Civilization V Catch-All

2. Its always been a bit screwy with economics and the economics of war. I always hated when a Civ that I was trading with heavily, even if they're not exactly on 'friendly' terms with me just up and attacked me. The reason China and America won't go to war anytime soon, even though if you converted their governments to their IV equivalents would devastate not only their economies, but everyone else's. Imagine if your war didn't just affect your economy and the warring partner, but everyone's based on your GNP, which was always fun to see at the end, but wasn't rooted much deeper than the 'trade route' idea. Some sort of added diplomatic recourse would be very interesting. The ability to force embargoes, lay out sanctions and the like would be fun, but may be too deep for this sort of game. (of course, I haven't played BTS, though I have finally bought it so it may be there but the current slew of my games has kept me from really exploring this)

Civ4's diplomacy is kind of a joke - you don't really have any friends, just civs that are least likely to attack you. Until your number comes up in the RNG, that is. I hope the new diplomacy system implements at least some aspects of casus belli, rather than just throwing the dice. As you say, it definitely should take into account the current economic relationship of all civs (more so than "+x because we're trading"). Also, it'd be nice if civs would forget past occurrences a lot quicker (both good and bad). It's totally ridiculous that a war or tribute refusal 2000 years ago can impact current relationships.

Sensical wrote:

Wonder if they'll get a theme song that's as utterly, painfully gorgeous as IV's.

I always thought it trod an uncomfortable line between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and The Lion King.

BlackSheep wrote:

3. Starting barbarian cities almost immediately. Ones that start when the players start that are chosen in random locations outside of spheres of control set by players' initial cities.

City-states would be great to help expand when you took them over through force or culture. It also wouldn't make any other Civs declare war.

Crockpot wrote:

With Civ4, I don't know what it is, but late game starts dragging for me especially the military victory. According to sources on this forum the "capital capture" should help that a lot. Does anybody else experience the late game drag?

Totally. For me, it kinda ruins the experience, the beauty and promise of the first 2/3rds of the game. I love the starting out, the exploration at the beginning, and the jostling/skirmish/diplomacy bits. In the end, it just bogs down. I really hope they get the combat right.

jonnypolite wrote:
Crockpot wrote:

With Civ4, I don't know what it is, but late game starts dragging for me especially the military victory. According to sources on this forum the "capital capture" should help that a lot. Does anybody else experience the late game drag?

Totally. For me, it kinda ruins the experience, the beauty and promise of the first 2/3rds of the game. I love the starting out, the exploration at the beginning, and the jostling/skirmish/diplomacy bits. In the end, it just bogs down. I really hope they get the combat right.

Exactly. Fielding units ends up being kinda boring near the end, in sharp contrast to the awesomeness of the units.

I think another part of the late game drag is the sheer amount of units and cities to manage. That could be remedy a couple of ways like small maps and auto build for cities. I really hope they acknowledge the late game drag a huge problem for some players. I guess I could play civ rev but I love the long epic games but the pacing drops for me at some point.

Crockpot wrote:

I think another part of the late game drag is the sheer amount of units and cities to manage. That could be remedy a couple of ways like small maps and auto build for cities. I really hope they acknowledge the late game drag a huge problem for some players. I guess I could play civ rev but I love the long epic games but the pacing drops for me at some point.

This is it for me. I love the game, but late game always end with me hitting skip a dozen times as I set half my cities to producing wealth. It just becomes so tedious trying to manage everything once the empire becomes a certain size.

They could get rid of workers. I would be totally OK with that. Let me purchase improvements, or give me a worker slider, or something.

I like late game military stuff. The micromanaging of cities gets old though. I should be able to set up build templates and tell a city "follow this build template" and it'll have a predetermined queue of buildings to build unless I jump in with a military unit I need.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I like late game military stuff. The micromanaging of cities gets old though. I should be able to set up build templates and tell a city "follow this build template" and it'll have a predetermined queue of buildings to build unless I jump in with a military unit I need.

Even better would be the computer watching the way you build up your cities through the ages and adapting its automated build style to that style. Let you go in and edit the template if you'd like to tweak it a bit.

Staats wrote:

They could get rid of workers. I would be totally OK with that. Let me purchase improvements, or give me a worker slider, or something.

You are a genius. I would love this. I haven't micromanaged workers since Civ II; I don't really see the point anymore.

ubrakto wrote:

The loss of religion stings a bit. I genuinely liked that aspect of Civ IV.

What the hell are they thinking? There's no more powerful force in all of human history. Sounds like political correctness taking over for sense to me.

Malor wrote:
ubrakto wrote:

The loss of religion stings a bit. I genuinely liked that aspect of Civ IV.

What the hell are they thinking? There's no more powerful force in all of human history. Sounds like political correctness taking over for sense to me.

I was thinking the same thing.
Maybe they will assign you a religion based on the historical drift and you'd get bonuses to diplomacy for ones not in your historical group? But what would you do with animistic societies or less mainstream religions?

I just don't see how you can ignore it.

Agreed. A game like Civ cant only look at 'Is this fun?' (which apparently was the devs excuse for removing religion). They have to look at 'Is this (historically) accurate?' to a degree as well, and maybe try to find a 'funnier' way to implement it, if it fails the fun-factor check so hard.

Crockpot wrote:

I think another part of the late game drag is the sheer amount of units and cities to manage. That could be remedy a couple of ways like small maps and auto build for cities. I really hope they acknowledge the late game drag a huge problem for some players. I guess I could play civ rev but I love the long epic games but the pacing drops for me at some point.

I totally agree that the late game drags, and I think they could do some things to help with that but I also think players need to take some of the "responsibility" and do what you said and realize they can play smaller maps and use more automation.

Staats wrote:

They could get rid of workers. I would be totally OK with that. Let me purchase improvements, or give me a worker slider, or something.

I honestly don't mind workers. By the time I get to the mid game I've usually created the direct routes and specializations that I want so I just automate. With that being said, I could see them going the way Civ Rev went with roads to build routes between cities and using some purchase system to build within you fat cross or the hex equivalent.

Crockpot wrote:

With Civ4, I don't know what it is, but late game starts dragging for me especially the military victory. According to sources on this forum the "capital capture" should help that a lot. Does anybody else experience the late game drag?

The 'end game drag' or 'mopping up' phase is pretty well accepted to be one of the biggest design problems for most long-form strategy games. Civ, MOO, MOM, GalCiv, Sword of the Stars, EU3, and even Sins of a Solar Empire -- they all have it. There will always come a point (if you're winning that is) where your probable victory is assured and any further playing just mechanically validates that outcome.

The domination victory condition was an early example that was introduced in Civ3 to help alleviate the issue a bit. Before then, you'd have to conquer every single opposing city to win militarily. Conquering capitals is just another iteration on the same goal and idea. Another option is to have some sort of super powerful options become available at the end that speed up the leading player's mopping up abilities. Obviously though, this must be balanced against the opposing desire to prevent 'runaway leader syndrome.' Fall from Heaven and the upcoming Elemental have good examples of using this technique with big endgame spells that have huge effects on the world. In any case, I think its safe to say that Firaxis is aware of the problem.

Concerning religion, I am a bit skeptical but more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I would argue that in Civ4 the religion mechanic had excellent flavor value but relatively little gameplay utility (I'm sure some will disagree, but hopefully everyone can agree that religion in Civ4 could have used some major improvements gameplay-wise). To me that signals that its a perfect mechanic for the next iteration of the series to improve and make really great. Civ and more specifically Sid have always been big on the idea of 'either double or remove' something thats not working rather than incrementally changing it, so I can see why they might just go the direction of removing it altogether. Remember, too, that Civ4 is the only game in the series that so explicitly modeled religion. Its not like a Civ game completely doesn't work without it.

I honestly see no problem with the Religion mechanic being subsumed into the Culture model. Cultural imperialism can be modelled by the standard espionage actions and through trade. I agree with Gunner in as much as it was long on flavour but short on gameplay.

Gunner wrote:
Crockpot wrote:

With Civ4, I don't know what it is, but late game starts dragging for me especially the military victory. According to sources on this forum the "capital capture" should help that a lot. Does anybody else experience the late game drag?

The 'end game drag' or 'mopping up' phase is pretty well accepted to be one of the biggest design problems for most long-form strategy games. Civ, MOO, MOM, GalCiv, Sword of the Stars, EU3, and even Sins of a Solar Empire -- they all have it. There will always come a point (if you're winning that is) where your probable victory is assured and any further playing just mechanically validates that outcome.

I actually thought that MOO did a good job of avoiding this problem. Generally you would win the next election after you reached the "mopping up" stage, both from your own population and the populations of the races that were intimidated by you but didn't have a history of warfare with you.

Gunner wrote:

Concerning religion, I am a bit skeptical but more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I would argue that in Civ4 the religion mechanic had excellent flavor value but relatively little gameplay utility (I'm sure some will disagree, but hopefully everyone can agree that religion in Civ4 could have used some major improvements gameplay-wise). To me that signals that its a perfect mechanic for the next iteration of the series to improve and make really great. Civ and more specifically Sid have always been big on the idea of 'either double or remove' something thats not working rather than incrementally changing it, so I can see why they might just go the direction of removing it altogether. Remember, too, that Civ4 is the only game in the series that so explicitly modeled religion. Its not like a Civ game completely doesn't work without it.

It's been a good 6+ months since I last played Civ4 so my facts may be wrong, but I remember religion having *huge* gameplay utility in terms of the benefits conveyed to the founder of a particular faith. If one Civ could manage to found two or three religions it could be a measurable boon to culture, commerce, and political influence with nearby Civs (because of the fact that a shared state religion significantly affected how other Civs might view yours).

Anyway, I'm not, personally, the least bit religious. I just thought its utilization in Civ4 added a lot to the game in terms of both giving credence to the historical importance of religion while also integrating it into Civ gameplay mechanics in a meaningful way - especially compared to previous editions. Obviously, a lot will depend on other changes to the gameplay and I'm hardly up in arms about it. It's just hard for me to picture how removing it from the game improves Civ gameplay.

wizard_in_motley wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:

3. Starting barbarian cities almost immediately. Ones that start when the players start that are chosen in random locations outside of spheres of control set by players' initial cities.

City-states would be great to help expand when you took them over through force or culture. It also wouldn't make any other Civs declare war.

This sounds like a direct pull of the minor races in GalCiv

Budo wrote:

This sounds like a direct pull of the minor races in GalCiv

Which was a direct 'pull of' the minor races in birth of the federation, which was a driect 'pull of' some game I can't remember.

Hmmm, I logged a ton of hours in CivIV with baby#1 asleep in my arms, and now we have baby#2 due in May and CivV due in Sept... excellent!

CodexMatt wrote:

Hmmm, I logged a ton of hours in CivIV with baby#1 asleep in my arms, and now we have baby#2 due in May and CivV due in Sept... excellent!

Are you having twins? Is one named "Alpha Centauri"?

Staats wrote:
CodexMatt wrote:

Hmmm, I logged a ton of hours in CivIV with baby#1 asleep in my arms, and now we have baby#2 due in May and CivV due in Sept... excellent!

Are you having twins? Is one named "Alpha Centauri"?

If not then for the good of strategy gamers everywhere Codex must procreate next year as well.

ubrakto wrote:

Anyway, I'm not, personally, the least bit religious. I just thought its utilization in Civ4 added a lot to the game in terms of both giving credence to the historical importance of religion while also integrating it into Civ gameplay mechanics in a meaningful way - especially compared to previous editions. Obviously, a lot will depend on other changes to the gameplay and I'm hardly up in arms about it. It's just hard for me to picture how removing it from the game improves Civ gameplay.

I think Religion in Civ4 is one of the reasons I didn't get into it like I had 1-3. For me it would have been better as something I exerted influence over but didn't directly control. The choice between building more troops or building religious missionaries always seemed odd to me.

ubrakto wrote:

It's been a good 6+ months since I last played Civ4 so my facts may be wrong, but I remember religion having *huge* gameplay utility in terms of the benefits conveyed to the founder of a particular faith. If one Civ could manage to found two or three religions it could be a measurable boon to culture, commerce, and political influence with nearby Civs (because of the fact that a shared state religion significantly affected how other Civs might view yours).

You're completely right that founding and spreading a religion did give you a pretty good commerce bonus. I really liked how open/closed borders affected allowing other guys' missionaries in -- thereby controlling their ability to harness their religion bonus in your territory. There are other things like wonders that can give you similar bonuses, but religion did have a place.

Consider the boon to diplomatic relations though. That was purely a flavor addition. The reason AI civs of the same religion like you is because they're told to do so for its own sake, not because there is some gameplay reason to act that way. A human player would have no reason to act like them based on the mechanics.

To be clear though, my view is that the mechanics built around religion in Civ4, while certainly entertaining and a good start, still need some love and fleshing out before it can become a great game system like culture for example is. It would have been a perfect thing to work on in a sequel, but it seems that Firaxis has chosen to focus on other things. I'm sure they'll come up with other great stuff instead.

I've been under the impression that founding religions was great at the lower levels for commerce boosts, but that the diplomatic problems it could produce ended up outweighing those boosts at the higher difficulty levels. I've never played a high enough difficult to really test that for myself though.

Generally, religion is used primarily as a way to influence diplomatic relations in the game. The commerce boost is nice, but that's not really what you're after. What you really want is to manipulate foreign leaders into expensive wars that you don't have to fight yourself, or, barring that, having them be friendly enough to you that you can ask for money and tech.

Used incorrectly, religion can give you plenty of diplomatic headaches.

My problem with Civ4's religions is that they're totally generic and interchangeable. I realize that it was done in the interest of being politically correct, but in my mind that's even worse; it kind of reduces the implemented religions to a name, nothing more.

I totally ignore religion. It distracts me from building my army of destruction.