My Impressions

[notyoueither]

Having finished a game and clicked around in another couple, I thought now would be a good time to share my initial thoughts on Civ5. Having been invited to the beta I had some exposure sooner than some, but then put it aside at an early point for a variety of reasons. The result is that I knew about as much about the game as most people who bought the game on release day.

While ruminating on the subject of civ(s) playing civ, and civ players the tale of Gulliver's Travels comes to mind. Many of us have previously voyaged to many different lands and seen wildly different things. In our travels some of us have gained considerable experience. These experiences give us a broad frame of reference with which to measure this new installment, but they can also lead to hesitation in accepting some things new or different. Some may feel hostility to the novel.

I am not immune to the tendency to be fixed in my expectations. At a point where I was very busy personally, the ideas of 1UPT and how roads would be treated greatly lowered my attraction to the beta project. Among other things, the effect of overlaying a tactical combat system upon the strategic map of the world offended my sense of civ. I drifted away from the project.

Then release day arrived. I make no bones about it, I am a civ junkie. I was successful in avoiding any civ game for a considerable period of time, but the idea of a new civ being in the shop just down the road had an effect. My wanderlust awoke, and it was time to set sail on this new voyage of civ.



1UPT did not turn out so bad as I thought in some ways. No, it is not Caesar's legions gathered on the single field for the decisive moment of action to decide the fate of empires. It is more like Napoleon's or Lee's regiments arranged across the terrain each in their turn to play a part in the battle that rages over a larger space. 1UPT is fun enough for combat, but it does nag when there is congestion.

It is one thing to have to manage the movement of troops in combat. Manoeuvre is an integral part of such systems. That is part of the fun. It is another to have congestion combined with the dearth of roads make it harder to manage workers in the late game. That is unfun.




The happiness system is interesting. Empire wide effects of cities immediately led me to review my mental notes on 'camps' from Civ3. Who wants Joe burg to be using the happy cap from luxuries when the capital has nowhere to go but up? Especially when small settlements can produce buildings that may further add to the pool from which larger metropoli draw. Why throw pearls before the swine? Is it better to keep luxuries to make the people of larger cities content?

I initially thought that cash was less important than happiness, but reading of the adventures of some others leads me to reconsider. Perhaps cash and happiness are more like twins with different natures. You may favour one, the other, or treat them with equal measure. They can each be their own keys to growth, but of different sorts.



Removing road spam has been a long sought goal of civ players and designers. They've done it, but I'm not fond of the cure. I find the system of paying to make the surrounding countryside navigable too restrictive. Moving workers around cities on plains is fine, but hilly country is not. Especially when pathfinding for long trips will move workers off the road if it is blocked for their final tile of movement for a turn. Now, have the worker bail off the road in the hills. Argh!

Had I to do it myself, I would make roads integral to tile improvements. Units would take a half MP to move through farmlands, mining towns, and forest camps. Highways would link cities for trade, cost gold, and units would move over them for something like a third MP. Or, any tile with an improvement costs one MP, and leave roads as is. Something like that would preserve the combat system and make worker management and long distance travel easier.



City specialisation was given a large push with Civ4. Specialist factories, banking centres, etc. I'm thinking it's on steroids in 5. I'm not paying anything other than a happiness pip to build a new city? More cities build more units and seem to make larger armies cheaper, and they can build improvements that will make other cities reach larger size? Cha-ching!

I mentioned camp cities in Civ3. The idea was to build a few cities as filler, add a barracks, and build units. They were good things to link borders and make the stuff to preserve your civ against others. Now add in the multiple buildings that advance upon others as prerequisites, each costing cash, and I'm not so much looking at city sites on the map as I'm looking at places to build graneries, barracks, libraries and banks.



City States add greatly to the diplomatic game. Unfortunately, their larger cousins, civs, seem to have regressed greatly. I believe the technical term is 'they suck.'

I haven't looked at this too closely, so don't have much to say other than the impression I have at this point is that diplomatic relations are too easily managed with both CS's and civs. I am not seeing too many trade offs in choices of friends. I could trade with both sides of a war without penalty so far as I could see. In a completed game on Prince I never got the idea that any combination of civs would cooperate to block my running away with the game. This may be the intent of the designers, if they chose to avoid having players feel conspired against, but even then I would expect to be told off about selling iron or luxes to both sides in a war. And then there was Catherine offering me all her cities (six or seven) after I took the first one of hers in my only war of the completed game.

Diplomatic Victory is simply broken. CS's count for one vote each. A huge civ occupying most of Russia and China gets one vote. This may be a realistic reflection of the problems in the real General Assembly, but it sucks to be able to buy victory in the game for gold via being a City State pimp (or is that John?).



Bugs? Too numerous to go into here, and some real howlers for a game that was extensively tested. I'm left to conclude that a race was on to finish and fixing will come. I'd be very nervous if this were a studio other than Firaxis. I have no reason to say this other than the fact that they have been diligent in patching in the past. All I can have is faith and hope it is not misplaced.

My big concern right now has to be AI. How much better can they make it? It should not be hard to make an AI that should win 50% of the time at coin tosses. It took quite an effort to make AI that could compete with the best at chess. Imagine trying to make Big Blue when there are 50 different types of pieces and the board is a huge map.

Balance is an issue, or maybe it isn't? Experience and reading around leads to the thought that maybe this is the popcorn civ. Perhaps the intent was not to build the balanced game that earlier versions were intended to be. On the other hand the way gold, happiness, the terrain, unit costs, maintenance, etc all fit together leads me to look further. This may end up being the best civ for things like PBEM and diplo games.

Overall, there are a lot of flaws, but my impression is that there is a game in there. I'm hoping that Firaxis has the time to bring it out.

[MRT144]

I disagree on city specialization being important. Why shouldn't you build every gold improving and happiness building if given the chance? Why shouldn't you just plop a bunch of trading posts down?

[notyoueither]

Building all the happiness buildings would be the most common use of camps now, I should think. Generally, you are buying happiness for other, larger cities at a rate of 1.x gold per happiness (1.0-1.3).

You might not build the gold buildings if you do not have the gold on the map for work by those citizens, or you don't have the food to assign a specialist to work as a banker.

I'm thinking small (size ~5-7) cranking shields for units/happiness buildings.

[notyoueither]

Another aspect of camps is that they occupy space between cities that are intended to be larger and more fully developed.

Early game the camp uses tiles that in later game may be used by the larger neighbours.

X---C---X

where X are planned to be large metropoli, and C is a camp filler.

[Krill]

Welcome back NYE.

Interesting take on the topic, especially with the camp city idea.

[MxM]

Had I to do it myself, I would make roads integral to tile improvements. Units would take a half MP to move through farmlands, mining towns, and forest camps. Highways would link cities for trade, cost gold, and units would move over them for something like a third MP. Or, any tile with an improvement costs one MP, and leave roads as is. Something like that would preserve the combat system and make worker management and long distance travel easier.

Great idea, but only for non-military units.

[jnh140]

I refer to the camp city concept as "towns." I think it would be possible to create towns for the player by using some of the citystate code. Also, perhaps such camp cites could spring up spontaneously along highways, and social policies could influence what kind of bonuses they gave. More than anything else I miss how the landscape developed in civ4-- cottages grew gradually giving you the impression of development througout the society. Examples: You could spec towards rural, agrarian towns, which would pass food to your pop centers, or you could spec industrial\material, which would add hammers or even science. Doing so might give some freedom to cut back on the gross bonuses provided by maritime CS.

Alleviating roadless workers: perhaps workers should, at the advent of combustion, get motorized vehicles to cruise around in, treating tiles in friendly territory as a roaded square, perhaps with a slight penalty for moving through unmodified woods and mountains. This would simplify their movement a bit.

For dealing with 1UPT restrictions. I REALLY like 1upt. By far my favorite feature overall. It fixes my main nigs with the series, but the fix is a hair too restrictive. I love how hard it is to capture even undefended cities on narrow peninsulas and tiny islands.

Perhaps a concept of "mobilization" would help. Mobilization was very important during WW1, for example, the european states had planned that war ad nasuem before it started, and germany knew that at its outset they had a several week advantage over how long it would take for france to mobilize. So an early-strike strategy would guarantee them a win! Sadly for the germans, the french managed to get mobilized in time to turn a quick trounce into a win.

Unmobilized units would be stackable and cost less maintenance, allowing you to have the units on hand, but are not combat capable and could be dispersed by fast invasion. They would then require several turns for mobilization, before becoming normal, unstackable units again. Autocracy type policies would provide a bonus to mobilization time, while maybe freedom style policies would decrease unmobilized maitnence but increase mobilization time.

[Arrian]

Thanks for your take, NYE.

I like the mobilization idea.

Then again, I have the same initial reaction to 1UPT that NYE did: I think it's a bad idea, full stop (Civ is a high-level strategy game, not a tactical war game, and the idea of 1 unit on a hex that is probably hundreds of square miles is... ridiculous). I am open to being convinced otherwise, once I get the game. Gameplay > realism, of course. I just don't see how stacks were bad for gameplay. Limiting the stacks? Sure. 1UPT? Seems extreme.

Ditto on "road spam." I never had a problem with it, myself. In reality, any developed nation has roads on just about every "tile" or "hex" in their nation. You either do this the way previous Civ installments did it (you, the player, build roads all over), or you build into the game an implicit assumption that there are roads (invisible, if you like), whereas the ones the player chooses to build are major highways. This could be adjusted by era (in the early game no there aren't roads everywhere. Mid-game you have assumed roads immediately around cities. Late-game you have roads on all flat land in your borders and on rough terrain x-tiles from cities).

-Arrian

[MxM]

Mobilization does not solve the problem of moving the units, only storing them (which is really minor problem). I also do not like the idea of paying less money when units are demobilized - it will promote having MORE units with harder micromanagement on the battlefield when they mobilized.

I would go with different idea. I would give them possibility to "pack". In packed state, they still have the same maintenance but
1) there could be multiple units per hex
2) You can move them something like 5 hexes per turn (+ road bonuses) ALL of the units, including those who would normally move six or more
3) Single attack would destroy the whole stack if successful (like civ 2) even if units are unpacked and did not move yet thus still on the same cell.
4) Units can not attack and have reduced defense in this state (like workers). Basically the whole stack becomes a worker from attack/defense point of view, no matter composition.
5) It would spend one turn to pack or unpack it. The unit can not move attack in this turn after unpack has pressed.
6) Once unpacked, on next turn you can only move from the hex where is more than 1 unit (and can attack if you attack from the hex with single unit). If hex has more than one unit - it can not attack and still has reduced defense (the same for all units). It will become truly unpacked only when you move away from the cell.
7) the process of packing can be simplified by assuming that if you move the unpacked unit into stack, then unit packs and joins the stack.

This will solve problem of moving 15 pieces of units from one side to another side - the only problem that current system has IMO. Still the game would need new interface to show stacked units.

[Standup]

Removing road spam has been a long sought goal of civ players and designers

I still find myself doing this if only out of boredom. All those workers and nothing to do. I did spend a game disbanding them as i captured them but that was fairly tedious.

1UPT did not turn out so bad as I thought in some ways.

I agree although I'm still not entirely conviced. The combat system in CIv 3 (which I didn't like) was explained/justified to some extent by the argument it's a strategy game so individual results shouldn't matter too much. In Civ V they do matter and it feels like the tactical combat is more important than your overall position. Certainly I seem to spend much more time fretting about the positions of individual units than I do about what my cities are churning out. At the momement its just different not obviously bad.

[Asmodean]

Good thread, nye

My feelings on the whole 1UPT thing are a bit mixed. As a whole I really applaud doing away with SODs. They were disruptive and made the game very unfun.

However, it is also my oppinion that Firaxis have found a very restrictive method of solving that particular problem. Now I am no game designer, but I got to thinking what do real world armies do? Stacks of Doom are impossible in the real world because of space constraints. You simply can't have all the armies in the world congesting around Berlin for example. The solution I came up with is combined arms. That what they do out there. They attack with infantry supported by tanks, artillery and air assets. So why not have fixed stack compositions in Civ V?

Design idea: Allow the player the opportunity to create armies. An army can have as much as 4 units, but fewer are allowed. Each unit in the army has a role. There can be only 1 unit in an army for each role. In the end game, those roles would be: Infantry, cavalry (tank when appropriate), artillery and air support. In the early game, you would have only infantry - then with the discovery of archery and/or animal husbandry you would have access to artillery and mounted roles, and finally with flight you could have the entire armies created. And the best of it all: An army would be allowed to form a stack, but of course you would only be allowed 1 army per tile.....1UPT becomes 1APT.

Not as restrictive as Firaxis' current system, but still a long way of being SOD.

Asmodean

[Sir Og]

Design idea: Allow the player the opportunity to create armies. An army can have as much as 4 units, but fewer are allowed. Each unit in the army has a role. There can be only 1 unit in an army for each role. In the end game, those roles would be: Infantry, cavalry (tank when appropriate), artillery and air support. In the early game, you would have only infantry - then with the discovery of archery and/or animal husbandry you would have access to artillery and mounted roles, and finally with flight you could have the entire armies created. And the best of it all: An army would be allowed to form a stack, but of course you would only be allowed 1 army per tile.....1UPT becomes 1APT.

Not as restrictive as Firaxis' current system, but still a long way of being SOD.

Asmodean

What you are proposing is one 1upt with the ability to field injured/incomplete units.(not full armies as per your definition) Since nobody would want to move around with an incomplete army the end result will be the same as the current system but with fewer units.

Having said that I think that civ5 system could work if they improve the interface significantly. They should add ability to select and move multiple units. Improve path-finding and most importantly make the AI less retarded.

[Asmodean]

What you are proposing is one 1upt with the ability to field injured/incomplete units.(not full armies as per your definition) Since nobody would want to move around with an incomplete army the end result will be the same as the current system but with fewer units.

Having said that I think that civ5 system could work if they improve the interface significantly. They should add ability to select and move multiple units. Improve path-finding and most importantly make the AI less retarded.

No you completely misread my post. I never wrote anything about injured/incomplete units.

I wrote armies, because I meant armies. An army consisting of up to 4 units, all of which would be allowed to occupy one tile.

Think it was clear what I wrote.

Asmodean

[Sir Og]

How is an army of 1 unit in the system you propose not equal to injured unit from a 1upt system (like current civ5 system)?

[jnh140]

earlier civ and bastardized call to power iterations had some army business going on-- it was never a strong point, which is surely why it was ditched. 1UPT is the best thing to happen to this series, ever. The only problem is that it causes a host of restrictive problems that limit mobility.