Civ IV vs Civ V - Breaking it down

I know there are a lot of threads that tell you the same things, but I would like to summarize the reasons why Civ V does NOT deserve to be called a sequel to Civ IV:


There are/is no...

- Civics

Social policies aren't a bad idea, but don't replace them. The Civics-system could have been upgraded/adapted to the Civ V environment. Makes every civ unique, also implement the idea of the dynamic civ-name mod (which I use in Civ IV) which are determined by Civics and (if Islamic) religion.

- Religions

Which could've been made more realistic for example by coding Gandhi to prefer to research Hinduism and Buddhism before other do and including more religions/philosophies like Zoroastrianism and Greek/Roman Mythology. Also, more strategy possibilities.

- Sliders (culture/research)

Specializing cities are the core of the whole strategy. It determines wars other than "I don't like him, let's conquer his cities".

- Stacking of units

I'll just say: I want to play Civ, not Chess. At least make it optional.

- Animated features

I don't know about resources, but why no swinging trees and streaming water? WHY?

- Growing cottages

....

- Climate/continent/region-based resources with the same value

Like (more) wheat grows in one region, (more) rice in another and (more) corn in a third. Same for pigs and sheep, clam and crab, etc. Why? Too much work to make such tiny graphics?

I like the implementation of pearls, though.

- Tech trading

I'm not sure about this, since there are unique tech trees?

- Espionage

....


Only (questionable) improvements:

Hexagon tiles

The world looks somewhat more realistic.

Full screen spoken diplomacy with native tongues

It surely looks and sounds more realistic. Only question: Is diplomacy that relevant in this game?

Unique abilities

I guess a fine replacement to leader traits.

Extra unique building or unit

The more the better!



Please reply if I've forgotten something.

Sequels don't have to include everything the previous game had.

HamTard said:

Sequels don't have to include everything the previous game had.

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Maybe not, but they are expected to be replaced or enhanced in some fashion. They are just deleted to make the game less of... just less of the prequel game.

Nobody is stopping you from playing (and modding) Civ IV now Civ V is released

Saying that 1UPT makes it chess not Civ is the dumbest thing I've read in a few days on these forums and that's saying a lot.

Droogie11 said:

Nobody is stopping you from playing (and modding) Civ IV now Civ V is released

Saying that 1UPT makes it chess not Civ is the dumbest thing I've read in a few days on these forums and that's saying a lot.

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Okay, Checkers...


But seriously: Every tile is like a county, province or region. It's supposed to be a world with little tiny units in it (the idea is they are enlarged so you can see them, as are the cities).

1UPT - Agree that there should be a limit as the Stacks of Doom in Civ 4 could be annoying, and this will lead to more strategy when playing, however I do believe there should be tiles where more than more unit can be stationed i.e Cities with Castles, forts. But believe it should only increase the limit to 3, therefore allowing a safe haven for injured troops, without having to displace the garrisoned unit.

Cottages - I think I am going to miss them. Should be able to build something that grows economically. Maybe keep the trading post for Tundra and Desert tiles but for grassland and plains the cottage works well. Maybe for Farms there could be a market garden feature, whereby following a tech discovery (Commerce) an extra gold could be gained from the tile to show the entrepeneurial skill of the population on that tile.

Religions - Think I am going to miss these too, although could of been changed to more of a sliding scale of discovery. Ie if you don't have a religion make it a 90% chance that you start up one when you make the relevent Tech discovery, and slide it down by 20% after each religion that you start, thereby giving other Civs a chance to discover an alternative religion. Another option would be to have Great Prophets start up religions if your civ has reached the required Tech, thereby encouraging the building of spiritual civs/cities with monuments, temples and policies etc to encourage the creation of great prophets.

Villages/cottages/hamlets system is the only thing on that list that I miss. Espionage can be cool too but I didn't really enjoy the way it was done.

I agree, some things are missing. A more active diplomacy gameplay in form of Espionage and Cultural Influence could add some thing that would really improve the whole game. Especially the part that has nothing to do with warfare. For example to spy out the diplomatic-relations (and reasons) of a civ or to learn something about their techs.

However i disagree with you at your civics and social policy reasoning. I think this is the place where you seem a little bit too obstinate. Looks for me like you can't accept that civ 5 isn't the same as civ4. In Civ4 you only had ONE civic at a time and it was always the best. Even if you had 1000 of them i don't think you really use things like slavery in the later stages of the game. In Fact you choose between about 2-3 real usefull civics and switch to the next one when a better is available.

NOW you can keep the early achievements/social policy of your society, while you still get something new over time which offers new choices. In civ4 it would be something like "Keep the advantages of slavery and add the new benefits of monarchy later". Civ 4 didn't had more flexibility. You can't call something more flexible just because you have to change it all the time you get something better. Especially because the social policys still offer some choices at the later stages of the game that add much more than any government form in civ4.

An improvement isn't always equivalent to an addition.

A game is perfect when there is nothing left to remove, NOT when there is nothing left to add.

Holy hell, another one? Can a mod just make a sticky thread called "Post here if you hate Civ 5 because its not Civ 4"?

City specialization in Civ4 didn't excist because of the slider. The slider was global anyway. City specialization is something you get because it was more hammer effective.

The slider is dead since science now comes from food.

City specialization is alive and well in Civ5.

I don't want to argue which is better, but maybe this helps:

nody said:

- Sliders (culture/research)

Specializing cities are the core of the whole strategy. It determines wars other than "I don't like him, let's conquer his cities".

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Sliders are gone, but gold has more influence. Think of gold as your slider. Spend more on culture, spend more on research, or spend more on military. It's actually more versatile that way.

- Stacking of units

I'll just say: I want to play Civ, not Chess. At least make it optional.

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It is optional now, get Kael's Legions mod from the in-game mod browser.

- Tech trading

I'm not sure about this, since there are unique tech trees?

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Tech trading has one huge drawback: Civs that grow up together develop at greatly exaggerated pace. This is not entirely gone since there are research pacts, but it's alleviated and makes playing on some map types much more viable. Personally, I also like that I now have to consciously research everything that I want. No more betting on getting all old techs eventually.

- Espionage

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Ok, that's just something I didn't really like in any Civ game that has it, not even in CivRev. I'm not sure, maybe they think they can't get it right? That or there's going to be an expansion that brings it back ;-)

Hexagon tiles

The world looks somewhat more realistic.

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Unit movement also isn't cheaper anymore if you zig zag, the circle of influence around a city is actually closer to a circle than a bfc now, ... many improvements, not just realistic graphics.

Funny, you name most of the things I disliked in Civ 4 (not that this meant it was a bad game or anything, far from it).

The slider was basically the solution to many problems. It also made it very hard to mismanage to the point where your empire would collapse, since it was always possible to set gold to 100. Now it's much harder to change the economic layout of your empire, you can't do it in a few clicks anymore. For me the slider was micromanagement and nothing else. You basically could have used a computer to manage it, unless you wanted to bank money (Upgrades, trades etc), in which case you set it to 0. in every otehr case you were just balancing deficit research anyway. The thing that was most aggrevating was that you had to min max the thing or else you'd actually loose research / money.

Once you understood the basics of Civ4 Combat ( = bring siege units and if in doubt, bring some more siege units, mop up with normal unis) there was no strategy involved anyway. Move to nearest city, bombard, sacrifice siege, check odds, rinse and repeat. This is a direct consequence of allowing stacking. Things like actually choosing the strongest defender are actually detrimental to any other strategy besides the stack of doom. The only promotion you had to use (Yeah, oversimplification, but you get it) was city raider and a medic.

Personally I like the fact that tech trading is gone, but this is more of a personal opinion (and we know that the AIs were never able to exploit this mechanism as well as the player was - tech trading was the most broken thing for me in Civ4, because it instantly removes some of the more isolated nations from the game. They'd never catch up and a Player can't loose to an AI that is behind in tech, unless the odds are absolutely overwhelming.

I liked espionage (actually I liked sabotage better but I found this feature to be too cluttered with nearly no impact on the game.

Fabien said:

I found this feature [espionage] to be too cluttered with nearly no impact on the game.

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This actually applies to many things, including religion etc.
This is NOT A BAD THING - flavor is great for roleplaying and for immersion, and CiV, like its predecessors, really needs some improvement in those areas, whcih modders will undoubtedly give us. As a simulation, Civ 4 wins. As a game, Civ 5 is more fun right now in my opinion.

Done. Can we move on to relevant things? I am getting the impression that I missed the point during the installation of CiV where it asked me to uninstall Civ 4, from the way some people behave here...