What went wrong with Civilization 4?

While I think it is one of the best games ever, it's not perfect. I'm interested what people think the problems with the core ruleset of the game are (rather than implementation problems like bad optimisation, barbarian galleys appearing every three turns, unbalanced starts, UI or AI problems).

From my point of view things I don't like as much are:

Clearly superior strategies at the start, such as going for agriculture/animal husbandry/mining/bronze working being a better bet than hunting/fishing/mysticism the vast majority of the time. Or worker first apart from occasional seafood starts when it is often still marginal.

It might be interesting if slavery and the ability to chop/reveal copper were on different tech paths so you had to choose one over the other.

It is again an implementation problem for several techs. Take Hunting as a prime example. Hunting isn't that bad by itself. It unlocks a nice food plot, that is the deers and a correct early source of commerce, the furs. The problem lies in mapscripts and that is a bad implementation because most maps have their deer and fur sources at the tundra. Seriously, hunting-gathering happenened in every part of the world in the neolithic, not just in the most northern parts. Quite often,on most regular mapscripts, a player won't be pleased by the sight of either fur or deer because they are a strong indicator of a very northern starting location or very southern one near the tundra or ice regions. Several mapscripts make Hunting a nice tech like Arboria, rainforest, boreal, etc. It is just that all you have seen until now is the typical pangaea, fractal, continents, etc. Those are putting hunting resources at the worst place.

Also, a nice feature I have found in a fan made mod called PAE is the ability to put hunting camps, farms (mostly) and other improvements on every tiles. Of course, the increase of the respective output is not as strong as it was put on a bonus, but that shows if that was possible on regular BTS, hunting would be an interesting option. Think about putting hunting camps on forests for instance. THAT would be an interesting alternative to hills.

The big problem with fishing is the workboat. What unnerves people is the strictly hammer cost and then especially the consumption of the unit once improving the tile. If the workboat was just like the worker, that is somehow eternal and just putting improvement for free of cost, that would certainly change the balance.

Indeed, BW groups too much of the best game features. Not only slavery but also chopping, permitting to compete finally against the AI. And to add to the injury, copper revelation and possibility to have the strong axemen. Indeed, I think a medium tech like, say, Tool Working, before BW, may just dilute the amount of goodies coming along BW. I know that RFC DoC separated the chop ability and slavery into two distinct techs, masonry and BW (that mod has basically almost the same tech tree as regular BTS).




Also on higher levels it is hardly ever worth going for a religion at the start of the game. It also bugs me that three of the religions are on exactly the same part of the tech tree rather than a bit more spaced out.

Again, if a religion brought a worthwhile bonus not accessible for a big part of the early game, the interest for going towards a religion would be stronger than ever.
Again, PAE mod reduced access to happy resources in the early game and the way the early game was made created a never seen need to go for the religious path.

The other problem with regular BTS early religions is the fact they are early. TOO early that the blow to your development is too strong to waste time going towards a religion. Again, I see your main problem is the tech tree implementation. I have also suspected problems with the tech because quite often I went for the same paths all the time. The separation of goodies enabled by techs is badly implemented.


I'd also like if it was more viable for smaller peaceful civilizations, conducting mostly defensive wars to compete over the course of the game, although this is probably a personal preference. In addition games are often decided very early on, not often allowing come backs from last place to win.


That's not true there is no way in recovering a horrible desesperate situation. Experience of the game leads the player at some point to mutate bad turns of events into advantages or opportunities. The lack of experience of perseverance often brings such mentality. I admit I am no better occasionally. People, including me, don't like to pursue a game with unfair disadvantage.

Indeed, the prize of warmongering is quite high. Cheap cities if captured with decent units, free improvements, free workers, free tribute techs, etc. The problem lies that cooperation prize is just techs and resources. Nothing more. If there were particular prizes from long term cooperations like access to more gold for exchange, peaceful approach would be possibly be attractive. But again, this is something you can't change because the prize of more cities leads often to victory.


I don't like a lot of the later additions to the game such as espionage, vassals and corporations as they feel a little too much like add-ons rather than things the game was designed around.

Lack of deep understanding. Espionage have a tremendous impact on a game if well used. And also unexpected consequences (cheap techs, ultra fast cultural victories, etc. ). Corporations are immensely strong and interesting well balanced compared to SP when it comes to late game. For instance, strong space games are sometimes won through hammer economy (SProperty) and other times through Corportations. That means, without expecting this, Firaxis managed by a strike of luck to implement two ways to winning late games. Of course, there is the problem just a couple of corporations are decent and only the first to found them will have a decent output of of this without unreasonable cost. It lacks variety. For hammers, Mining Corp. or Creative Corps. Thus only two winners and the rest eat dirt.
Vassals were subject to many criticisms and won't start discussing this. It is unbalanced and quite badly implemented. I admit it.


Also I feel the happiness cap is set too low early on in the game. I assume this is partially to help players with a bad start not get far behind too quickly as other civs hit their happiness cap, but it feels like an artificial barrier that without getting lucky with gold, gems or a hunting resource there isn't a lot you can do about it until monarchy. It also makes slavery much more of a non-decision as well.


In fact, it makes slavery A viable path. You just make the whipping cycle adjusted to get rid of unhappiness once they appear and get production.
I have seen worse in the small free happiness or health. Much worse. PAE is one example where most start with none additional. One happy and one health. That's brutal. I think BTS happy and health caps are correct. I admit on Warlords expansion and base Vanilla, that was quite low, but now it's ok.


Historically health was probably more of a concern in early civilizations than happiness, but the game has this the other way around. I think each population causing two unhealthiness instead of one would make the early game more interesting as you might hit the health cap before the happiness cap a lot of the time.

What else do people think is wrong with the game?

Comments in blue.
 
Might be a little off topic, but from real world observations on jungle harvesting...the few trees that do supply useful lumber are impossible to harvest efficiently because of the overall thickness of vegetation. That's why jungle clearing is done by burn offs rather than any attempt at cutting.

Back on topic...the OP says the happy cap is too low early in the game, and TW says that 'makes slavery a viable path'. Is that necessary? Near as I can tell slavery is the UNAVOIDABLE path. Try to be competitive without whipping on even moderate difficulty levels.
 
The problem is the lack of another way, another strong civic. Don't know. Crushing pops into slavery for selling and get commerce or gold treasury out of it. Something that competes the whipping.

And slavery ratio is so good compared to simply working mines that it exacerbates the problem.
 
Slavery could be nerfed by making each pop point yield fewer hammers, say 50-75% of current amounts.
 
^ One reason that's dangerous is that slavery is an equalizer; otherwise poor-production starting positions actually have a chance because of it, while low food starts are pretty well screwed regardless of its existence.
 
There are some balance issues for sure. Some UB's and UU's could use some balancing.

I do agree that Bronze Working is overpowered for someone who has Copper in their BFC. I think Archery should be replaced with something like Warrior Code. And all melee units require Warrior Code AND Copper/Iron.

In some ways, I think Axemen should be nerfed slightly too. Axemen are generally more useful than Swordsmen since 7.5 beats 6.6. Most people would generally have an Axeman to defend their city so bringing Swords to attack it isn't always optimal.

Another idea I have is to provide existing units with small upgrades with certain tech discoveries. For example, when you discover Iron Working, Archers gain an additional first strike. Axemen will be Strength 5 with BW, but be Strength 5 w/ 50% vs melee with IW. This gives incentive for someone to tech IW when they already have Copper in their BFC. And also gives Archers an improvement if a player finds they have no Copper or Iron in their territory.
 
^ One reason that's dangerous is that slavery is an equalizer; otherwise poor-production starting positions actually have a chance because of it, while low food starts are pretty well screwed regardless of its existence.

A small reduction shouldn't make too much difference, 25h/whip on normal settings would bring the output closer to running mines at small sizes. A side result would be that certain builds (chariots, monuments, work boats) become potential 2 pop whips, interestingly benefiting whipping these builds.

Alternatively ramp up the unhappy penalty duration, and/or make it cumulative with the number of pop whipped (2 pop whip = 2 unhappiness etc). This would nerf whip stacking as used at the moment, and early game production poor starts could still compete, albeit with more care required in deciding upon priority builds to whip.
 
Barbarians are a flawed mechanic, since they exacerbate the impact of a good or bad RNG roll, and this process is totally outside of the player's control. Barbs spawn at random, advance (more or less) at random, and win battles according to the whims of the RNG.

For instance, it is not bad play to expect to defend successfully against a barb Archer at 90% odds. But if you lose this battle before or shortly after you have settled a second city, it can be totally debilitating. Losing, e.g., a Cuirassier at 90% odds later in the game does not have the same impact. Or else, if you spawn on a continent next to the AI that builds TGW, the barbs can flood you in numbers that cannot be countered with normal or safe play.

In the mean time, the AI is given a 40% boost versus barb units, which helps to mask the fact that they (Barbarians) are mostly there to stop the human from snowballing at such an early stage.
 
Has anyone mentioned battles that consist of catapults charging first as suicide bombers, cavalry making hit & run attacks which consist of the unit smashing their faces against a pikewall until one man is left and him having to flip double heads to limp away, and infantry then fighting to the death without panicking or being taken as POWs?

An actual 'battlefield' screen in which stacks (armies) meet and deploy would be spiffing.
 
My personal dislike is the land and city development aspect, although this has been with us from the original Civ.

I'd prefer some of the following:
* the area from which the city can draw resources (a concept to replace the city's 'radius'), be dependent on the available transport capacity and routes. E.g. squares next to the city can be worked at the start, then with The Wheel you can use squares within two tiles of the city, but only on which you've a road, etc... With Sailing, can work all sea-side squares within five tiles of the city on which you've built a harbour (new improvement type), and all nearby river-side squares (which highlights the importance of rivers for early civilizations).
* The city growth rate be dependent on happiness, infrastructure, availability of jobs or trade connections or something other than raw food supply. Availability of food could be a strong happiness modifier, I guess, thereby strictly limiting the ultimate size, particularly early on.
* The upkeep or maintenance cost should not be dependent on the number of cities, but on actual infrastructure (which would nominally be proportional to population in some way).
* Industries within a city should not operate in a mutually-exclusive way. I don't think that my dock should lie idle while a marketplace is built. I like the Colonization way of doing this, where it's your population (and where you tell them to work) which allows multiple industries to operate simultaneously.

Basically, I would like a system which feels more realistic. Early on, more small villages closer together. Later on, fewer, larger cities. You don't develop every village into a city like it is now. The really big cities can draw resources from quite some distance.

Perhaps that'd be too much an empire-building simulation game. If anyone has any suggestions for games that are like this...?

Too bad I don't have the skills to attempt such a modification for Civ.

Cheers,
A.
 
Civilization IV would definitely do much better if all the civics were redesigned. As it stands, there are obviously some civics which are more useful than others, regardless of the situation. For example, slavery.

Civics should have been designed so that each civic can only work in a certain situation. Even the initial civics should have some benefits under some situations. That way, civic choice is mostly determined by your environment, and not determined by superiority.
 
Take Hunting as a prime example. Hunting isn't that bad by itself. It unlocks a nice food plot, that is the deers and a correct early source of commerce, the furs. The problem lies in mapscripts and that is a bad implementation because most maps have their deer and fur sources at the tundra.

Some interesting points there.

I take your point about the map scripts, but early on you really are trying to get your food resources worked and hunting only gives you access to deer which only adds +2 food. Perhaps another hunting food resource would help solve this.

The big problem with fishing is the workboat. What unnerves people is the strictly hammer cost and then especially the consumption of the unit once improving the tile. If the workboat was just like the worker, that is somehow eternal and just putting improvement for free of cost, that would certainly change the balance.

Completely agree with this and I tried to make a mod that did this years ago, but never quite managed it. Perhaps an increased yield from seafood would help mitigate this problem a bit. It would be good to get +1 food on water tiles later in the game with a new tech (in the same way biology does for farms).

I also think that coastal cities have limited long term economic development, when in history they were often the richest cities.
 
Plains are definitely too weak. I don't know about "all tiles should be workable", but expanses of plains are a net detriment to the empire until ~biology and that completely SCREWS maintenance and development...not sure what making such a prevalent tile so much worse than the other standard one accomplished.

I wonder what would help balance this, would an extra hammer on plains be too powerful overall? You could then cottage grassland for commerce or farm plains for production whilst still allowing growth.

I would suggest Serfdom be change to also give you +1 hammer on farm tiles, which would have some synergy with the extra hammer on plains tiles.
 
I wonder what would help balance this, would an extra hammer on plains be too powerful overall? You could then cottage grassland for commerce or farm plains for production whilst still allowing growth.

I would suggest Serfdom be change to also give you +1 hammer on farm tiles, which would have some synergy with the extra hammer on plains tiles.

The start tiles generally have a massive impact on the game, i only play monarch so can win bad starts, but comparing a game where i get rivers, grassland and wet food...to a game where i start with a lake and a plains cow....its like a different game.

I think start positions probably should be more balanced.
 
The start tiles generally have a massive impact on the game, i only play monarch so can win bad starts, but comparing a game where i get rivers, grassland and wet food...to a game where i start with a lake and a plains cow....its like a different game.

I think start positions probably should be more balanced.

I agree that start positions need to be optimised.

Also I think because food is so much more important than production at the start of the game it makes low food starts so bad. If food and production were of equal importance then it wouldn't be an issue. Making settlers and workers from purely production instead of food might help high production/low food starts.
 
Another thought occured to me, perhaps a lot of the balance issues are due to the fact that there is a tech tree at all, with multiple abilities/buildings/units etc. available at each point.

What if each ability/unit/building/wonder was its own separate tech, with any tech can be researched right at the beginning? This would allow much more flexibility in deciding what to research next. Obviously you'd probably still leave the expensive ones until later on when you can generate more science.
 
A beef I have with the tech tree is it's still too linear. Different cultures developed differently. If you want Rome, Greece and Carthage to establish republics of antiquity, they've got to take turns with the Pyramids. Mesoamerican cultures developed an alternative paper making as a result of not having mills with which to process grain. Japan had knowledge of steelmaking long before the blast furnace was developed. Oil was a significant part of many economies prior to the advent of modern refining. Etc
 
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