the music doesn't feel epic and after having a taste of Nimoy the new voice just doesn't engage you. I think basically it's a the little things V does wrong over IV that makes people want to complain.
 
Krall said:
It doesn't feel like a board game to me either even with Shafer's admitted love for them and Panzer's hexes.
Click to expand...

I agree. The empire building is alive and well in Civ V. It does need a bit of fixing, though.
 
OP is spot on about the differences. It also illuminates the same argument that goes on over at boardgamegeek.com, namely "Ameritrash" games with lots of fiddly mechanics versus streamlined "Eurogames" that favor one or two mechanics.

On both forums I think the issue is the same: players who want "complex" mechanics don't just want more complexity, they want content. As someone who enjoys Civ V and Eurogames a lot, I can say that's a valid criticism. Civ V took a different approach to ensure a deeper experience with tactical play, but in order to do that, it had to remove plenty of stuff from Civ 4 that entertained those same players. Memoir '44's a fun game if you're not looking for Axis & Allies.

Of course at this point, we're beating a dead horse until the patch comes out.
 
CivCube said:
in order to do that, it had to remove plenty of stuff from Civ 4 that entertained those same players.
Click to expand...

Luckily, much of what was removed from IV was either redundant (health, corporations)...or easily exploitable (tech trading).
 
I don't think it feels like a board game but it is an interesting comparison. So far no one has compared it to a board game... but with hexes, it can give it that flavor at times.
 
An interesting thing to note about this theory is the fact that board games are obviously designed around the multiplayer experience. Settlers/Seafarers/Knights and Cities of Catan (Eurogame) is great fun with a group of good players. But considerably much less fun against an ai "opponent" on the PC version.

I am enjoying Civ V single player, but not nearly as much as I'm looking forward to good multiplayer. I think once its patch up, balanced, and working well Civ V multiplayer is going to blow IV out of the water. Combat alone gives us so many more possibilities.

I think maybe the "god game" concept may mask slightly better the fact that you're playing against a bunch of 1s and 0s when in SP mode, for some people anyway. If you have a bunch of extaneous features to play around with, you can pretend more immersively perhaps. Personally, however, I think Civ V has gotten the boardgame advantage of being more streamlined and tactical, wihtout sacrificing very much of the god game immersiveness. So I find it to be a good trade off. But some people disagree, I suppose.
 
Becephalus said:
I don't think this is it at all honestly. And he completely misunderstands "god games" as he calls them.

No game is aiming to represent reality, just the same as every map. To be useful a map needs a certain amount of abstraction. To be fun a game needs abstraction.

Now you might quibble with the particular amount of abstraction chosen, but I don't feel Civ 5 is remotely close to baord game level (I have played a ton of board games, and even board gamey computer games, civ 5 reminds me of them not at all

A map on a 1:1 scale is useless because ti is the same as the object it is representing. Ditto a game. Games are ALWAYS about picking a level of abstraction and attempting to make a framework for interesting decision making.

Civ 5 does that and does it well, better than Civ 4 IMO (E.G. Espionage: A, didn't belong in the game, B was not fun, C was extra useless clutter, d didn't actually matter to the core game).

Unfortunately Civ 5 seems to be a little unfinished and needs a lot of polishing. I might remind people that this is VERY common in the computer games industry, regrettably.
Click to expand...

That guy is saying exactly what those of us bored with this game are thinking.

You are misunderstanding god games and the types of board games being talked about here. We're talking specifically about German boardgames (and other Euro games).

I prefer the term empire building sim rather than god game. Paradox makes empire building sims. They don't have to replicate the real world, they just need to abstract it in a way that still represent the real world, like your map example. Civ 5 makes no attempt to represent reality at all... the whole happiness mechanic is a perfect example of being completely unrealistic just to satisfy a game objective (capping expansion).

I've played a lot of German board games and Civ 5 plays just like one. It's a game of number crunching and micro-strategy. Civ 4 is nowhere close to Paradox quality simulation, but it's much closer to the sim end of the scale than Civ 5 is and is complex enough to require intuition and grand strategy. All of us who are disappointed prefer empire sim games to board games on a computer.

Civ 5 as it is, like any Euro board game, can never be fun played in SP against an AI. The only way to have fun with it will be to play MP against people you know.
 
I play board games in a group that specifically calls itself "The Eurogames group".

I think the only feature you are identifying similar with Civ 5 and Eurogames is intelligent thoughtful design. Games were stuck in a period for so long where they couldn't add more features due to the limitations of machines. So as machines got better they crammed in more and more stuff excitedly without thinking. Now a few are starting to realize that a lot of this could be profitably dropped. Look I LOVE Paradox games and have them all and made some big mods over there, but they still desperately need to learn this lesson. Their games are filled with useless dodads the AI can't use, break balance, and cause bugs. If they cut out half their mechanics their games would be 10X better (they are still awesome).

Maybe once you get it all working you add more in, but have the base game working first (this is Firaxis's big sin with civ5, they went the elegant design route but then neglected to polish the game all the way).

To get back on topic.

Its not quantity of features its quality.

Hexes have nothing in particular with Boardgames that is a moot point. Civ 5 is only tivially more closer to a boardgame to the extent it is a tiny bit smiple.more abstract, but boardgames are still many orders of magnitude more abstract and I play some pretty complicated ones.

I just don't see this as a profitable analogy.

Perhaps a better analogy would be the people who want more features vs the people who want better features. I just do not understand the people who want more.

It seems insane to me. It...

1) Makes the game take longer.
2) Makes the AI worse because there is more for it is mismanage
3) Diverts resources from making the features more in depth
4) Makes balancing the different features quite the mess

Anyway it seems Firaxis released a wildly single player game (what 95% of games are SP?, 97%?) with a very poor AI, and that seems to have been a big mistake. But overall I think from a design perspective they did a good job. Just poor implementation so far.
 
I'm unconvinced by the analysis. I don't think any of the changes represent a shift in game style (god vs board) rather they simply represent solutions (of which there are probably many) to elements of the Civ series that were deemed undesirable by the developers (and possibly the community as well).
 
I agree that the poster of this thesis has made a good point. I however disagree that this applies to the Civ series.

Civilization has always been built around a board-game philosophy. Evidence for this is the high degree of abstraction ("shields", incoherent geographical sizes and timescale) and easy-to-follow game mechanics.
An example for a simulation-type strategy game would be the Paradox Games, take for example Victoria 2. Here, the game tries to emulate the real-life behavior and development of nations, making the case of changing history more interesting. For Civ, however, this has NEVER been the primary point.

Civ was always based upon abstraction, not on simulation, and while I agree that there is a difference between a gameist and simulationist/narrativist approach, I do not think that this problem applies on this scale.

Much rather, if you want to understand the reasons for the division of the community on Civ 5, try asking Xbox360/PS3-Fans why they don't like the Wii, or moreso, why many of them do not want to embrace motion controls.

However, I mentioned "scale".

The problem is that the community of 'gamers', in this case the sub-community of devout CIV-players, is never either simulationist or gameist, but a little bit of both. At the same time 'casual gamers', or newcomers to the franchise, also do not fit entirely into one of the categories.
The problem is that this conflict existed back in the day when Half Life 1, heck, even when the NES came out. It exists in boardgames (there are simulationist boardgames, and there are a lot of them! Calling all boardgames gamist is like calling all cars SUVs), it exists in movies, in television, in literature. It is around now and it will be around when CIV (that's part one-hundred-four of the series) will be out.

It is just out tendency to overthink the issues that are closest to us right now. However, I consider it smartest to stick with the actual differences about Civ 5 and keep in mind the global developments, but not try to mix them both up.
 
Becephalus said:
I play board games in a group that specifically calls itself "The Eurogames group".

I think the only feature you are identifying similar with Civ 5 and Eurogames is intelligent thoughtful design. Games were stuck in a period for so long where they couldn't add more features due to the limitations of machines. So as machines got better they crammed in more and more stuff excitedly without thinking. Now a few are starting to realize that a lot of this could be profitably dropped. Look I LOVE Paradox games and have them all and made some big mods over there, but they still desperately need to learn this lesson. Their games are filled with useless dodads the AI can't use, break balance, and cause bugs. If they cut out half their mechanics their games would be 10X better (they are still awesome).

Maybe once you get it all working you add more in, but have the base game working first (this is Firaxis's big sin with civ5, they went the elegant design route but then neglected to polish the game all the way).

To get back on topic.

Its not quantity of features its quality.

Hexes have nothing in particular with Boardgames that is a moot point. Civ 5 is only tivially more closer to a boardgame to the extent it is a tiny bit smiple.more abstract, but boardgames are still many orders of magnitude more abstract and I play some pretty complicated ones.

I just don't see this as a profitable analogy.

Perhaps a better analogy would be the people who want more features vs the people who want better features. I just do not understand the people who want more.

It seems insane to me. It...

1) Makes the game take longer.
2) Makes the AI worse because there is more for it is mismanage
3) Diverts resources from making the features more in depth
4) Makes balancing the different features quite the mess

Anyway it seems Firaxis released a wildly single player game (what 95% of games are SP?, 97%?) with a very poor AI, and that seems to have been a big mistake. But overall I think from a design perspective they did a good job. Just poor implementation so far.
Click to expand...

Whether the AI can handle them or not is a question of how much work is being put into them. As time progresses, the AIs get better too. For those of use who like the realism and complexity of empire sims, we don't care that the game's can't be handled perfectly by the AIs, so long as they keep working towards it. The journey towards more realism and more holistic AI is as exciting to us as the games themselves.

It's fine that some people don't care about that and just want board game style elegance with a manageable set of variables, but that's a different game. There are other games they can play if they want that. For those of us who liked Civ for the empire building sim aspect and tolerated the board game style foundations of it as a necessary simplification, this change has completely ruined the game. The only thing I can think of that can be fun about it will be playing with the AI once the C++ comes out, because this very mathematical style of design makes it plausible to use brute force to find optimal decisions for the AI. Working on such an AI would be fun. Playing against it, not so much. A game with such a streamlined approach to the mechanics and a linear direction for gameplay cannot support an AI with any more personality then a chess playing AI.

If this market does better for Firaxis and they keep going down this route, I'll just stick to Paradox for empire sims and play Euro games and chess for my abstract strategy fix. At least until the "Back to Civilization" TC mods turn up or some other game company steps in with a proper empire sim game.
 
Becephalus said:
It seems insane to me. It...

1) Makes the game take longer.
2) Makes the AI worse because there is more for it is mismanage
3) Diverts resources from making the features more in depth
4) Makes balancing the different features quite the mess
Click to expand...

This would make perfect sense IF Civ5, with its "less to manage" did actually produce a...

1) shorter [sure, this is right if you play on a tiny or duel map...I never played on those map sizes for Civ4...and my 3 standard level games for Civ5 to date have been just as long as any on Civ4, and my tiny/duel games have been a couple of hours. PLUS It takes just as long if not longer to process an AI turn for Civ5 as Civ4.]
2) more intelligent [I don't need to specify examples here, there are enough threads on how "intelligent" the Civ5 AI is]
3) in depth [How is any feature of Civ5 "in depth"??? How? Please give an example to back up your statement]
4) more balanced [balancing comes from thousands of hours of playtesting...I'll grant you that more complex systems are likely to require more playtesting, but that is a trade off that is necessary for any strategic game]

version of the game.

But it doesn't.

The feature that convinces me most regarding the boardgame vs godgame debate is that all the bonuses [I have the policies specifically in m ind here] are just that...bonuses, which are additive. The inertia of that system is significant too, so that it is difficult to initiate any change rapidly. You can compare this to a large number of strategic board games where you are pretty much locked in to a specific strategy once you start going down that route...and often the winner turns out to be the person who starts that path the earliest.
 
falconne said:
If this market does better for Firaxis and they keep going down this rout...proper empire sim game.
Click to expand...

I seem to have the same tastes you do, but I just have no idea what you are talking about with this statement.

So here are games on an abstraction scale. Lets say Chess is a 1, Manstein is a 10, Civ 4 is a 200 and Paradox Games are a 500.

And now Civ 5 comes out and is a 175, and you are like. I don't play games that are between 10-150 and if the next game is a 150 I won't play these games anymore.

What sense does that make? Abstraction is not some stepped slope, it is a sliding scale, and if you enjoy games all along that scale why on earth would some particular point along it be verbotten? It makes no sense.

As long as the game is good it shouldn't matter. I am guessing this just all has to do with.

1) People hoping for Civ 4.5 are disappointed.
2) Firaxis did a poor job implementing their design and so the game is simply not that good compared to BTS (I would argue this isn't the most fair comparison.)

If your not having fun playing Civ5 that makes perfect sense. But I don't think it has anything to do with where it is on the abstraction scale other than possibly your expectations in that regard.
 
falconne said:
At least until the "Back to Civilization" TC mods turn up or some other game company steps in with a proper empire sim game.
Click to expand...

You know, I've had a great time this past year playing a number of Roguelike games like ADOM and DoomRL, and the really great godgame Dwarf Fortress.

It's always puzzled me why no one has come up with a empire building ascii game.
 
charon2112 said:
I agree. The empire building is alive and well in Civ V. It does need a bit of fixing, though.
Click to expand...

I have to disagree. In V, what you just can't do is to build an "empire" (well, at least not on large or huge maps).

What kind of simulated is a loose confederation of city states like in ancient Greece. Nothing more, nothing less.
For sure it is not an empire which you "build".

And this is intentional. The designers clearly tell the player: "Obey!"

The player wants to have more cities than the designers thought to be sufficient for their preferred play style? Well, you will be punished by limited growth, limited industrial and limited military capacity.
The player wants to have more troops than the designers thought to be sufficient for their preferred play style? Well, you will be punished by costs (which you can only reduce by killing TWO units), you will be punished by limited industrial capacity.

You really managed to be successful in war? You are proving this by conquering an enemy city? Well, you will be punished by having to raze it.

This game is about playing happily with say up to 5 cities and be satisfied with such an "empire".
If you try to grow, you are just punished. Because you dared not to share the developers' intentions.

This game doesn't open chances and opportunities, it limits you. Therefore, it is much closer to a board game than any Civ game before.
 
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