A cogent explanation on the shortfalls of Civ V

[Jediron]

In CIV III it's one below Deity, the toughest ( in my mind - over the top/not fun playeble). Noble doesn't even exist.
What's your point? Playing lower then the highest level is "less noble ?

Besides, i say mostly. Meaning, mostly on Empire. Let me add that i played some Deity too, with succes. But to me, it's not a very "fun" level to play; it's too restricted, you have to really iron every detail out etc.etc. and, in the end you are just fighting a to me, cheating AI which get tonloads of bonusses )
Oke, on Emperor the AI still cheats. But atleast that was more playable. And surely i am not a very Mathematecal player, like some calc everything and put in practice.
I like to enjoy myself more, instead of translating it all in numbers. That being said, you wouls expect i love Civ 5. Wouldn't you ? Well, i don't. And i don't need math to come to that conclusion.

 

[Roxlimn]

Jediron:

We were talking about lower difficulty levels. It's in the post.

 

[Jediron]

Who speaks of lower difficulties, other then you ? Mastermind ?
I hear you speak of Noble level, which isn't even a valid CIV III level.

Anyway, it hardly makes a difference. Thing is, playing on harder levels; CIV 5 is much easier then older Civ's at a harder lvl, because it is dumbed down and because there are many game-balancing issues.
I started CIV 5 on King and soon went to Emperor but soon realised; it does not matter. While nometter what the level is, the AI still fights as dumb as ever ; you'll only need to kill some more. In a way that's not very different then older CIV's, but all the other issue's add up and then there's no joy for me to game on.

 

[Roxlimn]

Great.

Play Civ IV then. Post there. That would work, right?

And yes, we were talking of the lower difficulty levels. There are, in fact, more people playing Civ V below Emperor than above it. This may be hard for you to understand, but it is true nonetheless. Happy gaming in Civ IV!

 

[dominatr]

i want to see a civ game that with the increase of difficulty level, the AI gets smarter, instead of having loads of bonuses. Like, it could be that in the beginning mode you get a AI who makes some bad decisions, has poor empire management, but by the time you reach final difficulty, the AI finds your weaknesses, capitalizes on them, acts cleverly, and in general is hard to find flaws in.

 

[Stefanskantine]

i want to see a civ game that with the increase of difficulty level, the AI gets smarter, instead of having loads of bonuses. Like, it could be that in the beginning mode you get a AI who makes some bad decisions, has poor empire management, but by the time you reach final difficulty, the AI finds your weaknesses, capitalizes on them, acts cleverly, and in general is hard to find flaws in.

That's what everyone wants, but it doesn't exist. The best solution is to get a good group of friends for epic multiplayer games.

 

[hclass]

Of course this thinking only works if you wanted something that was a Civ development/advancement game (but with war as one component) rather than just mostly a war game. But for people that want mostly a war game but one through the ages, I feel they should look to Rise of Nations, AoE, etc as those are much better as war games.

I think you need to understand a bit what a warmonger wants in Civ.
I mean there isn't an absolute relation between someone who "like to play war game" and he won't like other things like development.

I always play for conquest victory (I like war way) in Civ, but I am also enjoying building things up. I build every building, try to grab every wonder and micro manage my giant group of workers. In fact to me, the satisfaction come from conquering and building up a great empire and I find the most interesting way to achieve that is through war.

War is suppose to be a major play style of Civ, however, I think there won't be any fun if a successful warmonger is only allowed to keep few cities or can hardly maintain even few cities after conquered. i.e. I don't believe anyone simply want to fight and does not care about the reward of winning a war... otherwise he would be playing console game like street fighter... you only got a display of full screen WIN! at the end.

 

[Jediron]

Yes Hclass, i am with you. We share about the same play-style and i guess you have as much of fun as i have; iow; none

 

[Roxlimn]

You guys seriously need to learn how to war better. Sure, you can win on what, Deity was it? But what's the point if you're not skilled enough to have fun while doing it? You should be able to keep every city, keep up in tech, and eventually buy your way out of unhappiness.

In fact, I have managed a full-takeover of a whole continent (the second one, not the one I've already subdued) from a position of 10 cities and I didn't go negative. The mechanics of happiness don't change on lower diffs. If I can manage this, so can you.

 

[masterminded]

It lacks the complexity of Civ 1? Truly? Have you played Civ I?

Civ I is a very, very, very simple game. There were no cultural victories. There were no city states or vassals. The concept of specialists was only a very general one. I don't think it's possible to win an argument saying that Civ V is simpler than Civ I, and if you are willing to make that argument, please do.

In fact, many of the complexities we've taken for granted were only introduced in Civ III, and Civ III still had no strong concept of particular specialists (and had no religion, either).

I think what you're trying to say is that Civ V is not as complex as Civ IV, and that has a dedicated thread of its own. Needless to say, I don't agree that Civ V is less complex than Civ IV. It only has less fiddly bits that don't have strategic significance.

For those joining us, this is a response to a response to a response to a critique of my OP. As such, I will be addressing Roxlimn's points in that context.

Let me begin by stating that I'm rather tired of having my arguments reshaped by my critics. If you don't find my arguments clear or need me to expand on them, please, do not make assumptions regarding my motives or mischaracterize my claims. This is the absolute last time I will be responding to critic who does this. It's more than just nettling. It requires backtracking so that the discussion doesn't degenerate into confusion.

In this case, spending so much time on Civ I, ignoring Civ II, mentioning Civ III in passing, and concluding that I was talking specifically about Civ IV is completely reformulating my argument and puts me in a weaker position. I am NOT claiming that Civ V should be like Civ IV. My claim is and has been that while each successive Civ game has been an improvement on the series, this is not the case with Civ V, which represents a regression. Your attempt to reword my argument in order to use the "doesn't like it because it's not Civ IV" meme against me is dishonest.

With that out of the way, I will clarify that statement. I was predominately referring to Civ III and Civ IV, but I would also claim that Civ II, and possibly Civ I, which I admittedly haven't played and can't attest to, was a game that required more strategy in a limited sense. Even Civ II allowed for more strategic depth because there was more room for strategic shifts. Civ V encourages swim lane-esque routes to victory given the heavy-handedness and lack of flexibility afforded by the happiness, gold, production, and social policy mechanics, as well as the victory conditions. My analysis of these elements can be found in prior posts.

Even though I would make an argument to this effect even when comparing Civ II to Civ V, I will admit that it's a weaker argument than if I were to focus on Civ III/IV, which is why my past comparisons were with those two games. That is where I would like to maintain focus because my weaker argument is unnecessary toward supporting my broader arguments about Civ V.

With my points clarified, I'd appreciate it if you would qualify your assertion regarding the complexity of Civ IV vis-a-vis Civ V, including that fiddly bits statement. I've already extended myself in this regard. If you think that this is the case, you need to provide a counter-argument.

I'll point you to the AI of Civ III and Civ IV. In both those games, the maps were also mostly empty for most of the game, and I know this because I have lots of experience playing at Noble in Civ IV. Expansion in Civ IV was curtailed by economics, and if you didn't know how to counterbalance the downsides, you were stuck at a small size for quite a while as well.

It is not hard to get sufficient happiness to expand very, very, very quickly indeed. In fact, you can pretty much negate the no-tile penalty of 1 additional unhappiness per city (the city tile itself gets 1) through the Meritocracy Policy, which is self-explanatory if you just mouse over the tooltip. Get Construction for Colosseums (Aqueducts in previous Civs?) and you can pretty much spread and grow your cities at the same time.

All the trade-offs you mentioned are in Civ V. You can very, very easily trade growth for productivity if you want to. Just switch tiles, switch improvements, and hire more Engineers. Easily doable in the Industrial Era.

Want to forgo research for funds? Don't build libraries. Later on, don't build Universities. Hire Merchants instead of Scientists. There's always a way.

It's not true that it takes too much paying attention "at the margins" to effect good happiness management. Micromanaging small amounts of happiness and staying small without the attendant benefits is a mark of a player who's unfamiliar with Civ V systems. With Civ V, you make broad strokes and get what you want in aces. Fiddling with small numbers at the margins of happiness gets you into -10 very quickly. There's no helping that. You have to plan ahead and gain happiness by the tens if you want to capture cities and keep them.

For the second time, please address my points in the same order in which I presented them. Its much easier to follow the conversation this way. Otherwise, I have to carefully track what points you are responding to and it also becomes more difficult to identify what you inadequately responded to, as well as consuming much more time preparing my next post. As such, I will address your claims on happiness, strategic trade-offs, expansion, and AI, in that order.

First, your claims on the subject of happiness were largely unresponsive. My argument wasn't that the player constantly focus on keeping happiness only slightly positive, but that since there are fewer mechanics to restrict the player in Civ V than in previous games, the restrictions in Civ V have to be particularly heavy-handed. You leave this point unaddressed; instead, you focused on one phrase and used it as an opportunity to underhandedly insult me by suggesting that my perception of the game results from inexperience. In addition, your response only serves to buttress my point as you admit that many important decisions regarding happiness need to be planned many turns ahead, such as building many happiness structures before settling a few cities or conquering them. This is a good example of the heavy-handedness of these mechanics. Without this planning, it's very easy to fall into unhappiness.

But happiness is not the only mechanic that works this way. Gold, social policy accumulation, and production limitations are also heavy-handed.

Second, I never claimed that the player is without any means to shift focus. My contention is that with fewer mechanics, there are fewer things to track and less ability to do so. You even suggest as much when you qualify your statement by claiming that this is easy to do in the industrial era. That is way too late to introduce such trade-offs.

I would also argue that even the trade-offs that are available are less flexible and meaningful. Less flexible because you have less control over them. For example, rather than being able to determine your base science output without building modifiers, etc., by shifting the distribution of your financial resources, it's based upon population, which you have less control over (which isn't to say you have no control). Less meaningful because the victory conditions incentivize linear play styles. I've already covered this in great detail elsewhere.

Third, your claim about the ease of growth does not address my argument that I made in that post, which is that the game provides strong incentives to remain small and that this is counterintuitive.

Fourth, as others have already stated, your analysis of the AI's behavior in previous Civ games is false. The AI went to great lengths to claim available land as early as possible, even on sub-medium difficulty levels.

To conclude, I will recall the central claim from the section that you are critiquing: "To summarize the aforementioned points, I never claimed that the mechanics were difficult to manage or insurmountable, but that they are shallow in their heavy-handedness and introduce perverse incentives to not grow." You still have not come close to actually addressing this. In fact, you double-downed on your previous argument regarding the ease of expansion, etc., even after I went to great lengths to qualify my position by explaining that those things weren't the issue.

You can't be more mistaken!

Barracks should be built in 3 turns by the mid-game by any city capable of producing units sufficient to the task. Armory in 6 by Classical Era. Barracks + Armory gives you units that have two promotions out the game, and due to how promos work, these are at least as significant as the Green vs. Veteran status in Alpha Centauri. It makes a great deal of difference. Such a unit is worth at least 50% more than a unit that has no promotions. Arguably, it's worth twice as much.

If you are constantly at war and never lose units, then sure, it's not worth building Barracks (or any other units for that matter), but if you lose units, then replacing that unit with another unit that approximates its experience is invaluable in keeping an up-to-date military.

In fact, I not only build Barracks. I also build Armories and Military Academies. Getting a unit to Blitz one attack out the gate is fantastically good. Well worth the maintenance.

The following three sections are about my claim that many of the games elements were poorly planned. The designers took many elements from previous civ games, such as buildings, wonders, and units, and did not rebalance them to adjust for all of the other changes. The result is that there are too many bad buildings and bad wonders, and a plethora of units late game. In addition, and most importantly as it was my strongest point, the varying mechanics combine to create a counterintuitive and perverse incentive to commit genocide, i.e., to raze conquered cities en masse given the unhappiness and maintenance penalties that would have been accrued otherwise. My responses to the arguments Roxlimn makes will evaluate how will he clashes with my points.

This response introduces one argument to support the importance of barracks, an example that I used for illustration, but did not address my larger argument.

First, you have a habit of framing your arguments so that your examples occur under ideal circumstances. Mentioning that barracks can be built in only three turns by the mid-game (and I'm assuming in a production specialized city) is such a case. Barracks are available much earlier. They take longer to build in this Civ.

You do the same thing with your two promotions example. We are talking about barracks in this example, not barracks and armory. You cannot combine the effects of two buildings when we are comparing the usefulness of one building between different Civ games. This invalidates your claim that such units are +50% more effective.

Second, you have failed yet again to actually address my claim: "Slow building times, maintenance costs, the changes in combat (fewer but more robust units and the carrying over of xp when upgrading), and the opportunity costs of not constructing other buildings render barracks undesirable. Their costs have increased and the benefits provided by them have decreased to the point of favoring other buildings with the long building times."

Sharing that you still use barracks and they have some use when combined with several other buildings does not negate this point. They cost more than they used to and they provide fewer benefits. And this is the problem. If the goal of reducing production in Civ V compared to other games is to foster the production of fewer units and buildings to encourage city specialization, then each building should provide better benefits than their cheaper counterparts in previous Civ games.

I do not find Wonders having the same build times as in Civs III or IV. In many cases, they have lower build times. Nearly all the wonders have powerful and irreplaceable functions. There is no Wonder in Civ IV as powerful as Great Wall, which is arguably quite broken.

Wonders take longer because production of everything is slower. I'm not sure why you think otherwise.

Couple the build times with poor effects, and many wonders are rendered useless. While you may claim otherwise, and I would certainly agree that there are some very powerful wonders, many of them are terrible. Just look at Notre Dame, the Colossus, the Great Lighthouse, and the Brandenburg Gate as examples.

Think of this is terms of opportunity costs. Building one thing means you cannot be building another. You have to choose by evaluating trade-offs. Since everything in Civ V takes longer to build, the player will have fewer things. This means that the benefits of the wonders, must be attractive. When the major bonus of Notre Dame is +5 happiness, there is little incentive to build this over a happiness building that costs many times less. Certainly, it doesn't have maintenance costs, but those accumulated costs are hardly worth the use of scarce production resources.

I cannot respond to this usefully since I cannot understand its point. Missile and ranged units are arguably the most powerful units in Civ V, but they require support. That argues for at least two unit types in every army.

I'm not sure what more I can say. I suppose I can restate slightly differently: build times means fewer units. Fewer units typically means the player will build less of a variety of units. Therefore, having too many units in the game is indicative of poor planning.

I would like to mention here that you did not address my critique of conquest. This was my strongest argument that the design of this game is poor and inconsistent. To briefly reiterate: the unhappiness costs accrued from occupation, the production cost of building courthouses, and the high maintenance of courthouses gives the player a very strong incentive to burn down conquered cities rather than keep them. This is counterintuitive and perverse.

You can fool the Civ IV AI to bounce its SoDs back and forth between two ultimately useless cities. You can lure it to attack at the worst possible location, and then decimate its SoD with nary a scratch to yours. Hell, you can freely manipulate it to protect you! You can use the Deity level AI to protect you from other AIs so you can win.

Civ V's tactical combat systems are inherently more complex than Civ IV's one-tile SoD combat. I don't know how to explain something that is self-evident.

You made two claims that I asked you to support: Civ IV's AI is worse than Civ V's and Civ V is more complex than Civ IV. In both of these cases, you selected examples that supported your argument, but did not make a comprehensive case. These are hasty generalizations: inductive generalizations based upon sufficient evidence. In the first example, you referenced very specific instances in combat where the AI can be manipulated in Civ IV and claimed that the AI in Civ IV was inferior solely based upon its behavior in said instances. But that does not follow that the overall performance of the AI in Civ V is better because it won't be manipulated in such a fashion. In fact, a direct comparison in this regard between the two games is quite difficult since the combat mechanics are different.

If you want to make this claim, you have to do something similar to what I did: comprehensively address the AI. Compare how the AI from both games handle aspects of economy, diplomacy, warfare, etc. A good example focusing on diplomacy would be the conversation between Lord Parkin and dexters on this very thread.

In the second example, you claimed that Civ V is more complex due to the tactical elements. Whether the combat in Civ V is more complex is not dispostive toward determining whether the game is more complex overall. The combat could be more complex, while the game is overall less complex as elements such as diplomacy or economy may be much less complex.

In order to argue this point you would have to define complexity and do a comprehensive review evaluating both games against the criteria you lay out in your definition.

If you cannot do so or offer an equally valid means of coming to this conclusion, I don't see how this is much more than an assertion.

Generally, the Civ V AI tells you not to settle near it, trade with its enemies, or attack/steal its City State allies. It tells you this quite baldly. Again, I don't know how your experience has been but in my view, the AI generally acts according to how it says it's going to act. In fact, it frequently has the courtesy to declare war on me before the turn it attacks my units.

The AI does tell you some of the things that upset it. However, the player is often left unaware of what rankles the AI. Sometimes there are clues, such as when they ridicule the size of the player's military, but this is hardly dispositive. Is the AI angry because I have a small military or is it mocking my military because it is angry? Civ IV had an elegant means of measuring such. It was a mechanic that served as a shorthand for all the diplomats and advisors that aid rulers when they engage other powers. Civ V did not need to ape that system, but it did need to replace it with something intuitive and coherent. I would again reference you to the discussion between dexters and Lord Parkins on the issue. Parkins repeatedly addresses how dysfunctional and irrational the AI behaves.

What argument did you want? Larger empires win culture faster. Is there some point that was unclear? Do you not know how to win culture with a large empire?

I addressed this in my OP. I'm not sure why my argument isn't obvious, but I will briefly repeat it: Poor scaling between the number of cities and social policy cost, the flat rate at which cultural CS provide bonuses, the imperative to build a monument and museum in every city prior to building their respective national wonders, and the high maintenance costs of puppet cities that are permitted to construct too many buildings all favor smaller empires in pursuance of a cultural victory. As such, the path to this victory is rigid and uninteresting, which contributes to my argument about the meta-game, which is that the game presents the player with rigid and linear strategies to follow.

If you think that this description is incorrect, you need to detail how the mechanics of the game enable larger empires to win cultural victories more easily. I provided my argument in the OP. You can't just assert an argument away.

Eh.

I suppose it does seem to be contradicting. I would need to do a lot of systems explanation if you want all the nitty gitty of all this. It's not contradictory. It just seems that way. I suggest going to the strategy forums to get a handle on the game.

I can answer small, specific questions.

In this sense, Sullla is making the case that ICS is too easy, but then references late-game policies with which he is making his case. Yes, that is contradictory, and I said as much. However, REXing and expanding normally is NOT ICS. ICS is not large empire. It is a specific form of large empire.

You referenced something that wasn't apparently relevant to the conversation and appeared to contradict an earlier point. When confronted, you simply state that this isn't the case and told me to visit the strategy forums to "get a handle of the game." I will simply state that I have visited that forum and such backhanded insults to my competency are not worth my time to address.

You have not demonstrated or explained why this example is relevant to anything. In your last analysis, it was introduced without reference to any of my claims. I don't see any need to address it.

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In conclusion, most of your responses don't actually address my arguments. In my OP, i described how different aspects of the game functioned and described how I viewed them as faulty. In my conclusion, I brought these points together to discuss how they shaped the meta game. The vast majority of your points are caviling. You dispute the accuracy of my examples, for instance, but you don't really challenge my broad conclusions. In this sense, the conversation has become like two ships passing in the night. You and I are concerned with completely different issues.

It also doesn't help that you have a predilection for insulting my competence or mischaracterizing my argument in order to set it up for an easier rebuttal (i.e. a straw man), or that you address my points out of order and ignore many of them, sometimes even the stronger ones. Meanwhile, you tend to gainsay my points, which are qualified with copious details, by simply asserting them away.

 

[masterminded]

You guys seriously need to learn how to war better. Sure, you can win on what, Deity was it? But what's the point if you're not skilled enough to have fun while doing it? You should be able to keep every city, keep up in tech, and eventually buy your way out of unhappiness.

In fact, I have managed a full-takeover of a whole continent (the second one, not the one I've already subdued) from a position of 10 cities and I didn't go negative. The mechanics of happiness don't change on lower diffs. If I can manage this, so can you.

This is exactly what I mean by insulting and condescending. If you cannot address someone's argument without insulting the poster's skill, then please stop posting here. You are convincing no one with such behavior.

 

[masterminded]

Yeah, I have to apologize. I shouldn't be attempting to point out why I disagree with you while not actually taking the time and energy to flesh out my points.

I will just add in conclusion that I do agree with much of your opinions. I just feel that there is a flavor of "I used to be able to, and enjoyed being able to, do X" without a full recognition that this version of Civ is intended to be different and other strategies are now viable. Seems to me that there are new, "I can do, and enjoy doing, X".

In any case, I really have not advance the conversation much, so I'll digress.

I do have a couple of direct questions for you though:

1. Are you spending time and energy in these posts primarily because you are really frustrated, or do you genuinely hope that it will help the developers/modders "fix" the game?

2. Will you be playing Civ 5 anymore, or will you go back to BtS, or will you be dropping Civ for the time being?

1. Both.

2. I haven't played Civ V in weeks. The last game I played (three city culture victory) was too boring. I found myself alt-tabbing between every turn, partly because the AI took so long to complete their moves. Every time that I consider playing another game, I find myself thinking of this one.

Unfortunately, my copy of BTS is a few thousand miles away and I won't have access to it for a bit. If I did, I would be playing it or a mod.

 

[Jediron]

Originally Posted by Roxlimn
You guys seriously need to learn how to war better. Sure, you can win on what, Deity was it? But what's the point if you're not skilled enough to have fun while doing it? You should be able to keep every city, keep up in tech, and eventually buy your way out of unhappiness.

In fact, I have managed a full-takeover of a whole continent (the second one, not the one I've already subdued) from a position of 10 cities and I didn't go negative. The mechanics of happiness don't change on lower diffs. If I can manage this, so can you.

This is exactly what I mean by insulting and condescending. If you cannot address someone's argument without insulting the poster's skill, then please stop posting here. You are convincing no one with such behavior.

Thnks, Matermind. Anyway, if Roxlimn would have actually read my posts well, he shouls have know i played deity, more or less in the way he described. I choose to play Emperor, as that was a better level for exploiting more strategies. Nothing wrong with that. So Roxlimn; i mastered DEITY, more then once but did not liked the journey very much.

Come to think of it:

Originally Posted by Roxlimn
You guys seriously need to learn how to war better. Sure, you can win on what, Deity was it? But what's the point if you're not skilled enough to have fun while doing it? You should be able to keep every city, keep up in tech, and eventually buy your way out of unhappiness.
In fact, I have managed a full-takeover of a whole continent (the second one, not the one I've already subdued) from a position of 10 cities and I didn't go negative. The mechanics of happiness don't change on lower diffs. If I can manage this, so can you.

i smell something....

 

[Roxlimn]

masterminded:

Let's get this out of the way first. I am not insulting your competence. I am questioning your mastery of the game based on how you view it, because certain things that you deem are impossible are, in fact, very possible.

This is not an insult, as I have clarified before. This is simply a clarification - a pointing to the right direction.

In this case, spending so much time on Civ I, ignoring Civ II, mentioning Civ III in passing, and concluding that I was talking specifically about Civ IV is completely reformulating my argument and puts me in a weaker position. I am NOT claiming that Civ V should be like Civ IV. My claim is and has been that while each successive Civ game has been an improvement on the series, this is not the case with Civ V, which represents a regression. Your attempt to reword my argument in order to use the "doesn't like it because it's not Civ IV" meme against me is dishonest.

I'm not trying to lie or paint you in ways that I don't see you. It isn't dishonest, but rather, an honest impression. It really does seem like you were comparing it to Civ IV.

That aside, it is not true that each successive game has been a complete improvement of the series. Some concepts in Civ II were overhauled in Civ III, and some concepts in Conquests didn't make it to Civ IV. In fact, many players were likewise disillusioned with vanilla IV and did not make the transition. It is not an improvement in every way.

Civ V is also not a regression but a change in focus, such as what happened between Civ II and Civ III. In some ways, it is a more advanced game design. The paring away of useless mechanics is some ways in which it is superior.

With that out of the way, I will clarify that statement. I was predominately referring to Civ III and Civ IV, but I would also claim that Civ II, and possibly Civ I, which I admittedly haven't played and can't attest to, was a game that required more strategy in a limited sense. Even Civ II allowed for more strategic depth because there were more paths to victory than in Civ V and more room for strategic shifts. Civ V encourages swim lane-esque routes to victory given the heavy-handedness and lack of flexibility afforded by the happiness, gold, production, and social policy mechanics, as well as the victory conditions. My analysis of these elements can be found in prior posts.

Your analysis was wrong, and I've already told you why and how. You can shift between Cultural and any other victory type easily in Civ V, and back again with equal facility. Some of the large empire victory strategies in Civ V are so effective that they have been deemed exploits and not acceptable in HoF games.

Particularly, Science, Domination, and Diplo wins are so easily interchangeable that you should be able to just choose which one you like at any point and just go that way.

It's not true that Civ II has more victory paths than Civ V. You can't win Culture.

As for complexity comparing Civ IV and Civ V, there's a separate thread for that that covers all the details. Please refer to the reasoning there.

First, your claims on the subject of happiness were largely unresponsive. My argument wasn't that the player constantly focus on keeping happiness only slightly positive, but that since there are fewer mechanics to restrict the player in Civ V than in previous games, the restrictions in Civ V have to be particularly heavy-handed. You leave this point unaddressed; instead, you focused on one phrase and used it as an opportunity to underhandedly insult me by suggesting that my perception of the game results from inexperience. In addition, your response only serves to buttress my point as you admit that many important decisions regarding happiness need to be planned many turns ahead, such as building many happiness structures before settling a few cities or conquering them. This is a good example of the heavy-handedness of these mechanics. Without this planning, it's very easy to fall into unhappiness.

"In previous games" meaning Civ IV, right? Or were you referring to restricting mechanics in other games? I don't recall any particularly restricting mechanic in Civ III, where ICS was the name of the game. Even in Civ II, as long as you placed the Forbidden right, you could plunk down a city for every tile and it would be good.

In Civ V, there are multiple factors that act to restrict empire growth. Happiness is only one of those factors, and only the most proximate. Happiness does not have to be planned many turns ahead. As long as you have a healthy economy for war, you should be able to buy as much happiness as is required to keep your economy up.

By this measure, the gold metric is heavy handed, and because of how gold is earned, the food metric is heavy handed. Many the production metric is heavy handed as well! This refers to the other factors at play. If you fail at all of them, then the backlash on your empire will be writ large and the happiness is how it happens to show up in your games.

You can't say that everything is heavy handed, because that belies your point that there are few factors that are restricting action. Happiness begets population, which begets gold, which begets production. None of these are particularly "heavy-handed." Or at least, none where more "heavy-handed" than they were before.

Second, I never claimed that the player is without any means to shift focus. My contention is that with fewer mechanics, there are fewer things to track and less ability to do so. You even suggest as much when you qualify your statement by claiming that this is easy to do in the industrial era. That is way too late to introduce such trade-offs.

I would also argue that even the trade-offs that are available are less flexible and meaningful. Less flexible because you have less control over them. For example, rather than being able to determine your base science output without building modifiers, etc., by shifting the distribution of your financial resources, it's based upon population, which you have less control over (which isn't to say you have no control). Less meaningful because the victory conditions incentivize linear play styles. I've already covered this in great detail elsewhere.

Your details were wrong, and I explained why.

I don't find it hard to track the mechanics in Civ V. Which mechanics were you having trouble tracking?

As for the trade-offs, weren't you saying that it wasn't possible to trade growth for production in the Industrial Era? Please read the track of that argument and you will find it so. Certainly, I responded with the qualifier because of exactly such a conditional.

You can always trade food for production in the early eras just by shifting tiles worked. This still works in Civ V, and I can't imagine how it wouldn't.

Base science is based on population, but you are underestimating the power of Specialists in Civ V if you think that working even two (2!!) Specialists in Civ V doesn't boost your Science significantly. It does.

It's not as changeable on-the-fly as the sliders from before, but that arguably makes a strategic decision out of how much science you plan on producing, whereas you could always just shift it around previously, at will.

You still retain some amount of control over it, per assigning specialists, as mentioned.

Third, your claim about the ease of growth does not address my argument that I made in that post, which is that the game provides strong incentives to remain small and that this is counterintuitive.

The incentives the game provides to remain small is not enough to make it an actual winning proposition. I don't understand how you're been using "counterintuitive" in this sense. Use another word.

Fourth, as others have already stated, your analysis of the AI's behavior in previous Civ games is false. The AI went to great lengths to claim available land as early as possible, even on sub-medium difficulty levels.

Tell you what, if you still have Civ III, load that up on the lowest difficulty setting, play it up to 0 AD and then post the results of AI expansion.

I am quite confident in how badly the AI expands at low settings because my friend likes playing at only the lower settings of Civs, far below where he should be playing, and the AIs don't expand worth anything in those games.

To conclude, I will recall the central claim from the section that you are critiquing: "To summarize the aforementioned points, I never claimed that the mechanics were difficult to manage or insurmountable, but that they are shallow in their heavy-handedness and introduce perverse incentives to not grow." You still have not come close to actually addressing this. In fact, you double-downed on your previous argument regarding the ease of expansion, etc., even after I went to great lengths to qualify my position by explaining that those things weren't the issue.

Your assessment is wrong. Happiness is manageable and attainable. Happiness should never be an incentive not to grow. If you lack for it, the solution is to get more, not to let it sit there at pathetic amounts.

First, you have a habit of framing your arguments so that your examples occur under ideal circumstances. Mentioning that barracks can be built in only three turns by the mid-game (and I'm assuming in a production specialized city) is such a case. Barracks are available much earlier. They take longer to build in this Civ.

Not quite true.

Barracks are available after you research Bronze Working. Depending on your tech focus, this can be after you've teched to Medieval Era and gotten either Theology or Civil Service. In fact, the Civil Service Slingshot depends on extreme focus so you won't get to have the tech to build Barracks until they build quite quickly.

In fact, you can research almost up to the Modern Era without researching Bronze Working.

On a pathetic 2-hammer site without any improvements on terrain, beelining straight for Bronze Working, you can get a 14-turn Barracks - or you can farm Barbarians and buy your Barracks before your first Spearman finishes (Barracks is only 420 gold - perfectly doable).

Rushing a Barracks-improved unit has never been so fast as in this iteration of Civ, but you pay more in opportunity costs, as that gold could have gone into other investments.

You do the same thing with your two promotions example. We are talking about barracks in this example, not barracks and armory. You cannot combine the effects of two buildings when we are comparing the usefulness of one building between different Civ games. This invalidates your claim that such units are +50% more effective. They are only such under ideal circumstances.

Ideal?!?

I build Barracks + Armories in every Civ game I've played to date, and they've been murderously effective. This was especially so when I played Romans and I was able to field elite Legions. They owned face.

Even when not fielding Legions, Barracks + Armory is very good. I don't consider buying a unit in a city without a barracks lightly.

Second, you have failed yet again to actually address my claim: "Slow building times, maintenance costs, the changes in combat (fewer but more robust units and the carrying over of xp when upgrading), and the opportunity costs of not constructing other buildings render barracks undesirable. Their costs have increased and the benefits provided by them have decreased to the point of favoring other buildings with the long building times."

Sharing that you still use barracks and they have some use when combined with several other buildings does not negate this point. They cost more than they used to and they provide fewer benefits. And this is the problem. If the goal of reducing production in Civ V compared to other games is to foster the production of fewer units and buildings to encourage city specialization, then each building should provide better benefits than their cheaper counterparts in previous Civ games.

Not necessarily. The point isn't to make Barracks better - it's to make it so making Barracks is a no-brainer decision you do just because. Granted, you could be making units instead in Civ IV, and in Civ III as well, but even that decision is supplemented by Barracks, so it makes some sense to just spam the things.

At that point, it ceases to be a strategic component, but just another thing you click.

Barracks are not undesirable, and the factors you claim make them undesirable do not make them so. Don't misconstrue my point. I made the point about combining them with Armories because it seemed to strengthen my position that these buildings are well worth the cost, but the Barracks building is worth it on its own, if you want to make units in that city.

Generally speaking, it makes sense to make Barracks in all production cities, since there's a chance that you will be forced to make or buy units quickly in multiple sites, and it's worth it to build all the XP buildings in dedicated military centers.

This is true even though Barracks are comparatively more costly in Civ V.

Wonders take longer because production of everything is slower. I'm not sure why you think otherwise.

Couple the build times with poor effects, and many wonders are rendered useless. While you may claim otherwise, and I would certainly agree that there are some very powerful wonders, many of them are terrible. Just look at Notre Dame, the Colossus, the Great Lighthouse, and the Brandenburg Gate as examples.

Think of this is terms of opportunity costs. Building one thing means you cannot be building another. You have to choose by evaluating trade-offs. Since everything in Civ V takes longer to build, the player will have fewer things. This means that the benefits of the wonders, must be attractive. When the major bonus of Notre Dame is +5 happiness, there is little incentive to build this over a happiness building that costs many times less. Certainly, it doesn't have maintenance costs, but those accumulated costs are hardly worth the use of scarce production resources.

You picked the worst ones as examples, as those wonders are not useless at all. Let's take the best one first - Brandenburg Gate!

Brandenburg Gate should be buildable in under 20 turns - comparable to two buildings or two units of the era, and it doesn't have maintenance.

It gives you a Great General, which boosts your army performance by 25% over and above all other factors. This is as decisive as favorable terrain in battle. In fact, the Chinese advantage is only +20% over this and many players consider that borderline broken. It is that strong.

After you use him in war, you can then burn him for a small Golden Age, earning many times his hammer cost in pure hammers and gold over your empire. This is a no-brainer Wonder. You build it every time unless you're on the ropes.

Notre Dame is less good, but still quite useful. It is +5 happiness over and above all other sources, and should be the only source you can get your hands on once you're there. Granted, you could just found another city and build a Colosseum, but by that measure, Notre Dame is something like +3 GPT then and +4 and +6 later on as the building costs on upper happiness increase.

Colossus isn't quite so dramatic, but in favorable circumstances, it gets you +3 GPT very early on for a pittance of hammers. If you can spare it, it's easily better than a Market in the early goings, and on par with a Mint (if you have 1 Gold).

Finally, Great Lighthouse is the most situational, as it "only" grants you +1 movement, +1 sight. Good for when you're stuck on a god-forsaken slab of rock and need to embark your units for anything better, but understandably marginal otherwise.

All of these wonders add +100% Culture to the City given the right policies, and they all add + GPP to independent GP pools. Quite apart from culture wins, the gain in policy speed is quite appreciable. Arguably, you shouldn't be skipping any wonders, ever.

I'm not sure what more I can say. I suppose I can restate slightly differently: build times means fewer units. Fewer units typically means the player will build less of a variety of units. Therefore, having too many units in the game is indicative of poor planning.

I would like to mention here that you did not address my critique of conquest. This was my strongest argument that the design of this game is poor and inconsistent. To briefly reiterate: the unhappiness costs accrued from occupation, the production cost of building courthouses, and the high maintenance of courthouses gives the player a very strong incentive to burn down conquered cities rather than keep them. This is counterintuitive and perverse.

Generally, you have at least two unit types in Civ V: Ranged and melee. Using melee only doesn't work as well because most armies have a front of maybe 4 hexes. Any more than 4 or 5 melee means you have units that are doing nothing.

Additionally, you have specialized mounted units and siege units, which are both fantastic for their roles. Bringing along one or two of each type is quite useful, if you already have sufficient numbers of melee and ranged.

As for occupation...

Generally, players can puppet cities for normal happiness penalties while the conquered city gets population back up to the point where it can build Courthouses in a reasonable amount of time. In the meantime, it contributes gold and science and recreates lost infrastructure.

A player can raze cities, and I believe that this should be a valid option in the game because so many historical conquerors did it. I don't know why you don't like it, but describing it as "counterintuitive" and "perverse" doesn't tell me anything. Use clearer descriptions.

Why would it be counterintuitive for players to opt for genocide? It has happened many times in the past, and used to control restive conquered populations. If he or she really minds that much, she can opt to resettle, but this has attendant costs of its own.

If you want to make this claim, you have to do something similar to what I did: comprehensively address the AI. Compare how the AI from both games handle aspects of economy, diplomacy, warfare, etc. A good example focusing on diplomacy would be the conversation between Lord Parkin and dexters on this very thread.

In the second example, you claimed that Civ V is more complex due to the tactical elements. Whether the combat in Civ V is more complex is not dispostive toward determining whether the game is more complex overall. The combat could be more complex, while the game is overall less complex as elements such as diplomacy or economy may be much less complex.

In order to argue this point you would have to define complexity and do a comprehensive review evaluating both games against the criteria you lay out in your definition.

If you cannot do so or offer an equally valid means of coming to this conclusion, I don't see how this is much more than an assertion.

I don't see anything you've written as a comprehensive address of anything whatsoever. If what I've said is "merely" an assertion, then I might say the same things about what you are saying as well.

The AI does tell you some of the things that upset it. However, the player is often left unaware of what rankles the AI. Sometimes there are clues, such as when they ridicule the size of the player's military, but this is hardly dispositive. Is the AI angry because I have a small military or is it mocking my military because it is angry? Civ IV had an elegant means of measuring such. It was a mechanic that served as a shorthand for all the diplomats and advisors that aid rulers when they engage other powers. Civ V did not need to ape that system, but it did need to replace it with something intuitive and coherent. I would again reference you to the discussion between dexters and Lord Parkins on the issue. Parkins repeatedly addresses how dysfunctional and irrational the AI behaves.

Begging your pardon, but players critical of Civ V AI apparently doesn't even know how to keep the AI off their backs, so any such understanding of the AI must be viewed as suspect.

I take any and all things the AI says at face value and it works. It tells me my military is too small. I build it up. Better relations.

It tells me not to settle near it. I don't. Better relations.

It tells me not to buy lands near it. I don't. Better relations.

Civ IV's way of "solving" diplomacy by allowing the player to mind-read the AI wasn't elegant at all! It was brute and ham-fisted, and I still disagree with the decision. I do my best to ignore the information.

I addressed this in my OP. I'm not sure why my argument isn't obvious, but I will briefly repeat it: Poor scaling between the number of cities and social policy cost, the flat rate at which cultural CS provide bonuses, the imperative to build a monument and museum in every city prior to building their respective national wonders, and the high maintenance costs of puppet cities that are permitted to construct too many buildings all favor smaller empires in pursuance of a cultural victory. As such, the path to this victory is rigid and uninteresting, which contributes to my argument about the meta-game, which is that the game presents the player with rigid and linear strategies to follow.

If you think that this description is incorrect, you need to detail how the mechanics of the game enable larger empires to win cultural victories more easily. I provided my argument in the OP. You can't just assert an argument away.

Maintenance costs in puppets can be managed to the point where they are almost purely beneficial. They give you large culture for no increase in policy costs whatsoever. As I mentioned, the fastest wins on Culture are on large Civs, and one of the ways to do that is to puppet the world and manage their build queues and tile improvements.

Alternatively, you can build a massive empire that creates thousands of culture per turn, stockpile culture to the extreme, then sell all your cities but the productive three and buy your policies thereafter. This means that you accrue culture at the rate of a massive empire, but then spend it as if you were a three-city empire.

This is only a very general outline. It is possible to win Culture with a straight 10-city empire, and it's arguable better because you're stronger militarily and science-wise, despite the policy increases. A smaller empire would get there faster, but it would be weaker in many key ways.


All of this is quite basic. It should be self-evident, really.

 

[Roxlimn]

This is exactly what I mean by insulting and condescending. If you cannot address someone's argument without insulting the poster's skill, then please stop posting here. You are convincing no one with such behavior.

If the poster cannot accomplish what he wishes and others can, then it reflects a lack of similar familiarity with the system, no? How is this insulting?

Thanks, Matermind. Anyway, if Roxlimn would have actually read my posts well, he shouls have know i played deity, more or less in the way he described. I choose to play Emperor, as that was a better level for exploiting more strategies. Nothing wrong with that. So Roxlimn; i mastered DEITY, more then once but did not liked the journey very much.

Anyone can win Deity right now with Horsemen. Doing so does not reflect a profound familiarity with game mechanics.

It is possible to do what you say is impossible. You can keep every city from a continent-wide conquest, if you have a sufficiently strong core to support it. If not, then I don't see why a conqueror should be favored over a builder who chooses to invest in developing his core cities.

 

[Jediron]

Roxlimn, i am wondering where you find all that time to post here; while at the same time, you're so in love with CIV V. Or are you waiting for another "next turn"

Do you really think i was speaking of CIV V ? Really? Interresting

Another thing; you speak of '" ICS was the name of the game in CIV III". While that was a sure thing to achieve victory, and beloved by some warmongeres. Many, including me; see it as a exploit. Just did it once of twice, and ofcource, with succes. OCP was my name of the game, much more satisfying. Futhermore, these strategies took a while before someone came up with it. With while, i mean something like months...

 

[Roxlimn]

It is assumed that we are talking about Civ V in a thread that's about Civ V. If not, you shouldn't be posting on this thread without constant clarifications to the contrary, as that only confuses the discussion.

 

[Jediron]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9768575&postcount=236

Excuse me ?

I refered to CIV III in both post above, have you missed that too ?
Let me help you, you seemed confused all the time...

In CIV III it's one below Deity, the toughest ( in my mind - over the top/not fun playeble). Noble doesn't even exist.
What's your point? Playing lower then the highest level is "less noble ? (post 241)

Who speaks of lower difficulties, other then you ? Mastermind ?
I hear you speak of Noble level, which isn't even a valid CIV III level. (post 243)

As of yet, i still haven't finish ONE civ V game. I loose interrest, getting bored. Start over, try something else, bored. And on the upperhand, all the time.... before you want to say anything ....

 

[charon2112]

Roxlimn seems to be making a lot of sense.

 

[dexters]

What a cluster of a thread.