Similarities between 4E and Civ5

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

Civ3 wasn't as crappy of a game as Call to Power (with its inane Stalinism == Progress stance), but it was certainly pushing it.

I never played much CtP, so I don't get this reference. Stalinism?

[Doom]

Man, Alpha Centauri brings back memories. The game had some issues (really wish I coulda played with that ruleset on a planet I'm from being my personal biggest), but lots of cool stuff.

Finally finished the DL last night while I slept. Guess I'll be leaving a bit early today to go home and see for myself.

Zin--Definitely, Culture victory is kind of hard in Deity, but in my opinion everything gets kind of hard in deity. Religious win? Almost impossible to found a religion, your only hope is if you start Spiritual, above and beyond actually building the Vatican (or whatever it's called). Diplomatic? Har. Conquest? Your best bet perhaps, but the computer sure do crank out alot of units. Anyway, saying "Culture is hard in Deity, so you can't do it" only works if something else was easy in Deity. Culture is mindlessly simple at very low skill levels, and viable in most others.

Seriously, at Deity, if you don't get copper by your second city, it's pretty much over anyway outside of special cases.

[Username17]

Civ3 wasn't as crappy of a game as Call to Power (with its inane Stalinism == Progress stance), but it was certainly pushing it.

I never played much CtP, so I don't get this reference. Stalinism?

CtP had three scales that determined how you treated your people:

• Hours Worked. If people work more hours, then they are more productive and less happy.
• Meals. If people eat less, you have more food excess and they are less happy.
• Wages. If people are paid less, you get more money and they are less happy.

Now the first thing they dazzle you with is that people have "expectations" which vary depending on the society you are running. So if you are technocratic dystopia then people expect long working days and if you're running a hippie commune people expect big meals. And fucking whatever, because that shit doesn't even matter, because they'll accept worse treatment than they "expect" in one area if they are receiving better treatment in another.

The next thing to note is that since this is a Civ Clone to the extent that it even has Civilization right on the front of the box, the only thing you really do with money is hurry production or blow up the ass of foreign leaders. And working people longer hours and paying them for it was simply a better exchange rate on money lost than actually getting the money and then buying production that way.

But the big thing to remember is that this is a Civ Clone, so population growth happens because of food excess. So if you starve your people, you have more food left over, and you have more population growth. And population makes everything - including production and money (and for that matter, food). So the starvation diet is like way more powerful than any of the other options.

So regardless of what your society nominally wants, what you actually give them is titanic nominal wages, a dubious potato, and as long a work day as you can manage. Which is in fact usually 12 hours a day. Seriously. So you really just sort of enact a Stalinist five year plan at the dawn of time, and then you crush everything because you just set the entire fucking universe to easy mode.

-Username17

[Doom]

Durrr, anyone play the tutorials?

I'm on the road building one, and it says "connect 2 cities to Rome"...they're connected, but the tutorial never finishes. I've done the other goals well enough.

What stupid little detail am I missing? Nothing in the civipedia as near as I can tell gives me a clue.

[Goldor]

Hmm.. Since I don't see another topic on Civ 5, is there any place other than steam to get it online? I generally use GamersGate as I prefer them much more than steam, but they don't have it ;(.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Complaints about 3.5-> 4E are similar to Civ4 -> Civ5

It's too much like playing a video game and the combats are like padded sumo?

No more like

1. Oversimplified the game
2. Next iteration is not D&D or CIv, it's a different game
3. Many features and niceities (monster lore, spell descriptions, etc.) (religion, espionage, no unit auto-cycling, etc.) gone in the new version

Things like that, hehe

[Zinegata]

Man, Alpha Centauri brings back memories. The game had some issues (really wish I coulda played with that ruleset on a planet I'm from being my personal biggest), but lots of cool stuff.

Finally finished the DL last night while I slept. Guess I'll be leaving a bit early today to go home and see for myself.

Zin--Definitely, Culture victory is kind of hard in Deity, but in my opinion everything gets kind of hard in deity. Religious win? Almost impossible to found a religion, your only hope is if you start Spiritual, above and beyond actually building the Vatican (or whatever it's called). Diplomatic? Har. Conquest? Your best bet perhaps, but the computer sure do crank out alot of units. Anyway, saying "Culture is hard in Deity, so you can't do it" only works if something else was easy in Deity. Culture is mindlessly simple at very low skill levels, and viable in most others.

Seriously, at Deity, if you don't get copper by your second city, it's pretty much over anyway outside of special cases.

Everything is harder in Deity (and everything is much simpler at lower levels), but my issue with Cultural wins is that it's impossible in Deity except for very specific situations. And in low levels you really need to plan out a cultural win, because you're shutting the empire's normal operations down.

By contrast, domination & space race are generally always options, regardless of opening situation.

I've done a Domination win on Deity without copper in the early game - I had to wait a while before I got Iron (albeit I did get horses, but I hardly used chariots). It resulted in the siege of Lisbon lasting something like 3,000 years, but you can do amazing things with even warriors and archers if you're aggressive enough, and I didn't really feel the economic losses as the Portugese were nice enough to provide me a steady stream of free workers.

Edit: Regarding tutorial... dunno. I jumped straight in and muddled along

[cthulhu]

SMAC is the best civilisation game still, but Civ 5 is good.

[Zinegata]

SMAC is the best, but can get so crazy broken to the point that the only worthwhile opponents are people, not the AI.

Civ 2 was in a lot of ways a technology race. The winner is generally the civ that produces enough science to get to key techs (i.e. Gunpowder) and Wonders first. Once you have these tools, you can just have a powerhouse economy/military to streamroller everyone. The thing is, the governments that let you do research well (Republics and Democracy) are massively anti-military, so you end up with a schitzo empire that's a peaceful democracy for long periods, before turning into a fundamentalist madman sending out waves of tanks.

SMAC changed the formula a bit by making some factions very good at aggression, but only so-so for building regardless of their "civics" (which makes for an interesting multiplayer game). It also lessens the schitzo empire feel a bit, as Miriam and her Bible nuts will always have shittier research.

Still, anybody who survives the first hundred turns should have picked up Industrial Automation and Supply Crawlers, which lets a human player collect resources at such a fearsome rate that they can simply bury the AI.

(How fearsome? Let me put it this way... I was playing Lal on the highest difficulty level. I hadn't built any Secret Projects/Wonders, but saw that Morgan was about to complete the Weather Paradigm. I wanted it. Using supply crawlers, I completed the Paradigm in one turn and beat him to it. He switched to Human Genome and was almost done building it too. I wanted it too. Sent more crawlers and beat him to it. And I did that to him for five consecutive turns for 5 seperate Secret Projects, using a combination of crawlers and rush-builds. I think I only stopped because we had both run out of Secret Projects/Wonders to build)

In fact, I kinda feel that "key technologies" are kinda front-loaded in SMAC. You can generally get all of the key tools you need to conquer the world in the first 100-150 turns (Formers, Crawlers, Choppers) if you're just playing against the AI, making for rather short games. OTOH, short games are again more in-line with a standard multiplayer game.

Ok, I'm rambling now. I'll shut up now.

[Doom]

Dang, making me want go get SMAC.

I've been playing Titan Quest: Immortal Throne WAY too much (the only Diablo clone that's better than D2, imo). I've just started with CivV be a week before I can decided if it sucks or not. Hope I can keep away from SMAC long enough to give CivV a fair shake...what I've seen so far is more Civ resembling than 4e was D&D resembling.

But I do wonder if GamersGate has SMAC. And, at the risk of sounding like I have stock in the company, check out Gamersgate if you haven't.

They have *tons* of crappy games but at great prices, and quite a few diamonds in the rough (randomly got Romance of the Three Kingdoms XII--not sure of the number--best freakin' wargame I've played in at least 5 years, and a few other 'better than they have any right to be' games).

They generally don't get A titles until they're not A titles anymore, so I doubt they have CivV, or ever will.

[Zinegata]

If you're getting SMAC, you may as well pick up the bundle that comes with the expansion. Alien Crossfire isn't the best expansion ever, but it does come with some cool new unit abilities and Secret Projects.

[cthulhu]

Yeah, if you want to have a satisfying game against the AI, you need to agree to a bunch of restrictions

They are

1. Don't use supply crawlers
2. Don't use supply crawlers
3. Don't use supply crawlers
4. Don't use supply crawlers
5. Don't use supply crawlers
6. Don't use supply crawlers
7. Don't use supply crawlers
8. Don't use supply crawlers
9. Don't use supply crawlers
10. Don't use supply crawlers
11. Select map criteria that are advantageous to the AI, not you.

[Zinegata]

Even without Supply Crawlers, the fact that human players can execute a Pop-Boom tends to very much doom the AI.

[cthulhu]

Yeah, it's still not great, but supply crawlers are unbelievable. It's vaguely balanced because humans know how to use helicopters and carve you up, but it's still dumb.

[A Man In Black]

1. Oversimplified the game
2. Next iteration is not D&D or CIv, it's a different game
3. Many features and niceities (monster lore, spell descriptions, etc.) (religion, espionage, no unit auto-cycling, etc.) gone in the new version

Things like that, hehe

So.

1. They simplified it/added complexity, and rar change is bad
2. I don't like it, so it's not REALLY foobar,
3. And they made changes, rar change is bad.

How is this different from every single sequel and new edition in the history of games?

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

As you wish:

1. UI & Menu stuff


1.1 Menu & Game Options

* The legal mumbo jumbo stuff at the beginning of every launch that I have to click “Continue” to before accessing the main menu. Signing it once should be enough.

* No automatic default savegame name when saving the game.

* Savegames are only sorted by name, not by date.

* Too few customizabilities.
You are not able to create a completely own civilization , with an own choosen name and traits.

* There should be an option to change the keyboard shortcuts.

* Add "No Unit Cycling" option

* Add a real time clock option.

* Add an option to disable unit animations

* Add an option to enable razing all cities (capitals, city states)

*Add an option to immeidately reenter diplomacy when a trade deal is up

*Add an option to turn on/off notices by type.

* Add an option for a right-click menu instead of making your units move that way

* Add an option to enable combat zooming.

* No button to view the civilopedia from the main menu.


1.2 Civilopedia & Game infos

*The Civilopedia is vague over features and bonuses that elements give.

*It has too much fluff content and not enough game information.How fast do railroads make my units? How much do Pacts of Secrecy/Cooperation help my standing with another leader?

* Civilopedia: brief descriptions and no links. Sometimes only text with no graphics or symbols.

*Seems whenever I do a search for legitimate terms in civilopedia (raze, razing, cooperation, secrecy, etc.) it doesn’t know what I’m talking about

*Ankgor Wat claims to reduce culture cost to buy tiles 'in every city' but actually effects just the building city.

*Rationalist Social Policy claims +2 science for each trading post, but only gives 1.

* Game info for the Factory is incomplete. All it states is its requirement of 1 Coal.

* the civilopedia just shows 1 specialist for many of the buildings when they in fact provide 2.



1.3 Strategic view

*Cities in the strategic view cease to show detailed info when zoomed out. Right now, I have to either zoom in a lot, then lose the overall picture, or zoom out enough to see what's going on, but lose track of what city's building what.
It shows the size of the city when it should show it's strength.

*strategic view: because the tile yeilds are much lower there is little to differentiate them, for instance only one type of hill (even desert hills are the same), floodpains and grassland the same, all forest tiles the same, food resources mostly very similar to farmed grassland, all luxury resources similar. There should be more variety. It feels like it makes little difference where I settle because all the land is the same

*In strategic view there are a few things that are unclear e.g impassable ice looks the same as coast tiles unless you mouse over it.

* Remember last active strategic overlay on saving game.



1.4 Normal map view

* Show which tiles are being worked in the normal map view would be nice.

*Until you actually fight in a Marsh, there is no way to find out that you get -33% combat strength there.

* The mouseover information above the map should display all information about a tile and units in it. The popup tooltip is slightly more useful, but there is little to no information given about the enemy units.

* You can only guess City HP based on HP bar and there is no way to see the exact numerical value anywhere.

* Reduce length of camera movement after end of map-scrolling inputs.
Zoom-To-Cursor is a very nice feature and a step in the right direction for the civ UI. However there is quite a considerable time the camera keeps moving when you release the mouse's scrollwheel. A similar thing happens with regular screen-edge scrolling too. It's ok for there to be a bit of movement after one stops the input but it's about 1.5 seconds in civ5. Compared with maybe 0.4 or so seconds in civ4 where it's basically a non-issue.

* The Zoomlevels could be longer in both directions

* No load bar that shows you what is going on.

* Draggable mini-map
Scroll the map by clicking and holding on locations in the mini-map.

* No information on what improvements can be built on a tile before you have a worker there.


1.5 City Screen

* There isn't a column for Great Person Points within the city overview screen to compare cities.

* Within the city overview screen the science column doesn't sort correctly.

* city overview screen: when clicking on columns to sort, it should be possible to sort out in ascending/descending order

* Hover-over info box (or whatever you call it) on buildings doesn't display any info on how many specialists it provides or what kind.

*Sometimes, when clicking on a city, you only get a limited build queue and have to go back to the city to look at it and add items to the queue

* Make the building queue available without having to check the box

* Allow drag & drop ordering of items in the queue

* Show full city screen when selecting "Choose Production"

* Make building queue longer

*Its slow to scroll down the list of units, buildings or wonders.

*Not being able to spend gold to finish the remainder of a production item.

* No city-screen resource details. Although you can see your excess resources in the diplomatic screen, yet some buildings require "local" resources, as opposed to "empire" resources. A simple screen in the city screen should show what type of resources the city can access locally and empirely.

*No tool tips tell you how many specialists a building gives you.

*The city screen is kind of cluttered, and building icons take up too much space. We like the look of it, but it should be smaller and more compact.

* Specialist control is cluttered with the giant stylized icons. It divides up your specialist slots into the buildings that grant them, but the buildings are placed in alphabetical order.
No group by specialist type, so if you're assigning a lot of specs of one type for any purpose, you'll have to scroll the list.

* The "citizen coin" is too cluttered. It's used both for specs and for assigning citizens to work tiles. The problem is that unless you zoom in a lot, these "citizen coins" are gigantic and obscure most of the view, so you can't even see much in your city screen. Also is the "buy tile" coin. As these icons are offset from the tile itself, so it can be difficult to take in in a quick glance. It would be better to highlight or circle the yields in the tile to show that it is being worked.

* Disable city screen map scrolling and allow user to exit screen by clicking map

* When choosing production in a city, exiting city screen should close the production-choice window as well.

*Not beeing able to destroy buildings

* Quirky production queue system. Shift-clicking and Ctrl-clicking should be implemented.



1.6 Other overview screens

*On the Military Overview (F3), click or doubleclicking a unit neither shows you where the unit is nor selects it.

*It's too complicated to find out what Food or culture a city state is giving you:
You have to open up diplomacy view - Select City State - On the popup, hover your mouse over the appreciation bar.

* No resource page in general. The resources are squeezed into the diplomatic screen. It would have made sense to have a separate screen outlining these details.
It's too difficult to know where your resources are coming from. Which are mine? Which imported?

*The military overview window displays incorrectly for units that have fractional movement points left

*Have the city states listed separately on a one-state-per-line list, with the list click-sortable by name, by category, by attitude, by who they're allied to, and by what their influence point status is.

* No Score List.
The diplomacy snapshot is rather obtrusive compared to the old, transparent score list, that also included your current agreements and allowed for quick diplomacy. I suppose the addition of city-states would make the list too long, but maybe a list with options what to be shown?

* Bring Back Graphs.
Graphs added an aspect of analysis and interest to Civ IV, and were purely optional--they were in a menu, so you didn't have to look at them; still, it was really interesting to see culture growth, espionage growth, etc.

*Diplomacy trade screen defaults to having all expandable trade areas unexpanded by default. So It takes two extra clicks to expand my, then my targets, luxury list if I want to trade luxuries.

* It's hard to tell which resources an other civ needs.



1.7 Messages & notifications


*No Messages about your Civ's status and growth, like reached population milestones, etc

* When open borders expires, I don't need to be told that both ends of the deal were cancelled. A single notice is enough.

*When you go to a new era, you will be told city states provide more to you now, without it telling you exactly how much more.

*If the AI comes to you for a deal, accepting the deal closes the AI panel and prevents any other deals being made

* the back-transparent screen-overlay when scavenging a ruin or getting any note.
this pulls you out of the game for a little.

* No notification when your culture acquires a new tile.

*missing a pop up when entering a new era to remind us that new social policies are available.

* Enemy attack info is displayed too little time to read it all. You may have to go to the log too many times. White color isn't easy to read.

* No option to enable/disable notifications about puppet cities (f.e. population growth)

*The "Advanced Ballistics" quote text doesn't match the audio.




1.8 Keyboard Settings & Shortcuts

* The quick save hotkey (F11) is right next to the quick load hotkey (F12). You can load by accident and lose some turns.

* There should be an option to change the keyboard shortcuts.

* Disable most keyboard shortcuts while civilopedia is open.
At the moment it's too easy to accidentally give an order to a unit.

* Canceling an active movement path placement by hitting ESC should be possible

*The R button is both the hotkey to build a road, and the hot key to toggle the display of resources on the map. Since there is a brief lag to unit movement (As there is NO quick move option) you can tell a unit to move, and then hit R, and instead of giving them the order to build a road, turn off the resource display.




1.9 Unit controls & Unit UI

*Unit Info Panel: HP bar is easy to miss, Promotions are small, aren't unique and require tooltips to see. No XP bar, Range not listed, too large and nonadjustable size.

* No info to see how much turns a unit needs to heal.

* No unit command menu when the movement points are used up.

* No way to find out about the AI's units' promotions.

* Provide detailed unit mouseovers

* Add shift clicking to set waypoints for units.

* Add being able to mouse over a worker and see how long he has left to build something

*Add a "Wait" command for units

*Add a command to awaken all units at once

*Add a command to upgrade all units.

*We want more worker automation options (improve nearest city, replace existing improvments, improve based on the governor of the city, etc)

* add a way to move units "en masse": select all unit you want to move together (shift-clicking?) and wherever your mouse point, you see the (transparents) units keeping the formation and adjusting to each tile (must take account of mountain and everything impassable: don't authorize the order or divert unit posing problem). Particulary necessary for overseas movement.

*When plotting a multimove turn starting on land and crossing water, the "number of turns" calculation does not take into account that the unit will move faster across the water. It still counts one move per tile on the water in the displayed number of turns to reach the destination.

* You should be able to tell combat Percentages with another unit before starting a war.

*No way to tell the range of a selected unit without actually pressing B (or S + B in the case of early siege units) or right-clicking the unit portrait to get the civilopedia.

*Units with many abilities and promotions hide them behind the unit portrait, making it impossible to see what they are.



1.10 General UI & menu stuff


* The Interface in general is too large and nonadjustbale.

*Sometimes you can't see all the combat modifiers due to UI overlapping

*When playing as India (or against them), the green territory boundaries are difficult to make out among the green mini map terrain. One of them should be a slightly darker shade to contrast more.

* No "regenerate map" menu option once the game is started.
If you are unsatisfied with your starting location, you have to go back to the main menu where you have to completely redo all the setup settings.

* No "city naming box", or at least no option to enable it, to ask you for the name of your newly build city.

* Customize options are too hidden.
like renaming citys, advanced map setup f.e., for the most people they are really hard to find. A button instead of the small "edit" would be nice.

* Input boxes should have default focus.
For example, when saving the game or renaming a city, the user shouldn't have to use the mouse to click the box before being able to enter something into it.

* Inability to change default XML files and save the game and reload it. You'll get a message saying: "Currently enabled mods are not compatible with this saved game"

* when building a wonder the city info gives 'Moscow is building a .....' it should be ''is building the...'.




2. AI & Unit behaviour


* On water maps, AI should be more willing to research naval techs and explore and settle other islands

*AI has problems at naval combat/getting across the water/founding cities on islands

*AI is has problems with combat, they will move ranged units right next to your melee/non ranged so you can an easy kill.

*AI settles early cities (or expands) too far away from their capital or even on the other side of the continent/landmass.

* Auto-exploring with any unit typically leads to them infringing on city states borders even when they don't have to.

*Worker Automation AI has problems (building roads to long long distance cities and obscure places,mass embarking, moving into enemy territory, trading post spam etc)

*workers don't flee the enemy and are easy to capture.

*Giving a unit a move order into a city automatically garrisons it.

*You cannot 'pass' a turn in a city. You either have to garrison or move.

*Units lose their queued orders when their path overlaps with other units. A very specific case of this is when you try to use the "route to" command with multiple workers. They stop every turn and request orders, which makes gameplay very tedious.

* Agressive Civs have no defense units when at war, as they send everyone to attack.

*Helicpoter gunships can use roads

*Units lose their queued orders when you click on them

*Barbarian Triremes never pillage, instead they just buzz around and are a nuisance

*Sometimes if you get gifted units from CS's, yet their units block your passage out of their territory. Over time if you lose alliance with them, you start accruing penalties for tresspassing

* you cannot click on a unit that has multi-turn orders and see where it is heading.

* Units will not take quickest path to a destination. Example: If I tell an archer to go to a location and taking the road will get them there in 2 turns, the unit forces its way across the hill (even if there are no units in the way).

*Feedback from the AI is insufficient. Sometimes the AI cancels a pact of cooperation fex when you ally to a city state but states that it's due to your warmongering.

*Very few options for interacting with the AI or affecting their opinion of you. Most AIs will trade luxury resources and do research agreements with just about anybody with little consequences (of the likes of 'traded with our enemies')

*Ai will buy any startegy resources as long as it has the gold, no matter if it needs it or not.

*Automated workers should be able to ignore manually constructed improvements



3. Graphics & Artwork


* Rivers are ugly, especially when they run into the ocean.
This is almost agreed by the whole community and definitly needs to be reworked.

*Ice sometimes just looks out of place and overlaps the terrain.

*No Tile Working Animation: Show what tiles are being worked from the main map.




4. Gameplay & Game mechanics


*Railroads don't need to be unbroken to give production bonus.

*If you connect a city to the capital with a railroad, the city gets a +50% production bonus, but the capital itself does not.

*There are nearly no tech requirements, you can easily skip certain techs like musketman/riflemen and go straight for infantry. Rifling should be a requirement for infantry. GDR should need robotics.

*Upgraded artillery -> rocket artillery still need to set up before bombarding

*Crossbowmen get upgraded to riflemen and their ranged promotions become useless

*Air strikes take forever since the unit physically flies from the destination, to the target and back, regardless of the distance and how much of it is on screen.

*Scale the happiness provided according to map size, so that the world can be sufficiently populated.

*The "Terra" map style will not provide different resources for different continents. This really takes the joy out of discovering the new world.

*Penalty for unhappy empire is too low.

* Map Replay: There is no map replay upon completing a game.

*The fact that roads do not allow certain units to pass each other adds a layer of micro-managing which takes away from game play.

*Moving multiple naval units at different speeds can be very frustrating.

* Multi-turn moves. In former Civ games, when a unit was order for multi-turn moves, it moved during your turn, generally after you had moved the currently active units and before you hit end turn. After all, they do move during your turn. Instead, Civ V asks you to end your turn before moving those units. Its nice to be able to tell where you might need to move units that still have MPs left AFTER the units you ordered last turn(s) have moved.

*Bonus resources feel pointless.
F.e. right now there's no reason to build a pasture on a cow, for example as it's almost always better to spam a farm.
A grassland-cow gives 3 food 1 production. A normal grassland with a farm eventually gives 4 food.

* be able to build up forests/jungle again. Its important for Iroquies and universities.

*Purchasing the same tile can cost differently for different cities that are close to each other.

* Egypt civ unique building is too rewarding.It has 0 maintentance and 2 culture and 2 happyness rendering the construction of any other happyness building overall useless.

* Egypt with their civ unique treat combined with marble and +33% wonder building policy constructs wanders faster then normal buildings(Pyramids 11 turns/Granary 15 you get the picture).

*No trade routes along a river

*Considering that each Great scientist provides a free tech, whenever you want it, there seems no real reason to build the scientist improvement to get a paltry 5 science. Especially since while it gives 5 science per turn, you lose the advantage of whatever other improvement you were going to build (2 food, 1 production, 2 gold, etc).

*A unit's multi-move path in terrain out of viewing range is sometimes plotted using information unavailable to the player like opposing civ unit locations or barbarian encampments.

*When u have the option of displaying yields when civilian units are selected, the great general displays it. Not very useful and very confusing when waging war.

*Slow production pace vs. fast tech pace: Buildings and units seem to build too long compared to benefit and compared to tech rates (I can often tech faster than the units I'm building).

*Several buildings seem too costly for their benefits. Granaries and Courthouses are frequently mentioned.

*a lot of the buildings are pretty much useless, some Wonders as well. As an example, you can put a lot of hammers in a building that makes you build military units a bit faster, but with so few military units in the game there's really no point.

* People are upset if you have population and build slowly. If you stop expanding, your people build slowly. If you starve your population to reduce it, your people build slowly. Kind of a built in lose/lose.

* if your people are unhappy, you can build a coliseum but building it takes very long.

* "raze" and "annex" both lead to "annex".

* 1UPT makes it hard to navigate at chokepoints.

* social policies should be more flexible, an empire should be able to change it's directions over the ages

*Great People are unbalanced. They usually have two options. One of which is extremely overpowered, and one which is extremely underpowered.

* Exploring troops who pop goody huts should not get the 'improved weapons' bonus if it takes them more than one tech level ahead.

* embarked units appear to exert a zone of control over land. The AI's pikemen on a boat can stop your land units from freely moving around on land

*many units don't need the resource they depend on like War Elephants don't need the ivory resource.



5. Multiplayer


*No dedicated servers

*no matchmaking

*constant lag issue

*framerate problems

*no online ladder and rankings

*no unit animation (no option)

*random crashes

*no way of reconnecting a game

*no way of joining a mid-game through invite.

* No Ability to easily play modded MP Games

* No Ability to easily save MP Games

*no abilty to add more then the defualt number of players in MP

*In multiplayer, when you have human and AI players human players seems to start next to one another every single time, forcing early confrontation, which is not always desired.

*when selecting a leader/civ in a multiplayer lobby, it does not show you their perks/unique units. This information is not on the tech tree / info sheet that came in the box either.




6. Miscellaneous


* No SP Scenario
SP consists only of "Play Now" and "Custom Game". It doesn't get any more plain than this.





7. left to discuss

* It is almost unanimosly agreed by the community that the trading posts are ugly and break the scenery immersion.
There is often the wish for a graphic like small towns.

*No option to enable Random Events

* No Wonder Movies an no Victory Movies:

* No End Game Cinematics

* Satellites do not reveal the map

* No map trading

* No era specific Music.

[A Man In Black]

As you wish:

So, they're similar in that they both made changes you don't like.

[cthulhu]

Some of those changes are pretty dumb to be fair.

What does a pact of secrecy even do? I spent a quite while trying to work that out.

On the other hand

*Worker Automation AI has problems (building roads to long long distance cities and obscure places,mass embarking, moving into enemy territory, trading post spam etc)

Worker Automation AI has always been shit. Many of those issues are obviously bugs or have always been the case.

[Doom]

No map trading is more than 'changes you don't like'....that's actually a big thing to lose.

Now I've got to build explorers and stuff, and wait. Yuck, I can trade for how to build firearms, but not ask the other civ for a coastline? Yeesh.

[Zinegata]

The Civ V UI isn't perfect, and I've also found the AI to be rather lacking.

That being said, I think people are forgetting just how problematic Civ IV was at launch, including...

* A very serious memory leak.
* A brain-dead worker AI (never fixed).
* The complete inability to mass units for attacks until Soren finally left Firaxis and we got a competent AI designer.

I actually approve of taking away the "Raze city" option. It just seemed incredibly stupid in SMAC and Civ 4 for a single warrior to be able to genocide a size 42 city. In fact, given the crazy levels of unrest you tend to encounter in Civ IV, they make genocide the preferred option for that game.

Edit: I'm meh about losing map trading. Too easy to exploit in previous Civs. And scouting is much faster nowadays anyway.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Perhaps a better point to make would be this: In Civ4 we have more options out of the box than Civ5. Just like 4E did not come out of the box supporting many things that vanilla 3.5 does, so too does Civ5 not support many things out of the box that Civ4 vanilla did.

No map trading, no tech trading, no Diplomacy modifiers, no ICBMS, no wonder movies, no religion, etc. If the designers didn't like map or technology trading they simply could have left it out by default and let an option enable it, but they didn't even do that.

This is of course in addition to everything else I posted in the spoiler.

[Doom]

And that was a pretty amazingly thorough 'spoiler', too.

Still haven't played out my first game yet (in the middle of two games, laptop and tower).

I'm not saying by any means that Civ 4 was without flaw (although the worker AI is decent enough nowadays, imo).

Why is scouting faster nowadays? Because movement is higher? That's true enough, but at some point I might want to know about enemy territory (which I can't move into), being able to trade for a map comes in mighty handy then.

[Zinegata]

Doom->

Yep, much faster movement.

You shouldn't really be able to know about what's in a foreign country's territory unless you get Open Borders... which you aren't gonna get with unfriendly nations. In Civ IV, the map-trading system was exploitable so that you can trade maps around so you can map out your opponent's area.

I'd like for there to be an espionage option to let you get your opponent's map, or techs that eventually give you full map view... but I'm more "Meh" than "Ruined forever!"

Perhaps a better point to make would be this: In Civ4 we have more options out of the box than Civ5. Just like 4E did not come out of the box supporting many things that vanilla 3.5 does, so too does Civ5 not support many things out of the box that Civ4 vanilla did.

No map trading, no tech trading, no Diplomacy modifiers, no ICBMS, no wonder movies, no religion, etc. If the designers didn't like map or technology trading they simply could have left it out by default and let an option enable it, but they didn't even do that.

This is of course in addition to everything else I posted in the spoiler.

I think you're completely ignoring a lot of problems in Civ IV and viewing it through rose-colored glasses.

Map and tech trades in the old games were highly exploitable. As were diplomacy modifiers. The latter is how it's possible to have a 100% peaceful game in Deity even though the AI should really be kicking your ass already because you're turns away from winning the game. I suspect they got taken out because these "features" were arguably bugs. And frank, I kinda doubt they can ever be fixed.

As for ICBMs... let's be honest here. It's a pretty silly quibble, because people generally don't use nukes in Civ unless they want to play in Fallout world. And regardless, the way Civ V uses nukes is the same as every other Civ except for Civ IV.

And losing ICBMs isn't as retarded as Civ IV's initial combat system (where two spearmen are guaranteed to kill a tank), or how the airpower system remained for naval battles for its entire duration (Airpower can't demolish units. Therefore carrier to carrier battles are impossible in Civ IV). So if you're gonna complain "the game sucks out of the box", Civ IV is much guiltier of this, particularly when you consider that stupid, stupid memory leak that fans found and fixed ahead of Firaxis.

Further evidence of rose-colored viewing... We haven't had proper Wonder movies since Civ II. Civ IV's doesn't count. It's just a 3-Model of the wonder. It's little different from having a painting like in Civ V.

And finally, religion? Bit of a tacked-on thing in Civ IV to be honest that provides too little benefits, even with BTS's religious victory.

----------

How Civ 5 really, really changed the formula is this:

It no longer revolves around a trade-based economy. This is the second time we've seen in happen. Basically...

Civ 2 - The winner is the guy that gets key techs first. Trade pays for science. Economy revolves around pumping up trade until you get key techs... then either buy out everyone or go fundie and roll out tanks.

AC - same as Civ 2, but faction bonuses make early-game aggression viable. These early-game warriors can then transition into a research-based economy once they capture/steal enough techs to add Supply Crawlers, which pumps your economy to such crazy levels it renders their economy penalties moot. Also introduced the alternative of "Specialist Cities".

Civ 3 - The only other game not revolving around trade. And enforced minimum research time and stupid levels of corruption dictate the game must invariably devolve into "build lots of units and bury them under endless waves".

Civ 4 - Largely goes back to the trade-based economy. Science is too important as it unlocks key techs. However, "Specialist cities" gain much greater importance due to Great People, often making it a better strat compared to cottage spam (Road + Democracy/Free Market spam in previous games).

Civ 5 - Coin, Culture, and Science no longer come from Trade. Trade no longer exists. Instead, you need to increase Coin/Culture/Science seperately in different ways. And you can't just change your allocation slider instantly to transform your civilization from the world's leader in science... to a hippie artist paradise that's about to bury the world in culture in one turn.

Whether this is a good or bad thing should be the central issue of the Civ IV vs Civ V debate.

In the old games, trade was the uber resources. Not only because it produces science, but you can shift your trade around to produce other victory-winning stuff easily. Civ II and AC tried to limit the sudden economic shifts somewhat by governments/civics. Civ IV dropped these limitations entirely, making trade even more uber.

This is no longer the case, and this is what makes Civ 5 a fundamentally different experience. Not whether a 3d-rendering wonder "movie" is better than a painting.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

You're still not getting it:

*Removed* City Maintenance based on - Distance to Capital. Concept using Forbidden Palace, Main Palace Relocation, Courthouses, Colony concept from BTS, Vassalage Concept from Warlords. Replaced with Global happiness - Building maintenance

*Removed* Trade Network with other nations - Not really replaced with anything

*Removed* Connecting resources with road, connecting roads with rivers, Intra nation wide network to determine which cities had which resources & luxuries. - Replaced with... moving across the galaxy.... droping a town next to a resource... building improvement on top of resource... instant nationwide access.

*Removed* Terrain bonuses for woodland - hills - hills & woodland - flats. Replaced with Rough Terrain - Open ground ... +25% -33%.

*Removed* Promotions like First Strikes, City Attack, Guerilla, Woodsman, vs Archer - Horse - Melee etc etc etc. Replaced with generic bland +% open ground +% rough terrain

*Removed* War Weariness. Replaced with nothing... part of the dumbed down global happiness

*Removed* Religion & Corps - Replaced with nothing

*Removed* Any real need for diplomacy between Players or AI. Replaced with "1 trick pony" City States

*Removed* Fluid & Flexible Civic System. Replaced with Fire & Forget rigid Policy system

*Removed* Correlation between Income & Research, Income vs Hammers. Replaced with Income = *end all be all*

*Removed* Great General - Add to Unit with Unique promotions - Golden Age - Military Academy. Replaced with Tag along +25% bonus, semi useless Golden Age trigger since happiness will do that for you, completely useless fort improvement.

*Removed* Every UN Resolution Option. Replaced with single vote option for Diplo Win

*Removed* Espionage. Replaced with nothing at all

*Removed* Random Events. Replaced with generic handfull of city state quests...

*Removed* City Health system. Replaced with nothing

*Removed* Various military units. Replaced with less more generic units

I guess i could go on... and on.... and on.... but you get the picture.

[Username17]

Yeah? But how much of that is bad?

Civ4's religions and corporations were implemented shittily. It was kind of interesting from a modding standpoint, because it meant that you could have tags that spread irregularly from city to city that allowed cities to make different units and buildings. But in the base game it pretty much completely sucked ass. Removing it entirely is a positive development.

Civ4's espionage system essentially did not exist before Beyond The Sword, and afterwards it still completely sucked. After some good faith efforts to try to get it to do something I finally came to the reluctant conclusion that you were better off just ignoring the entire subsystem. Removing it entirely would change the game in pretty much no way except that it would free up space on the GUI and thereby improve things.

Civ4's unit promotions scheme was overly complicated and a waste of time. The promotions didn't really do anything until you got like 8 of them and could finally get an extra movement point. Regressing it back to something that didn't require micromanagement would be an across the board improvement. Fuck, it could just be the Veteran/No Veteran tag from Civ2 and that would still be better. And we have solid examples of more complex systems that still do not require massive micromanagement like Alpha Fucking Centauri that would be better still. Clicking on little blue boxes to decide whether to get a +10% to strength all the time or a +20% to strength while in Forests is a waste of fucking time, since the power increase from one unit to the next in the series is always a fuck tonne more than +10% regardless.

I haven't played the new game. And I likely won't be able to until July. But for fuck's sake a lot of you "complaints" are that they removed nonfunctional subsystems that they tried and failed to get me to care about in Civ 3 or Civ 4.

-Username17