Civilization 5 Announced

[Jaffa]

And most importantly, despite someone arguing that Civ5 is more of "sim" game than a strategy game, I feel absolutely no immersion. The AI never feels unique to me, there's no personality, its just the same game playing out over and over again. I never felt that way in Civ4.

Here is why I find Civ5 to be more immersive than Civ4.

1. Hexes. Hex-based movement is more natural.

2. 1UPT. This is huge. In Civ4 there were too many units, they were all piled into stacks, and all anonymous. In Civ5 I can have the trebuchet that became a cannon and then an artillery in the nick of time to defend my capital from the Roman mech infantry.

3. Road network instead of road spam.

4. City-states. For all their flawed execution, they are a great idea and add more life to the Civ-world.

5. Organic city growth instead of fat cross.

6. No research slider. Adjusting the balance of commerce vs research vs production by moving citizens around feels much more "part of the world".

7. Unique leader abilities instead of pick-and-choose from a bunch of traits.

I do agree that the Civ series are supposed to be strategy games, and however much I might enjoy Civ5 as a sim-game, doesn't redeem it's failings as a strategy game. But even if Civ5 never gets patched or expansioned into a good strategy game, at least I am getting my money's worth from it.

[Speaker]

Here is why I find Civ5 to be more immersive than Civ4.

1. Hexes. Hex-based movement is more natural.

2. 1UPT. This is huge. In Civ4 there were too many units, they were all piled into stacks, and all anonymous. In Civ5 I can have the trebuchet that became a cannon and then an artillery in the nick of time to defend my capital from the Roman mech infantry.

3. Road network instead of road spam.

4. City-states. For all their flawed execution, they are a great idea and add more life to the Civ-world.

5. Organic city growth instead of fat cross.

6. No research slider. Adjusting the balance of commerce vs research vs production by moving citizens around feels much more "part of the world".

7. Unique leader abilities instead of pick-and-choose from a bunch of traits.

I do agree that the Civ series are supposed to be strategy games, and however much I might enjoy Civ5 as a sim-game, doesn't redeem it's failings as a strategy game. But even if Civ5 never gets patched or expansioned into a good strategy game, at least I am getting my money's worth from it.

I guess I just disagree with you on every single point.

1) Hexes - Squares seem perfectly natural to me, and offer more movement options than Hexes

2) 1upt - I think this limits strategy. With no limit to the number of units per tile, you have to decide not only which tile to occupy, but how many units to use, what combination, which promotions. Again, more strategy is required, not less. 1upt is limiting. Your point about units promoting is an non-starter, since you can name and promote units in Civ4 as well. I honestly believe that anyone who complains about stacked combat did not truly understand the high-level tactical movement that was possible (and common in multiplayer) in Civ4. See my posts in Sullla and my PB2 thread during the 5v1 invasion for more info.

3) Road network instead of road spam - Again limits options and adds tedious micromangement in unit movement. Possibly the worst change in Civ5, in my opinion.

4) City States - totally broken and uninteresting. They are basically the "random events" from Civ4, without the interesting quests. The fact that you can just buy them off makes them a complete joke.

5) Organic city growth - A joke considering the AI doesn't correctly prioritize which tiles to obtain next. You end up forced to buy the tiles you want anyways.

6) Research Sliders - I wish they had been added on a city-by-city basis, and allowed you to fine tune in smaller intervals than 10%. This would have allowed more strategic options.

7) Unique leader abilities - Horribly unbalanced.

Throw in the fact that the AI is totally unable to make use of most of the game's systems, and that multiplayer has been basically made unplayable by removing pings, signs, stacking workers, combat logs, and much of the rest of the UI has been made less user-friendly, and overall it's just a bad game.

Just my take on things.

[Tatan]

1) Hexes - Squares seem perfectly natural to me, and offer more movement options than Hexes.

Here, I feel compelled to disagree. I feel just the opposite about squares; to me, they feel horribly unnatural and really take away from the immersion of the game. Doesn't stop me from enjoying the game, of course, but the various issues related to diagonals [uneven culture, faster movement on zig-zagging diagonals, the fact that two water tiles can border each other on a diagonal but not be connected, the fact that diagonal mountains can be crossed over] have always bugged me. And, really, 8 movement options being reduced to 6 doesn't seem that big a deal to me.

I guess this is just a matter of personal preference.

[Ayu]

I suppose what partially saves Civ5 is that since Civ games take a lot of time, most players will only play few single-player games (and at low difficulty and not very aggressively), and thus the bad game balance might not have such a great impact on them.
That's also most likely why they got decent reviews.

On the other hand, I guess the most dedicated players are also those most likely to buy expansions or Civ6, so I think they are going to see a significant drop in the sales of them.

Unless of course they manage to fix the game and advertise that.
This seems unlikely however considering that there seem to no comments at all from Firaxis on why they released such a bad game, and what they plan to do next, and Jon Shafer still seems to be in the lead designer role.

The odd thing is they managed to create an awesome game with Civ4, involving the community before release and getting the majority of things right: I'm not sure why didn't just do the same with Civ5. They just seemed to throw away all their previous know-how for no good reason.

Actually, I think it's much more likely that Elemental will turn into a good game: unlike Firaxis, the Stardock CEO apologized, committed to redesigning the game, and stepped down as the game lead designer, hiring the FFH2 designer to replace him.

At any rate, Civ4 is still a great game, and is actively developed by the community with the BUG project for UI, Better BTS AI/Bull AI for AI, and all the gameplay mods, so the solution is to simply forget about the Civ5 release, and continue playing Civ4, updating it with the latest UI/AI mods and playing mods when one wants a different gameplay style.

[Speaker]

Here, I feel compelled to disagree. I feel just the opposite about squares; to me, they feel horribly unnatural and really take away from the immersion of the game.

You lost me at immersion. Civ is a strategy game, not a storyline game.

[Krill]

Whether one prefers squares or hexes is a personal opinion. Which one is better in a strategy game isn't. The combination of hexes and 1upt does limit movement options compared to unlimited units per tile and squares. Whether it limits tactical warfare? That depends on what is put in place in the combat system, and it turns out that it does limit tactical warfare compared to Civ 4.

[Ayu]

Here, I feel compelled to disagree. I feel just the opposite about squares; to me, they feel horribly unnatural and really take away from the immersion of the game.

I find squares much more intuitive: they have a single intuitive coordinate system and squares can be split in NxN subsquares.
Hexes instead have 3 vectorial coordinate systems, plus 2 orthogonal ones with an even/odd offset, none of which is really intuitive.

On the other hand, hexes better approximate euclidean distance, and have 6 uniform movement directions.

Ultimately, the correct solution is probably to make a game engine that can handle both, and design the game so that the player can choose, giving balanced play in either case.

You can also tessellate with equilateral triangles, by the way (but this is probably not a good choice at all).

[Jaffa]

You lost me at immersion. Civ is a strategy game, not a storyline game.

The Civ games have always been both a strategy game and an empire-building sandbox. You might be hardcore only-care-about-the-strategy, but I think most people would agree that some amount of being drawn into the game-world adds to the game-play experience.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

You can also tessellate with equilateral triangles, by the way (but this is probably not a good choice at all).

Where's the Penrose MOD ?


I probably can't be persuaded to care about hex vs quads, but having a single distance function is a win.

[Tatan]

You lost me at immersion. Civ is a strategy game, not a storyline game.

Just because it is a strategy game, doesn't mean I can't get just as absorbed with making the decisions that go into the game than if it were a storyline game. Regardless of genre, I feel a good game should have immersion.

Whether one prefers squares or hexes is a personal opinion. Which one is better in a strategy game isn't. The combination of hexes and 1upt does limit movement options compared to unlimited units per tile and squares. Whether it limits tactical warfare? That depends on what is put in place in the combat system, and it turns out that it does limit tactical warfare compared to Civ 4.

From what I have read from others about Civ 5, the combat system is in fact limiting when you have large numbers of units around, which is why I am arguing more for hexes in the abstract than in the specific case of Civ 5. I have played games that successfully used 1upt and hexes together... but they were miniature games that consisted of moving guys around a map and shooting at each other, not creating an advanced network of cities and generating an increasing number of units ever couple of turns. So hexes and unlimited units per tile? Good. Hexes and 1upt? Bad. Actually, 1upt with anything? Bad, at least for a Civilization game.