Civ V a step backward?

[1morey]

Does anyone else think that Civ series are going backwards with each new sequel? I mean religion, espionage was awesome in Civ IV. But now they're not going to be implemented in Civ V. I mean what's the point of making a sequel if you don't take the new parts from each sequel and put them in the new game. In my opinion, include EVERYTHING that was in Civ 1-4, including the expansion packs. (and Revolution) (But take out the micromanagement, pollution etc.) That means ALL the civilizations, leaders, units, buildings, wonders, terrain, religion, espionage, etc. And add new ones for Civ V. (Of course there is still room for expansion packs.) The thing I hate about the one leader/one civ thing, is I hate playing against the same people for a particular civ. Maybe have 3-5 leaders for each civ. That will broaden the game up, and makes each game unique. Also include Ethnic diversity. It sucked in civ iv, they only did it for a few units. Make each unit for each civ ethnically diverse and make the cities ethnicly diverse. The one makes me mad, is this stuff has been done already. In mods. Phungus420 had the ethnically diverse down, and the Thomas' War mod, had the new civs, wonders, etc. Heck, the mod even has animated random events. Why couldn't Firaxis think of these things before hand? And, uh, sorry for my ranting.

 

[Chalks]

Are you implying that the only way not to make a "step backwards" is to include every single feature that the previous instalment had, untouched?

Many of your points suggest that you need to do further research into the game before passing judgement. Religion is not completely gone, it is "combined into the new civics replacement". Civilisation AI traits are not defined by their leaders but rather by flavours, of which there may be as many as 30. I assume you can select different trait combinations for your opponents so you won't be playing against the same AI personality each time, even if they leaderhead is visually the same.

Then you some what lose your train of thought - especially since UUs are meant to be properly unique and diverse in Civ 5, I would have thought you would consider this a step forwards.

 

[Gamemaster77]

But if an AI hates you because your not thier religion, what do you care? It's just not good gameplay.

 

[Ahriman]

Does anyone else think that Civ series are going backwards with each new sequel?

No.
They're massively reworking the combat engine, moving to hexes, and removing clunky mechanics that didn't work well like espionage.

 

[Evie]

Plus, it would be absolutely ridiculous if the designers had to go back and build not only the features of each previous main game but also each previous expansion into every new game - how many years do you think that would take to build a game engine able to handle all of those?

And then they'd have to find even more features to add in expansions...

 

[boredatwork]

Does anyone else think that Civ series are going backwards with each new sequel? I mean religion, espionage was awesome in Civ IV. But now they're not going to be implemented in Civ V.

No. I liked neither. Unless a way is found to make them "fun" I'm happy they're both out altogether.

 

[Abraxis]

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Who cares what they're adding or taking away, so long as the final product is fun and cohesive? Espionage felt gimmicky and not well integrated, and religion made diplomacy totally predictable. Sure the ideas are cool, but if they're not implemented or can't be implemented well into their game, get rid of them.

I feel like everyone complaining about features being removed is shallow and unable to realize that with the level of complexity Civ is working with, less is often more.

Just look at Rise of Mankind, sure all the added features are cool, but they aren't integrated into the main system, the AI doesn't use half of them, or doesn't know how to.

The number of features is unimportant, it's the interaction between features that makes a game.

 

[bonafide11]

If they just took everything from Civ IV, then added stuff to it, it'd be another Civ IV expansion pack and not a sequel. A sequel starts over and rebuilds the game from scratch. Just adding more and more stuff to a game like Civ does not make it better.

 

[Earthling]

Civ 5 appears to be going backwards in many ways from civ 4; I would not say that's true of the previous progression of the series.

 

[Buccaneer]

Don't know if it'll be a step backwards (like Civ3 was compared to Civ2) but it'll be different. My only concerns are 1) the game will be "simplified" to appeal to a wide audience (and more dependent on mods to add complexity); and 2) all this talk about diplomacy, alliances, collaboration, etc. with the AI scares me since that's putting a lot of faith into something that has been unacheivable in most games.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

@Earthling : How can you say that without knowing anything. Maybe in a few month you'll be a fervent adept !

 

[The Almighty dF]

From what we've heard so far... in some ways yeah, it's a step back. Especially the ******** one-leader-per-civ thing. There's no excuse for that.
It's also kinda disappointing that most units still look alike, like they haven't taken a page from people like Bakuel yet.

 

[The_J]

It's also kinda disappointing that most units still look alike, like they haven't taken a page from people like Bakuel yet.

When you develop a software, you'll first try to get everyting working, and not to polish everything and make it shiny .
The graphics will sure be improved until the release.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

@TaDF : well, Leaders are a full body now and they speak the language that was used in their time. How many hours do you think it takes to make only one leader. IMO, 18 leaders/civilizations is the least that they must do but also the most that they can do.

And we are not sure for the units as the early build they showed can be far from the final result.

 

[The Almighty dF]

@TaDF : well, Leaders are a full body now and they speak the language that was used in their time. How many hours do you think it takes to make only one leader. IMO, 18 leaders/civilizations is the least that they must do but also the most that they can do.

And we are not sure for the units as the early build they showed can be far from the final result.

What would you rather have, 18 leaders with full bodies or a wide selection of leaders?
Judging by the more popular mods here, like CivGold, the quality of the leader's graphics don't really matter. People seem to be happy just getting to play as their favorite civilizations and leaders.
Give me variety over anything. Especially from a modding perspective, as those new LHs seem like they're going to be a pain in the ass after getting to see Oda and Bismarck in motion.

 

[the343danny]

What would you rather have, 18 leaders with full bodies or a wide selection of leaders?
Judging by the more popular mods here, like CivGold, the quality of the leader's graphics don't really matter. People seem to be happy just getting to play as their favorite civilizations and leaders.
Give me variety over anything. Especially from a modding perspective, as those new LHs seem like they're going to be a pain in the ass after getting to see Oda and Bismarck in motion.

Wide selection of unique leaders? No... I'd rather have 18 unique ones rather than a whole bunch of them with different traits like in Civ4

 

[deanej]

I prefer what we have now with multiple leaders to full-body leaders speaking their own language. What's the point of having leaders speak if you're just going to have to read the subtitles anyways? And the new diplo environment is going to make modding in new leaders very, very hard. 2d leaders could pass in civ4. In civ5 they won't be able to because of the full-screen environment.

 

[eleazzaar]

I mean what's the point of making a sequel if you don't take the new parts from each sequel and put them in the new game. In my opinion, include EVERYTHING that was in Civ 1-4, including the expansion packs.

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Only one of these posters understand game design.

 

[The Almighty dF]

I prefer what we have now with multiple leaders to full-body leaders speaking their own language. What's the point of having leaders speak if you're just going to have to read the subtitles anyways? And the new diplo environment is going to make modding in new leaders very, very hard. 2d leaders could pass in civ4. In civ5 they won't be able to because of the full-screen environment.

Exactly.
For this reason alone, I have a feeling that Civ5 will be more of a side-game for many in the Civ community, at least for the first two or three years.
It won't be a bad game, just... not that good of a Civ game, especially for those of us that play Civ for the moddability and customizability. Making leaderheads will be near impossible, which deals a -serious- blow to both.

And I really don't care that the leaders speak in their own languages. That's not a feature, that's a gimmick. To trade in more leaders on a simple gimmick which will wear thin quickly (how long will you honestly care that Wu is speaking Chinese to you? You'll eventually get tired of the same few phrases in Chinese over and over again, just like you don't really care what the leaders in Civ4 say, just the content of the message: IE are they ready for war, trade, etc. When was the last time you read their greeting text?)

It's especially kinda funny that the attention is going more towards graphics because, unless what they're using for promos is very early work (unlikely, early beta material is usually not shown off like that for fear of customers assuming the final product will look like that), ...it doesn't honestly look that great compared to Civ4 with Varietas Delectat and Blue Marble going.
Firaxis is trying its best to keep up with its own mod community, but... I hate to say it... maybe they just can't catch up. At this rate, they'd probably be better off just going ahead hiring people like Bakuel, Avain, Ekmek, Capo, etc.

 

[deanej]

Part of that is the difference in development environments. In modding, you can think of a feature, code it, and do a quick test in a short time. Companies actually have to rigorously test the code across as many configurations as possible.

Testing for us modders might get harder though... we won't have the in-game world buiding so we can't magic a unit into being to make sure some new ability it has works properly... we will actually have to build the unit.