Civilization 5 Announced

[ThERat]

I do recall Sullla mentioning some disagreement over the direction of BTS (corporations etc). Was he involved in this as well, as it wouldn't surprise me.

I do think that his ideas are not what most of us really saw as civ immersion. However, it can't be only him who supported stuff like Fountain of Youth and GDR?

[Sullla]

Jon is a good guy. I met him in person (obviously, since we both were working for Firaxis) and had a number of chances to talk back and forth. I have nothing but positive things to say about Jon as a person. However, we definitely had different ideas about how to do game design. Jon likes to brainstorm cool new ideas and put them into his mods/games, then worry about implementation and balancing later. I tend to look at things the other way around - if you can't balance a feature, or the AI can't use it, you probably shouldn't have it in your design. I wasn't a big fan of Jon's Civ4 scenarios and mods, because it was very clear that the AI had no clue how to play them. My belief is that Civ5's design probably worked in a similar fashion, with Jon and his team drawing up a list of cool features (one unit per tile, city states, social policies, etc.) and never quite managing to get the whole thing working together as a whole.

Regardless of how things have turned out, I wish him the best of luck moving forward.

[MJW (ya that one)]

The AI on inmortal does not put a scary number of units on the field until around turn 180. By that time you have a decent number of units and should win. Diety might be very hard but the AI starting with an extra settler is just too much for me.

Another AI cheat is that it can select units when they have finished their moves. This means they can delelte your workers without passing a turn.

[Sullla]

Merry Christmas! I come to bring you some Civ5 gifts in the form of two editorials on my website. One of them I wrote back in the summer and never uploaded, since I didn't think it was fair to do too much speculation with limited pre-release knowledge. The other one is an evaluation of the problems with Civ5's design flaws, as well as a look at the recent mega-patch. You can find them here, in the Civ5 Editorials section of my website.

That should keep readers busy for a while today.

[antisocialmunky]

I dunno why but:

The most important thing to keep in mind when designing a game is that it should be fun and engaging for the player. Sure, you can go ahead and make that indie game with the deep existentialist plot that investigates man's place in the universe... but if it's not fun to play, no one is going to care about it.

made my day.


Great analysis as always :D

Edit: Also new LoL vid :D

[ellman]

One of them I wrote back in the summer and never uploaded, since I didn't think it was fair to do too much speculation with limited pre-release knowledge.

I was going to say that you had amazing foresight in predicting the flaws of civ5, but I realized you were just being critical of every new feature. And in civ5, all the new features have critical flaws. Diplomacy is pointless(nothing to do with allys besides resource trade) and frustrating(insane AI). Culture expanding 1 tile at a time promotes ICS(6 free tiles) and is frustrating due to the AI picking the tiles. Global Happiness encourages keeping your cities from growing. Road maintenance is unfun and causes more traffic jams.
City states are boring and too powerful.

The only new features I liked are hexes, strategic view and... um... I think thats it. Social Policies are okay, but I still liked civics better. Civ5- what a disappointment.

[Dantski]

Haven't seen anyone mention it but I hate the look of the Civ5 minimap, Civ4's just looks more modern and useful IMO.

[T-hawk]

I feel the need to play devil's advocate for a few moments here.

I gave it six weeks of regular play, then followed the forum discussions for another two months after that.

In the broader world of computer and video gaming, this is a success. A playtime on that order is about what's expected from and delivered by most games, outside of MMOs. Your average retail boxed Grand Theft Auto or Zelda or Guitar Hero game delivers in that general ballpark. Civ 5 entirely followed in the footsteps of Pirates and Colonization and Civ Revolution, bringing a set of interesting ideas and enough execution to hold interest for several playthroughs, more than sufficient to make the game a worthwhile purchase. Even RB's other baby Galactic Civilizations petered out after a few months, as well as its sequel.

Your described pattern of a month or two of play, followed by agitated forum discussions of unrealized potential, followed by shelving the game, is common. It's also not bad. By that time, you've well gotten your money's worth from the game purchase, and any further sense of entitlement is misplaced. If you want a game that gets continuously redeveloped to player wants and needs, go find an MMO, or MMO-lite like League of Legends. (The motivation is no secret: ongoing development brings in increasing revenue for LoL but practically speaking none for Civ 5. More generally, but outside the scope of this discussion, the retail boxed single-purchase game will be dead within ten years.)

Civ 4 is a tremendous glaring exception, not the rule of what is to be expected from a game. These games like Master of Orion that hold replayability for five or twenty years and hundreds of plays are the rare jewels, not something that we have a right to expect from every game release. If Civ 4 had not existed, or even just hadn't had Soren's loving attention to patching, Civ 5 would be perceived as a solid incremental step up. (Also, I might point out that you've all but shelved Civ 4 itself too - by my count, you've played one game of it in the past two years.) Civ 5 set expectations too high with a formula that is not as repeatable as we might seem to think.

As Sirian touched on, Civ 5 did squarely hit what it was aiming at. It wasn't aiming at us.

[Sullla]

Sorry, but I vehemently disagree with that, T-Hawk. The value of a purchase is determined by the consumer, not the manufacterer. If I feel like I didn't get my money's worth from a purchase, then I didn't get my money's worth from it. End of story.

Honestly, it makes me angry when I read sentiments like this. (Not trying to pick on you specifically T-Hawk, but its a bit of a topic with me.) That train of though - "as long as purchasers play the game for a couple of weeks, we don't care if they shelve it after that, and they have no right to complain" - that whole logic is why so many of today's games are mediocre/poor quality. Whatever happened to taking pride in your work, and doing a quality job? If consumers are willing to put up with crummy products, then they'll get crummy products in return. Damn straight I have every right to complain if I'm not happy.

So no, for me it is not acceptable. I buy few games, and the ones I do purchase I expect to last for a long time. If Firaxis isn't interested in that thing anymore, fine. Just don't advertise your game as one that will "stand the test of time." And don't expect me to ever buy from you again.

[Selrahc]

that whole logic is why so many of today's games are mediocre/poor quality.

I'd question that. There have always been crappy games. It's not like games have suddenly become awful, or that there are no good games being made any more. If the general ratio of good/bad hasn't really changed, why would the explanation have changed?