CIV V croints convo

Voyager — Today at 12:48 PM
the other big camp is that Civ 4 is the best one, what's your take on it?

Johan — Today at 12:53 PM
I’m casual and don’t want to stumble through maximalist design and read a whole ingame wiki to understand the strategy. 4’s onboarding and conveyance made it really hard to learn and appreciate anything beyond surface level “ooh cool diorama empire sim”. 5 actually works from the getgo as a series of interesting decisions
[12:54 PM]
I researched BNW and some praised it for “endgame on par with civ 2” and it made it real clear how different i am from the hardcore fans lol

Gagan — Today at 5:06 PM
Can’t go back to 4 after civ 5
[5:06 PM]
Dem hexes boyo

Voyager — Today at 5:12 PM
4 had a lot more complexity like all the sliders
[5:13 PM]
but I felt like all this complexity was very gradual and not really noticeable
[5:13 PM]
games and DLCs after 4 made it so everything seemed like it has noticeable impact
[5:14 PM]
even smaller number increases were noticeable and it was tied to some more discrete actions for the most part like building something, researching something rather than "I put the slider to this value"
[5:14 PM]
that and stacks of dooms in combat were ridiculous and braindead I felt
[5:15 PM]
AI in later civs is braindead and can't fight for shit but I'll take it over statcheck battles

Gagan — Today at 5:15 PM
Civ 4 fucks no doubt
[5:16 PM]
Don’t care for the firaxis routine where you have to wait for the expansions tho to get to the part where the game is at its peak kino
[5:16 PM]
Felt that way about both xcoms

Voyager — Today at 5:16 PM
definitely true for Civ games at least since 4
[5:16 PM]
Civ 6 before DLCs was barely playable
[5:17 PM]
with Gathering Storm I had more fun with it than with other titles I played
[5:17 PM]
this routine pains me because Civ 7 is in the works apparently and I'll need to wait like 2-3 years after release for it to be good

Johan — Today at 7:04 PM
Getting into combat was where I quit 4 cause I had no idea how any of it worked, very unclear how strength and stacking works, couldn't understand outcomes in hindsight let alone predict them. I played it before 5 so didn't go back but zero experience with 4x prob made it harder to get into.

Voyager — Today at 7:05 PM
it is quite simple, AFAIK you could just feed your units to the stack to make it stronger and combat was basically whoever has bigger stack wins
[7:06 PM]
combat was more about having better production and build priorities for that particular situation
[7:06 PM]
actual act of combat was nothing
[7:07 PM]
in V due to hexes your positioning mattered and it added a bit of micromanagement since two units couldn't occupy same hex
[7:07 PM]
but AI doesn't put much of a fight on the other hand, it doesn't know how to plan and use the hex system
[7:08 PM]
so combat is still more about your build priorities  with the added bonus of efficiency gains via terrain modifiers and things like flanking rather than dealing with AI itself
[7:09 PM]
still true for Civ 6 though Civ 6 added more macro game to it due to how loyalty and war weariness works
[7:09 PM]
so actual combat sucks and AI can't do the fighting part well but it is made interesting by everything else around it

Johan — Today at 7:13 PM
I've climbed to "normal" difficulty and the ai is still braindead yeah, in current game had Ceasar sneak attack me with 5 ships while shipping over a cannon and stuff, except I attacked all of them on the way with three of my own ships, privateer killing like 5 embarks and two frigates eventually wearing through and taking over 3 of his while he did nothing but travel towards my capital and then delta split. Sending some ancient units to their territory and destroying their fields will make them give up a 10 vs 1 military strength war

Johan — Today at 7:23 PM
It’s fair that it can’t optimize coordinating its units (advance wars ai is similar, having weak melee units block ranged stuff by trying to get close), but it’s kind of absurdly stupid at very basic stuff like attacking vs running

Voyager — Today at 7:24 PM
it also seems that unless you play on near highest difficulties it hardly ever builds any sizeable armies at all
[7:24 PM]
unless the faction is warmongering one

Johan — Today at 7:55 PM
Genghis khan and ceasar are very bloodthirsty in my current, but until i got aggressive with religion i found most pretty passive/friendly