Most of the depth is gone? Game seems dumbed down

[Biz_]

I haven't played since 2010

It seems the game was more strategic back then. There was a broad spectrum of ways to grow your civ

The social policies made vertical growth powerful
The nature of the game and happiness system made horizontal growth powerful
And you could do anything in between

I don't know when every change was made in the past few years, but looking at the game now it seems much narrower.

Vertical growth seems useless because you don't get as much of a policy advantage compared to horizontal civs (exponential savings of 10% instead of 30%.. that's huge). Also, the culture victory is basically gone.
And you can't grow as quickly horizontally because of the new happiness system.

So everyone seems forced into a very narrow playstyle... It's like there are no more hard choices to make and you have to just play your land.

I am kind of an expert player when I decide to play Civ, but I don't really know all the details of the past few years of changes. Where is the strategic depth in the current iteration of the game?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

If plopping on your ass in <4 cities and doing nothing other than generating culture to accrue policies is depth, I want none of it.

At least Tourism is competitive. And Tall civs still do have advantages. There's the 10% per city policy cost penalty. Science has a similar wide civ penalty too. And National Wonders favor the tall.

 

[moysturfurmer]

yr right, now that u can make trade routes n religion n stuff it seems like no matter wat u do u can win the game somehow I hate it

 

[otaman1]

I never really played Vanilla. Once G&K came out, I started playing it 24/7. When I play it, the economic system seems really balanced. The culture victory is not gone. Complete five Social Policies and build the Utopia Project in G&K or become Influential with other civilizations in BNW to win a Culture victory. Plus, I don't think Firaxis is bringing CiV into a narrower gameplay. The past couple of years, I've seen an improve in a lot of things.

 

[SamBC]

Um, there are still lots of ways to play. Tall or wide or in-between. Trade-offs between them. You can't REX without limit, but you haven't been able to do that since a fairly early patch. Going for different VCs. The new cultural victory is different, more active, but still a very viable victory to aim for. All VCs are plausible tall or wide.

 

[Merciorum]

Strangest post I've read all day...

 

[Ryoga]

Was the policy cost increase actually 30% in the beginning?

And regarding happiness I remember that I had a lot more problems managing that in my first games than after patches and G&K.

 

[Buccaneer]

Particularly since post #3 is completely incomprehensible.

Lots of ways of playing this game and to make it challenging. Since you play at high difficulties, try playing on difficult maps. There are some aspects that dumbed down the game but people seem to care about variety more.

 

[Loucypher]

Back when Civ V vanilla was out, you had the following choices:

Go out and conquer enemy capitols for a domination victory.
Sit on your ass and turtle until you win the science victory.
Sit on your ass and turtle until you win the culture victory.
Sit on your ass and turtle until you have enough money to buy the diplomatic victory.

Riveting.

Now, each victory condition (barring Science) requires you to go out and work for it through all kinds of interactions. Quite a drastic switch. You can still go either Tall or Wide.

 

[kajillion]

Back when Civ V vanilla was out, you had the following choices:

Go out and conquer enemy capitols for a domination victory.
Sit on your ass and turtle until you win the science victory.
Sit on your ass and turtle until you win the culture victory.
Sit on your ass and turtle until you have enough money to buy the diplomatic victory.

Riveting.

Now, each victory condition (barring Science) requires you to go out and work for it through all kinds of interactions. Quite a drastic switch. You can still go either Tall or Wide.

No, when CiV came out there were two choices:

Build as many cities as you can because global happiness was broken and there was no reason not to ICS.
Beeline to Horse riding and spam horsemen because combat was broken and there was no reason to attack a city with any other unit.

Vanilla lacked any challenge or strategy until it was heavily patched, I have no idea what OP is smoking.

 

[Polisurgist]

Wow, I was prepared for this to be another inane rant from a player who spent years playing IV and ten minutes playing V. But saying that G&K/BNW have actually made the game less deep strategically...is baffling. And certainly not a worn-out position, at the very least

 

[Cymsdale]

No, when CiV came out there were two choices:

Build as many cities as you can because global happiness was broken and there was no reason not to ICS.
Beeline to Horse riding and spam horsemen because combat was broken and there was no reason to attack a city with any other unit.

Vanilla lacked any challenge or strategy until it was heavily patched, I have no idea what OP is smoking.

Oh man, I had forgotten about happiness being completely meaningless back then. That was awful.

He is pretty much right about the victory conditions. Culture was the worst because you pretty much had to play for it from turn 1. The new culture victory is much more interesting, and you can kinda fall into it in the mid-game.

 

[Cyanfunk]

"Depth" and "dumbed-down" are so overused when it comes to games at this point that they mean nothing.

And vanilla was incredibly incredibly dull VC wise.

 

[Gyra Solune]

I certainly wouldn't say adding in religion, espionage, revamped trade routes, global congresses, ideologies, an entirely new culture victory system with tourism and archaeology, eighteen new civs plus the seven from DLC, a plethora of new wonders, buildings, units and social policies, and the wide expanse of smaller changes that rebalance and make the game far more playable, none of those could be defined as removing depth and simplifying the game.

 

[emblemfire]

I do a solid 4-5 tall cities every game. And win a lot of the time on emperor-imortal, as well as online. Wide has too many penalties, it gets you less science do to lack of pop, and less ability to make and stack academies around your cap. Tradition is even better now as great engineers can be bought with faith from the branch now. Plus the new 5% increase in tech cost per city... Wide seems to weak to me now. Tall seems way stronger over all. So I don't think you have played very much, or at least not on higher difficulties where keeping up with AI science takes work.

 

[Loucypher]

No, when CiV came out there were two choices:

Build as many cities as you can because global happiness was broken and there was no reason not to ICS.
Beeline to Horse riding and spam horsemen because combat was broken and there was no reason to attack a city with any other unit.

Vanilla lacked any challenge or strategy until it was heavily patched, I have no idea what OP is smoking.

Ah, my bad that. I only got into CiV about a year post-release, at which time horses were already less good and Happiness was actually an issue. God, I remember my first god-awful victory game...was playing as Egypt, all I needed were a few archers and all the wonders I could crap out. In hindsight that was the most boring game I ever played.

 

[Civking5]

To the op, if you don't know it by now whether you like civ5 or not, you better not know at all. Posts like this, drive me vertically crazy or horizontally nutz.

 

[Epic Eric]

I don't agree that the Culture Victory is now dead. In my opinion, it's exactly the opposite: instead of just being a passive, easy way to victory, now you actually have to put quite some effort into it &#8211; as you would for other Victory Types &#8211; and it requires direct interaction with other Civilizations, which was lacking in the original concept of "culture" in the game.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

I would be interested to know what version of Civ 5 the op played? The one I bought sucked donkey butt. I put it down until G&K came out.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

As the OP has not returned to offer a response to our rebuttals, I'm going to assume that the purpose of this thread was to stir up trouble.