Sullla Discovers the Major Fault Behind Civ V: The Death of Civ?

[cas]

I don't understand why anyone would assume this, Civ IV had a variety of patches fixing things even after the game was done (How long did 3.19 come out after Beyond the Sword, 2008 or 2009?)

Civ IV still has some obvious flaws in the game mechanics that have never been fixed...like the mechanics behind the vassal system. Because the vassal system became a major component in CivIV at Warlords, it should have been patched/fixed by now. But it isn't.

That doesn't give me much hope that MAJOR components of the the game mechanics in CiV will be fixed. Ever. This is one of the points Sullla was making --> CiV is broken at the fundamental game design level. They would have to radically change the game to fix it.

If you want to believe Firaxis/2K will do that, it's ok with me. But I think there are quite a few people who agree with Abegweit.

Patches will improve some of the bugs and balance issues. But mods are the best chance for the core of the game to be fixed, not Firaxis/2K.

cas

 

[EmpireOfCats]

That's just it and it's only going to get worse. There simply aren't enough people like us that enjoy a deeply satisfying, immersive game to satisfy Firaxis or greedy 2K Games.

Oh, there are enough people who want intellectually challenging games, but there are more people who just want to move little colorful figures around.

There is a snarky saying about television that might apply to computer games now. See, in the beginning, clever people made television for other clever people. Then, the bosses realized that there were more non-clever people than clever people, so the clever people began making television for non-clever people. After a while, the clever people got disgusted with that and left for other things. Now we have non-clever people making television for other non-clever people -- a world in which Firefly and Veronica Mars get cancelled, and (with the possible exception of Fringe) most of everything is simply mindless trash.

For a long time, computer games were made by clever people for clever people. My feeling is that we are now entering the phase where clever people are making games for non-clever people -- where mindless console games and FarmVille are the norm, and complex PC/Mac games such as Civ IV are rare and far apart.

If you think this is bad, wait for phase three.

 

[hclass]

Oh, there are enough people who want intellectually challenging games, but there are more people who just want to move little colorful figures around.

There is a snarky saying about television that might apply to computer games now. See, in the beginning, clever people made television for other clever people. Then, the bosses realized that there were more non-clever people than clever people, so the clever people began making television for non-clever people. After a while, the clever people got disgusted with that and left for other things. Now we have non-clever people making television for other non-clever people -- a world in which Firefly and Veronica Mars get cancelled, and (with the possible exception of Fringe) most of everything is simply mindless trash.

For a long time, computer games were made by clever people for clever people. My feeling is that we are now entering the phase where clever people are making games for non-clever people -- where mindless console games and FarmVille are the norm, and complex PC/Mac games such as Civ IV are rare and far apart.

If you think this is bad, wait for phase three.

I don't think it has anything to do with the word "clever".
"Clever" has no international measurement... or there is no absolute way to judge who is clever and who is not. Normally, everyone think he himself is clever (that include the fools) and if he dare to state that openly, everyone else will think he is not.

The actual problem is we are having two different Civ designers with very different personal character, that is the main reason why Civ4 and Civ5 can be that different.

Civ4 designer makes Civ4 features rich. But he has his problem. Let me quote 2 BTS examples:
1. Gunship
a) its amphibious ability has been removed
b) it can't capture a worker (instead it always destroy one if you place it on the same tile of an enemy worker).
Anyone can argue a) is for game balancing such that the gunship unit is not too powerful, but I doubt anyone can give me a reason why b), it simply make no sense.

2. You can build mine, cottage in neutral zone tiles, but you can't build farm. Ridiculous, is the word isn't it?

I dare to conclude, Civ4 designer is one who like to torture himself for no apparent reasons, thus when he designs Civ4, he extend that to all his players. There are many more small restrictions like above that really don't make sense. (they are merely there to cut your fun of playing Civ4)

I agree to the claim that Civ4 is feature rich, but I can't agree it offers more choices. (at least I dare to say most of the choices are not interesting, spoiled by brainless, unnecessary restriction)

I think Civ5 designer happen to be just opposite with the former.
In a way, I like his decision that if something is allowed in the game, he allows you to do it to its extreme. For example, he wants to let you cross the water, so save the trouble of building ship, just cross it... every unit is now a transformer.
I mean he is either a guy with true guts or he has been forced to design Civ5 with fewer features as a prerequisite. I suppose he already foresee a huge protest on the release of Civ5, that is the reason why, we can't even see much details of Civ5, even in the last week before Civ5 is released.

 

[drachasor]

I don't think it has anything to do with the word "clever".
"Clever" has no international measurement... or there is no absolute way to judge who is clever and who is not. Normally, everyone think he himself is clever (that include the fools) and if he dare to state that openly, everyone else will think he is not.

The actual problem is we are having two different Civ designers with very different personal character, that is the main reason why Civ4 and Civ5 can be that different

Civ 5 was also released in a much worse state than Civ 4, imho. So the lack of testing and polish really hurts it as well. A lot of the issues might have been removed if it had another 3-6 months of testing before release.

 

[hclass]

Civ 5 was also released in a much worse state than Civ 4, imho. So the lack of testing and polish really hurts it as well. A lot of the issues might have been removed if it had another 3-6 months of testing before release.

To be fair, we should only compare the situation of Civ4 vanilla and Civ5 now.
I think the former was not much better during its release.

I am not here to encourage everyone to stop pre-order or buy on the day of release Civ6, I think the future of Civ rely on a single matter:

They must allow the game to be returned and give a full refund.
(This shall at least, force them to release a complete game)

It seems the whole world has lost confidence with Civ producer and publisher, their future is rather dim. Three leasons in a row, Civ3, Civ4 and Civ5, that should be enough to make everyone learn a lesson that:

Rush buying newly released Civ is as bad as its rush release.

I learn my lesson after Civ3, when are you willing to lern yours?

 

[drachasor]

To be fair, we should only compare the situation of Civ4 vanilla and Civ5 now.
I think the former was not much better during its release.

Eh, worst thing about Civ4 Vanilla that I recall was the memory leak, and that wasn't ever much of a problem for me. The base mechanics overall, from what I recall, were more or less sound. The AI was bad, but not nearly as bad as it is in Civ5. The engine was bad, but turns didn't take up as much time.

 

[Fistalis]

Civ IV still has some obvious flaws in the game mechanics that have never been fixed...like the mechanics behind the vassal system. Because the vassal system became a major component in CivIV at Warlords, it should have been patched/fixed by now. But it isn't.

That doesn't give me much hope that MAJOR components of the the game mechanics in CiV will be fixed. Ever. This is one of the points Sullla was making --> CiV is broken at the fundamental game design level. They would have to radically change the game to fix it.

If you want to believe Firaxis/2K will do that, it's ok with me. But I think there are quite a few people who agree with Abegweit.

Patches will improve some of the bugs and balance issues. But mods are the best chance for the core of the game to be fixed, not Firaxis/2K.

cas

Pretty much my opinion.
They will patch stuff but if anyone thinks they are going to change any major thing or patch every issue then they aren't looking at firaxis track record.

 

[Markstar]

Civ IV still has some obvious flaws in the game mechanics that have never been fixed...like the mechanics behind the vassal system. Because the vassal system became a major component in CivIV at Warlords, it should have been patched/fixed by now. But it isn't.

Exactly. Same story with Civ3, btw. And the new Pirates wasn't that great in that respect, either.

That doesn't give me much hope that MAJOR components of the the game mechanics in CiV will be fixed. Ever. This is one of the points Sullla was making --> CiV is broken at the fundamental game design level. They would have to radically change the game to fix it.

Indeed. Don't expect the time between turns to come down. Maybe mods will be able to remove some of the linearity of the gameplay, but I doubt we will see a truly challenging and fun version anytime soon.

If you want to believe Firaxis/2K will do that, it's ok with me. But I think there are quite a few people who agree with Abegweit.

Patches will improve some of the bugs and balance issues. But mods are the best chance for the core of the game to be fixed, not Firaxis/2K.

cas

Well said!

 

[Zogar]

Sulla pretty much puts the nail on every problem in Civ 5 with his 4 explained games. Most of what I deduced for myself as broken is stated by him. He pushed his analysis even farther with the ICS strat, which I didn't find at all, and makes the game even more of a mess.

It makes me happy to see people with the same concerns as me, and expect a lot from a Civ game. With all the people saying they enjoy the game and don't find it broken, I was starting to doubt my judgement.

Indeed. Don't expect the time between turns to come down. Maybe mods will be able to remove some of the linearity of the gameplay, but I doubt we will see a truly challenging and fun version anytime soon.

It has been proved that 90% of the cpu time is for the workers. It is fixable through mods (not expecting firaxis to do this).

 

[Johnny Canuck]

It has been proved that 90% of the cpu time is for the workers. It is fixable through mods (not expecting firaxis to do this).

Huh? Firaxis already said they are improving the worker AI calculations for the next patch.

 

[Markstar]

It has been proved that 90% of the cpu time is for the workers. It is fixable through mods (not expecting firaxis to do this).

I believe it when I see it (actually, if this is really true I would actually have more faith in a modder to fix this than a Firaxis employee).

I will definitely keep an eye out for developments on Civ5 and hope for the best, but currently I have no faith in Firaxis whatsoever.

 

[BubbaYeti]

The worst part of it is that city spamming, which ruined civ III and was fixed nicely in civ IV, is back in civ V. I also liked, as Sulla did, having to carefully pick out ideal city sites in civ IV.

 

[MkLh]

Eh, exactly how is the ICS problem going to be fixed easily?

AI and diplomacy can be adjusted, and build times can be dramatically lowered (though then we need more buildings and lower maintenance). However, I am not seeing a simple solution to ICS at all.

Put tech costs to depend on a size of an empire - more cities, more expensive techs. That would be a simple solution, but is it too radical?

 

[drachasor]

Put tech costs to depend on a size of an empire - more cities, more expensive techs. That would be a simple solution, but is it too radical?

It's a demented mechanic, imho. It doesn't make any sense at all.

 

[pi-r8]

People should stop wasting their time trying to think of quick and easy fixes to this problem. It's not going to go away easily. Right now almost everything in the game rewards city spam, so you'd have to rebalance everything to fix it. I'm going to through all the ways, here.

To start, your economy is based on 3 things- gold, science, and production. All are better with ICS:

Gold:lots of trading posts, and no need to pay maintence on expensive buildings. In theory a well developed city with bank and stock exchange can produce more, but in practice it won't be able to work nearly as many trading posts as the many small cities. Big cities do get more trading route gold, but that's cancelled out by the high cost of their happiness buildings.

science: the small cities have higher net population, and many more scientists. Scientists are the most powerful way to get research in this game, and the best way to get scientists is to build more libraries in more cities.

production: each city tile can contribute hammers, and it's much more effective to have multiple cities with mediocre production than 1 city with high production. Once again the faster growth rate is a big factor here, to get more citizens working more mines.

You might say, but what about happiness? Each city adds 2 unhappiness, which is supposed to check ICS. Well, the easiest way to get more happiness is with resources and coloseums, and ICS helps with both of these. There are also numerous social policies that help with happiness/city, and the forbidden palace. In theory, a size 1 city with no buldings could actually boost your happiness. I've gone into happiness golden ages while spamming cities.

Speaking of social policies... It's true that adding more cities increases the cost of social policies. This is basically the only downside of an ICS build. However, most social policies became more powerful with more cities. Communism is the obvious one, but in fact almost all of them do. There's very few that really reward having fewer, larger cities- the only ones I can think of are the tradition policies that benefit your capital.

The only thing that disguises the horrible imbalance of ICS is warfare. This game revolves around warfare, it's much more of a wargame than an empire-building game (thanks to 1UPT...). So if you manage your unts carefully during war you can steamroll AIs while running your economy into the ground, and if you're careless in war it won't matter how good your economy is.

At this point, Civ V is a mediocre war game with a badly balanced economy system tacked on to it as an afterthought.

 

[MkLh]

There are core mechanics that are broken, like science depending directly on your population and not much else - I think that was one major stupid decision. But in the same way, slavery was much too efficient in Civ IV.

May be in Vanilla. In BtS increased unhappiness balanced it quite nicely.

 

[the streak]

People should stop wasting their time trying to think of quick and easy fixes to this problem. It's not going to go away easily. Right now almost everything in the game rewards city spam, so you'd have to rebalance everything to fix it. I'm going to through all the ways, here.

To start, your economy is based on 3 things- gold, science, and production. All are better with ICS:

Gold:lots of trading posts, and no need to pay maintence on expensive buildings. In theory a well developed city with bank and stock exchange can produce more, but in practice it won't be able to work nearly as many trading posts as the many small cities. Big cities do get more trading route gold, but that's cancelled out by the high cost of their happiness buildings.

science: the small cities have higher net population, and many more scientists. Scientists are the most powerful way to get research in this game, and the best way to get scientists is to build more libraries in more cities.

production: each city tile can contribute hammers, and it's much more effective to have multiple cities with mediocre production than 1 city with high production. Once again the faster growth rate is a big factor here, to get more citizens working more mines.

You might say, but what about happiness? Each city adds 2 unhappiness, which is supposed to check ICS. Well, the easiest way to get more happiness is with resources and coloseums, and ICS helps with both of these. There are also numerous social policies that help with happiness/city, and the forbidden palace. In theory, a size 1 city with no buldings could actually boost your happiness. I've gone into happiness golden ages while spamming cities.

Speaking of social policies... It's true that adding more cities increases the cost of social policies. This is basically the only downside of an ICS build. However, most social policies became more powerful with more cities. Communism is the obvious one, but in fact almost all of them do. There's very few that really reward having fewer, larger cities- the only ones I can think of are the tradition policies that benefit your capital.

The only thing that disguises the horrible imbalance of ICS is warfare. This game revolves around warfare, it's much more of a wargame than an empire-building game (thanks to 1UPT...). So if you manage your unts carefully during war you can steamroll AIs while running your economy into the ground, and if you're careless in war it won't matter how good your economy is.

At this point, Civ V is a mediocre war game with a badly balanced economy system tacked on to it as an afterthought.

That's an overly harsh criticism of the game. In reality the disparity between tons of trash cities and a few really good cities is not as large.

For one, these small cities take forever to build the higher tier improvements, and such improvements cost a lot in maintenance and do not give as much of a return. Public schools, research labs, stock exchanges, factories, hydro plants, these things take forever to build and are not worth it when you've got a million size 6 cities. But the % returns from these buildings are very significant when you've got large cities.

The thing is, with less cities, you can rush buy these late buildings and get immediate, large benefits. You'd never afford this with many small cities and the payoffs would be much less. You also get more specialist slots and more benefit out of assigning these specialists because of the % boosts and the better SPs.

I've gotten similar returns to the posted ICS from my very non-powergamed/non-refined French culture victory game with about 7 supercities with river/hill tiles, river jungles etc., rationalism and commerce and all that good SP stuff. Not quite as good as ICS, but not a fraction of the effectiveness either. The balance is not way off, but it is off. It's fixable.

 

[Leif Roar]

I also liked, as Sulla did, having to carefully pick out ideal city sites in civ IV.

To be fair, with the greater city radius, the perfect city placement was always going to be less important than in IV.

 

[MkLh]

It's a demented mechanic, imho. It doesn't make any sense at all.

It's the same mechanic that is already used in social policies. Penalty in social policies isn't enough, but increase base tech cost by 30% from every new city, and maybe the ICS doesn't look so tempting anymore.

If you meant it's utterly unrealistic then you are probably right. But I guess game play > realism. It isn't very realistic in SPs either.

 

[the streak]

It's the same mechanic that is already used in social policies. Penalty in social policies isn't enough, but increase base tech cost by 30% from every new city, and maybe the ICS doesn't look so tempting anymore.

If you meant it's utterly unrealistic then you are probably right. But I guess game play > realism. It isn't very realistic in SPs either.

It makes a bit of sense. If you take a small fishing village, build a library and put some locals to work in it, it's not likely to discover nuclear fusion or produce the next Albert Einstein. The intellectuals flock to the big universities in the big cities.