What are the worst game mechanics in Civ4 and how could they be fixed?

[jnebbe]

I recently found this civ3 channel. Even though I don't play civ3 I still kind of like watching him. In this video he talks about game mechanics he really dislikes and how he would fix them, and I thought that would be a fun discussion here.


1) Peace vassals

I don't have a problem with the vassal system through capitulations since the master has to "earn" it through time and resources spent, but there are many problems with peace vassals. They allow an already strong civ to "conquer" a smaller one essentially for free (either you or an ai). They can't easily be prevented besides just attacking the bigger civ, and it's not realistic to be constantly attacking any civ that gets remotely big. It also snowballs by adding the vassal's power to the master's, which makes further vassals/capitulations easier and faster.

Then there's the problems with peace vassals and war. Peace vassals can happen at any time and is especially annoying when an ai vassals to someone else right before you attack them. Another annoyance is that sometimes a civ that you just attacked will immediately vassal to a different civ once you make peace/ceasefire with them. This can get you stuck in wars that you don't really want to be in, but feel like you need to stay in so that they don't vassal to someone else. And finally there's possibly the worst mechanic in the entire game; peace-vassaling to a civ during war, and automatically declaring war on the new master. This is an absolutely awful game mechanic and I don't know why it's in the game. It's so out of place; with good diplomacy, checking diplo screens, and scouting armies, you can have a good idea of who's a threat to you at any time. But forcing you to declare on a third party you had no plans on fighting can seriously mess up your game.

To be honest I don't know how you could fix this, maybe don't allow peace vassals during a 10-turn peace treaty or something. The master requiring over 50% of the vassal's land and pop is a nice feature that offers some counterplay but regardless this is one game mechanic I hate.


2) AP

Introduces more randomness, no way to opt out of the AP, proposals that pass are civ-wide (stop trading with x, declare war on y) regardless of if you have 1 or 20 cities with the AP religion, and a lot of proposals limit your options and are not fun to play around (assign city you conquered back to owner, stop trading with x, switch into y civic and not allowed to switch out of it).

There's 2 big problems I have with AP, one is that there's no way to know what proposal will be voted on in advance. You can't plan ahead and adjust your play for what proposals might be picked. I think a cool addition would be whenever you vote on a proposal, you also vote which proposal will be voted on the next vote cycle. Since this would make the resident pointless, you could give the resident 1.5x voting power when voting on the next proposal or something. Then you have 12(?) turns to plan ahead of the proposal you know is coming.

The 2nd problem with AP I have seems like a bug, but it's that you can't look at any advisor screens while the vote interface is open. How many votes do I get? Can my cities handle the defy unhappiness? How many Hindu cities do I even have?
This has to be a bug, I can't imagine that this was intentional. Because of this, you have to just guess how the vote will affect your game, which isn't good design. Easy fix, let me look at advisor screens when voting, similar to how you can look at them when the ai demands from you.


3) Espionage

The only 2 things I see espionage used for is tech stealing in a dedicated EE, or the odd city revolt during a war. Otherwise Espionage is reduced down to "Put your points on Mansa" 9/10 games.
There aren't really any small missions that can benefit you in the early game. Spies are expensive early on considering there's a decent chance they'll just die either moving/waiting in an enemy city or from mission failure. Mildly inconveniencing a single ai by poisoning their water or whatever is just not worth the hammers.

I think there should be some more smaller spy missions that directly help the player. One idea I had was to steal beakers from a civ. What if you could steal just 200 beakers instead of needing to get the entire tech? Maybe there could be a small discount applied to stealing beakers vs the entire tech, which would be balanced by the need for multiple spy missions and more chance of your spies dying. Or what if you could steal a city's food and bring it back to one of your own cities? This sounds really fun in theory and would bring all sorts of cool strategy changes but it might be really overpowered or frustrating to play against. You could also just make spies cheaper, down to 20 hammers so it's not such a huge commitment early on.



Those are some of my ideas, obviously I love this game but these are some of the things I would change if I could

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Good idea for a thread but this belongs to General Discussion. Would moderators please move it there?

I have no problems with vassal system or espionage.

Apostolic Palace victory is problematic because you can lose instantly with no recourse. I have to run theocracy and raze every city I capture or I just lose instantly.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

Agree that espionage and vassal system are fine. AP victory is annoying but I can only remember once having to give up all the cities I’d just conquered to avoid defeat so I haven’t found it a big issue. The two things I dislike the most are:

- That the AI will speak to you again more quickly after you’ve declared war on them than if you’ve stopped trading with them because of the AP or another AI asked you to. It’s ridiculous that it can be dozens of turns before they’ll talk.

- Barb galleys - particularly those that enter your territory following an AI workboat - because there’s no real way of dealing with them through the skill of the player and with bad RNG they can result in a lot of lost hammers and food.

Other things annoy me like the AI being able to trade clam for iron with each other but it’s all part of the bonuses the AI get to compensate for their incompetence.

And it’s the only game I play so none of the above annoys me that much!

 

[Fippy]

Well we can deal with barb galleys, it's just that we often do not want to cos own galleys cost 50 + upkeep

 

[Nick723]

There’s lots of things you could argue in terms of balance. But in terms of mechanics, the three that stand out for me are:

1. Slavery. Makes ‘natural hammers’ in many cases irrelevant. Needs a redesign.

2. ‘Fog-busting’. Not too bad if you know it, but a crucial mechanic that’s not explained anywhere. Doing it by vision would be clearer.

3. Enforced peace treaties through receiving a gift/giving into a demand. If i demand something from you and you acquiesce, I shouldn’t be able to attack you but you should be able to attack me. Similarly if i ask you for a gift.

 

[lymond]

Moderator Action: Moved to General Discussion. Cheers-lymond

 

[Plains-Cow]

User interface. There are a lot of useless buttons that sometimes change their location for a second, causing problems even if you wanted to click them, and suddenly your army is exploring lol. Shortcuts for rally points and other ways to quickly play the game are difficult to come by... unless you've been reading the threads regarding speed civing or watching people play CIV IV on YouTube and they say how to play the game faster. Also, auto worker movement/suicides are kind of ridiculous for the player. I always manage my workers late into the game until I know I have it in the bag.

Perhaps the most annoying is having my cities assigning specialists that I did not want or need, especially spy specialists, which seem to be the default even if you have a load of artists. I can have 10 artists, and on growth the city wants to make a spy. Rebalancing the city? The AI shuffles your specialists around and you need to reassign them all back accordingly. AI poisons you and you regrow? Better keep checking for spies, but not enemy spies, oh no, YOUR OWN that get auto-assigned!

Another issue is when an AI has a vassal, they never surrender even if they're down to one or two cities so long as their vassal doesn't break free. It would be better to have a mechanic to force-free the vassal of the enemy while making them your vassal instead (if the game doesn't like the idea of "inheriting" a vassal state of another empire).

The AI vassaling to another AI between turns even though you've taken most of their cities, but they won't vassal to you. If you're willing to submit, why not submit to the person that will only keep mauling you now that you're a part of a different empire? Doesn't make sense mechanically or with regards to immersion/world building.

"Defy" unhappiness that doesn't go away if you later adopt the resolution. "Defy" unhappiness that isn't somewhat mitigated by living in a police state or under despotism. "Defy"unhappiness when in a defensive war for ignoring a peace treaty FORCED ON YOU BY PARTIES NOT PARTICIPATING IN THE WAR even though you're now winning against the AI who declared on you and taking all of your stuff. Why would MY OWN PEOPLE hate the idea that we're turning the tables against a would-be conqueror?

Global warming mechanic even if everyone is running environmentalism (such as if forced to by the UN) is just stupid. Also, I can scrub literal radiation, but I can't terraform land with worker turns with some late-game tech? Please.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Vasals - I just turn it off using the Custom Game option to do so. I don't like it so I never use it.

Gloabal Warming - I don't like it, so I modded it out.

Nuclear Weapons - I don't like them, so I modded them impossible to build.

The governor assigning spy specialists, I detest. Since I have not figured out how to stop it, I have to check my cities every time they grow or something happens to change what is in the BFC. I could sure do without that.

 

[Nick723]

Vasals - I just turn it off using the Custom Game option to do so. I don't like it so I never use it.

Gloabal Warming - I don't like it, so I modded it out.

Nuclear Weapons - I don't like them, so I modded them impossible to build.

The governor assigning spy specialists, I detest. Since I have not figured out how to stop it, I have to check my cities every time they grow or something happens to change what is in the BFC. I could sure do without that.

Just don’t build courthouses

 

[Plains-Cow]

Just don’t build courthouses

I've unironically done this before.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I am going to list mine in order of how much I dislike them (most to least) and suggest some fixes or just what I do with them.

• Automation.
  There is absolutely no reason for there ever to be a button to let an AI play parts of the game for you. There just isn't. Thankfully I can just not use this part of the game so it's fine.
  I am still opposed to it on principal though.
  
  
• The "force civic" resolutions in the UN.
  Everything else about the UN/AP it is fine. They add some flavor and extra challenge to the late game and that is a good thing. But the force civic resolutions are just painful.
  Not only are they just not fun to deal with but they also represent what I consider to be the worst most disgusting show of evil of the UN in real life. And you can tell I hate the real life UN.
  I tend to mod those out.
  
  
• Tech brokering
  It's not evil per se but it's kind of annoying. It turns teching into a race of who gets to get it first to beat all the AI to a trade. And it makes AI alliances way too powerful as they trade with one another but won't sell to you.
  I keep it turned off.
  
  
• The fact that there is no built in way (or even in mods) for the game to automatically zoom to a city that has grown. If it was up to me you would get a popup, same as the one you get when a city finishes all items in its production queue. And that popup would offer you to zoom to the city to assign the new citizen or to ignore and carry on.
  This one is on my to do list.
  
  
• Slavery
  It's just overpowered. There is no down side really to whipping until you bleed a city dry.
  If it was up to me (thought I think it impossible) I would make it so that you can only whip from your non angry population. As in the angry pop in your city refuses to participate.
  
  
• Watermills
  I just think they are OP even without State Property. And with it they are literally just farm + mine. In my mod they are completely removed.
  
  
• Workshops
  They are basically a useless improvement until the late game when all the hammer bonuses add up. And even than the -1 food is painful.
  It's always better to get a lumbermill or mine or watermill.
  
  
• The combat system
  This one is at the bottom simply because it's such a core feature that I don't think it can ever be fixed and still have CIV4 be the same game. Not because I dislike it the least. But if it was up to me combat would work very differently. Each unit would have a single strength value. And combat would just be a formula saying:
  
  attacker strength -= defender strength
  defender strength -= old attacker strength (before subtraction)
  delete all units whose new strength <= 0
  Who ever is left alive at the end wins
  
  So say you have 2 infantry (STR 20) attacking one tank (str 28).
  Infantry 1 attacks and is destroyed (20 - 28 <= 0) leaving the tank at 8 STR (28 - 20 = 8).
  Next Infantry 2 attacks and is left at 12 (20 - 8) STR and the tank is destroyed (8 - 20 <= 0).
  
  It would be simple, easy and without any dice rolls and stupid odds and unpredictability. Just 100% perfectly predictable for both the human and the AI.

 

[Elliot_Ness]

War weariness: You should only be punished for losing units or cities. If you capture a city it shouldn't count against you.

 

[Gumbolt]

War weariness: You should only be punished for losing units or cities. If you capture a city it shouldn't count against you.

Why are you losing cities? In my experience the unhappiness goes to the city where the unit was built. So just have HE and Globe Theatre in same city. Use HE units for initial attacks and mop up with units from other cities.

This is a 2004 game and even now many new games don't match it. You can tweak features but I doubt you would improve it much. Things like AP can be managed. UN/AP can be razed.

I guess the AI engine could be improved. Not sending lots of archers to a barb city that they would never attack with an archer. Quite frustrating when they start losing cities to barbs.

 

[NickGabben]

In Civ 1 it was possible to search for a city. That's something I miss pretty much every time I play.

However, you could abuse it to search for the other capitals right at the start and the game would centre on them even though you hadn't explored the map at all yet, so it gave away the location of all the other civs.

 

[ArchGhost]

"Worst mechanic" is a loaded qualifier, not just because of the subjectiveness of opinion, but because of the ambiguity of whether something is actually "bad" or not in the sense of upsetting fun or balance.

For instance: Slavery is amazingly overpowered compared to anything else contemporary. Does that make it a poor mechanic because it's too good? It certainly upsets the balance of the game mechanically. But whether or not that's a bad thing is up to your own subjective viewpoint. You may very well fully embrace it and instead deride everything else as too bad to compare to it, go full meta about it....which I hate, personally, but it doesn't change how powerful slavery is.

All that aside, my picks are all just personal gripes. Only a few things actually really bother me to an intense degree in Civ4, the rest of it is mostly just rolling with how the game tends to be....

Peace Vassals are really stupid and could be fixed by simply forcing the vassal to accept the war status of the master instead of the other way around like it is now. No more surprise DoWs from what is essentially a bribe you have zero control over, and that you can't even replicate to the same degree -- instead the peace vassal would be forced to end its own war somehow to be accepted.

Barb galleys can just f-off. Easiest way to fix that is to remove them entirely. They have something ridiculous like 16 tiles of vision through the Fog of War, the AI merrily trails them into your waters if they don't find their way in on their own, they can spawn in single unobserved tiles all game, and they can readily win fights against the first two units you can even attempt to counter them with, which thanks to the combat system, favors their suicide tactics unless you want to spend way too many hammers to mitigate attrition. Like durability mechanics in other games, it's just not fun to have to sink hammers into what is essentially an annoyance that will remain unchecked for far too long on its own, unlike the land barbs which organically progress and eventually are either gone or are hyper-advanced in isolated little pockets, which adds some levity to things (pretty cool to see barb rifles in the New World sometimes!). Especially not fun when you have to spend those hammers, while the barb galleys just spawn.

The more I play the game the more I dislike the combat system. I really do not like that a unit at long odds can outright wipe out a unit because every combat results in a kill on one side or the other. Not that I think the newer games' "percentage-off" combat is better... but there should be a threshold to prevent exactly the "spearman vs. tank" scenario, whether it's based on base powers or some sort of point system for how advanced units are or whatever. I really start losing my composure when barb warriors start winning 3% at all or 10% MULTIPLE times (6 in a row was the last I remember) against entrenched units. If they throw 33 units at 33 units and win one, or 100 at 100 and get those odds, it feels fine. It absolutely does NOT feel fine when the only random barbarian warrior on your isolated landmass plows through your fortified unit specifically set in position to eat him on approach.... and suddenly he has more threat than he has any business presenting.

Global Warming was stupid so I modded it out. Absolutely zero appeal and a pure punitive mechanic for the game advancing. There's already at least two other sources of interest (expense inflation and AI era boni), don't need another one.

Corporations are just....under incentivized so much. Too late, too difficult to employ, hell even founding one is a bit of a lottery. And then they don't even really measure up except in the extremely late game to hammer economy anyway, and in terms of investment/reward per turn, aren't even close whether it's modern war or space race scenarios. Not sure how they'd really be fixed, it's not like they are bad so much as they are utterly unnecessary, whether it's just to win or to "play well."

 

[Thrasybulos]

I like none of the features brought by BTS. I basically only play that version for the QoL improvements, and the new civs.

Vassals, AP, and Events are always disabled, Espionnage and Corporations are essentially ignored.

But if I have to pick one core feature which really annoys me... it would be the interraction of the way culture works and conquests. Any border city you conquer from the mid-game onwards gets swamped in foreign culture, and that just doen't feel right.
Now don't get me wrong: I think the "culture" (which is actually a mix of culture and political influence) system is one of the best things about the game, and the system I wished later games had expanded upon and refined. But that doesn't mean it's perfect, and this is one instance where I think it breaks apart.

 

[phillip1882]

hex over square tiles
worker suicide during war
police state should allow unlimited spy
theocracy should allow faster built missionaries, and unlimited priest
communism shouldn't remove corporation, only the effect
either kremlin shouldn't obsolete, or fiber optics should give the kremlin bonus
theme park can be built after discovery of physics, gives a bonus happiness and 50% culture bonus
build forest available after discovery of paper.
environmentalism should also allow forests to build faster, and give +1 growth
+5% increase in income/beakers rather than 10%

 

[floydmcw]

My objections to cIV are quite minor which I guess is why I've been playing it for almost 20 years.

Apostolic Palace victories should not exist (they interact especially poorly with Always War). Other AP features are fine.

It's not a big deal but the constant parade of AI demands is tiresome, and most of the requests are pinheaded. (No Shaka, I am not going to declare war on Asoka, because, you see, I'm already at war with another civ.) The mechanic is fine, but the implementation is poor.

I have no problem with vassaling. It's an important balance mechanic to prevent a strong civ from wiping out its weaker neighbors one by one. But it could be implemented better; instead of declaring war on you/vassaling your victim, an AI could threaten you with war if you don't make peace, giving you a chance to back off.

I like corporations but only 2-4 of them are any good. Civilized Jewelers is practically an IQ test, it's even worse than the Space Elevator. Ethanol can save your bacon but it and Std Al are severely underpowered in benefits other than the resource, only work in cities where the corp has spread, and compete with very productive corps. (I haven't done the math but I bet replacing Mining Inc with Std Al results in lower hammer prod for space parts for a civ lacking aluminum.)

War becomes a big slog due to the proliferation of units. Managing stacks with dozens of units is not fun. cIV should have found some way to limit the number of military units.

It's really weird that I have to constantly refer to a bookmarked CivFanatics thread to figure out what my great people can bulb. Bulbing should allow a choice of great person-themed techs, maybe with a lower yield to compensate for this flexibility.

Many of the espionage missions are pointless. Ho hum Sitting Bull poisoned my well again.

It's very annoying to be asked to make an important decision (a vote, a request to switch civics or religion), but have no way to check the current state of the game to see what the effects would be. There should be much better previewing functions for civic/religion switches in general.

This is really my biggest criticism of the game: The most effective ways to figure out civic choices or AI behaviors or great people tech preferences is
- Try it out and reload.
- Consult CivFanatics (my play will get a LOT worse if something happens to this website).
- Hope the info is available in-game; usually it's not.

 

[livinginaz]

I have maybe a few nitpicks but only a few major mechanics stand out to me as problematic.

First I hate the way peace vassals affect warfare, primarily wars I am already in. At least for me and my skill level I end up in many unwinnable wars that force me to abandon my goals. I spend an exhaustive amount of time destroying a civilization that is around my tech level, finally I have them beat down and am making good progress, then they collapse into a vassal of a more powerful civ, usually the one that I can't fight. Now I have to abandon my war aims against the original civ just to defend my gains and homeland from their attacks until I can force a peace. Sometimes I lose things to the uber powerful civ and the whole power balance is screwed. At least if it were an alliance I can peace out with the battered civ and still make marginal gains for peace, then I am not forced to fight against two civs.

Of course no matter what at this point it is impossible to ever declare war on that civ again, even if they go free the moment I declare they fold into the vassal state again. I have had games where every single civ is involved in the vassal dynamic and it becomes impossible by 1300 or so to wage war against a singular civ. I don't mind this part so much, but the fact that the agreement is so difficult to break often leads to wars involving the whole world by the end of the game. in Civ III this could happen as well, but it is always possible to get peace with anyone I want, no matter.

Secondly, it is indeed absurd how much of a crybaby the AI becomes when you stop trading with them, there are times when I have never gotten a chance to talk to them again afterwards. Completely ignored.

Third, the chance for a reactor to melt down is absurdly high and makes them almost useless. Often times I don't even realize it's happened until there's fallout around my cities. I think this can be lowered with some modding but I can't believe they never addressed this. Nuclear power is nowhere near as unreliable as the game makes it seem, it's laughable.

I also don't like the espionage mechanics very well. I mostly leave it alone though.

 

[Plains-Cow]

I have maybe a few nitpicks but only a few major mechanics stand out to me as problematic.

First I hate the way peace vassals affect warfare, primarily wars I am already in. At least for me and my skill level I end up in many unwinnable wars that force me to abandon my goals. I spend an exhaustive amount of time destroying a civilization that is around my tech level, finally I have them beat down and am making good progress, then they collapse into a vassal of a more powerful civ, usually the one that I can't fight. Now I have to abandon my war aims against the original civ just to defend my gains and homeland from their attacks until I can force a peace. Sometimes I lose things to the uber powerful civ and the whole power balance is screwed. At least if it were an alliance I can peace out with the battered civ and still make marginal gains for peace, then I am not forced to fight against two civs.

Of course no matter what at this point it is impossible to ever declare war on that civ again, even if they go free the moment I declare they fold into the vassal state again. I have had games where every single civ is involved in the vassal dynamic and it becomes impossible by 1300 or so to wage war against a singular civ. I don't mind this part so much, but the fact that the agreement is so difficult to break often leads to wars involving the whole world by the end of the game. in Civ III this could happen as well, but it is always possible to get peace with anyone I want, no matter.

Secondly, it is indeed absurd how much of a crybaby the AI becomes when you stop trading with them, there are times when I have never gotten a chance to talk to them again afterwards. Completely ignored.

Third, the chance for a reactor to melt down is absurdly high and makes them almost useless. Often times I don't even realize it's happened until there's fallout around my cities. I think this can be lowered with some modding but I can't believe they never addressed this. Nuclear power is nowhere near as unreliable as the game makes it seem, it's laughable.

I also don't like the espionage mechanics very well. I mostly leave it alone though.

Hey, livingingaz! You and I need to link up for another 1000AD Monarch (or higher!) game sometime!