I'm really looking forward to ciV. My Favorite Games are the Civ series (best turn based strategy), the Total War series (strong turn-based strategy and best real-time tactic) and the Panzer General series (best turn based tactic). Correct me if I used the terms strategy and tactic in a wrong way, but i guess this was the easiest way to point out the differences I consider important.
Since I got tired of the weak Diplomacy and monotony of the turn based part of the Total War games, I dreamed of a mix of Civ and the Total War series. To my opinion Civ's weakness is warfare, which is Total War's strong part. Unfortunately this mix is not gonna appear in the near future.
The second best game would be a mix of Civ and Panzer General. And in a way this is gonna happen upcoming fall! Civ is the best Strategy game ever. But thanks to SoDs, tactical warfare is not challenging at all. So I'm highly confident that the new / old hexagon and the "one unit per tile" system will change this.
Now I want to reply to some statements I read over and over:
1: Don't panic, the maps won't be crowded because of the following facts:
- unit production is limited due to the number of your ressources and the unit's upkeep costs. And I believe that the developers will find the right balance
- Cities do not have access to only 2 squares in each direction any longer, in ciV they have access to 3 hexes in each direction (Computer Bild Spiele 3/10)
- maps will very likely become bigger. In a crappy translated Interview with Jon Shafer on March, 17th, 2010 he said that there can be about 2500 hexes. Some say that this number is meant to be multiplied by X... Anyway, if the cities have access to 3 hexes it is logical to assume that the map will consist of more tiles than it did before. In Fact there will be more space between the cities, which means that there will be more space for units.
I'm really looking forwad to actually use terrain in warfare, not only to go from hill to forrest an vice versa until I use suicde cats/art and take city after city with my 1 billion men army, which is being healed by one damn busy medic unit
2: "Just one unit per tile is unrealistic!" and "A Unit of Bowmen can shoot over a distance of two tiles - that's just waaayyyy too far!" - LOL - if I started to write down every unrealistic element of Civ 4 right now, I would be able to buy Civ 6 right after I'm finished. No, seriously - each tile can stand for an area of any size. SOME things in Civ HAVE to be abstract. And I guess the absolute majority can live with these ones!
@ the developers: good job so far