Simplification?

[Rhye]

Judjing from this site:
http://well-of-souls.com/civ/index.html
it looks like Civ5 is being very streamlined.

Not only regarding the shorter tech tree and the absence of religions (with related units and buildings).
It looks like there will be many less units and buildings. We already knew about the lack of transport ships. But for instance, if what the site says is confirmed, there will be only 3 air units (fighter, bomber, helicopter) instead of 7 (airship, jet fighter, stealth bomber, paratroopers). The lack of modern air units take us back to Civ1 times.

I believe that some simplification is a good thing, because some aspects of civ4 (resources, improvements, espionage, corporations, missionaries etc.) were a bit redundant.
I just hope it doesn't become too much dumbed down because of the influence of CivRev. Of course, we cannot judge until we get our hands on it.

Your thoughts?

 

[V. Soma]

Well, before discussing whether civ5 as now seems to be simplified as to civ4,
let me say that what I find important is that whatever complexity and number of features, elements the game has
- the AI should use them all sufficiently, in order so I enjoy playing the game with such AI...

...in the end it might turn out that less is more...

 

[PieceOfMind]

Great to see you in the civ5 forum, Rhye!

I think we know very little about the game so far. I've no doubt they have taken lessons "learned" (if that's what you'd call it) from CivRev and applied them to civ5, but I'm quietly confident they're not going to let us down in terms of dumbing down or simplifying the game. The debate has come up a few times in threads around here about how strong the connection is between simplification and streamlining, as they are different things to one another.

I do believe, as much I hate to say it, that one of the things they'll try to do is make games go by faster. That is one of the things that would appeal more to the average gamer, but not likely to go down well with all those civ fans who adore Epic and Marathon speeds. Part of that may mean reducing the variety of units, as you fear. I'd agree that reducing the variety of units below what civ4 had is not a good way forward, but it's hard to really stick to that view with so little information about the game in the first place.

 

[hk2717]

The info on that site is by no means complete and is gathered piece by piece by fans from all the articles, screenshots, and videos available so far. So we are only sure that the mentioned air units will be in the game, but we don't know if there will be more.

 

[Rhye]

Yes I'm also confident that they know what they're doing.
It's important to have a balanced number of build options. When that number is too few, gameplay becomes boring and repetitive. If it's too large, it's confusing and in the end the differences between different types of units are almost nullified (like in some massively additive mods)

 

[AriochIV]

We know very little about the industrial or modern units.

 

[TM Moot]

One new feature I am really looking forward to is the City States. I am hoping that this really deepens the whole Diplomacy/Expansion/Conquest aspects of Civ.

Also, as said already, the list of new features only contains what has been 'sighted' so far, hopefully there is plenty more to come.

 

[Windsor]

In general I do expect Civ5 to contain less elements than Civ4(especially when you also include Warlords and BtS). Hopefully they have managed to streamline without dumbing it down.

When I look at the Civ4 tech tree I see a lot of things I dislike. What matters is not the amount of techs in it, but how you progress through it and real options in choosing paths.

In Civ4 we all tried founding an early religion, but as we improved we all realized that the religious route sucked. So while the religious route technically was an option, it wasn't a real choice. It was simply a newbie trap.

I think we also need to look at what gets more sophisticated. The new combat system is obvious, but I do hope/believe that culture will be something to actual take into consideration now(more than the initial borderpop in Civ4) as well as city states and better AI will improve the diplomatic side. If they manage to create a game where you not only have a few real and interesting alternatives in the tech tree but also needs to balance science, culture, military and foreign relations then we suddenly have a very promising game.

 

[TM Moot]

In general I do expect Civ5 to contain less elements than Civ4(especially when you also include Warlords and BtS).

Civ5 will have to have some features/Civs/units missing, otherwise they'll be nothing to put into the XP's. And they must be one or two XP's already in the pipeline....

 

[AriochIV]

I'm liking the new tech tree so far. It worries less about logical links between technologies and more about giving you the right units and abilities at the right time (it always irked me in Civ IV that cannons were available so late). A lot of important abilties are available much earlier, giving you more to do in the ancient eras.

 

[Gre_Magus]

I agree. There is no way to know, a priori, whether more or less "complication" will make the game better or worse. On one extreme you can get a game so complicated that it's almost a "sim" (like a Paradox Interactive game), with all of the bugs, exploits, and AI ineptness that that entails and on the other a really streamlined and balanced game like Settlers of Catan. The Civilization series has always struck a balance between the two extremes, and I hope Civ 5 continues the legacy.

 

[Tomice]

I'm liking the new tech tree so far. It worries less about logical links between technologies and more about giving you the right units and abilities at the right time (it always irked me in Civ IV that cannons were available so late). A lot of important abilties are available much earlier, giving you more to do in the ancient eras.

Using Trebuchets so long in Civ4 was strange, luckily such stuff was so easy to mod that even I could do it

Also I hope they give you a reason to leave some of the forest within your empire standing. There were quite a few such smaller nuisances.

 

[Ahriman]

The website is the result of what info we have seen directly; it confirms what is there, not what is excluded.

Not only regarding the shorter tech tree

The tech tree appears to be shorter because there are now 50 social policies; political and religious techs have been moved out of the technology tree and into the social policy tree.

But for instance, if what the site says is confirmed, there will be only 3 air units (fighter, bomber, helicopter) instead of 7 (airship, jet fighter, stealth bomber, paratroopers)

What the site says, correctly, is that we have no seen these units.

There is no indication that these units aren't in the game, merely that we haven't seen them in any screenshots yet. But then, we have hardly seen *any* screenshots of the modern or future era. The existence of the tank unit in screenshots doesn't mean there isn't a modern armor unit.

It looks like there will be many less units and buildings

I do not see strong evidence for this.
Also remember that some units (airship, curaisser) were not in vanilla Civ4.

I agree that I would have liked more variety in units - in particular a bigger difference between 16th century and 18th century militaries - but we didn't have this in Civ4 either.

In short, I think you're jumping the gun a bit here.

 

[migkillertwo]

Judjing from this site:
http://well-of-souls.com/civ/index.html
it looks like Civ5 is being very streamlined.

Not only regarding the shorter tech tree and the absence of religions (with related units and buildings).
It looks like there will be many less units and buildings. We already knew about the lack of transport ships. But for instance, if what the site says is confirmed, there will be only 3 air units (fighter, bomber, helicopter) instead of 7 (airship, jet fighter, stealth bomber, paratroopers). The lack of modern air units take us back to Civ1 times.

I believe that some simplification is a good thing, because some aspects of civ4 (resources, improvements, espionage, corporations, missionaries etc.) were a bit redundant.
I just hope it doesn't become too much dumbed down because of the influence of CivRev. Of course, we cannot judge until we get our hands on it.

Your thoughts?

Are you sure its only 3 units and not 3 classes of units? I can definitely get behind 3 classes of aircraft (fighter, bomber, helicopter), but having the same unit from the late industrial age up through the modern and near-future ages is just ridiculous. The capabilities of modern air power far outweigh airpower from the 40s or even the 70s, what with the advent of smart bombs and far superior bomb sights.

I think it is also somewhat inconsistent. We know that there will be two types of modern artillery, MLRS/Rocket artillery and regular towed artillery. It would make even more sense to just have one artillery unit throughout all the modern ages than to have one type of fighter or bomber throughout the history of air warfare.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I believe that some simplification is a good thing, because some aspects of civ4 (resources, improvements, espionage, corporations, missionaries etc.) were a bit redundant.

Streamlining is really going to be the key. Dumbing down is not the same thing as streamlining, but you can accidentally do one while trying to do the other.

If we're fortunate they've managed to cut Civ down to the core gameplay model with as little fat as possible. If we are less lucky they'll have accidentally removed most of the bones

 

[bjbrains]

A few notes on the tech tree: It seems to extend further into the modern or potentially future (since we know we have mechs) era, and we don't know that much about modern era warfare because we're working off of incomplete data. I'd be surprised if there weren't several more units that we haven't seen, and we've definitely got precedent for 2 types of modern artillery. They also, as Arioch said, seem to be going for proper timing of units/advances, and have rolled some previous advances given to techs to the social policy tree.

 

[Ahriman]

We also finally have some units that have been missing forever from core Civ: anti-tank guns and AA batteries!

 

[Tomice]

We also finally have some units that have been missing forever from core Civ: anti-tank guns and AA batteries!

BTS already had two types of AA units, this seems more like a question of style than a missing game feature. Admittedly, hand-carried missiles for both AA and AT was not a perfect choice optically and the new choices fit better as "early" versions.

 

[ShaqFu]

I think it's less an issue of simplification and moreso of Civ5 being less gamey. From what I can tell so far, it's shaping up to be a lot less "use this arcane combination of +/-s to win the game" and more "do sensible things and you'll do well." Things like removing the visible diplomacy +/- while making the AI more human-like (e.g., they care more about your mounting army on their borders than the fact you once briefly switched to Hinduism 3000 years ago) support this, as do the layered AIs that work to form a more intuitive opponent and less one that can be gamed mercilessly.

 

[Ahriman]

from core Civ

BTS already had

Core Civ != expansion pack.