"The term dumbing down describes the deliberate diminishment of the intellectual level of the content of schooling and education, of literature and cinema, and of news and culture." - wikipedia

Obviously, you already know that when a developer 'streamlines' a game, the hope is for more sales. Granted I haven't seen much evidence to support this statement.

I have three questions for you.

1.) Who are you to get in the way of a companies profit?

2.) Your post gives the impression that at least for you, complex = fun. How did you develop this enlightening attitude?

3.) What is it about streamlined games that caused you to make this post today? Or rather, does the idea of people you've deemed not worthy of your superior intellect that play the same game as you, bother you?

What caused me to make this post was a trend these days to dumb down games when they should be getting deeper and more complex, a trend that strips a game of all its character just to turn a quick profit and appeal to the masses. The Elder Scrolls Series, The Total War Series, the Dragon Age series, the list goes on and on and on. I love Gal Civ 2 and want to see Gal Civ 3 become deeper, more detailed in its systems. Deeper diplomacy, more input into combat, more input into economy. Having a deeper game doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be more complex to manage. It has been a long time since Gal Civ 2 was released after all  So far the devs seem to be going in a awesome direction, and if they expand on the depth of the last game me and about 6 other friends will be purchasing it for multiplayer

With the exception of sleepyx732, I don't think anybody has suggested dumbing down the game.

Most suggestions here have been for new things, like tactical combat, expanding on existing things, or making certain things more user-friendly, like the tech tree, and starbases.

Of courses, hardcore fans (like myself) want more complexity. Regular and casual players, on the other hand, want something that is accessible.

Now, which of these two groups have more money?

I hope stardock wont go the way of Blizzard.

Look I love Alpha Centauri. It's an awesome game

But dear god that games NEEDS STREAMLINING. The UI is mind numbing and too much click micro.

"Streamline" != "making the game stupid"

It's about making each choice a meaningful chioce, instead of giving you 100 stupid choicses that have no clear consequence. Having more junk to do, doesn't make the game more 'complex' it just makes it 'complicated'

The problem has often been that people have complained about "being forced" to do something, and then things get automated, or simply removed, which in turn leaves you with too little to do. The level of possible interaction must stay high, or else you end up as a passive observer, rather than an active manipulator.

With passitivity comes the question of interactivity, or lack thereof. There must be something to do, all the time, or else what use has the game for a player!

I was at first sceptical about the change/removal of the sliders, but I guess you can tweak the same things with the new interface solution. But then again, if you could do it much easier and faster, what to do with that extra spare time? That is the real question!

I am of the opposite opinion.  While I agree that it shouldn't be dumbed down to the point of it becoming a more casual type of game, I would certainly like it more accessible. Some people are intrigued by the notion of building their own empire, but we're not all number crunchers who like to play via spreadsheet UIs.  So while I'm all for complexity of the rules built into the game, make it easier for people so see the cause and affect of these rules, and easier ways to govern their civilizations.

In my own Civ games when they used to have Governor AI to do things. I would always micro manage the hell out of the city FIRST. Get it to wehre I needed it to be, then just let the AI Governeors do what I had designed the city to do. This allowed me to more concentrate on my capitals and the death war machine, I mean 'totally non-aggressive self-defense-force-so-dont-worry-ai-opponents'.

I have no problems with the AI doing teh boring mundane stuff which gets quite tedious in a gigantic 'totally non-aggressive' empire.

I originally siggested automating things to speed things up on request. For the current governor settings I would shut them off if they were global. I want to control how the computer does things, so I want more governor optons suggested Que's to take some of the redundancy out of the game. Not to change h0w the game works.  I wouldn't support any automated option unless there was  a way to shut it off, so if you aren't doing enough you can turn it on.

Question is the fact there is nonething to do at the beginning or end. I'm constantly micromanaging every turn.

  I don't want to turn this game into sim city .

I turn governors off in civilization because they don't play the way I want to. They usually want to build up when I want to explore or do science.

I agree more complexity is good depending on what it is. If we are having people decide on what kind of food to grow on a farm. I would find this silly, but if we wanted to add an option for multiple factions to share tech research then this is a good idea. Complexity for the sake of complexity is not good. Not worrying about making the game too complex is a good idea. I'm in support in making an easier interface. I'm in support of giving me ways of eliminating redundancy without losing control. I'm in support of having automated governors for people who want to cut down on micromanaging as long as I could shut them off. I'm not talking on a per planet basis, but a way to do this at once globally.

I'm talking about streamlining the game. This is probably dummying down the game. I want to eliminate redundancy not control. I in support of making it more complex as long as it doesn't slow down the game to much. I'm in support of making things more complex as long as being more complex changes the way I can play the game.

If you can't find things to do are one of those people who don't build anything until you have 2 billion people. The answer to that is start building infrastructure and control your production and approval.

Remember Wardell Day!

Supreme commander (of more recent examples) style?

Sex-bomb, sex-bomb...

I completely agree with AdmiralWillyWilbur here- more complex game ideas and mechanics are a general good thing. I think that excessive dumbing-down has been the bane of gaming for the last five years has been the tentative, wet-knickers type of attitude the mainstream corporations have been dipping their toes into developing games designed for wide audiences- and am thoroughly pleased to see long playerbases thoroughly lost to those companies for their fallacy. The X franchise, the C&C lineage, Wargaming- all companies that could be doing much better if they remembered who they were selling to. Galactic Civilisations has been blessed with a relatively large niche of loyal gamers, and I hope that Stardock continues its customary habit of making games that are well received by those loyal customers, and not messing around trying to please everyone, which inevitably fails. 

I didn't think the old UI was too bad, but I'm fairly tolerant to this myself. What was a little unpleasant was the small amount of real customising and the little of it that was supported by the game engine. More weapons, defenses, and methods of using them, and fully displaying these changes in-engine, would be awesome. I kinda don't like seeing only my first two lasers firing. More hulls and a more free-form but still easy ship design system would also be nice. An experience system with a few more effects, too, would be great.

But anyway- on behalf of the old-market loyalists in the crowd- PLEASE DON"T TRY TO MAKE A ALL-DEMOGRAPHICS FAMILY GAME WITH THIS GAME. We all thank you in advance. it won't work, and you'll piss a lot of people off trying, trust me. And here's hoping for a lot of new, complicated things to learn in the new game!

Oh yes this excites me too. Particularly if they manage to make it work a little smoother then how it dose in Civ 5. Oh and have a lot of different bills.