masterminded said:
The only thing I agree with is that I dislike Civ V out of preference, as I would rather play a complex strategy game that allowed for a greater array of options and more challenge. Civ V isn't a bad game per say. There is a market for easier games with fewer, more rigid, and consequently more manageable mechanics. There are certainly advantages to each style.
What I am claiming is that Civ V is a bad civ game because it lacks the complexity, depth, and difficulty of its forebears.
Regarding the specifics of my observations, I think you are right to suggest that a reevaluation of my understanding was somewhat needed. In fact, I claimed as much in a prior post. But while I think the details of my points from early could be requalified or adjusted somewhat, I think the conclusions I made at the end of each point are still valid.
It lacks the complexity of Civ 1? Truly? Have you played Civ I?
Civ I is a very, very, very simple game. There were no cultural victories. There were no city states or vassals. The concept of specialists was only a very general one. I don't think it's possible to win an argument saying that Civ V is simpler than Civ I, and if you are willing to make that argument, please do.
In fact, many of the complexities we've taken for granted were only introduced in Civ III, and Civ III still had no strong concept of particular specialists (and had no religion, either).
I think what you're trying to say is that Civ V is not as complex as Civ IV, and that has a dedicated thread of its own. Needless to say, I don't agree that Civ V is less complex than Civ IV. It only has less fiddly bits that don't have strategic significance.
masterminded said:
First, your description of the penalties of unhappiness above is strikingly underhanded. You mention the penalty to population growth and claim there is no other effect. Then you mention that there are in fact other penalties under -10, which you seem to suggest is hard to reach, but you never actually enumerate them. This manner of presentation misrepresents the true penalties of unhappiness by neglecting the more damaging effects, such as combat and production penalties, while only describing the weak effect.
This is not caviling. In order to evaluate the mechanics, they must be properly described.
Second, I would dispute your account regarding the difficulty of achieving > 10 unhappiness. That is one additional city with a population of 8 with no new buildings or luxuries to offset the unhappiness.
Third, my point isn't that resources cannot be managed to prevent unhappiness or that they are hard to manage, but that they require too much constant attention at the margins. In other word, the restrictions are not onerous because they increase the difficulty, quite the opposite; they are onerous because they are too heavy-handed. To a degree, this is the result of a paucity of mechanics: the fewer the game has the more those few mechanisms must restrict. In this case, unhappiness and maintenance costs. This leads to a shallow experience: Gone are the days of tracking multiple mechanisms, each of which only limit the player in a specific and limited sense (e.g. corruption, health, research/culture costs as a function of economy, etc. along with unhappiness and maintenance). Instead, the remaining mechanics must restrict nearly everything. This eliminates a whole number of strategic possibilities, where the player could choose to make a sacrifice for a benefit, such as forgoing research for a few turns in order to raise funds or sacrificing the ability to grow population during the industrial period for increased production.
To put it plainly, the fewer mechanics that the designers implement, the more heavy-handed each restriction and the fewer options there are for the player.
Fourth, they are also onerous in that they create counterintuitive incentives to maintain a small empire. The mechanics that create this incentive are many: unhappiness is caused by the number of cities; luxuries give a flat bonus that does not scale with empire size; more money must be spent on happiness buildings to compensate for this lack of scaling, which means a higher maintenance burden overall; the requirement that maintenanced buildings be made in every city before constructing a national wonder; social policy costs do not scale well with larger empires; none of the above scales to accommodate larger map sizes etc.
The result is that on lower or medium difficulties, maps are largely empty for most of the game because the incentives are to either remain small or grow very slowly. This is extremely counterintuitive to the player who is trying to forge a civilization that dominates the world, especially given the pace at which historical empires have grown. The remedy to this is increasing the difficulty level, which gives the AI advantages that violate core gameplay mechanics.
To summarize the aforementioned points, I never claimed that the mechanics were difficult to manage or insurmountable, but that they are shallow in their heavy-handedness and introduce perverse incentives to not grow.
I'll point you to the AI of Civ III and Civ IV. In both those games, the maps were also mostly empty for most of the game, and I know this because I have lots of experience playing at Noble in Civ IV. Expansion in Civ IV was curtailed by economics, and if you didn't know how to counterbalance the downsides, you were stuck at a small size for quite a while as well.
It is not hard to get sufficient happiness to expand very, very, very quickly indeed. In fact, you can pretty much negate the no-tile penalty of 1 additional unhappiness per city (the city tile itself gets 1) through the Meritocracy Policy, which is self-explanatory if you just mouse over the tooltip. Get Construction for Colosseums (Aqueducts in previous Civs?) and you can pretty much spread and grow your cities at the same time.
All the trade-offs you mentioned are in Civ V. You can very, very easily trade growth for productivity if you want to. Just switch tiles, switch improvements, and hire more Engineers. Easily doable in the Industrial Era.
Want to forgo research for funds? Don't build libraries. Later on, don't build Universities. Hire Merchants instead of Scientists. There's always a way.
It's not true that it takes too much paying attention "at the margins" to effect good happiness management. Micromanaging small amounts of happiness and staying small without the attendant benefits is a mark of a player who's unfamiliar with Civ V systems. With Civ V, you make broad strokes and get what you want in aces. Fiddling with small numbers at the margins of happiness gets you into -10 very quickly. There's no helping that. You have to plan ahead and gain happiness by the tens if you want to capture cities and keep them.
masterminded said:
First, you misrepresented my analysis on buildings. My concern was not with build times as an isolated phenomenon, but how build times, maintenance costs, opportunity costs, and smaller army sizes converge to render many buildings virtually useless. These are two very different arguments.
Your criticism of my my use of stables as an example puzzles me. True, stables were somewhat of a marginal argument in Civ IV as well. But so what? My argument demonstrates how this building is rendered even less useful. In you would prefer a different example, I could make the same argument about barracks. Slow building times, maintenance costs, the changes in combat (fewer but more robust units and the carrying over of xp when upgrading), and the opportunity costs of not constructing other buildings render barracks undesirable. Their costs have increased and the benefits provided by them have decreased to the point of favoring other buildings with the long building times.
You can't be more mistaken!
Barracks should be built in 3 turns by the mid-game by any city capable of producing units sufficient to the task. Armory in 6 by Classical Era. Barracks + Armory gives you units that have two promotions out the game, and due to how promos work, these are at least as significant as the Green vs. Veteran status in Alpha Centauri. It makes a great deal of difference. Such a unit is worth at least 50% more than a unit that has no promotions. Arguably, it's worth twice as much.
If you are constantly at war and never lose units, then sure, it's not worth building Barracks (or any other units for that matter), but if you lose units, then replacing that unit with another unit that approximates its experience is invaluable in keeping an up-to-date military.
In fact, I not only build Barracks. I also build Armories and Military Academies. Getting a unit to Blitz one attack out the gate is fantastically good. Well worth the maintenance.
masterminded said:
Second, you did not address my analysis of wonders. With longer build times, they should provide better benefits than they did in Civ III or Civ IV. Instead, they provide the same or worse, with only a few exceptions.
I do not find Wonders having the same build times as in Civs III or IV. In many cases, they have lower build times. Nearly all the wonders have powerful and irreplaceable functions. There is no Wonder in Civ IV as powerful as Great Wall, which is arguably quite broken.
masterminded said:
Third, you may have built more units, but that doesn't mean they are all useful. Given build time restrictions and the focus on fewer units, makes one use missiles less useful. Further, given this focus on fewer units, there imperative is to build the more powerful units. Giving the player many choices does not make much sense.
I cannot respond to this usefully since I cannot understand its point. Missile and ranged units are arguably the most powerful units in Civ V, but they require support. That argues for at least two unit types in every army.
masterminded said:
You make a number of assertions here with no evidence or warrants. I would dispute two of them: the AI in Civ IV is worse and that Civ V is more complex than Civ IV. I won't make an argument. The burden is on you for making the initial claim in that regard.
You can fool the Civ IV AI to bounce its SoDs back and forth between two ultimately useless cities. You can lure it to attack at the worst possible location, and then decimate its SoD with nary a scratch to yours. Hell, you can freely manipulate it to protect you!
You can use the Deity level AI to protect you from other AIs so you can win.
Civ V's tactical combat systems are inherently more complex than Civ IV's one-tile SoD combat. I don't know how to explain something that is self-evident.
masterminded said:
First, you claim that real players do not inform others why they behave the way they do. I would say that this is incorrect. Other players form alliances, go to war, conduct certain exchanges, etc., because these things are in their interest. Certainly, a fair amount of perfidy, secrecy, and missteps are to be expected from human players, but nothing like the poor AI in Civ V, which is mercurial to an extreme.
Second, diplomacy as it functions in the real world and real players as they function in the game give some indication of how they view the behavior of others. Matters of secrecy aside, diplomacy usually strives for transparency. Its better for another nation to know the disputes between them or their common interests in order to coordinate and avoid conflict. That is why the memory of the AI in Civ IV and the report that elements like religion built were so realistic. The reason the game told you what these were is because you don't actually have actual diplomats and advisors in the game to relate such information to you, so the system it provided served as a convenient shorthand.
Third, this argument is risible on its face. What is the point of diplomacy if other players will not convey their concerns or interests?
Generally, the Civ V AI tells you not to settle near it, trade with its enemies, or attack/steal its City State allies. It tells you this quite baldly. Again, I don't know how your experience has been but in my view, the AI generally acts according to how it says it's going to act. In fact, it frequently has the courtesy to declare war on me before the turn it attacks my units.
masterminded said:
This is another assertion. Please provide an argument so that I can provide a response. Otherwise, I will simply gainsay this point.
What argument did you want? Larger empires win culture faster. Is there some point that was unclear? Do you not know how to win culture with a large empire?
masterminded said:
First, I never referenced Sulla's argument and it is unclear how that is relevant.
Second, you seem to be contradicting yourself. Earlier you argued that larger empires are relatively easy to attain and here you claim that ICS is only possible late game after certain social policies are accessed. Which is it?
Third, you contradict yourself in regard to cultural victories. At first, you claim that they are easier with larger empires. Here you suggest expansion should be avoided until social policies are obtained. If the first is true then there is no need to hold off expansion, as empire size won't inhibit social policy accumulation.
Eh.
I suppose it does seem to be contradicting. I would need to do a lot of systems explanation if you want all the nitty gitty of all this. It's not contradictory. It just seems that way. I suggest going to the strategy forums to get a handle on the game.
I can answer small, specific questions.
In this sense, Sullla is making the case that ICS is too easy, but then references late-game policies with which he is making his case. Yes, that is contradictory, and I said as much. However, REXing and expanding normally is NOT ICS. ICS is not large empire. It is a specific form of large empire.
