I'm new to the ''Civ'' series. What is the best in all the aspects? Civ4 or Civ5?

Civ IV is not incoplete graphicaly and was a very good game on it's time... I just was playing it with a lot of pleasure... and yes now civ5 with both expansion is a lot more for me now... but I like the civ4 like it was... another question.... the happiness of course is different from civ4 to civ5... when I grow in civ4 in every turn when I'm growing the population of the city gives -1 happiness... I just was playing more and grow fast and I have encounter a number of -9 happiness from the city just in a few turns with the messege: ''it's too crowded!!!''. so what can I do to decrease all the happiness? but without building wonders because I'm in a early era... and what represent this message? why was increasing too much so fast?
 
Civ IV is not incoplete graphicaly and was a very good game on it's time... I just was playing it with a lot of pleasure... and yes now civ5 with both expansion is a lot more for me now... but I like the civ4 like it was... another question.... the happiness of course is different from civ4 to civ5... when I grow in civ4 in every turn when I'm growing the population of the city gives -1 happiness... I just was playing more and grow fast and I have encounter a number of -9 happiness from the city just in a few turns with the messege: ''it's too crowded!!!''. so what can I do to decrease all the happiness? but without building wonders because I'm in a early era... and what represent this message? why was increasing too much so fast?

Civ IV gives you -1 unhappiness per population point; each city has a base positive happiness (at the level I play - Monarch - this is 6, I think it's higher at lower levels). There's nothing you can do about getting unhappiness with population (as you can with certain Civ V policies, say), so you have two options for managing it, not very different in essence from Civ V:

1. Reduce the rate of population growth. You're probably seeing such high levels of unhappiness because you're not used to the higher tile output improvements give in Civ IV, so your cities are just growing too fast. Workers, like Settlers, cost food to produce in Civ IV, so you can stop a city growing temporarily by building either. The slavery civic can also be used to kill off population and so increase happiness, but unless you're losing at least 3 or 4 pop this will be offset by an unhappiness penalty for cruel and oppressive treatment (by the time that wears off your population will probably have grown back to the level it was before).

2. Use the same tools to increase happiness that you would in Civ V - certain Wonders, luxuries, and happiness buildings. One thing to be aware of is that, while as in Civ V they provide what amounts to global happiness (giving the bonus to every city they're connected to), luxuries only provide happiness if they're connected to your cities by road, and also each type of resource only provides 1 happiness (base - certain buildings can increase this for certain resources). You also get +1 happiness for having the state religion in a city, and can build temples to each religion - so you can get quite a big happiness boost from having several temples (and unlike Civ V a religion can't be removed from a city once established).

There's also one more tool you don't get in Civ V - the Hereditary Rule civic (unlocked with Monarchy). This gives you +1 happiness per military unit in a city, and is probably the most important happiness management tool for most of the game since the others (luxuries and buildings) are available in fixed quantities and the happiness "offset" they provide runs out fairly quickly. Units are the only thing you can produce and stack more or less infinitely to manage happiness, and so the only way to keep your cities growing quickly past a certain point is to spam garrisons (except for using the slider to prioritise culture, which boosts global happiness, but you need a very large culture boost to have significant effects on happiness and this will hamper your science and maintenance costs if kept up).
 
Civ IV gives you -1 unhappiness per population point; each city has a base positive happiness (at the level I play - Monarch - this is 6, I think it's higher at lower levels). There's nothing you can do about getting unhappiness with population (as you can with certain Civ V policies, say), so you have two options for managing it, not very different in essence from Civ V:

1. Reduce the rate of population growth. You're probably seeing such high levels of unhappiness because you're not used to the higher tile output improvements give in Civ IV, so your cities are just growing too fast. Workers, like Settlers, cost food to produce in Civ IV, so you can stop a city growing temporarily by building either. The slavery civic can also be used to kill off population and so increase happiness, but unless you're losing at least 3 or 4 pop this will be offset by an unhappiness penalty for cruel and oppressive treatment (by the time that wears off your population will probably have grown back to the level it was before).

2. Use the same tools to increase happiness that you would in Civ V - certain Wonders, luxuries, and happiness buildings. One thing to be aware of is that, while as in Civ V they provide what amounts to global happiness (giving the bonus to every city they're connected to), luxuries only provide happiness if they're connected to your cities by road, and also each type of resource only provides 1 happiness (base - certain buildings can increase this for certain resources). You also get +1 happiness for having the state religion in a city, and can build temples to each religion - so you can get quite a big happiness boost from having several temples (and unlike Civ V a religion can't be removed from a city once established).

There's also one more tool you don't get in Civ V - the Hereditary Rule civic (unlocked with Monarchy). This gives you +1 happiness per military unit in a city, and is probably the most important happiness management tool for most of the game since the others (luxuries and buildings) are available in fixed quantities and the happiness "offset" they provide runs out fairly quickly. Units are the only thing you can produce and stack more or less infinitely to manage happiness, and so the only way to keep your cities growing quickly past a certain point is to spam garrisons (except for using the slider to prioritise culture, which boosts global happiness, but you need a very large culture boost to have significant effects on happiness and this will hamper your science and maintenance costs if kept up).


thanx philbowles, apreciate for the answer... I heard that you can sacrifice population for production with the first civic that can you unlock ''slavery'' ... is that good? and in a video of sullla he says that slavery is the more important civic of the game. but he didn't mention why is more important than the others civics.... why?
 
thanx philbowles, apreciate for the answer... I heard that you can sacrifice population for production with the first civic that can you unlock ''slavery'' ... is that good? and in a video of sullla he says that slavery is the more important civic of the game. but he didn't mention why is more important than the others civics.... why?

Yes, I mentioned Slavery above. Sulla knows a lot more about Civ IV than I do, but my experience is that Slavery is good because it has a low maintenance cost (all civics have maintenance costs), it gives you control over your population (other than just stopping food production), and it's very early.

In my experience its actual effects other than population control are secondary - as I mentioned above, it's an inefficient way to manage happiness since it creates more happiness than it saves with small projects (only a small population loss). The production speed boost is trivial because everything completes so rapidly in Civ IV that at least in my experience I'm never short of time to build anything I need.
 
Yes, I mentioned Slavery above. Sulla knows a lot more about Civ IV than I do, but my experience is that Slavery is good because it has a low maintenance cost (all civics have maintenance costs), it gives you control over your population (other than just stopping food production), and it's very early.

In my experience its actual effects other than population control are secondary - as I mentioned above, it's an inefficient way to manage happiness since it creates more happiness than it saves with small projects (only a small population loss). The production speed boost is trivial because everything completes so rapidly in Civ IV that at least in my experience I'm never short of time to build anything I need.

Interesting. thanx for the civ4 info.
If a civ6 comes out phill, from your perspective how do you wanna see that game? with civics or social policies?
how do you wanna see the tech tree? from your point of view what you like the most the empire based growing or each city apart like in civ4?
the combat? hexes with one unit per tile or squares with stacks of doom?
I know that is like an a offtopic question but I like your point of view and I'm just curios what do you prefer the most and how do you want the core game like civ4 or civ5?
 
EDIT: That should have been slavery creates more UNhappiness than it saves with small projects.

Interesting. thanx for the civ4 info.
If a civ6 comes out phill, from your perspective how do you wanna see that game? with civics or social policies?

I don't think either system is quite ideal, but I think one thing that should be retained is the link to culture. It's one of Civ V's biggest advances that not everything is tied to the tech tree - in all past incarnations, whatever your ultimate strategy you had to beeline certain techs that unlocked governments or certain civics (in every past Civ game, rushing Monarchy was important, for instance).

Also, culture in Civs III and Civ IV was rather like tourism in BNW in the sense that it was a resource mostly without purpose other than to win a certain victory condition. It was better-integrated into early game stages than tourism is in BNW, but it was definitely the least useful resource for general play. Tying it to policies has made culture a much more relevant part of gameplay.

The only real advantage of civics is that they can be changed more or less at will. I di like the flexibility of this, and the government systems of prior Civ games, but it's difficult to see how it could easily be integrated into the social policy system.

Where I dislike policies is in the tree system and its finishers - with cultural victory now decoupled from completing policy trees, it should be more viable to "mix and match" policy branches to allow more varied strategies, but the finishers and the faith purchases they unlock mean that it's still optimal to fully explore your chosen paths, and you still have to follow a very restricted route to get to the individual policies you want in each tree. I prefer the way the ideology tiers are structured.

In both Civ IV and Civ V I think there's something thematic missing, however - the social policies and civics fundamentally represent governance, but quite aside from some rather oddly-chosen names for some of Civ V's 'government' policies and branches (exploration and aesthetic governments?), you don't get any real sense of identity as to what your government actually is. Civs I to III had a very simple system - you had Despotism, Republic, Monarchy, Theocracy, Communism, Democracy and so forth as specific government types. That's not mechanically very satisfactory, but in an empire-scale game like Civ not having name-checked government types also feels very unsatisfactory. You do have them in the names of some policies, but no one pays attention to policy names in Civ V, only the names of policy branches.

Civ IV mostly unlocked certain civics with government techs of the appropriate name (Monarchy provides Hereditary Rule, for instance), which makes the link between policy and government more obvious but as above has the problems associated with linking civics to the tech tree.

how do you wanna see the tech tree?

Now that the branches are better-balanced, I like Civ V's tech tree a lot more than I used to, but the early branching pattern does make it rather binary (you still go down the "Bronze Working path" or the "Theology path"). I also think that, with BNW adding so many new features but hardly any new techs, some techs are now a bit too 'bloated' with features and should be split:

Trade (prerequisite: Animal Husbandry), for instance, which takes the trade route and caravan from Animal Husbandry and the Caravansery from Horseback Riding - the latter could replace the Caravansery with extra range for caravans

Literature (prerequisite: Drama and Poetry) and adding the Writers' Guild and National Epic.

Code of Laws (between Mathematics and Civil Service): unlocks Courthouse and Open Borders.

Priesthood (prerequisites as for current Theology tech, leads to Theology): unlocks Temple, Borobodur.

As far as tech progression is concerned, I still prefer Civ IV's either/or prerequisites for some techs, since (while supported by a visually terrible UI and worse Civilopedia that made the system somewhat awkward to learn) something like this is the only way to avoid either a system that forces you along one of several mutually exclusive paths (as with G&K/BNW) or that forces you down a single, giant tech path with limited options for deviation (as with Civ V vanilla).

from your point of view what you like the most the empire based growing or each city apart like in civ4?

If it has to be one or the other, I prefer my empire builders to feel like building an empire, and Civ V wins on this count. Strategically I also much prefer being able to direct how my cities develop by choosing how allocate my available global happiness to population vs. new cities to the forced management of Civ IV which I described in an earlier post.

Having said all of which, the game needs more city-level micromanagement, and this feeling is all the stronger for having played several mods that add micromanagement mechanics for health and local happiness.

the combat? hexes with one unit per tile or squares with stacks of doom?

1UPT, less because of the system itself and more because you simply don't need as many units. One thing I like about Civ V is the slowed production times - you have to make meaningful choices about what to produce when, and moving to unit production sacrifices some other element of empire production. People who dislike 1UPT use this as a criticism and point out that they dislike 1UPT less for the hex combat and more for the attendant changes - in my case it's the reverse, the attendant changes are a major improvement in my view.

I noted on another thread today (in the BNW forum) that this system has also had another very positive effect: air combat. No previous Civ game, in my opinion, has captured the way warfare changed so drastically with the development of flight, or has made air superiority such a fundamental part of late-game warfare. With the old stack system, although the mechanics were somewhat similar to Civ V's aircraft mechanics, air combat was much less decisive - air units were just flying artillery, and dealt collateral to a certain number of units in the stack when they attacked. If the defending stack was powerful enough, the plane died - even if there were no fighters on the defending side. This is because ranged unit mechanics worked differently - siege units attacked and defenders dealt damage back, rather than the Civ V system where only the ranged unit attacks. Planes take some damage from attacking in Civ V, but you can't beat them by spamming land units as you could in the past - you need AA or fighters of your own.
 
I've played all the Civ iterations, and the best have been II, IV, and now V. Of course, Civ II would look pretty old school nowadays, but it was a good game. Civ IV was the best of the old style Civ games. But, personally, I prefer Civ V because I like one unit per hex.
 
Civ 4 is an awesome game I still play it and love it but Civ5 has become my favorite the 1upt is great as I love the war game aspect of the game, overall civ5 just sucks me in as soon as I finish a game I cant wait to start another one!
 
EDIT: That should have been slavery creates more UNhappiness than it saves with small projects.



I don't think either system is quite ideal, but I think one thing that should be retained is the link to culture. It's one of Civ V's biggest advances that not everything is tied to the tech tree - in all past incarnations, whatever your ultimate strategy you had to beeline certain techs that unlocked governments or certain civics (in every past Civ game, rushing Monarchy was important, for instance).

Also, culture in Civs III and Civ IV was rather like tourism in BNW in the sense that it was a resource mostly without purpose other than to win a certain victory condition. It was better-integrated into early game stages than tourism is in BNW, but it was definitely the least useful resource for general play. Tying it to policies has made culture a much more relevant part of gameplay.

The only real advantage of civics is that they can be changed more or less at will. I di like the flexibility of this, and the government systems of prior Civ games, but it's difficult to see how it could easily be integrated into the social policy system.

Where I dislike policies is in the tree system and its finishers - with cultural victory now decoupled from completing policy trees, it should be more viable to "mix and match" policy branches to allow more varied strategies, but the finishers and the faith purchases they unlock mean that it's still optimal to fully explore your chosen paths, and you still have to follow a very restricted route to get to the individual policies you want in each tree. I prefer the way the ideology tiers are structured.

In both Civ IV and Civ V I think there's something thematic missing, however - the social policies and civics fundamentally represent governance, but quite aside from some rather oddly-chosen names for some of Civ V's 'government' policies and branches (exploration and aesthetic governments?), you don't get any real sense of identity as to what your government actually is. Civs I to III had a very simple system - you had Despotism, Republic, Monarchy, Theocracy, Communism, Democracy and so forth as specific government types. That's not mechanically very satisfactory, but in an empire-scale game like Civ not having name-checked government types also feels very unsatisfactory. You do have them in the names of some policies, but no one pays attention to policy names in Civ V, only the names of policy branches.

Civ IV mostly unlocked certain civics with government techs of the appropriate name (Monarchy provides Hereditary Rule, for instance), which makes the link between policy and government more obvious but as above has the problems associated with linking civics to the tech tree.



Now that the branches are better-balanced, I like Civ V's tech tree a lot more than I used to, but the early branching pattern does make it rather binary (you still go down the "Bronze Working path" or the "Theology path"). I also think that, with BNW adding so many new features but hardly any new techs, some techs are now a bit too 'bloated' with features and should be split:

Trade (prerequisite: Animal Husbandry), for instance, which takes the trade route and caravan from Animal Husbandry and the Caravansery from Horseback Riding - the latter could replace the Caravansery with extra range for caravans

Literature (prerequisite: Drama and Poetry) and adding the Writers' Guild and National Epic.

Code of Laws (between Mathematics and Civil Service): unlocks Courthouse and Open Borders.

Priesthood (prerequisites as for current Theology tech, leads to Theology): unlocks Temple, Borobodur.

As far as tech progression is concerned, I still prefer Civ IV's either/or prerequisites for some techs, since (while supported by a visually terrible UI and worse Civilopedia that made the system somewhat awkward to learn) something like this is the only way to avoid either a system that forces you along one of several mutually exclusive paths (as with G&K/BNW) or that forces you down a single, giant tech path with limited options for deviation (as with Civ V vanilla).



If it has to be one or the other, I prefer my empire builders to feel like building an empire, and Civ V wins on this count. Strategically I also much prefer being able to direct how my cities develop by choosing how allocate my available global happiness to population vs. new cities to the forced management of Civ IV which I described in an earlier post.

Having said all of which, the game needs more city-level micromanagement, and this feeling is all the stronger for having played several mods that add micromanagement mechanics for health and local happiness.



1UPT, less because of the system itself and more because you simply don't need as many units. One thing I like about Civ V is the slowed production times - you have to make meaningful choices about what to produce when, and moving to unit production sacrifices some other element of empire production. People who dislike 1UPT use this as a criticism and point out that they dislike 1UPT less for the hex combat and more for the attendant changes - in my case it's the reverse, the attendant changes are a major improvement in my view.

I noted on another thread today (in the BNW forum) that this system has also had another very positive effect: air combat. No previous Civ game, in my opinion, has captured the way warfare changed so drastically with the development of flight, or has made air superiority such a fundamental part of late-game warfare. With the old stack system, although the mechanics were somewhat similar to Civ V's aircraft mechanics, air combat was much less decisive - air units were just flying artillery, and dealt collateral to a certain number of units in the stack when they attacked. If the defending stack was powerful enough, the plane died - even if there were no fighters on the defending side. This is because ranged unit mechanics worked differently - siege units attacked and defenders dealt damage back, rather than the Civ V system where only the ranged unit attacks. Planes take some damage from attacking in Civ V, but you can't beat them by spamming land units as you could in the past - you need AA or fighters of your own.

It's very good structured in this way... we will see if firaxis will change something about it for a civ6 game... I think they will because are a lot of people complaining the new core of civ5, and of course a lot of people that like how the new system works... though for the moment they are concentrated in civilization online to release for the moment... I don't like it very much is very cartoonish like in world of warcraft or like in an animation movie... we will see what it will happen... for the moment we have those 2 great games with expansions. was a good topic for discutions and for inform the people... thanx
 
In my experience its actual effects other than population control are secondary - as I mentioned above, it's an inefficient way to manage happiness since it creates more happiness than it saves with small projects (only a small population loss). The production speed boost is trivial because everything completes so rapidly in Civ IV that at least in my experience I'm never short of time to build anything I need.

No, sorry. On both. With whipping you can actually whip away unhappy citizens, so it's a very effective way to get your cities happy. And your statement about "trivial production speed" documents quite obviously that you never really played Civ IV on higher levels. Slavery is an incredibly effective way to get production into cities with few or no hammers at all. Slavery is an incredibly effective way to raise huge armies in a VERY short time - which is mandatory whenever you actually want to go to war successfully. Slavery is the most important civic for winning Civ IV on higher levels. It's the one you want to be in for most part of the game.
 
Ok so, I just want to continue this topic with more questions... if you are new or just want some information about the comparation of the two of the games civ 4 and civ 5 , reading all the 11 or 12 pages of this topic you can find a lot and the majority of the information you need... thanx to a lot of people, especialy to PHILBOWLES and FUNKY there are a lot of good answers that you can read about history and in general civilization stuff. Thanx a lot and have a nice time playing the civilization series...
 
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