What went wrong with Civilization 4?

In a game designed around making some hard choices...this one stands out as more of a "derp pick the best thing again" choice.

While this is mostly true, it's not really a big problem. Slavery isn't something you just pick and forget. It's a civic you actively use. The way slavery interact with food/hammer/population/happiness gives the player lots of new choices. Much more interesting choices than the lost "which civic should I pick?" can ever hope to be.
 
I dislike the stacks of doom. I also dislike Civ V's one unit per tile. Civ could use stack limits, and maybe certain traits or policies could increase / decrease stack limits, and buildings could increase the limits for city garrisons.
Love this idea!
 
I don't see what the problem is with stacks. Most people here aren't old enough to have played Civ 2, are you? That was the last time there were no stacks in the game. Civ3 and 4 obviously had stacks. A stack simply represents your army and it's not unrealistic, considering a tile can represent an enormous area. I'd say there are other more serious problems with the combat, such as the way siege and collateral damage works.
 
I'd say there are other more serious problems with the combat, such as the way siege and collateral damage works.

It could be said that the problems with siege and collateral damage are a direct offshoot of the stack question.
 
It could be said that the problems with siege and collateral damage are a direct offshoot of the stack question.

Agreed. In Civ3 you had to wait until artillery to get a reliable, effective bombardment unit. But without collateral damage they weren't nearly as powerful as siege units in Civ4. Apparently the designers felt SOD's should be discouraged, hence the change to collateral damage with "suicide siege" units engaging in melee :lol:. Unfortunately the cure seems worse than the disease, IMHO.
 
I thought the changes in civ 4 were more about AI limitations. I remember reading that the AI in civ 3 had no idea how to use artillery and that it was easier to teach it to use siege weapons like other units. In any case, that's very lame, and I hate the way siege is used in Civ 4. To be honest, all combat in Civ is an abstraction, I'm not even sure why we need separate siege units at all. If I build a Napoleonic army of musketmen and grenadiers isn't it implied that my army also has artillery platoons?
 
Most people here aren't old enough to have played Civ 2, are you?

I'll admit that I didn't play much Civ II compared to the time I devoted to I, III, IV, & V. On the other hand, I played Civ I from the beginning, and I was an adult at the time, so I guess I'm old enough.
 
@ noto2: Yes it's lame, not to mention totally unrealistic. Like, since when did siege units go mano-a-mano with the enemy? They're ranged units, designed to fire projectiles from a distance. Too bad the designers couldn't have figured out a way to factor in collateral damage without resorting to the absurdity of "suicide siege."

As for the historical Napoleonic army, the reforms initiated by Guibert attached field artillery batteries to divisions. Heavier stuff was used for bombarding cities or fortifications. But even on the battlefield they still used the "grande batterie," a heavy concentration of field guns to batter a section of the enemy line. So with a Napoleonic army in Civ you could have separate bombardment units in the stack to represent this.
 
Civ: CTP had something like this.
interesting. have to check this game

Most people here aren't old enough to have played Civ 2, are you? That was the last time there were no stacks in the game.
units could be stacked but the whole stack died if attacker managed to kill the top unit (forts and cities were an exception). its the original civ1 design iirc. and i think its much better than civ3/4 SODs.
 
slavery in civ 4 is nonsential. slaves werent breeded and then killed like cattle. the main source of slaves was war, and masters werent interested in forcing slaves to work to death as they were quite costly.

Whipped people aren't killed at all. According to some excerpt I've read in the Civilopedia long ago, the reduced pop represents disillusioned people emigrating after the forced labour put onto them. Whereto? Ah, who knows?

It's like the corvée, which is mostly a term related to middle ages, but that existed way back in the past.
 
Whipped people aren't killed at all. According to some excerpt I've read in the Civilopedia long ago, the reduced pop represents disillusioned people emigrating after the forced labour put onto them. Whereto? Ah, who knows?

It's like the corvée, which is mostly a term related to middle ages, but that existed way back in the past.

That's a shame, I was imagining courthouses and libraries and pyramids built from the bones of all those slaves I'd slaughtered. :crazyeye::lol:
 
Whipped people aren't killed at all. According to some excerpt I've read in the Civilopedia long ago, the reduced pop represents disillusioned people emigrating after the forced labour put onto them. Whereto? Ah, who knows?

It's like the corvée, which is mostly a term related to middle ages, but that existed way back in the past.

well, if people could be forced to work, there would be no problem to keep them on the ground, preventing emigration. ofc some could escape but not the half of population :)

where did they go - to the wilderness, or barbarians. most of the world's population lived in tribes well until AD, where was no state or exploitation (constant wars though, which isnt much better).
 
The best alternative I've seen to SoDs is the army/battlefield system. Much better than banging heads together on the main map.
 
I think stacks are kind of essential myself

The AI at the end of the day...is not very bright

Give them a complicated system and they will mess it up.

With SOD all the ai needs to do is make a sensible mix of units..which means theres less for them to mess up
 
But if SoDs were replaced with Armies, the actual conflict could take place in battlefields separate the the main map. That would allow for more dedicated combat AI that doesn't have to also move units between cities.
 
But if SoDs were replaced with Armies, the actual conflict could take place in battlefields separate the the main map. That would allow for more dedicated combat AI that doesn't have to also move units between cities.

True, i seem to recall playing a civ with armies?.. CTP maybee? i know you all hated ctp but i enjoyed some features.
 
Give them a complicated system and they will mess it up.
Cough cough CIV V
 
I've said this before, but not in this thread. I don't mind stacks of doom at all and I'm not all that excited at the prospect of battlefields in Civ - what do you mean like in the Total War series?

You see in the original Rome Total War game it took me about a month to finish a game, and that was playing it nearly every day for at least a few hours. If I were to play a game of civ for a few hours a day it would be over in a day or two. Then again, if battles were handle like in RTW who knows how long it would take.

Civ is the most strategic TBS game with the most depth (except perhaps for MOO3). If I want tactical battles I have so many other games I can play, hell, even Starcraft. I don't want tactical battles in Civ. It would take far too long and take up too much of the game. Think about RTW, how much time do you spend on the main map in a turn? 10 seconds? 30? Then think about how much time a typical battle takes... 5 minutes? More? 10? 15? You spend the VAST MAJORITY of game on the battlefield. That's great for RTW, I like that game, but when I play Civ I want to be managing my empire, not commanding troops on a battlefield map.

That's why I'm fine with combat being an abstraction in Civ. It's already tactical enough, imo, with you having to command each and every unit and the terrain playing a part in battle. It's one of the things I really hate about Civ 5. I mean, cripes, warfare is already the biggest part of the game, from Civ3 and 4, I don't want to spend even MORE time fighting wars in Civ.

Let's be honest, if you win a peaceful game, say a cultural victory, you can get a standard size map, normal speed game done in 3-4 hours, assuming no one attacks you. A space win in under 5 hours easily, even assuming a short defensive war or two. But if you're at war for most of the game, expect a 10-12 hour game.

So I'm just throwing my voice in here, in case any Firaxis people ever read this, not all players want more involved and complicated combat. I want the opposite. There are thousands of war games out there. I play or have played RTW, Starcraft, Warcraft, Star Wars Empire at War, Rise of Nations... the list goes on and on and on. There are so many great tactical war games if Firaxis wants to make one they can try, but Civ shouldn't be a tactical war game. It's really the only TBS game I play and I want to stop trying to be a tactical war game. Get it back to being about empire management please, which yes, involves dealing with war as ONE aspect of the game.
 
I've said this before, but not in this thread. I don't mind stacks of doom at all and I'm not all that excited at the prospect of battlefields in Civ - what do you mean like in the Total War series?

You are not alone. Nearly all 4x games do combat on a tactical map and even if you discard the huge AI problem it takes lots of time. That alone is a huge problem for a game that wants to cover as much as Civ does.

When I think of how I want the combat system in a Civ-game I want it to be:
- Fast
- AI-friendly
- It should capture the feeling of a King planning the overall strategy

I want this:
Spoiler :


Not this:
Spoiler :
 
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