Is Gods and Kings what Civ5 should have been as released?

Adding some of the worse features from Civ4 doesn't mean they were left out of Civ5. All it would really mean is that it probably took a while to figure out how to do them much better, if it turns out that way.

 

They weren't left out due to a lack of time - their exclusion was a design decision.

PCG: What have you streamlined from previous games?

Jon: We made some changes with religion. Because diplomacy is one of our focuses with Civ V, planning what an AI leader is thinking, how he's going to win the game, that wasn't something that was meshing very well with the religion system. In Civ IV, the religions were primary factors of who liked whom and who disliked whom. And that wasn't meshing very well with what we wanted to do, so we decided to move on without the religion system. But that's mainly because we wanted diplomacy to have more depth and not be so predictable. We wanted to make sure that the AI leaders were taking into account the same things as the player was taking into account. A player might not care what religion you're running, but they might care quite a bit if you attack one of their friends.

Let's see if there's a couple good examples...

Dennis: Jon's point about stepping away from religion is a good one. We want people to remember that as these systems are taken away, in favour of new systems, we're never leaving gaping holes where people are going to be saying, 'Oh my god, they took out religion, what am I going to do now?'.

We're putting in new mechanics, especially with diplomacy, that are making the game an entirely new experience - especially with things like city states. City states are a new mechanism on the map. They're smaller, single city, weaker NPCs scattered throughout the map. They never really grow that much, but they're there to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

 

Probably, since you expect a new version to build upon the old, not retrograde back to how the old began. Civ5 has never felt like a cohesive product to me, always a work in progress that needed more work and more progress...

 

I don't think that any expansion is how the game should have been at release. The launch version was good enough for me to enjoy it without addition. However, I get the feeling that this expansion is going to bring V up into the league of IV. Not because it is including features from IV, but because the implementation of them seems to be very good and the whole game will be better for it. Vanilla V is a good game, a decent Civ game, and I think that GK will make V a great game and a great Civ game.

 

fingers crossed.

 

What I find most amusing about this is that diplomacy was one of the main focuses of Civ V?! I enjoy the game a lot, but like everyone else, find that diplomacy is one of its weakest spots.

 

I'm torn here. On one hand, I feel Civ5 is disadvantaged as being the game to really shake things up on the diplomacy side for the first time in 10 years. It also doesn't help that the game borrows familiar elements of civ3 and 4's diplomacy system even as the underlying concepts and rules are vastly different. However, I can see and understand what Civ5's diplo system is going for. And I think it's completely subjective whether it is actually 'better' or 'worse' than Civ4's. It is just a different answer to the question of "how do you build a diplomatic game"

After Civ2, diplomacy took a giant leap with Civ3, and that model was largely kept in-tact for Civ4. I think most people who grew up with those games, or started with those games are used to the diplomatic lexicon from those games

- AI's who don't try to win, no grand strategy, but passively obstruct
- Must be in your own borders to DoW or get a rep penalty for 'sneak attack'
- Must wait for per turn deals to expire before DoW or you won't get the same deals offered to you again
- Various exploitative strategies involving crippling trades that sap the AI per turn income and slow their science (not really diplo, more of a lux/sci/gold slider & trade issue)
- AI's can be bribed and largely placated with fear; techs, luxuries, gold or religion (civ4)

Civ5's apprach is vastly different. alliances are active rather than passive. They form but rarely do they last the entire game when, the human player uses said alliances to vault from middle of the pact "one of the guys" to "top dog" or conversely, stagnate and fall behind, opening an opportunity for an easy lunch.

I understand the frustration seeing a profitable relationship disappear as the AIs re-evalute their alliances and their #1 threats, but the fluidity and broad scope of that diplomacy is at the very least simply another way to make diplomacy in 4x game. It's a different lexicon. Real-politik is in.

 

As much as I don't want to be a Civilization V apologist, the strictest interpretation of this is actually unsustainable across a five game series. You'd either have too much mechanical bloat *or* a game that barely changed.

 

I think it would be better to ask this question again after the expansion is released.

 

And Tropico 3 was basically a graphical update of Tropico 1

 

I think the big issue here is that when we think of Civ 4 we are still thinking of Beyond the Sword, and comparing that to Civ 5

 

i happen to like civilization i dont feel the need for a completely new civilization every time a new game comes out so i find barely change to be a good thing personally

this is one of the things that always bothers me about successful series instead of giving you what you love but better they give you xyz instead

i would rather someone else give us xyz with the series i love continuing to give me what i love

as for mechanical bloat if they are taking stuff out just to add it in expansions you are right back to that bloat again anyway arent you

 

The release of Civ5 did not uninstall Civ4 from your PC.

 

Obviously "should have been" is subjective, but: the content they're adding in G&K sounds like it would bring Civ5 closer to what I expected the initial release to be. We had to wait a couple years and pay another $30, that's all.

 

I'm pretty sure that's the reason I was disappointed by Civ 5 on release. I wasn't comparing Civ 5 vanilla with Civ 4 vanilla (which didn't like that much either), and I wasn't actually comparing it with BTS vanilla either, but BTS with mods.

No matter how good Civ 5 was going to be, it wouldn't be able to compete with the level polish and additions that three and a half years of expansions and mods can provide.

 

It didn't specifically need to be religion and espionage - I would have been happy with other systems that added more depth to it. G&K is at least adding that, supposedly. I know the party line is still "Civ 5 is not Civ 4" and I agree, it's clearly not - but that doesn't mean Civ5 should have been so shallow when it was released.

And yes, obviously polish is separate from feature set. Both were sorely lacking when Civ5 dropped. Yes, it's been improved through free patches, but (A) that's not really unique to Civ5 or a favor from Firaxis, and (B) that it needed so much improvement through patches isn't a good thing at all.

 

i am still interested in having the game i enjoy updated to benefit from more current technology and to see things that might not have worked fixed or removed and new stuff added

the idea that every new iteration has to start from scratch again is an excuse we make because we feel like we cannot criticize anything about the game

the majority of other video games build upon previous iterations they dont restart from scratch each time out

it has become more about a business model of how to release parts of it to maximize the money made instead of improving the finished product of the last 'generation'

 

EA Sports games simply "improve from the last one" and that's generally seen as a waste of money.

There are diminishing returns from just adding new features to an established game. Taking a fresh approach is generally more rewarding (when done right) both for the developers and the fans.

 

except its not a fresh approach its holding things back and making you pay to add them back in later on

they take civilizations out to make you pay to get them back later they take religion out and make you pay later to get it back etc

ea sports games dont remove teams and make you rebuy them at a later time after the release of the game

you can take a fresh approach like they did with hexes and the combat etc and still keep the stuff that you had from the previous generation

its the removing stuff you had and intend to have just to sell it to me in bits and pieces that i dont appreciate