Was Civ IV combat broken and not Civ V?

KAuss

Warlord
Joined
Nov 3, 2005
Messages
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Thinking back to how "hard" Civ IV was, and how easy Civ V is... I have concluded that the difficulty in Civ IV was purely based off hammers...

The faster you build, the easier the game is to win... There was no combat tactics, the AI wasn't any "smarter..." They just out produced you in higher diffs and they just sent a bigger stack than you did...

Also, they attack and they always attack, you basically pick their best defensive target against your attacker... Also, due to the lack of ZOC, there is no incentive for the AI to attack your stacks!!!

That's why good players away fight the fight abroad... There was no defense in Civ IV... In Civ V, you'll notice that now the game has evolved to logical and sensible combat with 1UPT, the AI is clearly out matched... Defensive positions actually gets used, ZOC slowed moving of attacking units...

Hammers does not mean insta win because you HAVE to play rock paper scissors...

So thinking back, is Civ V broken? Or was Civ IV masking their ineffectiveness to create a competent combat AI by making it impossible to defend?

Think about it, if your full stack of mega army chose to attack a single point, how can you create enough defense to stop it? If you have it stationed in one city, I'll just walk to the other... If you choose to attack me, then you'll always fight a losing fight...

Civ IV is really more broken and Civ V ever will be, Civ V just fixed the biggest AI handicap... They fixed defense...
 
It's not broken, it's just not a tactics game. It's a strategy game. Nothing wrong with that. There were some rudimentary tactics but nothing serious, yes. And no hammers didn't mean insta win back in civ4 either. Cannons did :D
 
There is a difference between a non tactic game and a game that is broken...

When the cpu choose to fight you, it is never a good idea to have defense... Again, imagine you have 5 cities in a circle... You and I have the same army 5 spears, 5 calvary, 5 catapults, 5 swordsman...

Now how do you position your units to counter this attack? Do you put one of each type of unit in each city? You'll lose in numbers... Do you focus all of them in one city? You'll lose 4 cities... Do you collect them all and attack the cpu? You'll lose every fight...

So a simple situation like that and you can't even come up with a winning situation because you lost by having the AI making it to your borders... You have equal units, yet it will not be a draw, not even close... Couple this with the AI's ability to out produce you, and you get a snowball effect...

Before this 1UPT, we've just grown to accept the shortcomings of the Civ battle system... After 1UPT, we all now notice how good we all were at city management, and how much better we are when we're fighting with actual sense and tactics...
 
Sorry but I can't even understand your point. Are you saying you didn't like it the way it was? Fine, but that doesn't make it broken.

As for your hypothetical example situation, sorry, I didn't really get it either. What are you saying, that you don't know how to defend yourself? What do you mean by "you have equal units", strategy skill is not about having equal units, it's about having better units and bigger numbers. And no if I had even army both in terms of quality and quantity, I could beat AI with no problems.

Yes I do like new system more, but that doesn't mean the old one was broken.
 
You have the same # of units I do assuming we're playing a mirror map...

I walked a stack of units listed above 5 of each type...

I am now equidistant to your 5 cities (imagine it a circle and I'm in the middle)

Now it's up to you to place the "same units" I have to defend me not taking all your cities one by one...

How do you use the units you have to beat my army of "equal strength..."
 
Was Civ IVs combat AI better than Civ V's? No
The thing is.. Civ IV the AI could fallback on SOD and you never quite knew how dumb it was.
Civ V they decided to remove that crutch.. without putting tons of time into a tactical AI.. which means? Combat AI could be 2x as good as Civ IVs but since it doesnt have the crutch of a SOD it seems worse. Which when translating it to game play means its worse AI. any questions?

Ya what the post below me said is probably an easier way of understanding what i'm trying to say
 
The fact is : Civ V AI is more ******** because in Civ V tactics are important and the AI has none . Just think of it this way : you will appear more stupid doing a Math test in college and doing 0/20 than doing a test in high school and getting 10/20 even if you have the same knowledge . Why? Because in College you're supposed to know more . Just like in Civ V the AI is supposed to know more . Its like if in Civ V the game offered us a brand new hammer to use in combat and the AI never learned how to use a hammer . We will have the hammer which will give us a huge advantage , making it way easier to beat the AI
 
Was Civ IVs combat AI better than Civ V's? No
The thing is.. Civ IV the AI could fallback on SOD and you never quite knew how dumb it was.
Civ V they decided to remove that crutch.. without putting tons of time into a tactical AI.. which means? Combat AI could be 2x as good as Civ IVs but since it doesnt have the crutch of a SOD it seems worse. Which when translating it to game play means its worse AI. any questions?

You sir get a cookie...

If the Civ IV combat allowed your unit to attack the WORST DEFENSIVE unit in the game, THEN it would make sense...

It made no sense how you're the attacker and your horseman will ALWAYS fight their spearman... Why would the attacker choose to fight the worst matchup?

This is what Civ V fixed... Now the attacking horseman is killing an archer, and your swords man is killing the spearman, and your spearman kills their horseman...
 
How do you use the units you have to beat my army of "equal strength..."
Dude. This situation is unrealistic. Why should we even discuss it? Civ is a strategy game. I do not get a preset army, I build my army myself, and I do everything in my power to make it better than the opponents. For starters, I would never ever have a stack of composition like you said. My stacks are more along the lines of 6 swordsmen 14 catapults, or 20 horsemen.

But if you insist of discussing this unrealistic situation, why, its easy. I would place my stack in the city AI is gonna reach first. Once AIs stack comes close I would attack with catapults and horses then with the rest, in that order. It would be enough to get AIs stack completely decimated. Do a test yourself if you dont believe me.

Then again like I said I do like current system way more, for many different reasons. But Civ4 system was different, it wasn't "broken".
 
The fact is : Civ V AI is more ******** because in Civ V tactics are important and the AI has none . Just think of it this way : you will appear more stupid doing a Math test in college and doing 0/20 than doing a test in high school and getting 10/20 even if you have the same knowledge . Why? Because in College you're supposed to know more . Just like in Civ V the AI is supposed to know more . Its like if in Civ V the game offered us a brand new hammer to use in combat and the AI never learned how to use a hammer . We will have the hammer which will give us a huge advantage , making it way easier to beat the AI

No it's wrong...

The AI in Civ IV was handed a saving grace... SOD, and best defensive match up to worst offensive match up...

The AI was simply build X units, mass units into a blob, walk unit to worst defended city, kill everything... There is NOTHING in the game that allows you to stop this unless you have MORE units than they do...

The AI in Civ V isn't dumber, in fact it does a lost more things smarter (but really some dumb stuff)... However, it's because now the player have options to stop it that makes it look dumb...

Imagine if you played a basketball game where you can only stand still as defense, and the offensive player can do whatever they want unless they step out of bounds, you will almost never stop them...

Now play regular defense... The same player will look "dumber" and lose, but the player that you're playing against haven't changed, now you're just given the tools to beat him... Got it?
 
Since we're talking about battle AI. I see there some basic problems.

1) It seems to me that the AI doesnt have enough CPU time to properly calculate their odds and turns for min-max (selfevident since everyone wants quick turns...just look at some good chess simulators how long they take to make turn)

2) It seems the AI doesnt see enough... they keep falling in every trap I make. Just backoff archers and let there 1 suicidal unit in range of their stronger melee. (Maybe problem with writing down my units or not enough visibility?)

3) AI is completely off with evaluating most dangerous units in battle situation and don't bring enough focus. For example why shoot with 2 ranged units at 2 different targets? It's absolutely basic thing to focus fire!

4) AI is too offensive, they try to do too much with units and a lot of times just for the sake of it... they make move maneuvers, advance etc. This game defense is stronger and if we saw actually AI make defense blocks we would have a lot more problems.

5) They overvalue their strength on strategy level, leading to nonsense wars, wasting units on fronts in suicide instead of bunkering home.
 
You sir get a cookie...

If the Civ IV combat allowed your unit to attack the WORST DEFENSIVE unit in the game, THEN it would make sense...

It made no sense how you're the attacker and your horseman will ALWAYS fight their spearman... Why would the attacker choose to fight the worst matchup?

This is what Civ V fixed... Now the attacking horseman is killing an archer, and your swords man is killing the spearman, and your spearman kills their horseman...

Actually it was based on the assumption that the DEFENDER would get to choose. IE if you have a pikeman and an archer both standing there and horseman Charge you your not gonn have the archers stand up front.
 
There is NOTHING in the game that allows you to stop this unless you have MORE units than they do...
It's obvious you haven't played the game much. There are many ways to stop it. From the politics (making the AI send it's stack to kill someone else), to siege units with collateral damage.
 
The AI still outproduces you. The advantage is no longer as meaningful though as it can't put them all on the same tile and focus fire with it. But it's still there and AI attacks are actually more convincing when it has a large army at its disposal, or when the terrain doesn't hinder its advance as much. In a situation where the AI attacks through a very narrow chokepoint, it won't benefit from its larger army so much, if at all. In Civ IV it still would because all the units would be in the same stack.
 
Dude. This situation is unrealistic. Why should we even discuss it? Civ is a strategy game. I do not get a preset army, I build my army myself, and I do everything in my power to make it better than the opponents. For starters, I would never ever have a stack of composition like you said. My stacks are more along the lines of 6 swordsmen 14 catapults, or 20 horsemen.

But if you insist of discussing this unrealistic situation, why, its easy. I would place my stack in the city AI is gonna reach first. Once AIs stack comes close I would attack with catapults and horses then with the rest, in that order. It would be enough to get AIs stack completely decimated. Do a test yourself if you dont believe me.

Then again like I said I do like current system way more, for many different reasons. But Civ4 system was different, it wasn't "broken".

I was a ChoBow spammer, I knew about collateral damage... That was the machine gun in the rock paper scissor matchup...

The essence of Civ IV combat was a joke... Civ IV was more a economic / resource balance game than it ever was combat...

Civ V is sorta backwards...

I love Civ IV's building side, it just never translated well into combat... Civ IV is a 4X game... Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate...

I feel Civ IV does the first 3 well, the 4th was lacking due to bad mechanics... I rather play a game with bad AI than mechanics anyday tho because you don't feel cheated from a win...

There is always multiplayer...

If you can't see the old method of fighting was a crutch and is broken, I can't convince you, but I can see it in flying colors... (I'm color blind in real life LOL)
 
Actually it was based on the assumption that the DEFENDER would get to choose. IE if you have a pikeman and an archer both standing there and horseman Charge you your not gonn have the archers stand up front.

If you get to initiate how the fight would be, then you're no longer defending...

In Civ V, does a war start with you using your horseman to ram their spearman, or do you ram their archer or warriors?

This never translated in the SOD fights... That's how it was broken...
 
No it's wrong...

The AI in Civ IV was handed a saving grace... SOD, and best defensive match up to worst offensive match up...

The AI was simply build X units, mass units into a blob, walk unit to worst defended city, kill everything... There is NOTHING in the game that allows you to stop this unless you have MORE units than they do...

The AI in Civ V isn't dumber, in fact it does a lost more things smarter (but really some dumb stuff)... However, it's because now the player have options to stop it that makes it look dumb...

Imagine if you played a basketball game where you can only stand still as defense, and the offensive player can do whatever they want unless they step out of bounds, you will almost never stop them...

Now play regular defense... The same player will look "dumber" and lose, but the player that you're playing against haven't changed, now you're just given the tools to beat him... Got it?

Maybe you should read what i wrote . And btw , i stopped stacks of doom with less units easily , it was called "artillery units"
 
If you get to initiate how the fight would be, then you're no longer defending...

In Civ V, does a war start with you using your horseman to ram their spearman, or do you ram their archer or warriors?

This never translated in the SOD fights... That's how it was broken...

As your the one charging they would have the time to reposition in order to counter you. Combined arms and all. Your the one who has to run 1000 meters to meet them and attack.. while your running to meet they simply swap formations.
 
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