Honestly, to say that Civilization V is a more complex game than Civilization IV is laughable. You can argue about whether or not watering down the complexity and depth is a good idea but you cannot argue whether or not they watered it down. They did. It's not an opinion, it's a statement of fact.
There is no reason for diplomacy to exist in this game. Unless you declare war on an AI, their attitude toward you doesn't change at all throughout the course of the game save for the normal negatives and positives that go along with border proximity and historical traits. Even the diplomatic victory is bunk -- since votes are no longer proportional and there are no vassal states, you can't gain them through accumulating territory and population and no AI will ever cast its vote for you -- all you need to do is get enough money coming in to buy off City-States. It's a commercial victory.
With no true element of diplomacy, what do we have left? A game that focuses mainly on production -- how quickly you can produce military units or science discoveries. And since you can just click on what you want a city to focus on, optimizing your empire's output takes essentially no thought whatsoever.
With no true element of empire management, then, what do we have left? A tactical war game. I guess I can't say anything about that because the combat isn't bad.
Civilization V is not a bad game but can we please stop trying to pretend that it is a deep and complex strategy game? It's not. It's Revolution for the PC.
Please back that statement up with facts.
There are indeed numbers behind it. You simply don't have access to them (now, whether THAT is a good design decision or not is a different question!). Both 'Pacts' modify diplomacy over time.
Please note: I am
not saying that diplomacy in Civ5 is robust. It needs a lot of work. But it's not quite as binary as you say.
I disagree strongly. By making them permanent, you are forced to make decisions as to whether it is better to select an early social policy for an immediate gain or save your culture for a later social policy that will have a more dramatic effect. Those difficult decisions are what make strategy games good.
And that's where I think it is hard to argue Civ5 is clearly less complex than Civ4. I find decision-making in Civ5 to be more complex than Civ4. You generally have more options at your disposal, and knowing which one is the best is less apparent.
It is, at least as I see it. With civics, you made a choice between the 0-4 civics you'd unlocked, and it was generally a straightforward choice. Building units for war? Go with Police State, Vassalage, and Theocracy. Specialist economy? Then it's Representation, Caste System and Mercantilism for you.
With Social Policies, there's much more choice and opportunity cost in the decisions. Is +1 production per city for the rest of the game more valuable than 50% cheaper tile buying? Every time you get a policy to "spend", there's usually at
least a dozen policies to consider (not necessarily stuck you can take directly, but stuff you can unlock the prereqs for. An empty tree, for instance, has six policies on its own you'd have to think about when you consider whether to take the tree or not). Since you can't change your mind in five turns if the situation changes, it's much more important to think about how you're shaping your empire in the long-term.
Finally, because policy points accumulate entirely separately to techs, it's another axis to think about when considering development. With Civ IV's civics, you unlocked new civics at the same time as certain techs, so it was always predictable when (in the sense of the tech advancement) you could pick certain techs up. And you were usually teching as fast as possible, so this didn't really add any extra depth. With Social Policies, the only connection is the era restrictions; beyond that, you'll get policies at the rate that you devote yourself to culture. Which has important ramifications:
- The opportunity cost of choosing between two SPs is much higher than civics. Make the "wrong" choice with a civic and you have to wait 5 turns to change it again; fail to choose an SP that in retrospect you should have gone for, and you have to wait a lot longer to get another chance to pick it up. Your decisions matter a lot more.
- All civilizations were able to choose between civics in all five categories, and since the techs were generally useful anyway, everyone could choose between all civics at the end of the game. With SPs, being divorced from tech means that you'll get much more pronounced differences in different civs' abilities.
- The rate at which you acquire SPs is dependent on how much you divert your attention and resources to culture. Hence with the difficult decisions above, you have the power to lessen the wait between SPs if you are prepared to make sacrifices elsewhere; you have the power to acquire more SPs than you opponent and give your civ permanent advantages if you're prepared to make the sacrifices elsewhere.
Basically, civics were akin to pseudo-static bonuses that you got when discovering techs. In fact you could probably write out a civic plan before playing the game (when I get to Code Of Laws, I'll switch to Caste System) and it wouldn't vary much based on the way the game turned out.
With SPs you get choices that are individually less powerful, but cumulatively much more so, and something that gives culture a legitimate axis for advancement that's completely separate to beakers. More choices, more depth, more rewards, more sacrifices, more complexity.
So yes.
I greatly agree with this. I enjoy Social Policies.
In fact, my first mod will make extensive use of them (~8 entirely new policy trees), though not quite for their original intention.
Ha! I tried to say the same but this is wonderfully concise.
Yes. There is also no reason to not have both: Civics and buyable traits.
Like, imperial Japan and modern Japan are totally different in their emphasizing of military vs economy. But there is still a continuity in their cultural quirks which defines the nation. Or take soviet union and russia today with the russian soul. Bush-America vs Obama-USA
etc. A mixed system makes sense and could game-mechanic-wise work.
One important thing I feel I should note... There is no reason you can't have both in the same system, you know. None whatsoever.
Different policy trees can oppose each other (and this is in game); Adopting one deactivates the other. Adopt the blocked one, and you enter anarchy for a period of time, before coming up with the new policy tree active and the old one inactive; Same as civics. Better, you can switch back for free, without using culture; Culture buys the tree, but once you have it remains unlocked. Again, like civics.
On top of this, different branches within a tree can apparently block other branches (or hell, even branches in other trees, maybe!), though this is not shown in game; Tag is PolicyDisables. I'm not sure if this one can be switched, but I'd assume so.
Given this, it's not inconceivable that you could use each Policy Tree as a Civic Category, with each individual branch blocking others in the tree and representing civics. You have a higher opportunity cost for unlocking any specific civic, but there's no reason a mod could not also decrease the culture needed.
My own mod will feature 8 new Trees, which all block each other (no, won't say why) and are not gained in the normal way; Eventually, once we get DLL access, I'll be completely splitting them from Culture into their own value.
In one of my recent games, I was just about to launch my spaceship, when the AI used all his espionage points to destroy one of the spaceships parts. I thought "Fine, I'll do the same to him"... Then I realised that I had neglected espionage and that it would take 50 turns for me to gather enough points. The AI then launched his own spaceship and won the game.
I think this is a good example of how these small details could change the outcome of the entire game. The Civ 5 fanboys claim that the slider was unnecessary since you spent all the gold on science, but obviously that ruined the game for me. And keep in mind that he didn't even declare war on me.
In Civ 5 on the other hand, was is the solution to everything. Someone is building a spaceship? Destroy the parts! Someones is building Utopia Project? Destroy it! You can no longer stop someone from winning a cultural victory by convincing him to give up Free Speech or by sabotaging his broadcast towers.
And yes, I know that espionage wasn't in vanilla Civ 4, but somehow I expect the new game to have, not all, but the best features from the old game. It seems as the focused more on animating cool leaders than on the actual gameplay.
What? You count espionage as one of the best features?
I personally count it as one of the worst, and most poorly designed. Had a long design doc written up for a (heavily) modified system for RifE, but we never used it (or standard espionage); My basic issue with the system was that you both defend and attack with the same value. Meaning
using your espionage actually hurts you! Bah.
This is probably one of the more eloquent defenses of the Social Policy system, so let me commend you for actually bringing an argument to the table rather than "LOL UR WRONGZ".
I don't have the energy to write a long post right now, so let me just summarize my feelings by saying this: There is a pre-set plan for Social Policies too. If, at the beginning of the game, you are leaning towards a domination victory, you'll pick a militaristic leader and hit up the Order, Autocracy, etc. tracks. The problem is that, once you pick them, you are locked in. If you suddenly decide that you want to swerve and go for a space victory, you are SOL. There is no ability to adapt to the changing dynamics of the game. Perhaps that is more "realistic" but it certainly isn't fun knowing that, 100 turns in, you have one real path to victory (especially if you are playing against humans).
So what's the difference between social policies and civics/religion? The latter is folded into the diplomacy of the game, as it is in real life. There was a thrill that came along with racing to convert a border foe in Immortal to Islam so that I could flip a modifier in order to avoid war so I could continue the last twenty turns before a space victory (this actually happened on my first Immortal victory). But what about social policies? Outside the bonuses, they have no relevance to the game. Why not just tack the bonuses onto the leaders from the beginning and be done with it?
I wasn't opposed to replacing civics and religion with a single, more concise system, but I am opposed to removing national characteristics from the equation of AI diplomacy. That's not the kind of Civ that helped found this website.
So, I guess it was a little long.
As I said, it is easily conceivable to make a mod reversing most of what social policies are. Or any combination between SPs and Civics.
No, it was an absolutely pathetic appeal to authority. If you're going to get in a major tuffle over actually knowing anything about a game like civ4, you probably should either have:
-Released a major civ mod
-Beaten civ4 on Immortal/Deity repeatedly in different ways and demonstrate understanding of game mechanics (so many ways to do things of course, but players who are consistently WRONG about how, say, the AI worked in civ4 obviously are not experts. There's virtually no evidence that a player who can only beat the game on pedestrian difficulties knows about many game mechanics like diplomacy modifiers or AI attitudes - since if they do they should beat the game at higher levels much more easily. That's why we still get players who don't accurately know/complain/praise the diplomacy in civ5, for instance, when they do not really understand what an AI personality is or what modifiers are and so on. Example: the AI does not "play to win" in civ5. Every single person who's ever said that on these forums remains irrevocably wrong.)
-Have a degree or significant experience in computer programming or graphics or related field, even if no specific experience in civ, to comment on those aspects of the game
Without any of those things, a player who tries to make such an argument deserves the criticism.
The OP put much effort into this though and he does recognize the same points that others would make - like the AI in civ5 being really poor. But the connection being missed is that part of the reason WHY the AI in civ5 is poor is because of the screwy way they implemented many game mechanics, combat and so on.
I believe I qualify for the first there, even if it is 'just' a modmod it is larger than many mods.
I also share the majority of his opinions. I won't post full arguments, nor do I have time to; All I'll say is that while Civ5
does have some obvious issues, so did Civ4. And Civ5 has a far better base to build off of, IMO at least.
Granted, I am far more concerned with the modding tools than the game itself, it is still the first Civ game I have enjoyed in an unmodded state.