Why put out an unfinished game?

[Vordeo]

Ironic thing is, by releasing a franchise product early, they destroy the brand and actually make their long term situation way worse.

We've seen plenty of strategy houses blown away recently.....

That's assuming people remember this after it's patched and expansions are released.

And assuming that the number of new fans this picks up < the number of fans so turned off they never buy Civ again.

 

[stavka]

Vordeo: absolutely right. This is a key moment for Firaxis.

After the fiasco of Empire Total War, Creative Assembly effectively abandoned milking that release and went on to Shogun II

Which I fully expect to be awesome;

Its a bit like HOMM5 killed HOMM4, but HOMM4 totally sucked compared to HOMM3

Seriously, people need to understand the gaming franschise release cycle way better.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I agree with you that the players should know the rules. But from the point of view of a novice, they don't care if "new city costs 2 happiness" or "new city costs 1 happiness + 2 gold*(1 + 0.05*(Ncities)**1.5) or whatever. It isn't a simple formula that matters.

By contrast, making people build defenders for cities is more complicated than having cities defend themselves.

A lot of the things in Civ 5 look as if they created problems by insisting on simple rules (each city costs 2 happy, each pop costs 1, each luxury is worth 5...) instead of setting up rules that work well.

I'm wondering how much people know about the V mechanics that leads to the conclusion that it's a simplified game. Pretty much every fundamental tradeoff from previous games exists in civ V. Happiness is now global, sure, but tech slider/city maintenance is now NOT global. Once again, pick your poison there, but it's hard to argue that one or the other model is more convincing. Just as diverting money into research makes some sense (although historically HUGE % of government money funneled into research towards anything except military isn't super common), having luxuries and buildings in other cities contributing to global happiness somewhat makes some sense (take football stadiums in the USA; they generate a lot more luxury output than for just their individual cities. Well-known theaters similarly add a cultural output that ultimately affects more than their direct location). Is that a reach? Yes, just like every other global mechanic that gets stuffed in to make gameplay reasonable.

Personally I find the model of gold/research in V to be a better implementation than a forced/fixed slider (with workaround existing in either case). I'm not certain you can consider social policies LESS complicated than civics, especially due to their permanent and scaling nature. Yes, you lose on the switching decision strategy, but you have to actually plan them against alternatives permanently based on an empire-wide plan, something that wasn't true in previous games.

1upt is undeniably more complex than stacks.

Probably the single biggest reason V seems dumbed down is that the AI can't handle the rules...so it's easier to win. I think it's time the community gets more active in attempting optimizations in V, similar to HoF, nobles/monarch/immortal club, and succession games. I bet you will find HUGE differences in optimized play vs standard play. If the AI can be calibrated to be challenging that will be very helpful, but do note that in HoF, XOTM, SGOTM, etc. the REAL opponent was other teams/players, because the competitive ones won regularly and it was a question of when.

Its a bit like HOMM5 killed HOMM4, but HOMM4 totally sucked compared to HOMM3

Post-patch HOMM5 was pretty good. 3 was one of the best TBS ever released however, so it's hard for 5 to beat it.

 

[kaltorak]

I bet you will find HUGE differences in optimized play vs standard play.

Should I move 1N to settle near the 5 bananas or just stay here with 0 resources? O wait, it doens't matter

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Should I move 1N to settle near the 5 bananas or just stay here with 0 resources? O wait, it doens't matter

Hah. You'll see. When the other team finishes 10 turns sooner, keep telling us it doesn't matter.

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

Hah. You'll see. When the other team finishes 10 turns sooner, keep telling us it doesn't matter.

Thats because the other team managed to find a maritime CS sooner and not because they settled on the bananas

Luck is a deal breaker in Civ5. And thats my main complaint. (Won't expand on that so I don't derail from OP line of thinking).

 

[kaltorak]

plantation: +1 food
farm: +1 food and later +2 food


who was the genious designer, really

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Thats because the other team managed to find a maritime CS sooner and not because they settled on the bananas

Luck is a deal breaker in Civ5. And thats my main complaint. (Won't expand on that so I don't derail from OP line of thinking).

Oh my

I don't even know where to start. Luck has been an overwhelming factor since at LEAST civ IV in this series (and probably the whole time to a lesser extent), and lots of ignants in the competitions threads favored adding MORE of it (scared of the competition I guess) by leaving things like huts/events in.

Luck is LESS of a factor in V than IV, especially at high levels, if only because it's easier to win the game and the tech trade mechanic isn't as heavily spawn-luck based.

 

[Vellis]

The real problem with Civ V is the AI. There are a few design issues, but I would almost argue that those issues are similar the the AI manipulating required to beat Deity in Civ IV. I don't get the people who say that just because they exist the game is fundamentally broken. If the AI could wage a halfway decent war I would argue that beating Deity would be almost impossible. Look at these screenshots from the RB3 Deity playthrough

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9817560&postcount=172

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9817948&postcount=176

Siam has an army of 18 and 22 strength units, but can't even manage to conquer an undefended Genoa (which would cut off their Maritime food completely). They're mainly using Knights for defense, Siam's elephants should be completely crushing them. Montezuma has researched Steel, but has thousands of gold sitting in the bank with un-upgraded Jaguars running around. Not to mention the fact that he has like 20 Spearmen without researching/upgrading them to Pikes.

I would pose this question. If you were in control of either army in those screenshots, would you have any trouble whatsoever killing the 6 or so knights and handful of catapults defending their lands?

The supposed fundamental problems in the game are all that allow them to keep up with the AI's. When the OP aspects of the game are balanced and the AI is marginally improved beating Diety is going to become a whole other beast. Yeah, the design of the game has its flaws, but the AI is the only fundamental problem with the game.

 

[ohioastronomy]

One unit per tile is a terrible idea with numerous bad consequences. Global happiness - with flat per civ and per city bonuses and costs - is a bad idea. Simple or complex, bad is bad.

It is in principle possible that the Civ 5 people will crack an AI design problem that no one else has ever done and get the clunky, difficult to path, and improperly scaled combat model to work well. I wouldn't bet on it.

My point, apparently entirely missed, is that the game would have benefited one devil of a lot by worrying less about inflexible and simple rules. The happiness model could have been designed to treat, say, population in large cities different from that in small ones; to play differently on different maps; and in general it could have been focused on good game flow and interesting choices. Instead, an inexperienced designer made an arbitrary decision and stuck by it.

The lack of stacking is another example: the problems are so obvious that it is still stunning to me that they didn't modify or scrap it. (No, I don't care if someone comes back with a litany of problems with the Civ 4 model. Bad in the past doesn't excuse bad now. Other, not-bad ideas would be preferred.) It's the source of the slow play (pathing is tough because units get blocked); it's micromanagement intensive (because multiple pieces are tough to get from A to B, and the details matter in war) and far too tough to do well with an AI. It's missing the most basic ingredients of decent tactical wargames (such as opportunity fire) that have been used for decades in computer and board games; add in the wrong scale and things just get worse.

You can tweak a lot of other things, but these central flaws, and the related issues they create in diplomacy, make it hard for me to see how you can fix things with mods etc.

 

[r_rolo1]

@TMIT

Hey, people got pissed if we didn't added huts

Well, I surely can't say that luck is or not more relevant in IV or V without equal acess to the code, but the ruins output ( I have a rifle! Cower in fear, your stick carrying fools ) and the fact that barbs can shoot out units as advanced as the more advanced civ around are definitely luck enhacers ( not mentioning that some UA really base on barbs, so taking them out of the game will probably unbalance it more than help in the balance ).

This obviously assumes that eventually we will have a AI that actually plays, to win or not.

 

[Kruelgor]

Why would 2K and Firaxis put out a game with all of the bugs and problems the game has? How could they not notice? Granted the patch did fix a majority of the bugs, but there are still problems ( Like multi-player for example ).

I'll tell you exactly why. http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:TTWO

Every quarter, all publicly traded companies are required to file accounting and earnings reports.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/946581/000104746910007879/a2200063z10-q.htm

These earnings reports heavily affect the stock trading price and so I assume they wanted to hurry up and start generating some revenue from Civ5 to reflect on these reports.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@TMIT

Hey, people got pissed if we didn't added huts

Well, I surely can't say that luck is or not more relevant in IV or V without equal acess to the code, but the ruins output ( I have a rifle! Cower in fear, your stick carrying fools ) and the fact that barbs can shoot out units as advanced as the more advanced civ around are definitely luck enhacers ( not mentioning that some UA really base on barbs, so taking them out of the game will probably unbalance it more than help in the balance ).

This obviously assumes that eventually we will have a AI that actually plays, to win or not.

In SP, luck affects the outcome less only because the AI is so bad you can overcome just about anything.

In MP I'd be very afraid of BCs rifles. Ruins are superhuts in their current form.

 

[lschnarch]

A lot of the things in Civ 5 look as if they created problems by insisting on simple rules (each city costs 2 happy, each pop costs 1, each luxury is worth 5...) instead of setting up rules that work well.

Yet, the cost calculation of units is still a mystery, isn't it?
Or have some math geniuses already cracked the formula?

1upt is undeniably more complex than stacks.

More complicated, yes.
More complex? Debatable. After all, it is just to move each single unit to a place where it delivers the best value. Quite simple, if you ask me.

 

[Roxlimn]

lschnarch:

If you think 1UPT is simple, feel free to write a concept-level algorithm that will allow the AI to perform better than it already does. It's not hard to do for stacks, since the army will only ever occupy one tile, and you only have to program the AI to path to tiles with the best defensive value.

Now, do the same for 1UPT.

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

Oh my

I don't even know where to start. Luck has been an overwhelming factor since at LEAST civ IV in this series (and probably the whole time to a lesser extent), and lots of ignants in the competitions threads favored adding MORE of it (scared of the competition I guess) by leaving things like huts/events in.

Luck is LESS of a factor in V than IV, especially at high levels, if only because it's easier to win the game and the tech trade mechanic isn't as heavily spawn-luck based.

In Civ5, if you find a maritime CS early on you throw micromanagement and half the game features outside the window. Now thats a design flaw.(no matter what level you play).

nough said.

 

[Roxlimn]

In Civ5, if you find a maritime CS early on you throw micromanagement and half the game features outside the window. Now thats a design flaw.(no matter what level you play).

nough said.

Not really. That seems to be more of a balance flaw than a basic design flaw. Shall I elaborate on the difference?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In Civ5, if you find a maritime CS early on you throw micromanagement and half the game features outside the window. Now thats a design flaw.(no matter what level you play).

nough said.

You're really struggling with basic thought processes here.

In a competition from same-start, maritime is going to be almost irrelevant to who wins - it's so strong that everyone will buy it out, meaning the winners would be decided by something else.

Yes, maritime is imbalanced, but that doesn't mean you get to use garbage/pretend arguments.

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

You're really struggling with basic thought processes here.

In a competition from same-start, maritime is going to be almost irrelevant to who wins - it's so strong that everyone will buy it out, meaning the winners would be decided by something else.

Yes, maritime is imbalanced, but that doesn't mean you get to use garbage/pretend arguments.

You struggle with keeping words within their context. CS maritimes is a huge factor in game design (Multiplayer or not). It affects:
Food bonus, ICS, City management, city placement, Social policies and lods of other game features. And finding it IS based on luck.

Not really. That seems to be more of a balance flaw than a basic design flaw. Shall I elaborate on the difference?

Balance flaw that heavily affects Game design becomes a design flow even when it can be easily fixed by a "balancing" mod on food output.

 

[Roxlimn]

Balance flaw that heavily affects Game design becomes a design flow even when it can be easily fixed by a "balancing" mod on food output.

A balance problem is a balance problem and a design problem is a design problem. It doesn't get more simple than that. The balance problem does not affect the game's design, and even if it did, the problem remain at the point where it affected the design - not the balance problem itself.

Shall we elaborate further?