Discussion: Social Upgrades

[kasnavada]

If it's about trimming the game to its essentials, then why does a feature like the social progress screen even exist? The essentials of the game, I'd guess, are placing buildings to maximise their bonuses. Everything else is simplistic, and either supposed to get extensively reworked (diplomacy), or rather simplistic (tech tree, social progress). The latter seem to me to be a distraction rather than an integral part of the game, so why are they in at all?

And... you stayed on your opinion and completely missed the part where it adds choices to cities but enabling culture as an alternative. It's not free, not simplified, the complexity moved somewhere more intuitive. Social progress in Civ 1 to 4 was "freer", because it was linked to important researches that you had to do. In SBR and Civ 5 it's dependant on you spending resources on buildings to boost it.

Ultimately my point boils down to this: Oversimplifying things in the name of streamlining takes away the immersive aspect of  the experience. In a good 4x, to me, change is gradual, granular, sometimes reversible and often dangerous, and not a sweeping "click to triple this aspect of your civilisation".

Of course tripling and oversimplying would doom a game, but Civ5 compared to Civ 4 is really not at that state at all.

I think we played a very different version of Civ5 here. I mean... Triple Oversimplying By removing choices no one ever took, and adding choices back to the city level instead of a subscreen that unlocked because of researches ?

You should look at the bonuses that social progress give in Civ5. It does feel like you're slowly adding and building your civilisation here, one step at a time. Over the course of a game, you'll be choosing from about 25 to 40 social policies out of a pool of about 70. And "finishing" the social policy gives bonuses which change the gameplay... but that you can't opt out of. Now that's a choice that matters. Let's compare it to the 5 civics out of 25 choices of Civ4, with much larger bonii, and from what guides say, a better choice in most situations for each kind of civic. Either the latest unlocked one or the ones that boost you the most at a given time. And yes, I'm doing you a favor by counting the "do nothing" base policies. I shouldn't.

The Civ5 social policy system is much more of a progression than the civics ever was. That's what giving 25 to about 40 "minor" bonii do compared to having 20 choices in an entire game which replaces the previous choices. It's also basically impossible get all social policies... and pursuing them is an important part of the cultural winning condition. Depending on how you're building your empire, you might just have half or twice what your opponent has. Whereas, in Civ4, the system being heavily tied to the tech tree... you'll have the same number of choices as your opponent at the same tech level do.

Basically it's doing everything you're asking for, but you prefer the "old" system... which does not do what you're asking for.

I'd go on about other aspects but that nails the discussion for me.

[kasnavada]

After long decades of increasing complexity, the tables have simply turned. The market is way bigger now, and nobody wants to limit their offerings to a niche audience when there's such lot of potential customers out there.

Seriously I'm so very glad that the tables have turned.
The level of pointless micro-management and useless choices attained really pathetic levels, and the hardcore forum fans kept asking for MOAR.


It's good to finally have the game industry realize that Go is a deep game despite simple rules, and try to make their game deep that way, instead of just burying the player in content and hope that the result makes for something deep. Sadly, some people are missing the difference between "lot of rules" and "deep game".


PS: that said... Civ5 ain't perfect. But at least if you want to give it flaws, give them were they are.

[Mick]

It's the age old complexity vs depth debate.

[Cinth]

After long decades of increasing complexity, the tables have simply turned. The market is way bigger now, and nobody wants to limit their offerings to a niche audience when there's such lot of potential customers out there.

Seriously I'm so very glad that the tables have turned.
The level of pointless micro-management and useless choices attained really pathetic levels, and the hardcore forum fans kept asking for MOAR.


It's good to finally have the game industry realize that Go is a deep game despite simple rules, and try to make their game deep that way, instead of just burying the player in content and hope that the result makes for something deep. Sadly, some people are missing the difference between "lot of rules" and "deep game".


PS: that said... Civ5 ain't perfect. But at least if you want to give it flaws, give them were they are.

It's why I haven't had fun playing any of the new offerings.  Civ 3 was awesome. 4 was pretty great too. 5 failed to grab me in any meaningful way.  I bought 5 day one and played one day.  I immediately uninstalled it.  I wish I could find my disks for 3 .

Unfortunately this isn't the first series I have felt this way with.  Diablo 1/2, Warcraft 1/2.  The third title in each of those just failed to grab me.  WC 3 was the art and heros... bleh, and the over simplification of the campaign maps.  Warcraft was hard.  3 was to easy.  Diablo started to fall apart a bit in 2 for me. It lost that atmosphere that 1 had.  3 is fine for an ARPG but should never have been called Diablo. 

I'll stop derailing this here and now though...

[Shrugging Khan]

Text.

The triple bonus comment was referring to SBR, not Civ5.

My main criticism was and remains the fact that Civ5 felt wrong. A game about something as complex as entire civilisations throughout 6000 years of history, with 4 predecessor games that continuously added features to represent that complexity, being boiled down to simplified, supposedly 'core' model...just doesn't do the idea justice. I fully concede that micro-management had gotten out of hands in many games. I hate micro-management, myself. Specifically, I hate being forced to do it. But I also hate not being able to do it when I decide it's time for me to give something a closer look. When it's a freedom that used to be there in earlier games, and is gone in a later one, then that's pretty jarring.

There are some good games out there that offer the player the option of just delegating whatever they do not understand or do not like. Distant Worlds (much as I hate it) got that one very right. There is an AI that can play the game - let the player use it when he doesn't like a certain part of it. Keeping the complexity under the hood for those who care, and still offering the option to just not care and play the game anyways - that's the ideal path, IMO. But it's also a lot of work for the devs. Two sides to everything, as always.

So to get back to Civ5 - yes, you do have more overall social choices. Them's the numbers. But it's still a matter of picking them and stacking up bonuses; it's just a system that rewards procurement of a certain resource (culture) with a number of one-time choices that neither require nor even permit any further involvement.
With the older Government system there was always an incentive to rethink, to consider other options. You had numerically fewer icons to click, overall, but the choice was always present. Does it still count as only 5/20 VS 45/70when you can make them a hundred times throughout the game?

Furthermore, that's really a bit besides my own point; That one being that the older system just felt a lot more right. It fit better. As you go through history, you get to know new options, new ways for a society to work. Changing these ways is painful, and the new ones may not even be better. You can make the decision and go back on it if you're prepared to pay the price. And the actual matter is forms of Government, Economy, and other aspects of policy; providing boni and mali in a somewhat realistic fashion.

It beats the hell out of gathering culture for flat and everlasting boni, because it makes more intuitive sense. It's more complicated, yes, and still far from perfect, but it's still a much better representation of the processes and systems the game is ostensibly trying to depict. An as such it feels better and makes for a more coherent, immersive experience, even if it may not be as streamlined and elegant as a pure game like GO.

Repeat: I'm not trying to deify Civ4 or unviersally condemn Civ5. This thread shouldn't really be about that. I was just trying to use it to illustrate why the Social Progress system of SBR feels so damn wrong to me.

[Misery]

Please, for the love of all that is good int he gaming world, don't every say Civ 5 is a good game.  It's the Diablo III of the Civ series.  You want a good place to compare points, Civ 3/4.  Those were a blast to play, 5 not so much.

I honestly have to disagree with this one;  Civ 5, I like well enough, even though my attention wanders at times.... though as my attention wanders regardless of what I'm doing, that doesnt say much...  but anyway, number 4 I didn't really like very much.  One of the biggest offenders being the infamous Stack of Doom;  Ugh, war stuff was SO BLOODY BORING in that.  Crash my mountain of random crap into the other guy's mountain of random crap... bleh.   Among assorted other problems I had with it.  Civ 5 certainly has it's issues (I have yet to find a 4x game that I can honestly say is "great", really...), but I can actually get into it.

Sorta the same with the Diablo games... number 2 didn't catch me at all.  Bored me to death.  D3 holds my attention decently enough though.  It's hard to explain why (without taking up like 5 pages), but it's there.

And this is me saying this... I dont exactly qualify as a "casual" gamer.

Everything is just so bloody subjective on stuff like this that I think it's very hard to get a definitive answer on which is better in the case of comparisons like this.  But it also does indeed end up being at least somewhat the idea of complexity VS depth, and I think that one's hard to fully manage for any developer.  To some degree, I think SBR is currently having a bunch of issues with this.  The social trees are kinda like this to me... they sorta seem to be there just because it's expected that they be there.  But I find them pretty meaningless, I just open it, click whatever, and close it, and dont actually notice all that much difference if I click them in a different order than usual.  Being that the game is so extremely focused on buildings that do a variety of things, it kinda seems like the things that the social menu provides could instead simply be stuck onto certain buildings instead; removing the needless complexity that the skill trees are currently adding.  Enhance one mechanic, the buildings and their attribute, while cutting out one that's made kinda unnecessary by the way that buildings are handled in the game.  Or, you know, something along that line.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm explaining this properly, but that's some of my current thoughts on the issue.

[kasnavada]

So to get back to Civ5 - yes, you do have more overall social choices. Them's the numbers. But it's still a matter of picking them and stacking up bonuses; it's just a system that rewards procurement of a certain resource (culture) with a number of one-time choices that neither require nor even permit any further involvement.
With the older Government system there was always an incentive to rethink, to consider other options. You had numerically fewer icons to click, overall, but the choice was always present. Does it still count as only 5/20 VS 45/70when you can make them a hundred times throughout the game?

Except that realistically... you don't go back, don't rethink, and don't change "back".

Let me explain. You were planning to do a military victory ? In Civ4 in each civic tree, there is ONE civic which is better suited to that. The only "change" you're doing is that since it's not available, you're choosing poor options until you can switch to the right one.

In Civ5, you want to do a military victory ? You choose one of the 4 available social policies and build on it. One is better for it depending on your civ, neighbours and placement. By the time you've finished getting it, you've got more choices, you generally still have 4 social policies to choose from. You can choose to be opportunistic and choose early bonii in multiple trees instead of filling the entire tree. Some are mutually exclusive and you can't go back. Now that's meaningful choice.

If you do go back and try to change your entire civilization, then something should wrong in how you built your cities. It should not really be possible to just "switch" your entire civilization from the warpath to the diplomatic path in a matter of turn. But that's what the social policies in Civ4 aim to allow when they allow switching back.  But the "rest" of the game does not.

Furthermore, that's really a bit besides my own point; That one being that the older system just felt a lot more right. It fit better. As you go through history, you get to know new options, new ways for a society to work. Changing these ways is painful, and the new ones may not even be better. You can make the decision and go back on it if you're prepared to pay the price. And the actual matter is forms of Government, Economy, and other aspects of policy; providing boni and mali in a somewhat realistic fashion. (...)

Then, you're thinking with your heart, with opinions.

Anyway, the "switching" of civics never felt "right" nor "realistic" to me whenever I played the early civ series. What was the penalty again, 3-4 turns of anarchy ? And "free switch" when getting the research ? And about "realistic", 1 "turn" of civil war completely reworking how trade, production, research worked for thousands of years ? Also, a new government types unlocked by a group of researchers ?

I mean, I imagine the scene. A group of scholar come and state : "hey, tribal rule suxxx we invented monarchy, you can be a king and claim you've got divine blood, and there is the whole vassal thingy...". Yeah right... Or maybe growing population, cultural advancement, and societal changes, and researched of a civilization forced the system to evolve from a tribal system which could not work for millions of individuals to a more efficient one.

So... no, objectively, it may feel more realistic to you, but it's a opinion. Both are game simplifications of what really happened. And presonally, I don't think you can forget history and societal advancement "just like that". So the Civ5 system is plain better to me as a game mechanic and it relates more closely to what I think of how history advanced. It has room to grow though.