"Too Many Clicks!"

[Piscator]

While I agree with the author that most games take too long to finish (whether by too many clicks or not), I certainly don't agree with a lot of his argumentation.

You may wonder why I’m talking about Civ III, when Civ IV has been out for months. I never bought Civ IV. I’d been waiting and hoping for a more playable Civ. What finally arrived was a Civ that takes just as many clicks, but with a new animated 3D UI.

Don’t get me wrong – Civ IV has important new gameplay aspects. Firaxis did far better than companies who create some new units, artwork, and cut scenes, and call it a new version. But I didn’t stop playing Civ III because I was tired of the game, or because it

Well, this article is 5 years late then! He should have really bought Civ4 to make some comparitive statements. True, the 3D engine put me off when I read about Civ4 in the beginning, because I really didn't feel Civ4 would need it. But I bought Civ4 anyhow, because I'm a tiny bit of an addict
But he just assumes that a 3D UI takes just as many clicks. While he's harping about improving UI's (and the magic number 7), he doesn't come up with something actually helpful and refuses too look at the current Civ4 UI.

One of the biggest annoyances for me about Civ3... Wat pops to my mind are all those popups... "Civil disorder in City 77". "We want an aquaduct/hospital". Overflows of food/production/research that would get lost. The inability to do anything useful with a remotely conquered city. These thing already removed a lot of the tedium. Also now in Warlords, the Vassal states (still having their quircks), it removes a lot of the tedium to conquer all your opponents completely. Civ4, although it has a 3D UI , is for me one of the best civs ever. And the progression Fireaxis made with it, certainly removed quite a bit of the tedium.

What example did the author use for the Civ3 tedium? Building parallel railroads. I find that a really bad example. I just stacked a bunch of workers together and let them build from A to B. Automating roads/railroads was actually one of the things automation didn't mess up completely...

To come back on 3D engines. A few years ago, Locomotion, a successor to transport tycoon was released. I found that quite a good game. It's UI had the feel of a typical DOS/VESA mid-nineties game. What kind of review did the game get in the beginning... A 1 by most gaming review sites (although some gave it a 9)!!! To go 3D or not is not an option nowadays. It's compulsory!

In gaming, bad players drive out good players. In roleplaying games, the bad roleplayers, who emphasize accumulating wealth and power over playing a role well, advance faster and eventually drive out the good roleplayers. In a game which allows control of individual units, adrenaline-filled 14-year-olds who can make three clicks a second will beat more thoughtful players who rely on the computer to implement their plans, because we’re still a long way from the day when a computer can control units better than a player.

There is a player demographic that enjoys click-fests and micromanagement, and it may be the same 14-year-old males that the game industry’s magazines, advertisements, and distribution channels are aimed at.

It seems the author has a kind of fobia against 14-years old...
First of all, a lot of the games (especially strategy games and such) are marketed towards and older public (20-35). They have more money than 14-years old and are a more interesting audience. The latter part of this statement is just nonsense.

Also, to generalize that the major skill of 14-year-olds is to generalize that they can click fast and therefore they win... Well, let's face it, some of these kids are just excellent players! And time matters when you play online games. Or you should try playing by email, if you don't like that.

The author likes to make some comparitive statements to chess. I'm quite a good player myself (if I may so...). But there are occasions where you play against 14-year-olds. And yes, some of these games I lost... To speak of the laughter and taunts of my teammates... It's just as well that another teammate did lose to a girl... Eurrrmmm... I still remember the time when I was 14 year and did win against someone twice or trice my age. The disgruntled look on their faces...

Back on topic. Bad players don't drive away good players. I would say. Sore losers are bad players. It's a game.

Smalltalk users called objects “objects”, and, what’s worse, they called methods “verbs”. Ever since, many object-oriented programmers have interpreted the word “object” as something like “noun”. I had arguments with other adventure programmers in the 1980s who insisted that a game wasn’t object-oriented unless the physical objects in the game were OO objects in the code. When I suggested organizing the code so that verbs in the game were objects in the code, thus enforcing a consistent physics on the game, they said, “Objects are objects; verbs are verbs.” To this day, we organize our game code, and the user interface, around the physical objects in the game.

I don't want to go in too much technical discussion here (seems not the place). I agree with the author that physical objects in the game don't need to be the same as the code objects. But a verb (as he calls it) should never be an object. It's just bad OO design (shows old habits of functional programming). Though many OO programmers mave the tendency to make objects far too static, there are much better methods (forgive me the pun) to make them interact together.


In short, I agree with the point of the article but not with the reasoning. And also giving gamers 7 UI interface objects (though 7 appears to be the magical number in UI design), seems not the way to go, it's not a TV show...

 

[nc-1701]

What they need is to eliminate the idea of 'units' entirely IMHO wars should be fought completely from the military advisors screen. You have a specific number of people say a 'unit' is a thousend people your screen could say 59,000 troops available. Then you select a number of people say 30,000 thousend and order them to a general area. Tanks artillery etc could all be represented in your troop numbers or even seperated. workers can be represented by say 500 laborers on your worker screen then you say put X laborers to work on building a road from A-B and put Y laberors on building irrigation in D area. Workers or unit without orders would automate and begin working or for units they would settle into fortified positions in your major bases.

 

[Pvblivs]

What they need is to eliminate the idea of 'units' entirely IMHO wars should be fought completely from the military advisors screen. You have a specific number of people say a 'unit' is a thousend people your screen could say 59,000 troops available. Then you select a number of people say 30,000 thousend and order them to a general area. Tanks artillery etc could all be represented in your troop numbers or even seperated. workers can be represented by say 500 laborers on your worker screen then you say put X laborers to work on building a road from A-B and put Y laberors on building irrigation in D area. Workers or unit without orders would automate and begin working or for units they would settle into fortified positions in your major bases.

But this would be a completely different game then

 

[binhthuy71]

As long as we keep requesting, and getting, more units/techs/leaders/attributes the game will continue to get "bigger" and the effects of being enbiggened (To borrow from Homer Simpson) are multiplied by large maps. Attempting to mitigate this effect by either AI assist or interface simplification would, in my opinion, move the player closer to being a spectator.

Want a short, easily managed game? Play Duel on an Archipeligo map.

Other than the folks who have mastered the game to the point where they get a Space Race victory in the 1700's or a Domination victory shortly after discovering Bronze Working, playing on larger maps means a longer game and a more drawn out endgame.

Ya' pays your money and ya' makes your choice.

Of course I may be biased because my highest scoring game so far (Over 24,000) was a Noble level Duel on an Archipeligo map. It wasn't on purpose.

 

[nc-1701]

But this would be a completely different game then

Basicaly I know it would take some getting used to but I think if we are truly going to make civ any better or more realistic. We need to completely overhaul the work and combat systems. I think it has basicly maxed what can be done on the current system in civ3. Civ4 was an attempt to play the same game better and thus it ended IMHO a failure. I hope for civ5 they realize it truly needs to have Workers, Military, Aswell as some kind 'FBI' all implemented very differantly. They also need to atleast in modern imes allow multiple cities to put their shields toward the same project after all the apollo program wasn't all done in a single city. So rebuilding the advisors and centralizing control would reduce unneeded clicks and allow a truly realistic strategy game. Also it would allow a differant level of 'strategic' micromanagement.

IMHO this is the only way to make civ signifigantly better.

 

[Pvblivs]

IMHO this is the only way to make civ signifigantly better.

You're right. Even with the first civ, having played Hannibal (oooold static VGA game about Hannibals crusade against Rome), I tried to think about merging those two concepts.

Well, though it would be no sequel of Civ as we know it. I would call it Civ-Streamlined but not Civ V.

 

[Piscator]

Basicaly I know it would take some getting used to but I think if we are truly going to make civ any better or more realistic. We need to completely overhaul the work and combat systems. I think it has basicly maxed what can be done on the current system in civ3. Civ4 was an attempt to play the same game better and thus it ended IMHO a failure. I hope for civ5 they realize it truly needs to have Workers, Military, Aswell as some kind 'FBI' all implemented very differantly. They also need to atleast in modern imes allow multiple cities to put their shields toward the same project after all the apollo program wasn't all done in a single city. So rebuilding the advisors and centralizing control would reduce unneeded clicks and allow a truly realistic strategy game. Also it would allow a differant level of 'strategic' micromanagement.

IMHO this is the only way to make civ signifigantly better.

I think you are really looking for a different kind of game. This concept as well as the concept described in the original article (more automation) would never work for a single player experience.

The main problem now seems to be that automation now is a bit crappy if you use it. Ruin your fingers or your game -- juni_be_good . The AI, however, uses the same automation to build its empires and player handicaps are necessary to make the game competitive.

Now assume that all the automation is brilliant, that would make the AI, by definition, brilliant too. Hence, a player would never get a noticeable advantage with general directives as "attack in this general area".

I think the focus should be on removing tedium, not more automation. But the former doesn't exclude the latter. And Firaxis seems just to be on this track, imho. I know the experience from tedium varies from player to player. But as binhthuy71 said: "Want a short, easily managed game? Play Duel on an Archipeligo map." (!)

The kind of game you described looks pretty much like online massive multiplayer games such as Planetarion or Mech Warrior. Focussing techs, building your empire, determine the kind of units you want to have and set a target. While both these online multiplayer games are excellent and don't need 5,000 clicks, it is something completely different.

 

[iheartponeez]

I think you are really looking for a different kind of game. This concept as well as the concept described in the original article (more automation) would never work for a single player experience.

...

I think the focus should be on removing tedium, not more automation. But the former doesn't exclude the latter. And Firaxis seems just to be on this track, imho. I know the experience from tedium varies from player to player. But as binhthuy71 said: "Want a short, easily managed game? Play Duel on an Archipeligo map." (!)

Don't you think that there's a problem when you consider late-game tedium and carpal-tunnel-inducing numbers of clicks to be an integral part of the game?

I am not a game designer, but I have faith that the professionals at Firaxis could devise ways to reduce tedium in extreme ways while remaining true to Civ. The only thing preventing this is a fear of straying from that spirit, and alienating customers, but, as I see it, and to rely on clichés, sometimes you must break a few eggs to make an omelette. Which is to say, the design team and the players should not be afraid of losing some elements that we see as "quintessentially Civ" when the payoff could be a radically better game.

 

[Pvblivs]

Now assume that all the automation is brilliant, that would make the AI, by definition, brilliant too. Hence, a player would never get a noticeable advantage with general directives as "attack in this general area".

No, that's not the point. You say: "Capture Philadelphia" and define the strategy after a recon mission: Elite first or last, Massive bombardment of troops before (=suicide cats)/Defence bombardment/Overrun without bombardment or simply abort because of lack of troops. Maybe you can even define which troops are to be assembled where. How to decide depends on many variables. The AI has patterns how to decide here based on troops, terrain, enemy troops.

But you're right anyway. The point is how to involve players intelligence such that she can actually could achieve an advantage through strategy and not through "tactics".

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

A very good article.

It takes a lot of clicks to play Civ3. I have played it for about a half year and my hands is doing well - so far.

The UI in Civ CTP is even worse than Civ3. It takes alot more mouse clicking and playing CTP have given me serious hand problems in the past. It resulted in quite a few doctor and drug store visits.

I think it comes down to two competing camps - the "builders" who would welcome a streamlined warfare system stripped of micromanagement, and the "warmongers" who wouldn't play the game without direct control of each and every unit.

Nah, I'm not so sure if I agree with that. I am certainly a "builder". But I do have an urge to control each and every unit completely in Civ3. But I would welcome a new UI - if it worked the way I want it to work.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I would argue that
A) Civ has a fair amount of this already built in, but it's just not good enough
B) The corruption model was designed to reduce the number of cities and thus units, but it failed to do so.

Governors, build queues, automation of workers - all these things can reduce the amount of clicking and raise the number of strategic decisions. the problem is, they do it rather badly. No one automates workers until they are just on pollution cleanup duty, not after they get an idea as to just how bad workers are. I do use the road-to and rail-to features - they are quite useful.

Build queues are useful, especially in cities that have worker or settler farms, or cities that just pop out endless military.

I do think that trading is bad - the advisor could easily say "the minimum they will take is x" or at least say "they cannot pay GPT" or "they don't trust us enough for us to pay in GPT"

but then - the binary search that the user methods is part and parcel of negotiation, isn't it?

 

[nc-1701]

I think you are really looking for a different kind of game. This concept as well as the concept described in the original article (more automation) would never work for a single player experience.

The main problem now seems to be that automation now is a bit crappy if you use it. Ruin your fingers or your game -- juni_be_good . The AI, however, uses the same automation to build its empires and player handicaps are necessary to make the game competitive.

Now assume that all the automation is brilliant, that would make the AI, by definition, brilliant too. Hence, a player would never get a noticeable advantage with general directives as "attack in this general area".

I think the focus should be on removing tedium, not more automation. But the former doesn't exclude the latter. And Firaxis seems just to be on this track, imho. I know the experience from tedium varies from player to player. But as binhthuy71 said: "Want a short, easily managed game? Play Duel on an Archipeligo map." (!)

The kind of game you described looks pretty much like online massive multiplayer games such as Planetarion or Mech Warrior. Focussing techs, building your empire, determine the kind of units you want to have and set a target. While both these online multiplayer games are excellent and don't need 5,000 clicks, it is something completely different.

No-No-No.

Thats not what I mean. I don't want the AI to control your stuff any more than it does now. I just want you to move your soldiers as large groups that can be split or added to and can cover more than a single sqaure of the map. This is still civ but a far more realistic combat movement system than is currently used by ending the unit system. The AI would not have any control battles would still be fought by the RNM. This way the arbitrary 'units' can be broken down or added onto continuosly. Similarly to civ4's grouped stacks except all the troops would engage at once instead of the unrealistic one after the other approach. It would be similar to the armys vs units except you could remove and any number of units to your armys. Just imagine each HP represents 1,000 people Instead of healing units you 'add' them to another unit wars would be fought basicly by pileing all your units into several large mga-units with hundreds of hp. That can later be broken down agan after the war. All this could be handled from the military advisor screen.

The AI would not be given control of it. All that would happen is that you would a better more fluidic interface as aposed to the rigid unit based interface. This would be more realistic, faster, less clicking, and allow more time for diplomacy ad other usefull things.

 

[timerover51]

Just a couple of quick comments. I agree with those who say that the end game of Civ is boring as it takes so long to run through each turn. I enjoy the early game much more and find myself quitting when I hit about 20-30 cities or so.

One option that you can do with the Civ3 editor is make the Pentagon and Military Academy build leaders and armies, which you can then use to group units together in a coherent manner, and reduce the micromanagement. This is basically what is done in miniature gaming in Napoleonics or US Civil War, where you have hundreds of miniatures on a side, but they are combined into unit blocks using mounting boards. Then you are only moving the board, not all of the units. Same thing in Axis and Allies with the Task Force piece, where you lay out the naval task force, and then only move the marker, not all of the individual pieces.

Basically, the computer games need some way of better grouping units into larger ones, like the military does in building from platoon to company to battalion to regiment/brigade to division. As for city micromanagement, my problem is the AI changing what I have told the city to do, which forces even more micromanagement. In this respect, the limited number of cities that you can build in Rise of Nations makes much more sense. What the Civ designers should start looking at is changing the way cities are being built and located, and what are the production capabilities. Having a minimum distance between cities whould be one option, and also dropping the pollution concept and entertainment concepts, which in one of the major headaches I encounter in endgames in the modern age. My response to the pollution issue has been to not build hospitals, and boost resource yields to avoid the factory issues, so that I can concentrate on the game.

 

[dh_epic]

Clickfests detract from the point of strategy games: strategy.

When RTSes hinge less on who can optimize their clicks and hotkeys for the opening 3 minutes and more on actual strategy, I'll start playing them again.

Civ 4 is pretty damn good for strategy, by all measures.

 

[Norseman2]

Basically, the computer games need some way of better grouping units into larger ones, like the military does in building from platoon to company to battalion to regiment/brigade to division.

This is actually done pretty well in Rise of Nations. You can select all units of a type, by clicking one such unit and home, IIRC. You can select all military units, by pressing comma twice. You can select all idle workers by hitting period twice. You can group units into individual forces, by hitting control - # (and then whenever you hit that number again, you reselect all those units). Everything has hotkeys to it so you can minimize your clicking. You choose how your units form up (e.g. line formations, v shapes, etc.) and what they do when confronted with an enemy (hold their ground, target civilians first, chase the enemy, etc.). That's why I started playing it again. When telling them to go somewhere, you can even tell them what direction to point their formation when they arrive. It's a rare game combines the ability to micromanage with the ability to not need to micromanage. It lets you focus on what you're good at.

 

[wioneo]

Well, I completely and totally disagree with that article. I don't beleive that I represent a very large part of the community, but my favorite part of the game is warring. I often find my self bored after I finish an ally and there is noone left on my continent. Then, after meeting the other continent, I find that I would need even more than the vast number of troops that I had built to conquer them, and that a war with one would lead to a very near war with their religous friends. I personally enjoy moving each and EVERY soldier across the map. I really don't care much about building up more than a few cities. One or two science cities, one GP farm, three or so production cities, and a countless number of identical commerce cities. but that's just me.

 

[Aneurism]

"Civ5: Streamlined for simple gameplay!"

game logic
#######

Start game:

Option A) Play poorly? Outcome: You lose! (score=0)
Option B) Play well? Outcome: You win! (score=1,000,000)

 

[DBear]

Does this guy even realize that Civ3 is a TURN-BASED game?

 

[civictor]

When you direct a unit to attack in Civ 4, the outcome of the battle is determined randomly. Conceptually, this represents the vagaries of combat, fog of war, morale, weather, training, and leadership. It would be possible to open a combat screen and fight the battle with the constituent units to reduce random elements. And this could be repeate ad infinitum down to individual soldiers.

So we already have a level of abstraction in games by using aggregate units at some level. The article is suggesting that the level of aggregation has become too fine-grained to be manageable. We need higher levels of abstraction. I also agree with comments that offering micro and macro management options in a game is not the way to go.

I think the solution is to develop new paradigms for game activities that are intelligent and easier to interact with. For example, real armies define units and then supply replacements to maintain unit strength and composition. Civ-style games basically give you an amorphous collection of individual units and you build more and move them to the front when units are destroyed. If games operated by defining armies that were automatically resupplied and restaffed, it would simplify warfare and logistics.

It is true that the rule of seven works in real life for managing complexity. The problem is that RTS strategy games are not much fun if you only control seven things. Part of the appeal of games is a degree of micromanagement to beat the system. But too much control becomes unwieldy. There is a happier medium between seven and several hundred. Probably a _few_ dozen things to do in a turn is the enjoyable limit.

Another example is worker improvements. Right now you micromanage workers doing every single improvement. It would be easier to define a set of improvements and allocate manpower points and resources to performing them abstractly. One thing that bothers me about terrain improvements is that they only cost time, but not money (resources). This results in ridiculous things like railroads in every square. The AI and human play would be improved if their was a cost to building everything so that ROI decisions could be made.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Philip Goetz, the author, is exactly on target. I recently heard Sid Meier speak, and he mentioned that one of the design goals of Civ 1 was to eliminate the tedious micromanagement that developed in an earlier game, Empire. He specifically mentioned the problem of moving lots of individual units a short distance, and then repeating it all the next turn.

The problem is that the Civ series hasn't really succeeded in eliminating or even reducing that. It's about as big a problem as ever, and that's due to the inherent problems in an interface where you move every unit individually.

Civ4 tried to do a few things to help with this, e.g., giving workers 2 movement points was specifically so that they could move-and-work, instead of having to move them one turn, and then separately give them a work order the next turn. But that's a long, long way from the kind of high-level control that would be most valuable.

So what's the problem? The problem is that designing a good, high-level interface, that doesn't make the player pay a huge penalty compared to direct control, is really, really hard. No one has been able to do it, or get close. My criticism is that they haven't really tried. We need some people to try and fail before we can even get a good idea of how one might succeed. We also need to abstract away some of the unit detail. E.g., instead of workers being represented by individual units on the map, you could just build N workers which would give you N "work points" each turn, which you could then use directly to perform necessary worker tasks, without moving lots of individual workers around. Similarly, there should be mechanisms that naturally group military units into higher-level entities. By increasing the level of grouping, as the game goes on, one could reduce the growth in detail, from the early game to the later game.