These are taken from the PCGamer interview posted up today, and I don't think I agree necessarily with either of them.
-----------------------------------------------
PCG: What have you streamlined from previous games?
Jon: We made some changes with religion. Because diplomacy is one of our focuses with Civ V, planning what an AI leader is thinking, how he's going to win the game, that wasn't something that was meshing very well with the religion system. In Civ IV, the religions were primary factors of who liked whom and who disliked whom. And that wasn't meshing very well with what we wanted to do, so we decided to move on without the religion system. But that's mainly because we wanted diplomacy to have more depth and not be so predictable. We wanted to make sure that the AI leaders were taking into account the same things as the player was taking into account. A player might not care what religion you're running, but they might care quite a bit if you attack one of their friends.
--------------------------------------------
My point : Here's the thing about religion. A very strong argument can be made that both Religion and land/resources, are pretty much the root of almost every conflict in the history of mankind.
Given that Religion is so important in the history of the world, why would you remove it completely? The Firaxis argument to remove it, is that in Civ 4 it made a massive impact on diplomatic relations if you had a different religion from another civ, and in Civ 5 this would overwhelm other diplomatic options.
My argument is that if you know that is the case, then tone down the impact of religious differences so that it's just ONE COMPONENT of diplomacy, don't just remove it because its implementation in Civ 4 was flawed.
Religion is too important to the history of mankind to not include it in any game based on the history of the world.
I'm not even religious myself, but I think its crazy to not have it at all due to its impact on the course of humanity.
-------------------------------------------------------
PCG: Do you see Civ V as an incremental progression of Civ, or a revolution?
Jon: It's more of a revolution than a refinement. The basics are all still the same, but the new combat, the focus on diplomacy, the city state, those are all new mechanics. We lean in the direction of trying to innovate rather than refine. We recognise that Civ is a great game, and we didn't want to just keep piling on top of that base. We wanted to create something that was good in its own right, where we could try new things and provide a new flavour of Civilization.
--------------------------------------------------------
My point : The only thing I want to mention here is that "piling on top of the base" would actually be pretty great for me. I know not everyone likes the complexity of Civ, but I and many others actually do. If there were more types of terrain, more resource types, more advances, more units etc etc etc, I think that would make for a pretty great Civ game. Not that I'm against new features or changes to the gameplay that make it better, because I'm not. I do like the hex tile change, ranged archery, simplified messaging, cities defending themselves etc.
It seems like people are scared to say they would love a Civ 4 or 5 with tons of extra "stuff", instead of core gameplay changes, so I'll say it for them. In fact this is the way alot of Civ 4 mods have gone, which only shows that people want "more" without changing basic gameplay.
Thoughts?
-----------------------------------------------
PCG: What have you streamlined from previous games?
Jon: We made some changes with religion. Because diplomacy is one of our focuses with Civ V, planning what an AI leader is thinking, how he's going to win the game, that wasn't something that was meshing very well with the religion system. In Civ IV, the religions were primary factors of who liked whom and who disliked whom. And that wasn't meshing very well with what we wanted to do, so we decided to move on without the religion system. But that's mainly because we wanted diplomacy to have more depth and not be so predictable. We wanted to make sure that the AI leaders were taking into account the same things as the player was taking into account. A player might not care what religion you're running, but they might care quite a bit if you attack one of their friends.
--------------------------------------------
My point : Here's the thing about religion. A very strong argument can be made that both Religion and land/resources, are pretty much the root of almost every conflict in the history of mankind.
Given that Religion is so important in the history of the world, why would you remove it completely? The Firaxis argument to remove it, is that in Civ 4 it made a massive impact on diplomatic relations if you had a different religion from another civ, and in Civ 5 this would overwhelm other diplomatic options.
My argument is that if you know that is the case, then tone down the impact of religious differences so that it's just ONE COMPONENT of diplomacy, don't just remove it because its implementation in Civ 4 was flawed.
Religion is too important to the history of mankind to not include it in any game based on the history of the world.
I'm not even religious myself, but I think its crazy to not have it at all due to its impact on the course of humanity.
-------------------------------------------------------
PCG: Do you see Civ V as an incremental progression of Civ, or a revolution?
Jon: It's more of a revolution than a refinement. The basics are all still the same, but the new combat, the focus on diplomacy, the city state, those are all new mechanics. We lean in the direction of trying to innovate rather than refine. We recognise that Civ is a great game, and we didn't want to just keep piling on top of that base. We wanted to create something that was good in its own right, where we could try new things and provide a new flavour of Civilization.
--------------------------------------------------------
My point : The only thing I want to mention here is that "piling on top of the base" would actually be pretty great for me. I know not everyone likes the complexity of Civ, but I and many others actually do. If there were more types of terrain, more resource types, more advances, more units etc etc etc, I think that would make for a pretty great Civ game. Not that I'm against new features or changes to the gameplay that make it better, because I'm not. I do like the hex tile change, ranged archery, simplified messaging, cities defending themselves etc.
It seems like people are scared to say they would love a Civ 4 or 5 with tons of extra "stuff", instead of core gameplay changes, so I'll say it for them. In fact this is the way alot of Civ 4 mods have gone, which only shows that people want "more" without changing basic gameplay.
Thoughts?
