Hail Jon Shafer

[lemmy101]

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I feel I never really addressed three BIG changes to the way Civ plays in my OP.

Global Happiness
Building/Unit/Improvement only Maintenance.
Slider removal

As I said at length in my play-through, these three things are responsible for a lot of the additional strategy found in the non-combat part of the game. All of them technically appearing like simplifications, it's quite startling how much extra they add to the game, rendering bits of the game that used to require less thought into some of the most fundamental decisions on how to succeed at the game.

Thoughts?

 

[Flavorable]

I've always prefered more Civs than space, makes for interesting borders, and tense diplomacy.

So I'll often choose a Duel map with 5 Civs.

 

[lemmy101]

Haha tense is not the word. I've got to try that.

 

[Flavorable]

What I found really fun though, my first Civ clusterf#@k, is bumping the citystates as high as it goes on a duel map.

Talk about a screwed up pangea.

 

[anandus]

I also love Civ 5. Even though I only put in some 10 hours or so, so I'm still getting to grips with it and learning the ropes.

But it's a lovely game and to be honest I really don't get why there are all these complaints?
To me it feels like those people were anticipating the third expansion pack for Civ4 and were disappointed when it turned out to be Civ 5, a different game.

Anyway, props to the makers of Civ 5, I'm absolutely enjoying the game and I'm sure for every bitter complaining person there are at least another hundred who are also enjoying the game.

The new 'ruleset', the 1UPT, the hexes, the maps, abilities, etc really make for a nice fresh and diverse game. The variation for replayability is i lot higher.

2 thumbs up for Shafer and the whole team at Firaxis!

 

[Kid_McHutt]

Man, I hope sincerely you're not anything like this in real life or you must live a pretty depressing lonely existence.

Well, I am that type and I still like things you do The truth is, Devilhunterred is troll. Hungry, ugly one, not the Shrek one

And yes, JS did good job.

 

[JtW]

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I feel I never really addressed three BIG changes to the way Civ plays in my OP.

Global Happiness
Building/Unit/Improvement only Maintenance.
Slider removal

As I said at length in my play-through, these three things are responsible for a lot of the additional strategy found in the non-combat part of the game. All of them technically appearing like simplifications, it's quite startling how much extra they add to the game, rendering bits of the game that used to require less thought into some of the most fundamental decisions on how to succeed at the game.

Thoughts?

I love the Global Happiness. It acts like the stability modifier in EU3. I hated the micromanaging of per-city happiness and health. Now I can see it at a glance. I am more into "historical fiction" than "number crunching" so this is something I welcome.

New style maintenance: I like it as well. It makes building decisions important. In Civ4 I would just keep spamming things because it didn't really matter. One thing I hope they add with a patch, though, is the ability to sell or simply destroy buildings. Esp. with the Puppet mechanic, you are sometimes left with a city generating massive building maintenance costs and you cannot do anything about it.

Slider removal: In Civ 4, you wanted to have your slider at 100% science anyway. And now, if you go on red with the money, it eats off your science as well: so the change isn't as big as it looks. And as to the science being generated by population directly: I like it, esp. because more cities = less social policies, which makes for interesting decisions.

 

[lemmy101]

Puppet mechanic, you are sometimes left with a city generating massive building maintenance costs and you cannot do anything about it.

Ha yeah I hear ya here. With no building deleting I've come across this one a few times. I'm sure that'll get added at some point. At the moment I just count it as an extra encouragement to get them annexed and courtroomed up before they build a whole bunch of crap I have to pay for. Then again they do seem to favour banks and markets, so it's not always bad.

 

[AlexandrosV]

I must agree, to do:
1) fix AI problems
2) gameplay balance issues
3) put an option to enable anomations in MP. Playng lan civ V gives a much worse atmosphere than playng lan civ IV and i don't think it was the purpose of developers. It's easy and FAIR to put an option
4) (with expansions) add a lot more depth( like diversifing food resource, readd pollution, and so on)

 

[JtW]

Ha yeah I hear ya here. With no building deleting I've come across this one a few times. I'm sure that'll get added at some point. At the moment I just count it as an extra encouragement to get them annexed and courtroomed up before they build a whole bunch of crap I have to pay for. Then again they do seem to favour banks and markets, so it's not always bad.

Yeah. It's more like when they run out of things to build, they will start building Barracks and whatnot.

 

[lemmy101]

Another thing is the way they've done the AI. This too I like. I would argue that every mechanic in the game should be exposed to the player somewhere. Every last one. Where every important value comes from, how it's influenced and what the totals are after all the modifiers.

Except AI. Again In Civ IV, because I didn't think any different, I used the AI modifiers to their fullest. I got them to +4 by giving them techs and knew not to bother beyond that, I knew which Civs would have -4 for differing religions and which didn't care so much. Etc. Etc. I exploited them as mechanics not interacted with them as people.

But I would argue that the AI is the one and only system in the game that should be allowed its mystique. I love the way I have to figure out how they feel about me not only from the dialogue, but from their posture and expressions, even body language. They are after all mimicing intelligent opponents. They may need a bit of work in patches, and I'm looking forward to modding in additional interactions, but in principal I approve of the new way.

It was also rather bizarre on Civ IV that two human players would have AI standings with each other. It was funny because in a four player game (all RL friends) I let one of my friends I had allied with know that another had bribed Churchill to go to war with him, purely because in the diplomacy screen friend A had a -2 or whatever saying that friend B had brought a war ally in against him. So as an AI player he knew but as a human one he did not. (though he suspected, after all this is what friend B is like.

That was a bit daft

 

[draxil]

Yes, it's a great game!

 

[xienwolf]

lemmy, you should hang out in Customization forums instead of General It has always been where the "Cool Kids" only poke their heads in briefly to complain that nobody has signed up to write the mod they dreamt up. The rest of us, who stay in there, and rarely come out here, are generally positive, and tend to only complain of the bugs we introduced ourselves and can't get back out

 

[Flavorable]

In Civ 2 GME hotseat, you set your diplomacy meter towards the other player that determines how nice you are towards them, but I always forgot and it defaulted on the highest setting. Whenever I would play with a friend I'd be kicking his ass, only to realize my treasury had magically dissapeared and he was in first place.



Turns out my AI would go out of its way during his turn to give him money.

 

[JtW]

With regard to diplomacy, I concur. I like the "no modifiers" part.

I have my gripes when it comes to combat and expansion AI, though. After a few games, I feel like the computer players don't really use their armies/settlers as effectively as they could for combat and expansion. I hope that they fix it, but I think it is more realistic to expect a mod with good AI than solid patches.

Do you also feel that Prince in Civ5 is easier to beat than Noble in Civ4?

 

[AlexandrosV]

The AI has some problems but great potential: it seems to really be going for a victory condition now and each civ looks like choose it considering it's situation and territory. In a game Gandhi declared war on China... figures! (i didn't apply the random pers. opt)
I don't think it's so easy, with emperor it's has been really challenging so on it was a defeat.
i agree with the fact that diplo should stay a mistery, secrets and opportunities, not a matter of numbers, +1 right of passage plus a resource for 100 turn and you have a friend... AI must try to win, always, every civ, not just helping you or try to stop you, like tribal villages and barbarians, how it was in civ IV.

In civ IV i tryed to win a few times: i felt like playng alone with some ostacles (AI) even with 5 years patchs, expansions and mods.. so i was playng for victory points, where AI civs could compete. in CIV V it's different notice that.

 

[dannythefool]

What I found really fun though, my first Civ clusterf#@k, is bumping the citystates as high as it goes on a duel map.

Talk about a screwed up pangea.

Haha, sounds like Europe during most of its history.

Shame that the HRE is not there anymore, or we could have an RPC with max city states and a goal of "uniting" them all under one ruler. Maybe Bismarck would work too, he did something similar for Germany.

 

[Flavorable]

Whats HRE?

 

[lemmy101]

With regard to diplomacy, I concur. I like the "no modifiers" part.

I have my gripes when it comes to combat and expansion AI, though. After a few games, I feel like the computer players don't really use their armies/settlers as effectively as they could for combat and expansion. I hope that they fix it, but I think it is more realistic to expect a mod with good AI than solid patches.

Do you also feel that Prince in Civ5 is easier to beat than Noble in Civ4?

Possibly, a little... I don't know really, yet. But then it's all relative anyway. It wouldn't surprise me if they shifted the name 'Normal' and 'Easy' down slightly since they were hoping to bring in a new audience.

Easy to us and Easy to a new player are wildly different things.

 

[JtW]

The AI has some problems but great potential: it seems to really be going for a victory condition now and each civ looks like choose it considering it's situation and territory.

In civ IV i tryed to win a few times: i felt like playng alone with some ostacles (AI) even with 5 years patchs, expansions and mods.. so i was playng for victory points, where AI civs could compete. in CIV V it's different notice that.

You are so right! I love the fact that finally the AI plays to win. It could do it more efficiently, but the pure paradigm shift is such a big step forward!

I also had the feeling of playing alone in previous Civs. Not so much anymore. I hadn't given it any thought before I read your post. Good point.