I agree with everything you wrote here (minus that specific Anno game that I've never heard of). I don't understand why, if people don't like the way Civ 6 is turning out and have vowed never to buy it (to the ridiculous point of threatening not to do so - which is clearly aimed at people who'll probably never come to these forums and read them), they continue to come here and disparage the game and antagonize the people who, at the very least, have a mild interest in it. I know I can't use the "T" word, but what else would you call it? Do they think, 5 months before release, the developers are going to come here, see the complaints/suggestions, and completely scrap what they've already done?
I love Civilization and I want each new iteration to be the best it can be. When it isn't, I'm disappointed. What's wrong with that?
I know that some people are opposed to any form of discord or disagreement. Personally, I cannot help but talk about and lament the general direction of gaming today. It is going through the same transition that other art forms have undergone as they transition from being niche to being mainstream/commercialized. There was a time when rock and roll war written, played, recorded and promoted by people who just desperately loved rock and roll. Those days are long gone, and the quality of most music today reflects that. You get less innovation and more 'easy to digest' offerings.
The same is true in gaming. 20 years ago, heck arguably just 10 years ago, gaming was still kind of a fringe activity (with regard to the wider culture..not economically). Now that gaming is a bigger industry than most (all?) other media outlets the activity and decisions of the major develops reflect this. The result? Less innovation, more 'easy to digest' offerings. For really interesting games one has to increasingly go off the beaten track, which is disappointing (since smaller developers generally don't have the budgets to do a 'proper' game any more).
To bring it back to Civ, I worry that people have forgotten what the whole point of the franchise was. It is not 'just a strategy game' with a historical backdrop, it was a game designed to be a sort of 'playable history' (albeit in very cartoony terms). What I mean by this is that in the past the history generally came first, and game mechanics were modeled, however loosely, around historical realities. Using slavery to rapidly build something killed a lot of slaves (for example). It was always imperfect and wildly abstracted, but the priority was some sort of vague relationship between our ideas of history and mechanics that might represent them.
The modern approach (and this is true of many games in general) seems to focus on mechanics first, and what might be termed 'colour' or 'theme' later (with Jon Shafer himself here it would be very interesting to hear a bit more about the creative process....I'd love to know if I 'm right about this, or if I'm totally off base!). There is no historical precedent that would lead one to create the city-state system whereby you give them money and you get a bonus in return. Likewise, the current system whereby there is no war weariness at all (so long as you don't take cities) is absurd. Nothing in history would support this. Your people only get angry if you start winning!? The point is not the desire for a pseudo-simulation a la EU4 (as much as I love EU), but rather some clearer relation between mechanics and what they are meant to represent.
I assure you, I'm not a troll. I just think it is good to talk about these sorts of trends and ruminate over them a bit. Is this the direction we want gaming to go in? Is it even possible to reverse the trend, given the staggering profits out there to be made? What does it mean for the future of gaming? The evolution of Civ from 4 to 6 (based on what very little we know about 6) is as good a case study as any.
3 of them adjacent!) on the map, or getting to units like axeman (as the first example) - ok the advantage could be slightly overpowered for a time - but that's what drove it. for me anyway. the "one more turn". The fact that there was a significant advantage that you could get for a while if you understood the game's mechanics and could pull it off.
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