Episode 225: Brave New World

[Rob Zacny]

Rob, Troy, Fraser Brown, and Rowan Kaiser talk about the latest Civilization expansion.

 

Listen

[MikeO]

Good discussion. I don't know whether BNW fixes enough of Civ V's problems, but I have been playing it quite a lot since the expansion. I like the Caravan system, and the new religion tweaks, but I haven't really gotten a grasp on tourism yet, and the UI isn't that helpful. I have played three of the new civs, and found them all interesting (I will try Venice next). Even though the AI does a lot of stupid or head scratching things even now, I can enjoy the game on sort of a Civ/ RPG level. Rob made a god point about the graphics engine -- the graphics draw me in sort of hypnotically in a way that no other Civ game ever did.

[Adam Beckett]

Since this is such a highlight and everyone is so positive about it, let me bring you all down, if I can. Let's start by telling you, I always had trouble with video games using historical settings on a world scale. It is my fault. I cannot abstract the idea of playing a video game from the intention to 'use' history and historical facts (names, places, cultural landmarks, technology)

I started the "Brave New World" and my Morrocan ruler (one ruler to rule them all, as always - never mind tribal culture - but that's fine) from the Saadi clan just discovered the Kilimanjaro, a few tiles away (never mind the biggest desert on Earth in between, I guess). My first "General" is called "Rommel"(!) - most certainly beloved by the Morrocans. Next, my neighbors - a native American tribe (Shoshone, on the soil of AFRICA!) said hello.

Take a moment to let this sink in. Explain it to a four year old you know.

I am not so dumb, to doubt, that the Civilization games - and especially this latest incarnation - have a lot of great 'systems', game mechanics and offer great gameplay. What you all seem to enjoy (and I envy you for it), is the complexity of how the systems are more refined and allow for more complex gameplay than ever before. If anything, the idea to turn reality into game mechanics is fascinating and thrilling to game designers and developers, for sure.

My problem with this (and these kind of games) is: everything in the world is reduced to one unified ideology: follow the game rules (mechanics).

 

This games' mechanics are propagating a unified view of the world and the people in it. Everyone and everything under "one" game mechanics (which means "one set of rules"). Diversity, complexity, heritage and history, are just different colors on the same set of units. "History" as lipstick.

"Social policies" do not "naturally" progress into "Ideology" It is a field of controversy and world views, It is a topos for political and theoretical debate, based on highly complicated rules of who is saying what to whom. Neither Hegel's nor Sid Meier's "Weltgeist" is the "End of History" all-in-one ideology. But while Fukuyama tried to tell Hegel's story to a wider audience, at least, Sid Meier can say "Hey, it's just a game." Suddenly YOUR ideologies and YOUR believes discussing the 'real' world are colored (or limited) by thoughts, that are informed by game design decisions. Mixing 'real' world history debate with ideas based on 'compelling' game design, turns everything into ahistorical relativism? Relativism is the death of history.

Again - all my fault. Because I cannot divide the real from this virtual terra nouva, when every "terra" is a "terra nullius". This game truly is a "Brave New World" as it turns real history and the origins of real culture into (meaningless) toys. History as a 'science', as a source, is always fragile, always under threat, always 'up for grabs', for debate. The fear of mixing my thoughts about toys with the real world, makes me not enjoy any of these games.

 

And seeing "culture as a weapon" is certainly ONE way to see the world. Not mine.

[Gormongous]

The rock version of Pachelbel's Canon at the end was somehow the greatest, guys. Good job with this show!

[enmalkm]

Agreed on the outro. With things like that and the bombastic orchestral intro that played a while ago, do you guys purposely put that in, or does Michael Hermes pick up on your comments and sneak the magic in there as a surprise?

[sclpls]

This expansion has definitely made me come around to Civ 5. I didn't like it at all in its original release. After it got patched up I felt luke-warm about it, and then G&K didn't really do anything for me. With this one though I definitely feel like everything has fallen into place nicely. The AI still isn't great, but there is enough going on that I am getting some really interesting experiences.

 

I tend to agree with Rob that the main drawback to going back to Civ 4 is graphical, and not stacks of doom. That being said, I think there is an obvious compromise between 1UPT (which really does necessitate what I consider to be a lot of unfortunate design choices) and stacks of doom. The next Civ iteration should pay attention to Jon Shafer's new game, At the Gates, and introduce supply. There should be real restraints on how large an army you can field which should create conditions for how much of the map you take up, and where you are occupying your cities/forces.

 

Also, if you are serious about wanting some outro guitar soloing music, I'd be more than happy to provide my services.

[billt721]

Re: The Stack of Doom discussion at the end.

 

I don't really have a problem with Civ IVs combat model so much as I've never enjoyed Civ as a military game. Though in defense of SoDs, as Rob said, it's awfully satisfying to take your huge army and steamroll over your neighbors with it. Anyway - as someone who prefers to play peacefully unless it's obvious that conquest is my only route to victory, I quite like that the 1UPT change has limited army sizes. Rather than having to build 2 stacks of 10 units to go take a few cities, I can instead manage it with 4 ranged units, a siege unit, and a few melee units.

 

And whichever panelist was wishing for the SDK to be released so modders could get into it like they did Civ IV -- the SDK has been out since sometime last year. I play on a Mac and so don't really keep up with mods, but to the best of my knowledge nothing approaching the various total conversion mods we saw with Civ IV has yet been released.

[Chris]

Re: The Stack of Doom discussion at the end.

 

I don't really have a problem with Civ IVs combat model so much as I've never enjoyed Civ as a military game. Though in defense of SoDs, as Rob said, it's awfully satisfying to take your huge army and steamroll over your neighbors with it. Anyway - as someone who prefers to play peacefully unless it's obvious that conquest is my only route to victory, I quite like that the 1UPT change has limited army sizes. Rather than having to build 2 stacks of 10 units to go take a few cities, I can instead manage it with 4 ranged units, a siege unit, and a few melee units.

This is how I feel. There are definite tradeoffs and the change affects different playstyles in disproportionate ways, but as someone who is relentlessly non-aggressive in Civ, it allows me to play a much less absurd-seeming defensive game.

[Gormongous]

And whichever panelist was wishing for the SDK to be released so modders could get into it like they did Civ IV -- the SDK has been out since sometime last year. I play on a Mac and so don't really keep up with mods, but to the best of my knowledge nothing approaching the various total conversion mods we saw with Civ IV has yet been released.

 

If I recall the buzz surrounding it, so many of the variables that would allow for really drastic overhauls of the game are still locked up in the executable itself and Firaxis has stated they have no intention of exposing them for modders. The closest we get to a total conversion mod is Civilization NiGHTS, which I've heard is a mostly successful attempt to rework the "unhappiness loop" and "carpet of doom" that are generally agreed to be the worst consequences of the game's design decisions.

[LlamaCat]

I am enjoying this show since I'm a big Civ V player but I wish these guys would get themselves a little more familiar with the game before discussing it. They didn't seem to understand some of the mechanics and were just wrong about others (Liberty social policy is not worthless to Venice: you get a free great merchant instead of a settler). They do a good job speaking in grand strategy/general terms but when they give specific examples their ignorance of the game mechanics come out. By the way guys: unhappiness from ideologies is countered with tourism/cultural output. And the culture victory is really meant to be a late-game thing, when hotels and certain ideology buffs really boost tourism dramatically. It may seem like tourism is dwarfed by culture for most of the early game but once you look at the later game buffs and strategically plan them out a little, you can zip along your tourism, even without conquering everyone (although that never hurts).

[sclpls]

If I recall the buzz surrounding it, so many of the variables that would allow for really drastic overhauls of the game are still locked up in the executable itself and Firaxis has stated they have no intention of exposing them for modders. The closest we get to a total conversion mod is Civilization NiGHTS, which I've heard is a mostly successful attempt to rework the "unhappiness loop" and "carpet of doom" that are generally agreed to be the worst consequences of the game's design decisions.

 

Yeah, even if Civ 5 were to totally open up at this point I get the impression that the modding community feels a little burned by this version of Civ, and has moved on. A real shame.

[MikeO]

Agreed on the outro. With things like that and the bombastic orchestral intro that played a while ago, do you guys purposely put that in, or does Michael Hermes pick up on your comments and sneak the magic in there as a surprise?

 

I loved that at the end of this show, and I assumed that was Michael Hermes' picking up on the comments when he edited. Nice job, Michael! Got a laugh from me!

 

As far as the stack of doom vs 1UPT, I think there has to be some compromise here. One thing I really like about Civ V is, not so much the 1UPT, but the generally smaller armies. I think 1UPT runs into real problems with the Civ map (let alone only one worker per tile, which I really dislike), and, as others have mentioned, some simple logistics model, limiting stacking in some eras/ tech levels/ terrain would be a better idea. I really hope that Firaxis doesn't look at the (presumably good) sales of Civ V and it's expansions and think everything is wonderful with the design. I hope they aren't wedded to 1UPT if they can't make it work.

[Snooze]

Yeah, even if Civ 5 were to totally open up at this point I get the impression that the modding community feels a little burned by this version of Civ, and has moved on. A real shame.

That is really sad. Civ V has nowhere near the quality mods that Civ IV has. I would have liked a successor to Fall from Heaven. Not Fallen Heroes as thats a different lore.

[billt721]

That is really sad. Civ V has nowhere near the quality mods that Civ IV has. I would have liked a successor to Fall from Heaven. Not Fallen Heroes as thats a different lore.

 

That was never going to happen anyway, given that the creator of FFH is now employed by Stardock.

[Michael]

Agreed on the outro. With things like that and the bombastic orchestral intro that played a while ago, do you guys purposely put that in, or does Michael Hermes pick up on your comments and sneak the magic in there as a surprise?

 

It's the latter - I usually listen to the pre and post-show chatter while I'm getting things set up. I've put in quite a few musical bits for my own amusement but I doubt the panel has heard them all. Occasionally something will tickle me so much that I'll make sure they hear it, such as the hip hop intro from what I think was the iPad show. The only time something was specifically requested was when Bruce asked for "hobo music" in 221. Since I do all that in post production the panel won't hear it unless they go back to listen to a show that they just recorded, which I don't believe happens often.

 

Sometimes I wonder if Rob ever heard when I purposefully did a bad cut of him saying "Michael Hermes is great" at the end of a show. I had a good laugh at that one. 

[Snooze]

That was never going to happen anyway, given that the creator of FFH is now employed by Stardock.

 

Urgh, I actually meant to write Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, not Fallen Heroes....

[Kordanor]

Maybe I should start to avoid listening to podcasts of games I actually played a lot as my opinion about it seems alyways to be very different and it kinda hurts getting through it. ^^

 

So, what are the biggest flaws of Civ 5 just before BNW (like if you would disable the add on right now):
-The City State System is basically broken
-The AI is horrible and don't know how to navigate units
-The Game is quite unbalanced in a few aspects

-Not much happens in the World compared to Civ 4 and the AI's thougts about war
-Long Loading Times/Small Worlds compared to Civ 4
-The cultural victory was boring

-The "you are screwed"-problem

Now I don't just want to throw these points in and appear as a troll, so I will write a little bit about each one though I'll try to keep it short:

-The City State System is basically broken

Before BNW: Unlike it was said in the podcast the City States had much more benefits than just the luxury ressources. Each city state had a bonus like culture, faith, happiness, military. So it could give you a big advantage if you have these city states. This itself is not the problem though. The problem is, that City states are much too dynamic and easy to befriend and lost as easily in multiplayer. So what you have to do in multiplayer is to buy out city states, make them as ally and then declare war to other players so that they cannot buy them out. The swap of a city state could easy cause your happyness to drop into the red. The whole city state quest system is also extremely snowballing. If you buy city state A, they give you a ressource which then does a quest for City State B and so on. Once you are in the lead and generate more great persons and World Wonders than other player, you also get them to be allied automatically. City States are an extreme RNG Factor.
In addition you don't need to build a worker in the beginning when playing with city states as you can get one from them for free at about turn 20.

After BNW: The old flaws stayed the same, in addition the importance of city states even rose for the world council. So with the insane amount of money you get now in the later game, you can easily buy the city states you need to get what you want in the council. This is a convenience mechanic for the player if he plays against the AI. If you play with another player it will break the game very fast in the sense of making it very random. Even the diplomatic winning is purely based on how much gold+luck you had accumulating city states in multiplayer. With the new money rain coming from trade routes this even gets more absurd.

I therefore recommend to disable City States alltogether, before BNW and after BNW. Besides of the new Civs and the world congress there are no new features related to city states. Don't forget to disable to diplomatic victory as well as otherwise the loser can vote for a third party and end the game by that as you don't need more than two player's votes to do so without city states.

-The AI is horrible and don't know how to navigate units
Before BNW: It's like basically all of you said in the podcast, the AI just cant handle to win fights. They are horrible to navigate troops and unless they have tons of units and the city is totally open they are easily defended by a couple of units. As there aren't any obstacles in naval paths the coastal attacks become much stronger than at vanilla when AI was totally afraid of water.
After BNW: It's almost the same. Just that the AI has seems to have a harder time to build units and upgrade them. So they are even more unlikely to do something

 

-The Game is quite unbalanced in a few aspects

There are at least two points in which the game are unbalanced.

-Starting Locations.

Before BNW: While the location relative to other players is also very important this is not what I am talking about there. What I mean is that it is for example that your capital city has a river. A river gives you tons of money, you will be able to build the water mill, an extremely powerful building in the beginning, you will be able to build gardens which increase your great people generation, you will be able to build a hydroplant late game which will boost the city production a lot.

And of course there is also the mountain which will boost science by 50% and the coastal city which will enable you to build the sydney opera house which is very important for the cultural victory. But mountain and coastal are not essential.

So while in Singleplayer you can just restart until you got a river, in MP gets harder. If you just play with one buddy it shouldn't be a big problem to restart as long as everyone has a river, but with more people this would become a pain in the ass. To have a good spot for the capital is essential because 1. you get a big boost in the beginning and 2. unlike in Civ4 you can't shift your Palace to another city. Your religion will be founded in the capital city, so the grand temple can also only be built in the capital city, there are faction bonuses only working in the capital (Korea, Rome), the whole Tradition Tree is only working in the capital (and I contradict Troy here and say that it's most times as powerful als liberty if not better), also the opener from the mercantile Tree bosts the money from the capital.

After BNW: Rivers don't add to money directly but they increase your income for trade routes by 25%, so the effect is basically the same. Gardens are now even more powerful because of the great culture persons you probably build in the capital. But in addition in BNW it's an even greater advantage to have coastal cities. Every city which is not coastal is basically crippled as it needs to use caravans which are much less effective than ships. Having your capital as coastal city means you can boost the city a lot by other cities. It also means that you can get much more money out of your trade routes because the capital normally generates more money (especially with Tradition tree or the mercantile tree.) In addition with the new trade route system it is of advantage that your holy city = capital is a coastal city because it makes spreading the religion much easier.

So all in all it's even more important to get a good location than before. If you got a coastal city with a river you are off sooo much better than a player which is inland without river that with equal skills he could almost give up immediatly.

 

-Balancing in Factions:

Before BNW: The factions were balanced quite badly. While there are a lot of "good" factions, there are also some which are just gimp  or a one-trick-pony (Huns, Danish), there are also some factions which are overpowered. The Austrian is a great example for an overpowered faction. With just 700 Gold they can convert a city state to an own city. They don't just get an additional City with more than 10 population, They also get tons of units for free, where a single unit would cost as much. Playing austrial you can actually completely neglect bulding military if not at war, then raise an army buy buying two city states and crush your opponents with them

After BNW: No improvements. The role of some civ powers was shifted a bit. You get much more culture now, so the aztecs lost some of their value for example. Troy said "they have redone a lot of the old civs". In fact they adjusted only two civs: The French and the Arabians because their old bonuses do not make much sense anymore.

 

-Not much happens in the World compared to Civ 4 and the AI's thougts about war

Before BNW: Due to the stupidity of the AI it has a hard time to actually conquer cities. If there is a war between two AIs, the AI will most probably just take one city, if it even manges to get the troops to the other side.

While in Civ 4 the shape of the world changed a lot and to watch the video summary after a game was lots of fun, there is not much change to be seen in civ 5.

After BNW: The AI now considers the loss of gold when declaring war. Many people realized that the AI hardly ever declares war in the early game. That seems to be due to some sanity calculation within the AI as Aristos pointed out at Civfanatics: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12619981&postcount=498

As long as you don't declare war on anyone and earn the "warmonger" flag, you will have a very peaceful live during your stand. And that also contradicts what Rob said (at least I think so) in the podcast: That you would need troops out in the field to protect your traderoutes. Thats not the case. In the first turns trade routes are highly risky of course, but once the map is basically filled with cities (and thats when you start to have more than 2-3 traderoutes) the barbarians are gone and there is no risk anymore besides of maybe a few barbarian ships coming from tiny islands, which you should watch. You don't have that many traderoutes anyways, so you don't necessarily send them to all cities on the planet. And if the routes are long and an opponent wants to plunder them you can hardly protect them by ships anyways. But as I wrote before, war hardly happens for a long time if you don't initiate it at any point.

So I said the world is at peace, right? Well, that suddenly changes if you play with another human player. While the AI hates to go to war on it's own since BNW. It will happily do it if you give them like one luxury ressource and a gold coin each turn. So the AI becomes this "black mass", a tool you use to attack other players and screw their trade routes. The AI players are extremely cheap to buy and do your bidding. This then destroys the immersion of different factions battling for themselves. We even had one totally absurd situation were we both asked the Aztec to attack each other at the same time. They took our stuff and declared war on both of us in the same moment.

 

-Long Loading Times/Small Worlds compared to Civ 4

Before BNW: The Loading times got much better since vanilla but they were still not as good as you would want to play on a huge map. The benefits of that were just too small.

After BNW: The Loading times went up a lot. In addition it happens even less in the world. So that most of the AI factions will just serve as traderoute node or partner to sell ressources to. I don't see any use to play on a map bigger than small.

 

-The cultural victory was boring

Before BNW: As mentioned in the podcast you clicked on Next Turn a lot with almost nothing in between

After BNW: It became much more interesting though the tourist system seems not to be that fleshed out. The jumps it does in later techs are insane. The swapping of great works to get set bonuses can be annoying, especially in multiplayer. You can hardly win by culture alone though and a strong military can help to take out the biggest tourism pusher, which makes it interestng.

 

-The "you are screwed"-problem

Before BNW: You had essential city states which could drop from ally to friend or you might have another player who just gave them money so that they aren't your allies anymore. That could then lead to unhappyness. There is not much you can do about it but to declare war on any human opponent. You can also be easily screwed if someone keeps luxury ressources or strategic ressources destroyed which you need to maintain happyness or make your troops effective. But this is basically your own fault.

After BNW: There are different factors which were added: With the addition of world congress there are lots of opportunities where someone can completely screw you while you have no real chance to do anything. If someone bought up most of the city states or manages it otherwise that there is a trade embargo against you, you are almost done. Not just your own traderoutes are lost, but all the incoming as well. You will hardly gain any money from that moment on, making it impossible to get back some city states. The world congress can also screw you by forbidding ressources you depend on. In addition the ideologies and the tourism can screw you heavily. Also if someone goes at war with you and the trade routes you haved are just deleted or get plundered by the other faction you are easily screwed. In all these cases you can do some work to prevent it, but there are lots of "single events" which might screw you completely and trigger a spiral down, especially in multiplayer, where the other players will do everything to cause this.

 

So in essence, what did actually become better in the Add On?

I'd say not much, but a couple of little things. The trade routes are a nice addition though they fluctuate a lot. The cultural win was improved for sure, though it's not perfect. It's nice how the religion ties in with the trade routes now. In addition the overhaul of the social policies was nice. The different trees have a better structure and starting conditions.

I disagree that these changes make Civ like a whole new game now.

 

Advantages from Civ 5 over Civ 4:

I agree that it's not the graphics but the one unit per tile system which the AI can't handle unfortunately. In addition to the much more stable multiplayer platform even if mp was and still is handled as a stepchild. But it seems like it slowly gets better finally. If I played alone I'd still play Civ 4 because I love the feeling of beeing in a living world. Civ5 in comparison still feels like a board game (which isn't bad, but its a different experience). Due to the technical side however Civ5 is my game of choice for multiplayer matches.

 

And just for those interested:

After playing for a while in MP, we made following houserules to make the game most enjoyable for us:

-0 city states

-diplomatic victory disabled

-start over until all players have a river in proximity of the starting location

-don't trade AI into war, only ask it without buying it (discussion menue instead of trade menu)

-don't suggest embargos in the world congress

 

And I guess that are my 2 cents about this topic. Well, looking at the wall of text it's probably more than just 2, but well...^^

(my Experiences are based out of 50-70h of gameplay in about 10 games on Immortal with another human player and 4 AIs, first games with normal amount of city states to see the changes, then reduced to 0 again)

[robc]

I thought of this while jogging and listening to the podcast to find the above poster has a similar complaint. Civ V has the city-state relationship mechanic backwards in my opinion. If a player becomes an ally with a city-state, it should become easier to maintain the relationship. Long term relationship building should be rewarded so city-states aren't things to be bought and lost at the drop of a hat. There are a couple ways this could be achieved:

 

1) Actually have the relationship meter grow a little each turn once a civ is allies with them.

2) Have it be cheaper for an ally to buy more relationship points.

 

Maybe add the option for Civs to be able to lower the relationship of another civ with a city state. Then multiple civs could gang up on another to buy down their relationship points. In any case, the main point is to reward long term relationships so it isn't nearly as beneficial to buyout a city-state at the last second to get their vote in the world council.

[Fhnuzoag]

I thought of this while jogging and listening to the podcast to find the above poster has a similar complaint. Civ V has the city-state relationship mechanic backwards in my opinion. If a player becomes an ally with a city-state, it should become easier to maintain the relationship. Long term relationship building should be rewarded so city-states aren't things to be bought and lost at the drop of a hat. There are a couple ways this could be achieved:

 

1) Actually have the relationship meter grow a little each turn once a civ is allies with them.

2) Have it be cheaper for an ally to buy more relationship points.

 

Maybe add the option for Civs to be able to lower the relationship of another civ with a city state. Then multiple civs could gang up on another to buy down their relationship points. In any case, the main point is to reward long term relationships so it isn't nearly as beneficial to buyout a city-state at the last second to get their vote in the world council.

That's more realistic, but is that more fun? It sounds like a snowball mechanic there. A civ that controls most of the nation states would see his control reinforced over time, even as he reaps the benefits overall, which basically gives him control over that part of the game.

[Gormongous]

Well, I think the option would be to make city-states more demanding and have the consequences for ignoring that demand increase as the relationship develops. If a city-state asks you to declare war on someone right when you meet them, there's not much penalty to ignoring it, but if you don't do as they say when you're allied, the fallout should be ruinous. This would make pursuing city-states for diplomacy a valuable strategy, like it already is, but more all-consuming for resources and time. As it stands now, you want to pick up a few city-states as friends and allies, no matter what you're doing.

[biz]

anyone know how to make this game fun for someone who is actually competent at strategy games?

 

the AI is absolutely no threat on any difficulty level except deity... and the game just doesn't function anywhere close to how its designed at that level

 

has anyone found any satisfaction in seeing how quickly you can win instead of whether or not you will win at the end?

[robc]

That's more realistic, but is that more fun? It sounds like a snowball mechanic there. A civ that controls most of the nation states would see his control reinforced over time, even as he reaps the benefits overall, which basically gives him control over that part of the game.

 

I think so because I absolutely hate how all the city states can be purchased at any time. I think the game needs a way to make that more difficult. It seems a natural way to reward a player for building a relationship early on. It shouldn't be insurmountable to topple an ally of a city-state.

 

Another option would be to have payment to a city state be long term (like xx gold over 30 turns). Each turn your relationship grows based on how much gold per turn you give them. That way players can't just buy the city states away in a single turn, it takes a longer term commitment.

[Snooze]

anyone know how to make this game fun for someone who is actually competent at strategy games?

 

the AI is absolutely no threat on any difficulty level except deity... and the game just doesn't function anywhere close to how its designed at that level

 

has anyone found any satisfaction in seeing how quickly you can win instead of whether or not you will win at the end?

 

I think you will find there is a whole class of players that love to kick an AI's ass in whatever game they play.

 

I don't yet play on Diety level so I guess I am not competent at computer games....

[Kordanor]

I think you will find there is a whole class of players that love to kick an AI's ass in whatever game they play.

 

I don't yet play on Diety level so I guess I am not competent at computer games....

 

Only at strategy games he said. ^^

But yeah if you want a real challenge look for human opponents. Just make sure you play with the same houserules.

[Snooze]

Only at strategy games he said. ^^

But yeah if you want a real challenge look for human opponents. Just make sure you play with the same houserules.

 

Ha!