Which is the “best” Civ (1-6) and why?

[Gorbles]

Wouldn't that imply you take your own view as more than anecdotal?

Equally anecdotal!

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Now here's something else I liked in 5 rather than 4: unique abilities.

Often times when loading a save in 4 I thought: who am I again? Besides a unit or a building that would eventually come, I often forgot who I was or why it mattered. There was some leader traits that I never understood ("Spiritual"...ok, but what does that mean? The select screen doesn't say) and starter techs that both gave you a bit of a leg up in the early game. But other than that it seemed that there was little difference between each player.

Granted there were some real stinkers in Civ 5, but I did enjoy the idea of civilization bonuses.

 

[Sommerswerd]

A lot of the military micromanagement in civ (even post 1-upt) actually relates to the operational level, not the tactical level. So we can see that micro =/= tactics, though, again, in many games a lot of the micro does in fact relate to tactics.

This got me thinking about the difference between "tactics" and "micro". In an RTS game, this is a little easier to distinguish, as the "tactics" might be something like attacking the enemy with one type of unit from the south/bottom of the screen/map, while simultaneously attacking with a flanking/surrounding force from their rear or sides, while the "micro" is babysitting that one spellcaster, hero, or fast unit to avoid attacks, kite enemies and milk every last kill out of that one unit, utilizing superior APM and/or knowledge of particular game mechanics, while all the while keeping the units and upgrades pumping out at your base.

In TBS (like Civ), there is what I would describe as "tactics" in deciding things like... if I attack with a Sword, they defend with an Axe, but if I select my Axe they defend with an Archer, so who do I pick?... Or, do I use my lvl 3 city attack unit to attack first, hoping to sacrifice it to inflict maximum damage on their strongest defender, or do I use a generic attacker to hopefully wound their strongest defender a little, making it possible for my highest lvl attackers to actually survive the assault? Thinking about it... maybe some would see that more as "micro", whereas things like placing my stack on the nearby hills or forest tile instead of flood plains would be "tactics"... Or occupying all their cottage and resource tiles with single units while moving the main force in to lay siege to the city as "tactics" while the order of attacking with the units as "micro"...

Is there really "micro" in TBS games?

 

[Marla_Singer]

Just looking at the map gfx, you can tell that this game is unlikely to ever have big maps. So you will be stuck with (at best) subcontinent-spanning cities.
Part of the allure of older civ games - and any title before 3d, ie before civ4 - were the massive maps. Of course by now you can still have decently sized ones in Civ4 (unless there is a hardcoded upper limit, way below a "large" map?), because its graphics are primitive (low-poly and skin-based).

You now have 3D engines such as Unity which are very good to switch rendering from high fidelity graphics when looked closely to low poly when looked from afar. This is what is used in games like "Cities: Skylines" or "Transport Fever 2" and it really runs very detailed maps very smoothly. Maps can be really big and the number of "agents" simulated very high (like hundreds of thousands).

I haven't studied it closely, but I think performance issues relate to other features. 1UPT clogging comes to my mind but there could be other things too.

 

[PhroX]

Now here's something else I liked in 5 rather than 4: unique abilities.

Often times when loading a save in 4 I thought: who am I again? Besides a unit or a building that would eventually come, I often forgot who I was or why it mattered. There was some leader traits that I never understood ("Spiritual"...ok, but what does that mean? The select screen doesn't say) and starter techs that both gave you a bit of a leg up in the early game. But other than that it seemed that there was little difference between each player.

Granted there were some real stinkers in Civ 5, but I did enjoy the idea of civilization bonuses.

I like the idea of have more distinct civs through abilities and so forth, but I felt the at times 5 and 6 went too far with them, particularly when combined with UUs and UBs, leading to having certain civs very oriented towards particular playstyles and victories. Obviously, once you add any uniqueness, there's always going to be some that are better in certain areas, but I want the map and how otehr civilisation's are acting to be the main deciders in the goal my campaign, not what civ I picked. And Civ 4 did this better - sure, if I'm, say, Shaka, I'm at my best when conquering, but if the circumstances of the game don't lend themselve to that, and instead push me towards a science victory, I don't feel utterly gimped the way some of the 5&6 civs can.

 

[aelf]

I've been mulling this over since you floated the whole "sliding puzzle" formulation and I've come to realize that each Civ V game I play effectively amounts to a attempt to overcome the advantages that the AI gets on deity through my superiority to it at sliding puzzles.

And I'm basically okay with that.

I've long thought that the appeal of Civ to me is essentially the same appeal as a very elaborate puzzle. I can just now say more precisely the form that puzzle takes.

I never did like those sliding puzzles. But add combat and they become fun.

Civ6 has its appeal, but the sliding puzzle aspect doesn't have much to me, so I tend to play more peaceful games. If I don't have to fight a war, I don't - maybe for the whole game. Some people allege that Civ5 and 6 were designed more for peaceful gameplay, and they're probably right.

Civ7 is better with its commander system, but still, combat is a puzzle. It's possible to perform much better in a fight by moving individual units in the right way and in the right order. This is probably what people mean by 'tactical' combat. Go to the Civ7 forum and you'll see a lot of people preferring 1UPT (while having silly misconceptions about SoDs). Sure, it can be fun under the commander system. But for me, fighting a whole war and having to deal with endless waves of enemy units like this is tedious.

They can improve the system to reduce the tedium. Like why not allow commanders to deploy units when they have no movement left? But I'm sure such tedious 'tactical' elements has its defenders.

 

[Lexicus]

Is there really "micro" in TBS games?

I would say so. It's just a different set of demands on the player. Good micro in real-time games generally means a high # of actions per minute, usually in giving orders to units but also in managing things in different parts of the map simultaneously and building your economy while also fighting. You still have micromanagement in turn-based games but it isn't time-pressured. It just means taking care of details. An example of micromanagement would be using your build order in civ 3 to minimize shield overflow (in civ 3, overflow is wasted) in your cities. By contrast in civ 4 a lot of micro centers around the timing of cracking the whip to maximize hammer overflow (which is not wasted in civ 4).

 

[Samson]

I would say so. It's just a different set of demands on the player. Good micro in real-time games generally means a high # of actions per minute, usually in giving orders to units but also in managing things in different parts of the map simultaneously and building your economy while also fighting. You still have micromanagement in turn-based games but it isn't time-pressured. It just means taking care of details. An example of micromanagement would be using your build order in civ 3 to minimize shield overflow (in civ 3, overflow is wasted) in your cities. By contrast in civ 4 a lot of micro centers around the timing of cracking the whip to maximize hammer overflow (which is not wasted in civ 4).

I would say good micro is micro you enjoy. I have decided that for some reason the Civ 3 micro you describe I enjoy, and that is not a high # of actions per minute, quite the opposite I would say.

Can any 1UPT advocate really describe what their problem is with doomstacks?

 

[Lexicus]

good micro is micro you enjoy.

I just meant the kind of micro that skilled players do.

 

[Gorbles]

Can any 1UPT advocate really describe what their problem is with doomstacks?

It's very game-y and doesn't reward positioning or even logistics. Who cares how large the army is if a single tile lets the whole thing through with a single point's worth of movement?

"pure" 1UPT obviously takes this to the other extreme, which is why (as I keep saying, and yet everyone fixates on CiV as though that's the only iteration of 1UPT in the franchise) VI and VII are changing the mechanics somewhat to allow for more stacking in a variety of contexts.

 

[Moriarte]

Can any 1UPT advocate really describe what their problem is with doomstacks?

I am not really a 1UPT advocate, I am a L-UPT advocate, as realised by post Civ 4 games. 1UPT is nonsense exaggeration invented by those advocating for larger stacks. There is no strict 1UPT in post Civ 4. I guess it just doesn't seem interesting to me to increase level of abstraction past the point of most tactical shenanigans falling off the board.

 

[Samson]

It's very game-y and doesn't reward positioning or even logistics.

I have to admit I do not know what "very game-y" means in a game, but the others make sense. I guess I just do not play civ to position units or manage their logistics.

 

[Gorbles]

I have to admit I do not know what "very game-y" means in a game, but the others make sense. I guess I just do not play civ to position units or manage their logistics.

Yeah, I should've said "feels game-y". People have similar criticisms of unpacking the cities, of policy cards, and so on. It's an immersion factor for me, and the ability to actually do things like flanking, to consider the world I'm trying to navigate my army through . . . I like that in Civ. I like it more when it's not as intensive as it was in CiV / BE (and even then, in BE I often went Purity because hey they got hover units, which didn't negate all terrain, but certainly opened it up in a way that made it more less tedious than CiV was).

VI I loved, unequivocally. I loved the stylised art, I loved the saturation, I loved unpacking cities, I loved that you could combine units into stronger versions - in the field - to alleviate unit management. VI really was the "perfect" Civ for me, and I say that loving SMAC (for what it is). VII is early days yet, ironically the thing I'm missing most is the stylised, saturated art direction. I really liked it. VII is beautiful but personifies to me the risk in going more "realistic" - it gets harder to pick out details.

 

[Lexicus]

yet everyone fixates on CiV as though that's the only iteration of 1UPT in the franchise

I talk about it because it's the only one I've played.

It's very game-y and doesn't reward positioning or even logistics.

I don't know what you mean by logistics in this context but of course positioning is important when most of your units are on one tile.

1UPT is nonsense exaggeration invented by those advocating for larger stacks.

I simply disagree, 1UPT is a fair description of civ 5 at least. You can have one military land unit per tile. The limited stacking of units in civ 5 (e.g. 1 civilian and 1 military unit allowed on the same tile) does nothing to alleviate the sliding puzzle problem. Neutral or allied civs' units are impassable, a step backward from civ 4.

 

[Gorbles]

I talk about it because it's the only one I've played.

That's fair, but in terms of where the franchise is at / where it's going, it's dramatically out of date. The 1UPT vs. MUPT discussion has been done to death in every Civ game subforum on this site since V was released, and it's not even accurate unless you stop counting at CiV!

I don't know what you mean by logistics in this context but of course positioning is important when most of your units are on one tile.

In the original Civ, when a single loss wiped the stack? Yes, positioning was important (unfairly so, I'd say - I'm not saying this was a fair mechanic, it's just how the game worked in its earliest iteration).

In subsequent games (most of my experience is with SMAC during this time), you dealt partial damage to units beneath. Movement could also get very, very high, so no, not so much. Either your stack was reachable and therefore repeatedly attacked assuming the attacker had the resources to overcome it, or it wasn't. Like you mentioned in previous posts, the actual battle had been lost beforehand, because you'd been outproduced / focused on the wrong thing in that game / got your timings wrong.

Like, is there any kind of logistics at all? Yes. Do I like it? No, not really. I much prefer pushing stack sizes down and making more use of the map for unit movement. Which is the direction later games went in, and are continuing to go in. CiV is in the past, at this point. I haven't played it since VI came out for that and other reasons. I still revisit SMAC from time to time.

 

[Farm Boy]

Hearts of Iron IV does that side pretty in depth if you want logistics to matter.

Not sure if there is an indie game to recommend that knocks it out of the park.

 

[Gorbles]

I played a fair bit of EU3 back in the day, but grand strategy is a pretty different type of game again. Even when I used to play SotS (including a hilarious 18 hour MP session with some friends), Civ scratched a different itch.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not sure if I will ever play Civ7, tbh. Maybe I will try it a few years from now. I only played Civ6 a few months ago - and didn't like it.

 

[Farm Boy]

I played a fair bit of EU3 back in the day, but grand strategy is a pretty different type of game again. Even when I used to play SotS (including a hilarious 18 hour MP session with some friends), Civ scratched a different itch.

Kinda, in those instances, yeah. Crusader Kings doesn't really logistics tho. It does, but very little. Can't really tell you anything about EU or sots.

 

[Moriarte]

I simply disagree, 1UPT is a fair description of civ 5 at least. You can have one military land unit per tile.

Well, you can certainly disagree, but there are several examples of multiple military units per tile in V, specifically 5 bombers can stacked within a city, a (say) catapult and city defenses acting as separate units within one tile and ending the turn within that same tile. That's seven military units acting independently, stationed inside one tile. Given that "1UPT" claim is misinformed. Imo, the principle difference between IV and V is that in IV all units within the Stack could attack simultaneously, while this can't be done in V. That is the delineation, not the limited vs unlimited stacks.