Things I hoped would be gone from Civ5

[apocalypse105]

Um you know you can change the amount of city states for whatever map you are playing on right - just customise the game. Standard size is way too small for me, huge maps are the only way to go.

I told in my post wich problem you face if you lower city state easier diplo victory..

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's a controversial one, but I agree. I didn't like stacks of doom. I though Civ5 combat was more decisive and less about massive production.

There are fewer BNW tactics that are viable for war than there are in BTS. Ranged spam + blocking units, or frigates...until what point in the game? You start seeing divergence in arty/air/nuke times, but that was true in civ 4 too.

Prior to that, civ 4 had more variance. Collateral initiative, huge swings in defensive bonuses, promotions that sped up movement in terrain, and the lack of passive city defense meant that positioning of troops was more crucial...a mistake more punishing.

Saying civ 4 combat was about massive production advertises a dubious understanding of civ 4 combat.

Civ 4 combat system was awefull it wasnt fun at all. It was olso totally random you could have total random outcomes i allways remember themeinteam ranting are you kidding me game ? on his lets plays and he is right game sometimes make you fail even if you have high odds.

Civ 4 had two times this mattered a lot, and both were bad:

1. Early game, before catapults. Civ 5 destroys civ 4 in pre-siege warfare design.
2. Tactical nukes vs SDI: I hate these resource-heavy situations with huge stakes on low # dice rolls.

The rest of the game, RNG at warfare was mitigated by the collateral damage mechanic and enough production to offset small variances. An early game axe rush or pillage run with a good or bad RNG outcome deciding the game was junk though, I'll stand by that one.

But stacks of dooms was 0 strategy

Again, people who played like they believed this were the kind of people who would have 33% more army than someone, then be wiped off the map 15 turns later by the person they attacked.

 

[apocalypse105]

There are fewer BNW tactics that are viable for war than there are in BTS. Ranged spam + blocking units, or frigates...until what point in the game? You start seeing divergence in arty/air/nuke times, but that was true in civ 4 too.

Prior to that, civ 4 had more variance. Collateral initiative, huge swings in defensive bonuses, promotions that sped up movement in terrain, and the lack of passive city defense meant that positioning of troops was more crucial...a mistake more punishing.

Saying civ 4 combat was about massive production advertises a dubious understanding of civ 4 combat.



Civ 4 had two times this mattered a lot, and both were bad:

1. Early game, before catapults. Civ 5 destroys civ 4 in pre-siege warfare design.
2. Tactical nukes vs SDI: I hate these resource-heavy situations with huge stakes on low # dice rolls.

The rest of the game, RNG at warfare was mitigated by the collateral damage mechanic and enough production to offset small variances. An early game axe rush or pillage run with a good or bad RNG outcome deciding the game was junk though, I'll stand by that one.



Again, people who played like they believed this were the kind of people who would have 33% more army than someone, then be wiped off the map 15 turns later by the person they attacked.

yeah because combat was based on random numbers and you can have 99% change and till lose.. Or it was more like who atacks first. if you both have trebuches just sucide trebuches and kill their army. To be honest combat system wasnt that great.

 

[cephalo]

Again, people who played like they believed this were the kind of people who would have 33% more army than someone, then be wiped off the map 15 turns later by the person they attacked.

I think there was probably plenty of strategy in 4, but it really was just too much of a slog. The battles were short and fun, but the mustering was long and boring. I've never been some kind of strategy guru, and I don't even remember any strategy I might have used, just the 'crankety crank' sound of the tank heading to the stack, over and over and over.

Civ5 made that process a lot less time consuming, and though the AI couldn't handle the 1upt, that just doesn't bother me that much. It's not the computer's failings that determine world history, it's my brilliant tactical mind! Right?... RIGHT? I'm ok with that.

 

[PhilBowles]

I really didn't like the concept of city states. I much prefer the idea that everyone starts off equally, and if given the chance, could develop into a great civilization. Civ4 had city states if you just fill the map with lots of civs, some would necessarily stay small and you could deal with them how you wanted to, albeit without the gamey bonuses.

I'd prefer something a bit more organic, but 'minor civs' are a common feature of 4x games that Civ's late tapping into. In Civ V they could (in earlier versions) be aggressive and occasionally conquer rivals - if this were retained and expanded, so that they could sometimes become pseudo-civs the way barbarians occasionally did way back in Civ II, it would be welcome. They're here to stay, since Firaxis has said they like having them as a way to add states that they don't want to add as civs but which have a playerbase, such as Australia, Canada or Malaysia - and certainly it's a better solution than adding a full-blown 'Australia civ'.

I didn't like having two tech trees. A civilization knows what it knows, and everything you know is dependent on everything else. You can't have Rock n' Roll without electricity, you can't have organized religion without a writing system, etc. It makes sense to have a winding, diverse path, but splitting the tree in two pretends that culture can advance without science, and vice versa.

Mechanically a single tech tree has always been problematic, and perhaps most so in Civ IV due to the link between religion and tech. Specific governments/civics appearing at set points on the tree lead to stereotyped progression that has to hit tech A at point B. However you arrange the tree, this will remain an issue as long as every game system is ultimately underpinned by the tech tree. Never mind that having things like Divine Right, Code of Laws or Military Tradition as "technologies" was always conceptually awkward, even without the absurdity of things like Prophecy in Civ III.

Civ V proved better at resolving this in principle than in practice, since it never successfully balanced the policy tree well and the tech tree itself ended up being too focused on following path X to pursue strategy Y - the very problem divorcing government and religion from tech progression ought to have solved.

 

[isau]

I want the Domination victory that was in Civ V to go away and some version of the one in IV to return. The Civ IV Domination victory was a contest of tiles. It created world-wide conflict and justified building outpost cities, taking over other continents, and grabbing every space available.

The version in V (be last one still holding onto your capital) removed most of the tension from the game, because there was no longer a lingering sense that if someone started to gobble up the world you had to stop them. In V you just hold on to your capital and you can literally never lose to an AI going Dom victory. This is part of what made it so easy to just sit in your little 4 city empire and ignore the world.

1UPT isn't the problem really. It's 1UPT combined with a Dom victory that entirely involves going after a tiny subset of the real estate.

 

[apocalypse105]

I want the Domination victory that was in Civ V to go away and some version of the one in IV to return. The Civ IV Domination victory was a contest of tiles. It created world-wide conflict and justified building outpost cities, taking over other continents, and grabbing every space available.

The version in V (be last one still holding onto your capital) removed most of the tension from the game, because there was no longer a lingering sense that if someone started to gobble up the world you had to stop them. In V you just hold on to your capital and you can literally never lose to an AI going Dom victory. This is part of what made it so easy to just sit in your little 4 city empire and ignore the world.

1UPT isn't the problem really. It's 1UPT combined with a Dom victory that entirely involves going after a tiny subset of the real estate.

In brave new world YOU NEED TO CONTROL all capitals so its changed

 

[isau]

In brave new world YOU NEED TO CONTROL all capitals so its changed

Yes and it's's still lame. The tile victory version was far superior.

 

[PhilBowles]

Nope. Just yet another player stuck on civ iv.

I cannot believe people can like stack of dooms over 1upt personnaly. Imo civ VI doesnt make it perfect as i believe the map should have grown bigger or change of scale to give more room for both units and cities especially with the unstacking.

But stacks of dooms was 0 strategy and made imo 0 sense. Which is weird considering thatblistening to some people everything in civ v is just easier and dumber than precious civ iv. But hey, to each his own i guess

As a long-term wargamer I'm fine with stack combat per se - what I disliked was stack production. Having to spam units every few turns was tedious and one of far too many systems (such as health and happiness management, or maintenance that restricted expansion to set times rather than presenting a trade-off more meaningful than between "be fast and get punished" and "be slow and don't get punished") in Civ IV (and older games) that basically intruded into otherwise strategic gameplay and said "Do X at point Y or suffer the consequences". Micromanagement for the sake of micromanagement is not strategic or particularly intelligent - and despite demanding essentially continuous unit production the game didn't even allow an option to produce units in multiples (as, say, you can choose to produce 5 or 10 ships of type X as a unit in the latest Master of Orion game).

I think the main issue for me with five is the "limit" on number of cities in your empire. I AM more of a small/tall player, but four/five cities shouldn't be the best option almost every time. That's basically a numbers balancing issue, though, not something I would remove.

You could play wide in Civ V - it just wasn't optimal on most maps. The gameplay didn't really prevent you from doing it. For a long time I praised Civ V's efforts to make go tall vs. go wide alternative ways to play the game, but ultimately it ran into a truism of Civ game design: playing tall is boring. It simply doesn't offer very much to do in a game that's about taking advantage of the map, building things in cities, and conquering rivals, when you control little of the map, have restricted build slots, and don't want to conquer.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

yeah because combat was based on random numbers and you can have 99% change and till lose.. Or it was more like who atacks first. if you both have trebuches just sucide trebuches and kill their army. To be honest combat system wasnt that great.

Alright, suicide those 8 trebuchets on the 6 guerilla longbows positioned between two of your cities. See how that works out in a to trade. Maybe you'll get that lucky 1% win?

I think there was probably plenty of strategy in 4, but it really was just too much of a slog. The battles were short and fun, but the mustering was long and boring. I've never been some kind of strategy guru, and I don't even remember any strategy I might have used, just the 'crankety crank' sound of the tank heading to the stack, over and over and over.

You need fewer total inputs to put 80 guys overseas in civ 4 than you would need to put 8 guys overseas in civ 5. Not only can you do it in fewer inputs, but you can do it in less real life time. That's because somehow civ 4's UI was less archaic in terms of hotkeys and conventions, and had faster turn times.

I consider something that takes a player 30-60 minutes longer to accomplish necessarily to be the thing that is the greater slog.

Unlike other aspects of this discussion, Civ 4 warfare when using hotkeys/controls decently is *objectively* less time consuming. In fact once you get to a certain level of speed in civ 4 even the fastest civ 5 player in the world couldn't possibly match him, the latter game simply runs and rolls to next unit too much more slowly. My guide with ~3.5 hours win times is dated, I would go on to routinely post wins in 1-3 hours...times you can't possibly match in 5 given the same difficulty, even if you give every order and end turn as fast as the game lets you.

I'd prefer something a bit more organic, but 'minor civs' are a common feature of 4x games that Civ's late tapping into.

Civ 4 had minor civs, but oddly made them scenario only. They are even handled differently by the code.

Yes and it's's still lame. The tile victory version was far superior.

I'm pretty sure they hacked that out of 5 because of how the city/1UPT/turn time type scaling was going. Being excessively penalized for successfully taking cities would not mesh well with a requirement of holding a large number of cities.

 

[JeszKar]

1UPT, First I liked the idea but it was overall a worse system.
Beside the problem of traffic jam and being completely non-immersive (really I can hold only 5 unit of soldier in England) it slowed the game terribly. You had to move every unit individually and I swear even the AI move them more slowly. I can't prove that I can't really see how the AI move units in 4 and 5 but it feels slower.

And beside of that Civilization is a 4x game, not a war-game it doesn't need a battle system like that unless if they somewhat try to make a hybrid system (world map+battle map) but I don't think that will happens any time soon.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1UPT, First I liked the idea but it was overall a worse system.
Beside the problem of traffic jam and being completely non-immersive (really I can hold only 5 unit of soldier in England) it slowed the game terribly. You had to move every unit individually and I swear even the AI move them more slowly. I can't prove that I can't really see how the AI move units in 4 and 5 but it feels slower.

And beside of that Civilization is a 4x game, not a war-game it doesn't need a battle system like that unless if they somewhat try to make a hybrid system (world map+battle map) but I don't think that will happens any time soon.

Of course it's slower. The AI stacked units just like the human and had some logic for massing them --> moving stack as one set. 1 UPT they absolutely have to path them to move them, a problem made worse by stuff like city states feeling a need to move units all the time even with no wars/barb threats etc.

Forget moving troops well, just moving them at all is hard on the AI to some degree. It's the biggest reason difficulty is lower in 5 too, because there's no threat of 30 things piling on your face too early. The effective front line limitation hard-caps the amount of threat the AI can create with its bonuses.

 

[jekke]

o, nice thread.
Clearly, I would like to get rid of the "science from population" concept. This, together with the crazy warmonger penalty and asymmetric diplomacy (when AI was offering crappy deals or demanding withdrawal of my troops when there was no good answer to that) was the worst part of civ V.

Also, I do not understand why people are unhappy with random things like battle outcomes or events... perhaps this has something to do with multiplayer.

 

[Nikae]

Also, I do not understand why people are unhappy with random things like battle outcomes or events... perhaps this has something to do with multiplayer.

Rhye's and Fall, China, hurricane taking away the needed temple I just whipped up. I cannot whip another in time, hence I cannot build the second pagoda in time, I lose the game. None of it is in my control.

Great design.

 

[Lord Lakely]

What I would change is the way the World Congress and espionage worked. I liked that both were in Civ 5, but both needed, idk, more refinement? Espionage was really basic and at least should have allowed you to frame other players, sabotage cities, poison the gdamn water supply etc.

Diplo victory was poorly programmed as other leaders would NEVER vote for you, so you had to court all the city states and pump billions worth of gold in them.

 

[pholtz]

If you don't like city states, just play the Mongols and conquer them all, or Austria and marry them into the family, or as other people said just set the number of them to zero in the advanced set up.

Personally for the most part I like them, of course occasionally one of them will be right in my way and I'll curse it, but that's the way it goes. The changes to the CS's in VI look to me to be very positive and fun. Also the fact that cities, including CS's will be much easier to conquer (than V) in the early game will help (without allowing someone to just walk right on in as in IV).

I also like the splitting of the tech tree. Many times a tech wasn't really a tech, and now those are separated out. Another thing I like about VI.

I think VI, from what I read on the forums has a chance to bring more players still playing IV into VI with all the V players that are moving to VI. I hope so, it would be nice to have a more unified community again. Of course there will be the hold outs, but I think they will be in fewer numbers than before, especially if VI is very moddable, the main mistake of V.

For all you that won't play VI because of 1upt? You are going to miss out on a bunch of other fun gaming systems that will be in VI. I feel sorry for you .

 

[Magil]

Also, I do not understand why people are unhappy with random things like battle outcomes or events... perhaps this has something to do with multiplayer.

It's a strategy game. The more randomness there is in the game, the less strategy is relevant.

A little bit here and there doesn't hurt too much, and can help keep you thinking on your feet, and it's definitely better for the game if you can take proactive steps to mitigate the luck factor. But it's a reason why I felt random events were never a good addition to the game.

 

[pholtz]

It's a strategy game. The more randomness there is in the game, the less strategy is relevant.

A little bit here and there doesn't hurt too much, and can help keep you thinking on your feet, and it's definitely better for the game if you can take proactive steps to mitigate the luck factor. But it's a reason why I felt random events were never a good addition to the game.

There are so many meaningful decisions to be made in VI, that randomness just adds to the challenge/fun. You have the strategy decisions! Now when random results go bad you have to overcome them with more strategy decisions, and when they go your way, you can cheer.

 

[Magil]

There are so many meaningful decisions to be made in VI, that randomness just adds to the challenge/fun. You have the strategy decisions! Now when random results go bad you have to overcome them with more strategy decisions, and when they go your way, you can cheer.

90% of random events in the Civ series have been dumb things like "floods strike! you lose some things" or "some of your improvements are randomly pillaged"! "Pollution appears"! "Your units take some random damage"!

I don't see how these add anything to the game. Random events were one of many bad decisions made in Beyond the Sword, I always turned them off (at least there was the option to turn them off).

 

[Big J Money]

I want to see micromanagement of sending spies to city states go away. And AI civs spamming me to accept their embassy for 25 gold. And obviously any bad AI. Other than that there isn't a whole lot.

Civ V had far fewer annoyances than Civ IV did.