Civilization 5

[Skallagrimson]

All I really want from a new Civ game is an improved AI for warfare. Heck, I'd settle for one that doesn't just park all it's unit's in cities and wait for me to destory them with collateral damage.

There is a certain level of predictability to them, though they have some additional strategies they employ:

If they have horse units, they always send them in to pillage, even if they ought to know I have 4+ spear/pike type units and the 4 gold they pick up from pillaging a farm will cost them their unit. I have literally bled an a/i to death just by letting them waste all their resources on horse units, refuse to give a treaty when they see the folly of it, and then since they're the aggressor they get more war weary faster, and when they are economically crippled, that's when all the units I queue-swapped into 1 turn apiece from every city, go into action, and just roll them up like a joint.

If they have a number of catapults defending the city, they tend to use about half of them on the first stack that approaches the city, and all the rest on the second stack. So I always send in two stacks of obsolete units I was going to delete anyway, just to make them expend their cats, then the real stack goes in and faces far less collateral damage while laying siege.

The big advantage the game gives to the AIs to make up for their tactical stupidity, is unrealistically huge bonuses of culture. I get so angry I could spit when I do all the hard work of taking a city, and then some AI city 10 squares away, which isn't even a capitol or a holy city, culture-conquers it out from under me within a few turns. WHEN IN HISTORY DID THAT EVER HAPPEN? When Alexander conquered Persia did it suddenly go to India due to their monumental pile of culture there? Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.

A strategy game like this has SO much potential, but they throw it all away making it a cartoony mess of unrealistic hoo-ha.

Maybe for realism a whole new game needs to be built from scratch... by another company?

 

[Skallagrimson]

I know it sounds radical, but maybe move away from the tile-based game and more into a fluid system, where your people scatter about the fields farming and such, and small towns build into mighty cities slowly. Or, perhaps a system where people abandon cities that happen to be in poor climate zones, for example, and relocate on their own. Maybe moving away from the concept of distinct units and instead using a combat system where you have some "real" number of soldiers of varying types fighting together against another "real"-numbered army...say you send 15,000 swordsmen and 8,000 archers and mixed light infantry along with 40 catapults to take a city.

A quantum leap in realism could be had if a civ could produce weaponry as a build-queue item, and then either have the choice of levying an untrained army instantly from the city's population to wield those weapons, OR to train them over time in a training-type building (and for realism there could be different ones, such as a drill field for ancient and medieval infantry, or a target range for modern infantry, or a flight simulator for air units, etc.), which would cost coins, population, and time but not "hammers" (a ridiculous concept that if I have several mines near a small city it can still blast out a unit per turn indefinitely, OR if I have a vast array of farmland, and a gigantic population, I can't build a unit in less than 1,000 years because there are no mines or watermills! WTH kind of "realism" is that?) The realism there is that to build weapons you need resources, but to build the TROOPS for them you need population. The strategy would be to have a production city with iron produce the weaponry, caravan/freight (a civ2 concept) those weapons to a large population agrarian city, and then train up the units.

Numbers of soldiers would also be a perfect way to describe the "health" of unit, but they should also have a morale factor for a "happy" concept similar to cities. An army can get demoralized from repeated defeats, long marches, low pay (which should be slider-adjustable), no "pillage" opportunities (and the other adult activities that used to motivate ancient and medieval soldiers almost more than coins... ahem...), etc. At a high level an army should have concepts similar to a city in its care and feeding. Its "population" (troop strength) can grow or diminish (desertions, KIA, etc.), its upkeep costs can vary depending on the morale you want to maintain along with its level of training and weaponry (which can be cheap if they're just cannon-fodder to be expended in an assault, but may grow huge if you want it to become an elite fighting force), and so on.

Additionally, ranged combat needs a complete overhaul. Catapults never charged in a suicide attack against a city. Ever. The concept of this in the game is idiotic and simplistic, lazy programming. What catapults DID was get set up, relatively stationary, at a firing position, and open fire. Either they were effective or they weren't, depending on accuracy, the strength of the defensive bulwarks, level of training on the part of the crews, etc. The only way defending armies could take out *real* catapults was to charge THEM. And then hope no one was defending said catapults (and they typically were). Similar concept for archery: they would shoot at a distance to infantry and mounted units and try to wear those units down in KIA before those units could catch up to them in a charge, after which the melee combat is fairly one-side in favor of the melee or mounted units. But it was entirely possible for them to do their work WITHOUT MOVING into the square being attacked. Just open fire and stay put. Is that so difficult to program? What have these Firaxis people been drinking? An archer can't fire at an axeman without running to occupy his ground after firing?

Anyway, I don't know. Sometimes I give up trying to "Monday morning quarterback" the Civ games, and I'm seriously considering making one of my own, to compete with both Civ and Total War. It's time for a third competitor in this very very lonely market space. All I need is game programmers, and I hear they're a dime a dozen (LOL)...

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

...Large empires would be inherently less stable than small ones, causing a balancing factor to expansion and allowing late-game upsets when the guy in first place gets his empire splintered by rebellion.

Would this not nullify someone trying to win a domination vic? If playing a Huge map on Prince+, I imagine domination would be next to impossible if size of empire is a factor in destablization. I agree it would add a degree of difficulty... but not one that I would be willing to spend hours upon hours trying to tangle with. Maybe they can have an option to turn it off?

A quantum leap in realism could be had if a civ could produce weaponry as a build-queue item...

I don't think I would bother playing a game so grossly over-detailed. I have little enough time to play epic games as it is. Adding all this into warfare would make a warmongering game take weeks to complete for me. I guess for those who have a little more time to play, it may be great. But I hope civ 5 doesn't over-detail everything.

EDIT: Btw, Skallagrimson, I think it takes quite a few experienced people to make a game like Civ IV. But as someone with C++ programming exp. and a few game design classes under my belt, I wouldn't be against helping to create a game such as what you mention. Just need a few dozen more people! (3D modelers, more programmers, etc) I say we go for it tho!

 

[Landmonitor]

Additionally, ranged combat needs a complete overhaul. Catapults never charged in a suicide attack against a city. Ever. The concept of this in the game is idiotic and simplistic, lazy programming. What catapults DID was get set up, relatively stationary, at a firing position, and open fire. Either they were effective or they weren't, depending on accuracy, the strength of the defensive bulwarks, level of training on the part of the crews, etc. The only way defending armies could take out *real* catapults was to charge THEM. And then hope no one was defending said catapults (and they typically were). Similar concept for archery: they would shoot at a distance to infantry and mounted units and try to wear those units down in KIA before those units could catch up to them in a charge, after which the melee combat is fairly one-side in favor of the melee or mounted units. But it was entirely possible for them to do their work WITHOUT MOVING into the square being attacked. Just open fire and stay put. Is that so difficult to program? What have these Firaxis people been drinking? An archer can't fire at an axeman without running to occupy his ground after firing?

The rest of what you said about morale and levying troops is a good idea, although we don't really know how many *people* an axeman represents, and if you want to build based on tons of farms, build a granary and use slavery. Further, as to training time, my axemen often take 100 years or more to build!! That should be enough time to get them trained!

As to the above passage, I think they solved the catapult issue well. Now you don't just need to build 20 catapults, supplement them with some defensive units and cavalry, and go redline every city, never losing anything. Now, at least the catapults need to be replaced to prevent a runaway war (as opposed to sipmly needing to bring up more garrison units). It may not be entirely realistic, but its workable. Think of it as wearing out catapults/breaking them (I'm sure they needed to be repaired in real life, although we likely will never know stuff like that unless they wrote it down) or using valuable ammunition and expendable parts that need to be replaced... that is until you get trebuchets, which just DON'T DIE!!

As to the archers, they do fire, and then the axemen charge. The archers don't keep firing because the axemen don't let them. I just wish the longbowmen had a short sword or something instead of using their bow as as club. And as to archers having to move into the square, that is perfectly reasonable when you consider the range of a bow and the size of a square.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Three dimensions of troop morale management:

1) Religious fanaticism: "Crusade" or "Jihad" or what have you, a holy cause of righteousness to cut low the heathen scum enemy! Great Prophets should be able to blast units to 100% in this dimension, or a mobile "priest" (similar to a missionary) should be able to boost them up a few notches per turn.

2) Personality leadership: points improve when victories accumulate, or if the unit spends one turn listening to your "motivating speech". Points decrease from defeats, unwise tactical and strategic decisions, and long periods of time with no "pep talks".

3) Appeal to self-interest: points improve with pay increases and "plunder" (let's face it... booty from the cities in both monetary and human value forms), and points decrease from long periods out in the field, long marches, low or no pay, etc.

Combine all three morale dimensions as factors for:

1) Desertions
2) Disobedience to orders (unit charges when no ordered, or refuses to attack when ordered)
3) Combat effectiveness (should be a modifier to promotion "stars", that is, a fanatical unit's modifier should be its promotion stars value *100%, or at zero, it loses all the modifier value of its promotion stars, and acts as an army of "draftees").

Just giving away the ideas for free, some more, hehe...

 

[Skallagrimson]

I don't think I would bother playing a game so grossly over-detailed. I have little enough time to play epic games as it is. Adding all this into warfare would make a warmongering game take weeks to complete for me. I guess for those who have a little more time to play, it may be great. But I hope civ 5 doesn't over-detail everything.

Micromanagement versus automation is certainly a challenge when programming a game. Detail players (typically at the higher levels) who are familiar with the concepts, will want as much opportunity to micromanage, as possible. Look over at the strategy forums for people arguing over how many extra beakers you get from a cottage improvement versus a specialist: that would be "overdetailed" to a novice player, without a doubt, but if that ability to manage isn't there, you lose the interest of the "power players". I think adding a new level of micromanagement to units would appeal to those players, and yours is a good reminder that an automation concept should also be there if you don't want to have to worry about all the numbers, "just make a unit" and the game calculates what it needs to do in each city to make it happen.

EDIT: Btw, Skallagrimson, I think it takes quite a few experienced people to make a game like Civ IV. But as someone with C++ programming exp. and a few game design classes under my belt, I wouldn't be against helping to create a game such as what you mention. Just need a few dozen more people! (3D modelers, more programmers, etc) I say we go for it tho!

I was, of course, being sarcastic when I said "dime a dozen". Most college kids want to do graphics and make pretty pictures, but few take up the challenge of actual *real* programming, which games do need behind the scenes. And they wonder why so many of those jobs ship overseas?

Anyway, I have a friend who was involved in a FPS console game startup, and while the game type was different, he is well familiar with the challenges of financing, etc., so I plan to consult with him, see what it would take to really make this happen. If it's hideously close to impossible, I might give up on it, but if there's a glimmer of venture capital hope in it, I might take these ideas balls-to-the-wall, and solicit everyone I can to help out (with promises of great plunder in the game market upon success!)

 

[SkippyT]

Since you were talking about Crusades and Jihad Skallagrimsson I would suggest just that every city has a certain Zeal. And a specialist priest would raise the zeal. Zeal can both be a good and bad thing. Priests would cost high to keep up and that's the bad thing - it's costful. And the good thing would be the strenght of every religious warrior - fx. a Buddhist warrior monk, Christian chivalric sergeant, Islamic ghazi infantry, Jewish spy or something and a Hindu war elephant.
Taoism and Confusianism would of course not be in the next game.
Every religion would have 3 UU's. And every unit would get an extra bonus for every 15% of zeal or so..So fx. the Buddhist warrior monk would begin with 4 strenght and +50% vs. mounted units with 0-25% zeal. For 25%-50% zeal they would get 5 strenght, +50% vs. mounted, +25% vs. melee. For 50%-75% they would get 6 strenght, +75% vs. mounted, +25% vs. melee and 2 movement. For 75%+ zeal they would be even better. This would go for all the religions. And the Islamic UUs would be the strongest because Islam comes so late

Yes I think many have great ideas about the next game. But I sure think religion should play a much greater role in the next game. Religious conflicts, and of course religion can go away in a city..

edit: are you from Iceland since your name is Skallagrimsson?

 

[Skallagrimson]

Since you were talking about Crusades and Jihad Skallagrimsson I would suggest just that every city has a certain Zeal. And a specialist priest would raise the zeal. Zeal can both be a good and bad thing. Priests would cost high to keep up and that's the bad thing - it's costful. And the good thing would be the strenght of every religious warrior - fx. a Buddhist warrior monk, Christian chivalric sergeant, Islamic ghazi infantry, Jewish spy or something and a Hindu war elephant.
Taoism and Confusianism would of course not be in the next game.
Every religion would have 3 UU's. And every unit would get an extra bonus for every 15% of zeal or so..So fx. the Buddhist warrior monk would begin with 4 strenght and +50% vs. mounted units with 0-25% zeal. For 25%-50% zeal they would get 5 strenght, +50% vs. mounted, +25% vs. melee. For 50%-75% they would get 6 strenght, +75% vs. mounted, +25% vs. melee and 2 movement. For 75%+ zeal they would be even better. This would go for all the religions. And the Islamic UUs would be the strongest because Islam comes so late

Yes I think many have great ideas about the next game. But I sure think religion should play a much greater role in the next game. Religious conflicts, and of course religion can go away in a city..

edit: are you from Iceland since your name is Skallagrimsson?

I'm just a fan of the Sagas, actually of German descent but live in Minnesota, which might as well be "Vinland" hehe.

On zeal, I'm familiar with how Total War uses it, and it's a good dimension to add to play. It can result in religious uprisings if troops from another religion are occupying lands, etc., which is pretty good realism. My criticism of TW enters in with how each (Catholic) faction risks "excommunication" if they attack another Catholic faction, which in reality ONLY happened if that other faction was in "good standing" with the Church and the faction doing the attacking had OTHER Church-related issues, e.g., having annexed Church property to the State, and so forth. And most of the time in reality it wasn't war that sparked excommunication but failure to follow papal orders, such as to start an Inquisition or to join a Crusade. That would be an improvement idea for TW, and an entirely other discussion, hehe, but for Civ, I think a zeal factor is needed so long as there IS a religion factor to go with it. It should be one of several things that could cause an uprising, and should add or detract from the religious zeal of an army passing through zealous or unzealous land.

Great idea!

 

[Swedishguy]

I'm just a fan of the Sagas, actually of German descent but live in Minnesota, which might as well be "Vinland" hehe.

On zeal, I'm familiar with how Total War uses it, and it's a good dimension to add to play. It can result in religious uprisings if troops from another religion are occupying lands, etc., which is pretty good realism. My criticism of TW enters in with how each (Catholic) faction risks "excommunication" if they attack another Catholic faction, which in reality ONLY happened if that other faction was in "good standing" with the Church and the faction doing the attacking had OTHER Church-related issues, e.g., having annexed Church property to the State, and so forth. And most of the time in reality it wasn't war that sparked excommunication but failure to follow papal orders, such as to start an Inquisition or to join a Crusade. That would be an improvement idea for TW, and an entirely other discussion, hehe, but for Civ, I think a zeal factor is needed so long as there IS a religion factor to go with it. It should be one of several things that could cause an uprising, and should add or detract from the religious zeal of an army passing through zealous or unzealous land.

Great idea!

One thing I find odd is that the creators seem to think that people will be addicted to religion forever. Can't any modder or something change that cuz' I can't!

 

[Antilogic]

I see what you guys are talking about, but I would caution against religious UUs...I'd rather see a general "crusader" unit or something for several different religions (because that's the way Civ4 currently handles religion, and I find that to be quite fair and unbiased).

Although, religion-inspired revolutions would be a great addition.

I guess what I want to go for is not producing weapons manually, and then assigning them to troops, but rather you have a real-numbered population, and you say "I want to conscript or levy 30,000 troops", and they make weapons out of whatever they can in that region (or import stuff from regions around your empire), and essentially start production in a separate queue from the civilian queue. Having to maintain supply lines and not just sending the stack 'o' death into somebody else's land would also be nice. Creating trade winds and such (certain loops where sailing ships can only go one way) and such for sailing ships is probably too complicated, but that would be awesome.

Being able to effectively use mercenaries (and have the AI use them as well) would also be cool. Imagine playing as China and hiring 6,000 Roman legionnaires from Rome to assist with your conquest.

Although, one word of caution I know I've posted before: remember MOO3? Don't make it that complicated. Avoid incredibly detailed systems, and simply develop something that is easy to use.

Just use real numbers, maybe, or try to change the tile-based system to a more fluid system. Replacing the cultural border system with something that makes more sense (like having a larger army there, or signing a treaty that establishes borders irregardless of culture) could also be innovative.

 

[Skallagrimson]

One thing I find odd is that the creators seem to think that people will be addicted to religion forever. Can't any modder or something change that cuz' I can't!

It seems like "free religion" was supposed to reflect that, but it reminds me of another issue: when was there ever a religious-based war started up by Buddhists? Or Taoists? It's really only Christianity, Judaism, and Islam who have that in their resume, and it seems that "holy war zeal" wears off over time.

It's pretty hard to see a Buddhist Montezuma out on a religious crusade, without smirking and wondering what these Firaxis people were on when they programmed this.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I see what you guys are talking about, but I would caution against religious UUs...I'd rather see a general "crusader" unit or something for several different religions (because that's the way Civ4 currently handles religion, and I find that to be quite fair and unbiased).

Although, religion-inspired revolutions would be a great addition.

I guess what I want to go for is not producing weapons manually, and then assigning them to troops, but rather you have a real-numbered population, and you say "I want to conscript or levy 30,000 troops", and they make weapons out of whatever they can in that region (or import stuff from regions around your empire), and essentially start production in a separate queue from the civilian queue. Having to maintain supply lines and not just sending the stack 'o' death into somebody else's land would also be nice. Creating trade winds and such (certain loops where sailing ships can only go one way) and such for sailing ships is probably too complicated, but that would be awesome.

Being able to effectively use mercenaries (and have the AI use them as well) would also be cool. Imagine playing as China and hiring 6,000 Roman legionnaires from Rome to assist with your conquest.

Although, one word of caution I know I've posted before: remember MOO3? Don't make it that complicated. Avoid incredibly detailed systems, and simply develop something that is easy to use.

Just use real numbers, maybe, or try to change the tile-based system to a more fluid system. Replacing the cultural border system with something that makes more sense (like having a larger army there, or signing a treaty that establishes borders irregardless of culture) could also be innovative.

I agree on real-numbered population. On conscripting armies, I think the only way it could make sense is to have two queues: one for city production (the weapons) and one for training. The former requires resources, coins, and time; and the latter requires people, coins, and time. The problem with a unified queue and viewing armies as something you "produce" like a building or a wonder, is that you can behave as if your city has unlimited population, and that you can mine soldiers out of the hills. That's fantasy which perhaps might appeal to a Star Wars fan, but it merely makes me shake my head in loathing. If I wanted cartoony unrealistic rubbish, I could have bought a children's game.

The engine for Total War came from a previous game called "Lords of the Realm", and the way that worked was far more realistic: conscriptions required a levee of a percentage of a NUMBERED population, and the number you could levee was limited by how many of that population were able-bodied men, and if you did levee most of them, production would suffer (obviously if they were all roped into the army, nobody's going to be out tending the fields, etc.) And then if you disbanded a unit, those men would blend back into the population and work. If a unit rebelled, they became pretty much the equivalent of Civ's "barbarians". But you had to manage an army's happiness, health, etc., the same way as a city's, in order for them to be combat effective.

On "detailed" gaming, again there should be a choice of how deeply or shallowly a player wants to manage. Most of the advanced Civ gamers are deep micromanagers, and the thought of letting the game decide for them whether a tile should be farmed or the site of a cottage, drives them up a wall. I honestly think offering them a military micromanagement system they can tinker with, would be a value add to them; I know it would be for me. And for those who would rather not micromanage the military, just give a few high-level options like where a city's army's weaponry resources should come from, let the game figure out the rest (and deduct whatever costs from the treasury, debit the population as required, etc.).

I would still want a concept of tiles, but the boundaries that can be worked by a city should be more fluid than its "fat cross". If a grassland tile is a part of your realm, it's ridiculous that your realm can't work it somehow to some city's benefit. If that were true all the farms to feed the residents of New York City could be no further from it than east New Jersey. Idiotic.

Borders absolutely should be established by treaty, and diplo screens negotiating peace should bring up a proposal map where you draw up those boundaries, and haggle over them similar to how you haggle for tech trades. If neither side can agree to new borders, there is no peace treaty and the war resumes. During war, borders are determined by troop presence; similarly, prior to an area of land being "claimed" borders expand through the sending of troops out to claim each tile. Disputed claims of this sort were the primary cause of wars in both ancient times and modern. "My gold mine; no... MY gold mine!!!" And the war begins.

Cultural and religious influence when it comes to borders should be in the form of uprisings if the people who live there are foreign to the culture/religion of the civ owning their land. There should be an ability for spies to foment such rebellions (increase their chance of happening), and this DID happen in real life PRIOR to the discovery of "Communism". Ancient and medieval kingdoms didn't need a Scotland Yard to send out a freakin' spy.

An unpleasant but real thing that also happened in history to prevent such foreign-culture uprisings was a genocide of the territory, of foreign elements. This brings up the concept of a leader's reputation for cruelty (called "dread" in TW), which up to a point reduces the probability up uprising (fear of mass executions, etc.), but past that point increases it exponentially as the ruler becomes truly hated by all, and the fear of their own fate is overcome by the emotional need to be rid of the leader's oppression.

Rome's method of assimilating conquered territory was to offer "Roman citizenship" to people, which mitigated rebellions but didn't do away with them entirely. An "occupational policy" management system is appropriate, I think, where the options for assimilation could be:

1) Annihilation of resisters
2) Propaganda (after a tech advance such as Printing Press)
3) Civic inclusion (offering citizenship, etc.)
4) Religious conversion (Islamic Jihad methodology)

Each would have advantages and disadvantages, with the annihilation approach having the best short-term results, but with longer-term risks; propaganda being weak at first but increasing effectiveness over time; civic inclusion being of moderate effectiveness with occasional flare-ups of failure; and religious conversion being effective domestically but inspiring hatred of your civ by those of other religions.

That also brings up: why is it so IMPOSSIBLE to let a player know what each AI's attitude is toward the other AIs? Open borders is not enough information. I want to know, will they go to war to protect that other civ? Are they trying to undermine that other civ? Do they consider them friend or foe overall? Why do I have to find out I "declared war on our friends" only after I did in fact declare that war? Why not just tell me straight out, civ A is friends with civ B. Or not. Is that so difficult? Wear out programmer's delicate typing fingers, perhaps? Total War has the same issue there. They show allies and enemies but among allies, they never let you know if one would readily betray the other for a price--and in real life that information could be elicited by spies. Oh, wait, that's right, not a SINGLE spy ever existed prior to the 19th century...

 

[Swedishguy]

It seems like "free religion" was supposed to reflect that, but it reminds me of another issue: when was there ever a religious-based war started up by Buddhists? Or Taoists? It's really only Christianity, Judaism, and Islam who have that in their resume, and it seems that "holy war zeal" wears off over time.

It's pretty hard to see a Buddhist Montezuma out on a religious crusade, without smirking and wondering what these Firaxis people were on when they programmed this.

That's what the game is about, an alternative history! A Confucian Roosevelt setting out on a holy war isn't that farfetche'd!

 

[Skallagrimson]

That's what the game is about, an alternative history! A Confucian Roosevelt setting out on a holy war isn't that farfetche'd!

I only like playing with alternative history to the point of what COULD have happened.

 

[Swedishguy]

So it's completely impossible?

 

[Hellfire]

Lets get back to the SMAC 2 discussion. I think Civ4 is an excellent basis for evolving into SMAC 2. You already have 14 civs, an excellent engine that can be easily moded. Lets take some of the best elements of SMAC and Civ4 and combine them. Civs can be easily made up, and I'll forgive the changes in the story/timeline that new civs will require since there was a lot of sci-fi background and story that went into the original SMAC. Or hell, make up a whole new damn time line.

That's it! Make up a new story with new characters. The only thing that stays the same is that it's a continuation of Civilization, a space ship travelling to colonize a planet on Alpha Centauri. It's what Civ is about, making up a new story every time

Civ4 is a pretty nice and complete package. I just got my copy and wow, I'm impressed so far. I had lots of concerns and complaints about Civ3, not so with Civ4. Back with Civ2, that was released years ago to much fanfare and people loved it. There were issues with it, but for the most part people loved it because it built on top of the original Civ and tweaked it, rather than rewriting it.

Civ3 tried to take the game in a new direction in order to handle some complaints and to start a real dynasty in Civ. By doing so they introduced a lot of game balance issues. Civ3 has a lot of nice new things over Civ2, counterbalanced by a lot of bad choices.

Civ4 corrected most of that, I feel, and there aren't the same number of civ4 complaints as there were Civ3. Therefore I think they should just let us bask in the glory of Civ4 like we did with Civ2 and let it go for a while.

Civ4 takes a lot of horsepower to play. If they release Civ5 in the next 2 years, I will be hard pressed to justify buying it. I like Civ4 just fine.

 

[Swedishguy]

Bake in Age of Wonders to!

 

[Skallagrimson]

I like Civ4 just fine.

I am a half-step away from uninstalling and just going back to Civ2. Cartoony fantasy is not what I have in mind when I want to play strategy.

 

[Swedishguy]

I am a half-step away from uninstalling and just going back to Civ2. Cartoony fantasy is not what I have in mind when I want to play strategy.

Me neither, only it's good strategy!

 

[worldbuilder]

The starting question of this post was:

What do you think such a game need to improve from the previous one?

Civilization, that's the name of the game, not destroying (other) civilization by warfare. Next level of the game would be implementing more difficulties to please your people, not only collecting luxury and food to keep people happy and healthy. And more than a simple war weariness to reflect wartime repercussions on your civil society.

As it is now you can go to war for decades or even centuries losing dozens of units and your Pop growth doesn't slow down the least bit, although lots of young men dying before having children and thus generating a female surplus to the utmost level. That's because building military units doesn't deduce from your Pop like in Civ2/3 building settlers did. Similarly going to war doesn't spread desease despite lots of rotting carcasses in the rivers and the like. And its for free (except the hammers to build the units) as long as you lose your units fast enough and avoid having too much of them at the same time.

So much for realism. The greatest lack of realism is the easy executable warfare, for increasing the fun developers would say. Going to war, more so in modern times, should be a painful and costly thing for the nation in many respects, a step to be well considered, not the simplest way to prosper and win. Going to war should not even be a help in winning, more like an ultimate means if all other things fail.

Concerning realism in warfare: Taking 5 turns of 10 years = 50 years to built a unit during the middle ages, and then another 50 years to move it into battle is ridiculous right from the start in terms of realism, so why care of all the other shortcomings of Civ warfare for the matter of realism?

Besides, there is a whole lot of turn based wargames out there, that specialize on warfare. Why not play them, if you like a deep and realistic warfare simulation, instead of desperately trying to tweak a game in that respect whose timescope of years, decades or even centuries per turn makes unit level warfare unrealistic by default. Unit scale warfare was in from Civ1 only for the fun IMO, but it shouldn't be. However, tactical intelligence will always be the weakest part of the AI anyway, never capable to cope with an experienced human general.

The timescope of Civ games is ideally suited for the speed of society development processes, also the shortening of years per turn in more modern eras, cause then also the society changes faster. That's what the game design structures suit best: coping with society changes, reflected by changing demands of the people e.g. emancipation or democracy or get rid of capitalists/communists or introduce free speech/press etc. The game shpuld take more effort to confront the ruler/player with the will of his/her people and make it a challenge to influence it, let alone change it.

Civ5 proposed slogan: Make civ not war!