Who else agrees that Civ 5 has been dumbed down?

[teccuk]

As others have said. It is not 'dumbed down' its mearly been changed.

And i'm sure expansions etc will add more features over the coming year or so.

 

[BeyondCivilized]

Nope, it became less of a mess, that's for sure.

 

[falconne]

So just like Civ IV then. Slingshot or double sling shot up the tech chart grabbing bureaucracy and setting up one giant science city. Or Build three culture cities and slider up your culture buying key buildings and wonders.

<snip>

The point is though, you need a lot more "tricks" to optimise Civ 4 and it took a long time for people to figure them out. A game of this type depends on challenging the player to "solve" it to keep them interested. And even if expansions made Civ 4 better, it had enough in it to keep people interested till they came out. Even after years of play you can still realise something new in the emergent complexity of the game.

Civ 5 was pretty much "solved" by most vets on the day they started playing it. There's nothing appealing about playing it till the next expansion, because there's nothing left to discover. With so few dynamics and variables, it has much less emergent complexity to keep the game fresh.

If I wanted lightweight entertainment I'd play an FPS or RPG. I play Civ for intellectual entertainment.

 

[Celevin]

The point is though, you need a lot more "tricks" to optimise Civ 4 and it took a long time for people to figure them out. A game of this type depends on challenging the player to "solve" it to keep them interested. And even if expansions made Civ 4 better, it had enough in it to keep people interested till they came out. Even after years of play you can still realise something new in the emergent complexity of the game.

Civ 5 was pretty much "solved" by most vets on the day they started playing it. There's nothing appealing about playing it till the next expansion, because there's nothing left to discover. With so few dynamics and variables, it has much less emergent complexity to keep the game fresh.

If I wanted lightweight entertainment I'd play an FPS or RPG. I play Civ for intellectual entertainment.

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.

 

[Ayt]

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.

 

[Veneke]

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.

You know, I remember there was this one time when we had a game series that was fun to play and actually challenged your intelligence to play well...

I don't recall CIV ever having one "do this to win" strategy. In fact, there was (and is) quite a bit of debate over several aspects of the best way to play CIV. There was never the kind of mentality that you are suggesting in CIV.

The game is a substantial step downwards from CIV:BTS. If you think to the contrary, then the "oooh, shiny..." factor of the new toy is getting in the way of your objectivity. It's debatable whether its a step downwards from CIV vanilla on release. The problem isn't that people can't find the words to describe the problems with CiV, they've done so endlessly throughout this forum (and probably other places besides). It's the sheer scope of these problems, coupled with the less numerical interface of CiV. Numbers mean we can analyse things, without numbers, there's very little to analyse... things become much less solid and you remove one of the most endearing features of the Civilization series: the micromanagement maniac's paradise. If you want to know why people are so annoyed at this release, especially most of the old-timers, its because we can't mess with the economics and civ-building aspects of Civ to the same extent that we could before.

That wouldn't be so bad if the other element of the game that was paraded in front of us as the best thing since the creation of Civ (the military aspect) wasn't accompanied by such a shockingly incompetent AI.

There's a forum full of whining and moaning about CiV, and not all of it is going to be fixed by patches and expansions, unless they radically change some of the underlying simplicity that was brought in to streamline the game. And let's face it, that isn't very likely to happen.

 

[SomethingWitty]

You know, I keep seeing a lot of comments about CiV being less complex. But I never saw any actual comparisons. So I went and looked at the info centers.

Number of units, not counting unique units, GP, the spy, or missionaries-

Vanilla Civ IV: 52
Civ V: 50

Number of Civs-

Vanilla Civ IV: 18
Civ V: 18

Number of techs-

Vanilla Civ IV: 85
Civ V: 73

Wonders of the World:

Vanilla Civ IV: 28
Civ V: 28

National wonders, projects, etc.:

Vanilla Civ IV: 12
Civ V: 14

Gone are religion and espionage, in are city-states and natural wonders.

All those numbers look pretty close to me. Civ IV only had more base units because all those beginning game wild animals put them over the top. A few more Civ IV techs, but only marginally. More Civ V national wonders, but I included SS parts in that count. Still, only a marginal difference either way.

Number of civs and world wonders are bang on. What a coincidence. It's almost like the developers made a conscious effort to make vanilla Civ V pretty much exactly as complicated as vanilla Civ IV.

 

[ds61514]

I don't recall CIV ever having one "do this to win" strategy. In fact, there was (and is) quite a bit of debate over several aspects of the best way to play CIV. There was never the kind of mentality that you are suggesting in CIV.

You haven't played enough Civ 4 then ;-).

Six cities-->Liberalism --> Cavalry (if good tech) or cannons (if bad tech) --> win. Read the Civ 4 S&T forum and notice that 80% of all BTS Deity wins follow this script.

Numbers mean we can analyse things, without numbers, there's very little to analyse... things become much less solid and you remove one of the most endearing features of the Civilization series: the micromanagement maniac's paradise.

People can win on Civ4 immortal in ~2 hours with automated workers and terrible micro, so alot of that micromanagement isn't even needed.

 

[SomethingWitty]

I don't recall CIV ever having one "do this to win" strategy.

Strategy in Civ IV: build a stack of doom.

 

[Cueball]

Long time lurker, and I finally signed up just so I could vote here. And my vote goes to "Yes". Never before in a civ game have I spent as much time simply clicking "Next turn" without doing anything else on that turn. I really have a hard time comparing this game to base Civ IV, because I am so used to playing BTS. It should be an improvement on that, and imo, it is not. And it isn't even close. In fact, I'd say vanilla Civ IV was a deeper experience in terms of micromanagement and diplomacy. I'm hoping this game can be fixed with patches and expansions, but I'm not even sure it will ever be able to reach the levels of BTS. The base game just seems too simple. We'll have to see... but it is pretty disappointing that I'm going to have to wait a long period of time to even possibly get the enjoyment out of this game that I experienced from the last version of Civ IV.

 

[tom2050]

No it wasn't. It took the mechanics in Civ 3 and added more. The main important thing that was taken out was ranged bombardment, but everything that was added more than made up for it. Mechanics being improved is perfectly fine, which is what Civ 4 did to Civ 3 mechanics. Mechanics being completely removed, without adding compensating mechanics to retain the complexity is bad. The pattern of increasing complexity continued with every release and expansion all the way from Civ 1. The game was slowly becoming less abstract and more connected to reality, although it had a long long way to go. Every version felt more "epic" than the last.

Don't compare 5 to 3... it's an insult to the classics 3 and SMAC. from 3 they only took and recycled a few things (like ranged attack); the rest is more like 4 if anything.

Strategy in Civ IV: build a stack of doom.

Strategy in Civ 5; there isn't one. AI is too bad to require one.

 

[Veneke]

S. Witty:

A straight up numbers comparison like that has so many things wrong with it that it boggles the mind that you'd even consider such an argument.

You haven't played enough Civ 4 then ;-).

Six cities-->Liberalism --> Cavalry (if good tech) or cannons (if bad tech) --> win. Read the Civ 4 S&T forum and notice that 80% of all BTS Deity wins follow this script.


People can win on Civ4 immortal in ~2 hours with automated workers and terrible micro, so alot of that micromanagement isn't even needed.

It's a reasonable strategy that. Actually what I was thinking of when I wrote that was the SE vs CE debate.

It's not whether the micromanagement is needed or not, but that it's absent in CiV. Also, where did you come up with that information?

 

[mrt144]

Strategy in Civ IV: build a stack of doom.

That's not entirely true. Bombardment was a way to counter a SoD. Also, you have the ability to play the game without fighting.

And to explain further, the SoD was at least something the AI could grasp and utilize and was a crude but effective means to an end.

 

[Abegweit]

Long time lurker, and I finally signed up just so I could vote here. And my vote goes to "Yes". Never before in a civ game have I spent as much time simply clicking "Next turn" without doing anything else on that turn. I really have a hard time comparing this game to base Civ IV, because I am so used to playing BTS. It should be an improvement on that, and imo, it is not. And it isn't even close. In fact, I'd say vanilla Civ IV was a deeper experience in terms of micromanagement and diplomacy. I'm hoping this game can be fixed with patches and expansions, but I'm not even sure it will ever be able to reach the levels of BTS. The base game just seems too simple. We'll have to see... but it is pretty disappointing that I'm going to have to wait a long period of time to even possibly get the enjoyment out of this game that I experienced from the last version of Civ IV.

Welcome to the forums!

And takes for exactly summarizing my feelings. Does Jon Shafer really enjoy clicking <ENTER>?

 

[SomethingWitty]

S. Witty:

A straight up numbers comparison like that has so many things wrong with it that it boggles the mind that you'd even consider such an argument.

Then it should be easy for you to come up with a counter argument.

 

[SomethingWitty]

Bombardment was a way to counter a SoD.

Bombardment was a crutch. It was a fix developed to counter the SoD because all strategies ended up devolving into the SoD.

 

[Thormodr]

Long time lurker, and I finally signed up just so I could vote here. And my vote goes to "Yes". Never before in a civ game have I spent as much time simply clicking "Next turn" without doing anything else on that turn. I really have a hard time comparing this game to base Civ IV, because I am so used to playing BTS. It should be an improvement on that, and imo, it is not. And it isn't even close. In fact, I'd say vanilla Civ IV was a deeper experience in terms of micromanagement and diplomacy. I'm hoping this game can be fixed with patches and expansions, but I'm not even sure it will ever be able to reach the levels of BTS. The base game just seems too simple. We'll have to see... but it is pretty disappointing that I'm going to have to wait a long period of time to even possibly get the enjoyment out of this game that I experienced from the last version of Civ IV.

Welcome to the forums or at least to your active participation.

I do share your disappointment about ciV and hope the developers take this to heart and make substantial corrections.

 

[Psyringe]

Bombardment was a crutch. It was a fix developed to counter the SoD because all strategies ended up devolving into the SoD.

"1upt is a crutch. It is an attempted fix to prevent the SoD because all strategies ended up devolving into the SoD."

Personally, I would have preferred an actual counter to the SoD instead of tearing out the whole mechanic. Bombardment in Civ3 was badly executed (too overpowered by itself, at least after the second expansion), but that doesn't necessarily mean that all other attempts to counter huge stacks would need to fail as well. I know a 17 year old game that countered huge stacks pretty well, it definitely can be done. It's a bit sad that Firaxis totally removed the option instead of balancing it better.

 

[Veneke]

Then it should be easy for you to come up with a counter argument.

*Sigh*

Okay...

The complexity (or lack thereof) in CiV has nothing to do with the number of units/buildings/tech/wonders etc to be found in the game. It is in what you can do with those units/buildings/tech/wonders that adds (or detracts) from the complexity of the game.

In short it is options, not number of objects, that dictates complexity. In case you're not following, if there are 500 units of which 250 are type A and 250 are type B, the complexity is the same as if there were only 2 units, of which 1 is type A and 1 is type B.

So, a straight up numbers comparison is useless.

There are fewer options, fewer opportunity costs and a worse AI in CiV than in CIV. Therefore its less complex.

 

[SomethingWitty]

*Sigh*

Okay...

The complexity (or lack thereof) in CiV has nothing to do with the number of units/buildings/tech/wonders etc to be found in the game. It is in what you can do with those units/buildings/tech/wonders that adds (or detracts) from the complexity of the game.

In short it is options, not number of objects, that dictates complexity. In case you're not following, if there are 500 units of which 250 are type A and 250 are type B, the complexity is the same as if there were only 2 units, of which 1 is type A and 1 is type B.

So, a straight up numbers comparison is useless.

There are fewer options, fewer opportunity costs and a worse AI in CiV than in CIV. Therefore its less complex.

So in other words, you haven't really got a metric by which to measure complexity. Maybe you should use some other word.