Why Civ V is more complex than Civ IV

Errr, no. It's not more complex, it's just unplayable. Yes, you can move away from SoD with collateral damage to all the stack, or any sort of incentive, but that's more in line with Civ 1/2 than with the 1upt system. 1upt just doesn't work for Civ, or you would need a map and cities 5 times bigger compared to units.

Of course it is more complex: even most of the haters will admit that. They just say it is broken as I thought you yourself were saying. Having to decide troop placement and coordination along with ranged combat is more complex then a massive SoD. SoD's boil down to who has the best economy and can create the bigger stack not who is better at war tactics. We can all agree the AI has problems with it but you have to see the potential of where this is going.

And the scale issue has always been a problem with Civ as they overlay a strategic map with a a tactical map which is inherently impossible. Even with SoD's this showed up as it could take years for your SoD to walk over to the front lines...
 
They should have used a Civ CTP like stack system. For the ones who do not know Civ Call To Power , there you could stack 12 units on a tile MAX . And when attacking you went into a new window which was the combat window. There you had 2 layers of units the first one would fight (attack/defend) according to their melee stat and the second layer according to their Range Attack . And you could only have the same amount (maximum) of units in the second layer as in the first one (thus: 6-6 but not 5-7 ) .

So what happened with that system is that combinations were important . Sending 12 cavalries was fine but due to their lack of range attack suboptimal, but on the other hand 6 cannons and 6 cavalry would have worked awesomely.

Now , that system wasn't optimal but a good compromise between the 1 UPT and stacks of doom . (though i must admit the 1UPT offers more possibilities but i fear the AI will never master it)
 
Also, another possibility to address the scale issue is to make larger maps with larger minimum distances between cities. Point is this is still a work in progress but I like how tactics are now important not just strategy or economy optimization.

Also, I'm not going to complain that they released the game before really figuring this all out. Better than waiting 2 more months and still getting a game that will need to be improved. The quicker the modding community tries out various ideas the quicker we will get to the right answer, and a better answer then a closed dev team can come up with as their bosses pressure them to a release date...
 
Of course it is more complex: even most of the haters will admit that. They just say it is broken as I thought you yourself were saying. Having to decide troop placement and coordination along with ranged combat is more complex then a massive SoD. SoD's boil down to who has the best economy and can create the bigger stack not who is better at war tactics. We can all agree the AI has problems with it but you have to see the potential of where this is going.

And the scale issue has always been a problem with Civ as they overlay a strategic map with a a tactical map which is inherently impossible. Even with SoD's this showed up as it could take years for your SoD to walk over to the front lines...

It's not broken at the begginning of the game, when you have 5-10 units. It is at the end when you have 50+. Have you tried to invade an AI who has 40 cities on emperor in modern era ? And it is 'only' emperor. I don't want to imagine in deity :D

True the AI is bad even at the beggining, and can be improved. However, nothing can be done for the late game without changing the whole 1 upt thing.
 
OK - I'll take a whack at disagreeing...

This is in response to the numerous polls and suggestions that Civ V is "dumbed down" or less complex than Civ IV. I do not mean to suggest that Civ V is perfect in its current state (it needs obvious bug fixes and ai improvements, probably a little building rebalancing also). What I do suggest, is that Civ V is certainly more complex in its basic mechanics than Civ IV. To wit:

Building maintenance- Civ IV had no building maintenance costs. This made the decision of what buildings to build, and where to build them far simpler, a step backwards in complexity from even Civ I and II. In IV you could spam every building everywhere in your empire, without regards to min/maxing or whether it would be worth it or not. Try that in Civ V, you will bankrupt your empire.
You could - but no good player would build everything everywhere. There IS a min/maxing -- cities did have underlying maintenance costs and even beyond that, there was still always the opportunity cost. I have no problem with building maintenance costs -- but it's terribly unbalanced. Maybe they need to bump everything up a factor or 2 and add more pinpoint variance because now -- there are a lot of buildings I don't even bother with... Defense buildings? What's the point? They're just gold sinks. Food buildings? Maybe in a few extraordinarily rare situations, but they, too -- sit unbuilt for me everywhere. Maybe you can fix those things by fixing the military AI (not a lot of confidence in that) and maritime CS (more confidence that can be done). Plus - as someone said - if you're going to have maintenance costs, you ought to at least be able to demolish buildings. Lock in the rote paths, fine (i.e., cannot destroy a library if you've built a uni) - but you'll never convince me to build a wall -- much less a castle or military base, if all it takes is a little conquest to make those improvements nothing but a gold sink.

If IV was too prone to "build it all" paradigms, V goes too far in the other direction - build NOTHING unless it serves your victory goal. There are too many building types that are completely untouched.

Personally, I think the best way to solve this is to put a stop to the "single purpose building" madness.... spread out the effects, as CiV did effectively... granaries helped health AND growth. Libraries science AND culture. Monasteries religion AND science. Castles defense AND trade. This adds variety and made the opportunity costs of buildings less cut and dry. You'd have to get rid of the silly 1-2-3 benefit progression to make it work, but this what V should do to make buildings fun again for us builders.

Combat- Stack combat was a gross oversimplification. Build some melee or gunpowder units, a bunch of seige, group together and click go-to button next to enemy capital. Not exactly rocket science. Now, in Civ V, one unit per tile is infinitely more complex. So complex, in fact, that the ai has not mastered it (one of the actually legitimate criticisms of Civ V). However, I appreciate the more rewarding and complex new mechanic, and look forward to vastly more exciting and complex multiplayer action, and single player games after ai improvements.

Well, I'd agree -- except -- I have close to zero faith the AI CAN be fixed. It was never "fixed" per se in IV -- but that was OK because 1) using the blunt force of AI lower costs to create massive stacks at least made the military aspect something you needed to worry about, and 2) Civilization was never supposed to be a military strategy game anyway... from panzer general to the many Paradox titles -- there are better games if it's a military strategy game you want. That, in effect, is the reason for my lack of faith -- creating an AI that functions effectively from a tactical standpoint is a monumental effort. Games that take this into account do nothing BUT focus on the tactical AI. Can Civilization do it? Maybe -- but again, Civilization is not supposed to be a military strategy game! I think the doveplay is excruciatingly boring -- too much "next turn next turn next turn" -- so you have to do SOMETHING about the military AI.... but if that's the focus, then I guess I'd just toss up my hands and say "why bother?" I'd much prefer playing TW or one of the Paradox HOI titles if it's military strategy gameplay I wanted -- they focus on it, they get it (largely) right. I don't expect Civilization to meet those standards, but they've put themselves in a position where they really have no choice.

...and I say all of this as someone that desperately DOES want to like hex/1UpT... I just think, at this point, it's been a mistake for the series. I used to play Panzer General. I liked Panzer General. I have little desire for Panzer general with cities.


Government- In Civilization 4, your choice of civics had zero long term repercussions. You could easily change Civics after a short period of anarchy, even that easily mitigated by golden ages or religious trait. While admittedly slightly less simple than the likes of Civ 2 (where you could run democracy, then pop into monarchy for a couple turns to declare and fight a war, then pop back into democracy) even Civ IV’s civics system is very simplistic. By contrast, in Civ V, you have to consider several things when adopting a social policy- the short term versus long term benefits not only of the current policy choice, but of all other policies farther down the tree. You really have to plan ahead with a grand strategy, making social policies in Civ V much more complex for the player than its predecessors.
OK - but once you've gotten through the trees, then what? You know what works for what VCs and style of play. It ceases to become long-term planning and instead - becomes just automatic button clicks (and then waiting for the next button click). Civics were malleable because games were malleable -- there were times when you were at peace and wanted to max certain benefits. There were times when you were at war and wanted to max other benefits.
I like Social Policies -- but they should have been an addition to, a limiter, and perhaps a modifier of SOME type of government (be it simplified II-style governments or IV-style civics). Was there too much flip-flopping in IV? Sure -- but by combining SPs with government/civics, the answer is painfully easy and obvious... simply toss a 50% culture penalty at the player or whatever. You make changing governments a significant cost - thus eliminating free-form flip-flops - but you keep the concept of an empire changing as gameplay requires it change. Locking people in is just a poor idea --- it forces you to decide far too early: Am I going to be the largest empire? Or am I going to be a small empire that maxes culture/science? The game shouldn't do that -- the course of the game should dictate that.

It's not more complex -- at least, not once you've played with the SP trees -- it's LESS complex because it becomes rigid and rote... it becomes automatic and unchanging. I mean -- the first time you waste culture on the liberty tree as a 3 city Civ that has few plans to expand further, it hardly becomes complex or difficult to remember not to do that again.


Expansion- Prior civ games had no effective check on expansion. Founding an additional city was nearly always advisable, bigger was always better. In Civ V there is a very real cost to reckless expansionism. There are benefits too, and therin lies the essence of complexity. A larger empire will generate more hammers and gold, but it will be difficult to keep happy. Founding a city to gain an additional resource may help with happiness or military power, but detract from your ability to accumulate social policies. There are all kinds of tradeoffs, and the optimal strategy may very depending on your situation and what victory condition you are aiming at.

I have to disagree entirely with this one. They DID have an effective check - maintenance costs would soar. Gold and Science would actually plummet. Unhappiness in far flung cities would skyrocket. There were trade-offs in IV - and they were just as complex and subtle.... what's worse -- the V system is so painfully easy to game. The only "cost" to expansion is culture and happiness... the solution? Simple - NEVER build new cities until you've popped the next culture level. Even at deity -- I have yet to have any problems with the AI stealing my spots, so what do I do? I have 5 settlers sitting in their spots - perhaps with a unit nearby if I'm still concerned about barbarians. Then - I just wait until I pop the next SP - and boom... 5 cities. Sure - the next SP cost goes up, but it's a simple matter of rinse/repeat. All it does is make expansion more jagged and uneven. What's even worse -- it contributes to sprawl. The "wait" approach means its even in my own interest to send my settlers all over creation -- 40 turns to get to the other side of the continent and snag that whale? Who cares -- I've got 30 turns until the next SP, so might as well.

Plus - if you're not going for a cultural victory, you can easily get by with with just a couple of SP branches.... once you no longer care about SPs -- and if you're going to be expansive, it's pretty obvious which SPs to snag to deal with unhappiness -- you end up with a ton of 2 pop/no building "resource depot" cities. If I've decided to forgo any thought of the land spaceship (excuse me... Utopia project), I just spam these tiny cities next to resources like mad, set them to max production to limit the population unhappiness, improve only the resource tiles -- and they become nothing more than camps. My last game (huge map, marathon, deity) -- I had more than 20 2 pop/no building cities.

If V is supposed to "check expansion", well... it doesn't work too well.

Happiness- Civ IV had the easiest and most simplistic happiness system in the series. Not only did your cities only have localized happiness, but they didn't even experience revolt or civil disorder, merely an unproductive citizen. You could effectively ignore all of those angry faces in Civ 4, until you got around to dealing with them. With Civ V global happiness, you ignore happiness at your peril. Reduced empire wide growth, lack of golden age accumulation, loss of rationalism science bonus, penalty to combat, etc. (I am aware of the existence "ignore happiness" strats, but these are mainly for specialized late game situations. Further, I believe they are something akin to an exploit which will be fixed by increasing the "very unhappy" penalty in future patches).
I will say this -- as someone that generally played RoM/AND for the most part -- what you say of vanilla IV/BTS might be true, but, the revolutions mod put a stone cold stop to "just ignore the angry people". That was a recipe was partisan disaster and before you knew it, you were actually booted out of office or you suddenly faced an empire fracturing into multiple squabbling nations.
But - that was a mod, not vanilla...

The problem with happiness here is that it's so illogical... you might as well not even call it happiness... just call it empire 'sprawl' and be done with it. Add another empire-level tree when you just buy 'sprawl reducers'. Do you even pay attention to WHERE you build a theater? I sure don't -- unhappiness creeps towards zero? Just randomly click through cities that haven't yet built a theater or coliseum or whatever and buy it. That's just a thousand times wrong -- and it's made even worse by the fact that, since happiness buildings, like everything else compound in such a straight-line fashion, you end up simply maxing a single city to control happiness.

I'm fine with something approximating happiness at a global level, but there should still be city-level impacts, city-level modifiers, and a city-level cost-benefit.

It all adds up to "cities" -- which were always the engine of Civilization since I -- becoming less and less like "cities", individual things to be managed, and more like empire "slots".... it doesn't matter what they are and they have little inherent differences... might as well just get rid of city build queues and make a global, empire level build queue. Add a city, get a new global slot to build building type A, B, C, D, etc. Happiness is the worst aspect of that -- but actually, I feel it in virtually all levels.... I look at my city list -- and it really pains me that there is so little deviation. Other than national wonders - and the smart player handles them just like Social Policies (i.e., park settlers and wait to actually found the city until you've built the heroic epic, national college, et al) - the city variance between hammers/beakers/gold/culture is usually so tiny that there's very little reason to specialize or even much attention to what's happening in each city. If you're going for a science or cultural victory -- you simply build all of those building types everywhere....

I actually used to have my own system of made up city names in IV -- it was just pointless fun, but I enjoyed it because it felt like individual cities DID have a character. After 2 weeks of V -- I don't even bother... they don't "feel" different, so there's little point in dealing with names.
 
I have not played Civ 5 yet. I will not make a claim on which game is more complex until I do. I can not asses the credibility of the OP’s claim. Still, I will point out some statements about civ 4 BTS that just seem wrong to me. I am not trying to engage in a social pissing contest when I do this and I hope I have kept it civil.

Building maintenance- Civ IV had no building maintenance costs. This made the decision of what buildings to build, and where to build them far simpler, a step backwards in complexity from even Civ I and II. In IV you could spam every building everywhere in your empire, without regards to min/maxing or whether it would be worth it or not.

The cost of buildings was in :hammers: spent. If you built every building in every city on anything higher than noble, I assure you your goose would be cooked. Building a laboratory in your Heroic Epic city or West Point in your Oxford city doesn’t cost :gold: directly but it’s really dumb and you’ll lose if you do things like this too much.

Government- In Civilization 4, your choice of civics had zero long term repercussions. You could easily change Civics after a short period of anarchy, even that easily mitigated by golden ages or religious trait. While admittedly slightly less simple than the likes of Civ 2 (where you could run democracy, then pop into monarchy for a couple turns to declare and fight a war, then pop back into democracy) even Civ IV’s civics system is very simplistic. By contrast, in Civ V, you have to consider several things when adopting a social policy- the short term versus long term benefits not only of the current policy choice, but of all other policies farther down the tree. You really have to plan ahead with a grand strategy, making social policies in Civ V much more complex for the player than its predecessors.

From what I know about civ 5, which is not that much, I gather that you are making a point here. I will nitpick some statements though.


Government- In Civilization 4, your choice of civics had zero long term repercussions. You could easily change Civics after a short period of anarchy, even that easily mitigated by golden ages or religious trait.

-Turns of anarchy are a big deal. On normal speed it turns to 2 turns later in the game. Absolutely no :hammers:, :commerce: or :gp: for a turn is not a little thing. It’s a much bigger thing if you plan on switching back. Many have been the games, actually all my non-spritual games, where I don’t capitalize on a civic that could have had a nice impact were it not for the anarchy. When everyone goes mercantilism and in turn you would be better off doing so too but you decide to stay in free market and ride it out comes to mind. I have lost a lot of :commerce: staying in free market as opposed to SP when my empire’s huge if I plan for a corporation. I could go on and on.

-While I admit it seems different than civ 5, where it seems you must more carefully pick what policies you select than civ 4, to say civics don’t have long term consequences is simply not true. The decision, for example, to stay in no state religion or to pick a religious civic usually has massive long term consequences. Of course you can always switch back…(see previous paragraph.) Other examples that come to mind

Free Relgion v.AP strategies

Nationhood v. Beauracracy or Free Speech. Neglecting your military or economy can win you or lose you the game. Yes you can always switch back (see anarchy paragraph) but you can also find yourself irrepubably behind in either category, or at least behind enough to what I would consider a long term consequence.

Deciding to follow caste system or slavery will have a large impact on your game for a while to come. Or at least it should.

Expansion- Prior civ games had no effective check on expansion. Founding an additional city was nearly always advisable, bigger was always better.

Now I really wonder if we played the same game :confused: or if you played it on anything higher than monarch. I don’t mean to sound like a snob when I say that. If you didn’t play anything higher than monarch, that’s fine. But I assure you, in Civ 4 BTS bigger is not always better, especially early game. Do I even have to conjure up hypotheticals to prove this? I may upon request but it should be fairly obvious.

Happiness- Civ IV had the easiest and most simplistic happiness system in the series. Not only did your cities only have localized happiness,

This statment could be right or wrong depending on how you interpret it. In a strict sense, yes, happiness is only on a city by city basis. But Civ 4 BTS does have many “federal level” happiness modifiers as well as “city level” happiness modifiers. Examples of federal level happiness modifiers include

-Charismatic trait
- :) resources
- Notre Dame, Stonehenge (if CHA), Eifel Tower (if CHA or having access to musicals, singles, movies), Broadway, Rock & Roll, Hollywood
- Emancipation
- Free Religion
-Various buildings that came about only with specific civics (barracks and nationhood, they're might be more.)
-Mt. Rushmore
- Police State
- Representation (affects 5 cities, not federal but not 1 city either)
- Vasals

but they didn't even experience revolt or civil disorder, merely an unproductive citizen.
"merely" and "unproductive citizen" should not be used in the same sentence.

Yes, I do understand your point and it is valid. Happiness is a bigger issue in civ 5 from what I know. But it still remains a huge issue in civ 4 none the less.

You could effectively ignore all of those angry faces in Civ 4, until you got around to dealing with them. With Civ V global happiness, you ignore happiness at your peril. Reduced empire wide growth,
unhappiness reduces growth in civ 4 too

lack of golden age accumulation,

This seems like a concept I am unfamiliar with.

With that said, while this may not be directly related, I do want to say that running a golden age in civ 4 BTS during a time of unhappiness (and not changing up civics to counter it) is a bad move.
-If you are using the :culture: slider, you don’t want to waste buffed up :commerce: on that.
-If you have :mad: in GPFs, you’re not making use of enhcanced :gp:.
-If your cities are smaller than they could be due to :mad: you are wasting :hammers: and :commerce: as well.

So, apologies to the OP if I’m clearly missing something and I probably am. I probably just have a problem with it’s wording. If it’s “happiness, maintenance and polices are a bigger deal and more complex in civ 5 than happiness, maintenance and civics are in civ 4” than my response is “no comment, I haven’t played the game.” But if the OP is saying “happiness, maintenance and civics are simple and not a big deal in civ 4” I must say “you are wrong, sir.”

Sorry for the length.
 
They should have used a Civ CTP like stack system. For the ones who do not know Civ Call To Power , there you could stack 12 units on a tile MAX . And when attacking you went into a new window which was the combat window. There you had 2 layers of units the first one would fight (attack/defend) according to their melee stat and the second layer according to their Range Attack . And you could only have the same amount (maximum) of units in the second layer as in the first one (thus: 6-6 but not 5-7 ) .

So what happened with that system is that combinations were important . Sending 12 cavalries was fine but due to their lack of range attack suboptimal, but on the other hand 6 cannons and 6 cavalry would have worked awesomely.

Now , that system wasn't optimal but a good compromise between the 1 UPT and stacks of doom . (though i must admit the 1UPT offers more possibilities but i fear the AI will never master it)

I recall that the CTP AI made quite good use of it, too. At least I think it constructed quite good combined arms stacks. But could be faulty memory there. Just reinstalled CTP2 so may play a game or two to see. (Great shame there was never a CTP3 - 2 was deeply faulty, unfinished really, but I do feel they could have got it right and been better than Civ3 if Activision hadn't lost interest.)
 
I recall that the CTP AI made quite good use of it, too. At least I think it constructed quite good combined arms stacks. But could be faulty memory there. Just reinstalled CTP2 so may play a game or two to see. (Great shame there was never a CTP3 - 2 was deeply faulty, unfinished really, but I do feel they could have got it right and been better than Civ3 if Activision hadn't lost interest.)

True , i loved the 1 but was deeply disappointed with CTP2 (tho i got it for free with a PC magazine so no real loss there) . I've always wished for Sid Meier's civ to adopt CTP's combat system . Not too hard for the AI to use correctly and much better than stacks of doom
 
Building maintenance- Civ IV had no building maintenance costs. This made the decision of what buildings to build, and where to build them far simpler, a step backwards in complexity from even Civ I and II. In IV you could spam every building everywhere in your empire, without regards to min/maxing or whether it would be worth it or not. Try that in Civ V, you will bankrupt your empire.
And the result is we cannot have just a single library in every city. What kind of realism is that ?

Combat- Stack combat was a gross oversimplification. Build some melee or gunpowder units, a bunch of seige, group together and click go-to button next to enemy capital. Not exactly rocket science. Now, in Civ V, one unit per tile is infinitely more complex. So complex, in fact, that the ai has not mastered it (one of the actually legitimate criticisms of Civ V). However, I appreciate the more rewarding and complex new mechanic, and look forward to vastly more exciting and complex multiplayer action, and single player games after ai improvements.
The 1UPT + hex system is great. But as you stated it, the game is broken as AI can't play it properly.

Government- In Civilization 4, your choice of civics had zero long term repercussions.
Except that you still had some anarchy turns, which could be very costly if you intended or had to change your civics often. Golden ages were quite rare (or triggered at the expense of some other bonus, and only a few civ had the religious trait). Moreover the social policies are just not logical with several ones which should be mutually exclusive and are not.

Expansion- Prior civ games had no effective check on expansion.
We might not have played the same games then ... Only civ 1 had no drawback with founding additional cities. Civ 3 had severe distance to capital + global number of cities penalities, and civ 4 had some economical drawbacks towards early and unplanned expansion as well.

Happiness- Civ IV had the easiest and most simplistic happiness system in the series. Not only did your cities only have localized happiness, but they didn't even experience revolt or civil disorder, merely an unproductive citizen. You could effectively ignore all of those angry faces in Civ 4, until you got around to dealing with them. With Civ V global happiness, you ignore happiness at your peril.
And it reduces the fun as well because that part is broken, especially on war time and while conquering ennemy cities. Moreover it is not realistic : all cities have the same global happiness factor which is really weird.

Civ V is complex sure, in the way that it behaves often in an un-natural and un-realistic way, and you have to plan for things that should not happen.

This is the magic of the internet that has emerged for a few years now. Give something unfinished, unpolished and in a more general way broken, and you will still find people to defend it to death. No, Civ V is not more cleverly complex, it is just not properly finished and lacks the depth of its predecessors.

Civ V has some really good ideas (the new tactical warfare - 1UPT + hexes - for example even if the AI doesn't know how to play it), BUT it has removed 60-70% of the improvements we have earned in nearly 20 years of Civ ... Great modders gave great paths and hints to what a Civ V could have become - I was especially fond as a lot of people here of Rise of Mankind and Fall From Heaven/Rise From Erebus - and we got a mediocre tactical game emptied from most of its substance.

You can justify basically everything if you really try hard to, and it can even be a very interesting intellectual challenge, but it doesn't remove that fact : all of of the money they put into this gave birth to the most epmty and uninteresting Civilization game I've played to.
 
a game can be VERY complex, even if it has less stuff on the surface. You'd think that IV having religion, espionage, corporations, would automatically make it more complex. But not necessarily, since many of those things aren't well implemented, or balanced, or they're redundant.

It's like saying that chess is more complex than Go, because it has more pieces. But they are both complex games, just different.

Your point is so simple, yet it seems so complicated to some.

I think you put it very well - the difference between complex and complicated. :goodjob:
 
To me, Civ V got the "easy to learn, hard to master" edge over Civ IV. It's interesting how Civ V seems to be growing more and more complex the more time I spend with it. The only argument I could see that would say that Civ IV was more complex was that Civ IV had hundreds of tactics, units, techs, and strategies that DIDN'T work, so you had to go through the complexities in order to figure out what did. But I'm not sure that "complex" is the right word for that... "complicated" is.
Also, Civ IV had two good expansion packs and several years of development to make it what it is today. If you look at what that game was two weeks after it released, and what this game is, I think this is a much better foundation... angry people just complain louder these days.

Atleast it had choises. now it's a war game only. If you want to be a builder or wonder whore, forget it, you have to go to war cous a big war will 95 % of the time come.

the happines cap is not that complex. yeah it halts you to city spawn a bit but so did the science output in civ iv. to many citys to early and you are teching bad.

Now the start of the game is pretty straight forward. you build a scout or worker then use the worker to make farms. you can even work the fish directly, no need to fishing, no need to farming techs, it's pretty straight forward.

When it comes to wonders so are the wonders werry lame in civ v. If you start to compare the wonders in civ iv and civ v you see alot of diffrences and even logical diffrenses.

Take the great library for example. now it gives you a new tech in civ iv it gave you two scientists. I belive that the complexity involved in two scientists are way greater than a new tech. For example the availity to make it a science city and/or early/longterm gpf out of it. now its nothing even nearthat, just a new tech. but if you say the oracel gave you a tech right!? I say now it gives you a social policy, barley nothing and not gamebraking in any way.
I can say that the thing to reserch into something gamebraking wonder is nearly out of the picture becous the wonders are not that gamebraking anymore.

The good thing about civ iv was that you had to make choises bouth short term and long term. just like real empires do/did and that is one thing that is symbolised in civics. Now you have an ever lasting social policy to pick and not to change betwen. its complexed in some way yes but not in the same hights when its compared with chosing betwen a civic becous what is best fore me right now and thake advantage of that to maximise something.

sorry for my spelling, i'm not a spelling be, I hope you understand what I wright.
 
Many claim that they are static, and that you never lose anything when adopting a SP, but I'll have to disagree with both (even though LDiCesare here only mentions the static-part; I'm not going to put words in your moth:)).

First off, I agree that SP are static in the way that you don't lose what you already have. But, at the same time you evolve all the time - you will pick up something new throughout the entire game - it's not like in Civ IV where you at one point decided that this is it. So will your opponents. This means you will become better than the rest in some aspects, and worse in others as time passes along. This for me is not static. It keeps evolving, not necesserily through revolution, but still.

This leads into my second point, "the never giving anything up"-side of the SP, pointed out in several other threads/post. I find that I do give something up every time I pick a new SP. When I decide which one i want, I pick it at the cost of another one. This makes for some really tough decision-making, based on your current state (do I need money, do I need culture, am I at war etc.). In Civ IV there were some Civics that you just had to take at certain stages, but I do agree that this was well implemented in Civ IV as well (not taking anything away from the great game).



I agree, and it seems this is the main complaint from the vast majority of posters. But some people seem to misunderstand the complexity/dumbing-down discussion just because of these mistakes. I'm not saying that LDiCisare or anyone else in this thread has misunderstood, but if you take a look at some of the posts in the "Are Civ V dumbed down"-thread, many say they voted yes because they easily defeated the AI using the Four Horsemen, or the AI did some really bad decisions or the Fortify-button is hidden or Spain is not in the game. This has nothing to do with complexity.

First of all, in history changes are a matter of fact in evolution of nations. So is more interesting a flexible system than a upgrade tree that stucks forever your game strategy (and if in some way it went screwed up you simply cannot loose the gap ever). It is more and more visible in multi, but in single as well...

So the SP are a good match WITH civics (or something similar, but better, because it was that the problem: making religions and civics better, not erasing them), not as a sub...

I don't understand why a lot of you don't like a wider range of game options and more flexibility and managing... Now cultural and science victory are almost he same, with a project to achieve ande the diplomacy is a matter of city state, because the other civs don't vote for you no matter what...

And i like the cultural conquest of enemy territory (i understand dumb players hating it, i can see AI taking out their territory, because of their lack of micromanaging:D), it was more exciting in this way than the idiotic and almost useless cultural bomb....

ANd I agree with the statement about the stack from Call to Power, it was the best solution for this type of game and the scale of maps so far...
 
Atleast it had choises. now it's a war game only. If you want to be a builder or wonder whore, forget it, you have to go to war cous a big war will 95 % of the time come.

the happines cap is not that complex. yeah it halts you to city spawn a bit but so did the science output in civ iv. to many citys to early and you are teching bad.

Now the start of the game is pretty straight forward. you build a scout or worker then use the worker to make farms. you can even work the fish directly, no need to fishing, no need to farming techs, it's pretty straight forward.

When it comes to wonders so are the wonders werry lame in civ v. If you start to compare the wonders in civ iv and civ v you see alot of diffrences and even logical diffrenses.

Take the great library for example. now it gives you a new tech in civ iv it gave you two scientists. I belive that the complexity involved in two scientists are way greater than a new tech. For example the availity to make it a science city and/or early/longterm gpf out of it. now its nothing even nearthat, just a new tech. but if you say the oracel gave you a tech right!? I say now it gives you a social policy, barley nothing and not gamebraking in any way.
I can say that the thing to reserch into something gamebraking wonder is nearly out of the picture becous the wonders are not that gamebraking anymore.

The good thing about civ iv was that you had to make choises bouth short term and long term. just like real empires do/did and that is one thing that is symbolised in civics. Now you have an ever lasting social policy to pick and not to change betwen. its complexed in some way yes but not in the same hights when its compared with chosing betwen a civic becous what is best fore me right now and thake advantage of that to maximise something.

sorry for my spelling, i'm not a spelling be, I hope you understand what I wright.

Amen, brother, amen --

As I just said in the omnibus 'dumbed down' thread... While I completely agree that the military AI is the most glaring mess, I just hope Firaxis realizes that a lot of us builders (I'm one, too) are unhappy, too.

War in IV was something you had to deal with - even as a builder - but it was a limiting factor for us to do the things we like to do (build wonders, manage cities, etc). It added challenge to our preferred gameplay. It forced us to deal with realities outside of our preferred styles of play. It made for a challenge.

Even if they fix the AI -- that won't change the boring Next turn.... Next turn.... Next turn.... next turn.... that a peaceful player deals with.
 
This is likely going to be trying to shine light in the eyes of those who refuse to see, but...

Entire game concepts are missing - religion, corporations, vassals, colonies - fewer Civs, leaders, traits, limited units, resources mined not connected, policies are static versus flexible civics, pinched diplomacy that does... nothing that can be discerned.

To make the statement that Civ5 is complex is simply to argue into the wind - all evidence is to the contrary.

other posters have said before you, a game need not be complicated to be complex. Most of those things you just mentioned just made the game more "gamey" and didn't really have long term repercussions depending on how you persued them. But most decisions in Civ V, like which units to build, where to put your units, how to specialize your cities, or which social policies to adopt DO have long term repercussions that you have to anticipate.

Take for instance civics. Individual civics had little to no effect on how you actually played the game, unless maybe you wanted to pursue a very specific tactic, like building workshops all over the place, but beyond that they did nothing. The benefits from social policies are weighty and immediate.
 
I don't think it's any meening to speak with these people, they clarely thinking that Venger's list is inferiur in weights of complexity.
vanger said:
religion, corporations, vassals, colonies, flexible civics

And why take out something that is working? becous all the things Vanger is speaking about was working and shorly was fun playing. Why not develop the ideas working and skipp the outhers. CIVILIZATION IS A FRANCHISE, When I go to McDonalds I can always buy a Big Mac now mather what. Sometimes you can find variations like Big Mac Bacon or Big Mac Chilli etc. but you will never and I say never se that McDonalds stop selling Big Mac or that Ford stops developing a popular specific car brand or that motorola start to use a function that demand you to press the answer button ten times before it answers. and the only reason they whold change something something like that is if they want to come out to a broather or diffrent audiance and that is what I think firaxis wanted to do now.
 
other posters have said before you, a game need not be complicated to be complex. Most of those things you just mentioned just made the game more "gamey" and didn't really have long term repercussions depending on how you persued them. But most decisions in Civ V, like which units to build, where to put your units, how to specialize your cities, or which social policies to adopt DO have long term repercussions that you have to anticipate.

Take for instance civics. Individual civics had little to no effect on how you actually played the game, unless maybe you wanted to pursue a very specific tactic, like building workshops all over the place, but beyond that they did nothing. The benefits from social policies are weighty and immediate.

Are you serious? Civics absolutely did have an impact on how you played the game.

And as zonk has pointed out, specializing cities in this game means building a specific set of buildings for the victory condition you want and ignoring every other building. There's simply not enough of an opportunity cost in uni-dimensional building.
 
As for flexibility, yes Civ IV was more flexible. You could make radical changes by turning a slider or revolting. But how does this make the game more complex? If anything, this makes the game less complex? All the choices you've made the last 8 hours of gameplay can be changed entirely in one turn?

You make a good point there! But, the lack of "flexibility" has deny the impression of open ended gameplay. It is now linear, boring and most people dont even border finishing their win anymore. I was a King player on CIV IV and I graduated to Immortal in my 3rd game of CIV V... its sad. As a casual gamer, i prefer having a hard time beating the game at a mid level than winning it at "very hard" from the start. It doesnt seem "complex" enough.

For the whole you have to live with your mistake the whole game complexity concept. Well, its not complex, its restrictive. The easy decision is no Wall, no nothing... you just dont bother using more than half of what the game offer, cause its plain useless and not cost effective. You end up building few things except for commerce/science ones and exploit the insane so call complex City State system to coast off to any easy win you want.

In a constructive way, why not allowing building to get destroy or refurbish... the player doing so can get a penalty, even a salty one... and use more stuff and do more thing therefore gaining the impression of more complexity by being more flexible, but denying him the option is plain stupid.

Lack of variety in Buildings attributes so that now you go from lv. 1 - lv. 2 - lv. 3 culture, commerce, etc.. buildings is a HUGE step back in complexity and flexibility... there's facebook games with deeper models. Not to mention all the unit exploits blocking the map, the City states exploits, getting insane bonuses at no "cost" and the tile yield total lack of flavor, where settling in good spot dont matter has much has it could be, the absurd city working up to 30ish tiles, but stuck at 12 in size, all the imbalance traits and units. Wow!!! I cant even see how someone isnt seeing this.

On the good side, its still addictive, eventhough I have a sick feeling about it, I still feel the need to start new games, it has HUGE potential, and might be the start of a very bright futur... but the game hasnt much more than that to brag about.
 
Maybe the AI is so bad as the detractors claim simply because Civ5 is much harder to program an AI to, meaning it is more complex and simple AI rules don't work as well.
Pretty much my thought indeed.

Regarding diplomacy, there are more options open, so more exploits available, and the ai is harder to program for this reason.
For instance, consider the possibility of exchanging 'per turn' income for 'instant' money. Civ IV didn't have it. In this sense it was less complex than Civ V. However, it is simply impossible to make such a kind of deal worthwhile. You are always a loser in terms of game theory if you accept to give gold in exchange for only per turn income, because the other party may disappear at any time. It can be compounded, by for example forcing you to pay back part of the income if you break the deal, but this would increase complexity and be hard to explain and show in the user interface when you first make the deal.
Such a feature, just to stay focused on one feature but keep in mind it's an example, has been thought out in other games, and many games decided to disallow an instant vs. per turn trade because it's way too hard to assess the value of such a deal. Furthermore, once the human has understood how the ai assesses such a deal, the human can always abuse the system.

However, there are ai weaknesses that are just moronic and not linked to the game complexity. Declaring war and never attacking for instance: If you can't attack, you don't declare war. Declaring war on the guy who's helping you fight the player, without making peace with the player. These are just stupid and have nothing to do with complexity.

Regarding social policies vs. civics again, I think they are too different to compare them in terms of complexity. If I measure complexity by the number of decisions about sp/civics I can take in the entire game, then since Civ IV allows me to change on almost every turn, while Civ V allows me only a limited amount of changes, Civ IV is way more complex. I prefer the Civ IV way because it's more dynamic, and it requires more thought. You can almost exactly get Civ V civics in Civ IV: Just give the effect when researching a tech. Except you have a different tech tree, and tech points are culture points. But then culture points in Civ were used for other things like city flipping, so I'd say IV was definitely more complex than V on this topic.
 
Building maintenance- Civ IV had no building maintenance costs. This made the decision of what buildings to build, and where to build them far simpler, a step backwards in complexity from even Civ I and II. In IV you could spam every building everywhere in your empire, without regards to min/maxing or whether it would be worth it or not. Try that in Civ V, you will bankrupt your empire.

Combat- Stack combat was a gross oversimplification. Build some melee or gunpowder units, a bunch of seige, group together and click go-to button next to enemy capital. Not exactly rocket science. Now, in Civ V, one unit per tile is infinitely more complex. So complex, in fact, that the ai has not mastered it (one of the actually legitimate criticisms of Civ V). However, I appreciate the more rewarding and complex new mechanic, and look forward to vastly more exciting and complex multiplayer action, and single player games after ai improvements.

Apparently in your Civ 4 games your cities had infinite production and could build units and buildings simultaneously. Somehow you got every building in every city and still made massive stacks of doom.

These two objections are in direct opposition to one another, or you never played above Chieftan.

Government- In Civilization 4, your choice of civics had zero long term repercussions. You could easily change Civics after a short period of anarchy, even that easily mitigated by golden ages or religious trait. While admittedly slightly less simple than the likes of Civ 2 (where you could run democracy, then pop into monarchy for a couple turns to declare and fight a war, then pop back into democracy) even Civ IV’s civics system is very simplistic. By contrast, in Civ V, you have to consider several things when adopting a social policy- the short term versus long term benefits not only of the current policy choice, but of all other policies farther down the tree. You really have to plan ahead with a grand strategy, making social policies in Civ V much more complex for the player than its predecessors.

Except now Social Policies have zero impact on diplomacy, you can't see enemy's social policies, the policies themselves have less effect than civics, and you can't choose a "bad" set of policies. There's no way to hurt yourself by picking policies. Hell, some people hoard policies for entire eras to "bomb" them when they hit a new era. That's how little policies affect the game right now.

Expansion- Prior civ games had no effective check on expansion. Founding an additional city was nearly always advisable, bigger was always better. In Civ V there is a very real cost to reckless expansionism. There are benefits too, and therin lies the essence of complexity. A larger empire will generate more hammers and gold, but it will be difficult to keep happy. Founding a city to gain an additional resource may help with happiness or military power, but detract from your ability to accumulate social policies. There are all kinds of tradeoffs, and the optimal strategy may very depending on your situation and what victory condition you are aiming at.

This is 100% wrong. Civ 4 has city maintenance based on distance-to-capital and number of cities. Civ 3 had corruption, as did Civ 1. I don't remember what Civilization 2 had. These were definitely effective checks on ridiculous expansion. It also influenced your choice in civics. You can't expand too fast early in Civ 4, or too far away from your capital, because it'll cripple your gold.

It's hard to take you seriously when you post arguments that are just flat-out, completely and unarguably WRONG.

Happiness- Civ IV had the easiest and most simplistic happiness system in the series. Not only did your cities only have localized happiness, but they didn't even experience revolt or civil disorder, merely an unproductive citizen. You could effectively ignore all of those angry faces in Civ 4, until you got around to dealing with them. With Civ V global happiness, you ignore happiness at your peril. Reduced empire wide growth, lack of golden age accumulation, loss of rationalism science bonus, penalty to combat, etc. (I am aware of the existence "ignore happiness" strats, but these are mainly for specialized late game situations. Further, I believe they are something akin to an exploit which will be fixed by increasing the "very unhappy" penalty in future patches).

Wow, I didn't think it could get worse than stating blatantly wrong information, but here you are. You're actually arguing that something in the game should be evaluated on what it MIGHT BE, and not what it IS. You're not even talking about the game now, you're talking about some imaginary future where the game is different. This is just defending Civ 5 for the sake of defending Civ 5, not defending any actual facts about the game. Frankly, it's pathetic and shows you don't really have an argument.
 
Top Bottom