Civ4 music (and sound overall) >> Civ5
Civ4 music is amazing from Baba Yetu to Chairman Dances.
I'd like everyone to start Civ4 (vanilla) and then Civ5. BabaYetu is by far the best title track. Then click "play now". Notice how terrible the "click" sound is in Civ5.
When you click "play" in Civ4 Baba Yetu transitions very well into the Civ1-intro music and you get the story of how the earth was created and life began. When the intro is over you are placed exactly where you expect to, just about to settle down and start a new civilization.
Found your city and start exploring with your warrior. Now I want everyone to notice that THERE IS NO MUSIC. Only ambient sounds. The birds flying from the trees when you enter the forest, the wind. The lack of background music makes you more aware of all the sounds, just like being in the wilderness in the real world. Only when you enter the classical era does the music begin and that's a brilliant move.
Soren Johnson nailed this. He sets the atmosphere of the game perfect.
Contrast this with Civ5. When you start a new game you get the story of the real world civilization (with a rather bad narrator). In my case the game welcomed me as "president George Washington" and told me that I lead the industrious american nation. It also tells me that a civil war almost tore my country apart.
Then the game starts. But there's nothing in the game suggesting that I'm playing as George Washington and my "industrious nation" consist of a settler and a warrior. It's 4000BC and there's never going to be a civil war. The soundtrack playing is far to advanced to fit a 4000BC civilization.
There's no coherency. There's a big disconnect between what the music and sound in the game tells you and what the game actually is.
Civ5 can keep its big budget specially composed music. It will never managed to evoke the same feelings as when the warhorn blows in Civ4.
Regarding music, well I guess that's a matter of taste. Frankly I don't like these ambient sounds in the Ancient Age and can't stand the Medieval music, the rest is okay and gets progressively better with every age. Since all music of 5 is on about the same level and that level is about the same as 4's Industrial and Modern, that is its highest and best, 5 pulls slightly ahead here imo. Also I really like how you sometimes still hear diplo music after talking to someone and how it switches between war and peace.
Also don't you think you are taking this a little too serious? The click sound, really?
Point taken with the history of your real civ instead of that of the world, that would fit so much better for something like RFC but not the default game.
Also some of the music in 5 is reused from 4 IIRC, but that's neither here nor there.
Vincentz, Windsor and blitzkrieg have already given excellent answers. I can especially relate to what Windsor said about the music and the general atmosphere of the games.
As for social policies and religion in Civ5, they are basically just further trees next to the techtree, and constitute a collection of bonuses that you collect over time. After a few games there is nothing interesting about the decisions involved, and the systems are historically implausible on top of that. It's just the feeling of collecting a further goody every few rounds, accomplished by a brainless click.
All the interesting and realworld considerations, like that of religious blocks creating the foundation for diplomatic negotiations or animosity, with the options of spreading your religion or fighting religious wars, or the various tradeoffs between civics, the consideration when and what to change to, accompanied by the risk of anarchy, are all non-existent in Civ5.
As for culture, the whole tall vs wide thing is simply absurd by any measure of historical accuracy, however rough. The culture spread of cities had potential to be better than Civ4, but was ruined by its implementation. You can buy extra land, from who exactly? Isn't the land unsettled? And how the hell do you spend gold for land before you have developed currency?
I will grant you that the flaws in the culture and religion systems, despite being rather glaring, don't necessarily stand out quite so much, because other mechanics like 1UPT, global happiness, or expansion being tied to tech rate are so horrendous and evoke even greater shock and abhorrence over so much concentrated incompetence on the side of the developers.
Well I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree about the music and atmosphere then. I actually think the atmosphere and presentation of 5 is its biggest strength, how else did it manage to make game reviewers overlook all the glaring flaws in actual gameplay back in the day? :lol
One can argue about the details and the practical implementation of social policies all day long, but I still think the idea itself, that is splitting the mechanic of how your society works from the tech tree and instead making it dependent on accumulation of civ wide culture, is brilliant. You simply can't deny that culture in 4 is practically useless for anything but the first border pop, while in 5 it's much more important due to this and your culture expanding from hex to hex. Also it's not as if 4 was perfect in the civic department either. (Slavery/Bureaucracy versus the likes of Serfdom/Environmentalism anyone?)
Yes, because Hindu-Buddha blocs for thousands of years are so much more fun and realistic.
How so? If anything 5 is the first entry in the franchise which got the whole tall vs wide thing somewhat right with regards to historicity and realism. The problem with that is that it's terribly unfun for gameplay.
Yes yes suboptimal implementation blabla, the idea itself is sound. Maybe when I said I want 20% of 5 in 6 I should have said I meant basic principles, not necessarily the present practical implementation.
Also you could just pay people to settle somewhere specific, why not? It's not exactly unprecedented in history.
I've played most civ iterations games as a builder, spaceman + diplomat, but civ5 seems only give the player some fun in the always war mode.
Huh, I actually have the opposite impression: War in Civ5 is 10% fighting and 90% resolving traffic jams. 1 UPT has got to be the single most stupid mechanic in any Civilization game ever. Warmongering in 5 is just tedious. Like I mentioned above (or at least I think I did) 4 is better than 5 in almost every way. Doesn't mean we have to put down the few areas it did well in though.