Civilization 4: Age of Empires 2 TBS edition

Top US player? Clan, name and rating please. I may not have been a top player (somewhere in the top 5 in Ireland at best) but I *was* rated at 2000 and played for iNsAnE and I see no similarity in Civ4 and AoC whatsoever. Civ1 was one of the first games to introduce the "Rock Scissors Stone" system into RTS gaming, at least 5 years before AOE itself was released.

Also; Nearly every point you make in your argument was also a feature in Civ3 or even Civ2. What on earth are you talking about?

Edit: Drixnak? Never heard of you. Although I did tend to play more with continental and korean players than american.
 
Here is the latest game pack I posted about 3 weeks ago. http://www.bskzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3557&st=0 You'll find the latest strategy I've been using...Goths. There's games in there against 2400s and numerous 2K's. I was 2100+ using goths and aztecs. Insane clan? Last I checked that was a UA rookie clan playing LN. My rating is all 1v1 arabia. If you're an LN player don't even bother asking who I am because LN players are total rookies. Having a 2k rating in LN is meaningless. Every rookie in the world plays LN and michi. As for clans, I've been in tons. Clans were never my thing though.
 
GoRy said:
Civ1 was one of the first games to introduce the "Rock Scissors Stone" system into RTS gaming...
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?

I assume that you mean Rock/Paper/Scissors and as far as I am aware then there was no Rock/Paper/Scissor system in Civ1. They did have the x2 defence value flags against air and fast land units in Civ2 though, but that is not really enough to warrant a Rock/Paper/Scissor classification.

Btw then Civ1 never was and still isn't a RTS, neither is/was Civ 2 and 3 - or 4 for that matter.


On topic then I was worried about the combat system in CIV from the day I first heard about how they were going to do it (1 strength stat, multifigures representing HPs etc.), but was somewhat reassured by the advertised promotions. From the reports from players so far though, it would seem that my apprehensions about the new combat system might have been justified - sadly.

The news about artillery and warships not being able to do any real damage to units without going into 'melee' (!?!) only aggrevates the seemingly unbalanced problem of defensive strength - as it currently is in the game.

Nothing a future patch(or mod) couldn't fix though - time for some lobbying(or modding) :)
 
To whoever said there were too many units - yes, there are. But the extra units problem isn't on the side of 'pults and Arty, but on the side of the ancient/medieval units - Archers/Spears/Mounted is all you really need, with MAYBE one sword-based foot unit.

Macemen and Axemen are poor jokes in regard to history. Flak (in C3C) and SAM Infantry are the same - "AA" should be a promotion available to some late game units, not a different unit entirely.

As I said elsewhere - I'm no fan of R-P-S. SOME "against other units" bonuses are reasonable. But generally speaking, I think the bonuses-based system of Civ IV, is a huge step in the right direction. Is there room for improvement? Of course there is. It's entirely true that bonuses slant a bit too much toward defending - Woodsman and Guerilla should have their bonuses on BOTH attacking and defending in the right terrain type, not just defending! There SHOULD be a unit adept at attacking city - PROBABLY swordsmen. (Knights require large open fields, spears aren't so good when you don't have room for formation maneuvers, and arrows are bad when the enemy has plenty of cover, so swords would probably be what's best)

As for the strength of defensive units - I think it's CLOSE to right. The problem is not in the strength of defensive unit : It's with the EASE with which you can spam out defenders in a city. Having to bring in a 6-unit stack to swarp down a 2-defenders town is no core; having to bring in a 30-unit stack to take out a 10-defenders town is the problem.

I put forward thus the following proposal for a patch : That EVERY unit in a city beyond the second (maybe third if you've built a castle) causes +1 unhappiness and +1 disease. That way you can STILL fight long drawn-out battles over your cities - but you cannot ever possibly maintain oversize garrisons in every city.

This also encourages establishing defense lines outside your cities, and using fortresses (especially if they are given ZOC).
 
I have to disagree with the premise of this thread. I've played two full games through now, and I might have agreed during the first hours of the initial game, before I realized I was not playing civ1/2/3 any more and some of the elements of play really had changed, especially combat.

You can take well defended cities without wasting a billion troops and without having a massive tech advantage. You have to bring the right equipment and do it properly. You need artillery not only to bombard to bring down the defense bonus, but to do collateral damage! You will need to sacrifice your artillery in doing so (though the various types of arty. units in the game have withdrawal chances like cavalry/armor that you can boost with experience), but you have to just accept the losses if you want to defeat cities.

How did I learn this? Simply really, the AI owned me. I was way ahead technologically from an AI player and when he declared war on me and advanced a ton of troops ranging from knights to grenadiers I was pretty confident with my three newly built machine guns and some cavalry defending the city. I let him roll up to the city at the chokepoint between our empires fully expecting him to fail miserably. Unfortunately he had a ton of catapults bombarded and then wore me down with collateral damage and even though his troops were inferior there were just so many of them. I probably ended up with at least a 6/1 kill ratio because of the technological advantage, but he won in the end. Before seeing that I was also frustrated with combat, but now I understand how to play better (of course, while I was watching my city get rolled over I was pretty frustrated).

I can agree with the idea of having forts give a ZOC, but I can live without ZOC. Since units can't use your roads you normally have plenty of opportunity to attack an approaching army. The lack of ZOC means that you can't just rely on defensive units. You need to have a mixed force to defend and counter attack (especially when the AI sends raiders to destroy your towns that too so long to grow).

Overall, I'm very happy with the new combat system now that I understand it fairly well. I think the frustration probably arises from playing this came as if it were one of the earlier iterations. If a technique isn't working for you (even if it worked in a previous title), it may simply be that that tactic isn't viable anymore and there are other tactics to achieve the same goal now. Don't just assume the game is flawed because you haven't found a strategy that works yet.
 
Eyes Of Night said:
ZOC means zones of control. In other words, if I control 1 tile, you can't walk past me directly by my tile. You have to go around me. You can't just run right by me into my city. It added in a whole new way of defending, and you didn't have any need for these ridiculous amounts of defensive bonuses. Having ZOC early on was huge in early warfare. Now...well...just run around and ummm...enjoy those huge defense bonuses as you run from tree to jungle to hill and i chase you waitnig for you to walk onto a non defense bonus land. At least in civ2 I could keep you from running into my base on top of defense terrain.
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dude, you say you were a top player at aoc in the US?

may i ask what your zone name was?? i played aoe, aok, aoc competitvely for many years........

What was your name?

ps. i dont agree with you regarding your remarks on civIV, i'm tierd of all the retards that just want the same **** (civ 1, civ 2, civ 3....) rebuilt with new graphics...............

If you want to play the same game, then dont buy civ 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is the freakn point of the same game built over 15 years with just slightly better graphix!!!!!!

I for one like the new concepts from civ4 and i think it is too early to run rants out of your mouth like you know what the freak is going on!
 
"CIV has purposely made war in impossibility. I can see no value to ever going to war unless you can gain a quick edge over a totally inferior enemy and even then the marginal cities you gain will not help you much."

I really must be playing a different game than some people here. War is absolutely possible and it a viable option. However war is now more than just "build huge stack and mow down AI who can't handle huge stack". The enemy actually can defend itself now and you can't expect to just roll over the entire map barely loosing a unit like you could do in some of the earlier titles. War is now a proper option in your arsenal of nationhood. You have to make damn sure you're going to war for a good reason, that you have a good plan and realistic goals ("I'll just roll over the whole map" is no longer a realistic goal). You have to time it right. It won't be over in three turns either. Before you go to war you have to check out his cities, examine their defenses, build and appropriate army to counter them, figure out how you will bring the army to bear since your opponent usually isn't just going to sit there and let you roll up to his city. You will also have to figure out how to deal with his counter attacks and raiders. You have to consider the diplomatic situation since you might end up with a multi-front war.

Some of the complaints in this thread, like not being able to take cities, or artillery slowing down conquest, really lead me to believe the actual complaint is more along the lines of "I'm not being as successful in warfare as I assumed I would be". This isn't a snipe at anyone; we all get frustrated when things don't go our way. Just take a moment to reexamine your criticism and see if it really is criticism of the game itself or criticism of the strategies you have adopted that aren't working fully.

One complaint touched on having too many unit types for such a quick game, well I'm hoping that's what epic games are for. I plan to start one as my next game.
 
I agree that this is an EMPIRE BUILDING game, not a designed premier wargame as the OP would have you believe. I'm glad that military has nothing to do with the score, as it should be in an EMPIRE BUILDING game, it should be about what you do/did to increase your EMPIRE structure. Gaining more cities, gaining more culture, increasing your population, increasing happiness and health, yes, those are things worth scoring in an EMPIRE BUILDING game.
He's just one of those minority MP's that didn't get the game HE wanted it to be. It's a proven fact, poll after poll that MP isn't any majority of any game, it's always been the majority of the single player experience that has sold the majority of these strategy games. Especially the Civilization series.

If it's AOE II TBS, great, because I've always hated RTS games, don't care for kiddie clickfests. I like "thinking MANS games". ;)

CIV IV is a lot of fun. And it's good to see that one can't easily exploit the AI anymore with settler rushing or even rushing their cities with just a handful of units. Yep, now you definitely have more strategy you have to work out, you have to use more finesse and you have to prepare and wait for the optimum moment to strike.

The AI is much improved, especially the aggressive ai setting now. Barbarians are harder and can even start building their own empire, that's pretty kewl.

ZOC was a major exploit in many ways. Using diplomats to slow/stop the advancement of an opponent/ai I wouldn't call too strategic. Having to build a wall of units is the correct way. And the terrain and unit and city bonuses now are just excellent. Makes taking a city much more challenging than it ever was before.

And besides if you're playing a quick game on a tiny map, you aren't playing Civilization anyways. If you are playing less than HUGE PANGEA, you're just playing a kiddie game. ;)
 
I agree with everything "Oda Nobunaga" says.

I have no problems building armies and conquering in Civ IV - it just takes a bit more thought - and it's way more fun - mostly because you do sometimes have to actually think. Combat in Civ3 never felt right to me and ZOC in Civ2 was way overdone.

I love the single strength value and the way the different modifiers work. The system is more realistic, you have way more strategic options (and/or chances to fail if you don't use your units wisely) and you have to THINK.
 
Ravinhood said:
I agree that this is an EMPIRE BUILDING game, not a designed premier wargame as the OP would have you believe.
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I absolutely agree. Civ IV is not a wargame and anybody who treats it as one is going to have problems. As a builder/science player this game suits my play much better than a military player, so I haven't had as many problems adapting.

While I understand the difficulty of previous strategies not working the same, I feel this game is far closer to the type of game Civ needs to be, it's not just a rehash of the previous versions. I will finish my first game tonight, and I believe that the game is so deep, that I only scratched the surface of everything it has to offer. I will be playing this game a lot more than I played Civ III.
 
This is a very interesting discussion. Makes me wish I had the game.

Still, I have a few comments. First, I agree that fortresses should have a ZOC. Not civII style, but a civIII style ZOC (damage units moving past it). It totally makes sense that a unit with a solid base of defense could raid and harass a nearby enemy that's making itself vulnerable. But then, you should also be able to bombard the fortress defense bonus away, and I'm not sure you can do that either.

Otherwise, I like to comment that rock/paper/scissors is not exclusive to the RTS genre. In fact, I find it mildly insulting that it's referred to as being a RTS concept. In my experience, the r/p/s concept is central to almost every good game I know of, computer or otherwise. The old system of attack/defense values was also flat unrealistic. Every battle in history the attacker either had overwelming firepower or was at a significant disadvantage. The few exceptions to this rule that I see in civ4 make perfect sense (cavalry get their strength from the charge, not from hiding behind fortifications).
 
Yeah Eyes about a year into AOC most of the good players (cobra, even, doink and so on, 21++) left for various real life reasons leaving the more relaxed, mature players who enjoy nomad more. At 21 im one of the 5 or 6 youngest remaining members, althought personally I moved on to AoM and could never break the 2000 barrier (most I managed was 1960 or so) due to everyone whoring loki, then set, then atlantis while I went thor, isis and zeus to avoid the trendwhoring and did quite well.

I did have a look at some of your games and you are a good player though, I also remember BsK.

And No I never played LN myself, didn't enjoy it. Was pure 1v1/2v2 rm, mostly with brits, aztecs and mongols.
 
Gottschalk said:
Historically the rule for attacking was you needed 3:1 on your enemy to prevail. This is probably true in CIV except that military units move so slowly and have to stop so often that is difficult to conquer enemies in an efficient manner. I would not mind needing such an overwhelmingly coordinated army if there was the time to properly conquer others.

Things like catapults and artillery slow the game down. This game has too many units for such a condensed amount of turns and the fact that units must constantly stop makes waging war time consuming in the extreme. All units should be able to attack and move, they should be separate counters. There should be a penalty for being unprepared for a war and not collecting proper intelligence.

CIV has purposely made war in impossibility. I can see no value to ever going to war unless you can gain a quick edge over a totally inferior enemy and even then the marginal cities you gain will not help you much. A far better strategy is to hope you get vast swaths of land by chance and have smart settler placement to block other civs so you can build more than 5 cities one day, down the road.

It is far too easy to brainlessly defend your empire. I suppose that instead of assaulting cities you can simply pillage terrain rendering their land useless and reducing them as a threat but there is something to be said about taking cities for their added value. Few empires desired to sadistically ruin the lands of their enemies (except for salting the earth) but wanted to fold those production centers into their own empire.

I am not a warmonger in the game or in any Civ game but in all the other Civs there was a fair balance. The guy off in Lala land who would still be defending the spearman in the 1950's as he cranks out more offshore platforms and every other contraption a city could hold gets steamrolled by an opponent that may be behind but has a standing army. This is only fair. There is a penalty for neglecting your army but in CIV he can just upgrade his men to the latest robot with laser eyes with a +1000% city defense who can hold off 100 riflemen.

I realize that a player, untouched, on a big island will always have an advantage but there needs to be a balance between strategies. Since marginal cities do not give on a decent advantage conquest is far too costly in terms of keeping up with the Jones’.

There has never been a successful empire that hasn't waged and won wars. There are examples of neutral states that are very prosperous but they are not technological and commercial leaders unto themselves but function as a crossroads between other true empires that have the greater output.

The best strategy now is to grow your capital as fat as possible without unhappiness then crank out a handful of settlers to found a handful of cities with walls and archers defending as your workers work the terrain in five seconds and you simply build buildings and research tech until you win. Forget warfare, if you have a tiny more modern army held up in your cities you can win against 10:1 odds and you'll be able to produce the newer, better units in 2 turns anyway. So your enemy, who has conquered a civ already and is twice as big as you will never be a threat despite his seasoned army and superior organization and tactics.

Yes catapults work wonders but if the enemy has cats in his cities, as the OP said, he massacres your stack of doom. Why does everyone act like SoD is a bad thing? It represents a huge ass army coming to kick your teeth in. In reality, most wars were fought with a SoD. The exception would be wars like WWI and later when the front lines were more spread out to prevent fast moving units from encircling your forces. When Meade and Lee met at Gettysburg they threw two SoDs at each other, from a national perspective. (I know you can say that Meade used arty to kill Picket’s SoD but shhh)

I'm not saying I want cities to be so easy to take that aggression is a must nor am I saying that I think big empires should be a must. I like that you can get by with less cities but the fact is that these things are too extreme. The military requires too much micromanagement for the time scale and by the time you've conquered a civ or two there's 100 turns left.

I am a builder by nature so when I first played the game I thought this thing was heaven but as I have tried other tactics I am seeing that the game is severely flawed. You have a choice between guns or butter, it is the ancient trade off and is simply not represented in the game.
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Grr! Me want smash more cities in! Game makes think before war? Noooooo!

To continue in a less facetious tone....your "civ4 war = impossible" rant is ludicrous. Civ4 has finally made war interesting, in that it is strategic, yet still very rewarding. Does it require more commitment to create multiple stacks of mixed arms to approach a target city? Yes, it does. But defensive bonuses are hardly what you claim them to be - anything can be countered with the appropriate units/promotions/artillary. In fact, until the extremely late game, the edge rests with the attacker, as they possess many more interesting traits/promotions that can be used to their advantage.

Another thing I love about Civ4 is that war can be strategically useful for a change - since the AI is much better at building, and cities aren't razed nearly as much in the taking - those cities can turn around and become incredibly potent for you right after resistance!!! My taken cities are typically some of my most powerful Space Ship builder cities late game...you get a much higher reward to offset a slightly higher skill necessary to conduct warfare.

One question - what difficulty are you playing on? In higher ones, you are not going to have a tech lead by hanging behind your walls and twiddling your thumbs. The AI attackers are smart, they will raze your improvements like mad, take your workers, and force you to have an active military. Meanwhile they have developed cities on their own right, and will keep up in tech just fine. You have to use strategic diplomacy and warfare (and this game makes diplomacy truly strategic, which is in itself an infinite improvement) to counter-act those types of things.

What this whole post boils down to is the fact that you miss achieving Conquest victory by somewhere around 300 AD or whatever. That latent frustration seems fairly clear in your last paragraph. But there's a few things to consider:
1. You just started playing the game, give it awhile before you see how good you are at war once all of the unit relationships become more ingrained
2. Just turn off every other victory condition except conquest, there's no time limit, and you can go nuts!
3. Remember that not everyone is only interested in playing conquest, and warfare for the purposes of other conditions has been vastly improved (aka you need to wage it sometimes to win the space race, or to get enough votes in diplomacy, etc.)

I don't know why you start off your post with the reasonable suggestion that you can't tie everything down to historicism, and then give a historical justification for the SoD. It is well balanced now, with attacking possible yet not one-sided either (you railed against brainless defending, but brainless attacking - aka pre Civ4 - is no fun either).

Your final statement then goes on to contradict everything that you said! You said "there's no choice between guns and butter in this game", but your entire post was about how you don't have to use guns whatsoever, and you can just hang out, pursue butter ("I can't believe its not tech!"), and then win that way.

The point is that the new system feels more like chess - less quantity, much more quality - and that I think the frustrations you and others are feeling have to do with one small particular playing style that you game to the game expecting. I don't want people trying to weigh whether or not they want the game based on hearing accounts liked that from such a narrowed perspective.
 
Bwahaha, my Redcoats joined with catapults have been stomping through Mongol city after Mongol city :)

Catapults are the way forwad removing city defenses.
 
I'd think Rock-Scissor-Paper was truely introduced by Panzergeneral. And CIV indeed has aopted many concepts from PG2.
Civ1 was a "draw numbers out of the hat" principe. Civ2 only a slight modification (combat rounds). Civ3 a bit more complex, but still nothing like R/S/P.

RTS have invented nothing except for right-click movement and the time pressure - everything else was simply stolen from games like Civ, PG and Warlords.
Yes, TBS is almost exclusively CIV today - but for sure not because TBS are so innovative.
It's just that a generation of PS gamers and FPS addicts cannot cope with the need of thinking, planning ahead and the need to learn that there is not ONE way to win.
 
Over at Apolyton EyesOfNight under another dogtag posted the same thread starter and Aeson did a lovely answer which I think people would enjoy here.

See second post - follow link:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141616

Re: Civilization 4: Age of Empires 2 TBS edition Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations


quote:
Originally posted by StarLightDeath
When I first started playing this game I thought it was the greatest game ever. I was lost in all the new terrain improvements and the new unit upgrades and all the bells and whistles. As I play it more and more now I realize that it is just make up on a cheap whore. Civilization 4 is in fact Age of Empires 2 Turn Based Edition. Let me explain before I become irreversably mauled by a horde of fanboys.


I can see how you are confusing TBS and RTS clearly now. You're asking for time to state your case which is contained in the same post.

quote:
First the combat system in civ4 is very different in that there is no longer a defense value, it is just a general strength value that is modified by upgrades and defensive bonuses.


Quite true. Run the math on the combinations possible yet? Puts A/D to shame.

quote:
In addition you now have a rock, paper scissors system, just like in AOC where you have the counter system.


Rock, paper, scissors, true. Just like AOC though... not really.

quote:
The problem comes in with the fact that Civ4 isn't AOC...obvious right?


You begin to agree.

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Well the counter system in AOC worked because AOC had this thing called unit micro; it was a god damn TBS game. You had spears being microed against scouts, archers against spears, skirms against archers, etc. Well in civ4 there isn't that, the unit that is attacking automatically attacks the unit that counters it in the defending stack making the counter system completely mindless.


You've agreed, the r/p/c in CIV isn't just like in AOC.

As for the stack and counter stuff, the unit attacks the stack, and the best defender against that unit defends. It may or may not be the "counter". It may seem like a technicality, but it's not. Because the counter isn't guaranteed to be there. Thus the real military strategy is in designing an offense or defense that won't be countered, or countered as much, by your enemy. Reading your opponent, setting them up, and having the upper hand in intelligence plays a huge role in that.

Though micro definitely isn't completely absent. It just works differently than in RTS. You have to think ahead, place units, and deal with the consequences of those placements. Rather than just being the quickest (with the lowest latency) and most accurate clicker. Even some of that does seep in at the end/start of turns in simul.

quote:
In addition we lack the features that made TBS...well, strategy. We don't have ZOC, we don't have offensive values and defensive values. We have just one flat rate with insane defensive values awarded to units in cities. You're talking 25% for fortification, 60% for city bonus, 20% for each city defense upgrade on archers, and we aren't even talking about a city with walls and on a hill. Obviously if you do the math you'll see that the city raider upgrade isn't **** compared to the defensive bonus.


So make them come out and play or lose their economy. If they sit in their city, let them sit in a city with no improvements. I wonder who gets to Cats first? (Ooops, skipping ahead.)

Or hit them quick somewhere they aren't prepared for. Or overbuild military and come with numbers they can't handle. Options abound. I've taken lots of cities in MP, not just early rushes either, and I'm just a lowly SP lifer.

quote:
In comes the catapult, the unit we all screamed was useless in civ3. Now it does collateral damage to stacks, and it just happens to be the ONLY way to defeat a stack.


Not really. Overloading a specific unit type kills "counter" stacks too. You just sacrifice enough to get through those relatively few counters and then the rest of the stack folds like a deck of cards. It's in turned countered by an overloaded stack of that particular counter... which is in turn countered... and yes, in some cases the true combine arms stack is the best.

quote:
Are you with me? Yes, that means you can't take any properly defended cities until you get construction which is about half way through a typical 150 turn limit game on Quick.


Ack! 75 turns to Construction? It can definitely take that long (or longer), but it certainly doesn't have to take anywhere near that long.

quote:
So now you have a very obvious "strategy" evolving which I like to call the stack and cat. Just throw together a mass of units and march right on in.


Mmmmm... free XP! That's what a thoughtless stack (in composition and/or application) ends up being when it invades a smart defender.

quote:
Oh, and don't forget to use a "combined arms" force in order to "counter" their units; according to some of the beta testers this is where the real skill lies. So what happens if, god forbid, the defender decides he'll throw catapults in too? Well...don't bother taking the city. Try what's called a "choke" and ummm...you know...choke his economy. Real effective.


Nothing wrong with options. Combined arms works well in some cases, not so well in others. Same with "chokes". Lots of little stacks make Cats much less useful, so there's your micro against Cat heavy defenses.

quote:
Basically you have a really neat looking combat system with all these fancy upgrades that really do nothing. Defense is king in this game except very early on which brings me to my next point.


I've seen some Sledgehammers that worked very well. (And some early rushes that fell flat on their face.)

quote:
Rushing...the hallmark of RTS games. While this isn't a bad thing, the difference is that in RTS games you have this thing called economy that slows down your rush. In Civ4 you have this thing called luck of the strategic resources that determines whether you can rush, defend a rush, or die to a rush.


There is a valid point here actually. There is quite a bit of random factors into gameplay. (Some would say that's what gives the civ series it's rather endless replayability.)

It can be eliminated completely if desired though. Map scrips are customizable, and if you want the RTS every game with every unit play, just write a little script to make sure everyone gets the same resources or start. (Not sure if Mirror does this or not already with resources?)

quote:
In addition, without ZOC you can't play map control or fortify that weak warrior on a hill and hope to defeat a chariot. Basically just hope you have the resources to stop the rush, or hope you have the resources to do a rush yourself.


ZOC isn't there of course. There are resourceless counters to rushes though still. As you've already pointed out, defensive bonuses really stack up for Archers in cities. (Though you're very likely to get "choked", which you seem to think is not a valid option thankfully, so I can ignore it right?)

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Since expansion is really difficult you can't try to outexpand the guy. Your options are so limited it's ridiculous.


You can certainly expand "poorly" or "well". To extreme degrees actually. Not only can you expand faster or slower, but you can expand yourself into economic ruin if you do it wrong.

quote:
I can't put into words how idiotic I feel the developers are. What were you thinking?


Since I had some input in the developement... thanks... very constructive... "No ZOC or A/D, game is broken even though I've enjoyed playing it. You're idiots.", check. Needless to say, the little insult is the main reason I decided to respond. I don't mind if you don't like the game, but insulting the people who worked on it, and trying to back up that insult with a poor understanding of the game mechanics is too choice of a target.

As for what I think personally, the game made great strides towards eliminating "in your face" strategies. It's subtle. You have to work it. It's not longer "get tech X, build/upgrade to unit Y, win" every time out as so much of civ has been in the past. I do wish the elimination of micro hadn't gone so far, but as someone very firmly planted at the extreme of the issue (with my preference at least, thankfully not with my reaction to it), I don't expect a game to be designed for me.

quote:
You got rid of things that make up the strategy in TBS games (ZOC, offensive and defensive values, map control through terrain) and then combined it with features from AOC (rushing, counter units) but without the skill that made those kinds of things fun to end up with this bland mass that makes gaining any sort of lead on your opponent impossible.


ZOC and A/D are gone. I would prefer they were there, but not because they leave a strategic hole relatively speaking. What replaced them is much more deep and allows much more variation. A/D has nothing on promotions. ZOC can't make up the difference, especially when r/p/c and stack vs collateral are increasing the gap.

I do wish it would have combined instead of substituted...

But saying ZOC and A/D are what makes a strategy game... just ask yourself this, are ZOC and A/D in Chess? It's possible to have strategy without them.

And that you can't figure out how to gain a lead on your opponents only shows your lack of ability (in relation to who you are playing). If you're playing against Fried... you would still be very good of course.

quote:
The point system is huge in MP play. Points determine who wins the game when the turns run out. Well the way they set it up makes it so that even the worst player in the world will still stay in the game.


Only if you're not much better than the worst player in the world. I've been in 100 turn games where one player took out 2 or 3 others and won on points. I've been in games where one player took out 2 or 3 others and was still trailing in points. Then there are games that are actual Conquests (especially 1v1, but even in 4-5 player FFAs it happens). Then there are games where no one can take out anyone else, and it's determined by points. It's... variable.

quote:
Yes, that's right, all you have to do is build a few cities, throw out some workers and throw them on automate, and put units your ciites and you will hang at least half way through the game until the guy gets catapults.


Again with halfway through the game with Catapults? 75 turns. What are you doing? Anyways... that guy sitting in his cities is asking to be made insignificant. You don't even need the Catapults because economically improvements (+ pillaged gold) > no improvements . Who really even cares if he survives if he's a non-factor?

And automated Workers?

quote:
Why? Because military has no bearing on points.


It does if you raze someone's city. Both for them and you, as your shared borders are now yours to expand more freely. If you eliminate them, it has the most absolute bearing on their points possible, and is going to open up a lot of room for you. (And when in games where it's not razing, it's transfering points.)

quote:
In addition, culture and city size are huge point gainers. So not only can you not expand much faster than the other guy, but you can't kill him through military and now he can even win just by sitting back and growing. FUN! "But there's so many options to improve your terrain, it's just so 'deep'!" Deep seems to be the word I hear alot, and I admit, I thought it was deep too. But when you get right down to it, you don't need more than maybe 1 or 2 farms to grow big. All you need is towns to keep up the upkeep and build a wonder or something. Hell, do whatever you want as long as you defend properly you'll stay in the game. So really the depth of the economy isn't really so deep after all.


How can you possibly defend properly with a "do whatever you want" economy backing it? I don't care how you defend, if your economy is 1/2 the other guy, you're almost certainly screwed (be it military or economy).

quote:
I find the game fun right now only because I am still trying to find that way to get ahead...but as time goes on and I realize there really is no way to get ahead I'm going to realize that there is no point to playing this game competitively multiplayer.


So you admit you haven't realized yet that there is no point to the game, yet are making the point that there is no point to the game. Getting ahead of yourself? Trying to talk yourself out of the fun you admit to have been having with the game?

quote:
Maybe I'm wrong and there's some secret to this game that adds all the depth and strategy in the world, but I just don't see it.


It's possible that the game will take more than 6 days to figure out. We can hope, right?
Click to expand...

:goodjob:
 
The original poster has some good points imo. I don't know if Civ4 is trying to be an RTS game and frankly I don't care, I don't play RTS. I don't mind if they 'borrow' ideas from other games as long as they're good ideas.

I actually think they have the right idea with the bonuses and the combat system per se is definitely an improvement over previous games. However, the defense in Civ4 is favored to such an extreme warfare has become a joke! I just finished the most ridiculous game (noble, aggr. AI, aggr. barbs, continents, high sealevel). I was the romans and all 7 civs landed on the same continent with only 3 iron sources. Unfortunately my immediate neighbours, the mongols and the english, got two of them right by their capital while I didn't even have copper. Now in a situation like this in Civ3 I would've rushed one of the other civs with archers but in Civ4 that's simply not possible because you would likely need something like 20 archers to defeat a city with 3 archers defending (and your archers would get hammered on their way to the city). Before you can make an army of that size they will have axemen and swordsmen. It didn't help that the english had ivory as well. So I decided to pursue a peaceful victory but in 760 AD the english attacked, immediately followed by the mongols and the spanish. I had 5 cities, 2 of which were very week tundra cities which were quickly taken by the english. Before I could research longbowmen, the mongols swordsmen had taken antium, my flood plain scientific city. So I was left with Rome(9) and Pisae(5, pathetic desert city with hardly any production) which I defended with longbowmen for the duration of the game which happened to last until 1973. In all that time I was constantly at war with at least 3 civs simultaneously without a single year of peace. All my land was pillaged and I had no ressources. All I had was longbowmen and catapults. Until the AI got knights I pretty much never lost a unit. I think I lost 3 while the AI lost at least 100. With knights I probably lost 1/15 battles. It wasn't until the english got redcoats and the americans got infantry that my longbowmen finaly succumbed. At one point I had a level 8 (!) longbowman which was all but indestructable. In all the AI lost 243 units to my two cities. I lost something like 40 longbowmen and some suicide catapults but I think about 25 of those 40 were in the last 10-15 turns where I got manhandled by infantry and redcoats. I was one turn away from researching gunpowder, with which I'm reasonable sure I would've survived to the end of the game.

Simply put, this should not be possible! I survived massive stacks and repeated catapult suicides with taking almost no losses! I haven't played multiplayer yet but I can imagine how frustrating it must be... Warfare in Civ4 has been reduced to simple pillaging.

It's hard to imagine that this game has actually been beta-tested but it's not the first time I see this phenomenon. I think sometimes a lot of beta-testers are so flattered or proud of being 'picked' for testing that they come to think of themselves as some sort of company employees and becomes hopeless fanboys of the game, unable or unwilling to provide critisism where it is needed. This is especially true when you read the previews written by testers giving endless praise to the game without any critisism whatsoever. This isn't meant as an attempt to flame btw, I simply think it's part of basic human behavior and it's not the first time I've seen something like this.
 
Doc Tsiolkovski said:
I'd think Rock-Scissor-Paper was truely introduced by Panzergeneral. And CIV indeed has aopted many concepts from PG2.
Civ1 was a "draw numbers out of the hat" principe. Civ2 only a slight modification (combat rounds). Civ3 a bit more complex, but still nothing like R/S/P.
Click to expand...

I LOVED the combat in panzergeneral (at least in the first game), I always wished that civ would adopt it but I guess it will never happen. I especially liked the way fighter escorts worked and the rugged defense. It was perfectly balanced in my opinion. Its only flaw was that many of the units were too weak compared to their price so you usually just had a bunch of the same unit in each category.
 
Lorteungen: I hope Firaxis reads your post. Either the AI sucks at attacking or the defense is too high (which it is, btw).

I see you were at war for a long time - was that intentional or where you not able to get peace?
 
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