How come there's so many empty spots in Civ V?

Compared to Civilization IV or previous games of the franchise the spheres of influence of the different civilizations seem to leave lots of empty spots in-between for the entirety of an average game. I haven't played this game before, and I haven't seen anyone commenting on this before.
Doesn't this influence gameplay for the bad? Not to mention that is looks ugly on the world map, in my humble opinion at least.

Maybe I'm biased and might my perception change once I pick up this game. Many people seem to prefer Civilization V over Civilization IV while I truly love IV.

Danielion said:

opinion

Click to expand...

yeah...

I'm downloading the demo already.

Still, I do wonder whether there are many Civ IV players who prefer Civ V and why exactly.

Cause they're babies? I held off Civ 5 because of them. Its pretty common in the gaming industry for flop games. I finally played it and its awesome. They complain about stuff like stupid AI in wars. IF they upped the difficulty they would find out what playing against an AI is suppose to be like. You're not gonna be able to simulate a real human in any game today and for years ahead so I don't know what they want.

No religion? Again, its just a complaint that people make for no reason. Civ 5 plays completely different from Civ 4. With the happiness limit, you can't be teamming up against another player just because of their religion.

I think the main reason why they went back to Civ 4 is because the gameplay is very different.

I like Civ 5 because they put checks and balances into this game. Remember the great library? Just build that and you're set for the rest of the game. Its not the case in Civ 5.

Danielion said:

I'm downloading the demo already.

Still, I do wonder whether there are many Civ IV players who prefer Civ V and why exactly.

Click to expand...

I like to move forward.
Ofcourse I too have some issues with various aspects about CiV. And I'm one of those who miss religion, not because it added a welth of strategy, but it was a fun "flavor" to my empire. Ai cheating on higher levels in CiV isn't as fun as it could be, I think.
And the game has alot more to give I think, with future patches and expansion DLC.

Nevertheless, I have clocked 1k hours on CiV now, and when I reasently fired up my old beloved cIV,,,,, I smiled and thought "yeah, that was a great game. Maby the best game ever. I hope someday CiV can become the best game ever too." then I exit and fire up CiV.

I like Civ 5 because they put checks and balances into this game. Remember the great library? Just build that and you're set for the rest of the game. Its not the case in Civ 5.

Click to expand...

Someone (and I apologize to whoever said this as I don't remember who) on these boards pointed out that CIV was a game of low-impact choices stringing together momentous game-changing events. Building individual troops was nigh-trivial when they could be pumped out one per turn, science vs culture vs gold spending could be reversed at any time, even diplomacy could make a 4 point jump at any time by swapping state religions. In between those single decisions with low impact were incredibly influential wonders like the Apostolic Palace and civics like Free Speech which gave huge boosts once unlocked.

CiV on the other hand is about small-but-often-irreversible choices that build your empire. Social Policy selection is the most obvious example, but diplomacy has no hooks to make a quick turnaround with, and focusing heavy on population/research growth cannot be quickly turned around to booming culture growth. Redirecting the step-by-step direction of your empire will involve no small amount of expense and time, which if you didn't survey the situation before taking a leap can mean a challenging push up ahead.

You want to give yourself an early lead by wiping out a neighbor and taking his stuff? Sure, but that's going to give you a diplomacy hit with your other neighbors who will now see you as a warmongering menace with a greedy eye on their cities. When a runaway Alexander from the next continent over starts knocking on your door, you may find yourself in need of some allies to unite against him when those potential allies are currently looking at Alexander like their salvation against YOU. Not an unrecoverable situation, but you'll need to be plying them with favorable trades for a while, and be ready to sacrifice relations with other civs if you really want to turn things around (nothing like mutual denouncements and declarations of war to make for great chumpals).

hung_h said:

Cause they're babies?

Click to expand...

Dunno about the others, but I haven't been a baby for about 53 years now.

I prefer Civ4 over Civ5 for a very simple reason; they removed the complexity. Civ2 was more complex than Civ; Civ3 more complex than Civ2; Civ4 more so than Civ3. Now it's becoming a simpler game.

If you prefer it, goody for you. But don't presume that others dislike it because they're childish; it reflects very poorly on you.

I prefer civ5 over civ4 because it is far more strategic, and takes more thought... in other words it's more like complicated chess or go, which are fairly simple games, yet strategy and thinking are all important.

In civ4 the progress was far more predictable, and as long as you could build a good stack, you would win.

In civ5 it's far more unpredictable until you get to the modern era and know what everyone else is doing, then it's a question of playing it out (my least favourite bit), but that's similar to civ5 in that respect.

Civ5 also has better graphics, but is less forgiving of mistakes (a good thing, imho), and has interesting DLC add-on civs and scenarios, and the achievements can be an extra bit of fun too.

To me, it feels brighter and less repetitive, so I am unlikely to go back (oh, and I do have, and have played, all the Civs, from shortly after civ1 came out).

To the OP, I say, try civ5, and you will find out why.

Why do people want new shiny toys? Because they're new and exciting. And after a while they get used to them and learn to love them. While going back sometimes is fun, as progress junkies we are 'programmed' to move forward.
Yes, Civ5 is lacking depth, is more simplistic and repetitive than Civ4. However, Civ4 wasn't such a great game until BTS came out. If the devs leave Civ5 where it currently stands, I believe its fan base will slowly diminish.

The Pilgrim said:

Why do people want new shiny toys? Because they're new and exciting. And after a while they get used to them and learn to love them. While going back sometimes is fun, as progress junkies we are 'programmed' to move forward.
Yes, Civ5 is lacking depth, is more simplistic and repetitive than Civ4. However, Civ4 wasn't such a great game until BTS came out. If the devs leave Civ5 where it currently stands, I believe its fan base will slowly diminish.

Click to expand...

Indeed, this is how I feel. I really like CiV, it just needs to evolve into a better game as cIV did.

Be fair, give it a bit longer! After all, how long was it after civ4 release that BTS came out? Two and a half years or thereabouts (iirc).

There is plenty of scope to improve civ5, and financed by DLCs, it should flourish with more work done. I for one, am looking forward to the finished product, but I don't expect that for a good while yet!

@The_Pilgrim
I don't think Fraxis are so unintelligent as to leave it where it is... and I sincerely hope I'm right!

Hormagaunt said:

Dunno about the others, but I haven't been a baby for about 53 years now.

I prefer Civ4 over Civ5 for a very simple reason; they removed the complexity. Civ2 was more complex than Civ; Civ3 more complex than Civ2; Civ4 more so than Civ3. Now it's becoming a simpler game.

If you prefer it, goody for you. But don't presume that others dislike it because they're childish; it reflects very poorly on you.

Click to expand...

Some may argue that it is a "simpler" game, but complexity can only go so far. This game reminds me of Civ2 and it's play style. To me that allows complexity to start over fresh, and it does have a great platform in V to allow the next two versions room for complexity without having a dead end route.

The_Quasar said:

Be fair, give it a bit longer! After all, how long was it after civ4 release that BTS came out? Two and a half years or thereabouts (iirc).

There is plenty of scope to improve civ5, and financed by DLCs, it should flourish with more work done. I for one, am looking forward to the finished product, but I don't expect that for a good while yet!

@The_Pilgrim
I don't think Fraxis are so unintelligent as to leave it where it is... and I sincerely hope I'm right!

Click to expand...

Why should anyone give this game any longer? When was it released? A year ago or more? its not a bad game, its just not as gripping as earlier iterations of the series.

I for one am more hooked on EU3 (yes yes I know it has expansions and CiV does not yet) than I ever was on CiV. Why? well it certainly isnt the graphics......Its the imersion and complexity of the game I love, something that sadly CiV lacks.

Other people will like different things and Love CiV.....its all about opinion.

Danielion said:

Compared to Civilization IV or previous games of the franchise the spheres of influence of the different civilizations seem to leave lots of empty spots in-between for the entirety of an average game. I haven't played this game before, and I haven't seen anyone commenting on this before.
Doesn't this influence gameplay for the bad? Not to mention that is looks ugly on the world map, in my humble opinion at least.

Click to expand...

I think the reason for this is that building an additional city is often difficult to justify, incurring penalties to both global happiness and social policy accumulation.

Unless the city spot is really, really awesome I would generally rather have an AI settle a city there so that I can take and puppet it later.

One or both of these systems needs to be changed to encourage expansion - maybe making the increased culture costs for policies more closely match your empire's increased ability to generate culture, or perhaps reducing the 'per city' -3 happiness, or maybe just reducing the utility of puppet cities.

I agree that it is quite sad to see - even in the modern era - unclaimed land. It feels weird, and is certainly not realistic. Even though there are large swathes of land currently where people don't live, they are still claimed by countries (ie. Antartica).

The_Quasar said:

@The_Pilgrim
I don't think Fraxis are so unintelligent as to leave it where it is... and I sincerely hope I'm right!

Click to expand...

I sincerely hope you're right too. But it's not about intelligence. It's about profit. Current DLC model is very profitable as it is. They can continue to charge $5 per couple of buildings/leader and get away with it for quite some time. Not forever though. I hope they prefer to secure the fans' loyalty and release an EP sooner as a preventive measure rather than later, as an attempt to pull them back after they lost their interest.


As for the unclaimed land, on higher difficulties there is no much of it. AI expands rapidly.

On the point of large spaces between civs, add more civs at the start up screen. It would seem that the default setting is like the easy setting for any particular dificulty level and i use it as so. You can tend to play the game in relative saftey.
Once i find that dificulty level easy i turn up the number of civs rather than simply jumping up another dificulty level.

As for why i have never considered turning back to IV, well 1upT is the major contributor as it just adds so much to the game and is a change i have wished for since playing the original civ.
Another couple of highlights are the way your borders grow, the restrictions on road building and i would quite miss the social policy system to name a few.
There is still much lacking in V and even improvements that can be made in the good parts, especially compared to IV but when you consider IV had years of tweaks and expansions then V has barely begun.

Makata, I think that is well said. It sums it up about right. Civ5 is about laying a groundwork that can't be easily changed. The only thing similar in Civ4 were cottages. Religion maybe to a degree (although once they had spread far, that was no longer the case). In that case, there's a huge difference but neither is clearly right and the other wrong.

Tapewormlondon, I defend the game usually, but I will agree here. If you don't like the game, don't feel bad about this. You just don't like the game. It's reasonable to move on to other games. Others, of course, might disagree. I find it very enjoyable. I'm hoping they continue to refine it, but I think they have a good place right now.

IME the only instances wherein there are unclaimed lands later in the game are on larger than Standard size maps. I'm currently playing on a Large Continental map as England, and when I explored the world using Caravels there was still a lot of unsettled land around 1300 CE. It wasn't until 1800 CE that most of it was taken -- and even then there were gaps in borders of the new cities.

I usually play Standard size maps, and there's rarely ever unsettled lands by the time I unlock Caravels -- and I'm always on the hunt for them because I want to find a foothold on the other continents to facilitate an invasion if I decide to go for DV.

Yeah, to actually address the original topic, I don't think gaps in territories are as big of a deal as I originally thought. They actually seem relatively uncommon.

Large gaps:

1. Except in the demo which is probably not patched, minimum city placement allowed on the same landmass is
C - X - X -X - C. INCLUDING a foreign city or even a city state.

2. Founding a city initially brings only surrounding hexes instead of an entire square. (2 fewer tiles)

3. Culture expands one hex at a time instead of civ 3 / civ 4.

4. For the human at medium and above difficulty levels: Happiness limits. (AI plays at Chieftain happiness bonuses at all difficulty levels)

Mostly in the Demo: (AI). Until one of the early patches sometimes an AI would decide to focus on wonders to the exclusion of everything else, including workers & settlers.
(A patch fixed that, and in addition a fairly recent patch rewards free workers to Pyramids so if an AI does go all out getting it then it will have two workers when it completes)