Corruption

[caliskier]

Does civ 4 have the same corruption headaches that civ 3 had?

 

[King Flevance]

Nope. All new headaches.

 

[caliskier]

Nope. All new headaches.

really, like what?

 

[AThousandYoung]

Like iron age Swordsmen fearing bronze age Axemen.

 

[snipafist]

It's got a maintenance system instead. In Civ 4, cities have maintenance costs, which is a factor dependent on total number of cities (so going from 6 to 7 cities might drastically increase your overall maintenance as ALL your cities' maintenance costs will increase) as well as distance from your palace. You will NEVER see production decreased due to maintenance, but if you overexpand in the early game, your economy will collapse. In Civ 3, the only means of doing that was to overbuild in distant cities, as buildings induced maintenance penalties, but that was hard to do with such low production. So for a quick summary, Civ 3's corruption system could be circumvented while Civ 4's cannot but on the plus side it no longer effects production.

 

[King Flevance]

really, like what?

What Athousand years young said really used to bother me. So much that I modded it to change it. ALong with a few other units. (I couldn't sit around and wait for Firaxis to finally nerf praets as they still haven't to this day. I personally think they have a hard-on for Rome.)
What snipafest refers to is true, but you are no longer allowed a domestic advisor that tells you all your costs. INstead everything is "summed" up through your new 'financial advisor'. Which is basically a screen that says "this is what everything combined is costing you". Even military unit support in that screen is a pain in the ass to figure it out. But maybe I am just pampered from the Civ 3 military advisor saying:

TOTAL UNITS: X
ALLOWED UNITS: Y

Really the financial advisor can't help you too much. It can't tell you how much your next city will cost, so your only way to know how much that next city will cost is to go build it. But then if it's more than you were wanting to spend, you can't cancel the build nor abandon it.

Religion has been brought in and is one of my biggest headaches of the game. First, it means NOTHING to you if the AI is of a different religion to you. It makes no difference as far as gameplay pre-BTS. (Latest expansion) Yet, the AI acts like its the end of the world if you are a seperate religion than it is. It is not uncommon to see religion modifiers outweighing other more important things. You can declare war on them and they won't care because you are the same religion. You can nuke them a few times, they don't care if you are the same religion. Now to any player, those are like -10s and -20s meaning any civ that does that must either be detroyed, or be sent back into the stone age. To hell with what religion you use to keep your population happy in the game. I don't think any player in here will let it slide that an AI declared war on them and captured 3 cities so long as they share religion. So already religion screws the AI.
Now, we move into it's overpowered effect if you were the one to discover the religion. All you gotta do is get a Great Prophet (Not that hard to do at all), build your shrine, and start making 1 GPT per city that houses that religion + line of site. (Although I believe LOS was taken out in BTS.) But the +1 GPT gets more and more powerful the larger the map gets. So by huge, it's simply overpowered and a religious economy is the strongest in the game. Even against a Financial civ with every city optimized for economy. It actualy makes missionaries more profitable than Great Merchants. Missionaries are the new 'caravan units'. But only a max of 7 people can use them as such instead of everyone.

Religion in BTS - That mixed with other threads I have read, I believe religion, or at least the AP needs tinkering with in BTS. There is a fine line in the new system between 'functional' and 'overpowered' and so far it has remained on the overpowered side to me.

Air and Navy are also a large headache. But mostly because the systems just suck. Espionage, I won't touch as it has entirely been overhauled in BTS. But this all seems to depend on the person. Some people don't care that they aren't allowed to see the empires budget despite that they are the ruler. Others like the religious system even though the AI is totally blindsided by it. And some actually like the air/navy system. But to me it all feels like "bumper bowling" or something.

I personally, have just went exclusively back to Civ 3.

 

[Diamondeye]

fine list Flevance, yes, that should be the worst headaches - have you mentioned the Global Heating erupting frmo nukes and nuclear plants and not form coal plants?

 

[UERD]

That's true, the global warming model is seriously flawed from a gameplay perspective. If even one of your nuclear plants melts down or one of your nuclear bombs explodes, you can look forwards to watching your productive land tiles irreversibly become desert for the rest of the game.

 

[caliskier]

What Athousand years young said really used to bother me. So much that I modded it to change it. ALong with a few other units. (I couldn't sit around and wait for Firaxis to finally nerf praets as they still haven't to this day. I personally think they have a hard-on for Rome.)
What snipafest refers to is true, but you are no longer allowed a domestic advisor that tells you all your costs. INstead everything is "summed" up through your new 'financial advisor'. Which is basically a screen that says "this is what everything combined is costing you". Even military unit support in that screen is a pain in the ass to figure it out. But maybe I am just pampered from the Civ 3 military advisor saying:

TOTAL UNITS: X
ALLOWED UNITS: Y

Really the financial advisor can't help you too much. It can't tell you how much your next city will cost, so your only way to know how much that next city will cost is to go build it. But then if it's more than you were wanting to spend, you can't cancel the build nor abandon it.

Religion has been brought in and is one of my biggest headaches of the game. First, it means NOTHING to you if the AI is of a different religion to you. It makes no difference as far as gameplay pre-BTS. (Latest expansion) Yet, the AI acts like its the end of the world if you are a seperate religion than it is. It is not uncommon to see religion modifiers outweighing other more important things. You can declare war on them and they won't care because you are the same religion. You can nuke them a few times, they don't care if you are the same religion. Now to any player, those are like -10s and -20s meaning any civ that does that must either be detroyed, or be sent back into the stone age. To hell with what religion you use to keep your population happy in the game. I don't think any player in here will let it slide that an AI declared war on them and captured 3 cities so long as they share religion. So already religion screws the AI.
Now, we move into it's overpowered effect if you were the one to discover the religion. All you gotta do is get a Great Prophet (Not that hard to do at all), build your shrine, and start making 1 GPT per city that houses that religion + line of site. (Although I believe LOS was taken out in BTS.) But the +1 GPT gets more and more powerful the larger the map gets. So by huge, it's simply overpowered and a religious economy is the strongest in the game. Even against a Financial civ with every city optimized for economy. It actualy makes missionaries more profitable than Great Merchants. Missionaries are the new 'caravan units'. But only a max of 7 people can use them as such instead of everyone.

Religion in BTS - That mixed with other threads I have read, I believe religion, or at least the AP needs tinkering with in BTS. There is a fine line in the new system between 'functional' and 'overpowered' and so far it has remained on the overpowered side to me.

Air and Navy are also a large headache. But mostly because the systems just suck. Espionage, I won't touch as it has entirely been overhauled in BTS. But this all seems to depend on the person. Some people don't care that they aren't allowed to see the empires budget despite that they are the ruler. Others like the religious system even though the AI is totally blindsided by it. And some actually like the air/navy system. But to me it all feels like "bumper bowling" or something.

I personally, have just went exclusively back to Civ 3.

Thank Flavance, and others. I think I will go back to civ2. I hate the corruption in 3, I like to build a vast empire and kick butt. One question though, will civ 2 run on windows xp? Can't seam to get it to.

 

[Diamondeye]

It will, atleast the Civilization: Chronicles version does.

 

[King Flevance]

I would think that a patch exists somewhere... although I am not positive.

 

[caliskier]

It will, atleast the Civilization: Chronicles version does.

I have multiplayer gold edition. Is there a patch for that?

 

[nullspace]

Thank Flavance, and others. I think I will go back to civ2. I hate the corruption in 3, I like to build a vast empire and kick butt. One question though, will civ 2 run on windows xp? Can't seam to get it to.

Please realize that Flevance speaks for himself only, and IMO, he's completely ignoring many improvements in order to nitpick some things that I don't even think are real problems.

But maybe I am just pampered from the Civ 3 military advisor saying:

TOTAL UNITS: X
ALLOWED UNITS: Y

You can get this exact information in Civ4 by mousing over the unit cost line in the financial adviser.

[quote-King Flevance]Really the financial advisor can't help you too much. It can't tell you how much your next city will cost, so your only way to know how much that next city will cost is to go build it. But then if it's more than you were wanting to spend, you can't cancel the build nor abandon it.[/quote]
Civ 3 and Civ 2 did not tell you how corrupt a city would be before you founded it, or how it would affect corruption in our other cites, so this problem is hardly unique to Civ 4.

Religion has been brought in and is one of my biggest headaches of the game. First, it means NOTHING to you if the AI is of a different religion to you. It makes no difference as far as gameplay pre-BTS. (Latest expansion) Yet, the AI acts like its the end of the world if you are a seperate religion than it is. It is not uncommon to see religion modifiers outweighing other more important things. You can declare war on them and they won't care because you are the same religion. You can nuke them a few times, they don't care if you are the same religion. Now to any player, those are like -10s and -20s meaning any civ that does that must either be detroyed, or be sent back into the stone age. To hell with what religion you use to keep your population happy in the game. I don't think any player in here will let it slide that an AI declared war on them and captured 3 cities so long as they share religion. So already religion screws the AI.

This one is mostly true, but it is completely blown out of proportion. Different leaders value sharing religion different amounts, from +1 to +6. Giving a good can get you +4, trading with a civ's worst enemy can be -3, refusing a demand in -1 each time, and just having peace and open borders combines for +2. So there are lots of ways to affect relations and religion does not dominate. And none of this prevents the AI from declaring war on you, so it doesn't exactly "screw" the AI. You can screw the AI a lot more in Civ 3 or Civ 2. The diplomacy bonus is sort of fake, but it's still an interesting way to nudge an AI towards being a friend or enemy.

Now, we move into it's overpowered effect if you were the one to discover the religion. All you gotta do is get a Great Prophet (Not that hard to do at all), build your shrine, and start making 1 GPT per city that houses that religion + line of site. (Although I believe LOS was taken out in BTS.) But the +1 GPT gets more and more powerful the larger the map gets. So by huge, it's simply overpowered and a religious economy is the strongest in the game. Even against a Financial civ with every city optimized for economy. It actualy makes missionaries more profitable than Great Merchants. Missionaries are the new 'caravan units'. But only a max of 7 people can use them as such instead of everyone.

Shrines are so far away from overpowered. Maybe the are IF you play a huge map and found one of the first religions (which is hard above noble level if there are many civs on this huge map) and you create the shrine fast, and there is a coast connection to many other civs so the religion can spread on its own early. The shrine costs a great person, which have a number of other powerful effects, and the missionaries require a special building or an expensive civic, and they cost hammers. So shrine income isn't free. You're often better off building military units than building missionaries.

Civ 4 isn't perfect, but I think it's much better than the previous games. The civics let you customize your government in many different ways and they're well balanced. Great people have a wide variety of abilities to give you a sudden boost, or a long-term bonus, and generating the type of great person you want takes some strategy, too. The combat system is more interesting because of strengths and weakness and promotions, and collateral damage is a balanced way to handle artillery. Air and naval combat have never been good in Civ, but they're better in Beyond the Sword. Roads no longer make commerce, so you have to use cottages, or specialists, or trade routes, or shrines for money instead of simply spamming roads everywhere. Religion is a complicated and subtle system that affects happiness, diplomacy, income, civics, and culture. And the AI is smarter.

Don't write off Civ 4 just because one person can write a long post that's critical of some flaws. If you call yourself a fan of Civilization, you should at least try out Civ 4.

 

[caliskier]

Please realize that Flevance speaks for himself only, and IMO, he's completely ignoring many improvements in order to nitpick some things that I don't even think are real problems.

You can get this exact information in Civ4 by mousing over the unit cost line in the financial adviser.

[quote-King Flevance]Really the financial advisor can't help you too much. It can't tell you how much your next city will cost, so your only way to know how much that next city will cost is to go build it. But then if it's more than you were wanting to spend, you can't cancel the build nor abandon it.

Civ 3 and Civ 2 did not tell you how corrupt a city would be before you founded it, or how it would affect corruption in our other cites, so this problem is hardly unique to Civ 4.


This one is mostly true, but it is completely blown out of proportion. Different leaders value sharing religion different amounts, from +1 to +6. Giving a good can get you +4, trading with a civ's worst enemy can be -3, refusing a demand in -1 each time, and just having peace and open borders combines for +2. So there are lots of ways to affect relations and religion does not dominate. And none of this prevents the AI from declaring war on you, so it doesn't exactly "screw" the AI. You can screw the AI a lot more in Civ 3 or Civ 2. The diplomacy bonus is sort of fake, but it's still an interesting way to nudge an AI towards being a friend or enemy.
Shrines are so far away from overpowered. Maybe the are IF you play a huge map and found one of the first religions (which is hard above noble level if there are many civs on this huge map) and you create the shrine fast, and there is a coast connection to many other civs so the religion can spread on its own early. The shrine costs a great person, which have a number of other powerful effects, and the missionaries require a special building or an expensive civic, and they cost hammers. So shrine income isn't free. You're often better off building military units than building missionaries.

Civ 4 isn't perfect, but I think it's much better than the previous games. The civics let you customize your government in many different ways and they're well balanced. Great people have a wide variety of abilities to give you a sudden boost, or a long-term bonus, and generating the type of great person you want takes some strategy, too. The combat system is more interesting because of strengths and weakness and promotions, and collateral damage is a balanced way to handle artillery. Air and naval combat have never been good in Civ, but they're better in Beyond the Sword. Roads no longer make commerce, so you have to use cottages, or specialists, or trade routes, or shrines for money instead of simply spamming roads everywhere. Religion is a complicated and subtle system that affects happiness, diplomacy, income, civics, and culture. And the AI is smarter.

Don't write off Civ 4 just because one person can write a long post that's critical of some flaws. If you call yourself a fan of Civilization, you should at least try out Civ 4.[/QUOTE]


Well, I appreciate the points, I need to study up on it more before I make a purchase. I like some of the aspects of 3 but hate corruption.

 

[T.A JONES]

Well, I appreciate the points, I need to study up on it more before I make a purchase. I like some of the aspects of 3 but hate corruption.

We talked about this before remember?Heres the link

Ya again though, In CIv3 Corruption has been cured. Its all owed to one main reason, an editer. Its something CIv4 is sorely lacking.
You can fix problems like this yourself in Civ3 but I bet your no expert in python(the ones who are work for Fireaxis now ) so your outta luck if you want to try in tackle the maintence wall that comes with expansion in CIv4.

Don't think when someone says they like CIv3 they mean they don't mind corruption. Theyre sayin they like CIv3 modded, They play CIv3 'refined' edition. Its evolved in more ways then just improved graphics, and better gameplay. Hell it plays lighnting quick with maxed out maps on CIv4 'approved' computers , but more important, things like corruption have been dealt with my man

In Civ3 now its a balancing act with corruption levels and high maintence fees.
It plays like this: You can choose to ignore corruptions harmful effect on production to instead enjoy high science/cash output levels.
OR, you can build infrastructure (court, police, prison, Interpol,etc) that fights corruption, you enjoy high production but suffer weakened science/cash output at the cost of diverting capital to cover gov maintence fees

If your good you can afford to take care of 90% of the corruption and cover your bills with no hurt on your tech race standings.
ITs deeper game then some let on, mostly cuz these guys just fool around with original crap and then move on, gone-to civ4 where now mods are even more heavily relyed on for peak replayabilty.

Imagine no "Better AI mod" or "Combat mod? Well its tha same with Civ3, you have to count the "Better corruption model mod"(among others) as part of Civ3's default makeup these days .

 

[GenocideBringer]

Civ 3 corruption meant you couldn't do . .. .. .. . after a while.

Civ 4 corruption means that having a large empire can be hard to sustain, but your cities will still be productive. You can build a large empire.


Civ IV is leagues better than civ 3 or 2.

 

[King Flevance]

Please realize that Flevance speaks for himself only, and IMO, he's completely ignoring many improvements in order to nitpick some things that I don't even think are real problems.

I figured one of these days, especially after that long post a pro-cIV player would show up to show the other perspective.

You can get this exact information in Civ4 by mousing over the unit cost line in the financial adviser.

Yes, I agree. But it isn't as simplified as I personally prefer it to be. It's made needlessly complicated. It is not as simple as X and Y in my example. Many times I end up having to go through and count my units to see where the costs are being calculated from. As I stated, most everything in my post was a perspective issue. This issue just ties in that I don't like any of the advisor screens in 4. They just seem half-ased and incomplete.

Really the financial advisor can't help you too much. It can't tell you how much your next city will cost, so your only way to know how much that next city will cost is to go build it. But then if it's more than you were wanting to spend, you can't cancel the build nor abandon it.

Civ 3 and Civ 2 did not tell you how corrupt a city would be before you founded it, or how it would affect corruption in our other cites, so this problem is hardly unique to Civ 4.

no but it isnt really hard to guess on it. Look at a nearby city, check it's corruption levels. You can get a pretty good idea. Easier to guesstimate than Civ 4's maintenance system.

This one is mostly true, but it is completely blown out of proportion. Different leaders value sharing religion different amounts, from +1 to +6.

+1 to +8 as far as I know. And really its from +4 to +8. 1-3 are stepping stones you go through. (Basically you can only have this small of modifiers if only a small portion of your population has your state religion.

Giving a good can get you +4,

I could also go into how the AI will never take the short end of a deal, and rarely offers fair trades as they don't know how to value things. (Although the latter part has always been the case.) BUt my point being the player has to suck it up and take the horsehockey deals most of the time if you want to gain edge-wise in diplomacy.

trading with a civ's worst enemy can be -3, refusing a demand in -1 each time, and just having peace and open borders combines for +2. So there are lots of ways to affect relations and religion does not dominate.

Can you name anythingthing else that goes over a +4? Other than doing something that ticks them off over and over and over again? I am pretty sure religion is the thing they will tack on at least a +4, but also upwards whereas the player has no reason to care about it.

And none of this prevents the AI from declaring war on you, so it doesn't exactly "screw" the AI.

Yes, it doesn't prevent it neccessarily, only if you focus on military enough to be able to compete in the power charts. That is the best chance of them going against their modifiers. After that chances drop dramatically, like the odds of them accepting a bribe or something.

You can screw the AI a lot more in Civ 3 or Civ 2.

Yeah if you like to exploit. I don't care to exploit so I just see an even more ignorant AI in regards to religion. The AI on 3 values better things IMO. (Outside of the embassy modifier - but even that makes more since to me than the weight attached to religion in 4.)

Shrines are so far away from overpowered.

It seems to you. I don't see it the same way.

Maybe they are IF you play a huge map and found one of the first religions (which is hard above noble level if there are many civs on this huge map)
It really doesn't get that hard until Emporer IMO.
and you create the shrine fast,
Basically prioritize building stonehenge, or prioritize preisthood and temples which you should do anyways if you found a religion.
and there is a coast connection to many other civs so the religion can spread on its own early.
Not hard to have coastal cities early on, even so, I don't have much problem with religion auto-spread some people do. If I found a religion, I build 1-5 missionaries per game if that and my religion spreads itself.
The shrine costs a great person, which have a number of other powerful effects,
The shrine is so much more worth anything else a prophet can do. You would be hard pressed to find anyone on this forum to disagree with that statement. And on a huge map, getting a religion a great prophet is the best thing you can go for.

and the missionaries require a special building or an expensive civic, and they cost hammers.

Well, like I said, I dont use missionaries much to spread my religion but looking at this individually, everything in the game costs hammers and missionaries are really cheap hammer-wise. SO the fact they cost hammers is no big deal really. OR has high upkeep but this early in the game it means it costs like 2-4 gold at most and totally worth it if you want to missionary spam and get your gold for 1 per city. Or you can avoid OR or combo it with monestaries. Then your borders expand faster and you get a small boost to science.

So shrine income isn't free.

TO me it costs, tech research time, my first GP, and a hadful of misionaries. It's extremely cheap when you compare how much effort other people that DON'T get a religion have to put into their economy.

You're often better off building military units than building missionaries.

I don't deny that too much, but if you pop out a hand ful of missionaries, you can have your economy get a strong foothold way earlier than anyone else can to support a larger army, through having the money to have more cities. 'Trickle down' and all that.

Civ 4 isn't perfect, but I think it's much better than the previous games.

THAT is how I view Civ 3. Civ 3 is a solid game and better structured than 4 is to me. I like the maintenance system in 4 better. But I think the economic model as a whole sucks. Civ 4 is always overpowered here and overpowered there. All kinds of mechanics are always screwy. And before Firaxis ever fixes them, they seem to just spew out more broken features instead.

The civics let you customize your government in many different ways and they're well balanced.

Yeah civics are alright. They were really fun at first but after a while they kind of lose the "wow" factor as any game mechanic usually does. They are a fun addition, and I like them but its not enough to make me overlook the other things in the game I don't like.

Great people have a wide variety of abilities to give you a sudden boost, or a long-term bonus, and generating the type of great person you want takes some strategy, too.

I don't like the fact that you "control" what kind will be born. I prefer the random situations in 3. But I like the diversity of GP in 4.

The combat system is more interesting because of strengths and weakness and promotions, and collateral damage is a balanced way to handle artillery. Air and naval combat have never been good in Civ, but they're better in Beyond the Sword.

Eh, I ain't even going to bother with the combat system. This forum can go round and round about it to no end.

Roads no longer make commerce, so you have to use cottages, or specialists,<snip>
This is really the civ 3 system. On civ 3 you spam roads and use corrupt cities as specialist farms. They can even support your economy as well. On Civ 4 instead of spamming roads, people spam cottages. Same idea, just a different design. It's face value alone that is different except for 1 thing - cottages can grow to give you even more commerce than a road on Civ 3 can. But this doesn't mean that you get more out of cottages as maintenance costs are alot more expensive in Civ 4. Mainly number of city maintenance. So corruption still eats you alive through the same manner.

<paste>or trade routes, or shrines for money instead of simply spamming roads everywhere.
I do miss trade routes in Civ 3. I really wish it had a trade route system.

Don't write off Civ 4 just because one person can write a long post that's critical of some flaws. If you call yourself a fan of Civilization, you should at least try out Civ 4.

I agree that 1 person's post shouldn't influence anyone to entirely write off a title. I didn't plan on going into everything... and now, I am just simply in the mood to reply to your points. I honestly expected my initial comment to get muffled out in the background by Civ 4 fans. But since caliskier asked what headaches I had with the game I told him some. Those are not all of the disappointments I have in Civ 4 persoanlly. Its the ones I could think of while I felt like typing. But after having spent money on 4, and being disappointed enough to go back to a previous version (Something I rarely do.) It's worth mentioning that caliskier or anyone else interested in this topic might want to do a little looking into the game before stepping into it. Civ 4 has a whole new atmosphere and mechanics to it than the previous 3. It should be expected that some people are just not going to like such huge differences in gameplay. One day I may go back to 4, but only because of a better multiplayer interface. If that happens, it will need personal mods applied to keep my interests. Although, if Firaxis ever released the source code for 3, I imagine there is a good possibility I might just hold out till 5.

Imagine no "Better AI mod" or "Combat mod? Well its tha same with Civ3, you have to count the "Better corruption model mod"(among others) as part of Civ3's default makeup these days .

If tomorrow Firaxis came out and said all mods are incompatible to their new 'encrypted source code' or something crazy, basically making Civ 4 unmoddable, I could easily see it getting no more play from me ever. I cannot say the same thing about Civ 3. Civ 3 is not perfect, but its alot more enjoyable than 4 unmodded IMHO. I mean that simply as food for thought. If Civ 3 had the moddability 4 does, it could easily compete with Civ 4. I believe this is the reason 3's code may never get released. Which sucks ____.