Fair enough...
I guess I would say the globalization of what used to be city concepts - happiness, culture (for the most part). Now - I get the response "but that was boring/you could ignore it" - but for a lot of us, that's what we DID! We liked walking through each of our cities every turn and making micro-adjustments to deal with health, etc.
When you globalize those things - we really have no reason to do that anymore - we simply buy more happiness (in any random city).
You still can assign specialists for GP generation and move people around tiles, just like in Civ4. If you're talking about microing tiles works to avoid overflow of beakers or hammers, that wasn't an issue with Civ4 either. Actually If you have both social policies that reduce unhappiness of unoccupied cities and reduce unhappiness of specialists, you will see marginal gains in happiness if you switch out a specialist and have him work a tile and vice versa. depending on the city. So happiness can be microed for sure. You just have to learn it.
I would further say that the elimination of many non-luxuries... The "builder" actually saw a lot of value in having pigs... and crab... and corn... and rice... because they were more things we could trade because health had value and dietary diversity mattered. This essentially makes trading solely a matter of luxury and strat resource trading -- in other words, 1/3 of the trading portion of Civilization is gone.
That's a Civ4 only concept though. So are you implying games outside Civ4 aren't builder friendly? And Civ4 absolutely encourages war-waging above all else. AIs like the ones we've had in the last 3 games are best dealt with by sapping their productivity and diverting production through war. There was another post elsewhere where someone outlined all the benefits of war in Civ4. Also how else are you going to get all those non luxury resources if you really are a building. The voracious pace at which the AI expands pretty much means you won't get enough to trade.
The elimination of religion has wiped out broad swaths of city maintenance and diplomacy.
A lot of people like it gone. And IMHO, adds nothing to diplomacy, it adds imagined power and is an SMAC(human centric) feature the humans can manage 1000% better than the AI, who only vaguely understand spreading it and 'liking' whoever has the same religion as they do. So a human player can always move their SOD into positions they would never tolerate the AI doing to them, then DoW and feel like its diplomatic intrigue. I just find it assinine and boring. But everyime I play Civ4, I can't say I don't exploit it. Or i'd be stuck playing in Prince and Noble. The AIs are far too agressive if you have the wrong religion.
The implementation of Social Policies to substitute for multiple concepts.
Fair enough, I am not satisfied either, but nothing has satisfied me since the switch away from set governments. Civ4 Civics encouraged cookie cutter 'me too' accross all civs. At least Civ5 allows variety with no 'ultimate' path. Well I lie. Piety is probably hands down the best must have for the bonuses it gives you. But the other 7 is open to your game style and game situation.
In other words, the "streamlining" removed a lot of gameplay options for the player that wasn't at war.... Many of these smaller things became abstracted to the point of being "every 25-35 turn" pick lists -- irrevocable picklists.
How often do you switch Civics in Civ5, outside of switching because you just gained access to new ones.
In short - V, it feels like for the first time in the series - took a lot of "things" one used to do in Civilization and merged them into a different implementation -- there's a lot less to do in a turn now.
A lot less spreading of religion and corporations? good riddance. I'd put it along with the food carvans of Civ2 was needless microing for the sake of microing.
OTOH -- the military side changes... hex/1UpT - obviously, gotta be pleasing to the quecha rushers and Stackers. As is the resource limiting. As is 'embarkation' -- I'll let you in on a secret - I didn't really care for the transport tedium either, but it didn't matter because I only "did it" once or twice a game!
There's also fewer units to manage. Unit placement matter and you will lose units due to bad luck and 'chess' issues where you move one unit and unintentionally block another's path of retreat. But I like that kind of nail biter as opposed to the 'let me move that mech inf to cover the redlined unit' type dealie of the past.
In short - if you play without a lot war, there's just really not a lot to do from turn to turn. There Next Turn-Next Turn series in previous iterations, too -- but for the peaceful player, far far fewer of them.
Again, was this even true in Civ4? You can certainly go for small compact empires in Civ5, the cultural victory encourages it. You'll have a smaller empire, and you can probably even expand as needed given AI expands much more slowly due to the happiness mechanic. In Civ4, true builders would have to be playing some OCC variant or in archipelago maps. And that's still possible in Civ5.
Any other kind of builders aren't builders, they probably have to wage war to get land then stop and build. Also possible in this game.
I simply fail to see the point here, outside of certain Civ4 specific features being removed.
