Is Civ 5 really "being dumbed down"?

[Bad Brett]

No. I don't. I'm more commenting on how you talk. If you're going to talk like a pretentious elitist, then I'm going to respond as such. Your argument basically consists of "New players are bad and don't want to spend time doing stuff". That's childish at best.

The thing is, that most people that I've met haven't had the patience to play a game such as Civilization, Railroad Tycoon or The Settlers. But on the other hand, the people who have the patience, usually get obsessed. My fear is that 2k Games wants to make the game "available" to a bigger market by making it simp... more "streamlined".

They did it with Railroads, they did it with Colonization and they did it with The Settlers (not 2k but it doesn't matter). They tried to do it with CivRev. I now fear that they are trying to do the same thing with Civilization.

And it's not a secret that there are many "sandbox" players out there, even on this forum. I would say that this is one of the most common responses to a complaint on this forum: "If you don't like it, mod it out of the game".

But that would ruin all the fun, because what's fun to me is to win. I want a Civilization that only a few number of people can master, no matter how hard you try. I want there to be official rules so that no one can play an archipelago against Ghandi and then claim that they can win on the hardest difficulty level.

But the less options you, the easier it is to "learn" how to play the game by studying other players.

To me, Cilization is about numbers, algorithms, statistics and risk calculation, and I don't think that you should be able to win the game without having at least basic mathematical knowledge. If people don't care about this and just want to use the game engine as a simulator, that's okay with me, but the core game shouldn't be designed that way.

 

[Bad Brett]

Oh FYI, that means for your interest, roads are required for trade routes, which provide you with gold, thats the shiny yellow things that buy stuff.

I'm really curious, how was building a temple a bad thing in previous civs?

The trade routes will, in best case scenario, pay for the road cost. So if you don't intend to move troops between the cities, there will be no reason to build a road.

When playing on Deity level in Civ IV, wasting 10 turns on building a Temple in a city that didn't need one could mean game over. In Civ V, it will never be a waste of hammers, unless your economy is really, really bad.

 

[bjbrains]

In Civ V, it will never be a waste of hammers, unless your economy is really, really bad.

What? Not only are buildings still expensive, but they cost maintainence now! That's an unjustified, speculative statement if I've ever seen one. You just look at what is gone/reworked without looking at what's replaced it.

 

[Schuesseled]

Perhaps they should make a diffuclty you would actually enjoy, one where it is literrally impossible to win, that would be super fun.

If you truly believe trade routes aren't improtant in civ 5 and not worth it, then i'd love to see you beat anything past chieftan.

And building a temple in civ V when you don't need it will be much more problematic than it was in civ 4. Seriously if you rage quit every time you waste production in civ 4, i can see where your going wrong.

 

[Dale]

To me, Cilization is about numbers, algorithms, statistics and risk calculation, and I don't think that you should be able to win the game without having at least basic mathematical knowledge. If people don't care about this and just want to use the game engine as a simulator, that's okay with me, but the core game shouldn't be designed that way.

Number crunching does not a good strategy player make. It just make you good at crunching numbers.

 

[Schuesseled]

Number crunching does not a good strategy player make. It just make you good at crunching numbers.

Well said, i didn't start playing civ to use math, ugh.

 

[SeismoGraf]

Fortunately, everyone can play Civ without math or a calculator at hand. Basic knowledge about numbers and percentages helps to understand the game. Extensive mathematical analysis of exactly tailored scenarios can be interesting, sometimes giving well-founded and great rules of thumb. But to become good at Civ, a multitude of skills are needed and math is only one of them.

 

[jagdtigerciv]

From what I understand, not much is being 'dumbed' down in Civ5 at all. Maintenance costs, as mentioned, seem to add the dynamic previously felt in Civ4 of building temples in already happy cities. We'll have to see the true effect of this when we play; whether maintenance costs are overwhelming or underwhelming. Also, do not forget the role of prioritizing buildings in particular cities based on their strategic location and resources.

 

[Ondskan]

Some things are streamlined (no religion and espionage), some imporved (combat), and there are also some new features introduced (city states).

Moderator Action: *snip*

 

[PawelS]

Moderator Action: *snip*

I didn't know I'm one of them, thanks for telling me

Edit: I just noticed a typo in my original post, of course I meant "improved".

 

[Ondskan]

np

 

[Ahriman]

Moderator Action: *snip*

Check the espionage poll.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=379188
Very few people liked BTS-style espionage, and many prefer no espionage at all.

 

[iop]

I'll copy my post from another thread:
So don't tell me that the gameplay won't be simplifed. And they did exactly the same thing with Railroads! and Civ:Col.

How exactly is combat simplified?
How exactly are social policies simpler than the government?
How exactly is road placement simplified? Especially if you should turn out to be right and they're purely a money sink?
How exactly is cultural expansion simplified?

Also, temples produce culture now. Which makes them trickier: Does the little bit of culture matter for getting social policies? Does the city need help popping cultural borders? Or is that not worth 1 gpt?

 

[Ondskan]

Check the espionage poll.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=379188
Very few people liked BTS-style espionage, and many prefer no espionage at all.

Bah noobs.
I have no idea of the Civ 4 version but the Civ 3 was good and if someone thinks it has to high costs or even is to much work then that someone can opt out from doing it. Like this guy complaining about how he didn't get a tech after wasting so much time in preparations for a spy mission. Well tough luck boy, moving on.

 

[Bad Brett]

How exactly is combat simplified?

It's not. Combat will be a lot more interesting in this game, no doubt about it.

How exactly are social policies simpler than the government?

Because you can never make a bad decision, only a less good decision. In earlier games, you were often forced to change back and forth. This option will technically still be there, but very few people will actually fill out two tree that cannot be activated at the same time. So basicly, once you pick the upgrade, you won't have to worry about the policies until you get another upgrade.

In Civ I governments were incredibly sensitive. A few unhappy citizans were enough to make the government collapse. You had to pay attention to your cities every turn to be able to stay in democracy. The civics system in Civ IV was even more intersting, since there was always a risk of making a really bad decision.

How exactly is road placement simplified? Especially if you should turn out to be right and they're purely a money sink?

I don't know exactly how much the the trade routes will yield in this game, but let's say that you build six road tiles to connect two cities. The trade route may just cover that expense... But other than that, the roads only makes your units go faster. The point is, if you don't want to go to war, there will be no point of building roads.

Though I applaud the fact that they now cost money, I can't see why the removed the resource connecting ability. I hated when the barbarians destroyed the road that lead to my only iron mine, but that was still a very tactical part of the game.

How exactly is cultural expansion simplified?

It's simplied because the AI makes decisions for you. Though there's an option to buy tiles manually, it's not very likely that you will afford to use that option a lot, at least not in the beginning of the game.

Also, temples produce culture now. Which makes them trickier: Does the little bit of culture matter for getting social policies? Does the city need help popping cultural borders? Or is that not worth 1 gpt?

The question is, what should you build instead? You have a limited amount of units and you will need less workers. So basically, your only option will be to construct buildings.

 

[rastak]

Bad Brett, in Civ IV you had ZERO control over what tiles were added via culture expansion. None at all.

 

[bjbrains]

I have to disagree with you on several points Bad Brett:

1: We've seen the yields on trade routes. While early on they may just "pay for themselves", they quickly begin to give significant gold income (see 2K greg's game). You'll want to road most of your cities, but possibly not all (any small/out of the way cities?).
2: What? Cultural expansion in Civ 4 was driven completely by the AI with no way to intervene. How is making it tile-by-tile and adding the option to rushbuy (which isn't that expensive, and remember you'll be earning a lot more gold now early on via barb camps, base income, and city-state discoveries) is added complexity. Especially since you now have to consider city placement more carefully: It'll take a long time for the 'edge' tiles to fill in.
3: The caps on units are counterbalanced by an increased cost, you'll have to put more time/hammers into each unit. And there are also a lot more specialized buildings to consider, and they all have maintenance costs, some quite high.

On a side note: The reason they don't require roads to connect resources is because they didn't want players to feel 'punished' for connecting resources, and/or rebalance gold incomes/road costs to make up for the higher amount of roads.

 

[Bad Brett]

Bad Brett, in Civ IV you had ZERO control over what tiles were added via culture expansion. None at all.

That's funny, because in my games I had complete control over them since I knew exactly how the borders would behave. That way I could do a quick calculation on how many turns it would take for the borders to expand to a certain tile and place my cities according to that.

A fat cross that expands in a pre-determined way is not AI, it's just game rules. However, once the computer begins to do calculations on what option that will suit you the best, you lose control.

 

[bernlin2000]

You answered your own question, so I guess nobody needs to answer . I agree with you on that answer, but I (and a lot of people) disagree on a number of other things you mentioned. CiV being dumbed down, though? Not in the least bit.

Religion was a good (not great) feature in CivIV, and it will be missed, but I'm sure they've found ways to make the game more interesting. I think it worked fine, however, especially for the diplomacy that CivIV had in place. It was only annoying if you failed to convert to your strong neighbors' religion

I'll miss culture flipping more than religion, although I still like the changes they made with growing one hex at a time. This will make it much easier to position cities in strategic areas. Culture flipping makes sense to me: if your civilization dominates in culture it often indicates a prosperous civilization that offers many benefits to its people, and why wouldn't a city want to join in that?

Empire-wide happiness doesn't seem dumbed down at all to me, it's a different of way of managing happiness than CivIV, no more no less. It was mentioned by someone at firaxis (I think during the 2 hr feed) that city happiness allowed you to neglect unhappy cities when you had many cities, and so you could go to war forever and checking unhappiness was either a non-issue or a minimal one (switch a civic, build a collosseum). Now, it will be a more severe penalty, affecting the growth of the entire empire, and eventually hurting your military strength. And since capturing a city will introduce several units of unhappiness, you could reach a situation where you suddenly need to stop several cities from building military units and invest in happiness buildings. The only change i see here is it will require less micromanagement, which is very useful especially during times of war, when I would rather not be focusing on anything but my military.

It's impossible for micromanagement to ever go away from Civilization: you will always have to decide production for a city (with the option to always give this power to a governor) and can always choose to manually control workers (especially if you want to specialize and maximize cities). That all being said, I agree that micromanagement for the sake of itself is not fun, and removing any micromanagement that doesn't contribute importantly to the gameplay (and therefore have tangible benefits) should be removed.

Good posting, I also hate trolls that complain that CiV will suck, when they get nearly all their facts wrong and distort that lack of information on certain aspects as proof the game is severely flawed. Shoo!

 

[Bad Brett]

Empire-wide happiness doesn't seem dumbed down at all to me, it's a different of way of managing happiness than CivIV, no more no less. It was mentioned by someone at firaxis (I think during the 2 hr feed) that city happiness allowed you to neglect unhappy cities when you had many cities, and so you could go to war forever and checking unhappiness was either a non-issue or a minimal one (switch a civic, build a collosseum). Now, it will be a more severe penalty, affecting the growth of the entire empire, and eventually hurting your military strength. And since capturing a city will introduce several units of unhappiness, you could reach a situation where you suddenly need to stop several cities from building military units and invest in happiness buildings. The only change i see here is it will require less micromanagement, which is very useful especially during times of war, when I would rather not be focusing on anything but my military.

Well, the thing is that Civ IV basically had the same system, except that it was called city maintainance. If you built too many cities or build too many units, you would go bankrupt. You would be force to move your food tiles to ocean tiles to get more commerce, so it actually affected growth in a way as well. So basically it's the same system, with a few minor tweaks.

But I still think it's stupid that the people in a city, war away from the war, with circus, library, colosseum etc. won't be happier than the citizans in a town that just has been nuked.