/v/ - Video Games

>>15492312

Could just put a cap on units in a stack that isn't someone like a million.

I like 1 unit per tile, it makes wars about placement and maneuver rather than doomstack vs doomstack

is this game actually interesting or is it the kind of game where it's fun only if you are autistic enough like harvest moon or animal crossing?

>>15492342

The downside is it makes it too much rock-paper-scissors where X unit beats Y for my taste. I think a good middle-ground would be one army composition per tile. So you could still specialize an army around one unit type and through careful placement take advantage of their strength versus another unit type, but could also create more balanced compositions. Doomstacking limiters could be done through other mechanics, like needing logistics technology to handle larger armies or leader aptitude.

>>15492378

See if you find think it interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qIoijjiIXs

>>15492410

*if you think it's

>>15492456

That sounds interesting. Would it only impact stack limits or effect combat too? What would happen if you tried to move a stack that was too large into the tile, would it split the stack?

>>15492410

The fact of developing and inventing shit is interesting, but I'm the guy who doesn't like the war aspect, like in cossacks as a kid I would make peasants, build farms and shit but when it came to fighting I hated it and just played on cheats.

I only like weeb turn based rpgs like Fire Emblem because I have finite number of units.

I have IV, BtS and Warlords. Does BtS contain the base game?

Also why do people shit on Civ5 and 6, is it nostalgia?

>>15492564

>Civ5 and 6, is it nostalgia?

We keep getting traded a new graphical art style for increasingly simplified or outright removed mechanics.

>>15492134

>>which Civilization is best?

mine

>>which one is worst?

my neighbor's nation

>>who is the best leader?

some thinking man

>>what's better: 1 unit per tile or army stacks?

I don't know

why do some people sperg the fuck out when you suggest that the doomstacks from Civ4 are shit but 1UPT is also shit and a middle-ground like 1 melee + 1 ranged + 1 civilian/general would be vastly superior?

>>15492661

Because that would require the dev to actually create something new and innovative.

>>15492724

That would be nice, but I still feel like there should be a limit to how many units of the same type can be put on a tile, early game it would be ok but imagine the cheese of having 5 modern infantry or 5 gatling guns or 5 artillery on the same tile

civilizations revolution. the others are far too slow paced in my opinion. it is consolized but i feel it only removed tedium. a game of revolution can be played in one sitting, at the VERY MAX it will last 4 hours. the level sizes are much smaller, so navigation is faster and interesting encounters are far more common. its rules are very simple, terrain does not effect movement, so stats are static (tiles still have stats though). units dont need gold or food, but both gold and food still serve a purpose to win. no autistic worker micromanagement, no random crap like revolts, build times are far faster, roads are built between cities instantly, ive tried nearly every civ game including spinoffs like alpha centauri or colonization or even other strategy games like master of magic but nothing comes close to revolution. if you have a friend 360 version is a load of fun, multiplayer is great. the ds port is really good, a straight upgrade actually because animations are far faster, but only good with the touchpad. the android sequel is basically a straight upgrade but with the huge detriment of no multiplayer, and no selling units. still fun singleplayer though easy

>>15492564

When Civ V was the newest one, spergs shit on it because it wasn't like IV, they hated the art style, and you couldn't make doomstacks. Now that VI is the new one, the same spergs are complaining that it isn't like V, they hate the art style, and you can't make doomstacks. I thought VI was a little rough at launch, but it's pretty good now. I just wish they could make the AI a little better at war. Civ games are pretty complex so people have particular details of their autism that the systems do or don't appeal to.

>best civ

alpha centauri

>>15492865

The lack of unit stacking is fucked.

It makes moving armies across continents incredibly tedious.

And means you have to micromanage where you keep workers (less of a problem in VI) and other civilian units like great people.

It also prohibits stacking across civilizations, so a city state can park a horseman on a strategic resource that you can never ever use without declaring war on them (still a problem in VI).

No unit stacking sounded like a good idea ten years ago but has never been implemented well in the Civilization series. Hexagons are the only redeeming feature of Civ V. The Civ IV mods are still better than anything the later Civs have to offer.

>>15492859

>the others are far too slow paced in my opinion

t. not good at normal civ

>>15492312

>This is now a Fall From Heaven thread.

Like anyone here but you and I played it.

Hippus best civ, fuck the Illians.

Civ 1 is legitimately best. It had proper zone of control, it was worth building on the map and making use of choke points, it was worth building a navy, and trade routes weren't magical. It also lacked the various stupid shit added later that just made the game drag hard late-game, introduced a competing meta, or just over-complicating it. It also didn't have python or lua written by Pajeets so late-game AI turns didn't require an hour on a supercomputer.

>>15493373

Illians blows but the Orcs with Soldiers of Kilmorph is where it's at.

Freeciv with hexagons and the civ2civ3 ruleset is best Civ.

>>15493441

I've never tried that but the Orcs are also pretty good with Order, ironically. It's literally impossible to win against Tasunke with horseman rush though. That early game conquest potential creates an economic base that will steamroll everything else on the map.

I didn't buy any expansions but my enjoyment of vanilla Civ5 was completely ruined by global happiness. Why would you make a game mechanic where conquering cities and nations as ancient Rome makes Romans unhappy? There are other more plausible ways to throttle military expansion, and they go with 'war is bad, man.'

>>15493470

Every faction has cheese, for the Clan of Embers they have the warren building which make the city produce 2 units instead of one, so you get a high production city, slam in the 250% military production buildings, and then churn out soldier of Kilmorph all day and all night which can be used to speed up production and any of your city, stack 50 of those and instantly build any wonder, build everything everywhere.

>>15493542

>Every faction has cheese

And if you don't like your own cheese, there's always the baron.

>>15492312

My nigger

When did you wake up and realize that the world is better off under the firm control of the White Hand?

>>15493373

>>15493441

>>15493560

I like Illians for their fun rituals, the worst faction has to be the kuriotates

Best nation is Civ 5 Venice.

Embrace your inner jew. Cuck Alexander of his city states.

>>15492865

>durr people don't like V just because it was new

It was, and still is, utter dogshit. As an insult to the injury it switched "player base" to fucking casuals and they're not turning back on that.

>>15492312

>>15492456

Age of Wonders 3 (dunno about all the others) and EL do something like that.

>>15493952

I like age of wonders 3. id be super happy if they made a similar system for civilization. Will Probably never happen but a man can dream.

>>15493637

When I first got my hands on Auric and his three Priests of Winter. Summon ice golems every turn, Auric can summon two per turn if he gets Twincast, which can happen within the initial 100 XP limit, put Mobility 1 and Commando on all four of them, get a two-move army (four counting the golem's movement) that can attack every turn, possesses ludicrous defense, and heals on the go, because most of its combat forces are constantly being regenerated. I've never had such fun with conquest, summoner/golem stacks are more interesting to me than any other form of combat in Civ4, and the Illian golems get naturally stronger over time as you want to convert every mana node you get into Ice nodes. The first time I played around with it, it strongly reminded me of a Dungeon Keeper/Sailor Moon crossover I had read some time ago called Dungeon Keeper Ami. It's actually a pretty good story, and one of the tricks that gets deployed reasonably frequently is the idea of mobile, rapidly regenerating ice golems.

The other thing I really like about the Illians is that they involve heavy terraforming. The Temples of Winter can singlehandedly convert pretty much every tile you take over into hostile, frozen tundra. I'm not much a fan of how badly blizzards harm your visibility, but it's pretty good defensively. My end-game civilization tends to look like fortified, isolated, highly advanced cities surrounded by a vast magical icy expanse, with railroads connecting most of the major metropolises and farms and towns dotted across the interior. I'd like to imagine that it's rather picturesque.

Disclaimer, I usually play with Magister's modmod, so I'm not sure how much of this applies to vanilla or the other modmods.

>>15493454

>>15492134

>Best Civ

This is confusing since you're not specifiying between "Civilization" as in the iteration of the game in the series, or as a faction in any game (and if that's what you meant, then do you mean overall over all the games or only in one game) you absolute mong.

Anyway, despite what idiots on /v/ say, Civ 6 is the best Civ game. First, it has the best music hands down. Then, far more importantly, it has the highest amount of potential complexity and depth of choice per turn for a non-modded Civ game. Its artstyle is divisive (I prefer the more realistic take of 5 myself), as is its AI, but it's never really worse in either category than 4 ever got. So long as you can deal with the artstyle and the somewhat loopy (but usually OK) AI, it's the easily the best game, and it's still likely going to get one overhaul DLC.

>Worst Civ?

As a game? Civ 1 in terms of featureset. Yes it's the original, but the whole series is very iterative so the original game is going to naturally be the weakest.

But if nostalgia's prevents honesty for you, then Civ 2, since it's almost exactly like 1 and was really a bit of crap iteration pumped out by the publisher without Sid Meier or Firaxis' involvement.

> Best Leader?

Overall, over all the civ games? I think the ones that have made the most appearances could probably be considered "the best" so that'd probably be Gandhi, Alexander, Genghis, Montezuma, or maybe Shaka.

In Civ 6 it's still TBD since we're likely going to see more, but so far I'm pretty sure Gilgamesh reigns supreme to this day since the timing on your major bonuses means a LOT in terms of power - with the sooner your abilities appear and are useful being better - and everything he has comes out immediately. Not only do warcarts make for unstoppable early game rushes, but the ziggurauts can get you really good science for little investment while starting critical tile improvement infrastructure.

>1UPT or Stacks?

I think 1UPT ultimately is better if I have to choose in a no compromise way. But they should allow some more stacking. They've done a *little* bit in 6, since you can combine units of the same type into "Corps" or "Armies" which are just stacks of 2 or 3 units of the same type, and you can attach modifier units to units, but it's not very intuitive or flexible.

They should just allow stacks that take up tiles that can add one more unit to the stack per technological age. Usually there are 8 ages in the game so you'd have a max 8 stack in the information era, but you wouldn't be having ludicrous doomstacks in the ancient era to worry about.

>>15492532

You'd get an option upon marching to go for cohesion or to go at max speed; if an army enters a tile out of enemy range it splits the stack. If you want cohesion the slowest go first up to a max distance of something like 2 tiles and your army caterpillars along, if you want max speed it sends the fastest first and when you select 'the stack' they all share a destination but not necessarily current tile; units can leapfrog each-other out of combat but not in range.

This is important because it adds emergent functionality to the siege-only artillery units no one cares about, where you'd station artillery at a safe position near-front lines to force the enemy to "order up" so that it gums down their movement efficiency. Bonus because this is a huge chunk of real-world war history.

You could make the system more in depth for autistic minmaxing reasons, but it wouldn't be especially necessary.

>>15493952

It's one of the Endless Legend series' best ideas. Due to the nature of Civ I'm proposing a more terrain-focused and persistent version because I think that fits better. Age of Wonders has always struck me as a Civ-HOMM hybrid and that's fine too.

>>15494763

Civ 6 has new mechanics that aren't just old mechanics but dumber/removed so it's automatically better than Civ 5. That's not to say there didn't make things dumber or remove things, but at least an attempt was made to push the series in an interesting direction.

The biggest advantage is that it feels like they cut huge chunks out of the game to develop them more (esp. religion, spies, and tech tree) and sell them as DLC. Since I would never be stupid enough to give EA money that has no downsides and just means Civ 6 will be neat and feature-complete game by the time I want to really play it in depth.

The UI on the other hand…

What the fuck were they thinking?

Where they thinking at all?

>>15492564

civ 5 borrowed mechanics from civ revolutions, which was made after civ 4. Sid said worry not my fans, this is just a casual game for casuals, and you'll get your hardcore game next! Then he gives us civ 5 which has shit like global happiness and badly balanced 1UPT, and other revolutions influences. 5, even with the enhancements it got over time, was just significantly shallower than 4. I have no clue about 6 because I stopped paying attention to the franchise after the 5 debacle.

>>15492865

You have no clue what you're talking about and are probably a 4 or even a 5babby. 4 mods are still and will probably always be the apex of this franchise. I was able to play 5 on deity by my second game of it, just shameful. I pirated the expansions/DLC at some point a few years ago and tried it again and still managed to win on the highest difficulty without major issues, as someone who has played FOUR complete games of civ 5. I have played THOUSANDS of games of civ 4 and I can still only win on deity with a strong start.

If you want a new game that's like civ, endless legend is the spiritual successor that's worth playing.

>get declared on by aztec or songhai

>Try to negotiate peace

>Won't agree to peace terms until you wipe out 80+% of their cities and even then they only send assinine peace requests, won't accept any negotiations

>Warmonger because it becomes necessary to wipe them out just to be able to benefit from peacetime specific perks

Diplomacy was a mistake

Civ 4 was the last true Civ game. There are no Civ games after that.

>>15492134

Stacks is better, for many reasons, but most of all its better because it takes less time to manage. 1UPT takes forever to manage large armies, making long military campaigns tedious and slows down the experience.

They have so far failed to deliver an enjoyable tactical experience, and in Civs 5 they balanced around how shit the AI were at dealing with certain things, nerfing units that didn't need to be nerfed.

I don't know how it is in Civs 6, but from my understanding its still a chore to move giant armies.

frostling theocrat is the best faction

>>15492134

>>which Civilization is best?

Civ III

>>which one is worst?

Civ 6

>>who is the best leader?

fuck you

>>what's better: 1 unit per tile or army stacks?

Stacks were done well in Civ III because tiles were less linear then 4

>>15494817

>What the fuck were they thinking?

touchscreens

>>15492661

Mods already function like this.

Realism invictus gives a negative to each unit over a certain number based on technology you have, this way early game you can only have 5 units per tile before you start to get negatives.

Pie's Ancient Europe has a similar setup but the number of units is much higher, sitting at around 20 units before you need supply units to feed the stack.

My favorite was always Rise of Mankind with the hard unit limiter, which I set at 3, this way I actually have to develop a frontline and monitor it for weaknesses and potential breakthroughs. Just don't play with raging barbarians with a unit limit so small because the game will crash regularly.

>>15494777

>They've done a *little* bit in 6, since you can combine units of the same type into "Corps" or "Armies" which are just stacks of 2 or 3 units of the same type, and you can attach modifier units to units, but it's not very intuitive or flexible.

Isn't this was that Chinese civ clone did to fix 1UPT? The concept sounded solid to me so what exactly makes it not work in civ 6?-

>>15492661

There is nothing wrong with doomstacks.

A player who invests their entire army into a doomstack does not pillage or take cities faster than a player who does not, but should you let your raiding units get picked off you will not be able to stand against their doomstack when time calls for it.

There is plenty of strategy in composition and positioning. Siege gives the attacker the advantage, while the defender gets the better match ups and usually should pick better terrain. Trebuchets are better against cities while catapults are better against armies. Bombarding a city takes time, time that a group of, say, 5 fast units won't bother wasting on a city with only 2-3 defenders. To get the most of your doomstack you have to play smart (until gunpowder).

Just look at the early game 'paper-scissors-rock'.

>Archer on a city beats Axemen, but loses to Swordsman

>Axemen are weak to Chariots, but beat Spears and Swordsman

>Spears beat Chariots and Horse Archers, but are ultimately weaker than Axemen or Swordsman, but can beat an Archer in the field

>Catapults weaken multiple units on attack but die hard to Horse Archers

>Trebuchets have 1 less strength than catapults but double strength against cities, and are the only unit that can top a Longbowman on a city

>Horse archer beats Longbowman if the Longbowman has no city or hill, but is only equal strength to swordsman

>>15497148

Theres nothing wrong with doomstacks when playing against other players, theres everything wrong with them when playing against the AI.

>>15497214

AI is autistic and likes to move every single unit even if it is unneccesary to do so, making any form of 'cannot stack' movement consuming for the AI to process.

No battle method is good vs AI, except heroes style sub-battles. Mostly.

Civ 2 is best, but Civ 4 is probably a close second. Civ 1 is third, but only because it's nostalgic as hell.

>>15492908

This man has it right

>>15497345

Reminds me of the time my little brother found a troop of Mechanised Infantry in ancient ruins while still in the stone age.

What mods should one get for Civilization 3?

>>15500074

What you want is a civ that develops as you play the game in order to best fit the culture to your choices, rather than the other way around. What you'd end up with is just following the optimal choice order in order to maximize your traits, OR RNG hell.

>>15500074

I've imagined that, too. I think that kind of system would suit a simulation game like Dwarf Fortress rather than a strategy game, as >>15510781 said.

I'm universally told 4 was the best, though I've only played 5 and the DS port. Yes, really.

>>15500074

>>15510781

That would work better as a simulation game rather than a pure strategy game. Would still be something fun to see.

>which Civilization is best?

Civ V with the Brave New World expansion. Honestly, I have yet to hear of anything better than it.

>>15511305

>Ice-T is a TORposter

Makes sense.

>>15510781

For a single player mode, having some RNG shit is an acceptable compromise to have original factions. On multi, I can see it becoming a problem or forcing min-maxing. I frankly dislike the way Civ games are always being "gamed" for the purpose of maximum gains instead of more RP-oriented shit. Picking a civ over another one grants you a specific benefit over time or at a given historical period, meaning you already start with a tiered choice from the get-go instead of having something that develops throughout the game. Also I dislike the fact that multi needs a symmetric map to be fair - it'd be so much funnier if it was more about politics and balance of power, with factions rising from knowing that someone is too powerful now or in the long run or if some underdeveloped country suddenly finds riches and every other player has to either defend him or attack him for resources.

>>15511185

Probably, yeah.

>>15511121

CivRev also helped me get into the main series. Sid Meier knew how to make his games inviting.

>>15512050

The issue with politics is the fact that you need "nothing personal" mentality, or else you risk people not playing to win, which they should be doing. Not everybody can betray out of pragmatism and not everybody can take betrayal as just a part of the game. See Diplmacy, the board game.

>>15512364

Also, is there a way to play without vanilla and Warlords the DVD, without using a cracked EXE? I know BtS and Colonization can be played without DVD after installing the latest patches, but Vanilla and Warlords still need the disc.

>>15512615

* play vanilla and Warlords without the DVD

>>15492342

>I like 1 unit per tile, it makes wars about placement and maneuver rather than doomstack vs doomstack

I hate it for the same reason. Don't get me wrong, I like battle isle style games, but in a game like CIV it just means a bunch of tedium moving your units to and from battlefields, and it takes a ton of time and focus away from the greater strategic part of the game.

Pretty much there's a better, smaller wargame trapped inside civ 5.

>>15511305

>Civ V with the Brave New World expansion is the best

>builds 4 bases

>no need for any further expansion since the game is balanced to punish you if you want to go big and expand after hitting the medieval era

>no ability to adjust what percentage of your income is allocated to tech; simplistic economic management

>the tiles gives such meager resources

>production is badly nerfed

>the tile improvement system is greatly simplified

>the computer can't handle the one-unit-per-tile system, so the game's difficulty is a joke, even on deity

I don't get how you can prefer this to the fourth game. It's just terrible.

>>15492312

>I want to find some kind of middle.

Endless Legend already got you covered here.

You have to pay upkeep for every stack and for every unit. Stacks have a maximum amount of units in them (plus a hero commanding them). Whenever a stack starts combat, others can reinforce but they enter the fight 2 units at a time every combat round instead.

This means that investing in technology to make your stack bigger not only lets you start combat with more units but also lets you use less stacks for the same amount of units, thus saving some money.

For CIV specifically, what you could get was a limit to military units on a single stack, plus a commander (civilians are 1UPT but on their own layer).

Then you have upkeep for each army (stack) and for the units, as well as being able to put a General on a stack too.

Now, the tactical turn-based combat from Endless Legend wouldn't probably go well with CIV (or maybe it would) so what you'd have is the same round-based combat you have now but with all units in a stack attacking at the same time.

Artillery fires on the first and second round, archers and cavalry start attacking on the second route and every other unit attacks rounds 3,4 and 5. With the attack complete, you get to order a second stack.

Proximity bonus, your general bonus, etc all apply as usual but with some variation where vegetation makes cavalry attack on the 3rd round and heavy vegetation makes every melee unit attack on the 4th instead but gives cover from ranged attacks, Artillery on defense doesn't attack on the first round, etc.

This would mean that your stack is a composite of units and it's role is decided by what you field in them. Sticking 4 archers and 2 swordsman in a stack means a lot of early damage, which makes them good against lightly armored stacks but shit against cavalry or heavy infantry. Sticking a single artillery can help against bigger stacks of slower troops, but will suck against cavalry unless you have at least some spearmens to keep them safe, etc.

>>15492465

The only thing 5 did better than 4 was the religion system, and even that was only JUST better.

Also does anyone know of a grand strategy game that lets you create your own nation/race/whatever form scratch? Preferably one that doesn't have $300 worth of DLCs

>>15517138

Age of Wonders 3?

>>15517145

AoW 3 is pretty good, but from what I recall it didn't really let you make your own nation, so much as it let you slightly modify a preexisting nation type. You could change your spells and starting hero (I think) but if you chose the elves you were restricted to elf units. I was thinking something where you would be able to choose what your units would be and their tiers. Or what bonuses/hindrances your civ gets, like a +1 to magic but a -1 to food production or whatever. I know it's a lot to ask, but you never know, maybe some hyper autist made something like that. I know endless legend has SOMETHING like that, but it's pretty trash IMO, not to mention it has more DLC content than vanilla content, which is a major turn off for me.

>>15517156

Well, you pick a race for your nation but the class of your hero changes the type of units from that race you get. Alignment played a role there too. It's a bit deeper than it seems at first, but probably not at all what you're going for.

There's Empire Earth 1 with it's Civ Builder, but that's probably too shallow as well and an RTS.

How hard is it to mod new features/factions in Civ IV? I had this way dope idea to implement sort of a Refugee mechanic that would increase pop but decrease stability depending on the government kind.

>>15517198

Im pretty sure thats already a thing in one of the existing mods.

Regicide was a neat idea, but they should've made the king units more of an offensive unit to promote risky play.

>>15517138

There's this Mount and Blade: Warband mod. Not quite Grand Strategy or 4X though.

https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6199?tab=files

>>15512717

All the game really needs is a click and drag that shows you what tiles the bunch of units will end up on.

>>15517490

the first age of wonders did this and ive never seen it anywhere else.

civ 5 is easily the worst game in the series no contest

civ 5 babbies who never played civ before civ 5 are very likely to be trendy retards jumping on the civ 6 hate train, despite the fact that civ 5 is the worst game in every single regard

So have any of you autists been playing V with Vox Populi? How do you feel about it compared to the base game?

>>15528291

fuck off showershitter

>>15529718

What's your opinion of cleaning your ass in the shower if you run out of tp?

And no there is no kleenex, wetwipes or papertowel.

>>15525657

I dunno man, I've heard the corruption mechanic from Civ2 was pretty terrible and made it even worse than 5.

I'm honestly more upset at how spies were changed from 4 to 5 and that we lost Corporations (aka 20th century religions).

Spies lost a lot of their sabotage powers since they become mostly another angle for diplomacy instead of the saboteurs from Civ4. It would be best to have them split in different roles to keep both functions.

Religion was expanded a lot and in a very cool way, but it's a shame that corporations didn't had the same treatment when it'd make perfect sense for them to. Maybe even avoid the issue with having an entirely new resource (Piety) and instead have Religion for Culture and Corporations for Money, like it used to be, but with the expanded mechanics from CIV5

>>15525990

>it's pretty clear that the 4-5-6 audience is made exclusively of millenials that never played 1-2-3 or SMAC

<It's pretty clear that the audience for the newer games is much younger than the audience for newer games

No shit. What a meaningless statement.

>1upt posters never seem to mention who they play their civ games against

Maybe because it doesn't matter, especially since nobody ever claims that the AI is okay with 1upt? What if we want 1upt but AI that can capitalize on it instead?

And maybe having or not having humans to play with and against does not change the worth or effectiveness of gameplay? It's either bad or good regardless of who you play against.

Frankly, I'd rather have Endless Legend (stacks with a variable maximum size) than either 1upt or stacks of doom.

Age of Wonders does this and it's far better (in terms of armies) than any CIV game, although it does have it's own problems due to the buffs and the tiered units.

>>15529892

><It's pretty clear that the audience for the newer games is much younger than the audience for newer games

*than the audience for older games

>>15525990

You fags needs to quit with the millennial shit, we've all fucking played SMAC and Civ 1-2-3, millennials are as old as you because you're probably one. Last good Civ was 4 and ur a faggot who can suck my big white hairy balls

>>15492134

India

>>15529892

spending forever stomping low-end AI that can't compete sounds more like you have autism than you're having fun.

>>15533113

get away from me homo.

if you're both too young to pick your games based off of fun instead of social validation from e-celebs maybe you should leave?

>>15533191

I did pick Civ 4 based off of "fun" you gay faggot homo, I don't follow gay faggot streamers. Civ 4 was/is the best Civ and if you don't agree then you're a dumb faggot. It's like saying Sim City 3000 is better then 4 which is just wrong and gay

I hated civ 5 so much that I haven't even looked at civ 6. Of the ones I've played 3>4>2>>>>>>5 for vanilla but modded civ 4 is easily the best. Then again if we're looking at it a little more broadly then the best "civ" game will always be alpha centauri

>>15533697

civ 4 is just embarassing - simplifying units from attack / defense / move to power / move with a patchwork of a million specific exceptions and counters can't really be explained or justified. if you have a boner for really low quality 3d graphics and can't stand spritework no matter the quality, just say that instead of pretending the game is good.

alpha centauri has working zone of control, doesn't have magic unit-warding borders, and also doesn't expect the player to let military units in for """trade""". add blind research and the only good social police design in a civlike and it's beyond comparison.

>>15533191

>spending forever stomping low-end AI

So you're just going to make assumptions on how someone else plays to support your argument? I could have sworn that's a falacy of some kind, hum…

>>15538584

>simplifying units from attack / defense / move to power / move with a patchwork of a million specific exceptions

>simplifying

>million specific exceptions

Why would you contradict yourself in your own argument on the very same sentence?

Merging attack and defense into the same stat isn't simplifying, it's just removing a dumb choice altogether. Instead of stacking high-defense\low-attack units on your cities for defense or on your stacks to deal with attacks and using high-attack/low-defense units are the only ones that actually attack, which is essentially the entirety of strategic depth you can have with this, you instead have units that are strong against a particular target, in a particular situation\terrain or in a specific situation.

Artillery withdrawing from combat after a few rounds and applying damage to a whole stack has a very clear purpose, clear large stacks of units. Archers withdrawing from combat after a few rounds has a purpose, soften up targets. Cavalry has an extra move to pursue units or move and pillage on the same turn, pikes having bonus against horses, etc, etc.

Are these modifiers really that hard to you? Or do you seriously think that having a single Defense stat in paralell to Attack is that much better than using the terrain, positioning, countering unit types and using veterancy bonus?

>magic unit-warding borders

You mean Open Borders, that somehow you can mention twice on the same post, something that's different in Civ because diplomacy in Civ is different as a concept than for Alpha Centauri? It's there for a reason, and you're an idiot if you don't know about it. Stacking units surrounding a whole city before actually declaring war or having Civilian units in the game at all that can change the game a lot (and this wasn't even in AC) are very good reasons for Closed Borders to exist as a mechanic.

>blind research

You can turn it off and go with a regular tech tree. It also works for Alpha Centauri because Research works in a very different way. All of it pertains to the same time period and it's actually lots of small trees to progress into, while Civ's research is instead 1-2 very long trees you progress through.

So picking priorities in AC means that you'll get a specific research relatively sooner, while doing the same for Civ wouldn't work. At the beginning there'd just be Economy and Army research, and later on it adds Culture and Science to the mixture, but each field is so fucking broad, it'd be a complete mess.

You're comparing AC with CIV when they are both very different games and claiming that one is bad because it features things that make sense in that context or doesn't feature things that don't fit that context at all. You are terrible at this.

>>15540567

bad "simplifications" aren't a contradiction, they're a pattern that plays out with a bland consistency across all mismanaged games. just look at the "simplified" mechanics in, for example, hearts of iron IV from III. the original mechanic is removed, yes, but the thing that replaces it is more cumbersome and stupid than what came before.

artillery (and with a poor implementation archers) existed in civ 3, as did cavalry. if you think you have to remove attack / defensive stats in order to have all these roles you're just confused.

magic closed borders blow and shouldn't exist. borders should be defended by overlapping zone of control against dangerous enemies, and with a patchwork of scouts / cavalry up against friends. if your game engine blows so hard that you can't have enough units on the map to contain borders, your engine sucks. borders representing claims on land and resources >>> mystic unit wards.

finally, if your research trees are as bloated as civ 4+ but you can't balance them for blind research, your research tree sucks. no matter what you have to do to get there, blind research is the most important feature for a civlike. knowing you can't control which techs you get in which order frees the player from annoying strict metagaming. besides, your categorization of research focuses sucks - each research path in the civ tech trees could definitely be flagged with exploration / knowledge / build / military or similar classifiers if "having a fun game" was a development focus.

>>15542294

I'd love a zone of control type system in Civ, if I could afford massive army upkeep in V.

>>15492724

>models breast augmentation surgery scars

>models taint scars?

uhmmm…

>>15542643

just mash the "hurry production" button and get out of slave economy fast if you want to have productive outposts far away. if you're running republic / courthouse / forbidden palace / police station (in modern era) and you still have corruption problems you probably own over 1/3rd of the game map anyways. if you're too poor for infrastructure stop sucking.

>>15542294

>bad "simplifications" aren't a contradiction

The contradiction isn't that they are bad or good but rather that they are simplifications in the first place.

The word you're looking for is "convoluted", as in they made the game more complicated in an effort to make it more deep but did so in a convoluted way that didn't actually make it any deeper.

>artillery existed in civ 3, as did cavalry

And did they perform the same roles in the same way as in Civ4? Or was Cavalary just "faster Infantry" and Artillery just "glass cannon infantry"?

Because that's the issue with your retarded idea about "attack\defense\speed", the only thing it serves for is to make a few unit archetypes and the game can't work with anything else other than that. You'll get units that excel in 2 of those fields, making the third their weak point and that's it.

Tanky units that don't move as fast, Strong, fast units that need to be defended and Defensive units that can be relocated easily but never help much on the offensive.

If they went from CIV4 to CIV3, that'd be an actual simplification.

>magic closed borders blow and shouldn't exist

<this game is bad because it doesn't play how I like

>if you can't have enough units on the map to contain borders, your engine sucks

<disregard WHY the game doesn't work like this, it's the engine that sucks!

I'm not sure you actually play CIV games.

The only thing limiting your army to a small enough size you can't just dump stacks along side your boder like a makeshift wall is their cost ramping up and ruining your economy, especially during peace periods. The game does this because, if at any time you were to suddendly start marching forward with your army, you'd have a very sizeable force that your oponent would have to contend with, forcing everyone on the entire game to also make a sizeable force just for the sake of defense, instead of getting away with a smaller one and many advantages brought to the defended.

I'm not even sure this was how you defended your cities in CIV3 or any other CIV or any other 4X at all, what are you even rambling on about?

>if your research trees are as bloated as civ 4+ but you can't balance them for blind research, your research tree sucks.

>if your game is different from the game I like, it sucks

Alpha Centauri is roughly on the same "era" while CIV is supposed to see you start from the Stone Age all the way to the Modern Age. Research will therefore be a VERY long tree with small branches, instead of many bushes placed together.

Alpha Centauri research works amazingly well for Alpha Centauri and it would suck for CIV.

CIV research works amazingly well for CIV and it would suck for Alpha Centauri.

You can't just demand a very different game implements a feature from another game just because you like it.

>each research path in the civ tech trees could definitely be flagged with exploration / knowledge / build / military or similar classifiers if "having a fun game" was a development focus

You are a colossal retard and now I'm sure you don't actually play CIV at all.

Research in CIV is something you can't possibly have being blind since what you'll focus on depends a whole lot on the environment around you and your oponents. It's not enough to research "Economy", you will go with Hunting or Agriculture based on the tiles surrounding your city and you'll only go with Mining if you have Iron or something similar around you.

Specificially for CIV4, religions are tied to specific research. Between 2 researchs that give two different religions, you'll pass the one that someone already got. If it was blind research, you could end up researching it instead.

Why are you so adamant that RNG on research is such a good thing when all it does is remove the strategic element of reacting to your environment and coming up with a plan for the future?

>>15542573

Also this, CIV games are not balanced around having huge armies all over the map. You keep mentioning Hearts of Iron, so I'll add that up with Alpha Centauri with "games that do something I like and therefore CIV should do as well"

>>15543778

>Also this, CIV games are not balanced around having huge armies all over the map

It makes me wonder why those massive Earth type maps are so popular.

>>15525990

>millenials

I dont think you know what that word means

you are a millenial yourself

>>15492134

Civ 6 was such a disappointment, when I heard "multi-tile cities" I thought they finally realized what was limiting them: the maps and more importantly their scale. The stacking turned wars into smashing towers of babylon made of troops into one another, 1UPT made wars into giant queues, and the pathfinding was fucked and forced you to constantly repeat move orders. What they should've done is instead of gay districts which are basically tile improvements that unlock buildings, make cities 20 or 50 tiles big and scale the rest accordingly. You could never express the giant scale of New York or Beijing in civ, it would've been great. The new scale would lift the range restrictions, you're no longer stuck to 2 tile range for regular ranged units, 1 for melee with free offensive attacks and 3 for late-game shit. You have a more fine-grained control over what happens in your cities. Things like city capture can net you a better city than your enemy lost since you eg. bombed legacy districts and can rebuild them into more modern & effective versions. URBAN WARFARE - you don't just waltz in with a single troop to magically control the whole city, now you have to actually lock it down with your army while the enemy has home-turf advantages, maybe he can blend in his troops with the civilians, maybe add some some guerilla fighting. Allow for multiple counties to share a city by either splitting it like cold war Berlin or allowing for a "shared" city like many border cities in Europe. Have the palace be an actual tile in the capital that contains your actual government that you have to evacuate as a civilian unit when enemy is approaches it, because once they die it's game over (or super huge penalties), maybe ask other empires for asylum.

I should make that. Can firaxis sue?

>>15543778

just because every mainline civ game sucks in multiple crucial areas doesn't mean they should suck.

the civ 4+ model where you have to hit tech level kappa in order to learn to pick up grapes and eat them and tech level epsilon for sugar is gay and retarded. maybe if you just got rid of all the gay and retarded techs you could reduce the tech tree down to "advances that wouldn't totally blow if you got them at random".

essentially every idea i've raised has been represented in a civ game or alpha centauri. you have to be fucking retarded if you think "civ 4 doesn't let you have lots of units so no civ game should ever let you have lots of units". SMAC isn't trivially ruined by the option to eventually pump out clean reactor units or pick the police state ethos for more unit support. i understand SMAC isn't your favorite game and that you've never played it, but it's proof that even the people who made civ II understand what i'm saying.

i can't tell whether you're overtaken by is-ought or if you're legitimately autistic and can't understand change, real or theoretical.

>>15544084

>just because every mainline civ game sucks in multiple crucial areas doesn't mean they should suck.

You mean, just because it doesn't play the way you envision the game should, it doesn't mean it couldn't.

Re-read your posts and think about this better to yourself. You're not asking for Civ to improve, you're asking for Civ to become a cross-breed of other games you prefer.

>the civ 4+ model where you have to hit tech level kappa in order to learn to pick up grapes and eat them and tech level epsilon for sugar is gay and retarded.

You are rambling. The Civ model separates tech based on the era you're currently at because it's a game about progressing through the eras. This alone means you can't just take out researches from the tree just because you think they are retarded because you'd end up with eras having very few researches in them to begin with.

You also don't have to hti a specific level to research something, you're thinking of Alpha Centauri, actually. Civ only has pre-requisite researches.

>essentially every idea i've raised has been represented in a civ game or alpha centauri.

I don't think your idea of making borders with cavalry and scouts has been present in any Civ game ever due to how unfeasible it would be. SMAC however is an entirely different beast.

>you have to be fucking retarded if you think "civ 4 doesn't let you have lots of units so no civ game should ever let you have lots of units"

CIV is not a Wargame, it's a 4X. If you could cover half the map with your army, the economy, spying, culture, science, etc would be only side aspects of the major means to achieve victory: military. That goes against what 4X games tend to be. Are you sure you're playing the right kind of game for you? Why not try RTS instead?

>i understand SMAC isn't your favorite game

Please don't start making assumptions about someone else that you can't verify one way or another. It's not just embarassing, it's a very, very weak premise to base the rest of your argument on.

>if you're legitimately autistic and can't understand change

This coming from the guy that just wants the newer games to be exactly like older ones because that's all he likes to play.

>>15492134

As others said both 1UPT and stacking are kind of bad options that come down to preference.

One way to combine them is to have customizable armies that occupy a whole tile. You'd have limits to both the number of armies and what you can put in them. Let's say you have a limit of 500 points per army and one unit of pikemen cost 50 points and one unit of archers cost 30 points. Each would contribute different stats to the overall army. If you have at least one ranged unit you could attack at range but the strength would be limited by the number of archers. On the other hand pikemen would be more useful in melee engagement.

There could be combat phases similar to what's in Crusader Kings - skirmish, melee, etc with each unit having different stats in each. Although this may be too much complexity for a civ game.

Tech, government, culture, wonders, etc would give more points per army, free slots for special units, bonus stats for units (general or against specific units) or whatever you can think of.

The easiest implementation of army building would be to leave unit production like it is now but each new unit would be its own army. Then you could join them into bigger armies as you like. If you armies over your limit there would be penalties to morale/cost/stats/whatever.

Scouting would be essential to learn the composition of enemy armies.

What I'd like to see in a civ game:

- supply system (armies only regain strength if there's a continuous road with no enemy units on it connecting the army to one of your cities with the necessary strategic resource(s) connected)

- different ways to raise armies through the ages (no standing armies until "renaissance age" or equivalent - until then it's levies raised from cities based on city development)

- morale (heavily dependent on culture and can be damaged by spy activity)

- terrain should affect battle in ways other than defense bonus (e.g. limited active army size in mountains, mounted units better in open than in forest or marsh)

>>15544153

There was that 4X chinese game that had an interesting concept for the armies, where every city had stacks of military units that rose over time up to a maximum.

Then, when you wanted to raise an army, you'd spend those stacks to create units in a single turn or so.

After the battles are won, you can simply put the units back into the city to regain stacks faster, but losing veterancy bonus.

I think there was also something there regarding the population size, but I can't remenber it.

I'd also really prefer a levy system for early game, since stopping production that soon to make troops can be quite crippling, but sacrificing a few citizens, especially if you can return them back later on, not so much.

>Let's say you have a limit of 500 points per army and one unit of pikemen cost 50 points and one unit of archers cost 30 points.

I was thinking about Age of Wonders with it's stacks of 6 units only per tile. It sounds like a great idea but the tiered units means that you're better off stacking 6 tier4 units into an army than 6 tier1 units, making the early units useless in the lategame. Also, abusing buffings spells to make flying, invisible death stacks.

But the idea of a point limit could technically solve that, depending on balance. Higher tier units costing far more than lower tier units means that you'd field far less on the same army, which could either fuck everything up (more units is always better than stronger units or the reverse) or it could make it so that proper composition is the best strategy (one high tier unit and plenty of smaller ones complementing)

>>15544207

You can also balance strong units with more upkeep cost, strategic resource cost or even civil unrest or diplomatic relation penalties.

I'd definitely go for the proper composition way you suggested over the "lol dude just spam the best unit" solution.

If you recall the name of that game I'd be very interested.

>>15544246

I think he's talking about this one.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/357310/Oriental_Empires/

>>15544253

Thanks! Looks like it's worth a try.

>>15544246

The problem with higher upkeep is that it's literally a temporary solution. You could be bleeding money every round but that doesn't mean you can't have an army that big, only that the war must be won faster.

Even so, there's the cost\benefit analysis. If 1 stack of tier 4 units costs as much as 4 stacks of tier 1 units but still performs better, it's still a better option afterall.

Although, one thing I've yet to see explored fully is diplomatic or morale costs for using certain units or tactics. At best there's nukes in Civ but slave armies, child soldiers, mutants, biological weapons, etc. There's a whole world of unorthodox strategies to use and have everyone go batshit crazy over you daring to use them.

>>15544253

Yes, that's the game. The research trees are pretty nice, the "simultaneous battles" as well since it means you have to try and antecipate what your oponent will do (kinda a bit like Frozen Synapse) and there's a lot of neat tidbits and ideas there too.

I think I stopped playing it since the eye candy isn't that good and campaigns see you starting on the same map at all times, plus a few other nagging points. But I'm sure anyone that like historically accurate games would actually end up loving it a lot more.

>>15492134

Stacks with the size limit depending on the leader's capability to lead.

>>15544297

How about stacks with no limit, but increased maintenance cost for every unit in the stack?

>>15544744

That's basically Stellaris and it fucking sucks. It not only punishes you for having a big army, it also means that economic advantages snow ball into armies bigger than anything the game is balanced around.

>>15544810

>space game has mechanics for doling out higher wages to feed armies in overcrowded areas

The reason it's shit is because it makes no sense. Don't almost all futuristic sci-fi settings have protein factories, replicators, etc?

>>15544825

Forgot to mention: if you have a huge army without a good general and good enough formations to follow through your orders, realistically, they'd be in disarray if a stronger or more disciplined opponent hit them or caused enough collateral damage that their numbers would be come useless. Case in point: all of modern Chinese battles fielded a shitton of units or soldiers or horseback fuckers and they got their shit kicked in by organized armies or by shock-and-awe tactics.

i genuinely enjoyed beyond earth + rising tide, even though i've only played two marathon-paced games and then uninstall

fight me

>>15544812

No need for that, just limit it to 5x for stack and hope it works well enough.

Balanced? probably not, then again have Civ-games ever been balanced?

>>15544881

Why should it be limited arbitrarily at all, really? The only limit should be logistics: how you supply, feed, clothe, equip and house your army stacks. The simplest way to abstract this would be putting an increased maintenance fee for each stacked unit, but I'd prefer the more in-depth, autistic system by which you have to get food and other resources to and from your centers of production.

>>15544903

I'd prefer what you speak of too but being realistic we're never going to get anything close to that, best to just hit a middleground between doomstacks and singles and hope it works.

>>15525990

I started with 3, mind you I was around 10 or 11 yo.

>>15542643

> what are courthouses and the forbidden palace

Anyone interested in PBEM?