Who else agrees that Civ 5 has been dumbed down?

[Venereus]

I see more strategy in the social policy system. With Civics, if something isn't working...hey just wait three turns, then change it back. That's not strategy.

It was never that simple. Every switch meant making one or more decisions. The extensive array of variables made that one mechanic involve a lot of strategy, even just to unlock the options with techs.

I'll show you what's not strategy.

- Less than 5 cities, ideally coastal.
- Tradition tree -> Aristocracy -> Stonehenge.
- Patronage tree -> Cultural City-states.
- Piety tree -> Free Religion -> Freedom tree -> Free Speech.
- Commerce tree -> start backfilling.
- GG.

 

[charon2112]

i can understand where you guys are coming from, and I think i understand why you aren't crazy about these new systems. And while I'm convinced by all of your arguments that the system in V is very different, I'm still not convinced that it's worse...

It was never that simple. Every switch meant making one or more decisions. The extensive array of variables made that one mechanic involve a lot of strategy, even just to unlock the options with techs.

I'll show you what's not strategy.

- Less than 5 cities, ideally coastal.
- Tradition tree -> Aristocracy -> Stonehenge.
- Patronage tree -> Cultural City-states.
- Piety tree -> Free Religion -> Freedom tree -> Free Speech.
- Commerce tree -> start backfilling.
- GG.

 

[falconne]

I think we have a difference in play styles. I don't go for the quickest win I can. I like to build slow and experiment. Anyway, there were a ton of quick win exploits in IV, and it didn't stop people from loving that game.

Early rush tactics in Civ 4 only work if you're lucky and would be a disaster to try against experienced humans.

That's besides the point. You're talking about experimenting, yet Civ 5 doesn't reward it. There is a set path to each victory condition and it's obvious from the start. All your experimenting is doing is wasting time - you won't discover a better strategy and this isn't an RPG, so you're not going to discover an interesting dungeon system while you go down a scenic route.

Civ 4, with it's multitude of mechanics and variables rewarded experimenting and going off the beaten path. Since it was too hard to figure out a perfect strategy on pen and paper, only gameplay experiments could improve your strategy.

Us builder types liked Civ 4 just for that. Every game played out differently because of the interaction of so many mechanics - emergent complexity from simple mechanics. That forces you to adapt your strategy and make gameplay experiments. It was very hard to see the road to victory and required several months of play before you gained enough experience to do so. That's why we like complexity - it forces you to experiment to figure out good strategies.

Civ 5 on the other hand plays the same every time. You purposefully handicap yourself by straying from the set path and it doesn't actually make the game any different, it just slows you down.

Regarding your comment about civics in Civ 4, it makes me wonder if you played the game correctly. 3 turns anarchy is a big deal if you're playing efficiently, that's why some leaders have the Spiritual trait. "No anarchy" is actually a powerful gameplay mechanic if you know how to use it. Each civic only gives you a certain bonus and you lose it if you switch - whilst Civ 5 policies are about as powerful as any individual civic, have no penalties and stay with you for the rest of the game.

 

[timberwoolf]

A great failure indeed. And I don't say empty words....
I'm playing civ since civ 1 so I'm talking from experience....

 

[blizzrd]

i can understand where you guys are coming from, and I think i understand why you aren't crazy about these new systems. And while I'm convinced by all of your arguments that the system in V is very different, I'm still not convinced that it's worse...

Just so everyone else has some perspective, charon2112 hasn't actually played Civ4.

As you haven't played Civ4, your opinion as to whether Civ5 is better or worse is really not worth reading.

 

[Revoran]

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.

The irony here is just too much.

 

[Toady]

Back to Civ IV Hephmod it is...

 

[deut]

I don't think it's dumbed down. Diffrent, yes.
Not shure if it'll grow on me or if i like it enough. Got 100hrs in now.

One thing is for shure, I'm not as enthusiastic.

 

[WuphonsReach]

Whatever else the games faults may be, this I think is a positive thing. In this respect, V requires more forethought and planning. You really shouldn't be able to turn your civilization on a dime, 3/4 of the way through its history. This accentuates the empire building aspect of the game, in my opinion.

From a player's perspective: Locking the player into a win condition at the very start of the game and then not giving them any option to change to a different win condition is not fun. You're forcing the player to:

- Decide ahead of time what win condition they find fun. That leaves no room for players to explore the different win conditions. They might get 1/2 through a game and find that they're having a lot more fun chasing a cultural win or find that instead of a culture win, going for the space win might be more fun. In a game as rigidly designed as Civ5 - you don't have that option unless you've already run away with the game.

- Forcing the player to make a major game decision at a time when they don't know who the players are, what resources are available, what the geography looks like, or what the major power blocs are. In Civ4 - you could keep your options open until all pretty much all the land was claimed (or about 1/3 to 1/2 into the game). You didn't have to commit whole hog to chasing one social policy at the exclusion of another.

So, if you guess wrong at the start, you're either doomed to a long draw-out loss, or you restart the map. For the empire-builder types, neither choice qualifies as fun. The fun of being an empire-builder is (a) exploration (b) dealing with the neighbors (c) grabbing land (d) growing the empire (e) figuring out a win condition. You get emotionally invested in the map and the locations of the dragons in the margins.

Good games don't force the player to make big decisions early on. Yes, you're taking gambles early on (settle here, don't settle there, what to build), but nothing there that forces you onto a particular path forever and ever.

Which is my chief complaint with social policies. Yes, I agree that there should be a stepped ladder/tree where one policy unlocks more advanced policies. That, at least, is an interesting design decision. What I don't agree with is that you can never change government types. You should be allowed to change governments, just like you did in Civ4, but the social policies that you have chosen before should merely add flavor/bonuses to those governance types. You should do best if you stick with the government types that most closely match your social policy picks, but if plans change, you should be able to suffer along under a different government type (with reduced effects/bonuses or without the bonuses from your already chosen picks).

Right now - decide at the start of the game whether you want a small empire or a large empire, because you can't change that choice later. Decide at the start of the game whether you want to chase a culture / economic / science / military win - because you won't be able to choose differently later. Choose whether you will oppress your citizens or give them freedoms, because you can't change later on.

 

[DopeJam]

I feel like this game was made for consoles, simple as possible for such a game. 1st impression was amazing ofc, nice grafix, 1 unit per title, hexagons...etc...etc.

But, MP is horrible, no animations(ok I admit we always turned them off i bigger MP sessions, but let me have animations till I get bored off them, or when I play only 2player MP with CPUs.

2-3minutes waiting in MP after every turn made me stop playing after 2 multiplayer games.

They removed religions(I guess they wanna keep something for addons) and placed very boring and anoying city states. (turned them completly off after few games). No sliders for since/culture, no epionage(I gues they wanna keep it for another addon), the whole way u place points in civic is horrible, it looks like some rpg game where u place point into your character, you dont have the feeling that you have nation, I have more feeling this is some poor copy/mix of some ******ed MMORPG.

Please let me click next turn without being forced to choose production/reseerch/move unit.

Please let me move or change something after i clicked next turn (but still waiting others to finish) like it was in civ4.

I guess civilization 6 will look like this: No need fore keyboard/mouse you will play with game pad. Research and production in cities will be removed due to fact that new generations of player are to bored to use brain, they wanna very simple action game no complexity just boom and bang (look just at lates dawn of war/command and conquer crap).

Units will be moved in FPS style. No need to bother with founding cities, everything will be chosen for you, all u need to do is press one big flashing button that changes in order what you need (they gonna copy it from current civ5).

good luck Ill check back after couple GB of patches and 1-2 addons, maybe we get real civilization after that

 

[Malvi]

the truth is that civ 5 it's just a console game...i think firaxis policy was to do something that could have been sold to new generations of players, too many things from civ4 are missing, i'm really disappointed
civ revolutions was clearly the preview of this <snip> game...

Moderator Action: Swearing is not allow on this forum, thanks.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[DopeJam]

the truth is that civ 5 it's just a console game...i think firaxis policy was to do something that could have been sold to new generations of players, too many things from civ4 are missing, i'm really disappointed
civ revolutions was clearly the preview of this horsehockey game...

true: civilization 5: Devolution

 

[zonk]

From a player's perspective: Locking the player into a win condition at the very start of the game and then not giving them any option to change to a different win condition is not fun.

Right.

I also think it's going to severely reduce replayability -- especially for those of us with zero interest in MP (which, I highly suspect, is a fair majority of civ players).

What made IV (and previous iterations) so eternally replayable was that games COULD be malleable.

The current system pretty much puts a stop to that -- Social Policies are fun... up until you've played a game where you've made it through the trees. There's very little mixing and matching.

Personally - I never really had an issue with the civic change frequency issue in IV, primarily because I never played with a spiritual leader. I hated to lose so many turns (I usually play snail) to anarchy, so I only flipped during GAs (which were fewer in IV).

But that said, that was never an unfixable flaw in any IV mechanics -- there were extremely easy ways to change (higher anarchy costs, longer times between allowed flips, other penalties) the problem.

Civ games were always malleable... Even if you were playing for a specific win - you sometimes changes the paths to that specific win.

 

[TheTalentedGame]

There are many great changes in this game, and many bad ones too.

I can live with global happiness, crappy tactical AI, archers firing over mountains etc, but wtf, where'd all the information and options go?

Automated workers have been bombed back to the stone age. Where's the option for 'no changing existing improvements? However I choose to play my game, I end up with a continent full of trading posts even though I have a ample gold and happiness surplus.

Diplomacy is crap. What happened to the traits from Civ4? "You nuked one of our cities" etc -10. And talk about being idiotic. I'd been saint to one civ throughout the entire game, big Japan declared war on him but would he ally with me? NO!

Units take forever to build in the Industrial/Modern era. 50 years to build a Bomber? 80 years for Modern Armour? LOL

I am also very dissapointed in the AIs naval strategy. I've witnessed one amphibious landing on my shores and Catherine's invasion consisted of an Infantry and Cavalry division. As for air units. not once have I been attacked with an air unit, only guided missiles.

Personally despite the above, I do enjoy the game, but boy it should be so much more. I had faith this would retain some level of micromanagement with Civ Rev on consoles, guess I was gravely mistaken. I must admit, it does have a 'Civ Rev for PC feel to it'.


Dumbed down? Most certainly so.

 

[PieceOfMind]

From a player's perspective: Locking the player into a win condition at the very start of the game and then not giving them any option to change to a different win condition is not fun. You're forcing the player to:

- Decide ahead of time what win condition they find fun. That leaves no room for players to explore the different win conditions. They might get 1/2 through a game and find that they're having a lot more fun chasing a cultural win or find that instead of a culture win, going for the space win might be more fun. In a game as rigidly designed as Civ5 - you don't have that option unless you've already run away with the game.

- Forcing the player to make a major game decision at a time when they don't know who the players are, what resources are available, what the geography looks like, or what the major power blocs are. In Civ4 - you could keep your options open until all pretty much all the land was claimed (or about 1/3 to 1/2 into the game). You didn't have to commit whole hog to chasing one social policy at the exclusion of another.

So, if you guess wrong at the start, you're either doomed to a long draw-out loss, or you restart the map. For the empire-builder types, neither choice qualifies as fun. The fun of being an empire-builder is (a) exploration (b) dealing with the neighbors (c) grabbing land (d) growing the empire (e) figuring out a win condition. You get emotionally invested in the map and the locations of the dragons in the margins.

Good games don't force the player to make big decisions early on. Yes, you're taking gambles early on (settle here, don't settle there, what to build), but nothing there that forces you onto a particular path forever and ever.

Which is my chief complaint with social policies. Yes, I agree that there should be a stepped ladder/tree where one policy unlocks more advanced policies. That, at least, is an interesting design decision. What I don't agree with is that you can never change government types. You should be allowed to change governments, just like you did in Civ4, but the social policies that you have chosen before should merely add flavor/bonuses to those governance types. You should do best if you stick with the government types that most closely match your social policy picks, but if plans change, you should be able to suffer along under a different government type (with reduced effects/bonuses or without the bonuses from your already chosen picks).

Right now - decide at the start of the game whether you want a small empire or a large empire, because you can't change that choice later. Decide at the start of the game whether you want to chase a culture / economic / science / military win - because you won't be able to choose differently later. Choose whether you will oppress your citizens or give them freedoms, because you can't change later on.

1. You can right-click a social policy notification to dismiss it, just in case you didn't know.
2. This means you are never forced to lock yourself into a particular social policy tree at any point in the game.
3. Even if you were, the social policies are not powerful enough to completely dictate your path to victory - they merely complement it, make you feel like you're doing things more efficiently. Storing up social policies for later eras is a strategic decision to make, and you seem to completely ignore that possibility in your analysis.
4. So, if you guess wrong at the start, you're either doomed to a long draw-out loss, or you restart the map. That has got to be one of the biggest exaggerations I've seen in this forum since the game's release, and IMO it's completely wrong with some of the reasons being what I mentioned above.

EDIT... Some recommended reading:

sunk-cost fallacy
When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can&#8217;t stop now, otherwise what I&#8217;ve invested so far will be lost. This is true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in the project. Everything one has invested is lost regardless. If there is no hope for success in the future from the investment, then the fact that one has already lost a bundle should lead one to the conclusion that the rational thing to do is to withdraw from the project.

To continue to invest in a hopeless project is irrational. Such behavior may be a pathetic attempt to delay having to face the consequences of one's poor judgment. The irrationality is a way to save face, to appear to be knowledgeable, when in fact one is acting like an idiot.

http://www.skepdic.com/sunkcost.html

It's a bit more offensive than I'd like, but you get the idea.

 

[zonk]

1. You can right-click a social policy notification to dismiss it, just in case you didn't know.
2. This means you are never forced to lock yourself into a particular social policy tree at any point in the game.
3. Even if you were, the social policies are not powerful enough to completely dictate your path to victory - they merely complement it, make you feel like you're doing things more efficiently. Storing up social policies for later eras is a strategic decision to make, and you seem to completely ignore that possibility in your analysis.
4. So, if you guess wrong at the start, you're either doomed to a long draw-out loss, or you restart the map. That has got to be one of the biggest exaggerations I've seen in this forum since the game's release.

I'm not sure how you can say in 3. "SPs are not powerful enough to dictate your path to victory" when they themselves ARE a victory condition. You can click and dismiss, I guess -- but then, you would generally want to pop the first two before you settle more than your second city to avoid cost scaling.... not to mention -- the initial entry points are pretty much tailored to early game play.

I.e., if you want to open the liberty tree -- who really cares about 50% settler bonus... or, if wait to open tradition -- you probably DON'T want the capital growth bonus ( I suppose I could see storing up 3 pops so you could immediately get the growth bonus AND the capital population unhappiness nerfer... but then -- what's the point in either?).

I've played to a couple of "cultural victories" now -- and beyond the autocratic (whatever the fascism tree is called), I've toyed with all the SP trees. I'm not a warmonger - and until the AI is bettered, the combat bonuses are pointless anyway - so I don't think I'm missing much in that tree.

I agree more with the original poster --- I think SPs are an interesting idea that COULD have been a fun addition, but under their current implementation, they get old real fast.

EDIT to address your edit:
Sorry - but this is ALMOST complete bunk when it comes to the subject at hand.

sunk-cost fallacy
When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can&#8217;t stop now, otherwise what I&#8217;ve invested so far will be lost. This is true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in the project. Everything one has invested is lost regardless. If there is no hope for success in the future from the investment, then the fact that one has already lost a bundle should lead one to the conclusion that the rational thing to do is to withdraw from the project.

To continue to invest in a hopeless project is irrational. Such behavior may be a pathetic attempt to delay having to face the consequences of one's poor judgment. The irrationality is a way to save face, to appear to be knowledgeable, when in fact one is acting like an idiot.

Of course - don't throw good 'resource' (be it money, production, or science) after bad.

But - then what good is culture? The only thing you spend it on -- the only value it has -- is for SPs. By the time you get to the point that you've figured out the Utopia spaceship (whatever) isn't in the cards -- and figure you can open other trees, rather than finishing off started trees -- the entry bonuses are generally pointless.

What you quoted is really just a smart-sounding way of stating the obvious....

It basically means - cancel those broadcast tower builds... of course, you're probably now stuck with museums you wish you could sell/demolish (but can't).

 

[Willowmound]

I really wish someone would edit the title of this thread.

 

[tom2050]

Just so everyone else has some perspective, charon2112 hasn't actually played Civ4.

As you haven't played Civ4, your opinion as to whether Civ5 is better or worse is really not worth reading.

@charon2112: you haven't played Civ 4, and yet you are saying 5 is better? How would you know or not know that? I guess you just make this stuff up? Something always seemed kind of fishy..

 

[Guardian_PL]

(...)
Automated workers have been bombed back to the stone age. Where's the option for 'no changing existing improvements? However I choose to play my game, I end up with a continent full of trading posts even though I have a ample gold and happiness surplus.(...)




Dumbed down? Most certainly so.

I can help you with this one - the option is hidden (cause y'know, players could hurt themselves if it'd be available OR they're waiting for the DLC to trumpet about plethora of "cool innovative UI changes", not sure which is right) in /Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/sid meier's civilization V/assets/gameplay/XML/GameInfo/Civ5PlayerOptions , amongst other interesting options that should be available from the main menu.

..Perhaps there are bugs associated with these options (like allegedly "no unit cycling" has some issues, personally I love it and have no problems) and that's why they are hidden?

I really wish someone would edit the title of this thread.

Haha, yes, good idea! OP, can you see that?

 

[Jharii]

UPDATE ON POLL (10/7): Here is the most recent poll results; Yes - 47.19%, No - 43.35%, Undecided - 9.45%
That is less than 3% needed to take the majority, more than 50%, who agree that Civ 5 has been dumbed down.

So what does it mean if that number hits 50%?

Answer: absolutely nothing. Only 1400 people have voted. What is that, less than 1% of the total people that purchased CivV?

You have an agenda and you won't rest until some meaningless poll "proves" that you are right so you can have a bigger soapbox to stand on. So utterly silly.