Just made the jump to Civ 5: Impressions

Teproc said:

Sure, your argument on maneuvering room is good and you kinda convinced me that they should do those things for CiVI. I was talking about the production/science side of things.

@Thormodr : Really nothing has changed since CiV Vanilla ? What ?

I mean really, I have no idea how you can read that article and not find it completely outdated. CiV is all about going tall, yet her whole argument is that 1UPT is preventing tall cities to be good (or part of her argument anyway)...

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I've read Sullla's Brave New World review and watched a number of video series including Marbozir who explains the game very well. Nothing has effectively changed. Sure there have been nerfs here and there and they added a lot of fluff and busywork but the same core problems are still there under the surface.

Civ 5 is just less exciting. whether it's due to the negative influence of 1upt or not, it just feels flat, stale, unexciting. Mainly this concerns tame incremental growth. Everything is just +1 here or there. Wonders that don't feel that wondrous. A long list of policies and religious bonuses, but none of them feel special or stand out. As one progresses through the game, there's not much to look forward to.

Compared to previous Civ games, including CivRev, they had stages in the game where you felt a jump in power and control, opening up more possibilities. While there were fewer civics, each one vastly changed the way you play the game. Wonders and even common buildings that promote a certain strategy and encourage you to want to build them.

Thormodr said:

I've read Sullla's Brave New World review and watched a number of video series including Marbozir who explains the game very well. Nothing has effectively changed. Sure there have been nerfs here and there and they added a lot of fluff and busywork but the same core problems are still there under the surface.

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So you are saying that tall play is bad in CiV ? We must not have been watching the same Marbozir videos...

Edit : I don't think you're saying that, to be clear, but since all you've been answering is a non-specific "nothing has changed" it's a little hard to have a conversation...

Chinese American said:

Civ 5 is just less exciting. whether it's due to the negative influence of 1upt or not, it just feels flat, stale, unexciting. Mainly this concerns tame incremental growth. Everything is just +1 here or there. Wonders that don't feel that wondrous. A long list of policies and religious bonuses, but none of them feel special or stand out. As one progresses through the game, there's not much to look forward to.

Compared to previous Civ games, including CivRev, they had stages in the game where you felt a jump in power and control, opening up more possibilities. While there were fewer civics, each one vastly changed the way you play the game. Wonders and even common buildings that promote a certain strategy and encourage you to want to build them.

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I can explain why that is. After playing Civ5 for years then coming back to RAND mod for Civ4, the latter is sooooo much better than BNW because the number of meaningful decisions per turn is just right, and the game is not trying to be something it isn't.

The trick is not whether the game is "epic" or "immersive" or whatever you people want to call it, but that the decision density of the game has to be correct and flow evenly throughout the game. The decision density means that every turn, the amount of decisions have to fit with people's memory capacity AND be meaningful too. That is the recipe.

So every turn there has to be 4-7 meaningful decisions. Less than that and players get bored. More than that and players feel overwhelmed and loose focus. Problem with Civ5 is that the decision density is all wrong because of bad game design.

The game design is bad because Civ5 is trying to be a strategy game when the whole Civ tradition before that is actually sandbox. If Civ6 wants to be a strategy game, it needs to realize what makes a game a strategy game. In a top notch strategy game, every decision is visible to all players. Nothing is hidden BUT the decisions are committal (there is no easy way to reverse them). So it doesn't matter whether you're opponent sees your decisions because you are committed to a strategy and cannot go back. This is why Chess is one of the best strategy games ever invented. But in BNW half of the games decisions are invisible (the build game), and are often not committal just additive. No wonder the game plays blandly.

What I really like about Civ4 is that it is a genuinely honest sandbox game. Civ5 is just a bad strategy game and a cut down sandbox game where they cut-down the game to save money and improve sales. Sorry.

For me the landmark Civ games of all time are RAND Civ4 because it is vintage sandbox and Rise of Nations which showed the world that tiles on the map are unnecessary for a civ game and that city buildings are placed on the map rather than icons in the city screen (so that the build order is visible). I fear that Firaxis is not learning from these land marks and are instead focusing on how to maximize profit for Civ6.

Regarding 1UPT, I think too that a mix of both models (i.e. limited stacking) might work. But then, someone else has pointed out that that might cause more problems (for example, ranged units covered by melee units would become even more OP than they already are), which would need to be adjusted too. I still don't see the finesse in stacks of doom, but I guess being able to move them all at once and cut down on micromanagement really is an advantage.

In any case, 1UPT at least allows one to have elite highly-promoted units. I'll take that over CivIII's 2-4 HP cannon fodder units. Oh, and CivIII's corruption system. Making cities more than a certain (not very far) distance from your capital all but useless, no thanks. Not to mention that hidden feature where corruption increased dramatically empire-wide, regardless of distance, if a civ built more than a certain number of cities depending on map size. So...you'll make a game based around city-spamming, and then include a mechanic that makes city-spamming harmful?

LoneRebel said:

Regarding 1UPT, I think too that a mix of both models (i.e. limited stacking) might work. But then, someone else has pointed out that that might cause more problems (for example, ranged units covered by melee units would become even more OP than they already are), which would need to be adjusted too.

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Could make it like Civ4 where all atacks are 1vs1 and then a dice is rolled to see who survives with how much life. The primary reason of OP range in 1UPT is the lack of counterattack, this has to go.

It occurred to me that the 1 UPT combat in Civ5 is worse than it needs to be. 1 UPT could be interesting if ranged units could shoot farther, if defensive units lasted longer, and if mobile units had more movement... and of course if the map was bigger.

But that would be interesting in a tactical war game, which Civ has never been.

There are many sports games where you actually control the player... like you press a button to swing the bat and try to hit the ball in a baseball game.
Then there are games where you simply manage a team, your choices as a manager help determine the outcome of the game, you don't directly control the players.

In my opinion, if you're going to add tactical battles to your game, you'd better go full-out and do them very well. I still play Rome Total War, the first one, because it's still fun. The battles are fun. If Civ5 went completely all-out with tactical battles to the point that they were really well done, who knows what I'd think of it, it would certainly be a complete change for the series, but I may have liked it. The problem is that they dabbled in tactical warfare and didn't do it justice. Keep in mind that no other 4x game attempts to dabble in tactical warfare, and there's a good reason for it, in a strategy game it is just unnecessary.

I'd rather play a game with very simple combat but a rich strategic atmosphere, than a game with poorly implemented tactical combat.

I can honestly say I find combat in Civ5 to be a wash with Civ4. It's no better, no worse, and they nearly broke the game (many have argued they did indeed break the game) simply to switch to 1 UPT. The whole thing was unnecessary... and they committed to it without really putting in the effort to make it work.


All that said, I'm actually enjoying this game. Keep in mind I've clocked in well over a thousand hours in Civ4 and I'm not even at 50 in Civ5, so I have no idea if I'll play this game as much as the last one, but it's not nearly as bad as some (like Sulla) made it out to be. Perhaps that's the benefit of not picking it up until it's had 2 expansions and many patches I did buy everything on sale and I do feel I got my money's worth. I hope they learn from the very mixed reviews and do a better job launching Civ 6

For Our friend, Noto2,
While I didn't get into the Civ system until V, I haven't spent money on games since February, and the $80 was WELL spent here .
Back in the day of mapsheets and cardboard, games running up to $20, before PC's; I was young, and somewhat a lemming over the new Games Avalon-Hill and TSR pumped out, "OOOh, new and shiny!!,GIMME !!!!" .

But with the advent of PC's, and lots of updates, one does aquire patience, thus, for BE (and any other new stuff), the idea "YOU go find those BUGS for ME", has shown to be a good one .
So I started with vanilla(chieftan), worked up to G&K (warlord) , and now onto BNW (prince +); while having a FINE old time !!

I say that Civ V is a "keeper".

1 UPT was one of the reasons why I thought Civ5 would be great in multiplayer. I never liked the stack of doom in previous games although it was fun to anhillate enemy armies with one nuke.

Civ 5 AI is mostly useless in warfare. Even when it has superior numbers and tech, it manages to lose most of the wars with human player. I keep on killing single units from AI:s army and in meanwhile it keeps on shuffling most of its units around, instead of just attacking my units.

I just finished reading Sulla’s October 2014 Civ 5 BNW write-up and I wouldn’t place too much stock in it. Some of the things he said made sense, but others were wrought with holes so big even I could see them (and I’m terrible at analyzing these things).

First he criticized Civs 1-4 and Civ 5 Vanilla for allowing you to ICS and spam the map with dozens of cities. Then he criticized BNW because you couldn’t build massive sprawling empires. You can’t have it both ways.

He picked apart the “Science penalty per # of cities” because it meant that it was better to build 3-4 cities and then stay put. He then cited Game Of The Month saves that showed that building only 3-4 cities was the quickest and most efficient way to win the game. Yeah, well not everyone plays the game to win it as quickly as possible. And, by no means does this mean you CAN’T build more than 3-4 cities. I do it all the time in my games and I do just fine.

He complained that, because of the player and AI only building 3-4 cities, late in the game there were large swaths of unsettled land all over the map. I’ve played plenty of games where the AI settled more than 3-4 cities and there was very little unsettled area on the map.

He said that, after building 3-4 cities, there was no reason to build any more. I can think of some: to claim (and prevent the AI from claiming) land, to place cities in strategic spots on the map, to gain access to (and prevent the AI from gaining access to) Strategic and Luxury Resources, to open up new Trade Route opportunities, etc.

He said it was ridiculous to balance Wide vs. Tall and that Wide should always be better. It’s Wide vs. “Tall” not Wide vs. “Narrow.” It’s not just about the Quantity of cities, but the Quality as well.

He then compared the Wide vs. Tall balance to saying it equated to, in Starcraft, saying that Large armies should be equal to Small armies. This analogy is incongruent. It would be like saying that a Large army of untrained units should be equivalent to a Small army of highly promoted units. That whole Quantity vs. Quality issue again.

i played the original civ and then civ ii. i skipped 3 (real life busy) but then i got iv mainly because i didnt realise there was a civ v when i came back to pc gaming. then i tried civ v vanilla to see if it ran on my old laptop and got the complete when it ran fine (if taking a couple of minutes to do the other civs/CS/barb turns). and i too felt disappointed, especially at the limited espionage, apparent civs cheating (always they beat you to wonders by a single turn??). the lack of unit stacking i wasnt quite so bothered but i missed the privateer hiding its nation sponsor. and diplomacy seemed....odd. some options didnt seem to do anything. warmonger penalties seemed too much.

and after one such post i started a civ iv game....and had no fun at all. very strange. civ v has somehow ruined me for civ iv. 1upt isnt so bad after all. and i love the hex map, much better than the squares of other civ games. i still have civ iv discs someplace but i havent even bothered installing it on this new laptop. i dont have many achievements tho; mainly because i love playing with the mods i found in civ v and that disables them.

but i still hate the movement AI applied to my units when i tell them to move to a tile more than one hex away. they embark and disembark if there is any chance at all regardless of any possible threats or the fact its going to save a turn to move over land...

I think the real problem comes from trying to do everything on the same map. In other strategy games that combine tactical battles with a turn based strategy map, the battles don't happen on the main map (Master of Orion, Total War series, Star Wars Empire at War, to name a few).


And wtf is with the world congress??? I think that deserves its own thread. I mean, I'm all for having a world congress, and I'm all for being punished for being a warmonger. If the other civs want to stop trading with me, cool. The banning me from trading with my own city state allies is a little hard to believe, but I dealt with it. I can understand the world banning other civs from trading their luxuries to me...

But how on earth is the world congress banning me from using my own salt and truffles??? I possess these resources in my land, how are they stopping me from using them? Really stupid implementation of what could have been a great game feature.

Don't snort salt kids, it's now banned.

You can use the resources. They just no longer count as a luxury. You could say they still make your people happy, but that has no effect on the abstract happiness system.

noto2 said:

And wtf is with the world congress? ... But how on earth is the world congress banning me from using my own salt and truffles?

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Hey, be grateful the AI is giving you a little bit of difficulty! I understand banning luxes to punish opponents. Be sure to be trading your monopoly lux around to help prevent it from being banned. I don't understand how the AIs think trade bans on CS is a good idea. Even the AI with the most allies will do this. Do they think it cements their lead? I think the player should get a proposal every time because the AI are just too much RNG, it is very annoying.

noto2 said:

But how on earth is the world congress banning me from using my own salt and truffles??? I possess these resources in my land, how are they stopping me from using them? Really stupid implementation of what could have been a great game feature.

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I think it's supposed to be a reflection of the social stigma attached to certain luxuries. For example, cannabis and tobacco are both drugs, but one has a strong social stigma attached to it, limiting its legal uses to fiber products (like rope) and medicines, while the other was for a time strongly entrenched in Western society, featured broadly in advertising and media, and considered to be the "cool" and fashionable drug to partake in.

They are both drugs that you smoke that induce certain psychoactive effects. But one is stigmatized, and one isn't. I see the World Congress banning a luxury as to be reflective of that. If salt gets banned, sure people will still use it to salt their meat for storage and to remove ice from roads, but it'll develop a social stigma that'll discourage people from partaking in it as a personal luxury. "Salt? Ugh... after the Romans razed Carthage and literally salted their fields so their crops wouldn't grow, people didn't like the idea of using salt as a spice anymore. Nutmeg and pepper from Indonesia are the spices of choice now..."

bouncymischa said:

I think it's supposed to be a reflection of the social stigma attached to certain luxuries. For example, cannabis and tobacco are both drugs, but one has a strong social stigma attached to it, limiting its legal uses to fiber products (like rope) and medicines, while the other was for a time strongly entrenched in Western society, featured broadly in advertising and media, and considered to be the "cool" and fashionable drug to partake in.

They are both drugs that you smoke that induce certain psychoactive effects. But one is stigmatized, and one isn't. I see the World Congress banning a luxury as to be reflective of that. If salt gets banned, sure people will still use it to salt their meat for storage and to remove ice from roads, but it'll develop a social stigma that'll discourage people from partaking in it as a personal luxury. "Salt? Ugh... after the Romans razed Carthage and literally salted their fields so their crops wouldn't grow, people didn't like the idea of using salt as a spice anymore. Nutmeg and pepper from Indonesia are the spices of choice now..."

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Interestingly enough, the Romans razed the Carthaginian capital. Certainly not possible in Civilization 5.

noto2 said:

I agree with him, though, that 1 UPT was a bad idea. Give me a day and $50 and I could come up with a far superior combat system for a 4x TBS game.

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I'm genuinely curious. (Don't got no $50 tho.)

The thing is, in that particular game, by the time the world congress banned my salt and truffles, I was in a game ending war and already had something like 40% of the world's landmass and population. My military was enormously powerful and I was raining fiery death down upon everyone else. I don't see how anyone could have stopped my people from using salt, or any other drug.

In Galactic Civ 2 there is a United Planets, that serves a similar purpose. It enacts laws and you vote on them. Also, in GC2, trade routes are very important, and you often get a significant amount of your income from them and they give diplomatic bonuses. You can, however, opt to abandon the UP and thus not be forced to follow any of its laws, but the downside is you can't trade with anyone else anymore. I'd like a similar option in Civ5.



By the way, the Romans did not salt the fields of Carthage. They may have symbolically sprinkled a little salt... but they did not actually salt the fields. Back then, salt was worth more than gold, there's simply no way they wasted tons of salt to ruin fields. Salt was so valuable that many people were paid in salt, and this is where the term "salary" comes from. Also, Carthage was rebuilt not long afterwards as a new city for the Romans.

The AI's world congress proposal choices are nearly always notoriously terrible. They love to try banning your luxuries (this option seems to have been put in by the devs for the sole reason of trolling us) or embargoing city-states when there are far better things they could be putting up to vote.

My personal favorite is how Korea always wants to pass arts funding...