RoM took years hundreds of man-hours for modders to develop. It's not like RoM was released two weeks after launch. And if you're paying attention, you'll notice that Zappara's already on the scene, learning the game.
You can't blame Civ V developers for not already having the many expansions and mods that makes Civ IV/RoM so complex.
Could agree if it weren't for point 6
RoM was developed under the More is Moar school of design that doesn't know when it has a good number of features and decreases the quality of the whole through inclusion of the mediocre. My favorite phase of Fall From Heaven was towards the end when more features were getting cut than added.
That doesn't make sense? Firaxis has a PAID staff who put in 40 hrs each per week.
[..] for Semi-amateurs to develop, in their spare time, for free [..]RoM took years hundreds of man-hours for modders to develop. It's not like RoM was released two weeks after launch. And if you're paying attention, you'll notice that Zappara's already on the scene, learning the game.
They are hired, paid, trained professionals.You can't blame Civ V developers for not already having the many expansions and mods that makes Civ IV/RoM so complex.
[..] for Semi-amateurs to develop, in their spare time, for free [..]
There, I fixed it for you, mate.
They are hired, paid, trained professionals.
I can blame them for the blood boilingly stupid enemy player AI and worker AI, the lack of features, the elimination of previous good features, implementing bad ones and the boring gameplay.
Two good things came out from Civ5: graphics, 1 unit / tile combat system (although, I understand if someone likes the stack of death playstyle better), but after 6 games (and beating the second hardest ai on my 3rd game with one hand in my nostrils) I angrily discarded it for Civ4+BtS+Warlords+RoM.
RoM is a great mod and the only reason I might one day buy Civ5 (probably, who knows what other mods will have to offer).
I'd pay good money for that to happen.
What is Rise of Mankind? I never herd of it.
RoM was just too much of everything. It also had terrible memory leak issues too, as well as big performance issues. Best model to look at IMO was Legends of Revolutions. It had hero units (like 300 Spartans and Red Baron), had parts of BUG and BAI integrated, ranged bombard on some of the later tech units, some new wonders, and ofc Revolutions. It also had some more stuff which I cant recall at the moment. It also didnt break the back of the AI, unlike with RoM.
...It seems like you want the game to be remade and I don't understand why. Some of the features in RoM are secondary or tertiary in importance because there are so many. Why add even more?...
Vanilla games are supposed to be vanilla. If I order vanilla ice cream, it should be vanilla, it shouldn't have a bunch of nuts and fudge chunks and gummi worms in it.
If you want a harder game, play a higher difficulty. If you want an intelligent opponent, play multiplayer.
@ Opening post: Did you ever tried to sell cars? :>
Well, I agree to certain points in a certain way, as it's just that... vanilla right now. But it's okay, it's a new game in it's on way.
On the other hand, one should not forget the bad things, you will never miss:
1. Tedious micro vs. stupid automation: At some point (mostly around rennaissance age) RoM just get's tedious micro managemend of countless workers, overdeveloped tiles and even on marathon and beyond, you get in late game 3+ popus to change the production in a city. It's just not fun. And don't you dare to try automate your cities or workers... have fun :x
2. The naval horror: When you board your first fluyt/galleon with a settler, musketman and worker to build your first settlement you are proud and it's all fun and games, it's adventure. But later, you need to ship units from continent to continent, or you want to expand more, build more settlers... soon you get countless of transport ships, units which take 10-20+ turns to travel between the landmasses, get lost on the square tile maps... aaaaand AI never even managed to invade over sea. They just can't do it.
3. Production and tech horror: It's just too much of all. When you found new cities you have to build dozens of buildings to get them up and working, all requiring micro managment, as your governor won't build food/production buildings first, no... he starts with a stadium/barracks.
4. Failed espionage and religion: Espionage is just like this: You get to see through the fog of war sometimes later, when you invest enough into espionage points. You can micro manage single superagents to start almost useless missions. (For example: lowering happiness/health in an enemy city, won't do anything as the Ai cheats on the production and happyness anyway... :x ) And religion, as it was implemented, did do 2 things: screw with diplomacy and gets you lots of gold, if you have the holy city buildings of the religion...
I'm too lazy to go on, it doesn't matter anyway.
And sure, I miss some things in CiV from RoM, especially civic/politcs was better implemented. Although I like the idea of talent trees.
Just my 2c, take them or not
Isn't the whole point of the modding tools that RoM for Civ 5 would exist? Why would they or should they implement the amount of stuff RoM has in it into the base game?
I really admire what RoM has to offer, but the sheer amount of stuff in it is too much to be the 'base game' in both terms of performance (a few people I play with who have older machines simply couldn't run the late game of RoM because it was way too much performancewise) and preference for game speed settings and amount of content.
It's a lot easier for modders to add extra stuff than to take it away and maintain a fun game.