I think I understand what happened here; gameplay vs simulation.

[MrMT]

Reading through all these posts, and feeling some (though not all) similar frustrations, I think I understand the fundamental issue here.

Let us cast aside tech bugs and AI issues for the moment, as these are fixable in time.

Instead, let us examine the fundamental game design, which we are basically stuck with.

For most of its history, the Civ series has been a hybrid of 1) history simulator and 2) game. This means that it is a loose attempt to model the way civilizations have grown and competed over time, whilst offering entertaining gameplay and a balanced challenge.

Sometimes the game erred a little too much in one direction or another, losing balance in favour of simulation, but overall this was a stunning example of a game that married these two elements.

Fast forward to Civ V. What we have here, I believe, is an attempt to make far more game and far less simulation.

A series which had become an increasingly complex and subtle effort to include many different strands of human competition - economic, religious, scientific, military etc etc - has been stripped down, in practice, to an old style military board game.

Yes, there are some different approaches to how you build up, and yes, there are varying victory conditions, but broadly what we see here is an attempt to balance a series of nuanced approaches to what is in essence a full frontal military battle.

Gone is meaningful religious intrigue. Gone is espionage. Gone is the possibility to bribe people through economic might. Genuine culture victory ( Gal Civ 2 style) is not on offer. Asymmetric warfare is not there. Clever diplomacy is not there. Clever use of trade is not there.

A simpler tech tree may be better for pure competitive gameplay (jury still out), but bears far less relation to genuine tech development than before.

The social policy trees offer genuinely interesting choices, but gone is any sense that they simulate the evolution of a genuine human empire. They just don't.

We have renaissance cities able to hurt stealth bombers, samurai able to dent tanks; and goodie huts that create riflemen in the stone age; again, gameplay decisions that may offer laggards a chance to stay in the game, but which makes no sense to a historical simulation.

In other words, this could ultimately be a decent strategy game, once the kinks are rolled out, but a history simulation this is not.

If you are looking for what Civ was - an attempt to balance gameplay and world simulation - then Civ V is not really for you.

If what you are looking for is a fairly fun, loosely history inspired, hex based military battle game, Civ V promises to be an entertaining and potentially quite decent strategic game.

[ind1g0]

I never liked history class anyway...

I just want a game that makes me feel like I'm in control and its fun to play in single and multilayer.

I like lush graphics, new video card technologies and clean new UIs.

Civ 5 is fine by me!

[Heliocon]

I never liked history class anyway...

I just want a game that makes me feel like I'm in control and its fun to play in single and multilayer.

I like lush graphics, new video card technologies and clean new UIs.

Civ 5 is fine by me!

In other words the lowest common denominator = you

Thats why the game is seriously defficient.

Its graphics arent even good either lol

[Mateops]

Nice analysis.

I see some problems with it, here are my points:

-"Meaningfull religous intrigue"? I never saw anything meaningfull about the religions in 4. They where just another way to make some pocket change for your empire, and slightly influence diplomacy. It was a nice little addition, but nothing meaningfull IMO. What I dont like about removing it, is that it seems, (I have no proof) that it was taken out for purely politically correct reasons.
Unless we are talking kid game here, there is no room for Political Correctness in games IMO, it should be on par with movies, if I can make a movie or a tv show about terrorists or show nudity (not for civ talking in general) I think games should have the same freedom, but sadly they dont.

-As for Espionage, the original civ 4 never had it included, that came later with the expansions, so we cant use that to compare the two, more will be added to get our money in the future. Now I never saw espionnage as being tremendously important either, but just like religion a nice little add on... what disapoints me here, is that instead of going foward an "taking for granted" the good features, they always cut back on content and spoon feed us old features and we are happy. This is very similar to most sequel of games, in this, I dont find Civ to be very different from most other games. Its like they are scared to be creative so they constantly hold on to some content that has already been released in older games.

-Is this mainly a military game, I did not get that feeling, but I am a war mongerer kind of player so maybe I cant see the difference, if anything at all, I wish other civs would try and fight me more! I remember a feature in civ4 was to put the AI on agressive, its missing here.

-About the spearmen killing the tank deal... it sucks, yes, but its nothing new. I have played all the previous civs at almost all levels of difficulty, and it seems to me that the harder the difficulty, the more easy science is to find for the AI and the harder their units are to kill; thats it, I never really saw them do anything "smarter".

-I disagree that the policies dont reflect history (more than it did in previous games) as we know in rl we can have a country that calls itself a democracy and be despotic, etc. I think the policies reflect more the gray areas of governance, but that could be further debated...

I am not a fanboy or trying to defend the game, I like it so far but with several features that do irritate me alot. In defense of the people that are frustrated all I can say is firaaxis 2k or whom ever should be happy about the gripes, it means people care and love the series, if people did not, no one would be here talking about it. I think the game will improve as time goes on, but it has been mapped out already, sadly, I dont think they pay great attention to us here, they are probably just working and waiting for the storm to pass... IF (its a huge if) I would ever manage something like this, I would assign a person to work in the forums full time and report everyday. I never understood why the most active forum users are not from their ranks? this goes for all games.

So I dont see much difference between the balance between simulation or the gaming aspect here as in the past. I see a cowardly and lazy withdrawal of features: hotseats, religion, espionage, playable civilisations and a complete lack of vision for the future and even a true assestment of the present (I am sorry but newflash: nukes and tanks or even modern armor are old news and with the current tree it seems suggest to suggest they are not, its frame of thinking seems to be stuck in the cold war era and not able to go beyond, I know we are not supposed to make nationalistic comments etc. but it seems the game is "crystalised" in the golden era of the usa, which is of course, long gone now and all the nukes and tanks and military supperiority cant save you now with the new generation of warfare. The times of easily identifying your enemies because they are wearing a different color is over and is the perverse affect of being so strong, no one wants or is stupid enough to fight you fair... So speaking of history, my problem is not with the early history, but more with the current one.

I would have hoped to have a more complete tree especially for our times, and to risk having vision! To go foward not just the same old boring "future tech" tech. (civ call to power did that, they could have inspired themselves from that game years ago!)

What about having war wearyness higher when troops die?
What about the role of media in war?
What about a high profile attack like we saw a few years ago?

I could go on for a while here, but these things, no matter how we like them or not, are what is happening today?

The only exception is the famous SDIs that for some reason where included in previous title but sadly are nowhere near a reality. Its more like a "you wish".

it seems history stopped in the 1990 for civ, sad but true... but lets all celebrate! the berlin wall is down! usa just won king of the hill!

[p34nk]

Well, okay, but I buy Civilization because it is called Civilization and my impression that you build civilization that will stand the test of time (just like the motto on the first civilization), whether through war, diplomacy, culture, or by blasting to Alpha Centauri (their rule).

If you say they are making this more 'gameplay' oriented, then I am honestly disappointed (if I am not already) and if they are focusing on battle/wars, then it is not supposed to be called Civ since wars is only one aspect of civ. If I want a war board game, I can perhaps play Risk, Stratego, or Total War series instead.

[Ickabod]

I think the civics work much more like a real civilization actually does. Over time your people aquire traits to how they see the world which is the personality of a given people, essentially the history of the people in your game actually matter rather than get a new tech and presto we go from theology to Democracy overnight.

[Mateops]

Well, okay, but I buy Civilization because it is called Civilization and my impression that you build civilization that will stand the test of time (just like the motto on the first civilization), whether through war, diplomacy, culture, or by blasting to Alpha Centauri (their rule).

If you say they are making this more 'gameplay' oriented, then I am honestly disappointed (if I am not already) and if they are focusing on battle/wars, then it is not supposed to be called Civ since wars is only one aspect of civ. If I want a war board game, I can perhaps play Risk, Stratego, or Total War series instead.

all civs have concentrated on war before anything else...
go ahead and try to leave your nation without an army in any title and let me know what happens!

lets not idealise the past here, all civs have it. Maybe they need to tweek out things in victory conditions and the transparency of diplomacy, but lets not push it.

I could also counter-argue, that if you dont want war you can play a builder game.

[Yfelsung]

The new Culture system is much more organic because you can't just pretend your culture never took something. Every cutlural policy has a lasting effect on a nation. In Civ4, it's like your people just convientiently forgot when you used to beat and oppress them for 3 thousand years when you suddenly gain a new Civic.

Now, if you take something in a tree, you have it forever. It will always be part of your culture, even if it gets overshadowed by better SP's later, it will always be there.

That is WAY more realistic and challenging than overnight civic changes.

[p34nk]

all civs have concentrated on war before anything else...
go ahead and try to leave your nation without an army in any title and let me know what happens!

lets not idealise the past here, all civs have it. Maybe they need to tweek out things in victory conditions and the transparency of diplomacy, but lets not push it.

I could also counter-argue, that if you dont want war you can play a builder game.

THat is true, however it is not war that they are focusing on, its military (just so we are not confused with terms?). I am fine with building military power so that the civ wont be invaded, sure (even though I know my country was really not built on military to begin with historically) but my point is that I dont want this game to focus solely on building military and so far the AI is mostly making decision based on the military power and little else. If they want to make it a true civ game, why do this then?

There is nowhere that I said I dont want any war, I just dont want it to be heavily focused on war which it is, otherwise how can you explain the city only options in the earlier era is to either build military units or military buildings and not much other options where as in previous civ you can build many other non-combat/military units like trader, missionary, spies, etc? I guess they dont matter that much anymore.

I also do like city building games. The thing is the base core concept then what makes this game different than the Total War series if it is about war and conquest?

[Heliocon]

all civs have concentrated on war before anything else...
go ahead and try to leave your nation without an army in any title and let me know what happens!

lets not idealise the past here, all civs have it. Maybe they need to tweek out things in victory conditions and the transparency of diplomacy, but lets not push it.

I could also counter-argue, that if you dont want war you can play a builder game.

Ironic pov. 1. Civ IS a builder game! You build a civilization and a world... enough said.
2. Military power cannot be created and leveraged without a whole range of things including a actual civilization to support it. No great empires were ever built purely on military might. Even the Romans excelled in art and architecture, their culture was the envy of the world and there government allowed there empire to expand. Their roads and aqueducts created the empire just as much as there legions did. If anything, military power follows domestic development and progress, it cannot exist without the bedrock of a stable state.