Best Civ game

[yung.carl.jung]

Civ V with Acken Mod

 

[TheMeInTeam]

4 wins by miles for now. It is way up there in mechanical depth, and in contrast to Civ 6 the design team back in Civ 4's time at least make something that resembles a passing effort at considering end user experience while playing the game.

I have enough disrespect for the UI in modern strategy titles I've played to hold their respective development teams in disdain in some cases.

Interestingly, I consider Civ's competition before Civ 4 to be better than it. Warlords 2/3, HOMM 3-5 absolutely dumpster their contemporary civ competition in terms of depth, control scheme, accuracy of information presented, pacing, and in Warlords' case means of handing some of the typical issues with 4x. Those franchises proceeded to fall off a cliff, then Civ 4 came about.

Firaxis has been resting on its laurels ever since. Civ 5/6 have abandoned UI conventions that competent developers managed in the 1990's and every year since, and apparently neither # inputs or accuracy are worth emphasizing these days.

It's a shame too, in terms of POTENTIAL mechanical depth Civ 6 isn't too far away from 4, and with an expansion could surpass it. It's hard to look past gutter tier trash UI more than doubling the amount of time it takes to play a game if you're somewhat fast though. Really hard to look past that. It's glaring in MP games with a turn timer, when you notice that more time is spent navigating unnecessary extra prompts and broken cycling than is spent managing an army on two fronts.

 

[Chose]

Civ III was basically the first computer game I loved. I was about 9 or 10 at the time, the entire experience was pure magic. I had little idea what I was doing, my first game I remember playing as the America, making it into the 1800s, but still having swordsman and pikemen. After building a road to some saltpeter I finally got my first musketman, which I thought was basically the coolest thing in the world. I mean, my unit had a gun, and could shoot people who attacked it! No one would be able to stop me now. But then, out of the blue, my neighbor Egypt declared war on me and absolutely steamrolled me with infantry and tanks. From that point I was hooked. Needed to get me some of those infantry and bouncy tanks and get my revenge next game.

Civ VI was really good, not a huge fan of the stack of doom and collateral damage mechanics though. Played a lot of V, but the late game was really tough to get through. I mean, all civ games suffer from boring late games, but the unit clutter in Civ V made end game almost unplayable for me. Civ VI fixed that issue, but has a number of it's own problems, including terrible UI. I still think VI has the most potential, they got one more expansion to fix some of the major issues.

Never been into Civ multiplayer games. They take far too long and you spend too much time not doing anything. There are so many multiplayer games that are infinitely better IMO.

I do wonder if there is a way to fix civ late games. Like, in the beginning of the game, your decisions matter so much, and there are not too many to make. Easy to keep track of your units and your cities and your goals. You are exploring the map, meeting your neighbors, super fun. Each turn as you move towards the late game, you have more and more decisions to make, and each one becomes less and less meaningful... Just counting down the turns to get the victory that is all but certain.

 

[Lexicus]

Civ III was basically the first computer game I loved. I was about 9 or 10 at the time, the entire experience was pure magic. I had little idea what I was doing, my first game I remember playing as the America, making it into the 1800s, but still having swordsman and pikemen.

my first civ 3 game, also had no idea what I was doing, at age 9 or 10, played as America and didn't know how to switch production so I built nothing but warriors until the AI started colonizing my starting island/continent and I quit and restarted, recognizing myself to have been outmatched.

I do wonder if there is a way to fix civ late games. Like, in the beginning of the game, your decisions matter so much, and there are not too many to make. Easy to keep track of your units and your cities and your goals. You are exploring the map, meeting your neighbors, super fun. Each turn as you move towards the late game, you have more and more decisions to make, and each one becomes less and less meaningful... Just counting down the turns to get the victory that is all but certain.

In Civ 4 the way I made the lategame more fun was by increasing the difficulty and map size. There is nothing quite like fighting an all-out war in the modern era to decide whether you will win the game or not.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Unfortunately even in Civ 4 games are rarely decided outright in the modern era, at least not in SP. If you could get to tactical nukes + submarines and declare war on someone, that target was dead. SoD meant nothing (100s of units die to 2 nukes, including 90% of their navy), culture cities could burn instantly, realistically even with SDI nothing traded effectively with this in the end game. Even if your enemy also had nukes, alpha strike ruined the significance or in most cases capacity for retaliation.

I would generally win Civ 4 on immortal, and sometimes win it on deity. This was a credit to the game; later titles became comparatively trivial on deity. I can beat Civ 6 on that difficulty while largely ignoring some of the game's subsystems outright (good thing too since the UI makes no effort to display the game's rules with any consistency), at a tiny fraction of the time or effort investment. Some of that is carryover from improving at strategy games in general. Most of it is because Civ 6 is easier against the AI, and pretty imbalanced from a VC/civ/start perspective otherwise.

 

[bestrfcplayer]

Civ 4 for me. While I still go back to play 5 and 6, 4 to me is the best one by far. Loved having death stacks of 100+ units rampaging the enemy’s countryside. Who doesn’t love that?

 

[Lexicus]

I always try to get nukes banned by the UN before the Manhattan Project is built. Some games the AI won't even build it so there are no nukes anyway.

Pretty much all my games go until at least a few civs have finished the tech tree. And most commonly they're decided by a rifle/cannon/cavalry/cuirassier war fought by me, but probably 1 in 3 games is decided by a war fought mostly with infantry and artillery.

I guess that's more like industrial era than modern era.

 

[Synobun]

I strongly dislike everything post-Industrial in all the Civ games. Just a terrible slog, especially in 5 and 6 when load times go through the roof.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah, I actually love fighting wars with ww1-equivalent tech in Civ IV and III. Industrial-era combat in III in particular is awesome with combat engineers building railroads to let you position your artillery to blow the enemy army to pieces without taking any damage.

 

[civvver]

4 wins by miles for now. It is way up there in mechanical depth, and in contrast to Civ 6 the design team back in Civ 4's time at least make something that resembles a passing effort at considering end user experience while playing the game.

I have enough disrespect for the UI in modern strategy titles I've played to hold their respective development teams in disdain in some cases.

Interestingly, I consider Civ's competition before Civ 4 to be better than it. Warlords 2/3, HOMM 3-5 absolutely dumpster their contemporary civ competition in terms of depth, control scheme, accuracy of information presented, pacing, and in Warlords' case means of handing some of the typical issues with 4x. Those franchises proceeded to fall off a cliff, then Civ 4 came about.

Firaxis has been resting on its laurels ever since. Civ 5/6 have abandoned UI conventions that competent developers managed in the 1990's and every year since, and apparently neither # inputs or accuracy are worth emphasizing these days.

It's a shame too, in terms of POTENTIAL mechanical depth Civ 6 isn't too far away from 4, and with an expansion could surpass it. It's hard to look past gutter tier trash UI more than doubling the amount of time it takes to play a game if you're somewhat fast though. Really hard to look past that. It's glaring in MP games with a turn timer, when you notice that more time is spent navigating unnecessary extra prompts and broken cycling than is spent managing an army on two fronts.

Warlords and heroes of might and magic aren't that much like civ at all, to me anyway. Rts is a different genre entirely and homm you don't build cities and expand, you have missions where all you can do is conquer existing stuff. Civ competition to me is like master of orion 2, which is in many ways civ in space. Modern titles that compete with civ5 though? I'm not really sure. I haven't played any paradox stuff so I can't say if EU or crusader kings are civ like or not. Nor have I played Anno series. That seems fairly close? Oh I thought of one, Warlock master of the arcane, which also have no played but people tell me it's fantasy civ 5 basically. I don't know if endless legend is civ like or not.

Do you guys think it's a little odd that there are a ton of space 4x games now, basically all spiritual successors to master of orion, but there are like zero historical civ games? You have a couple fantasy games, but I can't think of anything that's loosely based on real life.

Yeah, I actually love fighting wars with ww1-equivalent tech in Civ IV and III. Industrial-era combat in III in particular is awesome with combat engineers building railroads to let you position your artillery to blow the enemy army to pieces without taking any damage.

Eh, it's a little bit too easy in 4 because artillery just annihilate everything with barrage damage while the enemy is awful at countering machine guns. I like non nuclear modern wars better, cus they ai will actually build anti tanks and sam infantry which can mess up your tanks and bombers and require a little more thought than just throwing units at them.

 

[Lexicus]

Do you guys think it's a little odd that there are a ton of space 4x games now, basically all spiritual successors to master of orion, but there are like zero historical civ games? You have a couple fantasy games, but I can't think of anything that's loosely based on real life.

EU series and Crusader Kings II?

Eh, it's a little bit too easy in 4 because artillery just annihilate everything with barrage damage while the enemy is awful at countering machine guns. I like non nuclear modern wars better, cus they ai will actually build anti tanks and sam infantry which can mess up your tanks and bombers and require a little more thought than just throwing units at them.

I've never found machine guns to be particularly useful. Indeed, any battle where I'm relying on the strength of my units on defense is one where I've already failed, because the goal is always to be the attacker in the decisive battle thanks to the collateral damage mechanic. To that end tactics often involve allowing the enemy to capture a city on the border so that my large numbers of CR-promoted siege weapons can be used to best effect.

 

[Synobun]

EU series and Crusader Kings II?

And soon: Imperator.

 

[rah]

I've never found machine guns to be particularly useful. Indeed, any battle where I'm relying on the strength of my units on defense is one where I've already failed, because the goal is always to be the attacker in the decisive battle thanks to the collateral damage mechanic.

Exactly. It was always the joke of why would i ever promote a unit down the city protective line. If they're attacking your city, you've already screwed up. The exception is letting Monty (pre cats) throw his jags against your fortified axes in cities.

 

[Lexicus]

Exactly. It was always the joke of why would i ever promote a unit down the city protective line. If they're attacking your city, you've already screwed up. The exception is letting Monty (pre cats) throw his jags against your fortified axes in cities.

Yeah, I will build some city garrison units becuase sometimes taking attacks is unavoidable, but that's usually when I have a lot of recently-conquered territory to defend, so losing one of those cities can be an annoying setback but not a disaster.

And soon: Imperator.

[drooling slightly] I...might have to actually get that

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Warlords and heroes of might and magic aren't that much like civ at all, to me anyway. Rts is a different genre entirely

Warlords 2 and 3 are NOT RTS games. Not even a little bit. They're serious contenders for best TBS of the 1990's and had UI and design conventions miles ahead of their contemporary civ competition. Once SSG stopped making the series, it changed drastically and never had a real successor that I've seen. These games and HOMM were barely outclassed in economy depth by Civ 3, while having tactical depth the civ series has yet to match.

Pdox games are modern competition to Civ, and annoyingly share quite a few of the same problems despite the obvious differences in how the games play.

Eh, it's a little bit too easy in 4 because artillery just annihilate everything with barrage damage while the enemy is awful at countering machine guns. I like non nuclear modern wars better, cus they ai will actually build anti tanks and sam infantry which can mess up your tanks and bombers and require a little more thought than just throwing units at them.

Artillery annihilates everything forever in civ 4. The only minor caveat is if you need to cross water or make a couple SAMs. Machine guns only counter pre-artillery armies; while immune to collateral damage machine guns could not handle city raider arty directly and thus quickly become to defender and get mauled with ~90% odds to the attacker. After collateral, even very late game stacks struggle on defense vs artillery. I've bowled through so many high difficulty late games with infantry/arty/SAM spam, doesn't matter if they have mechinf defending. If your arty has CR 3 you're even winning the trades pretty hard.

I've never found machine guns to be particularly useful. Indeed, any battle where I'm relying on the strength of my units on defense is one where I've already failed, because the goal is always to be the attacker in the decisive battle thanks to the collateral damage mechanic. To that end tactics often involve allowing the enemy to capture a city on the border so that my large numbers of CR-promoted siege weapons can be used to best effect.

There's a bit more to it in PvP thanks to terrain movement promotions and that people could stack up a handful of contemporary units on defensive terrain to force you to choose between moving onto flatlands (while giving them collateral initiative) or attacking these handful of units at a pretty terrible trade.

Exactly. It was always the joke of why would i ever promote a unit down the city protective line. If they're attacking your city, you've already screwed up. The exception is letting Monty (pre cats) throw his jags against your fortified axes in cities.

CG units are efficient, and you generally have to leave SOMETHING behind in cities as you progress to the next ones, otherwise opponent can just use free movement in his own culture to recapture the cities easily. Even the AI will run by with crap like knights or maces, and stacking raw strength on defense makes sense in this case since its stack will posture defensively against your approaching stack (assuming you're still strong enough).

Letting anything attack a border hill city pre-catapults was usually worth it if they had an army. W/o siege the AI will melt so many units for free, and your followup is then less expensive.

 

[civvver]

Well I like to stack a machine gun or 2 and just let all the enemy cavalry commit suicide attacking it. I'm not as good as you guys though, like I said, just a monarch.

Sorry I was confusing warlords with warlords battlecry off gog.

 

[Lexicus]

Well I like to stack a machine gun or 2 and just let all the enemy cavalry commit suicide attacking it. I'm not as good as you guys though, like I said, just a monarch.

That's interesting, I find that when I do build machine guns it's often cavalry that kill them. Usually by this point in the game I have at least one city producing 4 promo units, so I will usually have a machine gun or two in each stack plus some Drill IV infantry.

 

[rah]

Letting anything attack a border hill city pre-catapults was usually worth it if they had an army. W/o siege the AI will melt so many units for free, and your followup is then less expensive.

And some great experience and GG points.

Machine gun added to stacks at the beginning of airships

 

[civvver]

That's interesting, I find that when I do build machine guns it's often cavalry that kill them. Usually by this point in the game I have at least one city producing 4 promo units, so I will usually have a machine gun or two in each stack plus some Drill IV infantry.

In the open yes cus of flanking, I meant in a city. The AI still attacks my cities a lot! I haven't mastered diplomacy or the art of first blood.

 

[rah]

It was always fun to leave a basically undefended city to bait their stacks onto flat terrain.