Source ? Civ is for recreating History, the others are replicating it. (more or less) Plus, it is made to simulate the evolution of the civilizations. Last, it's not limited to an era, but embraces the whole history of mankind.
There are so many historical omissions and simplifications in Civ5 that it could not possibly be used as a historical simulation. Let me name just a few:
- The player always has complete control of their civilization, even under a supposedly democratic government. The only exception are puppets, but the player has complete control over which cities become puppets and when they get unpuppeted. Not even in today's world of near-instantaneous communication is this possible, let alone in 3000 BC. In fact, a lot of governmental challenges and the evolution of social structures revolved around addressing the problem of management, with people slowly coming to the realization that resources and services were often managed the best when they are not all overseen by the same entity. Heck, even Lenin, the founder of what some might say is the most authoritarian government in human history, realized a few years into his government that total economic control does not work: he forced the USSR to allow for the existence of small business (up to 5 employees, IIRC) to operate in a free market economy (1924 revision of NEP, I believe), policies that were scrapped a few years later after the irrational Stalin took over. And it's not like Firaxis have not tried to implement some sort of control loss with democratic governments in the past: the democracy government in Civ2 (and maybe Civ3?) had a Senate that would overrule the player's declaration of war 50% of the time. Firaxis removed this in later games because despite it increasing historical accuracy, they found it to be frustrating for newcomers from a gameplay perspective.
- The timescale is gameplay-based with a calendar tacked on, rather than the other way around. In games like Victoria 2 and Hearts of Iron, the game revolves around a consistent in-game calendar: one that attempts (and usually succeeds) at making in-game actions happen on reasonable timescales (troops move between territories in a matter of days, buildings get built in a matter of months or years, governments hold elections every X years, etc.). By contrast, if Civ5's calendar is to be taken seriously, it can take over 100 years to build a quarry in the ancient era; it might have taken a few years, sure, but definitely not more than 100.
- The game uses cities as the smallest unit of territorial player control (culture is just a way to spread a city's control, the smallest unit remains the city itself). Despite the fact that Civ games take place over the entire breadth of human history, cities only really became bastions of power in the late middle ages, and even then you had countries like Imperial Russia and Japan where farming in sparsely populated areas remained as the local economic backbone. Steppe cultures' military and economic prowess came from large, roving bands of shepherds (of all manner of livestock), rather than centralized points, ie. cities. Cities are simply not a small enough unit of territorial control to any game that wishes to be a historical simulation: heck, even the provinces of Victoria 2 (which represent roughly 1-3 tiles' worth of population and economy in Civ5) aren't always small enough for the task, since small countries are forced to produce larger amounts of a few resources rather than small amounts of almost all types of resources (most apparent with Japan and the fact that they don't produce enough rice to sustain their population, as most of their provinces produce goods used to make industrial or luxury goods, eg. tea, lumber, iron, coal, sulfur).
- Concepts that shape centuries' worth of relations between peoples are either absent from Civ games or implemented in such a way as to not actually model the way those relationships are shaped. The idea of maximizing the amount and types of people who can become powerful in order to generate more value out of groups of humans (the driving force behind the formation of free market economies, capitalism, socialism, communism, liberalism, abolishment of slavery, abolishment of serfdom, abolishment of caste systems, Western European models of feudalism that allowed nobles to still challenge the power of their kings via upper and lower houses, egalitarianism, etc.) is completely absent. Cultures are constant, never merging or diverging. Nationalism is assumed from the start of the game (French people will always remain loyal to France), even though its beginnings emerged around the high middle ages and it often only really started kicking around the 17th and 18th centuries (eg. the lines between Polish, Lithuanian, Ukranian, and Russian cultures was quite blurry until the mid-19th century). Racial relations are absent (Arabians don't view the medieval French as smelly barbarians, industrial era British don't view themselves inherently superior to Songhai, and I don't think I even need to talk about internal racism, eg. Manchu vs. other parts of China, former slave owners vs. former slaves, European settlers in Brazil vs. natives in Brazil). Ownership distributions (eg. state-owned assets, corporation-owned assets, communally-owned assets, assets owned by a few group of powerful individuals, assets owned by a large, divided group of individuals, etc.) are completely absent. Religion, when implemented, evolves separately from cultures (historically, cultures have often been shaped around the most prominent religions present, not just the other way around like the way Civ5 models religion) and education (for the longest time in human history, clergymen were usually at the forefront of education, with completely secular public education only really coming about in the 19th century, perhaps even later).
All this would be achievable with more aggressive/close AIs.
Civilization is not the same series as Galactic Civilization: the games are never built to only work in singleplayer. Major civ AIs in Civilization games are meant as stand-ins for human players, and only minor civs in Civ5 are AIs that are an actual part of the game's design. Even if you don't play multiplayer, the fact that multiplayer is possible plays a gigantic role in designing the game: you can no longer rely on AIs to balance out any game system, because there is always the possibility that a game will have no AIs (eg. 6 player multiplayer with no AI players), and you want your game to be good even then. And if multiplayer games of Civilization have proven anything, as human players can be more aggressive, unpredictable, and cunning than the best aggressive AI Firaxis an make, it's that expansion speedbumps are needed to keep the game fun.
Why ? Because of the random map generator. By the way i don't see as a problem if two or several civs get to be more or less equal. That's for this approximate equality that corruption have been put.
Notice how even the strongest of starts don't put resources on every tile within 2 radius of your city, much like how you still don't get starts with absolutely zero yields. There comes a point where too much inequality becomes boring, both for the player with the advantage (no challenge to the game) and the player with the disadvantage (no chance at winning). Not having expansion speedbumps can make even the slightest inequalities (eg. you start with one more fish than your opponent) possibly snowball to the point of making the game boring.
In Civ5 you still want as many cities as possible, given the fact that 1 pop point = 1 beaker point. More cities = more pop growth pools that act in the same time, the more when the first pop points are faster to get than the ones of a larger city. This counterweights definitely the fact that settlers stop growth.
... except you forgot about the empire-wide population cap called "happiness" and percentage modifiers from wonders. IIRC, each new city that you found generates 4 unhappiness simply from being a new city: even without that stupidly powerful Monarchy policy (-1 unhappiness from every 2 pop in capitol), if you have 10 happiness, you can either have it as 10 population in one city or 6 population between two cities. With monarchy, it's either 15 population in your capitol or 8 population at most between two cities (7 in capitol, 1 in second city). You would need to capture a new luxury resource with each city to make up for the happiness loss, two new luxury resources with Monarchy.
As for percentage modifiers from wonders, since only one city can have a wonder, the yield bonus you get from a wonder that gives its yield bonus in % is greater if you have one, large city than if you have two, medium-sized cities. If you get 5 beakers from a single city, a +100% beakers boost (National College) gives you +5 beakers, while if you get 3 beakers from one city and 2 beakers from another, that same boost can only give you up to +3 beakers.
Now, in BNW there is this science % hit with each new city, but it's mainly unmonitorable in many ways, so you may as well consider that each average city makes you gain science, which is true mainly. (just limits it)
That limit really is nothing. You take a greater science "hit" from having your science-earning population spread out instead of being concentrated in your National College city (loss of potential yield) than you do from the arbitrary increase in science costs from city count.
Oh, because 1UPT makes obviously all armies weak, the instant availability of rush buy makes you spam units in the map in a finger snap, and the fact that cities don't need garrisons in order to defend themselves makes them invincible.
Though you did take it to extremes, I see you do get the general idea. 1UPT doesn't make larger armies weak, it just diminishes their strength to where building new units instead of settlers may no longer worth it after a point. Rushbuy lets you use gold, a resource you actually earn more from by having more cities, to replace both the hammer cost and the time to build the military units you could have built instead of settlers; the fact that it unlocks from the start means you can do this right from the start, while the fact that you don't need to dedicate a civic to it means there is no extra cost to Rushbuy. The fact that cities defend themselves essentially means whenever you settle a city, you not only get the usual city benefits, but you also create a permanent, ranged military unit that will defend your city: its only two disadvantages are that it cannot earn XP and cannot be used offensively, but otherwise it's like having built a military unit with your settler. These three combined mitigate so much of the risk associated with building settlers instead of military units that it no longer becomes much of a risk at all (and the rewards for settling a new city are huge if there is no speedbump).
I don't really get what you are trying to say here. It's not about what it was, but about what it could be.
Let's assume that there is no downside to settling a new city, other than the nuances of building and escorting a settler to a tile. When your city nears its population cap (which is when you would be building settlers anyway), spending production on buildings and wonders is not a viable alternative because you remain just as defenseless as if you had spent that production on a settler; the extra growth you get is wasted because you would be going over your population cap faster, while improved yields from a single building are easily eclipsed by the yields you could get from being able to work another set of up to 20/36 tiles with a new city.
The only real alternative is therefore to build military units. However, new technologies unlock stronger military units, and while building military units does nothing to increase your science, settling a new city does. This means that although pumping out military units would be a good alternative at first, any player who can keep their second city for 10 or so turns will gain a tech advantage over you, which they could use to make units that would win in a fight against your numerically superior but technologically inferior army. On the flipside, it would also make games incredibly boring: since there is no disadvantage to owning more cities, only for investing in the settler to found them, the player who creates warriors instead of settlers will always be able to capture the other player's second city without any negative effects. This means that the only move that cannot lose when near another player is to spam military units (you win if they go settler, stalemate if they also spam), so the first couple of turns in the game would just be cities producing units, units, and more units.
Actually it's not advised to wait for the limitation in order to start expanding. (build a settler) You are doing it not just when your cities are maximized and can't grow anymore, it's a continous play that come pretty early, way before cities have reach they maximum size (even temporary). It's dynamic, and the decisions you have to take are dynamic also of course. This has been done in order to make expansion risky and not always the best choice. But it's pretty dead with a system with far away and passive AIs.
I don't know if you've ever played Civ4 multiplayer, but the reason people built warriors instead of settlers before reaching city population cap was not because of possible city maintenance, but because of the lost growth from settlers. In fact, if you built warriors and then a settler, you would usually end up producing your settler on the same turn as a player who started off building a settler, simply because the extra yields gained from city growth during warrior production make up for the time not spent on building settlers.
You really, really should try your hand at a few multiplayer games if you haven't already.
It's just another "always doing the same", just that it's more cheasy and requires more micromanagement. (build cottages, place citizens on them) It just delays the inevitable inequalities that will unfold from the random map generator, making everything slower and more frustrating.
Uh, because gold is an empire-wide currency, I would actually call it "macromanagement" instead of micromanagement. There is no fiddling around with units, chop timings, city automation, or any other source of micromanagement. You don't have to worry about swapping citizens back and forth between tiles every turn. Everything can be resolved by planning ahead, and citizen automation has become a good enough algorithm that you often don't even have to go into a city to force someone to work your cottages; heck, automated workers will build enough cottages to the point that you really only need to worry about what stuff you build in your cities. It's the exact opposite of micromanagement, which is about constantly monitoring individual situations and acting accordingly.
Are you trying to prove that corruption brings repetitiveness and no brainers ? But, it's the same with Civ4 and Civ5, you can sum up an optimal play more or less this way.
Civ3's corruption had one no-brainer path. Civ5 has a few no-brainer paths (roughly 2-6, depending on the map, any player or AI handicaps, and your civ) to choose from, though more experienced players will usually know instantly which path is most optimal in a given situation. Civ4 has a lot of no-brainer paths to the point where while you can definitely determine what not to do in a given situation, the best thing to do precisely is lot more player- and skill level-dependent than map-, difficulty, or civ-dependent.
What about the other civs ? Isn't it boring to follow arbitrary rules you have to manage in your corner instead of being confronted directly to them ?
You answered your own question right there. You have to manage rules, so if the rules are made in such a way as to make managing them fun, it doesn't matter how arbitrary they may seem. Arbitrariness is only a problem when it does not serve to increase the number of high-quality options.
The "arbitrary" limitation on city expansion increases number of high-quality options: it makes options that are not expanding be of similar quality as expanding.
Cultural identity radious
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Runaways empires are definitely still possible, probably even more so under this system than in Civ4. This is because of production delegation: because the player does not gain culture or science from fringe cities, culture and science wonders and buildings are pointless in those fringe cities. This means that those cities will probably dedicated to producing military units, while core cities are dedicated to wonders and buildings. While wide empires can have their fringe cities work on military units and while their core works on science and culture, tall empires have to make their core cities work on both buildings and military units (for defense).
Your idea does follow along the same lines as the cultural tech tree brainstorm I wrote about in my first reply:
I would propose a Civ4-like system with one extra twist. The game would have two tech trees, a "scientific" one and a "social" one: the "scientific" tech tree would progress on a player-by-player basis, while the "social" tech tree would progress on a city-by-city basis.
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The basic idea is that because social tech is city-based, larger empires would fall behind simply by having to spend more time bringing all of their cities up to speed with their social tech-leading city (probably capitol, but not necessarily), so they could not capitalize on possible empire-wide bonuses (civics) for new social techs as quickly as smaller empires. There are no added maintenance systems or extra modifiers and radii to be accounted for, it just works by virtue of having to actually manage a larger empire. It also solves odd flavor discrepancies from having technical techs (archery, machinery, printing press) sharing the same tech tree as social advances (liberalism, civil service, mass media). Maybe have a look and see what you come up with?
