Civilization 6 - coming October 2016.

[Flagg]

To be honest, I can't understand why people love Civ 4 so much. I found the combat to endlessly frustrating and unrealistic. The lack of any viable defensive strategies due to the removal of Civ 2's zone of control meant that unstoppable doom stacks can snake around your defensive units rendering them useless. Yet they are all-but-impossible to attack if their own defenders had the right terrain bonuses so they can raze all your roads and improvements and there's nothing you can do about it. When fighting did occur, I found it to be far too random and felt that strategy took a backseat to the simple roll of the dice. The AI would attack with rabid genocidal fury after millenia of friendship even when they had nothing to gain, and I hated that city spam was so effective. There were a lot of cool ideas, but for me they were built on a rotten foundation that prevented me from enjoying it without mods, and I don't see how anyone can prefer Civ 3 / 4 to 2, which had none of the combat problems.

Civ 5 certainly had its flaws, especially before G&K and BNW, but the fact that it bid good riddance to bullshit doom stacks and unassailable defensive bonuses won it a million points in my eyes, even if the AI was completely feckless and a lot of features were stripped out. I know a lot of people consider Civ 4 to be the pinnacle of the series, but I just don't see it.

I liked Civ4 mainly because it was "oldciv" perfected, taken to what IMO was as far as they could go. Civ% is superior in every way. Getting rid of stacked units and the change rom squares to hexes made the game new and refreshing. It was very much Civilization, but taken to a new, more mature style of gameplay. Civ6 is expanding on that in so many exiting ways. I honestly can't wait to actually have to fight IN cities, taking them district by district. Of course they could fuck it up, but I doubt they will.

[Patroklos]

I really couldn't get into any of the Civs past Civ III. Part of that was just how involved in the modding community I was and it was just too much effort to switch over to the new 3D cartoons. All I really want is a Civ III with the following improvements:

1.) Remove infinite railroad movement
2.) Stack limits. However, not to one. Its a global grand strategy game, a group or archers isn't all that should fit in a hex/square representing hundreds of square miles.
3.) Limit resources. In Civ three if you had one oil tile you had enough oil for your entire nation no matter how big. It would have been nice if each resource tile only supported so many buildings or units that used it. It would allow more dynamic Saudi Arabia cartel analogues, and prevent me from beating the AI by paratrooping one unit onto its only oil supply.
4.) Some of the invisible unit concepts from CTP2. Their religion system.Their slavery system (it feels good to conquer the slavers). Their economic capture system where you could set up shop in enemy cities via corporation analogues and siphon off money and production (any non war competition system is a plus). Etc.
5.) Hexes.
6.) The map. Every iteration of civ clutters up the map more and more. Keep your cities to one tile. I don't need to see little farm houses to know there is irrigation there. I prefer a map with more iconography over miniature cartoons of stuff. Its the same reason I use counters in HOI.

In the end just the first three would create a superior game. Maybe some of the other civs have this like the hexes (haven't played bast IV) but they are married to so much other fluff I haven't bothered.

[Purple]

I really couldn't get into any of the Civs past Civ III. Part of that was just how involved in the modding community I was and it was just too much effort to switch over to the new 3D cartoons. All I really want is a Civ III with the following improvements:

1.) Remove infinite railroad movement
2.) Stack limits. However, not to one. Its a global grand strategy game, a group or archers isn't all that should fit in a hex/square representing hundreds of square miles.
3.) Limit resources. In Civ three if you had one oil tile you had enough oil for your entire nation no matter how big. It would have been nice if each resource tile only supported so many buildings or units that used it. It would allow more dynamic Saudi Arabia cartel analogues, and prevent me from beating the AI by paratrooping one unit onto its only oil supply.
4.) Some of the invisible unit concepts from CTP2. Their religion system.Their slavery system (it feels good to conquer the slavers). Their economic capture system where you could set up shop in enemy cities via corporation analogues and siphon off money and production (any non war competition system is a plus). Etc.
5.) Hexes.
6.) The map. Every iteration of civ clutters up the map more and more. Keep your cities to one tile. I don't need to see little farm houses to know there is irrigation there. I prefer a map with more iconography over miniature cartoons of stuff. Its the same reason I use counters in HOI.

In the end just the first three would create a superior game. Maybe some of the other civs have this like the hexes (haven't played bast IV) but they are married to so much other fluff I haven't bothered.

This all seems to me like you want to give it the same treatment they gave IV when they made V. As in take a builders game and turn it into a tacticians game. The only thing I can vaguely connect to on that list is the resource thing. Everything else is a nightmare.

[Patroklos]

Only the hexes can really be considered tactical, and I don't want hexes because of tactical reasons, I want them because you can then make an actual globe with a little edge cheating. That will let you cross the poles for instance for a real nuclear standoff on a real world map for instance. maybe they have that already, not sure.

[Purple]

Only the hexes can really be considered tactical, and I don't want hexes because of tactical reasons, I want them because you can then make an actual globe with a little edge cheating. That will let you cross the poles for instance for a real nuclear standoff on a real world map for instance. maybe they have that already, not sure.

I am not sure what you mean by edge cheating. That is a new term to me. The best I can figure is that you're talking about having the vertical wrap of the map fold in so that if you go up from asia you end up above america. But that sort of stuff won't work on a hex grid either. You essentially need a physically spherical map for that.

[Simon_Jester]

With hexagons you can may well be able to create a map which maps every part of a sphere onto the hexagons.

The hexagons would definitely have to be slightly distorted, since otherwise you'd have some pentagonal tiles (like on a soccer ball). But the distortion is likely to be much less than you'd need in order to tile the whole surface of the world with squares (in which case you need the top 'rows' of squares to be very very distorted, unrealistically narrow, in order to preserve constant movement rates). This is why Civ I through IV all have super-long stripes of frozen terrain at the top and bottom edges of the map, and make the poles impassable... but also means that east-west distances on the map are calculated unrealistically for a round Earth.

[Purple]

So what if the top row of squares is a tad distorted? Personally I very much prefer that as, once again being a builder I like the easy way squares lend them self to mapping things out. It's just too valuable a thing to lose. And having a few squares in an area I won't be colonizing anyway distorted is infinitely superior to having to work with hexes or worse yet having to figure out how to map my cities onto several different shapes!

Hell, if it was up to me I would not even try and wrap the map spherically. I'd just fiddle with the existing world wrap to make the exit points more in line with what you'd expect from a globe.

[Patroklos]

Only the hexes can really be considered tactical, and I don't want hexes because of tactical reasons, I want them because you can then make an actual globe with a little edge cheating. That will let you cross the poles for instance for a real nuclear standoff on a real world map for instance. maybe they have that already, not sure.

I am not sure what you mean by edge cheating. That is a new term to me. The best I can figure is that you're talking about having the vertical wrap of the map fold in so that if you go up from asia you end up above america. But that sort of stuff won't work on a hex grid either. You essentially need a physically spherical map for that.

A physical sphere is what I am talking about. SJ explained what I meant by edge cheating. You can model the grid so that close in all the edges still aline on the viewable portion of the screen graphically. When you zoom out you can muddle the visuals a bit to hide the pentagon inserts.

As for being a builder, you can in fact make cities still fit snugly together by making the city footprint be shaped differently than the normal cross. Just have the tiles make a bigger hex. And as a builder this will in the end let you have more realistic trade routes besides just tactical movement.

[Simon_Jester]

So what if the top row of squares is a tad distorted? Personally I very much prefer that as, once again being a builder I like the easy way squares lend them self to mapping things out. It's just too valuable a thing to lose. And having a few squares in an area I won't be colonizing anyway distorted is infinitely superior to having to work with hexes or worse yet having to figure out how to map my cities onto several different shapes!

Hell, if it was up to me I would not even try and wrap the map spherically. I'd just fiddle with the existing world wrap to make the exit points more in line with what you'd expect from a globe.

Doing this with squares really does not work.

Either squares near the poles represent vastly more land area than they have in real life (which screws up game balance and unit movement)...

Or you need a way to have each "row" of square tiles near the poles be shorter than the ones near the equator (fewer total tiles around the world to go around the world at the 50th parallel of latitude than at the equator). Which means that you can't just have every tile automatically let you travel to the tiles in the cardinal directions, which means your map no longer has squares, it has pentagons or hexagons, because the tiles now have a number of sides that does not equal four.

Now, if your argument is "why do we care if the map is a spherical planet, I prefer a grid of rectangles anyway," that's fine, but it's stupid to try and think of ways to model a globe with a pure rectilinear grid of squares. If that were possible then the Mercator projection would make good maps- it doesn't.

[Purple]

All I know is that I have a globe (as in a physical globe, I like such stuff) next to me right now, its split into squares and it works just peachy. So as far as I am concerned all of you are just vastly over thinking this in an attempt to justify making a simple thing complicated.

[Patroklos]

Its actually not spit into squares, is divided north and south and west to east by lines meant to reference positions relative to each other. You us the lines, not the shapes. The shapes they make (which are not squares, or even rectangles for that matter), are of no consequence. They are a byproduct, a coincidence, used for nothing.

Which is more complicated?

1.) Using a shape that does not distort distance or movement and still represents equal areas from unit to unit.

2.) Using a shape does distort distance and movement and represents wildly unequal areas from unit to unit.

The real question is what is the map in civ supposed to represent. Is it just an abstract representation of political divisions? Or is it used to allow for the simulation of movement approximating the reality of the world it is based on? The answer is both, so doggedly insisting the thing be optimized for the first (and not even then, a hexed globe still does that better) is not a position based on game play concerns. Y

I also have to note again hat as a "builder" the traditional city footprint requires you to waste squares. A hex grid is better at that.

[Purple]

The answer is neither. The map is supposed to represent a world in a nice simple way that allows you to easily stencil your cities over the terrain and generally plan out your empire. Movement concerns are secondary at best because you aren't doing grand strategy. You are taking stacks of units and bashing other stacks of units and may the best industry win.

I'll be perfectly honest. The way that world wrap works in CIV4 and even SMAC is perfectly adequate from my perspective.

[Simon_Jester]

Then hexes aren't actually a problem; the problem is that you are too stupid and unadaptable to figure out how to cope with hexagons. Since it's very much possible to just tile/stencil an area with hexagons.

[Purple]

Not as easily. And besides a change that brings no benefit is bad by default. And to me a change to hexagons brings no benefit. That much I have demonstrated over and over.

Simply put Civ 1-4 were builders games. Civ 5+ are warriors games. That's fine. Different things for different people. But its still a fact.

[Flagg]

Then hexes aren't actually a problem; the problem is that you are too stupid and unadaptable to figure out how to cope with hexagons. Since it's very much possible to just tile/stencil an area with hexagons.

This. Hexes (and just as importantly not being able to build stack armies of doom) improved the game immeasurably for me. Just because certain fans of Civs4 and before (that rhymes so you know it's true! ) couldn't cope with or just disliked the change doesn't mean hexes are inferior. And frankly, enjoyment is a subjective matter, so stating "hexes are bad, fact!" is silly bordering on doltish.

[Jub]

Not as easily. And besides a change that brings no benefit is bad by default. And to me a change to hexagons brings no benefit. That much I have demonstrated over and over.

Simply put Civ 1-4 were builders games. Civ 5+ are warriors games. That's fine. Different things for different people. But its still a fact.

You can build just as well on hexagons.

I mean, look at a city IRL, they're far more round than they are square, roads often aren't straight for any great length of time, and so on. It's not like any version of Civ has let you go all sim city, so what exactly could you build in Civ 4 that you couldn't have built if the game had hexes instead of squares?

[Simon_Jester]

Then hexes aren't actually a problem; the problem is that you are too stupid and unadaptable to figure out how to cope with hexagons. Since it's very much possible to just tile/stencil an area with hexagons.

This. Hexes (and just as importantly not being able to build stack armies of doom) improved the game immeasurably for me. Just because certain fans of Civs4 and before (that rhymes so you know it's true! ) couldn't cope with or just disliked the change doesn't mean hexes are inferior. And frankly, enjoyment is a subjective matter, so stating "hexes are bad, fact!" is silly bordering on doltish.

I personally like stacking within reason (Civ II's mechanics on stacking were too punitive, to the extent that it actively impeded the AI's ability to fight; SMAC got the balance about right).

The big problem with the Stack of Doom was, yes, the ability to just slip past defenses and the total lack of incentive to do anything other than pile your whole army onto one tile.

Purple doesn't like to have to think about military tactics, or at all if it would involve not doing things the way he thinks they ought to go. So having to make intelligent use of the terrain, or whittling down the enemy with ranged attacks and harassment, are just not things in his comfort zone. But for the typical Civ player those are important... and stacking the whole army on one tile does badly subvert that.

The problem that arises is that one unit per tile is just not enough on a map where there are a lot of bottlenecks no more than a few tiles wide.

[Purple]

The big problem with the Stack of Doom was, yes, the ability to just slip past defenses and the total lack of incentive to do anything other than pile your whole army onto one tile.

And that's more than good enough for me in CIV.

Purple doesn't like to have to think about military tactics, or at all if it would involve not doing things the way he thinks they ought to go. So having to make intelligent use of the terrain, or whittling down the enemy with ranged attacks and harassment, are just not things in his comfort zone. But for the typical Civ player those are important... and stacking the whole army on one tile does badly subvert that.

I like to do it in games that actually focus on doing it. Like if I was commanding an army in a RTS game and could actually do tactics. But in an X4 game where "terrain" represents hundreds of kilometers of landscape I very much prefer gameplay where it's not your tactical ability that counts but your economy and its ability to outgrind the other guy. And for the simple reason that it's out of place.

Really, from my perspective the kind of tactical maneuvering you are talking about is supposed to be happening one layer of abstraction bellow what the game is simulating. Like in a total war game. It's supremely stupid to talk about strategy in a context where your grand maneuver involves picking which half of the alps to occupy.

The problem that arises is that one unit per tile is just not enough on a map where there are a lot of bottlenecks no more than a few tiles wide.

That's because again, you are trying to shove tactical behavior into the wrong scale. That bottleneck a few tiles wide is hundreds of kilometers across. That's what makes the whole stack limit thing even more jarring. I can fit a whole city with millions of people into a tile but not 2 units?

[Simon_Jester]

Some minimal level of tactics is a designed feature of Civ-style games. Otherwise they wouldn't even bother having multiple unit types. That you wish the feature weren't there doesn't make a lot of difference, since this is one of the many issues where your preferences are... frankly, weird.

Thus, bad tactical gameplay is a problem for the typical player. The solution is to have not one unit per tile but, say, three. So that units can move through each other and so that concentration of force is possible.

Or to create mechanics that make intense stacking counterproductive, which the AI understands, so that the units spread out over the available land even though in principle you could put your whole army in one place. Otherwise you're just effortlessly stomping the AI because it is too stupid to fight back effectively against your stacks, unless it has overwhelmingly stronger stacks of its own and attacks you first.

[Purple]

Exactly. A builders game where building decides wars before they even happen.

[Patroklos]

Purple, you keep boiling down any gameplay that involves anything other than a stack of doom as tactical. There is in fact things between abstracting war entirely and tactical. There has, in fact, never been a Civ game with tactical combat. Tactical combat would be something like Command and Conquer. Even a game like Panzer General, which is many times more in the weeds than any civ game, is OPERATIONAL in scope by an real world military definition of concepts. A game like Hearts of Iron straddles the line between operational and strategic, and is still further in the weeds than civ.

Every iteration of Civ has been purely strategic. You are not pissed that the game has become tactical, you are pissed that wars are represented as anything other than a message text box telling you how the algorithm resolved things. No Civ has ever been remotely close to what you want. You are not asking for a better civ game or advocating tweeks to improve the existing property, you are asking for a different game altogether.

[Flagg]

Not as easily. And besides a change that brings no benefit is bad by default. And to me a change to hexagons brings no benefit. That much I have demonstrated over and over.

Simply put Civ 1-4 were builders games. Civ 5+ are warriors games. That's fine. Different things for different people. But its still a fact.

You can build just as well on hexagons.

I mean, look at a city IRL, they're far more round than they are square, roads often aren't straight for any great length of time, and so on. It's not like any version of Civ has let you go all sim city, so what exactly could you build in Civ 4 that you couldn't have built if the game had hexes instead of squares?

Giant stack armies. I honestly think if you could still build those most anti-hex civ fans wouldn't care.

[Flagg]

Then hexes aren't actually a problem; the problem is that you are too stupid and unadaptable to figure out how to cope with hexagons. Since it's very much possible to just tile/stencil an area with hexagons.

This. Hexes (and just as importantly not being able to build stack armies of doom) improved the game immeasurably for me. Just because certain fans of Civs4 and before (that rhymes so you know it's true! ) couldn't cope with or just disliked the change doesn't mean hexes are inferior. And frankly, enjoyment is a subjective matter, so stating "hexes are bad, fact!" is silly bordering on doltish.

I personally like stacking within reason (Civ II's mechanics on stacking were too punitive, to the extent that it actively impeded the AI's ability to fight; SMAC got the balance about right).

The big problem with the Stack of Doom was, yes, the ability to just slip past defenses and the total lack of incentive to do anything other than pile your whole army onto one tile.

Purple doesn't like to have to think about military tactics, or at all if it would involve not doing things the way he thinks they ought to go. So having to make intelligent use of the terrain, or whittling down the enemy with ranged attacks and harassment, are just not things in his comfort zone. But for the typical Civ player those are important... and stacking the whole army on one tile does badly subvert that.

The problem that arises is that one unit per tile is just not enough on a map where there are a lot of bottlenecks no more than a few tiles wide.

Yeah, I'd have rather they allowed one unit per type, rather than only one unit. Like one non-ranged, one ranged, and one siege, something like that.

[Simon_Jester]

Eh, then you'd still have the problem of units not being able to pass through each other. Which really messes up the AI because it requires so much planning to maneuver forces effectively in tight quarters. I'd make it a flat "three per tile."

[Flagg]

Eh, then you'd still have the problem of units not being able to pass through each other. Which really messes up the AI because it requires so much planning to maneuver forces effectively in tight quarters. I'd make it a flat "three per tile."

Yeah, I didn't like not being able to pass through, either. But it was a trade off I didn't view as being anything more than a nuisance.