Civ4 had a lot of problems. Religion and corporations were not implemented well at all (and let's remember that corporations were in an Expansion, not the core game); the AI was utterly incapable of using them correctly, and the effects of religions were completely interchangeable. So to me, the removal of these systems was a positive change; when implemented well (see the DUCKS mod) it can be a great addition to the game experience. But Civ4 didn't do these well. And yet, a large number of the posts talking about how superior Civ4 was to Civ5 brings these up...
As for the rest, it's a question of taste. While I don't particularly like the 1UPT, I also never liked the stacks o' doom. Hexes are an improvement, IMO, but they have some drawbacks. And city-states are a great addition, in my opinion, but could be improved a bit.
I say that making Religion work better is an improvement, you say that removing it entirely is an improvement.
I say that making Corporations work better is an improvement, you say that removing them entirely is an improvement.
Problem is, which of the two (making it work better versus removing it)
adds to the game?
The fact that some of them came into Civ4 via expansion is unimportant; they exist. Thus,
adding to the game involves expanding their functionality, not removing them. By your own admission, implementing them well adds to the gaming experience.
I believe, as do you, that hexes are better than squares, but as another pointed out, by your own logic, as they implemented hexes poorly, they should remove them rather than improving them.
No, nostalgia also happens when someone has a blind spot to the faults of the old versions of things when comparing to newer items. Like how my grandfather could just never admit that an HDTV looked better than his old '70s-era TV, or that my Japanese car could be a better car in any way than his '88 Cadillac. He still had the items he was comparing around, so in theory could make a direct comparison, and it still didn't change anything. He had a bias towards the older things, and couldn't assess newer things rationally.
Nostalgia and wilful blindness are not the same thing. Nostalgia is specifically looking to things of the past that are no longer available, and then using rose-coloured glasses (or wilful blindness if you will) to gloss over the shortcomings of then-and-there.
When it's something that's right in front of you and immediately comparable, that's a direct example of wilful blindness. Except... it is most times, but not always.
My father preferred his old TV versus the newer ones (until the old ones weren't available anymore). My father and I both see slightly into the UV range; the image looks slightly different between CRT and LCD. I don't care about the difference; my father did. (I got proof that I was seeing differently in college when I marked the UV bands of mercury spectra. The teacher called foul until I did it again in front of him.)
The fact is that when I look at Civ5 and compare it to Civ4, Civ5 (for me and very obviously for many others) falls short. Not just of what I wanted it to be but explicitly short of their own advertising. The graphics are prettier than Civ4 but they still fall short in the animation, and the performance overhead for those graphics is atrocious. The immersiveness, the detail, the abilities of the game, all fall vastly short of what their own box blurbs say should be there. At this point I'm not comparing against Civ4; I'm comparing against what
they themselves said would be there.
Jon Shafer was the lead designer; at the end of the day it was
his responsibility for what went out the door.
They messed up hard. Gamers are fickle. One bad egg and the train, the franchise, can easily get derailed. I hope that is not the case here.
