A theory on why ciV has been so divisive to the community.

This game was released in a poor state with many obvious game play and balance problems. All of the talented beta testers in the world will not matter if their advice is ignored. The inexperienced lead designer may well have been unwilling to listen. I've been involved in beta testing in other contexts. Frequently the testers are very vocal about major elements and the designers either don't have time to fix them or ignore the feedback (it doesn't actually matter which is the case.) Oddly enough, exactly the same problems then show up on release, along with even more new ones - and the beta testers are forbidden by their agreements from disclosing the "I told you so" moments.
 
Firaxis won't go to the trouble of setting up Frankenstein to ignore their comments. obviously not all input will be heard.

But the team is more than strong. (Sirian) Bob Thomas, who headed up Civ4 testig is there too.
 
Good analysis, I understand better why some people still defend the game while so many people (I included) are so disappointed with it.

Perhaps a better analogy would be the people who want more features vs the people who want better features. I just do not understand the people who want more.

It seems insane to me. It...

1) Makes the game take longer.
2) Makes the AI worse because there is more for it is mismanage
3) Diverts resources from making the features more in depth
4) Makes balancing the different features quite the mess

What is insane is that Civ 5
1) actually takes longer since end-turns are sooo long
2) AI is broken
3) hardly has any depth apart from the policies
4) is not balanced

Not only did they remove a lot of micro management, which made the success of the Civ series, but you get all the bad consequences of having a more complex game as well.

Cvi4 too complex? It was the casual version of Civ3. That's when 2K first acquired Firaxis and they signed Nimoy as part of the push to appeal outside the number crunching crowd.

But as with any strategy games, it got more complex with each expansion.

Im sure Civ5 will follow the same trajectory.

That's one of the positive thing about Civ5. They can't really make it any easier that it is now. Or I hope so.
 
Cvi4 too complex?

For casual gamers, yes, I believe so from reactions to Civ4 on non-civ gaming boards (however, once many get over their fears, it had become their most beloved game). But we won't get into the Paradox boards.
 
Unfortunately for them I am certain that Civ 5 is still far too complex for the FarmVille crowd. On the other hand, that does raise hope that they'll make a game for their actual audience (e.g. the ones who bought 1-4).
 
Unfortunately for them I am certain that Civ 5 is still far too complex for the FarmVille crowd. On the other hand, that does raise hope that they'll make a game for their actual audience (e.g. the ones who bought 1-4).

Facebook already has a Civ. City of Wonder, it's like Civilization meets Pokemon - you're invited to collect all the buildings, but you have to pony up actual real $s for the more powerful ones. It even has a tech tree. Must be a Civ.

I've played it. It's beyond ******ed.
 
I have faith they will have the problems fixed.

I think that is the heart of the issue right there. Some of us have more patience than others.

Civ 4 had multiple patches and 2 expansions. I'm sure we'll see the same thing with Civ 5.
 
The irony is that the "loose confederation" is a closer simulation of the pre-modern reality of "empires". Highly integrated territories covering every inch of the Earth is a modern phenomenon. The main exceptions were probably the Roman Empire and Han China; the latter didn't last very long and the former was likely due to the existence of the Mediterranean Sea as a natural transportation hub, but even the R.E. fell apart - something that the Civ series has never "empire-sim'ed" sucessfully, BTW.

But I think that the problem that lschnarch refers to is not a fundamental problem of game design, but a technical problem of correctly scaling the happycap to map size. After all, in previous Civ#'s it is the same question of starting with 9 squares (or now 7 hexes) , regardless of map size, so more city founding - always the basic solution before CivV - can be allowed without blowing the happycap. However this doesn't seem to be the case right now with CivV. It is my sense - although I've only played with standard and large maps - that the same ~3 city threshold applies.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lschnarch View Post
I have to disagree. In V, what you just can't do is to build an "empire" (well, at least not on large or huge maps).

What kind of simulated is a loose confederation of city states like in ancient Greece. Nothing more, nothing less.
For sure it is not an empire which you "build".

And this is intentional. The designers clearly tell the player: "Obey!"

The player wants to have more cities than the designers thought to be sufficient for their preferred play style? Well, you will be punished by limited growth, limited industrial and limited military capacity.
The player wants to have more troops than the designers thought to be sufficient for their preferred play style? Well, you will be punished by costs (which you can only reduce by killing TWO units), you will be punished by limited industrial capacity.

You really managed to be successful in war? You are proving this by conquering an enemy city? Well, you will be punished by having to raze it.

This game is about playing happily with say up to 5 cities and be satisfied with such an "empire".
If you try to grow, you are just punished. Because you dared not to share the developers' intentions.

This game doesn't open chances and opportunities, it limits you. Therefore, it is much closer to a board game than any Civ game before.
Oh please - Civ4 had VERY clear punishments for expansion (ramping city costs) as well & happiness was also a limitation. A larger army = more upkeep.

Yes, the designers of Civ4 put SOFT CAPS on ICS (which was a monster from Civ 2 + Civ 3 + SMAC) in the form of cost + happiness. It's the same thing in CIV5 only implemented a little differently. Of course you have to play by the designer rules - that goes for any game. But if you really think you are limited to 5 cities you need to experiment more
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I think that is the heart of the issue right there. Some of us have more patience than others.

Civ 4 had multiple patches and 2 expansions. I'm sure we'll see the same thing with Civ 5.

Civ4 was released on October 25, 2005. On April 13, 2006 (about 6 months after the initial release and several patches later), we had this massive patch, which was the last one prior to Warlords.

Spoiler :

Changes:

* randomized processing order when multiple players try to move on the same turn slice
* only the host can set the admin password
* Horseback Riding now a classical tech
* Kremlin now gives -33% hurry production cost
* can't airlift from foreign cities
* expanded subject for PitBoss e-mail
* lightened the color of some civs' text
* mp retire fix
* less hammers from chops the farther away from a city
* reduced hammer yield from forest chops to 20…
* Mathematics increases forest chop yields by +50%
* SDI cannot be built before the Manhattan Project.
* increased SDI cost
* marines and SAM Infantry now upgrade to Mech Infantry
* better AI-to-human diplo in team games
* no more diplo penalty for helping to end wars
* city production popups stay on city when entering/exiting
* can now set units to Sleep and Intercept in wbs
* Continents map script now produces large continents
* game options and victory conditions now saved in ini file
* invalid buildings now removed from city queues
* Free Trade: Medium Upkeep
* State Property: Low Upkeep
* Representation: +2 happy in X biggest cities.
* Hereditary Rule: Low Upkeep.
* Representation: Medium Upkeep.
* Slaver: Low Upkeep
* Nationhood: No Upkeep
* firepower is now average of curr and max strength
* Gunships now move faster over rails
* No Cheating option renamed to Lock Modified Assets
* city management no longer uses "forced" specialist states when not automated
* Expansive: +3 Health
* Financial: No longer give production bonus for Banks
* Prompt for admin password when loading a game containing one in LAN, Internet, or Pitboss play
* Don't allow players to play non-playable civs in Pitboss
* Do not display SP only mods in Pitboss
* Allow hotseat/PBEM scenario host to select which civ s/he will play
* Force non-playable civs to be AI in Hotseat/PBEM games
* Allowing for AI slots in player defined scenarios for Hot Seat, PBEM, and Pitboss games
* Do not display duplicate buddy request popups from the same guy
* Peer address handling improvements
* Number keys perform leaderhead actions on Civilopedia leader screen.
* Custom game SP screen remembers difficulty level last played
* Reduced rounding error for population and land victory condition test
* Loading a multiplayer game as a PBEM/hotseat converts it to non-simultaneous turns
* When the city names of your civ are all taken, choose a default name from a random civ
* Timelines more uniform across game speeds
* Military Advisor shows Barbarians
* Tech chooser screen now observes CvGameInterface.cannotResearch() and shows the tech in a red pane if the function returns true
* Fixed American Revolution scenario to work with Pitboss
* PBEM password reminder popup no longer disappears when the game starts
* Wonder description on Wonder Movie screen more legible
* Top Civs screen no longer appears in online multiplayer
* Civilopedia main page sorted in columns rather than in rows
* Pressing escape when selecting goto points now cancels the goto waypoints
* Military advisor now works like foreign advisor: clicking on leader buttons clears previous leader selections unless you hold down the shift key.
* Teams in multiplayer once again share all the players' starting techs, not just the last player's
* Great person point generation from Wonders continues after Wonder has become obsolete
* quicksave doesn't prompt for overwrite

Fixes:

* exploit fix that allowed multiple players to extract the same gold/resources from the AI...
* Don't set localhost address as public addr for peers on same computer
* fixed gunships capturing cities bug
* game doesn't end on ties
* fixed mp UN voting bug
* Leaderheads on a radeon 9000 64mb - fix for strange skin shading
* Fixed crash that happened when a spy sabotaged an improvement outside cultural borders
* The full mod path is no longer stored in the save when the mod is installed under the user folder
* Double-clicking on a save of a mod now loads the proper DLL
* fixed Out-of-Sync from exiting to main menu
* fixed anarchy/specialist resetting bug
* fixed bug where environmentalism doesn't affect new cities
* fix for missing head mission crash
* fixed stack attack bug with groups of units with more than one move
* fixed premature end-turn unit cycle bug
* fixed State Porperty cumulative effect in team game
* fixed plot list button scrolling for multiple resolutions
* fixed some AI attitude issues for team games
* Strip chat messages of color tags before displaying in Pitboss
* Fixed logic bug that determines the number of open slots in a Pitboss game
* Improving how the host determines if the game is full - number of connections rather than number of players - before, the host wasn't considering joining players when determining if the game was full
* Set status to CLOSED when a computer player dies in the game
* The full mod path is no longer stored in the save when the mod is installed under the user folder
* Load proper DLL when a mod is specified in the ini file
* fix for tech chooser showing known techs as unknown
* Clear map data (like latitudes) when you exit to main menu
* Fixed error in combat calculations when a zero-strength unit was involved
* Fixed bug in Info screen "rival worst" calculation
* End of game sequence plays correctly for hotseat/pbem
* Diplomacy screen no longer allows end-turn events to go through
* Diplomacy screen gold popups respond to ESCAPE and RETURN
* Right-click select-all no longer causes large stacks to slide off the screen
* No longer possible to attempt to take over unplayable civs in multiplayer scenarios
* Fixed PBEM infinite movement exploit
* Fixed rush production per population for game speeds other than normal
* GNP graph is now consistent with demographics table
* Fix Gunship being almost invisibile in Frozen mode
* fix mod name in progress bar
* New DX9 code takes screenshot without requiring lockable back buffer
* Fixed the vertically launching torpedo for the submarine unit
* Movie playback optimized
* Significant reduction in video and system memory usage
* Fixed some memory leaks
* Fixed crashes with modified SDK
* Fixed XML failures with non-default locale
* Many translation fixes
* Memory related crash fixes
* Fixed diplomacy crash fix (when expanding an empty tree control with space bar)
* Internet lobby -> LAN fix
* fixed pedia and menu buttons disappearing after leaving tech chooser
* PitBoss no longer crashes on victory
* can no longer see number of units in darkened tiles by moving the flag
* No more Archers holding all their weapons and Workers holding all their tools
* No more fog of war missing from the southern ice and from trees/jungle on the dateline
* Pushing "go back" while joining a mp game, no longer causes background music to disappear
* Wonder movie effect and zoom no longer happens when you have disabled Wonder movies
* City billboards no longer choke on text formatting
* Many tutorial issues fixed…
* Fixed checksum folder order difference between NTFS and FAT32 filesystems
* Many worldbuilder issues fixed…
* Fix: Black eye shadows
* Fix: Some leaderheads appear to have white eyes when the low-res textures option is on
* fixing crack in huge globe view maps
* fixes the problem where animals were not animating in the fog
* Prevent Terrain crash when reloading EarthMap twice
* fixed crash on too quick quickload
* fixed city yields being revealed in FOW
* fixed ability to see cities in FOW via defense modifiers
* ICBM no longer flips upside-down when fortified/awaken
* Fix for combat bug across a map seam

Additions;

* PitBossSleep ini setting
* unit cycling optimization
* Africa, Europe, East Asia, Eastern U.S., and South America maps
* Fantasy_Realm, Fractal, and Shuffle map scripts
* unit health bar for plot list buttons
* Require Complete Kills game option
* No Movies is now a graphical option (instead of an ini option)
* Warn all users when a player with a different version of files joins the game
* Display a popup warning the host when a joining player has different versions of XML/Python files so he can make sure this guy can be trusted
* Indicate which players have an active turn in the Pitboss admin screen
* Synch Logging now an .ini option
* Able to load mods from the Pitboss
* Hotseat and PBEM scenarios
* Display name of peer you are contacting in join screen if available
* Saving DirectIP join address
* Added culture rate popup help to culture bar in city screen
* Added Admin password field in PBEM/Hotseat staging screens
* Added HideMovieBackground ini option for further movie speedup
* Added HideOutOfVRamWarning ini option
* Exposed many more functions to Python
* Hooked up modern whaling boats
* support for movies in customAssets folder


Warlords came out 9 months after the initial release and its first major patch was 3 months later (big patch too, lots of changes).
 
I think that is the heart of the issue right there. Some of us have more patience than others.

Civ 4 had multiple patches and 2 expansions. I'm sure we'll see the same thing with Civ 5.

And why not bash it while we wait? It deserves it, and for a lot of us it's certainly more fun arguing in the forums than playing the game.
 
And why not bash it while we wait? It deserves it, and for a lot of us it's certainly more fun arguing in the forums than playing the game.

Seen. The diplomacy here is a little more interesting than in the game - well, just about...
 
False dichotomy followed by groupthink, IMO.

I tend to agree: The Civ series always had a strong boardgame/wargame aspect, what made Civ unique was not that it was an empire sim, but that it attempted to *combine* both these aspects into a single game. Not always so well, and usually to the detriment of the boardgame aspect, originally driven by severe platform limitations when the first Civ came out (squares are easier to render than hexes, point-to-point (city to city) line movement is easier on the AI than movement over a 2D space, etc); so much to the detriment, though, that the board-game was the ultimate optimal way to go strategically. So to with the "empire-sim" metagame: always emphasize gold, just ask TMIT and DaveW, I followed them and my game instantly leaped a level (currently Emperor, BtS+*the current BetterAI*, very important!)

Unfortunately the boardgame aspect in Civ was by far the most tedious and ultimately boring, and it was a good design decision to finally clean this up.

The jury is still out in my mind as to whether they have permanently de-emphasized or "dumbed down" the empire-sim aspect. I do miss:

1) Trade routes with other AIs. Gold was always god, but emphasizing trade routes + GLH was a *limited* alternative to simple cottage spamming (although I always did both for good measure, as routes are inherently unstable over the long run), and this gave a powerful incentive to stay on good terms with (overseas) AIs for as long as possible. Hence it impacted diplomacy.

2) Diplomacy: AI attitude towards civics choices. Maybe I'm wrong, but CivV AI doesn't care about your SP choices. A whole strategic game aspect is missing here.

Both of the above do not involve the introduction of micromanagement tedium. Both involve straightforward strategic decision-making. But as against the CivV critics, the structures (trade routes and SPs) already exist in the game and can be extended , rather than be awkward feature add ons like espionage or religion (particularly the AP).

And far from a "massive fail", their absence may be part of the marketing strategy, to be released for ransom in later expansions. Hey, welcome to capitalist game production! It sucks, I know!

But I suspect that it will be easier to extend the empire-sim metagame now than to do so on the old, truly broken broken boardgame.
 
The irony is that the "loose confederation" is a closer simulation of the pre-modern reality of "empires". Highly integrated territories covering every inch of the Earth is a modern phenomenon. The main exceptions were probably the Roman Empire and Han China; the latter didn't last very long and the former was likely due to the existence of the Mediterranean Sea as a natural transportation hub, but even the R.E. fell apart - something that the Civ series has never "empire-sim'ed" sucessfully, BTW.

I'm replying to multiple people, but this quote captures my main idea in comparing the Civ series to Paradox Games and/ or board games. I agree that Paradox Games produces the model for empire-simulation, in that it most closely replicates managing an empire with historical accuracy. However, this is not why I play Civ. I love playing Civ because I can create a massive empire that subdues the entire globe over the course of five or six thousand years. Would it be more realistic if giant Civ empires eventually collapsed due to massive overexpansion/ supply problems/ a faulty economy and civil unrest. Yes, it would. Would it be fun? Absolutely not! Civ IV provides some much needed checks against ICS but stops short of penalizing expansion as harshly as actual history did. And if I really want a Civ game where empires expand and collapse, I can just fire up the Rhyse and Fall mod. If you want to experience the challenge of guiding Burgundy to become the dominant power of Europe over a 500 year period while skillfully manipulating the Papacy and surviving riots because you became 5% more plutocratic, Europa Universalis III is the way to go. It's an enjoyable game for history nerds like myself, but it doesn't offer the infinite replayability of Civ. No matter how many times I load up the map, I still get the globe in 1399.

I think Civ achieves a balance between entertainment and simulation better than any other game, which is why every iteration of the series wins Game of the Year. It appeals to a wider demographic than it gets credit for. I'm guessing most of the people who buy the game never get past the first three levels of difficulty because they prefer the casual experience of steamrolling the AI archers with tanks in 800 AD (and it is fun!), and the Civ IV AI, despite its deficiencies, make most of us (or at least me) look silly. Anyway, I think if complete historical accuracy is the endgame of the developers, it will only diminish the Civ franchise.
 
Anyway, I think if complete historical accuracy is the endgame of the developers, it will only diminish the Civ franchise.

Which, IMO, is why the framework of the underlying gameplay has to be so solid. Historical accuracy can be added later (as can a fantasy or scifi theme) by modders.

Unfortunately if that framework is too weak the whole thing collapses.
 
The analysis is just wrong. He's drawn conclusions based on similarities between design elements that are purely coincidental.

The reason people are finding CiV to be a disappointment is because they expected CIV+all expansions+more. Instead they got a game that is more like Civ3 than CIV.

It's exactly what happened when EQ2 came out. People expected EQ+6 expansions and instead got EQ+DAoC.

It happens all the time. Players set themselves up with expectations about a product and then, when a product doesn't deliver the expectations that they created, they become disoriented.

Anybody who was aware of CiV development KNEW they were bringing in several Civ Rev elements to CiV and KNEW they were dumping a lot of the excess that came from CIV. They KNEW that this game would be the 'perfect game for a newcomer to the franchise.'

This also includes the bad AI and non existent diplomacy everybody complains about. The only thing the AI fails at is military. They make intelligent macro game oriented decisions but lack a lot of the micro game. I.E. Unit tactics and strategy.

It's your own fault for making the assumption that 'better diplomacy'=more numbers.

That's all it is. I love CiV as well as CIV. I enjoy CiV more because I like 1UPT and hexes over stacks and squares. That is the ONLY core change in game play.
 
The only thing the AI fails at is military.

And expansion, and naval movement, and diplomacy, and resource acquisition, and archipelago maps, and peace treaties, and city defense, and trading, and on and on and on. :rolleyes:

If you're able to enjoy all that, more power to you. I wish I could, but eventually these flaws become too egregious to ignore any longer.
 
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