Lord Chambers
Emperor
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2001
- Messages
- 1,004
Make sure to ask this question in the civ 4 forum. You will get different answers.
I'll be getting a new computer that should be able to run Civ5 at max soon and I am wondering if from the perspective of someone who loved Civ3 but hated Civ4 if Civilization V is better than Civ4?
My PC barely runs Civ 5, (it does run it well, but if it gets far into the game as well as 8-12 AIs it gets bit choppy)
What Civ 5 already offers is a great tactical combat system, much better than any previous version of Civ. Where Civ 5 is lacking in comparison to Civ III is trade
Come on, Civ V is a failure in the market and the community because it is a simplified, dumbed down game. It is also full of flawed concepts that just don't work. Further, the developers mislead the community by not coming clean about the game before it was released. That's why few play it. Friends don't let friends play Civ V, over Civ 4.
You make some great points, and essentially hit on the weakest points of Civ 5.
My main complaints- No espionage, No land or sea routes required to trade resources, No trading of maps (even after Navigation is reseached).
And another one I forgot...
No buying and selling techs.
I'd actually favour a 'hybrid' system - one which keeps research agreement, but in which each research agreement is for a specific tech. So, say, you can arrange to research Monarchy with another civ specifically, as long as it is a tech that at least one Civ could research. The gold cost would be the cost for the most advanced civ to complete that research. This:
a) is more reflective of the way research agreements would actually work in reality, when two powers might collaborate and invest a specific amount of money to reach a certain end point.
b) means you know what you're getting, which gives you control of the decision-making process (do I want to invest that much to get that tech?). Sometimes a research agreement will be a good idea, sometimes it won't.
c) means you have to weigh the benefits you get from that technology against the benefits your rival will, as well as potentially the advantage you're giving him of accelerating part of his research before he would otherwise reach that tech level.
The AI behavior is bizarre. Diplomacy is a real chore. There are supposed to ways to bribe other AIs into going to war with you, but they are not transparent.
Diplomacy can be managed, and you can see the various +/- modifiers. The key thing is the tripartite aspect; your relations with Civ X tend to improve/deteriorate more as a result of the way you treat Civ Y than as a result of the way you treat Civ X, in contrast to other Civ games. If you're nice to their friends, they'll usually be nice to you because if they aren't their friends won't be as friendly any more.
I think in principle it's good that there are negative modifiers for some areas of conflict (such as friendship with rivals, favouring city-states your rivals are after), but the problem is that there are too many that are outside the player's control - "we're after the same win condition", "we're after the same Wonder", neither of which you can usually know in advance, particularly in the absence of espionage - close borders is too strong a penalty (almost always leads to war or denunciation eventually, yet you have to share borders with *someone*), and there should be more positive modifiers than the three or four that exist. Civ IV's cumulative positives made diplomacy far too easy to manage, particularly since few of the negative modifiers were cumulative, but it did mean that by the time you started incurring negative modifiers you usually had some 'offset' from positive relations that could prevent war - in fact it probably went too far in that close borders almost never prompted war.
Diplomacy is another thing like CS - "in principle" Civ V has a superior, more interesting system in general, but it more than any other element of the game engine needs tweaking to make it work properly. When I play Civ V, by far the greatest influence on whether I decide to carry on a game all the way through, and the greatest influence of my ultimate enjoyment of a game, is whether diplomacy is working or not. In Civ 4 I could pretty much take it or leave it; I'd can games if not doing well at war (or just bored of barbarians or stack combat), or in a randomly terrible starting position, very occasionally if beaten to a critical Wonder, but never really because of diplomacy, which was something of an optional extra in most games of Civ 4 (even if going for a diplomatic victory). To some extent that suited Civ 4 well - it like previous iterations of the series was always something of a 'sandbox' game, giving you plenty of more or less trivial options that you could play with for detail's sake or for a refreshing change of strategy, but which weren't ultimately that relevant to gameplay.
Overall, I like the CS concept, but the way you interact with them needs to be changed quite a bit.
I'm happy enough with them, other than the incessant 'please wipe out another CS for us' issue, and they play very well in diplomatic victory games where the later stages revolve around gaining control (through bribery or conquest) the remaining city-states in the game - it makes interactions between the powers fighting over them dynamic, and at higher difficulty levels they are militarily relevant in their own right (in one of my games Sydney destroyed and/or conquered three Arab cities on my behalf). But there are issues to resolve (such as a CS's inability to negotiate in its own right - if you've paid it enough, it will fight till the bitter end against your enemies rather than pull out of the war), and the developers appear to agree that there are more major issues with the promised overhaul coming in the expansion.
I don't like the idea of such confined expansion, i.e. if you build cities too fast, or grow too fast, you seem to get punished.
This is a game design choice rather than a problem - personally, I like it. I think that by definition if you do anything "too fast" you should be penalised. Civ IV had the same constraints, but because health was mostly irrelevant, easy to control, and not usually a problem if you did allow a point or two of ill health, and because you could adjust your income at will to overcome the costs of expansion, these controls simply weren't effective. All previous Civ games put brakes on city growth - playing Civ 1-3, you needed to research a particular tech and build the relevant buildings in your cities to progress past pop 10/20/24 etc. In my current Civ 4 game I've got 4 10-18 pop cities in 1400 AD, despite several sacrifices to Slavery, and only that few because I'm out of room to expand in a fairly small corner of a continent (that 7-square limitation on building new cities, I suspect, has a lot more to do with the death of ICS in Civ IV than the oversimplified maintenance system). If I'd had more space to build, any other cities I have would be at the same size. That would be unthinkable for any other Civ game - and this in the version of the game that has a nominal population control mechanic (health). I think Civ V's approach is a less artificial way of achieving the Civ 1-3 goal of constraining population growth. It may be that Civ 4 veterans then-new to the franchise don't appreciate that this isn't really the way the game was designed originally, it was an anomaly (and, depending on your perspective, arguably a lapse) in Civ 4 specifically.
What's more, in Civ V population is even more intrinsically important than in the other games - extra pop automatically produces research, and can produce commerce while doing so (or be turned into specialists who, with the right policy, generate even more research for you). So runaway pop growth along Civ 4 lines would pretty much break the system; the constraints should be fairly strong. I understand that, prior to the first major patch (before I started playing), the system was indeed broken because expansion/growth was too easy in Civ V. All of these changes have to be seen in the context of changes to the overall game engine, rather than isolated changes from the Civ 4 model.
There are points in the game where you have to leave workers idle, turn cities into gold production, because you can't afford to build anything new.
Only roads/railroads cost gold - workers can build anything else they like. Usually in those circumstances (and, in fact, most others) you'd want them building trading posts.
I know there are tricks and methods to controlled, micro-managed growth, but it gets to be TOO tedious micro-managing every tile and worker. This is how you have to play to have a chance to win at the highest levels.
I've never automated workers in any version of Civ I've played. It's not a very efficient use of them. So this isn't a new issue for me (nor is having idle workers - I've reached the point in my Civ IV game where I'm having to idle them now, having developed everything I usefully can until I secure more Inca territory). But this comes back to my preference for Civ V's (and pre-Civ IV's) building maintenance approach - you can't any longer build duplicates of every building in every city if you so desire, or invest in a Monument just because you've got nothing better to do even though it doesn't really do anything (well, in Civ V it's actually a useful improvement). You run out of money in Civ V (and 3,2,1) generally because you're constructing buildings in places you don't need them. I find it part of the challenge to identify where the issues are and resolve them, either by removing the offending buildings or by changing strategy on subsequent playthroughs; the downside is that it's in the nature of Civ games that, once you've cracked the puzzle once, it's generally the same solution every time. It's the Angry Birds of empire simulators.
I just don't have that much time. That said, you can have some fun, wide open games at the middle levels of Civ 5. Play the game for you own fun, don't get caught up in trying to win at Deity.
I'm only playing Immortal and Deity for the achievements (still don't have either) - I've had my best games on Emperor and King, where you can still play flexibly.
Also, you are correct about the AIs fighting with poor tactics. They also take a while to update their miltaries with techs they have reseached, hence even at high levels, you tend to be fighting out-dated units (I think this was generally true in Civ 3 as well).
The AI never upgrades, only replaces losses. It also never promotes other than to restore full health (even when it doesn't need to). Another element that makes winning too easy at some difficulty levels is the ease with which you can accelerate science - research agreements and "Great Person always researches the complete tech, however advanced". Combined with the shorter tech tree, this is too exploitable with only one or two key wonders, and/or particular civs (chiefly Babylon). I usually go for science victories in older versions of Civ. In Civ V I nearly always now go for other victory conditions (generally diplo) just because I find science victories too much of an easy win. By contrast, achieving cultural victory at higher difficulty levels in Civ V is one of the toughest Civ challenges you can face, harder than most games of Civ IV.
Phil
I'll be getting a new computer that should be able to run Civ5 at max soon and I am wondering if from the perspective of someone who loved Civ3 but hated Civ4 if Civilization V is better than Civ4?
You have to be warned of some things before jumping in.
In Civ5, happiness is global. Initially ressources had a value of 5 happinesses, which has been nerfed into 4 only. Plus, buildings such as colosseums have been nerfed also.
It's not the same thing at all when it comes to expand. In Civ3 you have to expand the fastest possible, taking as many land as you want. In Civ5, you are GREATLY limited by happiness. You never have a lot, when a new 1 pop city will cost you... 4 happinesses !
So, in lower difficulty levels, AI will expand so slowly that at the end, all the land would be inoccupied. It's rather a strange (and unrealistic) thing.
In higher diff.levels, AIs will expand like pigs, whereas you will be limited by 2-3 cities, and insulted by AIs for your civ being "puny".
I've never found myself this strongly limited at higher levels - I can maintain a dozen or so cities on Emperor. But expansion does work differently in Civ V. To a large extent, population (which directly produces research and, obviously, works your land) has the same effect wherever it is - 1 pop in a 20-pop city has the same effect as 1 pop in a new, 1 pop city. Various policies favour growing individual cities compared with spamming cities (or vice versa). Any number of tiles around your city can be worked, not just the city radius. You do generally expand more slowly, and you have to decide between expanding vs. growing rather than trying to have a large number of large cities (i.e. you can have a small number of large cities, or a large number of smaller cities). The luxury bonus (+4 happiness) is the same as the city founding penalty (-4 happiness), and so you'll usually want to settle near a new luxury to compensate for the hit to happiness from building a new city.
The above complaint is just another case of trying to play Civ 5 like Civ 4 - not a flaw with the game, just someone who can't yet play it well.
You start with 9 happiness or so, and when you expand, you will indeed want to expand to a place with luxes, but don't exaggerate.In Civ5, you are GREATLY limited by happiness. You never have a lot, when a new 1 pop city will cost you... 4 happinesses !
Make sure to ask this question in the civ 4 forum. You will get different answers.
I can assure you that by far most players try to get their expansion off the ground as quickly as possible, with the National College being the main reason for holding back - the National College may only be built when all your cities have a library, so this doesn't go well with expanding quickly.Optional says " Where Civ III places a huge emphasis on early expansion, meaning getting settlers out quickly is strong play, Civ 5 isn't much different." I strongly disagree. An early settler/city rush (which is the winning move in CIv3) simply doesn't work at Prince on up in Civ 5. You will be buried in unhappiness and DoWed like crazy. Expansion is very slow in Civ 5.
Make sure to ask this question in the civ 4 forum. You will get different answers.
@Phil, thanks for the detailed reply. I'm still having some doubts about Civ 5, mainly in the area of dipmlomacy. The following has happened to me twice. An AI asks me to DoW another AI with him. I reply with the "give me ten turns to prepare" option, ten turns later, I ask them to DoW with me and they say no. I give them a spare lux or some gold, and they still say no. So wtf? I still don't know fully understand the way diplomacy functions in this game. Also, there has been a lot of sentiment that dip victory on Civ 5 is way too easy, and essentially comes down to buying off CSs in the last turns of the game. I've won a game this way, and its not very fulfilling. These are things that many hope to see changed in the coming update.
As I've said, diplomacy in Civ V is great in principle, but struggles in practice. I don't think I've come up against this one specifically, though I have had a couple of occasions where I've agreed to the 10-turn attack and my ally has failed to remind me 10 turns later (annoyingly, there isn't apparently an option to see the stage of the current deals you have - how many more turns of a trade agreement, open borders, etc.) I see the issues with the older diplomacy system the new one tries to fix, and I approve, but it doesn't do it as well as it should, and some lost functionality (missing international trade routes, no map trading) doesn't make any sense as the changed mechanics don't require these changes.
Diplo victory is what you make of it. Much as in Civ IV, a diplo victory was essentially a conquest victory that you reached when you had more than 50% of the pop/land area rather than the whole lot. Yes, you *could* play it diplomatically, but there was no requirement to do so at most difficulty levels, particularly since diplomacy under the old system was so passive ("you don't talk to/bother us, we won't talk to/bother you"). In Civ V you can do a last-turn hoarding, which is easier and less challenging than doing the actual diplomacy (just as with Civ IV conquest-lite), and sometimes it will work. This relies on the AI not realising you're aiming for a diplo victory; the moment you start accumulating city states, the AI will promptly ally as many as it can and declare war on you, simply so that you can't regain favour with its CS allies and you'll have to conquer them. It also works best in larger maps where multiple civs are after diplo victory, since that makes it harder to outbid them all. I prefer to play longer-term diplomatic games, where I accumulate CSes early (which itself can be a bit too easy - if you're Greece, and have Patronage, there's little to no way of losing CS favour, other than warfare, and if you are ever offered peace with the ally power, of course your influence goes back to high-neutral straight away). This tends to generate a lot more diplomatic back-and-forth between major powers over CS favour, sometimes diplomatic and sometimes military, because the AI realises you're going for a diplo victory from early on. This is in any case the way you'll often want to play (especially as Siam) because, after all, you get more CS bonuses the longer you have them as allies.
Optional says " Where Civ III places a huge emphasis on early expansion, meaning getting settlers out quickly is strong play, Civ 5 isn't much different." I strongly disagree. An early settler/city rush (which is the winning move in CIv3) simply doesn't work at Prince on up in Civ 5. You will be buried in unhappiness and DoWed like crazy. Expansion is very slow in Civ 5. You get your free settler, so you have only 2 cities for a while. If you go to 3-5 cities early, you better have the military to protect, and the happiness factors to support it. If you are on a continent with four aggressive AIs, you will be fighting for your life.
Agreed. Yes, you can expand to your second - and often your third, since by the time you have the free settler you will probably have developed your first luxury resource - city very quickly, but then you stabilise for a long period. This makes sense to some degree - after all, there is a certain minimum you need in a Civ game to do things; several production slots, sufficient cities to start specialising in at least two of the main city development archetypes. You don't want to be too slow to get to this stage.
Philbowles and Optional, I can't let you say such things.
It's not the first time I notice it, I created myself several topics on the subjects and saw the same reactions :
I've seen one of those topics - one which mentioned your experience with Civ V came from playing on Settler and King, and from playing some fairly poor strategies (building a colosseum in every city etc.). It simply suggests you need to know how this game plays. In Civ IV, yes you could get away with building everything you want everywhere because of the lack of building maintenance and fast production times. You could have up to five temples in a single city, each giving 1 happiness. Any luxury you had access to gave you 1 happiness in every city in your empire (on the assumption you knew how to build roads).
Yes, management is more difficult in Civ V than in earlier Civ games - you can't get 40 happiness from a single resource by having 20 cities with markets and a long road. You don't get free happiness just for having a religion. You can't maintain pop 30 cities. You don't have a slider as a quick and easy fix to overspending (or, indeed, unhappiness) - but then you don't have a trade-off between these and research either.
"Nothing to see, everything is cool, there's no problem with happiness, why ?"
Whereas I feel there is a BIG problem with happiness, and i'm an old Civ player.
And you've said elsewhere that all Civ games play exactly the same way and that mechanical differences are trivial. You're trying to play Civ V as though it's one of the older games. It's got the feel of a Civ game when played well, but it rewards different strategies.
This negationism kinda hurts me, everything is good in a candy world... no, didn't see that flying cow...
You need to appreciate that there's a distinction between things that are wrong with the system and things that are player issues. Is the game design perfect? Certainly not. However, are your specific complaints accurate assessments of particular problems? No. Simply looking at the claims you've made, each has been refuted empirically. In this particular thread:
Claim: You can't expand past two cities on higher difficulties (which for you appears to mean King from your testimony elsewhere).
Verdict: False. I play on Emperor or Immortal and conventionally found at least 5, usually 6 cities, and generally obtain more through conquest (which itself has a big happiness hit); I noted that in one game I had about a dozen. Elsewhere in this thread you've seen claims that high-level strategies often revolve around four cities. There's even an achievement (Bollywood) for winning with exactly three (a homage to the Civ IV cultural victory, which required three culture cities).
There are plenty of ways of managing happiness - Stoneworks or Circuses if you settle close to the appropriate resources, happiness buildings, Piety and some other social policy tracks, resources from city states, luxury resources, resource trading with other Civs, several Wonders, depressing population growth, expanding more slowly...
Something isn't a game flaw just because some players struggle with it - one could argue the exact reverse, in fact. This is why diplomacy is a complex issue and bone of contention in Civ V: many of the problems people complain about are down to poor diplomacy management, however at the same time there are genuine problems with the functionality of the diplomacy system, and the two can be difficult to separate (the lack of positive diplomacy modifiers, for instance - a design flaw or part of the challenge intended to make it more difficult? A design flaw, I think, because it goes too far in making diplomacy difficult to manage).