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

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes and yes! Civ 3 is much more streamlined in its design compared to the following iterations 4-6 of the Civ series, all of them full of unnecessary micromanagement by not needed additional minor tech trees.

i don't know what mods you play for civ 3, but in terms of base game the idea that 3 has *less* unnecessary micro than 4 is comical. maybe 3 added stuff after i stopped playing? i don't recall stack attacking, giving orders to dozens of cities at once, waypoints, sortable city list that let you build queue from it, saving build orders in civ 3 to give a few examples.

for some reason, civ 5 and 6 also don't include these features, despite that other than stack attack there's no valid reason they should have stricken them from the ui. strict regression.

civ ui has been bad for nearly its entire existence as a franchise. even 4's ui had some significant problems, but compared to contemporary strategy games, civ games prior to 4 were *pathetic* in ui. queue, waypoint, hotkeys for stacking, etc were things that existed in civ 2's time. but not in civ itself, when civ 2 was the current civ! there are multiple ways the release-day warlords 2 ui is objectively better in design than civ 4's, and civ 4 is easily the best civ in the series by a wide margin in terms of input efficiency/accessing information.

What about traditionally stateless peples such as the Gypsies and Jews?

these aren't even represented as a "civ" in civ games. they cannot win. judaism is a religion option though.

Thinking about it some more... Civ 4 does have a mechanic that allows one attacker to completely wipe out unlimited stacks of units... the naval system. Specifically, if you capture a city that contains any number of enemy units loaded in enemy transport ships "in port", ALL the transports will be simultaneously destroyed, along with each and every unit they contained. IIRC, the same goes for all the "escort ships/warships" caught in port as well, they can all be simultaneously sunk by one ground unit capturing the city.

the other exception from 4 that completely flips the table on stacks of any size is nukes. You can put 1000 units on a tile, and after 2 nukes if there's anything left at all, it'll be a couple nearly-dead units.

Why can't the new Civs just do away with 1UPT and implement a stacking limit?

civ 6 pretty much did, as i mentioned earlier. every tile can easily have 4 units worth of stuff.

limited stacking in turn-based strategy dates back to the early 1990s, and can work well depending on the design of the rest of the game.

 

[Sommerswerd]

civ 6 pretty much did, as i mentioned earlier. every tile can easily have 4 units worth of stuff.

limited stacking in turn-based strategy dates back to the early 1990s, and can work well depending on the design of the rest of the game.

The "limited stacking" in Civ 6 still does not relieve the unit shuffling madness WRT most land-based military units. So the tedium is reduced, compared to Civ 5, but not gone entirely.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The "limited stacking" in Civ 6 still does not relieve the unit shuffling madness WRT most land-based military units. So the tedium is reduced, compared to Civ 5, but not gone entirely.

all true of course. i wouldn't be surprised to see civ 7 build on the ways to implement more limited stacking in similar fashion.

 

[Civinator]

i don't know what mods you play for civ 3, but in terms of base game the idea that 3 has *less* unnecessary micro than 4 is comical.

Sorry TheMeinTeam, but when reading your post, the only thing - to use your words - that is "comical" is, that you did post nothing about the additional minor techtrees, that were started to be introduced with Civ 4, so this point was even taken into bold letters by you (also you forgot to put half of the term into bold letters) when quoting me.

As it seems you also haven´t read my linked post, here in short the following:

I don´t like the flood of, in my eyes, unnecessary additional micromanagement, that was introduced to the franchise in Civ 4-6 with all these not needed superfluous secondary techtrees.

Sid Meier worked very hard to eliminate such secondary techtrees in the past and I think he knew why he did it. Here is a statement of Sid Meier about this in his troy-goodfellow-interview, attached to the Civ Chronicles Compilation:

With Civ 4 this philosophy in streamlining the Civ game was changed to the doctrin: "You asked for more, you get more" and existing working concepts were split up in additional secondary techtrees and even more and more additional minor techtrees and in later versions even playing cards were added to the game, while the focus in former versions of the civ game was to take them out. Of course this caused additional micromanagement, that in my eyes is unnecessary and "unfun" in game play (this is my opinion and of course other civers can see this very different). I prefer the "streamlined" civ design philosophy by Sid Meier with one tech tree and not additional minor tech trees and later even additional playing cards.

I mostly play the C3C mods CCM 2.5 and RARR in combination with the amazing Flintlock mod.

maybe 3 added stuff after i stopped playing?

Yes, the Flintlock mod adds a cornucopia of new options to Civ 3.

i don't recall stack attacking, giving orders to dozens of cities at once, waypoints, sortable city list that let you build queue from it, saving build orders in civ 3 to give a few examples.

Many of these features, so I don´t use them, are included even in standard C3C (some others options like stack bombardment are added by the Flintlock mod):

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i am not sure what you mean by minor tech trees for civ 4. civ 6 has parallel trees though.

mods can/do change the equation. however, i would be surprised if 3 is more input-efficient (aka micromanagement) than civ 4. either as vanilla experience, or with max modding available to both.

might be worth to define our terms, particularly what you mean when you say "micromanagement". lots of things fall under that umbrella, like which tiles are worked/specialists used, how many inputs to control units, city queues etc. i abandoned civ 3 back in the day because of the sheer, overwhelming volume of inputs required between choices i could make that meant something. moving units, attacking with them etc took up too large a % of time, once i'd decided what to do. if mods fixed that, then great. maybe you can open list of all cities in civ 3, sort them, and manage their production for the next 20 turns all in that screen now. maybe controlling 50-100 units in < minute per turn is a thing. that would be an outstanding mod achievement for sure. i was thinking of base civ 3, where those things weren't available.

 

[Gorbles]

Designers change their minds over time. I'm not saying Sid has, but relying on something he held to be true however many years ago doesn't necessarily reflect what is good now.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Subthread to this thread;

What it really boils down to is individual taste. Sometimes we can get carried away in our passion when someone doesn't love the same thing as we do. Even sometimes loving the same thing as someone else could cause friction if you're not loving it the same why they love it.

So please be kind to one another realizing we have different attractions. There is no right answer here, only statistics gathered for fun and curiosity.

Now back on topic. C3C for life son!!

 

[Civinator]

i am not sure what you mean by minor tech trees for civ 4. civ 6 has parallel trees though.

If you would have read my linked post, it should be clear that per example the "trees" for unit promotions and civics for me are falling under that term. In that post and the other linked posts in this thread I always wrote, that this is my personal opinion and other civers can see this completely different.

Every version of the civ series had civers that had fun with each one of the different versions. As Moff posted, this is a matter of individual taste. If this individual taste is different from the settings that are offered in the current versions of the civ series, the individual can change this by doing one´s own mods (if being able to do this).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you would have read my linked post, it should be clear that per example the "trees" for unit promotions and civics for me are falling under that term. In that post and the other linked posts in this thread I always wrote, that this is my personal opinion and other civers can see this completely different.

oh. it's odd to call those mini "tech" trees. that threw me off.

i enjoyed each of the civ games, to varying extents. however, bad ui is a major pet peeve of mine and i am not okay with any of the civ uis, with 4 being the closest to acceptable. the others are much, much worse than contemporary ui capabilities, or even worse than games ~1-2 decades older in ui design terms. that's really brutal. there was a point in civ 5 where i realized games were taking me more than twice as long to complete simply through waiting for the ai and waiting for the game to let me play on my own turns. what was once 90min to 3h turned into 5-6 hours. part of that was 1upt, most of it was sheer poor optimization of ai turns and a major regression in user interface. i basically got less than half the game per time spent playing, before so much as considering whether the mechanics were good. civ 5 has some good and bad things, but asking its mechanical design to make up for hours of doing nothing in a run is steep.

similar deal for civ 6. i order units to a new front, let's say 10-15 of them. the game can't handle it. first, i get screwed by inconsistent input buffering (sometimes, it accepts next order given a bit early, others it does not). then, i start hitting end turn to wait for my units to get over there. but oops, they collide with each other/get pathing screwed and now the previous orders are gone, issue them again. end turn, wait. okay, new orders two more times. 20+ minutes later (!), i might be able to do the things i wanted, with all of that time spend re-issuing orders i'd already decided to do or waiting for the ai. do this a few times a game, slap in some bad city management, and you have a recipe to spend hours in front of the game not playing it. and thus maybe i go back to eu 4, or dcss, or ftl, or something else where i can play the game when i want to play the game.

it's stuff like that where players then try to tell me that civ 6 has a better ui than 4...just lol. there are things one might prefer between the games. maybe one doesn't give ui much weight even. but to say something that wastes hours on design alone is better? cmon now. i can still pull up my videos of 10+ years ago. i could literally give orders to 10x more units and 2-3x more cities in a fraction of the time that anybody can possibly do it in civ 5 or 6. civ 5 and 6 have strengths, and ui is objectively not one of them. they are bad.

aside from true rts like starcraft 2, it seems like ui in strategy games in general is pathetic lately. it was not always so; warlords and homm were up to reasonable standards to their contemporaries in other game genres. numerous game genres also offer games with solid-to-excellent ui design in terms of presentation and input efficiency today as well. it seems to be the flagship strategy titles in particular that disregard it...or at least the ones i play (firaxis and pdox stuff). it's wild that eu 4 actually has better ui than civ now. that hurts. beating eu 4 wasn't a high bar to clear. but you can spend a larger % of time in eu 4 playing it.

hoi 4's ui is a travesty and i actively disrespect it though. this is a civ thread so i won't go into detail...but wow. what a way to ruin a fun gameplay loop. the controls don't work, provably, and the devs don't care.

 

[Civinator]

oh. it's odd to call those mini "tech" trees. that threw me off.

In my eyes the unit promotions and the civics have "tech tree-like" structures. In addition several of those Civ 4 civics were directly ripped out of the Civ 3, Civ 2 and Civ 1 techtree.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

civics are more of a direct progression of earlier civ governments. you research a technology, and you get a new government option.

promotions change by more, because they introduce tactical considerations that did not exist in civ games previously.

 

[Civinator]

civics are more of a direct progression of earlier civ governments. you research a technology, and you get a new government option.

promotions change by more, because they introduce tactical considerations that did not exist in civ games previously.

Yes, civics are options arranged around ripped out parts of the streamlined tech trees of former versions of the civ series where they were integrated into the techtree without any problems. Promotions in my eyes are not needed parts in an epic civ game. They may have some sense in scenarios with hero units, but for the epic civ game individual differing unit values are not needed and only cause trouble in recognizing the true values of those units.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Yes, civics are options arranged around ripped out parts of the streamlined tech trees of former versions of the civ series where they were integrated into the techtree without any problems. Promotions in my eyes are not needed parts in an epic civ game. They may have some sense in scenarios with hero units, but for the epic civ game individual differing unit values are not needed and only cause trouble in recognizing the true values of those units.

To each his own. I totally respect the fact you like better Civ3.

I only disagree with you about considering civics and promotions "tech tree-like" structures. Civics are unlocked based on technologies the very same way governments were in the 3 first civs. The only difference is that they were subdivided into 5 categories. Now I understood you don't like it and that's good for you. As for promotions, I liked them as a way to portray military experience, giving personality to your units. Yet that's only my opinion which I understood wasn't yours. We all played those games extensively so we won't change anyone's mind on this.

When we mastered a civilization game, we're often disturbed by changes in the following one. Sometimes we successfully adapt, sometimes we do not. Apparently you blocked on Civ4, and personnally I blocked on Civ5. I still believe though that 1 UPT brought a much stronger change in game core mechanics than anything which happened in earlier Civ games. You can dislike civics and promotions, but they are frankly minor changes in comparison.

 

[Civinator]

When we mastered a civilization game, we're often disturbed by changes in the following one. Sometimes we successfully adapt, sometimes we do not. Apparently you blocked on Civ4, and personnally I blocked on Civ5. I still believe though that 1 UPT brought a much stronger change in game core mechanics than anything which happened in earlier Civ games. You can dislike civics and promotions, but they are frankly minor changes in comparison.

Marla_Singer, this is true and I have not forgotten, that you created the world maps coming with Civ 3. For me that "block" were the so called 3D animations and the table top presentation, that were introduced with Civ 4 and killed the fun for me in playing Civ 4-6 games. For me this was the strongest change that happened in the Civ series. The lost time by constantly fiddling with civics and the anger with unit images no longer showing the true value of the unit and promotions spoiling the civilopedia informations about units, are only additional components to that "block".

I have the same opinion as you about 1UPT in Civ games with their limited maps sizes and I posted it here in my linked posts in that thread.

The good thing about the Civ series is, that every version has its fans and if a civer is "blocked" by a version, he/she can play the Civ version providing the most fun to that civer and has the oportunity to mod it.

 

[Kyriakos]

The main problem with CivIII was Firaxis not having any event file for it. Which made zero sense, given the code wouldn't be dissimilar to what they had in civII.

The gfx do look better, though.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Marla_Singer, this is true and I have not forgotten, that you created the world maps coming with Civ 3. For me that "block" were the so called 3D animations and the table top presentation, that were introduced with Civ 4 and killed the fun for me in playing Civ 4-6 games. For me this was the strongest change that happened in the Civ series. The lost time by constantly fiddling with civics and the anger with unit images no longer showing the true value of the unit and promotions spoiling the civilopedia informations about units, are only additional components to that "block".

I have the same opinion as you about 1UPT in Civ games with their limited maps sizes and I posted it here in my linked posts in that thread.

The good thing about the Civ series is, that every version has its fans and if a civer is "blocked" by a version, he/she can play the Civ version providing the most fun to that civer and has the oportunity to mod it.

Thanks for it, I read all your posts. Now the thing is that, no matter what, Civ3 is 22 years old and Civ4 is 18 years old. I would like something new nonetheless. If that wouldn't come from the Civ main series, maybe that could come from a spinoff?

Reading the Old World forum, it seems people really like it. Has any of you given it a try?

 

[Civinator]

Thanks for it, I read all your posts. Now the thing is that, no matter what, Civ3 is 22 years old and Civ4 is 18 years old. I would like something new nonetheless. If that wouldn't come from the Civ main series, maybe that could come from a spinoff?

Several programmers are working on a new Civ 3 with the project name C7: https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ3-future-development.604/

Reading the Old World forum, it seems people really like it. Has any of you given it a try?

Unfortunately Old World has the - by me unloved - 3D graphics and the table top presentation, so I have not bought it yet.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Reading the Old World forum, it seems people really like it. Has any of you given it a try?

I have Old World and I like it. Combat is satisfying but there is a nice role play element to the game as well. You have a family of characters similar to Crusader Kings but nothing so complex it's unplayable. I like the game however it is limited to the ancient period. Maybe about 200 or so turns if I remember correctly.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Just as a side note, MUPT does not necessarily mean SoD. That is the false equivalence used to promote 1UPT since day 1. You can have MUPT without SoD.


Civ3 was certainly the pinnacle of SoD, as it also had armies that basically allowed 3 units to attack against a single defender with no risk to get lost. Now collateral damages in Civ4 were still too limited to not make stacking the best strategy in order to protect your units. If you had 10 units in your stack, only 4 or 5 of them were damaged, leaving 5 of them intact. Therefore spreading your units was still exposing them more than stacking them.

I believe we could make things funnier in altering combat even more according to unit types. Here are some ideas:

• Melee units: the most basic, work best in SoD.
• Range units: can damage multiple units in stacks, forcing ennemies to spread out. That would make archer useful even with only a 1-tile range (range units with a larger radius coming only later).
• Horse units: can perform flank attacks dividing ennemies stack into 2, with half of units moved to a neighbouring tile.
• Pikemen: prevents flank attacks to succeed when in the stack.
• Siege units: destroy city fortifications or forts (cannons and artilleries could be both used as "Siege" and "Range" units).

There are plenty of other ideas that could be fun. For instance, when cannons are on flat land, they only have a range of 1, but when they are on a hill or a mountain, they have a range of 2. In late game, guided missiles allow you to choose the specific building to be targetted in a city (for instance the airport, destroying all air units in one shot). Anyway, all those ideas could only work with MUPT, and they are not simply "SoD". Therefore I strongly disagree with the idea that 1UPT is the only way to bring diversity to combat. It is not.

Sorry to auto-quote myself but for the records, I gave it a shot in creating a thread proposing those ideas in the "Ideas and Suggestions" forum section. The least we can say is that it wasn't a great success.

Rather than having a spear unit in a small stack preventing a mounted unit to perform flank attacks on it, they like better instead to have a spear unit physically located in-between the opponent's cavalry and the unit it's supposed to protect from a flank attack. It all feels like younger civ players are thinking at a significantly more narrowed down smaller scale than I do. For such a thing to make sense to me, it would require much larger maps with cities a lot more distant of one another and units having a lot more moves per turn as well.

My concern is how much does that fit in a game that is supposed to be played from stone age to space age. As much as I agree tactical gameplay adds flavor, strategical considerations should remain more meaningful to me, otherwise the risk is to lose sights from the game's main objective.

EDIT: message corrected after @Gorbles comment.

 

[Gorbles]

It all feels like younger civ players are thinking at a significantly more narrowed down scale than I do.

The age thing aside (always funny to me), this is funny because the thing here is "stack abstractions are good", when abstractions themselves are narrow by design.

Abstractions abstract away detail by design. I'm not criticising this - abstractions can be good or bad. But they're inherently narrowing.