I am skeptical

[RickInVA]

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean its there. boot up civ 4 and tell me you can see your gold or production breakdowns without having to mouse over them. tooltips are a great way of revealing more information when you want it, and not cluttering up the screen when you don't. And it fits perfectly with the amount of minimising going on.

All the builing tabs can be hidden away at a click, the citizen allocation focus (the auto menu to right of the queue in civ 4) can also be clicked away. The queue can be revealed or hidden, the choose production menu is hidden until needed. It would follow suit, would it not that the things that are missing are just hidden.

Trade routes - Under gold breakdown, tooltip.

Maintenance Costs - Gold breakdown

Happiness - You can clearly see the net happiness at the top of the screen in taht little bar.

Ethinic breakdown - Might not be in, but i its hidden its probably a tool tip when mousing over the citizen:11 box.

Great person production - Would slide nicely into culture tooltip.

Food! - Its in that citizen box I just mentioned. And its net food which is nice, so another breakdown will be there, so tahts where health will appear if its in the game.

As for strategic resources, well done for noticing the net resources at the top, it doesn't really need to say if the resources are in the city, the net resources could vanish from the abr if looking at a city not connected. Or hopefully they'll remain and you'll just get a large imposing notice saying the city has no trade route, and no access to resources.

Civ 5 looks simplified to a point of sheer stupidity, till you get out the magnifying glass, and see the intricate network of complicity.

The only thing you have to base these ASSUMPTIONS on is wishful thinking. There is no indication that any of this is remotely true. Perhaps what you have described is the way you would have made the game, but I'm going to bet that you are not on the design team.

It becomes very hard to have any sort of actual, reasonable, intelligent discussion on this site because those of you that are convinced (or have convinced yourselves) that Civ V is going to be the best Civ ever simply tell any and everyone that say anything that even hints at criticism that they are "just wrong". No evidence other than your personal opinions necessary, others are "just wrong". People are allowed to disagree, and are not simply "wrong" because they have doubts that this iteration of Civ will be any good.

My personal opinion is that they are taking all the good things of Civ out and that this Civ V will be a piece of excrement that I will not waste my money on until it is in the $2.99 bin, if then. Disagree if you like, but my opinion, being just that, isn't wrong.

 

[12agnar0k]

Cartoony,

No Civ5 is the best graphically non-cartoony look so far from the civ franchise.

To the second point you made thread maker, no the game has not been simplified like civ rev was, the game will still have the same depth of micro management, its just, the way the game looks, its user interface has been sexified! thats right, I just made up a word to describe ciV, it has a much less boxy cold look that cIV had, which was great at the time and a big improvement to civIII but with all the extra graphical power they have now, all the landscapes and units look stunning and sexilishious, and the interface, instead of being all blocky its curved sexy and stunning. I feel in love with ciV as soon as I saw the gameplay footage, this game looks great. All the depth that was in cIV but with a few tweaks on mechanics is in there, its just not quite so "IN YOUR FACE" which cIV was with all the information all over the place. Now you see what you need to see, and if you want to look deeper and get all the micro depth you like then thats there too, but for a new user who may be scared away by information overload its sneakily hidden from sight.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Isn't Rick so, polite and eloquent?

 

[12agnar0k]

Not particularily.

The only thing you have to base these ASSUMPTIONS on is wishful thinking. There is no indication that any of this is remotely true.

Not true, Tooltips are not a fabrication, they exist, and not only in previous Civ's they exist in Civ 5, or have you not noticed that when you hold your mouse over say a hill it tells you its a plains, hills with 1 food and 1 production. All this information is hidden sneakily till you want to see it.
Assuming that Civ will continue to use tool tipes where ever possible to condense lots of information into a small space without giving information overload is not wishful thinking its a reasonable assumption and we see it all over the design of many games not just Civ, so we can with some certainty concur that it may well be the case, that additional information on a city screen for example has been condensed into some tool tips as it is merely common sense for them to do so.

He may well not be in the design team, but if the design team is comprised of close minded individuals like you Schuesseled damn well should be.

Disagree if you like, but my opinion, being just that, isn't wrong

Your opinion is your's, we can't claim it isn't, it is indeed what you believe, but that doesn't make your opinions correct, just that you think they are, so your opinions while no one can deny that these are your opinions you have said as much yourself, they may indeed well be wrong.

Civ 5, may not be the best thing since sliced bread, but we won't know that till we play it and no one thinks its simply the best civ game ever because we haven't played it. But however we do think it will be worth buying and we will buy it, and we will love it, these are all facts, will it be the best thing ever, I can't say, but unlike you I don't think I know the answer. Which you clearly state is your opinion on what it will be like even though you haven't played it nor will by what you say.

My personal opinion is that they are taking all the good things of Civ out and that this Civ V will be a piece of excrement that I will not waste my money on until it is in the $2.99 bin, if then.

This kind of close minded nonsense should be stricken from this forumn, you say

It becomes very hard to have any sort of actual, reasonable, intelligent discussion on this site

well I have to agree with you, with persons such as yourself one struggles to have resonable and intelligent discussions.

I thank you sir and good night, blessings be upon you my child.

Moderator Action: Trolling - warned
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Schuesseled]

Isn't Rick so, polite and eloquent?

Rofl, that one cracked me up.

The only thing you have to base these ASSUMPTIONS on is wishful thinking. There is no indication that any of this is remotely true. Perhaps what you have described is the way you would have made the game, but I'm going to bet that you are not on the design team.

It becomes very hard to have any sort of actual, reasonable, intelligent discussion on this site because those of you that are convinced (or have convinced yourselves) that Civ V is going to be the best Civ ever simply tell any and everyone that say anything that even hints at criticism that they are "just wrong". No evidence other than your personal opinions necessary, others are "just wrong". People are allowed to disagree, and are not simply "wrong" because they have doubts that this iteration of Civ will be any good.

My personal opinion is that they are taking all the good things of Civ out and that this Civ V will be a piece of excrement that I will not waste my money on until it is in the $2.99 bin, if then. Disagree if you like, but my opinion, being just that, isn't wrong.

It would seem to me, that you are displaying a bountiful amount of dimissive thinking. I have never described someones opinion as "just wrong", although you do closely cut the biscuit.

There is evidence behind my logic, by all means if you wish to disagree, please do so. You are entitled to your opinion after all.

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action: People: Please stick to discussing the topic at hand, not the people discussing it.

 

[Schuesseled]

at about the 3 minute mark on this audio clip, it talks about how they designed civ 5 to be clean and easy to read, but without taking away functionality.

He goes on to say basic unit functions are at the "front" of the interface (defend, attack move etc), other secondary functions such as delete unit are hidden away out of sight but are still very much there.

^proof of my logic!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ01YSaQYDA&feature=related

p.s. this video might be considered leaked, even though it has no picture, so you might not find it there when you click it.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

You know, even though City Flipping is out (which is good, as it was a crude mechanic) I still hope that Ethnic Composition of cities will still be in. Even without City Flipping, Ethnic Composition can still serve several important functions:

(1) Liberating Cities-if a city is multi-ethnic, then you might get a choice as to who you want to Liberate it for. So a city might be 40% Egyptian & 50% French-so you get a choice as to whether you want to liberate it to France or to Egypt (depends who you want to curry favor with the most ).

(2) Happiness-if you're long-term friends with a civ whose people make up a significantly large % of a city's population, then those cities might benefit from extra happiness. If, however, you go to war with that same civ, then these cities might experience unhappiness.

(3) Diplomacy-The ethnic composition of a city might influence how likely a civ is to either ask for the city (as a demand, a gift or a trade) or offer the city to you.

(4) Social Policies-though it probably won't feature in the Vanilla Game, it might be possible to mod in Social Policies which allow you to have some control on how quickly the ethnic composition of your cities change-either via controlling who comes in (which might effect population growth, but keep your cities ethnically pure for longer) or by making people assimilate (causes unhappiness &/or diplomatic penalties, but causes your city to head back towards "purity").

Aussie.

 

[qwerty25]

Well let's see, so your saying that if they show you an Alpha screen, you should assume thats what the finished game will look like?

Spoiler :

There will probably be an option to get minimize everything else on the screen except the map.

 

[Schuesseled]

wait are you telling me Civ4 isn't supposed to look like that?!!?

 

[Krill]

Graphics =\= gameplay.

 

[Schuesseled]

what does =\= mean

 

[astrognash]

=\= means Not Equal To

 

[Buccaneer]

I started to write something along the lines of criticizing the dumbed-down move towards "accessibility" until I realized that the very first I do when I load a game is to hit Ctrl-I. Of all of the fixes and changes they had made in the Civ4 patches, the best one (imo) was making Ctrl-I stick after switching from the City View. I never understand how people can play on the main map with all of that clutter (and part of the map being hidden by the UI - which is bad design). However, I love all of the information in one screen going to the City View and I don't think any of it should require additional mouse clicks. But if there will be options to have more things chosen if you wish, then all is good.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Well let's see, so your saying that if they show you an Alpha screen, you should assume thats what the finished game will look like?

Spoiler :

The ign.com watermark makes this post f00kin hilarious!

 

[Ricci]

My personal opinion is that they are taking all the good things of Civ out and that this Civ V will be a piece of excrement that I will not waste my money on until it is in the $2.99 bin, if then. Disagree if you like, but my opinion, being just that, isn't wrong.

Coolegg, don't be carried out with some pre-release screen shot about how the interface will show exactly. Maybe it will show less info but I don't believe we won't be able to search for it somewhere in the game if we like (or maybe even set some aspects of the interface a la BUG mode).
On the other hand the game appears to have some cartoonist features yes, as these huge arrows I keep noticing over some screen shot. I wouldn't worry to much about it, the rest of the graphics seem to be nice and serious though.
Anyways, you might be seriously right about the complexity embedded to this new version, compared to the latter BTS. Many many systems have either been completely removed from the game (religious system, espionage) severely reduced or cut off (government, tech trading) or kept in the dark (colonies, corporations, random events, permanent alliances..); just to name a few. Tech tree vastly reduced and nothing has been said about the amount and variety of military units either. Of course there will be some mentioned new systems as well as new mechanics. Still, with all the features already confirmed to be taken away, I must concur in grief (not really) that it will be a more incomplete and shallow version of the franchise. As someone pointed out in this same thread already, some of the stuff taken away could be perfectly blended in with a expansion pack later on, it is within this spirit that we might have a complete and bug free version of the game in about another couple of years.. hopefully.

important functions:

(1) Liberating Cities-if a city is multi-ethnic, then you might get a choice as to who you want to Liberate it for. So a city might be 40% Egyptian & 50% French-so you get a choice as to whether you want to liberate it to France or to Egypt (depends who you want to curry favor with the most ).

(2) Happiness-if you're long-term friends with a civ whose people make up a significantly large % of a city's population, then those cities might benefit from extra happiness. If, however, you go to war with that same civ, then these cities might experience unhappiness.

(3) Diplomacy-The ethnic composition of a city might influence how likely a civ is to either ask for the city (as a demand, a gift or a trade) or offer the city to you.

(4) Social Policies-though it probably won't feature in the Vanilla Game, it might be possible to mod in Social Policies which allow you to have some control on how quickly the ethnic composition of your cities change-either via controlling who comes in (which might effect population growth, but keep your cities ethnically pure for longer) or by making people assimilate (causes unhappiness &/or diplomatic penalties, but causes your city to head back towards "purity").
Aussie.

You know, all of these I like and believe should give a meaning to ethnicity within a city. A;so, I still like the idea of one city which is greatly influenced by a neighboring population of another nation join them in awe, hence city flipping. This feature is critically realistic and has been around since CIV I , though at that point a city flipped in awe due to another civilization's whole level of progress (tech, wonders..).. haha!!
Never formally red about city flipping being cut off, though it wouldn't be a surprise at all.

 

[SGRaaize]

I doubt that is the final look, although I'm pretty sure the game will be more simple than the last one, which is a shame

 

[Frank Drebin]

well, the more cartoonish, the bigger the market.

it's not a niche product anymore. that's what europa universalis is for.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry, but I'm still not seeing how this game has been massively oversimplified. I mean, consider the following:

-Culture & tile acquisition is much more complex & organic.

-Strategic Resources are more complex (no more unlimited units from a single resource deposit).

-removal of tech trading & its replacement with research pacts makes far more sense-its certainly not a simplification.

-From what I've seen of the tech tree, all of the techs are there except the ones which have been merged into the Social Policy system (which, again, makes somewhat more sense).

-Civ4 religions have been removed from Vanilla Civ5, but are replaced by Piety & Rationalism in Social Policies.

-Governments/Civics haven't been removed, they're also now part of the whole Social Policy system.

-From what we're hearing, there are 10 Social Policy branches with about 5 options per branch-& you can have 6 non-exclusive branches in play. This makes for a total of around 30 broadly "Governmental" options compared to 25 for Civ4 (or 20 if you don't include the default options).

-Combat is now going to be many times more complex-most certainly *not* dumbed down.

-City States add a new layer of complexity to the diplomacy system.

-Specialists, Great People & Golden Ages are all still part of the game.

-From what I've read, the victory conditions aren't dumbed down-though the Domination Victory has been altered in order to make it much less tedious to achieve.

-Terrain improvements are still pretty much as complex as they were in Civ4.

So, all in all, I'm not seeing a great deal of evidence to support this "dumbed down" theory of Civ5. Now, I'm not saying that the changes they've made are all necessarily *good* or that I'll personally *like* them-I'm just highlighting that the changes made so far don't seem to indicate a move towards over-simplification/dumbing down!

Aussie.

 

[Johnny Be]

-From what I've read, the victory conditions aren't dumbed down-though the Domination Victory has been altered in order to make it much less tedious to achieve.

I would even say that there are MORE ways to win now!

And the rest of the game hasn't been dumbed down, it has been streamlined!