Is it me or a Civ players since Civ IV a step backwards from previous Civ players? /s
No seriously. I started playing Civ since the original in 1990-91 on floppy discs. I played CivNet when that launched for Win3.1. I played II and III. I don't ever recall this level of elitism, gate keeping and self-aggrandizing puffery in the early forums and discussions in those days. Most players discussed the strategies if memory serves.
Nowadays it's all this self-patting on the back over how big your brains are and how the newer games made changes you don't like because you see yourselves as game developers in your own minds and the developers didn't fall over themselves copy/pasting your sage advice.
Civ V was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and it suffered from some fundamental flaws that even its expansions could not fix but Civ V and Civ VI were definitely steps in the right direction specifically because they needed to address the fundamental flaws that Civ IV brought to the fore.
And yes, sorry to break up the mutual admiration society here,but I am one of few Civ players who will tell you to your faces that Civ IV is not the end all be all of Civ and in fact I'd argue that it is as flawed as Civ V strategically and mechanically but I digress.
Civ IV was the maturation of the classic Civ formula which meant that Civ had nowhere new to go. This formula was already showing its age and its major weaknesses and with the advent of multiplayer becoming a more integral part of modern gaming any Civ after IV absolutely NEEDED to be designed with the intent of reducing the power creep, easily abused mechanics, and de-incentivize the need for spam to win games.
Civ IV suffers from all of these three defects. It wasn't a big deal in the past games because Civs I though IV, despite having some multiplayer support, were primarily singleplayer games. But V was an attempt to address these issues because it was designed with both multiplayer and singleplayer in mind and the reason for that is simple: easily abused mechanics, power creep and spam tactics make for bad gameplay and short multiplayer games when people inevitably quit the game when another player beats them to the Great Library or some other major wonder, or, when you're invaded by a stack of doom.
Speaking of stacks, Civ 4's over-reliance on unit spam was almost certainly directly involved in the decision to implement 1UPT. And Civ 4's spam mechanics aren't caused by one thing but a systemic flaw created by a number of factors that encourage this kind of play: it's wonky unpredictable combat RNG where a ~90 percent chance to win can still end in a loss, its overbearing rock-paper-scissors-axe-banana-spitball mechanics that needlessly convoluted unit composition (meaning you needed 10x of every unit to account for every contingency), the absolutely inane decision to have units in stacks face off against their counter, and last but certainly not least, the absolutely pants-on-head STUPID decision to divide artillery into two different uses between removing defensive bonuses and forcing artillery to suicide themselves into other stacks in the hopes of sufficiently damaging the units through collateral damage, forcing you to lose units, which forces you to make replacement units.
Not to mention that stack combat in Civ IV is not exactly genius level stuff (no matter how much you shine your self-awarded medals), basically spam melee units, cavalry and artillery into a stack; soften with artillery, mop up with cavalry and/or melee units until you've won the war. Rinse repeat. Yawn.
Long story short: Civ V was not a step backwards, it was an attempt to right the problems that have been inherent in Civ since its earliest inception a necessary step in order to make multiplayer as viable as single player. Civ V was not perfect but neither was Civ IV which suffers from key weaknesses, it's just that this community has normalized these weaknesses you fail to recognize them for what they are.
No Civ is perfect and no Civ is a complete failure Anyone who says otherwise is either an arrogant liar or a fool. Each Civ since the earliest beginnings has attempted to improve on or address the desires of the community. Perhaps Civ IV is your sweet spot when it comes to what attracts you to Civ, but that doesn't make it perfect.
I for one enjoy all Civs. I play VI regularly but I still go back to V and IV and III and enjoy them despite their shortcomings while also appreciating their strengths.
