Civ V is more complex than Civ IV

apotheoser said:

I hope you don't mean that the first statement follows from the second... that would be pretty facepalm.

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Bad Brett said:

Is it possible not to win on monarch? I'm sorry if I sound arrogant, but it's kind of strange that you are trying to explain for us how complex this game is when you obviously weren't very good at Civ 4.

A decent player should be able to win most of the times at Emperor and occasionally on Demigod. Monarch is more like a sandbox mode, you can do pretty much whatever you want and you'll still win.

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I think you guys are really pretty unaware of the level of skill of the majority of Civ4 players.

DarkMaster said:

Oh, shut up. You don't know what a fact is. What about the combat? Is it a fact that the combat system is less complex? What about the Social Policies? Is it a fact that the Social Policies system is less complex than the Civics system? There are more possible combinations in the social policy system than in the civics system, so surely if we define complexity as possibilities, the social policy is more complex.

Do not be so arrogant as to believe that your opinion is a fact.

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Are you seriously arguing that civics, with more or less the same number of choices and the ability to change over time to fit the needs of your empire politically/economically/militarily (not to mention how civics melded together with religion), is a less complex system that a series of irreversible, static bonuses that have no affect on diplomacy?

You must be smoking.

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Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

And I believe that gave props to the new combat system.

All I'm arguing is that what you think and arrogantly said it was a fact it's actually an opinion.

Moderator Action: there is no need to attack another user while disagreeing with their post. Please remain civil.
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Flavorable said:

I was a good Civ IV player, I've beaten my fair share of games on Monarch

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You beat on Monarch some games than you are a good player? So i've beaten Deity than I'm the King of Civ players????

Awful review, couldn't take it seriously. How is whiping not strategic?

DarkMaster said:

All I'm arguing is that what you think and arrogantly said it was a fact it's actually an opinion.

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With that logic, you could say that "sun = hot" is an opinion too.

Also, do the meterbrags here, no one believes you. If you feel the need to make sure people know what difficulty setting you beat the game on regularly, it's probably a lie. I've won games on Immortal, I've lost games on Warlord.

Unionfield said:

Are you seriously arguing that civics, with more or less the same number of choices and the ability to change over time to fit the needs of your empire politically/economically/militarily (not to mention how civics melded together with religion), is a less complex system that a series of irreversible, static bonuses that have no affect on diplomacy?

You must be smoking.

And I believe that gave props to the new combat system.

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There is no way in hell that civics offer more choice, or require more though than policies.

Civics were just bonuses of diplomacy. They were obvious choices with some being much stronger than others. You BELIEVE you made choices, but you almost always made the same ones, regardless of diplomacy modifiers. Civics were nothing more than a bonus when you reached a certain tech, or made a certain wonder.

I am constantly wondering what to take next with policies. In 3 separate games I have started with all 3 separate branches and have made different empires. That alone makes Civ5 have much more interesting open plays than Civ4. I really don't care that I can't switch them around, half the fun is building something completely permanent and unique from other play-throughs.

Unionfield said:

Honestly, to say that Civilization V is a more complex game than Civilization IV is laughable. You can argue about whether or not watering down the complexity and depth is a good idea but you cannot argue whether or not they watered it down. They did. It's not an opinion, it's a statement of fact.

There is no reason for diplomacy to exist in this game. Unless you declare war on an AI, their attitude toward you doesn't change at all throughout the course of the game save for the normal negatives and positives that go along with border proximity and historical traits. Even the diplomatic victory is bunk -- since votes are no longer proportional and there are no vassal states, you can't gain them through accumulating territory and population and no AI will ever cast its vote for you -- all you need to do is get enough money coming in to buy off City-States. It's a commercial victory.

With no true element of diplomacy, what do we have left? A game that focuses mainly on production -- how quickly you can produce military units or science discoveries. And since you can just click on what you want a city to focus on, optimizing your empire's output takes essentially no thought whatsoever.

With no true element of empire management, then, what do we have left? A tactical war game. I guess I can't say anything about that because the combat isn't bad.

Civilization V is not a bad game but can we please stop trying to pretend that it is a deep and complex strategy game? It's not. It's Revolution for the PC.

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Civilization IV had no strategy. All it was was build buildings, make units, kill something, build another thing faster, get a victory.

Civilization IV was not a bad game, but can we please stop trying to pretend that it was a deep and complex strategy game? It's not. It's chess with a monkey.

Crezth said:

Civilization IV had no strategy. All it was was build buildings, make units, kill something, build another thing faster, get a victory.

Civilization IV was not a bad game, but can we please stop trying to pretend that it was a deep and complex strategy game? It's not. It's chess with a monkey.

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As opposed to Civ V, which is just 1. Amass gold 2. Buy an Army 3. Win a domination victory by abusing the AI's inability to competently wage war. Nice try.

If Civ5's AI rates a 3/10 in wars, then Civ4 would be in the negatives. At least in Civ5, I've seen the AI retreat, make a larger front, attack me by sea, and even run away just to engage me somewhere else.

Seriously, folks. If Civ4 was put out today, can you imagine how badly the AI would rate? You can predict the entire damn game. All the AI does is attack blindly like a zombie. I've had 30:1 kill to death ratios against the AI on Immortal, and similar numbers on Deity.

As it was said by several people before the game's release, no AI in any complex game is even close to a human. The way it's solved is through insane bonuses for the AI.

Celevin said:

If Civ5's AI rates a 3/10 in wars, then Civ4 would be in the negatives. At least in Civ5, I've seen the AI retreat, make a larger front, attack me by sea, and even run away just to engage me somewhere else.

Seriously, folks. If Civ4 was put out today, can you imagine how badly the AI would rate? You can predict the entire damn game. All the AI does is attack blindly like a zombie. I've had 30:1 kill to death ratios against the AI on Immortal, and similar numbers on Deity.

As it was said by several people before the game's release, no AI in any complex game is even close to a human. The way it's solved is through insane bonuses for the AI.

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This. Honestly, play against the noble AI in civ 4. Its a cakewalk to win by conquest on a pangea map before 0 AD. There is some stuff lacking in civ 5, but at the higher levels it does well as a tactical wargame.

yeah, the AI is a serious problem that I hope they either patch or mod.

So is Multi.

However, the core mechanics of the game are more interesting and more varied.

Bad Brett said:

That doesn't make sense. Why would you play on Monarch if you beat Emperor 50% of the time?

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Because I have the freedom to do impractical things that immerse me further into the history. I grew up on Civ as a kid, and really, the number one reason I buy it is to immerse myself in my own history. Alot of that immersion flies out the window on harder difficulties because they're designed so poorly and are so inneffective. Like Naval invasions, which were impossible on any demanding difficulty level.

The AI plays to win much like a multiplayer opponent. They will attack when you're weak regardless of how you've helped them out and they'll backstab you all the same. And thats a good thing.

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No, that is not a good thing.

If you register at Civfanatic you are somewhat a "gamer". You care about strategies and competitive play and argue on the internet with strangers about stuff.

But I know girls who like to play Civ4! Not to win on deity, but because it is fun, it is like an epic story with villains and friends. My girlfriend had done some stupid stuff, like building no factories because they are evil (imagine my facepalm *g*) and trying to stay nice with their best-friends-forever-AI. Not to win the game but as an end to itself.

In my opinion the "Fun"-AI hits a sweet spot: Casual players have fun with it and don't care that the AI is not aggressively playing for a win. Because they are doing neither! And hackish gamers like us can ruthlessly exploit the quirks.

A "good"-AI like in Chess or Starcraft II is in my opinion not the ideal thing. Casual players don't understand what is happening and will find it unpredictable. Hackish gamers like us understand that you never should cooperate with the AI … which is kinda autistic and not very diplomatic.

JLoZeppeli said:

You beat on Monarch some games than you are a good player? So i've beaten Deity than I'm the King of Civ players????

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Bad Brett said:

Is it possible not to win on monarch? I'm sorry if I sound arrogant, but it's kind of strange that you are trying to explain for us how complex this game is when you obviously weren't very good at Civ 4.

A decent player should be able to win most of the times at Emperor and occasionally on Demigod. Monarch is more like a sandbox mode, you can do pretty much whatever you want and you'll still win.

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You, and posters voicing similar thoughts, are being deliberately arrogant and obnoxious, and apparently spend too much time on CivFanatics.

Relative to the vast majority of people who play Civ -- people who this forum is not representative of -- beating Deity does indeed make you "the King of Civ players."

The OP did not claim "ZOMG I M THE BEST CIV PLAYER EVARRRRRRR BECAUSE THIS ONE TIME I BEAT A GAME ON MONARCH!"

The OP said that he was a "good" Civ player because he's beaten 90% of his games on Monarch.

I think that that is a much more accurate statement than than saying that it is "[im]possible" to lose a game on monarch, or that "only" being able to beat Monarch means that "obviously" you "[a]ren't a very good Civ player."

Being able to beat the highest difficulty level does not make you a "decent" player.

Also, I may be wrong, and I lay no claim to being an expert on Civ -- unlike those posters I quoted above -- but wasn't deity, not demigod, the highest difficulty of Civ 4? Demigod was only in Civ 3, IIRC. If you're going to be purposefully snobbish about your Civ-knowledge, you could at least be correct.

edit: darn typos

Well, some of the "Features" of Civ 4 were closely linked to the inner game mechanics, which lead to elements such as Diplomacy being completely dominated by knowing how to "achieve" good results. Stacking Religious bonuses and generally manipulating the diplomacy was one such thing, where you were left with quite predictable (generally too predictable) situations. I'm not sure if this really qualifies as being that strategic. The most strategic elements in Civ were city placement and order of expansion. Civics are completely situational anyway and like others said, the actual range of working combinations is quite small.

Ralgar said:

No, that is not a good thing.

If you register at Civfanatic you are somewhat a "gamer". You care about strategies and competitive play and argue on the internet with strangers about stuff.

But I know girls who like to play Civ4! Not to win on deity, but because it is fun, it is like an epic story with villains and friends. My girlfriend had done some stupid stuff, like building no factories because they are evil (imagine my facepalm *g*) and trying to stay nice with their best-friends-forever-AI. Not to win the game but as an end to itself.

In my opinion the "Fun"-AI hits a sweet spot: Casual players have fun with it and don't care that the AI is not aggressively playing for a win. Because they are doing neither! And hackish gamers like us can ruthlessly exploit the quirks.

A "good"-AI like in Chess or Starcraft II is in my opinion not the ideal thing. Casual players don't understand what is happening and will find it unpredictable. Hackish gamers like us understand that you never should cooperate with the AI … which is kinda autistic and not very diplomatic.

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This. Very true. I really want to use Civ V to get my GF into Civ, but all these misteries scare people.

Unionfield said:

Are you seriously arguing that civics, with more or less the same number of choices and the ability to change over time to fit the needs of your empire politically/economically/militarily (not to mention how civics melded together with religion), is a less complex system that a series of irreversible, static bonuses that have no affect on diplomacy?

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It is, at least as I see it. With civics, you made a choice between the 0-4 civics you'd unlocked, and it was generally a straightforward choice. Building units for war? Go with Police State, Vassalage, and Theocracy. Specialist economy? Then it's Representation, Caste System and Mercantilism for you.

With Social Policies, there's much more choice and opportunity cost in the decisions. Is +1 production per city for the rest of the game more valuable than 50% cheaper tile buying? Every time you get a policy to "spend", there's usually at least a dozen policies to consider (not necessarily stuck you can take directly, but stuff you can unlock the prereqs for. An empty tree, for instance, has six policies on its own you'd have to think about when you consider whether to take the tree or not). Since you can't change your mind in five turns if the situation changes, it's much more important to think about how you're shaping your empire in the long-term.

Finally, because policy points accumulate entirely separately to techs, it's another axis to think about when considering development. With Civ IV's civics, you unlocked new civics at the same time as certain techs, so it was always predictable when (in the sense of the tech advancement) you could pick certain techs up. And you were usually teching as fast as possible, so this didn't really add any extra depth. With Social Policies, the only connection is the era restrictions; beyond that, you'll get policies at the rate that you devote yourself to culture. Which has important ramifications:

1. The opportunity cost of choosing between two SPs is much higher than civics. Make the "wrong" choice with a civic and you have to wait 5 turns to change it again; fail to choose an SP that in retrospect you should have gone for, and you have to wait a lot longer to get another chance to pick it up. Your decisions matter a lot more.
2. All civilizations were able to choose between civics in all five categories, and since the techs were generally useful anyway, everyone could choose between all civics at the end of the game. With SPs, being divorced from tech means that you'll get much more pronounced differences in different civs' abilities.
3. The rate at which you acquire SPs is dependent on how much you divert your attention and resources to culture. Hence with the difficult decisions above, you have the power to lessen the wait between SPs if you are prepared to make sacrifices elsewhere; you have the power to acquire more SPs than you opponent and give your civ permanent advantages if you're prepared to make the sacrifices elsewhere.

Basically, civics were akin to pseudo-static bonuses that you got when discovering techs. In fact you could probably write out a civic plan before playing the game (when I get to Code Of Laws, I'll switch to Caste System) and it wouldn't vary much based on the way the game turned out.

With SPs you get choices that are individually less powerful, but cumulatively much more so, and something that gives culture a legitimate axis for advancement that's completely separate to beakers. More choices, more depth, more rewards, more sacrifices, more complexity.

So yes.

Venereus said:

This. Very true. I really want to use Civ V to get my GF into Civ, but all these misteries scare people.

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The AI on any difficulty lower than Prince is far less aggressive, and won't try to exploit weaknesses.




Also: I did beat Demigod once in Civ 3 PTW, but that was a long time ago, I haven't played a tenth as much of Civ IV, and I haven't taken it nearly as seriously.

But really, once you can beat Prince or Monarch, its safe to say you understand the mechanics.

Junuxx said:

I think you guys are really pretty unaware of the level of skill of the majority of Civ4 players.

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No, it was an absolutely pathetic appeal to authority. If you're going to get in a major tuffle over actually knowing anything about a game like civ4, you probably should either have:

-Released a major civ mod

-Beaten civ4 on Immortal/Deity repeatedly in different ways and demonstrate understanding of game mechanics (so many ways to do things of course, but players who are consistently WRONG about how, say, the AI worked in civ4 obviously are not experts. There's virtually no evidence that a player who can only beat the game on pedestrian difficulties knows about many game mechanics like diplomacy modifiers or AI attitudes - since if they do they should beat the game at higher levels much more easily. That's why we still get players who don't accurately know/complain/praise the diplomacy in civ5, for instance, when they do not really understand what an AI personality is or what modifiers are and so on. Example: the AI does not "play to win" in civ5. Every single person who's ever said that on these forums remains irrevocably wrong.)

-Have a degree or significant experience in computer programming or graphics or related field, even if no specific experience in civ, to comment on those aspects of the game

Without any of those things, a player who tries to make such an argument deserves the criticism.

The OP put much effort into this though and he does recognize the same points that others would make - like the AI in civ5 being really poor. But the connection being missed is that part of the reason WHY the AI in civ5 is poor is because of the screwy way they implemented many game mechanics, combat and so on.