rezaf
Cipher
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2015
- Messages
- 652
Some efforts were made to try and address this, so the devs have been clearly aware of the issue.
In Civ1, which is the only "real" Sid Meier game, since his part in design and development was fundamental, this was much less of an issue. Compared to later civ titles, the first game is so simple it can almost pass as a coffee break game.
Later games, for understandable reasons one of which was players demanding it, piled complexities and features on, most of which requires player attention, causing the micromanagement hell. Adding insult to injury, with quite a few such features they never even bothered to enable the AI to make use of them.
Attempts to remedy the situation ranged from automation options to drastical changes to game design aimed at discouraging player growth alltogether.
But the core problem remained.
I feel civ is in need of a new major evolution, maybe splitting the game into distinct phases, kinda like in Spore, to outright remove certain micromanagement options at certain points. Of course, something like that would probably be at odds with having multiplayer, which has come to be an expected feature of the series.
But what do I know, I'm just an old fart at this point. The last two civ games never really clicked for me, if I play the series at all these days, it's usually CivWin, the Windows version of part 1. Like I wrote earlier, it's almost like a coffee break game these days, you can easily finish the average playthrough on an afternoon or two. So ...get off my lawn, I guess.
In Civ1, which is the only "real" Sid Meier game, since his part in design and development was fundamental, this was much less of an issue. Compared to later civ titles, the first game is so simple it can almost pass as a coffee break game.
Later games, for understandable reasons one of which was players demanding it, piled complexities and features on, most of which requires player attention, causing the micromanagement hell. Adding insult to injury, with quite a few such features they never even bothered to enable the AI to make use of them.
Attempts to remedy the situation ranged from automation options to drastical changes to game design aimed at discouraging player growth alltogether.
But the core problem remained.
I feel civ is in need of a new major evolution, maybe splitting the game into distinct phases, kinda like in Spore, to outright remove certain micromanagement options at certain points. Of course, something like that would probably be at odds with having multiplayer, which has come to be an expected feature of the series.
But what do I know, I'm just an old fart at this point. The last two civ games never really clicked for me, if I play the series at all these days, it's usually CivWin, the Windows version of part 1. Like I wrote earlier, it's almost like a coffee break game these days, you can easily finish the average playthrough on an afternoon or two. So ...get off my lawn, I guess.
