How can you like this series so much ?

[FeiLing]

There are only 2 types of players that keep playing this, the "Immersives" and the "Achievers".

The achievers want to keep doing better and better at this game.

The immersives on the other hand look for pleasure foremost, often with a interest in history and roleplaying.

Seems like the same situation as in about every other game (for e.g. StarCraft), where there is one player that only ever does multiplayer 1v1 and never even touched the campaign and those that only play the singleplayer stuff and maybe a 4v4 or funmap from time to time.

However in Civ the Singleplayer vs AI on random maps is more comparable to an MP game and what is left for them roleplayers are the campaigns/DLCs... or custom maps.

 

[blasto]

So I'm going to have to ask as I would LOVE to know;

List some games that you think have a better replay-ability over the Civ series? To me, Civilizations, no matter the version, has an almost timelessness to it that can never get old.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

I'd say the major difference between SC2 and CiV in that respect is it's focus, while SC2 is almost completely focussed on the achievers (the WoL campaign is a joke, written more like a Michael Bay script then the intricate storylines of SC/W3 glory and the custom game system is broken due to battlenet 2.0 being written by the guy who made the Xbox live system) while CiV tries to serve both parties but fails for both, the achievers for having an incredibly low skill ceiling and the immersives for having homicidal AI and all the other buzzkills.
One party that remains (which I did not talk about in the previous post because they don't qualify as "people who keep playing this game") is the casuals, who are the main party that got lucky with CiV as the simplification made for a far more accessable game, the technology stick, social policies that only give advantages and are very straightforward, AI sucking at combat and the very strong focus on war.

Ofcourse SC2 also has a certain amount of casual players but I believe it is a lot smaller percentage of their demographic then CiV, the minimal skill ceiling on multiplayer is a lot higher, gameplay is more stressfull and hectic then pretty much any turn based game and has a fairly intricate control scheme, the enemy of all casual players.
And ofcourse there's my personal observations amongst my friends, not that that holds any empirical significance.

And I don't think the concept of a Civ game has to clash with immersion, CIV for instance was highly condusive for immersive play, this is ofcourse a subjective qualifier but one I think resounds pretty well the majority of the people who came here from CIV, it seems that John Shafer simply had a much stronger focus on aspects like gameplay and casual player compatibility that immersion was a very low priority if not forgotten at all.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

SC2 is also a real-time strategy game that (after basic difficulties) becomes an APM (actions per minute) game that requires VERY good keyboard skills. You can play Civ with 1 hand and never on any timers unless you do MP. the split second decisions in SC2 are pretty complicated. they have a world-wide professional league that people make good living wages at.

 

[Tabarnak]

OP should read this thread.

I repeat :

If you don't have fun, it doesn't worth it. Whatever you do or like.

Simple as that. Relaxing or not.

 

[ProximaCentauri]

Man, post #20 is top 5 of the most ridiculous things I've ever read.

First, let us summarize it in a funny, but accurate way :
"There are 2 types of people.
The stupid meaningless autists on a side, trying to give meaning to their lives.
The sensitive hedonists, who seek wisdom in history, on the other side.
Hopefully I belong to the latter, the elite class, leaving the stupid mass in the former."
Clearly there's some 2-cent psychology here. Then why not apply these basics to your own opinion first ? And don't you feel you are insulting people instead of making any valid point ?

Second, let me enlighten you with my personal case. For a large variety of things, what I am actually enjoying is the feeling of doing them good. Or doing them better over time. This paradigm helps me improve, plus it's the way I enjoy things, that's the way I relax. Of course there's also a % of the enjoyment (let us call it the enjoyment slider, maybe and idea for Civ6 ?) coming directly from the activity itself.
And all of this has nothing to do with Civ or folding paper not deserving my will to improve, nor with any need to prove anything to anyone.
If you feel improving is the opposite of relaxing, then I'm sorry for the overall evolution of mankind (just joking here, unlike you I won't insult anyone on a taste-basis).

Well, this was probably not worth a post and was maybe off-topic, but I felt a bit insulted (although I had a good laugh). I hesitated between this somewhat long post and the following : "Check your favorite porn channel. Watch people enjoying whipping themselves and learn a lesson about relativity of enjoyment'.

Moderator Action: ...please don't back, please don't respond to posts which are obvious trolling.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

So to summarize your post:
Your a casual player that is still learning the finer details but see yourself as my classification of achiever, hence the rather strong sentiment.
I'm not sure why you see yourself as an achiever, the assumption the entire 2nd paragraph was dedicated to, from your post it is clear you are still improving, considering this games stupidly low skill ceiling that says an awful lot.

I understand your frustration though because you're approaching this like any other game you know well, and most games are too complex to use definitions like that (like SC2 that was discussed before for instance), in the case of CiV it works very well though, when you've played it a bit longer you'll understand.

And relativity of enjoyment is a very good point, as noted before, this is a game designed mainly for casuals, so learning it is simple and the process is fairly enjoyable, when there is nothing more to learn the game turns into dreary mechanical repetitions due to the nihilistic amount of actual choices you make.
Just gotta wait till you're past your learning phase and you'll start seeing the big picture.

 

[Optional]

There are only 2 types of players that keep playing this, the "Immersives" and the "Achievers".

Do you mean this for any kind of strategy game? I think it's a decent observation.
I believe for any version of Civ it goes that the most effective way of playing it only allows you to follow a very thin strategy line, and forgetting about 90% of the game's content.
If you're saying this is a somewhat tunnel visioned approach, then yes, I agree.

The Civ series has never been particularly deep, just look at the strategy section, 90% or more players are picking the same wonders, same techs, same policies for every single game. There's hardly any 'it depends on this' or 'it depends on that' considerations, as there would be in a game with more depth.
There's still hoping an expension will improve things, but until then I have to agree with you.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

The "Achievers" - "Immersives" split is something that happens even outside of strategy games but is by no means a rule, the only thing you need for the immersives is a compelling storyline, be it created by themselves (Civ, Paradox games, Spore, Sims) or predetermined (Skyrim, Half Life, Starcraft and most games that exist).
While the achievers effectively focus more on gameplay elements, creating the challenge their gaming experience is centered around, the skill ceiling of the game in question is usually one of the deciding factors in their enjoyment, people that like to be challenged usually do so in every genre of games they play, but what is considered a challenge is variable from person to person.
Personally I find it hard to understand how people can find this game challenging after you find out that playing effectively basically means following build orders and the same tactics over and over and over again, this is ofcourse excluding those that set insane external challenges (12 civ small pangea deity, etc), but even that feels more like raising your chances of arbitrarily dying then requiring more skill from you.

To get back to the distinctions though, if we take SC2, with a terrible storyline it is hardly any interest for immersives, but highly enjoyable for any achiever and if we look at for instance a pro SC2 custom map player (Dota for instance, but in Warcraft 3 there where even TD tournaments), the skill ceiling for these games is very low so they are hardly appealing for most achievers, being pro in a game played by casuals would make them spirited casuals? Failed achievers?
The exclusive distinction works for some examples but it was mostly focussed on Civ, the only place I've noticed a similar split is in the Paradox Forums, who's games for obvious reasons attract the achievers, immersives but due to it's rather complex nature, unlike CiV, hardly any casuals.

 

[ProximaCentauri]

Hi Derpy,
Why I see myself an achiever ?
You originally defined achievers as
"[guys that] want to keep doing better and better at this game",
followed by some so-called psy interpretation, and that's it.
So I can't be wrong with arguing about "doing better" in my reply, using your own short definition.

I consider myself still in a learning phase, yeah, but I played for like a few months. Let me make something clear : I don't play Civ5, this one bored me after a few weeks, then I discovered Civ4, I only play 4 since then (except a few games when new patches came out, but it didn't fix my disappointment). Here I can easily imagine we might share a lot of opinions about 4 vs 5.

Plus, my post was more of a "hot reaction" to what I read as nonsense and insults, something I was moderated for.
I mean, who is going to disagree that in a strategy game with some flavour (historical flavour, god-like flavour, whatever), some play for the strategy part, some for the flavour, and some for both ? That's just obvious.
Let me just insist on the BOTH strategy + flavour part before leaving.
Artificial categorisation leads to nonsense at best, hell at worst. You artificially split the gamers, but if I wanted pure strategy, optimization and reflexion I don't think I would play Civ at all. I would just go back to the real-life beaker-per-turns I produce to burn my neurons more efficiently, or something else. So were am I in your classification ?
Then you made other posts, and they seem to start to leave the path of oversimplification, which pleases me.

See you,
Prox

 

[Volstag]

You played one game, you played all.

You can say the same about any other game.

-V

 

[Nevyn]

Naokaukodem: Why are you always restarting the same thread all over? We get it. You don't like Civ5. Duly noted. We get that now. Next!

 

[PhilBowles]

Beside the groundbreaking principle, what's left of Civilization ?

You played one game, you played all.

You could say the same about most games. Particularly the more popular shoot-em-up/beat-em-up types. Few things are as tedious as 'farming' in World of Warcraft, in my experience, for example.

I see no reason why this shouldn't be more and more boring with time.

Really, I've played Settler diff.level Civ5 games lately, it was fun but boring around the end, especially if military is involved. Now I just played a King diff.level game, man, it's boring but from the start ! Everything is so slow... You know you have to build the National College, but you have to build libraries in every of your cities first..

Which is one library if you have one city, two if you have two, seven if you have seven... How many cities do you want when you reach a position where you can build the College? Fewer mean it's cheaper and you need fewer libraries, but at the expense of expanding early. Which is better in your situation? It will, of course, vary with the game, your starting position, your choice of civilization...

you know you have to build colosseums and markets in every of your cities also in order to compete...

No you don't. Happiness buildings affect the whole empire, so it doesn't matter where you build them. How many you build is dictated by how much unhappiness you have - which in turn will vary depending on how many cities you settle, how many different luxuries you can gain access to, which social policies you choose...

A market in a big city with lots of commerce will be as productive as several markets in smaller cities. Which is best for your situation? Do you have a single commerce hub with lots of resources a river? Do you have production-heavy cities with hills and forests that can't produce that much gold, so a market wouldn't be very useful there?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive to that point to consider Civilization other than a collection of simplistic, unfun and boring mechanics anymore. Me too I was pleased by the combat animations ! They were very good ! Me too I was pleased by the nice graphics ! But after ? Does it really have just this to offer ? Well it seems that yes. Civilization 5 is only an update of the original game, as have been Civ2, Civ3, Civ4, etc...

This is why it's called Civilization rather than something else... People tend to cry, even scream, foul when changes even as limited as those between Civ 4 and Civ 5 come along - anything that made it play 'not like Civilization' would be a dealbreaker.

Is Civilization "unfun" or boring? To you apparently, to many others no. This is subjective.

Is Civilization simplistic? Ultimately, yes to some degree. In any essentially single-player strategy game, particularly one like Civ in which interaction with and ability to derail other players' strategies is more constrained than in, say, chess, you are ultimately going to run up against the inevitability of one or two optimal strategies that are always the best route to victory. But it's plain even from your limited testimony that you haven't begun to reach that stage yet - Civilization is somewhat simplistic, but far less so than you're making out. And not all of the national wonders are as necessary as the National College - sometimes you will have situations where you will need to decide whether you should go for a particular one.

So let me ask you something... are you really a fan ? How this can be ? Did you played every iteration of the series and took, objectively or even subjectively, the same pleasure each time ?

Yes indeed - and indeed I can say that having played both Civ IV and Civ V concurrently, so can directly compare my experience with the two over the same time period.

Come on, if you answer 'yes' to this question, I really want you to tell me something : how can this be ?

What do you find in the different iterations of the series that renew your pleasure on intact ? Don't you feel you are playing the same game over and over (beside the little mechanics twits which are lame), without major changes ? What is making your feeling ?

Yes, I feel I'm playing the same game over and over - which is exactly *why* I like each version. Civ V, for instance, is mechanically more different from other games in the series than any of its predecessors have been from one another - however it feels pretty much exactly the same game when playing it. If I didn't want to play the same game over and over I'd only have played the original Civilization once and then never played again. It's a stupid question, I'm afraid - what makes wanting to play Civ IV and Civ V any different from wanting to play Civ IV multiple times? It's the same game, but the gaming experience is different every time.

What games do you like to play? Do you like to play them only once?

As a "Civ fan" myself (whatever it means), but a delusioned one (yes Civilization series exists to be up to date graphically, not to evolve)

This is true of every game franchise in existence. In almost exactly two months Blizzard will be releasing Diablo III, a game which proudly boasts of being nearly identical (or, in marketing terms, of retaining popular elements) to a game that was released at the turn of the century, which itself was nearly identical to a game that was released in the 1990s. They recently released a sequel to Starcraft, another '90s game, and promptly got roundly criticised by members of the fanbase by not making a very similar game similar enough for their tastes - exactly the same criticisms get levelled against Civ V by Civ IV fans here.

 

[PhilBowles]

One needs to make choices. If you play the same civ and the same map and the same strategy all over again, of course it can become boring. Even more so if your 'strategy' is to "build every single building and wonder and fully research the tech tree and then at some point at around turn 350-450 win by anything but domination" - it's boring because you didn't make any choices.

This is possibly particularly true in Civ V. One thing I feel from comparing with Civ IV is that, in Civ IV, civilizations are designed around playstyles, while in Civ V they are designed around win conditions - Babylon is particularly tightly tailored to science victory, for instance, Greece to diplomatic, and while they provide strong bonuses when played for other victory conditions, you clearly gain most out of them when shooting for 'their' victory conditions.

By contrast, I can't as effectively play for a quick science victory as Pericles in Civ IV as I can as Suryavarman - on paper, double production speed for both libraries and universities should make a science victory a cinch, particularly with the GP bonus, however Pericles does nothing to favour expansion and can ultimately struggle to maintain the population growth necessary to maximise research output, while I like to expand early and build granaries to promote rapid population growth. I also don't particularly play GP or Wonder-based strategies. Another player may find Pericles easier to take advantage of, but struggle to control the happiness and health issues that arise earlier with the Khmer. etc. etc.

With grand strategy games (and historic games) like Civilization V or Paradox games like Europa Universalis III or Crusader Kings II i always try to roleplay the nation or civilization i'm playing.

Was playing Civ IV as Pericles the other day, and in the ancient or classical era I was given the "build a fleet of Triremes" quest. I was thrilled. (For those who don't know why, look up the Polypenessian War). Annoyed today that I was beaten to building Angkor Wat, as Suryavarman II, in Angkor Wat.

The achievers want to keep doing better and better at this game, beating all the difficulties with or without added criteria, I personally find this approach meaningless as it tries to make a skill or an art from what should be a means of relaxing. Somewhat like someone who is a master at folding paper airplanes or a skill as niche and autistic like that. Moderator Action: It's not appropriate to describe other forum users in this way.

Non-moderator action: It's also not appropriate to use 'autistic' as a perjorative, any more than it would be to describe the above as a 'gay' way of looking at things, for example.

More relevantly to the point at hand, Derpy Hooves is making a mistake in assuming that 'skill' and 'relaxing' are necessarily separable for everyone. Those of us who treat the game as a skill exercise do so because practising our skills is a form of relaxation, not (at least certainly not in my case, and I suspect not in the majority) because it represents "something to prove". When I relax by playing guitar, I do so to increase my skill. When I relax by taking photographs, I gain the most pleasure from photographic opportunities that increase my skill. Diving is a very relaxing activity, yet it's essentially impossible to dive without getting better at it on each occasion... If developing a skill is something you find stressful, you're probably doing it wrong...

Man, post #20 is top 5 of the most ridiculous things I've ever read.

Is the comment in post 23 that Starcraft 1 had an intricate storyline in the top 4? This, after all, is a storyline where a key protagonist turns bad halfway through with no foreshadowing, for no reason other than shock value, and a few 'episodes' (mission briefings) later is saying, in as many words, "No one is going to stop me, bwahaha", with a cliched panto villain routine borrowed wholesale from Ming the Merciless.

 

[Glassmage]

I want to be an achiever! Bite me! lol jk

Civ5 is more fun and more immersive than Civ4 imo. Go ahead and disagree but you ain't gonna change my mind.

 

[PhilBowles]

While the achievers effectively focus more on gameplay elements, creating the challenge their gaming experience is centered around, the skill ceiling of the game in question is usually one of the deciding factors in their enjoyment, people that like to be challenged usually do so in every genre of games they play, but what is considered a challenge is variable from person to person.
Personally I find it hard to understand how people can find this game challenging after you find out that playing effectively basically means following build orders and the same tactics over and over and over again, this is ofcourse excluding those that set insane external challenges (12 civ small pangea deity, etc), but even that feels more like raising your chances of arbitrarily dying then requiring more skill from you.

Possibly as a result of labelling your 'rival' demographic "achievers", you are I think oversimplifying what we think of as 'skill' or a 'challenge' (or possibly this oversimplification leads to your labelling). It's not binary, and it doesn't need to be technical skill. If I'm technically skilled at playing guitar, for example, I still don't necessarily know how to play a particular song. So I might practice that. It's not to improve my technical guitar skills, it's to improve my repertoire - a different skill set. I recently took an underwater photography course - that didn't improve my skill as a diver any more than any other dive would, and didn't improve my technical skills as a photographer - the same considerations of light and framing I was already aware of were invoked. What it did was allow me to capture novel subjects.

Similarly you don't play Civ as an "achiever" with the simplified objective "Beat Civ", or even necessarily "get better at Civ". The objective can be a 12-Civ small Pangea on deity, or it can be getting a Steam 'achievement', or it can be any self-imposed challenge that needn't necessarily involve winning the game. No 'achiever' wants to achieve victory by pinching someone else's strategy. There are fixed build orders on Immortal/Deity? Fine. Then let's see how far we can get using different ones, knowing we probably won't win but seeing how far the exercise gets us and if we get further than we did with our last strategy. The key element is setting yourself a challenge to meet, and that the enjoyment comes in achieving that. If it's the same challenge the game designers set (i.e. beating it at high difficulties), that may be the point or it may be no more than a happy coincidence.

 

[Dan4GS]

I think you are under-estimating greatly the pleasure a teddy bear could procure.

Best part of the thread IMO.

 

[mattavich]

I just really like Civilization 5. I've liked every new Civ game since it all begun.

I don't know why you created a thread about this... if you don't like the game don't play it. But don't bash people just because they love the game.

Civ5 is one of the most played games on Steam, there's usually about 15,000 games at any one time so I think that speaks for itself.

Maybe you should try Shogun total war or something? I don't know. I just don't see the point in creating this thread, kinda sad really.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I just really like Civilization 5. I've liked every new Civ game since it all begun.

I don't know why you created a thread about this... if you don't like the game don't play it. But don't bash people just because they love the game.

Civ5 is one of the most played games on Steam, there's usually about 15,000 games at any one time so I think that speaks for itself.

Maybe you should try Shogun total war or something? I don't know. I just don't see the point in creating this thread, kinda sad really.

You didn't even tried to answer the original question properly. Next time, try to read the text more carefully.

Oh and no, I'm not here to "bash" people. (even if some times i get warned which is not the case here hopefully )

 

[Vorlath]

I like Civ 5 for the same reason I like most other games. I like to build up my own stuff and destroy everyone else's. It's especially satisfying when the computer asks for a peace treaty that involves my giving them everything I have and they're the weaker party, not by units, but by sheer genious of how I mobilize my units. Ok, the AI is pretty bad at everything war related, but it's still fun outmaneuvering him/her.

Also, I've never played the other civ games for any length of time, but I love Civ 5. I have tried the earlier ones a couple times. Wasn't interested. I hear people complaining about Civ 5 on here. I don't get it. I have 143 hours logged on Steam (and I'm behind a firewall most of the time where steam can't track my time). What keeps me coming back to the game is that you can keep increasing the difficulty. It's never too easy. Winning on Emperor a couple times after being stopped in my tracks a dozen or more times is satisfying.

Plus, I learn new things about the game all the time. For example, stacking is not non-existent. There are two kinds of units that can stack. Also, sea units can stack with land units. This is only possible in a city, but it means you can have two defending units (usually ranged units) in a city at the same time, not to mention bombers. walls, etc. make your city have stronger attacks. You can take over cities with 1 hp if the city is also at 1 hp from ranged attacks (or whatever else). Chopping trees is a useful hammers bonus at the beginning of the game if used strategically. I also learn what units promote to what and when and where those techs are located on the tech tree. I also keep an eye on civil service and fertilizer. etc...

What's so simple and boring? You can play as simple or as meticulously as you decide.