Civ 5

[FIZ]

Hey, I see some people playing at that, was wondering...

Well, it was a fun game to learn, but once you get past easy, any sense of strategy feels like it is handicapped by the need for 100s of happiness structures.  I want aggressive opponents that will wage war, but when you have to spend all your time on happiness structures... really... buzzkill.  I have to plan entire theaters of war on conquering territories with incense and silk... really.

Are you guys savvy on some mods or something or playing online?

[Koln]

Who says your people need to be happy? I mostly play with unhappy people: happiness oscilates between -5 and +5 the whole time, and also I basically base my play on conquer xD. Even when I tried other winning paths on higher difficulties, the AI would end up attacking me and my revenge knows now limits xD.

Also conquering the enemy's resources and wonders is the best way to raise happines ^^.

[Gandalf]

I don't like Civ 5, for many reasons. Civ 4 is the superior game imo.

[Gandalf]

This is a good read of why I feel how I do about civ4/5, it's quite long though. It's written by a civ 4 designer, saying what is wrong with civ 5 and how he would design a successor game.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/designingciv.html

Here's another of his articles.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

[Raveen]

I think Civ's been going downhill since they made the mistake of going isometric

[FIZ]

Yeah, I think the way to go is to just stick to smaller maps on higher difficulties.  The AI getting happiness buffs on higher levels really is lame sauce.

[FIZ]

Soooo... was looking through mods and found this... http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... earchtext=

Too bad I don't have G&K

[Koln]

You can play large maps on higher difficulties, but this is how it usually goes for me:

1-I decide not to go for military win since that's the thing I always do.
2-Expand peacefully, explore economic technologies, work on infrastucture and some small defend-only army.
3-Get bullied by the AI.
4-Get attacked by one AI with an army 4 or 5 times yours.
5-Stomp that one AI's armies with superior human tactics.
6-AI still won't negotiate peace but they don't insult you any more when you try.
7-Attack that one AI back for revenge, take their most important cities.
8-Get proposed peace by AI, but they won't offer anything else like resources, money or cities, just peace.
9-Say "I ain't taking no bullshit from no shitty computer, fuck you".
10-Conquer the rest of the cities and send them to oblivion (or just leave them 1 or 2 as a buffer border against other AIs)
11-Try to go back to step 2 and repeat, but now other AIs look bad at you because you were a mean bastard to the one that was a mean bastard to them before, because fuck logic.
12-Repeat step 3 to 10 with some other AIs.
13-Now there's no going back, you spent your latest 100 turns doing war and now your economy runs in war. You need money from war to sustain your army, you have become like the USA!
14-Start run against the clock to conquer the rest of the world before that one AI that conquered a whole continent of the other side of the map achieves a technological victory.

[Smilez]

That's pretty much how my Civ 2 games used to run. I'm trying civ 4 now.

[Gandalf]

On civ 4, you should be "Getting attacked by one AI with an army 4 or 5 times yours" unless your tactics are way off, you're playing one of the upper difficulty levels, or a nutjob like Shaka, Montezuma or Alexander the Great is your neighbour.

[Koln]

I didn't like Civ 4's interface, it was too complicated for a relaxing game IMO, if I wanted to run something as complicated as a business i'd try to get a job there .

Anyway, I have to agree that with civ 5's simpler economy the AI can use the difficulty level advantages way faster and in a more agressive way, thus turning the total war ending in just a matter of time.

[Solamnus]

[quote="Gandalf"]
I don't like Civ 5, for many reasons. Civ 4 is the superior game imo.
[/quote]

Seconded.

Civ 4 is way more better than Civ 5. Civ 4's game dynamics are far more better, overall it's a more complete game than Civ5. You can read a lot of reasons from Sulla's page