CIV5 - a disappointment so far...

[chris79]

Thanks for all the responses, I haven't read all of them in detail, but surely some interesting points were made. Still they haven't convinced me. Some thoughts:

I spent more than 10 hours on the game. Additionally, I didn't only play the game, I rather tried to experiment on how the basic mechanism work - for which you don't need to have played 5 full games if you are an experienced civ player. I spent an equally long time at reading the discussions here, reading ABOUT the game etc. I understand that I wasn't able to get to know the game as well as some of you did, but I think I am entitled to comment on it. Also "you have nor right to comment" is not a valid argument IMO, I would rather expect "what you say about how game works is not true (cause you haven't played it enough) so your arguments are wrong".

Of course I know it is not a addition to civ4 BTS but a new game. But it is not a wholly new game, it is something that is expected to base of Civ tradition and basic set of ideas (ie the growth of a city is based on food IT produces, not the empire produces or not on anything else). So every thing that previous games successfully used and especially everything that was in the series since the beginning may and that is not present in civ5 may be considered as removed. If great people are here, it means at some stage the developers sat down and said: we leave this out, we take this feature in. That's why it is normal me and others treat religions or cottages as "removed" features. So the fact that technically nothing in this game can be treated as removed does not make your points valid.

Of course I know the game is new and it is not fair to compare it to fully developed BTS. But I thought I concentrated on basic stuff there, the things that are very unlikely to change in the future (just like they didn't change the health general concept in C4). I don't think I posted anything about the fact that some things are unbalanced (and so many are, like maritime states being far too helpful compared to thers) or bugged.

Now, more specifically:

Most posts, even my favourite one from Svest, seem to have one thing in common: to criticise the way some features worked in CIV4 or previous games, while not concentrating on why a certain option was not improved and rather left out. Also, I learned only a bit on how the new approach is supposed to be better, more complex than the old one; I know little about how civ5 is more complex, how player's decisions mean more etc. Let's take cottages for example. The argument that they were too strong is not a valid one - neither I nor anyone else said we wanted a super improvement to be left in the game - I just miss the great idea of an improvement that would grow over time (when used by the city! a choice: I'd rather use something else now but if THIS ONE grows it may be very useful in the future - so what do I do? Where are these small but important decisions in CIV5?). This was a great idea and as someone pointed out, a fully grown town was often an important strategic point worth defending - it is part of the fun of the game that you create things like that. So the argument that towns were too powerful and they even gave a hammer in the late game is completely irrelevant - this flaw didn't come with the idea of a cottage (or potential addition of a self expanding farm or something else similar I lack creativity to think of) but a concept of a civic that introduced it.

The same goes for religions - most people say they were just something that was ruining AI diplomatic decisions. Well, (1) so just make religions less influential for AI's policies, (2) it is a simplification which omits the most of the role religions played in the game. In general: I want more choices that influence the gameplay, more options of which I will never be able to choose all. I think that the civ4 system of accumulated bonuses was simply great. You want organized religion to have a full effect/your shrine to be a source of more income? Create 3 missionaries at the cost of 2 libraries or 3 swordsmen. I just loved how all these aspects interacted with eachother (spreading religion to another civ required OB with them etc). I somehow do not see it in CIV5. And this is a problem - I haven't been able to find answers on what new options were added to make up for the loss of those.

Another good example:

"Health was boring IMO. It was just a secondary identical to happiness city growth limiter that just required a secondary different set of buildings to improve. Now we have happiness (and food) as the primary limiters and happiness has been made much more engaging to make up for the loss of health."

Now, that is the point! They were not identical, they played different roles and also you had to acquire different set of resources to improve the health and happiness! That's why having BOTH of these factors was adding new dimension to the game! I'll ask again - what is the equivalent of this in civ5? An empire wide happiness?

So let's talk about this. For starters, and I am not insisting I am right - this is just an opinion, it is completely silly for the happiness to have just 3 "steps" (yes, I know that in fact there are more of them, as extra happiness adds to golden ages, but it is not in the core of the concept). I mean, one happy face up and everything in the entire empire is going well, one happy face less (ie one city grew by 1 citizen) and suddenly all cities almost stop growing. IMO it is simply far too simple. The city specific happiness was a lot more subtle. As many others mentioned before, current system seems to lower the importance of a single city management. I don't see a any reason - apart from a will or need to simplify everything - not to leave a city specific happiness in the game AND add strong empire wide modifiers to it, if the developers wanted to make happiness a general limit of growth. The old system was simple, yet not easy to control if you played on your level of difficulty, Now the examples Svest gave, like "let that city grow not the other" show you need to take artificial actions to stop unhappiness.

One thing I asked about and possible hasn't been answered here - the distance from capital and effectiveness/corruption - I think they intended to "hide it" in the roads maintenance cost. Not the best way to do it, but still will generally work. For upgrades, I would imagine the cost to vary depending on the distance from he capital or the road being in city radius/outside of it.

So, generally, my gameplay experience so far is that this game is the most boring of all civs I played (mind you I enjoyed hundreds of hours spent playing Europa Universalis!), things just seem to be happening, my choices seem to make a very little difference etc. Let's hope it improves over time (either me or the game ).

BTW, what I like about civ5 so far:
- combat and all that - it is new, I still haven't decided if better, but a change that is fully acceptable (some will like it, some not, but it was done with a lot of thought and invention)
- road maintenance idea
- the limit of units based on resources you posses (in fact, I always wanted something like this in the game, with a choice to spend resources on industry/health or maybe army).

 

[May Day 10]

^^^ Great thoughts. Other than I hate the combat worse than SoD.

I do like hexes. I dont like 1upt too. I have said it before, but they should assign a mass rating to each type of unit, and cap the total mass per tile. That would eliminate the stacks of doom, but also not completely inhibit the map and your territory. In addition, you should be able to build an improvement called a Military Base where you can store an unlimited number of units.

I like embarking also to a point. Again, I think it should require an improvement like a Naval Base where you have to embark from instead of the ability to shove off anywhere.

Other than those things, which I feel should have been done better and more creatively, the game is nearly unplayable to me.


So disappointed too. Was looking forward to this for years, and really, really wanted it to be good and had high expectations.

 

[Usama84]

^^^ Great thoughts. Other than I hate the combat worse than SoD.

That would eliminate the stacks of doom, ....
I like embarking also to a point.

stacks of doom were sick, especially when you could nuke them...

also, embarking eliminates transports, which were so crucial to the game..logistics was a big part of the game... i was hoping for some trains in this one!

 

[lilnev]

I do like hexes. I dont like 1upt too. I have said it before, but they should assign a mass rating to each type of unit, and cap the total mass per tile.

I liked the system in The Operational Art of War: you can stack multiple units, but their combat effectiveness decreases as the tile becomes more crowded. In particular, they took more damage from incoming fire. It allowed a lot of flexibility while still encouraging a spread-out front, not a SoD. But overall I give civ V props for trying to fix one of the worst aspects (Sod-based warfare) of IV.


More generally, I think my opinion of V is improving, past the first 60 or 100 turns. And I think I understand why I don't like the early game....

IV had a great tension between expanding and teching quickly. You could choose to REX until your research completely stalled, trusting that the land gained would allow you to get back in the tech race eventually. Later, you could choose to build an army and go conquering, but again it came at the cost of your tech pace -- whipping, drafting, and rush-buying all allowed you to trade commerce and/or pop and/or happiness (read: pop) for a military buildup. That tension -- expansion vs. tech-rate -- is the heart of civ IV. Part of the skill was the correct execution of each phase, expansion and consolidation. But part of the skill, and a big part of the fun, was in the decision, "Which phase should I be in? When should I switch?".

I don't feel that tension in the early stages of V. It feels like there's one correct course of action -- grow your pop and production, grab good city sites, and in particular luxury resources that will allow you to keep growing -- that is the best expansion policy and also the best tech policy. So there are still questions of technical execution, but it's not a trade-off. Without that tension, the early game is less fun.

It does get better later, when cities can finally specialize some, decisions have to be made about Policies, and so forth.

 

[Svest]

Most posts, even my favourite one from Svest, seem to have one thing in common: to criticise the way some features worked in CIV4 or previous games, while not concentrating on why a certain option was not improved and rather left out. Also, I learned only a bit on how the new approach is supposed to be better, more complex than the old one; I know little about how civ5 is more complex, how player's decisions mean more etc. Let's take cottages for example. The argument that they were too strong is not a valid one - neither I nor anyone else said we wanted a super improvement to be left in the game - I just miss the great idea of an improvement that would grow over time (when used by the city! a choice: I'd rather use something else now but if THIS ONE grows it may be very useful in the future - so what do I do? Where are these small but important decisions in CIV5?). This was a great idea and as someone pointed out, a fully grown town was often an important strategic point worth defending - it is part of the fun of the game that you create things like that. So the argument that towns were too powerful and they even gave a hammer in the late game is completely irrelevant - this flaw didn't come with the idea of a cottage (or potential addition of a self expanding farm or something else similar I lack creativity to think of) but a concept of a civic that introduced it.

The problem is if all tiles grow over time it takes those little decisions away from you too. If farms and mines grew like cottages then you would never have to decide between working what you need now and growing a tile for later. No matter what you worked you would always be growing something or working a fully developed tile (which is the goal anyways). So in order to have those little decisions you want then some tiles need to grow while other tiles don't. The problem there is that any tile that grows is bound to be too strong when fully developed compared to one that doesn't. If trading posts grew to give 4 or 5 gold they would be insane. They are already quite good at 2.

The same goes for religions - most people say they were just something that was ruining AI diplomatic decisions. Well, (1) so just make religions less influential for AI's policies, (2) it is a simplification which omits the most of the role religions played in the game. In general: I want more choices that influence the gameplay, more options of which I will never be able to choose all. I think that the civ4 system of accumulated bonuses was simply great. You want organized religion to have a full effect/your shrine to be a source of more income? Create 3 missionaries at the cost of 2 libraries or 3 swordsmen. I just loved how all these aspects interacted with eachother (spreading religion to another civ required OB with them etc). I somehow do not see it in CIV5. And this is a problem - I haven't been able to find answers on what new options were added to make up for the loss of those.

Here I think you are just getting stuck on the name. Everything that religion did for you is still in the game, just under a different name. Pacts of cooperation, secrecy, and research, along with competing interests in city-states (if you try to ally yourself with a city-state an AI wants it will cause tension) replace the diplomatic effects that religion had. Instead of building missionaries to increase happiness in other cities now you can just build a happiness building to do the same thing. IMO there is no real difference there. There are plenty of ways to increase your gold production. I really don't understand why it matters that there is a mechanic called "religion."

"Health was boring IMO. It was just a secondary identical to happiness city growth limiter that just required a secondary different set of buildings to improve. Now we have happiness (and food) as the primary limiters and happiness has been made much more engaging to make up for the loss of health."

Now, that is the point! They were not identical, they played different roles and also you had to acquire different set of resources to improve the health and happiness! That's why having BOTH of these factors was adding new dimension to the game! I'll ask again - what is the equivalent of this in civ5? An empire wide happiness?

How did they play different roles? They both simply limited the size your city could grow to. They might have represented different things, but as game mechanics they had the same effect. The only difference was happiness was a hard cap and health was a soft cap. When you make happiness civ-wide health either has to be removed or made civ-wide too or you defeat the purpose of making happiness civ-wide. Had they made it civ-wide it likely would have just been redundant.

So let's talk about this. For starters, and I am not insisting I am right - this is just an opinion, it is completely silly for the happiness to have just 3 "steps" (yes, I know that in fact there are more of them, as extra happiness adds to golden ages, but it is not in the core of the concept). I mean, one happy face up and everything in the entire empire is going well, one happy face less (ie one city grew by 1 citizen) and suddenly all cities almost stop growing. IMO it is simply far too simple. The city specific happiness was a lot more subtle. As many others mentioned before, current system seems to lower the importance of a single city management. I don't see a any reason - apart from a will or need to simplify everything - not to leave a city specific happiness in the game AND add strong empire wide modifiers to it, if the developers wanted to make happiness a general limit of growth. The old system was simple, yet not easy to control if you played on your level of difficulty, Now the examples Svest gave, like "let that city grow not the other" show you need to take artificial actions to stop unhappiness.

All I can say here is if you really think civ-wide happiness is a simplification you really don't understand the nuances of what it does for you. It does not lower the importance of single city management at all. It is true that for the novice player it might be a bit simplified. They only have one number to worry about rather than a different number for each city. However this is not at all true for the advanced player. In fact it takes far more micromanagement and thought to achieve optimum results. It is not in any way "simply far too simple" it is actually "simply very complex." Its one of those things that's very easy to understand but very hard to master. It opens up tons of new strategies to explore.

Also, the golden age part is actually very close to the core of the concept. It also opens up far more strategies. Because of this golden ages are no longer the super rare events that they were in CivIV. They are far more frequent and can make a very big difference. In fact its even possible to spend the majority of the game in a golden age depending on your strategy.

Why is it silly for happiness to have 3 steps? It only had 2 before. Happy and unhappy. Also the third stage "very unhappy" is actually not all the same. The more unhappy your people are the bigger the penalties are.

Finally, I don't quite get your point about having to take artificial action to avoid unhappiness. Are you saying you somehow didn't have to in CivIV? When a city reached its happiness cap didn't you change it to work different tiles or at least click the avoid growth button until you could increase the cap? The system in CivIV was simple and very easy to control even at immortal/deity (the difficulties I played at). All you had to do was grow the city until it reached its cap and stop it from growing until you increased the cap. In CiV it is not that simple at all. Deciding how to allocate your population to obtain optimum results for your strategy requires a ton of thought and planning.

So, generally, my gameplay experience so far is that this game is the most boring of all civs I played (mind you I enjoyed hundreds of hours spent playing Europa Universalis!), things just seem to be happening, my choices seem to make a very little difference etc. Let's hope it improves over time (either me or the game ).

It is perfectly fine if you just don't like the new game. However calling it simple or dumbed down (I know you didn't say that, however others have) only shows that you do not fully understand the new system. It is anything but simple. If your choices seem to make very little difference then you likely don't really understand the decisions you are making yet.

 

[ohioastronomy]

The new game is actively hostile to many styles of play. It is one thing to have it take, say, longer to build a big empire; it's different and much worse to make it so that you can end up struggling without even knowing why what you're doing is wrong.

It's very easy to dig yourself into a hole (with things like building maintenance), and it's even possible for the game to dig you into a hole without you even knowing it (e.g. puppet states using up your resources and saddling you with expensive, pointless buildings.) That is lousy design.

It's also maddening to have people claim that the simplifications in game mechanics are somehow leading to deeper strategies. This is possible in principle, but it just bears no relationship to the actual game at hand.

They removed mechanisms for boosting early production (whipping), neutered them (almost no real estate where tree chopping is viable early), and slowed them down drastically (no partial buys of units or buildings.) Food resources were made weak and barely different. Diplomacy was drastically weakened and simplified, and the diplomacy victory condition effectively removed. The tech tree was slashed, with far fewer strategic choices. I could go on, but it's abundantly clear to me that the underlying game play is much shallower. Add in that the balance between different ways of approaching the game is the worst it has been for any Civ release, and the challenge by far the lowest, and you can see where people are coming from.

The more I mess around with this game the more it reminds me of MOO3.

 

[Malecite]

I agree completely with the above poster, as I have said before the game is like paint and spit over a rotting interior. You eventually get to that core and find that there is decay from the previous Civ 4 with a whole bunch of gloss over top. We traded complexity and amazing core gameplay for new graphics and a fun new combat system.

In terms of player longevity, I dont think we did well at all in that trade.

Additionally how the hell are people saying this game has layers of strategy? There is SO little you can do to actually customize anything aside from building 1 particular structure. Cities can be semi planned, but really the choice comes down to farm or trading post, and the trading posts dont even evolve like cottages did. Technologies are all linear, and hell, even wonders are almost a waste of time save a few.

I cant wait till someone makes a Civ 4 mod for Civ 5, hell I would pay for such a thing.

 

[USAFireFly]

Thank you all for your honesty. I just saved $50 and Firaxis doesn't deserve it for putting out something like Civ V when precedent has already been established. They have no excuse!

 

[chris79]

Svest - I fully accept that I just do not understand everything or in fact that I misunderstand all of it (which, given my age and experience in strategy games, may be a bit unlikely, but still possible). That's why in my 1st psot I asked - please, explain me, what I am missing here, what is so special here?

But it is a bit too easy to accuse me of ignorance. In fact, you or developers can tell anyone who find the new core game system to be shallow and simplified that they just "don't understand the genius" of it all, just don't see the complexity. Well, it it's there - show us. The game doesn't do that IMO, and your answers mostly don't as well. I learned a lot from them, but they only served to reinforce my original opinions. Let's take a look at this part:

"Here I think you are just getting stuck on the name. Everything that religion did for you is still in the game, just under a different name. Pacts of cooperation (...) replace the diplomatic effects that religion had. Instead of building missionaries to increase happiness in other cities now you can just build a happiness building to do the same thing. IMO there is no real difference there. There are plenty of ways to increase your gold production. I really don't understand why it matters that there is a mechanic called "religion." "

Firstly the mechanic matters. It is a game, supposed to be fun and resemble simplified human history. So yes, looking at how religions spread over the world and knowing this influenced the history is fun in itself. Going by your logic, we could as well remove the names of all buildings and just call them "happiness building number 1 (+2 h, -2 m)" or "science building number 1". BTW, by the look of thing, new techs simply allow you to construct new happiness building that vary only in maintenance cost and hap. effect. So you have a +4 happy -3 gold building or a +2 h-2 g one. I mean, how cool and deep is that? No longer the childish and simplified +2 dye for theatre along with a happy face for 10% of culture (which you have to choose at expense of gold or science, but that surely is hidden somewhere in these social policies which just do not understand yet, right?).

Also, the now so unpopular among the so called "fanboys" mechanic happened to be something that required you to acquire the religion, spread it to your cities and construct buildings or pick civics to make use of them. Kind of more complicated than constructing a temple. So let's have a look at your argument:

"Religion" in one game: to get a benefit to happiness, you need to acquire a religion (possible decision: go for a rel. tech or pick a war one etc/allow neighbour spread his rel. or go for your own), construct a monastery or change civics (all potentially hard decisions to make), train a missionary (possible decision: train it or army or construct a building/wonder), move the missionary on the map (may be destroyed by barbarians or enemies, shall it get an escort?), pick one of possibly larger number of cities to spread the religion and finally construct temple there. Then, maybe a monastery? Or, if the city is near a border, maybe a temple in another city to let iteh frontier city build a cathedral? So on and on, the civic bonuses, the wonder bonuses etc.

"Religion" in another game: you can build a temple in Antium, so that the empire wide unhappiness from a pop growth in Rome will disappear. You pay for the temple's maintenance. Full stop.

Now, you can argue which system is better, less artificial and so on. One thing is beyond doubt (no matter how much develops try to force people to believe religion was a gimmick that only influenced AI's diplo stance): one game is simplified in this area, the other was more sophisticated.

Also the fact that EFFECTS of religion are now present in social policies or buildings doesn't change anything, as in c4 these EFFECTS were also affordable via other strategies, improvements etc. Civ5 just limited the options to achieve these effects.

Don't get me wrong - religion is just an example, and I do not insist it has to be in a good civ game. I just use it as a perfect example of how things were simplified and your explanations just further prove the point.

Now back to health/happiness:

"How did they play different roles? They both simply limited the size your city could grow to. They might have represented different things, but as game mechanics they had the same effect. The only difference was happiness was a hard cap and health was a soft cap. When you make happiness civ-wide health either has to be removed or made civ-wide too or you defeat the purpose of making happiness civ-wide. Had they made it civ-wide it likely would have just been redundant."

Again it looks as if you are trying to tell people c4 was something it wasn't. Even if these were truly 2 mechanisms doing exactly the same (which they weren't), you still have to admit, they were using different resources and buildings and civics, so there was a huge strategic difference between using them. Do I get corn or furs? If they were just the same, it wouldn't matter (as it doesn't matter in civ5 unless city "asks" you for a specific resources - I imagine it is a desperate attempt to make the differences between resources matter and introduce more city specific strategies), so I'd go for the easier one (ie not confronting enemy etc) - but as these were 2 separate systems, I had to choose which one I needed more, also to which I had more bonuses from buildings (do I have grocery or marketplace?). To my best knowledge, none of this is in civ5.

Also, it is obviously not true they both worked the same way. In general, yes, they limited the pop. But while health limited it definitely, happiness didn't. This allowed a strategy planning: I can let my cities grow beyond happiness cap, as I expect to get another 2 lux resources soon.

Now again, one can argue which is better (funny thing, you say one simplification - making happiness empire wide - should justify another simplification), but there is absolutely no doubt which is simpler - it is civ5.

It is somehow surprising people keep on saying so many options to influence gameplay are there and then they refer to things like allocating specialists or changing the tiles' improvements. Well, that was in the game for ages but a large part of other options were removed (yes, removed, the "new game" argument is worthless here, as they were there since civ1). So the game was simplified.

Again: I didn't expect a remake of c4. I expected a more sophisticated game than c4 Warlords at least. Let's be honest, so many years have passed it was a justified expectation. Every new version was bringing huge changes (even c3 which I disliked had the resources thing!). Playing every new version was like "now how does this new feature work", playing c5 is like "now what is new here, oh I see, new +3 happy-2 gold building in that technology".

Civ4 was a great game cause the first version created a base that gave options for great expansions: cities, which are core of the game, had some easy to understand growth/production factors, which then could be changed and influenced by absolutely any aspect of the game - from civics to terrain type, from terrain improvement to a religion+civic or a resource+a building. On the other hand, what civ5 seems to offer is less city specific values and just a minimum number of basic factors that influence their grow. Even the general tendency to make everything more even (and empire wide) takes a lot of strategy from the game IMO. It is obvious that being able to concentrate on happiness in a particular city (fe sending military units to one city with her. rule or just constructing buildings/spreading religions from all over the empire to that city) was some strategy that cannot be in civ5 as happines is empire wide. I still wait to find or read about those new strategies that civ5 is said to have created, but as someone said, it just seems they are like choosing between a farm
and a trading post; a library and a market/granary.

And just out of curiosity: is the flood plains tile just exactly the same as grassland on river? Why have both of them then? To create a feeling of complexity that is not there?

 

[zonk]

The new game is actively hostile to many styles of play. It is one thing to have it take, say, longer to build a big empire; it's different and much worse to make it so that you can end up struggling without even knowing why what you're doing is wrong.

It's very easy to dig yourself into a hole (with things like building maintenance), and it's even possible for the game to dig you into a hole without you even knowing it (e.g. puppet states using up your resources and saddling you with expensive, pointless buildings.) That is lousy design.

It's also maddening to have people claim that the simplifications in game mechanics are somehow leading to deeper strategies. This is possible in principle, but it just bears no relationship to the actual game at hand.

They removed mechanisms for boosting early production (whipping), neutered them (almost no real estate where tree chopping is viable early), and slowed them down drastically (no partial buys of units or buildings.) Food resources were made weak and barely different. Diplomacy was drastically weakened and simplified, and the diplomacy victory condition effectively removed. The tech tree was slashed, with far fewer strategic choices. I could go on, but it's abundantly clear to me that the underlying game play is much shallower. Add in that the balance between different ways of approaching the game is the worst it has been for any Civ release, and the challenge by far the lowest, and you can see where people are coming from.

The more I mess around with this game the more it reminds me of MOO3.

What's amazing - I agree (not there on MOO3 yet... but I'm getting close) - but for completely opposite reasons.

I'm, in fact, having far too EASY a time. It literally took me years until I could hold my own on higher levels in IV.

Now - I'm already winning easily at normal/prince... and it's only been a week.

Maybe it's a style of play thing -- I always broke the cardinal rule in IV (I love wonders and I at least try to build every one of them), and consequently, I could be easy pickings for AI stacks of doom.

In V -- my style of gameplay is INCREDIBLY easy to implement.... max out liberty to expand rapidly, grab the wonder bonus from Tradition, then flip-flop between commerce and order SPs --- and spend all turn-to-turn gameplay on accumulating gold. Then - you can buy peace, buy city state allies, buy the rare building you might want.... Science takes care of itself and the AI is so awful at using the hex/1upt military -- that I can easily swat them back with gifted city state units.

I already feel like I need to institute "house rules" (limit of city state allies for one) - and I've NEVER had to do that... with ANY civ title.

 

[Danei]

- Cottages. What was wrong with them?

They discouraged players from ever switching to a different improvement on the tile, once the cottages had grown. Agree or disagree with that as a good reason for the change, but that is almost certainly the reason for the design decisions around removing cottages and replacing them with trading posts.

- religion - again, added a lot of options, a lot of choices, like building temples in cities that wouldn't otherwise need them at the time, to help another city's culture by allowing a cathedral. I agree this was almost a one way road (ie the more religion(s) in your cities the better) and had too much influence on AI diplo - but it was easy to change. Why not? Now we're back to just constructing "a temple". Cool.

They wanted to put religion into the social policy system. Which they did. I'm not sure how much I like the implementation, personally, but I didn't like it that much before, either.

- happiness is now empire wide. I read the arguments for it and I don't agree with them. The way I understand it, it simply replaced number of cities maintenance cost as a growth limit (while probably omitting the distance factor) - so it is not NEW, BETTER, it is simplified again.

I don't really like the way happiness interacts with other systems in Civ V (for example, that it's currently a valid strategy to ignore it completely), but I can see why they made that change. Happiness in Civ IV was the all-consuming growth factor early game, and became almost completely irrelevant late game. They probably wanted to avoid that.

 

[pwestern78]

I agree with all the points made so far, but my biggest complaint is the poor city placement by the AI. I haven't played much yet, but have not seen a second city placed anywhere the capital. I don't understand how that makes past testing, it is simply gamebreaking to me. Seriously, the AI in Civ I was better with city placement.

impatiently waiting a massive patch

Pete

 

[Civulic]

I agree with the OP only about the disappointment part. But my main gripe is that I actually find the game much more complex than the previous ones (well at least the last couple since I started playing Civ with the 3rd opus). I know for sure that I had a bunch of fun playing these and after 500 turns of Civ V I just decided to end the experience there, I am not playing a game to get a headache but to have fun.

It very quickly gets to the point where the only new city that's worth settling is one that brings in a new luxury resource, and very shortly after that all those are taken, and there's no point in settling anywhere.

Exactly what I quickly felt. Something that I do hate about Civ V, I don't have the feeling at all of building an empire but just a bunch of City-States, it looks like they actually intended our cities to be like these.

 

[Svest]

Svest - I fully accept that I just do not understand everything or in fact that I misunderstand all of it (which, given my age and experience in strategy games, may be a bit unlikely, but still possible). That's why in my 1st psot I asked - please, explain me, what I am missing here, what is so special here?

But it is a bit too easy to accuse me of ignorance. In fact, you or developers can tell anyone who find the new core game system to be shallow and simplified that they just "don't understand the genius" of it all, just don't see the complexity. Well, it it's there - show us. The game doesn't do that IMO, and your answers mostly don't as well. I learned a lot from them, but they only served to reinforce my original opinions. Let's take a look at this part:

The problem is that you dislike the new game, which is perfectly fine, there are many, many things I have a problem with in it as well (AI being a big one), and because of that you are not seeing the new complexity of strategies and decisions available in the new system (I will admit that most of them are pointless until they fix the AI though). You only see the specific strategies that you might have liked or used in CivIV to get a certain effect and that they are no longer available in CiV. What you fail to see is how you can achieve those same effects through the new mechanics just in slightly different ways. I'm not saying that they game is good or bad or better or worse than CivIV, just that it is not at all simplified or dumbed down from a strategic point of view.

Firstly the mechanic matters. It is a game, supposed to be fun and resemble simplified human history. So yes, looking at how religions spread over the world and knowing this influenced the history is fun in itself. Going by your logic, we could as well remove the names of all buildings and just call them "happiness building number 1 (+2 h, -2 m)" or "science building number 1".

Actually no, in a discussion about if the game's core mechanics have been simplified then the name of said mechanic is meaningless. From a game mechanics point of view you are correct it could simply be called "happiness building number 1". Only the complexity of the system matters. If I was arguing that the removal of religion made the game more fun and more resemble history then you might have a point here. This is not the argument. I am only saying that the game is no less complex without religion.

BTW, by the look of thing, new techs simply allow you to construct new happiness building that vary only in maintenance cost and hap. effect. So you have a +4 happy -3 gold building or a +2 h-2 g one. I mean, how cool and deep is that? No longer the childish and simplified +2 dye for theatre along with a happy face for 10% of culture (which you have to choose at expense of gold or science, but that surely is hidden somewhere in these social policies which just do not understand yet, right?).

The choice of happiness at the expense of gold is in the game. Its built right into the happiness buildings. The difference is that instead of making the decision to adjust the slider to increase your happiness at the expense of gold/science you instead have to make the decision to to build another building at the expense of whatever else you could be building. The decisions are there, the mechanic is still there, its just changed in form. You may like the old way better, but that doesn't make the new way dumbed down.

Also, the now so unpopular among the so called "fanboys" mechanic happened to be something that required you to acquire the religion, spread it to your cities and construct buildings or pick civics to make use of them. Kind of more complicated than constructing a temple. So let's have a look at your argument:

First, I am far from a fanboy of this game. I think it is in a very poor state at the moment and will take a ton of work to get it right. All I'm saying is that people who are claiming the game to be simplified or dumbed down either (a) haven't spent enough time with it, or (b) have a very poor grasp of high level strategy.

"Religion" in one game: to get a benefit to happiness, you need to acquire a religion (possible decision: go for a rel. tech or pick a war one etc/allow neighbour spread his rel. or go for your own), construct a monastery or change civics (all potentially hard decisions to make), train a missionary (possible decision: train it or army or construct a building/wonder), move the missionary on the map (may be destroyed by barbarians or enemies, shall it get an escort?), pick one of possibly larger number of cities to spread the religion and finally construct temple there. Then, maybe a monastery? Or, if the city is near a border, maybe a temple in another city to let iteh frontier city build a cathedral? So on and on, the civic bonuses, the wonder bonuses etc.

"Religion" in another game: you can build a temple in Antium, so that the empire wide unhappiness from a pop growth in Rome will disappear. You pay for the temple's maintenance. Full stop.

Now, you can argue which system is better, less artificial and so on. One thing is beyond doubt (no matter how much develops try to force people to believe religion was a gimmick that only influenced AI's diplo stance): one game is simplified in this area, the other was more sophisticated.

You are letting your bias cloud your judgment. Everything you said in your religion paragraph can apply to the new mechanics that replaced religion as well. The only real exception being escorting the missionary, which to be perfectly honest in the years I played CivIV the thought of escorting a missionary never even once crossed my mind (I never once lost a missionary either).

So let's go over your first paragraph and see how those same decisions and challenges are present in CiV.

The first one is easy, tech choices. You still have to decide between going for a war tech and a happiness tech, or a science tech, or a gold tech, or a diplomacy tech, etc. Just because there aren't "religion techs" doesn't mean your tech decisions are any simpler or easier. All of the functions of religion techs are covered in other places. From a complexity standpoint there is no change here. I'm going to be saying this a lot, but just because you don't like something doesn't make it simpler.

Second, choice of civics. This was obviously replaced by social policies. Every single option for religious civics is represented somewhere in the SP trees. You have to make hard decisions about which SPs to pick and you have to think even harder about them because if you screw up you can't simply fix it with a couple turns of anarchy. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it simpler

Third, choice of what to build. Why is building a temple, missionary, or monastery in CivIV to spread happiness in your empire any different from building a circus to spread happiness in CiV? In both cases you are building something for one purpose at the expense of building something else for another purpose (units, markets, libraries, etc). You mention having to build a temple in one city so another city can build a cathedral in CivIV. Well in CiV you can build a circus in one city so another city can grow, or you can build a museum in one city so the border city can build a Hermitage and snatch up all the border territory, or you can build a market in another city to pay for other culture buildings in the border city to do the same thing, or even just to pay for buying the tiles yourself. Again, not at all simplified, just changed a bit in form. Here is really where you show your bias. You mention building the temple, missionary, or monastery at the expense of other options but conveniently leave that detail out in your second paragraph to make CiV seem simpler.

Finally, choosing which city to spread the religion to. Well, once you build your circus, you have to decide what to do with that 3 happiness. Which cities get to grow? Or do you use that happiness to found another city (or conquer one). Do you use that happiness for golden ages? Still just as many decisions to make here too. In fact with religion once you spread a religion to a city and build a temple there your options are narrowed. You can never spread that religion to that city or build that temple there again if you want to try to grow the city more. In CiV if you want to keep growing that city you can just build another happiness building somewhere else.

Also the fact that EFFECTS of religion are now present in social policies or buildings doesn't change anything, as in c4 these EFFECTS were also affordable via other strategies, improvements etc. Civ5 just limited the options to achieve these effects.

This is simply untrue. First, many of the effects were not available via other strategies. There was no other way to become an instant ally of Saladin or Isabella by simply clicking one button as one example. Second, as shown in the previous section, your options are not at all limited. CiV's mechanics offer just as many choices and decisions.

Don't get me wrong - religion is just an example, and I do not insist it has to be in a good civ game. I just use it as a perfect example of how things were simplified and your explanations just further prove the point.

Actually the only point it proves is that you have decided you don't like CiV for whatever reason (which again is perfectly fine and reasonable considering the current state of the game) and are unwilling or unable to view the mechanics objectively. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it simplified.

Again it looks as if you are trying to tell people c4 was something it wasn't. Even if these were truly 2 mechanisms doing exactly the same (which they weren't), you still have to admit, they were using different resources and buildings and civics, so there was a huge strategic difference between using them. Do I get corn or furs? If they were just the same, it wouldn't matter (as it doesn't matter in civ5 unless city "asks" you for a specific resources - I imagine it is a desperate attempt to make the differences between resources matter and introduce more city specific strategies), so I'd go for the easier one (ie not confronting enemy etc) - but as these were 2 separate systems, I had to choose which one I needed more, also to which I had more bonuses from buildings (do I have grocery or marketplace?). To my best knowledge, none of this is in civ5.

Yes they were using different resources, buildings, etc. However, from a game mechanic point of view they were extremely similar. What they did do was give a nice flavor to the game to make it more match history. You were supposed to be struggling with each at different points in history that represented when real people struggled with these issues. I will agree that this added to the feel of the game. However, as a game mechanic they were redundant. It was simply population limit a and population limit b. If fact, health was pretty much a non-factor for most of the game. You got plenty of health bonuses naturally (health was not the real reason you built a granary or put a farm on that corn tile for example) until you got to the industrial era where health took over as the primary population limit (for a while at least).

Also, it is obviously not true they both worked the same way. In general, yes, they limited the pop. But while health limited it definitely, happiness didn't. This allowed a strategy planning: I can let my cities grow beyond happiness cap, as I expect to get another 2 lux resources soon.

Actually, yes they did work in exactly the same way. You could keep growing and gain unhappiness until your unhappy citizens consumed all of your food surplus. Or you could keep growing and gain unhealthiness until it consumed all of your food surplus. How is this different?

Now again, one can argue which is better (funny thing, you say one simplification - making happiness empire wide - should justify another simplification), but there is absolutely no doubt which is simpler - it is civ5.

Again, civ-wide happiness is not a simplification, it actually makes the game more complex. Also there is only no doubt that CiV is simpler if you have already made up your mind and are unable/unwilling to be objective.

It is somehow surprising people keep on saying so many options to influence gameplay are there and then they refer to things like allocating specialists or changing the tiles' improvements. Well, that was in the game for ages but a large part of other options were removed (yes, removed, the "new game" argument is worthless here, as they were there since civ1). So the game was simplified.

I never made the first claim, because obviously those have been a staple of every Civ game. Gameplay options were not removed. Shuffled around? Changed? Yes. Removed? No.

Again: I didn't expect a remake of c4. I expected a more sophisticated game than c4 Warlords at least. Let's be honest, so many years have passed it was a justified expectation. Every new version was bringing huge changes (even c3 which I disliked had the resources thing!). Playing every new version was like "now how does this new feature work", playing c5 is like "now what is new here, oh I see, new +3 happy-2 gold building in that technology".

You have just as many strategic options and decisions to make as in CivIV Warlords plus an entirely revamped combat system. So yes, it is easily as sophisticated and arguably more so.

Civ4 was a great game cause the first version created a base that gave options for great expansions: cities, which are core of the game, had some easy to understand growth/production factors, which then could be changed and influenced by absolutely any aspect of the game - from civics to terrain type, from terrain improvement to a religion+civic or a resource+a building.

Replace Civ4 with CiV in that sentence and its still true. There are plenty of SPs with effect cities and the tiles they work in various ways. Obviously terrain and improvements are still in the game and have a big effect on the city as well. There are a number of buildings that can only be built when a city has access to a certain resource or terrain feature (mint when you have silver or gold, circus when you have horses or elephants, and observatory can only be built next to a mountain, etc). All these features are still here.

On the other hand, what civ5 seems to offer is less city specific values and just a minimum number of basic factors that influence their grow.

Simply not true.

Even the general tendency to make everything more even (and empire wide) takes a lot of strategy from the game IMO.

Only from a novice point of view. If you choose to simply ignore the potential of controlling your population allocation and just let cities grow however they want then yeah, it might be simpler and easier. However for the advanced player, having more control over your population pool will add to the challenge and options available. Making a mechanic easier for the novice to learn but harder for the expert to master is the Holy Grail of game design.

It is obvious that being able to concentrate on happiness in a particular city (fe sending military units to one city with her. rule or just constructing buildings/spreading religions from all over the empire to that city) was some strategy that cannot be in civ5 as happines is empire wide.

Wow, here's a serious example of how you just aren't being objective. Anyone capable of playing any Civ game should very easily be able to see how you can concentrate on using happiness to grow a particular city with civ-wide happiness. Build lots of happiness buildings in your other cities and grow the population in the city you want to grow. Just because you don't do it the exact same way as you did in CivIV of no importance. The only thing that is truly obvious is you just don't know what you are talking about when it comes to what can and can't be done in CiV.

I still wait to find or read about those new strategies that civ5 is said to have created, but as someone said, it just seems they are like choosing between a farm
and a trading post; a library and a market/granary.

Then read this very thread, go to the strategy forum, or simply play the game and figure it out for yourself. If you can't find new strategies the problem is with you not with the game. I've tried to explain how all the options you had available to you in CivIV are still there in CiV. If you still can't get it, then you have simply already made up your mind and I might as well be talking to a brick wall.

And just out of curiosity: is the flood plains tile just exactly the same as grassland on river? Why have both of them then? To create a feeling of complexity that is not there?

No its simply a way to make rivers in deserts useful while still using a graphic that's appropriate to a desert.