Civilization 5 Announced

[Krill]

Yes well you don't need much of an army to defend a single city. And there are resorceless units. And a size 20 city has at least as much production as four size 5 cities.

I agree with you...unsurprisingly. OCC is relatively simple to get working as well, without those settlers and a broken Henge/Angkor Wat, and the Tradition SP.

[uberfish]

OCC seems incredibly powerful in Civ5. Founding more cities will hurt the happy cap, increase the cost of social policies, and not least make national wonders less available. In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of three reasons to ever found more cities:
1. Smaller cities grow faster than megacities (usually)
2. Grab luxuries or strategic resources
3. Trade routes and railroad bonii.

It feels like the list should be longer... 1 isn't even always the case, 2 can be dealt with by diplomacy instead, 3 isn't that compelling.

What am I missing?

EDIT: Obviously I'm missing per-city bonuses, but still...

That the output of 100 citizens is going to be more than that of 20, even if those 20 have their national wonders up faster

In civ4 you had +100% national wonders and settled GPs to run through those multipliers, so it was possible to keep up for much longer.

[Krill]

In rather interesting news, the SDK is available for download from steam...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread...ost9682601

[sunrise089]

Sullla, I think your strategy vs tactics thoughts are very relevant and on-point.

That said, I'm not at all convinced Civ5 is bringing even better tactics here. If tactics means [turn roll->move melee units on four adjacent hexes forward 1 tile->move siege units 1 hex back forward 1 tile->order siege to set up->turn roll->fire siege->hit the city with the melee units sequentially until it falls] then sure, you have tactics. To me that's just more clicks though.

To me strategy is choosing when and where to attack, altering your tech and building priorities based around that, (versus humans) trying to ensure a favorable diplo situation to attack, and making sure you can afford the economic hit. Tactics means moving the units on the right tiles, choosing the right promotions at the right time, attacking in the right order, using roads and cultural changes to exploit enemy weakness, and (versus humans and in real time) using quick thinking and quick reflexes to gain an advantage. And, I think most of that takes a step backwards in Civ5.

Continuing my theme of harping on major changes we aren't talking about because they're overshadowed, IMHO the basic difference between units has been tremendously compressed in this game. A spear versus a sword is now basically just a 50% strength difference. Honestly, I've found one unit is pretty much interchangeable - 4 spears as my front line more or less = 4 swords = 4 horsemen. In pretty much each case I can take any single city, but the value of sniping a city in Civ5 is greatly reduced. So instead I'll move slowly with siege, and my front units will be hit by AI bombardment and take damage. But, it doesn't matter if they're strength 9 vs strength 12 really, as either way the enemy will either only wound them via bombardment, or kill one unit via hitting it from multiple tiles. IMHO almost all the thought has gone out of army composition.

[haphazard1]

Continuing my theme of harping on major changes we aren't talking about because they're overshadowed, IMHO the basic difference between units has been tremendously compressed in this game. A spear versus a sword is now basically just a 50% strength difference. Honestly, I've found one unit is pretty much interchangeable - 4 spears as my front line more or less = 4 swords = 4 horsemen.

I think sunrise has made a very good point here. I've only played two partial games so far, but I found myself missing the Civ IV feeling of "I really need to get X unit into the field - they will totally change the balance of power". Maybe the first siege unit gives that feeling, because it is adding a new type of unit to your forces. But most of the new units are just small incremental steps -- a slightly tougher melee, a slightly stronger ranged, etc. The additional value of a spearman over a warrior (7 vs 6) is almost nothing. (Yes, I know it gets a bonus (how big? not mentioned) against horse. But for many situations that does not matter.) Even a swordsman which requires a precious iron resource is less than twice the strength of a warrior, compared to Civ IV's 3 times. Maybe the starting warriors are just too strong at 6?

Maybe if the AI wasn't so pathetic at war I would actually need (and care about) those small incremental improvements. But it isn't.

[Sirian]

No longer will the winner be determined by the player who can pump out the most units in the shortest amount of time.

Are we really sure that's a good thing?

How much strategic variety is there to pursuing the biggest empire you can field, in every single game?

Civ has always tried to put the brakes on this "strategy". Civ1/Civ2, there were penalties scaling up for number of cities. They didn't work too well, as the Infinite City strategy, cramming them in every two tiles, showed. Civ3 ended the no-corruption government option and enforced a maximum count on useful cities (those not limited to one shield and one trade). Civ4 put a tight cap on supportable cities via geometrically increasing maintenance costs, which are only overcomable when the mechanics loosen as the tech tree advances.

Civ5 takes its shot at containing this, too. Now there are mechanics that increase costs as your city count rises: but not for everything. Some things are easier with a higher city count; others harder. This at least tries to introduce new strategic options for an approach other than Reckless Expansion. With 1UPT, choke points can counter numbers, which reflects historic incidents like the Spartans vs Persians in the mountain pass, allowing tactical elements to influence strategic options in a way that they haven't before. Not every map or area has choke points, and the nature of the terrain has more influence now. I don't see how this can be inferior to the sameness of rolling your SOD around the map, on the strategic front.

How much strategy ever existed behind fielding the biggest SOD? In Civ3, where SoD ruled the strongest, it was mostly about baby-sitting various micro-economic elements to squeeze the most out of what your cities produced. Then you lure the AI enemy in to various traps, taking out its mobile force, and mop up its cities, which are helpless and stationary, sitting ducks. This wasn't strategy: it was far, far more about tactics than Civ5 will ever approach. And there was only one flavor to it.

SoD's time is past. I can still enjoy a game with that mechanic, but there really is nothing new left to do with it. Strategically speaking, it's been fully explored. And, like Infinite City strategy, it was never meant to exist in the first place. This was a byproduct of flaws in the game design, not a planned strategy intended for every-game use. How much "strategy" exists in plopping down cities every two (or three) tiles, as tightly packed as they can go? No concern about terrain or anything else. Some players enjoy the tactics of applying this "strategy" game after game, but game designers would be lax to turn out a product where this is the most effective approach. I now consider SoD to be the same as ICS: a dead end to be avoided, for a quality game design. This is precisely for the reasons you lift up: growing the biggest empire that can field the most units. This "strategy" actually reduces the strategy down to a purely economic, one dimensional vector. Why even fight the war, unit by unit? Measure the stacks and apply a strict formula, eliminate the smaller stack and take x% off the bigger one. No tactical element left at all. This would be good?

Civ has always been a tile-based game. The map is supposed to matter. The aim is for a game with both strategic and tactical elements, which influence one another. Civ4 brought more tactics to the battlefield with the unit promotions, and this was clearly a step forward for fun. You can make the case that, for yourself, SoD is still fun. For me, it's played out.


- Sirian

[Dantski]

Could have always pursued a middle ground between SoD's and 1UPT though. 5UPT or some other restriction would have helped remove the SoD element from play, while keeping it very interesting.

I have no intention of buying Civ 5 until some major patching is done, for now I'll enjoy LoL

[Speaker]

I'm really not going to argue about the SoD, but anyone who says that the Civ4 combat system doesn't require tactical skill in addition to skill empire development, hasn't played multiplayer against challenging opponents, where many of Sirian's complaints are addressed.

ICS is removed by X-City elimination.
Combat is about way more than stack versus stack.

Why even fight the war, unit by unit? Measure the stacks and apply a strict formula, eliminate the smaller stack and take x% off the bigger one. No tactical element left at all. This would be good?

This is absolutely, unequivocally, not even remotely true. Again, please see my detailed explanations of how to defend your empire against (at least somewhat) competant enemies in the PB2 thread. There are *so* many more decisions to be made than simply "put all my units on this tile" or "put all my units on that tile."

The problem is with the AI's inability to wage war, not with the combat system.

And ranged bombardment is completely broken. C'mon, we saw that in Civ3. How about LK38 for proof? I remember bombarding with huge stacks of Artillery until every enemy unit was "redlined" and not losing a single unit in the ensuing "fight."

In my eyes, 1upt makes combat simpler, not more complex. In stacked combat, you have to decide both where to position your units, and how many to put on each tile. In 1upt, one of those choices is removed.

[Cull]

Could have always pursued a middle ground between SoD's and 1UPT though. 5UPT or some other restriction would have helped remove the SoD element from play, while keeping it very interesting.

I have no intention of buying Civ 5 until some major patching is done, for now I'll enjoy LoL

I'm in the same boat.

[lossofmercy]

Now this is all well and good, and I have no doubt that many, maybe even most fans will be highly pleased with the changes. However... I have to be a little suspicious of all this. The thing is, the Civilization games are STRATEGY games, as opposed to tactical war games like the aforementioned Panzer General series. That might sound like a trivial difference, but it's not. Combat has traditionally been kept relatively simple in prior Civilization games, on purpose, so that the strategy elements of the game can remain in the foreground. You might say, why not have a rich tactical system of combat, with a great emphasis on unit deployment? Isn't that a good thing? Not necessarily. The more that a game dials up the tactical elements of combat, the weaker the strategic elements of the game become. Think about it: is it really a good thing if someone with 3 swords and 2 archers can defeat an army of 15 swords through superior use of terrain and movement? I would argue no. In that situation, you're playing a game where strategic elements (what to build, how to develop an economy, tech path to pursue, etc.) have been overshadowed by the tactical elements of unit movement and positioning. This is the flaw that wrecked many empire-building games in the past, such as Master of Magic (where I quickly found ways to defeat armies five times more powerful with broken spell combinations in battle) and the Total War series of games (where the AI is appallingly stupid in battle). These aren't bad games, very fun games in fact, but they can't really be called strategy games any more.

I am sure you know more than me as a historian, but I don't know what your definition of "strategy" is. There is such a thing as "military strategy," in fact that is where the term came from. This dealt with troop placement, when to engage, when to retreat, the unit composition etc.

You mentioned 15 swordsman loosing to 3 swords and 2 archers, then would it not be a strategic mistake for one player to ignore archers in the first place? If this is due to huge terrain advantages on a choke, it could be fixed with better map-making script or design. Or better balancing.

In my opinion, the art of war should not be dictated as an extension of the economic system. While it is important for one to know how to build an empire, it should also be important to know how to dictate a war. Ultimately, I think it is a bad thing if the combat was simplified, it should retain complexity for those that love warfare. Whether Civilization V actually increased the complexity of the combat, I am not sure of. I have not had very good run with ranged bombardment in games like this. I am with speaker when he says that the combat might actually be shallower -- which might be the real reason you might be disappointed with the system.

And I actually like tactical war games; I love chess (even though I'm a terrible player), and have a bunch of Advance Wars and Fire Emblem games which are based around the same concepts. Defeating a superior opponent through intelligent tactics is fun to pull off. But... these aren't true strategy games, and the whole model doesn't seem like a good fit for the Civilization series. Quite aside from the issues I already mentioned, combat is very slow in these games - and that's with the focus on nothing BUT combat! I'm not sure that having to micro every single unit each turn in battle is going to be fun, and scaling down the total number of units to alleviate this issue creates as many problems as it solves. I actually think that Civ4's combat system would benefit from less complexity, not more of it. What we've been reading about in the previews sounds like it would be really fun for a couple of games, then start to get tiresome.

I am not sure if there is any use in separating games in this manner. The biggest difference is simply in the scope of the games, Fire Emblem and Advance Wars are light (but fun) titles whereas Civilization has much bigger scope and is a really hefty game to get into. In this case, I would consider even Chess in the latter category due to its complexity. But you are right, I don't think the model of Fire Emblem or Advance Wars would fit very well with Civilization.