Who else miss the civics?

[Guardian_PL]

I think the lack of flexibility is huge. Allowing civics to change allowed for interesting decisions throughout the game. Should I switch to Vasslage/Theocracy for better troops despite the anarchy? Should I burn a GP on a golden age to avoid that anarchy? The only cost to picking a new policy is opportunity cost- you get a bonus but you don't get that other bonus. Switching civics costed you something more- you get a bonus, you don't get that other bonus, AND you now no longer have the first bonus. Is it worth it? Maybe you should stay. Maybe that new civic won't help you as much as the one you already have. Now you just go ahead and add whatever bonus is the best without nearly as much thinking/evaluation.

Exactly!

It was this thrill of constant assessing your own decisions - "Had I done the right thing? Gosh that anarchy hit me hard, lost a lot of money that way. Now Sumeria no longer likes me, do I have strong enough army down there? Hm, situation has changed - with whom I should ally now?" - stuff like that could swirl in my mind throughout the day of dull work making it more colourful and fueling my excitement of an evening play.

Now it's fire&forget. There's nothing to think about really - what's done is done, not to mention that it doesn't really matter anyway - there's no favourite civics anymore. SP is like Eskel said - collecting achievements...

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

The way I see it, civics really added another dimension to the game because you got to pick your civics based on your current need and reap the rewards. Also, EVERYONE got the same number of civics and got to pick their combination. In Civ 5, it seems like kind of an after thought. Like social policies are more "rewards" for having high culture and if you have low culture, you don't get any policies. It's like social policies are things that are nice to have, but not neccessary to play the game.

In previous Civs, they were much more important and central to the game I guess.

They're another area your civilization can excel in. Maybe your army is powerful because you have a lot of units. Or maybe your army is powerful because you're a few technologies ahead of your opponents. Or maybe your army is powerful because you have social policies conducive to it and invested your culture in it.

It's just another way to customize and excel, like picking which techs to focus on, or how you grow your cities.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

Exactly!

It was this thrill of constant assessing your own decisions - "Had I done the right thing? Gosh that anarchy hit me hard, lost a lot of money that way. Now Sumeria no longer likes me, do I have strong enough army down there? Hm, situation has changed - with whom I should ally now?" - stuff like that could swirl in my mind throughout the day of dull work making it more colourful and fueling my excitement of an evening play.

Now it's fire&forget. There's nothing to think about really - what's done is done, not to mention that it doesn't really matter anyway - there's no favourite civics anymore. SP is like Eskel said - collecting achievements...

You're really, really oversimplifying it. Maybe you dislike them, but give it a fair shake.
If you want to simplify things like that, then someone can look at Civics and say "Oh, it's not really important which I choose because I can change it on the fly. Oops, I want to go to war now. Oops, I want to have better relations with this Monarchy so I'll switch to a monarchy."

Hardly seems like a fair criticism, does it?

Far from being fire and forget, you are picking a path down which you're progressing. Maybe you do early expansion with Liberty and later become military power with other social policies: Now you're a military empire with lots of small cities, which is a lot different than being one that started out with Tradition, and is a military empire of a few strong cities with a huge capital city.

At least that's how I see it. The social policies you pick really give you a chance to pick what you want to be good at. It allows you to specialize. Sure you can ignore the bonuses and say it doesn't make a big difference; but you'll be a much better player if you acknowledge the bonuses and pick policies that reinforce the strategies you want to use.

 

[kolhite]

say you where running monarchy, then revolt to democratic, this should immediately make monarchy locked out since most likely the royal family must had get murdered or is hiding in another country to not be kill and the people wont welcome back another king to rule their country after a revolution that got the monarchy out.

cf. England, 1649-1660

 

[Beamed]

It wasnt intented as tirade, so pls dont take it too personal.
The point is that I think in terms of "reality simulation"(what is more evident in my earlier post), while you wrote about gaining bonuses, and more precisely - gaming experience.
We have just totally different expectations. I think they are mutually exclusive, unfortunately.
That said, you probaly are satisfied customer, while I am not.

..uh, no, we don't. I enjoy an element of realism to my games by quite a degree, and dislike grossly unrealistic things - unless they make the game that much better. Social Policies aren't grossly unrealistic - the only place they really fall apart is in the modern era, which CiV, as it is, is simply completely unequipped to handle.

 

[Eskel]

If you want to simplify things like that, then someone can look at Civics and say "Oh, it's not really important which I choose because I can change it on the fly. Oops, I want to go to war now. Oops, I want to have better relations with this Monarchy so I'll switch to a monarchy."

Hardly seems like a fair criticism, does it?

Criticism of social policy system doesn't mean automatically that someone is a satisfied with civics of Civ4. Wouldnt we anticipate the coming of new Civ game if we were, would we?
Moreover, exactly because of that it wasnt done right in Civ4, some of us - especially me - expected it will be done at last in interesting and fun-to-play way ( which isnt exclusive actually, btw).
My disappointment comes from conclusion, that it wasnt done better. In fact, it was made worse and is several back-drop in comparison to few great strategy gaming titles I know from past (with special credits to SMAC, and Europa Universalis).
I dont get your arguement; more convincing is what Beamer said: it is simple and gives (at least for some of the players) a feeling of progression in collectiong bonuses. IMO that feeling should be received through expanding empire, increasing productivity, and last but not least - research progress; but thats just my 0.02.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

I like the social policies, you pick them based on how you want to play, but your play also changes based on what you've picked.

It makes playing through the game a little different each time, rather than just picking the best government for that time.

If I'm not a powerful, militaristic empire, and I'm having tensions with Bismarck, it effects how I deal with him, or if we do go to war, how I fight the war. I like that there isn't really the option to just change what kind of empire you have so you can beat up Bismarck.

It's not like picking a social policy is a permanent choice for all of Civ 5. Each game you can make different choices. I think it's perfectly fine to have permanent choices within the course of a game.

Like I said, it helps you tailor your empire to be more unique and to play differently. Your playing style isn't entirely determined solely by your civilization's unique abilities and such.

I agree, I wish they were a little more complex, or that there were MORE social policies, and maybe we'll see some changes and mods eventually. But I really didn't care much for Civ 4's civics, they weren't really interesting to me, and I'm not sure where people are getting all this depth they saw from It was basically just choosing, as people have said, what is best for your empire at the time.

Simple because it was strategic choice with drawbacks (revolution, malus and upkeep)... Social politics have no drawbacks... so are much more simple to handle (i think the reason behind them it's that, for those with poor managing of choices with drawbacks).

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

The drawback, as others mentioned, is the opportunity cost.

When I've been doing Freedom, Piety, Commerce and Liberty, and then Montezuma attacks me in 1950, and his infantry are much stronger than my infantry, tell me that social policies don't have drawbacks.

Or similarly, expanding without Freedom, or maintaining happiness without Piety, so on, so forth.

The fact that you CAN'T change them is what makes the opportunity cost a drawback. Just because it doesn't have little red down arrows doesn't mean it doesn't have downsides.

 

[Biz_]

there was no real strategy to civics . just exceedingly obvious choices

with social policies you at least have to choose between something really crappy but effective immediately vs something good effective long in the future

and there is a reason not to spam 15 cities

 

[Eskel]

I enjoy an element of realism to my games by quite a degree, and dislike grossly unrealistic things - unless they make the game that much better. Social Policies aren't grossly unrealistic - the only place they really fall apart is in the modern era, which CiV, as it is, is simply completely unequipped to handle.

So we have a common ground. I tend to choose more sophisticated models, and because of my "sociology hobby" bias, I'd preffed system I described - that allows social progress as well as social engineering (SMAC mention again).

However, as a long term pen-and-paper RPG player and game master, I fully understand that more rules doesnt automatically mean more fun. I would even say, that after going too far is exactly opposite.
But I dont like the way it was done with social policies in Civ5 - too many aspects of play that I enjoyed were taken out at once.
Besides playing Civ, i have other hobbys, some are more complex, and some are much more simple. I dont like be forced to choose from casual range game products only.
Many-dimensional entertainment become flattened to one and only dimension, while the complexity of Civ was the main reason I appreciated this game.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

The drawback, as others mentioned, is the opportunity cost.

When I've been doing Freedom, Piety, Commerce and Liberty, and then Montezuma attacks me in 1950, and his infantry are much stronger than my infantry, tell me that social policies don't have drawbacks.

Or similarly, expanding without Freedom, or maintaining happiness without Piety, so on, so forth.

The fact that you CAN'T change them is what makes the opportunity cost a drawback. Just because it doesn't have little red down arrows doesn't mean it doesn't have downsides.

Are you joking? social politics give only benefits, if you miss something, it does not mean that you have disadvantages, only that you pick up something not good as another to undergo some type of game, but it's not a drawback at all. No maintenance cost, no maluses, no revolution... And are you crying over the fact that if you miss some upgrade you have a little problem to do something??? I can't say you nothing because i don't want infraction point anymore, but that's just very...

The drawback is "not changing", "opportunity cost"... What a joke!

 

[C~G]

but thats just my 0.02.

Not only yours. I can literally agree about everything you're saying.

Even about expecting certain kind of complexity from Civ game compared to other games, even though I can also apprecite other games that are more simple.

The civics in Civ IV weren't that good and could have been done better BUT Civ V with social policies feels just weird and also absolutely unrealistic...

 

[sketch162000]

The drawback, as others mentioned, is the opportunity cost.

When I've been doing Freedom, Piety, Commerce and Liberty, and then Montezuma attacks me in 1950, and his infantry are much stronger than my infantry, tell me that social policies don't have drawbacks.

Or similarly, expanding without Freedom, or maintaining happiness without Piety, so on, so forth.

The fact that you CAN'T change them is what makes the opportunity cost a drawback. Just because it doesn't have little red down arrows doesn't mean it doesn't have downsides.

So the way you are describing it, social policies work well as a strategy mechanic, but the problem is that for a game dubbed "Civilization" it's gamey and extremely unrealistic. In the real world, governments DO change, radically...It makes no sense for a country to stick with a form of government for 6000+ years. I doubt any have in the history of mankind. Of course, it could be argued that SPs represent more than government, but then that's all the more reason to implement a system of civics!

 

[Generals3]

While i didn't truly like the civic system i still prefer it to the current rigid SP system.
My ideal system would be something like :
"- Mix Governments and Social Policies and make them interact. I believe such a system , while hard to balance, could be awesome because it would combine the Dynamism of governments with the Rigid social policy into something where you can adapt but can't just make any choice "unpunished" . Each government will have it's own specific advantages and disadvantages but at the same time attenuate or extend the effect of certain policies . " (copy pasted from my topic )

 

[JLoZeppeli]

While i didn't truly like the civic system i still prefer it to the current rigid SP system.
My ideal system would be something like :
"- Mix Governments and Social Policies and make them interact. I believe such a system , while hard to balance, could be awesome because it would combine the Dynamism of governments with the Rigid social policy into something where you can adapt but can't just make any choice "unpunished" . Each government will have it's own specific advantages and disadvantages but at the same time attenuate or extend the effect of certain policies . " (copy pasted from my topic )

That's good, maybe social politics may unlock governament civics and make some old civic obsolete, like a tech tree... A sort of social tree...

 

[WastinTime]

The first time I experienced social engineering (aka Civics) was Alpha Centauri (SMAC.) I loved the trade-offs, decisions, and different play styles it promoted. I give SMAC credit for this genius, but it may have gotten the idea off another game, anyone?. Civ IV Civics had an OK attempt at copying this, but the options weren't as tightly connected to each other. Civ V doesn't have this feature as many have explained, SPs are just achievements.

 

[Eskel]

The first time I experienced social engineering (aka Civics) was Alpha Centauri (SMAC.) I loved the trade-offs, decisions, and different play styles it promoted. I give SMAC credit for this genius, but it may have gotten the idea off another game, anyone?. Civ IV Civics had an OK attempt at copying this, but the options weren't as tightly connected to each other. Civ V doesn't have this feature as many have explained, SPs are just achievements.

Similar feature exist in Europa Universalis. It is more complex, however, because there us more categories and levels (it is even overcomplicated for me).
Saddly, I am not sure which was first to give credit for - SMAC or Europa Univesalis.

 

[chrissifniotis]

Hi,

Been playing civ since I was a kid (Civ I), one thing that I really like was the governement civics, going from depostism to monarchy then to comunism for example was really immersive, getting to get all the communism leader against the democratic leader, when changing for example from monarchy to comunism, you feel like your civ is really going forward...

Not that I dont like the social policy, they can be a nice addition to the game, but I dont see why they had to remove the governement civic to include the social policy, no country in the world had their governement system stayed the same for 6000 years, they all had some revolutions at some point in their history where the governement system change drasticly, you cant do that with social policy because the choice you made 3000 years BC still apply in 2000 AD...

The way I would had done it, is use social policy as a cultural thing, include in there religions and other stuff that define the peoples in a civ, and keep the governement civics for the way you manage your empire, and allow to switch the governement while the social policy cannot be changed...

In my last game for example, I had about 20 cities around 1000AD, but only 6 social policy, I then realised that I would never be able to get the later policy since I'm still expanding/capturing and the next policy is always further away... it's like if my civ governement does not evolve any further, thats a game breaking for me as far as immersion goes...

what do you think about the social policy yourself? I am alone feeling this way about the governement system in CIV V?

I dont know much about modding, but would it be possible to mod the game to add a true governement feature with revolutions and change the social policy??

Firstly, I think it's worth pointing out that there is little difference between a civic from Civilization IV and a Social Policy in Civilization V, which is why I tend to call social policies civics. The civic altered the dynamic of your civilization by activating bonuses withing your empire for a fee of upkeep, by contrast the social policy does the same thing with notable exceptions; there is no upkeep, each tree does not need to be, or in cases can be, active at any one point in time, and each tree allows every social policy within it to be active at any one point in time.

Having said that, I also don't like how the social policies are set up, my only real concern is that policies require, oddly enough, culture to activate policies. That means no real sence. This Utopia project is also rubbish, is someone developing this without our knowledge? This project is very difficult to achieve and shouldn't be a victory condiction, although I'll admit that using it as a Cultural victory was a good idea for this setup. I'd gladly pay a person to mod the social policies to be researched in the tech tree just like in Civ4 and return the Cultural victory to what was.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

Are you joking? social politics give only benefits, if you miss something, it does not mean that you have disadvantages, only that you pick up something not good as another to undergo some type of game, but it's not a drawback at all. No maintenance cost, no maluses, no revolution... And are you crying over the fact that if you miss some upgrade you have a little problem to do something??? I can't say you nothing because i don't want infraction point anymore, but that's just very...

The drawback is "not changing", "opportunity cost"... What a joke!

Are you serious? I made a very reasonable post, very calm, and I felt, very well rationed out. And you accuse me of crying and want to say more?

I wasn't joking. Opportunity cost is very valid when you can't change them readily. You can't specialize in everything. If you specialize in one area, you'll be better in that area than another player, but they might be better than you in an area they specialized in.

So by choosing what you specialize in, you forgo other benefits. That's not an alien, ludicrous concept. I'm not sure why Social Policies should have to have maintenance costs, unhappiness, or deliberate, spelled out downsides.

Think of it like this. You 'leveled up' or whatever, and each time you 'level up' you put a point into Strength. Someone else has been putting some points in Strength, and some points into Wisdom. They're not going to be as strong as you, but they're going to have better wisdom. You're stronger, but you have much lower wisdom. That's a drawback.

I'm not sure what part of this is ridiculous, or offensive, or makes you angry. If you really want to explain to me without fear of an infraction, you're free to PM me.

So the way you are describing it, social policies work well as a strategy mechanic, but the problem is that for a game dubbed "Civilization" it's gamey and extremely unrealistic. In the real world, governments DO change, radically...It makes no sense for a country to stick with a form of government for 6000+ years. I doubt any have in the history of mankind. Of course, it could be argued that SPs represent more than government, but then that's all the more reason to implement a system of civics!

Civilization has always been gamey. I'm not sure what magical version of Civilization you guys have been playing where you were immersed in richly detailed culture and realistic simulation of the progress of civilization. Civilization (the concept, not the game) is basically one of the most complex concepts in the entirety of the human race. The fact that Civilization (the game) is a game at all means it's almost entirely abstracted and 'gamey.' It isn't close to 'accurate' or 'realistic'. The entire thing is abstract and far removed from the reality. Every single aspect. All of it.

Again. You're assuming that Social Policies are 'government.' And I've already explained, Social Policies aren't meant to be 'government.' Yes governments can change radically. But almost never because the government just decides "we want to be different now." Government changes are largely the result of social upheaval or and unrest. If you want to talk about realism, maybe you should be forced into different civics if you've been in a war too long and have your units in the enemy territory for too many turns. Or if you've been running at low income for too long, maybe you should have a civic forced on you randomly. And you shouldn't be able to choose your civic.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be civics, fine if there are, but the Social Policy system is pretty great, and if I had to choose between civics and SPs, I would prefer SPs hands down.

The realism and suspension of disbelief argument is often really silly, but using it in defense of civics is just hilarious. I'm not some uneducated idiot. I have a love of history, and politics, and sociology too. I do theater. I write for a large newspaper. So I sort of resent the insinuation that I'm too 'gamey' to really 'understand' civics.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

Specializing is equivalent to a better bonus, not a choice with drawbacks, you don't lose anything chosing a better path, as well choosing a worse path... in the first case you gain more, the best bonus for your play, in the second you gain less, bonus as well but not specialized for your game... I don't see the similarity to te choice of civics...

When i choice Pacifism I know very well that my troops will cost me a lot... (not adding the revolution and the possible cost of the civic itself)... I gain something, but i lose something as well... And it can affect my game VERY badly....

PS speaking of levelling up is a little odd to me it remembers a build from some mmorpg....