Why didn't like you civ5?

[vincentz]

Jon Shafer posted an article

Wow!. just wow!
I didnt read it all, but what I did read seemed like one big apology for the design flaws of Civ5.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

He seems to be referring specifically to the visual interface.

I disagree with the visual appeal but don't care about that much. I want fewer inputs to accomplish the same thing, not MORE inputs. That's an objective facet of UI and it's inexcusable to not have at least some method of accomplishing simple tasks in a minimal #inputs. It's not like this was some secret to him or anyone else there. It's basic game design. Heck, it's basic UI design in general.

Edit: Reading the article, it is indeed the visuals he describes, but that isn't and never was my complaint about UI (I had making tons of unnecessary inputs and having to wait needlessly between said inputs on my own turn), so we're on different pages with that.

This will allow us to use far more processing power than we could otherwise, while keeping end turn lengths short to boot.

!!! I'll believe it when I see it! Still, it's nice to see it mentioned.

This meant they floated from one "strategy" to another without any real cohesion behind those decisions. This approach is nice in theory, but if you want a strong AI there are times when you need to force it to behave in very specific manner.

This means a much simpler AI system, which in turn will result in a much stronger opponent.

Reminds me of my idea for canned but difficult-to-discern AI scripts I talked about in another thread about improving AI, except from someone who is actually potentially capable of it.

Jon Shafer is doing a pretty good job in this article of sounding like he can plausibly make something good. That's happened before without results, and the format he's making this game under in terms of funding source + release strategy + etc doesn't have a lot of success stories yet, but he's said enough for me to keep my eye on his game and that means a lot, considering my opinion of how civ V ran.

 

[mynystry]

Speaking of which, what about combat in ATG? Well, for one thing the game will allow for stacks of units!

The main reason for this is one of my high-level goals for the game. As I touched upon earlier, ATG is designed to be a strategy title which takes place primarily at the strategic level, rather than the tactical.

I find this very cynical: He defends his decision of implementing the 1upt in Civ5 (A classic strategy game) and then say that he is using stacking in ATG because he wants a strategic and not a tactical game... HEY DUDE, CIVILIZATION I-IV were the epitome of Strategy games at their respective times. Why in hell did you wanted to change Civ to a Tactical game then? I think he really messed up that one.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I find this very cynical: He defends his decision of implementing the 1upt in Civ5 (A classic strategy game) and then say that he is using stacking in ATG because he wants a strategic and not a tactical game... HEY DUDE, CIVILIZATION I-IV were the epitome of Strategy games at their respective times. Why in hell did you wanted to change Civ to a Tactical game then? I think he really messed up that one.

It was a mistake, like many of the other mistakes he described .

But you're wrong. Civ I and II were not at the epitome of their strategy times. Back then, SSG was still making elite-class TBS Warlords games and we had HOMM II and III. Civ IV is the only TBS that thoroughly trounced all other TBS in its era. That's due in part to its design depth and in part to the complete disappearance of the TBS warlords series/disbanding of SSG and HOMM going south, with nothing to replace them.

For example, civ II's UI was pathetic compared to warlords II and it had barely if any more strategic depth (gogo ICS! Hope you like moving units 1 at at time!).

 

[gps]

I didnt read it all, but what I did read seemed like one big apology for the design flaws of Civ5.

Well, not exactly, should have read the whole article:

"Civ 5's gameplay had several rough edges at release, but those were all due to decisions I made with the design. My friends over at Firaxis have done an excellent job improving the gameplay following my departure, and I can't wait to see what they do next!"

Interesting read nevertheless, remarkable to see even the lead designer admit some of the most obvious flaws in the game. My respect!
Should give the hardcore fanboy apologist fraction something to brood over. Let's just hope the guys at Firaxis take notice...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I do believe their decision on the graphics was a bad one, perhaps among their worst. When you think about it from a design perspective, while graphical quality is important, it is a serious detriment when you literally can't support your intended design as a result. If their engine couldn't keep up with 4x the number of hexes on the map, they needed a different engine. That decision was made very early in the development process obviously (likely years before even most beta testers knew the game existed at all), and it **** near screwed the project from "go".

When you run aground of that kind of technical limitation your only choices are to try to completely change the game's design concept or to use a different engine. They...sort of...attempted the former. The game paid a terrible price for that...so much that now he's planning to go back to 2d models! That's a very heavy emphasis on gameplay and will probably help the game's budget alot too, but we'll see how it plays. Can he recapture the turn-to-turn depth of choice that made civ great AND come forth with a solid, working UI? I'm not holding my breath, but at least he's attempting it and if he succeeds, I'm buying!

On a side note, I am not a technical expert in programming obviously, so I have a question: why is it that *non-animated* 3d models take up so much processing power that the turn times become enormous? What kinds of calculations are going into that? It seems a bit odd.

 

[damerell]

On a side note, I am not a technical expert in programming obviously, so I have a question: why is it that *non-animated* 3d models take up so much processing power that the turn times become enormous?

They get redrawn every frame; it basically doesn't matter if they are animated (providing that the animation doesn't want fancy particle effects, etc) or not.

 

[Camikaze]

@TMIT - yeah, you and Shafer definitely seem to be on a different page with regards to the UI. I found it interesting that for him the UI was almost all about the visuals, from what he was saying, which would go a long way to explaining the presence of the issues with the UI that you identify.

Let's just hope the guys at Firaxis take notice...

Given a lot of (or all) the problems Shafer identified have been addressed at least to some extent, I would say they are well beyond the stage of taking notice. Firaxis obviously isn't going to advertise the problems of their games, but this should pretty emphatically show that they are quite capable of identifying them, even if they don't always have the resources to fully rectify certain issues. It's not like they or their testers exist in a vacuum, oblivious to the flaws that are present (in fact, you'd probably say that many Firaxians justify their employment on the basis of finding problems to rectify). It's that in all likelihood their subjective enjoyment of the game isn't as negatively impacted on by said problems as it is for others.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

They get redrawn every frame; it basically doesn't matter if they are animated (providing that the animation doesn't want fancy particle effects, etc) or not.

Nice and concise, makes sense. Thanks.

(in fact, you'd probably say that many Firaxians justify their employment on the basis of finding problems to rectify)

This has led to...some very questionable patch choices. I think they're a little too trigger happy on "anti-good player tactics" and a little too lax on "add hotkeys" or "this particular thing is flagrantly imbalanced"

A few good examples from civ IV:

- Nerf redcoats and cossacks, did not nerf quecha, prats, war chariots, or immortals (all of which were always better on average). Did not buff later UU which are surprisingly irrelevant even if available in their era at parity!
- Increase galley spawn rate by 4x, did not address how players beat them with work boats and land units
- Nerf "spread culture" mission, then restore it...but never tweak nigh-useless missions

- Allowed the continued existence of 8 str elephants. This one is really grating. There are 0 other resource-based units that allow a composition winning stack D % against all units an era ahead with the support of 1 other unit that's also an era behind. Due to weak trebs, a full-on medieval stack of maces, knights, trebs, pikes, and crossbows can not effectively break axe/cata/phant. Axes kill pikes and noobiphants stomp all else. Basically we have a rare resources that allows completely unmatched era + 1 future era dominance. That is excessively out of place given how the rest of the game is set up. The next closest unit in this regard is infantry, but infantry does not dominate modern era units so soundly.

Civ V carried on the tradition, over-nerfing mounted (not surprising, mounted was ridiculous in vanilla release), over-nerfing ICS (despite what Jon Shafer says, ICS was super viable on vanilla release and the designers only took that away after a few patches), and once again not touching more than a few other questionable things.

When you have core gameplay issues, these little esoteric tweaks like we saw all the time in civ IV don't make sense and gave a feeling of firaxis being out of touch. I do admit their V patch history is actually better, so they're heading in the right direction in that regard.

 

[gps]

(in fact, you'd probably say that many Firaxians justify their employment on the basis of finding problems to rectify)

Fair enough, should have taken their job a bit more seriously then before releasing Civ V...

 

[alex15]

Im playing since Civ1 and yes i absolutly hate Civ5 and here is why

1) In my opnion Civ4 have better looking graphics (especially with graphic terrain mod like Blue Marlbe)

2) Civ4 got great combat system - i.e big unit stacks, siege,bombarding, corratel demage, evry unit got his counter unit (i.e anti tank for killing tanks, spearman for killing chariots)

3) In civ5 u have to wait too much for AI making turn, unlike Civ4 because in Civ4 even if you playing Huge map with 18 civilizations "end turns" is nearly instant if you want make 100turns fast u can simply spam enter or spacebar.

4) Civ4 have great UI and automization i.e people not using automated workers and automated citys production in multiplayer and difficultys like emperor and immortal but if you are Role playing at Noble u can easy make all your workers/citys automated and change production any time u want if you think AI doing wrong

i.e if you want u can reach modern era in less 1 hour of gameplay, and if you dont u can play till modern era for more 48 hours

Civ4 gameplay is totally customisable you role play conqueror, you can role play builders, you can roleplay hug empire with hundreds of citys etc

 

[mynystry]

It was a mistake, like many of the other mistakes he described .

But you're wrong. Civ I and II were not at the epitome of their strategy times. Back then, SSG was still making elite-class TBS Warlords games and we had HOMM II and III. Civ IV is the only TBS that thoroughly trounced all other TBS in its era. That's due in part to its design depth and in part to the complete disappearance of the TBS warlords series/disbanding of SSG and HOMM going south, with nothing to replace them.

For example, civ II's UI was pathetic compared to warlords II and it had barely if any more strategic depth (gogo ICS! Hope you like moving units 1 at at time!).

Matter of taste, I always loved Civ. Since Civ1 it was lots of fun and countless hours of gaming, same with Civ2. Of course if you look at them from today's perspective they were very primitive, but both games were a big success, and they won many awards and secured places in all sort of "best of" lists.

I think Civ3 and Civ4 are so excellent that they still keep big gaming communities active, even after many years they came out.

For me Civ5 is the first big let down coming from the Civilization Franchise.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Matter of taste, I always loved Civ. Since Civ1 it was lots of fun and countless hours of gaming, same with Civ2. Of course if you look at them from today's perspective they were very primitive, but both games were a big success, and they won many awards and secured places in all sort of "best of" lists.

A lot of these "awards" are superficial bullcrap just like the review ratings given by joke publications like game informer. That was even more true in the 90's when name recognition was an even greater factor than now (now we can scout games before buying them much more easily, and give opinions of them more easily).

Warlords 2 had stacking, arguably superior pathing to civ FOUR (but certainly miles ahead of civ 2), ran at a good speed, had working hotkeys for almost all basic tasks, and comparable turn-to-turn choice counts. It was a different game in that it's a pure war game within the 4x genre, but it was mechanically better in every way and had more depth.

Pre-civ IV can't compete with the HOMM II-III depth either, though that's less fair because IIRC HOMM iterations were released a bit later than civ iterations, timewise (except V and VI which came earlier). Civ IV has more depth, but is almost its own animal as despite all of its flaws the design itself is lightning in a bottle.

Basically if you wanted to play civ in the time of 1-2 then you had to move dozens of units individually every turn, while there already existed games that ran more seamlessly and had more strategic depth.

The nostalgia glasses are very strong on civ II. It is not civ IV, and it isn't even close to civ IV. To claim otherwise undersells just what the IV dev team did for this franchise. You had roads, irrigations, and mines in civ 2! The optimized approach to a game practically never varied (ICS), and the tactical element of war was quite minimal compared to games designed around war (but that still had some econ).

Bad as V is, without time adjustments it's easily the 2nd deepest game in the series and even with its pathetic UI it's still either 2nd or 3rd, even if it's 5th in engine vs spec quality.

 

[mynystry]

The nostalgia glasses are very strong on civ II. It is not civ IV, and it isn't even close to civ IV. To claim otherwise undersells just what the IV dev team did for this franchise.

I agree with you that Civ4 is by far the best one. That's why I play Civ4.

I have not played Civ2 or 3 since ages, though I've played little Civ1 not long ago out of curiosity to remember how it was, and of course I couldn't play long because feeling the urge to switch to Civ4. But I remember 20 years ago it really amazed me, I spent countless hours moving units as you say, and in that time I found it to be fun. (Actually I still quiet enjoy micromanaging units and cities in Civ4).

I think that if I had to choose today between having Civ5 or Civ3 installed in my computer, I would probably go for Civ3. As I said, for me 1upt really makes Civ5 unplayable. I tried to enjoy it, but I got bored too fast, and that never happened to me before while playing any other Civ game.

Fortunately there are games that "stand the test of time". I think Civ4 is definitely one of those, if it is (and I really hope it is not) the last one worthy in the Civ franchise, that for me may become timeless, as I consider board games like Chess or Risk.

 

[alex15]

A lot of these "awards" are superficial bullcrap just like the review ratings given by joke publications like game informer. That was even more true in the 90's when name recognition was an even greater factor than now (now we can scout games before buying them much more easily, and give opinions of them more easily).

Warlords 2 had stacking, arguably superior pathing to civ FOUR (but certainly miles ahead of civ 2), ran at a good speed, had working hotkeys for almost all basic tasks, and comparable turn-to-turn choice counts. It was a different game in that it's a pure war game within the 4x genre, but it was mechanically better in every way and had more depth.

Pre-civ IV can't compete with the HOMM II-III depth either, though that's less fair because IIRC HOMM iterations were released a bit later than civ iterations, timewise (except V and VI which came earlier). Civ IV has more depth, but is almost its own animal as despite all of its flaws the design itself is lightning in a bottle.

Basically if you wanted to play civ in the time of 1-2 then you had to move dozens of units individually every turn, while there already existed games that ran more seamlessly and had more strategic depth.

The nostalgia glasses are very strong on civ II. It is not civ IV, and it isn't even close to civ IV. To claim otherwise undersells just what the IV dev team did for this franchise. You had roads, irrigations, and mines in civ 2! The optimized approach to a game practically never varied (ICS), and the tactical element of war was quite minimal compared to games designed around war (but that still had some econ).

Bad as V is, without time adjustments it's easily the 2nd deepest game in the series and even with its pathetic UI it's still either 2nd or 3rd, even if it's 5th in engine vs spec quality.

Homm have nice fantasy graphics but i playing Homm since homm1 and civ since civ1 and i personally think that Civ series is alot better then Homm.

Also what i like about Civ series that evryone can play game they want Civ1,Civ2,Civ3,Civ4 any day any time unlike some games like World of Warcraft for example cas in World of Warcraft there is no alternative Blizzard servers with old expansiosn and Vanilla World of Warcraft from 2004 , World of Warcraft players always forced to play newest expansion.

i.e many people prefer TBC and Vanilla over new expansions but they have no chose unless quiting WOW.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Homm have nice fantasy graphics but i playing Homm since homm1 and civ since civ1 and i personally think that Civ series is alot better then Homm.

I'm specifically comparing HOMM II and HOMM III to civ II and civ III. Because HOMM fell off after 3 instead of after 4, and it has released some subpar titles since (though V isn't bad), it's not really fair to compare anymore. HOMM III was a golden age; a game ahead of its time in the strongest gaming era for TBS we've seen.

I don't think it's worth comparing any main-line civ games to an MMO; the genres are so different and so is the gameplay. At least other TBS have some valid reference points. WoW? I'm not sure that has any lol. At least Wc3 and SC 1/2 are "strategy" games, though once again real-time makes it hard to compare them to civ.

A big reason for the spike in civ popularity is the decline of truly good TBS games to compete, along with how deep civ IV is. If a game with similar depth and a good UI/engine came out concurrently with civ IV (tall order) civ IV would have been left in the dust, completely annihilated during its buggy vanilla release. However, there just wasn't any competition and there were a lot of good ideas.

I am hoping for some good competition, or else we'll probably keep getting civ V's and that sucks.

 

[AdamCrock]

I do not know why the strategy genre is collapsing over the years. (People prefer dumbed down first person shooters I guess) I have noticed a serious dumb down in those game genre and there is no titles to compare Civ to anything really (Civ 4 is the one to play and rule them all), there are simply no better than Civ games. I would give a kingdom (and my horse, my sword and a bow down) for a decent Master of Magic/Orion kind of game so I can compare it to recent Civ.... ehhhhh.....

 

[GKey]

Speaking of taste, I always liked HoMM2 more then HoMM3. I actually liked HoMM5 with it rebuilt skills/abilities system, still don't have same feelings like these with HoMM2. Partially due to becoming older, I guess.

But of Civ1 and Civ2 - these were clearly brilliant for their time. If I understand correctly, you liked Warlords more at the same time, that would be your personal preference (even with all these better UI, been noted by you like bazillion times already).

 

[Cristoval]

1upt was my biggest gripe, that and the lack of concern for improving empire building mechanics, such as diplomacy and trade.

I'm also happy to know the future of 1upt is looking grim and uncertain in this series

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Speaking of taste, I always liked HoMM2 more then HoMM3. I actually liked HoMM5 with it rebuilt skills/abilities system, still don't have same feelings like these with HoMM2. Partially due to becoming older, I guess.

But of Civ1 and Civ2 - these were clearly brilliant for their time. If I understand correctly, you liked Warlords more at the same time, that would be your personal preference (even with all these better UI, been noted by you like bazillion times already).

I do tend to lean on UI and how the game runs/handles, because it gets very hard to be objective after those things. I still believe warlords II and III are among the most underrated strategy games ever, if only in part because they're just not well-known at all.

Graphics? Music? Design? Goal-focus? These things, you can't really quantify how they add value to a playing experience and compare them.

So I fall back on UI/Mechanics, where WLII won handily. However, the other "objective" element was your turn to turn choices. Because of the heavy tactical element in WL series, most of your choices were there while in civ they were more heavily on economy even back in civ II. What I believe separates the two, however, is how frequently a situation dictates a choice as opposed to the player simply making one from memory. For example, there are a ton of ways to approach an opening in civ IV and on higher levels sometimes being wrong is an instant loss. In civ II, the optimized approach took far less consideration, since the game was markedly simpler.

Built around the tactical element with some econ, Warlords II frequently forced some careful choices. I do not believe civ II was able to match that with its economy model of the time, and it was very far behind in tactics. The gameplay 101 stuff really throws salt on that comparison though; a game that is markedly better from a mechanical standpoint can make up a lot of distance! We're talking about pretty seamless controls that only feel a little dated today (and better enemy-pathing interruption than civ IV) versus a game that wouldn't even let you move units as a big stack...despite allowing you to build a TON of units. Design elements like that are crucial; some of the biggest issues with old games are their prohibitive controls. Controls aren't absolutely everything, but they are extremely important and can easily help, hinder, or in the most extreme cases even destroy a game.