Reasoning behind divide among civ players

[MantaRevan]

I've played Civ games for the better half of my lifetime, so I guess that makes me long-term Civilization player. But what seems to separate me from other long-term civ players is the fact that I like Civilization V. It seems universally hated by long term civ fans. In contrast, people seem to go crazy for Civ IV. To me, the games are just as good. Maybe there is something I am missing. What I'm asking is, why do you prefer to play Civ IV?

 

[Manco Capac]

I've played Civ games for the better half of my lifetime, so I guess that makes me long-term Civilization player. But what seems to separate me from other long-term civ players is the fact that I like Civilization V. It seems universally hated by long term civ fans. In contrast, people seem to go crazy for Civ IV. To me, the games are just as good. Maybe there is something I am missing. What I'm asking is, why do you prefer to play Civ IV?

Civ5 is hated by hardcore players because many mechanics are broken even though the intent was to renew the game.

For instance, 1UPT was implemented so to create a new strategic environment like chess and to destroy the old stack-fashioned type of war since CivIII. Last attempt was Civ2's complete obliteration of the stack if prime defender is destroyed.
Not only this creates an infernal unit micromanagement for the player, but also the AI cannot handle strategy on that view. AI was asinine in warfare in CIV, in Civ5 they are more hopeless because of the restriction of mindless stacks.

Other types of bad implementations I've heard is how big empire suffers from greater unhappiness, which makes big empire's cities smaller vertically (population) and smaller empires are the opposite.

Another type of broken implementation is highly unfair early bonuses like natural wonders IIRC.

Lastly, the lack of challenge kills the interest of the common player. Most hardcore players seek a challenging experience, otherwise what to extract from a game played for a long time. Challenges are spices that rekindle interest for old and rehashed games. For hardcore player that is. Possibly not all too. Never generalize ofc.

I've heard in 2 weeks, any players can go through the lowest level to deity with no problem. That points the issue with gravity.

A friend proposed to give me for free Civ5 via steam because steam gives some promos according to the ratio of buyings. I haven't give my complete nod yet...
and I haven't tried Civ5 once. CIV has so much secrets.

 

[Kid R]

@MantaRevan

Why not start us off? Say what it is you like about the two games.

 

[markusbeutel]

@MantaRevan

Why not start us off? Say what it is you like about the two games.

As well as what difficulty you play IV on, and what your general play-style is/was. I find that the players more accustomed to micro on harder difficulties of IV were the most put off by the "hands off" approach of V, while more casual players who played on <Prince/Noble weren't as critical - as on these lower difficulty levels of IV, they wouldn't really have picked up on intricacies of stack composition, (as well as as all of the other inter-developed mechanics of IV) and just assumed stacks of doom always won the day. But this can present another problem, in that how does one define "hardcore" with respect to Civ? Is "hardcore" being able to beat the game on high difficulty levels? Or is it being a dedicated fan of the series while playing on lower difficulty levels?

Based on my experiences with the game and in the V forums, V is also popular if you play more of a warmongering style - and again, never really focused on manually using your workers or build/tech/improvement choice orders in IV, as these take a backseat to tactical warfare in V, (as aside from hooking up your strategic/luxury resources in V, automating your workers doesn't really punish you at all seeing as all the terrain is pretty much the same after being improved).

There's also the difference between "playing to win" and "role-playing" in Civ games, and while IV presents a good mix between the two, V is all about "playing to win," as choices you make on your very first turn, (combined with permanent policy choices and traits optimized for certain victory types), all funnel you down a linear path to the end-game. I'd be curious what side of this argument the OP is on as well, as it seems like, IMO, those that want more of a sand-box rpg experience also didn't like V as much as IV.

 

[MantaRevan]

@MantaRevan

Why not start us off? Say what it is you like about the two games.

Well, I like them independently as quality games.

Civ V has a lot of gloss and niceties, I love the viability of a cultural victory, and each Civilization is actually unique besides just units or buildings. IUPT makes the game feel more skill based to me, and I like the fact that being a warmonger will actually have global repercussions.

Civ 4 has a strong element of nostalgia for me, but also a greater depth to be enjoyed, and better availability of mods(though I can't get any personally). There are more civilizations and leaders,expansion isn't as difficult and diplomacy is more fun.

All in all, they clock in about the same for me, even though I've played more of BtS(most likely due to owning it longer).

 

[MantaRevan]

As well as what difficulty you play IV on, and what your general play-style is/was. I find that the players more accustomed to micro on harder difficulties of IV were the most put off by the "hands off" approach of V, while more casual players who played on <Prince/Noble weren't as critical - as on these lower difficulty levels of IV, they wouldn't really have picked up on intricacies of stack composition, (as well as as all of the other inter-developed mechanics of IV) and just assumed stacks of doom always won the day. But this can present another problem, in that how does one define "hardcore" with respect to Civ? Is "hardcore" being able to beat the game on high difficulty levels? Or is it being a dedicated fan of the series while playing on lower difficulty levels?

Based on my experiences with the game and in the V forums, V is also popular if you play more of a warmongering style - and again, never really focused on manually using your workers or build/tech/improvement choice orders in IV, as these take a backseat to tactical warfare in V, (as aside from hooking up your strategic/luxury resources in V, automating your workers doesn't really punish you at all seeing as all the terrain is pretty much the same after being improved).

There's also the difference between "playing to win" and "role-playing" in Civ games, and while IV presents a good mix between the two, V is all about "playing to win," as choices you make on your very first turn, (combined with permanent policy choices and traits optimized for certain victory types), all funnel you down a linear path to the end-game. I'd be curious what side of this argument the OP is on as well, as it seems like, IMO, those that want more of a sand-box rpg experience also didn't like V as much as IV.

I play a mix of the two. I will not 'play to win', simply because it makes my favorite game a job. At the same time, I'm not going to lose my game just to play some silly role. I play a fairly high level on ciV, but I can't really win up from Noble/Prince in cIV.

 

[strijder20]

I hated CivV when it came out, but I do now quite like it. 1UPT is really not that bad, and it isn't an 'infernal unit micro' until the very, very late game (and even then just building nuclear missiles which hardly require any micro at all is preferable over training an army consisting of ground units because of massive maintenance).

Natural wonders, especially the Fountain of Youth (Free double healing on every unit? Really?) and the El Dorado (500 gold, which IIRC is enough to buy a settler) are indeed not that great for game balance, especially when Spain starts next to 3 of them or something (Spain gets 500 gold for discovering a wonder first - yes, that's 1000 gold if they find El Dorado first).

The AI seems to become better and better at coping with 1UPT, although they have no clue how to defend against certain things (ranged mounted units and aircraft).

CivV is indeed about 1 difficulty level easier than CIV in my experience.

Other types of bad implementations I've heard is how big empire suffers from greater unhappiness, which makes big empire's cities smaller vertically (population) and smaller empires are the opposite.

I don't get how this is a bad implementation, I actually think this is one of the best elements of the game. It's the only thing that stops a human player from steamrolling after having captured enough cities.

and diplomacy is more fun [in Civ4].

Huh? I've always found the diplo AI in Civ4 a robot which doesn't even try to hide itself. What human reasons like this: The total sum of our diplomacy modifiers is -3, which translates itself to diplo level 2 (annoyed), so according to my personality modifiers I now have a 60% chance to prepare for war against that player if the RNG decides for a war check?
At least the CiV AI hides it, although it probably works like that too. The problem though is although that it resembles humans more closely, it seems like all leaders are psychopaths.
A + for CiV is that the AI actually pursues victory types now, unlike in CIV where the only victory type they actively went for was culture.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I really tried hard to like Civ5, but I couldn't get over the lack of depth and the boredom factor. Also, micromanaging troops in 1UPT is not my idea of a good gaming experience. Add to that the fact that it wouldn't play nice with my high end graphics card (no matter what I tried), and we have a solid loser all around.

I played a game or two (or tried to actually finish one) every time a new patch or update came out, thinking that I would give it "One more chance!", but it was still a dumbed-down, children's version of Civ. I finally erased it (again) from my hard disk, got rid of Steam, and that's that. A waste of $50.


@Tachywaxon: I just love your avatar! Do you have her number?

 

[MantaRevan]

Huh? I've always found the diplo AI in Civ4 a robot which doesn't even try to hide itself. What human reasons like this: The total sum of our diplomacy modifiers is -3, which translates itself to diplo level 2 (annoyed), so....

To be fair, the Civ IV diplo interface is set up as if you are taking to someone with Aspergers Syndrome, which is why I empathize with it more. Sometimes the irrationality of the Civ V AIs can annoy or confuse me(this only applies to me and a few others personally, it's not a reason I expect most to relate to).

 

[Revent]

The reason for this divide is that Firaxis has ditched it's players who love playing a difficult game that is an intellectual challenge in favour of a newer market to give us a dumbed down Civ game.

 

[karadoc]

When I play Civ4, every turn I'm thinking about potentially grand strategic decisions. For example, on any given turn I could choose to have a revolution (or use a great person) to switch from science-focus civics to military-focus civics to prepare for a big war. At any time, I can steer my civilization in a whole new direction to aim for victory. If my research is too slow to keep up, I can still gamble on the tech tree by researching something of little value in order to trade it around to get the techs I need. -- On any turn, I can think about multi-stage tech trade deals; and I can choose to follow a particular branch of the tech tree to pursue a particular strategy.

The key point I'm trying to make is that in Civ4, there's almost always some options for the player to make a big decision - any time they like. There's always something to do, and something to think about.

When I play civ5, I feel like there are very few important things to think about. Every so often I have to choose what my city should build next, or what I should research next; and that's about as far as it goes. Choosing techs and policies are fairly big decisions, but these choices only come up relatively rarely, and the strategy in them in quite narrow anyway - narrow because the tech tree is narrow, and because half the techs you get are randomly chosen by 'research agreements' anyway; and because the policy branches essentially based around particular strategies and so once you've chosen your strategy, the choice of next policy is usually trivial.

In civ4 you can make turn-by-turn strategic decisions, whereas in civ5 it's like you pick your strategy at the start of the game, and then play that same strategy throughout the game with a set of formulaic decisions about techs and policies. That's how it feels like to me anyway.

In civ4 I feel like I'm playing a strategy game, whereas in civ5, when I'm not trying to navigate a 1UPT traffic-jam, I feel like all I'm doing for the entire game is pressing end turn and making trivial decisions about what to build next in my cities.

 

[Rusty Edge]

Civ V is a beautiful game to look at as well as listen to.. I like the idea of Natural Wonders, even if the implemintation isn't balanced. Hexes are the way to be! I welcome the idea of the city states.

I don't like the tactical overlay upon the strategic. I don't like the social policy approach. I don't like the idea that each leader is locked into one victory type.

What I like about Civ IV is the feeling whenever I play that the world is my canvas, that I can pursuit any victory type with the leader I draw, give or take a difficulty level. As for AI rivals , I like the idea that Hannibal is a threat in a race to world domination or space. I like the idea that Ghandi is a threat for space or culture.

Since the release of the SDK, IV's mods are getting better and better.

 

[damerell]

Hexes are the way to be!

Yes! If there is one change I would make to Civ IV, it would be to have each city have a Big Fat Hex of 18 tiles.

 

[calibur]

Hexes were one of the few actual improvements in ciV. they are more realistic and make the land look more natural than a similar-quality square would've.

 

[vincentz]

For me, being a Civ5 hater, it was about this :
waiting 5-6 years for a continuation of the best game series I have ever played. Seeing how far and advanced mods have taken Civ4, and highly expecting a Civ+++, I get a broken game, which is boring as hell, with features implemented that the AI doesnt know how to use (its been a loooong time since I played Civ5, so I dont know if they fixed the AI/1UPT/Diplo problems).
Sure, it might look nice ('ish. map was VERY static compared to civ4), but graphics have NEVER been the most essential thing in civ's universe. Gameplay have.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

For me, being a Civ5 hater, it was about this :
waiting 5-6 years for a continuation of the best game series I have ever played. Seeing how far and advanced mods have taken Civ4, and highly expecting a Civ+++, I get a broken game, which is boring as hell, with features implemented that the AI doesnt know how to use (its been a loooong time since I played Civ5, so I dont know if they fixed the AI/1UPT/Diplo problems).
Sure, it might look nice ('ish. map was VERY static compared to civ4), but graphics have NEVER been the most essential thing in civ's universe. Gameplay have.

Well said.

I didn't think that the map looked all that wonderful, TBH. For me, it just looked like a sepia toned wash of brown, like really old photographs. It was drab and dull.

 

[Funky]

For me there are three layers of dislike.

The top layer is the stearing of civ in the direction of a tactical wargame by the installment of 1UPT, removal of war weariness, elimination of interesting building choices, elimination of non-military tech races, and in general not having much to do when not participating in a war. The empire building side of the game, which the series was always about, has been greatly reduced, or "streamlined", in favor of a focus on military and war. Even if you make a great number of stategical inaccuracies or downright mistakes you can still prevail easily by use of superior tactics compared to the AI.

The second layer consists of questionable and/or poorly implemented features, like global happiness (which is unrealistic and counter-intuitive on many levels while not preventing ICS), an atrocious AI, artificial and gamey city states, shallow and often meaningless diplomacy, unit embarkation, the replacement of cottages with trading posts, and a console-like UI, just to mention the most prominent ones.

The third layer, which is partly a result of the first two layers, is the sheer boredom I felt when playing the game. My very first game I won on emperor with ease, despite not having a clue what I was doing. Everything is so easy and self-evident, there are no mysteries or hard-to-grasp concepts. You just do common sense stuff and after a while you win. Whereas on the highest difficulties the game is all about fighting off endless swarms of braindead AI units. Not fun.

 

[ElJojo]

My basic answer is : I stopped playing because I was bored while playing it.

I happen to play Civ since the first one and I remember how the process to discover, understand and figure out strategies was a long process. And it made half the fun, lots of parameter, understanding how they interact etc, accompanied by the slow progress of difficulty levels.
On Civ 5 I achieved a 1000 AD Riflemen (or whatever they call it) rush with such ease on my second game! And I'm not an elite Civ4 player, at the best I can win on emperor with a good start.
I didn't feel like I had many difficult choices to make and learn from...
I also think the 1upt is a disaster, it tries to get a tactical part to the game while being wildly clumsy and it has a lot of consequences on the whole game. I recommand you read Sulla's final critic about Civ5, it explains how the 1 unit per tile choice has consequences for the whole game and not just the war system : http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

I don't play Civ4 regularly but I do come back now and then and I still find articles interesting and new strategies and I read some posts and say "well thought" and I'm eager to go again and try to adapt and improve.
In Civ5 I think the solutions they took to avoid issues are killing the game rather than upping it.
You need to find a reason to stop a sprawling empire to just steamroll everything, yet the global unhappiness discourages empire building, and you end up with an empire of villages... Not elegant, not fun.
You need to make diplomacy more interesting than just piling +/-, yet making every leader a psychotic irrationnal unreadable person does not grant depth but randomness.
You want to avoid huge piles of unit, etc (a piling limit linked to tech, road and terrain could have solved the problem for example).

Yet I realize most of my post says the same than the first sentence : I get bored and it's hard to pinpoint a rationnal argument about what makes it so...

 

[Silverbow]

I wish they used something like supply limits depending on tile terrain to limit the size of stacks in CiV. 1UPT is just bleh, and the AI is horrible at using it. City states are also random, useless annoyance.

But what has annoyed me the most is the absolutely psychotic nonexistent 'diplomacy'. I guess they wanted to have AI that'd be going for the win at any cost, but suicidal wars, imbecilic reasons for denouncing ('OMG you settled 28 tiles from us!') and all-around complete randomness ain't the way to do it. And maybe, just maybe, I'd like to play a bit of a RPish game once in a while, but I can't. Because there's simply no allies, and all civs are just rabid 12-year old psychopaths.

I didn't actually experience problems with global happiness, strangely enough. And hexes, natural wonders and the diplo screens are cool. But in the end I haven't played the game in months. Kinda waste of money.

 

[calibur]

You don't have problems with global happiness, global happiness is the problem. It is a step far back from the system in civ 4.