I'm not sure if anyone keeps up with some of the discussions about Civ5 such as here or there. Or looking at the reviews of Civ5 at Amazon.com
Complaints about 3.5-> 4E are similar to Civ4 -> Civ5
thoughts?
Similarities between 4E and Civ5
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Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp
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Similarities between 4E and Civ5
Last edited by Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp on Wed Oct 06, 2010 11:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Similarities between 4E and Civ5
Having played Civ 5 quite a bit I don't think it's as radical a shift as 3.5 -> 4e. Is Civ 5 is more 'streamlined' than Civ 4, and it does have a few really good ideas, like how roads work, the hexagonal maps and how culture expands your borders. As a consequence though Civ 5 looses some of the options that Civ 4 had, some of which are infuriating, like you can't set your tax rate and you can't use gold to hurry the production. Ultimately, I'm getting around to installing the expansions to Civ 4, I'll let Civ 5 gestate for a few months or years until its 'done'.Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:I'm not sure if anyone keeps up with some of the discussions about Civ5 such as here or there. Or looking at the reviews of Civ5 at Amazon.com
Complaints about 3.5-> 4E are similar to Civ4 -> Civ5
thoughts?[/url]
Civ V is somewhat a big change compared to Civ IV. But if you've been playing Civ since the beginning... it honestly feels more like a return to normalcy 
.
People are forgetting that when somebody talks about Civ IV, they're usually talking about Civ IV + Warlords (Meh) + Beyond the Sword (Great expansion, but mainly because Soren finally left and Firaxis hired a good AI designer). Taken together, the main game plus two expansions have a ton of stuff that Civ V doesn't have (Religion, Corporations, Espionage etc).
The thing is, I don't think the complete Civ IV experience is necessarily a good thing. Let's be honest here. Religion in Civ IV sucked. It was just an extra way to produce happiness and culture. Corporations gave you nice things to make ultra-mega cities, but if you know how to manipulate the system you can make them even without corporations. Espionage in Civ IV was simply terrible.
Civ V, by comparison, felt surprisingly streamlined where all the components mattered. Even the fiddly tactical battle mini-game you have to play during wartime seemed to be in-tune with the rest of the system. And to me, that's actually an improvement. Late-game Civ turns are already a pain in the ass to manage. I don't need several extra layers of busy work (via Corporations, religion) that produce just miniscule benefits.
Plus, the interface is good. And the strategic view is very cute.
Also, at least they made Cultural victories much less retarded than before.
.People are forgetting that when somebody talks about Civ IV, they're usually talking about Civ IV + Warlords (Meh) + Beyond the Sword (Great expansion, but mainly because Soren finally left and Firaxis hired a good AI designer). Taken together, the main game plus two expansions have a ton of stuff that Civ V doesn't have (Religion, Corporations, Espionage etc).
The thing is, I don't think the complete Civ IV experience is necessarily a good thing. Let's be honest here. Religion in Civ IV sucked. It was just an extra way to produce happiness and culture. Corporations gave you nice things to make ultra-mega cities, but if you know how to manipulate the system you can make them even without corporations. Espionage in Civ IV was simply terrible.
Civ V, by comparison, felt surprisingly streamlined where all the components mattered. Even the fiddly tactical battle mini-game you have to play during wartime seemed to be in-tune with the rest of the system. And to me, that's actually an improvement. Late-game Civ turns are already a pain in the ass to manage. I don't need several extra layers of busy work (via Corporations, religion) that produce just miniscule benefits.
Plus, the interface is good. And the strategic view is very cute.
Also, at least they made Cultural victories much less retarded than before.
QFTZinegata wrote: But if you've been playing Civ since the beginning... it honestly feels more like a return to normalcy
The thing is, I don't think the complete Civ IV experience is necessarily a good thing. Let's be honest here. Religion in Civ IV sucked. It was just an extra way to produce happiness and culture. Corporations gave you nice things to make ultra-mega cities, but if you know how to manipulate the system you can make them even without corporations. Espionage in Civ IV was simply terrible.
The biggest gripe about Civ V I have is the slow speed of the early game.
It feels like during the ancient age everyone was into experimental drugs. They don't get anything done and time seems to pass awfully fast.
In Civ 4 and 5 you get a radius of culture around your cities, how big it is depending on how much culture your city has. In Civ 4 a city can annex an enemy city if its culture envelops the other city, to win a cultural victory you have to have a large portion of the map controlled by your civ's culture. In number 5 you just have to collect a number of culture points to win, thats it. The number increases relative to the number of cities you have, but the more cities you have the more culture you can generate.
Gotcha.
I love Civ - I doubt I'll be able to play 5 because my computer's retarded, but I love the game.
I love Civ - I doubt I'll be able to play 5 because my computer's retarded, but I love the game.
My son makes me laugh. Maybe he'll make you laugh, too.
Hrm, just blew all of Civ IV off my laptop, and downloading 5 now.
Sure hope I'm not going to regret this. Guess I'll read them reviews.
Sure hope I'm not going to regret this. Guess I'll read them reviews.
Kaelik, to Tzor wrote: And you aren't shot in the face?
Frank Trollman wrote:A government is also immortal ...On the plus side, once the United Kingdom is no longer united, the United States of America will be the oldest country in the world. USA!
They're very hard to achieve, and you need to aim for this strategy from Day One.Maj wrote:What made cultural victories retarded?
You need to have three cities hit 50,000 Culture to win a cultural victory. An average game (on normal speed) lasts about 500 turns. That means you need 3 cities producing 100 culture every turn to hit the 50,000 target.
This is especially daunting when you consider that you usually don't produce a lot of culture for the first couple turns in the game. Being Creative (a mandatory trait for this "strat") gives a flat +2 culture per turn (only 98 more to go!) and buildings give another 2-4 culture per turn.
The main (and pretty much only) way to get around this puny cultural production is to exploit the "thousand year building" rule. For every thousand actual years a building remains standing, its cultural output doubles. So a humble temple built in 3000 BC can seriously produce more culture than a late-game wonder, and it's the only way to pump your cultural output to around 150-200 in the late game to make up for the lack of cultural production in the early game.
The problem is, it's very risky to build buildings early in the game. You need to focus on non-military techs to even build these buildings (You might not even have archers). Also, because you also need to build Settlers to quickly build 2 more cities, you generally can't build a lot of military defense either. This spells a quick death at higher difficulty levels if you have any warlike neighbors, or if the Barbarians come calling in force.
(It's also worth noting that if one of your wonder cities is ever captured, the accumulated culture evaporates. Meaning game over from a cultural victory perspective).
No other victory path in Civ IV requires this level of babysitting. If you instead follow the "normal" Civ IV early game (expand quickly, build a decent military, pump up research), you can go for Conquest, Diplomatic, or Space Race victory. You have a lot of options, and you can still keep fighting even if some of your cities are captured or razed.
Hence, winning by cultural victory isn't really an option. It's a challenge - and a really painful one at that. And what makes it doubly infuriating is that the Cultural Victory doesn't scale based on map size, or game length. It's always 3 cities at 50K culture. So it's a bit easier to win this way on Marathon speed (1000 turns instead of 500), but totally impossible at faster speeds (250 or so turns instead of 500). I suspect this is because Soren (lead designer) didn't really think this through.
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Civ V's cultural victory by comparison, counts the culture you gathered from your whole empire (and not just 3 cities). When you get enough culture, you just build some hyper structure and everyone ascends to a higher level of existence (or something like that). Thus, you can still keep aiming for a cultural victory even if you lose some key cities. It'd be a setback, but it's not the end of the game.
Moreover, you now get Civics based on the amount of culture you get. This is a huge improvement because Civics help your Empire out a lot regardless of your strategy. Getting a 50% discount on all Settlers you'll ever produce? That's golden.
In comparison, culture in Civ IV just gives you bigger borders (Meh), increases a city's defense bonus (not much help if you don't have any military to speak of), or very occassionally annex an enemy city via culture flip (doubly meh. Because these cities tend to be underdeveloped and badly placed).
Last edited by Zinegata on Wed Oct 06, 2010 3:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
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TheFlatline
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Re: Similarities between 4E and Civ5
It's too much like playing a video game and the combats are like padded sumo?Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:Complaints about 3.5-> 4E are similar to Civ4 -> Civ5
City States are indeed awesome, both in-game and concept-wise. And I really enjoy how seamless this addition "feels" like.TheFlatline wrote:Not only that, but I managed to stay allied to 3 cultured city states for most of the game, and they all produced metric assloads of culture for me. I think by the modern era I was pulling in well over 500 culture a turn, and I wasn't even *focusing* on culture.
Moreover, I particularly like how City States become a key component of a Diplomatic victory. Before, it was almost impossible to get a Diplo-win vs high level AIs because they'll never vote for you.
But now that there are "NPC" cities that you can bribe into voting for you, a diplo win is much more plausible.
Which should be the case. Different victory paths should exist only if they're actually viable. Not because they want another marketing copy point. With Civ V's setup I can really see people gunning for different victory paths depending on their late game situation.
Odd, I always found cultural victories to be so easy as to be pretty much cheating (never played much MP, tho). That's why I didn't like them, too easy, unlike space race (takes forever), domination (a pain to do except very early in the game), diplomacy (kind of tough, you need to nearly dominate), or religion (tricky at times, and can become impossible easily).
The trick is absolutely to figure out which 3 cities you're going to focus on, and not build any wonders (or many other cultural buildings) anywhere else.
The 'ancient bonus' is nice, but the real key is getting lots of religions and building cathedrals/equivalents in those culture cities. Each one grants a +50% bonus to all culture; that, and putting resources into culture instead of other knowledge/money/espionage, can have you producing many hundreds of culture a turn (nearly 1,000 by endgame). Toss in a few artists (+6000 culture each), and you can have all your cities hiting the cap on nearly the same turn.
You can go full-throttle and focus on making artists, which speeds up the processs hugely, but even just by focusing on 3 cities, you can get there in the late 19th/early 20th centuries quite consistently...if I hadn't just erased all my games, I'd give actual numbers, but there's guides on doing it, it's not that tough at all.
Dang, DL at 40%, not going to play Civ 5 tonight, that's for sure.
The trick is absolutely to figure out which 3 cities you're going to focus on, and not build any wonders (or many other cultural buildings) anywhere else.
The 'ancient bonus' is nice, but the real key is getting lots of religions and building cathedrals/equivalents in those culture cities. Each one grants a +50% bonus to all culture; that, and putting resources into culture instead of other knowledge/money/espionage, can have you producing many hundreds of culture a turn (nearly 1,000 by endgame). Toss in a few artists (+6000 culture each), and you can have all your cities hiting the cap on nearly the same turn.
You can go full-throttle and focus on making artists, which speeds up the processs hugely, but even just by focusing on 3 cities, you can get there in the late 19th/early 20th centuries quite consistently...if I hadn't just erased all my games, I'd give actual numbers, but there's guides on doing it, it's not that tough at all.
Dang, DL at 40%, not going to play Civ 5 tonight, that's for sure.
Last edited by Doom on Wed Oct 06, 2010 4:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
Here's the thing though Doom... religion, cathedrals, and everything you need to produce culture don't net you anything else but culture.
Religion and religious buildings mainly add happiness, which isn't a big issue if you survived the early game. And culture itself doesn't really do much for you.
Moreover, if just one of your legendary cities get captured... your game is essentially done.
In comparison, a trade or specialist-based economy is much more liquid and capable of shifting gears. And that's the real issue with culture in Civ IV - it largely exists for its own sake. Unlike science (which nets you bigger guns and better buildings) or money (which you can use for rush builds, bribes, etc), culture does nothing but sit in your cities.
That's why it's really a self-imposed challenge strat - once you're committed to it, you have to take it all the way at the expense of other victory conditions. A technology leader aiming for a Space Race victory can still pick up military techs along the way and go for Conquest as Plan B, but if you pour your trade 100% into culture for a number of turns, and then one of your Legendary Cities gets captured, you're pretty much done because you'll be far behind in tech and have no money.
Moreover, even if you decide to risk not getting ancient buildings, you need to commit to a culture win fairly early and do the math well in advance. You can't just decide to switch to culture victory in the last 50 turns unless you've built up everything you need beforehand.
Religion and religious buildings mainly add happiness, which isn't a big issue if you survived the early game. And culture itself doesn't really do much for you.
Moreover, if just one of your legendary cities get captured... your game is essentially done.
In comparison, a trade or specialist-based economy is much more liquid and capable of shifting gears. And that's the real issue with culture in Civ IV - it largely exists for its own sake. Unlike science (which nets you bigger guns and better buildings) or money (which you can use for rush builds, bribes, etc), culture does nothing but sit in your cities.
That's why it's really a self-imposed challenge strat - once you're committed to it, you have to take it all the way at the expense of other victory conditions. A technology leader aiming for a Space Race victory can still pick up military techs along the way and go for Conquest as Plan B, but if you pour your trade 100% into culture for a number of turns, and then one of your Legendary Cities gets captured, you're pretty much done because you'll be far behind in tech and have no money.
Moreover, even if you decide to risk not getting ancient buildings, you need to commit to a culture win fairly early and do the math well in advance. You can't just decide to switch to culture victory in the last 50 turns unless you've built up everything you need beforehand.
Happiness is a bit of a factor on the higher skill levels, although I admit you don't need it much at Prince or so.
Culture also gives you wide borders. Yes, culture-flipping is hard, but wide borders give you great protection from barbarians (early game), and considerable warning against attacks from other civs and allow easier invasions (rest of the game), and easier full conversions of cities you capture militarily.
Those benefits might not be as amazing as, say, tanks, but you get them all fairly quickly.
That assumption, "one of your legendary cities gets captured" is mighty, mighty, strong.
It's true you'll be hard pressed to win a culture victory that way (not impossible, but tough), but you're not going to win the space race if your main capsule building city gets captured and any other civ is close to finishing, and you'll have huge science/money issues if your science/money city gets captured (on higher skill levels, you need to focus cities).
Every game I play, I play with "what do I need to do to win the culture race", I admit you have to figure that out early on. But every game I play, I keep an eye for every other victory condition, settling for space race if nothing else works. Most of my wins were (lame) culture wins, because those are the easiest by far, and you don't need a 'culture civ' to win that way, any more than you need German panzers to win a conquest victory.
Culture also gives you wide borders. Yes, culture-flipping is hard, but wide borders give you great protection from barbarians (early game), and considerable warning against attacks from other civs and allow easier invasions (rest of the game), and easier full conversions of cities you capture militarily.
Those benefits might not be as amazing as, say, tanks, but you get them all fairly quickly.
That assumption, "one of your legendary cities gets captured" is mighty, mighty, strong.
It's true you'll be hard pressed to win a culture victory that way (not impossible, but tough), but you're not going to win the space race if your main capsule building city gets captured and any other civ is close to finishing, and you'll have huge science/money issues if your science/money city gets captured (on higher skill levels, you need to focus cities).
Every game I play, I play with "what do I need to do to win the culture race", I admit you have to figure that out early on. But every game I play, I keep an eye for every other victory condition, settling for space race if nothing else works. Most of my wins were (lame) culture wins, because those are the easiest by far, and you don't need a 'culture civ' to win that way, any more than you need German panzers to win a conquest victory.
Kaelik, to Tzor wrote: And you aren't shot in the face?
Frank Trollman wrote:A government is also immortal ...On the plus side, once the United Kingdom is no longer united, the United States of America will be the oldest country in the world. USA!
I tend to play well above Prince .
The main (and frankly only) reason why the cultural victory can even work against the AI is because they aren't programmed to gang up on you if you're on the brink of winning the game. Capturing a legendary city may be a stretch, but only because the AI coming after your key city (the one building the capsule) is a stretch regardless of your game.
At Deity though, unless you cheat a little and you fill your game with peace-lovers, chances are someone will eventually knock on your door with 20+ soldiers.
Even worst, against human opponents, you're gonna have multiple guys coming after you the moment they notice you're going for a culture win. And with your labs and money turned off, you're probably dead meat. They only need to capture one city to knock you out of the game for good.
Moreover, the important difference is this: You can rebuild the capsule in some other city. Most players have a secondary city in addition to their main science/military/money city.
You cannot rebuild a city about to go into Legendary from scratch. You have to rebuild everything (Cathedrals, etc), then wait another 50 or so turns (even at 1K culture/turn) to hit Legendary. That's way longer than building a capsule.
And that's why cultural victories are retarded. The cost of a space race victory revolves mainly around paying for the science - but once researched that tech can never be taken from you. Building a Legendary city by contrast - represents a 50K trade investment that can be burned to the ground.
I'd like to note that I'm not saying that cultural victories are impossible to achieve. But they're not practical, especially if you like playing with whatever the map gives you as opposed to re-rolling for a good starting position.
At Deity level, for instance, the strategy guides to win via cultural victory are so specific that they have preconditions like "You need to have Stone in your starting city, otherwise restart the game" and "Play on a Pangea map with peaceful powers, so you meet everyone early and get their religions without being wiped out militarily". It's simply too narrow as a strategy.
Civ V, wherein Culture = Civics, presents a far more balanced implementation and is much less retarded. And it's clearly not just tacked on like in Civ IV where they even forgot to scale the victory conditions depending on map size and game length.
. The main (and frankly only) reason why the cultural victory can even work against the AI is because they aren't programmed to gang up on you if you're on the brink of winning the game. Capturing a legendary city may be a stretch, but only because the AI coming after your key city (the one building the capsule) is a stretch regardless of your game.
At Deity though, unless you cheat a little and you fill your game with peace-lovers, chances are someone will eventually knock on your door with 20+ soldiers.
Even worst, against human opponents, you're gonna have multiple guys coming after you the moment they notice you're going for a culture win. And with your labs and money turned off, you're probably dead meat. They only need to capture one city to knock you out of the game for good.
Moreover, the important difference is this: You can rebuild the capsule in some other city. Most players have a secondary city in addition to their main science/military/money city.
You cannot rebuild a city about to go into Legendary from scratch. You have to rebuild everything (Cathedrals, etc), then wait another 50 or so turns (even at 1K culture/turn) to hit Legendary. That's way longer than building a capsule.
And that's why cultural victories are retarded. The cost of a space race victory revolves mainly around paying for the science - but once researched that tech can never be taken from you. Building a Legendary city by contrast - represents a 50K trade investment that can be burned to the ground.
I'd like to note that I'm not saying that cultural victories are impossible to achieve. But they're not practical, especially if you like playing with whatever the map gives you as opposed to re-rolling for a good starting position.
At Deity level, for instance, the strategy guides to win via cultural victory are so specific that they have preconditions like "You need to have Stone in your starting city, otherwise restart the game" and "Play on a Pangea map with peaceful powers, so you meet everyone early and get their religions without being wiped out militarily". It's simply too narrow as a strategy.
Civ V, wherein Culture = Civics, presents a far more balanced implementation and is much less retarded. And it's clearly not just tacked on like in Civ IV where they even forgot to scale the victory conditions depending on map size and game length.
Last edited by Zinegata on Wed Oct 06, 2010 5:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
Well, against human opponents all bets are off. Discussions of game play for humans and AI don't even belong in the same thread. I don't think I've even *heard* of a space race game with all human players, any more than a culture game. Domination is pretty much the only sane strategy, as far as I've ever heard, or seen (but, really been a while, perhaps things have changed in MP strategy).
I very seldom reroll maps against the AI...part of the fun is the challenge, after all.
If you lose a Legendary city, you don't rebuild it, that is a hopeless task in terms of culture...you go to your #4 city. Assuming you fight off the AI (which you'd have to do under any victory condition), you'll have 2 cities making 500 or more a turn, and not a problem. If you're determined to go for a culture win, change everything over to producing artists, slam every artist you get into your #4 city, and, of course, put that city to making culture.
You won't set any high scores (against the AI, you're only playing for score), but you'll still have a decent chance of pulling it off by late 20th century or early 21st. Of course, in any game, if you lose a major city, you're not going to get high scores....but try playing a few games against the AI for culture win, and then check and see for yourself, your #4 city isn't *that* far behind. Losing one of the big three costs 50 years or more, but doesn't guarantee you can't do it.
If you have one of your old games that you've won via culture, load it up, and track down your #4 city and see for yourself...doable, if an unpleasant prospect.
I very seldom reroll maps against the AI...part of the fun is the challenge, after all.
If you lose a Legendary city, you don't rebuild it, that is a hopeless task in terms of culture...you go to your #4 city. Assuming you fight off the AI (which you'd have to do under any victory condition), you'll have 2 cities making 500 or more a turn, and not a problem. If you're determined to go for a culture win, change everything over to producing artists, slam every artist you get into your #4 city, and, of course, put that city to making culture.
You won't set any high scores (against the AI, you're only playing for score), but you'll still have a decent chance of pulling it off by late 20th century or early 21st. Of course, in any game, if you lose a major city, you're not going to get high scores....but try playing a few games against the AI for culture win, and then check and see for yourself, your #4 city isn't *that* far behind. Losing one of the big three costs 50 years or more, but doesn't guarantee you can't do it.
If you have one of your old games that you've won via culture, load it up, and track down your #4 city and see for yourself...doable, if an unpleasant prospect.
Kaelik, to Tzor wrote: And you aren't shot in the face?
Frank Trollman wrote:A government is also immortal ...On the plus side, once the United Kingdom is no longer united, the United States of America will be the oldest country in the world. USA!
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Username17
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Culture Flipping is too hard. Culture Victory is too easy.
And Espionage sucks monkey balls. Seriously, with all the Beyond the Sword crap in play you will never bother spending Espionage points. It is a fucking waste of time. It's just like Europa Universalis. There's this whole spying minigame, but you never use it for anything because even without the very real risk of failure and the chances for discovery and shit, the crap it does is simply not worth the cost.
So the idea that those things might have been changed into something completely unrecognizable is something I personally am all for. Civ4 was an improvement over Civ3, but I'm really not sure it was better than Civ2.
-Username17
And Espionage sucks monkey balls. Seriously, with all the Beyond the Sword crap in play you will never bother spending Espionage points. It is a fucking waste of time. It's just like Europa Universalis. There's this whole spying minigame, but you never use it for anything because even without the very real risk of failure and the chances for discovery and shit, the crap it does is simply not worth the cost.
So the idea that those things might have been changed into something completely unrecognizable is something I personally am all for. Civ4 was an improvement over Civ3, but I'm really not sure it was better than Civ2.
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The Lunatic Fringe
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Doom->
MP is mostly about domination, yes. But even in single player, Cultural victory gets hard in Deity especially when the AI can seriously push for a space race victory by the 1800s.
In short... It's obvious we have different frames of reference here. Deity AI (if you don't exploit its diplo engine) tends to send enough guys to seriously threaten all of your cities to render even its atrocious target selection moot. If they don't... they go for a space ship victory so quickly that you need to go for a very lean, mean, cultural victory strat that's highly conditional.
And yeah, I thought about a 4th city too. The problem is this - city #4 isn't always gonna be an option, simply because a Cultural City needs to be a grassland/plains city that either produces lots of food for specialists, or have lots of towns for trade. If you don't have a 4th grassland/plains city, you're screwed.
By contrast, you can convert a grassland city into a production powerhouse rather easily. There's that civic that gives +1 food to workshops. Simply worshop every tile, and you get +3 production in the later game per workshop. Getting a production engine up is relatively easy with enough techs.
Ultimately, my point is this: Cultural wins are very conditional, and going for such a victory turns your empire upside down to the point that it stops functioning properly. And the latter is really just an outgrowth of the fact that culture in Civ IV is more of a tacked-on feature (and being the only victory condition that does not scale depending on map conditions) as opposed to something that works seamlessly with the system as a whole.
Civ 3's combat engine virtually reverted back to the age when Spearmen killed battleships. In Civ 2 every unit had hitpoints. More advanced units got more hitpoints. Ancient units got 10, gunpowder got 20, and armored units got 30. So while a tank may be damaged by a spearman, the chances of a Spearman killing a tank are very low.
In Civ 3, they changed the system wherein all units had 3 hitpoints, regardless of tech level. While the math is supposed to still favor technologically advanced units, I've seen two full strength battleships (Str 24) die to a fucking Caravel (2 defense).
In short, combat became really, really dumb. And city management became frustratingly boring because corruption levels were for the most part atrocious (to the point that Cities = Barracks for more troops was often the only way to play).
People also forget... but Civ IV's initial combat engine was also total shit (Repeat after me: Soren does not know how to do the math or how to make a proper combat system. He designed the system for both 3 and 4).
In the original Civ IV system, damaged units were almost guaranteed to die against a full-strength enemy unit. Even if it's a damaged tank against a full-strength spearman. Given that a tank was almost guaranteed to get damaged when fighting any enemy, the result is often two spearmen killing one tank.
Fortunately, that was fixed in a hurry. However, the system still had major issues concerning sieges (the defense bonus of cities made archers able to hold out against tanks), which wasn't resolved until Beyond the Sword (when they finally had a new designer, who also did the AI).
MP is mostly about domination, yes. But even in single player, Cultural victory gets hard in Deity especially when the AI can seriously push for a space race victory by the 1800s.
In short... It's obvious we have different frames of reference here.
Deity AI (if you don't exploit its diplo engine) tends to send enough guys to seriously threaten all of your cities to render even its atrocious target selection moot. If they don't... they go for a space ship victory so quickly that you need to go for a very lean, mean, cultural victory strat that's highly conditional.And yeah, I thought about a 4th city too. The problem is this - city #4 isn't always gonna be an option, simply because a Cultural City needs to be a grassland/plains city that either produces lots of food for specialists, or have lots of towns for trade. If you don't have a 4th grassland/plains city, you're screwed.
By contrast, you can convert a grassland city into a production powerhouse rather easily. There's that civic that gives +1 food to workshops. Simply worshop every tile, and you get +3 production in the later game per workshop. Getting a production engine up is relatively easy with enough techs.
Ultimately, my point is this: Cultural wins are very conditional, and going for such a victory turns your empire upside down to the point that it stops functioning properly. And the latter is really just an outgrowth of the fact that culture in Civ IV is more of a tacked-on feature (and being the only victory condition that does not scale depending on map conditions) as opposed to something that works seamlessly with the system as a whole.
I hold on to this view as well. And for one reason: Combat.The Lunatic Fringe wrote:Really? You think that 3 was worse than 2?
Civ 3's combat engine virtually reverted back to the age when Spearmen killed battleships. In Civ 2 every unit had hitpoints. More advanced units got more hitpoints. Ancient units got 10, gunpowder got 20, and armored units got 30. So while a tank may be damaged by a spearman, the chances of a Spearman killing a tank are very low.
In Civ 3, they changed the system wherein all units had 3 hitpoints, regardless of tech level. While the math is supposed to still favor technologically advanced units, I've seen two full strength battleships (Str 24) die to a fucking Caravel (2 defense).
In short, combat became really, really dumb. And city management became frustratingly boring because corruption levels were for the most part atrocious (to the point that Cities = Barracks for more troops was often the only way to play).
People also forget... but Civ IV's initial combat engine was also total shit (Repeat after me: Soren does not know how to do the math or how to make a proper combat system. He designed the system for both 3 and 4).
In the original Civ IV system, damaged units were almost guaranteed to die against a full-strength enemy unit. Even if it's a damaged tank against a full-strength spearman. Given that a tank was almost guaranteed to get damaged when fighting any enemy, the result is often two spearmen killing one tank.
Fortunately, that was fixed in a hurry. However, the system still had major issues concerning sieges (the defense bonus of cities made archers able to hold out against tanks), which wasn't resolved until Beyond the Sword (when they finally had a new designer, who also did the AI).
Last edited by Zinegata on Wed Oct 06, 2010 8:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
Ok, since this is probably gonna come up soon, I'm gonna go out on a limb and explain the differences between Civ V and IV (and its previous iterations) and how I feel the changes affect the game. Damn you all for getting me started on Civ.
* Civ V has hexes instead of squares. Not as big a change as you'd think it would be - since previous Civs allowed diagonal movement at the same cost anyway. But the map looks surprisingly good, and the strat view is cute.
* No more unit stacking - with one exception. One combat and one non-combat unit can share a space. ZOCs from Civ II are back. No more "one stack of doom", and the potential to have a unit do a Thermopylae is back.
* Most units can now move 2 spaces. Makes warfare a surprisingly mobile affair. Especially given that units don't need dedicated sea transports anymore.
* Combat is no longer all-or-nothing. About time.
* There is a sane and simple flanking combat bonus that has never been seen in Civ before. About fucking time.
* Culture, Science, and Coin no longer come from a generic "Trade" resource. Instead, there are now very specific ways of producing each. You get 1 science for every population. Culture is generally produced by buildings. Coin is generated by tiles and trade routes. This is a pretty huge change as it puts to rest the trade-based economies of old (where everyone is rushing to make cities that produced tons of trade/energy).
I feel it's an improvement as I felt the old trade-based economy was too powerful, to the point that it was a virtually mandatory thing. Others feel it oversimplifies the game.
* Culture now accumulates on a national level, although the amount a city produces still contributes to border expansion. Culture accumulated at the national level can be used to purchase Civics (governments in previous games) that last forever. I approve of this mechanic as it finally turns culture into an integral part of the system as opposed to a tacked-on resource, and eternal civics finally puts to rest the endgame "We went from communism to democracy in one year!" insanity.
* You can buy stuff via gold for the full price, but not rush-build an existing project. Kinda weird, but okay, whatever.
* Unrest is now counted at the national level - based on number of cities, number of population, and available resources. Hallelujah, no more checking each individual city for unhappiness!
* City States act as neutral one-city minor powers that you can do stuff for. Being friends with them nets nice benefits. Pretty awesome concept overall. Makes diplo victories plausible as opposed to an urban legend.
* You can now puppetize a city you conquer, which dramatically lowers the amount of unrest it causes for the minor inconvenience of being unable to control its production. Compared to the old system where the game forces us to simply genocide everyone we conquer because of stupid levels of unrest... I like it.
* Corporations are gone. I'll kind of miss them.
* Religions are gone. Oh well.
* Espionage is pretty much gone. Oh well. Better dead and buried rather than living as you did in Civ IV.
* Each Civ has a unique ability, not seen in any other Civ. The problem is that many of them suck. Really Firaxis? An extra 25 gold for taking a barbarian camp, compared to +2 movement for all sea units? Or treating all forests as roads?
* Roads now cost 1 gp to maintain a turn. But they earn money if you connect cities together. Cool.
Will post more stuff as I uncover them...
* Civ V has hexes instead of squares. Not as big a change as you'd think it would be - since previous Civs allowed diagonal movement at the same cost anyway. But the map looks surprisingly good, and the strat view is cute.
* No more unit stacking - with one exception. One combat and one non-combat unit can share a space. ZOCs from Civ II are back. No more "one stack of doom", and the potential to have a unit do a Thermopylae is back.
* Most units can now move 2 spaces. Makes warfare a surprisingly mobile affair. Especially given that units don't need dedicated sea transports anymore.
* Combat is no longer all-or-nothing. About time.
* There is a sane and simple flanking combat bonus that has never been seen in Civ before. About fucking time.
* Culture, Science, and Coin no longer come from a generic "Trade" resource. Instead, there are now very specific ways of producing each. You get 1 science for every population. Culture is generally produced by buildings. Coin is generated by tiles and trade routes. This is a pretty huge change as it puts to rest the trade-based economies of old (where everyone is rushing to make cities that produced tons of trade/energy).
I feel it's an improvement as I felt the old trade-based economy was too powerful, to the point that it was a virtually mandatory thing. Others feel it oversimplifies the game.
* Culture now accumulates on a national level, although the amount a city produces still contributes to border expansion. Culture accumulated at the national level can be used to purchase Civics (governments in previous games) that last forever. I approve of this mechanic as it finally turns culture into an integral part of the system as opposed to a tacked-on resource, and eternal civics finally puts to rest the endgame "We went from communism to democracy in one year!" insanity.
* You can buy stuff via gold for the full price, but not rush-build an existing project. Kinda weird, but okay, whatever.
* Unrest is now counted at the national level - based on number of cities, number of population, and available resources. Hallelujah, no more checking each individual city for unhappiness!
* City States act as neutral one-city minor powers that you can do stuff for. Being friends with them nets nice benefits. Pretty awesome concept overall. Makes diplo victories plausible as opposed to an urban legend.
* You can now puppetize a city you conquer, which dramatically lowers the amount of unrest it causes for the minor inconvenience of being unable to control its production. Compared to the old system where the game forces us to simply genocide everyone we conquer because of stupid levels of unrest... I like it.
* Corporations are gone. I'll kind of miss them.
* Religions are gone. Oh well.
* Espionage is pretty much gone. Oh well. Better dead and buried rather than living as you did in Civ IV.
* Each Civ has a unique ability, not seen in any other Civ. The problem is that many of them suck. Really Firaxis? An extra 25 gold for taking a barbarian camp, compared to +2 movement for all sea units? Or treating all forests as roads?
* Roads now cost 1 gp to maintain a turn. But they earn money if you connect cities together. Cool.
Will post more stuff as I uncover them...
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Username17
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Yes. Civ2 had a lot of staying power. I've put hundreds of hours into that game. Civ 3 wasn't even interesting on any level. Culture push in Civ3 was so bullshit slow that it wasn't even a viable option for anything - there was just stabbing people and nothing else. With city purchasing in Civ2 there was a viable Builder option for mid- and late-game expansion, but in Civ3 there is only conquest. And let's be real here: combat in Civilization has never been that interesting.The Lunatic Fringe wrote:Really? You think that 3 was worse than 2?
Civ3 wasn't as crappy of a game as Call to Power (with its inane Stalinism == Progress stance), but it was certainly pushing it. Alpha Centauri was a clear improvement over Civ2, Civ3 was a clear step back. Civ4 was a tremendous improvement over Civ3, but I don't think it ever reached the awesome that was Alpha Centauri. I'm not sure it even eclipses Civ2.
-Username17
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A Man In Black
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