On-Topic Off-Topic Forum Thread: Rate'em! Civ's I-V

[Sir Og]

4 , 1&2 tied for third place,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,, 3, 5

If I had to pick a single feature that I disliked the most it would be 3's horrible corruption system which made most of my cities useless.

[onodera]

SMAC-4-2-1-5-3

I've reinstalled 4 this weekend, and its gameplay is so smooth compared to 5. That's why I won't kickstart At The Gates.

[onodera]

A middle ground for stack problems would be a "max stack size" value that could be changed by research/civics/traits/player preference. Say that you start with a stack limit of three or so, but it goes up when you research things like map making, the radio, refrigeration, etc. that would increase a commander's ability to maintain communication, cohesion, and supply lines in the field. You could make it more flexible by allowing the player to exceed the limit at the cost of added upkeep for the turn--getting the AI to fathom that might be a bear though.

Or you can bring back ZoC, so the stacks can't just zoom past each other. Or make max stack size a function of the distance to your nearest city with no recently conquered malus. Just not 1UPT with tiles the size of Austria.

[Hauldren Collider]

Civ IV was the best. Civ V was an abortion. Never played enough II or III to judge, and I never played I at all.

But hey, aren't you guys forgetting Civilization Revolution?

[snoopy369]

To be perfectly clear, I have no problem with 'stack' mechanics. It's different from 1UPT, and both have advantages/disadvantages. I think Civ4 handled 'stack' mechanics fine (as well as it could be handled); but Civ5 having 1UPT is good because it gives us variation. 1UPT _is_ more interesting, to some of us; you get over the annoyance of moving units around/blocking [and I'm an extreme anti-MMer, by the way]. You just don't build super big armies; build a small empire with an efficient army. I completely agree that 1UPT wasn't done right in Civ5 - but it was done, and it was at least somewhat interesting. I have a lot more fun with Civ5 battles than Civ4 battles, though I have more fun with the 'sim' part of Civ4 than I do with Civ5 (though it's not a total disaster).

Personally I think this thread is showing Apolyton's age. It's not a shock that few people here like Civ5 - it's substantially different from Civ4, and appealing to a slightly different group of people. That's okay, and I don't think anyone's wrong for disliking it. But saying categorically that nobody can like it is stupid - Ben level stupid. Lots of people liked it. It's got a 90 on metacritic, and the user score is 7.1, with a pretty big split - 60% positive reviews, 40% negative. So a lot of people liked it, and a lot of people didn't. I don't think anybody thinks it was near to perfect, but given it was an odd iteration, that was bound to be the case. It was still enjoyable, and not a waste of time for me.

[snoopy369]

Civ IV was the best. Civ V was an abortion. Never played enough II or III to judge, and I never played I at all.

But hey, aren't you guys forgetting Civilization Revolution?

I'd rank Civ:Rev .. somewhere in there. It's better than Civ1, now, and better than Civ3; so probably 4-5-2-Rev-1-3. It's better than not playing Civ on a console/iPhone. It's not the same game as Civ, but IMO it was an excellent transformation of the game to the console. Sort of like book versus movie: the worst movies are the ones identical to the book. They're different platforms, so they need different things. CivRev is pretty fun, and every so often I'll play a few games just because I can. Not complex at all, not really 'thinking' game like Civ-PC; but fun, anyway.

[Elok]

Or you can bring back ZoC, so the stacks can't just zoom past each other. Or make max stack size a function of the distance to your nearest city with no recently conquered malus. Just not 1UPT with tiles the size of Austria.

I'm assuming here that you'd keep the Civ4 change where rivals can share a square provided they aren't at war? That was my big beef with ZoC in SMAC and II, because the computer would always block you off in neutral territory by sticking a couple of weak units in just the right spots. Gee, do I declare war, or let this weenie deny me the power to expand?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Thats what spies and probe units were for later on air units.

[Elok]

If I had to pic a single feature that I disliked the most it would be 3's horrible corruption system which made most of my cities useless.

This is pretty much the only thing I remember about III, and the reason why I stopped playing almost at once. Oh, and I remember that there were unique units, civ traits and strategic/luxury resources. A beat version of IV, basically. I guess you could argue that VI will do the same thing for V, but the thing is, Civ III's ideas had potential. You could clearly see that they had potential, it was just that implementation was rotten. I can't think of anything about V that doesn't sound at least a little dumb to me. Hexes, I guess, solve a "problem" that honestly never bothered me in the first place. I think they're ugly and make movement feel weird and immersion-breaking, but I suppose they do something for some people.

[Elok]

Thats what spies and probe units were for later on air units.

Okay, but why should I be unable to pass by someone who's not supposed to be hostile to me, in territory neither of us controls? Why is it that way in the first place?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

You are to respect their authoritae.

[Donegeal]

I wasn't around this site for when Civ III came out. Just what do you guys think the problem is with it?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Culture

[PLATO]

I wasn't around this site for when Civ III came out. Just what do you guys think the problem is with it?

Civ III was great...until it wasn't any more. Once you understood the game mechanics (which didn't take all that long), then you could beat it like a drum every time.

That being said...rolling over an entire country in one turn is a nice way to take out some frustrations! I must admit though....there are times I wished for Civ III bombers while playing Civ IV!

[Krill]

You're insane. I've never seen Jon claim 1UPT was a mistake. Do you read his developer blog?

I'm just better read than you are: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...s/posts/404789

Speculation aside, the reality was that the congestion caused by 1UPT also impacted other parts of the game. In every prior Civ title it was no problem to have ten, fifty or even a thousand units under your control. Sure, larger numbers meant more to manage, but hotkeys and UI conveniences could alleviate much of the problem. But in Civ 5, every unit needed its own tile, and that meant the map filled up pretty quickly.

To address this, I slowed the rate of production, which in turn led to more waiting around for buckets to fill up. For pacing reasons, in the early game I might have wanted players to be training new units every 4 turns. But this was impossible, because the map would have then become covered in Warriors by the end of the classical era. And once the map fills up too much, even warfare stops being fun.

So is there a way to make 1UPT really work in a Civ game? Perhaps. The key is the map. Is there enough of room to stash units freely and slide them around each other? If so, then yes, you can do it. For this to be possible, I'd think you would have to increase the maximum map size by at least four times. You'd probably also want to alter the map generation logic to make bottlenecks larger and less common. Of course, making the world that much bigger would introduce a whole new set of challenges!

He admits that it wasn't done correctly, which is entirely fair; his solution for having too many units was to slow down unit production, which was ... not right. But 1UPT, _even as implemented_, is far superior to Civ4 tactical combat. SOD is boring and ultimately non-strategic. Sure, 1UPT bogs down later on; perhaps the reason I like it so much is I rarely play a modern era game. I typically play until the Renaissance era and either just coast to victory or stop playing that game, as it gets boring to me after that (every Civ has been like this for me).

His proposed solutions are, as he notes, not feasible.

SOD is boring and ultimately non-strategic.

See, this is where you embarrass yourself. Boring = subjective. But so is the carpet of doom to other people. I said that earlier. What I also said was about the objective differences between the two combat models as used in IV and V. Objectively there are many different tactics to use in IV that work in different situations, and a single SoD walking into someones land isn't actually one of them.

I don't disagree that you are certainly able to justify ranking CivV on the bottom of the list, but it's quite possible to justify a higher ranking as well. It is a game, Krill. People enjoy different things; deal with it.

Christ Snoopy learn the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. What you prefer doesn't matter. What is a better mechanic for game balance and strategic options isn't relevant if you are judging the games subjectively, but the do if judging them objectively.