Simplification?

[Thyrwyn]

Anyway, for now I'll just leave it at it's hard to tell yet whether there will be much balance between gold,science, culture etc. There doesn't necessarily need to be, but the game will be quite a bit different if science is finally on a more level playing field - I think I would enjoy the game more that way too.

It is pretty obvious that culture at least is on a more even footing with science than it used to be. Tile expansion can be supplemented with gold, but the bonuses from Social Policies seem too substantial to pass up. By moving (what used to be) civics out of the tech tree (science) and into the Social policy system (culture), they have certainly moved in the direction of making them more equal.

Science is a "uni-tasker" (yes, I watch the food channel): it is only good for techs;
Culture enables Policies & expansion - both of which are vital;
Production builds units and buildings - but is ultimately dependent on science (if you aren't tech-ing, you won't have any buildings to build and your units will be so out-classed it won't matter);
Gold remains the catch-all: you need it to maintain your units and buildings; it can be used to expand; and it can be used to supplement Science through research agreements, but it can no longer replace Science (through trade).

With Techs being removed from the diplomatic menu, Science can no longer be used to supplement gold (through trade). This also makes expansion (resources) and gold more valuable.

It certainly seems more balanced. (he says optimistically...)

 

[Babri]

It seems like happiness is going to take over the job of health & city maintenance. City maintenance is not much needed though since buildings & roads now have seperate maintenance.

 

[PieceOfMind]

It is pretty obvious that culture at least is on a more even footing with science than it used to be. Tile expansion can be supplemented with gold, but the bonuses from Social Policies seem too substantial to pass up. By moving (what used to be) civics out of the tech tree (science) and into the Social policy system (culture), they have certainly moved in the direction of making them more equal.

Science is a "uni-tasker" (yes, I watch the food channel): it is only good for techs;
Culture enables Policies & expansion - both of which are vital;
Production builds units and buildings - but is ultimately dependent on science (if you aren't tech-ing, you won't have any buildings to build and your units will be so out-classed it won't matter);
Gold remains the catch-all: you need it to maintain your units and buildings; it can be used to expand; and it can be used to supplement Science through research agreements, but it can no longer replace Science (through trade).

With Techs being removed from the diplomatic menu, Science can no longer be used to supplement gold (through trade). This also makes expansion (resources) and gold more valuable.

It certainly seems more balanced. (he says optimistically...)

I think progressing through techs is still going to be more useful than leveling up through social policies, but then again I'm not sure we even know all the things that can be done with culture yet.

 

[Celevin]

@PieceOfMind

You do have a good point that 1 beaker isn't equal to 1 gold or 1 culture which you've put out multiple times, and I haven't been able to completely refute it yet. Let's focus on that to cut down on post size / focus the argument. There's at least one more argument I want to bring forth. For the sake of argument I'm going to stick to gold and science only, ignoring culture.


There exists a linear (hopefully) relationship between and . The reason you're using the word "equal to" is because 1 is equal to 1 in Civ4. This is because 1 buys you either 1 , or 1 . But the player has a different linear relationship between gold and science, making science worth a lot more. This pushes the slider to max out science pretty much every game.

In Civ5, the game no longer artificially sets this, and doesn't give the player the option to trade commerce for either 1 or 1 . Of course the player still creates a linear relationship in his head. The player is valuing "How much gold would it take me to advance my position in the game as far as 1 science?". It doesn't matter if this relationship is 1:1 or not. What matters is its relationship VS the relationships of the areas we are able to make a choice between and :
1) Hexes, between trading posts, and city specialists.
2) Research agreements
3) Buildings (This one matters and while it's a multiplier it still makes sense: The city either gets a bonus science, or bonus gold at a cost of gold maintenance)

I'll focus on hexes for sake of simplicity. Let's say you can choose between a 4 gold hex, or a 2 science specialist, ignoring everything else. The offer infront of you is "2 for 1 ". You compare that to your value function which might say "2.5 is worth 1 ", making the specialist worth more than the hex. Under other circumstances, say you needed a lot more gold, you might think "right now 1.5 is worth 1 to me", and decide that the hex is a better deal.

My main point through this is with commerce and the slider, 99% of all transactions happen at this 1:1 trade rate and it never varies. The player never has to value gold VS science. With transaction rates changing, the player is forced to make decisions on what's considered more valuable at the time. In Civ4 you are able to trade pretty much all your gold for science. In Civ5 are we certain that through hexes, research pacts, and everything else, no matter how valuable science is, that we'll be able to dump all of our resources towards it? I think having a hard cap on how much science we can "buy" per turn might be a good thing.


Obviously we don't know everything. And no sane player actually creates a value function in their head. But it still exists at a subconscious level.

 

[PieceOfMind]

There exists a linear (hopefully) relationship between and . The reason you're using the word "equal to" is because 1 is equal to 1 in Civ4. This is because 1 buys you either 1 , or 1 . But the player has a different linear relationship between gold and science, making science worth a lot more. This pushes the slider to max out science pretty much every game.

I'll post a reply tomorrow when I'm a bit less tired, but for now I'll just say I don't agree with this description. One needs to make a distinction between base beakers and gold vs. net (i.e. contributed to the empire) beakers and gold.

For example, in cities in civ4 that have a choice of building wealth or research, it's usually better to build wealth because 1 base gold is better than 1 base beaker. That's because it's cheaper to build science multiplier buildings than it is to build gold multiplier buildings. But at the end of the line, 1 net beaker surely must be more valuable than 1 net gold - otherwise at the start of the game we'd all turn the science slider to 0!

It's easy for the wording of these discussions to get confusing, but yeah, it might be because I'm tired too. I wrote a bit more than I thought I would.

 

[Celevin]

Alright, go get some sleep, man

I'll look over my argument and see if that changes anything.

 

[moscaverde]

An easy way for making the gold/beakers more balanced would be of creating mores uses for gold. For example, if tile improvements or unit promotions cost gold, the player would have a reason to accumulate gold.

 

[mattcrwi]

An easy way for making the gold/beakers more balanced would be of creating mores uses for gold. For example, if tile improvements or unit promotions cost gold, the player would have a reason to accumulate gold.

or maybe buying land like is already confirmed?

 

[PieceOfMind]

@PieceOfMind

You do have a good point that 1 beaker isn't equal to 1 gold or 1 culture which you've put out multiple times, and I haven't been able to completely refute it yet. Let's focus on that to cut down on post size / focus the argument. There's at least one more argument I want to bring forth. For the sake of argument I'm going to stick to gold and science only, ignoring culture.


There exists a linear (hopefully) relationship between and . The reason you're using the word "equal to" is because 1 is equal to 1 in Civ4. This is because 1 buys you either 1 , or 1 . But the player has a different linear relationship between gold and science, making science worth a lot more. This pushes the slider to max out science pretty much every game.

In Civ5, the game no longer artificially sets this, and doesn't give the player the option to trade commerce for either 1 or 1 . Of course the player still creates a linear relationship in his head. The player is valuing "How much gold would it take me to advance my position in the game as far as 1 science?". It doesn't matter if this relationship is 1:1 or not. What matters is its relationship VS the relationships of the areas we are able to make a choice between and :
1) Hexes, between trading posts, and city specialists.
2) Research agreements
3) Buildings (This one matters and while it's a multiplier it still makes sense: The city either gets a bonus science, or bonus gold at a cost of gold maintenance)

I'll focus on hexes for sake of simplicity. Let's say you can choose between a 4 gold hex, or a 2 science specialist, ignoring everything else. The offer infront of you is "2 for 1 ". You compare that to your value function which might say "2.5 is worth 1 ", making the specialist worth more than the hex. Under other circumstances, say you needed a lot more gold, you might think "right now 1.5 is worth 1 to me", and decide that the hex is a better deal.

My main point through this is with commerce and the slider, 99% of all transactions happen at this 1:1 trade rate and it never varies. The player never has to value gold VS science. With transaction rates changing, the player is forced to make decisions on what's considered more valuable at the time. In Civ4 you are able to trade pretty much all your gold for science. In Civ5 are we certain that through hexes, research pacts, and everything else, no matter how valuable science is, that we'll be able to dump all of our resources towards it? I think having a hard cap on how much science we can "buy" per turn might be a good thing.


Obviously we don't know everything. And no sane player actually creates a value function in their head. But it still exists at a subconscious level.

Well I'm not going to bother going into a long reply (on that particular topic!) now as it sounds like 2K Greg is going to release info about gold specifically, very soon.

However I was thinking about it a bit this morning and I think part of the problem that is being discussed here but not being focused on (if that makes sense!) is that gold and beakers are used in essentially different ways.

Beakers as they are collected are spent instantly, at the end of the turn they are collected. Gold, apart from what is spent on turn to turn expenses, is collected at the end of each turn rather than spent.

Culture is a bit different again but is more similar to beakers in that it is spent straight away and cannot be pooled.

Because most of the decision-focused ways that gold is spent require lump sums (e.g. upgrading a unit, or rush-buying a building) there is never incentive to accumulated gold except to spend it. Any gold that you horde is gold that could have been spent improving your chances to win the game.

Beakers cannot be pooled and if they could be you could surely bet that no one would accumulate more at any time than what they needed to buy the next tech they wanted.

Interestingly, civrev changed this dynamic a bit by giving real rewards to players who reached certain gold-hording milestones first, eventually including the grand finale of granting an economic victory to the civ who accumulated (was it 20,000?) gold.

In civ4, you run your gold reserves low. You only ever bring them up as high as you need to make some purchase or to fund some deficit-time research. Never is there a direct advantage to having more gold than your enemy.

In civ5, I suspect it is going to be much the same situation with gold. That is, there is going to be little incentive to horde it. That is unless they are going down the route of civrev and putting in an economic victory, or instead at least putting in rewards for the civs that reach certain gold-hording "achievements".

Even culture in civ5 will now just be another currency to spend. Save up 500 or so culture and you can buy the next policy button.

Science is still going to be fundamentally different from the other two in that it's spent instantly. Gold will be a mix - being spent instantly on some things like unit upkeep and building maintenance, but also being pooled for spending on things like tile expansions and unit upgrades. Culture will be no longer ever spent immediately, from what I can tell from available info. i.e. there is no "culture maintenance" to pay each turn.

An easy way for making the gold/beakers more balanced would be of creating mores uses for gold. For example, if tile improvements or unit promotions cost gold, the player would have a reason to accumulate gold.

I agree. People would still choose not to horde gold, but there would definitely be more incentive to run the gold slider higher and spend it on things other than the boring stuff like unit upkeep, civic upkeep, city maintenance and everything else that happens "invisibly" in the Economics Advisor Screen without most players even noticing.

 

[gordykeefers]

hi guys and gals, this is my first post on these forums and I figured this is the appropriate place.

I'm really disappointed in what we've seen so far of Civ 5. Yes they removed some things that didn't work very well once players have played through several times, but I think they could have set their sights much higher. We still have the same city ideas, the same completely random battles and military tactics (spears are good against horses, archers are good for defending cities, yawn), the same size maps, the same currency, research and culture ideas, it's just all dressed up in art deco. Here are my specific gripes:

1. Instead of taking away everything they were trying to do with Civ 4 and simplifying it, why didn't they go the other direction? Instead of making the game something that takes a day or two to play through, why didn't they greatly increase the timeline & complexity and make it a game that takes a month to play through? It's always been a "save as you go" kind of game, with long campaigns and strategies that slowly change over time, so why didn't they carve out that niche even more? Or better still, why didn't they allow us to play in "classic" mode (civ 5 as it is now) or "epic" mode with all the details? This new game seems like just a casual game for casual players. They're just scratching the surface of their potential.

2. Using the military has always been a crapshoot in Civ. I'm not suggesting it should be a combat simulator, but come on! Can't we develop some new ideas with military strategy? Instead of spending all these resources building single units, why can't we raise well-rounded armies? If we could raise a certain size army based on population and production, it would be SO easy to raise an army with 30% archers, 30% spearmen, 30% swordsman, and 10% catapults in the back (for example). That way not only do we have to make sure we have the latest units, we'd also have to figure out the right ratios to take on different types of enemies. We could also do "death marches" with massive armies of infantry, to get across distances and attack at 75% strength but when you want it. These are just a few ideas to vary the military strategy.

3. Let's face it, this is Civ 4 with lipstick.

 

[12agnar0k]

Gordy, you need to go look at some collected data, civ5 will be very different to civ4, it won't be civ4 with lip stick, it is a sequel.

They haven't "just taken everything away and made it simpler" not at all, yes they didn't re-implement certain features that were in civ4 into civ5. But this was because they wanted a change, "religion & civics" have been removed for example, and instead the game has implemented a new and innovative "social policies" system, which is much more indepth than any previous civic or religious system ever was. If anything the game is more complex or as complex than any "vanilla" civ game. With Expansions we will see even more content.
Civilization has never had campaigns at all so i'm not sure why you think it has, it has always been a game where you play skirmishes, and once you have finished one game you will want to start another one up because the game is very replayable and very addictive, it has never had a "story line" or a "campaign" its not that kind of game.
The games UI has been streamlined so it looks simplified some what, with extra information hidden away in tool tips and extra options in drop down menu's, for example the "delete" unit button is hidden away till you need it.
This streamlined UI will not only help lessen the steep learning curve normally assosicaited with a civ game, but also tidy things up for advanced users too. If however you prefer the "civ4" look where everything that can possibly be displayed to you... is, then thats an option in the option menu.

The military system in civ5 has been vastly improved, with brand new mechanics, ranged combat that works, and its beautifully made. Its vastly different to anything that has come before, so you know.. what more do you want.

Civ5 is certainly not Civ4 with lipstick, it is however to quote the mighty shafer, "A big sloppy kiss from them to us"

 

[JonoLith]

2. Using the military has always been a crapshoot in Civ. I'm not suggesting it should be a combat simulator, but come on! Can't we develop some new ideas with military strategy?

This alone makes me think you haven't read a terrible amount on what's going on in Civilization 5.

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/

Check out that link. It has all the information collected so far.

Welcome to the forums, hope you have fun.

 

[The Leviathan]

hi guys and gals, this is my first post on these forums and I figured this is the appropriate place.

I'm really disappointed in what we've seen so far of Civ 5. Yes they removed some things that didn't work very well once players have played through several times, but I think they could have set their sights much higher. We still have the same city ideas, the same completely random battles and military tactics (spears are good against horses, archers are good for defending cities, yawn), the same size maps, the same currency, research and culture ideas, it's just all dressed up in art deco. Here are my specific gripes:

1. Instead of taking away everything they were trying to do with Civ 4 and simplifying it, why didn't they go the other direction? Instead of making the game something that takes a day or two to play through, why didn't they greatly increase the timeline & complexity and make it a game that takes a month to play through? It's always been a "save as you go" kind of game, with long campaigns and strategies that slowly change over time, so why didn't they carve out that niche even more? Or better still, why didn't they allow us to play in "classic" mode (civ 5 as it is now) or "epic" mode with all the details? This new game seems like just a casual game for casual players. They're just scratching the surface of their potential.

2. Using the military has always been a crapshoot in Civ. I'm not suggesting it should be a combat simulator, but come on! Can't we develop some new ideas with military strategy? Instead of spending all these resources building single units, why can't we raise well-rounded armies? If we could raise a certain size army based on population and production, it would be SO easy to raise an army with 30% archers, 30% spearmen, 30% swordsman, and 10% catapults in the back (for example). That way not only do we have to make sure we have the latest units, we'd also have to figure out the right ratios to take on different types of enemies. We could also do "death marches" with massive armies of infantry, to get across distances and attack at 75% strength but when you want it. These are just a few ideas to vary the military strategy.

3. Let's face it, this is Civ 4 with lipstick.

You really haven't been reading up on Civ V have you?

 

[Celevin]

Now now guys, one week ago when this thread was created the general consensus was that Civ5 will be a simpler game to play, and people were talking about how streamlined it would be, talking about Civ Revolutions. It's right in the OP. It's only been with the discussions in this thread and a couple more that the board, as a whole, has found a lot more depth or complexity or whatever other words have been used to describe in Civ5.

I'm starting to lose sense on what "simple" means, so I don't think I should use that word in a general sense anymore. I'm starting to confuse myself.

 

[Disgustipated]

Removing health does seem like a simplification to me. I'm not entirely against it, mind you. I don't believe civ3 had health. I believe that was a civ4 only mechanic. So it's not something that has to be there. But I kinda liked it. It made resources that much more attractive for trading and whatnot.

Other features aren't as simple as we thought one week ago. the removal of the slider is one such feature. This will mean you will have to pay a little more attention to what your cities are doing (or just let the governor do it)

I'll address the 2 points in that post above.

1. Making the game longer isn't realistically going to happen. I do hope they give us options for marathon games (or even longer). But I think mods will be able to accomplish this easily enough. As for other options, I believe there will be ways to micromanage things if you so wish.

2. Armies isn't realistically going to happen either. It's too late for that. Other games have tried, but they weren't able to do this in a very fun manner. Civ3 was alright. But it was too easy to stomp the ai with an army. Call to Power games had armies, but I never played them long enough to build one (for whatever reason those games bored the hell out of me). But I don't think armies were that fun in that game (correct me if I'm wrong). Maybe in Civ6 they will be able to make armies that are fun, but also the ai can handle well.

 

[johny smith]

Civ5 still sounds like it is be simplified to me, but simplified in meaning streamlining the same concepts from the previous games in hopes of balancing out the game, or leaving them out together. They may be some changes but nothing sounds revolutionary to me. But I have not read every post. I am disappointed so far.

Especially with what I heard of Happiness only effecting your entire civilization and not individual cites(if it is true), health going away sucks if no mechanic to replace it, but resources required for making units instead of just bonus to time on creating them sounds good, the hex map should of been done years ago but still better than squares. City states and diplomacy may even be worse than Civ4. I have no clue till I see it.

The only thing that will make me buy the game is if it really is that easy to mod or not. I have no real interest in the same repeated concepts anymore. I am grouch when comes to the series anymore. Especially when the only discussion usually focuses on trying to figure out calculation changes from the last it sounds more like more of the same concept with tweaks. I am not looking for eye candy and better tweaks only. I am looking for a complete new game this does not seem to be it. (I would rather get more complex not simpler, but streamlined can be still more complex.)

 

[lovepack]

Has anyone else considered the reason they are "streamlining" is to make it more accessible when they inevitably port over Civ V to console?

 

[The_J]

It has already been said, that Civ5 will only be made for computers, so that's sure not the case .

 

[lovepack]

It could just as easily be renamed with a few added features don't put it past publishers.

 

[12agnar0k]

It was confirmed that they won't be bringing civ5 to any consoles.