Civ V no longer a 4x or am I missing something?

[learner gamer]

So from reading this thread I guess I am at the point to ask if anyone knows of a mod to add gold back to rivers and oceans and perhaps to also add happiness back to religious buildings as it pretty much was in vanilla?

I hate to mod the game as such but am really not thinking my recent investment of 30 bucks was not worth it and might as well salvage what I can and return the game as much to vanilla as i can.

I think this is my last civil purchase as long as firaxis holds the reins. Sad really considering I own all the others including such things as call to power.

I'm not aware of any mods which do those things specifically. As a result, the best advice I can offer at this juncture is to:

(a) keep an eye on the development of the Communitas Expansion Pack mod by @Thalassicus here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=418 Previous versions of this mod for vanilla and G&K have made various balance tweaks which I've found have made those games more enjoyable; or

(b) perhaps request a mod which provides the precise changes you're looking for in the thread at the top of the page here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=395

If however what you want to do is disable one or more of the expansions entirely for a game, I understand that you can do this by loading up BNW, clicking on DLC and then choosing which DLC you want active or inactive.

 

[MkLh]

I would say "great job" is debatable. At the start of the game, 10 cities (producing setters and workers nearly nonstop) is fairly ICS, and there's really no reason to stop there. You don't see a lot of that because once the ICS expansion is won, people simply stop playing!

That's not a common definition of ICS (Infinite City Sprawl). Pure ICS means spamming cities endlessly and as fast as possible without paying any attention to quality of the site or anything, often in a geometrical shape so that cities are packed as tight as possibly. This was initially the best playing style in Civ5 vanilla. I've actually seen one Civ4 game where they were doing just the same (it was a forum team game with Asoka years ago), but it was really really marginal strategy in Civ4.

Trying to expand to 10 cities ASAP is usually very suboptimal on Civ4 higher levels btw.

 

[Ordate]

I'm not aware of any mods which do those things specifically. As a result, the best advice I can offer at this juncture is to:

(a) keep an eye on the development of the Communitas Expansion Pack mod by @Thalassicus here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=418 Previous versions of this mod for vanilla and G&K have made various balance tweaks which I've found have made those games more enjoyable; or

(b) perhaps request a mod which provides the precise changes you're looking for in the thread at the top of the page here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=395

If however what you want to do is disable one or more of the expansions entirely for a game, I understand that you can do this by loading up BNW, clicking on DLC and then choosing which DLC you want active or inactive.

Thanks about the advice for disabling entire expansions, but would like to keep what I payed for and try and play a game that is fun for me. Sadly Firaxis didn't provide that. Only reason I'm saying the happieness on the religious buildings is honestly vanilla is when I was having the most fun with Civ V and that seems like it would be the quickest and dirtiest way to get close to its balance setup. Though I think it would make some things too easy sadly. I'll watch that other mod and keep my fingers crossed.

 

[The QC]

Thanks about the advice for disabling entire expansions, but would like to keep what I payed for and try and play a game that is fun for me. Sadly Firaxis didn't provide that. Only reason I'm saying the happieness on the religious buildings is honestly vanilla is when I was having the most fun with Civ V and that seems like it would be the quickest and dirtiest way to get close to its balance setup. Though I think it would make some things too easy sadly. I'll watch that other mod and keep my fingers crossed.

I don't think that the change you want would work in the context of the rest of BNW.

I wouldn't advise you to give it up so fast, either. I think it has a bigger learning curve than some of us expected, but it's actually well thought out and will be fun once you learn it.

I'll repeat my advice: if you want wide, try a wide civ. Also, try a civ that is geared towards what you are missing. If you're missing gold, maybe Inca or Morocco or Portugal... If you're missing hapinness, Egypt would be my advice.

By the way, Pagodas still provide 2 hapinness. There are some other good sources of hapiness in religion as well, like Ceremonial Burial or the follower belief that adds hapiness from Temples.

 

[Roxlimn]

learner gamer:

Having qualified what you wrote, I still think you have not made a good case for your hypothesis. "Turtle" I qualified as meaning "to stop and focus on defense." I did not say that that was what you meant. I was going off on that based on what I thought.

That said, now that you've qualified it, I don't think it follows. If the designers intended to start from ONE city only and then proceed slowly from there, then they have failed utterly. The intent is not very clear except for Venice, which isn't even clear then since Venice acquires the ability to puppet an early city with Optics - very early in the game.

Even the Policy tree made for small empires - Tradition - is clearly optimized with no less than 4 cities. You can hard-build or acquire as many as three additional cities in Civ 5 quite, quite easily from many start positions, using a variety of means.

It is not necessary to move slowly, but best to move as quickly and as expediently as possible towards the type of play you wish. If that's to conquer the world, that's doable quite quickly.

MkLh:

It's a little difficult to pin down Civ4 supporters on what Civ4 is, one way or the other. Usually, it's whatever the posters want or complain about in Civ 5 - Civ 4 has it! Your assertion that expanding quickly to 10 cities being very suboptimal in Civ 4 goes directly against Sullla's complaint that that was (supposedly) not doable in Civ 5 (whereas it was supposedly okay to do so in Civ 4).

So yeah, you like Civ 4. That's really the not the point of this thread. Let's agree that you hate Civ 5 and leave it at that.

 

[TyBoy]

MOO2 is still remarkably playable. Granted, it's 640x480, but they used what they had really well and the graphics were exceptional for the time. If you're an experienced strategy gamer it probably won't take you too long to work out one or more strategies that dominate the AI, but being a 4X game, you can be totally over it after 3 games and still have spent 20 hours on it.

I rarely play wide, but I'd like to see them roll back some of the older anti-wide tweaks they made now that so many things from BNW are encouraging tall civs. As it is, it's hard to imagine even a wide-optimized civ being better off. The ones that stick in my mind are the ceremonial burial nerf and moving the scientist slot from the library to the university, but there are probably other changes that may be more logical places to buff wide empires.

Making early war worthwhile has always been a problem. I'd still like to see them buff honor some more in that department.

 

[Ashbery76]

MOO2 late game falls down under its own weight and is a great example of why newer games restrict micromanagement.Loads of busy work is not good design.

 

[Roxlimn]

Policy cost increase from expansion has been decreased in BNW. Wide empires also do both religion and tourism well, since those are flat numbers that are not penalized by city size - having more just means that you're flat out better.

Ceremonial Burial nerf might seem like it's anti-wide, but it's really just a general nerf. Ceremonial Burial doesn't care whose cities are converted - yours, CS, or AI. So long as the city is converted, you get the benefit. Loss of happiness means loss of population, which affects wide and tall equally. Arguably, it's still better for wide civs since it depends on lots of faith generation or religious pressure - both easier to accomplish if you have more cities.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Policy cost increase from expansion has been decreased in BNW. Wide empires also do both religion and tourism well, since those are flat numbers that are not penalized by city size - having more just means that you're flat out better.

Ceremonial Burial nerf might seem like it's anti-wide, but it's really just a general nerf. Ceremonial Burial doesn't care whose cities are converted - yours, CS, or AI. So long as the city is converted, you get the benefit. Loss of happiness means loss of population, which affects wide and tall equally. Arguably, it's still better for wide civs since it depends on lots of faith generation or religious pressure - both easier to accomplish if you have more cities.

Wide empires only do tourism better with

1. more artifacts in their territory
2. they have a culture UI/culture pantheon
3. they have Sacred sites/India

Otherwise no tourism comes from tiles/buildings... it all comes from Wonders, and GWAM which only come from the capital (although faith does help with that)

 

[jozef57]

it is posible to expand and get a realy huge empire, i play like you, only thing just dose your expansion a bit slower, spacially at the beginning , later on i found no problems i swim in gold my empire spans over 3/4 of a continent, and sttled on many Island ( continents plus) it works like a trian, maybe this has much to do with the civ you chose??

 

[Roxlimn]

KrikkitTwo:

Wide Empires also do tourism better for the mere fact that they have more Museum spots to use. Typically, something like 30 or so Artifacts emerge once you discover Archeaology. You can't fit all of those into 3 cities, let alone account for the Hidden Artifacts. Wide Empires can not only have Museum spots without making Wonders, they can also just make Landmarks, which yield more tourism per spot once Hotels come along (and make much culture, and do not require spaces).

GWAMs can also be bought with faith. If you have lots of Temples and Shrines, you can just buy the GWAMs you need.

I think it's reasonable to suppose at this point that toursim and culture VC favors Wide play.