Stop Trying to make Civ V into a war simulator

[Ahriman]

(there was a suggestion you wouldn't want more than about 3 units per city due to resource and upkeep limitations)

Not from a developer (that I've seen!). I think you might have remembered this from the preferences of some particular forum-posters.

there really will be much less unit management, even with 1upt

I don't think we have any evidence for this. Fewer units, absolutely, but without stack management we could potentially see a lot more unit management.

But hey, we'll see.

 

[Healz]

The more I hear about Civ V the more a nagging doubt starts creeping into my head that a lot of the best aspects of Civ IV are getting junked in favour of a system most people will not like, that has never fitted with what the Civilization Series was about....

 

[trickofthehand]

I agree with Ahriman, having fewer units, and ranged units that are vulnerable to melee attackers (artillery to infantry in later age I suppose as well) is going to make you think EXTRA hard about where and how to move each one.

Ofcourse I for one welcome this, I'm sick to death of stupid SoDs and have been waiting for a Civ title where combat strategy was a little more than "make sure you end your turn on a forest or hill!"

 

[Shurdus]

The more I hear about Civ V the more a nagging doubt starts creeping into my head that a lot of the best aspects of Civ IV are getting junked in favour of a system most people will not like, that has never fitted with what the Civilization Series was about....

What best aspects, who else considers this the best aspects? If you feel like one aspect is the best and barely anyone else is with you, the devs will do very well to drop thoise things you consider 'the best about Civ IV'.

Also what system that people will not like are we talking about, and how do you know most people will not like it? Keep in mind that only a slim minority of gamers bother to post about a game online, and even fewer of those come to civfanatics. Sentiments you picked up from these boards mean nothing.

 

[Mathew952]

I would like to see a recruitment/construction que similar to total war, where you can recruit and build at the same time. That way, you can still have war and military, but without it taking over the whole game for 20 turns.

Also, does anyone else think that units should be a combo of food and hammers, since most armies are typically made of both meat and steel? It would give advantage to countries with lots of people, but not great tech, so they don't get kicked around too much.

 

[Shurdus]

What makes civ so cool imo is the very fact that you are forced to choose between infrastructure or units and that you cannot build both. I think that is also the way it should be.

Of course one may argue that a city can produce more at once, but that is not the point. The point is that in a game that spans as much time as civ does, it is hard to argue that buildings like a granary do in fact represent one single building. I prefer to think of creating buildings more as a period where your nation diverts more of its attention to development rather than defending itself from harmful sources from outside their borders. Alternatively training units is a period where forces from outside make it so that safety becomes more important than creating great new building projects.

When one thinks of a library in the game as just one library, then it puzzles the mind why building one building should take so long. Same thing with units. A few hundred years just for giving clubs to some brutes? Please. I think of units and buildings more as symbols rather than actual buildings and units. You need to invest in them rather than being able to spam them with impunity. With that in mind, the one cue for everything made a lot of sense, and I have said it before: you need not have all well developed cities in order to win. Therefore you do not even need more cues. You ned to choose your buildings and units wisely. Timing what you build when is also a part of the strategic elements of the game. More cues diminish the importance of strategic planning and therefore I think it is a bad idea to implement more cues.

 

[Ahriman]

What makes civ so cool imo is the very fact that you are forced to choose between infrastructure or units and that you cannot build both. I think that is also the way it should be.

I prefer to think of creating buildings more as a period where your nation diverts more of its attention to development rather than defending itself from harmful sources from outside their borders.

I think of units and buildings more as symbols rather than actual buildings and units.

I agree with Shurdus on all points here. Construction decisions are more strategic when you have an actual either/or choice. Being unable to invest in everything is part of what makes investment meaningful.

That's really a big part of what strategy is; choice under scarcity, and selection of priorities.

Now, if only I could make him use "queues" instead of "cues", we'd be on total agreement

 

[Shurdus]

Sorry about that, Dutch is my first language.

 

[frekk]

Fewer units, absolutely, but without stack management we could potentially see a lot more unit management.

Nothing can possibly be worse than the Hell of MM that the SOD imposes. A single battle between 2 SODs can take up to 20 minutes, and that's after you've spent hours building and collecting a couple of hundred units into a single pile. Then, afterwards, you have to individually run through the whole damn thing picking out the units that are wounded to heal them (else the whole stack has to wait) and the units that get promotions and so on. God help you if you miss one when you're cycling through.

 

[Shurdus]

Nothing can possibly be worse than the Hell of MM that the SOD imposes. A single battle between 2 SODs can take up to 20 minutes, and that's after you've spent hours building and collecting a couple of hundred units into a single pile. Then, afterwards, you have to individually run through the whole damn thing picking out the units that are wounded to heal them (else the whole stack has to wait) and the units that get promotions and so on. God help you if you miss one when you're cycling through.

There is the option to allow stack battles, and one may turn of animations by default. I turned off the animations but I do not stack battle, and I can eliminate a full stack in seconds, 20 being the very may that a battle may take. Battles taking 20 minutes is nothing short of horrible, and if you dislike that then it iis your own fault for not using the options the game provides for shortening this time.

 

[Ahriman]

Sorry about that, Dutch is my first language.

I'm from a Commonwealth country, we like queues. Very orderly and polite.

 

[Crazy George]

I think the biggest problem would be if the game becomes too tactical. Anytime a human player can use tactics to make up too much ground on the computer is not good.

No doubt C5 is going to become more tactical. Oddly, I have the opposite take on it. If one makes the game of rock-paper-scissors too complicated, the only one who can keep track of it is a computer. With this in mind, I have every expectation that On the Line, in the Field of Battle, the computer will use it's troops far more effectively than I will.

the only thing i want from the military side of the game is being able to automate your armies like in SMAC so i can be done with the whole war business.

I couldn't agree more. But not just military automation. I want to be able to automate the entire thing and then come back and pick and choose where to take control and make strategic decisions.

 

[Shurdus]

Automating units in war... That is actually the best idea I have seen on this boards in like... ever. Warring is probably the area in the game that I like the least, so doing that automatically will be nice and handy indeed. Here is to hoping!

 

[frekk]

There is the option to allow stack battles, and one may turn of animations by default. I turned off the animations but I do not stack battle, and I can eliminate a full stack in seconds, 20 being the very may that a battle may take. Battles taking 20 minutes is nothing short of horrible, and if you dislike that then it iis your own fault for not using the options the game provides for shortening this time.

It's not a very good system at all if you have to turn off all the animations or have a game that is "nothing short of horrible". Might as well not have animations.

Unless, of course, you expect the user to turn the animations on and off all the time - reloading the game every time, of course. But "horrible" would be a charitable description for that.

 

[Healz]

What I am meaning is one of the best aspects and most distinctive is the ability to have multiple units on the same tile. That is an ability that has been with Civilization from the beginning that Civ V now seems to be losing due to developers that are tinkering majorly with a system that has held from Civ 1. That isn't good tinkering with a game in such a major way, as you lose what the game is about. If they want a war simulator why couldn't they produce a separate game where you could only have one unit per tile and leave Civilization V to be more like an improved Civ IV.

There were a lot of things they could have done to improve on Civ IV without needing to totally screw around with the units system. Also we have the fact that there are millions of posts in threads such as these by fans of this site that seem to be asking major questions on how the new system is meant to work. These are what I am pointing out.

I really think there were any things they could have done like land and air transports like a helicopter or a plane. Built in a city with an airstrip, it has a range similar to Civilization 1 and 2, also so should the helicopter gunship in reality. The gunship can go forever which could be fixed by a long range. Also marines could be able to build the way I saw a Roman Legionary that was able to build in a mod and I have also seen elephants that could build improvements in Mods. Therefore Marines could build forward bases. If the AI actually was equipped to use these abilities they would improve the game in a way that is better than what sounds like a total rewriting of the game. I rarely ever use the stack of doom as I rarely war in ancient times. A lot of those people that use the SOD are now complaining and getting listened to for whatever reason. I don't know how you can manage to grow your empire quickly enough to really be viable on the harder levels as I have problems doing that on the lowest level. Regardless I hope these new total game change aspects turn out to be some ultra elaborate joke, otherwise I will seriously consider not buying Civilization V.

 

[frekk]

What I am meaning is one of the best aspects and most distinctive is the ability to have multiple units on the same tile. That is an ability that has been with Civilization from the beginning

Enh, sooort of.

In Civ1 and 2 you never really stacked units more than 2 high, at least not anywhere near the enemy. You might pair a high-defence unit with a high-attack unit, such as a musket with a cavalry. But other than that it was a pretty bad idea. While units could stack for movement purposes, for purposes of combat, there was just 1 defender, and if he got killed, the whole stack was destroyed. So in a way it was 1 upt - you just got to move in the same square (at the risk of losing the whole stack).

Civ3 was the first time you were allowed to have multiple defenders, and with that came the SOD, which we've been trying to get rid of ever since. That's why suicide catapults were introduced in civ4 - as SOD-busters, even though the idea of suicide artillery makes utterly no sense at all. Plus it didn't work since we still have SODs, they're just made of catapults now.

That isn't good tinkering with a game in such a major way, as you lose what the game is about. If they want a war simulator why couldn't they produce a separate game where you could only have one unit per tile and leave Civilization V to be more like an improved Civ IV.

If all you want is civ4, keep playing civ4 by all means! I'm sure all kinds of mods that improve on it will continue to be produced and refined. You should probably at least try civ5 sometime though, just in case.

The point of a new edition is not to create a slightly improved version of the same old thing - that's what expansion packs are for. The whole point of a new edition is changing the game in relatively major ways.

I don't think civ will be or is aiming to be a "war simulation". Changing the quality of warfare in the game is not the same thing as changing the quantity of warfare in the game.

Also we have the fact that there are millions of posts in threads such as these by fans of this site that seem to be asking major questions on how the new system is meant to work. These are what I am pointing out.

Of course, because the game is months away from release and lots of details are still a mystery, meaning there is alot of speculation and alot of people wanting to know more details. This happens every time a new edition is released. Nobody really knew very much about civ4 until very shortly before its release other than a few broad details ("it has civics" "it has religion" "it has collateral damage") that nobody really knew anything about. Even when more details started to get released close to the time the game hit the shelves, to really get how the game worked you had to actually play it.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I am expecting we will not see any sort of formation-move in Civ5. What I do suspect is that unit numbers will be drastically reduced (as everyone keeps pointing out) and thus the need for some feature to move multiple units simultaneously will be small.

However, I do expect one will be able to move multiple units on the same tile e.g. a stack of 2 units - 1 military and 1 civilian.

By the way, anyone who calls the civ games simulations seriously needs to check the definition of 'simulation'.

 

[phungus420]

What I am meaning is one of the best aspects and most distinctive is the ability to have multiple units on the same tile. That is an ability that has been with Civilization from the beginning that Civ V now seems to be losing due to developers that are tinkering majorly with a system that has held from Civ 1. That isn't good tinkering with a game in such a major way, as you lose what the game is about. If they want a war simulator why couldn't they produce a separate game where you could only have one unit per tile and leave Civilization V to be more like an improved Civ IV.

As Frekk pointed out, the SOD was added in Civ3, and has not been with us since the beggining of the series. Civ4 tried to fix the SoD with collateral damage artillery, and it did not work, we just now have SoDs consisting of suicide artillery, which makes no sense whatsoever. Personally I'm happy to know the devs are focusing on what is the glaring flaw in Civ, the SoD, which absolutely had to go. Good for them.

Point being your premise is utterly false. Play civ1 first before commenting on it, and basing a whole argument around something that isn't true.

 

[phungus420]

There is the option to allow stack battles, and one may turn of animations by default. I turned off the animations but I do not stack battle, and I can eliminate a full stack in seconds, 20 being the very may that a battle may take. Battles taking 20 minutes is nothing short of horrible, and if you dislike that then it iis your own fault for not using the options the game provides for shortening this time.

You're defending a poorly implemented, tedious, and annoying feature because we have the ability to semi turn it off and can sort of try to bypass it? How about just, you know, eliminate it, since it sucks. I can pug my nose around sh!t, but that doesn't mean it smells good.

 

[Shurdus]

You're defending a poorly implemented, tedious, and annoying feature because we have the ability to semi turn it off and can sort of try to bypass it? How about just, you know, eliminate it, since it sucks. I can pug my nose around sh!t, but that doesn't mean it smells good.

Not sure what you mean to say. I for one do not think that unit movement is something a player should want, so I click fast movement. In large stacks I certainly do not want to see the animations of soldiers dying, and I think after maybe one playthrough this feature gets old -> one should turn it off, even moreso if long battles annoy you.

I think no battle animations are the way to go, and if one dislikes the ckicking several times then one may simply stack attack. The options to do it are there. If you do not want to use the functionality then that is fine, but do not complain that battles take so long. They do not have to take long.

Now I am unsure what feature I defended exactly, I was pointing out that there are options to make combat faster. If you think combat takes too long, it may be a good idea to use the options that make it faster. I do not care about animations and I certainly would not care if they left them in or out in the next installment, as long as they provide the option to turn them off.