Is Civilization forever dead?

[brianshapiro]

None of this necessarily makes it a bad game - and it will be incredibly popular. The money men are usually right about the changes they make.

Nah, often the money men are wrong. You can talk about all the franchises EA ruined.

 

[Toulouse]

I'll be moving on shortly but I'm still in mourning.

I loved 4 like no other game -- it was my first PC strategy title -- and I probably logged a thousand hours or more, Yes I hated 5 pretty bad when it first came out because it didn't work. Later, I warmed to 5 after G&K was released and I ended up playing hundreds of hours of Civ 5.

But I wouldn't touch anything that looks like 6 does, it's just not accessible for me. I appreciate the work Ed Beach did helping salvage 5 but the artwork for 6 feels like being shot through the heart.

When I need a Civ fix I'll fire up BtS or BNW.

 

[noto2]

"streamlining" is not dumbing down. Not every player wants to play a game of civ with 1000 technologies, 4000 different units, on a map with 1000 0000 hexes, and having an empire of 13 000 cities, with 1700 different buildings to choose to build.

I don't want to be sitting in my mother's basement collecting welfare checks for two decades just to play through one game of Civ.

Think of the great games that have stood the test of time. How many different types of pieces do you have in chess? How big is the board? Chess gives enough options to be interesting, and no more.

Even a standard game of Risk can take an entire evening to play and it can get boring. Now imagine if Risk had 10x the number of territories. Would you want to play that? I wouldn't. You'd play a game like that for 16 hours and everyone would get tired and go home. Then you wouldn't be able to get everyone together the next day to finish it, and it would sit on your kitchen table all week, before you'd finally give up and put it away.

Streamlining is a very good thing. It's part of good game design. I'm sure there are some people here who would like to play a 10x bigger Risk, but then there are some people who like dubstep. You're just weird and the masses do not need to pander to you. 98% of people would rather play a streamlined game and so that is what the developers create. For those of you who want Risk x10, go and make your own game. We can't help you.

 

[Hail]

"streamlining" is not dumbing down. Not every player wants to play a game of civ with 1000 technologies, 4000 different units, on a map with 1000 0000 hexes, and having an empire of 13 000 cities, with 1700 different buildings to choose to build.

not every player wants a 4-city empire building game.

 

[Westwall]

Is that what Civ 6 is going to be though?

From what we've been told so far, seems like they're doing more to encourage players to go wide.

 

[Hail]

Is that what Civ 6 is going to be though?

From what we've been told so far, seems like they're doing more to encourage players to go wide.

yes, Ed did state something to the extent that "he dislikes the 4-city strat in civ5". however it was said in the context of pushing players out of their comfort zones and adding dynamics (active research, terrain type reqs, etc.) to the strategy chosen for each new game.

but! shiny graphics will be chosen over bigger maps anyday, so...

 

[Naokaukodem]

IMO, Those misunderstanding and non-evolution is why they call the next game Civilization VI and not entirely new series like "Humanity I" or something.

They will for sure not give up such an evocating name. "Humanity" is pretty neutral, to the point it can be seen as negative. "Civilization" has several meanings, one of them being the contrary of "barbarism". It implies so much "positive accomplishments" that they become wonders and marvels. Unfortunately, one can hardly see Civ6 graphics as marvelous !

Civilization, as a series, retain several aspect of the game since Civ 1 and change the rest. At least they take the precedent of district, and city-state is a welcomed change by some.

They don't "change the rest". They just tweak what is there. Tweaks that are not clever. The whole point of moving to 1UPT could have been adressed by keeping stacks. Now we have unbearable traffic jams. Add unpassable mountains (a wonderful idea), and bingo ! yet another spoiled session. Not talking about global happiness, perfect in theory but horrible in practice.

This reminds me about a french citation : "les cons ça ose tout, c'est même à ça qu'on les reconnait". Not insulting developers here, but that's the same type of idea : it means that beyond being just tweaks, the changes reveal themselves out of reach of developers playtesting capacities. They are just mad scientists.

It might not evolve fast enough for your liking or in the direction you prefer. But it is evolving.

Not fast enough is an euphemism. It's been 6 years I'm suggesting ideas since the release of Civ5, and yet I started suggesting ideas directly after playing Civ2. (sending letters to Firaxis, which apparently they have read) How many more time should I wait according to you ? I got resigned at a point that Civ series was only about graphics, but even that is not true anymore.

Whether it will turn up to be good is a matter of speculation at this point.

Being good is only a matter of how many players will adapt to it on a side, and how many "good players" will find it's a no brainer on the other side. All what I can say is that the changes are just tweaks, and that they feel pretty awkward.

 

[tat501]

"streamlining" is not dumbing down. Not every player wants to play a game of civ with 1000 technologies, 4000 different units, on a map with 1000 0000 hexes, and having an empire of 13 000 cities, with 1700 different buildings to choose to build.

I don't want to be sitting in my mother's basement collecting welfare checks for two decades just to play through one game of Civ.

Think of the great games that have stood the test of time. How many different types of pieces do you have in chess? How big is the board? Chess gives enough options to be interesting, and no more.

Even a standard game of Risk can take an entire evening to play and it can get boring. Now imagine if Risk had 10x the number of territories. Would you want to play that? I wouldn't. You'd play a game like that for 16 hours and everyone would get tired and go home. Then you wouldn't be able to get everyone together the next day to finish it, and it would sit on your kitchen table all week, before you'd finally give up and put it away.

Streamlining is a very good thing. It's part of good game design. I'm sure there are some people here who would like to play a 10x bigger Risk, but then there are some people who like dubstep. You're just weird and the masses do not need to pander to you. 98% of people would rather play a streamlined game and so that is what the developers create. For those of you who want Risk x10, go and make your own game. We can't help you.

I don't necessarily agree or disagree - but id say the difference between this and risk is that you can save this and then come back to it. Try leaving a board game out. It gets knocked over, people slip back into the room and cheat, the dog eats the pieces, the guy losing says he's suddenly too busy to finish....

Fwiw I like the idea of the change to research. It sounds much more realistic. In real life development historically was built upon necessity, and necessity dictated to by geographical and political demands. If you lived by the sea, you better discover how to get fish for example.

 

[cseanny]

Imo Risk is rather pedestrian at best (Civ5 comes to mind, muahahaha!).

The best board game of all time, hands down (not even close man) has got to be Axis and Allies. Can't even recount how many hours I spent playing that in the early 90's, especially overseas when stationed in Germany (go figure).

I've been reading in the Civ 4 forum (Civ6 thread) that "it might" appear Civ 6s' content is being geared at release for both PC and mobile. If this comes to fruition then obviously the game would need to be dumbed dumb to work for both platforms. I hope this isn't the case.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Streamlining is absolutely different from dumbing down. Here is an example of (negative) streamlining:

You want to build a worker, then a barracks.

Civ IV:

1. Select city by clicking on its name
2. Hold shift then click on the worker, then on the barracks

Civ V:

1. Select city
2. Go into city view to change production
3. Click to allow for a queue, because otherwise you can't
4. Click to add worker
5. Work through the interface again to add the barracks
6. Get out of change production
7. Get out of city view

Now, what if you want to do this in two cities? As it turned out, the earlier game with the massively better UI let you simply select and queue units out of both cities at the same time.

Wanted to add a unit to the bottom of that queue? Shift-click from main UI and you're done. Add one to the top of the queue? Control-click. Add an archer to six cities at once? Similar to what you need to do to alter your queue in ONE Civ V city.

THAT is streamlining, negative because the newer game is worse at it. It's a contrast from fewer choices being made.

If there's no real decision making process for taking some of the technologies, you can combine them to no ill effect, but ultimately something is only dumbed down when the player is making fewer meaningful choices than before. Civ has a lot of mundane stuff it doesn't need per se'.

 

[Kissamies]

I agree with OP. Civ4 seems to have been the pinnacle of the series. The only improvement that 5 brough to the table was hexes and that is a fairly minor thing. Everything else was worse than in 4. With 6 there was a chance to get it back to the right track but, to my complete lack of surprise, they are not taking it. They are doubling down on this streamlining business to sell to the lowest common denominator. Civ7 will not be any different, but maybe they'll finally come up with the spherical world map.

From what I've seen so far, it's not worth preorder or even buying near release. I'll check it in a few years when the goty edition with both expansions is on sale if it is worth picking up out of curiosity. Much like CtP's were fun to play through once or twice just to see what outrageous stuff was in their tech trees. It will sell well, no doubt. I have other 4X games.

 

[crazyewok]

For people who can't grow up, grow beyond their pre-established comfort zone, and hate change, then yes, Civ is dead, all music and film & TV sucks now, and everything was way better in the good old days.

For people who aren't scared of change, no.

Rubbish.

Civ seems to be devolving and dumbing down.

Change is ok as long as it adds and evolves.

When it "streamlines" , detracts and dumbs down then its bad.

Civ 3 built on Civ 2 and Civ 4 built on Civ 3 but Civ 5 took the heart out of the game.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I'll finally buy CiV when it's hit the $5 mark. I still prefer Civ II over CiV or BE. Slick graphics don't make it a game of interest or depth.

Hopefully Civ VI while be better than V can ever be and maybe as good as Civ III. But I doubt it will be as good as IV BtS. Hopefully it will prove me wrong, hopefully. (Lot of hoping here )

@Talcove

For people who can't grow up, grow beyond their pre-established comfort zone, and hate change, then yes, Civ is dead, all music and film & TV sucks now, and everything was way better in the good old days.

For people who aren't scared of change, no.

Perhaps you should leave your Judge Bench before you post. Might get your "Piety robes" all dirty by insulting others. Just sayin'.

JosEPh

 

[crazyewok]

I played Civ IV, including a revisit recently. I like the diversity of options, and indeed the recent revisit prompted me to reevaluate that aspect relative to Civ V - and Civ IV is ahead by some way.

But diversity is not depth. Civ IV had very little strategic depth - there were two or three core strategies you could pursue, supported by optimal mixes of civics and optimal paths through the tech tree to unlock them and beyond,
and all but one of those ultimately boiled down to 'expand as fast as you can, choose a resource type per city and spam the appropriate +X% modifier buildings in it'. That's an exceptionally shallow approach to specialisation (Total War: Rome 2 did the same and it felt like a dumbing down even of the previous TW system, in a game series not historically noted for the complexity of its strategic layer).

Civ V ultimately failed in its go wide vs. go tall effort to vary playstyles; go wide was (almost) always possible, but go tall was the path of least resistance, and of lowest risk since early expansion required gambling on there being suitable city spots in sufficient quantity in your vicinity to be worth the effort. Sadly for a Civ game, going tall is also the path of least interest for a game of this nature. That was however a failure of implementation, not an effort to 'dumb down' - the developers wanted to permit more varied strategies to succeed than was historically the case in Civ.

Yes there was dreadfull things wrong with Civ 4 .

But because there were bad things doesnt mean you needed to throw out the good as well.

Hell there are SOME good points in Civ 5. Just because I dont like civ 5 I dont want to see those good points thrown ou either.

You refine thing by keeping the good (IE the diverse social and govement option in Civ 4 and custmisation in your civ) and throw out the bad like the stacks of doom and generic stratergy.

 

[kamex]

Looks like this thread has turned into another Civ V bashing thread. Shame.

Civ V improved on a lot of things over IV:

Religion being more interesting than a tech race followed by a bit of gpt and huge diplo problems

Diplomatic victory being more than just a population contest

Cultural victory is much better, rather than just hording 3 cities and hoping one of them doesn't get insta-razed

You no longer see packs of lions killing spear-men in the middle of the arctic


The only real thing IV had that V didn't was a decent health system.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Looks like this thread has turned into another Civ V bashing thread. Shame.

Civ V improved on a lot of things over IV:

Religion being more interesting than a tech race followed by a bit of gpt and huge diplo problems

Diplomatic victory being more than just a population contest

Cultural victory is much better, rather than just hording 3 cities and hoping one of them doesn't get insta-razed

You no longer see packs of lions killing spear-men in the middle of the arctic


The only real thing IV had that V didn't was a decent health system.

IV had better:

- early game decision workup (not spamming 4 city trad)
- UI by miles (I have done this to death, example from above isn't representative), to the point where it's objectively superior to vanilla V and from an input perspective also now.
- subject nation modeling (vassal states had issues, but represented feudalism in a way that V doesn't bother)
- unit composition balance (not horse, horse, horse, horse in vanilla or xbow spam BNW, comp and counter-units mattered prior to bombers/nukes which dominate both)
- Turn times on recommended specs
- Rush/defense balance

V had better:

- RNG (far less likely to lose early on outright due to exceptionally bad RNG, less start variance)
- Religion
- DV and CV (CV only with expansions though, original CV was similar)
- Late game (ideologies offer more choice and screw up potential than similar time in IV)
- Framework for tactical combat, that wasn't realized in practice.

Those claiming IV tactics were limited to "SoD" were those who don't know Civ IV tactics against opponents with a pulse.

 

[Hail]

If there's no real decision making process for taking some of the technologies, you can combine them to no ill effect, but ultimately something is only dumbed down when the player is making fewer meaningful choices than before.

disagree. the ideal choice density for the game is somewhere in the middle.

add too much choice (civ:be is guilty of this):
not only it is very hard to design many meaningful choices, but the player will feel overwhelmed and cease to care. choices will get repetitive and to the player loose the sense of impact on the game.

add too little choice ( MoO3 comes to mind):
imo the game will feel more like a simulation. with incomplete information the player will stall to make the decision at the last moment. I think there may appear a feeling that the game is decided too early. some may not like that the game is playing itself (civ5 puppets ).

Looks like this thread has turned into another Civ V bashing thread. Shame.

in the civ5 subforum which is telling.

 

[brianshapiro]

"streamlining" is not dumbing down. Not every player wants to play a game of civ with 1000 technologies, 4000 different units, on a map with 1000 0000 hexes, and having an empire of 13 000 cities, with 1700 different buildings to choose to build.

I don't want to be sitting in my mother's basement collecting welfare checks for two decades just to play through one game of Civ.

Think of the great games that have stood the test of time. How many different types of pieces do you have in chess? How big is the board? Chess gives enough options to be interesting, and no more.

Even a standard game of Risk can take an entire evening to play and it can get boring. Now imagine if Risk had 10x the number of territories. Would you want to play that? I wouldn't. You'd play a game like that for 16 hours and everyone would get tired and go home. Then you wouldn't be able to get everyone together the next day to finish it, and it would sit on your kitchen table all week, before you'd finally give up and put it away.

Streamlining is a very good thing. It's part of good game design. I'm sure there are some people here who would like to play a 10x bigger Risk, but then there are some people who like dubstep. You're just weird and the masses do not need to pander to you. 98% of people would rather play a streamlined game and so that is what the developers create. For those of you who want Risk x10, go and make your own game. We can't help you.

I think streamlining is good, though sometimes too much streamlining is done, or the wrong type of streamlining. I think its right for Civ to have a bit more complexity than a boardgame. I don't think hundreds of different types of units really helps gameplay, though, because it doesn't add anything.

I play for the long game, btw. What that means is I might play "legacy games." I play for an hour or two at a time, but return to the same game every couple of days or every week -- I don't play straight until I win. Watching your civ grow and expand is like a hobby, like doing model building or gardening. Same way I play SimCity games.

They haven't favored this type of gameplay for a long time. I couldn't care less about the "short game", ie finishing a Civ game in a single straight played through session. Multiplayer I'd prefer something like play-by-email, where the other player doesn't even have to be attendant while you're taking your turn. I've played Risk games like that with my friends.

 

[crazyewok]

Looks like this thread has turned into another Civ V bashing thread. Shame.

Civ V improved on a lot of things over IV:

Religion being more interesting than a tech race followed by a bit of gpt and huge diplo problems

Diplomatic victory being more than just a population contest

Cultural victory is much better, rather than just hording 3 cities and hoping one of them doesn't get insta-razed

You no longer see packs of lions killing spear-men in the middle of the arctic


The only real thing IV had that V didn't was a decent health system.

The problem was civ 5 removed a lot of the good things about civ 4 too.

They should have removed the bad like you mentioned while retaining the better aspects and adding the new features of civ 5.

 

[crazyewok]

"streamlining" is not dumbing down. Not every player wants to play a game of civ with 1000 technologies, 4000 different units, on a map with 1000 0000 hexes, and having an empire of 13 000 cities, with 1700 different buildings to choose to build.

I don't want to be sitting in my mother's basement collecting welfare checks for two decades just to play through one game of Civ.

Think of the great games that have stood the test of time. How many different types of pieces do you have in chess? How big is the board? Chess gives enough options to be interesting, and no more.

Even a standard game of Risk can take an entire evening to play and it can get boring. Now imagine if Risk had 10x the number of territories. Would you want to play that? I wouldn't. You'd play a game like that for 16 hours and everyone would get tired and go home. Then you wouldn't be able to get everyone together the next day to finish it, and it would sit on your kitchen table all week, before you'd finally give up and put it away.

Streamlining is a very good thing. It's part of good game design. I'm sure there are some people here who would like to play a 10x bigger Risk, but then there are some people who like dubstep. You're just weird and the masses do not need to pander to you. 98% of people would rather play a streamlined game and so that is what the developers create. For those of you who want Risk x10, go and make your own game. We can't help you.

Then play a game of risk then.


There are plenty of simple stream lined games already out there.

So why not play them rather than insist on dumbing down other franchises.

Better yet OPTIONS.

Flick a option on game option to set it up for simple civ lite or for a mature complex game for us grown ups. Everyone wins then.