Three tech trees (research/culture/faith) is lazy design

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, there's nothing tree like about religion. If anything, combat promotions (which haven't yet been mentioned) are more tree-like. You could say Civ4 had just as many trees as Civ5.

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

Hello There. Personally I agree with the OP there are too many similarities between Culture and Social policies.

I made a similar Post on Mar 10, 2012, 03:46 PM called Is Culture and Faith the same thing? http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=455995. On my post most people are discussing how the things you are buying with faith points behave differently than the policies you buy with culture. which is true but the underlying mechanic is fundamentally the same.

I'm Glad someone out there agrees with me for I have gotten few agreements on my own thread.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Isn't the fundamental mechanic for science or military promotions the same in that case?

 

[guczy]

If you really want to split hairs even building buildings is the same mechanic, you accumulate hammers to get them, for some of them you need to have a prereq built

 

[Deggial]

While I agree, that all (money, culture, faith) is sort of a currency which has to be accumulated to "buy" the related elements, I don't think this as "lazy" by all means.

As many posters clarified in this thread, there are enough differences to make them feel unique. Additionally, I can not see an interesting and intuitive alternative. But maybe my imagination is just limited and I would love to read proposals of a different approach.

Anyway, I did write a lengthy concept about religion at a German civilization forum, proposing a slightly different (and, as I think, quite "revolutionary" ) way of faith accumulation:
My "faith" was generated by *all* religion followers and loaded an "international faith trust" (so to say). When reaching a certain threshold, a new believe should have been available (just as in G&K), but only the "religious leader" (= the player who gathered the most faith so far) was allowed to choose which one will be taken.
The interesting part here was, that wars between followers of the same religion would have lowered the amount of faith accumulated, which hinders the growing of the religion and could lead to the loss of religion leadership. Religion would have been a true peace keeping force as result of this mechanism.

(All in all, I am very proud that the G&K religion system is not so far from what I proposed. But to be honest, G&K's *unique* believes are better than my concept was.)

 

[Fabiano79]

I dont think "lazy" is a fair statement. They probably work hard to get this kind of design. But, I agree with the OP regard that I dont like this mechanic.

When ciV was released, lots of people complained about how "gamey" the series had become. I now see this very clearly.

I know many people like to have "all the information transparent", they like to know all the bonuses..the plus 2 food, plus 4 culture...right in front of them.

But, if you like to roleplay your empire, ciV is far the worse game on the series. All those numbers and tree options keep pushing you back to your chair by telling you that is just a game. The "AI trying to win" concept has the same effect.

The civics werent perfect, but IMO the devs moved to the wrong direction when they decided to just remove them.

 

[seasnake]

Actually, I think it's far more game to suddenly decide "I want to go to war, let's a be a police state" and then to say "war's over, let's embrace free speech again!" In Social Policies you're setting up your civ to get better at areas that either 1) compensate for weaknesses of your civ or 2) accentuate your strength. You you can invest in a really tall india game with few cities and max out Tradition, or you can try to offset India's weakness and found more cities with Liberty. You can choose to embrace late game specialist economies, building economies, or fighting. And so on.

 

[bhavv]

I vastly prefer social policies to civics, however I also miss governments from earlier civ games.

Another thing I also disliked since Civ IV was how much more expensive they made it to build things. I absolutely loved Civ II and Smac in which you could actually win via just building things. They completely took the fun of that out in Civ IV and V.

 

[vonbach]

The tree design was probably my favorite change they made to this game.
Its far better than the old governments.

 

[Volapyk]

Give me a single example from the entire known existence where any effect is not preceded by an action (or reaction). Want to buy a pizza? Pay X money. Want to take a single step? Pay the energy required to move your leg. Want to have another thought? Pay the energy required. It is the basis upon which every choice is made, wants and costs (or actions and consequences).

Basically everything is based on "Pay X to get Y", though that is of course an oversimplification but as a generalization it holds. So yea one could argue that it is lazy design, but on the other hand is it even possible to have any other way available?

 

[IcyFrozen]

I liked the concept used in Civ4 better.

In which you choose a particular unlocked option in each category instead of selecting a category and choosing various elements of the theme.

Why do i choose Piety and run the gamut from liberal to oppressive relgion in the same tree? How many nations in history have had liberal/oppressive religions? Civ5s concept is more about getting bonuses then any sort of portrayal of realism. Which is pretty much a summary of the whole game.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I liked the concept used in Civ4 better.


Why do i choose Piety and run the gamut from liberal to oppressive relgion in the same tree? How many nations in history have had liberal/oppressive religions? Civ5s concept is more about getting bonuses then any sort of portrayal of realism. Which is pretty much a summary of the whole game.

It's no more or less realistic than the way 4 did it, whether you like it better or not.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I liked the concept used in Civ4 better.

In which you choose a particular unlocked option in each category instead of selecting a category and choosing various elements of the theme.

Why do i choose Piety and run the gamut from liberal to oppressive relgion in the same tree? How many nations in history have had liberal/oppressive religions? Civ5s concept is more about getting bonuses then any sort of portrayal of realism. Which is pretty much a summary of the whole game.

Not a single Civ game is supposed to mirror any actions done in real life.

That's the thing, we're supposed to be making these type of nations, why not make a Fascict Jewish Germany or a Religious Communist China! We have this options and we are suppose to be taking advantage of them. Saying that we shouldn't combine Communism with Religion is like saying.. well it's saying something. This is Civ 5, it's meant to be fun, not to educate and mirror real history. If we were to go for that we shouldn't have half of these nations because they're already dead.

 

[Zaimejs]

I forgot how much I liked the opportunity to change policies/politics in Civ IV. the idea of a Policy tree is just stupid when you think about it. Policies should change and adapt with the times and the leaders. Show me a civilization that has been on a steady "policy" path! I should be able to change my policies with my desires. If I want to be a fascist for awhile, I should be able to be. That's my complaint about the current system. I don't mind unlocking policies, but there should be a way to switch.

 

[turingmachine]

I forgot how much I liked the opportunity to change policies/politics in Civ IV. the idea of a Policy tree is just stupid when you think about it. Policies should change and adapt with the times and the leaders. Show me a civilization that has been on a steady "policy" path! I should be able to change my policies with my desires. If I want to be a fascist for awhile, I should be able to be. That's my complaint about the current system. I don't mind unlocking policies, but there should be a way to switch.

The mechanic just suffers from poor naming. They're not policies, you're right. However, they do represent your cultural tradition and history. If a civ used to be huge warmongers, that's not something you can switch from. Even later on, that part of your history and culture remains, people remember it, and it influences later culture and actual policies.

Honestly, if it was just named Tradition or something similar they'd be no confusion over the mechanic, or demand for the ability to switch. In terms of gameplay it replaces the old government and civic systems, but thematically it doesn't. In fact, you could justify adding a government system in addition to policies if Social Policies were named correctly.

 

[rfxmills]

I forgot how much I liked the opportunity to change policies/politics in Civ IV. the idea of a Policy tree is just stupid when you think about it. Policies should change and adapt with the times and the leaders. Show me a civilization that has been on a steady "policy" path! I should be able to change my policies with my desires. If I want to be a fascist for awhile, I should be able to be. That's my complaint about the current system. I don't mind unlocking policies, but there should be a way to switch.

If you have gone down the Freedom path and you want to be Autocratic instead, you can, but you can't reassign the policies you've already chosen and you can't have both branches active at the same time. You will go into unrest for a few turns as well. I think this is a really good system.

 

[Zaimejs]

It is silly. Why would it take so much longer and be so much more effort for a later civilization to chance "policies" than an early civ? I can't just sell something or trade something to change my "policy".

 

[Steamwerks]

I can't imagine how anyone thinks that Civics were better than Social Policies. There were very little choices and consequences in choosing Civics, even to the point for many, you just get to the choice ones each branch and stay on that forever. You can even get to the point where you can switch off at will, if you wanted. In other words, very little decision making. Contrast that to Social Policies. All nice wonders-like bonuses (even though I would like to see a little more negative bonuses scattered throughout). In a strategy game, what better mechanism is there than having to decide one tree to start with over another or even better, having to choose one tree at the expense of another? For example, the left side of Rationalism is awesome but so is Organized Religion in Piety. You can't do both.

If you want to see very lazy design mechanics, look at the way religion, espionage, corporations and civics were implemented in Civ4.

I don't mean to be elitist here, but whenever I see someone claim that civics could effectively be put on autopilot (at any stage) in Civ IV, I have to question their level of proficiency with the game. Certainly at Deity/Immortal, and probably Emperor, this is demonstrably false. If you're always choosing the same leader and regenerating the map to get a specific terrain then you will likely trend towards a particular loadout much of the time, but even then, there are going to be many occasions where religious spread, diplomacy, warfare, and timing will factor into the analysis and draw you away from your theoretically optimal civics. Furthermore, there's also a great deal of optimization involved in juggling civic swaps to coincide with golden ages, swapping immediately for maximum benefit, etc. If it's the case that you generally play deity/immo and random-civs, then you're going to vary the selection and timing of your civic choices a lot from game to game (any many times over the course of those games). With exceptions of course, I suspect the optimal civic is often not nearly as obvious as you think it is.

I won't go over your list of "lazy design mechanics" one by one, but just point out that the only real similarity between religion and corporations is the delivery system. There is far more that differentiates them.

In regards to the OP, I'd say the jury's still out on the new religion system, as we haven't gotten our hands on it yet. But, there is at least a semblance of being sufficiently distinct from the other systems. I'm actually quite excited to try it out. As for social policies, yes, I am in total agreement. Honestly, I'd love to see the whole system scrapped; it's very static and prone to optimal builds, because the juicy stuff requires a level of commitment that generally makes it impractical to adapt to circumstances. The tech tree is decent enough, but once again, it's a bit too streamlined as opposed to IV. There simply aren't enough viable paths through the tree.

 

[rfxmills]

It is silly. Why would it take so much longer and be so much more effort for a later civilization to chance "policies" than an early civ? I can't just sell something or trade something to change my "policy".

If your society has focused on being pious for hundreds of years, how could it suddenly become very rational overnight? Surely they would have to spend more time becoming an equally adept rational society?

 

[Gucumatz]

I have to agree with some of the posters. I like and hate culture as it is in Civ 5. I like how there are gradual rewards. However, the inability to change your government effectively sort of takes away from the Civ feel.

I guess I would like Social Policies and perhaps a reintroduction of civics (in a muuuuch weakened state) as separate things.

However, I dont mind the way they built faith. Looks really fun and since its use/span is limited mostly to the early game and you can choose many things looks like a lot more fun than social policies.