dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
With the second XP due soon, I'm getting the occasional message in my inbox asking me where I think Civ will go for Civ 5. I speculate as much as my fellow civ fans.
The problem is it's hard to see where to improve. Not that Civ 4 is flawless. But Civ 4 doesn't have the same obvious and objective flaws that Civ 3 had. With the exception of players who enjoy a cakewalk, most people could agree that dominating Civ 3 with 0% research is evidence of a fundamental flaw. Fixing stuff like this is what made Civ 4 a masterpiece. But now the few remaining big flaws in Civ 4 aren't so much flaws as preferences. It will be hard to make improvements for the next Civ without breaking another part of the game that people have gotten used to.
Moreover, the suggestions for Civ 5 are sorely lacking. I know Civ 5 hasn't even been announced, and it might not be announced for a long time. But the few early ideas I see fall into a lot of traps that make them pretty boring, IMO:
1) More of the Same: New units, leaders, wonders, civics, more UUs, techs... Nothing really interesting here. These are really just graphics that front for a few mathematical values. Not that these are bad, but you can't make a good sequel off of "more of the same".
2) The return of Civ past. Aside from begging for Civ 5 to be 2D... there's lots of suggestions to return to old systems that were inherently broken. Zone-of-control, caravans, damage-without-risk catapults, resources-without-cost colonies, suicide galleys, blind-greed diplomacy, rich-get-richer rewards for winning wars. Besides the fact that these all led to huge exploits, these features are unfortunately OLD. Where's the creativity?
3) Meaningless Suggestions: I'm not here to point out which ideas I like or hate. But there's a lot of ideas that don't seem to do anything at all. Divide the game into more ages: why does this matter? Culture groups: what difference does it make? Work on two projects at the same time -- isn't this twice as slow as building them one at a time? What's wrong with switching between projects midstream, as you can do now? You're pissed off it takes 500 years to build your first warrior... so you want 6 warriors per turn instead? These ideas are also incomplete, at best.
4) Obvious Suggestions: better graphics, better performance, fewer bugs, better AI... you might as well NOT suggest them they're so obvious. I know a lot of people here think pretty lowly of the developers who created the game that they can't seem to pry themselves away from. But we all know the developers didn't try to make Civ laggy. The fact that there's a huge chunk of players who are disappointed is probably something Firaxis themselves are disappointed about, and can improve on in Civ 5.
5) Minor Technicalities. These are suggestions that aren't necessarily bad, but you ultimately can't build a sequel around. Things like a truly round globe, tech diffusion, trading units, re-organization instead of anarchy, unit-ranges, mountain-passes, transformable terrain... some ideas are better than others. But these ideas are almost as petty as running for UN Secretary General because you believe there should be a stop-sign at your street corner. "Civ 5: now rivers increase movement points!" isn't a bad idea, it's just not enough to sell a sequel. Nor is it particularly creative.
That's four categories with no creativity, and one category with only marginal, petty ideas. That's not enough for a big vision.
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There IS some hope. There are a lot of good suggestions from a few years back that haven't been implemented yet. But they keep getting repeated, with very few new ideas. Repetition isn't a bad thing until you realize that many of these ideas have been floating around for almost a decade. If they haven't been implemented yet, I think that's a VERY bad sign for Civ 5.
Why haven't they been implemented yet? I can only speculate:
"Invention-tree separate from an idea-tree": nobody has ever drawn a credible dual-tree prototype for even a single era, let alone all of history. I'm starting to think it's actually impossible to have separate trees for inventions (printing press, firearms) and their respective ideas (democracy, chemistry). It's starting to convince me that they MUST be intertwined, as in the current tech tree.
"Diseases", "Weather": it looks like BTS will include some kind of events system. But even so, most people haven't explained why it's fun to to lose due to an opponent by a few unlucky dice rolls. And, if not sheer luck, people aren't clear on what the player actually does, strategy wise, to deal with disasters.
"Global Warming", "United Nations", "Terrorism": In a game where there can only be one winner, nobody has explained why you'd want to prevent an international threat, or work together. So long as you're winning, who cares what happens to the planet collectively?
"Education and Literacy": If this is just a bunch of different bonuses for how you run your schools, then how is this suggestion anything but a few new civics? Nobody has really advocated any special strategic choice or feature here.
"Improved Resource Economy": There's a lot of economic suggestions. But I speculate why they often fail. Systems for stockpiling or converting resources fail because they seem to suggest that the play has to manage 30-40 different values and formulas. A suggestion that Firaxis would buy into would need to be as manageable as Civics (5 main choices), or religion (7 special techs that get you the same set of 4 or 5 bonuses).
"Improved City Economy": If you're going to change the staple trio of food/commerce/production from the Civ series, you have to offer a really good reason. Nobody can really predict what a new economic model will do for game play, and such a fundamental change may require totally rethinking the game balance. I suspect that's why Firaxis finds other, less risky suggestions more compelling: no one has explained what the upside of this risk is.
"Improved Population/Soldier Model" Suggestions like drawing your army from your population instead of hammers, or gaining population through immigration are interesting.These necessarily cut deep to the heart of the food=growth model of Civ. Growth is supposed to be your reward for lots of food. What would happen if your army came mostly from food, instead of hammers? What would happen if your city grows due to a sudden flock of immigrants, rather than what tiles you're working? People fail to articulate a compelling upside, while there is a very real downside of totally throwing off the game balance that people are accustomed to.
"Improve Culture": This is one of the clearest areas where it strikes me as though Firaxis could improve. There are lots of people who point out how culture is generally useless compared to science, commerce, or hammers. But at the same time, making culture more powerful scares the crap out of people who HATE how culture can rob them of a city. As someone who wants to see culture play a bigger role in Civ 5, I'm equally as scared of the idea that they'll just scrap it completely. Someone needs to explain how to make culture more valuable without inflaming the culture-flip wonkiness that irritates a small but vocal minority.
"Civil War / Political Instability / Minor Civilizations": This is another example of people who explain what happens in the game without explaining what the player actually does to win. Civil war sounds a lot like instant defeat -- how do you come back from watching your empire fall apart? It also sounds like it makes conquest victory impossible, which pisses off a lot of long-time Civ fans. People seldom explain what this means for conquest victory, and that's probably why Firaxis hasn't gone that route.
"Attrition", "Supply Lines", "Troop Morale": These ideas are within striking range of any good modder. And yet most people can't explain how these would work. And the few explanations we have end up getting caught up in textbook-level analysis that makes it sound like you spend half the war moving little supply units back and forth. That sounds as exciting as mowing the lawn for 6 hours.
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Firaxis, from what little I know, is pretty risk averse. They have four of the best selling games and one of the best selling franchises in video game history. It's hard to convince them that change is necessary, let alone good.
And that's why the big suggestions probably haven't gotten much traction. Not because Firaxis believes history is all about war. Not because Firaxis hates realism. Not because Firaxis refuses to listen. It's because most fans haven't offered big suggestions that *safely* navigate around big gameplay obstacles like balance, strategy, and victory. The big suggestions around here are vague at best. They raise more questions than answers. Big risks, with no clearly explained reward.
Chris Crawford is one of the most respected game designers of all time for a reason. You can have a Civ game with great, realistic features, but it can't result in an 1000 turn or 200 hour SP game. We have to be more creative than "implement this textbook on economics". Creativity is how Alfred Hitchcock managed to make movies as "real life, with the boring parts cut out". And yet, most suggestions seem to heap on the boredom or tedium, hoping they will be justified by the occasional glimmer of excitement. That shows a real lack of real creativity around these parts.
And that's why I don't believe it's time for Civilization 5. There just aren't enough good ideas out there gaining traction. If Civ 5 were to be implemented now, Firaxis would likely remake Civ 4... or, worse, they'd focus on those small piddly suggestions, with no real progress.
The problem is it's hard to see where to improve. Not that Civ 4 is flawless. But Civ 4 doesn't have the same obvious and objective flaws that Civ 3 had. With the exception of players who enjoy a cakewalk, most people could agree that dominating Civ 3 with 0% research is evidence of a fundamental flaw. Fixing stuff like this is what made Civ 4 a masterpiece. But now the few remaining big flaws in Civ 4 aren't so much flaws as preferences. It will be hard to make improvements for the next Civ without breaking another part of the game that people have gotten used to.
Moreover, the suggestions for Civ 5 are sorely lacking. I know Civ 5 hasn't even been announced, and it might not be announced for a long time. But the few early ideas I see fall into a lot of traps that make them pretty boring, IMO:
1) More of the Same: New units, leaders, wonders, civics, more UUs, techs... Nothing really interesting here. These are really just graphics that front for a few mathematical values. Not that these are bad, but you can't make a good sequel off of "more of the same".
2) The return of Civ past. Aside from begging for Civ 5 to be 2D... there's lots of suggestions to return to old systems that were inherently broken. Zone-of-control, caravans, damage-without-risk catapults, resources-without-cost colonies, suicide galleys, blind-greed diplomacy, rich-get-richer rewards for winning wars. Besides the fact that these all led to huge exploits, these features are unfortunately OLD. Where's the creativity?
3) Meaningless Suggestions: I'm not here to point out which ideas I like or hate. But there's a lot of ideas that don't seem to do anything at all. Divide the game into more ages: why does this matter? Culture groups: what difference does it make? Work on two projects at the same time -- isn't this twice as slow as building them one at a time? What's wrong with switching between projects midstream, as you can do now? You're pissed off it takes 500 years to build your first warrior... so you want 6 warriors per turn instead? These ideas are also incomplete, at best.
4) Obvious Suggestions: better graphics, better performance, fewer bugs, better AI... you might as well NOT suggest them they're so obvious. I know a lot of people here think pretty lowly of the developers who created the game that they can't seem to pry themselves away from. But we all know the developers didn't try to make Civ laggy. The fact that there's a huge chunk of players who are disappointed is probably something Firaxis themselves are disappointed about, and can improve on in Civ 5.
5) Minor Technicalities. These are suggestions that aren't necessarily bad, but you ultimately can't build a sequel around. Things like a truly round globe, tech diffusion, trading units, re-organization instead of anarchy, unit-ranges, mountain-passes, transformable terrain... some ideas are better than others. But these ideas are almost as petty as running for UN Secretary General because you believe there should be a stop-sign at your street corner. "Civ 5: now rivers increase movement points!" isn't a bad idea, it's just not enough to sell a sequel. Nor is it particularly creative.
That's four categories with no creativity, and one category with only marginal, petty ideas. That's not enough for a big vision.
---------------------------------------
There IS some hope. There are a lot of good suggestions from a few years back that haven't been implemented yet. But they keep getting repeated, with very few new ideas. Repetition isn't a bad thing until you realize that many of these ideas have been floating around for almost a decade. If they haven't been implemented yet, I think that's a VERY bad sign for Civ 5.
Why haven't they been implemented yet? I can only speculate:
"Invention-tree separate from an idea-tree": nobody has ever drawn a credible dual-tree prototype for even a single era, let alone all of history. I'm starting to think it's actually impossible to have separate trees for inventions (printing press, firearms) and their respective ideas (democracy, chemistry). It's starting to convince me that they MUST be intertwined, as in the current tech tree.
"Diseases", "Weather": it looks like BTS will include some kind of events system. But even so, most people haven't explained why it's fun to to lose due to an opponent by a few unlucky dice rolls. And, if not sheer luck, people aren't clear on what the player actually does, strategy wise, to deal with disasters.
"Global Warming", "United Nations", "Terrorism": In a game where there can only be one winner, nobody has explained why you'd want to prevent an international threat, or work together. So long as you're winning, who cares what happens to the planet collectively?
"Education and Literacy": If this is just a bunch of different bonuses for how you run your schools, then how is this suggestion anything but a few new civics? Nobody has really advocated any special strategic choice or feature here.
"Improved Resource Economy": There's a lot of economic suggestions. But I speculate why they often fail. Systems for stockpiling or converting resources fail because they seem to suggest that the play has to manage 30-40 different values and formulas. A suggestion that Firaxis would buy into would need to be as manageable as Civics (5 main choices), or religion (7 special techs that get you the same set of 4 or 5 bonuses).
"Improved City Economy": If you're going to change the staple trio of food/commerce/production from the Civ series, you have to offer a really good reason. Nobody can really predict what a new economic model will do for game play, and such a fundamental change may require totally rethinking the game balance. I suspect that's why Firaxis finds other, less risky suggestions more compelling: no one has explained what the upside of this risk is.
"Improved Population/Soldier Model" Suggestions like drawing your army from your population instead of hammers, or gaining population through immigration are interesting.These necessarily cut deep to the heart of the food=growth model of Civ. Growth is supposed to be your reward for lots of food. What would happen if your army came mostly from food, instead of hammers? What would happen if your city grows due to a sudden flock of immigrants, rather than what tiles you're working? People fail to articulate a compelling upside, while there is a very real downside of totally throwing off the game balance that people are accustomed to.
"Improve Culture": This is one of the clearest areas where it strikes me as though Firaxis could improve. There are lots of people who point out how culture is generally useless compared to science, commerce, or hammers. But at the same time, making culture more powerful scares the crap out of people who HATE how culture can rob them of a city. As someone who wants to see culture play a bigger role in Civ 5, I'm equally as scared of the idea that they'll just scrap it completely. Someone needs to explain how to make culture more valuable without inflaming the culture-flip wonkiness that irritates a small but vocal minority.
"Civil War / Political Instability / Minor Civilizations": This is another example of people who explain what happens in the game without explaining what the player actually does to win. Civil war sounds a lot like instant defeat -- how do you come back from watching your empire fall apart? It also sounds like it makes conquest victory impossible, which pisses off a lot of long-time Civ fans. People seldom explain what this means for conquest victory, and that's probably why Firaxis hasn't gone that route.
"Attrition", "Supply Lines", "Troop Morale": These ideas are within striking range of any good modder. And yet most people can't explain how these would work. And the few explanations we have end up getting caught up in textbook-level analysis that makes it sound like you spend half the war moving little supply units back and forth. That sounds as exciting as mowing the lawn for 6 hours.
---------------------------------------
Firaxis, from what little I know, is pretty risk averse. They have four of the best selling games and one of the best selling franchises in video game history. It's hard to convince them that change is necessary, let alone good.
And that's why the big suggestions probably haven't gotten much traction. Not because Firaxis believes history is all about war. Not because Firaxis hates realism. Not because Firaxis refuses to listen. It's because most fans haven't offered big suggestions that *safely* navigate around big gameplay obstacles like balance, strategy, and victory. The big suggestions around here are vague at best. They raise more questions than answers. Big risks, with no clearly explained reward.
Chris Crawford said:
Chris Crawford is one of the most respected game designers of all time for a reason. You can have a Civ game with great, realistic features, but it can't result in an 1000 turn or 200 hour SP game. We have to be more creative than "implement this textbook on economics". Creativity is how Alfred Hitchcock managed to make movies as "real life, with the boring parts cut out". And yet, most suggestions seem to heap on the boredom or tedium, hoping they will be justified by the occasional glimmer of excitement. That shows a real lack of real creativity around these parts.
And that's why I don't believe it's time for Civilization 5. There just aren't enough good ideas out there gaining traction. If Civ 5 were to be implemented now, Firaxis would likely remake Civ 4... or, worse, they'd focus on those small piddly suggestions, with no real progress.
. All I really wanted to show was that I'm been having great fun modding Civ IV 
crazyeye: in my own eccentric ways 
) for the last 18 months.
