What went wrong with Civilization 4?

^^ OMG...so simple, and yet so brilliant... yes, that's all they had to do! It would make cities much easier to defend, but your tiles around the city would still be vulnerable to pillaging. I'd imagine with a system like that, collateral damage should be nerfed slightly and siege weapons should be a lot more expensive, considering they never die (unless your whole army is destroyed).
 
It would make cities much easier to defend, but your tiles around the city would still be vulnerable to pillaging.

I proposed a system in K-mod thread about that and people swiftly ignored it.
 
Well I think it's a great idea but Karadoc has repeatedly said he likes to be very cautious about changes to the game. Kmod is a fantastic mod and when you add it all up together it is a massive change to BTS, but each change in Kmod is a small tweak, except for global warming. GW is really the only major change Kmod makes, everything else is tiny little tweaks here and there. To change the way siege weapons work would be a huge change and would probably require tons of work done on the AI and a ton of balancing. I can see Karadoc saying it's beyond the scope of the mod. Still, if there's anyone who could do it well it would be him so perhaps if we ask nicely ... :)
 
^^ OMG...so simple, and yet so brilliant... yes, that's all they had to do! It would make cities much easier to defend, but your tiles around the city would still be vulnerable to pillaging. I'd imagine with a system like that, collateral damage should be nerfed slightly and siege weapons should be a lot more expensive, considering they never die (unless your whole army is destroyed).

Thanks :o Unfortunately, while the change is conceptually simple, and feels right to me, balancing the effects of the change might be pretty hard to do without a lot of major changes to the game.

If you're going to make this change, I think it makes sense to also reduce the strength of siege units across the board – after all, siege is a ranged weapon, so it ought to not do well when attacking or defending in close combat. With the elimination of ‘suicide siege’, bombardment and the infliction of collateral damage is a no-risk activity, so the strength score is largely irrelevant there.

Siege would still die if directly attacked, or if flanked by horse troops (the way it does now). If the rules were changed to remove from siege units the immunity to collateral damage that they have now (which never made sense to me), it could also be an idea to reduce the amount of collateral inflicted by a damaged siege unit, in proportion to the amount of damage it has suffered (damaged Catapults with 0.2 STR removing the same amount of city defense as full-health Catapults never made sense to me either). If wounded siege units are less effective, getting the first shots in will be very important: Advantage, defender.
 
I think that the late-game health system is deeply flawed. It punishes players too much for building factories and plants, but provides counter-measures only a little. Almost always in my games, my cities reach their population peak in Renaissance era while life expectancy peaks at 60-70 years. But as soon as Industrial era sets in, my cities stagnate at pop. 18-19 maximum and life expectancy drops below 50 years. It's opposite to what really happened in human history. Industrialization caused the life expectancy to increase, not drop.

I disagree, and think the game accurately reflects reality in this. Population goes up appropriately with development of chemical fertilizers (biology) and medicine/sanitation, but early industrialization was brutally unhealthy. Layers of fallen soot covered everything like black snow. Concentration of population turned streets into running sewers. And let us not forget that the invention of the automobile was hailed as the solution to pollution, since most major cities were slowly disappearing into mountains of horse manure.

That is very interesting information. But in the game the discovery of Oil makes the pollution problem even worse. When Coal makes cities with Factories sick then the addition of Oil makes them to starve.

I agree that early industrialization was very unhealthy, but it eventually got better with the development of biology and medicine. But in the game, Biology doesn't improve health at all and Medicine is an insignificant and expensive dead-end tech unlocking a health building which provides an insignificant bonus, but which has a cost so enormous that one may wish to never again build any Hospital in the game.

Well I agree that industrialization was a brutal transition.

Historically -Increased agricultural output, and a reduction in infant & child mortality led to an increase in population. A migration to the cites where people lived in unhealthy conditions, and workers were so plentiful they were considered expendable.

My game solution proposal was to include a "union" labor civic, which would add 2 health, one for safer working conditions, and the other for better living conditions for families that was a result of negotiating better wages and benefits. The downside would be that it's impossible to rush build anything with union labor.
 
Here's a couple of possible solutions for the Slavery dilemma:

1. +1 :( for every known civilization not running Slavery. People don't really realize how much slavery sucks until they see other people happy without it.

2. Unhappy citizens cannot be whipped. This could be combined with 1 for a super-nerf.

3. No whipping. Instead, Slavery provides bonus hammers to Citizen specialists. This would still fit in with Slavery's "Turn food into hammers" approach, but in a way that's a bit more reasonable.
 
Don't get me wrong I think that Civ 4 is still the best game ever (among the series) but still : Here are some of my thoughts on Civ 4 :

-The technology progress is way too fast, it should be more epic. and the second problem:
-Buildings are costly hammer-wise so I need to carefully plan them in each city which means micro managing a lot. Wonder for example is a huge sacrifice and besides if we failto build it we get gold usable only for upgrade of units.
-Those two mentioned above forces me to adopt slavery and monarchy asap so I can keep up with infrastructure using food and happines using units
-All that mentioned above creates a stressful feeling of racing against time each game I play - especially early on. (if I were to loose that race early on I loose the game)
-All that puts an enormous emphasis on early game leaving the late game (which is more interesting imho) to ghosts.
 
^^ Agreed with the above, the late game does not have enough impact. In a way, it makes Civ like MoBA like Dota. In Dota, if your team fails hard in the first 10 min of the game, the game is over, there's no coming back. Civ is the same way. If I get attacked in the early game and my enemy bribes someone into the war, so I'm fighting 2 on 1, and I'm fighting with brilliant tactics but having to whip all my cities to nothing...and this goes on for a while and now my economy is in shambles, even if I successfully repel the invasion, at that point, I've pretty much lost, because I just spent 30 turns whipping hammers into units that died.

On slavery: I really like the idea of boosting hammers from the citizen specialist. The real problem with slavery is there isn't much of an alternative. It's not often that I need to be in caste system. Sometimes I'd like to be but it's not usually that important. Serfdom is worthless. So even on a map where my land is extremely food poor (very brown) so my cities get a lot of natural production and I'm not really using the whip, there still isn't much reason to leave slavery, not unless I've spammed workshops for some reason, which wouldn't happen on a map like that.
 
The real problem with slavery is there isn't much of an alternative. It's not often that I need to be in caste system. Sometimes I'd like to be but it's not usually that important. Serfdom is worthless. So even on a map where my land is extremely food poor (very brown) so my cities get a lot of natural production and I'm not really using the whip, there still isn't much reason to leave slavery, not unless I've spammed workshops for some reason, which wouldn't happen on a map like that.

I think this is accurate. So the question probably isn't what to do about slavery. The question is what to do about serfdom, and to a lesser extent caste?

Serfdom...the first economic system to allow concentration of wealth in the control of a ruling class...you thought you were a subsistence farmer...guess again because the king gave me all the land, so you have to pay me for the crops you grow...sounds like adding one coin to farms would be realistic enough...and certainly attractive.

Caste...artists, scientists, merchants...these people tend to be satisfied with their lives compared to those still grubbing in the dirt...caste system for me often falls flat because early on in the game I can't have enough farmers to run more specialists than my library anyway because farmers plus specialists is greater than happiness limit...so what about a happiness offset for specialists under caste system? Not a happiness bonus that could just turn into extra hammers or farmers, but a smiley face actually attached to the specialists that would effectively make them not count against the limit.
 
All agree ... caste system is all profitable to PHI leaders. (which is why they are so good actually). All other just get +1 hammer from an unprofitable in the future land improvement which sucks because it gets away -1 food and only works somehow with guilds. All that it gives You is specialize Your cities , but it's no-benefit if You have crappy land or You are not philosophical, therefore I declare workshops - an one trait improvement ! (which only works properly with guilds)
 
Since caste isn't as worthless as serfdom maybe just have specialists count as half a pop when calculating happiness. (Hmm wonder where that idea came from) That might make a difference early in the game. I'd also be a big fan of not being able to whip unhappy citizens also. Those two tweaks might make it an actual decision.
 
Can someone explain the "not being able to whip unhappy citizen" mechanic? I don't get it.
 
Can someone explain the "not being able to whip unhappy citizen" mechanic? I don't get it.

Unhappy citizens aren't the one's eliminated from a city as a result of rushing a build. It would be the happy one's eliminated. However, the unhappy people from overcrowdedness would decrease leaving just the unhappy from other reasons (+1 for the most recent whip).
 
Unhappy citizens aren't the one's eliminated from a city as a result of rushing a build. It would be the happy one's eliminated. However, the unhappy people from overcrowdedness would decrease leaving just the unhappy from other reasons (+1 for the most recent whip).

Well that's how it works today. I'm wondering what people want to change this into.
 
Also when you see that it takes 3 to whip something out and it says you have 4 available, that it wouldn't count unhappies as part of that four so you might not have enough available yet. (at least that was part of what I was thinking)
 
A fantastic game...my main problems are that

a) going to war (short-term or mid-term) is superior to peaceful development
b) AI culture makes it so that limited warring is usually bad - once you start to go to war, better take on the neighbouring AI, and so on, or lose lots of tiles to culture.

Solutions for a) would be even more penalties for war (besides the already existing unhappiness, diplo hits and unit costs...I know). For b), I'd really like some sort of cap for how much culture a city can put into a tile outside its BFC, making newly conquered cities usable even in the Renaissance if you whip a Theater and put some amount of culture into the tiles. War weariness adding up from different AIs would also go a long way towards keeping continous warring in check.

I used to think the same thing until it occurred to me that I couldn't think of any civilization that didn't go to war with someone. Now I think the game should allow for brief military conflicts without the lasting stigma of it. Perhaps the diplomatic repurcussions of a war should be connected to its duration, it's ferocity, and how much time has passed.
 
I used to think the same thing until it occurred to me that I couldn't think of any civilization that didn't go to war with someone. Now I think the game should allow for brief military conflicts without the lasting stigma of it. Perhaps the diplomatic repurcussions of a war should be connected to its duration, it's ferocity, and how much time has passed.

But can you think of any civilization, ever, that prospered through a genuine 'world conquest' strategy? Squashing and absorbing an unruly neighbor has worked out, but the kind of world-wide stampeding that is really the backbone of Civ games is well outside reality...at least so far.
 
@Timsup: I agree. It's ridiculously easy, in Civ, to just conquer conquer conquer endlessly. There already exists a theme in Civ, since Civ 2 at least - that a militaristic society must be a more authoritarian society, and that authoritarian societies are less wealthy. Less freedom means less trade and scientific research. They would run with that a bit more.

I think a democracy should be able to defend itself but in civ a liberal democratic society can conquer the world, which is unrealistic and also probably not good for gameplay. A worldwide conquest strategy should probably require increasing levels of authoritarianism, thus stifling the economy.

Additionally, there are military changes that could be made to the game. One of the reasons why world domination never really worked out is because it was very difficult to pull off. Small changes to the game - such as making the machinegun actually useful by giving it a larger bonus against infantry and also giving it a bonus against cavalry - would stop games from ending with rifle drafting and cuir rushes.

You could also have a stronger emphasis on culture. The Mongols conquered China but you would be forgiven for not knowing that today. They essentially became Chinese. They had no culture of their own. In the game, you could make it so that a civ with inferior culture would have a very difficult time holding onto land it conquered from a civ with superior culture.

Anyway, it's probably all beyond the scope of Civ.
I agree that warfare is just not balanced with everything else in the game. If I spend a game building lots of wonders, developing my economy, producing culture, I end up just getting invaded and having to fight off one or more AI's attacking me and it's a difficult game. Alternatively, I can watch the AI develop its economy, build wonders, and I can be the warmonger, and go and stomp them and take their land and wonders. Doing the latter is infinitely easier than the former. Horse archer rushes don't even feel like trying anymore. Just whip HA's nonstop, kill 3 neighbours, take the 5-10 wonders they built and all their cities. Win. Easy. Yawn.
 
It's ridiculously easy, in Civ, to just conquer conquer conquer endlessly.

I agree that warfare is just not balanced with everything else in the game. If I spend a game building lots of wonders, developing my economy, producing culture, I end up just getting invaded and having to fight off one or more AI's attacking me and it's a difficult game. Alternatively, I can watch the AI develop its economy, build wonders, and I can be the warmonger, and go and stomp them and take their land and wonders. Doing the latter is infinitely easier than the former. Horse archer rushes don't even feel like trying anymore. Just whip HA's nonstop, kill 3 neighbours, take the 5-10 wonders they built and all their cities. Win. Easy. Yawn.

That is all very well, but when I've tried Praetorian rushes with Auggie on Monarch "the war situation has developed not necessarily to [my] advantage." For example, in my last game I started by taking 2 of Monty's cities, but increased culture defenses (?!) required catapults, and by the time his last couple cities fell he was already fielding LB's and MM's. By then Liz and Tokugawa on the opposite border were boasting much higher power/culture ratings, and my cities were getting unhappy from WW. Obviously it was time to turtle.

Game before that the Praetorians took two of Monty's isolated cities to the west. Then I spotted Brennus' juicy cities to the south and east. The Praetorians took two without cats (unfortunately leading to a shared border with Mao in the south), then paused to wait for cats to reinforce. Immediately upon capturing the Celts' next city Brennus applied for vassalage to Mao, who accepted with his own DOW.

Shortly thereafter Monty followed suit so I was fighting on two fronts. Somehow I managed to fight them off but defensive wars are not profitable. Again my cities suffered from WW, development suffered, and in the end I was left with an inferior position.

So what am I doing wrong? Is Auggie--or the Romans--inappropriate for warmongering? Does waiting for Praetorians take too long? Are my diplomatic skills laughable :lol:? Thanks and happy gaming!
 
Not necessarily 'doing something wrong', but my own failures as a warmonger involved lack of commitment. I take a 'juicy' city, I want it to develop into something. I'm trying to use my plunder to improve my economy/cities/civilization.

The successful warmonger doesn't wait for more cats, he whips them out of the newly conquered population until they are nothing but a sad unhappy face and moves on. The plunder goes to supporting his army because he doesn't need to do any research and just dumps the slider to zero, but his vast army still costs more than he is making. He'll take a peace treaty if a civ offers techs, particularly important war techs, but ten turns later he attacks them again. And he cripples or kills every rival so that the fact that his civ is totally stagnated doesn't really matter. This successful war monger might have an army of praetorians, or horse archers, or cuirassiers, or cavalry, or whatever...but the critical component is commitment and slavery.
 
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