Gods and kings community verdict

[PhilBowles]

Yea we are just imagining all those features that are in Civ 4 and not in Civ 5. Because we are confused about the... user interface...

omg

The UI one is certainly a silly argument, and Civ V isn't going to win any prizes for its interface either.

At the same time there's a difference between having extra features and having more depth - Civ IV had the ability to switch civics, which on paper looks as though it puts the player in the driving seat in terms of making strategic decisions, but in practice gameplay was rarely situational enough, and the civics themselves were sufficiently poorly-balanced, that this was an option that wasn't often used, or was used only in no-brainer situations ("Yes, now that I'm at war it might be a good idea to switch from Universal Suffrage to Hereditary Rule. Now I'm at peace let's switch back again").

Most Civ IV decision-making was equally formulaic, so allowing for relatively little strategic variation in practice - you had to build specific buildings to counter health/happiness effects once you'd connected all available resources, and those effects always manifested at a certain population size. It's like the aqueduct building chain in Civ III - you get to a certain city size, you have to build one or growth stops (which is, indeed, essentially what the health system in Civ IV replicated). You had more tile improvement options, but once you'd determined a focus for your city which ones you put down would be determined wholly by the terrain, as in Civ V - you aren't going to build a farm on a hill in a production city in Civ V, you aren't going to build a windmill instead of a mine in the same city in Civ IV.

And yes, Civ V is much the same - but as far as depth goes, it's no deeper giving you a dozen different illusory "decisions" that always have the same solution than it is having two or three. So it's not entirely unfair to suggest that Civ IV had more features but no more depth than Civ V.

 

[Haig]

Civ V + Gods & Kings is the best game in the series, no turning back to previous ones. With vanilla Civ I had occasional III or IV periods, but now I don't miss them at all.

 

[PhilBowles]

Civ IV diplomacy opted for a more realistic diplomatic system by sacrifiying the excitement of the unpredictability, a direction that I agree with, even if I can understand that some other people might like a bit more of spice. That being said, I also miss the whole interdependence relations between nations that the Civ IV system created. The fact that trade relations with a third partner, goverments and religious alliences had butterfly effect on the world really added a lot to diplomacy, even if it was more slow - paced.

In my experience tripartite relations tended not to be important in Civ IV, certainly not to the extent that declarations of friendship and denunciations made them in Civ V. It may be the case that in Civ V vanilla those effects were too dominating - it does present a strange situation "realistically" when your relationship with X is determined more by your behaviour towards Y than it is by your behaviour towards X, and I think it was a source of a lot of frustration at the system that people who hadn't worked out the tripartite game didn't understand why they could be nice to their allies and still get backstabbed - which often happened simply because they weren't nice to that ally's best friend, or were trying to be friends with their worst enemy. I think G&K strikes a better balance than either, although I miss international trade.

A bigger city radious means a lessened impact of the city placement, the disappeareance of the health mechanic means a reduced importance of the riverside locations (and the inconveniences of jungle / flooded plains locations), and the standarization of tile improvements means that there's little room for city specialization.

The workable radius isn't larger, it just looks larger in the hex system - I made the same mistake myself before realising it, but you can still only work three tiles from the city.

As for health, you wanted to clear jungles in Civ IV anyway, and retain forests - health didn't give you the main incentive to do so, the tile production did. Civ V is actually a slight advance in regard to jungles, since you now want them for science once you develop Education, so at least for early city placement and development decisions you have to determine what the best option is regarding treatment of jungles.

As for standardised tile improvements, as with an example I gave in another post this is to an extent a non-choice in Civ IV. You decide what your city specialises in, and your tile improvements are basically pre-selected for you, exactly as in Civ V. It's irrelevant that you have the option to build a windmill if you have a production city, since it wants a mine. If you want a food city to support cities, it doesn't actually matter if you settle in hills since you can just produce windmills that give good food output. You could build a workshop anywhere, and ultimately they produced massive amounts of hammers, so it wasn't actually very important where you placed a city since you could specialise it for anything.

In Civ V you want to actively avoid settling grassland if you want a production city, other than a few tiles to fuel food production. Certain resource clusters are better for gold than others; I usually place my commerce cities near those. The smaller number of improvement types in Civ V means that you don't actually have an option to overcome any and every terrain limitation you come up against - no more hilly food cities or flatland production cities (not that those were optimal choices in Civ IV, admittedly, but they were more feasible than they are in Civ V).

I always interpretated the whole slider mechanic as a kind of a "decadence meter" and it worked quite well at that since it forced you to become a backward civilization in order to sustain the costs of your inefficient empire (quite realistic!). About the infinite buidling copies of cities, that was something that only happened on the latter stages of the game with the industrial production bonuses (which is a common fault of every Civ).

Things tend to build very quickly in Civ IV, and early on you often don't have a lot of building options (as well as generally wanting to have things to use slavery on occasionally). Granted I tend not to expand aggressively so probably produce too few settlers in the early game, but I often found myself building duplicates just because there's no downside and they might come in useful, rather than being forced to consider what I actually need.

I trust you on the last part, since I rarely played Civ IV on deity level, but the mechanisms introduced on Civ V in order to curb the whole "bigger is better" effect were wholly uneffective (common unhappiness is not a proper deterrence) and led to the whole ICS madness. Civ IV's city manteinance costs were far more effective in that regard, me thinks, and in combination with the war weariness and individual city unhappiness, it forced you to rebuild the economy on the aftermath of the wars.

I didn't play it on the highest levels either, but my point is that if you were to take several Civ IV strategies and compare them against each other - either vs. human opponents using them, or judging based on the scoreboard (which is in any case biased towards higher scores for more cities, so is a less reliable method), and the more expansive strategy will prevail.

What I would concede is that, indeed, Civ V's control measures don't work as advertised, although ICS is not the dominating strategy it was in older games - Civ V didn't kill ICS by making it impossible to execute, but by making it suboptimal to play. More cities in Civ V means smaller populations, and while you usually want a large number of cities with moderately large populations, literal ICS (i.e. found a city everywhere you can actually put one) is going to depress populations too much to gain the population multiplier benefits of various buildings, as well as the maximum science bonus from population (since you can have 3 pop in one city for every new 1 pop city you found) - as well as costing more gold in maintenance because you need to support 50 libraries to get the science a smaller empire may gain from 10. This is, surely, a better - at least more strategic - way to deal with ICS than just 'banning' it outright.

 

[Andulias]

The UI one is certainly a silly argument, and Civ V isn't going to win any prizes for its interface either.

At the same time there's a difference between having extra features and having more depth - Civ IV had the ability to switch civics, which on paper looks as though it puts the player in the driving seat in terms of making strategic decisions, but in practice gameplay was rarely situational enough, and the civics themselves were sufficiently poorly-balanced, that this was an option that wasn't often used, or was used only in no-brainer situations ("Yes, now that I'm at war it might be a good idea to switch from Universal Suffrage to Hereditary Rule. Now I'm at peace let's switch back again").

Most Civ IV decision-making was equally formulaic, so allowing for relatively little strategic variation in practice - you had to build specific buildings to counter health/happiness effects once you'd connected all available resources, and those effects always manifested at a certain population size. It's like the aqueduct building chain in Civ III - you get to a certain city size, you have to build one or growth stops (which is, indeed, essentially what the health system in Civ IV replicated). You had more tile improvement options, but once you'd determined a focus for your city which ones you put down would be determined wholly by the terrain, as in Civ V - you aren't going to build a farm on a hill in a production city in Civ V, you aren't going to build a windmill instead of a mine in the same city in Civ IV.

And yes, Civ V is much the same - but as far as depth goes, it's no deeper giving you a dozen different illusory "decisions" that always have the same solution than it is having two or three. So it's not entirely unfair to suggest that Civ IV had more features but no more depth than Civ V.

I was going to write the exact same thing with one small exception. Most people want choices, even illusionary choices. It might not matter in the end of the day, it might have no influence on the outcome of the game, but having a choice, any choice, still creates an illusion of depth.

It's a blurry line to balance and I don't think either game got it quite right. CIV with both expansions had a lot of such choices that didn't really make much of a difference, but nevertheless brought some character. The problem was it might have had in fact too many, creating a sense of the game being needlessly convoluted. CiV on the other hand drastically reduced the number of such small insignificant or imaginary decisions, but it did so maybe to a fault. If anything, CiV needs more of those.

Anyways, I still haven't given my "verdict", I will do so tomorrow, but it's definitely interesting to read what the community thinks of the expansion so far.

 

[jjkrause84]

In Civ 4 you settled cities next to food resources, in Civ 5 you ignore food resources and settle cities for luxury resources.

This pretty much sums up just how fundamental the design mis-conception of Civ 5 is.

[That said....it's still a Civ game and is still REALLY fun, don't get me wrong!]

 

[Andulias]

In Civ 4 you settled cities next to food resources, in Civ 5 you ignore food resources and settle cities for luxury resources.

This pretty much sums up just how fundamental the design mis-conception of Civ 5 is.

[That said....it's still a Civ game and is still REALLY fun, don't get me wrong!]

So? It doesn't really make that much of a difference now, does it? Food resources used to be more important in IV, now luxuries are the key to success in V, it's just a change. I honestly don't see a design misconception here

I would also like to support PhilBowles' latest post yet again particularly about ICS. I think what some CiV haters still don't understand is that ICS wasn't really supposed to be fully exterminated from the game, but rather made into one of many play-styles. Thanks to how Global Happiness works right now (as opposed to the way it did on launch, but let's forget about that) both small, tight empires and big sprawling ones have their pluses and minuses, unlike in previous Civ games where having a bigger empire brought nothing but benefits.

If I have any beefs with CiV in that regard, it's the Puppeting thing. I don't think it's implemented very well and it partially destroys that choice between a big and a tall empire. It's too easy to exploit and brings too many benefits. If anything, the biggest problem with it is that the way I see things right now neither tall nor wide empires are the best. Tall empires with dozens of puppet cities are. I really don't understand why they still haven't changed something about this mechanic.

 

[Calouste]

In Civ 4 you settled cities next to food resources, in Civ 5 you ignore food resources and settle cities for luxury resources.

This pretty much sums up just how fundamental the design mis-conception of Civ 5 is.

[That said....it's still a Civ game and is still REALLY fun, don't get me wrong!]

If you city spam yes, but there are other ways to play. If you play tall, you usually have enough happiness and you want to make sure your secondary cities grow quickly.

 

[Calouste]

Btw, I don't see why people hark back to the sliders. There was never much choice with the sliders, you just ran it at the highest science level you could afford, and that was it. Ok, once or twice a game you maxed gold. Getting rid of that was an even better improvement in Civ5 than getting rid of the stacks of death.

What also is far better in Civ5, specially in G&K, is that you can build a reliable defense early on in the game without having to spam units. In Civ4, especially if you didn't have metals, you had to spam Archers and even then if you miscalculated and you had a few units less than your enemy's SoD, you'd be dead.

 

[Andulias]

Btw, I don't see why people hark back to the sliders. There was never much choice with the sliders, you just ran it at the highest science level you could afford, and that was it. Ok, once or twice a game you maxed gold. Getting rid of that was an even better improvement in Civ5 than getting rid of the stacks of death.

What also is far better in Civ5, specially in G&K, is that you can build a reliable defense early on in the game without having to spam units. In Civ4, especially if you didn't have metals, you had to spam Archers and even then if you miscalculated and you had a few units less than your enemy's SoD, you'd be dead.

Illusionary choice, mate. Yes, it didn't matter that much, but it made you feel like it did.

 

[Bisqit]

I would disagree that choices are an illusion of depth. I do agree that people like choices. Civ 5 is fun but i love having the options. In Civ5 you basically have to use espionage, in civ4 its just there. In civ4 i like how religion is in your face in the early game. G&K said it would be a defining diplomatic factor but i havent really seen this. I like how civ4 has corporations but you can ignore them completely. Overall i like having so many options and tools to utilize where civ5 doesnt have as many tools to use. The Civ4 has been out longer than civ5 and therefore had time to improve and add features is invalid. You go from content rich bts and then strip it all out with 5 then add it back in? Why would u strip out what everyone loved about civ4 in its final state? They could have simply left everything from civ4 and improved upon it in my opinion. Religion in 5 is cool and so is espionage and that could have easily been in the vanilla game. Civ4 had religion from the start. Id say my main gripe is that civ5 stripped out all the options and then decided to add them back later. They focused way too much on reinventing the game and didnt add the options. Now there making up for it by adding it in later which is fine but i think theres a certain sour taste that ciV left behind. I cant seem to get past thinking "why was it not like this on release?". I hope civ6 is a return to form for civilization.

 

[Bisqit]

Although id have to say this thread has officially derailed.

 

[Andulias]

I would disagree that choices are an illusion of depth. I do agree that people like choices. Civ 5 is fun but i love having the options. In Civ5 you basically have to use espionage, in civ4 its just there. In civ4 i like how religion is in your face in the early game. G&K said it would be a defining diplomatic factor but i havent really seen this. I like how civ4 has corporations but you can ignore them completely. Overall i like having so many options and tools to utilize where civ5 doesnt have as many tools to use. The Civ4 has been out longer than civ5 and therefore had time to improve and add features is invalid. You go from content rich bts and then strip it all out with 5 then add it back in? Why would u strip out what everyone loved about civ4 in its final state? They could have simply left everything from civ4 and improved upon it in my opinion. Religion in 5 is cool and so is espionage and that could have easily been in the vanilla game. Civ4 had religion from the start. Id say my main gripe is that civ5 stripped out all the options and then decided to add them back later. They focused way too much on reinventing the game and didnt add the options. Now there making up for it by adding it in later which is fine but i think theres a certain sour taste that ciV left behind. I cant seem to get past thinking "why was it not like this on release?". I hope civ6 is a return to form for civilization.

Your post contradicts itself.

Espionage could be ignored in CIV BTS? Really?! Did you ever play even at Monarch! You lose the game if you ignore it, plain and simple.

Then you say that you like how religion was "in your face", which contradicts how much you liked that the Espionage (according to you at least) wasn't. And nobody ever stated it was going to be a defining diplomatic factor. It's neither realistic, nor would it make sense - why do the exact same thing that IV did? There is much more to diplomacy than religion and, like I already said before, very few wars, if any, have been started entirely on the basis of religion.

I agree that V tried to change too much, which amounted to a badly balanced content-poor game at launch, but I thought we were talking about the expansion pack here? And saying they add things back is pretty wrong, both religion and espionage have nothing to do with their iterations in IV.

And finally, they didn't make CIV.5 because that's not how you do a proper sequel. If I want to play CIV, I play CIV, every new Civilization game should actually change and innovate instead of piling on top of features that already in exist in the previous game. Not to mention that with BTS CIV was already a convoluted mess in some regards, with many needlessly complicated and boring systems. And plenty of choices that didn't actually matter.

Overall from your post I am getting the feeling you just want CIV and nothing else. And to be honest, I am very glad Firaxis didn't go down that route. While CiV wasn't exactly the game it was supposed to be, I would still take it over a CIV with a 5 slapped on the box, thank you very much. We already have enough such franchises in the industry.

 

[jjkrause84]

Btw, I don't see why people hark back to the sliders. There was never much choice with the sliders, you just ran it at the highest science level you could afford, and that was it. Ok, once or twice a game you maxed gold. Getting rid of that was an even better improvement in Civ5 than getting rid of the stacks of death.

The fact that a system could have been implemented better does not mean that the idea behind it was flawed. Forcing the player to actually use the luxuries/culture/happy slider (which Civ 4 did not do) would allow a great deal of flexibility.

 

[jjkrause84]

If you city spam yes, but there are other ways to play. If you play tall, you usually have enough happiness and you want to make sure your secondary cities grow quickly.

I actually do play tall....every single game (I'm an SP fiend, I don't know why).

 

[themascarasnake]

Btw, I don't see why people hark back to the sliders. There was never much choice with the sliders, you just ran it at the highest science level you could afford, and that was it. Ok, once or twice a game you maxed gold. Getting rid of that was an even better improvement in Civ5 than getting rid of the stacks of death.

What also is far better in Civ5, specially in G&K, is that you can build a reliable defense early on in the game without having to spam units. In Civ4, especially if you didn't have metals, you had to spam Archers and even then if you miscalculated and you had a few units less than your enemy's SoD, you'd be dead.

The fact that you actually think running it at the highest science level you could afford is always optimal just shows that you have no idea how the commerce system worked.

Oh, and in Civ IV spamming units for defense was hardly necessary (at least in the early game). Your first buffer was diplomacy, but if your neighbor was someone like Monty or Shaka then you could easily just settle a hill city near them, build a Walls in it, and stack some archers/longbows in it. You rarely needed more than 10.



Oh, and choosing where to place the slider is in no way an 'illusory' choice, it makes a huge difference, depending on what multipliers you have in what cities, with what improvements and with what specialists.



CiV GnK is OK, but Commerce is one of the best mechanics in Civ, and it left a gaping hole in CiV.

 

[jjkrause84]

So? It doesn't really make that much of a difference now, does it? Food resources used to be more important in IV, now luxuries are the key to success in V, it's just a change. I honestly don't see a design misconception here

It makes a huge difference in how the game "feels". Early civs building cities in food-rich areas makes sense. Early civs building cities primarily because of luxury resources does not make quite as much sense.

 

[ampmclock]

Civilization V Gods and Kings IS...A Good Game. Need any more than that? It's a good game with the same problems Civ V had when it started, more or less, and those problems may never go away. They are in the base build of the game, and that may not be a problem with the game, but the players who can't accept that this IS the game, and there very particular ways to play it. It's not Civ IV, you guys are right, it never will be.
Maybe Civ VI will be, I mean in all honesty, the odd numbered civs have never been the most popular. If Civ V is a stepping stone game, let it be, it's added a lot of great ideas to the series. Individual abilities, steam lined city managing (that is still very complex) and a battle system that actually endorses smart strategies, and not JUST army size. It's a great game, even if it isn't going to be a "classic" of the series, once it's all said and done.

 

[oddtail]

First of all - I have played all games in the series - a sizeable amount of Civilization 1, a LOT of Civilization 2 and its iterations, a little Civilization 3 (it took me a while to warm to it), a lot of Civilization 4. Plus Colonization and Alpha Centauri and a few open-source remakes of the basic Civilization idea.

Personally, I thought that even Civilization 5 vanilla was noticeably better than Civ 4: BTS. This does not seem a common opinion in these forums, but I do think a lot of the "depth" in Civilization 4 was illusory. There was a lot of lather-rinse-repeat action in the game, in all stages of it. Civilization 5 does not feel this way.

The key points that make the game superior, even in vanilla, compared to Civilization 4 are, in no particular order:

1) The combat is far superior, and GaK made naval combat really fun. In no Civilization game before, even the ones where I had fun with the simplistic battle mechanics (like Civ 2), had I ever had any fun with naval invasions. Now some wars I conduct are almost exclusively over the seas. Both against AI and in multiplayer.
2) Vanilla did not convince me fully with the level of interaction possible with others (what with no tech trading, no foreign trade routes etc.), but GaK remedied that with religion. If you look at just the bonuses, religion seems rather bland. But the real trick is how the interplay between the bonuses you get, the bonuses you deny your opponents by converting their cities, the bonus your enemy might get from your Follower bonus, the choice between various beliefs, the diplomatic considerations creates a surprisingly deep system. In multiplayer, this makes religion a whole game-within-a-game. In Civilization 4, even though I liked religion, the whole game boiled down to "convert as many cities as possible. Late in the game, possibly try to get as many religions in your cities as you can". Gods and Kings religion surprised me in how much your strategy is influenced by both your choices in beliefs and in how you play out your religion game. Every choice has impact, even seemingly no-brainer decisions like picking the "best" Pantheon for your civilization are trickier than they might seem if you consider all pros and cons. There is nothing about Civ 4 religion that I'd prefer to Civ 5 religions.
3) The addition of City-States makes the game very different, especially in multiplayer. The influence wars between civilizations, the protection of your pet CS, the possible conquests - these all things add a layer to the game that a CS-less Civ 4 simply could not have. Vanilla broke that great potential somewhat by making everything too gold-reliant. With GaK, I feel I might pick it over BtS for the City-States alone. But again, it's in a large part due to how human players interact with each other when CSs are at stake.
4) Espionage in GaK is better than it looks! I was seriously disappointed with it (with thoughts like "meh, if you're behind in technology, you just get a bonus so that you get a fighting chance to get back in the technological race"), but I'm pleasantly surprised. I still think espionage needs balancing and possibly some changes (I hate how few spies are involved in a game, I think the number should be slightly increased), but espionage is still much better than in Civ 4. And importantly, it's a good building base - just like how City-States in Civ 5 vanilla were a good base for how CS work now.
5) A lot of Civ 4 "depth" is, I feel, part nostalgia, part illusory decisions. Civ 4 had a LOT of things to juggle and handle. It gives the game a feel of sophistication. But frankly? I think - always thought, despite loving BtS - that a lot of Civ 4 gameplay is "lather-rinse-repeat". Civ 5 involves, to me, a lot of meaningful strategic and tactical decisions in empire-building. Civ 4 often got to the point where you'd just build a lot of cities and try to equip them with as many important buildings as possible. Civilization 5 has, to me, fewer "duh" moments, and more planning your strategy. In short, I don't equate micromanagement with depth. There's a reason Chess is often considered the greatest board game of all time, and it has very simple rules. Go, the other candidate for the greatest board game in the world, is even more simplistic in its rules. Civ 5 sacrifices hundreds of meaningless choices in favour of dozens of important ones, in my opinion. And that's good design.
6) I vastly prefer the new cultural victory to the old one, AND the way new cultural mechanics work to the old method. The only thing I hate in Civ 5 is that border growth is much less of a factor (I think) - instead of being an important part of creating your empire's border, it's a way to grab resources a little faster. But other than that, I think culture works great now, and in Civilization 4 it was just an addition, rather than its own major part of the game.

TL;DR - I think Civilization 5 vanilla, for all its problems, introduced elements to the franchise that I can't, and won't, skip when playing a game now. The execution was sometimes flawed, but GaK removed a lot of the problems - probably most. I honestly think that with a minor exception or two, GaK is a superior game in *all* respects to BtS. It's still not perfect, but I feel no need to return to Civilization 4 in any shape or form. I honestly would be more likely to play Civilization 2 again if I got tired with Civ 5. Which I probably won't, for a long time.

In all honesty? I think every Civilization game since Civ 1 was better than its predecessor. Civilization 3 was probably the largest jump, to me, and had the most problems - but even it was better than Civilization 2, in my personal opinion. Civilization 5 is no exception as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Ikael]

The workable radius isn't larger, it just looks larger in the hex system - I made the same mistake myself before realising it, but you can still only work three tiles from the city.

That's why I said that the problem lies within the core of the game (hexes). An hexagonal circle of 3 radious contains more tiles than the standard square of 3 tiles wide on each axis. Perhaps if they reduce it to a 2 hex radious circle they could balance things out? Also, a small yet crucial dettail that I miss in order to plan my cities:could they pretty please highligh the city radious of the "city to be" once you select a settler?

If I have any beefs with CiV in that regard, it's the Puppeting thing. I don't think it's implemented very well and it partially destroys that choice between a big and a tall empire. It's too easy to exploit and brings too many benefits. If anything, the biggest problem with it is that the way I see things right now neither tall nor wide empires are the best. Tall empires with dozens of puppet cities are. I really don't understand why they still haven't changed something about this mechanic.

I never puppet - state conquered cities precisely because of what you mention. Call me a fool or a romantic, but I rather to play a game the way the creators intended for me to do it so It does make civ V games far more interesting since you need time to actually "digest" your conquests.

As for the debate between evolution VS disruption between Civ IV and Civ V:

I do like that they try new mechanics, I really do. But I do not like quite a lot of the general directions behind this game. More of a board war game than a sim, AI behaving like human players focused into win, less of a simulator, little to no micromanaging, hexes... I strongly disagree with many decisions on a conceptual level. But don't get me wrong, I don't want a "Civ IV: the expansion pack" for a sequel, and no, I don't think that more features equals more depth. I do like civ V for what it is, but if I would be the Civ VI's director by God I would take the game on a wholly opposite direction that being said, there are things from each particular civ that I would love to pick from each one:

Civ IV:
- City placement mechanics
- The whole philosophy of "making small yet relevant decisions towards a bigger goal"
- Cultural victory
- International trade routes (albeit I am eagerly waiting for a game that makes trade routs - right -)
- How goverments works (a good system in dire need of a revamp)
- Politics, and its interaction with religion
- City building
- Limits to empire expansion

Civ V:
- Embarked units
- 1 UPT and the whole combat system in general
- Actually different religions. Also, the whole "social policy" mechanic is strangely fitting for religion rather than society, which is a much more changeable entity
- No science / gold slider
- Military victory

Civ Revolutions (yes it has good ideas if you look at it):
- Civilization special abilities that changes / adds over time. Loved, LOVED that. So much different flavours depending which civ you were playing
- The choosing between producing either gold or science on each city
- Naval support of terrestrial units. More accurate than the whole "melee ships" thing
- Culture output tied to the city's popullation

Civ III:
- Leader potraits changing over the eras

Civ II:
- One... more.. turn

Civ I:

 

[pspboy7]

I like the whole expansion for the most part, but I like religion more than the espionage part. Religion adds some nice bonuses to get your empire started nicely. Espionage on the other hand feels like you can't really control how you use it to your advantage. I preferred the Civ 4 approach to espionage a lot better. Maybe they will change that in the future perhaps?