Make it real fun.

[Naokaukodem]

I may not say that global happiness is ununderstandable at the image of Civ4 city maintenance, but it sure differs greatly with the other Civs mechanics, and that since the very first one. I have been pretty worried to have a negative happiness with everything 'happiness' built while i had only 2 cities in my first games, while the key to win in all the other opus was to expand (and grow) as fast as possible, what I got accustomed to and surely have been grey tint several times by that feeling of conquest.

For Civ5, the famous 'production focus' was a revelation for me, something I, closed in my habits, never really realised on my own. And indeed, it was basically unneeded in previous Civs to play with citizens placement : was the automated citizen managers task too easy ? Maybe. That said, this was an aspect of Civ you didn't had to care about, it was optional. But, it's good to know that constant and maxed out growth was always the best way to play. That way, the need to change citizens placement was null... I guess that's why they introduced world wonders that could be built only once for the whole game and for all civilizations, to create a race where it was handy to switch for less growth but more production.

But in the state, global happiness does not make citizen placement more mixed, all the mechanics makes the game the same as the previous opus, it is to say that they favorizes growth (science tied to pop, etc.) and therefore expansion (several cities growing in the same time kicks the ass of one only) For example, focus-production cities are a nice thing, you can produce faster, but is such a faster production really usefull, when you use so often the lame "build science" function, so that you maybe didn't realized your priorities very well, the more when more hammers = few turns gained, while you could put it towards maximum growth and decent production in the same time ? Growth is just now hard capped, which makes the game beyond frustration. And there's no rush for expansion anymore (except for the AI which have in most difficulty levels huge happiness bonuses), which was indubitably fun.

So, not only global happiness is not fun, but it is frustrating. Especially in many cases where everything in your game is ready for a next step, except... happiness. This is a huge bottleneck. And those repetitive bottlenecks, the time you learn to ignore them or adjust your priorities (basically you will never learn it alone because everything shouts you UNHAPPINESS IS BAD ! and YOU HAVE TO EXPAND AND GROW !), makes the system finally counter-intuitive beside all the will to make it very, very, way too much simple, which is not, in fact. This apparent simplicity of extremum makes the things counter-intuitive, just because negative global happiness is negative global happiness with all what it implies.

I'm not calling such a system, well, fun... it's just toying with systems as to make them more fan-compliant. Because let's face it, fans are fans, it is to say people that entered a particular universe, independent of the big one. As long as people are fan, they will deny reality or part of it. They are inside something, they don't juge with pure eyes anymore, they are corrupted. Don't get me wrong... i'm a Civ5 fan. I learned to bypass the game gaps, but come on, it takes time ! I have more than 1200 hours playing (and most of the time hating and rage-quitting from)that game !

 

[Arcaian]

And please don't' lie, you fully know well that 4 cities is the max for the first half of the game unless you acquire so much luxuries.

And 1 Happiness per 1 population is ultimately self defeating mechanic. I think i still have screenshots somewhere with me painting the whole world gray in my color and still have 100+ happiness.... I don't care enough to go and dig them up.

Tradition's four city opening is quite old and boring especially when it limits you to just four ridiculous cities in the time where there was massive roman empire around. Alexander, and huns and the chinese. That won't just simply happen in civ 5, firaxis has done a good job in preventing it from happening.

Oh and, I play exclusively on huge maps, anything else smaller is too small for me. I ragequit a large map halfway through cuz it was so tiny.

4 cities is nowhere NEAR the max for any point in time in the game - excluding the very beginning where you haven't had time to build settlers yet. 1 happiness per 1 population is an effective trade-off between cities and population; in this variety of Civ (Civ 5 vs Civ 4/Civ 3) I feel it is much easier to make a choice on this option than in the others. There IS no option in Civ 4. Play on any difficulty above Warlord and try and build 2 or 3 cities and go tall. You'll make it through maybe 100 turns before someone with 15 cities utterly swamps and destroys you; it's worse the higher the difficulty. On Civ V it's perfectly possible to play a wide empire as well, just requires a little more thorough knowledge of the game. Especially when you're playing on huge maps you have no excuses; there are so many luxes you should be able to settle many cities. You obviously are experienced and know how to play the game and so I won't bother pointing out how to get the happiness, but you and I both know it can be done. Sure Tradition 4-city start is a little easier at the moment, but a wide game of Civ V is much more doable than a tall game of Civ 4.

And that's what strategy games come down to, isn't it? Decisions and choices with meaningful consequences. In civ 4/civ 3 there IS no decision, you go wide. Civ 5 you can choose to have a slightly easier tall game or a harder wide game, but there is a choice.

And to your complaints, if you don't like it mod it. Seriously, whats the problem? Even without mods play on Marathon speed and you'll be able to have empires like the Romans or the Greeks during their time. Or get a mod that makes it so science is 3-4x slower but nothing else is if you like large wars, then you can have 20 spearmen fighting.

It's personal preference, playing on a huge map on marathon will give you more than enough time for 4+ cities by late classical. If you want to include mods, slow down science more and you're set.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

How many of you that say wide is weak or impossible have rushed to colusseums and have that built in all your cities asap?

Things like NC early or Wonders early is what I Think limits alot of peoples abilites to expand, and thats by alot.

However expansion is easier to do in Civ 3 then in Civ 5 however Civ 5 allow all cities to be pretty effective if you focus on it, which Civ 3 don't really allow.

Even a wide empire can be a tall one, basicly every empire that have alot more population then cities are a tall one.