This fundamentally changed the civ player base. This is where apologists start their spin. Yes, *some* people didn't move from III to IV. No game is *perfect* on release, and I'm sure somewhere there's a holdout who thought Civ II was blasphemy. The lie here is in the magnitude and the type of player that didn't move on. No high level civ IV players moved onto V. Nada, zippo, zilch.
Fantastic post! I agree with close to 100% of it, which is very rare, as these days, I disagree with most things
That's an interesting point on the high level players. Looking back, it feels like the series took a right angle turn with V, that (unfortunately) sold a lot, so they have gone further in that mainstream, casual direction. But possibly even worse, it's taken the whole 4X genre with it. They all try and tap in to the new markets Civ 5 opened up. e.g. no min/maxing, 1UPT, hexes etc
BiC did a great post comparing the ratio of S&T to General Discussion comments on the forums in the different games. Look at those numbers yourself: strategic discussion clearly peaked in IV.
I've noted that for years. Did my own calculations recently. Every Civ since 4 has significantly fewer posts per year in the strategy comments section. We can always disagree on opinions, but that is an objective fact. It's probably both a factor of those who played Civ 4 being more keen to discuss strategy and Civ 4 actually having more strategic depth, so providing more to discuss.
Anecdotally, I played many 100's of hours of Civ 4 - though definitely not a high level player, when I played a lot, I could occasionally get a win at 3rd highest difficulty level (Emperor?) . Even after probably more than 100 games, I admit I never won on Deity, or even the second level. With each Civ from Civ 1- 4, it took me a few games to even win at Noble (i.e. standard/even) level.(as an aside, didn't 5 also change the level names? Such a pointless gratuitous change). In contrast, I've played only 3 games of Civ 6. Each one on the standard level, whatever it's called, and won each one easily. These games were years apart, so a fresh start each time. And each time it seemed the game was trivial. Make the obvious moves ("moves", rather than "strateging decisions"), then mostly click end turn lots until you see the "You win" screen. My point is that , though I don't even like the phrase mysef, there is no escaping the game has been dumbed down.
I was shocked to see people getting Civ 7 and playing their first game on Deity...and winning! These are not good players, this is a bad game.
Very similar trend with "Hall of Fame" discussion, which I believe Firaxis essentially discontinued because cheat detection isn't compatible with VI. Not my cup of tea, but I'm sure that personally hurt the moderators on here who are otherwise pretty positive with their public-facing comments. At the end of the day, 2K does not care if they lose ~10% of an existing player base but increase the overall pool of new players. That's a financial win for them of course. But if that 10% dropoff is primarily coming from expert players, that means the quality of the series has absolutely no chance in recovering - the expertise is gone. Not only is the expertise gone but the type of player has changed. New players bemoan "tedious micro" and "min/maxing" and talk about tall vs wide. The game's huge drop in difficulty made way for streamers, who by their nature are more social beasts than serious gamers. It turns out sandbox difficulty is great for meme material.
Yes, I suspect that Civ 5, probably more by luck than judgement, came out at just the right time to tap into the "Let's Play" Youtube phenomenon, where charismatic Youtubers could make entertaining videos conquering the world with 1 chariot! I do find these videos entertaining...more entertaining than actually playing Civ 5 and 6, at least. But my guess is that if Civ 5 had been released in 2005, instead of Civ 4, (ie 1UPT, no religion, expansion punishments etc etc), then it would have flopped without trace. The new market that loved Civ 5 wasn't there yet and was not reachable in 2005. And the original Civ players mostly dumped Civ 5. Many times, comments by Civ 5/6/7 gamers make it clear that for them, the series started with Civ 5. The other giveaway is that it's hard for many to hide that they prefer hexes to squares because "hexes are for clever people, like me".
(reality is that neither hexes nor squares make or ruin a game, tile shape doesn't really matter in a design, it only affects perception)
I think your comment nails it perfectly. I've often had a vague feeling something was "off" when hearing all the Civ 5/6/7 players moan about micro, min maxing and so on. It's basically complaining about too much mental effort that gets in the way of clicking end turn until you see the "You Win" screen. There are a couple of ironies. One being the maligned stacks of doom (otherwise called "armies" and history is full of them). They actually require less micro than 1UPT. Which leads to my second irony being that the more they streamline the game, the longer each one takes! By Civ 6, each game took me twice as long to finish as a typical Civ 4 game. Same turns and so on. I think it's several things. 1UPT, of course. It takes much longer moving 10 units individually than 1 stack of 10 units and over a game, that all adds up. I suspect the real problem is that the AI could build big stacks and smash an unwary human player far easier than it can when a single unit can block dozens of others in 1UPT.
Also, too many animations and visual fluff that you have to watch. This is a problem I notice in all modern strategy games (and RPGs) compared to the older versions. You used to click a city/unit and up came the 2D detail screen *instantly*. Now, when you select things, you get a camera zoom, a pan, then some flashy, unskippable animation. Scrolling seems painfully slower and clunkier than ever, as maps glisten and glister so much you can hardly read them. Each may only take 2-3 seconds longer, but as you have to click these options 100's, maybe 1000's of times in a game, it all adds hours in the end.
Whatever, is it just me who finds that despite there being less to actually do in them, both Civ 5 and especially Civ 6 really drag and take much longer to finish?
My point being, all the resources since Civ 4 have been devoted to visual and graphic gloss. Nothing to AI, which is worse than ever. Your point on Civ originally designed such that the AI could play it is very valid and unfortunately largely forgotten, it seems. Civ 4 diplomacy was quite wonky and much derided at the time. Given 20 years of hindsight though, it is shocking that we've seen nothing better! The traditional excuse of "No AI can match a human" is looking really weak these days, given what AI in the real world is achieving. It's a weird dissonance that apologists still tell us that a game AI can't match a human, while we are also being told that AI will take over the real world soon....
I think that AI in strategy games could be so much better than it is, but for 20 years, it's stagnated because all the innovation has gone into graphics, which has attracted a new audience who don't really want a good AI. They make what sells. And due to the luck mentioned above, Civ 5 sold so that is now the formula.
Old World is made by Soren Johnson designer of Civ IV...... but Soren is not our savior. He didn't try to make a new Civ IV. Civ IV veterans turn off huts and events as a general rule and have been doing so for a long time. It would be hard for him to miss it if he was even casually lurking here. At first you might just think it's because barb events were unbalanced, and they sure were. The thing is *all* the events are bad. Random slave revolt costing you the game, obvious bad. But so too is a free truce to a war based on plane crash luck. Why would I bribe AIs into war if their war could be suddenly abrogated from such a dice roll? Why should I be saved by such a dice roll if the war is on me? The free health bonus largely unbalances health resources which already felt less important than happy resources. The events that buff your army are generally worthless, but amazingly OP if that's what you were going for anyway. What kind of option is axe rush and either win or lose the game based on that event firing? No event is good, they only range in their harm. And what did Soren do? He ignored his natural fan base and doubled down on making event-driven gameplay central to OW. I don't know if that's ignorance or ego, but it's awful. Capping worker actions with charges imposes a skill ceiling for no reason. Soren isn't my favorite Civ designer: Jon is. Jon admitted his mistakes and that's worth something to me at least.
I was so disappointed by Old World. Sometimes feels like I'm the only one, as it gets so raved about, yet to me is decent, but nowhere near the standard of Civs1-4/AoW/MOO/HOMM. Again, you nailed one of the parts that seems off to me. The events are absurd and get in the way. More micromanagement. I like Crusader Kings. But the system in OW is such a shallow implementation of it... I think Soren saw the Civ 5 sales and the CK sales and figured that bolting CK family events onto a Civ 5 style 4X would be a big seller. To me, it falls between both stools and fails as it is a shallow 4X and a shallow personality generator. Not being able to build cities where I want...it's a deal breaker. Also, on 1 UPT, apparently Old World did originally have stacks. Soren implemented a stacking system that he was very pleased with and he thought worked well. But playtesters didn't like it, probably corrupted by Civ 5, they begged for 1UPT so he changed it. To me, OW plays like a Civ 5 mod with a ton of random events added. A good mod, TBF, but still a pale shadow of what he did in Civ 4. Very derivative, copied the features of big selling 4X, while totally ignoring the part about interesting decisions. You are right in that Old World is a derivative of Civ 5, not 4. It's Civ 5 made slightly less casual and with a ton of events probably added in because Crusader Kings also became a surprise crossover into mainstream. By this point, I am just an Old Man Shaking His Fists At The Sky!
<EDIT> As a positive , I should add that Field of Glory Empires is a far superior old world/ancient world strategy game, IMHO. It tries something new, innovates and captures the essence of the ancient times more than Old World, which could be reskinned to any era/planet
The common top-down view of old hats not liking the new game, is that this is the civ cycle. But look at it from the side and it's really Civ's downward spiral. With each iteration the depth and difficulty of the series plunge, and the remaining group of players cares less and less about it. Judging from VII's top difficulty being absolutely crushed by some players on release, I'd say we're somewhere in Prince-Monarch range in Civ IV terms. That's how far it's slid. I get that many will be turned off by hater rants on games, especially at a time in the world when there are more serious problems.... but for a lot of us games are just such an escape from reality. I can respect that people want different things from different games. I have thousands of hours in Skyrim and it's certainly not for its depth or difficulty. But those goals seemed natural to want in a 4x strategy game supposedly designed around "interesting decisions". If this isn't our home, where is? The entire single player strategy game genre has been going backwards for over a decade. It's incredibly frustrating that the best game released in my adult life is FTL or something. On the one hand, I do want Firaxis to fail: I simply see no future with them at the helm. But I don't see a competitor willing (nonetheless able) to pick up the reins. And I don't think Firaxis will fail. The steam review tanking is from an unfinished UI. When lines literally don't line up, every type of gamer sees the problem and knows the game is unfinished. Otherwise I can't parse VII's steam rating with V, which was materially at least as bad at launch. Steam ratings are only from people who buy the game. Most of the people who understand the problems with modern civ aren't going to hand over more money to Firaxis just to voice their anger on Steam. The haters self-filter with each iteration as depth/difficulty drop. This is the real sin of Civ V - there's no room to reverse course because the player base has changed. If fighting the AI was hard again they figure they'd lose more players than they regain and they're probably right. From that perspective, the genre is doomed. Remasters are cheap ways to cash in on a legacy series, but they wouldn't really work with civ IV. Generally remasters are just new graphics, and the people they'd try to appeal to with this remaster are harder to please and don't care about graphics. Hope I'm wrong but I don't think it makes financial sense. I'd say keep an eye out for clever indie games in the broader strategy genre, and in the meantime let's do our best to make Civ IV eternal.
Have you tried any of the automation/factory games? Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Satisfactory, Captain of Industry etc While a very different genre, they scratch the same itch for me that 4X games did in the past. It's where the innovation is and designers with clear vision not following the latest fads. All seem very different, too, like in the early 4X games when Age of Wonders/Civ/MOO all put their own spin on the core idea, but now in 4X, all the games are much the same, just with reskinned graphics.
