What are the worst game mechanics in Civ4 and how could they be fixed?

[Tecumseh1]

You can adjust game speed. Have you ever tried playing a game that's faster? It greatly speeds up research time.

I have, but fast game speed messes up game balance IMO. The thing is, even at fast game speed the end is tedious, it just happens to come sooner.

 

[sampsa]

Worst game mechanic by far: modding.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

The biggest change I want is make the end game quicker and less tedious. I normal game should be 200 turns max. Perhaps an option for victory conditions at each era. Ancient/Medival/Ren eras could have very interesting and believable victory conditions.

I keep saying this. Fix military unit maintenance. Maintenance cost of newer military units should scale up with expected economy size. But it should also be worth it. One tank should cost more than 20 spearman, but 100 spearman can never beat a bank. I mean deterministically never: combat outcome should have both a random and a deterministic component.

It's not the number of turns, but the time each turn takes. Fewer units means more and shorter turns means that multiplayer is viable.

Developers must playtest their own games to see how long each game takes to finish.

While I am at it, there should not be "defender's advantage". The game state must progress with every move.

 

[civac]

In an FFA setting game works much better with significant defenders advantage. For teamers/duels it wouldn't be needed but even then I don't think gameplay would be great if minor advantages can snowball freely.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Civ in general has a problem with a lot of buildings giving a very poor ROI on hammers compared to units and IV is no exception, so I've always thought that having two production queues, one for units and one for buildings and wonders, would be nice.

But I think the worst game mechanic in Civ IV is plains cow being considered a food resource by map scripts, and it could be fixed by having it not be considered a food resource.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

The biggest change I want is make the end game quicker and less tedious. I normal game should be 200 turns max. Perhaps an option for victory conditions at each era. Ancient/Medival/Ren eras could have very interesting and believable victory conditions.

I feel the exact opposite way. I find the regular pace of the game too fast and prefer modded ultra slow game speeds and massive worlds. 200 turns is how long it takes me to get warmed up to a game and 800 or so is about the point where I am half way done.

And no, I do not use any automation. Automation is the tool of the devil. I manually check every unit and every city every turn.

 

[antimony]

Civ in general has a problem with a lot of buildings giving a very poor ROI on hammers compared to units and IV is no exception, so I've always thought that having two production queues, one for units and one for buildings and wonders, would be nice.

But I think the worst game mechanic in Civ IV is plains cow being considered a food resource by map scripts, and it could be fixed by having it not be considered a food resource.

For two queues I assume you mean both units and buildings have access to the same hammers and don't compete for them? Doesn't that reduce strategic choice if you can always have both with no tradeoffs? Not to mention as of now often the best choice is to build neither (e.g. build wealth).

Some buildings have bad ROI like market at 150 production and not made cheaper by any leader trait, but a mod could just fix their cost for better balance.

 

[civac]

Yes, giving some weaker trait a market production modifier improves both the trait and the market.

As mentioned many times the perceived weakness of buildings is partly due to Civfanatics meta. Playing small maps with tech trading against deity AI is about the worst possible case for infrastructure. Markets don't become magically great with different settings but they are worth it in your commerce cities, possibly only after forges/OR but nevertheless. Other buildings like forges, libraries, banks are genuinely good investments.

 

[sampsa]

What you call civfanatics meta is the default settings though. By small maps I think you mean standard maps - at least to my knowledge people don't play small really.

I am not fully sure if improving buildings (by changing settings or any other way) makes the game better or more balanced though? Just different.

 

[antimony]

I'm not super into modern era warfare so I would say I have used most of the buildings at least in some games (esp. space), but not most of the units. Not most of the wonders but that's also fine, they don't even need to all be a good investment. Wonders are not meant for ROI in real life either.

 

[civac]

@sampsa Twenty cities after expansion phase is a large map, 15 is medium size, 8-12 is small, below 8 isn't Civ.

 

[sampsa]

I understand that you are not completely serious, but default settings are defaults settings. You can't tell people what is Civ and what is not Civ. I am not telling you that multiplayer is not Civ, even if it is a completely different game.

 

[civac]

Hm, obviously I'm not serious. You play Civ as you like it. There is no reason to even care what I say about it. Also, obviously , the whole spiel was intended to explain the point about small maps I made above. There are something like 50-80 cities on a standard sized map depending on the script and deity AI will get more of them than the player on average.

I forgot about vassals. Vassals also massively shorten the game. And yes, those are the standard settings. They do have the advantage of reducing late game slog. However, I played with them initially and over time tech trading and vassals infuriated me to the point I turned them off. This was before I started playing MP which also usually does not use these mechanics.

 

[sampsa]

Not sure I fully understand the talk about small maps. I haven't seen people play them really.

 

[civac]

What I meant is that I consider a nominally standard sized map with 7 players and usual map scripts to be small. The city numbers were meant to illustrate that.

Sampsa disclaimer: This is just civac's opinion and can be safely ignored if you so chose. Are you making sport of me by any chance?

 

[drewisfat]

I went through a small map phase -- well standard size but high seas and quick speed, with the idea of keeping the challenge but lowering the unit/city numbers to more manageable levels to micro. Really hard to get over how much quick nerfs chopping/whipping though.

Buildings being bad is just not true. It's extreme advice geared towards beginners who just build all the things as soon as they're available without fully understanding how they work in relation to the slider or what alternatives exist. The only never-build buildings are in the modern era. The key thing to understand is that most buildings are not worth it as soon as they're available. Aqueducts and courthouses are common enough builds but post-Lib, not at math and CoL. Heck even granaries often come too early at pottery depending on your happy cap and how much expansion you have left. Other buildings are situational. Walls are incredibly good, but rarely and only in one critical city at one critical moment. Castles are great but only if going espionage, etc.This is all good design not bad. I don't want some cruddy mobile game designed so that no matter what I do I'm a winner. If everything's a good choice, it ain't a strategy game it's FarmVille.

 

[Fippy]

Didn't Plemo (one of the strongest MP players) write in one thread that he didn't build any markets at all this game..
i think it's not only MP vs SP but also skill level related, MP players who build them everywhere are prolly not flexible.
(just using markets as example..grocers are likely even more situational)

 

[sampsa]

Sampsa disclaimer: This is just civac's opinion and can be safely ignored if you so chose. Are you making sport of me by any chance?

No idea what this means or where it is coming from. I have no interest in "making sport" of you, whatever that means.

 

[civac]

Didn't Plemo (one of the strongest MP players) write in one thread that he didn't build any markets at all this game..
i think it's not only MP vs SP but also skill level related, MP players who build them everywhere are prolly not flexible.
(just using markets as example..grocers are likely even more situational)

I have seen that from another strong player too. Who in the renaissance had libraries and banks in his commerce cities but no markets. He did have to fight a lot though.

Wealth builds to get to key techs are still useful without tech trading just not quite as strong.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The 2nd problem with AP I have seems like a bug, but it's that you can't look at any advisor screens while the vote interface is open. How many votes do I get? Can my cities handle the defy unhappiness? How many Hindu cities do I even have?
This has to be a bug, I can't imagine that this was intentional. Because of this, you have to just guess how the vote will affect your game, which isn't good design. Easy fix, let me look at advisor screens when voting, similar to how you can look at them when the ai demands from you.

I have a similar problem when a leader pops up at the beginning of a turn and demands I cancel my deals with another civ... but I have no option to review what those deals actually are.