I'm new to the ''Civ'' series. What is the best in all the aspects? Civ4 or Civ5?

[Browd]

I think you need to adjust your sarcasm detector -- it doesn't seem to be working.

 

[eternalblue]

Your certainly entitled to your opinion on what you believe, but as for me, I'll take user reviews any day. The users are the ones who put the time and effort to play the game all the way through, not some critic who spends a few hours and then blesses something as "awesome" just to appease the publisher. Speaking of critics, the only critic who had the sheer balls to call civ v what it actually was at launch ( a POS), was Tom Chic at 1up. It's actually pleasant to see an indie tell the truth instead of kow towing to a major publisher. As for your comment that kids are the user reviewers; perhaps you should check out the demographic for the avg age of a civ player, you may be surprised.

and this comment is of course your oppinion... and we don't talking about civ players we talking about people who reviewing the game... can be anybody... watch on youtube there a lot of kids right there reviewing civ 4 games and doing let's play so can be anybody... every people can make a count on a website and praise or hate the game so this si not very accurate.. the critics if a game is bad can give them 3.0 or 6.0 and there are a lot of trademark games there with this average score.. if a game is so bad like u said, or different in a bad way, why all 20 websites they give them all 9.0 , 9.5 to this game?first: 20 websites with 400 critics are sick? or second: just a bunch of people who just they was playing a lot of civ4 and when they have seen the changes are not used with the new civ5 core and they make ''drama and poetry'' too much????

 

[eternalblue]

I started playing Sid Meiers Civilization way back in 1991 on my Amiga 500 and I think that Civ 5 is the best in the series so far. It has a lot of improvements compared to Civ 4, especially with the battle system. I hated the stacks of doom that just showed up on your doorstep all of a sudden, to wipe out your civ in civ 4, in civ 5 that won't happen. Also I love Gods and Kings with it's religion system.

me too... civ5 is fresh air in all the aspects... and are people that they didn't like the change because sid meyers just has ''changed'' things to offer better gameplay for all the people.... not just empire simulator with micromanaging stuff...

 

[PhilBowles]

me too... civ5 is fresh air in all the aspects... and are people that they didn't like the change because sid meyers just has ''changed'' things to offer better gameplay for all the people.... not just empire simulator with micromanaging stuff...

Civ V has lost a few elements of past Civ games I'd consider core to the series (not always core features for good reasons) - the slider and city-level happiness, but also different starting techs for different civs, granaries as - well - granaries, and the tech tree feels "emptier" without Monarchy, Literature and Code of Laws simply because these were such powerful techs in all previous versions of the game that rushing to them seemed a fundamental part of gameplay.

And in principle I don't find the loss of the slider any more or less jarring than the loss of granaries as storehouses, while changing the "core techs" is if anything a step in the right direction brought about by decoupling key game advances (such as particular government types) from the tech tree.

However, there is one element that really makes Civ V more of a 'true' Civ game than its immediate predecessors to my mind, and that's the reduced micromanagement. People have called this a "boardgame feel" as a criticism, but it's actually a hallmark of the series. Civilization is a board game; Sid Meier's first incarnation of the computer game was a very deliberate attempt to adapt a board game to the computer. By the standards of any modern Civ game its level of detail was rudimentary.

Those of you who've played the board game (the original, not the one subsequently based on the computer series) will know that this was a very low-detail game - fundamentally it was about managing and developing an empire, not individual cities. Civ IV was a great game in its own way, but it lost the plot irretrievably in that regard. The original game certainly had an element of "Sim Civilization", but that was never its main focus. Civ V's done a lot to restore the feel of the classic games (though it could do with smaller icons and larger maps - loading up Civ IV it just feels as though there's so much more world out there).

 

[eternalblue]

Civ V has lost a few elements of past Civ games I'd consider core to the series (not always core features for good reasons) - the slider and city-level happiness, but also different starting techs for different civs, granaries as - well - granaries, and the tech tree feels "emptier" without Monarchy, Literature and Code of Laws simply because these were such powerful techs in all previous versions of the game that rushing to them seemed a fundamental part of gameplay.

And in principle I don't find the loss of the slider any more or less jarring than the loss of granaries as storehouses, while changing the "core techs" is if anything a step in the right direction brought about by decoupling key game advances (such as particular government types) from the tech tree.

However, there is one element that really makes Civ V more of a 'true' Civ game than its immediate predecessors to my mind, and that's the reduced micromanagement. People have called this a "boardgame feel" as a criticism, but it's actually a hallmark of the series. Civilization is a board game; Sid Meier's first incarnation of the computer game was a very deliberate attempt to adapt a board game to the computer. By the standards of any modern Civ game its level of detail was rudimentary.

Those of you who've played the board game (the original, not the one subsequently based on the computer series) will know that this was a very low-detail game - fundamentally it was about managing and developing an empire, not individual cities. Civ IV was a great game in its own way, but it lost the plot irretrievably in that regard. The original game certainly had an element of "Sim Civilization", but that was never its main focus. Civ V's done a lot to restore the feel of the classic games (though it could do with smaller icons and larger maps - loading up Civ IV it just feels as though there's so much more world out there).

PhilBowles, this is the most interesting post, with this comment that civ5 feels like a board game is fascinating... me too I was feeling in civ5g&k like I'm playing with an empire with a nation, like a fun board game, not with just bunch of cities to grow them... like in SIM CITY... I like very much the ideea that u need to have cities to grow but what it matter is the overall, the nation, the empire... a city is just a part of the empire and if a city will have problems, all the empire suffer not just the city... that's the complex thing of a simple point, a lot of people don't understand why happiness and culture is overall thing and not per individual cities, and why it changes... so many people love this changes... but in some aspects u are wright .. the tech tree it was more authentic in civ4 , though granaries are a part of civ5 buildings, the code of laws and monarchy and those political things they are not in the tech tree because they have more importance in the ''social policies'' and them are implemented there... me too I think this way of civ5 is more frendly, more addicting than ever, the expansions give him a lot of content, waiting for the BNW in 9th july... and give us a lot of fun every turn, in a unpredicted way because of hexes and 1upt... a lot of good stuff...

 

[Funky]

What's with this Civ 4 is more realistic stuff? Civ games are not realistic at all.

That's a ridiculously strong statement. Can you go into detail as to why you think Civ5 is less a game of "Civilization" than Civ1, Civ2, or Civ3, all of which are acknowledged by everybody as games of "Civilization"?

I think you dramatize to much the part of civ5 is not on the standard of civ4... the historical acuracy that you talk it doesn't exist, I can't se a civ game with the historical acuracy that you talk... In civ4 is the same u can build the great wall with the netherland people and u can expand your city in asia , it depends how computer can generate the map... so u need to argue what is historical in civ4... sencond what makes civ4 very realist?

Apparently my statement that Civ 5 lacks realism is in need of an explanation. Many comments have refered to Civ being an unrealistic series due to George Washington being around in 4000BC and the Portuguese building the Great Wall, but this is not what I was refering to. These aspects form the frame of the series, in that we start out with a civilization and create an alternate history. For this goal we have a certain leader, and we can try to build the Great Lighthouse with the Aztecs if we desire. This is the fascination of the series, posing what if?-questions and seeing how history may have developed under different premises. The main difference between Civ 5 and its predecessors is that previous titles have modeled the historical developments within this frame after the real world and real historical occurences with an increasing amount of accuracy. Civ 5 doesn't only take a step backwards in this regard, it completely throws the whole concept of historical plausibility out of the window and adopts a fantasy style approach that makes neither sense historically, nor by using common sense. Regarding historical plausibility, the game is in many ways behind Civ 1 and totally distorts the image of how our past is shaped.

The elements of the game which I discuss in the following list all have in common that in previous civ games, at least in Civ 4, they were handled in a much more historically accurate and plausible way.

The combat system. This is perhaps the most obvious feature that is detached from realism. Units are now so large that they can only occupy one tile at a time. Since a tile represents at least a few hundred square miles, a unit would have to have the size of a million or more soldiers for the system to make sense. Which in itself naturally doesn't make sense, since whole armies, let alone single units/divisions, didn't reach such sizes till very late in our history. Another effect of the system is that armies now spread for many thousands of miles, which again is not how any war has worked. And of course there are these mysterious ranged attacks, where archers can fire for hundreds of miles, further than gunpowder units, and as far as (or farther, in the case of longbows) than artillery. We also have cities which can perform magical ranged attacks with an astounding accuracy, even before archery and siege weaponry have been developed. Since all these things have no connection to how wars functioned in real-life, the combat system is a fantasy system rather than a depiction of reality.

Global Happiness. This system is all full of absurdities as well. The most obvious one is that to please the inhabitants of a city on our west coast we can build a circus in a city on the east coast. In contrast, if a city on the east coast grows, all our other cities may become unhappy. Why should everyone get unhappy over the growth of a far away city? Makes no sense. Similarly, while there is no war weariness (we'll get to that later), if we are victorious in war and capture enemy cities, our whole empire may become outraged and stop re-populating itself (which is in itself a very non-sensical punishment). Of course it's the same for building cities, for some reason the existing population hates to expand. Obviously these occurences are unprecedented in real history.

Diplomacy. Other Civs don't behave like real Civs would. Instead they are totally schizophrenic and aggressive, and love to denounce others or throw random insults at you. Diplomatic options are limited (i.e. no map trading, no tech trading) or are detached from history, for example research agreements. Religious or governmental similarites and differences among nations have little to no effect on the relations. The main aspect that diplomacy is conducted for is to cheat the AI with broken trade deals, an exploit that goes back to Civ 3 and was unfortunately re-introduced in Civ 5.

City States. These strange entities completely overstep the borders of any kind of notion of common sense. Existing in 4000BC, they seem to be Civs at first, yet they aren't. They don't expand, and „diplomacy“ with them is reduced to giving them gold or fullfilling weird random missions like building a road to make them like you, in which case they provide all your cities with magical food or other miraculous bonuses. What are these things? We certainly haven't ever had anything like these things in our past. But in the game they have great influence and are crucial for certain victory conditions.

Governments. Once again, this is a system without precedent in history. Societies have never worked even remotely in the ways represented by social policies. They depict history as a linear development with accumulating bonuses as a Civ grows. As we know, this can't be farther from truth, and may lead to a false sense of history for those not so well-read. Societal changes and revolutions have not only occured in every major nation in history, but have often times been the decisive force in historical progression (rather than the continuity of systems, which has often limited or prevented societal achievements). This system I regard as one of the most misleading and dangerous concerning historical awareness.

Economy. The main change to the economy in Civ 5 was the removal of the budget. Previously, states could distribute their total commercial income among the fields of research, finances, culture, and espionage. This is a reasonably accurate representation of how states and state budgets function. In Civ 5 in contrast, the economy once again does not have any precedent. The absurdities start in the early game, when we can spend gold to buy land or units without having researched currency. There no longer is a budget, there is no element of distribution. Instead, technological research is tied to population, which, looking at our history, is a very peculiar feature.

Religion. There are no longer any real world religions. This may be tolerable, if the religious system was nevertheless related to history, which it isn't. Not only is religion more a kind of system which is all about collecting more or less random, fantasy-like bonuses, it also has very little effect on diplomacy.

No war weariness. The absurdity of your people becoming unhappy when they are victorious in war stands in gross contrast to them not caring about being involved in wars for many centuries. Not only is war weariness, nowadays the single most powerful tool preventing nations from going to war, not included, also combatting it in form of propaganda, which is crucial for modern nations in war and was represented nicely in Civ 4 by the cultural slider in combination with certain buildings like colloseum or broadcast tower, is obviously non-existant.

Hexes. In all major cultures, the world has always been structured by the four cardinal points North, South, East, West (and NE, NW, SE, SW). With hexes this historically grown way of shaping the world is gone in favour of a strange 6-dimensional arrangement.

Miscellaneous. The list is far from complete, but since this post is getting rather long, I'll list further elements in which the game strays far away from a reasonable depiction of reality without further comment and in no specific order: no health, no corporations, no foreign trade routes, embarkation, no capitulation/vassalage, no UN voting, „diplomatic“ victory, satelites don't reveal the map, deserts are among the best places to start, certain Civ's unique ablities (i.e. Carthage), Fountain of Youth and El Dorado, Giant Death Robot, some absurdities in the tech tree, knights not needing iron while catapults do, tactical abilities in war overstressed compared to production capabilities, static graphics, paying to buy empty land, no need to connect resources, promotion system (i.e. instant heal), good settling positions don't depend much on food, espionage system, no synergy between resources and buildings, no global warming, clouds instead of black for unexplored terrain, no natural threats in the early game, coastal cities are bad, universities connected to jungles, the wide vs tall concept, the world not being remotely populated in many games by the year 2000 and later, the importance of natural wonders, cities don't need certain buildings to grow (i.e. every larger city should need some kind of water system), trading posts.

I'm sure there is more, I haven't played the game in some time so this is just what I can think at the top of my head. Anyway. I believe that this list should make my previous point clear that Civ 5 is not in any kind of way modeled around the history and the functioning of our real world, but rather around fantasy concepts which largely are not only without precedent in our world but also make no sense using common sense. Therefore my previous conclusion that it is not possible to classify this game as a game of Civilization. It simply has nothing to do with creating and developing an alternate history with a historical civilization.

 

[jjkrause84]

Civ 4 is far more intimately tied to the world we actually live in (PhilBowles example of granaries being dead-on), and is vastly deeper and richer than Civ 5. This means it is more intuitive as things work in a way which bears a resemblance to the real world (food is good, city placement should not revolve around luxury resources, number of cities does not generate unhappiness, international trade exists, governments can control their budgets, etc.). That doesn't mean Civ 5 is not fun (it is!), but it is a different type of fun.....certainly very abstract in its approach.

As for Civ the board game....it was really nothing more than Go-Fish with a few added bits. Really unsatisfying, I found. If we keep the analogy: Civ 5 is like the original Civilization board game, Civ 4 is more like Diplomacy. It strikes a truer chord at just about every step (even though there were many serious flaws in Civ 4 that I would have fixed).

 

[jjkrause84]

I started out with Civ III and loved it. When Civ IV came out, I found it more challenging, entertaining, and loved it even more. When Civ V came out, I was so excited and couldn't wait, but I ended up being disappointed by it. Found it somewhat simplified and definitely not as fun. I keep checking back here, hoping to hear something about Civ 6.

Similar story here. My first Civ was Civ2 and Civ5 was the first that I felt was a disappointment in any way whatsoever. For me (and other like me!) this stung quite a bit. I'm still shocked at the low opinion I have of a Civilization game, especially because of how important the series has been to me personally and professionally (I undoubtedly became a historian because of Civ 2).

 

[jjkrause84]

Those are just ridiculous cynical examples you're cherry-picking and you know it.

How can you possibly deny the historical accuracy of a game in which devoting 10% of a city's population to working in an iron mine slightly reduces the number of centuries it takes to build a single aqueduct? Or one in which the best way to keep your population healthy is to build a city in the middle of a forest? Or one in which you can only discover the wheel because someone in your civilisation thought "I have a great idea - let's research how to make wheels!"

There is no way you can actually believe your own arguments AND enjoy playing Civ. Instead of making honest criticisms you've seemingly opted for psuedo-intellectual "gotcha!" points instead. The argument that because Civ is a game it does not need to bear any relation to the world as it exists denies the fact that Civ is a representation of human history. It may be a bizarre, abstract, finger-painting of history, but even in such a loose medium it is best to follow some sort of intuitive design (again, like granaries storing food instead of 'creating' it).

 

[PhilBowles]

Apparently my statement that Civ 5 lacks realism is in need of an explanation. Many comments have refered to Civ being an unrealistic series due to George Washington being around in 4000BC and the Portuguese building the Great Wall, but this is not what I was refering to. These aspects form the frame of the series, in that we start out with a civilization and create an alternate history. For this goal we have a certain leader, and we can try to build the Great Lighthouse with the Aztecs if we desire. This is the fascination of the series, posing what if?-questions and seeing how history may have developed under different premises. The main difference between Civ 5 and its predecessors is that previous titles have modeled the historical developments within this frame after the real world and real historical occurences with an increasing amount of accuracy.

Having a technology called Prophecy (Civ III) represents increased accuracy compared with its predecessor? Having a military formation that survives for centuries gain experience (Civ IV, Civ V) that it keeps and develops over further centuries represents increased accuracy? Being able to flip a city to your civilisation because of the cultural output of your neighbouring towns (Civ III, Civ IV, soon also to be Civ V) represents increased accuracy?

Civ incarnations have added detail - don't confuse that with realism. Every fully novel Civ IV mechanic - religion, health, Great People, unique units and buildings - was patently unrealistic either in design (those GPs lived for centuries too - and seriously, building the Pyramids increases your chances of giving birth to Isambard Kingdom Brunel? Who you can then sacrifice to create a golden age?) or in execution (you think a battering ram is a silly idea as a unique unit? Is a "Fast Worker" any better?). Health - the aforementioned issue where you can create a healthy city by settling in the middle of a forest. You founded specific religions by discovering technologies. Civics included bizarre effects both in terms of what they did (universal suffrage lets you rush production by buying items? And incidentally is available upon building the Pyramids) and the mutually exclusive options (a society can't have both slaves and serfs? It can have either without some form of caste system?) And let's not forget that cities cost you more money when away from your capital, but none of the buildings in them cost anything to maintain.

Then we have religion, a system where you can research polytheism and develop a priesthood but be unable to build temples because a cv you never met discovered those techs first. A system where you can even develop priesthoods, monotheism, and a concept of divine right (never mind how dubious THAT is as a "technology") without first having developed a religion. A system where individual named religions are the product of predetermined technological developments.

Sometimes people don't accept a point because they miss it, it's true. Other times - as in this case - they don't accept a point because it's manifestly wrong.

Civ 5 doesn't only take a step backwards in this regard, it completely throws the whole concept of historical plausibility out of the window and adopts a fantasy style approach that makes neither sense historically, nor by using common sense. Regarding historical plausibility, the game is in many ways behind Civ 1 and totally distorts the image of how our past is shaped.

The combat system. This is perhaps the most obvious feature that is detached from realism. Units are now so large that they can only occupy one tile at a time. Since a tile represents at least a few hundred square miles, a unit would have to have the size of a million or more soldiers for the system to make sense. Which in itself naturally doesn't make sense, since whole armies, let alone single units/divisions, didn't reach such sizes till very late in our history. Another effect of the system is that armies now spread for many thousands of miles, which again is not how any war has worked.

Consider what a Civ IV army was. It was a stack of military units on campaign for decades or centuries - each has to represent a sufficiently large formation to support itself for extended periods in the field at one time, which would in reality require a whole series of camp followers from blacksmiths and fletchers to shipwrights (indeed for gunpowder and later units so long in the field it needs continuous access to sophisticated manufacturing facilities). And yet they're arranged into discrete "unit types", they gain experience, and they have to have transport ships specially built and sent to move them when Alexander didn't have this problem after reaching India - his army just built boats as needed.

Why is that done? For realism? No, it's done because players want increasing diversity in unit types. It's a flavourful RPG element to add experience to units, never mind that in the context of a Civ game it is wholly and utterly senseless. Civ V's approach is every bit as unrealistic, but rather than Civ IV's shoddy compromise which is not only unrealistic but, by general agreement, not a great deal of fun either, Civ V decides - correctly - that gameplay should take centre stage.

And of course there are these mysterious ranged attacks, where archers can fire for hundreds of miles, further than gunpowder units, and as far as (or farther, in the case of longbows) than artillery. We also have cities which can perform magical ranged attacks with an astounding accuracy, even before archery and siege weaponry have been developed. Since all these things have no connection to how wars functioned in real-life, the combat system is a fantasy system rather than a depiction of reality.

It was in Civ IV as well - you merely had to think marginally harder to catch the inconsistencies.

Diplomacy. Other Civs don't behave like real Civs would. Instead they are totally schizophrenic and aggressive, and love to denounce others or throw random insults at you. Diplomatic options are limited (i.e. no map trading, no tech trading) or are detached from history, for example research agreements. Religious or governmental similarites and differences among nations have little to no effect on the relations. The main aspect that diplomacy is conducted for is to cheat the AI with broken trade deals, an exploit that goes back to Civ 3 and was unfortunately re-introduced in Civ 5.

Need I mention again that in Civ IV you could happily ally with one player and attack your enemies (and his allies) in that player's own cities without any repercussions at all? To me that makes more of a mockery of the diplomacy system than anything in Civ V, especially since few of your criticisms above are patently unrealistic. For a start it's untrue that the Civ V AIs are "totally schizophrenic and aggressive" as a whole, and denunciations and insults are very rarely random - once you know the system you can control these outcomes to a large extent.

But in terms of the specific options: the lack of map trading is an irritant, but tech trading doesn't reflect the way the real world works either. There are few if any cases of a civilization providing a key technology to another as an item of barter. Research agreements on the other hand have a degree of historical precedent, albeit only in the modern era.

The impacts of different government and religion types are as understated in Civ V as they are overstated in Civ IV - Civ IV took an essentially modern model of ideological differences (itself a very recent phenomenon as applied to states) and applied it throughout history, and to civic types that could never reasonably give rise to that kind of tension in reality (a civ hates you because you have bureaucrats?) Religion was heavily overstated and in reality, while religious tension is common, it has only rarely erupted into open warfare and much more rarely without accompanying strategic considerations (it is not a coincidence that medieval calls to rally Christians to drive the infidels out of the Holy Land had the effect of providing access to the Silk Road). Without a level of detail that allows the system to identify shared elements of religious dogma (for example, Renaissance Protestant England had closer political and commercial ties to the Ottomans and the Moors than to neighbouring Catholics because they shared an opposition of idolatry), having religion play a substantial role in diplomacy is bound to produce implausible results.

No war weariness. The absurdity of your people becoming unhappy when they are victorious in war stands in gross contrast to them not caring about being involved in wars for many centuries. Not only is war weariness, nowadays the single most powerful tool preventing nations from going to war, not included, also combatting it in form of propaganda, which is crucial for modern nations in war and was represented nicely in Civ 4 by the cultural slider in combination with certain buildings like colloseum or broadcast tower, is obviously non-existant.

War weariness in the Civ IV sense is however a very modern phenomenon, one made possible only by the development of mass media. Its occurrence throughout Civ IV's timeline is as bizarre as its complete absence in Civ V, if not more so.

And Civ IV had some of the same absurdities. Civ IV war weariness increased linearly over time - it was not influenced much by whether you were victorious in battle except when you took a city. And you got four times as much war weariness for launching a nuke as you did for being hit by one. War weariness for launching nuclear weapons is itself without precedent based on the one occasion in which nukes have been used in war.

Hexes. In all major cultures, the world has always been structured by the four cardinal points North, South, East, West (and NE, NW, SE, SW). With hexes this historically grown way of shaping the world is gone in favour of a strange 6-dimensional arrangement.

It aids in the search for the Northwest Passage...

Miscellaneous. The list is far from complete, but since this post is getting rather long, I'll list further elements in which the game strays far away from a reasonable depiction of reality without further comment and in no specific order: no health,

Either no health or unrealistically-handled health - which is better?

no foreign trade routes,

Back in the new expansion.

embarkation

See above. Until the Age of Sail, when building ships to carry armies was not feasible based on materials and time available on campaign, armies built their own ships to travel.

no UN voting

Back in the new expansion.

„diplomatic“ victory

Not handled in any way realistically in past Civ games, even given the assumption that applying any victory condition to an ongoing process like civilisation is conceptually absurd. Dominance by population, and a diplomatic victory condition that rewarded successful warfare, is at best misnamed. The revised diplo victories in G&K and BNW (where it's changing again) are an improvement.

, satelites don't reveal the map,

Yes they do.

EDIT: This is of course extremely unrealistic. In reality it wasn't until the Apollo Program that photos were taken of the Earth from space, and those were far too low-resolution to reveal biomes such as forests, let alone the location of precious metals or other resources in the landscape. Reliable world maps were required long before satellites by both naval and aerial navigation, and aerial photography provided better maps of the world than satellites until rather recently. The world map could be revealed by Longitude (if a separate tech), Flight or Apollo Program, but Satellites is a bad fit.

deserts are among the best places to start

Only with Petra or with key resources and rivers. Preferentially settling in floodplains in an otherwise arid environment is not particularly unrealistic - look at Egypt (which, unlike the areas of the Middle East now dominated by desert, was largely desert when civilisation first arose there).

, certain Civ's unique ablities (i.e. Carthage),

Few of which are any worse than either the traits in Civ IV generally, or the choice to apply them to specific civs.

Fountain of Youth and El Dorado,

Yes, I'd rather they dropped those.

Giant Death Robot,

Which is, as its name suggests, at least a joke unit, unlike some of the future tech buildings and Wonders in past Civ games (or indeed a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri). Come on, early Civ games had the Strategic Defence Initiative as a viable building.

some absurdities in the tech tree, knights not needing iron while catapults do,

Catapults don't. Since you've referred to the religion mechanics I presumed you were familiar with the expansion.

paying to buy empty land,

Insert joke about Canada or Alaska here. It does make you wonder who the landowner is that you're paying...

promotion system (i.e. instant heal),

See above. The promotion system - a Civ IV innovation - is wildly unrealistic in principle. Expecting a unit to be fully replenished with a period of at least a year in the field is more realistic than most.

good settling positions don't depend much on food,

Unless you find an obliging maritime city-state they do - you definitely want your early cities to expand fast because they're giving you science.

no synergy between resources and buildings

What synergy existed between them in Civ IV?

no global warming, clouds instead of black for unexplored terrain,

Seriously, you're reduced to complaining about the graphics? You might as well highlight Shogun 2's drawn fog of war as one of that game's deep historical failings.

If you're going down that route you might at least complain about the stone ancient ruins lying around the landscape in 4,000 BC (and that you're more likely to learn Animal Husbandry or Archery from them than Masonry).

no natural threats in the early game,

Actually, the wild animals are one of Civ IV's more annoying absurdities. Again, with the scale of formation that a Civ IV unit represents - and with the scale of game that it represents - wild animals are not going to be an issue. This is not Age of Empires.

universities connected to jungles,

There's nothing implausible about that in principle; what's more at issue is that jungles are far from the only areas where people do meaningful research, and there aren't many research topics in the tech tree that research in jungles would usefully affect - it's the same sort of absurd abstraction that you have to swallow in any Civ game knowing that the extra production you get from an iron mine somehow helps you build things with no iron content whatsoever.

the wide vs tall concept, the world not being remotely populated in many games by the year 2000 and later,

Believe it or not, 50% of the world's land area today is classified as wilderness due to low human population densities.

the importance of natural wonders,

How is this conceptually any worse than the importance of building a Wonder which in reality won't have any special effects other than costing resources and perhaps increasing tourism?

I'm sure there is more, I haven't played the game in some time so this is just what I can think at the top of my head. Anyway. I believe that this list should make my previous point clear that Civ 5 is not in any kind of way modeled around the history and the functioning of our real world, but rather around fantasy concepts which largely are not only without precedent in our world but also make no sense using common sense.

Yes, this is a well-known point. It's also a point that's true of every Civ incarnation.

Therefore my previous conclusion that it is not possible to classify this game as a game of Civilization.

Which is why this is a non sequitur.

 

[eternalblue]

Apparently my statement that Civ 5 lacks realism is in need of an explanation. Many comments have refered to Civ being an unrealistic series due to George Washington being around in 4000BC and the Portuguese building the Great Wall, but this is not what I was refering to. These aspects form the frame of the series, in that we start out with a civilization and create an alternate history. For this goal we have a certain leader, and we can try to build the Great Lighthouse with the Aztecs if we desire. This is the fascination of the series, posing what if?-questions and seeing how history may have developed under different premises. The main difference between Civ 5 and its predecessors is that previous titles have modeled the historical developments within this frame after the real world and real historical occurences with an increasing amount of accuracy. Civ 5 doesn't only take a step backwards in this regard, it completely throws the whole concept of historical plausibility out of the window and adopts a fantasy style approach that makes neither sense historically, nor by using common sense. Regarding historical plausibility, the game is in many ways behind Civ 1 and totally distorts the image of how our past is shaped.

The elements of the game which I discuss in the following list all have in common that in previous civ games, at least in Civ 4, they were handled in a much more historically accurate and plausible way.

The combat system. This is perhaps the most obvious feature that is detached from realism. Units are now so large that they can only occupy one tile at a time. Since a tile represents at least a few hundred square miles, a unit would have to have the size of a million or more soldiers for the system to make sense. Which in itself naturally doesn't make sense, since whole armies, let alone single units/divisions, didn't reach such sizes till very late in our history. Another effect of the system is that armies now spread for many thousands of miles, which again is not how any war has worked. And of course there are these mysterious ranged attacks, where archers can fire for hundreds of miles, further than gunpowder units, and as far as (or farther, in the case of longbows) than artillery. We also have cities which can perform magical ranged attacks with an astounding accuracy, even before archery and siege weaponry have been developed. Since all these things have no connection to how wars functioned in real-life, the combat system is a fantasy system rather than a depiction of reality.

Global Happiness. This system is all full of absurdities as well. The most obvious one is that to please the inhabitants of a city on our west coast we can build a circus in a city on the east coast. In contrast, if a city on the east coast grows, all our other cities may become unhappy. Why should everyone get unhappy over the growth of a far away city? Makes no sense. Similarly, while there is no war weariness (we'll get to that later), if we are victorious in war and capture enemy cities, our whole empire may become outraged and stop re-populating itself (which is in itself a very non-sensical punishment). Of course it's the same for building cities, for some reason the existing population hates to expand. Obviously these occurences are unprecedented in real history.

Diplomacy. Other Civs don't behave like real Civs would. Instead they are totally schizophrenic and aggressive, and love to denounce others or throw random insults at you. Diplomatic options are limited (i.e. no map trading, no tech trading) or are detached from history, for example research agreements. Religious or governmental similarites and differences among nations have little to no effect on the relations. The main aspect that diplomacy is conducted for is to cheat the AI with broken trade deals, an exploit that goes back to Civ 3 and was unfortunately re-introduced in Civ 5.

City States. These strange entities completely overstep the borders of any kind of notion of common sense. Existing in 4000BC, they seem to be Civs at first, yet they aren't. They don't expand, and „diplomacy“ with them is reduced to giving them gold or fullfilling weird random missions like building a road to make them like you, in which case they provide all your cities with magical food or other miraculous bonuses. What are these things? We certainly haven't ever had anything like these things in our past. But in the game they have great influence and are crucial for certain victory conditions.

Governments. Once again, this is a system without precedent in history. Societies have never worked even remotely in the ways represented by social policies. They depict history as a linear development with accumulating bonuses as a Civ grows. As we know, this can't be farther from truth, and may lead to a false sense of history for those not so well-read. Societal changes and revolutions have not only occured in every major nation in history, but have often times been the decisive force in historical progression (rather than the continuity of systems, which has often limited or prevented societal achievements). This system I regard as one of the most misleading and dangerous concerning historical awareness.

Economy. The main change to the economy in Civ 5 was the removal of the budget. Previously, states could distribute their total commercial income among the fields of research, finances, culture, and espionage. This is a reasonably accurate representation of how states and state budgets function. In Civ 5 in contrast, the economy once again does not have any precedent. The absurdities start in the early game, when we can spend gold to buy land or units without having researched currency. There no longer is a budget, there is no element of distribution. Instead, technological research is tied to population, which, looking at our history, is a very peculiar feature.

Religion. There are no longer any real world religions. This may be tolerable, if the religious system was nevertheless related to history, which it isn't. Not only is religion more a kind of system which is all about collecting more or less random, fantasy-like bonuses, it also has very little effect on diplomacy.

No war weariness. The absurdity of your people becoming unhappy when they are victorious in war stands in gross contrast to them not caring about being involved in wars for many centuries. Not only is war weariness, nowadays the single most powerful tool preventing nations from going to war, not included, also combatting it in form of propaganda, which is crucial for modern nations in war and was represented nicely in Civ 4 by the cultural slider in combination with certain buildings like colloseum or broadcast tower, is obviously non-existant.

Hexes. In all major cultures, the world has always been structured by the four cardinal points North, South, East, West (and NE, NW, SE, SW). With hexes this historically grown way of shaping the world is gone in favour of a strange 6-dimensional arrangement.

Miscellaneous. The list is far from complete, but since this post is getting rather long, I'll list further elements in which the game strays far away from a reasonable depiction of reality without further comment and in no specific order: no health, no corporations, no foreign trade routes, embarkation, no capitulation/vassalage, no UN voting, „diplomatic“ victory, satelites don't reveal the map, deserts are among the best places to start, certain Civ's unique ablities (i.e. Carthage), Fountain of Youth and El Dorado, Giant Death Robot, some absurdities in the tech tree, knights not needing iron while catapults do, tactical abilities in war overstressed compared to production capabilities, static graphics, paying to buy empty land, no need to connect resources, promotion system (i.e. instant heal), good settling positions don't depend much on food, espionage system, no synergy between resources and buildings, no global warming, clouds instead of black for unexplored terrain, no natural threats in the early game, coastal cities are bad, universities connected to jungles, the wide vs tall concept, the world not being remotely populated in many games by the year 2000 and later, the importance of natural wonders, cities don't need certain buildings to grow (i.e. every larger city should need some kind of water system), trading posts.

I'm sure there is more, I haven't played the game in some time so this is just what I can think at the top of my head. Anyway. I believe that this list should make my previous point clear that Civ 5 is not in any kind of way modeled around the history and the functioning of our real world, but rather around fantasy concepts which largely are not only without precedent in our world but also make no sense using common sense. Therefore my previous conclusion that it is not possible to classify this game as a game of Civilization. It simply has nothing to do with creating and developing an alternate history with a historical civilization.

Ok, thanx very much FUNKY because u take your time and explain in this tread why the things are like u said and these are very good arguments, explaining that u was refering on creating alternate history with a game... I was reading all this post and it is very true and fascinating about this aspects that I wasn't seen them... I think I need to play more civ4 to understand it... Now I know why u don't see a civ game in civ5... because civ5 it seems like an ''arcade game'' of civ series... u want to see that is not bad, but is simplified very much with nosense realistic ways no? and makes it different... I like what u said... and I thing I will give to civ4 another shoot... and if u can just answer me please to those questions when u have time what do you think ok? that will help to understand a lot:

1. what u don't like in civ4, and if u can change what u will change?
2. what is the difference in both games civ4 and civ5: religion and espionage? what is the difference... who is the best in this aspect?
3. how it works all the combat in civ4 with the stacks of doom and the other changes from civ5? is just because I don't understand it... and defend a city without ''the city's range attacks''? I don't know how to play the combat in civ4 because I was playing first civ5 and I'm new to the series...and if u explain it a little detailed and the differences I will be very greatful...
4. there is an impact in playing with different civs? u can feel it in civ4?
and the last question...
5. there are a lot more wonders, resources, and bonuses, different units and buildings, for every nation in civ4 than in civ5? or the same? and in civ4 exists the natural wonders?
nothing more... and thanx

 

[PhilBowles]

There is no way you can actually believe your own arguments AND enjoy playing Civ. Instead of making honest criticisms you've seemingly opted for psuedo-intellectual "gotcha!" points instead. The argument that because Civ is a game it does not need to bear any relation to the world as it exists denies the fact that Civ is a representation of human history. It may be a bizarre, abstract, finger-painting of history, but even in such a loose medium it is best to follow some sort of intuitive design (again, like granaries storing food instead of 'creating' it).

If you can't enjoy Civ while accepting that it bears no relation to the world as it exists, you can't enjoy Civ. It's really that simple. My argument is not about making "pseudo-intellectual 'gotcha!' points" - rather it's that very approach I'm criticising. I'm merely pointing out that the same standard has to apply to Civ IV as to Civ V, and vice versa. In the long critique of "realism" post, in the same post we're asked to accept that having Washington founded in 4,000 BC is just part of what Civ is, and that having city-states founded in 4,000 BC is a source of ridicule without precedent in human history. You can't have it both ways - my argument is that simple. There is no possible way a Europeanised American civilisation could have arisen in 4,000 BC, that's all there is to it. And at least in Civ V you can't found cities before discovering agriculture, as a number of civs in Civ IV can (indeed must).

It's exposing pseudo-intellectualism that I'm about, not perpetuating it. I can enjoy Civ games without any pretense that they have to simulate reality, and I don't need to invent one-sided justifications based on illusory historical plausibility to favour one incarnation over another. I'd like Civ V to have a number of more realistic features than it does (including a better way of representing domestic trade routes than will be in the expansion, city-states named after genuine city-states rather than capitals, and connecting resources to cities via roads), but ultimately Civ V's departures from plausibility are at best a difference in scale from Civ IV, not any difference in kind. Both games are fundamentally that - games. They are not 'what if' simulations, and I think if anyone needs to invent those kinds of justifications for liking the series they're either in the wrong place or there's an issue with the game mechanics themselves being insufficiently engaging.

 

[eternalblue]

Having a technology called Prophecy (Civ III) represents increased accuracy compared with its predecessor? Having a military formation that survives for centuries gain experience (Civ IV, Civ V) that it keeps and develops over further centuries represents increased accuracy? Being able to flip a city to your civilisation because of the cultural output of your neighbouring towns (Civ III, Civ IV, soon also to be Civ V) represents increased accuracy?

Civ incarnations have added detail - don't confuse that with realism. Every fully novel Civ IV mechanic - religion, health, Great People, unique units and buildings - was patently unrealistic either in design (those GPs lived for centuries too - and seriously, building the Pyramids increases your chances of giving birth to Isambard Kingdom Brunel? Who you can then sacrifice to create a golden age?) or in execution (you think a battering ram is a silly idea as a unique unit? Is a "Fast Worker" any better?). Health - the aforementioned issue where you can create a healthy city by settling in the middle of a forest. You founded specific religions by discovering technologies. Civics included bizarre effects both in terms of what they did (universal suffrage lets you rush production by buying items? And incidentally is available upon building the Pyramids) and the mutually exclusive options (a society can't have both slaves and serfs? It can have either without some form of caste system?) And let's not forget that cities cost you more money when away from your capital, but none of the buildings in them cost anything to maintain.

Then we have religion, a system where you can research polytheism and develop a priesthood but be unable to build temples because a cv you never met discovered those techs first. A system where you can even develop priesthoods, monotheism, and a concept of divine right (never mind how dubious THAT is as a "technology") without first having developed a religion. A system where individual named religions are the product of predetermined technological developments.

Sometimes people don't accept a point because they miss it, it's true. Other times - as in this case - they don't accept a point because it's manifestly wrong.





Consider what a Civ IV army was. It was a stack of military units on campaign for decades or centuries - each has to represent a sufficiently large formation to support itself for extended periods in the field at one time, which would in reality require a whole series of camp followers from blacksmiths and fletchers to shipwrights (indeed for gunpowder and later units so long in the field it needs continuous access to sophisticated manufacturing facilities). And yet they're arranged into discrete "unit types", they gain experience, and they have to have transport ships specially built and sent to move them when Alexander didn't have this problem after reaching India - his army just built boats as needed.

Why is that done? For realism? No, it's done because players want increasing diversity in unit types. It's a flavourful RPG element to add experience to units, never mind that in the context of a Civ game it is wholly and utterly senseless. Civ V's approach is every bit as unrealistic, but rather than Civ IV's shoddy compromise which is not only unrealistic but, by general agreement, not a great deal of fun either, Civ V decides - correctly - that gameplay should take centre stage.



It was in Civ IV as well - you merely had to think marginally harder to catch the inconsistencies.



Need I mention again that in Civ IV you could happily ally with one player and attack your enemies (and his allies) in that player's own cities without any repercussions at all? To me that makes more of a mockery of the diplomacy system than anything in Civ V, especially since few of your criticisms above are patently unrealistic. For a start it's untrue that the Civ V AIs are "totally schizophrenic and aggressive" as a whole, and denunciations and insults are very rarely random - once you know the system you can control these outcomes to a large extent.

But in terms of the specific options: the lack of map trading is an irritant, but tech trading doesn't reflect the way the real world works either. There are few if any cases of a civilization providing a key technology to another as an item of barter. Research agreements on the other hand have a degree of historical precedent, albeit only in the modern era.

The impacts of different government and religion types are as understated in Civ V as they are overstated in Civ IV - Civ IV took an essentially modern model of ideological differences (itself a very recent phenomenon as applied to states) and applied it throughout history, and to civic types that could never reasonably give rise to that kind of tension in reality (a civ hates you because you have bureaucrats?) Religion was heavily overstated and in reality, while religious tension is common, it has only rarely erupted into open warfare and much more rarely without accompanying strategic considerations (it is not a coincidence that medieval calls to rally Christians to drive the infidels out of the Holy Land had the effect of providing access to the Silk Road). Without a level of detail that allows the system to identify shared elements of religious dogma (for example, Renaissance Protestant England had closer political and commercial ties to the Ottomans and the Moors than to neighbouring Catholics because they shared an opposition of idolatry), having religion play a substantial role in diplomacy is bound to produce implausible results.




War weariness in the Civ IV sense is however a very modern phenomenon, one made possible only by the development of mass media. Its occurrence throughout Civ IV's timeline is as bizarre as its complete absence in Civ V, if not more so.

And Civ IV had some of the same absurdities. Civ IV war weariness increased linearly over time - it was not influenced much by whether you were victorious in battle except when you took a city. And you got four times as much war weariness for launching a nuke as you did for being hit by one. War weariness for launching nuclear weapons is itself without precedent based on the one occasion in which nukes have been used in war.



It aids in the search for the Northwest Passage...



Either no health or unrealistically-handled health - which is better?



Back in the new expansion.



See above. Until the Age of Sail, when building ships to carry armies was not feasible based on materials and time available on campaign, armies built their own ships to travel.



Back in the new expansion.



Not handled in any way realistically in past Civ games, even given the assumption that applying any victory condition to an ongoing process like civilisation is conceptually absurd. Dominance by population, and a diplomatic victory condition that rewarded successful warfare, is at best misnamed. The revised diplo victories in G&K and BNW (where it's changing again) are an improvement.



Yes they do.

EDIT: This is of course extremely unrealistic. In reality it wasn't until the Apollo Program that photos were taken of the Earth from space, and those were far too low-resolution to reveal biomes such as forests, let alone the location of precious metals or other resources in the landscape. Reliable world maps were required long before satellites by both naval and aerial navigation, and aerial photography provided better maps of the world than satellites until rather recently. The world map could be revealed by Longitude (if a separate tech), Flight or Apollo Program, but Satellites is a bad fit.



Only with Petra or with key resources and rivers. Preferentially settling in floodplains in an otherwise arid environment is not particularly unrealistic - look at Egypt (which, unlike the areas of the Middle East now dominated by desert, was largely desert when civilisation first arose there).



Few of which are any worse than either the traits in Civ IV generally, or the choice to apply them to specific civs.



Yes, I'd rather they dropped those.



Which is, as its name suggests, at least a joke unit, unlike some of the future tech buildings and Wonders in past Civ games (or indeed a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri). Come on, early Civ games had the Strategic Defence Initiative as a viable building.



Catapults don't. Since you've referred to the religion mechanics I presumed you were familiar with the expansion.



Insert joke about Canada or Alaska here. It does make you wonder who the landowner is that you're paying...



See above. The promotion system - a Civ IV innovation - is wildly unrealistic in principle. Expecting a unit to be fully replenished with a period of at least a year in the field is more realistic than most.



Unless you find an obliging maritime city-state they do - you definitely want your early cities to expand fast because they're giving you science.



What synergy existed between them in Civ IV?



Seriously, you're reduced to complaining about the graphics? You might as well highlight Shogun 2's drawn fog of war as one of that game's deep historical failings.

If you're going down that route you might at least complain about the stone ancient ruins lying around the landscape in 4,000 BC (and that you're more likely to learn Animal Husbandry or Archery from them than Masonry).



Actually, the wild animals are one of Civ IV's more annoying absurdities. Again, with the scale of formation that a Civ IV unit represents - and with the scale of game that it represents - wild animals are not going to be an issue. This is not Age of Empires.



There's nothing implausible about that in principle; what's more at issue is that jungles are far from the only areas where people do meaningful research, and there aren't many research topics in the tech tree that research in jungles would usefully affect - it's the same sort of absurd abstraction that you have to swallow in any Civ game knowing that the extra production you get from an iron mine somehow helps you build things with no iron content whatsoever.



Believe it or not, 50% of the world's land area today is classified as wilderness due to low human population densities.



How is this conceptually any worse than the importance of building a Wonder which in reality won't have any special effects other than costing resources and perhaps increasing tourism?



Yes, this is a well-known point. It's also a point that's true of every Civ incarnation.



Which is why this is a non sequitur.

... and here comes a great counter-attack that of course I like it a lot... so, like a new-comer, I'm very honored because I can see great founded comment's like FUNKY and PHILBOWLES... FUNKY justified that civ4 is acurate historicaly in these aspect and give great arguments with great aspects... and in counter, PhilBowles is coming with a good explanation too, why civ4 is non-realistic and , civ5 it is a ''CIV'' game like others civ games that are non-accurate historical... so both are very helpfull detailed and specified posts but... the two are in counter... I don't know in this moment what to think of about of civ4... so of coures PhilBowles from your post I have seen that u are very good at history and u like very much all the civ games one question of course for u:

Now if I have both games... like I am a newcomer in CIV series and a lover for past history... what game from CIV4BTS or CIV5G&K I should take my time in all the aspects? to take my time, because I don't have for both... I need to give to civ4 a shoot? or I don't need to bother and go with civ5 because it's have what I need? answer me please just with one of the games your prefered... and why? ok? nothing more.. thanx for taking your time in this tread answering...

 

[jjkrause84]

The impacts of different government and religion types are as understated in Civ V as they are overstated in Civ IV - Civ IV took an essentially modern model of ideological differences (itself a very recent phenomenon as applied to states)

What about the Peloponnesian War? The great struggle between oligarchy and 'democracy'. That said, I agree that religion was far to oheavy a determinant in Civ 4. It was one of the many things the game got wrong (along with no ZoC, and endless stacking, etc.).

War weariness in the Civ IV sense is however a very modern phenomenon, one made possible only by the development of mass media.

Yes and no. War weariness as protests in the streets cannot exist with modern representative government, true (otherwise, who are you appealing to?). Civil unrest, of course, is as old as civilization, and could be brought about a range of issues, war being one of them. War weariness in this sense was most typically expressed through passive resistance in rural areas, which would actually translate into a reduction in the 'production' of soldiers, food, taxes.

To approach the issue from a radically different angle: Native Americans living along the Eastern seaboard typically engaged in war until war weariness was unsustainable, at which point the war ended. Now, there were not 'protests' in the 1960s sense of the word, but tribe-members made it known that they had had enough of war and would demand a cessation of hostilities. This without any mass media (not even printing), or a centralized "modern" government.

Civ IV war weariness increased linearly over time - it was not influenced much by whether you were victorious in battle except when you took a city.

It could have been better designed...agreed.

Until the Age of Sail, when building ships to carry armies was not feasible based on materials and time available on campaign, armies built their own ships to travel.

Again, look at ancient Greek warfare when ships were state-built, and could be used to ferry armies across (relatively) vast expanses of water. You could also look to Rome who traveled by sea (the only way) to North Africa. In fact, it only becomes muddier if you move beyond European history. When the Mongols built their fleets to invade Japan was that the army building boats or the government? It is probably impossible to definitively say. In any case, a major campaign was needed, and took significant time and resources. This had always been portrayed (abstractly) in Civ, up to the introduction of 'transformers' in Civ 5. I think a good compromise might be allowing armies to build boats themselves to cross coastal waters, but not oceans.

 

[jjkrause84]

On a side note: eternal, just go buy Civ 4 and the expansions. They're dirt cheap. See for yourself.

To be honest, I think you may find that you prefer Civ 5, if only because going 'backwards' is always very tough. There are only a few old games that have pulled me in despite the fact that I only played them years after they came out. XCOM is the best example. I didn't play it until the early 2000s, but still fell in love.

 

[civvver]

Well said funky. I think you summarized everything I dislike about civ5. Not because of realism, but because I just don't feel the mechanics are as good as 4.

Guys forget realism, we're talking about games here. Which mechanics make for better games?

As simply as I can put it, civ5 feels like a game of constant accumulation and progression, like a bank account with a fixed interest rate. Civ4 feels like a game with ebbs and flows, stagnation and jumps, like the stock market. Ask yourself which you find more interesting.

Again, just my opinion, but every complaint I here new civ5 players making about 4 can be summarized as "I don't like micromanagement and the game is too complicated while the combat is too simple." Nearly every complaint from civ4 vets about civ5 can be summarized as "The game lacks depth and x mechanic is dumb and combat takes away from empire building/micomanagement." To each his own.

 

[rschissler]

Well said funky. I think you summarized everything I dislike about civ5. Not because of realism, but because I just don't feel the mechanics are as good as 4.

Guys forget realism, we're talking about games here. Which mechanics make for better games?

As simply as I can put it, civ5 feels like a game of constant accumulation and progression, like a bank account with a fixed interest rate. Civ4 feels like a game with ebbs and flows, stagnation and jumps, like the stock market. Ask yourself which you find more interesting.

Again, just my opinion, but every complaint I here new civ5 players making about 4 can be summarized as "I don't like micromanagement and the game is too complicated while the combat is too simple." Nearly every complaint from civ4 vets about civ5 can be summarized as "The game lacks depth and x mechanic is dumb and combat takes away from empire building/micomanagement." To each his own.

This pretty much sums it up for me.

 

[eternalblue]

On a side note: eternal, just go buy Civ 4 and the expansions. They're dirt cheap. See for yourself.

To be honest, I think you may find that you prefer Civ 5, if only because going 'backwards' is always very tough. There are only a few old games that have pulled me in despite the fact that I only played them years after they came out. XCOM is the best example. I didn't play it until the early 2000s, but still fell in love.

ok, thanx ... and yes , I love too the x-com series, and more the first x-com and x-com apocalypse... the last one of course is very good...

 

[PhilBowles]

What about the Peloponnesian War? The great struggle between oligarchy and 'democracy'.

I'm not seeing a connection, I'm afraid. The Spartans happened to be oligarchs, the Athenians happened to be democrats, but I've been able to find no reference to the different political systems counting among the motives for the war, which was initially an effort by Sparta to check Athenian expansion. Most of Athens' allies, like Sparta's, were despotic (such as the former Spartan ally Megara).

Yes and no. War weariness as protests in the streets cannot exist with modern representative government, true (otherwise, who are you appealing to?). Civil unrest, of course, is as old as civilization, and could be brought about a range of issues, war being one of them.

Civil unrest has always been part of the Civ series (often more so than in Civ IV), although isn't very meaningful in Civ V. War weariness as a cause of unrest (and, in Civ IV, often the major cause of unrest during wartime) is much less commonplace, and is not usually a direct result of war but an indirect effect of higher taxes or fewer available resources/less food when it was being funnelled to an army in the field. Civ IV already covered unhappiness due to taxation, and this didn't increase during wartime (unless taxes did, quite reasonably) - Civ IV war weariness specifically represents the sort of modern civil protest against war, which has only been feasible since the Crimea, and a mainstream source of widespread civil disobedience since the end of WWI, if not later.

Moreover wars might have caused local unrest historically in those cities being particularly heavily squeezed for funds, resources, or manpower, but Civ IV's blanket war weariness affects all of your cities equally, something that certainly isn't feasible without mass media.

To approach the issue from a radically different angle: Native Americans living along the Eastern seaboard typically engaged in war until war weariness was unsustainable, at which point the war ended. Now, there were not 'protests' in the 1960s sense of the word, but tribe-members made it known that they had had enough of war and would demand a cessation of hostilities. This without any mass media (not even printing), or a centralized "modern" government.

Those are also very small and localised societies, and minor wars, in which you don't need mass media to disseminate what's going on to the public at large - you find similar things in New Guinea, where communities are small and historically aggressive, but until the recent introduction of firearms, fatalities only occasional (there was even a recent paper on a related subject in, I think, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

I think a good compromise might be allowing armies to build boats themselves to cross coastal waters, but not oceans.

Yes, I've thought much the same.

Guys forget realism, we're talking about games here. Which mechanics make for better games?

This is very much the key point, I think. Fatuous arguments for realism in Civ IV make the poster look silly, but don't say anything about which game has better mechanics.

Again, just my opinion, but every complaint I here new civ5 players making about 4 can be summarized as "I don't like micromanagement and the game is too complicated while the combat is too simple."

I've heard this from a few people, but there are more complex issues hidden within this phrase.

Take micromanagement particularly. Civ as a series is a game about the largest possible scale of empire management - taken at face value, arguing that it should have more micromanagement seems absurd. Where Civ V goes wrong, I think, is not in having too little micromanagement, but in having too little macromanagement.

Take Distant Worlds - this is the sort of thing an empire 'simulator' should aim for; it's made explicit from the start that control of most micromanagement features is automated, while the player focuses on macromanagement, exploration, diplomacy and defence. You can set immigration policies and taxation, but not (for the most part) dictate planetary production. You can encourage trade by building the appropriate infrastructure around planets with resources you want, but not exert any direct control. Personal control over every building constructed or making sure the sewers are working in every settlement feels out of place.

And it makes the game feel smaller even when on a giant map (by comparison with Civ V). In Civ IV I don't feel like I'm playing an empire, I feel like I'm playing a string of loosely-related cities.

It doesn't help that Civ IV's curious blend of macro- and micro-management means that most micromanagement relates to managing macro-scale effects - tax rates are set globally, so unhappiness rises at a fixed rate in all cities, requiring the exact same solutions in every city. Trade routes even let you manage local city happiness and health with individual, globally-available resources. Unhappiness and unhealthiness have the same population threshold in every city. War weariness has the same effects on every city (extra impacts on foreign nationalities within your empire notwithstanding). Civics affecting happiness etc. affected it equally throughout the empire. So micromanagement in Civ V is to a large extent illusory - it's more an inelegant way of forcing exactly the same decisions and the same development paths in every city of your empire than true micromanagement.

 

[mattah]

I'm one of those earlier mentioned members of this forum, who every now and then just checks back to see if Civ V is worth looking at. Thanks to threads like these, I can see I probably still wouldn't enjoy it, and happily go back to playing Civ IV + mods.