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

[MrFun]

4,2,5,1,3, though I could live with 4,5,2,1,3 or 4,5,2,3,1. Ranking 2 any lower than third is a travesty. 1 isn't really fair, because it was a game ahead of its time.

If you ranked these relative to their time, then 2,1,4,5,3 is probably correct.

5 I don't object to rating anywhere on the scale, personally. Some people really really like it. It has strengths and weaknesses, but its weaknesses are glaring for those who like those parts of the game. I've always believed Civ is a tick/tock series; odd numbered iterations introduce dramatic changes and usually get them wrong in some ways, while even numbered iterations perfect the concept. V introduced some things that are for the better - hexes, 1UPT - just didn't get some other things right that are important to many people. Its tactics, however, really are lightyears ahead of Civ IV's tactics; even imperfect 1UPT is way better than SOD. I personally really enjoyed playing it during the time I played it (1 year old = no civ for snoopy...); 4 is a far better multiplayer game (among other things, it has functional multiplayer!) but 5 is a better game if you want to play primarily tactically and single player.

What does 1UPT stand for? And SOD?

[Krill]

1 Unit Per Tile.

Stack of Doom (where players shove their entire army on one tile. It works against he AI because the AI is dumb. Do it against (competent) humans are you get destroyed).

[regexcellent]

The entire issue of SODs which is armies basically passing each other like ships in the night would have been solved if they made roads usable to attackers. And then made it so that roads decay over time so you have to keep fixing them with workers. All of a sudden you have a "front line" because you have a smaller number of much more strategic tiles to defend: roads in and out of your empire.

[MrFun]

1 Unit Per Tile.

Stack of Doom (where players shove their entire army on one tile. It works against he AI because the AI is dumb. Do it against (competent) humans are you get destroyed).

ah, okay

[-Jrabbit]

IV
II
[others]

[snoopy369]

1UPT is atrocious, even Shafer admits it was a mistake and leads to broken gameplay. To rank V anything but last on objective gameplay is frankly wrong; subjectively, it just lets people know to ignore you when talking about good games. Also, anyone who comments on the tactics being better in V really doesn't understand warfare in IV.

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

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.

[SlowwHand]

II
I
IV

III

[giblets]

II > IV > III > V > I

[OneFootInTheGrave]

IV>II>I>drop off>III>cliff>V

[OneFootInTheGrave]

1UPT is atrocious, even Shafer admits it was a mistake and leads to broken gameplay. To rank V anything but last on objective gameplay is frankly wrong; subjectively, it just lets people know to ignore you when talking about good games. Also, anyone who comments on the tactics being better in V really doesn't understand warfare in IV.

does not understand V or IV or anything really. He just likes moving figures around for no reason, and it's great enjoyment. (Snoopy as well it seems... it's no crime, shiny units moving around roads one at a time, where roads cost money and everyone blocks everyone, it's a congestion simulator... liking it is just fine. )

[giblets]

The entire issue of SODs which is armies basically passing each other like ships in the night would have been solved if they made roads usable to attackers. And then made it so that roads decay over time so you have to keep fixing them with workers. All of a sudden you have a "front line" because you have a smaller number of much more strategic tiles to defend: roads in and out of your empire.

Civ2 handled this well. Not just with making roads have the same properties at all times and not magically becoming useless when an invading army is standing on them, but also with the zones of control so that forts were actually useful. The big flaw was the idiotic AI, of course. I think road decay would just be tedious and add to much micromanagement.

[Elok]

IV
II
[others]

This.

The entire issue of SODs which is armies basically passing each other like ships in the night would have been solved if they made roads usable to attackers. And then made it so that roads decay over time so you have to keep fixing them with workers. All of a sudden you have a "front line" because you have a smaller number of much more strategic tiles to defend: roads in and out of your empire.

Brainless MM is bad. So very, very bad. What you're describing would effectively make gameplay into work, or at best introduce road upkeep costs in a rather circuitous manner by forcing the player to build and pay maintenance for extra workers. Assuming you could automate road repair--if you couldn't, ugh.

I haven't played V, but 1UPT sounds like a stinker for a number of reasons. First, a player's own units should not serve as an obstacle for each other. That's just a recipe for frustration--is there any conceivable way to make it workable without making armies tiny, creating traffic jams or otherwise frustrating and limiting the player? Even if you think they should create hard movement barriers that way, a stack limit would make far more sense than an outright stack ban. But using it to implement "tactical" combat is just silly. Just introduce a subscreen or combat map if you want to have ranged archers...not that tactical combat of that type really fits in with Civ's scale.

EDIT: I guess it MIGHT work if you somehow forced cities to exist very far apart and puffed up unit movement to compensate. But that would introduce new frustrations. And be silly.

[giblets]

Aggregation of all responses so far:
1. IV
2. II
3. III
4. I
5. V

[ColdWizard]

2, 4, 1, 3. (Haven't played 5).

[Elok]

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.