my two cents after mixed feelings day in day out.
I think everyone but casual players and newcomers to the civ series would agree that Civ5 isn't as challenging and rewarding as BtS. Of course we were used to an almost finished product, while now we have something more than a beta, in comparison.
Anyway, I'm not jumping on the bash wagon, because there is no reason to. I like the fact that Firaxis changed the game radically (I didn't like SC2 because it was a mere update, therefore I am happy to see someone having the courage of leaving the safe road for a new one), and know that new implementations will take some time to finetune. Anyway, there are issues. Some can be fixed by a patch. Some by an expansion. And some are going to stay, unfortunately. I leave mods beside for now.
What I'm starting to think is: the game has got potential. Not less than Civ4, at least. Some features that have been removed didn't really add that much depth, while some that have been added can be a base for future developements.
Religion was good, although it was basically about a couple of choices throughout the course of the game. The "flavor" was bigger than its real impact on the game's depth. It can find a place in Civ5 though.
Health was a mechanic to stop cities from growing too much: when your cities couldn't grow, you used to look for resources or build structures . Which is the very same thing you do now with the new happiness model.
Civics were some no-brainers based on your strategy -you were no genius if you discovered that representation was good for a specialist economy-, the core element was usually *when* to tech for one. Social politics have more potential, because they force a choice that will have its drawbacks. While you used to have a set of civics for each situation that you could change accordingly in order to always gain the maximum from every circumstance, now you choose to follow a scientific or cultural path and know that a civ with militray policies will have an edge when declaring war on you. Pros and cons of a choice (SP) add depth, being able to choose any option at any time (civics) does not. Plus, Social Policies have another choices to make: how many of them to take. Expanding and gaining less, or staying small for a while and gaining more.
We lost the ability to turn food into production (whip), but gained the ability to turn gold into food (city-states) and production (buying units and structures from turn 1). There's no slider turning gold into research or culture, but we can still do that with different mechanics (research pacts and culture city-states). The only reason is, we start from gold while Civ4 started from commerce.
Plus, there's the new conversion from happiness to gold (via golden age) and culture.
So, health, civics and slider are features that were just replaced by something else. For example, a cottage economy was about earning much commerce and turning it into science by setting a high slider. Now, by focusing on tradeposts, you earn money that you can spend for research agreements. The numbers are of course different, since tradeposts are nowhere near cottages in terms of wealth, and the conversion rate is different between the two models. The new one just needs to be worked on, but it's there.
Plus, the flawed mechanic of "peace for technology" has been eliminated for good.
Great Persons are slightly different, maybe engineers and merchants can have their improvement buffed a little and lightbulbing could be nerfed, but overall, placing an academy outside the city (which must be defended) has more depth than having the GS join the city with no food consumption. Of course, again, lightbulbing mustn't grant a free tech in late game, otherwise an academy will never be preferrable.
The military side of the game has of course improved, no need to specify that. However, the difference between a small army and a big army is now narrow. War can't be currently judged, since the AI is too flawed and lets you take the world with 5-6 units, so the judgement is postponed.
Diplomacy isn't that great, but so wasn't in Civ4. They're essentially the same thing, and Firaxis is to blame for not having improved such key aspect.
Some issues can be fixed just with future expansions.
For example, leaders and civilizations are mono-dimensional. Like, Alexander= play with city-states, Bismark=barbarian hunt and so on. Their traits don't have many synergies with the other elements of the game. This could be fixed also in a patch, but I feel it's too complicated to be introduced without a long testing. A second leader is also really needed for game diversity.
All in all, the main problem of the game is war+dumb IA. It makes the game easier than it should be, by far. But the AI can be improved. In vanilla Civ4, it wasn't good either. So, the AI problem is important and can potentially ruin the game, but the framework of CIv5 is excellent, and I'm noticing that lots of whining has come from players who simply were used to previous broken mechanics (whip, SoDs) and want to be able to do the same things. Now, we all have the right to have a challenging game that gives a thrill of satisfaction when beating Immortal, but the core of the game will allow for such complexity: it will just take some time.
I think everyone but casual players and newcomers to the civ series would agree that Civ5 isn't as challenging and rewarding as BtS. Of course we were used to an almost finished product, while now we have something more than a beta, in comparison.
Anyway, I'm not jumping on the bash wagon, because there is no reason to. I like the fact that Firaxis changed the game radically (I didn't like SC2 because it was a mere update, therefore I am happy to see someone having the courage of leaving the safe road for a new one), and know that new implementations will take some time to finetune. Anyway, there are issues. Some can be fixed by a patch. Some by an expansion. And some are going to stay, unfortunately. I leave mods beside for now.
What I'm starting to think is: the game has got potential. Not less than Civ4, at least. Some features that have been removed didn't really add that much depth, while some that have been added can be a base for future developements.
Religion was good, although it was basically about a couple of choices throughout the course of the game. The "flavor" was bigger than its real impact on the game's depth. It can find a place in Civ5 though.
Health was a mechanic to stop cities from growing too much: when your cities couldn't grow, you used to look for resources or build structures . Which is the very same thing you do now with the new happiness model.
Civics were some no-brainers based on your strategy -you were no genius if you discovered that representation was good for a specialist economy-, the core element was usually *when* to tech for one. Social politics have more potential, because they force a choice that will have its drawbacks. While you used to have a set of civics for each situation that you could change accordingly in order to always gain the maximum from every circumstance, now you choose to follow a scientific or cultural path and know that a civ with militray policies will have an edge when declaring war on you. Pros and cons of a choice (SP) add depth, being able to choose any option at any time (civics) does not. Plus, Social Policies have another choices to make: how many of them to take. Expanding and gaining less, or staying small for a while and gaining more.
We lost the ability to turn food into production (whip), but gained the ability to turn gold into food (city-states) and production (buying units and structures from turn 1). There's no slider turning gold into research or culture, but we can still do that with different mechanics (research pacts and culture city-states). The only reason is, we start from gold while Civ4 started from commerce.
Plus, there's the new conversion from happiness to gold (via golden age) and culture.
So, health, civics and slider are features that were just replaced by something else. For example, a cottage economy was about earning much commerce and turning it into science by setting a high slider. Now, by focusing on tradeposts, you earn money that you can spend for research agreements. The numbers are of course different, since tradeposts are nowhere near cottages in terms of wealth, and the conversion rate is different between the two models. The new one just needs to be worked on, but it's there.
Plus, the flawed mechanic of "peace for technology" has been eliminated for good.
Great Persons are slightly different, maybe engineers and merchants can have their improvement buffed a little and lightbulbing could be nerfed, but overall, placing an academy outside the city (which must be defended) has more depth than having the GS join the city with no food consumption. Of course, again, lightbulbing mustn't grant a free tech in late game, otherwise an academy will never be preferrable.
The military side of the game has of course improved, no need to specify that. However, the difference between a small army and a big army is now narrow. War can't be currently judged, since the AI is too flawed and lets you take the world with 5-6 units, so the judgement is postponed.
Diplomacy isn't that great, but so wasn't in Civ4. They're essentially the same thing, and Firaxis is to blame for not having improved such key aspect.
Some issues can be fixed just with future expansions.
For example, leaders and civilizations are mono-dimensional. Like, Alexander= play with city-states, Bismark=barbarian hunt and so on. Their traits don't have many synergies with the other elements of the game. This could be fixed also in a patch, but I feel it's too complicated to be introduced without a long testing. A second leader is also really needed for game diversity.
All in all, the main problem of the game is war+dumb IA. It makes the game easier than it should be, by far. But the AI can be improved. In vanilla Civ4, it wasn't good either. So, the AI problem is important and can potentially ruin the game, but the framework of CIv5 is excellent, and I'm noticing that lots of whining has come from players who simply were used to previous broken mechanics (whip, SoDs) and want to be able to do the same things. Now, we all have the right to have a challenging game that gives a thrill of satisfaction when beating Immortal, but the core of the game will allow for such complexity: it will just take some time.
