The CIV IV random showerthought thread

[Fish Man]

We already have a Civ 5 leader in 4. One that sucks and is a nutter: Toku.

As for the suggested changes mentioned a few posts up, I think it would make the game more boring tbh, and make most cities kind of generalist, with less scope for and reasons to specialise cities, one of the strengths of the game. If improved metal just gave an extra hammer or something, why put a city there at all, if you already have access to metal?

Could probably just lead to ICS tbh, which is no fun.

I'm appreciative of the game we actually have. There are far, far more strengths than weaknesses.

To me, the most frustrating weakness is memory leak / how the game becomes pretty damn laggy after hours of playing, and in general the unresponsiveness of the UI, particularly with big-ish stacks. The grouping of units and such is bonkers more often than not, and the only way I've found to reduce the frustration is to select everything and remove all groups when about to assault something. That way I can select a unit without going crazy.

And of course, the hard-on the game has for spy specialists. A total nightmare for big space games, when 30 cities grow every turn and you need to remove those bastards every god damn turn. Yikes!!

Actually, I think Huayna Capac would be the civ 5 leader in 4, because everything about him is ridiculously OP and playing him pretty much knocks the difficulty down one level, if not more. So he can be a crutch for bad players, just like V.

Yeah...I agree there's not much to fix about IV. Most of the suggestions I've made thus far were meme ones. I still support commando invisible Navy Seals, though. XD

One thing in particular that I like in IV over V is the increased importance of resources. In V resources hardly mattered most of the time, and if they did, they were secondary to just riverside arable grassland...boring af. Seriously? Plantations give +1 gold? When gold in and of itself is such a useless resource? Wow, such wheat, an entire extra +1 (or +2 if you have granary) food! Oh, you have iron? Good for you, a whopping +1 production, maybe even +2 if you build the useless forge! You know what's pretty much an instawin, though? Farm farm farm farm farm

 

[Archon_Wing]

What if there was a Civ V civ in Civ IV?

Traits: industrious and philosophical, because that's the "best" combination that hasn't been taken yet, and also we all know how much V players love wonderspamming and great scientist bulbfests (speaking from experience )

Hey leave me alone! >.> My strategies are highly varied and I don't follow the same script regardless of map or game. Or....

It's often true I fire up games of Civ where winning is secondary. And I don't even know why I built the space elevator. It wasn't even a space victory.

And then Egypt doesn't get a bonus to wonders in Civ 6. RIP. China does, but problem is wonders take up a tile. Why they gotta hate?

Actually, I think Huayna Capac would be the civ 5 leader in 4, because everything about him is ridiculously OP and playing him pretty much knocks the difficulty down one level, if not more. So he can be a crutch for bad players, just like V.

Yeah...I agree there's not much to fix about IV. Most of the suggestions I've made thus far were meme ones. I still support commando invisible Navy Seals, though. XD

One thing in particular that I like in IV over V is the increased importance of resources. In V resources hardly mattered most of the time, and if they did, they were secondary to just riverside arable grassland...boring af. Seriously? Plantations give +1 gold? When gold in and of itself is such a useless resource? Wow, such wheat, an entire extra +1 (or +2 if you have granary) food! Oh, you have iron? Good for you, a whopping +1 production, maybe even +2 if you build the useless forge! You know what's pretty much an instawin, though? Farm farm farm farm farm

Pretty inane to learn that improving the resource makes things worse. But that's V for you.

 

[Fish Man]

Hey leave me alone! >.> My strategies are highly varied and I don't follow the same script regardless of map or game. Or....

It's often true I fire up games of Civ where winning is secondary. And I don't even know why I built the space elevator. It wasn't even a space victory.

And then Egypt doesn't get a bonus to wonders in Civ 6. RIP. China does, but problem is wonders take up a tile. Why they gotta hate?



Pretty inane to learn that improving the resource makes things worse. But that's V for you.

For the wonderspamming, I was actually talking more about myself...I'm playing an Inca game on settler difficulty (lol) in IV right now, where my win condition is to build literally ALL the wonders, AND win by turn 300 (shouldn't be hard, with all the culture). I popped a settler from a hut on turn 2...already feeling like the deity AI

 

[Archon_Wing]

That sounds fun. Eliminating people through culture would be humorous!

For the game I ss'd, I did let the plebs steal a few wonders sadly. Temple of Atremis I can never get. without losing something else. (Even on Prince, I can't build them all that fast, and I don't want the GW polluting my GP pool so building that crap in my capital is unacceptable.). (Also, Sitting Bull WTH). Chichen Itza is so bad that I can't even find an excuse to do it. And I never take MM in these cases since that would ruin the AP, so Hollywood/UN never gets built by me (unless truly desperate) or I can outright win with it

I think IV got culture/wonders the best. V, building anything is a chore, and culture seems kinda lame in V until later and then it's sorta.... there in VI.

 

[Windsor]

Not sure about slavery which is probably the single most overpowered feature (unless one counts certain UUs) of the game. Options would be: one unhappy face everywhere for being in the civic. -x diplo with anyone not in slavery. But as others have said, it would still be "necessary" for fast expansion or fast armies.

What to do really depends on what you want the civic to be. I don't think late-game slavery is overpowered.

But there's huge risk that by changing slavery you would end up dulling the game. Slavery is overpowered, but it's also a really interesting and fun mechanic. In general I'd say that all the ways of rushing stuff (Great People bombs/bulbs, drafting, chopping, rushbuying and whipping) makes the game much better. We don't want a game where everyone just slowbuilds everything.

These would help things balance-wise, but the problem is that deity players almost always "need" these powerful features to have a decent chance at winning, given how ridiculously hard and unpredictable the highest difficulty can get - and also that perfect balance is not always a good thing, as arguably games are more fun if there are some options that are generally more powerful than others, so players can enjoy spending time figuring out which strategies is "superior", generally speaking, and which aren't.

Don't really see difficulty as a problem. If you can't beat deity, just play on easier settings. If we can improve the game in such a way that the AI needs less bonuses to be competitive that's a good thing.

As for the suggested changes mentioned a few posts up, I think it would make the game more boring tbh, and make most cities kind of generalist, with less scope for and reasons to specialise cities, one of the strengths of the game. If improved metal just gave an extra hammer or something, why put a city there at all, if you already have access to metal?

I don't think copper and iron is overpowered yield-wise. However they're extremely overpowered as a resource. Only AI stupidity make it less of a problem.

But the problematic early resources are really gems and gold. Especially gems. The tile yield is extreme and since they tend to cluster getting two or three of those in your BFC is not uncommon. Add +2 happiness and it's really all you want. Gems should probably always start covered in jungle, even in BFC. I don't really think silver is much of a problem since surrounding land tend to suck.

 

[Pangaea]

That sounds fun. Eliminating people through culture would be humorous!

This has actually been tried, though naturally at a lower level. Win conquest in an Always Peace game. Tricky, but possible. Just need to seriously focus on culture, and get cities out quick so you can start stealing tiles from AIs.

 

[rah]

Don't really see difficulty as a problem. If you can't beat deity, just play on easier settings.

Agreed. I remember II where Deity level was easy and wished for a harder level. IV delivered it. But if you need tricks to beat it, Immortal became more fun. Then the Horror when I was play testing V and beat Deity the very first game I played without knowing what I was doing. That's when I knew the Franchise was dead.

 

[Kallikrates]

I did not mean that iron and copper are overpowered as far as tile yields go. I also do not really think that *precious* metals (gold, silver, gems) are overpowered as far as the tile yields go. But they are in relation to e.g. calendar goods. And they get another boost with forges. So calendar ressources are simply worse than gold in every respect with no redeeming features. Which leads to the map becoming more important than in any previous Civ game. Of course one can like this. I think it is a mixed blessing.
Of course this is quibbling with a pretty good game. But I think there are some features that were better in earlier games, like more terraforming and more importance for city improvements. And I think that it is bad design if there are a lot of options "in theory" that are also plausible as far as the simulation aspect goes (like a marketplace making money) that are in practice very often superfluous or bad strategic choices. If there were not city improvements at all I would have no problem with "building wealth". But as it is implemented in BtS it makes no sense to me (and it had been better in vanilla, this is really a puzzling change).

what is ICS?

 

[Archon_Wing]

This has actually been tried, though naturally at a lower level. Win conquest in an Always Peace game. Tricky, but possible. Just need to seriously focus on culture, and get cities out quick so you can start stealing tiles from AIs.

Well, I prefer games where the AI can fight back. Though I guess the distinction is nil on Settler.

 

[Fish Man]

Well, I prefer games where the AI can fight back. Though I guess the distinction is nil on Settler.

This has actually been tried, though naturally at a lower level. Win conquest in an Always Peace game. Tricky, but possible. Just need to seriously focus on culture, and get cities out quick so you can start stealing tiles from AIs.

Well...I have the added self-imposed win condition of building every single wonder in the game, including the national wonders. On the current game that I'm playing, if I don't win by turn 300, or an AI builds a world wonder, or I win before building all the wonders, then I consider that a loss.

It's actually pretty annoying. I can't build universities because I have 4-5 useless wonders I have to build first. But hey, at least I have stone and marble with Inca. And also I got education by 475 BC.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It's actually pretty annoying. I can't build wonders because I have 4-5 useless universities. I have to build first.

FYP

 

[Fish Man]

FYP

Nah, man. Who needs universities when you can build chicken pizza and statue of zeus, despite not planning to war anytime soon and wars in general lasting <10 turns, consisting of cavalry vs archers?

Won culture victory on t239, with all buildable wonders built. Was a bit easier than I thought it would be; sinking 25,000+ hammers into wonders and wonder-related buildings wasn't as painful as I expected.

 

[6K Man]

I generally think of stuff like this when on my commute, as opposed to when in the shower.

Would bringing back Zones of Control be a good idea or a bad one?

Airplanes have a fixed range (from a city or airbase or carrier). Why don’t other units have a fixed range (e.g. ships, oil-powered land units)? Maybe they could gradually lose strength if they don’t return to a friendly barracks or naval base after a certain number of turns (like Helicopters in CivII)?

Is there a way to change the combat mechanics so that battles do not inevitably centre on cities?

State Property is a civic – but really, isn’t the whole game State Property? All growth and production in Civ4 is planned, funded and built by the central government (i.e. the human player or AI). Would it be more fun/interesting/challenging if it didn’t work this way?

The sliders shouldn’t be science/tax/culture/espionage. They should be two tiered, as follows
1. Tax/culture(luxuries)
2. The tax portion further divided into science/cash/espionage (maybe defense/unit support in here too).
This might be too politically contentious, though – i.e. we would see debates as to whether a reduction in tax would/should make tiles more productive?

 

[Astax]

2. I feel the samurai and berserker are, simply put, weak UUs. Samurai gets up to 3 first strikes but none of that matters when facing mounted and at any rate first strikes don't do much if there's a large gap between attacker and defender strength, AKA city garrison longbowmen. For berserker, the 10% city attack is laughable, almost never enough to push over a jump point, and who even does amphibious assaults in medieval era?

Point of contention in MP Samurai are praised for Medi start games. A stack of Samurai with some siege will destroy units of the era. Longbowmen usually do not become available till after Engineering, following semi-optimized techpath in MP games. And you likely would never build Longbows over Crossbows, which have vastly more utility.

Also Vikings are great for Medi era, because you get extra move on boats, and depending on maps this is very useful. Charismatic with vassalage and theocracy can make 5 move galleys. The Berserker is slightly less useful, but sometimes you can use the Amphibious bonus. Usually people expect a boatdrop of Horse Archer or Knights, Berserkers would be a nice surprise for the pikemen people store in the coastal cities. Also quite a few attacks can take place across a river, so amphibious attack can be useful here, but the navigation bonus is usually more prized for Vikings.

 

[Pangaea]

Berserkers are actually pretty powerful on watery maps, at least on lower levels. When AIs get longbows they obviously lose a lot of appeal, but if you get Berserkers early they are very nice to have against archers, swords and also axes. They get an additional 10% city attack, which is sometimes enough to put them over a "tipping point", giving something like 70% odds instead of 40-45%.