Civ5 has been dumbed down - 8 examples

[brianshapiro]

In Civ5 with the addition of Social Policies, its completely different. While early SPs are very good, the late game ones are incredibly powerful. Culture is now genuinely useful at every stage. Even later on in the game I care about the cultural output of my core cities. This was never the case in Civ4 (bar cultural victory of course). This is clearly not one area which has been dumbed down.
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Social policies allow a much greater diversification and specialisation that Civics, but aren't refundable and don't allow you to change your mind. Some say that forcing you to plan ahead is more strategic, others that it removes player choice - on the whole its fairly balanced. However, another difference is that Civics were given as freebies as you went along the tech tree, while social policies require an active investment in culture growth. A system that requires you to invest (and hence sacrifice something else) for a later gain must be considered one that increases complexity.

When people say it was 'dumbed down' all they're saying is that the designers decided to remove things that appeared too complex and replaced them with things that were more understandable. Its not a claim that there's less strategy in the game, or less strategic choices, or less choices, its just a claim that there was a direction the developers were going in when thinking about how to make the game.

Usually the complaints aren't about removing strategy, but about gutting realism from the game for the fear that it was 'too complex'. Its an argument about whether Civizilation should be more a game about history or more like a board game.

Social policies are a good example. In your whole analysis of social policies, you never mention that it replaced religion. You never mention that it replaced cities with mixed populations. You're more concerned about social policies from the perspective of a board gamer.

Another example is people complain about the removal of health, or complain about the fact that happiness has been pooled for your whole population.

 

[Buccaneer]

When people say it was 'dumbed down' all they're saying is that the designers decided to remove things that appeared too complex and replaced them with things that were more understandable. Its not a claim that there's less strategy in the game, or less strategic choices, or less choices, its just a claim that there was a direction the developers were going in when thinking about how to make the game.

Usually the complaints aren't about removing strategy, but about gutting realism from the game for the fear that it was 'too complex'. Its an argument about whether Civizilation should be more a game about history or more like a board game.

Social policies are a good example. In your whole analysis of social policies, you never mention that it replaced religion. You never mention that it replaced cities with mixed populations. You're more concerned about social policies from the perspective of a board gamer.

Another example is people complain about the removal of health, or the fact that happiness has been pooled for your whole population.

But Civ4's implementation of "historical" elements like religion, espionage, corporations and civics were poorly implemented, cheesy, exploitive, or whatever word that can be used. It was best not to have them at all if they couldn't be done right. Pre-release Diplomacy in Civ5 was probably another example of that.

 

[brianshapiro]

complex =/= complicated

complicated is how many variables you have to count up to decide between two alternatives

complex is how hard it is find the optimal solution, given a constant number of variables.

Take chess, its very complex but not very complicated as it is. If you change the rules so that, say, each of the 16 pawns move in a slightly different way depending on whether its you even'th or your odd'th go; that would make the game more complicated but not add to its complexity.

Similarly for social policies. Picking between two options which are both positive is identical in terms of complexity/depth as picking between two options which both have a positive and a negative.

also,

needs complex strategy to win =/= complex in design.

Chess isn't very complex in design, and Go is even less complex. Both need complex strategies to win.

 

[Islet]

Intelligence needs IQ, CPU lacks a few Terabytes worth of human brain cells.

I think regarding the AI being unable to play the game as effectively as a human does not equal to the game being massively complex hence the AI is unable to process it.

As stated by earlier forum posters, like brianshapiro, the rules of Chess and Go are brutally basic, yet it offers countless replayability and flexibility.

And even with the advance in AI, and a supercomputer dedicated for the purpose (Deep Blue), humans have proven to be able to trump such AIs.

And even with super-AIs, Chess AIs relied on opening and end-game tables as reference; try taking away all entries in the Chessmaster opening tables and watch it fumble and make the most illogical steps.

The key is to make do with what you have. Civ IV didn't have the best of AI either, yet it managed to suck you into a world in which you were actively involved.

CiV, either by design or AI, or both, didn't.

 

[brianshapiro]

But Civ4's implementation of "historical" elements like religion, espionage, corporations and civics were poorly implemented, cheesy, exploitive, or whatever word that can be used. It was best not to have them at all if they couldn't be done right. Pre-release Diplomacy in Civ5 was probably another example of that.

Yea but the point is there were many directions that the game could have gone in. They could have kept all of these historical elements but fixed all of the issues with them so they were meaningful to the game. Instead, the designers decided to simplify and reduce elements.

Some people just disagree with the direction it did go in.

 

[Mathew]

I think regarding the AI being unable to play the game as effectively as a human does not equal to the game being massively complex hence the AI is unable to process it.

As stated by earlier forum posters, like brianshapiro, the rules of Chess and Go are brutally basic, yet it offers countless replayability and flexibility.

It isn't complex rules that challenges the AI, it's complex strategy. The strategies in Civ V are extremely complex, especially given that each map is different and even playing the same save can easily result in different outcomes based on decisions made by the player and the AI.

The AI doesn't have issues with the rules of the game (except for maybe 1UPT), but rather making good strategic decisions because there are just too many options. If Firaxis wanted to, they could make an AI that would be able to process these longer and make better decisions than they do now, but due to the sheer number of options this would take a long time to complete each turn.

This was no different in Civ IV, though a few problematic systems were better implemented then and of course SoDs made it easy for them to move their units around the map when fighting a war. This all gives the illusion that Civ IVs AI was better than Civ Vs AI. Realistically they probably aren't really that far apart.