Was there anything GOOD about streamlining?

[jacyp]

Combat: combat sucks imho exclusively because the combat AI is ******ed

I would add to that the fact that they implemented a 1UPT system without expanding the map so we could have space to actually put our minds into the tactical afair.

Right now you don't "take advantage" of the terrain, cos you have no choice on this matter. You simply get lucky or not about the terrain on choke points.

If there was more space for manouver you would employ more brain into the game, certain areas would be critical to control.

But with no space at all they couldn't implement a decent AI, imagine with the space and more choices available...

 

[Windsor]

To answer the thread question; yes. There have been numerous complaints that the UI is not as comprehensive, and can get pretty annoying at times, but it is more accessible. Lots of people obviously find hotkeys very useful, but being able to do everything with a mouse seems to me to be terribly important in terms of accessibility. It means that all players can have easier access to all features, even if once that access is found, the processes become more time consuming and tedious. Some may not find that a net positive, but I think it is pretty important, and is probably part of the reason Civ5 appeals more to the casual gamer.

Ok, after (yet another) attempt to play Civ5. What's so "accessible" with the orange "choose production" button? Why can't just a list with available options pop up and then have a "examine city" option like in Civ4? God I HATE all those annoying messages I have to click through, choose research, choose policy, choose production(x5). And sometimes I even end up thinking that I hit enter to end turn, but the game haven't registered it, so after waiting for a while I realize that I have to click end turn again and wait even more. Of course, if you don't just want to choose production, but also check worked tiles you suddenly have to click a lot. But I guess managing tiles is "advanced play" that Firaxis really have no ambition to teach players so it doesn't matter that the most fundamental part of Civ is hidden.

And really, I don't find much I can do in Civ5 that I couldn't do with a mouse in Civ4. It's just generally faster to do things in Civ4, even without hotkeys. Even contacting AI civs takes time.

 

[Camikaze]

Prompts for what you have to do, without actually forcing you to do it right away (such as production queues in Civ4) does seem to make sense. And then when you click that orange button, you get a list of possibilities, with the city details clearly displayed above it. Seems pretty accessible to me.

 

[Hail]

I would add to that the fact that they implemented a 1UPT system without expanding the map so we could have space to actually put our minds into the tactical afair.

Right now you don't "take advantage" of the terrain, cos you have no choice on this matter. You simply get lucky or not about the terrain on choke points.

If there was more space for manouver you would employ more brain into the game, certain areas would be critical to control.

But with no space at all they couldn't implement a decent AI, imagine with the space and more choices available...

probably
i would imagine, that, with a competent combat AI, some players will start to whine that the AI is blocking them at chokepoints or it set fortifications behind a line of marshes(marshes are evil!). in other words rolling over an AI is not fun, but stalemates are not fun either.

the only solution i see, is to remove the impassible flag from mountains and twink the map generator to avoid creating chokepoints

 

[Misotu]

Civilization isn't, won't be, can't be casual -- Civilization is a game of lost nights, long weekends and annoyed girlfriends resigned husbands. Anything else just isn't Civilization.

As amended ...

 

[SpearMan153]

That's nothing to write home about. Civ4 with hexes and Civ5 with square tiles would mostly work the same. Required fine tuning, e.g. sort out map creation and scale growth/costs so the changed number of tiles per city doesn't bork up the pacing, shouldn't be more difficult than doing the same thing in the original versions.

Civ5 might actually play slightly better with squares: 8 adjacent tiles make for slightly more open movement and therefore reduce the traffic jams. The main problem would be acceptance of 1upt... hexes have the wargame pedigree, 1upt on squares may be seen as a throwback to more primitive times rather than a step towards tactics. Irrational but not irrelevant.
Civ4 shouldn't suffer much, except from again running against conventions (squares are more intuitive to most people, without movement restrictions like 1upt or zoc hexes feel gratuitious).

Making a stylistic choice is easy, and tends to receive a lot more focus than warranted.
Imagine the same game with differently themed but functionally identical interfaces - one sleek contemporary one, one reminiscent of an 80ies UNIX environment, one in stuffy wood and polished brass and one with enough bling to melt your eyes. The choice may affect acceptance more than the actual game. And that's terrible.

ha ha I was just going for light hearted humor to defuse overly adversarial tone of posts due to me happening to find civ5 fun with a design I overall quite like as opposed to others that hate the game and think the design is rubbish

wasn't going for any kind of serious analysis of pros and cons of hexes vs squares

Actually I could make a case that hexes in fact ruined civ5 (as opposed to 1upt as others have argued).

Hexes = Need new game engine = can't find hex based engine that meets modding requirements = Lets build our own engine = Development time blowout + untested technology = not enough time spent on ai/balance = poor ai + poor balance + poor performance + poor stability = THE BAD SEQUEL

PS I like the hexes makes the game look better, yes functionally not much difference to squares. game play beats fancy graphics/presentation every time. good graphics/presentation enhances good game play but does not make up for bad game play