Sidenote: this thread probably belongs in general discussion, not S&T discussion...
(Edit: looks like it got moved there while I responding. Oops.)
DIPLOMACY: this feature was practically a joke initially. I was waiting eagerly the forthcoming patches to correct it. It is simply impossible to follow rationality if an AI player suddenly turns against you (without reason).
Actually, there is always reason. It's based on algorithms that attempt to mimic the reasoning human players would use themselves - wanting your land for their expansion, having key wonders, supporting their enemies, getting too far ahead, or just looking sufficiently vulnerable.
The trouble is that it frequently makes diplomacy irrelevant, at least with your nearest neighbours. That is, the concessions you have to make to stay on good terms with them aren't worth the payoff for staying on good terms with them. (Other than having enough military to avoid looking vulnerable.)
The idea was to make the AI less vulnerable to some of the blatant diplomatic exploitation that characterized the dominant strategies of Civ4. It doesn't always work out well, and some of the results are... aesthetically displeasing to me, but the idea itself is an admirable one.
So without this feature, the game became a roulette. There is no strategy if you don't use diplomacy. And subsequently there is no game-plan....
That's, at best, nothing more than a confirmation of how much the diplomatic exploitation aspect of the game dominated the strategy of previous editions. There's still plenty of strategy left in a game where you know that your 'friends' are all willing to stab you in the back if it'll either put them in a better position or keep you from winning the game before they can. It's existed for years in tabletop games where there is no AI to manipulate.
RELIGION: I can understand the developers for having a hard time to cope with religion matters as there is a lot of sensitivity and probably they thought it is better off. However, a strong weapon of humanity is the religion issue. Diplomacy, coalitions, brotherhood and vital tank-thinking. Unfortunately the world is made of religions and this path is extremely important feature.
Civ4 was the first (and, prior to the G&K expansion, *only*) civ game to even take a shot at implementing it, and the series was already a classic well before then. So it's not
that important a feature to gameplay.
HAPPINESS: Off course it's important but still cannot understand when the AI player conquered the whole continent to still have 20+ happiness while I could not follow simply because when I conquered a city or two, to experience -15 happiness and automatically everything halts! I simply cannot follow the logic of this feature...
It's different, is all I can say. I prefer the old model myself, but from watching some Let's Plays on youtube I can safely say that it is entirely manageable and my distaste is just a personal preference. ICS or world conquest while maintaining +20 happiness is entirely doable, with the right social policies & infrastructure.
(Hint: courthouses in conquered cities are important.)
UNITS SWIMMING: Just imagine to invade via sea to another continent and having 35-40 units stand alone, without any protection, swimming! This is hilarious! Let alone the tiredness of using 40 mouse-moves in each round just to move to the next tile....where is transportation?
Take a peak at the actual graphics used. Nobody is 'swimming,' they just removed the logistical juggling of having to build your transports and load up your army - now the transports are just assumed to be there for your troops when necessary. Simpler, yes; but even many the hardcore Civ4 fans complain about how much of a hassle intercontinental invasion is before the Industrial era. Everyone wanted simpler on this front, and while this was maybe going to far you can't actually fault them for taking a shot at giving us what we've been asking for for ages.
(AI still sucks at it, though.)
UNEXPLORED AREAS IN THE YEAR 2080! In the previous civs, the open spaces are fully covered and the game was very competitive.
I've seen plenty of games in Civ2 with a lot of open, unexplored and perfectly settleable space in them even by 2080. Not so much in Civ3 or 4, though I have seen a few rennaissance/early industrial finishes where there was still a lot of empty space left.
How does this happen? It's all in the economic model; if that area costs too much in corruption/maintenance/global-happiness, even the AI will sometimes put off moving there until later. And sometimes 'later' never comes.
CLEVER THINKING: In my last game of civ 4 I had a war with an AI player and in order to invade I had to pass through another enemy player which was also in war with him. Despite the fact that we had rivalry since I made a request to open the borders he immediately gave me a path! That's what I call intelligence!!!!
That's actually not always intelligent. Sometimes you *don't* want the enemy of your enemy to be having an easy time conquering.
This thread now has about three times as much views as all other current unstickied threads on page 1 of the Civ 5 General Discussion forums together - and therefore this thread becomes very difficult to survey.
a rants sub-forum where one can read about the topics they care about the most would be appreciated I'm sure. I love reading a good rant but only on the topics I also rant about.
