Thanks for all the comments Civers, i've found them very helpful. It seems I can look at it in the sense that one version isn't superior to the other and more so that they are simply different games that offer different experiences...where I'm looking for more immersion, depth, choices I think I'll spend some time playing with CivIV for awhile after reading what people have said. Civ5 for me has become boxy feeling where I'm forced to play a certain way (4 City Tradition, peaceful early with science victory being the least tedious) because differing from the standard 4 city tradition on higher levels, while doable, make things noticable more difficult...it would be like a sprinter purposely sticking a nail in his foot to make the race more of a challenge to entertain himself. I donn't want to be punished for warmongering early, or growing my empire too big..Alexander the Great's empire didn't suffer because he successfully took egypt...doesn't make sense historically which is what I personally prefer...every game I play now blend together and look very much the same.
Civ4 Complete vs Civ5 Complete "experience"
- Thread starter Thunda
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Thanks for all the comments Civers, i've found them very helpful. It seems I can look at it in the sense that one version isn't superior to the other and more so that they are simply different games that offer different experiences...where I'm looking for more immersion, depth, choices I think I'll spend some time playing with CivIV for awhile after reading what people have said. Civ5 for me has become boxy feeling where I'm forced to play a certain way (4 City Tradition, peaceful early with science victory being the least tedious) because differing from the standard 4 city tradition on higher levels, while doable, make things noticable more difficult...it would be like a sprinter purposely sticking a nail in his foot to make the race more of a challenge to entertain himself. I donn't want to be punished for warmongering early, or growing my empire too big..Alexander the Great's empire didn't suffer because he successfully took egypt...doesn't make sense historically which is what I personally prefer...every game I play now blend together and look very much the same.
Securion
Civ Veteran
I play Civ 5 with the Civ 4 Diplomacy Mod.
vivalamexico
Prince
Tell me about it. I have one domination game that I had to abandon because all my units made each turn take 20-30 mins
isau
Deity
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My hope is that in Civ 6 stacking on the main map will return, but each turn of the battle itself will be strategic like in Civ 5 (ie the "battlefield" is a zoomed in version of the tile). That would lower the tedium of moving units, which I agree gets excessive, especially when they can only move 1 tile at a time through some areas.
reddishrecue
Some dude on civfans
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Didn't this question get asked already?
Civilization 4 and civilization 5 came out with the usual vanilla civilizations and the usual expansion civilizations. In a way, civilization comes with a similar pattern as well as a different pattern which is the whole new game play type such as the production change when a product gets changed.
Civilization 4 and civilization 5 came out with the usual vanilla civilizations and the usual expansion civilizations. In a way, civilization comes with a similar pattern as well as a different pattern which is the whole new game play type such as the production change when a product gets changed.
project_ako
Chieftain
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Tell me about it. I have one domination game that I had to abandon because all my units made each turn take 20-30 mins
Same. One of the biggest problem with 1upt.
Tell me about it. I have one domination game that I had to abandon because all my units made each turn take 20-30 mins
If you're too lazy to play Civ 5, I suggest purchasing Simcity. All the fun of building up with none of the "tedious" fighting.....
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vorlon_mi
Emperor
My favorite portions of Civ4 are the flexibility of the internal workings of the empire. You can switch civics when you need/want to, and switch back later. One set of combinations add experience to the units you build, and another set balances your gold costs differently. Adjusting your sliders well is a skill; choosing which great people you want to produce is a skill. You don't build a university in *all* your cities to build Oxford -- you choose which 5 cities get one.
More of everything to manage, which is another level of challenge.
Civ5, as others have said, is a different game. Social policies are a ratchet; once you adopt one, you almost never un-adopt one. Fewer units, fewer cities, fewer roads. Different systems for spies and religions.
More of everything to manage, which is another level of challenge.
Civ5, as others have said, is a different game. Social policies are a ratchet; once you adopt one, you almost never un-adopt one. Fewer units, fewer cities, fewer roads. Different systems for spies and religions.
Take your trolling elsewhere, kid.
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KmDubya
King
I disagree that cIV takes more skill. Micro =/= skill. Everything in cIV can be fixed easily as there are no lasting choices - need gold just move the slider, need to change your entire societies focus- just switch policies to the optimal set. Resources are unlimited so you just need one to build all that you want. And lastly every combat situation can be solved with more collateral damage - suicide siege for the win.
I like ciV in that choices matter. Taking liberty to start instead of tradition has game long consequences. If you screw up your economy and need more gold you can't just move the magic slider instead you need to staff merchants, build trade units or build banks all of which have opportunity costs.
And the random great persons generated in cIV were just annoying - 99% great engineer, 1% great artist - say hello to your new artist.
Combat to the death resulted in the best choice was to passively aggressively put your unit in defensive terrain and let the AI attack. Random chance always had the dreaded spearman killed my tank issue, highly promoted units were kept from combat in order to preserve them where one bad roll in 90% resulted in death.
ciV with BNW and G&K is the best in the series for me.
You really think that setting a slider already qualifies as "Micro"ing??? If those interesting choices for you are annoying micro management - well, maybe then Civ V really is the better choice for you.
But what you completely seem to ignore in your post is the fact that each of those choices have opportunity costs and drawbacks and the optimum settings of civics and sliders are highly situational. While you get all the gold easily you are missing out on valuable research, while your people are kept happy by military police in Monarchy you are missing out the double science bonus of Representation in your capital, and so on. You may not belive it, but learning to analyze the current game situation correctly and then making the right choices is what playing Civ games is all about and what makes Civ IV interesting. Playing a Civ game should be about constantly making interesting choices - not about once making the wrong choice and then having to chose between either rage-quitting or beeing punished for it for the rest of the game. Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun...
I love both games. I'll break down the comparisons as I see them onto different posts, if thats okay, as I'm "at work":
Warfare:
Civ 4 to me, was the game where warfare was about logistics. There wasn't much room for strategy in the field, rather winning wars was all about the economy of production, and in getting the stacks in the right place at the right time. This to me felt appropriate for a game about simulating civilisations rather than battles.
Civ 5 war is about tactics and strategy. Its the careful balancing of multiple factors on a civ level, and the careful positioning on individual units working combined arms tactics on a unit level. The combat is undoubtedly deeper and more interesting, though at the same time it lacks the same sense of versimillitude. Whereas in Civ 4 you'd calculate how many units you're willing to sacrifice to win the war (and how that'd affect your next war), its very different in Civ 5: you want your units to survive as much as possible, and there's rarely a voluntary sacrifice of the soldiers under your command.
Cities:
In Civ 4 you get lots of them. While there were definite moves from Civ 2 (which was more its spiritual predecessor than 3 was) away from REx, REx still had its role. Essentially it was all about the multiplication of production through expansion. You had to manage that expansion, but the expansion was still the goal.
In Civ 5 complete, rapid expansion and world domination is startgame and endgame only. You want your first three to seven cities down fast, but if you build 20 cities, you're ruining your chances of winning. Wide is penalised compared to tall, and you don't even need to expand to win the game.
The difference here gives a very different feel to the games.
In Civ 4 you might run a specialist city strategy, but broadly you're looking at the output of your civilisation. You can make odd mistakes in your city build orders without much drop in overall efficiency, as long as your civ-wide strategy is sound. In Civ 5, efficient use of build time is everything, because between the anti-wide game measures and puppetting you've got fewer build queues. Fewer build decisions to make each turn makes each build decision much more significant. Every unit counts, every building is a considered decision.
This makes the game a more complex puzzle, but also reduces the feeling of simulating a civilisation.
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Warfare:
Civ 4 to me, was the game where warfare was about logistics. There wasn't much room for strategy in the field, rather winning wars was all about the economy of production, and in getting the stacks in the right place at the right time. This to me felt appropriate for a game about simulating civilisations rather than battles.
Civ 5 war is about tactics and strategy. Its the careful balancing of multiple factors on a civ level, and the careful positioning on individual units working combined arms tactics on a unit level. The combat is undoubtedly deeper and more interesting, though at the same time it lacks the same sense of versimillitude. Whereas in Civ 4 you'd calculate how many units you're willing to sacrifice to win the war (and how that'd affect your next war), its very different in Civ 5: you want your units to survive as much as possible, and there's rarely a voluntary sacrifice of the soldiers under your command.
Cities:
In Civ 4 you get lots of them. While there were definite moves from Civ 2 (which was more its spiritual predecessor than 3 was) away from REx, REx still had its role. Essentially it was all about the multiplication of production through expansion. You had to manage that expansion, but the expansion was still the goal.
In Civ 5 complete, rapid expansion and world domination is startgame and endgame only. You want your first three to seven cities down fast, but if you build 20 cities, you're ruining your chances of winning. Wide is penalised compared to tall, and you don't even need to expand to win the game.
The difference here gives a very different feel to the games.
In Civ 4 you might run a specialist city strategy, but broadly you're looking at the output of your civilisation. You can make odd mistakes in your city build orders without much drop in overall efficiency, as long as your civ-wide strategy is sound. In Civ 5, efficient use of build time is everything, because between the anti-wide game measures and puppetting you've got fewer build queues. Fewer build decisions to make each turn makes each build decision much more significant. Every unit counts, every building is a considered decision.
This makes the game a more complex puzzle, but also reduces the feeling of simulating a civilisation.
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Which game requires more skill to balance research, happiness, and gold? Which game allows tweaking at any time, and which requires multi-turn planning?
Do you really want to defend vorlons assertion that Adjusting your sliders well is a skill?
I somewhat agree with you about civics (but not the sliders). Civics are interesting in that many of them have a negative aspect. I appreciate having to weigh choices. Policies OTOH are universally positive. The only downside to any of them is the opportunity cost of not picking something else.
In the beginning, I was very skeptical about policies versus civics. Heres the thing though, instead of constantly having (seldom used) options, I am instead regularly making interesting choices! Its not as open-ended as IV where every turn you have the option to adjust the slider and/or change civics. But in actual game play, how many times do you move the slider? How often do you change civics? Once you have all the civic choices opened up, are there more than two favorite sets that you switch between? With V, there are 20+ policy choices made throughout a game. That is on par with the number of civic options you have in IV (but some of those options dont get used, and mostly you are picking the most recent one in each group, so not much real choice in actual game play).
TLDR: In terms of game play and actually making selections, there are more policy picks in V than civic picks in IV; and at each decision point there are multiple good choices (as compared to IV where the better choice is almost always the most recently available option).
With V it is all slow boil, and the policies are all positives, so there is no wrong choice and no punishment except for waiting more turns for the next policy opportunity.
Do you really want to defend vorlons assertion that Adjusting your sliders well is a skill?
I somewhat agree with you about civics (but not the sliders). Civics are interesting in that many of them have a negative aspect. I appreciate having to weigh choices. Policies OTOH are universally positive. The only downside to any of them is the opportunity cost of not picking something else.
In the beginning, I was very skeptical about policies versus civics. Heres the thing though, instead of constantly having (seldom used) options, I am instead regularly making interesting choices! Its not as open-ended as IV where every turn you have the option to adjust the slider and/or change civics. But in actual game play, how many times do you move the slider? How often do you change civics? Once you have all the civic choices opened up, are there more than two favorite sets that you switch between? With V, there are 20+ policy choices made throughout a game. That is on par with the number of civic options you have in IV (but some of those options dont get used, and mostly you are picking the most recent one in each group, so not much real choice in actual game play).
TLDR: In terms of game play and actually making selections, there are more policy picks in V than civic picks in IV; and at each decision point there are multiple good choices (as compared to IV where the better choice is almost always the most recently available option).
With V it is all slow boil, and the policies are all positives, so there is no wrong choice and no punishment except for waiting more turns for the next policy opportunity.
No. Actually all I wanted to do is to express my contadiction to the statement of KmDubya implying that sliders are "Micro" management.
How many times I move the slider? 30 - 50 times maybe? I don't know, I never counted. People who play digital research/commerce change sliders more than a hundred times a game. Now maybe that's what could really be called micromanagement.
And how many times do I change Civics? Maybe 10 - 20 times.
Interesting. You try to counter my arguments with the exact opposite to what the other guy said. So what is it? Do Policies in Civ V "matter" and have "game long consequences" - or is it all pointless indifferent universal benefit? I don't know, you are the experts here...
I would argue that IV made these things too easy. Calling them skills is hyperbole, but I have no doubt that some players took them very seriously.
I do miss that, but in balance, I find policies to much better than civics.
More does not equate to requiring more skill or providing better gameplay. My own opinion is that 5 is an big improvement over 4 with regard to buildings, units, cities, and roads.
I would point out that civics are also ratchet. You almost favor later civics over earlier ones. Its correct that it would be poor play to abandon a whole policy tree, but it is not that uncommon (for example) to open piety and then fill out rationalism. It is also true that policies are only beneficial and never individually un-adopted, so there is more of a cost-benefit analysis required for civics as compared to policies. Even with these caveats though, policies offer more and deeper choices than civics.
Maybe I was playing wrong! I think I moved the slider a tenth as often. I remember happy being 0 or 10, eventually 20% at the end. Science was maxed so long as I was not running in the red. Of course, there was the occasional war-time crunch or other panicked need to raise funds quickly. It was a convenient game mechanic.
I have no idea what digital research/commerce is.
Okay, so we can agree that the number of policy selections made in V is >= civic selections in IV. I think it comes down to a matter of opinion as to which is mechanic is more compelling.
It is more subtle than that. Each policy can have a universal benefit and be neither pointless nor indifferent. Policies do matter and do have game long consequences, while still there not being a wrong choice and little punishment for changing policy tactics.
Mudrac
Orc Warchief
I think both of these games are equally good. I haven't played CIV IV as much as V. But, I can already say that both games are equally fun, deep and addictive each of them in their own way. CIV IV does some things better than V, and V better than IV, but even in that case, some things are subjunctive some people will find some mechanics better than others no matter what. People who think that sliders add some kind of depth are wrong, they just add a little bit more busywork but they certainly don't add depth. That's why I am glad EU IV moved from slider system of EU III, and rather focused on points system. I like it more when your decisions matter when you make long lasting ones, without the ability to change them. But then again! It is all a matter of personal preference, some people will like sliders more than points system, none of them is more deeper or more complex they have equal depth.
Every game from CIV franchise from 1 to 5 is a great game. Which one you like the most depends on your personal preference, not to mention that nostalgia can play a huge role as well, so to the most people the CIV game they played first is the best CIV game.
Every game from CIV franchise from 1 to 5 is a great game. Which one you like the most depends on your personal preference, not to mention that nostalgia can play a huge role as well, so to the most people the CIV game they played first is the best CIV game.
Which - asuming you're playing on an halfway challenging level - starts somewhere between founding your third to fourth city. Provided you built enough cottages. And even then it usually takes some time before you get back to full science again.
Well, it's not exactly like you can switch Civics whenever you want to. All Civs not spiritual or not in a golden age lose one or more turns of commerce / science / whatever output due to anarchy. Also after a change of civics there is a number of turns where you can't switch again. All this might seem nice and easy as long as there are no high level AI around trying to kill you and where every little mistake might be enough to fall back and lose the game. With enough pressure from the opponents civic switches turn into exactly the kind of interesting decisions this game franchise is so well know for...
I have no idea what “digital research/commerce” is.
That's alternately running either 100% Gold or 100% Science to avoid losing commerce due to decimal point rounding errors. As said: another little trick of slider micromanagement.
Dr. D
Warlord
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2012
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- 258
I have enjoyed both IV and V equally preferring different things in each game.
It drives me crazy having a nice bit of land to build a city in V and not being able to because of happiness. If there was a nice spot to settle in IV, you settle there. I miss that. I also dislike having to build, say, libraries in all cities to build National College. I prefer how in IV you have to build a set number of buildings, not one in every city. Obviously, I'm a much greater fan of going wide, not tall, and this is favored moreso in IV.
However, replayability is far greater for me in V as different civs play completely differently. In IV, I was doing the same thing every single time because the goal was the same no matter the civ you played. In V, playstyles vary so much amongst the civs that if you get bored playing one way, switch to a different civ.
All things considered, I'd never go back to IV. I played it a ton and its time has passed. Likewise, when VI comes out, it will be time to retire V.
It drives me crazy having a nice bit of land to build a city in V and not being able to because of happiness. If there was a nice spot to settle in IV, you settle there. I miss that. I also dislike having to build, say, libraries in all cities to build National College. I prefer how in IV you have to build a set number of buildings, not one in every city. Obviously, I'm a much greater fan of going wide, not tall, and this is favored moreso in IV.
However, replayability is far greater for me in V as different civs play completely differently. In IV, I was doing the same thing every single time because the goal was the same no matter the civ you played. In V, playstyles vary so much amongst the civs that if you get bored playing one way, switch to a different civ.
All things considered, I'd never go back to IV. I played it a ton and its time has passed. Likewise, when VI comes out, it will be time to retire V.
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