Is Civ V or Civ IV better?

[reddishrecue]

I play on Deity and rage quit so many times.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

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.

Download Evolve, make an account, and send me a PM telling me your nick so I can add you to a group dedicated to Civ4 Multiplayer.

You are welcome.

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.

I am honestly confused as to what the problem with hexes is. Personally I always thought of that as rather inconsequential.

 

[nokmirt]

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.

There has to be hexes. Squares just don't work well. The primary advantage of a hex map over a traditional square grid map is that the distance between the center of each hex cell (or hex) and the center of all six adjacent hexes is constant. To me the problem is not hexes. It is the inability to stack and remove congestion. Civ V gets way too crowded and the AI just can't deal with it. For Civ VI there needs to be a brand new AI, hexes, some way to organize military forces. Armies, corps, whatever, but there has to be some way to stack, even if it is in a limited capacity.

P.S. If Civ IV had hexes I'd still play it.

 

[daft]

Do the hexes have to be visible? I think they could rid of them, display how many turns it would take to get to desired position, let us strategize more. And the world would be more realistic looking as well.

 

[nokmirt]

Do the hexes have to be visible? I think they could rid of them, display how many turns it would take to get to desired position, let us strategize more. And the world would be more realistic looking as well.

You can make them invisible. I just choose to play with them on.

 

[rschissler]

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.

While Civ V has a lot of flaws, it's hard to imagine how hexes are a negative.

 

[twilson1972]

While Civ V has a lot of flaws, it's hard to imagine how hexes are a negative.

I like hexes, but the AI cant use its units properely, just discovered this on my first emp game...where korea had more units, started the war and ended up losing its capitol

 

[joncnunn]

I like hexes, but the AI cant use its units properely, just discovered this on my first emp game...where korea had more units, started the war and ended up losing its capitol

That's due to 1 UPT vs unlimited UPT and NOT hexes vs squares.

 

[Seraiel]

1 UPT is really the biggest problem in CiV. I always wonder what those programmers are thinking. They develop a beautifully good game (CIV) and then, next time, instead of simply improving the graphics and fixing the bugs, they think “we must do everything different to before“ .
Additionally, I don't know, why Programmers only listen to the community of their games, if one catches them with going on mass-strike and don't buy their newest game. I know only 1 game, where the Creaters invited 20 top gamers for a week to speak with the over developement, that was in Elder Scrolls Online. In that game though, the decision for that came too late so it's free to play know, after only half a year.

 

[ThorHammerz]

... and NOT hexes vs squares.

I agree & second this. It is only somewhat more computationally expensive (note: it is perfectly accurate, and does not affect the quality of AI logic).

A quick reference on how a game would loop around a tile/plot:

Spoiler :

	for(iDX = -(Radius); iDX <= Radius; iDX++)
	{
		for(iDY = -(Radius); iDY <= Radius; iDY++)
		{
			pNearbyPlot = plotXY(pPlot->getX(), pPlot->getY(), iDX, iDY);
                        // do stuff

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

1 UPT is really the biggest problem in CiV. I always wonder what those programmers are thinking. They develop a beautifully good game (CIV) and then, next time, instead of simply improving the graphics and fixing the bugs, they think “we must do everything different to before“ .
Additionally, I don't know, why Programmers only listen to the community of their games, if one catches them with going on mass-strike and don't buy their newest game. I know only 1 game, where the Creaters invited 20 top gamers for a week to speak with the over developement, that was in Elder Scrolls Online. In that game though, the decision for that came too late so it's free to play know, after only half a year.

To be fair, the design team who worked on Civ5 was completely different from the team who worked on Civ4; AFAIK, this was the second time in Civ history that such a major team shift happened, with the first one being Civ2 -> Civ3 (which happened because Firaxis was founded after Civ2 was made).
As for inviting top players to comment on games beforehand, Firaxis actually did a similar thing with CivBE (they let a few Civ5 Deity players play around with the game 4 months before it launched), but not only did the Deity players not catch some of the more obvious problems (since they focused more on what was already in the game, not on what was crucially missing), but Firaxis didn't even fix some of the issues the players did pick up on (eg. trade routes being incredibly overpowered, certain quests being abusable, the AI being even more of an idiot than in Civ5, abusable aliens).
Also, Firaxis is a known developer; much like the now-defunct Maxis, they are going to make their money back on the games they produce, no matter how much they degrade in quality. Even if Firaxis realizes that their games have really become worse (starting with either Civ5 or CivBE, depending on who you ask), they might not actually know how to get themselves out of their mess: after all, most of the symptoms indicate that one of the biggest issues is that the developer doesn't seem to be learning from its recent mistakes.
As a final note, don't be mad at the programmers: if you read CivBE's credits, you'll find that non-QA, non-programmers (artists, writers, producers, designers) outnumbered programmers roughly 4:1. You can't expect to power an SUV properly with a two cylinder motor.

I agree & second this. It is only somewhat more computationally expensive (note: it is perfectly accurate, and does not affect the quality of AI logic).

A quick reference on how a game would loop around a tile/plot:

Spoiler :

	for(iDX = -(Radius); iDX <= Radius; iDX++)
	{
		for(iDY = -(Radius); iDY <= Radius; iDY++)
		{
			pNearbyPlot = plotXY(pPlot->getX(), pPlot->getY(), iDX, iDY);
                        // do stuff

And the computational gains with hexes aren't as clear, either: a nested for loop through hexes either requires that plot distance be checked on each loop to discard the iterations where iDX and iDY combined produce a hex that is outside of the radius (eg. when both iDX and iDY are -Radius or Radius), or the nested for loop needs to be set up in a way that makes sure those hexes aren't ever selected (via manipulation of the inner for loop's start and end values). Either way, you're adding an extra set of calculations to the loop, which means that if the loop's contents are small enough, it's actually faster to iterate through them if tiles were squares instead of hexes.

 

[nokmirt]

1 UPT is really the biggest problem in CiV. I always wonder what those programmers are thinking. They develop a beautifully good game (CIV) and then, next time, instead of simply improving the graphics and fixing the bugs, they think “we must do everything different to before“ .
Additionally, I don't know, why Programmers only listen to the community of their games, if one catches them with going on mass-strike and don't buy their newest game. I know only 1 game, where the Creaters invited 20 top gamers for a week to speak with the over developement, that was in Elder Scrolls Online. In that game though, the decision for that came too late so it's free to play know, after only half a year.

It's free to play? I love Skyrim, so I'd like to try it out.

 

[ThorHammerz]

As a final note, don't be mad at the programmers: if you read CivBE's credits, you'll find that non-QA, non-programmers (artists, writers, producers, designers) outnumbered programmers roughly 4:1. You can't expect to power an SUV properly with a two cylinder motor.

A no-fail solution: blame the management and you'll always be right (anything that goes wrong can ultimately be traced back to a poor management decision somewhere along the line).

 

[twilson1972]

1 UPT is really the biggest problem in CiV. I always wonder what those programmers are thinking. They develop a beautifully good game (CIV) and then, next time, instead of simply improving the graphics and fixing the bugs, they think “we must do everything different to before“ .
Additionally, I don't know, why Programmers only listen to the community of their games, if one catches them with going on mass-strike and don't buy their newest game. I know only 1 game, where the Creaters invited 20 top gamers for a week to speak with the over developement, that was in Elder Scrolls Online. In that game though, the decision for that came too late so it's free to play know, after only half a year.

On that i agree, although some love 1 UPT..i would like it if there were 10 times the tiles.

I think it is good to avoid stacks of doom, but they could split the hexes themselves into hexes in terms of units perhaps?.

Lots of the game play seems designed to discourage sprawling empires and lots of units. Plus i think the inability to use units properly is a huge thing with the AI.

But having said that, ive played 4 games one after the other now.

 

[rkade8583]

Realism Invictus for Civ 4 exists and it penalizes stacks while not making them a pain to move around. Civ 4 w/ RI for me, thanks.

 

[Seraiel]

@ delnar_ersike: Thx for that post, was very interesting to read.

@nokmirt: Yes, ESO is f2p, but most people loving Skyrim hate it, they say it's kind of “running simulator“ , because one always needs to run very long distances for trivial tasks like to speak to some person there, and then needing to return.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

They have somewhat different emphasis. IV's AI isn't "better", it's just more threatening because on high levels it can stack up dozens or even hundreds of units on one tile and attack you with that, and before nukes it's not easy to mitigate such numbers. In V you get stuff like citadels and rough terrain that the AI can't handle and you can melt it, so its raw #s are less threatening.

 

[Seraiel]

They have somewhat different emphasis. IV's AI isn't "better", it's just more threatening because on high levels it can stack up dozens or even hundreds of units on one tile and attack you with that, and before nukes it's not easy to mitigate such numbers. In V you get stuff like citadels and rough terrain that the AI can't handle and you can melt it, so its raw #s are less threatening.

Nice to see you post again TMIT . I thought, you had left CFC for good .

 

[twilson1972]

Well ive bought BNW now, finally

Looking forward to trying it after work.

Is it just me that misses little touches such as video councils, wonder movies, throne rooms, changing leaders via age, detailed city view and a big fuss when you win?

I know these are things you might not watch repeatedly, but they added polish and soul for me.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Nice to see you post again TMIT . I thought, you had left CFC for good .

This was my first big forum "home", and unless the series stops entirely I won't be disappearing completely. My interests took me away from Civ V for a long time, so I wasn't too active here other than in Polycast (and strategy wise I was constrained compared to Civ IV of course).

It helps that I have a better computer and that V seems to work okay on directx 11 without crashing every second now too, turn times of 40-50 seconds are what ultimately axed my interest in this game. Now they have added options like "don't wait for animation to cycle unit" and turn times are decent, so I can't vastly out-order the interface and encounter input buffering bugs and other junk that plagued vanilla, so I can enjoy Civ V for what it is now that it doesn't so actively and consistently block me from playing it. It's not Civ IV but rather a completely different game, but the expansions added enough depth even if the AI's limitations in 1UPH environment and propensity to not win hold things back a little.