New Civilization 5 Expansion - Brave New World

[Hail]

I read Sullla's sample BNW game and his review last night. A great read! But! Sullla should have read about archeology, art works, tourism forehand
collecting/trading art works is perhaps the most fun experience in civ5's lategame.
anyway, I have to say, that he's being too soft on civ5

casual gaming destroyed the Civilization series
Honestly, I can summarize Civilization 5 in four short words: "Bad ideas, horrible execution." yes AI, I'm looking at you!

the exact things that irritate many veterans of the Civilization series are the same things that make many newcomers love Civ5

exactly!
my biggest gripe with civ5 is that it is a financial success.
that means that civ6 will be mostly the same. it wil have one unit per tile, some quest system, pop = science, etc.
and that sucks the most!!

the denunciation mechanic is pure bs. the tech cost penalty is wtf. the puppet mechanic is really lame.
peaceful late game in civ5 is outright boring and dull. fighting wars lategame is traffic jam nightmare.
acquring and digging up artifacts to put into building slots to get the max bonus is fun. but once the slots are filled, there is literally nothing to do lategame. press the end turn button, until some bucket fills up, and I get to choose some mediocre benefit. another drawback of civ5's lategame is the turn times. every AI civ every turn moves their vast quantities of units around in the same meaningless, bs manner like in civ2.

I think the only way out is have the community to create their own civ game.

[Ichabod]

I think Civ 5 has MP potential, I had a lot of fun with PBEM 2. But there's qquite some things that are really disheartening when trying to play MP Civ 5:

*The information is badly presented in the game, which leads to confusing moments and difficulty to make strategies.
*There's no way to balance maps and, as far as I can see, the WB sucks. It might be me not knowing how to use it, but I don't think it is.
*The way end of turn works, getting the production phase happening at the start of next turn instead of the end of the one you already played gives you a lot of situations you can't control.
*There are some unacceptable bugs, like being able to hear notifications from the previous players before yours start in a PBEM (perhaps this has been fixed).

It still possible to have fun, but it frustrates me when some things that could be very easily fixed (from my perspective) and that were already addressed in Civ 4 come to bite you while you are playing. It seems Civ 5 never worried too much about the MP experience.

[Borsche]

the exact things that irritate many veterans of the Civilization series are the same things that make many newcomers love Civ5

exactly!
my biggest gripe with civ5 is that it is a financial success.
that means that civ6 will be mostly the same. it wil have one unit per tile, some quest system, pop = science, etc.
and that sucks the most!!

Ehh, idk. Civ4 was a bigger success than Civ3 and they still ended up changing it a lot.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Okay, I tested it out and it's additive not multipliable. If I had to guess Sulla thought 5% science was added per city just like the UI side. As it went up 5% each time you added one. However, the 5% refers to the BASE on a standard map. This is also why Gandhi only got one happiness from the Forbidden Palace in the base game, not two. This is a good example of this games UI being really bad and forces you to research everything if you are serious. This doesn't change anything else in the review as I've never heard of a good Civ5 player founding a city in the second half of the game in BWN.

       

Edit:212/222 or 222/212 is still less than 5% so this isn't rounding wonkiness.

[T-hawk]

I caught up to read through Sullla's stuff now too.

the exact things that irritate many veterans of the Civilization series are the same things that make many newcomers love Civ5

Exactly. I've been saying that forever, that Civ 5 is designed for the casual audience and is fantastically successful at it. And I've been saying forever that Civ 4 was a one time anomaly, not a precedent for a new baseline for the franchise. I'm glad to see that Sullla has come around to that way of thinking as well, moving away from trashing Civ 5 for not being 4.

Freebies: ... And a nearby Cultured city state is analogous to plains hill Marble for your second city. (MoM, here I come!) And free Writing or Horseback Riding from a Civ4 hut can be just as game-changing as a free pantheon.

The difference is that Civ 4's freebies give you strategic decisions that involve meaningful tradeoffs. You get that plains hill marble... you still gotta build that MoM to make use of it, and in doing so you won't be building the Pyramids. Get HBR, you still have to figure out how to produce that army of horses, putting off settlers and libraries. That is strategy, taking the hand you're dealt and leveraging it into the most impact.

Civ 5 doesn't do this. Civ 5 freebies snowball into more freebies with no further investment or decisions. A culture ruin leads into Tradition into monuments into entire policy trees completed without ever making any cultural effort or strategic tradeoffs. Connecting a resource to please a city-state gets you free military which clears more barbs to please more city-states. The game runs on autopilot. You feel like you're making strategic decisions, except that underneath it's railroaded to make those decisions just work. And that's perfect for the mainstream audience.

Expansion: That said, I think the culture and research penalties in Civ5 are MUCH more transparent than Civ4 city maintenance or Civ3 corruption, where you never really knew how much an additional city was going to cost or what gain was to be had from the Forbidden Palace. Again, it's a tradeoff.

This is true, that the penalties are much more transparent. And, psychologically, it's terrible. Civ 5 says in big bold red letters "WE'RE PENALIZING YOU". Civ 3 did the same, taunting the player with those redded out shield icons in the production bar. That isn't fun, that is trolling. Civ 4 did it right psychologically, hiding the expansion brake under several layers of math -- at the cost that you have to understand those several layers of math to work the system anywhere near optimally. Better perceptually, but less accessible.

The real solution is brakes to expansion that naturally emerge from the game mechanics, rather than arbitrary mathematical trickery whether clearly stated or obscured. Master of Orion's system of nodes and limited but expanding range is often cited as the best example, but it doesn't translate well to Civ's open freeform map. We don't have a great solution for Civ games yet.

Civ 5's global happiness is actually a pretty good way of doing this overall. It makes clear to the player that exceeding the boundary is their own fault, and shows exactly what they need to do to remedy it. It's a subtle way of escalating costs for expansion, as each incremental happiness source becomes more costly to acquire. It brings the brake into view front and center, as a point of strategy without frustrating the player with perceived losses or arcane math. This is great.

The problem there is Civ 5's happiness cap lost its teeth in the expansions. New luxuries, mercantile city-states (and a vast array of easy quests to please them), religious happiness, more cooperative AIs for trading, and tweaks to social policies all together made happiness much less of a limiting factor. To the point where ICS was again possible and even the best way to play. Instead of fixing the brake in the right place where it failed, the designers resorted to slapping on that tech cost penalty.

[Hail]

The real solution is brakes to expansion that naturally emerge from the game mechanics, rather than arbitrary mathematical trickery whether clearly stated or obscured. Master of Orion's system of nodes and limited but expanding range is often cited as the best example, but it doesn't translate well to Civ's open freeform map. We don't have a great solution for Civ games yet.

I shall shamelessly quote myself:
I agree. the more I think about it, the more I lean toward getting rid of corruption altogether.
Instead, gold for any purpose can only be used from the capitol's supply. other cities must physically transport gold (as any other yield) to the capitol.

Civ 5's global happiness is actually a pretty good way of doing this overall. It makes clear to the player that exceeding the boundary is their own fault, and shows exactly what they need to do to remedy it. It's a subtle way of escalating costs for expansion, as each incremental happiness source becomes more costly to acquire. It brings the brake into view front and center, as a point of strategy without frustrating the player with perceived losses or arcane math. This is great.

I disagree your excellency!

the goal of the global happiness mechanic (GHM) is to force the player to choose between adding pop to existing cities or building new ones. at the same the game designer gives stuff on a per city basis. earlier buildings are cheaper and most are no less effective. what about claiming new luxuries/resources? am I missing something? punishing the player for optimal play is pathetic.

the balance between building new cities or increasing old ones cannot be the key choice the player should be concerned with. the focus should shift to "how do I snowball the fastest with the hand I was dealt" imo.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I'm not doing this to rub it in. At work I realized that, my above example sucked as there is a billizon ways civ5's math can mess you up. So here is a clearer and better example. The number of beakers for giant death robots goes up by 484 beakers each time you found a city.

           

Edit: Fixed typos.

[T-hawk]

BNW is on Steam sale at -75% for $7.50. I almost decided to pick it up for a couple runs, but then read back up in this thread and I think Sullla has covered it already. That city tech cost penalty in particular doesn't sound like something I want to play.

[Hail]

one cannot zero the city tech penalty in the xml?

[T-hawk]

One could, but then you'd be off playing your own mod and not really Civ 5.