Is Civ V or Civ IV better?

[nokmirt]

Civ 5 should never have been designed with tall play in mind. I feel it did ruin those large sprawling empires I love so much, from previous titles. The AI is the main drawback though. I think much of the programming is left over from Civ 4.

 

[twilson1972]

I never seem to build more than 4-5 cities now, and i am reluctant to keep those i capture

When building cities i ignore nice land with fish and cows etc...land i would have jumped on in BTS, i only build by resources or luxuries now

The result is a lot of untouched land late game.

Do any of the top players build lots of cities?

 

[twilson1972]

Ho boy, Archipelago is the worst map for AIs. A lot of players here can confirm this from experience, and I can confirm it from the fact that the AI algorithms I know of in unmodded BNW start failing heavily on naval maps.


Science can definitely be very quick: it's not due to less techs, it's because of two things: 1) the ideal path(s) through the tech tree are both very clear-cut and accelerate science production to levels that the game's designers (seemingly) did not anticipate, and 2) you actually get a beaker boost on science overflow now, and though the latest patch capped it so you can no longer exploit it to ridiculous levels, it still means that beelining a tech and then researching earlier techs gets you to the same tech level faster than if you researched the earlier techs first before beelining.
It's one of the reasons I will play Standard map size on Epic speed and Small map size on either Standard speed or Quick speed, depending on the mapscript (land-dominated = Quick, otherwise Standard).


It's very simple in singleplayer, aye, but things are a lot more interesting in multiplayer. However, it cannot be said how important those random, earlygame city-state quests can be: if you're lucky, you don't even need to bribe a city-state to get influence with them.


Thing is, as the AI gets more challenging, your viable options get restricted. They'll still make the same, stupid decisions as before, but they'll be getting so many bonuses on the side that the game becomes more about exploiting holes in the AI's logic and getting lucky with starts than anything else.
I'd really recommend you give multiplayer BNW a try if you're finding the AI boring to play against: human players are a lot better at exploiting the options given to them by BNW than even the Deity-level AI.


Naval units couldn't capture cities in vanilla Civ5, either, mind you. But yeah, having to constantly embark and disembark melee units in Civ4 was a bit of chore and the only time stacks of doom flatout made the game experience better (you could just pile all of your land units onto a single tile instead of having to play traffic cop with embarked melee units).


It feels like a board game because it was designed by people with boardgaming backgrounds, specifically the American type (as opposed to Japanese or Euro games): they said so at Firaxicon when the designers were talking about XCOM board game.
I can definitely think of a few epic-feeling boardgames (eg. Twilight Imperium, maybe some of the larger-scale WH40K stuff), maybe even a few that fall on the Euro game side of things (Archipelago). However, all epic-feeling boardgames have a sense of escalation to them, the sense that small, petty skirmishes evolve into bombastic, drawn-out assaults as the game progresses. Civ5 is probably the Civ game that has this the least, most likely because of the way that tall play has been made so powerful compared to wide play: rarely do you see yourself really spreading out into a sprawling empire, and even then you're usually hit with an unhappiness so huge that half your cities rebel and convert to another civ. Sure, you can make a huge army of 50+ units like in Civ4, but you'll be spending more time micromanaging them due to 1UPT than actually fighting with them; plus, why build 50 units when 16 can perform just as well?


I wish I could share your optimism, but after CivBE and Starships, I honestly can't.

My main issue with the science is how briefly units are up to date, i hardly get time to get them across the map. Maybe i should play marathon but the ratio of scientific advance to production speed seems skewed. Ill try marathon

As for archipelago, well the AI has never played them well, i figured with units able to walk on water it would be simpler for the ai though. I have a bias to playing the english im afraid, and a naval themed game as a result

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

I never seem to build more than 4-5 cities now, and i am reluctant to keep those i capture

When building cities i ignore nice land with fish and cows etc...land i would have jumped on in BTS, i only build by resources or luxuries now

The result is a lot of untouched land late game.

Do any of the top players build lots of cities?

To my knowledge, unless you are going ICS, 4-6 cities should be your target. It's (unfortunately) how the game was designed. If you are going ICS, you usually stop at around 8-10 cities, basically until your policy- and luxury-sourced happiness just covers your per-city unhappiness (pop unhappiness doesn't matter, because you'll be keeping pops under local happiness limits all the time). Keep in mind though that ICS strategies in Civ5 only really work for specific civs with specific starts (some civs can do it on any start, eg. Ethiopia, others need either a good coastal start or a good faith-based start), so don't go about trying to perform one with, say, Austria.

As for archipelago, well the AI has never played them well, i figured with units able to walk on water it would be simpler for the ai though. I have a bias to playing the english im afraid, and a naval themed game as a result

None of the algorithms' problems are related to unit movement, they're related to things like unit composition, settler production, policy choice, and tech choice. For example, the way the AI chooses its plots for settling new cities is the following: it sums up all the fertility values (settling score) of each landmass, then takes the two landmasses with the highest fertility value and tries to settle on them at their highest fertility tiles. This means that the more landmasses there are and the greater the differences between landmass size (though only unowned territory can have a fertility value greater than 0), the greater the chance that the AI will ignore a close landmass that is good enough for settling on and instead try to go for a landmass halfway across the world that is only slightly better for settling on.
English, BTW, are good on pretty much any map with water: even in multiplayer maps of Pangea, players sometimes give up on coastal starts because they do not want to deal with England capturing their capitol with Ships of the Line. The other thing to know is that their Longbowmen keep the +1 range promotion when upgrading, so they are the only civ that can have Gatling Guns and Machine Guns with range 2 right from the start (a huge advantage to be sure).

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Having just finished a Civ IV BTS earth 18 game, the AI is not so much "better" but is programmed to build stacks that combine diverse units - so cav/pikeman/catapult/melee. This makes stopping an attack challenging as you'll face the unit which opposes you - so attack a stack with a cav and the pikeman is used - attack with melee and a promoted melee is used. And then there's the 50 unit stack-of-doom. The AI is also pretty good with using air units in combination with ground and okay with naval - although not great.

The complications of going to the 1 upt in Civ 5 create the complexity of how to recreate what the AI did well in Civ 4. I also noticed that the code for Civ BTS executes pretty fast - even late game when the AIs have hundreds of units. Civ 5 on the other hand really bogs down late game with it taking several minutes per turn.

So which is better? If you want to be challenged in terms of AI combat then Civ IV BTS is still far better. Whether it's possible to build a decent AI for 1 upt is an open question. Maybe Civ VI should go with 4-5 upt or impose some sort of unit support mechanism that would limit units a particular tile. With that maybe a decent AI can be built. Can Civ V be modded to allow more than 1 upt?

 

[Paszczak]

Civilization 5 is the better game, because I say so.

Thread closed.

 

[nokmirt]

Civilization 5 is the better game, because I say so.

Thread closed.

I agree it is by far.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Take Civ 4 BTS, upgrade the 10-year graphics, add-in a few Civ V features like finite resources and you'd have game 10 times better than Civ V

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Civ 4>Civ 5 singleplayer
Civ5>Civ4 multiplayer

What really disappoints me about civ IV is its multiplayer. Civ IV multiplayer is no more and thats why civ v is a lot better than civ iv.

Civs V Multiplayer better? The same Civ 5 that doesn't even support PBEM?

 

[nokmirt]

Take Civ 4 BTS, upgrade the 10-year graphics, add-in a few Civ V features like finite resources and you'd have game 10 times better than Civ V

As long as it has hexes. You've gotta deal. No more squares.

Civs V Multiplayer better? The same Civ 5 that doesn't even support PBEM?

Who plays by email? What is this 1960?

 

[reddishrecue]

There isn't even a civ 4 multiplayer. How could civ 4 be better in multiplayer if there isn't even a multiplayer in civ 4?

 

[nimling]

Civ IV is a better game, objectively speaking.

Civ V didn't do everything wrong though. It would be nice if someone could hack together a Civilization game that combines the best elements of every game in the series, and patches over the usual sore spots.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Who plays by email? What is this 1960?

Because e-mails existed in the 60s.
Are you a teenager or something? You certainly got the attitude of one. I'll have you know the Civ4 PBEM community is active to this very day and sees no signs of stopping any time soon. Some people like complex well thought out games, though I guess I wouldn't find many of those in the CiV forum.

There isn't even a civ 4 multiplayer. How could civ 4 be better in multiplayer if there isn't even a multiplayer in civ 4?

You are so ignorant it hurts. Even though Gamespy shut down there are still plenty of third party providers (first and foremost Evolve) that enable daily live games, there's a bunch of Pitboss games, I of course play via LAN with my best friend whenever he comes over and last but not least we have an entire community based around PBEM.

CIV is the better game period. Granted, this does not mean that CiV is a bad game, or that CIV is better in every single category. I certainly admire how culture interacts with social policies, how you can customize religions and the well thought out culture victory mechanics and ideologies. Music and Graphics is of course top notch. You really can't conceivably call me a CiV hater these days. I may have been a hater once, but then I actually got CiV with all expansions and DLCs in a sale and played it for some weeks straight. However I haven't even touched it at all since then once the shinyness went away and its flaws became ever more apparent. My reaction when I realized how much this game favors tall over wide was pretty much, "What is is, an empire building game for ants?" 1UPT is of course the single worst 'feature' in this game and ruins everything it touches. The AI is ridiculously petty, crazy and hypocritical (granted I guess that's a good representation of real life politicians ), the global happiness system sucks, health is missing entirely, everything is so small and tiny I feel more like a mayor than the leader of a nation, improvements have been dumbed down (cottages and their ability to grow was a brilliant mechanic and instead of expanding on that they scrapped it entirely), there is barely a modding community to speak of while its predecessor has some mods that are easily good enough to be sold as separate games and are still being developed today etc.

So yeah, CIV is easily the best game I have ever had the pleasure of playing in my life and as close to perfection as you can realistically get. CiV isn't a bad game, but it simply can't stand up to the concentrated awesomeness of its predecessor.

 

[Seraiel]

If the AI in CiV is worse at war than it is in CIV, I wouldn't know why I ever should play it. Fancy graphics don't catch me, it's the challenge the game offers, and there, CIV is miles beyond CiV.
Also, the (Elite) Quattromaster challenges in CIV HoF are great, and there is some extremely high competition between certain players.

 

[nokmirt]

Because e-mails existed in the 60s.
Are you a teenager or something? You certainly got the attitude of one. I'll have you know the Civ4 PBEM community is active to this very day and sees no signs of stopping any time soon. Some people like complex well thought out games, though I guess I wouldn't find many of those in the CiV forum

Have you ever heard of sarcasm?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Have you ever heard of sarcasm?

Have you?

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Please cease the sarcasm. It doesn't translate well from oral into writing and so is not helpful.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[reddishrecue]

Because e-mails existed in the 60s.
Are you a teenager or something? You certainly got the attitude of one. I'll have you know the Civ4 PBEM community is active to this very day and sees no signs of stopping any time soon. Some people like complex well thought out games, though I guess I wouldn't find many of those in the CiV forum.



You are so ignorant it hurts. Even though Gamespy shut down there are still plenty of third party providers (first and foremost Evolve) that enable daily live games, there's a bunch of Pitboss games, I of course play via LAN with my best friend whenever he comes over and last but not least we have an entire community based around PBEM.

CIV is the better game period. Granted, this does not mean that CiV is a bad game, or that CIV is better in every single category. I certainly admire how culture interacts with social policies, how you can customize religions and the well thought out culture victory mechanics and ideologies. Music and Graphics is of course top notch. You really can't conceivably call me a CiV hater these days. I may have been a hater once, but then I actually got CiV with all expansions and DLCs in a sale and played it for some weeks straight. However I haven't even touched it at all since then once the shinyness went away and its flaws became ever more apparent. My reaction when I realized how much this game favors tall over wide was pretty much, "What is is, an empire building game for ants?" 1UPT is of course the single worst 'feature' in this game and ruins everything it touches. The AI is ridiculously petty, crazy and hypocritical (granted I guess that's a good representation of real life politicians ), the global happiness system sucks, health is missing entirely, everything is so small and tiny I feel more like a mayor than the leader of a nation, improvements have been dumbed down (cottages and their ability to grow was a brilliant mechanic and instead of expanding on that they scrapped it entirely), there is barely a modding community to speak of while its predecessor has some mods that are easily good enough to be sold as separate games and are still being developed today etc.

So yeah, CIV is easily the best game I have ever had the pleasure of playing in my life and as close to perfection as you can realistically get. CiV isn't a bad game, but it simply can't stand up to the concentrated awesomeness of its predecessor.

That's right. It was gamespy that had shut down multiplayer. It is difficult to find civ 4 multiplayer these days. I couldn't even upload civ 4 into steam. If people and individuals would be able to get a multiplayer game they would have to be friends and establish a lan connection without the usual gamespy which got shut down. Gamespy had shut down and that left me without an opportunity to play civilization 4 multiplayer. I don't have any friends that want to play civilization 4 on mmultiplayer either. If If had skills I would want to play civilization 4multiplayer. I don't even want to play civilization 4 that much since civilization 5 has easier access to multiplayer than civilization 4 does. The only thing that I find entertaining about civilization 4 and keeps me coming back is the Deity difficulty which is still difficult for myself still. I've been playing civilization 4 since it came out. I bought and paid for each expansion of civilization 4 as well as the expansions that were sold and were at full price btw, beyond the sword and warlords. Not only that but colonization is also one of the expansions that looked similar to BE in civilization 5. The revolutionary difficulty in colonization is also a challenge, I imagine how difficult the Apollo difficulty would be if I would've actually had a copy of BE which also has good multiplayer access like civilization 5 does.

 

[Seraiel]

You never ever play Deity red and win even only 1 out of 100 games. You didn't even know about the power of slavery some weeks ago. Stop lying.

 

[chrisbk88]

Civ5 is actually the perfect game, it's just on hexes, so it isn't. If it wasn't on hexes it would be a ground breaking game. Period. It is a really goodtry ,Devs, but hexes don't work. It isn't Civilization, it's micro-civ.

Now, put Civ3 scale on Civ4 game limits, rules with a Civ5 engine, tech, and diplomacy and poof Civ6.