So was Civ4 dumbed down?

[JoKa]

hence the mostly done right
i'm not really disagreeing but what i'm missing in your post is the comparision with civ4...

 

[Malakal]

hence the mostly done right
i'm not really disagreeing but what i'm missing in your post is the comparision with civ4...

Unfortunately there is nothing to compare... In SMAC terraforming is way too powerful, in Civ4 it's nonexistent. You can't even irrigate deserts or plant forests. This aspect could be easily improved...

 

[MetalCraze]

Unfortunately there is nothing to compare... In SMAC terraforming is way too powerful

SMAC is sci-fi and the future - nuclear bombs are also less dangerous in Civs - if you remember SMAC's Planet Buster can take several towns with it -underwater-. In Alpha Centauri sci-fi was used correctly for once.

in Civ4 it's nonexistent.

Civ4 is "historically realistic"

The only problem I have with SMAC is that it gives you 300-400 turns (depending on the difficulty) and thus short - though it's offset by the speed at which events go - you can have an army and developed cities pretty quickly so you can concentrate on many other things whereas in Civs in the beginning you just click through turns because nothing happens.

 

[coldcrow]

Actually the best mod for Civ4 is "Planetfall", a take on SMAC. It is a very mature mod now with relentless native life, very good AI (better AI mod incooporated), differentating religions/dogmas and interesting units.
For example if you accumulate a negative Planet value through terraforming, the worms will especially target you and also you run risk of fungus blooms which will spawm fungus and some worms. If I have one small gripewith it, it would be that playing a Planet lover is a bit too easy compared to the middle ground or outright terrafoming.

I'd install Civ4 for that one, MetalCraze.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

You CANNOT use one unit type + artillery. Cavalry will get decimated by a few spearmen. Archers in a city on a hill will be nearly impossible to take down without specific anti city/archer units or a lot of artillery. Artillery is no longer a magical auto-kill-everything unit. It just gets some bonuses for certain kinds of combat and has a very high withdrawing chance so it rarely dies. But it still gets fucked up in combat, so you can't camp next to a city with a few units and bombard them for 30 years.

:

Pretty much the best way to take any city is to spam your strongest type of unit and a bunch of artillery. Bombard until theres no defense bonus, then attack with all the artillery which does collateral damage, and by the time you get to your other units it doesn't matter what type they are, because all the units in the city are so hurt from the artillery attacks. Combat outside cities is better in Civ4, but I'd hesitate before saying city combat is at all improved, and artillery is still definitely OP.

Even without a city defense bonus, archers in a city on a hill with no promotions gets a 75% bonus, bringing their effective strength up to 5.25, better than even axemen and they cost nearly a third less shields. With even two promotions they can get another 45% to bring them up to 6.6. And this is AFTER having the city bombarded to 0, which will take long enough they'll be able to bring in plenty of reinforcements and harass your best attackers with their own axemen or cavalry.

If you have so much artillery to waste that you can bring every single archer they have low with a single attack (Since they'll heal up the next turn and your artillery will be fucked until you can get it out of enemy territory to heal) then you could have just swarmed them with women wielding floppy dildos anyways you had such a massive economic advantage.

Uh, not really. Even assuming it's a really well defended city on a hill with 5 promoted archers, the first two catapults you attack with might die, but due to the collateral damage, anything after that is unlikely to die, so 4 catapults and a couple anything else against a city with 5 archers should easily be able to win. And this is assuming your catapults are unpromoted while the archers are promoted, if you even the playing field in that way, then even the first catapult attack has a very good chance of winning immediately, and every one after should easily win. The key in taking cities in Civ4 is to utilize collateral damage, because it is overpowered.

 

[Marsal]

So 4 catapults and a couple of anything (that would have to be at least 5 in this case, because catapults can't kill anything) cost how many hammers exactly? How many turns do you have to bombard a city to get it to 0 defense? 2? 3? So, you're just sitting there in front of an enemy city for 3 turns plus the time it took you to get there in the first place and paying 1 gold per unit of upkeep every turn, while he whips up more soldiers? What if he whips up a swordsman and all you did is bring spearmen? What about a couple of horse archers with shock and all you have is axemen with cover? How many catapults do you lose then? All of them? And all axmen, too.

And let's not forget that it takes a while to tech to catapults, let alone produce a sufficient number of them. Considering archers can be upgraded immediatelly into longbowmen or crossbowmen (assuming you have the gold), it's not a far fetched scenario that pits longbowmen vs catapults, depending on game speed and other game parameters.

Don't make general conclusions based on limited in-game observations. Yes, you can defeat anything with a large enough stack of siege weapons and any other unit. But, why would you want to? You want to get maximum efficiency for your hammers. Pumping one type of unit is not (in general) the best way.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Catapults won't do shit to a hill city with archers before bombardment. Archers will have over 7 strength and at least one first strike. And if your stack has only Axemen (Strength 5), Chariots (100% bonus vs axemen, strength of 4) will rape them. On top of that, even assuming you take the city, good luck defending it with some crippled axemen that can't heal in the revolting city that has no barracks anymore.

This is ignoring the fact that your example still shows a gross excess of resources in favour of the aggressor. 200 shields worth of Catapults + some Axemen vs 125 shields worth of archers? Why don't you just rush them with 300 warriors oh chieftain master?

The only time a stack of a single unit type is worth it is if you have some godly unique unit for that era. Any other time you'll want variety to be most efficient. Just because you can crush an enemy with sheer numbers doesn't mean the combat is too simple. It'd be pretty retarded if 10 axemen and 5 catapults couldn't take down 5 archers. It's still better to use 5 axemen, 2 archers, 1 chariot, and 2 catapults to achieve the same end.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

Uh...shouldn't the attacker have the shields advantage? Seeing as there are a lot more defensive bonuses than offensive bonuses, you need to use more units or better units to attack a city if you want to have any sort of guarantee of taking it. Otherwise you're just asking to lose all those units in a failed assault while giving the defender extra experience. The question is how should you spend those extra shields: on regular units where the defender can have specialists against them, or siege weapons that tend to not have natural enemies and also do collateral damage?

Maybe I'm just missing a better strategy to win, but after a lot of trial and error, I've been using siege weapon spam on Emperor/multiplayer for years and it's been good to me. If you do have a better way to do it, I would definitely be interested in hearing it/trying it out.

 

[Malakal]

Catapults won't do shit to a hill city with archers before bombardment. Archers will have over 7 strength and at least one first strike. And if your stack has only Axemen (Strength 5), Chariots (100% bonus vs axemen, strength of 4) will rape them. On top of that, even assuming you take the city, good luck defending it with some crippled axemen that can't heal in the revolting city that has no barracks anymore.

This is ignoring the fact that your example still shows a gross excess of resources in favour of the aggressor. 200 shields worth of Catapults + some Axemen vs 125 shields worth of archers? Why don't you just rush them with 300 warriors oh chieftain master?

The only time a stack of a single unit type is worth it is if you have some godly unique unit for that era. Any other time you'll want variety to be most efficient. Just because you can crush an enemy with sheer numbers doesn't mean the combat is too simple. It'd be pretty retarded if 10 axemen and 5 catapults couldn't take down 5 archers. It's still better to use 5 axemen, 2 archers, 1 chariot, and 2 catapults to achieve the same end.

Since Civ is 'grand' strategy game you need to consider lots of factors. Compare technologies: bronze/iron working is awesome (cutting forests/provides both defensive and offensive units/jungle removal which is a must in tropical maps/leads to even more awesome techs/and SLAVERY) while archery gives you only archers. What is more when investing in archers you weaken your overall force: you can't take archers from a city and form a defensive army or quickly recapture lost cities.
Now next is army burden on economy and force projection. Archer costs as much upkeep as axemen. You can't attack with archer. That means you must have some more mobile forces to counter pillaging or you cities wont grow more than ~3 size. Bronze/Iron working reveals more resources on the map improving your cities.
And yes, axemen and catapults are more expensive. But you can easily use population to build them, and axemen costs only 1 ie as much as archer.
And chariots only defeat axemen when attacking, I think its +100% offense vs axemen not 100% overall. Good luck defending with that(not to mention lack of defensive bonuses).

Civ4 is "historically realistic"

It tries to be. But in history we have many examples of limited terraforming. Dutch coast changed to grasslands. Jungle changed to grassland then plains then desert due to deforestation. Large areas of desert near Nile and Kaspian sea changed to farmlands (grasslands). We can't create or destroy mountains but it should be possible to at least irrigate deserts and dig channels (as in SMAC).

 

[MetalCraze]

Well that's another gameplay problem with Civ4 then - in Civ2 it was possible to do that.

 

[poocolator]

Jungle is easily converted to grassland in civ4. Slaving plebs make sure of it, cutting down swathes of forest. But that's pretty much it for terraforming, even in the late game, aside from desertification brought about by global warming, or whatever.

 

[GarfunkeL]

And there's fucking nothing you can do about which is annoying.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Doesn't global warming happen only if you start nuking the shit out of stuff?

 

[poocolator]

I don't remember. You're probably right anyway. But I could swear having a lot of high-pollution cities affected the global climate.

 

[Panthera]

The one thing that pissed me off the most was how they put religion into the game. They all give the exact same bonuses as each other because they were afraid some people might get offended if they made them *gasp* different.

No, they did it because it doesn't make any sense. All religion is bullshit, and all they're all abused to mean whatever people want them to mean. What you're thinking of is cultural differences, which are different from civ to civ and your decisions therein.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Doesn't global warming happen only if you start nuking the shit out of stuff?

Have enough pollution and it starts. Nuking just speeds it up, considerably. Which means that fun way to end the game is stockpile ENOUGH nukes, then declare war on everyone, nuke every city in the world that is not yours - in one turn - and watch how the world turns into a desert.

Extra points if your spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri while your enemies are razing your towns and everyone is starving since 90% farmland has disappeared.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

The one thing that pissed me off the most was how they put religion into the game. They all give the exact same bonuses as each other because they were afraid some people might get offended if they made them *gasp* different.

No, they did it because it doesn't make any sense. All religion is bullshit, and all they're all abused to mean whatever people want them to mean.

Obviously, since Buddhism and Confucianism are fucking same.

Shut your STD hole, ignorant twat.

 

[Panthera]

Theological differences don't add up to cultural differences. And what about Christianity, Judaism and Islam? Same shit, different pile.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Theological differences don't add up to cultural differences.

Are you fucking retarded

Go convince a buddhist to go to war

Go convince confucianist to vote for universal suffrage

Or suck a cock

 

[Panthera]

Because Thailand, China, Cambodia or Vietnam never fought in wars.

There is so much variety in the interpretation of religions that pinning a modifier on it makes no sense whatsoever from a realism perspective, especially if you're talking about management from a nation state level. Argue it from a gameplay perspective, sure, but consider how different Muslim populations in the Middle East, Europe and Africa are. Religion is used justify existing culture.

 

[MetalCraze]

Extra points if your spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri while your enemies are razing your towns and everyone is starving since 90% farmland has disappeared.

That's nearly how it was when I was playing Civ2 the last time. Except two other enemy nations launched ships and they would've reached AC earlier than me so I had to attack the capitals just in time to stop ships from reaching their destination - all of this while the world was turning into a desert and everyone was fighting everyone.
Civ2 is p. awesome

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Because Thailand, China, Cambodia or Vietnam never fought in wars.

They never had a state religion of fucking buddhism either.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor]

Just play TAM, or STFU.

http://tam.ancient.eu.com/

 

[poocolator]

Just play TAM, or STFU.

http://tam.ancient.eu.com/

I don't want to even try a mod where the head coder is Albanian, especially a mod about ancient Mediterranean cultures. As civilized as that particular Albanian may be, I'm certain he's managed to weasel some "Illyrian" shit into the final product, tainting it. King Zog would be proud.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

First: It seems like we can have much better discussions as a forum about strategy games than RPGs. Why is that?

Second: Civ IV is a really high quality game. I wouldn't call it dumbed down at all, actually, just changed. Streamlined might be the right word for it. Most of the changes they made were for the better, and there are a lot of good mods that make the game really worth the time and money. Plus, it's Sid Meier, so it has that "one more turn" effect like a mother fucker.