Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 4,304
Some of you CivFanatics may have noticed it, i've come up having some frustration with Civilization 4 and 5.
So I tried, shouted and cryed in order to understand what displeased me so definitively in those games.
It's all genuinely and randomly that the essence, the origin of my discontentment appeared to me,
playing a Settler game of Civ5 on a huge map.
I was asking a non favourable AI to trade one luxury. It said it wanted 4 or 5 of mine, including one that
i had in only one copy. Of course i said no, but i proposed it after this to say yes to everything, except this
ressource i had in only one copy... guess what it said? NO.
Then it all appeared to me: Civ5 is a too rigid game. (lol)
What would have cost to the general gameplay if the AI would have saiy 'yes'? Absolutely nothing... more,
it would have had a spicy dimension: player initiative can be rewarded.
Trading for less ressources may unbalance the game, but nobody said you to propose one only luxury less.
That, is a personnal initiative from you and nobody else.
We can imagine plenty cases of initiative let to the player. What happens in Civ5 is that the player
hurts himself constantly to refusals.
I say, let's load the game of cases where the simple fact to think about something will let him to gain an
advantage.
That's why IMO Civ4 and Civ5 are so frustrating: they are streamlined in a fashion that assumes that everydoby
will play in the same optimized way, without letting any room for initiative, and rewarding.
Considering the game entirely, I can say that many aspects of Civ5 are alike. War, for example.
I remember that in Civ2, Ais were more or less apathic considering war. Not that they would never declare war
to other AIs or the player, but they were more or less passive in that regard: on the first shot, Civ2 was a
management game, and war considered only as a bonus.
Nothing said obviously to the player: "do war and you will win", but if he had the idea to do war, especially
early, he had a fair chance to win the game.
War was a kind of bonus, a bonus that rewarded the player for his boldness. That was never a streamlined
piece of gameplay that everybody has to treat in the same way.
In the same way, the simple fact to move a unit. After all, i took the pain to build it, it cost me time an effort
(waiting effort...), and finally! there it is. Now I can move it and explore. In Civ5 it's still rewarding: you have the
ruins and the City States you discover first (30 gold instead of 15) but it's not enough. AIs will actively compete
ruins to you (they shouldn't disappear in the first place, it puts back the point to explore around the AIs other
than military spying), and 15/30 gold it too few.
This last example may not be the best one but it illustrates that it can/should be done on the basics too.
Now that's something that touches fun; a permissive game is always more fun than a rigor, strict and streamlined
gameplay, and there is quite room for designing things this way deliberately.
Well, at least, it's my opinion.
I hope I succeeded in translating what hurt me in that game into words. Was that clear, at least?
So I tried, shouted and cryed in order to understand what displeased me so definitively in those games.
It's all genuinely and randomly that the essence, the origin of my discontentment appeared to me,
playing a Settler game of Civ5 on a huge map.
I was asking a non favourable AI to trade one luxury. It said it wanted 4 or 5 of mine, including one that
i had in only one copy. Of course i said no, but i proposed it after this to say yes to everything, except this
ressource i had in only one copy... guess what it said? NO.
Then it all appeared to me: Civ5 is a too rigid game. (lol)
What would have cost to the general gameplay if the AI would have saiy 'yes'? Absolutely nothing... more,
it would have had a spicy dimension: player initiative can be rewarded.
Trading for less ressources may unbalance the game, but nobody said you to propose one only luxury less.
That, is a personnal initiative from you and nobody else.
We can imagine plenty cases of initiative let to the player. What happens in Civ5 is that the player
hurts himself constantly to refusals.
I say, let's load the game of cases where the simple fact to think about something will let him to gain an
advantage.
That's why IMO Civ4 and Civ5 are so frustrating: they are streamlined in a fashion that assumes that everydoby
will play in the same optimized way, without letting any room for initiative, and rewarding.
Considering the game entirely, I can say that many aspects of Civ5 are alike. War, for example.
I remember that in Civ2, Ais were more or less apathic considering war. Not that they would never declare war
to other AIs or the player, but they were more or less passive in that regard: on the first shot, Civ2 was a
management game, and war considered only as a bonus.
Nothing said obviously to the player: "do war and you will win", but if he had the idea to do war, especially
early, he had a fair chance to win the game.
War was a kind of bonus, a bonus that rewarded the player for his boldness. That was never a streamlined
piece of gameplay that everybody has to treat in the same way.
In the same way, the simple fact to move a unit. After all, i took the pain to build it, it cost me time an effort
(waiting effort...), and finally! there it is. Now I can move it and explore. In Civ5 it's still rewarding: you have the
ruins and the City States you discover first (30 gold instead of 15) but it's not enough. AIs will actively compete
ruins to you (they shouldn't disappear in the first place, it puts back the point to explore around the AIs other
than military spying), and 15/30 gold it too few.
This last example may not be the best one but it illustrates that it can/should be done on the basics too.
Now that's something that touches fun; a permissive game is always more fun than a rigor, strict and streamlined
gameplay, and there is quite room for designing things this way deliberately.
Well, at least, it's my opinion.
I hope I succeeded in translating what hurt me in that game into words. Was that clear, at least?
