Guardian_PL
Emperor
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2006
- Messages
- 1,231
I remember when Civ I was the best thing since sliced bread, I played it more than any other in the series except Alpha Centauri; I loved 2 and particularly 4, and I was never keen on 3 - but I love 5.
I came into 5 with an extremely negative vibe, not really expecting to think much of it at all, especially after BtS was such a high point of the series. I was surprised that it won me over so quickly. The first aspect was the combat, which has never quite felt right in civ, but which I think they've finally pretty much nailed. But more than that, I sort of feel that civ kind of slipped into a rut where micromanagement was more important than macromanagement, where to win at Immortal it was all about managing your hammers so that you only had 6 hammers (epic speed) so that you could whip 2 pop instead of 1 at a time to rush that axeman and have maximum spillover production for the next one etc; and that it was all about sweating the small details at the expense of the big picture of running a whole empire - like you were playing the role of ten mayors taped together instead of an emperor. And sweating the details like that really makes it much clearer that you're playing the game's idiosyncratic mechanics rather than actually managing an empire. It was more about knowing the rules than anything else.
I guess part of it was that I just found that your Paradox games and Dwarf Fortresses etc could really scratch that micromanagement itch in a much more satisfying way than Civ could; and that Civ V really feels like it brings back the feeling of making real leadership decisions, each of which is important and meaningful; rather than thousands of tiny, inconsequential decisions that felt more like just gaming the system. I think that Civ V has a lot more complexity than it's given credit for, it's just that it's taken away the tedious micromanagement that masquerades as complexity, but which is really just a tedious weaselly way to eke out an advantage over a bonus-heavy AI by hundreds of iterations of petty stuff that doesn't matter, rather than by using better grand strategy. Civ V is more about working the big-picture level of empire management, and I think it is improved by it.
Civ is not, never has been, nor really ever can be a series fanatically devoted to serving historical realism because the whole of human history is too big to fit realistically into one set of game mechanics; that's where your Europa Universalis-es and Victorias and Hearts of Irons step in, one era at a time. Civ has always been steeped in its boardgame roots, and I really think this iteration is a breath of fresh air by being honest and embracing those roots, in a way that I think really works.
Polycrates couldn't have put it in a better way.
This. Exactly this. Especially this.
V is just real civ instead of min-max+micromanagement.
Oh, and now come the hordes of users calling us fanboys... Again.
Necro due to atami's sig praise:
Are you serious?
So you're saying there's no tedious micromanagement in Civ5? Really? What about endless trade deals renegotiating then? Every other turn you have to click bazillion times to find an AI to trade with, find the price, etc, and then it comes back. And again and again.
Sure on some lousy Prince you don't have to, but on Immortal+ it's a necessity.
Also, army movement traffic jams are not tedious micromanaging?
We must be playing completely different games then.