Who else agrees that Civ 5 has been dumbed down?

[DarinDC]

In general, I agree with the assessment of Civ V. But, I think you are also overlooking some of the biggest improvements. Particulary, the improvements in combat. Love ranged attack and I don't miss the "stack of doom." I would like to see the ability to stack workers. Sometimes stacking workers is a great approach to strategically improving terrain. Let's bring it back for just workers. I also think that diplomacy is the area that still has the most opportunity for improvement. Civ V is at best even to Civ IV in the diplomacy department, and arguably a step backwards. Map and tech trading are a must. More realistic options and dynamic player interaction with the AI would be great.

I can live without religion. It was just too consuming in Civ IV. However, I would like to see great people have more effect on the game and Wonders be more influential. Both of these features have lost a little in Civ V.

All in all, this is still a great game. It is a better combat game then ever before. But that came at the sacrifice of the some of the other micro features.;

 

[Charvel1]

when he says "all", he is referring to "we ALL HARDCORE civvers"... of course, there are some "hardcore" that seem to think otherwise, but for the most part, we ALL agree on the overall leveling down of this iteration...

Oh... Ok. So, you obviously consider yourself a hardcore civver. And I consider myself a hardcore civver. But because we disagree on the 'leveling down of this iteration' issue then we can't be in the same club, is that it?

Ok, so you'll need to change your club name to 'ALL HARDCORE CIVVERS WHO THINK CIV 5 HAS BEEN DUMBED DOWN'.

Likewise, I'll call my club 'ALL HARDCORE CIVVERS WHO THINK CIV 5 HAS NOT BEEN DUMBED DOWN'.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

You are quickly losing me with your snide remarks.

I loved Civ IV. Awesome game. Easily one of the best games I've ever played and, in my opinion, with the BTS expansion, better than Civ I, II, and III.

Fall from Heaven 2. Awesome mod. Best thing to happen to the franchise.

However, I like Civ V better than Civ IV. Do I think it's been dumbed down? No. Do I think it's a different game from the rest of the series and especially Civ IV BTS? Yes. And that's what I love about it.

See? No need to be snide or condescending or rude. My opinion about this game is different from yours. Why does that bother you?

The fact that you think the Ai doing well... So i assume you like to win easy or that you played on low level previous Civs to make that statement...
I play on Emperor and have no difficulties to crush in many ways the AI that idiotically mad mistake too often and is totally dumb on warfare, so your "opinion" is very strange for me, sorry...

 

[Charvel1]

The fact that you think the Ai doing well...

Really? Did I say that? Can you point me to a quote that I've made about that? I'm looking and can't find it.

 

[Zechnophobe]

So, I hate to jump on the fact vs opinion discussion, but I really just want to clear something up cause it irks me to see it wrong.

Something like the AI of a computer game is, in fact, a quantitative value. It is immensely complex, and difficult to benchmark, but it does have a quantity. So it is possible to say "The AI is worse in civ 5 than in civ 4" and have it be considered factual (or provably counter-factual). I mean, is it impossible to tell if one person is smarter than another person? Of course not, but summing up the entirety of knowledge in a single statement can often be misleading. Maybe Person A is awesome at Math, but doesn't grasp Physical principles intuitively, and vice versa.

The problem is the complexity of such a statement. It is often better to analyze one vector of the AI capabilities at a time. For instance, with comparable technologies and empire sizes, how successful is a human in conquering them? If we want to support the statement "Civ 4 AI is better than civ 5" we also have to translate between the two games a bit. So we'll use Prince since they have nearly the same difficulty parameters.

But then you have to factor out player skill and.. uggh. It's difficult.

Anyway, the point is, don't argue about whether it IS an opinion, but instead use it as single data-points in determining the fact. Try starting a poll for instance to get a lot of data all at once. It would give you a good place to start.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I think the designers would agree that the mechanics of civ 5 have been simplified relative to civ 4. Calling them dumbed down is a judgment call about the merits of that simplification - that is, whether the play of the game requires less thought or is a good vs. bad thing. I can understand how people could differ on this - I do think that the strategies are less interesting, and the game is certainly much less challenging for me. But I wouldn't call this a fact in the same sense that the simpler mechanics are a fact.

 

[Thormodr]

But there's a fundamental shift at work here.

To the dove/builder - that shift was a streamlining and simplification of our gameplay options in order to please the warmongers.

I have nothing against unit alignment, counters, and terrain -- bully, good to have them.

However - when you globalize happiness and (95% of the effects) of culture, plus use culture as a secondary, scaling tech tree to replace government/civics, and remove religion (and it's multi-pathed, varied effects on everything science to commerce to diplomacy to culture), eliminate all city-level effects except for growth (which frankly, you might as well globalize too, at this point), gear diplomacy more towards warfare, push the AI in the direction of "declare war if losing" while eliminating any AI proclivity towards friendly/like human civs, nerf ocean exploration and cross-continent settlements basically because warmongers hated building and loading numerous transports for their big armies, make all buildings single-purpose, simplify plot yields....

Well... "dumbed down" is inflammatory to the point of being pointless, but to the non-warmonger -- wouldn't it be fair to say that the builder lost an awful lot of gameplay?

I've reached the point where I'm actually GLAD the military AI is awful... at least until it's fixed, at least the warmongers suffer with the builders... of course, they have hope for improvement -- I don't see it for us.

Very good analysis.

ciV is bleh. In the end it could be pretty good. However, it will only be pretty good to a certain group of people. People that like a certain style of play for which I derive little satisfaction.

To me, the problems in ciV will never be fixed enough for me to enjoy it. (Unless there is a mod that completely changes many things.) I like immersion and getting the sense that I'm really building an empire. I don't get that feeling at all when playing ciV and there are many others that feel the same way. It seems that JS just didn't put a priority on such things. Fair enough, since it was his baby.

I'll patiently wait for Civ VI. Sadly there won't be a FFH3. Perhaps Eden will be good enough which may redeem ciV to an extent.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

Actually, I can counter that undeniable opinion.

This incarnation of CIV has flaws which will eventually be worked out but even right now is an extremely satisfying game.

There, see? I countered your opinion with my own.

You said it's satysfying (assuming that means satisfactory): so if you are extremely satisfactory i presume that AI behaviour doesn't bother you...

 

[Charvel1]

You said it's satysfying (assuming that means satisfactory): so if you are extremely satisfactory i presume that AI behaviour doesn't bother you...

Well, you're presuming too much. The AI can use some improvement and it sounds like JS and crew are going to be working on it. However, the game as a whole is still extremely satisfying, and for me, better than any Civ before it.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

Ok i will presume (as you say i presume much, but it's just your opinion as well) that your idea of satisfaction is different from mine, like the maso who prefer indulging in pain to be pleased. Everyone has his own standard of satisfaction...

Cheers

Moderator Action: Personal insults are no tolerated, please refrain from posting them in the future.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[polypheus]

Well, you're presuming too much. The AI can use some improvement and it sounds like JS and crew are going to be working on it. However, the game as a whole is still extremely satisfying, and for me, better than any Civ before it.

I suspect that it is more satisfying for you because you play the game more as a wargamer than a builder. And for a wargamer, that experience, especially once AI is improved and game is more balanced will indeed be richer.

But for a builder or a mixed builder/wargamer, clearly Civ5 is lacking compared to Civ4.

I have said this many times and I will say it again. Imagine Civ4 and Civ5 but both with combat stripped down to only strategic level decisions (Attack X at location Y, etc). In that case is Civ4 still playable? By and large yes. Is Civ5 playable, almost completely not! Would you not agree on this point at least?

Read again Zonk's excellent analysis on this.

 

[Bad Brett]

It's really funny that the guy who thought that Yosef's poll was biased decided to start his own at the 2k boards...

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94311&page=2

 

[Minmaster]

It's really funny that the guy who thought that Yosef's poll was biased decided to start his own at the 2k boards...

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94311&page=2

lol he got pwnd.

 

[lschnarch]

It's really funny that the guy who thought that Yosef's poll was biased decided to start his own at the 2k boards...

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94311&page=2

Too bad.

 

[PieceOfMind]

It's really funny that the guy who thought that Yosef's poll was biased decided to start his own at the 2k boards...

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94311&page=2

Why is it funny? The way the poll question is asked, and the first post of the thread are less biased, though the post is still possibly a tad biased because it refers to KingYosef, but that could swing either way.

 

[da_Vinci]

Why is it funny? The way the poll question is asked, and the first post of the thread are less biased, though the post is still possibly a tad biased because it refers to KingYosef, but that could swing either way.

The funny isn't in his asking a more neutral question (which he did), but that he was sure (if you read his other posts at 2K) that he would get the opposite finding from KingYosef.

OOOPS! Never mind ...

dV

 

[PieceOfMind]

The funny isn't in his asking a more neutral question (which he did), but that he was sure (if you read his other posts at 2K) that he would get the opposite finding from KingYosef.

OOOPS! Never mind ...

dV

Interesting...

One could argue that because there has already been a poll asking almost the exact same question, the bias has already been planted.

Honestly I don't think much useful poll information from the 2K forum can come about anyway. Just like civfanatics polls, the polls only give an indication about the population participating in the polls (which can still be useful of course!, just more limited than random polls of the entire player base).

I still haven't voted in most of the polls on this site about civ5.

 

[Mikkow]

Don't forget to vote on the other poll... http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94311

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%.
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.
UPDATE ON POLL (10/9): The trend continues in favor of Civ 5 being dumbed down... Yes - 48.78%, No - 41.96%, Undecided - 9.26%, Out of 1,480 Voters
UPDATE ON POLL (10/11): The results now showing a Majority of 50.03% agree that Civ 5 has been dumbed down, while those who disagree at 41.02%. Undecided now sits at 8.95%. Out of 1,565 voters.


1. I have always felt like I have been in control while playing the Civ game. Civ 5 has me feeling like someone is holding my hand throughout the whole game as I'm being fed a choose your own adventure bedtime story. I just found myself hitting the next turn button without much to focus on or manage. Very disappointing.

2. Don't like the city states, or atleast how they are implemented too much into the game. They are just annoying and uninteresting.

3. Bring back religion. They should have just improved on this feature instead of omitting it. Omitting religion from Civ is like omitting the egg in an omelet.

4. They took away almost all the great features. I'm talking about: vassal states, tech trading, map trading, diplomacy, espionage, religion, health/sickness, random events, scenarios, wonder animations, end-game cinematics, and culture, research, and commerce sliders. This is just the ones that I can recall off the top of my head.

5. Also, civics. Now civics has merely become a ladder of perks that you upgrade. Has absolutely no flexibility. These are features that kept your mind buzzing as your culture advances into each era. If I want a barbaric Civ I can choose so... at any time I wish and any point in the game.)

I disagree with all your points.

I voted "Yes" to 'dumbed down?'. For me this asks "Does Civ5 have less complexity?" and "Is Civ5 easier to understand for a new player?" to which I would say maybe and yes.

Some concepts are removed. Some are merged into a new concept that ends up working totally differently from how the concepts worked in Civ4. There are a few concepts that I think are very solid. For example, global happiness & happy buildings costing money, typing the two together. The city maintenance is now more realistic and optional. A city far away from capital needs a long stretch of roads to connect them, and as such it becomes one part of the 'distance to palace' cost in Civ4.

The way these new solid concepts interact and affect the whole play (social policies included) makes it quite technically complex anyway, if wanting to go beyond scratching the surface of their effects. Good or bad? I like it.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

Interesting...

One could argue that because there has already been a poll asking almost the exact same question, the bias has already been planted.

Honestly I don't think much useful poll information from the 2K forum can come about anyway. Just like civfanatics polls, the polls only give an indication about the population participating in the polls (which can still be useful of course!, just more limited than random polls of the entire player base).

I still haven't voted in most of the polls on this site about civ5.

Piece of mind i like your posting but now your scratching the veil of a conspiracy theory. I can't se so much behind that poll, he wanted to win over King on the same road, because he was thinking that civfanatics was a bunch of idiots and almost fanatics of civ with poor understandig of the main playerbase, that, in his mind, was on 2k forum at least. So he failed and now he serves on a silver plate the victory to king... Not smart the kid, there were other ways to counter....

 

[PieceOfMind]

Conspiracy theory? Hardly. Why don't you tell that to all those posters accusing every major reviewer of being sold out and outright lying to the public in its scoring of civ5?

I'm just saying that the time for people to make up their minds on whether the game is dumbed down or not has mostly passed. Regardless of which way you sway, you'd expect the new poll to show a similar result to the old poll, and any differences between them would likely fall within margin of error too.

I don't particularly care what that particular poster's intentions or argument were - he was probably wrong.