What went wrong with Civilization 4?

Lone Wolf said:

Sid himself on Slavery. Take notice.

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Okay, so even Sid makes mistakes.

I'm way behind the curve as I just finally gave up 14+ years of Civ II and started playing Civ IV a couple weeks ago. Definitely a massive learning curve as I skipped Civ III entirely, but for the most part I like the game a lot. I'm used to having huge empires with 20-50 cities (and that's before I start conquering), but I can't seem to get more then 12 (if I'm exceedingly lucky) in Civ IV and even then it seems that large flung empires are discouraged to some extent by the game mechanics.

The games seem to go faster as I don't have to micromanage as much as I did in Civ II, which is only a minor complaint. Also, I found that "good" terrain is exceedingly limited. In the five or so games I've played so far, there are only small areas of grassland/plains and a seemingly massive amount of deserts all over the place, making most of the map unusable. Maybe that's just been the luck of the draw for me so far, but good city sites seem hard to come by and as someone mentioned earlier, if you don't find yourself starting near a river, you get kind of handicapped.

Just some critiques from from a newer player .

Timsup2nothin said:

Okay, so even Sid makes mistakes.

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We knew that though...didn't he work on that facebook civ game ?

Religion too strong as diplo modifier.

Espionage system awful.

I heard they planned before BTS a limited stack system but scrapped it, a shame.

End game can be a bit boring.

* rules are quite obscure (maintenance, inflation, tech modifiers)
* too much random (battle outcomes, great people birth)
* AI diplomacy: too exploitable
* tangled tech tree
* stack combat, suicide catapults
* killing animals

Civ 4 is 1 of my 2 fav games in my whole life (the other being dota) so take this with a grain of salt. There are just obvious stupid things the developers did that make no sense at all. Why does India's UB do the same thing the Ottoman's UB does except it comes later... it's just a blatant example of poor balance. Many UUs and UBs are complete crap. I don't like the way siege/collateral dmg works at all. And then the starts...oh boy the starts. I can't tell you how many times I've been completely surrounded by tundra and/or desert in all directions, meanwhile some other guy starts with 3 gold mines in the capital BFC. I think it would have been easier to program more balanced starts. There are too many games where I start with 4-5 wines/silks in my capital, as if that helps me at all in any way. Speaking of which, some of the resource yields are awful, such as wine and silk. Most of the time I'd rather just put a cottage on top of it.

Mr Jib said:

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.

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It is amazing how important food is

I started a new game yesterday, i had gold and stone in BFC!!

I thought great!...but my only food was a plains cow..and it was actually hard to get going...i didnt start with agri OR hunting. Lesson learnt was gold is no good if you cant work it

The utterly irrational AI can be a bugbear too..though i think the AI has always been illogical

Same game..i spread confuciasm to everyone but ragnar and shaka..

They were everyone elses biggest enemies.. i was the biggest military in the game

Yet the carthiginians, pleased with me, but annoyed with those two..travelled all the way to the opposite side of the map to attack me instead

It keeps you on your toes, but makes no sense at all as tactically it is stupid to a human player.

great people birth

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Great people birth isn't random unless you mix the pool. It is possible to 100% guarantee a great person of choice, and sometimes preferable.

Speaking of which, some of the resource yields are awful, such as wine and silk. Most of the time I'd rather just put a cottage on top of it.

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No way. Sell them for if you can. Most of the time the meager yield + trade value > what a cottage or farm could do. If you're willing to take advantage of the "subsidy" tactic or there are a ton of AIs (larger maps) each resource could easily be worth 8-10+ in addition to the direct yield and even ~5 would let it beat a town for most of the game.

They are still a joke compared to 2x gem 2x rivercorn type starts and other garbage balance issues with spawns. Nothing beats playing a map like "great plains" or a few others and literally having 0 resources though. That's about as pathetic as it gets.

TheMeInTeam said:

Great people birth isn't random unless you mix the pool. It is possible to 100% guarantee a great person of choice, and sometimes preferable.



No way. Sell them for if you can. Most of the time the meager yield + trade value > what a cottage or farm could do. If you're willing to take advantage of the "subsidy" tactic or there are a ton of AIs (larger maps) each resource could easily be worth 8-10+ in addition to the direct yield and even ~5 would let it beat a town for most of the game.

They are still a joke compared to 2x gem 2x rivercorn type starts and other garbage balance issues with spawns. Nothing beats playing a map like "great plains" or a few others and literally having 0 resources though. That's about as pathetic as it gets.

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If im spawned by a tonne of sugar im afraid i do the same thing..keep 1 or 2, cottage the rest.

The more i think about it, the more the generator is the thing that needed tightening up most, but of course you can always regen the map

I dislike the stacks of doom. I also dislike Civ V's one unit per tile.

I love Call to Power's stack limits.

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.

E.G. Base stack size = 6 for both cities and stacks on the map. Aggressive could add +2 stack limit outside of cities. Protective could add +4 stack limit inside cities. Walls / Castles / Security Beuro could add +2 stack limit each. Vassalage could add +2 stack limit outside cities, Pacifism could reduce stack limit outside cities by -2.

To capture a mature well defended city, you should need multiple stacks of units, not just one.

Stuff like that for more strategic value.

Also lots of stuff could have been rebalanced, especially UBs, UUs, and traits. I made an attempt at this in my mod, but also I would think that -25% military upkeep for Agg, and -50% upkeep on units inside your cities for Pro would be good additions.

Timsup2nothin said:

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.

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Yeah. Simply burn it. But in this game I need iron to rid myself of the jungle. Well that and I have an army of axemen that can't cut down trees.

On the other hand, I understand that jungles have plentiful food for a person willing to eat bamboo shoots, watch the monkeys, and eat what they do.

Rusty Edge said:

Yeah. Simply burn it. But in this game I need iron to rid myself of the jungle. Well that and I have an army of axemen that can't cut down trees.

On the other hand, I understand that jungles have plentiful food for a person willing to eat bamboo shoots, watch the monkeys, and eat what they do.

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Again real world observations intrude...you would probably have to tech combustion before you could burn off jungle. Too wet. Unlike a temperate zone forest it takes serious accelerant to sustain any significant fire.

It does seem like those lazy axemen could do something between battles though. I recall some game where axemen could clear forest if you didn't mind losing the wood...AoE maybe?

Would also be great to have customizable units like in Alpha Centauri in Civ.

Also maybe throw in some optional RPG type elements with weapon and armor loot in the game world that you can apply to individual units, like a superior or magic axe with an extra 2 strength, or a free promotion.

As for the Original Post regarding rules and such...

Sometimes I forget what the actual rules are because I'm playing various mods that have addressed some of these issues.


The Great thing about the Civ series is that it asks you to make a lot of decisicions that could "Change History" or "Change the world".

The problem is that the choices aren't always interesting.

Slavery? Oh, we balance that with a slave revolt random event!
Uh.... No. I think random events are an awesome feature that makes games unique, and replayable. That is not the same as balanced. It is unbalancing. It is a counterproductive solution.


Wouldn't it be more interesting if you had to choose between the production bonus of slavery and technological development? After all, slaves aren't going to school or using the libraries.

Wouldn't it be more interesting if slavery were a military handicap? Slaves are normally armed as a last desperate resort. Nobody likes to give them weapons and military training. Having slaves ties up a % of the population to keep them under control. Not the same as a society where every man is a would-be warrior.


If civics offered meaningful choices between say Slavery and an advantage in a wonder race at the expense of the arms and/or tech race, it could be a better game. Sadly, it's not the only non-choice in the tech tree.

Then there is the siege/stack of doom thing. I don't like the high % of siege units in a stack. I don't like the scores of units I've faced in A.I. stacks. I don't like the siege damage caps, because it seems to me that the higher the population density, the harder it is to miss. I would prefer to see larger stacks subject to increased collateral damage, not limited.

I would like to see Seige as equipment for other units. Something that would attach like a GG and provide a sort of first strike/collateral/ defense reduction capability. When the foot or mounted unit dies, the siege is captured or destroyed. Unattached siege would be as vulnerable and ineffective as an unattached GG, and subject to capture by the first siegeless unit to attack them successfully. That way, rather than have more siege units that foot and mounted, you would have an incentive to have seigeless units to capture enemy siege. Oh well.

As I understand it, slavery's main utility has been in low skilled agricultural labour and mineworking. For construction projects, it's inferior to paid labour, and likewise slave/conscript armies have left much to be desired. It even ******ed progress by presenting the solution of throwing more slaves at a production problem instead of improving technique.

There's mods in which Slavery improves various tile yields and/or enables captives to be taken, which for my money is a much better representation of the practice than an odd food/hammer conversion system.

lindsay40k said:

As I understand it, slavery's main utility has been in low skilled agricultural labour and mineworking. For construction projects, it's inferior to paid labour

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slaves were used in all spheres of activity, from artisanship and construction to management, education and artistry. slave labor wasnt less productive and was prohibited because of moral reasons.

societies built on violence are prone to internal conflicts and disintegration what negates their 'positive' effects

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.

i think slavery could be represented by receiving slave units upon razing an enemy city, these should be settled in the player's cities as special citizens eating half food. the negative thing could be increased corruption and decreased population growth.

Yeah a slavery mechanic that is realistic would be very complicated and difficult to implement. The developers just wanted a population whip mechanism. I guess they didn't realize how imbalanced it was. Slavery is ridiculously powerful in this game. Unlike Civ2 and Civ3, in Civ 4 things cost an enormous amount of gold to rushbuy, comparatively speaking, and slavery is cheap. Also, you can eliminate the unhappy citizens through killing them via slavery. Slavery might be at least on its way to being balanced if the unhappy citizens couldn't be whipped away, but they can. I don't like the mechanism because it is such a core part of Civ 4. You heavily depend on it in every single game. Bad game design.

noto2 said:

I don't like the mechanism because it is such a core part of Civ 4. You heavily depend on it in every single game. Bad game design.

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Why is it bad that a core game mechanic is something you need to use every game?

Windsor said:

Why is it bad that a core game mechanic is something you need to use every game?

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Rather than being a "core mechanic", it is one of 4 non-default civic options, and it is WAY too much stronger than its alternatives. The only one that is even competitive in a typical ancient start is caste.

No other civic is so strong relative to others. The closest one is monarchy, but it's arguable whether monarchy is even the strongest if you had other options early. Its early utility is balanced against the stronger potential benefit of other civics later.

Slavery though? That's a start-to-end game civic, unless the game goes really long and emancipation becomes hurtful (and you've not conquered enough to ignore that). Not only is it a start-to-finish civic (with temporary switchoffs to caste, sometimes) though, but it is also the first non-default one available in the vast majority of games. In a game designed around making some hard choices...this one stands out as more of a "derp pick the best thing again" choice.

killmeplease said:

i think slavery could be represented by receiving slave units upon razing an enemy city, these should be settled in the player's cities as special citizens eating half food. the negative thing could be increased corruption and decreased population growth.

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Civ: CTP had something like this. There was a "slaver" unit that could either steal pop from cities without walls to create slave pop points or accompany a stack and convert a killed enemy units into slave pop points. The slave pop points would go to the nearest city of the slaver's civilization and would consume only 1 food/turn (vs regular pop 2 food/turn). There were some mechanics about slave revolts. And later you could build "emancipator" units (if you emancipated your slaves) that could steal slave pop points and add them to one of your cities as a "normal" pop).

My recollection's a little vague; it's been a long time since I've played Civ: CTP.