Who else agrees that Civ 5 has been dumbed down?

[kuukkeli]

If you want to get pedantic, I never contradicted myself, because acting the same and being the same don't mean the same thing.

Let me be pedantic in Falk's place The fact that Falk partially based his argument to witnessed AI behavior does not affect your claim at all:

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 state that the claim of AI leaders being the same is "simply not true" and follow that by a statement "we don't know" - that's surely a contradiction.

Couldn't resist

 

[PieceOfMind]

Couldn't resist

Lol I noticed that.

However, I think you missed the subtlety I was talking about. I know what I said, and I know it looks like I meant something different to what I said.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

This thread has a lot of good points about this poll :http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93198

"See post 104."

 

[moscaverde]

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.

Exactly, it's not that the game is less complex or 'dumbed down', it is just not interesting (IMO of course). I can see there are a lot of people that prefer the new way of civ and complexity of the long term planning and the strategy of winning from the first turn etc.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

There are 37 or so buildings in vanilla Civ IV, not counting various flavors of religious buildings. There are around 44 in Civ V.

Is that what you meant by less options?

I think you don't understand at all.

The difference between buildings usage (like the bonus you get with specific goods), the connections between tech (if you don't have two tech, as example, you can build a specific building\unit, when in Civ V is the when you get a tech you get a unit\buiding so far). The difference to manage a city health\happiness one by one (In civ 5 building in a city or another is indifferent, the only thing may be food building, but if you get maritimate city state it become irrelevant). Theflexible strategy with civics vs a FOREVER AND EVER upgrade politic tree (where if you make a mistake, the whole game is almost screwed)...

I can make plentry of other examples, but just these ones make the sense, i feel...

Cheers...

 

[zonk]

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).

See, this is the fundamental problem.... I was well aware of the ways to 'win' in IV, but I never -- not even once -- used them because I didn't really care about winning!

I liked playing BTS (and vanilla IV and III and II and I). Sure - I could win in BC by whipping the AI, but I never did because I much prefer to build my empire... settle cities... build things in them... work the tiles... trade with the AI... build wonders... tweak my empire's attributes via sliders and civics....

I do just whip the AI in V because otherwise -- it's just 950 Next Turn clicks with 50 turns of "pick a policy" or "buy the next building down my science path" sprinkled in. Even when/if you hit the 'roadblocks' -- happiness hits from sprawl or whatever -- what's the solution? 50 more boring "next turns" until you pop the policy or build the wonder.... or 1 turn solutions like buy the happy building in whatever random city doesn't have it or buy a CS ally who has a luxury.

Everyone seems to agree that the AI is awful... but what happens when that's fixed? You have end up with a simplified military strategy game with a non-pushover AI?

I can grognard with the best of them - but no offense, Firaxis/Take2, there are shops that build better games for that because that's ALL they do - I play Civilization for the varying avenues of empire building... in fact, I play it to let my dove-side out! I think I've got every hex grid strategy title under the sun. Some of them are quite fun. I don't need another one.

Yes, fix the military AI.... but I just hope that Firaxis recognizes that its more than just the quecha/axeman/horse rushers that are unhappy and think V has significant gameplay faults and boring stretches -- a lot of builders feel the same way and simply making the AI a military challenge will only go so far to solve that.

 

[Thormodr]

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.

You'd have to be pretty weak minded to be influenced in my opinion. Most people I'd wager would see the thread, click on it and vote. A vast majority of people don't take the time to read through the thread before voting. They already have their minds made up before they vote. This isn't like a government election where the person votes for the person whom they saw the last election advertisement for.

I understand that you think the game isn't dumbed down and this grates on your nerves to see a thread like this. Like I said though, no likee, no clickee.

I realize it isn't scientific in any way but it does show that there is significant concern within the community about the game. That's where the value of this poll lies.

 

[Guardian_PL]

2k forum is a complete and utter joke - whenever the thread points out the flaws in Civ5 in a right manner it gets closed/deleted, only the lunatic rant threads are kept alive so the people can see how "ridiculous" the unhappy fan base is.

Nothing short of disgusting.

 

[Thormodr]

2k forum is a complete and utter joke - whenever the thread points out the flaws in Civ5 in a right manner it gets closed/deleted, only the lunatic rant threads are kept alive so the people can see how "ridiculous" the unhappy fan base is.

Nothing short of disgusting.

Of course. It's like a police state over there.

Thankfully these forums are more open minded. One can start a thread supporting ciV or criticizing it.

The mods really are doing a great job here.

 

[Psyringe]

This thread has a lot of good points about this poll :http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93198

Has it? After reading the first oage (and glancing about the rest) it looked to me like somebody tried to spend a lot of time trying to convince people that a majority isn't a majority if it isn't absolute. Which, no matter how one sees the poll, is objectively wrong, and it's a bit sad to see that statement even defended with such fervor (in my country, we learn the different types of majorities in school, I don't know about others). Why this semantic question is even important eludes me.

 

[Abegweit]

I don't know how it works in German but in English, a majority is 50% + 1 so the hairsplitters are right. A plurality of the members of this forum agree that the game has been dumbed down.

 

[Celevin]

I liked playing BTS (and vanilla IV and III and II and I). Sure - I could win in BC by whipping the AI, but I never did because I much prefer to build my empire... settle cities... build things in them... work the tiles... trade with the AI... build wonders... tweak my empire's attributes via sliders and civics....

I do just whip the AI in V because otherwise -- it's just 950 Next Turn clicks with 50 turns of "pick a policy" or "buy the next building down my science path" sprinkled in. Even when/if you hit the 'roadblocks' -- happiness hits from sprawl or whatever -- what's the solution? 50 more boring "next turns" until you pop the policy or build the wonder.... or 1 turn solutions like buy the happy building in whatever random city doesn't have it or buy a CS ally who has a luxury.

I could switch the 4's with 5's, and policies with civics, and create the opposite argument.

You can build wonders, select tiles, trade, do EVERYTHING you said you like doing in Civ4. Policies take more thought than civics. Trading takes more thought since you have a lot more uses for gold. The only reason war seems easy is because we can actually put more thought into it, and therefore see better results. Almost every aspect has more thinking involved. Sliders actually took away complexity (if that's a word I want to use here) as it streamlined EVERY one of the currencies into one. That's right, I said streamlined, that word that people seem to hate because it was used as a buzzword for Civ5.

Honestly, I don't get the problems. I just don't get it. I tried to go back to Civ4, which I loved dearly at a time, and I ended up having one of the most boring games, with half the mechanics not even being used. Civ5 has me using all the mechanics no matter if I'm going a spaceship, culture, diplomatic, or domination victory. In Civ4, I can ignore culture past the BFC, espionage completely, maintenance is easy to get around by a single wonder or trait, and war is fought only by 2 SOD's bashing heads. The game boils down to science and production. I wasn't a bad player too, I've won Immortal games using every victory condition.

You just sound disgruntled because Civ5 didn't meet up to your expectations that you created in your head. What more do you want? If it's the bad AI, play online against other people.

 

[Thormodr]

I could switch the 4's with 5's, and policies with civics, and create the opposite argument.

You can build wonders, select tiles, trade, do EVERYTHING you said you like doing in Civ4. Policies take more thought than civics. Trading takes more thought since you have a lot more uses for gold. The only reason war seems easy is because we can actually put more thought into it, and therefore see better results. Almost every aspect has more thinking involved. Sliders actually took away complexity (if that's a word I want to use here) as it streamlined EVERY one of the currencies into one. That's right, I said streamlined, that word that people seem to hate because it was used as a buzzword for Civ5.

Honestly, I don't get the problems. I just don't get it. I tried to go back to Civ4, which I loved dearly at a time, and I ended up having one of the most boring games, with half the mechanics not even being used. Civ5 has me using all the mechanics no matter if I'm going a spaceship, culture, diplomatic, or domination victory. In Civ4, I can ignore culture past the BFC, espionage completely, maintenance is easy to get around by a single wonder or trait, and war is fought only by 2 SOD's bashing heads. The game boils down to science and production. I wasn't a bad player too, I've won Immortal games using every victory condition.

You just sound disgruntled because Civ5 didn't meet up to your expectations that you created in your head. What more do you want? If it's the bad AI, play online against other people.

Good thing that multiplayer is so well done in ciV.

 

[Psyringe]

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.

To be fair, I don't think a biased poll can influence people to vote against their personal opinion. In order to be influenced by a poll's bias, they need to at least have been sitting on the fence already.

But I agree that the poll is biased and that this further limits its value.

However, I disagree that the OP's mapping of the trend in this poll is worthless. It at least makes a statement that over time, more people who are willing to participate, express a skeptical view. Whether they do that because they came to the same conclusion as the OP, or whether they do that because they were insecure enough in their own opinion to let themselves be influenced by the poll's bias, is not relevant for the statement that there is such a trend. Actually, I'd argue that the trend is safer to interpret than the absolute numbers.

Also, the trend can be compared to other sources. I recently read two or three dozens of user reviews for Civ5 and I haven't tallied the result, but the odd thing is that there's a substantial number of people who appended their review with statements like "After playing some more, I grow increasingly disappointed", and lowered the game's score. Conversely, I've seen very few statements in the form of "The game has grown on me, I'm raising the score". I think I remember a handful of posts here in that forum to that extent, but not many. Of the reviews I checked, not a single one had raised the game's score after playing more.

If that trend is constant over several sources, then I believe that it indeed does exist and is not just a result of biased poll in a single forum.

Of course, nothing of this would pass any scientific quality control. But we're not in a position to gather data in a form that would. Hence, making do with the data we have is the best we can do, as long as we acknowledge the shortcomings of the gathering process. I do believe that even weak tools can lead to believable insights, if they are interpreted responsibly.

 

[Psyringe]

I don't know how it works in German but in English, a majority is 50% + 1 so the hairsplitters are right. A plurality of the members of this forum agree that the game has been dumbed down.

Both Merriam-Webster and The Free Dictionary seem to allow for a much broader use of the term "majority". Wikipedia seems to explain a different usage in American (but not British) English in the context of politics, but since we weren't talking about politics ...

Anyway, can we agree that semantic hairsplitting about terms whose actual difference (in the context of the current poll results) amounts to less than 4% is pretty pointless?

 

[dexters]

unscientific poll is unscientific.

 

[Thormodr]

unscientific poll is unscientific.

Unproductive post is unproductive.

The sad thing is that when the thread was first started and only 25% of voters said the game was dumbed down, the ciV glee squad was trumpeting this as definitive proof that the game was wonderful. Now the thread is worthless according to them.

 

[Hailas]

I've come into phase where I totally ignore whatever is going on with AI, because there is no "I" in AI, and I play simply as in a sand box. I'll be back to Civ IV soon.

It's not just bad algorithms of computer players, tech tree is reduced, buildings cannot be built because of slowness (cost), some units are extremely expensive, roads are expensive, all in all, costs are all expressed in round numbers, there are no decimals, no finesse, nothing but first grade math. Terrain improvements are downgraded. City states force you to hunt down barbarian camps for money, market place comes very late and is insufficient to cover the expenses. It's a patchwork game, nothing like original Civilization.

Much more I could say, but it has already been said. Sad.

 

[Thormodr]

I've come into phase where I totally ignore whatever is going on with AI, because there is no "I" in AI, and I play simply as in a sand box. I'll be back to Civ IV soon.

It's not just bad algorithms of computer players, tech tree is reduced, buildings cannot be built because of slowness (cost), some units are extremely expensive, roads are expensive, all in all, costs are all expressed in round numbers, there are no decimals, no finesse, nothing but first grade math. Terrain improvements are downgraded. City states force you to hunt down barbarian camps for money, market place comes very late and is insufficient to cover the expenses. It's a patchwork game, nothing like original Civilization.

Much more I could say, but it has already been said. Sad.

Astute observations. Civilization: De-evolutions is pretty dull. I'll be shelving it too until Fall from Heaven 3 comes out.

 

[SpecialistElvis]

Civ V is laughable compared to the previous series. It just is... Nuff' said...