Oh wow, I didn't think more people were going to read the blog post. Ok, well yes, at the heart of it, I was hearing (still to this day) people talk about how dumbed down 5 is compared to 4. From my experience, that just wasn't the case. Streamlined, less, but not dumbed down. This was my attempt to grapple with "Are these two games vastly different in complexity?"
The conclusion I've come to from reading all the responses is that for me, they are almost exactly the same level of "complex" or "deep". That's because I am a roleplayer. I never switched religions in Civ 4 for political advantage, I never micromanaged a city's health, I never did the "power-gamer" type stuff. I always play all Civ games the way that Sid always talks about "Build a Civilization to stand the test of time". To me that means, role play and take things as they come. "Gaming the system" was never going to factor into it for me.
So is Civ 4 more complex than Civ 5? At this point I would have to say yes, but only for some people. It really depends how you choose to play. I spent just as much time playing as some of the power-gamers, but I was trying to get something very different out of the experience, and thus, I never saw this whole "back-end" that others discovered.
Well of course they are going to read your blog post. You provided the link and if they wanted to debate with you, presumably they would have to read it.
That was the whole point of this thread. To have people read your blog and find more people that shared the same opinion as you. Just like your previous thread on the subject.
Moderator Action: Don't troll other posters here.
Anyway, you brought up the point of role playing. Role playing is something that I have loved to do ever since the very first game. I usually don't game the system (I didn't care much for "slingshots", "whipping", "chop rushing", ICSing, etc.) in any way, I don't back stab long time allies and I play in a fashion that is at least semi realistic. I play to have fun and tell a story more than I play to win. Glad you seem to share the same play.
However, that is definitely one thing that is a lot harder to do in Civilization 5 since so many things stretch credibility to the limit. For example, if I go to war and am phenomenally successful and capture two of the enemy's cities and don't even lose a single military unit my people will likely be unhappier than before. However, if I do poorly in the war and lose a city as well as 10 military units they'll likely be as happy as before or possibly even happier. Certainly happier than in the first example. Global happiness as a concept compared to localized happiness makes far less sense.
Teleporting resources is another ridiculous feature. Enemies can sever your trade routes to your capital but resource trades with other civilizations magically float on air and can't be disrupted. Not realistic at all.
Not being able to have a great general and a spaceship part in the same city because they are both civilian units and yet being able to have 20 airplanes in the same city? How does that make any sense at all?
Those kind of things just make me shake my head. Writing good AARs is a skill and there were many very good ones for cIV. I still love to read them even now.
Trying to justify these logical inconsistencies in the latest iteration of the game has lead to much poorer AARs in general.
Something else that hasn't been touched on, goodie huts are certainly less complex. In order not to upset the mass market/casual crowd, they've removed all negative results. Now, there really is no reason to not explore that goodie hut whereas before, you really had to make a hard decision whether it was worth it or not. Also, removing random events removed those nasty little surprises that forced you to play a little more cautiously since something very unexpected could happen that would throw a big wrench in your plans. You had to roll with the punches and be adaptable.
It also greatly aided role playing and made for some great storytelling in AARs. Not having negative results just babies the player.
Barbarians are laughable now. Although, capturing settlers and workers added a new wrinkle, the fact that they never heal is ridiculous and they basically act as cannon fodder. I don't even think they are programmed to capture cities. Raging barbarians on higher difficulty levels in cIV were very challenging and made for some exciting AARs.
In summation, I find Civilization 5 to be less complex and certainly less engaging role playing wise.