Civ5 is more difficult than Civ4.

[Exterminas]

*Raises his Bile-shield.*

Not the combat. That is easy.

But the empire-management! I'm having a hard time conquering the whole world, or even a continent, like I used to in Civ4. Because I run out of happines, because my environment laks resources, our I lack tech for buildings. Or because the poeple on the world hate me as a warmonger and don't want to trade with me.


To pay my enormous forces and mega-cities I need money.

To get money I need large cities, because one tile won't hoste a mutan-cottage, but a small trading-post. To grow cities I need happy citizens.

There are numerous ways to get around that, like a pek from the honor-tree that gets you one happiness from units in cities. But unit maintenance is expensive, and when I run out of gold, I can't pay my citiy-states.

From my experience you have to manage your empire and it's growth more carefully than in Civ4, where there were lots of mechanics to get around that (monarchy and slavery)

Is that just me or is that just relevant to the warmongering-make-the-map-red-type of player?


PS: Yes, the title would have been more accurately as "Building massieve empires is more difficult in Civ5 than in Civ4", but who can blame me for a bit of provocation.

PPS: Also that would have been too long.

 

[Zelig]

Yeah, there isn't really any point in building massive empires since annexed cities are useless for too long to become useful, and puppeted cities cost too much gold. Much easier to just burn everything to the ground.

 

[Warspite2]

Not only unit maintenance adds up but also city maintenance is back. So you can't just build every building in the list down in each of your cities if you don't need it. It adds up and your gold starts going down quickly especially if you have a lot of units. When I had too many units and were having trouble affording them, I would give them to neighboring city states instead of dispanding them. At least this can help them hold their own against some warmonger civ as long as that civ never became me eventually

 

[cephalo]

It all kinda depends on the difficulty level. I played Civ4 on Noble and had trouble winning.

So far on 'Prince' difficulty (presumably the equivalent of Civ4 Noble) I won two in a row, although one was a time victory. The main enemy here is the game clock!

 

[cr0ws]

As long as the AI doesn't CHEAT like it did in Civ 4 I'd say it cannot surpass my strategic skills.

 

[J-man]

You can't play Civ 5 as if it where civ 4! That's for sure.
Empire management is very different.

 

[Exterminas]

Something that is very important to mention is the role of the absence of cottages. You could finance whole lands of qoneuered cities with just your tree starting cash-cities. In Civ% every city has to pull it's weigth in money and get you some to expand and built. That later margine isn't nearly as huge as in Civ4.

 

[Gath]

I'm finding civ 5 to be much easier than civ 4, and I wasn't a deity player in civ 4.

 

[Exterminas]

I'm finding civ 5 to be much easier than civ 4, and I wasn't a deity player in civ 4.

That depends on what your looking for. As I said, combat is vastly simplified, compared to Civ4, but that was mainly because the AI got so buffed up that it built twice as much units as you could and built better ones too (faster teching).

 

[J-man]

I in my first civ 5 game and I can say undervalued 2 things: Happiness and gold. They are so important. I over valued food, i.e. I have built too much farms and too few trading posts.

 

[devilhunterred]

It's actually easier.

CIV 5's prince difficulty is equivalent to CIV 4's warlord.

And empire management isn't difficult at all, because SP forces players to focus on striving for a specific victory condition (cultural, domination, scientific), so you just tailor all your cities to that goal and only construct the buildings that are necessary to reduce maintenance.

Unlike CIV IV where it forces you to juggle between culture, food, and health to sustain your city's normal development. And acquiring "We love the king day" from cities is much, much easier too, because now all you need is to get them the luxury resource they demand.

CIV 5 is actually much easier than CIV IV.

 

[Flavorable]

Well, combat in Civ 4 was strategic at a production level, but never in excecution, I don't think I built a fort more than once in Civ 4. I'm building them all the time in Civ 5.

 

[razor436]

In my first Civ 5 game, I was taken by surprise when my empire became very unhappy by my economy essentially came to a standstill: no city growth, negative gold per turn, crawling production line.

Since then, I'm finding Civ 5 empire management to be rather simplistic and less varied. As you say everything is about gold now so I aim to get lots of gold/turn to pay for happiness buildings, bribe city-states, field larger armies, etc. That means researching Currency ASAP, building ALL +gold city improvements, changing some farms to markets later in the game, ... everything to increase gold output.

 

[devilhunterred]

Well, combat in Civ 4 was strategic at a production level,

I agree with this, CIV IV's combat was almost purely based on the production side: How many and what units you can build.

CIV 5's combat is more meaningful and strategic, but it still needs a lot of tuning. For example more powerful units should have a higher upkeep cost than weaker units to allow players to compensate between quality vs. quantity, and maneuvering military units in a tight space is so frustrating because of the absolute no stacking rule. They should change it so that units can stack to move through eachother, but while in stacking they cannot attack and suffer from collateral damage from enemies.

 

[guczy]

I friggin love Civ IV, but combat can't be easier than that. Build a SoD -> go wipe the floor with your enemies.

 

[NZV]

I disagree. I'm pretty awful at Civ and would have a hell of a time in 4 playing on Noble. I feel like I'd have to pay really close attention to everything I do. It was somewhat challenging.

Civ5? I skipped the tutorial, jumped into prince, and just started doing whatever. No real grand strategy at all, and every decision was really just on a whim. Ended up winning a diplo victory, but could have won domination even quicker and more easily considering my 4-city empire was at the end of the modern age when everyone else was still in mid renaissance to very early industrial. Stealth bombers and tanks stepped all over the masses of early gunpowder, knights, and spearmen that were being thrown at me. Science victory also wasn't far off, I already build the apollo project in Sparta because there was nothing else decent to build, and I had all but around two techs.

Starting mid-game I had so much money and production that I didn't really know what to do with it, so the money just kinda sat there accumulating (all city states were allies already other than the war ones, and I didn't need more units). There wasn't really much worth building either at that point so I just spammed wonders that were useless to me. A wonder with 50% less unhappiness from number of cities, in my 4-city empire with a constant 25-30 happiness? Great, build it.

Super easy. Far more so than 4.

 

[Ralgar]

I'm having a hard time conquering the whole world, or even a continent, like I used to in Civ4. Because I run out of happines

There seems to be two easy strategies:
1. Ignore happiness
Who cares if you stop growing? If you run out of happiness you maxed your population already.
2. Simply raze all conquered cities