Extreme Tech Review (5. Aug 2010)

[Calouste]

You are aware that there was a version between Civ3 and Civ5 called Civ4 that was actually released and in which corruption and pollution had already been removed?

I thought I'd just ask.

 

[Intellectus]

You are aware that there was a version between Civ3 and Civ5 called Civ4 that was actually released and in which corruption and pollution had already been removed?

I thought I'd just ask.

Yeah I know Civilization 4 was released. Never bought it but played it and enjoyed it.Civilization 5 definetly looks like it will be good. I'm just saying that we should have more complexity such as those things from previous games before civ 4.

 

[Calouste]

Yeah I know Civilization 4 was released. Never bought it but played it and enjoyed it.Civilization 5 definetly looks like it will be good. I'm just saying that we should have more complexity such as those things from previous games before civ 4.

One man's complexity is another man's tedious micromanagement.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Corruption and Pollution.

The way you've described them, they add nothing to gameplay.

 

[bhavv]

The way you've described them, they add nothing to gameplay.

I didnt mind them, however corruption basically made me never want to use older forms of governmeant, and hhile they reduced pollution in Civ 4, they also added in health and religion.

But religion is being taken out of Civ 5 too.

 

[Bouben]

I will really miss religion. One had to think whether take it and have those bonuses but become enemy of someone or leave it but be quite safely neutral.

 

[JonoLith]

Competely disagree. Civilization V has been dumbed-down but not to the extent like other games in the past. This is still a big, sprawling game just Civilization 1 was. It is more refined of course but there are two things I abosultely think should have been kept in.

In my experience, when someone uses the words "Dumbed Down" they tend to believe the changes that have happened are bad. People who like the changes will use words like "Simplified" or "Streamlined" or "Elegantly Adjusted". Right off the bat we understand that you're not a fan.

Corruption and Pollution. Corruption was everyone's enemy but it is a natural part of how human states are run. It provided a challenge for players and forced them to take certain actions to combat it. You say that this is tiresome or it gets away from the 'big' picture.

The difficulty with both corruption and pollution is that they were difficult to control. They made sense conceptually, but from a gameplay perspective were largely random and frustrating.

Big picture be damned. I want every city to be indivdual and micromanaged to the microscopic level(Well, a level that is reasonable for a gam not a simulation like simcity 4 with water pipes, crime and aging populations).

One must be careful that micro-management be viable, but not necessary in a game. A lack of player control will frustrate people who wish to delve deeper into the game, but forcing too much player control will frustrate people who just want the game to go.

Pollution. A part of daily life that cannot be ignored. Pollution in civilization 3 showcased the issues that arose with the industrial revolution. One cannot just build tons of coal power plants forever and expect not for there to be consquences. The player must micromanage and determine which cities benefit from a heavy industrial transition and also determine which ones do not.

But what consequences? This is, after all, a game, and a strategy game at that. Any consequences that get dealt out need to be perceived and understood. Randomly making certain tiles useless is a bad way to go about that, as it is well without the player's control.

One of the nice touches to heavy industrialization was global warming. Now, I don't necessarily agree with all the theories says but the planet is warming and humanity is having some impact. The appearance of tiles turning to desert demonstrated the consquences of the industrial era that the game world just went through.

But from a gameplay standpoint, potentially disastrous. In truth, you aren't making any kind of choice between "Causing Global Warming" or "Not Causing Global Warming." Global warming, in the game, is a side-effect of advancement. If you choose not to advance your civilization, then you will fall behind those that move forward, and global warming will most likely happen anyway. This makes it a moot choice, and a frustrating game mechanic at that.

These two things added much to Civilization 3, a game I never master but enjoyed at warlord(I am pretty bad but I try very hard and I love the complexity). They punished the player and I think that is important in any sort of game. Reward the player yes but make sure you make the failures hurt hard. Just like in chess.

But in chess, all failures and losses are perceivable and not at all random. Imagine playing a game of chess where, every now and then, a tile explodes and kills whatever unit was in it. Most times it will take out either a pawn, or nothing, statistically speaking, but there will certainly be the times where it takes out a Rook, or a Queen, or the King. This would make the game of chess a pointless game for children, and not the foundational building block of strategic gaming as we've come to know it.

 

[NYHunter]

Now in Civ V it looks like they have gotten rid of a lot of that complexity. Stuff is hidden from you. Stuff is done for you. Less complexity means less thinking, which, as a cynic, I would assume means a more appealing game for the masses. So until proved otherwise by the demo, I stand by my verdict that Civ V is "dumbed down".

What on earth is hidden or done for you? If you are talking about the user interface it is only removing information you dont need at the time and in an E3 video interview Jon Shafer made it clear that anyone who wants to see that information will still be able to.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

What on earth is hidden or done for you? If you are talking about the user interface it is only removing information you dont need at the time and in an E3 video interview Jon Shafer made it clear that anyone who wants to see that information will still be able to.

You can't see what is not in the game any more.

I'm going to have to wait for the demo, which is a first for me and Civ. Too much talk about war, too many important things like religion removed, and still no word on the Mac version. This doesn't look good.

 

[Peng Qi]

That is what I was most afraid of. The review makes it very clear that this is a "dumbed down" version, though they are too polite to put it that way. Now I know I'm not going to buy it when it comes out: I don't want another war simulator. I think they really, really need to make that demo good to get my interest back.

That doesn't sound "dumbed down" to me. It just sounds like they shifted the focus slightly away from SimCity and slightly toward Panzer General.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Check the picture below.



That is what the reviewer stated about combat odds :

"Civilization V also makes it easier to know what your chances are of winning any given battle. Just position the mouse cursor over a nearby enemy, and a window will pop up in the lower-left corner telling you what sort of outcome you can expect. This isn't always 100 percent accurate—on a couple of occasions, we saw bloody defeats in what we were led to expect would be decisive victories—but it's a big help, especially if you're still learning the ropes of the game."

I already saw that picture. It's not very interesting though because it's a ranged attack and there's no chance of defender death (based on current info on how ranged bombardment works).

The fact the reviewer said it wasn't 100% accurate suggests the reviewer did not understand that the info being displayed to him/her was a best estimate of the outcome. I'm still assuming that combat will have random components to it unless I see proof to the contrary.

 

[CultureManiac]

The way you've described them, they add nothing to gameplay.

Corruption and pollution added absolutely NOTHING to the gameplay of civ3, and pollution was such a pain in the tush I was more than glad to see it gone - but you are still punished for building polluting plants in civ4 through decreased health. So the consequences were still there but playability is up.

I'm not sure how so many here can keep complaining that better playability means the game is being dumbed down. This is just one example of how the game can still have substance and complexity yet function more smoothly.

Let's face it, civ4, is far more involved and there are many more factors to deal with than civ1, yet in many ways it's playability is far superior.

This has been my favorite game for 20 years and if they bust it I'll scream as loud as anyone, but considering where they've taken the franchise since Stalin taught us all how to build a stack of doom and place it right beside your city before declaring war (remember the days of no cultural boundaries?) I think they've done a fantastic job of moving forward with each edition. I'll probably cry over a few favorites gone, and be happy to see other hassles taken care off, but until I play the game I'm giving Sid the benefit of the doubt.

 

[agoodfella]

i wonder if we will have the option to simply show a single graphic for units for the following reasons:

1) it hopefully will reduce the graphics "payload" on my PC
2) i really don't care about "eye candy" in the form of fighting / war mongering graphics

i hope they have an option to do this? what do you all think?

 

[Ikael]

Ugh, I am really, really not liking the sound of this AT ALL.

First, I want to be in control. I don't need a game to make decisions for me. Cities expanding "naturally" instead of however the hell me, their supreme leader, wants them to? Research pacts that gives techs RANDOMLY? What. The. . Is that .

Second, it seems that every other aspects of the game have been marginalized and putted in service of war. Culture only devoted to social policies and a dash of golden age? Trade routes being just the connection between cities and their capital? No economic management or whatsoever?

And third: so, ok, so, several aspects like religion, health, revolts and a looong etc, that did NOT bog down the game a la civ3 polution are gone... and then nothing is added in replacement in order to add a bit of complexity? Water, inmigration, language, nothing, nada? Am I only going to worry about war, war, and more war? Sorry, this sounds more and more like Civilization Revolutions, Sid Meier forbid.

If this Civ V is a civ for warmongers, count me out. We already have Total War for that, thank you very much. I always played the civilization saga in order to feel like a supreme ruler, controlling every aspect of my civ, not in order to feel like a puny general as in other countless strategy titles. I am going to give this game the benefit of the doubt for I love this saga, but if the last paragraph of the review is true, I fear that I will have to wait 7 more years until I get my civilization fix.

 

[bjbrains]

I don't get what you're saying Ikael. You aren't being internally consistent. Culture actually means more than it did in previous civs, or are you forgetting? (It doesn't even directly *deal* with golden ages). They've already addressed why religion didn't make it in, and health/revolts were just other forms of happiness (aka, population limitation). As to complexity: Social policies are 10x more complex than civics or governments. There has been time devoted to warfare, but that's because warfare in previous civ games was a chore, especially as the game dragged on. The point was not to 'make war the only tactic', but to make it actually interesting and enjoyable.

 

[asix79]

I don't get what you're saying Ikael. You aren't being internally consistent. Culture actually means more than it did in previous civs, or are you forgetting? (It doesn't even directly *deal* with golden ages). They've already addressed why religion didn't make it in, and health/revolts were just other forms of happiness (aka, population limitation). As to complexity: Social policies are 10x more complex than civics or governments. There has been time devoted to warfare, but that's because warfare in previous civ games was a chore, especially as the game dragged on. The point was not to 'make war the only tactic', but to make it actually interesting and enjoyable.

From what I understand of the implementation of social policies, it reminds me of Europa Universalis III: In Europa Universalis, the player has a series of sliders with which he gradually chooses the nature of his nation's government and social programs, among other things. The choices are made very slowly -- ten years at a time, I believe -- and the sliders offer a great deal of flexibility to the player.

The decision Firaxis made in implementing social policies, I think, brings a degree of added complexity to the game, which is good. It offers more realism than simply being allowed to reap the benefits of a civic change after a single turn of anarchy.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm still a bit sad about the lack of religions, but otherwise CiV looks good.

 

[MadmanAtW]

The fact the reviewer said it wasn't 100% accurate suggests the reviewer did not understand that the info being displayed to him/her was a best estimate of the outcome. I'm still assuming that combat will have random components to it unless I see proof to the contrary.

Much as I hate to disagree with you, I read that as letting the reader know that there is a random component- that the popup cannot be viewed as being definitive. He says "what the chances are" and "what outcome you can expect", not what the outcome will be. But that's just how I read it. I do agree that combat looks like it will have random factors to it.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

That doesn't sound "dumbed down" to me. It just sounds like they shifted the focus slightly away from SimCity and slightly toward Panzer General.

And I guess that is supposed to make me feel better ?

I have played game after game of Civ IV without firing a shot in anger (expect against barbarians, but they don't count). Some of those games were great. Now it looks like everything is aimed at war, more war, and after that, some more war.

I'm not a pacifist in any sense of the word -- I'm having lots of fun blowing stuff up in StarCraft 2 -- but Civ always left the victory strategy up to you, science, culture, diplomacy, or war (except if Monty was on the same continent). This is a pretty and flashy game, but it also looks like a war simulator in Civ's clothing. To manhandle a famous quote: Other Civs had a military, but this is looking like a military with a Civ.

(I might want to work on that a bit more.)

 

[PieceOfMind]

Much as I hate to disagree with you, I read that as letting the reader know that there is a random component- that the popup cannot be viewed as being definitive. He says "what the chances are" and "what outcome you can expect", not what the outcome will be. But that's just how I read it. I do agree that combat looks like it will have random factors to it.

Yes, and he may have thought the answers to:
"What the chances are"
and
"What outcome you can expect"
to be 100% in the case of the popup 'Major Victory' (as opposed to, say, Minor Victory) and also that many people in everyday language don't use the word 'expect' in the same way it's used in mathematics.

Regardless of any of that though, from what I've seen so far the 'combat odds' (if you'd call them that) that we've seen in screenshots while simplified look like they have the potential to confuse even more than in the past. If they stay as they are now, I will expect we will get just as many, if not more, complaints or accusations about the game's RNG or AI cheating etc. once the game is out. Suppose 'Major Victory' translates to 99% combat odds. I think that situation would be even worse than it corresponding to 80% odds, as in the former people would build up an even stronger expectation that they should always win the battle.