The Final Analysis?

[gaiko]

Well, since my childhood was before the computer age, I got very familiar with hex based board wargames with stacking limits (imagine the "user interface" problems of a Civ SoD-sized stack of cardboard chits! Timber! ). So it was a natural for me that Shafer or anyone else would want to move in this direction. In fact I could only wonder "what took them so long" to move to this utterly standard wargame format?

The irony now is that the two really positive innovations in the CivV game - hexes and stacking limits (but not necessarily 1UPT, which strikes me as excessive, and no wargame I've ever played went to this extreme) - will now be forever more associated with a "design fail".

That's why I am anxious to get clarity on the real issue - I want hexes and stacking limits in any future iteration of Civ!

The thing that alarmed me was when I read a pre-release interview with Shafer and he was talking all the time about importing into Civ those great game concept ideas from Panzer General.

In my mind I was like "Panzer General ? What is that, I never heard of it. Why would you want to take concepts from an unknown irrelevant game and import them to one of the greatest and estabilished franchises in game history"

 

[Arriaga II]

An excellent and (IMO) overly fair article by Sulla. It's great to see rational, fact-based critiques that you usually don't see from the professional reviewers.

 

[Dale]

One thing I'm curious about, is how Sullla formed his opinion on diplomacy being impossible to be friends with an AI. I've played five post-patch games now and I've found it easier post-patch to form a bloc with 2-3 other Civs and through luxury trading and RA's been able to be friends with the AI Civs in the bloc for a large percentage of the game. I had one game where the first Civ I met was a friend (and helped in wars even) to the very end when I won space race, and another game where 1 Civ in our 3 Civ bloc sneak attacked me and the other 2 Civs joined my war against the sneak. And I'm not the only one to notice this with some 'AI too friendly' threads around.

I just find it curious that everyone is staking their claim on this 'review' when Sullla only played one post-patch game..... that's right, just ONE.

 

[Atwork]

I just find it curious that everyone is staking their claim on this 'review' when Sullla only played one post-patch game..... that's right, just ONE.

The reason is that his ONE play through is fairly consistent with my and many other peoples' experiences. Every game will be different to be sure, but there are certain trends that emerge as patterns.

One thing I'm curious about, is how Sullla formed his opinion on diplomacy being impossible to be friends with an AI...found it easier post-patch to form a bloc...to be friends

My experience is that it was indeed easier to form and maintain positive relations post-patch. My complaint here is that the logic remains whacky. I was once denounced for my actions toward Persia (I was Persia). Other times I would be threatened or denounced even while the civs would remain friendly. Civs would grow unfriendly with me despite their own actions causing the turmoil (such as their expanding near my borders). My complaint is that diplomacy remains bizarre even if it is more transparently so. Also, there is just so few diplomatic tools available -- no bargaining tools.....I click, "let's discuss something," and there's no options! This in a game that advertised diplomacy as a selling point. Diplomacy still needs huge amounts of work.

By the way Dale, I checked out your ideas for your proposed New World mod. I liked your ideas of a world market and other ideas as well. Since you communicate with the devs, I'm curious what they envision for C5's future re: trade routes, pre-reqs to international trade, and the limited diplomatic tools. I'm curious how you personally feel about the current state of these very limited systems. Sorry I'm being a bit vague, but I'm in a rush to get outside before it starts raining

 

[Celevin]

I disagree with Sulla on both 1upt and diplomacy, however I find myself with the same feelings in the end that it would take a lot of changes for me to really get into Civ5. I think where we agree the most is maintenance. I'm going to avoid talking about culture maintenance for a number of reasons, and stick with happiness maintenance:

I don't have a problem with global happiness in that it stops growth of your cities. To me that's a more fair mechanic for Civ5 than a gold maintenance. After all, Civ4 gold maintenance was really "less science" and Civ5's is "more flexible but weaker production". Having a gold maintenance in Civ5 would be a poor decision in fact. Instead, Civ5's happiness maintenance hurts everything by limiting population. It's a good idea to slow down empires!

What I have a problem with is how the unhappiness and happiness are worked out. It's all static numbers! In Civ4, to make back that gold lost, you needed trade routes (a bit broken mechanic but can be tweaked) or population to make gold. In Civ5, you need a single building. If we build on a luxury we don't even need that building. The city is going to be a net benefit. This problem can't be tweaked away by adjusting 2s to 3s or 4s to 3s, as they are still static values.

I think 2 things need to happen for me to be pleased with happiness maintenance. Given what they are, I doubt they will:
1) Unhappiness-per-city marginal rate needs to be positive. This will make it so as the game progresses it will be harder for a city to get up on its own. Without this, a city is much easier to get up and running in Renaissance (due to more gold, etc) than Ancient. It kills the growth rate in the game.
2) Happiness building numbers need to depend on something the city outputs. An example is making it depend on a city's gold+production output. Make it so a colosseum makes +10% of production worth of happiness and +5% of gold worth of happiness, for example. This means for a city to step up on its own, it needs to actually grow and gain resources rather than just being a size 1.

 

[Atwork]

I don't have a problem with global happiness in that it stops growth of your cities. To me that's a more fair mechanic for Civ5 than a gold maintenance.

You conflate population growth with expansion via new cities. There is a difference between population growth in your cities versus expanding the number of cities in your empire.

That said, both C5 global and C4 local unhappiness serve as a check on population growth, but the difference is the global vs. local effect. In C4, an excess unhappy citizen in a city meant that citizen could not be used to work a tile or placed in a specialist slot. As unhappy citizens in a city mounted, it could become quite disabling, but only in that one city. Various mods added in global effects to local unhappiness. For example, in the revolutions mod, an unhappy city might revolt and join another civ. Thus, individual cities had to be cultivated. This mechanic has been completely disregarded in C5.

In C4, maintenance was a global check on city spamming since expanding with too many cities too rapidly would cripple a player's economy in terms of revenue and technology. In C5, city spamming actually increases gold output while adding 1 unhappy citizen to the empire. So, in practical terms of play, C5's global unhappiness rarely slows city spamming, and if it does, it does so even if the player is up against arbitrary threshold levels (about to go from neutral to -1 or about to go -5, or about to go -10. It is fairly easy to defeat the mechanic in C5 without long-term strategic economic/infrastructural planning -- all a player needs to do is have many cities with small population, eventually each of those smallish cities will build happy buildings and so on and so on. If a player is facing a threshold, then the player may have to stop spamming long enough to acquire a new resource or new building, but once acquired, the player can go back to spamming. The economy won't suffer and neither will technology. C4 required a real balancing act.

It's a good idea to slow down empires!

For the reasons above, C4 actually did a better job of slowing the expansion rate of empires. On the other hand, in C4, expanding to a large size did not negate the possibility of cultural victories, building national wonders, or achieving civic advances.

 

[Celevin]

For the reasons above, C4 actually did a better job of slowing the expansion rate of empires. On the other hand, expanding to a large size did not negate the possibility of cultural victories, building national wonders, or achieving civic advances.

I agree that Civ4 did a better job of slowing expansion, but I don't see your reasoning.

Happiness maintenance can work. You build a new city, you cost yourself x potential population in another city, which slows production / science / gold / others. Building cities in Civ5 *does* lower your science in the long term. The problem is with every new city, it can build buildings that immediately increase your long-term science (and gold, and production).

It all comes back to static values. It's like if, in Civ4, you were cost 4 gold for building a new city. But there was a building that produced 8 gold. How fast would you build and expand? As fast as you can get those buildings up in running.

 

[Dale]

My experience is that it was indeed easier to form and maintain positive relations post-patch. My complaint here is that the logic remains whacky. I was once denounced for my actions toward Persia (I was Persia). Other times I would be threatened or denounced even while the civs would remain friendly. Civs would grow unfriendly with me despite their own actions causing the turmoil (such as their expanding near my borders). My complaint is that diplomacy remains bizarre even if it is more transparently so. Also, there is just so few diplomatic tools available -- no bargaining tools.....I click, "let's discuss something," and there's no options! This in a game that advertised diplomacy as a selling point. Diplomacy still needs huge amounts of work.

Yes, I agree that diplomacy needs some work, I just totally disagree with the assertion that it's impossible to have/keep friendly relations with the AI.

By the way Dale, I checked out your ideas for your proposed New World mod. I liked your ideas of a world market and other ideas as well. Since you communicate with the devs, I'm curious what they envision for C5's future re: trade routes, pre-reqs to international trade, and the limited diplomatic tools. I'm curious how you personally feel about the current state of these very limited systems. Sorry I'm being a bit vague, but I'm in a rush to get outside before it starts raining

Sorry but under our NDA we can't discuss the development process. I'm glad you liked some of my ideas.

 

[Atwork]

It all comes back to static values. It's like if, in Civ4, you were cost 4 gold for building a new city. But there was a building that produced 8 gold. How fast would you build and expand? As fast as you can get those buildings up in running.

In C4 there was no such building. Buildings provided percentage bonuses to base gold production. So, in order to counter the 4 cost of a new city, the player would have to work a tile of such gold value that it countered that cost, or raise a large enough population that several tiles worked together could counter the cost. Cities were therefore investments -- it took a while for a city to come online and in the mean time, the empire would have to tighten its belt......

You build a new city, you cost yourself x potential population in another city, which slows production / science / gold / others.

My problem with this is that it is a silly system & C4 did it better.

Do you think New Orleans gives a damn that Dallas built a billion dollar football stadium for the Cowboys while their residents are still living in FEMA trailers? By the same token, in general, are New Yorkers less productive, less fed, or less happy because New Orleans is still a mess?

In other words, why should building a circus in one city effect happiness in another city? Why should lack of infrastructure in one city effect the happiness of a population in another city that has such infrastructure?

The whole concept in C5 is just silly. C4 had a better concept and it truly achieved the results and balance that C5's system doesn't but hopes to.

 

[Celevin]

In C4 there was no such building. Buildings provided percentage bonuses to base gold production. So, in order to counter the 4 cost of a new city, the player would have to work a tile of such gold value that it countered that cost, or raise a large enough population that several tiles worked together could counter the cost. Cities were therefore investments -- it took a while for a city to come online and in the mean time, the empire would have to tighten its belt......

Yes, I made this point. I also stated that I agree with what you said, that Civ4's maintenance system works better.

My problem with this is that it is a silly system & C4 did it better.

Do you think New Orleans gives a damn that Dallas built a billion dollar football stadium for the Cowboys while their residents are still living in FEMA trailers? By the same token, in general, are New Yorkers less productive, less fed, or less happy because New Orleans is still a mess?

In other words, why should building a circus in one city effect happiness in another city? Why should lack of infrastructure in one city effect the happiness of a population in another city that has such infrastructure?

The whole concept in C5 is just silly. C4 had a better concept and it truly achieved the results and balance that C5's system doesn't but hopes to.

The problem isn't with global happiness though. All that global happiness is is local happiness + extra per city. It efficiently does 2 things at once in an easy to understand way. The problem is with how much unhappiness and happiness is generated.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Lots of issues still remain with Civ5, obviously. The patch brought some new issues however. I'm surprised they didn't fix them yet. I mean issues that really need to be fixed, like NOW!

AI ICS... Here are some fine examples:

Spoiler :

Now I don't have a problem with AI ICS itself, that way I'll have some challenge beating them at least... BUT there is one problem however...

THIS:

Spoiler :

As you might have deducted from the pic, Alexander is at war with Persia. This is his attack on Sardis. Greek unit came by water from the east, right past the city of Sardis and landed right behind the mountain.
Later Alexander brought another unit. As you might guess he didn't attack the city, instead landed on that forest hill of Florence. From there, he then moved to where my horses are, once Sardis bombarded it near death. This "invasion" or "siege" lasted till the end of the game. They came as musket men and still there they were as mechanized infantry when the game ended...

SO... They made the AI build cities on one tile islands and closed off peninsulas etc., but it seems they forgot to teach them, how to attack those cities. As of now, cities on one tile islands and closed off peninsulas are UNTOUCHABLE for other AI's.

This alone screams "The game is broken!"...

Does AI behave any smarter after the patch? Well... Let's see:

Spoiler :

This is the most organized and threatening invasion from sea I ever saw! So I guess it does...

The interface. Oh, the interface... Still lots of problems with it. False information is displayed all over the place.

The food "bar" or um "circle", whatever, displays full food reserves at all times, no matter how much you have it:

Spoiler :

Some policies display wrong information, civilopedia displays old information.

You sometimes see some crazy stuff displayed:

Spoiler :

50 happiness from every city!? Huh? Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong?

Why the hell does Askia have "liberty" and "autocracy" active at the same time? If he doesn't, then again the problem is with the damn interface:

Spoiler :

If not, why does it show me non-active ones then? It's supposed to be this way? Then why doesn't it clarify, which ones are active? Etc...

Some CS problems... This one made me spill my tea:

Spoiler :

CS gifted me a "Kublai (Khan)"! Woot!? Mongolian UU!

Speaking of CS, the quest where you are required to build a road to your capital does NOT work.

And finally... Why does those city give-aways STILL happen!?

Spoiler :

 

[Atwork]

All that global happiness is is local happiness + extra per city.

That is not an accurate statement of C5's system of global happiness. Local happiness is irrelevant in C5. Only global happiness is relevant. There is no concept for local happiness in C5. At certain levels of global unhappiness, a player faces only global effects involving all localities equally.

Really, the correct statement of this C5 system is something along the lines of: the player has a pool of happy points -- difficulty level, resources, and buildings add to the pool -- population growth subtracts from the pool. Every additional population subtracts from the happy pool. Unless the player has sufficient happy points, the player may face empire wide penalties for exceeding certain arbitrary uhappiness thresholds.

In the global happiness scheme, individual cities are mere producers of buildings that add to the empire's happiness pool. Individual cities are not happy or unhappy. Individual cities are simply capable of producing happiness buildings or not capable of producing happiness buildings. Regardless of decisions made at the local level, individual cities don't become unhappy, the empire becomes unhappy.

It is possible for a city to produce no infrastructure dedicated to happiness and yet remain as happy as a city devoted to happiness infrastructure. On the other hand, even a city that has been dedicated to building happiness infrastructure will be dragged down by the lack of happiness infrastructure in other cities.

The problem isn't with global happiness.....It efficiently does 2 things at once in an easy to understand way.

It is easy to understand -- blandly so.

But, it does not EFFECTIVELY do 2 things at once because it does not control city sprawl (as it was intended to do) and it only controls population size in the short term. The very short term considering buildings can be purchased and marine city-states allow a city to explode in growth quickly.

However, what this system does effectively do is provide an incentive to spamming lots of small cities and to conquest without regret. I don't believe the devs intended to encourage either of these consequences. So, actually, C5's system of over-simplified global happiness is the problem.

C4 may have been a bit more complex, as it made decisions on the local scale mean a lot on the global scale, but it was balanced and it achieved the ends that C5's system doesn't.

 

[CaptTightpants]

I think comparisons with Civ 4 are completely appropriate. If Firaxis is going to release a Civ 5, then it should be based off of the lessons and conclusions that designers drew while designing previous Civs. Not necessarily copy every feature -- but at least if you are going to tinker with the design, or wholly substitute old features with new ones, you should first know why those features were put in place to begin with, what trade-offs were made, etc.

I particularly value Sulla's thoughts BECAUSE he was on the Civ 4 design team as a tester. For example, his discussion about having competing rewards (instead of competing penalties) for different strategies is a game-theory-level observation that must have been a design philosophy during the discussions designing Civ 4. I WANT Sulla's critique to include how Civ 5 stands against the thought of the past. When new ideas were considered for Civ 5, one would hope that the Civ 5 designers were cognizant of this philosophy, so they could weigh whether their ideas violated it, and if they did, whether it was desirable to overturn the entire philosophy altogether.

Another example is if someone in the Civ 5 design team had said, "Wouldn't it be cool if we couldn't predict the AI leaders' actions?", someone else should have said, "Well, we decided for the first time in Civ 4 to make it obvious to players what pluses and minuses were affecting diplomacy, so they could tailor their strategies toward how they want to affect their foreign relations." But apparently that discussion wasn't had, that knowledge from past experience wasn't shared (and also not enough playtesting was done), so that they put out an initial release that touted this "new feature(!)" saying that you can't predict what the AI leaders will do. (Only to renege on their touted "new feature" in their latest patch.)

To me, there doesn't seem to be the same degree of meta thinking, or applying theory, to the design of Civ 5 -- rather, it seems to be a "wouldn't it be cool if this feature were added" kind of approach. And to the extent there was a big-picture view applied, it was to find a hybrid between the complex, strategy-level game and the more casual, tactical game they designed with Civ:Rev. NOT necessarily a bad idea: but if they were going for that, then they should have considered why the features were applied in Civ 4 in the first place and how these changes would affect the overall "architecture."

Arguing against Sulla by saying he "shouldn't compare" Civ 5 to Civ 4 is of no interest to me whatsoever. It simply doesn't engage with Sulla's points, and the thought the designers put into Civ 4.

 

[sketch162000]

To me, there doesn't seem to be the same degree of meta thinking, or applying theory, to the design of Civ 5 -- rather, it seems to be a "wouldn't it be cool if this feature were added" kind of approach. And to the extent there was a big-picture view applied, it was to find a hybrid between the complex, strategy-level game and the more casual, tactical game they designed with Civ:Rev. NOT necessarily a bad idea: but if they were going for that, then they should have considered why the features were applied in Civ 4 in the first place and how these changes would affect the overall "architecture."

I agree with this mostly, except for the part about comparing everything to 4 during the design process. I think that the ability of devs to brainstorm ideas without really considering what previous games is did the best way to be truly innovative. Thinking outside the box and all. In fact I've argued before that the devs might have considered Civ IV too much, generating ideas for stopping 4's exploits rather than generating ideas that had merit on their own.

You must follow your ideas through to the end, and I feel like that's where the meta-thinking fell through. It seems as if someone said "Hey wouldn't it be cool if we didn't know what the other leaders were thinking?" It sounds like a great idea, and its nice that the devs are trying new things. But then it seems like that was the extent of it. They just pasted it into the game, apparently without testing enough to see if it really worked and was fun in context. The same thing goes for 1upt. Everyone was so enthralled with killing the SoD that nobody stepped back to consider that it might not be the right solution. By release, nobody had even stepped back to consider little obvious housekeeping things like stacking vulnerable civilian units with military units. Every other "innovation" follows suit, a cool idea on paper that doesn't work out in game, that drags other mechanics down with it...

 

[Atwork]

By release, nobody had even stepped back to consider little obvious housekeeping things

Yes, it seems as though that's how it went down. Like, the deadline was looming, and they decided -- well, let's just get the skeleton outline done and we'll put mean on the bones over time. But, it seems they weren't sufficiently critical of their basic construction. Maybe they had group think.

Having pushed C5 in to market in an unpolished state without having ensured the basic design functioned as intended, I realize it will take some time to get the basics up to full functionality before they'll be able to build on top of it.

 

[radiohodet]

Funny how people praise Sulla's pretty shallow analysis if you ask me when 4/5 of the things that "went wrong" would be dumbed down concepts if you go back to Civ 4's system.

- A small empire can be competitive now. Good luck doing that in Civ 4. ICS will of course still be the best strategy. It has to. The gap has been reduced though, which is good. If it should be done in another way than in Civ5 is of course a different question, but compared to Civ4 it's done better.
- Too many penalties? Awwww
- Diplomacy? While still far from perfect, it's still way better than Civ 4's.
- Multiplayer. Only valid point in my opinion.
- 1UPT. Yes, let's just go back to stack of doom, and spit out x units per turn and load them up in a nice stack. Talk about dumbed down. Why not try to make the AI more competitive instead? Carpet of doom is of course stupid, but it's the way the dev's "increased the difficulty" that is the problem, not 1UPT itself.

I agree with most of the minor complaints. Most of these are however bugs.... It's obvious the game was shipped way too early, but that's the case with most games these days with the exception of Blizzard's games, but they are basically just graphically enhanced versions of 10 year old games, so I wouldn't give them too much credit.

 

[JohnnyW]

I agree with most of the minor complaints. Most of these are however bugs.... It's obvious the game was shipped way too early, but that's the case with most games these days with the exception of Blizzard's games, but they are basically just graphically enhanced versions of 10 year old games, so I wouldn't give them too much credit.

And the Civilization series is how old?

99%+ of games are just rehashes on previous ones. So much has been done in the video game industry it's almost impossible not to. So Blizzard released "Starcraft 2" and it's basically a better version of Starcraft.....isn't that the point of having a sequel to begin with, just like the Civilization series??

 

[LDiCesare]

- Diplomacy? While still far from perfect, it's still way better than Civ 4's.

rotfl

 

[oldskald]

It's obvious the game was shipped way too early, but that's the case with most games these days with the exception of Blizzard's games,...

I don't agree with the analysis in the rest of the above post, but that isn't really important; its all opinion, anyway. What I want to focus on is the final quote (and this might be a touch off-topic so I apologise in advance).

In what other industry is it acceptable to ship a half finished, poorly tested product? Can you imagine A.N. Other car manufacturer shipping their latest product, with their salespeople then saying to potential customers, "yeah, the paint job is lovely and the interior is really comfy, however we've got some problems with the radiator, but don't worry; you can drive it away now and we'll send you a working radiator later..."

We really are just a bunch of mugs putting up with these half finished products. Why? Hopeful delusion over experience? I'd love to think that when (if) cVI ever comes around we all hold off buying it. 2K, Steam and Firaxis would be scratching their heads at the terrible sales figures, at which point the message would start to reach them; "we want a finished product that works, thanks all the same, so pull your fingers out! If you want our $100 (or whatever it costs by then), make a proper product."

It won't happen, I know. But its nice to fantasise....

Rant over, and thank you for your attention.

 

[Zechnophobe]

That is not an accurate statement of C5's system of global happiness. Local happiness is irrelevant in C5. Only global happiness is relevant. There is no concept for local happiness in C5. At certain levels of global unhappiness, a player faces only global effects involving all localities equally.

Really, the correct statement of this C5 system is something along the lines of: the player has a pool of happy points -- difficulty level, resources, and buildings add to the pool -- population growth subtracts from the pool. Every additional population subtracts from the happy pool. Unless the player has sufficient happy points, the player may face empire wide penalties for exceeding certain arbitrary uhappiness thresholds.

In the global happiness scheme, individual cities are mere producers of buildings that add to the empire's happiness pool. Individual cities are not happy or unhappy. Individual cities are simply capable of producing happiness buildings or not capable of producing happiness buildings. Regardless of decisions made at the local level, individual cities don't become unhappy, the empire becomes unhappy.

It is possible for a city to produce no infrastructure dedicated to happiness and yet remain as happy as a city devoted to happiness infrastructure. On the other hand, even a city that has been dedicated to building happiness infrastructure will be dragged down by the lack of happiness infrastructure in other cities.




It is easy to understand -- blandly so.

But, it does not EFFECTIVELY do 2 things at once because it does not control city sprawl (as it was intended to do) and it only controls population size in the short term. The very short term considering buildings can be purchased and marine city-states allow a city to explode in growth quickly.

However, what this system does effectively do is provide an incentive to spamming lots of small cities and to conquest without regret. I don't believe the devs intended to encourage either of these consequences. So, actually, C5's system of over-simplified global happiness is the problem.

C4 may have been a bit more complex, as it made decisions on the local scale mean a lot on the global scale, but it was balanced and it achieved the ends that C5's system doesn't.

I think it is more accurate to say that there is Global Happiness, Global Unhappiness, and Local Happiness.

Global Happiness: Wonders, Luxuries, social Policies.
Global Unhappiness: All of it
Local Happiness: Buildings

While you do not have any real concept of Local Unhappiness, since it will never effect a set other than the full set of your cities, you do have one for local happiness, in that it is limited by the size of the city that produces it.

Honestly, this is a really broken feeling system. It is also annoyingly hard to monitor.