"The Bad Sequel": Sullla's Analysis of Civ5

[gazzahk]

I too largely agree with Sulla's critique.

I think CiV is dead for most of us.

If there is ever a Civ 6 - it better be tested properly, thoroughly and with the community.

I feel cheated having paid for a completely boring game with zero challenge, a child's game in many ways.

Such a shame.

 

[André Alfenaar]

I think CIV IV was so good, that a lot of people didn't want CIV V but CIV 4.1.

Instead the developers tried to create a new game. Almost inevitably the people that wanted CIV 4.1 are disappointed. I, myself, think CIV V is a good game with it's own approach and maybe slightly different fanbase than CIV IV.

Also, when reading some of Sulla's published games, I noticed his frustration that a 'dumb' strategy, that consists of building a lot of small cities and postponing social policies, could be a winning strategy. Well, this has been addressed in the latest patch.

 

[OrsonM]

Sulla needs to focus on his writing skills more. The topic never reaches a compelling point and it seems he has copy pasted parts of his "What went wrong article" without distilling it's content correctly (or at all).

The Bad Sequel is an unnecessary, shorter, pastiche for the mainstream audience. For the real article check "What went wrong". Which is a painfully long rant that could be summed up in one phrase: Civilization V was rushed and we all fell for it

Sulla, baby, remember: brevity is the soul of wit, not copy-paste-selected-passages-from-a-longer-essay is the soul of wit.

 

[Leuf]

Some people have decided they just don't like the game, that's fine. But then stop playing it and move on with your life then. Apparently he hasn't even played one game all the way through after the patch but he has this whole mile long rant about it. It's not about criticizing the game, it's about justifying your own preconceived dislike of it. There's a nice story about how one unit per tile is inherently flawed and therefore the game has to suck, but that's all it is - a story.

 

[SuperJay]

Some people have decided they just don't like the game, that's fine. But then stop playing it and move on with your life then. Apparently he hasn't even played one game all the way through after the patch but he has this whole mile long rant about it. It's not about criticizing the game, it's about justifying your own preconceived dislike of it. There's a nice story about how one unit per tile is inherently flawed and therefore the game has to suck, but that's all it is - a story.

You're correct that it's just his take, but it's a little silly to say "just move on" as if he shouldn't even voice his thoughts. The guy runs a Civilization website, right? So it's pretty fitting that he'd post his own perspective on the latest iteration of the franchise, isn't it? It's not like he's coming to your front door and yelling it in your face on a daily basis.

He posts his opinions about a game franchise that he's very interested in, experienced with, and passionate about. If the length or content of his writing bother you, don't read it. Nobody's got a gun to your head. Your implication that Sullla is somehow not "moving on with his life" because he wrote an article about a video game for which he runs a website is fairly petty on your part.

 

[Drakarska]

Not to start any confrontation or anything, but it would be extremely interesting to get 2K Greg's or 'Liz's view on Sulla's write up.

 

[Bastian-Bux]

Drakarska, that would be interesting. But Firaxis would basically have to admit: "we tried to garner more customers, and we failed badly. We'll discontinue patching Civ V, and start completely anew on Civ VI. Oh and btw, anyone who bought Civ V will get a discount on Civ VI. We are sorry we screwed up, and we'll take the lessons we've learned to make a new game."

Why should they do so? Because there are ONLY 2 reasons why a game goes from the hardcore community to a broad community: an hype that holds up to itself, or a modding community that continues to make the game better. Civ IV had both (the first partly, the second, tremendously). Civ V has neither. It failed with the hardcore community, it fails with the "casual gamers". AND more importantly, it failed with the modders. Noone sane will invest time into modding this game in the same way as was done with Civ IV. Sure, some modders try ... but only half heartedly. And even they will abandon ship over time.

"He is dead Jim."

 

[Drakarska]

Drakarska, that would be interesting. But Firaxis would basically have to admit: "we tried to garner more customers, and we failed badly. We'll discontinue patching Civ V, and start completely anew on Civ VI. Oh and btw, anyone who bought Civ V will get a discount on Civ VI. We are sorry we screwed up, and we'll take the lessons we've learned to make a new game."

Why should they do so? Because there are ONLY 2 reasons why a game goes from the hardcore community to a broad community: an hype that holds up to itself, or a modding community that continues to make the game better. Civ IV had both (the first partly, the second, tremendously). Civ V has neither. It failed with the hardcore community, it fails with the "casual gamers". AND more importantly, it failed with the modders. Noone sane will invest time into modding this game in the same way as was done with Civ IV. Sure, some modders try ... but only half heartedly. And even they will abandon ship over time.

"He is dead Jim."

"Beware the dreaded Red Shirt" or "we come in peace, shoot to kill"

And I agree with you. But according to their job titles, they're supposed to be the community "reps" ( not that they actually communicate often with us mere mortals) and interract with us. I don't really expect them to admit anything ( prob with Civ V? perish the thought), but simple courtesy would be nice occasionally from those two lofty individuals other than just the usual PR drivel.

 

[_hero_]

I think the biggest issue is that Civ V is a good game relative to games as a whole, but relative to Civ IV it is a bad game.

Expectations drive emotions. It is almost impossible to be considered a good game if you are released as a continuation of one of if not the best game ever. It happens in other industries too. There are plenty of good sequels to movies that flop because they didn't live up to the hype of the first movie. Sometimes the sequels are even better but don't live up because expectations are so high.

If they make a Civ VI it will probably be loved because Civ V lowered the bar. Everyone will expect another mediocre game and it will be a good game just like Civ V but will seem like a great game as a result.

 

[LegioCorvus]

Some people have decided they just don't like the game, that's fine. But then stop playing it and move on with your life then. Apparently he hasn't even played one game all the way through after the patch but he has this whole mile long rant about it. It's not about criticizing the game, it's about justifying your own preconceived dislike of it. There's a nice story about how one unit per tile is inherently flawed and therefore the game has to suck, but that's all it is - a story.

The man worked with Firaxis. He was one of the most trusted and respected commentators on the Civilization franchise.

It would be like if Phil Jackson quit the Lakers then criticized the new coach's style of management - especially if the new coach is producing a losing season and trading away all of their best players.

*EDIT*

Having thought about it, that's not a fair comparison. It's more like the most prominent sports writer in Los Angeles (I don't care for the Lakers, so I have no idea who that would be) that has a strong connection with Laker's management started to criticize the new coach for following a championship season with a losing one and trading away franchise stars.

For this comparison to work, Phil Jackson would have to be Soren Johnson. Mr. Johnson hasn't outright criticized Civ5 yet, but he did repost the article about the Chick Parabola more than a month after Civ5's release. http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=287

 

[Jaybe]

Sulla is a very critical guy, as anyone familiar with his history with civ4 would know. Like, he takes things to extremis.

He has no cred in my book.

 

[jacyp]

Not to start any confrontation or anything, but it would be extremely interesting to get 2K Greg's or 'Liz's view on Sulla's write up.

Why? They are PR persons, they have nothing to do with the development of the game.

And as PR they will give you the same answers as always, I can tell them to you:

"We can garantee you that we are fully commited to make Civ 5 the best game possible for our fans."

There you go.

 

[Drakarska]

Why? They are PR persons, they have nothing to do with the development of the game.

And as PR they will give you the same answers as always, I can tell them to you:

"We can garantee you that we are fully commited to make Civ 5 the best game possible for our fans."

There you go.

Not entirely accurate. According to both of them, they have publicaly stated that they are NOT with the PR department (I don't remember the link, sorry) and they are "community representitives" ( I don't believe that for a second, and also believe that they are PR). Additionally, I also agree with your assertation that they will give a prepared response ( hmnn, PR spin? shocking).

I realize that they have nothing to do with the developement of the game, but I still think it would be interesting to see what there input would be concerning Sulla's review.

 

[SewerStarFish]

The problem is you sell much more if your game is appealing for the first days, than if it has a step learning curve and is appealing for years. So they do most of the games fast and short term enjoyable nowadays.

Here's the sophistry of that paradigm: Civilization was the exception to that rule, each Civ until this one grew in depth and learning curve yet each exceeded the previous version in sales and revenue. Civ V does not have the depth and time will tell if it is profitable and yeilds profitable expansions.

I don't think it will and am concerned that it is now the last version.

 

[Eklabiaan]

Not to start any confrontation or anything, but it would be extremely interesting to get 2K Greg's or 'Liz's view on Sulla's write up.

It would be even more interesting to hear/read Sid Meiers view on and on Sulla's review.

 

[Selous]

reading through sullas article "what went wrong" and while reading the "woes" of 1UPT dynamics and the flow on effects caused by the change to 1UPT

summary of 1UPT woes, by Luddite

So what do we have now? Thanks to 1UPT, we've got a game that tries hard to limit production because large armies break the 1UPT system. To limit production as the game goes on, large cities increase their production very slowly relative to science. This means that small cities remain competative throughout the entire game. This, combined with the many loopholes in the happiness system, allow an empire of many small cities to massively outproduce and outtech an empire of a few large cities, so the 1UPT is broken anyway with a massive clog of advanced units, early in the game. In my opinion, this is not fixable without severe changes to the game, such as bringing back stacks or greatly increasing the minimum distance between cities."

as i was reading this i couldnt help but think that the biggest problem is that the map is far to small for the 1UPT to work. the city radius was changed to 3 tiles in all directions but the min distance between citys still has not changed. This combined with the ICS "advantages" helps limit the size of the map even more and with how slowly culture spreads, if you do not fill in your gaps quickly the AI soon will.

in the article it points to 1UPT as the main problem that ciV faces and i think that to fix the game this is the first issue that needs to be addressed, i would like to see how much changing min distance between citys to 3 or 4 would affect gameplay and open the map up

While this article blames 1UPT for many of ciV problems, i also believe that hex combat and 1UPT is also the greatest strength of this game and i would hate to see the concept killed off so quick

 

[LordTC]

reading through sullas article "what went wrong" and while reading the "woes" of 1UPT dynamics and the flow on effects caused by the change to 1UPT

summary of 1UPT woes, by Luddite


as i was reading this i couldnt help but think that the biggest problem is that the map is far to small for the 1UPT to work. the city radius was changed to 3 tiles in all directions but the min distance between citys still has not changed. This combined with the ICS "advantages" helps limit the size of the map even more and with how slowly culture spreads, if you do not fill in your gaps quickly the AI soon will.

in the article it points to 1UPT as the main problem that ciV faces and i think that to fix the game this is the first issue that needs to be addressed, i would like to see how much changing min distance between citys to 3 or 4 would affect gameplay and open the map up

While this article blames 1UPT for many of ciV problems, i also believe that hex combat and 1UPT is also the greatest strength of this game and i would hate to see the concept killed off so quick

The main problem isn't that 1UPT is causing ICS, ICS has been around forever in CiV and it requires tricky clever balancing of complex mechanics to create the right tension between vertical and horizonal growth. The main problem of 1UPT is that the AI can't cope with it at all as evidenced by the stupid example of the archers blocking in the units. Civilization AI has always moved units in a specific order, without needing to consider its other units. In a world with flanking bonuses and units blocking off each other that's a silly thing to do that yields ridiculously bad results.

Try playing the game where instead of choosing what order to move your units in you have to pick what to do with the unit that it next scrolls to, and can't move any other units until you do. In fact you can't even look around to see what other units you have and what your plans for them are. That's basically the game the tactical AI is playing. And its not a simple fix to do more. If you archers plan their moves based on what the 6 other units near them want to do, and have to decide that first you're going to move a pike out of the way by 1 unit, then you're going to move your archers back 1 step and fire so that your other pike can go attack the scout then the problem of deciding what to do becomes incredibly hard. Instead of considering the limited number of options for 1 unit the AI now looks at all possible orderings of all possible unit moves to find the best play. The much simpler version already has AI turns take WAY too long and the more complex version would easily make it take many times as long (16 times as long is a very generous estimate) for any tactical unit movement. Quite frankly anyone with a decent understanding of video game AI for TBS's would never suggest 1UPT because of this problem. If you play on a large enough map for units to be sufficiently sparse and don't have complex factors like flanking bonuses (or they are so small the AI can effectively ignore them), then the AI could do somewhat better. The Naval Change actually really helps because it makes it easier for the AI to just move its units in a fixed order.

A lot of the frustrations with the new patch relate to the AI getting huge bonuses to happiness and playing an ICS game to make up for the fact that it sucks tactically, and all 1UPT does is makes the game WAY harder for the computer. Clever tactical warfare is obviously not an exploit, but playing this kind of game with a computer is about as fun and predictable as watching Kasparov vs a random 4 year-old in chess.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Really no different than the way most consumer products are designed today. It is not in a company's best interests to sell aproduct that will last forever!!

If you only had to buy one car in your whole lifetime the car companies would have been begging for handouts a long time ago. Company engineers design the vehicles to fail after an 'acceptable' amount of time and use has gone by.

Video game design is no different...You want to produce a game that goes off with a bang and then fairly quickly leaves you bored to tears(or waiting for the fix-all patch) and wanting something, well, different...like another video game=profits on a year over year basis.

That's so wrong it hurts. Games inherently fade over time. They aren't new and shiny anymore. Or you just finish them. Also, the money a game makes doesn't (or shouldn't) stop 4 months after it comes out. Look at the really popular games, and you'll see them making money for YEARS after they release. They just aren't in the news anymore. "People still buy Starcraft" in 2005 isn't really newsworthy... or at least no more so than in 2004.

 

[JtheJackal]

I haven't played Civilization V but considering I read all the same things after Civilization 3 and Civilization IV releases its easy to take these criticisms with a grain of salt.

 

[BlueTemplar]

A lot of the frustrations with the new patch relate to the AI getting huge bonuses to happiness and playing an ICS game to make up for the fact that it sucks tactically, and all 1UPT does is makes the game WAY harder for the computer.

So they made a game where the AI wasn't clever enough to handle tactical combat, and at the same time almost completely skipped multiplayer?
If that's not a recipe for disaster...

I have seen several VERY disappointing sequels recently:
- Civilization 5 (It actually made me to go back to Civ4, discover the mod community, and add another magnificent game to my best ever list)
- Command and Conquer 4 : Where are the damn Scrin!?
- Red Alert 3 : Some of my friends have played Red Alert 2 extensively and loved it, but I found the 3 to be just... meh.
- And the worst of them all : Supreme Commander 2. They just killed a whole RTS subgenre, and made a shallow StarCraft clone instead... Fortunately there is still Spring!

Now about "potential". Space Empires 5 had a lot of potential, and even if it was released in an almost completely crippled state, the fact that a it's potential came from a sound base and the ease of which it could be modded, what we see now with the Balance Mod, is not only a game that's terrific in multiplayer, but also one that can be fairly entertaining against the AI as well...
I doubt you can "save" Civ5 though, because it's fundamentally broken due to the all the things listed in the article.

I feel cheated having paid for a completely boring game with zero challenge, a child's game in many ways.

That's why you should try the games before buying them...