Gameplay-wise, what do you prefer? Complexity or Overview?

[mitsho]

What Gameplay Philosophy do you prefer? Are you an early game-player or a late game-player? Are you a Micromanager or a Strategist? Do you prefer CivRev over the Total Realism Mod?

I personally am a fan of Rhyes and Fall of Civilization. The Mod is already smaller regarding the empires you play than usual civ, nevertheless, the latter times get too tedious for me to play, partially due to the longer loading times, but also due to the more options and the increased micromanagment.

As I see it, Civilization is a game that starts you with few units, techs, cities and options, the more the game advances, more options come into play: Religion, Government, Techs, more ressources, more unit types (siege, flight), corporations, United Nations. This grows exponentionally so that the late game is inherently more complex than the starts. For me, this results in the fact that I mostly play the ancient and medieval times. Which I find is a pity.

So what do you prefer, a game with few options or one with a big variety? Keep in mind the few options don't necessarily have to mean less "content". There could be ways for example to "automate" certain aspects later in the game (like workers!!!) or generally, who says that a medieval army can consist out of 5 knights, 3 pikeman and 2 longbowman while a modern needs to compromise 4 battleships, 15 tanks, 7 artillery, 2 spies, 4 bombers and 8 infantry?

I personally advocate for LESSER units/decisions etc. even in the late game. I know I personally will be most probably in the minority in this forum, but nevertheless, I wanted to ask people in here. Because "core questions" like this are in my opinion what is the biggest deficiency with Civ. (which the developers actually seemed to have recognized themselves with the Civ Rev - Franchise which unfortunately only goes the way of "dumbing down" and does not offer a realy solution?

And this is for me the bigger question than which civ will be in (hint: more interesting would be how the civilizations play! )

 

[Steenberger]

I am mostly into the details. I enjoy micro-managing as long as there is a clear goal on the horizon - such as a specific tech or wonder

 

[AlpsStranger]

Each click or decision by the player should be loaded with as much meaning as possible. There should be as little rote "balance the sliders every turn for maximum effect" as humanly possible. That is my personal opinion crystallized.

EDIT: As an owner of the game, I can say that Revolution was pared down a little too far. Despite my stated ideal, Revolution was a little too bare. Something almost exactly between Civ4 and Revolution that retained as much strategic richness as possible would be my ideal.

 

[sappy]

I'd like to see greater micromanagement, but with the ability to automate the actions if i'm not feeling that fidderly.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Personally, I don't like micro-management and want more "big" decisions... but CivIV hits a sweet spot for me (at least the first half of the game, moving and using huge stacks is annoying).

Furthermore, there are two kinds of micromanagement for me:
1) Actual management: Things like setting the build orders of your cities, carefully considering how you specialise an unit and so on.
2) Stupid micro-ing: Managing hammer overflows etc., pre-chopping forests - they're click exercises, they don't require a lot of thought or decisions, you just need to do them.

If it's the former, I don't mind it (and that's why I largely like CivIV - there are many decisions, but most of them matter and are real choices) and wouldn't mind having more choices of that kind. The latter - good riddance (CivIV's abstract system of handling corruption/unhappiness etc. is a lot better than CivI-III). That includes handling big stacks and 30+ units.

And I have to say I have great trust in Firaxis' ability to do so. CivIV was excellent in that regard and is only the result of a steady progression since CivI... and CivRev wasn't released for PCs because it was carefully crafted to be a CivLite that you can play in half the time without having a mouse and keyboard - to me, it sounds like it hit the target pretty well, just as CivIV did (longer strategy on PC).

Cheers, LT.

 

[mitsho]

I actually haven't player revolution, so thanks for the opinion, Alpsstranger. And second your first statement.

@sappy this would be fine for me, if the automation process works fine and does not produce odd things. Still, there are some problems like "competition games in multiplayer or contests" and when you have to turn the automate of to reach the best results. The second thing coming to mind would be that even if the units were all automated, they are still on the map and crowd it, and automating in wars seems dangerous and doesn't remove the "unnecessary complexity" thing.

Am I the only one astonished by the poll result?

EDIT: Yes, finally answer posts )

 

[Loppan Torkel]

More options, but less micromanagement. The early periods are much more fun than the endgame.

I'm a bit curious what they'll do with the workers. Will it be reworked and more abstract?

 

[AlpsStranger]

Am I the only one astonished by the poll result?

I am pretty astonished. Even though the "realists" are outnumbering us it's not by nearly the amount I expected. I figured the fiddler-crabs would have us 10:1 on this particular forum.

 

[Bluetooth]

I like the complexity of the Civilization series but I also believe that more is not always better. We saw an indication of "more of everything" in BTS. The design team behind BTS was so eager to give the fans all they wanted and in IMHO it was a little bit too much of everything. But I definitely don't want a dumb-down Civilization.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Personally I love micro management.
I also love being almost overwhelmed with options just as long as each has a specific purpose.
This said, I do not approve of pointless overcomplexity like some ideas here. *cough*germs*cough*


The way I see it, games need to be exactly as complex as it feels good for them to be.

Firstly you must always be able to do everything that seems logical for you to do. A game should newer put you in a situation where the simplest and most logical solution to a plot problem is impossible due to game mechanics.

There is no need for a million of complex commands that you will newer use (like a Star Trek Bridge commander mod that lets you set your warp factor before jumping, but the mod is made for skirmish play only, who ever jumps in a single sector skirmish???) just for the sake of them but on the other hand it is unforgivable for things like a starship not to be able to fire blindly forward, for a race car not to have a hand brake or for a sniper not to have some sort of sighting without the scope (CS fans will remember this).
For example, a racing game I used to play had the option for a manual or an automatic gear box but no control options for the individual gears. So you only had the "shift gear" button that shifted seemingly randomly. Things like that are unforgivable.

Another thing that must newer occur is for the mechanics are counterintuitive. For a character to die from a 15cm drop or not to be able to walk over a 10cm tall fence is silly. *cough*global warming*cough*
If you don't want someone to walk over put a god dam brick wall and paint a clear warning about it.

The mechanics of the game must also not be hidden from the players. I preferred KOTOR where you were basically told how each calculation was done and what your stats meant than Dragon Age where you have to ask your self: "How does 65 points in attack actually translate to the game engine?"


In the end, complexity is probably the most difficult part of the game to determine. Add to little and the player will not be immersed into the story (Mass Effect comes to mind) but add to much and you end up looking like you tried to pad the game out with unneeded details.


Essentially, every feature needs to have a clearly defined and explained function in the game. If it is there just because it "is" without any logical backing for it, than it is to much but if something isn't there where you feel it should be than it is to little.

 

[GrayInvisible]

I find lots of Micromanagement annoying. You can have a good amount of content and strategic possibility without tons and tons micromanagement. In fact, I believe that less micromanagement allows the player to focus more on grand strategy, which I find cooler and more fun. I found Civ 4 to be pretty good, but I'm sure they could optimize it further.

You can have less micromanagement without dumbing down, you just add more broad concepts for the player to implement, which makes it complex, but more about knowing when or where to implement certain ideas and strategies, and less on making perfect numbers come out, or being patient enough to move tons of units around.

 

[Auncien]

Long, complex, micro-intensive games are best. I like to spend hours setting up the perfect grand plan and then execute it.The more game systems to think about, tile activities to perform, units to build, techs to research, opponents to manage etc. the better. You can't put too much into the game.

I did not like Civilization: Revolution.

 

[Seventh Child]

I think there needs to be a nice balance between the too. Complexity and a wide variety of options is great - so long as it is intuitive and unobtrusive to UI. Fiddling around with all 45 units in a stack of doom is not cool. Fine tuning your cities with specialists is cool, but having to go around each city and jump into the city screen then click around on the + and - buttons is not cool.

Micromanagement is something of a necessary evil, if you can't fine tune some aspects of your strategy it's easy to feel frustrated. But too much of it can lead to boredom or tedium. I've been playing quite a few multiplayer games recently and when someone is at war or are messing around trying to find a perfect balance in preparation for a war or a wonder or GP or something, the other players can easily get bored.

There's also a good article in the modding forum for Civ IV which talks about design and I agree with the majority of it. In that post it makes the point that flavour and complexity is good, so long as it has a WELL DEFINED spot in the mechanics of the game. It's been said that whilst options are a good thing, too many options leaves you with even less options because some will naturally be stronger choices than the others. Take a look at some of the civics like Caste System (very niche) or Environmentalism (which exists purely to get you pissed off at the UN) in Civ IV. Firaxis must have understood this, given that they are throwing out the civics system entirely.

 

[Quintillus]

What Gameplay Philosophy do you prefer? Are you an early game-player or a late game-player? Are you a Micromanager or a Strategist? Do you prefer CivRev over the Total Realism Mod?

I guess I'd say I'm a middle-game player - early rushes are boring, but waiting forever to start a war usually is, too. In other words, I go for the win at the opportune moment, not always early or always late.

I'd consider myself both a micromanager and strategist? You have to have the grand strategy, but the way you beat the opponent is attention to detail. Taking away the strategy would make the game pointless, but taking away the ability to micromanage would take away the fun as well.

I've never played either of those two, but I heavily suspect I'd prefer the Total Realism Mod. In large part I prefer Civ3 over Civ4 because Civ4 lost the epic feel of Civ3 along with several of the realistic features (no ranged bombardment? come on!).

When it comes to micromanagement, I should clarify:

*The ability to choose what you build in cities, what terrain improvements you make, exactly how you position your unimts, what you research, exactly how you spend your finances is excellent (one of my annoyances with Civ4 was that I could never quite figure out how unit maintenance was calculated). But I'm okay with options that automate this - auto-explore and auto-worker-improve, for example. I even use the auto-explore one frequently. But there should be the option for manual control.

*There are "micromanagement" parts that just plain aren't that fun. Things like having to tell all 25 of your bombers to bomb a city or stack of units individually in Civ3, the problems that result from inadequate happiness (riots) or treasury funding (sales) in Civ3. The auto-carryover on research in Civ4 was also a nice addition, as was the shield carryover.

That said, I like the basic concept of civics. I just found it to be poorly implemented. Basically, civics are a way to customize the government beyond the simple "government type" in Civ3. But the fundamental problem for me was that you could only have one in each category. I'd prefer a system such as in the game Tropico, where there are a number of edicts that can be enacted, and they are only mutually exclusive when they really are contradictory.

Despite the elimination of many of the "unfun micromanagement" parts of Civ3 in Civ4, I found the elimination of some of the "fun micromanagement" parts, such as city bombardment, and the loss of the epic feel made Civ4 less fun on the whole. So while Civ5 probably will be fun, I'm probably not going to rush out and buy it the first week, either. I want a game that can bring back the epic feel of Civ3, and it's too early to tell if Civ5 can do that.