Civ 4 or Civ 5?

[Doctor Phibes]

[Edited, because I didn't address the OP] You should acquire Civ4BTS. Real cheap, sure but better in almost every way than Civ5. (Actually Civ 2/3 are mostly better than Civ5.) You should also look into playing CTP2.

I happen to think now that Shafer's gone (and I am not going to speculate there), that if I were Firaxis, I would fork development now. Most of the codebase is right there for Civ4.5. Do the incremental improvement. Like, just one thing at a time, convert Civ4 to hexes. A hard enough task in itself - I would appreciate the effort and I would pre-order that. And it's just BTS with hexes. (Except that the rubbish Civ5 city graphics would be used, I suppose).

Keep Civ5, but retitle it. Call it something like 'Hey d00d it's like Civ or something'. Fork the development process for different markets basically.

 

[Johntiler]

lol, my girlfriend saw that I was playing Civ4 to death so she bought me Civ5 saying how it's the 'next' one and that I should play it.

To be honest, I'm dead scared of even opening the shrink wrap because of the DRM etc etc.

I hope I don't hurt her feelings if I don't play it. I hope she doesn't take it the wrong way... can anyone help me??

I kept telling her that if Civ4 was a girl, I'd happily marry it! and that I'm happy with Civ4, I'm not looking for a new relationship... and then she 'surprised me on my bday with Civ5'...

Thanks

Dont-want-to-break-up

 

[Doctor Phibes]

lol, my girlfriend saw that I was playing Civ4 to death so she bought me Civ5 saying how it's the 'next' one and that I should play it.

To be honest, I'm dead scared of even opening the shrink wrap because of the DRM etc etc.

I hope I don't hurt her feelings if I don't play it. I hope she doesn't take it the wrong way... can anyone help me??

I kept telling her that if Civ4 was a girl, I'd happily marry it! and that I'm happy with Civ4, I'm not looking for a new relationship... and then she 'surprised me on my bday with Civ5'...

Thanks

Dont-want-to-break-up

I am not a relationship counsellor. But if I were you I would adopt the mantra 'it's only a game'. Repeat 5-6 times with deep breaths in between. And then fabricate a story about how cool 1upt and hexes are...

 

[AndrewCree]

However, it's not like Civ 4 was the perfect game a lot of posters here pretend it was. While Civ 5 is a bit too simplistic, Civ 4 is a bit too complicated. In my view, there are too many units, too many techs, etc. to the point of which you're sort of lost and each step seems so minor that you wonder what the point is. Part of this is not remembering what each did, but part of it is that there are techs and units which really don't add to the game.

Civ 5 also does a much better job at organizing information and allowing you to control the order you do tasks during your turn. But what it gives you in organization, it takes away by not giving you very much info to begin with (there are a few really good mods that do this, which I highly recommend). Both could do a lot better - but after playing 4 again, I have a new respect for what they did with 5.

Bingo.

4 simply had too much to choose from. It was like taking a kid with a sweet addiction into an olde-worlde sweet shoppe and asking them what they wanted first. Indeed, religion was a waste of time and effort. Interesting concept but extremely badly executed.

5 gets rid of all the crap and gives you a game.

 

[lschnarch]

Bingo.

4 simply had too much to choose from. It was like taking a kid with a sweet addiction into an olde-worlde sweet shoppe and asking them what they wanted first. Indeed, religion was a waste of time and effort. Interesting concept but extremely badly executed.

5 gets rid of all the crap and gives you a game.

I have just to disagree.

Sure, Civ4 gave you a plethora of options. Which is not a bad thing, because even after years of extensive playing, you could always find something new.
Actually, the game was designed to allow you to react to circumstances, by this even opening many ways for modders.

I would agree that the implementation of religions was not the best possible, but they are not at all "a waste of time and effort". They opened a whole new way to influence diplomacy, culture, science and commerce, even or better just because they were border-crossing entities in the game.

 

[Axios]

Easy decision. Civ 4 is superior in almost every single way.

CIV IV forever! I hope that Civ VI is for hardcore civ gamers.

 

[Bad Brett]

"Small details"? In a game that's supposed to span ages and the globe, significantly decreasing the size of the game world, the number of cities that compose an empire, and how long the game lasts are *HUGE* factors. You've been here a long time - frankly, I'm shocked you're downplaying the initial reaction to Civ IV by many. That reaction being, that it was a downsized, "streamlined," arcadey mess and was betraying the core audience that wanted 100+ hour games, 100 city empires, and an epicness that befitted a game of empires and ages. For many of us it completely exonerated itself of these initial claims, but frankly, they were there and there in force. Small details? Trying to downplay the impact such a significant reduction in scope from III to IV is just disingenuous.

One of the most common complaints about Civ III was the ICS. These complaints came from the long-time fans. Obviously you can't make everyone satified. The point is that the primary goal was to satisfy the old fans, not to gain new fans with a short attention span.

Ranged combat is a *tremendous* factor in how one goes about battle in a tactical sense. Including or not including them is a massive spectrum shift in how one goes about war. Again, this is far from a small issue - and a lot of people noticed it.

Civ is, and has always been, a strategy game. Not a tactical war game. Though I realise that some people enjoyed it, it's insanely stupid to have ranged combat in a strategy game like Civ III. I'm one of those that actually enjoy micromanagement, but can't imagine that anyone would find it fun to manually select what tile to bombard with 100+ units every turn.

I'm not interested in arguing whether you think Civ V is a good game or not, whether you enjoy playing it, or whether you think it's a big step back. I'm just pointing out, there were SIGNIFICANT complaints about very major changes from III to IV, and in time, IV more or less completely exonerated itself of those complaints. I'll also make a prediction - a year from now, the complaints in this forum concerning the game being unfixable will have died down to virtually nil, and the game will have taken drastic enough steps forward that a lot of people who hate it now will actually enjoy it. I don't think the game is perfect, and I have my doubts I'll ever like it as much as Civ IV, but there's a lot of wiggle room in the current systems to improve it. And heck, I'm even still enjoying the game as is...

Obviously you're missing my point. For example, I was very excited when I first heard about 1upt because I thought that it would reduce the number of units and make games in the modern era run faster. The problem is that it doesn't work. It's not a matter of personal taste, it does not work, because the AI can't handle it. And the thing is... they can't fix it, not because they're bad at writing AI but because these calculations are very complex and improving them would make the game to run even slower.

Also, no matter how much some people enjoy Civ V, it's impossible to defend some design decisions...

For example:

Your people is really unhappy. Your units can't fight and your cities don't grow. Everything seems hopeless. But suddenly the Mongols come rushing in and capture one of your biggest cites! Now your people love you, they start to have sex again and your units learn how to fight again.

This isn't a matter of taste. It's plain stupid. They implented a new design without thinking about the consequences.

 

[attackfighter]

Your people is really unhappy. Your units can't fight and your cities don't grow. Everything seems hopeless. But suddenly the Mongols come rushing in and capture one of your biggest cites! Now your people love you, they start to have sex again and your units learn how to fight again.

They're patriotic and willingly to temporarily unite behind you to fight the foreign invaders. Or maybe the town they captured didn't support your rule and was actively destabilizing your regime. Maybe it was always at odds with the rest of your empire, always causing controversy and stirring up trouble.

You are forgeting that civ is abstract.

 

[CornPlanter]

You are forgeting that civ is abstract

Civ is not abstract.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_strategy_game

Civ simulates real life and real history up to some point. While ofcourse it lacks realism (and it's good thing) it's nowhere near "abstract". If I see a tank in civ, I expect it's behavior to make sense as a tanks behavior. That's why it's named "tank" and not a "caveman" or "elf". Similarly I want every other aspect to make sense. Not to be "realistic" - only to make sense to justify its name.

The whole global happiness and puppet cities system in current Civ5 hardly makes any sense. You can come up with explanations for everything, sure. And yours isn't particularly bad. But the mere fact that you have to come up with some justification shows that there's something wrong with the system.

 

[Isikien]

However, it's not like Civ 4 was the perfect game a lot of posters here pretend it was. While Civ 5 is a bit too simplistic, Civ 4 is a bit too complicated. In my view, there are too many units, too many techs, etc. to the point of which you're sort of lost and each step seems so minor that you wonder what the point is. Part of this is not remembering what each did, but part of it is that there are techs and units which really don't add to the game.

I am in agreement with some parts of this statement, but I think having that choice is better than having no choice at all. Variety is the spice of life in a game series which puts a premium on immersion. Yes, I'm seeing that word chucked around a lot here and I'd agree that it is a good tag for the series in general.

So yes some units did seem apparently useless but it was the fact that you could use them if you chose to.

You didn't have to build machine gun units in most games because you tended to breeze through the tech tree around industrial era, but they were useful to have if you suddenly hit a stagnant point of science rate.

You didn't have to have an active focus on religion but it was handy when it spread a lot through your empire, meaning you could build monasteries and temples to buffer your people. I don't get why people hate religion so much. I personally liked how it turned out and that the only reason why people don't like it is because in most games above noble you didn't have the freedom to develop your own religion without someone founding another one and creating a religious bloc opposed against your heathen people.

On top of this it dictated early diplomacy. Yes? So what? It makes it more immersive. I like holy wars, I like crusades, hell I even like the AP. So yes, you did have to adopt religion accordingly but, why should you care? They all had the same bonuses anyway. The only thing you'd be missing out on is the holy city (which you could eventually conquer anyway if the enemy was near you) and a long term happiness benefit for having the religion.

But even CivIV has weaknesses, as you said.

There were hidden diplomatic modifiers (the CiV 'hating the person highest in score' isn't a new thing, the modifiers existed in CivIV but not in such an extreme way).

The ol' stack system is a polarising thing. Although it wasn't bad early game, late game was defined by superstacks of rifles and cannons that, if there were enough accumulated, would plough through entire empires and repel massive counterattacks. This was made worse by the fact that AI only had a very small understanding of how siege and collateral damage worked (It did get better but not in the way you'd think, siege units would wander around the map unescorted and suicide on your stack, and all you had to do was fortify for a turn to heal them, hell not even that if you had a medic unit).

Leading on from this, vassalage offered an easy cheesy domination win, and the speed of which you could attain this would be amplified if you were on the same continent as the AI

We could go on for ages, but the bottom line remains that CivIV by virtue of being around longer is a much more polished game.

 

[attackfighter]

Civ is not abstract.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_strategy_game

Civ simulates real life and real history up to some point. While ofcourse it lacks realism (and it's good thing) it's nowhere near "abstract". If I see a tank in civ, I expect it's behavior to make sense as a tanks behavior. That's why it's named "tank" and not a "caveman" or "elf". Similarly I want every other aspect to make sense. Not to be "realistic" - only to make sense to justify its name.

The whole global happiness and puppet cities system in current Civ5 hardly makes any sense. You can come up with explanations for everything, sure. And yours isn't particularly bad. But the mere fact that you have to come up with some justification shows that there's something wrong with the system.

You're playing semantics, my point is that Civ is very far detatched from reality.

And you're singling out Civ 5, where as all Civ games have had glaring nonsensical "systems". Why does my unit take hundreds of years to reach enemy lands? Why does garrisoning soldiers make people happy? Why do all my cities function as islands and have no effect on each other? Why do towns squares make more money than city squares?

You'd have to think up some pretty contrived explanations to make sense of a lot of Civ content. Civ 5 is no different, and there's no compelling reasoning to convince me it's any worse. Happiness now doesn't make sense, but happiness in the past didn't either... it all comes with the territory of playing Civ.

 

[Bad Brett]

They're patriotic and willingly to temporarily unite behind you to fight the foreign invaders. Or maybe the town they captured didn't support your rule and was actively destabilizing your regime. Maybe it was always at odds with the rest of your empire, always causing controversy and stirring up trouble.

You are forgeting that civ is abstract.

This is just silly. I've studied visual ergonomics and cognitive learning and the most basic thing when you're creating a new design, whether it is a toaster or a computer game, is that the product should do what the user is expecting.

For example, if a city has poor health in Civ IV, you can construct a hospital. Since most people already know that hospitals improve health, you don't have to look it up in the civilopedia. This is good design.

But, if let's say the broadcast tower gave you +2 health, it would be an example of bad design. Sure, you could come up with explanations such as "if kids watch football on TV, chances are that they start playing themselves and therefore their health is improved", but doesn't matter. It's not logical. The game doesn't do what the common user would expect it to do, and that causes frustration.

It's not logical that people start reproducing when the enemy is burning down cities near yours. It's not logical that some people on a tropical island can affect the global happiness of your empire. You can find all the explanations you want, but it's still not a behavior that the common player would expect from the game.

 

[AfterShafter]

One of the most common complaints about Civ III was the ICS. These complaints came from the long-time fans. Obviously you can't make everyone satified. The point is that the primary goal was to satisfy the old fans, not to gain new fans with a short attention span.

Wow, way to paint the crowd that liked the massive scope of Civ III as a bunch of dirty, casual fan, ICS'ers. The truth is, many people who wanted the game to remain MASSIVE in scope were long-time fans. The thing is, prior to Civ IV coming out, I remember a number of people complaining about ICS, yes, but I remember next to no-one saying "I want a smaller, faster game." The issue of ICS is a related but separate issue from size, scope, and speed of the game. Plenty of long-time fans loved how big and long Civ was, making each era virtually a game into itself, and a conquer the globe effort a completely new undertaking with each new continent. Naturally, many long time fans complained when Civ IV streamlined so much and essentially shrunk and sped up Civ.

But I want to be dead clear - you trying to paint it as if the only people who were upset about the scope/speed shift from Civ III to Civ IV were a bunch of non long-time fan ICS'ers is utter poppycock. There were lots of long term fans who weren't happy with the move - heck, myself included - but we came to love Civ IV regardless.

Civ is, and has always been, a strategy game. Not a tactical war game. Though I realise that some people enjoyed it, it's insanely stupid to have ranged combat in a strategy game like Civ III. I'm one of those that actually enjoy micromanagement, but can't imagine that anyone would find it fun to manually select what tile to bombard with 100+ units every turn.

Wow, that's an arbitrary line drawn in the sand if I ever saw one. I must have missed the strategy game rulebook where it says ranged attacks should be outlawed in strategy games, but were just dandy in tactical war games.

I don't know if you've noticed, but there is at least one long-time fan posting *in this thread* who still enjoys Civ III more than IV. Of course after about five years of Civ IV being the main game, they're more rare, but as you should well know, upon Civ IV's release, there were a lot of them. They were NOT the great unwashed of Civ fans - they were perfectly legitimate long term fans of the series.

"Though I realise that some people enjoyed it, it's insanely stupid to have ranged combat in a strategy game like Civ III"... No. Just no. Plenty of people got off on massive scale micromanagement. You didn't like it - that's fair enough. Is it so hard to believe that your personal beliefs on the subject don't constitute a hard and fast rule of the right way to make a strategy game?

Obviously you're missing my point. For example, I was very excited when I first heard about 1upt because I thought that it would reduce the number of units and make games in the modern era run faster. The problem is that it doesn't work. It's not a matter of personal taste, it does not work, because the AI can't handle it. And the thing is... they can't fix it, not because they're bad at writing AI but because these calculations are very complex and improving them would make the game to run even slower.

"The AI can't handle it." You know this... How? Because the game came out, untested and buggy, and has already made significant improvements on the AI front, but somehow you KNOW they'll never be able to get it working? Frankly, it's significantly better than it was on release already - I'm curious to see them put some more time and resources into it and seeing how they get it working. Yes, it'll be difficult, but I don't know whether you remember it, but the AI in Civ IV made *huge* strides from launch to last BTS patch. This likely won't be any different. Yes they have different problems to overcome, but at the very least, none of us are in a position where we can make the claims of impossibility like you are.

Also, no matter how much some people enjoy Civ V, it's impossible to defend some design decisions...

For example:

Your people is really unhappy. Your units can't fight and your cities don't grow. Everything seems hopeless. But suddenly the Mongols come rushing in and capture one of your biggest cites! Now your people love you, they start to have sex again and your units learn how to fight again.

This isn't a matter of taste. It's plain stupid. They implented a new design without thinking about the consequences.

Oh please... The "it's just doesn't make sense - totally unlike like Civ IV!" thing requires such selective vision I have trouble taking it in any way seriously. Civ IV, a game of immortal rulers, Elvis being born in 2000 BC and kept alive in Tokyo until he's sent to drop a "cutlure bomb" on Seoul, spearmen killing tanks, etc etc etc... The are literally hundreds of things so far beyond the realm of realism in Civ IV it's not even funny, but you decide to pick on some of the mechanics of the happiness system in Civ V. I have trouble taking that seriously.

Civ V needs work, but the idea that it has anywhere to go but up and has zero potential to be a good game is just silly. You don't like it - that's fine. A lot of us long-term Civ fans have a lot of hope for the future, and are enjoying the game now. What's more, some of us actually like the stuff you're trying to paint as unequivocal bad design decisions. You speak far beyond what you have authority to do so on.

 

[Bad Brett]

"The AI can't handle it." You know this... How? Because the game came out, untested and buggy, and has already made significant improvements on the AI front, but somehow you KNOW they'll never be able to get it working? Frankly, it's significantly better than it was on release already - I'm curious to see them put some more time and resources into it and seeing how they get it working. Yes, it'll be difficult, but I don't know whether you remember it, but the AI in Civ IV made *huge* strides from launch to last BTS patch. This likely won't be any different. Yes they have different problems to overcome, but at the very least, none of us are in a position where we can make the claims of impossibility like you are.

It's common logic to anyone who has any experience in programming complex algorithms. Creating an intelligent AI is not hard, anyone with bacis programming skills could do it. What's hard (impossible) to do, is to create an AI that makes wise decisions within a few seconds. In Civ III and Civ IV, the AI just had to move his stack around. In Civ V, many units have 30+ movement options. And when moving large armies, the AI must think ahead and make room for certain units. It's impossible to do those calculations within seconds even on a modern computer, trust me.

"Elvis being born in 2000 BC and kept alive in Tokyo until he's sent to drop a "cutlure bomb" on Seoul

Read my other post. A great artist generating culture is very logical. If the great artist had generated extra food, it would have been illogical. And that's pretty much how Civ V works.

What's more, some of us actually like the stuff you're trying to paint as unequivocal bad design decisions. You speak far beyond what you have authority to do so on.

Yes, but these are bad design decisions. Whether a design is good or bad is not a matter of taste. There are widely accepted ways to analyze these things, such as QFD (Quality Function Deployment), used by Toyota among others. And when it comes to visual ergonomics and cognitive learning, there are rights and wrongs.

Here's an example of a BAD design:

This is not my subjective opinion. The design IS bad because it doesn't meet one of the basic requirements that should have been included in the QFD table (different bananas have different shapes).

Of course people still have the right to enjoy bad designs. Enjoy your banana cover as much as you want, but it's still a joke.

 

[CornPlanter]

Bad Brett explained whole realism issue far better than I ever could. But I had in mind exactly that.

 

[lschnarch]

Plenty of long-time fans loved how big and long Civ was, making each era virtually a game into itself, and a conquer the globe effort a completely new undertaking with each new continent.

But then you have to mention that exactly the same fans were mad about the hardcaps on cities and units.

Wow, that's an arbitrary line drawn in the sand if I ever saw one. I must have missed the strategy game rulebook where it says ranged attacks should be outlawed in strategy games, but were just dandy in tactical war games.

It is just a matter of scale.
Each map of the standard game is a world map. It may not be the world as we find it on your globes, but it is a world.
Having units (longbowmen) shooting from Dunkerque to London is not plausible.
Having more advanced units (riflemen) to be melee units makes this obvious.

As Bad Brett explained: things should function as real life experience tells us that they do.
Trying to mix tactical combat with strategic maps does not work.

We see this even more now that the AI has been trained to ICS. Attacking one city in many cases now means exposing your units to the supportive fire of other cities.
Literally, a city now has become some kind of bunker, with many other bunkers around.

Now, I (and I think, Bad Bratt too) don't complain about bunkers. But please, have them in the right scale.

"The AI can't handle it." You know this... How? Because the game came out, untested and buggy, and has already made significant improvements on the AI front, but somehow you KNOW they'll never be able to get it working? Frankly, it's significantly better than it was on release already - I'm curious to see them put some more time and resources into it and seeing how they get it working.

Well, it would be easy just to counter you by mentioning that the main advertisement feature, the "1upt" should at least have decently worked from the beginning. But ok, it did not.

Now we are three months later, and the AI still is stupid like bread. It may have been improved, but what does this mean?
Starting from 10, 11 means an increase. Yet, there are much more numbers until you reach 100.

The combat AI still sends ranged weapons unaccompanied against the waiting melee forces. The combat AI still concentrates the fire of a besieged and redlined city against ranged weapons, while a strong melee unit is already knocking at the city gates (and yes, this is 1.141).

Yes, it'll be difficult, but I don't know whether you remember it, but the AI in Civ IV made *huge* strides from launch to last BTS patch. This likely won't be any different. Yes they have different problems to overcome, but at the very least, none of us are in a position where we can make the claims of impossibility like you are.

Oh yes, we can.

We know about today's computing power available.
We know that the tolerable timespan for the AI to calculate the necessary action is limited, otherwise the user just get's crazy.
We know that one of the things which were promised, the frontlines, taking away combat from the cities, just did not happen.
We know that after more than two years of development now, the AI still is unable to move units in a meaningful way.

It is quite easy to deduct with all these things in mind that there won't be any significant improvements in the near future.
Even less, as core design decisions like the limited movement, the dense coverage of the terrain (a problem of scale, once again) are speaking against it.

Oh please... The "it's just doesn't make sense - totally unlike like Civ IV!" thing requires such selective vision I have trouble taking it in any way seriously. Civ IV, a game of immortal rulers, Elvis being born in 2000 BC and kept alive in Tokyo until he's sent to drop a "cutlure bomb" on Seoul, spearmen killing tanks, etc etc etc... The are literally hundreds of things so far beyond the realm of realism in Civ IV it's not even funny, but you decide to pick on some of the mechanics of the happiness system in Civ V. I have trouble taking that seriously.

The fact that many unrealistic elements were in Civ4 (and are in Civ5, too) is a good excuse to add even more of them?

Civ V needs work, but the idea that it has anywhere to go but up and has zero potential to be a good game is just silly.

It is not silly.
Unfortunately, as I must say.

The core elements of the game literally dictate the current state.
Yes, you may tweak it here and there, but you can't change much - or you get a different game. What about the guys who are full of hope for Civ5 to change for the better, then?
It may become better, but it won't be Civ5 anymore, because you would have to skip the core ideas behind the design.

Bad Brett explained whole realism issue far better than I ever could. But I had in mind exactly that.

I agree.

 

[Trias]

This is just silly. I've studied visual ergonomics and cognitive learning and the most basic thing when you're creating a new design, whether it is a toaster or a computer game, is that the product should do what the user is expecting.

For example, if a city has poor health in Civ IV, you can construct a hospital. Since most people already know that hospitals improve health, you don't have to look it up in the civilopedia. This is good design.

But, if let's say the broadcast tower gave you +2 health, it would be an example of bad design. Sure, you could come up with explanations such as "if kids watch football on TV, chances are that they start playing themselves and therefore their health is improved", but doesn't matter. It's not logical. The game doesn't do what the common user would expect it to do, and that causes frustration.

Funny, I've seen people make similar arguments about several mechanics of civ4, like the city maintenance costs, cultural defense, etc.

It's not logical that people start reproducing when the enemy is burning down cities near yours. It's not logical that some people on a tropical island can affect the global happiness of your empire. You can find all the explanations you want, but it's still not a behavior that the common player would expect from the game.

And it is logical that a prophet, a scientists and a rock star having a happy dance on the north pole, effects the productivity of said island?

Sorry, but your being completely arbitrary here.

And before you start posting yet again that you are not, maybe you should sit down and reflect a bit, because you are being quite silly.

 

[Trias]

It is just a matter of scale.

Your seriously complaining about scale in civ? Scale has never made any sense in any fashion.

As Bad Brett explained: things should function as real life experience tells us that they do.
Trying to mix tactical combat with strategic maps does not work.

Having ranged bombardment in civ3 did not work? (It had issues mostly because the AI didnot understand how to properly use it, just like it never was able to properly use aircraft.)

Now we are three months later, and the AI still is stupid like bread. It may have been improved, but what does this mean?
Starting from 10, 11 means an increase. Yet, there are much more numbers until you reach 100.

The combat AI still sends ranged weapons unaccompanied against the waiting melee forces. The combat AI still concentrates the fire of a besieged and redlined city against ranged weapons, while a strong melee unit is already knocking at the city gates (and yes, this is 1.141).

Five year , two expansions and god knows how many patches later, the AI in civ4 was still stupid like bread, managing to first suicide its stack on your fortified city and then attacking with its siege units. The only saving grace for the AI in civ4 was that at higher difficulty it had massive production bonuses and paid no upkeep, and the effectiveness of a SoD scales approximately with the number of units, even if badly used. (This in contrast to civ5, which was designed to have diminishing returns on increasingly large armies. The AI simply doesn't profit as much from the bonuses its getting. It would make much more sense to simply make that AI units stronger on higher difficulties, for example by giving them free promotions.)

 

[Bad Brett]

Funny, I've seen people make similar arguments about several mechanics of civ4, like the city maintenance costs, cultural defense, etc.

City mainenance is perfectly logical. If you have any knowlege about countries such as China or old Soviet, you should know that the government has/had to invest large sums of money to keep the empire from falling apart. As the welfare increases, the income goes up and the corruption goes down. I thought this was common knowledge. I can't believe that anyone would think that this is illogical or even unrealistic.

Things like cultural defenses and hammers from priests are basically bonuses. These things won't ruin your game if you don't understand them properly. They are NOT an important part of the core game.

And it is logical that a prophet, a scientists and a rock star having a happy dance on the north pole, effects the productivity of said island?

You can't even enter the north pole in Civ IV, so that's a rather bad example...

 

[need my speed]

So, if you lived in a nation that was constructing the most beatiful buildings, magnificent works of art, and truely cared for its people, helped them, etc etc, you wouldn't be happier (and thus more productive) than you would be in 'just another nation'? You should use some imagination, sure, but in essence, it's right.