Civ 5: My Doubts

[Thormodr]

Would you want Civ5 to be this wildly experimental game full of new ideas, half of which work which results in a critically divisive game at best and MOO3 at worst? A lot of what people are asking is for Civ to be EU3 or a pet wargame, which, even in computer form, wargames tend to be hugely unwieldy.

As it is, it makes some very substantial changes to Civ5, but you're arguing against conceits that have been in 4X games in general for years, like the idea that countries are always looking to expand. You're veering into "everything game" territory, where, like Paradox's Victoria 2, for all its complexity in its game systems, it's still wildly unrealistic and tiresome to play, because you have to automate it, lest it become tedious.

I'm sure you could make an interesting game out of 'survive as a ho-hum city-state', but it certainly wouldn't be Civ.

Victoria 2 is an excellent game and tedious is not the word that I would use to describe game play. It's very fun and I like the semi historical feel to it. For the most part, they get it right. Most things are quite realistic and well thought out. When the Victoria 2 Improvement Project (V2IP) comes out it will be fantastic instead of merely great.

Anyway, I'm happy the Civ series is different from Paradox Interactive games. I like the variety offered from both game series.

 

[CladInShadows]

You can't 'tolerate archers who can shoot arrows 500 miles, and one-unit-per-250-miles stacking limits' and yet you can tolerate units taking hundreds of years to train, then hundreds more to move between cities, and you can tolerate Alexander the great fighting a war against Montezuma, both of whom are using tanks and riflemen and preparing to builds ships into space? Interesting.

You're right though, I'd definitely prefer it if I had to wait around for 400 years while my civ built the great pyramids. I think it would be a lot more fun if they based everything about realism and forgot about the silly concept of gameplay.

 

[krunsh]

I apologize if I am coming across as a bit of a curmudgeon!
I played Colonization and thought--this is a really interesting economic model, why isn't Civ doing more to make its economic model more structured, with more interesting decisions?

I played colonization and I also thought that the economic system was great... for 2 or 3 game. Then it get realy boring and repetitive and I just don't want to play it anymore.

The more specific and complicated a game get, the more exhausting it is to do it again and again. You have to manage every single aspect of it, it's fun to explore and then to master... but when it's done it's realy just boring and you wish to put it on automation (wich is a very bad thing).

I had the same problem with most Civ 4 mod, they are fun to explore and sometime to master... but then you've seen it all and there's no reason to get back to it.

Civ4 had many of these problem to:

- Religion: was fun at first, but after a few game it became nothing more than new stuff to manage in your turn even though it wasn't fun to do it.

- Lots of city: It was a real pain to manage the building order and everything else for more than the few first city you'd made. Again, you could put them on automation but this is only a proof that it doesnt add to the gameplay.

- the slider for culture/tech/espionnage: The whole economic system was complicated and not very fun to manage. In Civ 5 it seems like everything seems to add to the gameplay. You make gold, you can use it in very different and interesting ways. The social policies realy make the culture interesting.


These are my opinion, and what they prove is that you are not right. It would not make the game better to do it your way. It would only make it better for you and some other more ''hardcore'' gamer. There are game for this... Civ is not one of them. Civ is great for being between the simple and complexe, very well balanced.

One last thing. I am a strategy game player (I started with age of empire, Populous, Civ 3, starcraft 1, the list goes on.) and the visual are very important for me. One of myfavorite strategy game is Company of heroes and one of the reason for that is that the video and Audio aspect of the game realy create an insane immersion into the action.

I'm not a fan of the artistic style they had taken for Civ 4 (but technicaly it was okay, I realy didn't care that much.). Civ revolution had an interesting cartoon style, but Civ 5 is simply awesome. Finaly the game as it's own personality that make it come out from every other turned base strategy game.

I'm sorry Civ 5 is not what you wanted, but I can assure you that it's 100% what I wanted. So yeah... I'm not THAT sorry

PS: congrat on keeping this all very polite!