You say Civ 5 is dumbed down and yet it requires higher specs. If all of these other things that you want added in (the separate tactical combat window and the mechanics that go with it, plus a couple of other things I can't remember and am too tired to go looking for), the required specs would be even higher, making Civ 5 even more inaccessable to people and reducing the sales of Civ 5. No business in their right mind would make their product more inaccessable unless they were going to charge more for their product which would in turn make it even more inaccessable. That is not how the gaming industry works.
I think this is quite the opposite way around. Loading a separate tactical map would lessen overall hardware spec. That is because of how in general zoning works. Loading a separate zone unloads the main map and all its elements and from them the processor only has to deal with the finite amount of elements in the zone. It is not a coincidence that newer games which are zoneless require more hardware resource. The other thing is, that current trends in game industry are unfavourable to the quality aspect. That a game is bad because of how industry works or because of lack of professionals doesnt really matter for me, I only look at the end result.
So to stay competative, the Civ games need to be able to be played be more people while also balancing out staying up to date on graphics, etc. The hard core gamers are the people who have the higher end machines and Civ is not geared toward the hard core gamer. It's geared toward the Civvers, who encompass a wide variety of people, many of whom aren't going to have those high end machines.
A very unfortunate trend, I hope at some point quality will superseed cheap marketing strategies.
To separate a feature from its environment, would make the feature pointless and thus useless. Additionally, the consequences and results of a feature are important because if those consequences and results of the feature cause a negative reaction, then the feature is more than useless, it is hurting the thing (I couldn't think of a better word to use) it is a part of.
Sure. That is evident.
But for the moment, I'll look at only the mechanics and controls and leave everything else out.And that brings me back to complexity. That's all these extra mechanics and controls did, make the game mor complex. While I agree that some level of comlexity is required to make a game fun, there is a limit. By the end of Civ 4, that limit and been passed.
Now this is actually something different which can be discussed and this really has little to do with 1UPT and SOD mechanical feature comparison. Ofcourse here I would argue, that removing elements of SOD in favour of 1UPT, so as to say so simplifying unit and tile relationship didnt live up to its expectations. Firaxis simply failed to make 1UPT fun to play because of these major reasons:
1) COD (carpet of doom) is a visually unpleasant subconsequence of the concrete way of implementation of 1UPT: namely putting the units on the main map. These units now cover to much of the terrain making your natural and infrastructural surroundings screwed up. This does not look good, nor does it feel good. - uncurable without alternative and more complex 1UPT mechanics.
2) In many cases (not all) moving an army requires uncreative and tedious -and so boring - micromanagement. - uncurable without alternative and more complex 1UPT mechanics.
3) Firaxis failed in AI implementation. Cureable, but you cannot know it will ever happen.
4) No more large armies. Because of 1 and 2, you are forced to keep the army small. Managing huge armies is a must to have the feeling of a large empire. The army should grow along with your empire. Otherwise I do not have the good old feeling of being an emperror.
You had to click on a bunch of different units to group them together so you could move them. When you reached your destination, you had to separate that group out into smaller groups so you could further move them or attack with them. Then you recombined part or all of the original group so you could continue to move or whatever. All the while, having to deal with the sometimes clunky UI mechanic/control that was introduced for the sole purpose of making these groups even slightly manageable.
First of all, there is a feature to the SOD (MUPT) that makes your stack move with the pace of the slowest unit if you want to move the stack as a whole. Second, this and other stuff you write maybe boring for you, but was never that much boring to me. The sort of micromanagement we are talking about is mostly dynamic and creative and does not break your immersion.
Overall, the only reason these various mechanics or controls were any good was they were needed to make SODs work. Without them, SODs would be even more hard to manage and warfare would not have been fun at all. So what you end up with is a highly complex and unfun (is that a word) system of warfare that was made slightly more manageable by adding more controls and mechanics that made the game harder to understand and get into.
Its quite subjective what is fun and what is unfun. Right? It wasnt unfun for me, and from this I donot see why was it unfun for you.
Now add environment back in. With SOD, environment was mostly irrelevant. All that mattered was who's stack was bigger and who's stack had a better makeup. Yeah if the defending stack was on a hill it would have an advantage but if the attacking stack was bigger or had a better makeup, the extra defense from the hill would be irrelevant.
Mostly correct, but:
1) The game was still fun without advanced tactics.
2) Civ5 1UPT failed to solve this issue.
Yes if you look at only the mechanics and controls, 1UPT is simpler than SOD. That doesn't mean it isn't a feature. In a car, you can have either manual windows or power windows. Both are features. Manual windows are the basic feature while power windows are a more advanced feature, but they are both still features.[/QUIOTE]
Correct. But I didnt claim that 1UPT aint a feature, I just said it is a simplification of MUPT or as to say so a simpler version of tile unit relation.
). I just can't see why one would want something to not be called "a feature" and be called "a simplification" when just calling it that takes a poster's point across easier than having to think deeply about what word to use to express himself. The particular word used does not change the meaning behind what is being said anyway. 
