Civilization V

All this talk of stacks, and there are several mods that enable stacks of 2-3-4, etc. in Civ5. AI handles it the same way, poorly(about as well as Civ4), but if you want your stacks there's an easy fix. You can even enable stacks of non-combatants only if you want. Or non-coms, and stacks of 2-3 military if you want to keep the hex-grid combat feel but reduce clutter.

 

But you can't play multiplayer with mods

 

I think one-unit (or two, or three) per hex would actually work in SMAC or the like because its a modern-futuristic warfare game, not a All of Human History Warfare game.

 

Suicidal artillery and stacks of doom were the pinnacle of combat in turn-based games. I also liked how corporations completely destroyed your economy due to inflation. I liked Civ IV back in the day, but I could never go back to it after V. The combat AI could be better, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to play IV. The game is more fun if you use small armies. I guess that's how they meant to play it because fielding a large army makes you unstoppable. It feels like an exploit. Deity sure isn't what it used to be.

 

As long as you founded corporations in the city where you built Wall Street you were fine. There are World Wonders that really made bank for you, but you can't rely on getting them.

 

Corporations only fucked you up if you misused them -- i.e., spammed without thinking. You could use them to damage your opponents, btw. Like dropping a production or culture based corporation in a fringe/frontier city your enemy only put down to obtain a resource (like outposts in the arctic or tundra, deserts, etc.).

 

You could ignore corporations completely. And suicidal artillery was bad but civV is thousand times worse. Its just another unit spam but this time your doomstack is smeared across a lot of tiles and instead of moving one doomstack in one move ou have to move every unit in a doomstack separately.

 

How big of an army do you need? Four to six units seems to be fine and it can move around pretty well unless the enemy has the Great Wall, but I think that's supposed to be a problem. My problem with the game is that you don't need a large army to conquer the world, not that you can't move the army you need.

I really only used them as weapons, IIRC. I seem to remember the AI being able to spread the corporations you spread to them and them spamming it to every city until their economy crumbled. I could've dreamed that, though.

 

Unless you have huge tech advantage, when taking even basic town with archer unit you will lose at least 6 units if enemy has his army backing this city. Just due to wound system and extreme effectiveness of archer units.

 

No. You lose 6 units if you attack the cities with melee or non-artillery weapons. But who does that? The artillery weapons are there to bring down city defenses, that's their role. You only need 3 artillery and a few supporting units to bring down a city, if you are not lagging behind and the city doesn't have a huge defense.

 

They could be super useful in specialized cities like adding huge chunks of food to your SP center, or buckets of production to cities building space parts, etc. In fact, the "specialized" cities thing is what I miss most from Civ4. All the cities in Civ5 are just kinda the same. I never feel like I purposely designate any of them for any specific purpose like I did in the previous game.

 

But you can do that. It really is your fault. Maybe not as high level specialization, can in Civ4, but the opportunity is there.

 

It's amazing how CiV is still shit after 2 expansions.

 

Yeah I didn't mean to say it was impossible, but it's nowhere near as important as it used to be. It's also nowhere near as effective. Specialized cities in Civ4 were focused in every sense of the word on one task. A number of changes in Civ5 kinda scale it back a bit: resources sometimes barely distinguish themselves from ordinary tiles; happiness is an empire wide trait; health is gone; early game GP production has been scaled back a bit; slavery's gone; city squares are now huge blobs that usually have a strong mix of resources instead of the small and limiting crosses in Civ4. The advent of caravans/trade has also kinda scaled back the need for a money-making city as well, I think, but I haven't played enough of the new expansion to know for sure.

 

Yes that's true, no doubt about that.

 

I had high hopes after everyone (everyone outside the Codex, that is) said how much better the game is with the expansions.


But it wasn't.

 

I've played a few games with all the expansions etc. installed.

I think Civ V is now pretty close with Civ IV as far as depth of mechanics go. There is enough there to make for an interesting game. It's actually kinda shocking to look back and remember how simplistic Civ V was at launch.

On an objective level, some stuff is greatly expanded and more involving. Espionage is more involved, culture wins require a lot more micro-management instead of just making 3 cities + Sistine Chapel and then trying not to die for 200 turns, religion is just useful enough to care about and gives you a trade-off in cost:benefit (instead of Civ IV's religion-as-choosing-friends mechanism), and the ideologies bring back the idea of flipping cities into the game, while being more customizable social policies (with social policies themselves becoming less powerful but still important). I do think city building and tech prioritizing is a lot better than in Civ IV too - starting location has a bigger impact on your strategy early on (can't just spam out 6 cities by turn 100 all the time), and cities no longer pay for themselves without viable trade routes.

Problem is in the execution. I don't have a real issue with the combat but the game still feels a lot slower than Civ IV, and it can still sometimes devolve into pressing End Turn over and over again. A lot of the systems are mechanically complex but still need a lot of weaking and balancing to get quite right. The problem with expanding the late game, too, is that now it almost takes too long to do anything - games seem to go on for hours more without being much more interesting; it's just you grinding out more techs. And now, the idea of specializing your empire is substantially downplayed - you don't need to focus on military nearly as much anymore because of the improved diplomacy, but you need to basically have strong everything in order to win (tourism to combat other civs, science is needed to unlock all the victory conditions except domination, etc.).

You also have to play on high difficulties to really understand the benefits of the new features. The AI still isn't very good, and will still only win due to its extra bonuses, not any tactics or skill, so stuff like espionage has very little use playing on the default difficulty (you'll always be way ahead of everyone else). Though, the AI in Civ V still has been radically overhauled and they are much more logical with making their decisions than they used to be. Also, the game lacks a way to really play dynamically. While civics in Civ IV meant you could change your strategy on the fly, in Civ V I feel like I get locked into a victory condition too early on, and having to straight up start over half your social policies or ideologies for changing over is too great a punishment.

As for 1 unit per tile, yeah, it still kinda sucks at times. I think the game would be improved if you could have military units walk through other military units, or share tiles, but only the "first" unit on the tile could attack/defend so you'd still have to spread out during fights. But, what's done is done I guess, and they won't be changing it.

With a few more patches and tweaks I think Civ V could be as good as Civ IV. I'm still enjoying it, though. It's not the same game, and it's not quite as complicated, but it feels a lot less cheesy and gamey than it did before, and you don't really have to rely on exploits (trade 1 GPT etc.) and memorizing hidden AI stats to win at high difficulties like you tend to in Civ IV.

Eh. You can specialize a lot. You have more options for making a city work in non-ideal conditions in Civ V (they just require trade-offs, special techs or civs). But, I think you end up building more in Civ V because maintenance fees are not as big an issue, and because gold-buying everything is still too viable an option (especially units), so there's less reason to have a "military production city" or a "money city". And generally speaking the benefits of going tall instead of wide are still a bit too great - Civ IV made it a lot easier to have tons of cities so in Civ V your cities tend to be fewer and more generic in order for you to still be competitive.

 

Well, I have finally given up on the game, and the main reason is that it feels like expanding in this game is unnecessary at best and detrimental at worst. I got as far as renaissance in my last game (marathon setting because I like long games... well, I did in Civ4 at least) before getting frustrated and bored. For the entire game I was stuck on a small continent more or less alone, with next to no contact outside. Then once I got ocean travelling tech I quickly build ships to take whatever land was left uninhabited outside. Turns out I didn't have to worry - half the bloody planet was still empty, including some prime locations. The AI was just wasn't expanding, and I realised that there was a reason for that - the game punishes you too hard for expanding as too many things scale with the number of cities. Here's an example - many wonders require a certain building in all of your cities. Even in that new colony on the ass end of the world you just build. And the cost of the wonder itself scales with the number of cities (why, I have no idea). That's just absurd and annoying as hell. Unhappiness scales with the number of cities, and because of the mechanic of civilization-wide happiness going red is not an option. Cultural costs scale with the number of cities. Golden age thresholds scale with the number of cities. Research costs scale with the number of cities. Is there anything in this game that doesn't scale with the number of cities?

Compare that to Civ4 where the only cost of expansion was city maintenance that you could control through economy sliders and civics choices. You can't expand too quickly or your economy will suffer, but you still wanted to expand because once you started developing them those cities would pay themselves back soon enough. Just what is the point of expanding in Civ5 anyway? The only thing that comes to my mind is more production, but for what purpose? You only need a fraction of the military you could have in Civ4, and for any other purpose you could have comfortably stayed on just the core four or so cities. So this is the biggest problem I have with this game - in a 4X game they have removed most of the reasons for expansion (and indeed often made it detrimental to do so) so that now a player can finish the game regardless of how many cities, population or territory he has. Civilization 5 - it really does scale to your level. Maybe the game picks up at the point I left it, but I just can't play it any more. Fuck it, I'm going back to FfH2.

 

Lol Civilization 5-scales to your level

 

Welcome to random map generation. In my experience a standard continents map will end up with equal numbers of civs on each continent, but there are sometimes weird maps that show up. Same thing could happen in Civ IV, in fact it happened to me far more often in that game than Civ V.

No. It depends on the AIs. They could be embroiled in wars, neglecting expansion. They could have gone tradition instead of liberty, favoring few cities instead of many. Some civs are naturally expansion-oriented (i.e. America) and others favor small empires. The map usually fills up eventually but again, sometimes weird stuff can happen. This isn't "normal" for Civ V at all as you seem to imply it is.

Those are called national wonders, which every civ can build. Almost all national wonders are things you get early game when you have few cities, before you are going to expand heavily. It's not like you lose the effect of the national wonders once you get more cities. And being able to get easier access to national wonders is part of the trade-off in going for a bigger empire vs. a smaller one.

You can get bigger cities that are more pressed for happiness due to high population, or you can go for more but smaller cities which get more benefit from happiness buildings. What's the problem? It's pretty well balanced. I do agree a local resource, like health, could improve the game strategically, but what's there isn't exactly broken (though it was a couple years back before many, many patches).

Perhaps you're missing the point that these changes were made to make small empires viable. In Civ IV was that the biggest empire was the best empire, and while perhaps somewhat more realistic, it wasn't necessarily well balanced, and you could get screwed over fast due to lack of land - if you didn't get X cities you were basically fucked. The new system is more versatile even though it "nerfs" large sprawling empires. Now you can't just defeat 1 other civ and let your momentum take you to victory over everyone else, because you have to choose to burn cities, give them away, puppet them, etc. It sounds to me like you're just upset your old play-style doesn't work.

More buildings to multiply your base culture, science, and gold, so empire-wide you will be able to obtain more of these resources than a small empire (but it's harder to manage).

More cities means your empire is harder to take by enemies in war, and lets you build more units at once.

Bigger culture borders also mean you have access to more luxury and strategic resources; having 3 iron deposits early game is way better than having 1, when a simple pillage will ruin your army, and it's often better to have resources yourself than to have to trade for them with the AI.

More cities means more internal trade routes, which means you have more ways to fuel your growth or production.

Getting more cities out early game denies territory to the AI and also stops barbarians from spawning.

I could go on, but yeah I guess there's no reason to go wide in Civ V at all, right?

 

But that's just it - fuck balancing if it means that small civilizations are just as viable as large. It's a 4X game - explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Expand - grow or die. I build or conquer a city and the game hits me with a bunch of nonsensical (why is research time dependant on the number of cities?) penalties that make me much worse off then I was before. I now have to work hard just to get back to were I was before expanding. So why would I expand? Sure, I can get more culture now when I build up my city, but the cost of policies has immediately went up as well - even after building culture buildings I will have to wait a long, long time just to be back to zero. I don't need extra units because of the one unit per tile rule and because the tactical AI is retarded. For the same reason I don't need extra strategic resources. I also don't need extra luxuries because I don't need extra happiness if I'm not expanding. I can fuel my economy through trade routes that are not dependant on the number of cities. It looks like the AI often doesn't care about territory either (it certainly didn't in the two games I played), but even if it did that just means it would run against those same problems. And since when are barbarians a threat to anyone?

It's not that you cannot go wide if you really try to, what gets me is that you don't need to. The game really does scale to your level. If you expand, the game hits you with just enough penalties that negate most if not all of the purpose behind your expansion to keep you on the same power level as the smaller civilizations. I hate balancing done in such a heavy handed way.

 

I dunno if Civ has ever really been a true "4X" game but either way, the fact that now small empires are made more viable doesn't exactly ruin the game either. Small size doesn't mean small population or lack of capability - what matters is your ability to effectively manage what you have.

What's nonsensical? First off, science is based on population and augmented by specialists, because more people equals more smart people who are contributing to sciences. Second, your empire is unhappy because it absorbed a city full of people it just conquered... it makes sense for them to be upset. That penalty disappears over time as you would expect it to. Furthermore you can justify the empire-wide happiness penalty to the fact that people don't like war/foreigners/etc., just like war weariness in Civ IV.

Puppet cities don't contribute to culture costs, and you're not expected to be constantly expanding throughout the game. Greater required culture for new policies per city is a balancing mechanism because if you could just immediately get a huge culture bonus by settling a few cities, with no real costs involved, there'd be no real choice involved - it's just "build more cities because more cities are always good." Again, not really realistic but it makes for better gameplay because there is now an extra choice to make with gameplay consequences when previously there was none.

Depends. If you're playing on high difficulties (especially deity) the army sizes of enemy AIs get to be insane, and if you get DOW'd by two or more, your army of 5-10 guys can actually disappear really fast. Against human opponents this is a moot complaint. And if you seriously think that having one unit per tile significantly limits army size (unless you are constantly playing tiny maps) then you probably aren't using your military effectively.

So you're going to go for the whole game using only 1-2 of each type of strategic resource, and you're going to keep your cities low pop to avoid needing luxuries? You must be winning every game you play with that approach.

True, and I think city state trade routes need to be nerfed. But inter-empire trade routes don't boost gold, they let you make certain cities in difficult locations more viable, or otherwise boost one up at the expense of others (more food or hammers).

Do you play on a difficulty above prince? Barbarians will significantly fuck with your trade routes and cause major problems to expansion as of Brave New World, and they will actually try to take your cities at times (though still very rarely). As I said, some AIs are more expansion-driven than others. But due to the overall more measured pace of the game and higher cost to establishing cities compared to Civ IV, no, you can't expect an entire continent to be completely settled by turn 100 - and if an AI tries to do this it'll probably bankrupt itself or severely mess up its tech development due to lack of gold and/or happiness. Now the AI will always build within their means instead of just expanding constantly (like they used to in earlier versions of Civ V).

Wide empires are more powerful than tall empires, they're just harder to make effective. So basically you're playing it safer and easier and convincing yourself you don't need to expand - and it's true, in some games you don't have to, especially on easier settings. Again, play on harder difficulties and see how your lack of expansion treats you. Yeah, it's lame the AI has to cheat through bonuses rather than be formidable itself, but at least it forces you to actually use strategy and planning.

I'm not trying to say Civ V is free of problems or anything (as I said earlier) but I think your complaints stem from a lack of experience with it and your belief that the game should be more like Civ IV. You can't reasonably make strong conclusions about Civ V based on one or two games with it. If I did the same after running through Civ IV once or twice on the easier difficulty settings I'd say the exact same things - too easy, too boring, shitty combat, lame city development, etc.

Incidentally, that's also why reviews of Civ tend to suck - you realistically need at least a good 100 hours in a game to start to draw serious conclusions about its value as a strategy game. Everything after that is just first impressions and whether a given feature appeals to you or not.

 

The lead designer said that the penalties to expansion were too severe sea. There's no need to defend it.

 

I exclusively play huge maps on marathon speed, so I haven't finished a full game with BNW yet, but so far:

• The AI seems a lot less aggressive early on, in terms of both expansion and declaring war.
• Waaaay more barbarians. This caught me by surprise and sort of fucked me over early on. This might be part of the reason for my first point.
• Gold and culture are far more difficult to get until you start using the new trade routes and great works/artifacts.
• I'm a big fan of how they handled foreign trade routes. Now you actually have to set up trading caravans/ships to travel from one of your cities to another city. The caravans/ships actually have to travel on the map from destination to destination, meaning you now have to actually protect your trade routes or they'll be attacked and pillaged. Both sides make money, with owner of the trade route making more. I also like how technology, religion and tourism are also shared between civilizations along these trade routes.
• It's nice that you can use local trade routes to finally transfer food/production from one of your cities to another, but I hate how it takes up a your precious trade route slot and how the food/production transferred to the other city isn't subtracted from the source city. It just magically appears. I'm also not entirely sure how to influence the amount of food/production that gets "exported."
• Archaeology seems kind of gimmicky so far. When the you get the appropriate tech, a bunch of archaeology sites pop up all over the map and you build and expend archaeologists to turn the site either into an artifact or a landmark (a culture producing tile).
• The new world congress has potential. It totally fucked me in my current game. I literally had a world monopoly on pearls and was making a killing trading them for other luxuries and gold. Then the world congress decided to propose banning pearls as unethical, and it fucking passed. Now my pearls are useless and provide no benefit, so I can't trade them anymore. My economy has gone to shit and my citizens are unhappy. That was totally unexpected. I think I'm going to fuck up Carthage out of spite. I might have been able to avert this if I played around with the new diplomats.
• Winning by conquest is still easy mode. If the combat AI improved, I didn't notice.

I'm looking forward to playing with the new ideologies and seeing how tourism really works.

 

Well, you can say it's "overflow" food that would otherwise be wasted I guess? Not all cities consume all available food in real life, if you want to think of it that way. As for the quantity, I think it's dependent on era.

Maybe, but it creates a race for claiming the sites with other civs. Archaeologists take some time to build and are consumed with each use, so grabbing sites can potentially incite conflicts etc.

Yeah, world congress is cool and can really open potential to change the late game. I like how its diplomatic function gets more evolved as you get later into the game, where instead of managing resources and settling new locations you're squabbling with other leaders over international affairs. It creates a more cooperative side to the late game that was desperately needed (both in Civ IV and V). Also gives espionage more meaning in the late game or if you're the tech leader.

Hopefully, Steam Workshop support means someone will be able to mod combat AI to make it non-retarded. I think there was a mod for Civ IV that overhauled AI which was pretty popular, so in theory it should be possible for Civ V as well.