Relationships with other AI players has been dumbed down to the point where all I can really do with them is go to war ... I can't get fair trades out of them, my cities won't make trades with them if I have open borders and free trade, they won't ally with me because of my social policies or religion, I can't use spy units to interact with them, I can't establish franchises for my corporations in their cities ... no, all I can do is go to war with them, occasionally sign a research pact, and get one-sided trade deals out of them if they don't hate me too much.
Civ5 has been dumbed down - 8 examples
- Thread starter Olleus
- Start date
Oh yeah--and no map trading.
SammyKhalifa
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2003
- Messages
- 6,308
Come on, seriously? Map trading made the game easier, not tougher.
Dumbing down means making it simpler, not making it easier--though it can become easier by becoming simpler.
Regular Civ IV is already a really simple game after you've played Rise of Mankind--with Civ V's takeaway of some features, well...
Deep_Blue
Knight
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2005
- Messages
- 750
I may or may not agree with your points I dont want to go through all of them because they were already discussed many times before, but I noticed that you forgot Religion in your examples.
Religion is a key component.
I think you summed it up when you said "Huh?"
The game is dumbed down because it is easy to beat. Dumbed down means dumber players can achieve greater success.
Is that a satisfactory explanation, or will I receive another "Huh?"
I wouldn't say that a dumbed down game is necessarily easier. I would also suggest that Civ 5 is easier than previous Civ games largely because the AI can't handle a lot of the changers which isn't an issue with the game being dumbed down, but rather a poorly implemented AI.
The AI's follow the path of most denunciation/friendship. They still blindly agree to unnecessary and potentially self-harming trades.
The city state quests are shallow, tedious and/or repetitive. I've spent dozens of turns waiting for a barbarian camp to be targetted, despite allowing the barbarians to freely harass the nearby CS. The kill rival CS quest is dangerous; DoWing multiple CSs will start freaking out the AIs, leading to chain denunciation and the AI running train on you. Finally, due to their seeding algorithms, CSs tend to be displaced into remote locations. More often than not, those quests are half a world away, literally.
CS demands quests are mediocre but acceptable. They'd make for a potential starting point if the rewards for completion were more appreciable than the rewards for simple bribery.
Just as en example, SP are only a bonus boost, not a governament with drawbacks or strategy choice, they are always useful.
I disagree. Just because there is no negative to a SP doesnt make it an easy decision.
Olleus
Deity
Yes, sorry about the slightly misleading thread name, this was done on purpose so we could have some meaningful discussion. As such, I wont be doing a point by point rebutal of points made because it's simply aggressive behaviour and a waste of time. Same thing with tl;dr posts.
I know that gold in civ4 paid for cities and units but that was entirely passive. The only reason you tried to increase commerce was so you could notch the slider up another tick. The only purpose of commerce was to allow you to pay for maintenance costs and run the slider as high as possible. That was it - no thought required. The espionage and culture sliders were, at worst, a joke and, at best, a quick way to get rid of war weariness.
Someone above mentioned that bigger empire equalled more science and more gold. I think that is entirely untrue in Civ5, although it was true in Civ4. The new way in which national wonders are managed and the much higher cost in building wealth/science buildings means that it is very hard to simultaneously build your empire AND your infrastructure. I've just finished a game as Gandhi as emperor and only ever had 4 cities and no puppets and managed a far higher rate of science than I'm doing now as the Romans running a domination policy.
The idea that diplomacy has been dumbed down is one that I abhor. Resource trading is far more important now than before, mostly because the AI might actually give you some strategic resource, and because having lots of them is more important. You can be friends with other civs (and doing so is very important for research agreements) but doing so now actually requires hard work and forward planing - not just converting religion or giving them millions of freebies and doing as they tell you all the time. Making diplomacy symmetric between the player and the AI is a great thing that few games have managed (EU3 failed utterly in my opinion at this - even though it is a great game).
Perhaps I have been wrong about corporations, the problem is I got grossly bored of any given Civ4 game by the time I reached that level. This may due to balancing issues which lead the early game and starting position to be too influential - I don't know. But I still found them not only lacking in originality but rather annoying because the real maintenance cost was not the maintenance cost shown by the UI due to the incredibly annoying and opaque inflation mechanism. In anyway, this is grossly off topic - I think that the inclusion of many, very specific late game buildings as well as city states sort of full fills the roles of corporations quite well - which is to use gold to get science/production/food/resources. But maybe I'm just wrong and never used corporations properly in Civ4. Anyway, the removal of them can be argued to be an example of dumbing down (more succesfully than in other cases anyway).
I've never gotten round to playing rise of mankind, but might do so now considering the glowing reviews this thread has given it.
I know that gold in civ4 paid for cities and units but that was entirely passive. The only reason you tried to increase commerce was so you could notch the slider up another tick. The only purpose of commerce was to allow you to pay for maintenance costs and run the slider as high as possible. That was it - no thought required. The espionage and culture sliders were, at worst, a joke and, at best, a quick way to get rid of war weariness.
Someone above mentioned that bigger empire equalled more science and more gold. I think that is entirely untrue in Civ5, although it was true in Civ4. The new way in which national wonders are managed and the much higher cost in building wealth/science buildings means that it is very hard to simultaneously build your empire AND your infrastructure. I've just finished a game as Gandhi as emperor and only ever had 4 cities and no puppets and managed a far higher rate of science than I'm doing now as the Romans running a domination policy.
The idea that diplomacy has been dumbed down is one that I abhor. Resource trading is far more important now than before, mostly because the AI might actually give you some strategic resource, and because having lots of them is more important. You can be friends with other civs (and doing so is very important for research agreements) but doing so now actually requires hard work and forward planing - not just converting religion or giving them millions of freebies and doing as they tell you all the time. Making diplomacy symmetric between the player and the AI is a great thing that few games have managed (EU3 failed utterly in my opinion at this - even though it is a great game).
Perhaps I have been wrong about corporations, the problem is I got grossly bored of any given Civ4 game by the time I reached that level. This may due to balancing issues which lead the early game and starting position to be too influential - I don't know. But I still found them not only lacking in originality but rather annoying because the real maintenance cost was not the maintenance cost shown by the UI due to the incredibly annoying and opaque inflation mechanism. In anyway, this is grossly off topic - I think that the inclusion of many, very specific late game buildings as well as city states sort of full fills the roles of corporations quite well - which is to use gold to get science/production/food/resources. But maybe I'm just wrong and never used corporations properly in Civ4. Anyway, the removal of them can be argued to be an example of dumbing down (more succesfully than in other cases anyway).
I've never gotten round to playing rise of mankind, but might do so now considering the glowing reviews this thread has given it.
Olleus
Deity
complex =/= complicated
complicated is how many variables you have to count up to decide between two alternatives
complex is how hard it is find the optimal solution, given a constant number of variables.
Take chess, its very complex but not very complicated as it is. If you change the rules so that, say, each of the 16 pawns move in a slightly different way depending on whether its you even'th or your odd'th go; that would make the game more complicated but not add to its complexity.
Similarly for social policies. Picking between two options which are both positive is identical in terms of complexity/depth as picking between two options which both have a positive and a negative.
hrrm ok I see what you mean. I'm just saying the developers went away from the hardcore civ4 gamers to civ V which they wanted to be a game that anyone could just pick up and play. (ie easy learning curve, less complex) this is what the developer said and majority of civfanatics too.
Fabien
Warlord
Most of the features in Civ 4 were quite complex in their design (i.e. many numbers and different effects), but required little complex decision from the player - many things like health, religion and GPT (--> Slider) are one dimensional in their solutions so to speak. Poeple most likely think that the room of their possible solutions has become smaller, but in the end you're more or less applying the same logic to it anyway. Sure the fundamentals of Civ V are easier to grasp, but what does that change anyway?
CivFanaticMan
Warlord
The part that is dumbed down about Civ5 is victory conditions. To win the diplomatic victory all you have to do is get commerce SP tree and give city states gold and you win. To win a domination victory you get militaristic SP trees and just hold all capitals... you don't even have to kill off every civ. To win tech victory you get a big population + rationalism and you win. The SP system is linear. For a game that pushes you to win, winning doesn't require much forethought. You can almost plan out the entire game before you start a game.
But this isn't my problem with Civ5. Its part of the problem but not my issue. My problem is immersion. Civ5's lack of it disturbs me. Its like Fraxis just abandoned the idea of Civilization being about building a CIVILIZATION in exchange for Civilization being about winning at a relatively easy game. Its nice they tried to add the strategy part back into the game, but it was never meant to be. Higher difficulty levels in Civ4 were for people who wanted to chalenge themselves to win. Prince and noble difficulty was for those who wished to just immerse themselves.
But this isn't my problem with Civ5. Its part of the problem but not my issue. My problem is immersion. Civ5's lack of it disturbs me. Its like Fraxis just abandoned the idea of Civilization being about building a CIVILIZATION in exchange for Civilization being about winning at a relatively easy game. Its nice they tried to add the strategy part back into the game, but it was never meant to be. Higher difficulty levels in Civ4 were for people who wanted to chalenge themselves to win. Prince and noble difficulty was for those who wished to just immerse themselves.
Fabien
Warlord
Yeah sure and Civ 4 was totally different; Rex, DoW the nearest AI, manipulate Diplomacy so the other stay unsuspecting victims until you DoW them as well. Rinse and repeat, at some point of time you'll have to decide wether to got for science victory or Domination (Which strangely enough, includes the Diplomatic Victory in Civ 4 in some way
) and you're set. The only victory condition that doesn't require that you become an imperalist pacman is cultural and spamming culture buildings isn't exactly that different in Civ 4 or 5 .I don't give RoM a good review at all and only would recommend playing it if you want your Civ4 game to have a lot of everything (more than what the original game gives you) and bewildering mishmash of disjointed gameplay changes. Personally, I recommend playing something that is not a kitchen-sink mess of mods and something along the lines of Rise of Empires (if I got the name right).
I'm also trying to get my head around the trifecta of Simplicity vs. (AI) Shallowness vs. Differentness. Not sure what exactly is at work here in comparing Civ4 and Civ5. I am thinking that Civ5 is a more "complex" game than Civ4 but is easier to beat than Civ4. So that points to an ineffectual AI. Civ4's AI was ineffectual too but it had lots more of everything and just could outrace you in anything (at higher difficulty levels). I don't think Civ5's AI has learned to do that yet but if it could, Civ5 could indeed be a challenging game to win.
