Civilization 4 and Civilization 5

[Mcsweeney]

I fixed my Internet and I'm ready to play Civ 4 with anyone who wants to spend some ungodly long hours playing with me! What difficulty do you normally play single player on? I can beat it on Monarch, but I find Emperor difficult.

Also discuss Civ V here. Coming in September. No more stacks of doom!

[Tyranidos]

I have the game but I suck. I can beat Warlord lol.

[Jerichi]

I like Civ but I suck at it and Civ 4 is weird.

I like Civ 3.

[ZoraJolteon]

BABA YUTEI YUTAEH A SHIMOUNTA BLA BLA BLA BLA.

[dosuser]

My attention span wanes pretty quickly in single player, so I rarely finish games against the AI. My difficulty level is probably Noble or Prince. I am always up for a good long multiplayer game though.

[Mcsweeney]

Civ 3 is good, but Civ 4 is superior in every way. Civ 2 is the most overrated, so many nostalgia goggles wearing people proclaim it as the best.

dosuser, we can set something up next weekend.

Baba Yetu is a very good song!

[Talon87]

I just spent the last half hour reading up on Civilization 5 (on their main website, and on video game review websites as well). And I came across an interesting, telling observation about Sid's move from squares to hexes:

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/civ5concernb.png

Granted, this kind of scenario is (a) not too threatening, since you can always place your own defending units in next-door hex tiles; and (b) it's not too common, since (mid-to-endgame, when you really start invading people) most of your invading forces have at least 2+ attack range or movement anyway; but still. It's somewhat telling of Sid's true intentions with Civ5.

On the one hand, he keeps saying he wants to make it so that players can beat the game in ways that don't require militancy. On the other hand, there is no denying that hexes offer the invading force a clear advantage over the defending force, especially when (as in Civ5) you cannot stack multiple units on the same tile.

[dosuser]

Mcsweeney, what's a good day and time to start our game? I should be pretty flexible if there's going to be Civ involved!

[Blastoise]

I just spent the last half hour reading up on Civilization 5 (on their main website, and on video game review websites as well). And I came across an interesting, telling observation about Sid's move from squares to hexes:


You needed a .jpeg to tell you that hexes have more sides than squares?

[Mcsweeney]

I work night shift, so I'm available from about 9:00 PM to 3:00 PM. I too can be flexible if that doesn't work for you. How about Saturday?

Talon, I didn't know you were into the Civilization! Want to join us? Do you have Beyond the Sword?

Also, it's not accurate to say SID is making those changes. They've got a cocky new kid leading development now, Jon Shafer. I'm not worried though, I maintain that every new incarnation of Civilization has been superior to the previous one. I went back and played the original Civilization recently, and, retro charm aside, UGH. Moving individual units manually across vast railroad lines is a nightmare!

[Talon87]

I'm not really into Civ all that much. It takes way too much time, and I'm generally the loser (against the AI or IRL friends), so it's not very fun. If I won at least some of the time, maybe, but ... sorry, I'll pass. ^^;

[Mcsweeney]

Understandable. Civ 4 is an extremely complicated game, in order to play at a high level you have to learn a ridiculous amount of rules and gameplay mechanics in order to maximize your empire. Lots of tedious micromanagement too (automating any task is a no-no). I could probably beat Emperor if I spent a really long time analyzing every move I make, and carefully checking each city every single turn to make sure they're doing exactly what I want them to do, but a lot of times I'm just too lazy and click "end turn" and make my worker, umm, whatever, build a mine here I guess.

[Doppleganger]

I'm interested but it looks expensive.

I played two army-building BBMMRTS called Travian and The Last Knights, but they were free and Civ is not. XO

Maybe if someone gets one of those "free" games off of Steam I can buy it off someone from Forumwarz.

[dosuser]

If you mean 9:00 AM on Saturday, I'll definitely be here.

[Mcsweeney]

That's great then, let's set it at 9:00 AM Saturday. What time zone, though? I'm in Mountain Time. Do you have Windows Live (MSN Messenger)? If not I guess we could just communicate with PMs to set it up.

Also, what kind of game should we play? Should we compete against each other or team up?

Dopple, if you can find it, make sure you also get the Beyond the Sword expansion. No need for the Warlords one since BtS includes it.

[dosuser]

I sent you a PM.

Teams are ok if we do a lot of strategy planning and collaboration, otherwise everyone just does their own thing and it doesn't achieve much.

We could always maintain peace while we beat down the AI players and then turn on each other later, or try for some surprise diplomatic/cultural/space race victory. =3=

[dosuser]

Awesome game. (Magenta = Mcsweeney, Purple = Morg)

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9656/mcsweeneycivs.gif

Some AI player boxed me in at the start, delaying me enough to be a full era of technology behind Mcsweeney for most of the game. However, my glorious dominion fought hard against his invading force, and stood to the very end. I even destroyed his mobile artillery with a swordsman! Mcsweeney won a domination victory with 90% of the word population and 66% of the landmass. The total time was 8 hours and 28 minutes.

We definitely need to do this again sometime =3=

[Mcsweeney]

That continent to the far right also capitulated to be my vassal.

Invading Morg took longer than I had anticipated, despite the fact that I had vastly superior technology (tanks and mobile artillery vs largely medieval era units, with the occasional WW2 infantryman). I even had an aircraft carrier off the coast bombing his cities.

First of all, I wasn't used to fighting real live human beings and the clever tricks they pull, as opposed to the predictable AI. He also has a weird style of building his cities very far apart, so I couldn't move quickly from city to city as I'm accustomed to doing. What's more, he never chops down trees, which meant I had to go through all these forests which seriously slowed down my tanks. I'd drop paratroopers into the wilderness and they still had to walk 5 squares to get to the enemy city! However, since he had a railroad, he could easily move through the forests and sometimes re-capture the cities that I had poorly defended. Yes, that swordsman defeating mobile artillery was something else. That sort of thing happened all the time in older Civilization games (spearman beating battleship was an especially notorious case), but these days it's very rare!

[Muyotwo]

Civ 3 is good, but Civ 4 is superior in every way. Civ 2 is the most overrated, so many nostalgia goggles wearing people proclaim it as the best.
Clearly, Colonization was the best. Freakin' redcoats.

[Mcsweeney]

I never played that. I did play Alpha Centauri though, which I put above Civ 2 but below Civ 3, although it's better than Civ 3 in some ways. The unit workshop for example is great, you can make all kinds of novel units with it. You can use terraformers to shape the land in any way you wish, much moreso than Civilization workers. Finally, planet busters are truly terrifying weapons of mass destruction (nukes are wimpy by comparison).

[Mcsweeney]

Up for another game on Saturday, same time? Can you handle Prince difficulty? I find Noble to be too much of a joke. That's why I was able to steamroll my two neighbours so easily. If your two friends come along again, we can play Hubs like they wanted.

I may not go for a domination victory next time. My turns took so long because I was constantly at war. I just can't help myself sometimes! I love rockin' people.

[Talon87]

So how is Civ 5, Mcsweeney?

[Mcsweeney]

Pretty good. They changed more than I expected. It's less complex but deeper. Less micro more macro. They streamlined lots of nitpicky little rules from Civ IV. The combat is a big improvement and forces you to think more tactically instead of DURR make 50 riflemen in one huge stack and throw them against the city. A navy is actually important for once!

However, there's loads of problems too. The AI is ABYSMAL, especially at combat, which makes the game much easier. I've only done two playthroughs and I'm already up to Emperor difficulty (it took me several years to reach Emperor in Civ IV). Hell I'll probably beat that on the first try too, since I've never even come close to losing yet. Also, as I predicted, there's loads of bugs, so you shouldn't bother buying it yet until they patch it. How did I predict that? Because they obviously never fired the piss poor play testing team from Civ IV. That game had to be patched like 10 times, and it was actually comical how LONG the list of fixes were for each patch. I don't understand how I can notice like 15 really obvious bugs on my very first playthrough, that somehow eluded the whole TEAM OF PROFESSIONAL PLAY TESTERS.

The interface is kind of awkward too. You're forced to click with the mouse a lot instead of quickly using the keyboard. This makes my playthroughs take a lot longer. In Civ IV, I got so good at playing quickly that I was getting my single player games down to about 5 hours. Who knows, maybe I just need more practice.

It's a good game, and it's still playable, but I'm going to put it down until they patch it, way too many annoying things going on at the moment.

[Blastoise]

That game had to be patched like 10 times, and it was actually comical how LONG the list of fixes were for each patch. I don't understand how I can notice like 15 really obvious bugs on my very first playthrough, that somehow eluded the whole TEAM OF PROFESSIONAL PLAY TESTERS.

Given the complexity of an average Civ game, I'm guessing they were only able to get through so many bugs before the QA team started drinking heavily to make the hurting stop.

[Mcsweeney]

I think Morg will like this game, because it suits his playing style very well.

Builds very few cities - This is a valid strategy in Civ V, because large empires have unhappiness problems. By the way, you don't have to micro every individual city for happiness anymore, it's one empire wide number now. Unhealthiness is completely gone. Also, having a smaller empire makes it easier to unlock social policies, which are the new civics.

Builds his cities far apart - This is also fine, because cities can work a HUGE number of tiles now (three hexes out). The corruption penalty of having cities far away from the capital is gone too.

Is lazy with improving tiles - Workers aren't as crucial anymore, because it takes SOOOOO long to expand a city's borders. If you can't wait for natural expansion via culture, you can also buy tiles with cash, but this is usually a rip off. You also can't spam roads everywhere anymore, because they cost 1 gold per turn in maintenance. Railroads cost an additional gold per turn.

Wages wars that literally last for millenia - War weariness is gone. No need for those "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banners anymore!

[Blastoise]

Just picked this up a few days ago. Played a game with Glorious Nippon and rolled over the entire world (fuck yeah Bushido), although Chieftan difficulty lol



Is lazy with improving tiles - Workers aren't as crucial anymore, because it takes SOOOOO long to expand a city's borders. If you can't wait for natural expansion via culture, you can also buy tiles with cash, but this is usually a rip off. You also can't spam roads everywhere anymore, because they cost 1 gold per turn in maintenance. Railroads cost an additional gold per turn.

Too bad the worker automation is still bleh. Midway through the game I automated half my workers hoping they'd prioritize turning my roads into railroads (because nobody wants to micro that shit). I check back several turns later and they're all overwriting half my improvements with trading posts =|

EDIT: Also, the Civilopedia in V is worthless. Thanks for telling me what fucking railroads are (because I don't know anything about them despite playing this game on a computer in a first world country), but a listing of the actual rules for the improvement would be nice.

[Mcsweeney]

Some Civilopedia entries are just blatantly wrong, too. Like when it claims that stealth bombers can't be based on aircraft carriers (they can). Way bigger blunders than that too. A certain social policy claims that it gives you +2 science per trading post in your empire, but it's actually only +1. That adds up to a massive difference! The funny thing about these two mistakes is that I'm not sure whether they screwed up the description, or screwed up its implementation into the game. That's why I haven't played the game in 3 weeks, not until they patch it. Right now it just feels like an incomplete game, like I'm playing in a beta.

Even putting bugs aside, I'm sad to say that this is the first ever Civilization game that isn't CLEARLY better than its predecessor (despite what the nostalgia goggles wearing Civ2 fanboys will say). The combat system, yes, huge improvement, but the economic and city management side? It's debatable. Not having to micro individual cities as severely is nice, but at the same time it feels like I'm not pushing my skills to the limit like I was in Civ4. In that game, the improvements you made with workers were extremely important; specializing properly and optimally could be the difference between life and death. Now it doesn't matter as much anymore, because it's usually a no brainer to trading post nearly everything, while abusing city states for food.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT! It's still entirely possible that I will proclaim this the best Civ game ever once it's fixed. I've only played two games after all. I did enjoy those games and was looking forward to more, but the beta test feeling got to me!

[Talon87]

Quoting Todd Brakke (http://nohighscores.com/node/52):

If you read my earlier post, which discussed my reasoning for walking away from Civ 5, you know one of my big misgivings with that game is that I don't think its various systems come together in a way that actually works. I'm not sure they ever will, but I am glad to see that Firaxis's next patch, which we should see this month, attempts to address the game's many balance issues.

Accompanying the patch notes is a statement from "Dennis, the Civilization V producer," that I think is rather telling...

With future patches we’ll continue to iterate through Civ V systems and fine tune the balance of each one. So far we’ve already identified combat, multiplayer, late-game policies, wonders and civilization-unique bonuses as additional areas that will benefit from this sort of attention. And as this journey progresses we promise to keep an ear to the ground for other areas the Civilization community may want us to address. Continued collaboration between community, our gameplay testers, and the development team will be nothing but a win for Civ V.

We are now six months out from the game's initial release and they're still talking about "iterating" through the game's systems to balance "each one." You can check the full patch notes where I've linked, but a huge chunk of the changes concern adjustments to the benefits civs receive from resources and buildings. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they're doing all this work as it gives me hope for the game's future, but if that doesn't say all that needs to be said about the release condition of the game, I don't know what does. Credit where it's due, at least they know the game's still got issues.

Source: http://nohighscores.com/node/52

Seems like you were right on the money, Mcsweeney. So I guess I'll see you in 2014 when they release their final commercial build of Civ V? :lol:

[Mcsweeney]

A lot of people in the Civilization community are pessimistic about Civilization V. They believe that the game is fundamentally broken and can never be made good through patching. The game is a disappointment, no getting around that, but with proper patching, I believe it can be JUST BARELY better than Civilization IV. Big cities need another buff, to counteract the Infinite City Sprawl strategy, which is currently considered the optimal way to play.

Diplomacy also needs to be less crazy. You see, in Civilization IV, if you knew how the diplomacy system worked, it was easy to exploit the other civs to get techs you wanted, and prevent them from declaring war on you. So for Civ V they wanted to make diplomacy more "mysterious" so people wouldn't be able to abuse it as much. But this just makes them insane. A civilization will ask you to declare war on somebody they hate, and then afterward they will denounce you for being a warmongering barbarian! I shit you not. In Civ IV it was possible to build a very strong friendship with another civilization. In Civ V, it seems like nothing you do is good enough, you never have any true friends, so just take what you can get from others and backstab them when the time is right.

The new patch look pretty good.
http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?104604-February-Patch-Notes
Haha, it's hilarious how many changes are in every patch. Look at that shit! This is why Civilization has such a high learning curve. All the million little rules you have to learn, further compounded by each new patch which alter everything. If a beginner picks the game up for the first time, the 233 page manual would be COMPLETELY USELESS, because most of the information in there is wildly out of date. So how is he supposed to learn how to play the game properly? Loads of trial and error, keeping up with each new patch and finely tuning his strategy to each new round of changes, duh! GOD, can't they do something so simple?

[Talon87]

What you've described in 5 sounds awfully similar to what I experienced in and hated about 3. Here's one story I vaguely remember ...

I was playing an eight-civ medium-map game in Civilization III one time and India was one of my neighboring civs. Mr. Gandhi planted a colony settlement right smack dab in the middle of two of mine but I didn't say anything: I didn't want to stir the hornet's nest, so to speak. Then he offers me a ridiculously unfair trade: something like 10 of one of my resources for 1 of his shitty resources that I already have plenty of myself. I tell him "No" but offer him a fairer counteroffer: 2-for-1, still retardedly against me. He turns it down and storms off. Later on, he's getting wailed on by somebody to one of his nation's sides that isn't near me, so I figure, "Okay, let's offer him another trade." He happily accepts the terms I establish, requesting some stuff I need in exchange for some stuff he'll need to power his war machine. Everyone's happy.

Eventually, we form an alliance. This drags me into Gandhi's tangled mess. He's pretty much pissed off half of the world at this point and I've pissed off nobody, so I now find myself confronted by 3 or 4 civs that hate my guts. Great.

What happens next is unbelievable: Gandhi declares war on me and forms an alliance with the people he'd previously been at war with. WTF @ him, but a bigger WTF @ them. What were they thinking!? That would be like if Soviet Russia made an alliance with Nazi Germany to go after the Japanese Empire when the Japanese hadn't yet spilled any Russian blood and the Germans had already killed 500,000 Russian soldiers. :evil:

So what do I do? I don't remember all of the details, but eventually war is called off, I've survived, and Gandhi is very pissed at me. Needless to say, our alliance is over and done with.

But what happens next just floors me: he sends troops to the perimeter of one of my colonies, I defeat the troops on neutral soil, and the world just EXPLODES in rage at me. Every nation accuses me of being a warmongerer. Even though HE Sent the troops. Even though HE'S the big douchebag. You'd think the AI would have realized:

1. Gandhi is a douchebag. Let's eliminate him.

2. Talon is a nice guy. Maybe we can milk the sucker, but regardless, no need to declare war on him.

3. Talon was just defending himself from Gandhi's militant advances. We'd have done the same.

But no. The AI is purposely designed, even at the easiest levels, to treat the player as Public Enemy #1. It makes a diplomatic style of play completely worthless and convinces me that Sid Meier only ever plays his baby one way, despite his many claioms to the contrary: and that's hardcore, Genghis Khan, "rape, pillage, and murder"-style barbarism.

I have no doubt Sid played as the Zulu in Civ 3. No fucking doubt whatsoever.

[Holy Emperor]

Was thinking of playing a Civ game. As a new person to the series, which one should I pick up first?

[Mcsweeney]

Haha, I don't remember the specifics of Civ 3's diplomacy system, but that sounds about right. In Civ 4 and 5, Gandhi is THE neighbour that you want to have. He's friendly and hardly builds any military. This means that he isn't a threat, and you can easily steamroll him when his usefulness expires and you just want his nice cities full of wonders.

Was thinking of playing a Civ game. As a new person to the series, which one should I pick up first?

Either Civ 4 or 5. If you want to play a great game NOW, Civ 4 with Beyond the Sword expansion pack. If you want to "invest in the future", get Civ 5, which is decent right now with patches and will only get better in the future. I have both, so either way, hit me up for a game! Morg also has Civ 4, and we spent many a late night playing, but I never see him around anymore :(

That's another thing that sucks, I have no one to play Civ 5 with. No one's around to share the experience of carpet nuking the AI's whole empire!

[Muyotwo]

Was thinking of playing a Civ game. As a new person to the series, which one should I pick up first?
Play Civ 2, then my dad would have someone to play with.

[Blastoise]

I would start Civ 5 first, if only because I find the combat system in that to actually be somewhat tactical and comprehensible (versus "hurr my stack is bigger than your stack my strategy is besterest"). I've always been a casual Civ fan though, so take that for what you will.

[Mcsweeney]

Civilization 2 didn't have multiplayer, but I believe there's mods out there that do.

I agree that Civ 5's new "one unit per tile" rule makes combat so much better, but it has its own flaws. It makes the late game tedious as you have to maneuver all your units around each other. In previous games you could just throw everything into the stack of doom. But then, Civilization games have always been notorious for having tedious endgames.

Civ 5 - You have so many units and have to figure out where to put them.

Civ 4 - The city governors aren't as good as Civ 5's, so you have to heavily micro all your cities to make sure they have the specialists you want, work the tiles you want, and population doesn't exceed the happiness/pollution caps.

Civs 2 and 3 - Microing cities is even more essential, since city production will completely stop if population exceeds the happiness cap. You also have to clean up pollution with workers.

Civ 1 - This game is nice and simple and has lots of retro charm, but IT'S ALSO A HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. Moving individual units across vast stretches of railroad is the goddamn worst.

For newcomers: Don't let my previous posts talking about the game's high learning curve scare you off. It's still an awesome series. Just be prepared to get rocked, and play on low difficulty levels until you figure out what you're doing.