Note the bolded text, a DoF only lasts for a very short amount of time so when a civ want's to murder you they just won't renew it, maybe you'll delay the war for 20 turns but you won't stop it from happening.
Which itself can be a sign that something's up. Although I rarely get a civ willing to accept more than two DoFs in succession. And I've had refused DoFs that don't lead to either war or deterioration in relations (other than losing the plus for "They have a Declaration of Friendship with us"), and can get acquiescence on future DoFs by doing positive things like denouncing/warring with their rivals or gifting them stuff. There seems to be a 'cool down' period after a DoF is first refused where they'll refuse to grant it no matter what (and will usually say something like "we've been through this, the answer's still no"), but after that they will often be willing to renew.
Not to mention that the amount of backstabs I get while in a friendship is absurd, this only happens early game because I'm guessing the AI feels I don't have enough army running, but then I get a powerful army and it just feels a waste to let them chill and not use them for what they're good at.
Yes, this is a major flaw. You're forced into producing a military deterrent in the early game in order for diplomacy to even kick in at all. This has usually been somewhat the case in Civ games, but I also don't remember it being as consistent as in Civ V. On the plus side, the deterrent really doesn't need to be that big, certainly not big enough to need to go conquering - at the start of the last game I had about four units during the early "surprise" backstab, and just needed to rough up a few Warriors to end the war. Had I had about the same number of units slightly earlier the war probably wouldn't have happened.
Also, I hardly ever get the possibility for a DoF after the early game because everyone hates me for being a warmonger, attacking a friend or CS or because I'm going for the same VC in 200AD and even if I meet other civs later, say on another continent, the constant denouncements from the other idiots will trigger them soon enough.
Well, that opens up at least one diplomatic possibility: don't do these things... I don't find attacking CSes is usually worth it, at least early in the game; it can be a useful boost to CS influence to fulfil a quest if you're already at war with that CS or its ally, and CSes are generally in good city locations and develop well, but in early game stages you aren't that short of good city locations and you do get that diplomatic hit. And you can get that influence by taking the CS out later, since the AI often won't do so itself, if you don't have an immediate need for the bonus or have other ways of achieving influence (basically, gold, killing nearby Barbarians, or Great Merchants).
The strange thing is, you're complaining that this game is all about war, and yet also complaining that if all you do is go to war, the gaming experience is shallow. Is it possible these two are actually related, and that you may actually find it more rewarding to play less aggressively rather than just going on killing sprees because you have the units lying around? I've already said I find Civ IV uninteresting when it comes down to constant war - so I don't play it that way.
...You find diplomatic victories the most interesting? Seriously, how?
Two key reasons:
1. They're a sort of 'hybrid' victory condition that rewards play incorporating elements from all the others. You need to build a strategy around particular social policies and branches, but not to a degree as restrictive as culture victories in terms of either policy selection or cultural building/Wonder focus. You need to develop a broad science base to reach the UN and to obtain the necessary commerce buildings/policies/techs (as well as cultural techs to power policy development). And at any level higher than Prince, you are going to need to go to war - to recover city-states taken by AI powers, to defend yours, or because your acquisition of states has led to conflict with another civ - but not usually constantly. So it gives you a more 'complete' experience of what the game can offer, at least in principle and when not played to exploit the AI's lack of gold fever.
2. It forces interaction between you and other civs. One of my longstanding criticisms of Civ generally is that it's hard to strongly influence or derail other players' strategies, except through warfare and only then if you're sufficiently powerful to challenge the major civs. The details were debated at length in another thread, but right or wrong seen in the context of human players interacting with the AI or with one another, in no Civ game has the AI itself been able to execute strategies that confound its opponents. It won't rush a specific wonder that it knows you want, settle an area just to stop you doing so, or do anything much to delay a science or cultural victory (it will sometimes sabotage spaceship production in older games - which feature espionage - but it tends to be pretty much by random chance rather than design).
And in Civ V it's no different for the most part - with the additional weakness that it is unable to recognise the value city-states have for science and culture victories. But in a diplomatic victory the AI actively pays attention to city-states; many civs will want them for themselves for their victory conditions (unless going for diplo victory, AIs never normally seem to actively seek CS favour, and if they gain some by completing a quest they just let it ebb away without trying to retain friend/ally status), and if they sense you need them they will launch wars to destroy CSes, and late in the game they will actively change their victory condition to deny yours. In that last game only Arabia and India started out with any interest in CSes, but both Denmark and Mongolia eventually started vying for CS alliances with me.
Japan twice captured Kuala Lumpur and immediately declared peace thereafter so that I couldn't get it back without going to war myself.
Mongolia launched the war that was ongoing at the end of the game simply to capture Stockholm, and again offered peace as soon as this was achieved (in fact this was a case of bad AI, since Stockholm was under Tyre control and didn't actually give me any votes, something the AI can't recognise) - in that case I refused and reclaimed Stockholm with the aid of nukes (catching a Tyre unit in the blast, causing them to declare war, so i captured Tyre...). Subsequently Mongolia made a strong push to take Brussels which would have worked if they hadn't tried using helicopters to take the city (repeatedly).
They are piss easy to get, dump x gold into CS, win game, as long as you have the gold nothing else matters, army, science, culture, cities, just make sure you got 10k banked and it's gg. If your playing on deity I can understand it as I don't expect fighting fighting 1 to 50 odds is a lot of fun.
I was playing this one on Emperor. At that level, CS play is very much more dynamic than on lower levels, both because of things like the above and because city-states themselves are much more aggressive, and become relevant in war if they're allied with either side. Civs need to pay attention to and attack CSes just to defend themselves - in that game Sydney captured and razed a Japanese city I can't remember, then Damascus, and then (with my units having damaged the cities, but having nothing in range left to capture), took both Lhasa and Mecca (much to my annoyance as I wanted both). CSes fight among themselves a lot to boot - Tyre vs. Stockholm in that game, also a very long-running fight between Tyre and Lhasa, which was ongoing even when both cities were my allies (once Sydney took Lhasa, Tyre wanted Sydney destroyed and the war continued, until Cape Town captured Lhasa).
Also, AI Civs will declare war just to stop you gaining CS favour. There again, gold isn't going to help you in the slightest, unless someone you aren't at war with buys those states off your enemies.
And let me repeat, the AI can only buy a single CS per turn
And there are how many turns before the UN is built? Plus each AI civ can buy its own CS, even if this limit exists (I haven't paid enough attention to check).
Yes, if you get the UN, you're almost guaranteed to win. So what? If you build the spaceship or the Utopia Project you're guaranteed to win as well. A diplomatic victory isn't decided by one city-state vote here or there. You might rephrase your argument to say "as long as you have the science nothing else matters, army, culture, cities, gold, just make sure you get the Apollo Program first and it's gg". The game isn't about the completion of the victory project, it's about how you get there, in diplomacy as in all of the other conditions.
And sure there are exploits you can get to secure a diplo victory like just saving all your gold to the last minute and then buying the CSes, but there are exploits you can use to secure any of the other victories too (quite often involving securing lots of gold).
so I don't see how you have much challenge in a gametype like that, unless that's what you actually want ofcourse.
If you exploit the game, you don't have much challenge. You can cheese your way into some of the higher leagues in Starcraft II in much the same way. That doesn't mean you can't play the game in a way that offers a challenge.
Having said all that, in that Emperor game I was, strangely, further ahead for more of the game than I've been on any lower difficulty setting. It was easy for me to claim diplo victory, but equally I could just as easily have claimed a science victory in the same timescale - I was an era ahead, and as much as 11 techs at one point, ahead of my closest competitors technologically. The game ended with me as the only player on my home continent in control of an original capital - had I been more concerted in my aggression I could have crossed to the Americas and captured the remaining three capitals. I even had three complete policy branches and several additional policies without specifically favouring culture. All of this with virtually no AI-exploiting behaviour - I didn't declare any wars (which often feels unfair against the AI apart from anything else), and the only times I used gold-exploit diplomacy were a couple of occasions where I had units out of position against a Japanese attack and needed to rush-build a crossbowman or cannon for city defence.
This is another Civ truism across all editions of the game: if you're in a position where it's easy to claim one victory condition, you're usually in a position where you could claim one or more of the others with about the same effort. Diplo isn't inherently easier than the others (culture in Civ V is just inherently harder).
...I do tech to those wonders first, in a cul/dom game I'll always open with henge into oracle and then anything I think I can get, but there will ALWAYS be some wonders you like that you can't get, ergo taking them from the AI. For instance because the Oracle and Henge don't have much time inbetween if rushed I'll generally forgo the HG, MoH and CI, all of which I like to have and because the AI that get's these often plays for a Cultural VC you only have to take over 2 or 3 cities all of which can easily be turned (if not already) into a high culture city.
Unless you can get all wonders that last quote was pointless.
In a cultural victory I played on King, I managed to get all key Wonders I went for other than Sydney Opera House. Yes, I lost other wonders (including Hanging Gardens), but they weren't critical enough to my victory condition to justify derailing it to go to war. If you go to war, you set back your development of culture buildings and other Wonders - unless it's a really key one like Sistine Chapel, chances are you'll lose more cultural development through time and production wasted than you'll gain through securing that Wonder. For a culture victory, since I tend to use a Great Artist strategy, I'd prioritise getting the Mausoleum, but even that would be optional if someone else got it first. Chichen Itza? Nice to have, but why go to war over it unless you really, really want (I think) a Great Engineer every so often? It gives only the same benefit as a luxury, and since you're playing for culture victory you'll almost always have Piety, the large happiness bonus you get from all the religious culture buildings, and a small number of cities (and so generally less unhappiness).
Also, capturing rather than building cultural Wonders is not often all that helpful, since a good part of the reason you want them is for the Great Artist bonus, which is most useful in a city where you already have things that generate GA points, and they're much less valuable scattered around the landscape. The AI doesn't seem to specialise its cities that well, and not at all when it comes to GP production (and it can't use GPs properly anyway, if it even uses them at all. I usually see AI GPs hanging around to get killed or captured).
I never said war should'nt be part of a Civ game, no idea where your getting this from,
Well, my first clue lay in the phrase:
the amount of bonusses you get for warring are so ludicrous I have no idea why you would want that and to me makes it clear this was not meant as a peaceful game, like the older ones.
Granted, strictly syntactically this should be interpreted as "Like the older Civ games, this was not meant as a peaceful game", but if that was the intent the sentence serves no purpose in your argument.
just that if you want you should be able to have a relatively peaceful game, which CIV allowed and CiV does'nt, or at least not without playing Archapelago which is kind of a joke IMO. The diplomacy in CIV was better, perhaps your theoretical diplo system that could exist if the AI would not be as terrible could beat it, but apart from you, noone has ever seen that.
Well, you haven't seen it, but you've already indicated you haven't seen much use of city-states, and your own examples of your own play seem designed to promote adversarial responses and a game that's largely war-driven.
I see so many of these complaints around here, but then I see similar complaints on the Starcraft forums that the game's not strategic or enjoyable because it all boils down to cheesing opponents. It's the same argument, with the same flaws. The reason it looks more reasonable in the Civ V context is because, unlike Starcraft, Civ V was shipped with gaping holes in a number of areas of play. The game's flawed, I'm not having fun, on the face of it it seems reasonable to consider that the latter follows directly from the former. But it's a logical error to make this leap, just as it's a logical error to conclude that because Zerg rushes in Starcraft win games, the flaw lies with Zerg being overpowered. The fact that you're playing the game in a way that's aggressive and unchallenging, likewise, doesn't imply that this is the way the game is designed to play.
Indeed, I play Civ V to much the same kinds of strategy I played the older Civ games - and I have much more of a sense than many of the other old-timers on here that the games are much more similar in scope and feel than forum complaints would suggest. Play Civ IV in the way you'd play Civ V - making the equivalent sacrifices to production, civic selection etc. to maintain happiness and military efficiency - and, superior combat AI aside, you'll likely get a similarly unfulfilling gaming experience. Play Civ V as you'd play Civ IV and, erratic diplomacy AI and bad combat AI aside, it's likewise a similar gaming experience to the older game.
And the extremely difficult Dom VC just makes it much more clear that CIV was not meant to be war focussed, I suspect removing it might even have to do with pleasing the console generation that finds it too much bother to conquer the entire globe.
All the previous Civ games made it very hard to claim Domination victories at higher levels; as a rule, I never even tried for them past Warlord. I don't know that this is necessarily a good thing in itself - if you have three or four victory conditions, isn't it bad game design if one of them is only viable at lower levels of play? You can see Civ V's change as an attempt to make all victory conditions achievable at all levels of play.
As for the 'console generation', if they even have the patience to stick with a Civ game, what makes you think they're preferentially playing at higher difficulty levels? And I think you're again betraying your age by equating 'game that allows combat victories' with 'dumbing down', since it implies you've never played a little gem called Master of Orion, which was no more aimed at a 'dumb' audience than the contemporary Civ games, and had many of the same elements, but was more combat-focused. This is another one of those non-sequiturs: it does not follow from "kids like violent games" that said kids will go for any game that has a notable warfare component, be it Call of Duty, Master of Orion, Civilization V, Total War or Company of Heroes - all are very different styles of game that appeal to very different types of gamer. It doesn't follow at all that because the console generation grew up on frenetic, micro-heavy first person shooters, what it will take to hook them on an empire-building game is adding a turn-based tactics component that involves moving units slowly around a board game-like hex map.
The bolded text is just your not so humble opinion as I have already refuted all your claims.
The suggestion that you've refuted those claims is just your not-so-humble opinion...
As far as the younger gen goes, have a look at this review:
http://angryjoeshow.com/2010/09/civilization-v-review/
This is a guy who could'nt get into Morrowind because it was'nt pretty enough and had too much text and considers Hack&Slash games RPG's, he hardly notices the terrible AI, finds the graphics fantastic, hated min maxing cities in IV because it's too much bother and most importantly, plays consoles.
You're reading an awful lot into a very cursory review. Firstly, he says it's an accessibility improvement that there's less micromanagement. This doesn't imply he "hated" Civ IV, quite the reverse he seems to have a reasonable knowledge of how it worked. If he'd reviewed and liked Civ IV when it came out, given his other reviews and likes, would you therefore assume the Civ IV audience consisted of console kids with no attention span, based on one anecdotal case?
Moreover, he specifically raises the poor diplomacy AI as an issue (and doesn't apparently notice the poor combat AI), which you wouldn't think would be the case if he was focused on war. He also expresses impatience with the fact that Civ V doesn't let you know early if you've made a critical mistake - the same sort of impatience I mentioned earlier that younger gamers often exhibit.
So all I see from this review is that someone from the console generation feels that the game requires too much patience, and expresses no particular interest in the changes to the combat system but is concerned that diplomacy doesn't work. Is this really the profile you'd expect if the game's target audience was a bunch of kiddie warmongers with the attention span of a gnat and the desire for quick games of capital-conquest?
in contrast to CiV, you can work out some real creativity and mind games, ofcourse your playing against humans so I suppose it's cheating a bit
This is very true; but as I pointed out above and at length elsewhere (highlighting SC2 as an example), if you're looking for a game where you can "work out some real creativity and mind games" against an opponent, you aren't going to find that anywhere in the Civ series.
but considering CiV's multi is completely broken it's a matter of comparing what you spend your time on in both games, and if you think SC2 matches only last 20 minutes, you clearly need to do some fact checking.
That was just an estimate designed to highlight the limits of the attention span of the person who complained about the time required in Starcraft. A typical game for me will usually be 25-40 minutes, and 20-25 minutes is the time when the first base will typically run out of resources (which at the lowest levels of play, when people rarely expand, sets an effective time limit on the game).
And I can counterexample any of yours without even touching the original complaints, strategic resources might have quantities but they removed a good amount of them, ergo less depth
Ergo = 'therefore', however the above doesn't follow. Depth is added with choices that force trade-offs, it's independent of variety. If you have a unit that uses copper and a unit that uses iron, and you have access to both resources, you aren't forcing a trade-off between the two beyond the trade-off you'd always make regarding whether to produce unit X vs. unit Y - the same trade-off you'd make if both units used the same resource, or neither used any. So in this context having copper in the game adds variety, but no depth.
By contrast if you have only one resource, iron, and you have a limited supply that has to be shared between catapults and longswordsmen, you're forcing a decision as to which one you go for - even if you don't have to choose between the two units based on production slots, you still have to choose which one to spend your limited iron on. This clearly adds depth to the resource mechanic that isn't there in the former case. Sure you could stick copper back and add a bunch of units that rely on copper, and hey presto you've got more trade-offs to make, but I think as it is Civ V could probably do with more 'shared resource' units that force these trades - more that rely on iron, say, rather than units that rely on an independent resource.
, same for luxuries and them removing the ability to trade certain resources, not to mention that an AI will ALWAYS buy your lux, even if it completely ruins their economy. Not sure what "with anyone you like" is supposed to refer to, unless your in a DoW you can always trade with CiV AI as well.
It refers to the fact that you can only trade resources with someone who doesn't already have those resources - it doesn't matter how much gold the AI has, and how much it may want a 5th or 6th set of spices you have to hand, the system won't actually give you the option of trading a luxury resource the trade partner already has. While in Civ IV, with the non-exclusive nature of resources, you can trade anything and everything with anyone.
The importance of terrain for units was already there in CIV, go read this if you need a refresher course
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/completeguide1.php search for defensive positions if you can't find the relevant part, same goes for cities.
The basic effects were there, my point is that it works very differently with other changes to the combat system. Early promotions, for instance, are now tied to the terrain your units are fighting in, rather than giving flat strength bonuses. In 1UPT combat in which you have limited units and you have extra incentive to keep them alive, that penalty for fighting over a river or bonus for defending a hill makes the difference in determining both where you'll site troops and the outcome of battles - in Civ IV if you had the bigger stack attacking across a river normally just meant you might lose an extra cannon fodder unit.
Social policies are fun and I will even admit they are an improvement but they most certainly don't give more depth, if anything it removes some flexibility for more advanced play, need to switch over to big empire policies after having filled the tradition, patronage and freedom tree? No chance.
This is a question of how you define more 'advanced' play. With civics, you could rapidly change strategic direction, gain benefits for peace one minute and for going to war the next. You make a bad call? You get a turn's anarchy while you switch back. It's more forgiving and doesn't require, or particularly reward, long-term planning. You can do anything you want more or less when you want if you've unlocked the right civics. And it suited the micromanagement style of earlier Civ games; if Civilization was a more reactive kind of play experience, it would probably be a good model. However, I think there's certainly a case to be made that a policy mechanic that requires longer-term planning, as well as having so many more options to trade off against one another, rather than a choice of one in four, promotes greater depth in formulating and executing an overall strategy.
Maintenance cost for tile improvements only work for roads and railroads, nothing much to consider but that you have to build them in a straight line, and because you don't have to hook up resources even less depth (choosing which one to go for first, practicality, etc).
My experience in older Civ games was that spamming roads everywhere a road could go was the default, since they had no drawbacks other than worker time, and your decision about which resources to hook up first was dictated by which one you developed first - you develop the resource, then you stick a road on it. Though I agree that resources should still require road links in Civ V.
And your big one, City States, I personally find them complete nonsense and the only reason I can imagine they put them in is because they are easier to process for the AI then an actual civ, i.e. shortening the embarrassing waiting times. City states are like vending machines, you give them x money or do some quest, that is either extremely easy or very problematic to achieve (wipe out x city state), you get X.
See my commentary on diplomatic victory play. The value of city states isn't so much in what they do themselves, although there are important considerations such as "do I want to spend my cash on the CS now, wait till I have more, or go for a research agreement now and wait?", "which CS is my best ally? Militaristic is a bit crap, but they have resources I need. Would I gain more from that or from this maritime state that only gives me a resource I can trade? Do I have anyone in my trade network who can use that resource?" etc. etc. Often the solutions are simple and decision-making not very complex, but it's still more so than a system with no city-state mechanic at all. Rather their value is mainly in how they interact with you and other civs, and how your behaviour towards them influences diplomatic relations (you've already given one example yourself, of people objecting when you attack CSes).