Make it real fun.

[Naokaukodem]

As it is, I just feel that the game patches and the new expansions are just toying with the game system, as to make it less "broken", by radical changes that theorically could massively unplease some people, as long as those changes aren't not massively asked by the fans themselves, in fact.

So i'm wondering what really is the fans concern : do they want a game that suits them and their playing style, minus all the other people that have less large mouthes ?... Can't they adapt themselves to basic rules, and if they do, why adapting to some other basic rules would make the game better ?

For example, I've seen that BNW forbid nearly warmongering : will people start to say that they want to warmonger again after having played a couple games of BNW, that would allow only 2, 3 cities and make the whole game boring again ?

Has the gameplay of the game to change completely according to fans moods, because they think that Civ should be eternal for 40 $ ? I'm just saying this : if you feel that the game is boring, just change your difficulty level ! And if you already win everytime on Deity, change the settings (civ included) in order to give you some disadvantages ! And if you won with every leader on every kind of maps and settings, just don't keep playing Civ, because it's way too simple for you. Rather play Chess VS a good opponent or VS a good program, with a headband on the eyes if you want. But stop pissing.

It seems that developers have employed themselves exclusively to respond to fans concern. As I showed it, it's a neverending silly quest. Instead, they should apply themselves to have imaginative and fun ideas. That's why we pay them. I don't really care to make a long post or long video to show the world I can master a new system... what I like, is having FUN. (and no, I don't have fun doing that) I don't have fun finding ways-to-play other people won't think about, because I'm alone and I don't really give a sheet.

Beside that, I think it's silly to gather game feedback from players of all levels. All they want is a game that fits their playstyle. Obviously, one can't please them all. But, there's something trivial that is common to every player out there, even if they ignore it themselves : it's FUN. You should design a game only with this factor in mind. It's not a big deal if it's "broken" or "unbalanced". Most of the time, the "unbalance" is what makes the game fun. Yes, I'm saying it. Even if that's not intentional.

However, creating new and fun ideas is intentional, or ideally. Is it ? Go figure... at least I can say what NOT to do : tweak, tweak, tweaking the game according to the fanbase. BNW is just that : "tweaking" ideas all the way... Ooh ooh, fun, where are you ?

 

[Bulldog Bats]

Part of it is that when the game changes from one version to another. For instance, I played a lot of CIV 3, and did not come back until this past year. The game is not what it used to be - it used to be empire building - to me, for the first time, a new version is a whole new game, and not a better one. I think that is a big part of what people have complaints about - that the new version is inferior to the past. In my opinion, a new version of a game should take the best parts of the old game and give it twists - when it changes the entire mechanic, people are pissed off.

These are opinions, and people have a right to voice them. I would assume/hope that the developers take them into account when new patches/versions are made.

 

[Abraxis]

You are saying Civ5 is not an empire building game anymore... what is your justification for that?

I thought that's exactly what it was...

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

You are saying Civ5 is not an empire building game anymore... what is your justification for that?

I thought that's exactly what it was...

Compared to civilization 3 in which you can get basicly as many cities as you want and as early as you want basicly with atleast 6 pop in each of them and still be running an economy and having a large force Before the ad's, Civ 5 don't get to the Epic scale of empire building of the old games.

 

[lindsay40k]

I think it's a fair criticism that the scale of battles keeps increasing in Civ 5, with the somewhat odd result of classical era warfare often being down to a few skirmishes between modest numbers of archers etc, whilst modern era warfare sees a carpet of units swarming over cities like soldier ants bringing down lions. I'd probably enjoy it a bit more if battles of antiquity had a more epic feel and human wave assaults were more obsoleted by the advent of flight. Or at least if more modern units cost more upkeep.

On a technical level, the single most anti-fun aspect is the lack of rally points. Having to tell every redeploying unit where to go every single turn for ten turns of deploying a marine invasion force puts me off finishing half my conquest games.

 

[AiTenshi1]

Civ V has empire building later than earlier games, that's the only difference. It's far more realistic, too, at least if you consider the entire world/globe rather than the much smaller "known world" of ancient, classical and medieval time periods.

For the OP, you don't seem to understand what the developers are doing. Yes, Firaxis listens to customer feedback. Any company that's worth anything had better do so or they will not stay in business. However, their primary approach is to address specific areas of the game that could not be fully addressed during normal development. They have stated this in interviews during pre-release publicity for the expansions. For G&K, they focused on the early game and wanted to flesh it out more than they could with the original release. For BNW, they focused on the late game with the same goal. You can look for videos on YouTube and elsewhere where the developers discuss their intentions and focus for each expansion. They are not simply catering to what fans post in forums.

 

[Autoclave]

I like all the Civ 5 restrictions, they make the gameplay more fun.

 

[Naokaukodem]

For the OP, you don't seem to understand what the developers are doing. Yes, Firaxis listens to customer feedback. Any company that's worth anything had better do so or they will not stay in business. However, their primary approach is to address specific areas of the game that could not be fully addressed during normal development. They have stated this in interviews during pre-release publicity for the expansions. For G&K, they focused on the early game and wanted to flesh it out more than they could with the original release. For BNW, they focused on the late game with the same goal. You can look for videos on YouTube and elsewhere where the developers discuss their intentions and focus for each expansion. They are not simply catering to what fans post in forums.

If you ask me, those interviews are just marketing . Because I really fail to see what they wanted to achieve. Later eras for BNW ? Say me why trade caravans are accessible very soon, and why it is specially focused on more restrictions for big empires (2% science hit for each city, how realistic ) regardless of the era, but according to what fans wanted...

Part of it is that when the game changes from one version to another. For instance, I played a lot of CIV 3, and did not come back until this past year. The game is not what it used to be - it used to be empire building - to me, for the first time, a new version is a whole new game, and not a better one. I think that is a big part of what people have complaints about - that the new version is inferior to the past. In my opinion, a new version of a game should take the best parts of the old game and give it twists - when it changes the entire mechanic, people are pissed off.

Yes, it's probably why some people are pissed off, because Civ5 didn't build from 4 to have a yet more amazing product, it just changed the rules basically. While it can be good, because Civ4 rules as I said it in another topic, are counter-intuitive, it's bad when it is to replace those systems with other counter-intuitive ones, or at least systems that break too much with the empire-building philosophy of the previous games. I had a lot of difficulty to adapt to Civ5 with its global happiness. Most of the time I was stuck with 2 cities, with a negative happiness and everything 'happiness' built. I can adapt though, even if I miss the feeling of rampaging-building cities as fast as I can, which was fun. But there's so much things that can make the game more fun, for example a true revival of History with empire rising and falling at a high rate, no more the frozen figures of leaders sitting forever straightjacket.

These are opinions, and people have a right to voice them. I would assume/hope that the developers take them into account when new patches/versions are made.

Sure, but they are opinion of people that don't like Civ5. If it's to listen to them, no problem. Unfortunately, Firaxis don't listen to them. I was more talking about opinions of people actually playing Civ5 extensively, regardless of the difficulty level they play.

 

[Abraxis]

I like all the Civ 5 restrictions, they make the gameplay more fun.

This is my predisposition as well.

Games are about boundaries, by definition they're fun rule-sets. If you're not being restricted, what's to stop you from simply opening paint and drawing your civ? Why pay all this money if all you want is visual feedback for your will to create a civilization? Without adversity, there's no thrill in accomplishment that couldn't be more easily found pretty much everywhere else.

I think I get what they're saying though. I also started with Civ3, and remember just sort of doing whatever came to my head because it seemed nice and imagining my civ within its world was a lot of fun, and obviously I enjoyed it since I'm still here. but... I really, really like how things have been tightened up. I still do that, but now there's just an extra sense of accomplishment knowing I didn't just do something because I chose to, but also managed to do it despite the circumstances. If I hadn't started increasing the difficulty and finding new challenges, forcing myself to understand the game at a deeper level as a result, I think I would have gotten bored of the series a long time ago.

To be honest though, I had attributed that growth in complexity only to my increasing the difficulty, where in civ3 I was probably playing prince or something, I've steadily increased the challenge over the series, and as a result my perception of the game's depth and boundaries has changed. Reading this thread I realize maybe the game itself has been changing. Is that really a bad thing though? I mean, at the risk of sounding rude, could it be that Civ5 with BNW has just become a much deeper game with so much interplay between individual mechanics multiplying system complexity? I'm sure if I went down to prince I could probably do whatever I liked, getting much that same experience Civ3 provided. Could it be you guys just havn't given Civ5 enough of a chance to understand its mechanics enough to the point where you don't feel so stifled by its challenges?

Or maybe I'm way off... I don't know. But civ5 is great fun

 

[satchel]

Part of it is that when the game changes from one version to another. For instance, I played a lot of CIV 3, and did not come back until this past year. The game is not what it used to be - it used to be empire building - to me, for the first time, a new version is a whole new game, and not a better one. I think that is a big part of what people have complaints about - that the new version is inferior to the past. In my opinion, a new version of a game should take the best parts of the old game and give it twists - when it changes the entire mechanic, people are pissed off.

This is fascinating to me. I was also a big Civ III player (I wrote some strategy articles for this very site), who skipped Civ IV and came back to the franchise recently to play Civ V. (I had also played a lot of the original and II. IV was the only one I didn't play.)

And I disagree with you completely.

Civ V is everything Civ III was for me, but better. I loved the variations on civ traits in Civ III, and Civ V takes those to a whole new level with UAs, UBs, and more varied UUs. I liked the idea of culture and empire borders that was introduced in Civ III, and in Civ V playing with culture is more refined and more varied. I love the idea of city-states and the different ways of using them in your tactics. I love the expanded victory conditions. BNW has religion and tourism, which are additional fun mechanics to think about, more angles to approach the game from, more different ways to play. I could keep going. But the short version is, I loved Civ III to bits, yet I think Civ V is better in almost every way.

Compared to civilization 3 in which you can get basicly as many cities as you want and as early as you want basicly with atleast 6 pop in each of them and still be running an economy and having a large force Before the ad's, Civ 5 don't get to the Epic scale of empire building of the old games.

My recollection about Civ III (on this board) is that there was a near constant refrain of complaints from people who found the corruption model in Civ III unworkably crippling for their larger empires, along with a near constant response from people who said it was a sensible game mechanic that you have to adapt your strategies to work with.

Basically the same as the current board dynamics around the warmongering system in BNW.

Likewise for Civ III's culture-flipping, which warmonger-types also hated, because when they took a city from a large, powerful empire they ran a risk of losing the city back to its original owner. I personally participated in some discussions here about this mechanic, and shared my own strategies for managing so that it was virtually never a problem for me. But there were plenty of players who didn't enjoy the changes they would have to make to their gameplay to accommodate it.

My point is that my recollections of how great and easy Civ III was for big empires and warmongering are quite different from yours, and are actually not that different from the discussions people have today about whether these mechanics are correctly balanced in Civ V.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

My general impression is the in previous versions of the game, your goal was basically to "take over the world" (think Pinky and the Brain) - you were Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Caesar, or whoever. Whether going for domination or whatever other victory condition, that was your mind set. You built an empire.

In the game now, unless you are going domination, you are penalized for doing this. The easiest way to win unless you are going domination, is to build 4 cities, play nice with everyone, and grow population and science. By mid-game, if you are ahead in science and have a decent base, you are just riding out the game til your win (I play on level 5 or 6 - I know it is not that simple on diety).

If you declare war (and heaven forbit, capture a city, even if the AI declared war) you are a pariah. Because of global happiness, the only way to have a larger number of cities is if you puppet them, which is no fun.

I actually liked the culture-flipping. If you were growing powerful, weak AIs came over to you. Likewise, if you took cities too fast, you risked losing them back. You had to balance the growth of your cities so that you did not lose them to others. I'm certainly not saying that III was perfect, but it seemed like a grand adventure/quest, while things fall flat now for me in comparison.

 

[redwings1340]

I've never played any other versions of civ before, but I find Civ V, particularly BNW, to be awesome and a lot of fun. I was addicted to vanilla civ, but I've had a lot of fun with BNW. I think there are times when games change and it gets more or less to our liking, but it's impossible to please everyone, and I think Firaxis did a pretty good job on Civ V.

 

[Callonia]

Well I'll put it this way simply, You can recreate the roman empire in Civ 3 and 4.

But if you try to do the same in civ 5, you just get murdered by unhappiness and is restricted to ruling only four tiny hamlets.

I'd be honest, I have never played the greeks, and rome in civ 5 because the game simply doesn't allow it.

Only civs i have played is German and Japan and well that's it i guess short of scenarios.

 

[Mudrac]

I think it's a fair criticism that the scale of battles keeps increasing in Civ 5, with the somewhat odd result of classical era warfare often being down to a few skirmishes between modest numbers of archers etc, whilst modern era warfare sees a carpet of units swarming over cities like soldier ants bringing down lions. I'd probably enjoy it a bit more if battles of antiquity had a more epic feel and human wave assaults were more obsoleted by the advent of flight. Or at least if more modern units cost more upkeep.

On a technical level, the single most anti-fun aspect is the lack of rally points. Having to tell every redeploying unit where to go every single turn for ten turns of deploying a marine invasion force puts me off finishing half my conquest games.

I don't see anything strange in it. New technology brings more death and destruction. It is historically how it happened, prior to WWI people thought that Napoleonic Wars was the deadliest conflict they saw, then came WWI and they saw what real massive warfare is, then came WWII and then they saw what an even more massive warfare is. Wars where getting bloodier and more destructive as technology advanced. There were also big wars in antiquity/classical era, but they were not so big because the population was not so large. As it grew bigger and more parts of the world, thanks to colonization, where brought together wars were getting more massive.

Besides total war is a relatively new term. Here it is what's written in wikipedia regarding WWII:

''In a state of "total war", the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the first use of nuclear weapons in combat, it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history.''

Edit: Also try out Paradox's games (perhaps you already have) EU IV and Victoria II. In those games you also see how wars get more bigger and deadlier as the game progresses. For example in EU IV wars early game in 15th century are not so massive as those you wage later in 18th century/early 19th century. In Victoria II you begin with relatively small wars that end quickly and don't change the map of the world much, but as you progress towards the end of 19th century: discover Great Wars and new technologies, your population grows and it's structure changes, you industrialize a lot, your armies get much bigger and better equipped, so when you enter the war (especially if you plat as a Great Power) it can really bring massive deaths on your side, cripple both your industry and economy very badly, and bring your nation in a state of disarray and dissatisfaction especially if you lose the war.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Atleast I Think we all can agrea, Civilization games aren't really that good representation of human history

 

[Mudrac]

Atleast I Think we all can agrea, Civilization games aren't really that good representation of human history

Absolutely, but that is the point of all video games, I can't remember 1 video game for which you can say "Oh yeah this so real", rarely can say that for a movie as well.

Also, just to add one thing regarding my previous post, many people think when we talk about Roman conquests or Alexander's conquest that these battles were big. But in truth were they? Since the only sources we have are numerous historians and philosophers that lived in the period, yeah, these battles and armies were big for them. It was big for someone who lived at the time, an army of 50.000 soldiers or so. But, these numbers rose through history, in age of colonialism, imperialism and Napoleonic wars grew to hundreds of thousands, and then in WWI and WWII to millions. Think about it.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

I was not talking about trying to re-create history. I just like the old game mechanics better - call me a heathen brute (you wouldn't be the first). Still a great way to waste far too much time.

 

[satchel]

Well I'll put it this way simply, You can recreate the roman empire in Civ 3 and 4.

But if you try to do the same in civ 5, you just get murdered by unhappiness and is restricted to ruling only four tiny hamlets.

First of all, if you do play a small empire, your cities should be enormous bustling metropoli, not "tiny hamlets."

Second of all, happiness definitely requires attention, but it doesn't murder large empires if you pay attention to the game mechanics. I am only a king player myself but I typically have not just excess happiness, but ridiculous amounts of excess happiness by the late game - if I play a small empire I can get up to 40-50, and even a large empire can have happiness to spare. Even on Deity I have seen plenty of Let's Play videos in which players manage large empires and/or conquest.

Work the tools that game gives you to manage happiness. Build happiness buildings, acquire luxury resources (should not be difficult if you are building a large empire, but ally up those mercantile city-states for sure), work your culture so that you can choose happiness-providing policies and tenets (all ideologies have very valuable ones), pay attention to ideology pressure and do what it takes to minimize it (working culture helps here too).

I find these challenges make the game fun. I like the happiness mechanic. It's a lot better than it was in previous versions of Civ where you had to micromanage happiness on a city-by-city basis.

 

[Callonia]

First of all, if you do play a small empire, your cities should be enormous bustling metropoli, not "tiny hamlets."

Second of all, happiness definitely requires attention, but it doesn't murder large empires if you pay attention to the game mechanics. I am only a king player myself but I typically have not just excess happiness, but ridiculous amounts of excess happiness by the late game - if I play a small empire I can get up to 40-50, and even a large empire can have happiness to spare. Even on Deity I have seen plenty of Let's Play videos in which players manage large empires and/or conquest.

Work the tools that game gives you to manage happiness. Build happiness buildings, acquire luxury resources (should not be difficult if you are building a large empire, but ally up those mercantile city-states for sure), work your culture so that you can choose happiness-providing policies and tenets (all ideologies have very valuable ones), pay attention to ideology pressure and do what it takes to minimize it (working culture helps here too).

I find these challenges make the game fun. I like the happiness mechanic. It's a lot better than it was in previous versions of Civ where you had to micromanage happiness on a city-by-city basis.

Yes yes yes I don't know how to manage happiness at all whatsoever.

I am aware that a city become a metropolis at size 13.

Anyways this is the screenshot of me during Gods N Kings in one of the biggest conflict I have ever seen in years of playing civ 5. I have yet to see AI achieve the greatness Hiawatha did once. He was in eternal golden ages. We clashed alot of wars against each other again and again.

Spoiler :

Then now for Brave new world screenshots....

This is screenshot of my galeasses waiting to be upgraded to frigates, and then took his capital immediately because hiawatha beat me to the machu Picchu.

Spoiler :

Same map but almost 200 turns later.

Spoiler :

Then this is me on another map....

Spoiler :

I'm the german guy in all the screenshots, and difficulty is King.

And please don't' lie, you fully know well that 4 cities is the max for the first half of the game unless you acquire so much luxuries.

And 1 Happiness per 1 population is ultimately self defeating mechanic. I think i still have screenshots somewhere with me painting the whole world gray in my color and still have 100+ happiness.... I don't care enough to go and dig them up.

Only reason I haven't gone back to Civ 4 is because I hate stacks of doom that much enough to tolerate a lousy happiness system of civ 5. Its that fun having combat on the fields instead of fighting pitched battles in metropolises all the time.

So firaxis succeeded in improving the combat but, their city management was a huge step back.

Tradition's four city opening is quite old and boring especially when it limits you to just four ridiculous cities in the time where there was massive roman empire around. Alexander, and huns and the chinese. That won't just simply happen in civ 5, firaxis has done a good job in preventing it from happening.

Oh and, I play exclusively on huge maps, anything else smaller is too small for me. I ragequit a large map halfway through cuz it was so tiny.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

I did like the war-weariness mechanic in past versions. Here, you can stay at war indefinitely against a civ with no repercussions. In real life, that doesn't happen. People want to get out of wars as soon as possible for the most part.