Is Civilization forever dead?

[stiiknafuulia]

Can anyone explain what the term "strategy" means in the sense that it can be present or lacking in a Civ game? I'm not really following.

Perhaps 'strategy' was the wrong word to use. 'Sense of scale' or 'epicness' might work better here.

This said, there is a clear difference between Civ IV and V with regards to their combat mechanics. While you could do some juggling around when it came to stack composition in Civ IV, what counted most in victory was that you simply had more units than your opponent, and/or that they were more advanced than theirs. So the strategy comes in when you decide what cities to settle and specialize for production, what techs to beeline, and so on. It means setting your sight on a goal from the beginning ('Hmm I've met Babylon and they're on fertile land close by; let's destroy them by teching X and power through to a Spaceship victory with their prime cities!'). The tactics in this case is simply the immediate means to get to that goal, i.e. hurling your stack against theirs 1-3 times (usually in Civ IV, before they ran out of troops to defend).

Contrast this to Civ V, where you can have an inferior army (in size and quality), yet if you use it well (which is easy against the AI), you can decimate the AIs forces regardless of their superior production and technology (granted that they can't be too much ahead or you'll need vast numbers to even the fight). You still need to have a strategy ('Comp bow rush', etc), but the tactics of how you use your troops is by far the bigger factor in deciding the outcome of the conflict. Some people like this, some don't. I'm on the fence I guess. I'd enjoy the more tactical approach if the AI actually knew how to conduct a fight with 1upt. As it is though, stacks are by far the better alternative.

So, to conclude, perhaps my complaint about a lack of strategy in Civ V as a whole was a bit misplaced (the point I added about the different 'economies' still stands though). I'd like there to be more units and cities in an average game, to give the game a more sweeping, epic feel. And I'd like to either have the AI be able to fight properly in 1upt (to have proper tactics), or to go back to stacks and let strategy rule over tactics in combat once again.

 

[Aristos]

So, to conclude, perhaps my complaint about a lack of strategy in Civ V as a whole was a bit misplaced (the point I added about the different 'economies' still stands though). I'd like there to be more units and cities in an average game, to give the game a more sweeping, epic feel. And I'd like to either have the AI be able to fight properly in 1upt (to have proper tactics), or to go back to stacks and let strategy rule over tactics in combat once again.

For your first point, have you tried a Large map? I am playing a Large Fractal Immortal map right now, and it's a blast. Most civs have more than 10 cities, Liberty is actually fun, and although it's still far away from the typical civ4 Large map with civs averaging 15 cities, it has all the epicness I need without turning it into a click nightmare every turn.

For your second point, have you tried the Community Patch? The AI in that mod is what the TacAI should have been in unmodded civ5. You WILL get your tactical fix there, believe me.

 

[Txurce]

Perhaps 'strategy' was the wrong word to use. 'Sense of scale' or 'epicness' might work better here... I'd like there to be more units and cities in an average game, to give the game a more sweeping, epic feel. And I'd like to either have the AI be able to fight properly in 1upt (to have proper tactics), or to go back to stacks and let strategy rule over tactics in combat once again.

This makes more sense to me. It's the only clear qualitative loss that I see from 4 to 5 (others will doubtless disagree) and what I'd like the devs to restore to some degree in 6.

For your first point, have you tried a Large map?

For your second point, have you tried the Community Patch? The AI in that mod is what the TacAI should have been in unmodded civ5. You WILL get your tactical fix there, believe me.

I haven't played in over a year now, but will try this combination. You've made it sound promising in your posts.

 

[Aristos]

This makes more sense to me. It's the only clear qualitative loss that I see from 4 to 5 (others will doubtless disagree) and what I'd like the devs to restore to some degree in 6.



I haven't played in over a year now, but will try this combination. You've made it sound promising in your posts.

If you want only TacAI improvements (and other AI improvements as well, but no gameplay changes), try the Community Patch only (dll mod). If you want the complete expanded experience (which I highly recommend), go for the full CBP/CBO/Vox Populi/whateveritsnamednow package.

 

[dexters]

Can these mods you speak of be managed through steam?

 

[shaglio]

Can these mods you speak of be managed through steam?

Not yet. The last time it was mentioned, Vox Populi's Steam release date was expected to be sometime around the end of summer.

 

[Txurce]

Not yet. The last time it was mentioned, Vox Populi's Steam release date was expected to be sometime around the end of summer.

That shouldn't be a problem. I used to play with the Communitas mod, and didn't use Steam.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

For your first point, have you tried a Large map? I am playing a Large Fractal Immortal map right now, and it's a blast. Most civs have more than 10 cities, Liberty is actually fun, and although it's still far away from the typical civ4 Large map with civs averaging 15 cities, it has all the epicness I need without turning it into a click nightmare every turn.

I do play on World maps mostly, which tend to be Large or even bigger. I never really got into Civ V like I did with Civ IV though, so I've only played a few hundred hours of it in total, compared to thousands for the three previous iterations. The thing that kills the joy of building a large empire for me, in addition to being hard to do and kind of pointless, is that it increases the cost of social policies, which are one of my favorite features of the game. Even with my second city, I cringe at the thought of this... After a certain point (which comes far too early regardless of map size), you really have to struggle to come up with reasons to found or conquer new cities. Iirc, a recent patch added a science penalty(!) for more cities, which is just the kind of sordid icing on a very bad cake that the game really didn't need, imo. Heaven forbid that you build an empire in an empire-building game!

EDIT: The map size has only tangential relevance in a sense, because whether it's 4 'optimal' cities on a standard map or 10 on a large one, after that number is reached the map is still half-empty. So the relative desolation remains nearly equal (although it does feel marginally better to have 10 than 4 cities). Only on Deity do the AI civs eventually balloon to take over every last bit of territory, and even then not always; in Civ IV, this happened in almost every game, and that's when the world wars would start -- when there was no way left to expand by peaceful means.

For your second point, have you tried the Community Patch? The AI in that mod is what the TacAI should have been in unmodded civ5. You WILL get your tactical fix there, believe me.

Iirc, when I last viewed that mod, it added a lot of stuff that I could do without. But after your praise for it, I might try the version that only alters the combat AI.

 

[Aristos]

That shouldn't be a problem. I used to play with the Communitas mod, and didn't use Steam.

A new non-beta release is about to come out... I would hold until then to try the mod, as beta releases are meant to be test beds, and have some bugs that are quickly resolved by the developers. New release expected in the next few days.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

It was exactly my feeling when I saw gameplay for the first time today. It's ugly and it seems to be a continuation of Civ V which I personally hated for ruining my favourite game series. I think I'll just stick to Civ IV with mods which I still consider the pinnacle of Civ series. What happened later was a dumbing game down and now adding cartoonish graphics to emphasize it.

 

[Roxlimn]

Haha. Interesting thread. It's weird how there are posts that bash Civ V because "there's only one way to win," while others bash Civ V on "you can do anything and still win." Those are mutually exclusive complaints, IMO.

There's some things that are true and some that are not.

1. There's only one way to do the economy, you can't go into negative budget.

Obviously not true. You can't just spam farms, particularly because not every tile can be farmed in the first place. Kind of bad to cut down Forest for Farms as Iroqoui, too, since the Forests will be giving you your signature bonus. In Civ 5, cities don't cost maintenance, but buildings do. Maintaining relations does, too. Roads cost maintenance.

So you CAN quite easily go into negative gold if you don't maintain a budget and particularly if you keep building cities that are a net loss to your gold economy because they're science or production-focused.

You can just do the 4-city Trad opening every time, of course, which is equivalent to just doing Cottage Spam all the time. You could do that and win reliably with it, but if you only ever keep doing that, then it's not the game's fault that you don't do anything else.

You could expand by choice to the size of Civ that you like. Civ 5 does allow you to do that. It'll cost you, but them's the breaks. Trying to OCC in Civ4 was a challenge too, and yet people choose small or even one-city empires in Civ4. The costs are just the other way around in Civ5. If you want your big world-spanning empire, then just go for it. I've done many maritime empires in Civ5 games that looked a lot like the British one, and it was fine, I still won. Just needs a little more doing.

You could finance your science, faith, and gold in Civ5 in any number of ways, each of which could be combined with other strategic choices. You could get your gold primarily from the tiles. That's a thing you can do in Civ5. Or you can get it primarily by building a fantastic trade city that everyone wants to trade with. Or have lots of gold-focused Trade Routes. Or even arrange to have an island of trade cities that generate massive overseas trade. These are things you can do to finance your stuff.

The AI isn't particularly aggressive against you if you never expand nor pursue their favored VC. You're just a glorified City State at that point. If none of the Civs are going after the City States, then that's going to be an easy Diplo Win. Obviously. But if you're competing for the same VC, Alexander IS going to get pissed and he WILL attack you.

 

[primem0ver]

It may be too early to judge as some of you have said. However, from what I have read and seen so far I am inclined to agree with the original post. You Civ V apologists can talk all you like but the numbers agree with the original poster. I watched the numbers over time on this website. It took Civ V YEARS to even come close and finally surpass the number of people that still played Civ IV. You only have mods to thank for Civ V finally catching up. Even today, over 10 years after Civ IV was released, there are still a substantial number of players.

 

[Cristoval]

With 1UPT returning, have fun destroying whole AI armies with a single artillery unit on a hill.

 

[Aristos]

With 1UPT returning, have fun destroying whole AI armies with a single artillery unit on a hill.

Why would you put it on a hill? It has indirect fire.

 

[noto2]

Civ 5 apologist? Really? I play video games to escape from reality, where my Prime Minister got called a sexist pig because he accidentally bumped into a woman behind him because he didn't see her. Now I come on Civfanatics and get labelled a "civ 5 apologist", as if I have something to answer for, and as if the person making this claim had anything to do with the development of civ 4.

No one here had anything to do with the development of any of the games. Stop acting like you have some kind of moral superiority over anyone else.

If I say I like strawberry ice cream better than chocolate, I'm not a "strawberry ice cream apologist". We're allowed to have our preferences. And by the way, the number of fans does not impress me in any way shape or form. Call of Duty blows Civ out of the galaxy in terms of sales and popularity, and that doesn't mean anything to me either.

</rant>

 

[Vallation]

It may be too early to judge as some of you have said. However, from what I have read and seen so far I am inclined to agree with the original post. You Civ V apologists can talk all you like but the numbers agree with the original poster. I watched the numbers over time on this website. It took Civ V YEARS to even come close and finally surpass the number of people that still played Civ IV. You only have mods to thank for Civ V finally catching up. Even today, over 10 years after Civ IV was released, there are still a substantial number of players.

Since you're stating numbers, care to share your source for those claims? Not saying you're wrong; I love modded Civ IV more than most Civ V mods. The only thing I can readily find is player stats from steam itself (via steamcharts) and there's been a pretty steady 40-50k peak daily players for much of the past few years since launch. Sometimes it dips but the lowest it ever peaked since release was 35k which is still quite active. Which puts it in the top 10 active steam games. Civ IV and expansions combined seems to get 1-1.5k combined peak daily roughly. And it hasn't been much higher than that since Civ V released.

This doesn't credit players who play via disc off of steam still, but on the flip side some (like myself) purchased it again cheaply via Steam for an easy access/download copy. So it's tricky to judge the number, but it's likely not substantially higher than what steam shows. Amongst hardcore fans, people who care enough to be active and contribute on a fansite like this, then yes Civ IV may have remained more popular a long time. But for the average gamer it looks like Civ V was quick to surpass IV while reaching a new (steam) audience.

Also mods did not suddenly create a big improvement for Civ V like with IV, because it's a much less openly moddable game. So any vast improvements in player activity would likely come from expansions improving the core game, moreso than mods created for it. Mods definitely help appeal to some though.

 

[dexters]

Why would you put it on a hill? It has indirect fire.

The hill is a 1 tile hex surrounded by water.

Cooked.

 

[cazaderonus]

The amount of rage in this thread is amazing.

I played Civ when i was 10 or earlier, it was free on a PC my parentsbought. Never understood it fully. Then i played Civ III and IV. About 400/500 hundred hours each. Finally began to "understand" civ late on Civ IV.

Played about 1200+ hours on CIV V.

Yes there is an obvious loss in scale with 1upt and something odd with city bombardment. But, i still believe from my playing experience that 1 upt is a massive improvement on CIV IV's stacks of doom.

Now, i hoped for CIV VI to keep that 1upt philosophy but dramatically raise map scaling and movement so that once again you can feel the distances, the width of huge world. Seems it s not gonna happend sadly. Maybe mods can fill that gap though.

But nothing would make me go back to anything stack of doom related.

 

[Aristos]

The hill is a 1 tile hex surrounded by water.

Cooked.

Hey! That gave me an idea about a new Steam achievement: Waterworld!

There is only ONE land tile in the entire world: kill the entire AI army with one artillery unit.

 

[Aristos]

I play video games to escape from reality, where my Prime Minister got called a sexist pig because he accidentally bumped into a woman behind him because he didn't see her.

Not to derail the thread, but I hope it's not the same prime minister that went into a rage in the middle of the Parliament ala Third World parliamentarian... right?

About some rage here, well, it's called CivFANATICS for a reason, and fanaticism usually includes manifestations of rage, anger, passion... god forbid passion in this grey, pale PC world...