Civilization "Depth" - A Civ 4 vs. Civ 5 Comparison

Yeah as said in a previous post, I hope they add an espionage system into the game. I never really liked Civ 4's espionage, but I'm hoping they create a whole new one that is more interesting to me (personal taste, I know).

I absolutely agree. Civ 4 did a lot of things well, but I never felt like espionage was one of them. I'd love to see it back in the game, but with a different mechanic.

Ditto with corporations actually. I liked the idea of them, but the implementation always felt a little rough to me. That was one of the areas where I thought Civ 4's complexity actually worked against it.
 
I have to say, this is one of the best "Civ 4 vs. Civ 5" threads I've seen. There's none of the sniping that usually finds it's way into these sorts of conversations. Intead, it's a calm rational discussion of the merits and weaknesses of both, and what constitutes depth. I'm enjoying it a lot.

I actually have learned a lot about what the vets think on the topic. It's been fun for me as well.
 
This does bring up one point in favor Civ V that I didn't mention: Roads. Roads and cutting roads are now really important in this game, because there are so few and they are tied to unit movement/trade routes. In history roads and control of roads has always played an important role, so I am glad to see that.

Now we just need an AI that knows enough to cut them, as someone said previously :p
 
Good read, good article with good points. But it makes me wonder, is it worth comparing Civ4 to Civ5 at this stage? It seems more like beating a dead horse ... full of grenades, with a GDR inside ... commanded by Alexander.
 
Good read, good article with good points. But it makes me wonder, is it worth comparing Civ4 to Civ5 at this stage? It seems more like beating a dead horse ... full of grenades, with a GDR inside ... commanded by Alexander.

Yeah I know, been there done that. Still I'm glad some people humored me in my thought process. I was trying to keep the focus on complexity, rather than "worthiness", hoping that at least some of that debate would be new ground. But probably not on this site. :lol:

But wow...there's a new feature that would be ridiculous/kinda fun: Your own avatar unit in the game world. Washington riding a tank or Oda flying a Zero. Funny to think about!
 
How is the naval system less complex? As far as I can tell, the ships act very similarly to Civ 4.

And actually, now that you mention it, trade routes are actually more involved in Civ 5, what with having to protect roads fewer roads from pillaging and all.

If you recheck my list on page 1, I've not mentioned navy as ciV weakness. I've just mentioned that no international trade routes is a letdown.
 
Yeah I know, been there done that. Still I'm glad some people humored me in my thought process. I was trying to keep the focus on complexity, rather than "worthiness", hoping that at least some of that debate would be new ground. But probably not on this site. :lol:

Sorry to disappoint you.

Have you tried the Weplayciv, Apolyton or 2K Forums?

Perhaps you'd get some good insight there.
 
Sorry to disappoint you.

Have you tried the Weplayciv, Apolyton or 2K Forums?

Perhaps you'd get some good insight there.

No I'm saying you all have probably covered this topic ad naseum. Which is why I'm glad people humored me anyway. The insights have been great.
 
If you recheck my list on page 1, I've not mentioned navy as ciV weakness. I've just mentioned that no international trade routes is a letdown.

Yeah now that I think about it, they really should bring back the "you have to connect harbors or roads" in order to trade anything with other civs.
 
I stopped reading when you compared the religion system to racism.

That's the entire point of religion! To simulate the historical bad relations between different religions! That's why it's a good system, because it makes sense from both a historical and gameplay perspective. Christian kingdoms tended to dislike Islamic ones and vice versa; religion played a part in this and removing religion ignores an incredibly large part of history. You can overcome the negative modifiers of religion, but it always is a factor as it was historically. It's certainly not perfect, but you don't perfect something by removing it, you actually improve it. It's also a great system gameplay-wise as it adds complexity by creating religious blocs and the opportunity to choose which one to join and switch between them -- you could also bow out of the whole thing by switching to free religion.

I also disagree that 1upt is a good thing. I never saw anything wrong with the Civ4 model as large armies are historical and they don't remove depth as there's a great deal of rock-paper-scissors style combat; do I build a Pikeman to counter their Knights pillaging behind my lines or do I build a Maceman to assist my own advance? It also doesn't take away the potential for tactical and strategic combat, you still have choices like "do I split my invading army to counter their surprise naval attack or press the invasion and hope my defenses can repel them?" or even smaller things like "do I send a cavalry to kill that musketman or do I let him retreat and focus on the city?" In Civ5 you certainly see these very same decisions but that doesn't mean you don't see them in Civ4.
 
I stopped reading when you compared the religion system to racism.

That's the entire point of religion! To simulate the historical bad relations between different religions! That's why it's a good system, because it makes sense from both a historical and gameplay perspective. Christian kingdoms tended to dislike Islamic ones and vice versa; religion played a part in this and removing religion ignores an incredibly large part of history. You can overcome the negative modifiers of religion, but it always is a factor as it was historically. It's certainly not perfect, but you don't perfect something by removing it, you actually improve it. It's also a great system gameplay-wise as it adds complexity by creating religious blocs and the opportunity to choose which one to join and switch between them -- you could also bow out of the whole thing by switching to free religion.

I also disagree that 1upt is a good thing. I never saw anything wrong with the Civ4 model as large armies are historical and they don't remove depth as there's a great deal of rock-paper-scissors style combat; do I build a Pikeman to counter their Knights pillaging behind my lines or do I build a Maceman to assist my own advance? It also doesn't take away the potential for tactical and strategic combat, you still have choices like "do I split my invading army to counter their surprise naval attack or press the invasion and hope my defenses can repel them?" or even smaller things like "do I send a cavalry to kill that musketman or do I let him retreat and focus on the city?" In Civ5 you certainly see these very same decisions but that doesn't mean you don't see them in Civ4.

I agree that his take on religion was an oversimplification of diplomacy, but the article was a worthwhile read and it would behoove you to finish it. And further, no one ever said there wasn't a need to pick the types of units you build, it's the matters of position and their effects on gameplay. Civ IV combat was an intense game of paper rock scissors, Civ V combat is tactical in the field. The problem is it's much, much easier to get an AI to understand paper, rock scissors than tactics.
 
I agree that his take on religion was an oversimplification of diplomacy, but the article was a worthwhile read and it would behoove you to finish it. And further, no one ever said there wasn't a need to pick the types of units you build, it's the matters of position and their effects on gameplay. Civ IV combat was an intense game of paper rock scissors, Civ V combat is tactical in the field. The problem is it's much, much easier to get an AI to understand paper, rock scissors than tactics.

Heh, thanks for saying I'm worth reading until the end. I know it sounds silly to say, but as an aspiring game writer, it is appriciated.

So does that mean that if they added some rock, paper, scissors gameplay to Civ 5 on top of the tactics, my processor would literally combust?
 
I stopped reading when you compared the religion system to racism.

That's the entire point of religion! To simulate the historical bad relations between different religions! That's why it's a good system, because it makes sense from both a historical and gameplay perspective. Christian kingdoms tended to dislike Islamic ones and vice versa;

On the other hand, Christians and Muslims tend to hate themselves almost as much as they hate each other; and the relations between Christians and Jews often boils down to "only we can bash them, anyone else tries and we'll bring the Wrath of God down on them."

And then there's the non-Abrahamic faiths... Buddhists, from what I can tell, weren't generally big on 'kill the heathens' thinking - though some did go for "subjugate the barbarians," religion didn't seem a big part of it. At least, not the way it was between Christians and Muslims.
Granted, some of that is reflected through leader-traits, in that Isabella cares more about your religious affiliations (positive or negative) than Stalin does.

I also disagree that 1upt is a good thing. I never saw anything wrong with the Civ4 model as large armies are historical

Meh. Army sizes are pretty abstracted in both games anyway, so I think this one's a moot point all around. Apart from AI limitations in handling either, 1UPT vs SoD is a wash IMO.
 
I really like Civ V and a few of your points, but I have some disagreements as well.

Civ V diplomacy does need some improvement. In Civ 4, you had too much influence with diplomacy. You could work the AI civs like puppets. In Civ V, you have the opposite, too little influence.

Civ V does need more positive diplomatic tools (and I think we'll see them in the future).

I do like your point about tech trading. This is something some feel should be in there, but I like that it isn't. In Civ 4 techs would work their way around and nobody ever had an advantage for long.

City management vs empire management is a deep topic and really comes down to personal preference. I get why people don't like it in Civ V and feel it is too simplified.

Comparing Civ V to Civ 4 + warlords + bts + countless patches is pointless. The games are at different stages in the process, and they are just different.
 
I agree that his take on religion was an oversimplification of diplomacy, but the article was a worthwhile read and it would behoove you to finish it. And further, no one ever said there wasn't a need to pick the types of units you build, it's the matters of position and their effects on gameplay. Civ IV combat was an intense game of paper rock scissors, Civ V combat is tactical in the field. The problem is it's much, much easier to get an AI to understand paper, rock scissors than tactics.

There's much more rock-paper-scissors in Civ4, and that adds greatly to the complexity of Civ4's warfare and he didn't really mention this in the article. And stack of doom vs stack of doom or city is never your only kind of combat in Civ4. On the defense tactics matters a lot more than on the offense, and even on the offense there's far more depth than just "charge SoD at city, repeat".

I read the full article now by the way.

On the other hand, Christians and Muslims tend to hate themselves almost as much as they hate each other; and the relations between Christians and Jews often boils down to "only we can bash them, anyone else tries and we'll bring the Wrath of God down on them."

And then there's the non-Abrahamic faiths... Buddhists, from what I can tell, weren't generally big on 'kill the heathens' thinking - though some did go for "subjugate the barbarians," religion didn't seem a big part of it. At least, not the way it was between Christians and Muslims.
Granted, some of that is reflected through leader-traits, in that Isabella cares more about your religious affiliations (positive or negative) than Stalin does.



Meh. Army sizes are pretty abstracted in both games anyway, so I think this one's a moot point all around. Apart from AI limitations in handling either, 1UPT vs SoD is a wash IMO.

Civ4 doesn't model things like the hatred between Protestants and Catholics and Sunni Muslims or Shia Muslims. That's one of the problems with its religion system, one which I had hoped would be fixed by Civ5.

And you're right about army size being abstracted, but Civ5 ignores scale (which to be fair I'm sure a lot of things in all civ games do) with things like archers shooting across cities and it also helps immersion for me when there's a massive army attacking a city rather than just a few units. Definitely a minor point though.
 
I actually have to disagree with Civ 5's military being deeper. Civ 4 had more units and more rock-paper-scissors combos to work with. And while I was always annoyed with the giant stacks of doom, there was an art to them. How many siege weapons should you bring in the stack? How many should you sacrifice for that city? How many of each melee unit? Etc. I found myself thinking about whether to produce an axeman or swordsman a lot more than I do in Civ 5, perhaps because there's just the swordsman.

While I enjoy playing both versions, the change in the set of available unit types is emblematic of design changes that deliberately simplified some aspects of the game in Civ5 by removing decision points. In Civ4, you had to decide whether to promote a warrior to an axeman of a spearman. You had to decide whether to promote a maceman or a pikeman to a grenadier or a rifleman. You had to decide whether to promote a grenadier to a machine gun or an infantry unit. You could eventually promote that infantry either to a SAM or to a mechanized infantry. Every one of the units that caused these decision points (axeman; grenadier; machine gun) has been removed from Civ5. This set of changes has not been discussed much, but I think it underlies part of the reason that some people have claimed that Civ5 is less complex; during many turns of the game, there are simply fewer decisions to make.
 
I read your article and most of the replies here.

I agree with the earlier comments that Civ 4 had more intertwining subsystems that all worked together to objectively yield a far more complicated game; but we are talking about a GAME. That is to say, an entertainment product whose sole purpose is to amuse the audience. In this regard it is kind of redundant to discuss the philosophies of complexity without consideration for fun (which in turn nullifies the objectivity as fun is subjective after all).

I find Civ 5 a far more approachable and playable game; I also found it a game that is much easier to master however. I like Civ 5 a lot and haven't touched Civ 4 since Civ 5's release. However I think at this stage and that is to compare an end product (Civ 4 BTS) to a young product (Civ 5); Civ 4 is indeed the more 'complicated game'. I feel I can confidently claim this on the grounds that I can play Civ 5 at much higher difficulties and keep up with the AI, where as with Civ 4 I could barely keep up at Warlord difficulty.

But like me; your article and indeed your comments in this thread seem to suggest that you prefer the slightly easier nature of Civ 5 (which is not a bad or wrong thing; I certainly prefer Civ 5 even if the experience is far more shallow overall).
 
I read your article and most of the replies here.

I agree with the earlier comments that Civ 4 had more intertwining subsystems that all worked together to objectively yield a far more complicated game; but we are talking about a GAME. That is to say, an entertainment product whose sole purpose is to amuse the audience. In this regard it is kind of redundant to discuss the philosophies of complexity without consideration for fun (which in turn nullifies the objectivity as fun is subjective after all).

I find Civ 5 a far more approachable and playable game; I also found it a game that is much easier to master however. I like Civ 5 a lot and haven't touched Civ 4 since Civ 5's release. However I think at this stage and that is to compare an end product (Civ 4 BTS) to a young product (Civ 5); Civ 4 is indeed the more 'complicated game'. I feel I can confidently claim this on the grounds that I can play Civ 5 at much higher difficulties and keep up with the AI, where as with Civ 4 I could barely keep up at Warlord difficulty.

But like me; your article and indeed your comments in this thread seem to suggest that you prefer the slightly easier nature of Civ 5 (which is not a bad or wrong thing; I certainly prefer Civ 5 even if the experience is far more shallow overall).

This is true; complexity does not equal fun. However critics of Civ5 tend to cite the game's alleged lesser complexity as a reason for why they dislike it, which I think is why this article was written. I personally tend to like more complex games better for example I like Paradox games which tend to be more complex than either game. I also prefer Civ4 over Civ5.

About the article though, it occurred to me that you didn't discuss the smaller more complex aspects of Civ4 such as whipping and drafting and Civ4's tech tree which usually has more options and different paths and thus complexity. You also didn't seem to talk about smaller aspects of Civ5 but as I don't play Civ5 nearly as much as 4 I'm not sure whether there are comparable features which are complex but not as obvious as things like the combat system and social policies.
 
Civilization V is more balanced than Civ IV about victory conditions with these differences. For example, in Civ V, I can win by playing with only one city that isn't so vulnerable to wars,thanks to the 1UPT.Besides,big empires has less social policies,less golden ages and bigger amount of unhapiness.You can analyze the details,but try to see how they make the game fair.
 
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