Civ 4 & 5 hybrid?

[ThorHammerz]

Disclaimer

Spoiler :

Discussion is intended to look at game-play between players (ideally rational humans, but a theoretically rational AI will suffice) playing on approximately the same handicaps.... in other words, the game at immortal/deity is not an accurate representation of how the game systems should function (you are playing 1 game, the AI is playing another - a race where one is running on a slope vs another on flat ground is not much of a race at all).

Between the games of Civ 4 and Civ 5, what would be a "best of 2 worlds" collage/mosaic/hybrid/lovechild you guys might imagine?

- Systems/features that one game does a lot better than the other?
- Systems/features that doesn't really work?
- Different takes on systems that could be merged/hybridized? (religion, espionnage, economy, you name it)


I like both MUPT and 1UPT conceptually, and it would be nice to have some sort of half-way point between the 2 extremes provided in these 2 games (e.g. a system that rewards smart tactical positioning via 1UPT, but allows for MUPT to work in certain situations, but not in others).

I enjoy the fact that Civ 5's trade routes are controllable (to an extent.. once every 30 turns ), with definitive costs, benefits, and risks associated with any trade route you can potentially send (potential to be plundered, food/production vs gold/science, potential to give science to the other guy).

On the other hand, I am really not a fan of Civ 5's espionnage system (it is very much a "fire and forget" type of thing you can still be effective in using... such as parking a spy on your capital + other large cities & never worry about it again. If a spy dies, you get another for free shortly afterwards anyways).

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I definitely liked civ4's government system and would love to see that come back in some form. It could be merged or hybridized with civ5's social policy system.

As for 1upt, I would like to see limited units per tile, say 4 units per tile. That way you can have the best of civ4's stacks without the problem of stacks of doom. The combat mechanics could still work a lot like civ5.

 

[YaroslavTheWise]

Civ 1/2/4 barbarian model is superior to Civ 3/5 model, where barbarians cannot capture a city, and can only be slow-moving (no barbs on horses allowed).

Cities should not get Civ5 style empire-wide bonuses to their production/gold/culture/food based on cultural traits, religion or city-states bonuses. This makes the geography of the city placement largely redundant - just build many cities and get city-specific bonuses! Civ 1,2,3,4 model of constant return from the city placement tile is much better, as the geography of city placement matters much more.

On 1UPT vs MUPT model I think the war modelling in Civilization game should be changed, and a new one developed. Since Civ1 most important battles happen in the city itself, which is (to an extent) rubbish, as many important historic battles happened outside of cities (Cannae, Waterloo, Panipat). WW1 and WW2 were fought in substance outside of the cities, unless those, by bad luck, fell onto the front line (Leningrad, Stalingrad). Even medieval sieges were sieges of castles, rather than cities. Therefore, it should be battle + siege warfare in the and the warfare permitting the creation of front lines for the modern warfare. How should this be achieved is another question, but with limited units per tile being just one of the possible solutions. Both stacks of doom and carpets of doom should be avoided.

Also city should not act as a military unit itself, like in Civ5. Barbs in Civ5 cannot even sack it, and city cannot be captured by chance; the carpet of doom is needed to capture it all the time. Arsenals with no people should have no fighting power

 

[Naokaukodem]

On 1UPT vs MUPT model I think the war modelling in Civilization game should be changed, and a new one developed. Since Civ1 most important battles happen in the city itself, which is (to an extent) rubbish, as many important historic battles happened outside of cities (Cannae, Waterloo, Panipat). WW1 and WW2 were fought in substance outside of the cities, unless those, by bad luck, fell onto the front line (Leningrad, Stalingrad). Even medieval sieges were sieges of castles, rather than cities. Therefore, it should be battle + siege warfare in the and the warfare permitting the creation of front lines for the modern warfare. How should this be achieved is another question, but with limited units per tile being just one of the possible solutions. Both stacks of doom and carpets of doom should be avoided.

Also city should not act as a military unit itself, like in Civ5. Barbs in Civ5 cannot even sack it, and city cannot be captured by chance; the carpet of doom is needed to capture it all the time. Arsenals with no people should have no fighting power

I agree with all of this, I've even emitted the same ideas.

The problem with 1UPT regardful of city capture is that only one unit can stay inside the city, that's why cities by themselves has been given fire power, to avoid impossible defense. The solution to that is to allow several units to stay into the city, in regard of a limit like food. For example, each unit stationned in the city consumes 2 local food. To avoid exploits, there cannot be trade routes arriving or departing from a sieged city / castle when it is besieged. However, this feature sets up the problem of troops consuming food. Well, just make it so that every unit consumes two food. Units originally consume food from the city they are built, but can be reassigned by will, or are automatically reassigned to the resident city when stationned in a besieged city.
We also have to revise how food accumulation (surplus, granary) works : the link between population growth and no more food in reserves is be avoided, one shouldn't have to stop growth in order to avoid the reserves to empty, it's too gamey and hurts the feeling of the game. Ideally we would introduce seasons, but obviously one shouldn't implement them just for this. I must admit that i have no idea for this at the moment. (Unless we revise the whole growth mechanism, making food surplus not an indice of growth, but an indice of size, making land more important early, with things like agricultural revolution showing their effects more deeply, and making land grab much more sensible : no need to have 10 citizens if 6 of them work the land and the remaining 4 do nothing, without specialist slots and without that +1 production for iddeling citizens) But nah, it's too many changes for just something.
Plus, I like the feeling to march on an empty city and conquer it in an instant.

As the field battles, I agree too. Unfortunately, power in Civ is concentrated on cities, so there's no mean one wouldn't want to conquer them in the first place. I fear one should change a lot in order to change this side of the game.

 

[Sync]

I'd prefer a Civ4+. No elements of Shafer 5 are needed.

 

[killmeplease]

there could be some mix of civics and policies maybe..
do not miss anything from civ4 besides that

 

[nimling]

Get rid of 1UPT and Civ 5 can be worked into a playable game, maybe.

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of taking stuff to make it more like Civ 4, which had its own flaws. Going down the list of things...

MUPT vs. 1UPT - beyond any doubt, MUPT is much better for this kind of game, and 1UPT is perhaps the single biggest stumbling block and Firaxis' insistence on 1UPT is why the Civ series will die... or someone will make a proper game without 1UPT and the 4X mantle will pass to someone else. I'd rather have Civ4 stacking than what Civ5 does, and the ways Civ5 combat can be exploited are well-known by now.

Limited MUPT is about as bad as 1UPT, aside from relieving some dronejam.

What would be fine is allowing for flank bonuses for positioning and adjacency bonuses, and zone-of-control effects. I wouldn't have either because I'd re-do how turns work, but presuming turns work as they do in Civ4/5 then those concepts work fine enough.

Social policies - In practice many trees aren't really worth entering, and the bonuses in Tradition or Liberty are such that players are obliged to rush for their finisher if they play optimally. I like the idea of a parallel tree of social development perks, but it shouldn't replace civics/governments entirely. Right now policies are merely a matter of picking the one that gives the most stuff, there are no downsides to policies.

Sliders and economy in general - Civ5's take is notoriously bad and streamlines the player into playing one way to win. The system of tying science to population turns the game into a race of who can raise their population the fastest. Civ4's biggest issue is that city maintenance costs were too easy to trivialize and basically didn't exist in the late game. That, and Slavery was brokenly good.

One tweak to Civ5's system would be to introduce a slider that directs the automatic sci output of population, so that players have a choice of whether they want money, food, prod, culture, or whatnot; and different government types / social or tech advances increase the limits and effectiveness of that tax. In the early game tax is basically limited to food or prod and in small quantities, and researching currency allows for gold taxation.

Trade Routes - Trade routes that crap food and hammers out of nowhere are super bad and exploitable. I saw nothing wrong with just assigning trade routes to cities, rather than mucking around with manual caravans.

Luxuries - I really hate these as a concept, and that applies to Civ4 and Civ5. Beyond Earth, for all its flaws, did a good thing by removing direct luxury resources. Having bonus resources for economic purposes is fine though; I could see control over luxuries being a cornerstone for gold generation. but it sucks to have your growth determined by hooking up luxes.

Global Happiness - Hate this as a concept, but local happiness in Civ4 sucked too. The old Civ1/Civ2 model wasn't too bad, aside from being a variant of local happiness and thus encouraging ICS; but in theory, a Civ1/2 city wasn't restrained by unhappiness in growing until revolts happened, and that's better than having a hard cap. I'd prefering unrest to be tied to tangible causes, not just having too many people; instead, use health or other mechanics as a means of controlling population growth.

Citystates - Way too easy to break and a bad idea. Having neutral cities in theory is okay, but they need to behave more rationally and not just be culture/food/faith/happyface/military resources to exploit. I could see the citystate concept being a way to control early growth - at the beginning of the game, the whole map would be covered in citystates and minor tribes, and expansion means exterminating or negotiating with them, not just spamming settlers into empty land. If you have that, then you don't even need barbarians at all, although there could be generic brigands, pirates, outlaws, and rebels in order to have elements that can only be met with force.

Religion - Why is this such a popular thing? Religion in both games was a broken mechanic and not at all like how religion works in reality. It's another big bonus resource, rather than an element with drawbacks. I'm of the opinion that whatever people are praying to has little impact on a wide scale, leaders will use or not use religion as they see fit; and there is necessarily a great deal of whitewashing in order to avoid offending large segments of people. I'd rather just do without religion altogether, or if it's implemented it should be something you can't avoid and don't necessarily want to use.

Espionage - Espionage isn't really available until way too late, when it should be an element of the game from very early on. Intelligence gathering and sabotage have been elements of warfare for a long time. I prefer having lots of spies - steamlining the process so that spies aren't on the map is okay, so long as the espionage interface is easy to use and effective.

Cities as military units - I don't see this as a problem to be honest, as a way of representing attrition damages. With proper unit stacking a city's natural defense wouldn't do much, and it doesn't do much in Civ5. I don't understand mods that reduce city strength, cities are already fragile in Civ5. What does suck is that proper tactics are impossible due to 1UPT being dumb, but city defense by itself is just barely enough to hold off an army until reinforcements arrive, which is better than Civ4 cities being death traps.

 

[YaroslavTheWise]

As the field battles, I agree too. Unfortunately, power in Civ is concentrated on cities, so there's no mean one wouldn't want to conquer them in the first place. I fear one should change a lot in order to change this side of the game.

I actually had in mind to change a lot in the military area. It is true that power is concentrated in cities, as they produce both money, and military units. Not only in the game, but in real life too.

So, why do we not fight for cities until death in real life?
1) It is not possible to keep a big army in one city. Here 1UPT is actually a more realistic model than MUPT, which can even be called VMUPT (very many units ). Thus, Inca Atahualpa kept his army of 30,000 indians outside of Cajamarca, and had to visit Pizarro in the city (Pizarro's army was only 124 Spaniards, which fit in the city), where he was kidnapped.
2) Defending city has costs (hunger, loss of property and loss of life). Civ prevents such costs via city wall construction, but this is too good to be true. All sieges should have some realistic costs (e.g. the siege of Leningrad in WW2 resulted in millions starved).
3) In real life huge army will cause some cities to simply capitulate without a fight (true both in 100 years war and in contemporary world). Thus, there is no point to overgarrison each city.
In Civ game battles happen more often in cities than not because the benefits (e.g. defense benefit per unit, no human costs or buildings destructed) make cities a good place to battle (from cost-benefit perspective).

What can be done is
a) ensure costs happen when cities are besieged, rather than captured. Thus, even if siege was unsuccessful, the defending party would suffer (e.g buildings destroyed)
b) ensure huge armies cannot stay in cities, forcing for battles to happen outside of the city walls
c) ensure cities will simply capitulate (fall, switch), if certain civilization has too weak an army to protect certain area. This would make military victory more important than grabbing the city itself.
d) ensure there are generic costs (e.g. unhappiness or loss of legitimacy, or morale) if you defend cities which are indefensible, or at too huge a cost.

Now onto the world of wars.
1) Enable armies to be created out of different unit types (which would complement each other), and for army to have 1APT.
2) Enable flanking bonuses for later game, when armies are so big that they actually can coexist on nearby tiles creating "front lines". Enable blitzkriegs by breaking through front lines.
3) Enable battles to happen between armies with some tactical logic (e.g. which unit attacks first, etc.). This can be more (Heroes of Might & Magic?) or less detailed.
4) Tactical details of battles would be determined by you (commander in chief) or generals (like city managers that we have) with possible limit of those determined by you to 1 army only. This even can lead to you being captured when your army is defeated, and having to pay ransom (like Peter I of Russia to Turkey, or Inca Atahualpa to Pizarro).
5) City sieges should still be possible and realistic - city walls for middle ages, Vauban fortress for later times, no sensible extra-defense for WW2.
6) Make forts (fortresses, defense lines, trenches) outside of the city more useful - these seized to be important or used since Civ2.
7) Make fielding huge armies (units spamming) costly, as for Britain in 100 years war.
8) Make AI wage wars sensibly, and strategically: AI is poor in both 1UPT and MUPT worlds, and this then requires unit spamming. Had AI been cleverer in unit deployment, unit spamming would have been unnecessary. There are known cases of not upgraded hordes attacking advanced military units. AI should have no incentives to do such silly things.
9) In Civ5 scout garrisoning a city creates + 1 happiness and + 2 culture under Honor. This is rubbish, and results in human scout-spamming. This should be abolished. I would argue that in ancient/medieval times each city should require a garrison by time-relevant (not too outdated) small army for happiness reasons or for fear of city quitting the civ and becoming independent. In later times having sufficient army for a Civ as a whole should be enough.
10) And one MUST have barracks

bar·racks - ˈberəks - noun - a building or group of buildings used to house soldiers.

to quarter an army - running armies without barracks is a bit daft. Essentially army should require some infrastructure and maintenance cost. I guess one should only be able to have militia without barracks.

I admit my thoughts are not very structured, but I would argue for an overhaul of a military model and would favor a creation of a new, more advanced model

 

[YaroslavTheWise]

Citystates - Having neutral cities in theory is okay, but they need to behave more rationally and not just be culture/food/faith/happyface/military resources to exploit.

I could see the citystate concept being a way to control early growth - at the beginning of the game, the whole map would be covered in citystates and minor tribes, and expansion means exterminating or negotiating with them, not just spamming settlers into empty land.

I agree with both of the above. Civ IV had minor civs, which behaved like "mute" civs, as there were too many things they could not do. Civ V introduced city states, which added flavor to the game, but the concept was not well thought through. So, while I would enjoy retaining them, it'd be good to revisit the concept.

1. Civ 5 prevents human player from conquering city states. This is because if you capture too many, all city states declare war on you, and you lose the benefits from all of them. This is also because mercantile cities, if allied give +1 food for EACH city you have, and you surely want a multiple-city bonus more than an additional city (which causes your happiness and culture development speed to fall). These disincentives to capture city states are too compelling and unrealistic, as many city states in history were eventually absorbed. In Civ 2 city states were substituted by barbarian cities in many scenarios, which made them a priority for conquest. This is not good either. There should be general tendency to slowly absorb city states (fast conquests to result in poor diplomatic reputation).

2. All city states exist in Civ5 since immemorial (4000 BC). Surely neither Venice or Almaty are THAT old. Thus the tendency to conquer city states should be countered by the tendency for new city states to appear via a) secession b) foundation c) liberation. So, when old city states disappear they will be replaced by new ones. Only route (c) is available in Civ5.

3. Empire-wide bonuses from city states should disappear. Mercantile bonus can be substituted by X gold per turn, or some rare resource (e.g. porcelain idea from G&K). Military bonus (unit spamming) is also not well thought, even if more balanced.

4. Claim to protect a city state should have greater consequences - better attitude from the city state while it is protected, and much worse attitude if the promise is not kept. Currently you can claim to protect (to compete a quest), and then just ignore the promise.

5. City states have poor AI fighting abilities. They attack the opponent, but often forget to capture a city. If they capture a city, they often raze it (?why?). I would suggest that city states be renamed into states (e.g. Ecuador is not a civilization like Britain, but it exists, and is not a city-state), can grow (if lucky), and can even turn into a civilization (Carthage, Netherlands). This would make fighting wars a bit more relevant to them.

6. Befriending a city state in Civ 5 is too costly, often requiring a sizable bribe. It makes sense if you want to get free luxuries, or empire-wide food bonus. But I would favor scaling down both the benefit, and the cost of allying a city state. And, btw, does the city state not need that luxury resource itself?