I think the disagrees are because people thought you meant "up to civ4" as saying "Civ 4 is when the series became simple," not "Civ 5 is when the series became simple." Considering Civ 4 is objectively the most complex Civ game, I could see that raising a few eyebrows. Though I did meet a guy once who swore up and down that Civ 3 was more complex than Civ 4 because it had more options for micromanaging the tiles that you work? But it doesn't.
You are, of course, referring to me.
And, as per usual with fanboys of a specific game, you're grossly downplaying the conversations had and misrepresenting the position I made. The Civ games have been becoming 'less complex' since Civ1. I've barely even played Civ1 and yet I get it when people say the decline has been constant. My first Civ was Civ2 and trying to play Civ1 after being used to everything Civ2 was something I couldn't adapt to, just as people who's fist Civ was Civ4 now have anti-other Civ game goggles.
Civ1 had that DOS feel. Just like with cRPGs on this site, some people just have a natural aversion to the DOS style of game, regardless of quality or content, a time and style of game that becomes prestigious just because it's DOS and trying to argue against it's better complexity would be like bashing your head against a brick wall as better graphics have, practically universally, meant a sense of decline in gameplay complexity. I can't bring myself to do battle with Civ1's DOS style enough to argue it's not that complex, so I'm happy to let Civ1 fans boast that Civ1 was the most complex Civ game, and I won't invent fanboyisms about my favourite Civ game to make an argument I'm not actually capable of having.
Civ1:
Civ2 was the first 'modern' looking version of Civ, or, if you prefer, the first Windows rather DOS looking Civ game. And Civ2 was the one I love with my nostalgia goggles and consider all subsequent iterations as dumbed down versions of. I actually hated Civ3 when it first came out, but I was forced to make it my daily Civ when Windows 7 (or, rather, dual core Hard Drives) made me unable to play Civ2 any longer. I played FreeCiv for a while after that, which was a weaker on-line version of Civ2, but stopped that after that site ended as it was. I eventually resigned myself to my only option, Civ3, after trying 4 and finding it even more alien than 3.
Civ2:
FreeCiv:
After getting used to Civ3 I found I could enjoy the game if I prioritised the peaceful victories and I found I especially liked the 20k from one city Cultural Victory which meant prioritising Wonder building. I could write paragraphs about just how shit the combat is in Civ3 and how different it is from Civ2, but that's a different discussion. All-in-all, Civ3 still looks and plays mostly like a Civ game, just a sort of borked and semi-broken Civ game where most of the mechanics don't function as intended. The complexity is still there and the jump from Warlord to Prince level difficulty is both real and noticeable for anyone not clued up on all the many little exploits and min/maxes.
Civ3:
You'll notice a sharp graphical improvement with each edition, combined with a sense that each iteration is losing a little sense of complexity. After pretty much wearing out Civ3 and just wanting some new Civ to play I finally fired up Civ4 for a proper go rather than just a looksey. I went straight in at the Prince equivalent difficulty and tried all the different Victory Conditions without really knowing anything about the games many exploits and min/maxes, and it felt like playing Warlord on Civ3 and before. Even going up a difficulty level didn't meet the jump between Warlord and Prince on Civ3 and before, and still without any knowledge of the little things or min/maxes.
Civ4 was also the first game to look vastly different to all the previous iterations and could even be described as looking different enough to be considered a completely different game. Civ4 also had many concepts and ideas that were both entirely new and almost entirely perfunctory, such as Religion, which doesn't even have a victory condition. However, Civ4 seems to have been released at a time when 'the next generation' of gamers was settling their tastebuds and, for an awful lot of people, Civ4's graphics finally found an appeal to a more 'mass' market, creating a huge wave of very dedicated fanboys to this particular game with many gamers having it as their My First Civ Game.
Civ4:
See how everything now has a rounded feel, like someone has filed off all the corners to everything in case a child bangs their head into in. Notice the more in-your-face UI, et al. Civ4 is the Civ1 of the new graphical era, the supposed base-line of quality from which all new iterations are judged, when, in reality, it is merely the 4th decline from Civ1's long list of sequels, it just happens to have an awful lot of My First Civ Game fans, just as, I predict, Civ6 will have one day as the Stream Generation gets their first decent quality new Civ game release (as in not-beta-like releases which have plagued the series from 3-5, to which 4 was no different than 3 or 5 in this regard).
please go on.
