ggmoyang
King
AI have right to cheat, they are forced to play in certain ways already(leader flavors)
So can we have the specifics about the whole science decrease for wide empires. Is is a percent decrease per city, or is it a -x science per city over 4.
This is HUGELY important! Please explain this more in detail.
Pilgrim and Txurce, I think both of you are right. Removing AI happiness may make for a better game (the same as I have said for a long time about removing Stacks of Doom and that ridiculous combat model) but I really hope they compensated in other areas - an effective counterbalance that makes consequences of actions the hallmark of smart strategy games. We probably did see that in G&K when they soften happiness for the human player but I don't think that version played any easier than the last vanilla version, at least in some situations.
I think, conversely, one of the criticisms strategists have is the amount of resources (from a finite pot) that went into fluff and flavor. For example, assuming it takes quite a bit of dollars and time to make a new civ, they listened to the wrong people that were screaming to have Indonesia or Poland or Zulus in the game instead of those screaming for a more effective and challenging AI. To me, it was a matter of setting the wrong priorities - knowing full well that a smarter, harder game is a tougher sell in a niche market than one that promotes having your nation in the game.
Having six less artists may mean hiring two additional programmers (hypothetically) and therefore, we would have four new civs instead of nine. Is that so bad? But then again, I think there are only a handful of programmers that can develop a more effective traditional wargame combat model; who knows, maybe they have most of them already.
m15a, it is a thrown-about term that may or may not support the evidence. Part of it comes from 2K's own marketing when they introduced vanilla Civ5 - interpreted to mean they wanted more non-strategy gamers to buy the game, particularly those coming from CivRev. It wasn't the change in the combat model because a lot of players still have a hard time with that. But the fact that many of us are playing at higher levels where in fact, we should not be. That really is the goal - to get us down two levels, which mean to have our cake (the far superior Civ5 mechanics) and eat it too (with BtS toughness).
Addendum, I forgot one other point, m15a. That has to do with the debates we had m15a pre-G&K. There were those adamant about removing the Happiness penalties for human players (you can look up those threads) so they can not be restricted in growing their "empire". That, imo, is an example of dumbing down the game.
So Buccaneer, what were you saying about listening to the wrong people?