.

[Xwarq]

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.

Oh yeah--and no map trading.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Oh yeah--and no map trading.

Come on, seriously? Map trading made the game easier, not tougher.

 

[Xwarq]

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...

 

[Mathew]

Dumbing down doesn't mean simple. It means the game is shallow.

A simple game can be very deep. Take Chess as an example. One of the simplest games to play, yet it is deep with a wealth of options and outcomes from every game.

 

[Deep_Blue]

I'll look into 5 key examples to see how this is the case.

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.

 

[JohnnyW]

This is an amazing form of cognitive dissonance.
"Civ5 is dumbed down because its so complex that the AI doesn't play it very well."

Huh?

Its totally fair to complain about the weakness of Civ5, but its a problem kinda because the game *hasn't* been dumbed down.
There are a few things that I think have been overly streamlined, like the tech tree and terrain improvements (largely done because the Civ4 AI was really bad at choosing tile improvements, its easier to work with a simpler system).
And I still find the Civ5 diplomacy system very non-transparent and frustrating.

But endless claims that the whole game is dumbed down really miss the point.

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?"

 

[m4gill4]

^@ImperialGuard

This is called irony.

No, it's called "bait and switch".

If you were playing a human, or at least an effective AI that could evaluate the changes like a human, do you have more or more interesting choices or do you have less or less interesting choices?

Can you even play other humans yet?

tl;dr: I couldn't disagree more.

{insert wall of text refuting each paragraph in detail}

 

[Mathew]

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.

 

[Nares]

Civ5 (post patch) feels like the leaders are following the rules of real politik and although alliances can be made; don't expect anyone to act directly against their own best interests.

The AI's follow the path of most denunciation/friendship. They still blindly agree to unnecessary and potentially self-harming trades.

City states on the other hand are also a bit tedious requiring constant gifts of gold but there interplay in diplomacy and quests liven the game up a lot. In this case, the sheer number of interactions with other game systems means that City States are a more complex system than Corporations.

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.

 

[groobz]

Civ V is deffinately less complicated. The developer even admited that he he wanted to go away from the hardcore civ4 to a game more suited to their wifes lol.

 

[Surgeon]

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.

 

[groobz]

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]

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.

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]

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.

 

[Fabien]

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.

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 .

 

[Buccaneer]

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 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).

 

[Buccaneer]

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.

 

[brianshapiro]

In Civ5 with the addition of Social Policies, its completely different. While early SPs are very good, the late game ones are incredibly powerful. Culture is now genuinely useful at every stage. Even later on in the game I care about the cultural output of my core cities. This was never the case in Civ4 (bar cultural victory of course). This is clearly not one area which has been dumbed down.
/
Social policies allow a much greater diversification and specialisation that Civics, but aren't refundable and don't allow you to change your mind. Some say that forcing you to plan ahead is more strategic, others that it removes player choice - on the whole its fairly balanced. However, another difference is that Civics were given as freebies as you went along the tech tree, while social policies require an active investment in culture growth. A system that requires you to invest (and hence sacrifice something else) for a later gain must be considered one that increases complexity.

When people say it was 'dumbed down' all they're saying is that the designers decided to remove things that appeared too complex and replaced them with things that were more understandable. Its not a claim that there's less strategy in the game, or less strategic choices, or less choices, its just a claim that there was a direction the developers were going in when thinking about how to make the game.

Usually the complaints aren't about removing strategy, but about gutting realism from the game for the fear that it was 'too complex'. Its an argument about whether Civizilation should be more a game about history or more like a board game.

Social policies are a good example. In your whole analysis of social policies, you never mention that it replaced religion. You never mention that it replaced cities with mixed populations. You're more concerned about social policies from the perspective of a board gamer.

Another example is people complain about the removal of health, or complain about the fact that happiness has been pooled for your whole population.

 

[Buccaneer]

When people say it was 'dumbed down' all they're saying is that the designers decided to remove things that appeared too complex and replaced them with things that were more understandable. Its not a claim that there's less strategy in the game, or less strategic choices, or less choices, its just a claim that there was a direction the developers were going in when thinking about how to make the game.

Usually the complaints aren't about removing strategy, but about gutting realism from the game for the fear that it was 'too complex'. Its an argument about whether Civizilation should be more a game about history or more like a board game.

Social policies are a good example. In your whole analysis of social policies, you never mention that it replaced religion. You never mention that it replaced cities with mixed populations. You're more concerned about social policies from the perspective of a board gamer.

Another example is people complain about the removal of health, or the fact that happiness has been pooled for your whole population.

But Civ4's implementation of "historical" elements like religion, espionage, corporations and civics were poorly implemented, cheesy, exploitive, or whatever word that can be used. It was best not to have them at all if they couldn't be done right. Pre-release Diplomacy in Civ5 was probably another example of that.

 

[brianshapiro]

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.

also,

needs complex strategy to win =/= complex in design.

Chess isn't very complex in design, and Go is even less complex. Both need complex strategies to win.