Old timer's, what are your thoughts so far?
- Thread starter wiggawuu
- Start date
Play since civ 1. All the civ games were my favorite game during their lifespan.
Played a ton on civ 1-4 and was excited for every release... until now. Civ V just killed it for me.
Just disliked almost every direction they took with that game. They dumbed it down to the point where I couldn't take it. Made something too slow and a game where the AI can't handle the mechanics in the game.
I am not holding my breath that the same team will not serve the same garbage.
I don't care about eye candy, innovate bla bla. I want something that WORKS, where the AI actually challenges you and where you have to think about your decisions as the game progresses.
Played a ton on civ 1-4 and was excited for every release... until now. Civ V just killed it for me.
Just disliked almost every direction they took with that game. They dumbed it down to the point where I couldn't take it. Made something too slow and a game where the AI can't handle the mechanics in the game.
I am not holding my breath that the same team will not serve the same garbage.
I don't care about eye candy, innovate bla bla. I want something that WORKS, where the AI actually challenges you and where you have to think about your decisions as the game progresses.
Aristos
Lightseeker
Sorry, but I cannot let this one pass. Shafer ONLY "reviewed" his performance as lead designer after thousands of lines of critics where written in this very forum, but more importantly, after Sulla wrote an excellent piece of analysis that clearly defined what was wrong with Civ 5 (vanilla). Shafer just repeated what was already said by many much earlier, and tried to appropriate some sort of "mea culpa" that only had the effect of putting his "professionalism" under the spotlight.
"Coincidentally", that "mea culpa" came exactly when Shafer was starting to promote his new endeavor...
@Pengu,
have you tried BNW with the Community Balance Patch? AI is much better, many systems have been altered to better correspond to the series' spirit, etc etc. You may want to try that while you wait for Civ 6 and the first reviews (by hard core civfanatics, don't trust the "official" reviewers/youtubers that much...).
Well, he admitted what went wrong. He owned up to it and agreed with the criticism launched at his game.
BTW, not to nitpick but it's Sullla, not Sulla.
It's neither here nor there whether Jon felt it was a mistake or not. By 2013 Civ6 was starting development and things like 1UPT , hexes and keeping Civ5 BNW features was being decided already.
I don't think it's really useful or helpful to constantly try to guilt Civ6 by association. Even if we grant someone truly dislikes Civ5, it would be like me dismissing Civ4 because I disliked Civ3. Just imagine that for a second.
I don't think it's really useful or helpful to constantly try to guilt Civ6 by association. Even if we grant someone truly dislikes Civ5, it would be like me dismissing Civ4 because I disliked Civ3. Just imagine that for a second.
Aristos
Lightseeker
You ARE nitpicking
Well, sorry man, but having lived among chantas for 37 years of my life (in the southern cone), I know how to read the signs. A true professional owns his mistakes in a timely manner, which usually doesn't correspond with "right before I am starting a new gaming company of my own" and much later than others have already lined up all and every main criticisms.
It would have been another story if he admitted right when he "decided to depart" from Firaxis, but that was not how it happened. Anyways, didn't want to derail the thread that much, but just couldn't let it pass. I just am very sensitive to that kind of professional behavior.
You ARE nitpicking
Well, sorry man, but having lived among chantas for 37 years of my life (in the southern cone), I know how to read the signs. A true professional owns his mistakes in a timely manner, which usually doesn't correspond with "right before I am starting a new gaming company of my own" and much later than others have already lined up all and every main criticisms.
It would have been another story if he admitted right when he "decided to depart" from Firaxis, but that was not how it happened. Anyways, didn't want to derail the thread that much, but just couldn't let it pass. I just am very sensitive to that kind of professional behavior.
No worries. I understand your point of view. It kind of went down badly, yeah.
Doesn't help either that "At the Gates" is approaching vapourware territory.
Still don't know what chantas or southern cones are but it's all good.
6K Man
Bureaucrat
Civ1 in 1994, Civ2 about 1998. Played a lot of ToT and was very active in Apolyton’s Civ2 succession game and demogame groups. Got Civ4 in about 2007 and BtS when it was available. Skipped Civ3 and Civ5 on the basis of poor peer reviews.
Am I excited about Civ6? Not really. It may turn out to be a well-liked game, and it may be a well-designed game. It may have a good AI and immersive play. It may allow for less annoying micro and it may be challenging to win. It might have an ‘epic’ feel and it might be easy to play. But it won’t do all these things, and I completely accept that – the designers can’t please everybody, and when push comes to shove, they’ll try to create a product that pleases the people that pay them. There’s no way everyone here will love it.
So, I may buy Civ6 at some point, but not anytime soon. I want to wait until the dust has settled, the reviews are in, the most egregious problems are patched, and when all the add-ons are out there. Instead, the week Civ6 is released, I plan on installing one of the CtC, VIP, or Realism Invictus (or something similar) mods to Civ4. From everything I’ve read, those are dramatic developments on Civ4 - which I liked. I’ll get the experience of a new game without having to guess whether I’ll hate the core mechanic. :woot:
Am I excited about Civ6? Not really. It may turn out to be a well-liked game, and it may be a well-designed game. It may have a good AI and immersive play. It may allow for less annoying micro and it may be challenging to win. It might have an ‘epic’ feel and it might be easy to play. But it won’t do all these things, and I completely accept that – the designers can’t please everybody, and when push comes to shove, they’ll try to create a product that pleases the people that pay them. There’s no way everyone here will love it.
So, I may buy Civ6 at some point, but not anytime soon. I want to wait until the dust has settled, the reviews are in, the most egregious problems are patched, and when all the add-ons are out there. Instead, the week Civ6 is released, I plan on installing one of the CtC, VIP, or Realism Invictus (or something similar) mods to Civ4. From everything I’ve read, those are dramatic developments on Civ4 - which I liked. I’ll get the experience of a new game without having to guess whether I’ll hate the core mechanic. :woot:
Aristos
Lightseeker
Are you telling me you DO NOT have any of those installed?
Have you tried K-Mod? Almost no gameplay change (but for the annoying Global Warming system that needed an overhaul anyways), but a BRUTAL AI to deal with... good time killer while you wait (and I will do the same) for afterpatch super Steam Fall/Christmas sale. By then, Sullla et al will have dissected the beast to the minimum detail, and man I trust their analysis.
6K Man
Bureaucrat
Are you telling me you DO NOT have any of those installed?
Have you tried K-Mod? Almost no gameplay change (but for the annoying Global Warming system that needed an overhaul anyways), but a BRUTAL AI to deal with... good time killer while you wait (and I will do the same) for afterpatch super Steam Fall/Christmas sale. By then, Sullla et al will have dissected the beast to the minimum detail, and man I trust their analysis.
Oh yeah, all over K-Mod - love it (except for the culture changes, but that's a nitpick). Also played and enjoyed LoR. But both of those are more or less Civ4 with refinements, as opposed to something like VIP or RI, IMO.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2008
- Messages
- 27,989
Yeah, it was one of the things V got right. Tech trades were long married to the series but they were seriously broken. It wasn't just "creating value out of nothing" (there are other mechanics that are comparable, conceptually). It was also that it was an overwhelming factor relative to other resources. Only mechanic that is comparable in brokenness by my estimation is beaker manipulation via espionage in BE.
The incentive to have cooperative partners to trade was an upside, but it was too crushingly decisive. You can't compete with a global multiplicative 200% or more science modifier, and that's how it acted in practice often.
Rusty Edge
Deity
I understand that, but that's not how I played my games.
I think it's a case where it's more an issue of implementation than feature merit. I think you can fix the problems by eliminating brokering, and making tech deals only as part of a treaty ( that either is unbreakable, or, as a less gamey balance, basing the ability to deal with A.I.s at all afterwards upon your reputation and integrity in dealing with others. )
I'd like to make it easier for player and A.I. civs alike to make deals with what they have, in order to get more of what they need, without always going to war for it.
Civ 1 (as a teenager) some time after it came out, but before Civ 2 came out.
I'm not optimistic at this point. I found Civ V boring. There was a more fundamental change of direction than 1UPT -- up until Civ 4, the series gave players a sandbox of well-designed small mechanics, some very distant goals (victory conditions) and largely let the player put the experience together from the chaotic interplay of the parts. It was a strategy game where it was up to the player to create the strategy. The tech tree was the only nod to there being a defined progression, and there's a lot of slack in it.
(So for instance, most of the complaints about earlier Civs -- stack of doom in Civ 4, tech brokering in Civ 3, etc -- are about emergent powerful strategies rather than restrictive low level rules)
In Civ V, the game shifted to being a tactical game within a set of largely pre-planned strategies. Earn your next badge along the path you chose this time. Choose vertical or horizontal. Choose your civics strategy. Now follow the path, and execute it tactically in a fairly obvious manner. The dominating strategies disappeared, but now the common complaints are about the rules being restrictive in play-style (1UPT, defined policy trees, etc) -- that's quite a state change for Civ.
From comments Ed Beach has made, although they're looking at how you can change tracks (no longer being locked into a policy tree), it's still becoming even more a tactical game of executing the designer's strategies properly, rather than finding your own. It's just you can switch between pre-defined strategies a bit more.
That shows up in design decisions -- eg, the research bonus actions means you're now incentivised to take particular pre-determined actions for the path you are on. Likewise, the limited-charges-per-worker (which he says was introduced to nerf worker stealing) stops a player-devised strategy (that the game AI doesn't do anyway) by making that player decision less consequential. It's a game rule that's effectively "Dammit, play it how the designer wants you to!"
It also turns in the philosophical comments Ed Beach has made. He's concerned that players tend to adopt similar styles for successive games and wants to change this. Sounds good? Unfortunately, that's quite naive. In a chaotic environment, players will find they naturally adopt a preferred strategy. (Technically, they'll optimise around a local minimum, depending on which actions they do/don't like, and that preferred strategy will show through). To force players to change play-style, he's putting stronger and stronger forcing functions in to make the game play in particular styles he intends and that he can play-test (essentially, taking chaos out of the game). Similarly, he's decided that "automation is a sign of poor design" -- rather than that it is a sign of player agency over the game (that they can choose when they care about something and when they just want to delegate it).
I'm not optimistic at this point. I found Civ V boring. There was a more fundamental change of direction than 1UPT -- up until Civ 4, the series gave players a sandbox of well-designed small mechanics, some very distant goals (victory conditions) and largely let the player put the experience together from the chaotic interplay of the parts. It was a strategy game where it was up to the player to create the strategy. The tech tree was the only nod to there being a defined progression, and there's a lot of slack in it.
(So for instance, most of the complaints about earlier Civs -- stack of doom in Civ 4, tech brokering in Civ 3, etc -- are about emergent powerful strategies rather than restrictive low level rules)
In Civ V, the game shifted to being a tactical game within a set of largely pre-planned strategies. Earn your next badge along the path you chose this time. Choose vertical or horizontal. Choose your civics strategy. Now follow the path, and execute it tactically in a fairly obvious manner. The dominating strategies disappeared, but now the common complaints are about the rules being restrictive in play-style (1UPT, defined policy trees, etc) -- that's quite a state change for Civ.
From comments Ed Beach has made, although they're looking at how you can change tracks (no longer being locked into a policy tree), it's still becoming even more a tactical game of executing the designer's strategies properly, rather than finding your own. It's just you can switch between pre-defined strategies a bit more.
That shows up in design decisions -- eg, the research bonus actions means you're now incentivised to take particular pre-determined actions for the path you are on. Likewise, the limited-charges-per-worker (which he says was introduced to nerf worker stealing) stops a player-devised strategy (that the game AI doesn't do anyway) by making that player decision less consequential. It's a game rule that's effectively "Dammit, play it how the designer wants you to!"
It also turns in the philosophical comments Ed Beach has made. He's concerned that players tend to adopt similar styles for successive games and wants to change this. Sounds good? Unfortunately, that's quite naive. In a chaotic environment, players will find they naturally adopt a preferred strategy. (Technically, they'll optimise around a local minimum, depending on which actions they do/don't like, and that preferred strategy will show through). To force players to change play-style, he's putting stronger and stronger forcing functions in to make the game play in particular styles he intends and that he can play-test (essentially, taking chaos out of the game). Similarly, he's decided that "automation is a sign of poor design" -- rather than that it is a sign of player agency over the game (that they can choose when they care about something and when they just want to delegate it).
Aristos
Lightseeker
Gotta love them Tech Whores... NOT. Mansa Musa...
Big Yes, this was one of the key issues Civ 5 got relatively right. I say relatively because I think there is a better model that HoI2 used, Blueprint Trading. In that game, you could share technologies with your allies only, and only as a "blueprint", which in gameplay terms acted like a discount to the shared technology. The key was that the receiver of the "blueprint" still had to research a big part of that tech, but got a considerable advantage due to the "blueprint" discount. I tried to push this idea before Civ 5 but it never got a hold of, well, anyone.
chrisge
Chieftain
Thanks for the welcome Thormodr (Been reading here for about a decade but only felt moved to write today for the first time). Aristos, can you say that anything Jon said in that piece was wrong though?
In reference to reviewers being allowed just 60 turns of Civ 6 recently, can anyone comment on all the overwhelmingly positive reviews that Civ 5 got upon release and yet so many Civ vets disliked it so much? Can anyone say that a lot of Civ 3 players really felt the same way about Civ 4? I understand that under normal circumstances there isn't enough time to fully know a Civ game before needing to review it but how did so many get this so wrong considering how bad many Civ vets found it? Are reviewers going to really get the chance to make more balanced reviews on Civ 6 this time with this hindsight in regards to what happened with the early Civ 5 reviews? These early reviews of Civ 5 have played a big part in its popularity with Civ newcomers and now the favourite game of my life seems to be continuing down a path of no return at this stage. Time will tell but I'm not sure it's looking good at this stage. (Soren for Civ 7! Soren for Civ 7! Soren for Civ 7!)
In reference to reviewers being allowed just 60 turns of Civ 6 recently, can anyone comment on all the overwhelmingly positive reviews that Civ 5 got upon release and yet so many Civ vets disliked it so much? Can anyone say that a lot of Civ 3 players really felt the same way about Civ 4? I understand that under normal circumstances there isn't enough time to fully know a Civ game before needing to review it but how did so many get this so wrong considering how bad many Civ vets found it? Are reviewers going to really get the chance to make more balanced reviews on Civ 6 this time with this hindsight in regards to what happened with the early Civ 5 reviews? These early reviews of Civ 5 have played a big part in its popularity with Civ newcomers and now the favourite game of my life seems to be continuing down a path of no return at this stage. Time will tell but I'm not sure it's looking good at this stage. (Soren for Civ 7! Soren for Civ 7! Soren for Civ 7!)
Acken
Deity
If your picture of a civ vet is someone that dislikes civ5 on principle, your vision will be distorted. Imagining civ5 BNW is popular only due to newcomers is non sense.
Civ5 GK/BNW got good user reviews because people like the game. CivBE got terrible user reviews in comparison.
No game is perfect and a lot of things were wrong in Vanilla. BNW won't satisfy everybody despite pleasing a lot of players vet and newcomers alike.
Now if you like nothing from civ5 then sorry but civ6 will probably disapoint you since it builds from it a lot apparently.
Edit: I don't talk about press because its mostly useless anyway. The reviews for civ6 will be high regardless of what CFC thinks. Like it was for Civ5 and then CivBE which was disliked a lot by players.
Civ5 GK/BNW got good user reviews because people like the game. CivBE got terrible user reviews in comparison.
No game is perfect and a lot of things were wrong in Vanilla. BNW won't satisfy everybody despite pleasing a lot of players vet and newcomers alike.
Now if you like nothing from civ5 then sorry but civ6 will probably disapoint you since it builds from it a lot apparently.
Edit: I don't talk about press because its mostly useless anyway. The reviews for civ6 will be high regardless of what CFC thinks. Like it was for Civ5 and then CivBE which was disliked a lot by players.
Some 6 years after release it is constantly in the top 10 played steam games. Those that hate it are absolutely free to do so but it was and is a huge success and a hit with gamers to this day.
That's been the point I've been making for a long time and Acken has way more tact than I do.
The terrible part isn't the disagreement, I think we're used to honest disagreements and preferences in which Civ people like best, it's going a step further and creating this class of 'original fans' or true fans and inserting it ram-jam in the discourse as a non-sequitur. I spoke out against that in that other thread when I called the gaming community having a dysfunction of creating some toxic subcultures.
I stand by it. The true-fan /hardcore subculture can be pretty toxic, and we're still seeing the effects of it because of Civ5's botched release, often with people either regurgitating articles they read or recounting their old vanilla experience, which leads to the inevitable deluge to entreaties for consideration to be ignored because they don't even know what Civ5 has become anymore.
Download CP and share your new experience with Civ V.
Civilization 5 even with the expansions is still a bad game since it doesn't deal with the core problems. These are mainly 1UPT and Global Happiness. The expansions, while they add some good things like religion and tourism, are still hampered by a rotten core.
The Community Balance Patch/Mod (Vox Populi) does make Civilization 5 a decently good game precisely because it deals with the core issues. Global Happiness is given the axe and while 1UPT is still there, it at least has a few less restrictions on it. They did their best with what they had.
So, the Community saved Civilization 5.
Thankfully Firaxis was watching and will axe Global Happiness in Civ VI. They also will temper 1UPT somewhat and hopefully give the modders to make even further changes.
Civ VI is looking promising precisely because they are moving away from Civilization 5. As Marbozir said, and I paraphrase, "Civ VI may on the surface look like Civilization 5 but in actuality it is a vastly different game."
The Community Balance Patch/Mod (Vox Populi) does make Civilization 5 a decently good game precisely because it deals with the core issues. Global Happiness is given the axe and while 1UPT is still there, it at least has a few less restrictions on it. They did their best with what they had.
So, the Community saved Civilization 5.
Thankfully Firaxis was watching and will axe Global Happiness in Civ VI. They also will temper 1UPT somewhat and hopefully give the modders to make even further changes.
Civ VI is looking promising precisely because they are moving away from Civilization 5. As Marbozir said, and I paraphrase, "Civ VI may on the surface look like Civilization 5 but in actuality it is a vastly different game."
