Who else agrees that Civ 5 has been dumbed down?

[Jolly Rogerer]

Come on, everyone knows that:

1 ==> 2 ==> 3==> is more complex than:

1 or 2

I mean, it has another thing. There's no 3 in the dumbed down second example.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Celevin, you really can't convince someone that thinks the game is simplistic that it isn't. Plus, you can't tell someone that thinks the game is solved for them that it isn't. A person thinking the game is solved for them has nothing to do with this forum.

As far as I am concerned, this game is solved for me because I know how to beat the AI senseless on the harder difficulty levels. It became obvious in my first two games how to beat the AI and it worked on any difficulty level I tried. No matter what victory I want to go for, the best thing to do is ally with maritime city states and build horsemen ASAP so I can take out a neighbor or two. Use the gold you get from war to ally with more city states then go from there.

Have you tried a game where you don't rely on the horseman rush crutch? I know it's hard to purposefully use a less than optimal strategy, but it could make the game more enjoyable for you. I remember beating Deity in civ4 pretty easily when I used the quechua rush on a duel map. That was taking advantage of a particular unit and a specific vulnerability in the AI. Later on, patches went a small way to address this. Especially considering the horseman rush, I suspect it will be not quite as effective after even some modest AI improvements or tweaks (e.g. getting them to build some spears instead of a million warriors and archers for a change).

Go... Go do a Masters degree or a PhD or something. There's better ways to get intellectual stimulation.

Civ5 is not "solved". Everyone always thinks the game is solved until some random person figures something out, at which point everyone thinks the game is then solved again. The same stupidity happened in Civ4. Expect next week for some random forum-goer to try something that makes the masses all switch strategies for the day, and the day after for them to pretend like it was there all along and is the main way of doing things.

Secondly, what does this have to do with being dumbed down, not complex, or any of the other BS words that people are using when they can't properly voice their complaints?

The form of complexity I use to judge a game doesn't have to do with any of its parts or lack there of, like city states or espionage. It's how much thinking I have to do in a given game. I don't know how much of Civ4 or Civ5 I've truly solved, but there's a lot more turn-to-turn thinking in Civ5. There's a lot more to keep track of in wars, in city expansion, in city planning, and diplomacy. Yes, there's a bunch of really stupid stuff, like puppets and maritime city states, or the AI being bad at war (yet still 20x better than Civ4's war AI). But these things are fixable. The game has a very very solid base of which to build on.

I'm inclined to agree with you. However this thread pretty much attracts the people most likely to disagree with you.

A numbers comparison is useless because it doesn't measure complexity. Much, much more thought and analysis has to go into measuring complexity. Fortunately, the human brain is relatively good at guessing, with reasonable accuracy, the complexity of something. It can weigh up the options and costs and a dozen other factors that are extremely difficult to actually formulate. That's why this thread is an opinion poll and not a step-by-step examination of how CiV has (or hasn't been) been "dumbed down".

Actually I'd say the human brain has an even more impressive ability to first come to a conclusion and then try to justify it.

Arguing whether civ5 is more complex than civ4 is really just an opinions debate. You are correct when you point out that simply comparing number of units etc. does not matter much, but so is most of what you're trying to say as well.

When I play civ5, I still see a significant number of decisions I need to make each turn, and only rarely press the end turn button twice quickly in succession.

And even if I was pressing end turn in a row sometimes, who was it who decided that complexity has to be measured on a per-turn basis? If you play marathon speed in civ4 (which lots of people do), there are also a lot of turns spent not making big decisions.

It seems completely arbitrary whether the game is more 'complex' or not. And if it is, who actually cares? Does the only way to enjoy a game require it to be more complicated than some other reference game (civ4 in this case)?

 

[WuphonsReach]

How many hours have you put into the game and what settings and difficulties have you played?

42 on varying difficulties up through Prince. I put it down a week ago and haven't felt the desire to pick it up again. It's just not that good. Pretty, but ultimately bland and uninspiring.

I'll list some of my complaints that I made in the balance threads:

- Food tiles that all give identical values are not interesting.

- Luxury tiles that all give identical values are not interesting. I don't feel a sense of envy that my neighbor has a particular luxury within their borders, because other then the name, it's exactly identical to what I have already. Especially if I already have one of that name.

- Buildings that simply give you X happiness for Y cost, with the next being exactly the same but with a different name, different bonus amount, and increased cost is boring.

- AI leaders that are all the same, except with different names. They all react the same, none of them have personality, and you have to resort to poking a stick into a black box and hoping that the dice roll comes up in your favor on the other side.

- Pick your win condition at the start, then make an uninspired beeline towards it. There's no mid-course change of directions possible or desirable, because the penalties to maintenance costs are so severe that you simply can't spend the time to create a backup plan for winning a 2nd way.

- Health was not "just another growth limiter" and did not deserve to be lumped in with happiness. Part of the fun in Civ4 was that you had to balance happiness and health (along with food) or else your cities would starve. That required that you make trade-offs, or at least think for a few seconds about the best build order for the situation at hand.

 

[PieceOfMind]

- AI leaders that are all the same, except with different names. They all react the same, none of them have personality, and you have to resort to poking a stick into a black box and hoping that the dice roll comes up in your favor on the other side.

It might seem that way to you but it's simply not true. We don't know yet how the XML values affect AI behaviour but there is quite a long list of different biases.

I can't be bothered putting these in a table, but I trimmed out some of the superflous stuff like <row> lines and just made bold-red the things that Gandhi and Alexander have in common.

Overall there seems to be about as much effort put into making the leaders have distinct personalities as what was done with civ4 (if not, maybe just a bit less). The main problem now is that those personalities are much less transparent, AI civs are in general more aggressive, and there are some behaviours that completely kill immersion (happy with you one moment, hate your guts the next). These are things that may change with patches however.

Also interesting to note there are values associated with religion.

Spoiler :

[/QUOTE]Gandhi

<Leaders>
			<Type>LEADER_GANDHI</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_LEADER_GANDHI</Description>
			<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_LEADER_GANDHI_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
			<CivilopediaTag>TXT_KEY_CIVILOPEDIA_LEADERS_GANDHI</CivilopediaTag>
			<ArtDefineTag>Gandhi_Scene.xml</ArtDefineTag>
			<VictoryCompetitiveness>2</VictoryCompetitiveness>
			<WonderCompetitiveness>3</WonderCompetitiveness>
			<MinorCivCompetitiveness>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]3[/b][/SIZE][/color]</MinorCivCompetitiveness>
			<Boldness>2</Boldness>
			<DiploBalance>4</DiploBalance>
			<WarmongerHate>7</WarmongerHate>
			<WorkAgainstWillingness>6</WorkAgainstWillingness>
			<WorkWithWillingness>8</WorkWithWillingness>
			<PortraitIndex>11</PortraitIndex>
			<IconAtlas>LEADER_ATLAS</IconAtlas>
	</Leaders>
	<Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases>
			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_WAR</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>3</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_HOSTILE</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>4</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_DECEPTIVE</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>3</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_GUARDED</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>7</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_AFRAID</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]3[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_FRIENDLY</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>7</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_NEUTRAL</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>5</Bias>
	</Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases>
	<Leader_MinorCivApproachBiases>

			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_IGNORE</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>5</Bias>

			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_FRIENDLY</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>7</Bias>

			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_PROTECTIVE</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>7</Bias>

			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_CONQUEST</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>3</Bias>
	</Leader_MinorCivApproachBiases>
	<Leader_Flavors>
			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_OFFENSE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>4</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_DEFENSE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]5[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CITY_DEFENSE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>7</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_MILITARY_TRAINING</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RECON</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>4</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RANGED</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>7</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_MOBILE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>7</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL_RECON</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL_GROWTH</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL_TILE_IMPROVEMENT</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_AIR</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]3[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_EXPANSION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GROWTH</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_TILE_IMPROVEMENT</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_INFRASTRUCTURE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_PRODUCTION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]5[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GOLD</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>4</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SCIENCE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]6[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_HAPPINESS</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GREAT_PEOPLE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]6[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_WONDER</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>6</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RELIGION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_DIPLOMACY</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SPACESHIP</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>7</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_WATER_CONNECTION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>
	</Leader_Flavors>
	<Leader_Traits>
			<LeaderType>LEADER_GANDHI</LeaderType>
			<TraitType>TRAIT_POPULATION_GROWTH</TraitType>
	</Leader_Traits>

Alexander

			<ID>0</ID>
			<Type>LEADER_ALEXANDER</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_LEADER_ALEXANDER</Description>
			<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_LEADER_ALEXANDER_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
			<CivilopediaTag>TXT_KEY_CIVILOPEDIA_LEADERS_ALEXANDER</CivilopediaTag>
			<ArtDefineTag>Alexander_Scene.xml</ArtDefineTag>
			<VictoryCompetitiveness>8</VictoryCompetitiveness>
			<WonderCompetitiveness>7</WonderCompetitiveness>
			<MinorCivCompetitiveness>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]3[/b][/SIZE][/color]</MinorCivCompetitiveness>
			<Boldness>8</Boldness>
			<DiploBalance>3</DiploBalance>
			<WarmongerHate>2</WarmongerHate>
			<WorkAgainstWillingness>7</WorkAgainstWillingness>
			<WorkWithWillingness>4</WorkWithWillingness>
			<PortraitIndex>9</PortraitIndex>
			<IconAtlas>LEADER_ATLAS</IconAtlas>

	<Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases>
			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_WAR</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>7</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_HOSTILE</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>7</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_DECEPTIVE</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>4</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_GUARDED</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>5</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_AFRAID</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]3[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_FRIENDLY</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>5</Bias>

			<MajorCivApproachType>MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_NEUTRAL</MajorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>4</Bias>
	</Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases>
	<Leader_MinorCivApproachBiases>
			<LeaderType>LEADER_ALEXANDER</LeaderType>
			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_IGNORE</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>4</Bias>

			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_FRIENDLY</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>5</Bias>

			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_PROTECTIVE</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>3</Bias>

			<MinorCivApproachType>MINOR_CIV_APPROACH_CONQUEST</MinorCivApproachType>
			<Bias>8</Bias>
	</Leader_MinorCivApproachBiases>
	<Leader_Flavors>
			<LeaderType>LEADER_ALEXANDER</LeaderType>
			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_OFFENSE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_DEFENSE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]5[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CITY_DEFENSE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_MILITARY_TRAINING</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RECON</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RANGED</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_MOBILE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL_RECON</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL_GROWTH</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>6</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_NAVAL_TILE_IMPROVEMENT</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>6</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_AIR</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]3[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_EXPANSION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GROWTH</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>4</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_TILE_IMPROVEMENT</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>4</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_INFRASTRUCTURE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>4</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_PRODUCTION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]5[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GOLD</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>3</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SCIENCE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]6[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>7</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_HAPPINESS</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_GREAT_PEOPLE</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>[color=red][SIZE="4"][b]6[/b][/SIZE][/color]</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_WONDER</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>7</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RELIGION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>5</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_DIPLOMACY</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>7</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SPACESHIP</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>8</Flavor>

			<FlavorType>FLAVOR_WATER_CONNECTION</FlavorType>
			<Flavor>6</Flavor>
	</Leader_Flavors>
	<Leader_Traits>
			<LeaderType>LEADER_ALEXANDER</LeaderType>
			<TraitType>TRAIT_CITY_STATE_FRIENDSHIP</TraitType>
	</Leader_Traits>
</GameData>

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Also interesting to note there are values associated with religion.

First good news I've heard all week from this game. Nice catch, thanks.

 

[Thormodr]

Thanks Piece of Mind. You made my day.

Religion would be a nice addition to the game.

 

[falconne]

Someone brought up the religion attributes before. Someone else mentioned the devs had said they started off having religion in the game, but it didn't work out so they removed it and that this might be something left over. I hope it isn't and it was just taken out till the next expansion.

 

[Vordeo]

The updates in the OP aren't biased, not at all.

 

[Thormodr]

The updates in the OP aren't biased, not at all.

He is merely keeping track of the voting and noting a trend. Basically you can see that the more people become familiar with the game, the more they vote a certain way.

 

[PieceOfMind]

The updates in the OP aren't biased, not at all.

lol. So true. It's because just about every time someone posts a poll they're trying to prove a point. Even I admit to that with the polls I've made before. However I really try my hardest to avoid biasing the result, including not voting in the poll myself. There appears to be no attempt whatsoever to keep this poll unbiased.

Even the poll question itself can be argued to be biased. Rather than asking "Is civ5 dumbed down?", by posting "Who else agrees", the idea is already implanted in the responder's mind that the person asking the question believes the game is dumbed down. Opinions are then anchored to that original implanted idea.

He is merely keeping track of the voting and noting a trend. Basically you can see that the more people become familiar with the game, the more they vote a certain way.

Sorry, but I think you are only showing your opinion causes you to fail to detect the bias if you truly believe there is no bias in the following commentary.

UPDATE ON POLL (9/25): As you can see, more than 1 in every 4 players think that Civ 5 has been dumb down. Numbers don't lie, this release is below Civ par.
UPDATE ON POLL (9/27): Now the numbers continue to rise as 33 percent - 1 in every 3 players agree that Civ 5 has been dumb down, while 11 percent are uncertain.
UPDATE ON POLL (9/28): The numbers continues to rise for those who believe that Civ 5 has been dumb down to a now 37 percent. Undecided still sits at 11 percent, while 52 percent are opposed.
UPDATE ON POLL (9/30): With the numbers still rising, now 40 percent of users think that Civ 5 has been dumb down with roughly ten percent undecided! That means only 1 in 2 users actually think there is no dumbing down of the Civ 5 game! Have us skeptics been wrong? Or is it only a matter of time before one realizes that the game is dumb down?
UPDATE ON POLL (10/1): Yes, you guessed it! The numbers continue to even out for those who think the game has been dumb down, which now sits at 41.19 percent. The number of undecided is at 10.18%, while those who don't think it has been dumb down now drops below the 50 percent mark to 48.63%. At this rate the majority will think the game has been dumb down will even with the opposite view in less than a week. Stay tuned...
UPDATE ON POLL (10/3): The trend continues as it has been over a week now since Civ 5 has been released and the poll numbers are showing that users continue to agree that Civ 5 has been dumbed down. Out of a 1,045 voters, 44.31% now agree that Civ 5 has been dumbed down, while the declining 45.36% disagree. The number undecided holds steady at 10.33%.
UPDATE ON POLL (10/5): Well, we saw this coming. Now the majority of voters at 45.23% agree that Civ 5 has in fact been dumbed down. Those that disagree sit at 44.90%, while undecided declines also to 9.88%.

I'll give you time to change your mind, Thormodr.

 

[Thormodr]

lol. So true. It's because just about every time someone posts a poll they're trying to prove a point. Even I admit to that with the polls I've made before. However I really try my hardest to avoid biasing the result, including not voting in the poll myself. There appears to be no attempt whatsoever to keep this poll unbiased.

Even the poll question itself can be argued to be biased. Rather than asking "Is civ5 dumbed down?", by posting "Who else agrees", the idea is already implanted in the responder's mind that the person asking the question believes the game is dumbed down. Opinions are then anchored to that original implanted idea.


Sorry, but I think you are only showing your opinion causes you to fail to detect the bias if you truly believe there is no bias in the following commentary.


I'll give you time to change your mind, Thormodr.

Who cares? No likee the threadee, no clickee.

A person would have to be pretty dense not to realize that the Op thinks the game is dumbed down. That's hardly a revelation.
However, people are free to vote any way they want. There's no coercion here and he isn't manipulating the results.

What I said isn't untrue. He is merely charting a trend and that trend seems to indicate that the more people play ciV the more they feel a certain way about it.

 

[Soam]

While I don't agree with every point of the OP I do feel it has been dumbed down.
I certainly don't miss Tech Trading, I always played with it turned off. I don't see a problem with having it as an option though.
I also prefer the new Social Policy system, Civics always felt too easy to change with too little in the way of penalty for making the change. However Social Policies are too hard to obtain in the game particularly for a large Civ, and could use reworking in other areas ie negative effects as well.

 

[Markstar]

Actually, if anything, I believe the poll is biased toward those who say it isn't dumbed down because you can't change your vote after you have played it three times and realized that there is not much to do and the AI is easily beatable on any level.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Who cares? No likee the threadee, no clickee.

A person would have to be pretty dense not to realize that the Op thinks the game is dumbed down. That's hardly a revelation.
However, people are free to vote any way they want. There's no coercion here and he isn't manipulating the results.

What I said isn't untrue. He is merely charting a trend and that trend seems to indicate that the more people play ciV the more they feel a certain way about it.

Mapping a trend of a biased poll is about as useful as just making the numbers up in the first place.

If the purpose of the poll is simply for the OP to make a statement to the forum, then fair enough - it does do that. However if the purpose of the poll is to collect data about views in the civ5 forum, then it has failed to do it accurately. Of course, everyone can also point out the problems with self-selecting polls, but even in self-selecting polls with an unbiased question one can still infer a result about just the group of people who answered the poll. When a person can be influenced before they vote, which clearly is possible from the OP, then even the results of of the self-selecting poll lose their meaning.

The thread becomes just an argument about the varying opinions and the poll at the top might as well be deleted. People will stick to the views they've already formed regardless of the result. The only difference is that one side will try to pretend the poll justifies their view.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Hopefully they'll improve the stuff with an expansion pack

 

[Falk]

It might seem that way to you but it's simply not true. We don't know yet how the XML values affect AI behaviour but there is quite a long list of different biases.

You are contradicting yourself. If we don't know how the XML values affect AI behaviour there is no way you could claim that the AI "characters" being the same is "simply not true". One could put all kinds of irrelevant XML tags in the files that do absolutely nothing after all.
The important thing is how the AI does behave in the game and it is pretty obvious that there are much less diferrences in behaviour than there were in Civ4. The only thing I have noted yet is that certain AIs seem to be more successfull (Bismarck, Alexander) than others (Ghandi, Monty). If Ghandi was accidentally called Monty I wouldn't notice that something is wrong.

To answer the OP's question: yes, it is dumbed down. I thought that making the game simpler could actually lead to a bigger challenge, but Firaxis is just too bad at game designing to accomplish something like that. We could have expected that given how horribly bad Col2 was. They need to get Brian Reynolds back...

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Actually, if anything, I believe the poll is biased toward those who say it isn't dumbed down because you can't change your vote after you have played it three times and realized that there is not much to do and the AI is easily beatable on any level.

This. I had voted "no" after a few hours, and would change it to "yes" now. Which means it is probably good I'm not a reviewer ...

 

[Dishonor]

Actually, if anything, I believe the poll is biased toward those who say it isn't dumbed down because you can't change your vote after you have played it three times and realized that there is not much to do and the AI is easily beatable on any level.

I agree. Many people seem to be voted for not being dumbed down before even playing the game or playing few hours. The trend in voting prove this.

But I would like to say, I'm not CiV hater. I love hexes and combat system. CiV is dumbed down that is fact (at last for me). I think that it would be fixed by expansions or mods. AI so stupid that I feel really sorry for it, when I can beat his 30 units with my 5-6 without losing one.

And buildings being useless don't make game complex .

Today's games seem to be developed by 1 programer 10 graphics and 50 managers. Releasing games full of bugs is "standard" (even for buyers ).

 

[PieceOfMind]

You are contradicting yourself. If we don't know how the XML values affect AI behaviour there is no way you could claim that the AI "characters" being the same is "simply not true". One could put all kinds of irrelevant XML tags in the files that do absolutely nothing after all.
The important thing is how the AI does behave in the game and it is pretty obvious that there are much less diferrences in behaviour than there were in Civ4. The only thing I have noted yet is that certain AIs seem to be more successfull (Bismarck, Alexander) than others (Ghandi, Monty). If Ghandi was accidentally called Monty I wouldn't notice that something is wrong.

If you want to get pedantic, I never contradicted myself, because acting the same and being the same don't mean the same thing. Saying the AIs behave more similarly in civ5 than what they did in civ4 (which you did) is a long way from claiming the AIs in civ5 are all the same. In my games I've definitely gotten an impression of different personalities and I'm sure the XML data would line up with some of the observations I've made.

I mean, yeah, technically it's possible that every single one of those XML values are ignored by the game, but so too is it possible that there is no AI at all and every single decision made by the computer players in the game is just a roll of a die. Out of those two things, one happens to be many many orders of magnitude more unlikely than the other, but they're both orders of magnitude more unlikely than the claim I made in my post (that the AIs are not all the same).

 

[ozon]

After quite a while of playing (~80 h) i feel like expanding this thread by another personal opinion/feeling about CiV.

1st of all, i voted "yes".

I played the whole Civ series and i think i´m one of these players who is really keen on micromanagement and CiV totaly fails in this aspect! Reasons for that i don´t have to list - there are plenty found in the forums.

I´m also disappointed on the tactical "improvements". Having played Battle Isle 1&2 and Panzer General, games from which the base idea of 1UPT stems i can only say, that CiV fails here too to reach the depth and the fun as WELL as the tactical options these games had.
In these games you had a small map (compared to a whole earth or even a continent)
with a large variety of units, all had there special strengths and weaknesses. In CiV you have mostly 3-max5 units belonging to one time era, which reduces tactics to a absolute minimum. (like: i place ranged units BEHIND melee - what a great performance)
Most other units from former eras are hopelessly inferior, so they exhibit no real strategic use (i know, the AI is so dumb, that this point might even be invalid at the current state).
Also there are other importand aspects of those turn based tactical 1UPT "war games" which (really unfortanetly) don´t fit in the world of CiV like reammunitioning or refueling units, size and range aspect ratios which doesn´t match, because you now have those vaaaast distances.

So concluding, after 3 playthroughs (king-emperor, duelsize-standard) CiV doesn´t give me even a spark of motivation, to go on playing. Sad(for me) story on the one hand, but fortunatly there is still Civ IV! I started a game yesterday and was instantly addicted with that "just one more turn" feeling i didn´t experience all the hours i played CiV.