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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was my favorite, especially since it had the best music. I sing old music professionally, and it was such a treat to enter a new era and hear some of the best musicians in the world singing actual music of the era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g7jOKLUus8

(the music in that video is by John Sheppard, a decidedly Renaissance composer (not Medieval, as indicated by the game), but the music is so good that I can absolutely forgive that inaccuracy).

Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late game. Even at the fastest setting, a full game seems to take at least 10-20 hours. Sometimes I just want to go through the tech tree in a different world without having to spend such large amounts of time on it.

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I'm sure you probably already know this but for people who don't follow music as much, Baba Yetu, was the first song from a video game to win a Grammy. It was originally sung by a Stanford a cappella group ( http://www.stanfordtalisman.com/ ). The composer, Christopher Tin, recently just released a new album called "To Shiver the Sky" ( https://christophertin.com/albums/toshiverthesky.html ). Check it out if you liked the music from Civ 4 as much as we did!

Baba Yetu is a great song and is now a phenomenon beyond Civ. Unfortunately it was no longer used in the expansions (Warlords, Beyond the Sword).

In one of thr updates for Beyond the Sword they introduced an option to choose the menu. So you can have both the additional features and Baba Yetu!

(While you're at it make sure you disable the enhanced espionage mechanics, for better gameplay. But that may be just opinion!)

Espionage and random events can be rather annoying.

Right? Nothing better than having a lategame make it or break it wonder sabotaged 1 turn away from completion by cave people that you smashed to bits two and a half thousand years ago because they have been accumulating espionage points against you since the dawn of history

/rant

In all fairness I feel like there is a core of a very interesting mechanic there. It just doesn't gel with the fun stuff that is the rest of thr game.

And don't get me started on spawning a Great Spy instead of a Great Engineer or Scientist...

"Nothing better than having a lategame make it or break it wonder sabotaged 1 turn away from completion by cave people that you smashed to bits two and a half thousand years ago because they have been accumulating espionage points against you since the dawn of history"

This quote won't age well.

I don't get your comment

Is Civilization IV going to change? I'll welcome any update that fixes this

In Civ Rev it's playing in some of the villages, which is a nice throwback.

Christopher Tin also did the soundtrack for Offworld Trading Company, an economic RTS.

The soundtrack is, if you haven't heard it, utterly amazing. I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqNtBAukbg

edit: I'll also note that "economic RTS" doesn't quite do justice to Offworld Trading Company - it's a real time strategy game, but the only warfare and combat is economic. You place structures which mine resources: water, iron, carbon, and so on. These resources can be purchased and sold on the open market, or you can refine them into more advanced resources (which requires having the structure to refine them) and sell the advanced resources for a larger profit.

But of course, the price of resources will constantly fluctuate based on supply and demand. Do you need to sell glass to make a profit, or can you just sell silicon to the person who wants to make glass? If your opponent has gone all in on producing steel, why not just buy all the iron on the market, corner the supply, and sell it back when the price goes up?

Baba yetu live is so so so so so good!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noneMROp_E8

And so close to the original. As an appreciator of good composition, the goosebumps with this had me sold and feel lucky to be alive!

I did not know, thanks for sharing!

The first and (so far) only to win a Grammy. It was also the first (but not the only) to be nominated for a Grammy.

>I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was my favorite, especially since it had the best music.

>Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late game.

You may be interested to know that the lead designer of Civilization 4, Soren Johnson, is directly attacking that problem in his most recent game. The TLDR is you have a fixed number of actions you can do each turn which you choose to spend to move a unit, rather than each unit having one action every turn no matter what. So turn times do not increase exponentially like in Civ games.

"Perhaps the most interesting resource in the pool, and the one which makes Old World stand out most from the 4X genre as a whole, is Orders. In most expand ‘em ups, you move each unit once each turn, and that’s that. In Old World, you have a pool of orders (replenished at a variable rate each turn depending on parameters such as your ruler’s legitimacy, the technologies in play, and dozens more), which you can split at will between your units. You might choose to blurt all your orders to a single scout, moving them three or four moves across the landscape until they hit their fatigue limit, or you might focus your whole order pool on a few military units fighting war, or you might go hard on workers building improvements. It’s a novel way of breaking a tradition, and offers flexibility while keeping turn times relatively snappy."

The game is playable now in Early Access, if anyone is interested.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/14/preview-shape-na...

interesting! This same mechanic is used in the "A Game of Thrones" board game, and really adds unique strategic depth there.

I like that idea!

How funny. I have always hated the "orders" mechanic in war games and other board games. How does it make sense as a mechanic? Ok, I can't move this infantry unit because two other infantry units already moved this turn. It's such a strange restriction. There's plenty of constraints in battle, but this limit is so strange.

even today communication isn't instant and isn't free; the limited order per turn mechanic is maybe to much of an abstraction but think for example doing a synchronized turn at the Jutland battle:

from the admiral giving the order to his own ship flaggers to communicate to the next in line takes time, then the order gets flagged to the next in line ship, which has to rely to the ship behind etc. then the acknowledgement signal has to travel back and after that you can execute a coordinated turn

it all takes quite a while, and meanwhile you're best off not changing idea; even just cancelling the order introduce the risk to confuse and disarray your battle line

now, is it the order per turn the best system? probably not. Fields of fire had an interesting system that represent well modern era army organisation and disorganisation from units moving independently, but then again it's a very specific application, while strategy system or civilization games have much more ground to cover

May I strongly suggest an alternative that just might scratch that itch?

Try the Through the Ages game app in your Android (possibly Apple?) device. Matches last one hour with single player (or knowleadgeable multiplayers) and you still get the civ-building feeling.

While it was, and is, originally a boardgame by a renowned author I find that it translates beautifully to a digital platform.

No finnicky moving pieces, automatic accounting, automatic randomization, automatic rule accountability... it all benefits greatly!

Thr strong points of the port, to me, are the good interface they came up with; the strong AI (seriously - I play this as a single player game 99% of the time. And I lose a lot.) and a great tutorial.

(Not affiliated to the folks who made it in any way. Just a 5-star review)

Seconding: I view "Through the Ages" as the spiritual incarnation of Civ in board-game form; it produces the vibe one seeks from Civ, although the mechanics are hugely different.

The designer, Vlada Chvatil, makes amazing games. Others to check out are "Dungeon Lords" (which is to Dungeon Keeper what TTA is to Civ) and "Original War" (a fascinatingly different RTS).

The mobile game for TTA is solid, and has a set of variant challenge modes for single-player play that are pretty fun.

I still haven't played VI, despite both owning it and the Civ series being one of my favorite games (all the way back to I).

I really hate micro (ADHD and tedious repetitive tasks don't mix well) and usually automated my workers as quickly as I could. I heard that this isn't possible in VI. That, along with the huge time commitment increase and the terrible AI have so far made me unwilling to bother playing.

Is it worth a shot? I'm torn between finally playing that, and the fact that CK3 just came out.

I would definitely say yes. It's extremely well made, and the core mechanics are extremely well polished.

You do still get the "big empire" management issue, but for worker in particular, I find that it's really spread out. You only have a little bit to do with workers at a time, but that little bit is pretty consistent over the course of the game. Two of the changes that affect this are: every worker action only takes one turn, and workers don't build roads.

(The "worker charges" mechanic also allowed, I think, for things like roman legions to one-time drop forts, which is awesome)

The unstacking of cities is mostly a good thing, although I do find that I spend a lot more time planning cities (Due to all the different adjacency bonuses and requirements between districts, terrain, and wonders).

NO!

I've played VI 6 after it was free on Epic store.

It is the worst game experience i have ever had!

You can play in full 3D (lame as hell) map, or strategic (2d map). Both of them give you a really bad view of the map, no matter what.

The UI is full of bugs and things you need to click twice, and full of pitfalls (pressed space but an event was just jumping on the screen? too bad now your worker just moved next to that barbarian and will be lost next turn)

The graphics completely destroy your GPU even though it is a freaking Civ game! no matter if you play on 2D view, your GPU will smoke just the same. no idea how they screwed that up.

Then, even without considering graphics performance, my i5 top of the line was taking a whole 30s between unit moves in the later rounds of the game, and a full 3+ minutes for the CPU players turns.

Avoid that game like the plague! unless you have a multi thousand dollars gaming PC. then just play it to laugh at all the times Gandhi will declare war on you on first contact.

Edit: oh and i tried to play on the Surface. Despite being impossible because of performance, the UI is unusable without mouse over, and there's no way to show the mouse overs windows with the touch mode. Complete disaster of a game. I'd be ashamed to have my name on the credits.

edit 2: I actually had lots of fun with https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv on the surface.

and for newcomers to the series, play the original ones or even the Nes one on an emulator.

This was pretty much my experience too. Such a letdown from Civ5.

CK3 is better (which is saying a lot for a Paradox game that just came out and a Civ game with a lot of added content). Civ 6 feels like they optimized for the tedium: Do you like moving hundreds of units one at a time? How about having to constantly reallocate your citizens among EVEN MORE OPTIONS just to get them to do reasonable things?

I've played every Civ since Civ II, and VI might be the best of the genre in terms of replayability and depth. It's excellent.

It’s super interesting that out of the four responses, two are emphatic “no” and two are emphatic “yes” - I think it’s time for me to make up my own mind :)

Thanks for the input!

What settings are you playing on? A game of 4 on normal speed usually takes me 3 or 4 hours, and that's usually for space race, domination wins would be quicker.

I don't micromanage everything unless I'm trying to hit a record early date, usually I'm paying to attention to one aspect of the game at a time, trying out different strategies.

And you can always just play the openings, usually everything is pretty much decided in the first 50 turns and after that it is just a matter of how much sleep you want to lose playing out the inevitable.

I've noticed that too, I only play one game a year over a couple of days in a single weekend, usually, because of the time commitment.

How long of a CIV game would you like to play? What do you think is worth streamlining out of the experience? What do you think absolutely needs to stay in to get the feeling you want from these types of games? (This goes to anyone who feels it's too long, btw).

You don't play a long-form game in one sitting.

Take "Axis and Allies", a long-form boardgame that typically takes ~12 hours to play in my experience. I usually play it broken up between three different weekends when I whip it out.

There's been a renaissance of long-form games recently. D&D is the most popular (5th edition. Pathfinder, Etc. etc.), but also Gloomhaven, and other "Legacy" games.

I do realize that long-form games aren't in everyone's cup of tea. But its no different from say... trying to watch Game of Thrones together with a group (or Sports-ball games). Its an excuse to form a regular social gathering with your group of friends once-a-week for months (or years) at a time.

The secret to long-form games is that the group-gathering is the primary goal, the gameplay is almost secondary. But having a good game helps (much like how a Game of Thrones watch party is better while the show is good).

I don't mind the length, but I think a lot of things are tedious and worth streamlining. Two that immediately jump to mind:

Worker micro is not very fun to me, I don't like the Civ 6 system. At least in Civ 5 they didn't have limited uses and could be automated.

The biggest thing is combat. It's mind-numbing having to move all the units and work out the positioning. It's so _slow_ both in real-time and game-time (should it take decades to move across the empire?). Maybe my roleplaying perspective is flawed, but if I'm supposedly the leader of the nation, why do I have to micromanage army tactics? Ideally a lot of that would be abstracted away

I recently realized Civ is perfect for playing during long transatlantic flights.

I prefer my Civ games to be very long.

Like so many, I spent countless hours of my childhood playing Civ 1 and 2 as a kid. These were single player experiences that I would play out over several days.

Much later in life, I remember there was a competing game that came out "Civilization: Call to Power" from Activision. It wasn't perfect, but it was some of the most fun I had. You see, that game had support for a type of play called "Play by Email" (PBEM). You could hang out on the Apolyton forums (https://apolyton.net/forum) and co-ordinate a PBEM game with other civ players.

Each player would play their turn, mail it on to the next player, and post an update on the forum. Posts would often be role play .. often with diplomatic messages, declarations of war, expressing outrage, or overtures for peace, or just listings of grievances or demands. People would email each other directly to scheme or perform diplomacy, form secret (or open) alliances and non aggression pacts.

If a player went inactive for too long, we'd get a new player to join the game and take over the helm for their civilization. These games would go on for many months start to finish. Players could be engaged in multiple such games at the same time.

I don't know if the new Civilization games offer this type of gameplay (I do not think they do), but I would love this type of game structure.

It is a turn based game, and it can end early if you are conquered.

However if you make it to 2050 in quick mode, assuming you have a modern computer, a game on Earth2 / Huge may take you 2 to 3 hours if you are familiar with the game and you do not get into many conflicts.

However this is not the way Civ is meant to be played. You are supposed to inspect your cities, make sure citizens are healthy and happy, emphasize culture, science, population growth, economy depending on what is best, build a balanced army, conduct diplomacy, spread your state religions and corporations, keep an eye on your allies and adversaries, spy on adversaries and sabotage their stuff, etc.

The game pushes you to take sides and if you don't you will piss off everybody.

To be clear, I enjoy a long Civ game from time to time too and wouldn't want Civilization to be a different game. But I'm wondering, as a game designer myself, if there's something worth exploring that's shorter format. There's a lot of those in board game form, but not so much for video games, at least not that I can think of.

What about something taking inspiration from the "roguelike" fad? Some of those intend for runs to take < 1 hour and yet still have interesting choices and variation due to randomization. Seems like a plausible fit for a civ-quick. There you often have some randomized choice of features to exploit and don't get access to all of them every run, thereby streamlining the game process.

There's a game called "The Battle of Polytopia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Polytopia which plays like a quick version of Civ. It might scratch your itch.

Recently I've been playing Warhammer Gladius, which is the bare essentials with a heavy focus on combat. With the right settings, matches will last 1-3 hours, which I think is perfect. I no longer have the time or the patience for 10-20 hour Civ matches, and honestly, I feel more drained and empty when a long match ends than satisfied. Whereas a finished match in Gladius is satisfying and leaves me wanting to start a new match (maybe not today, but the next day).

The combat design coupled with the relatively short matches also means that it's nowhere as micro-heavy as any Civ game past the early game, which I generally would find very tiring.

I play Civ 5 without any DLCs.

I'm interested only in the growth phase, so the first third of the game is intensely fascinating, the second third is mildly interesting but I'm invested in the outcome, and by the final third I usually get bored - too much micromanagement indeed.

Civ4 was highly flawed IMO, because the tactics revolved around setting up giant "death stacks".

There were a few units that could attack a whole stack, but ~20 musketeers in the midgame was practically impossible to defend against aside from having your own stack of ~20 musketeers.

Civ3 and Civ2 had the right idea: Kill-stack the entire stack if you group your units together like that. There was much richer play of combat in Civ3 and Civ2. It was non-intuitive, and players complained grossly about kill-stacks... but lets be frank: the game was better with kill-stacks.

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Between Lenard Nemoy as the narrator and the incredible music, I'd think 4 was the best production value of the entire series however. Civ6 comes in at 2nd place, pretty good music and Sean Bean is pretty decent too. Just not as good as Civ4 IMO.

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Civ6's issues is the "flattening" of the entire tree. Nothing feels different until you reach airplanes. Riflemen are just reskinned Musketeers, who are reskinned Swordmen, who are just reskinned Warriors.

Tanks are just reskinned Knights, who were reskinned Chariots.

In Civ6, there are basically only the following units: Anti-city Siege (Catapult / Bombard / Artillery), Warriors (Warrior, Swordmen, Musketeer, Riflemen, Mech. Infantry), Heavy Cavalry (Chariot, Knights, Tanks), Light Cavalry (Horsemen, Cavalry, Helicopters), and ranged-units (Slinger, Archer, Crossbowman, Field Cannon).

Eventually, airplanes take over the siege and ranged roles (Biplane / Fighters ultimately play like faster Archers, while Bombers play like better Catapults). But otherwise, there's not much difference to combat through the ages.

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Furthermore, Civ6 doesn't allow any exponential growth strategies. Aka: Wide vs Tall, or whatnot. In previous games (Civ1 through 5), buildings provided multiplicative bonuses.

So Library was +100% science for the city (or some other multiplier, depending on which version of the game). This means that Libraries had a "threshold", where they were useless for small cities (+100% science on 1-Sci base production is just +1 science), but powerful for large cities (+100% off of a city with 20 science is +20 science).

But there's none of that "play" in Civ6. Its wide-wide-wide for the win. Sure, Civ6 has increasing costs for settlers / builders to try and make the "wide" strategy weaker... but that just slows down the player. It doesn't actually change the fact that wide is the only way to play.

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Builders only can make 3-improvements before they disappear (unless you have Feudalism or Pyramids: increaasing the limit by +2 or +1).

In contrast, Civ3 through Civ5 had Workers (and Civ1 / Civ2 had settlers) that can continuously upgrade your city throughout all the ages. Workers vs Military was a key balance throughout the game.

While in Civ6, its basically "Builders until they become too expensive", and maybe "Play Feudalism Card every now and then to cheat some extra improvements out of your builders". There's no depth to the decision.

You seem to crap on all of them. Not sure they are major problems of the game, or nitpicking.

Which one is good/worth to play for a novice?

Strangely enough, I like FreeCiv the most. Its mostly based on Civ2, but it takes a few nice features like boarders from the later games. There's a huge degree of customization.

The main issue of FreeCiv is that its an open source game with poor music / graphics compared to Civ6.

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Civ6 is the best graphically by far. Its available on a wide variety of platforms. Arguably, the simplified combat system is better for a beginner (but for me, I just get bored with it a lot faster).

I guess Civ6 might be best for a beginner: the modern community is on Civ6, its got the music and graphics you'd expect from a AAA-game.

But as far as actually thinking about strategy, build orders, and competitive play? I think FreeCiv (Civ2) is the deeper game by all measures.

That poster is definitely nitpicking.

Ive seen most people point to V as the goto for novices. Its cheap, super engaging like all Civs are, and misses a lot of of the nitpicky flaws that are prevalent in VI

> It doesn't actually change the fact that wide is the only way to play.

You can win civ6 without even settling a city.

Computer players in Civ6 are... pretty poor opponents.

While Prince CPUs start on even grounds (1-warrior / 1 settler start, no combat bonuses), but are incredibly poor at making decisions. CPUs fail to take terrain into account, they are pretty bad about aiming at weak units (settlers / builders), and they send their units into the slaughterhouse one-by-one instead of waiting for a tactical edge. Case in point: I've played multiple games where Prince-CPUs are hemmed in by barbarians and unable to expand for 100-turns, leading to a no-effort win from me.

In contrast, Diety CPUs are "fake difficulty". Their tactics are identical to the low-quality Prince CPUs, but instead have a 5-warrior/3-settler start, a solid +4 strength (aka +15% damage) bonus applied to all units unconditionally, and +100% culture/science throughout the game.

Needless to say, Deity level CPUs are the epitome of "fake difficulty" in Civ6. Its incredibly poor tactics wrapped up with just stupid amounts of bonuses over the human player. I'm honestly not very impressed. At least they don't get barbarian-rushed into nothingness.

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Anyway, I find it unlikely that you'd be able to play "city free" vs a human player.

The CPU players seem "exploitable", they have holes in their gameplans (even at the Diety level) that don't really feel strategic to me. I can believe you that you can beat CPUs "city free", but I don't really consider such a game to be an accomplishment due to the weak AI of Civ6.

I've never won Civ 6, and I have a bajillion hours in across 4,5, and Revolutions. I just can't get anywhere. Even on the easiest difficulty, no matter where I focus all opponents seem to be running at 110% my speed in tech, production, and religion (which I wish you could ignore like you can in V).

Not sure if you're aware already, but you can disable religious victory in the advanced setup settings.

Good idea, cheers

Musketeers are good for defense not offense. They can beat earlier tech units like Longbowmen, and that's it. A stack of trebuchets and knights or macemen beats a stack of musketeers, subject to levels, bonuses, HP and tile bonuses.

And I disagree, the strategy does not really revolve around death stacks.

You can win a game without a conflict if you are good at diplomacy and you do not share borders with aggressive civs. You can turn aggressive civs against each other by asking them to declare war in exchange for things.

In fact one of the hardest AIs to bear is Gandhi, a leader that is rather peaceful, because the India civ has 2x speed workers, which given them a massive advantage in the beginning.

Civ 4 is a 2005 game and the graphics are very good for its time. In fact the graphics still look OK today.

> Musketeers are good for defense not offense

Offense / Defense scores stopped being a thing after Civ3.

> A stack of trebuchets and knights or macemen beats a stack of musketeers, subject to levels, bonuses, HP and tile bonuses.

Trebs and Macemen only have 1-movement. This means that they cannot force combat with the Musketeer. Even if they could, the Musketmen have 9-strength against the Trebs 6 or Macemen's 8. (And I don't believe that Macemen get melee bonus against Musketmen: Musketmen aren't considered melee units, they're gunpowder units).

The only time you can use Trebs is when the death-stack arrives at your city's doorstep. You smack the stack with collateral damage... but the death-stack player could simply not attack your city, and instead aim for map control. (Pillage and siege strategy).

Knights are a legitimate response, but require Iron and Horses. I'm not convinced its better for death-stack operations, because defensive boosts are an important part of keeping a death-stack healthy (ie: the Death Stack regenerates its HP in the field by sitting in a forest for +50% defense, until its HP comes back). Knights don't get defensive bonuses.

A Musketeer death-stack waiting in a forest (ie: Regenerating) will have 14.5 strength vs a Knight's 10 strength. I'm not liking the odds, even if Knights have a movement advantage.

Trebuchets cause collateral damage, and so do knights. Individual trebuchets will lose to musketmen but as a group they will cause enough collateral damage to allow a stack of other units to finish them off.

Grenadiers are a different story.

> Trebuchets cause collateral damage, and so do knights. Individual trebuchets will lose to musketmen but as a group they will cause enough collateral damage to allow a stack of other units to finish them off.

But Trebuchets only have 1 movement. You're not attacking a group of Musketeers in the open field unless your opponent is letting you do so.

So now the question is: how do you get your Trebs close enough to the opponent's death stack such that you can effectively attack them with collateral damage? Hint: it involves a death stack of your own Musketeers.

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Lets game this out really quick. Lets have a simple field with 3 locations:

* T . M

Where "T" is the Treb-stack, and "M" is the Musketeer stack. Both units have 1 movement. Lets game what happens if the Trebs approach.

* . T M

Okay, that's the Treb's turn: 1-movement per turn. The Musketeers now murder the entire stack of Trebs, because 9-attack Musketers wreak 4-attack Trebs. All the Trebs die, the Musketeers spend maybe 2 or 3 turns healing up from combat. Musketeers don't even need collateral damage, they just kill the Trebs in straight combat.

You might think things are symmetrical, but they're really not. The Musketeer stack does NOT have to stay as a stack. If the Trebs defend, the Musketeer turn happens as follows:

* T m M

Where "m" is just 1-Musketeer. Now what do the Trebs do? If you attack the "m" singular Musketeer, your Treb almost certainly dies without inflicting collateral damage (4 vs 9 strength is basically a guaranteed win for the Musketeer. Even with a 20% Retreat upgrade, we're looking at a near 80% chance of losing your Treb).

You can attack the lone musketeer with multiple units (1st Treb dies, but maybe the 2nd or 3rd Treb wins). If you dedicate a 2nd or 3rd treb to the combat, you're left with the following situation:

* T t M

After the 2nd or 3rd Treb wins combat, they enter the tile, damaged from combat.

And now its the Musketeer turn. They kill the Treb (9 vs 4 again, taking very little damage), and we're back to...

* T m M

A match that your Treb stack is almost certainly losing.

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The answer: The Trebs retreat to the nearest city, and hope that the Musketeers are stupid enough to chase. At a higher tactical level, the Musketeer owner will not be so dumb, but will instead invoke map control at this point. (Pillage and deny resources, find soft targets, etc. etc.). Attacking cities is very hard in all Civ games, so map-control is usually what you're aiming for.

Answer #2: Have a death-stack of your own Musketeers, allowing your Trebs to approach the opponent stack. This only really works if you have more Musketeers than your opponent. Thereby: leading to the "Death-stack" game where both sides simply build bigger and bigger balls of Musketeers in order to do anything relevant in combat.

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> knights

It has been a long time since I played Civ4, but I don't recall knights having collateral damage. I've checked the game manual (https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/3900/manuals/manu...) as well as the Civ4 Wiki, no mention of collateral damage.

What Knights have are Flank attacks (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Flank_attack_(Civ4)), which allow them to wipe out Treb-stacks with ease. But this does NOT apply to Musketeers.

I stand corrected regarding the flank attack / collateral damage confusion. Thanks for the link.

You have no considered first strikes, which are an important factor. For example Japanese samurais (Macemen) have 2 first strikes and Musketmen are not effective against them.

Then, because cities have a tile bonus for defense the AI might prefer defending a city rather than engaging in a regular tile.

As an invader you can protect yourself in hills and forests, and also using rivers to your advantage (there's a penalty for an attacker if it involves crossing a river) until you reach a city, not to mention a coastal drop.

But I really do not think Musketmen are as powerful as you say. They're the first gunpowder unit and a good defensive unit, but are not an unstoppable force.

Then, once cannons/artillery and air units come into play, death stacks are very vulnerable to them.

> But I really do not think Musketmen are as powerful as you say.

Its not Musketmen that makes the strategy annoying. Its the death-stack mechanic in general. The tactical possibilities of a Death-stack are boring: its just bigger is better.

Engaging in a death-stack is similarly boring: if your stack is smaller, you retreat. If their stack is smaller, you advance.

Musketmen are just the example I'm using because they're the "all-around" unit from the mid-game. I don't really need to know the composition of your military if I'm using Musketmen around the time they come out. It has nothing to do with Musketmen in general, the boring part is just throwing 20 of anything down onto a single tile stack.

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It doesn't matter if the stack is composed of Axemen, Samurai, Infantry, Gunships, Tanks, or whatever. Its all the same to me: you make a big ball then wreak things without thinking too much about the individual strategy.

In contrast: Civ2 was extremely punishing against stacks in general, only a well-defended location (ie: City or Fort) could support stacks. In the open field, it required careful consideration of the board whenever you were moving. Maybe a stack was worthwhile (ex: moving onto a Fortified Musketeer in Civ2, since you're confident in its defense). Or maybe not (well maybe you'll lose 3 units to their Artillery).

Civ5 and Civ6 get the right idea by preventing death stacks: it means that choke-points truly exist in those games. However, the lack of stacking messes with the movement of both games, and moving units (especially in the endgame) becomes EXTREMELY tedious.

Civ2's "kill the whole stack" allowed you to have simplified endgame movement and tactical gameplay. It was the best of both worlds, albeit with just the occasional newbie complaining about killstacks.

> Then, once cannons/artillery and air units come into play, death stacks are very vulnerable to them.

Cannons and Artillery only have one movement, and have the same problem as the Trebuchet. Mobile artillery has 2-movement, but everything in the game has 2 or more movement by that point (Tanks / Mechanized infantry)

Bombers, sure. Bombers finally give an answer to the deathstack right before the game ends. But Gunships (Helicopters) and Fighters don't do anything vs stacks. And it only takes a single Fighter running interception missions (100% interception rate) to deter any Bombers from your stack.

Stealth Bombers with 50% evasion, finally give a way to reliably attack stacks in the absolute endgame.

Take any important battle in history and try to represent it in a tiled world and you will get a death stack.

No. You get Lanchester's laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws

Games which more accurately represent Lanchester's Square Law are Axis and Allies, or Ikusa (as well as Pathfinder / D&D 3.5 actually). The death-stacks of Civ4 are very far removed from reality.

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Civ2, Civ5, and Civ6 work pretty close to Lanchester's linear law and are more acceptable battle simulations IMO. Risk is the board game commonly associated with the linear-law.

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The tactician chooses the Linear-law when outnumbered. You run and hide in a chokepoint, 300-style, fighting as small of a force as possible.

When you have the advantage, you try to choose terrain that's beneficial to the square-law, where you can outflank your opponent and focus fire them down (allowing the Square Law to take affect instead).

Civ4 has no play between these two different situations, because the Deathstack doesn't care about flanking or shapes of your units, or anything.

You've evidently spent a lot of time thinking about this so let me ask you this: would there be a sweet spot that's _between_ one unit per tile a la Civ 6 and the infinite stack as in Civ 4?

Do you think that there might be an 'n' sized stack that enhances strategic play?

Also do you blog about this stuff anywhere? If so I would love to read it.

> You've evidently spent a lot of time thinking about this so let me ask you this: would there be a sweet spot that's _between_ one unit per tile a la Civ 6 and the infinite stack as in Civ 4?

Civ2 / FreeCiv is my favorite. Civ2 / FreeCiv has infinite stacks EXCEPT all 20-units die if they lose in a singular combat. (!!!) One swordman can kill 20-swordmen if the 20-swordmen are stacked in one tile. Its quite unrealistic, but it leads to very nice emergent behavior.

I do think Civ6 and Civ5's stack behavior is actually pretty good and tactical. Civ6's main problems are in the economic engine / science / culture mechanics. The tactics / war point of Civ6 is pretty good in my opinion (although Civ6 could definitely use a more complex military).

The main issue with Civ6 / Civ5 stack behavior is more pedestrian: when you have 20-units on the battlefield and none of them can step on each other, it becomes incredibly tedious and unfun to move them around. Consider a chokepoint between two unpassable mountains: you now need to click each of your 20 units to individually move across the narrow pass.

In Civ2 / FreeCiv, they just stack-up and unstack into their final positions. In Civ5/Civ6, they constantly block each other, the AI fails to reroute, and then you end up manually clicking on every unit you've ever built on every single turn until the end of the game.

In Civ2 / FreeCiv: you still don't want to stack your units if enemies are close. Put your 20-swordmen in that narrow pass, and they can die even against a singular enemy. A lot of unnecessary risk there. So this sort of movement only really happens during peacetime, far away from any risky battlefield.

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In theory, Civ5 / Civ6 could be fixed with some kind of AI that can perform flocking movement (like Starcraft 2's pathfinding AI: select 100 units in Starcraft, they "flock" together as a group, and traverse the terrain automagically).

Alas, this still has its flaws: flocking AIs still wouldn't necessarily put all the units you have in the correct locations. You'll have to still deal with chokepoints slowing down your army's movements, etc. etc. (Chokepoints slowing you down is tactical however: so it'd be annoying but "realistic" and maybe worth considering as a mechanic)

Still, the tedium of clicking on so many damn units so many damn times is aggravating. It really makes me wish for the old Civ2 days.

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It should be noted that in Civ6, you can merge two units into a Corps for +40% damage and +40% defense. A 3rd unit can be added, forming an Army for +75% total damage and defense (once you account for +20 healing per turn with Medics, these bonuses are substantial)

So Civ6 has a "stacking mechanic" so to speak. Tactically, its fine and the 40% and 75% boosts feel rather balanced to me.

The issue is once again: economic. A 3x stacked Tank Army has the same maintenance costs as a regular 1x unit of Tank (wtf?)

So the economic engine of Civ6 is just completely out of whack. Given the high-maintenance costs of endgame units, it pretty much means you're 3x stacking everything into an army in the endgame, (which basically cuts your maintenance costs by 1/3rd). There's almost no economic cost to this strategy. Because there's no downside, there's no strategy: you just always make an army at endgame.

In Civ 6, Normandy in WW2 would be a couple of units in one tile. The Battle of Stalingrad would be another couple of units. Same with Iwo Jima, and every other major battle in history.

It should be possible to make a Civ 4 mod that incorporates some of these ideas, likely by just forking an existing mod. Civ 4 is a pretty moddable game.

Any thoughts on Europa Universalis?

Haven't played Europa Universalis. I hear good things about it and its engine. I'm considering getting into Crusader Kings 3 since that's the newest game on that engine.

Any idea which Universalis game is the best to get into? Stellaris? Crusader Kings? Or EU?

not who you're replying to -

so they share some similarities but are all the Paradox games are independent and have different foci. Here are my thoughts:

Stellaris is probably the easiest to get into, but I'm not a big fan; I see it as only a few steps above Civ complexity and tedium. It is broadly similar to Civ in concept and in how the game plays out. The sci-fi setting can be a plus, compared to the other games which are rooted in history. However this is also a con in that you lose all the dynamics and lore that make historical factions interesting. It's hard to manufacture good backstories from scratch, after all. I would recommend Crusader Kings or EU4 instead.

Crusader Kings is best described as a dynasty simulator. Yes, you can lead countries, raise armies and conquer your enemies, engage in diplomacy and intrigue, etc. But ultimately it's more of a game about people than nations. For instance, several main aspects of managing your realm are maintaining your relationships with your vassals, and planning for your succession and developing your heir. These are mechanics that would typically be abstracted away, and only really make sense from the game's _personal_ perspective. There are a lot more RPG elements as a result.

EU4's core concept is simpler than Crusader Kings - you are a nation, and your goals are viewed from those lens. It throws out the characterization of Crusader Kings in return for much more fleshed out mechanics around war, politics, and diplomacy. Consequently the gameplay is more strategic than Crusader Kings, at least in my view.

I can’t believe I’m willingly entering an argument about a video game but:

Musketeers and musketmen are different units. Only France gets the musketeers with 2 movement. Every civ has a special unit which gives them a temporary power spike, that is part of the game. Also re offense and defense you even mention in your own post the defensive bonuses not being available to Knights...city defenses (from culture and building), fortify, terrain bonuses, etc all make musketmen way better at defense than offense.

As long as you pick a balanced (not tectonics or something) map type, getting iron and horses by the mid game should not really even be much of a problem. Even if you fail at that, longbowmen are stronger at defending cities than musketmen are at attacking them, while being cheaper and requiring lower tech.

This is just such a trivial part of the game I am not sure why you are acting like it is a major flaw. Getting musketmen is not a game-ending powerspike.

I'm not talking about Musketmen. I'm talking about stacks, with Musketmen as a specific midgame example.

The death-ball stack is the premier tactic in Civ4. I just chose Musketmen since its the mid-game. But it could very well be Swordmen, Knights, Infantry, or Tanks.

Collateral damage units were too weak in Civ4 with not enough movement to really be useful outside of defending cities (at least before Bombers). If you entered combat on the open battlefield, the side with the bigger deathstack won.

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The entirety of Civ4 tactics in my experience, was won and lost on the size of the deathstack of your primary military unit.

I look at like this:

Civ4 pretty much perfected that kind of gameplay; local maxima at least, global maxima if that's your thing.

Civ5 started exploring a new optimization zone, and Civ6 continued towards that local maxima.

All of the things you listed as differences in 5 & 6 are things I view as good things; although I'd disagree that the various units are "just" reskins.

I can't believe you mention civ III as an example of a game that got combat right. I loved both civ II and civ 4, but civ 3 city combat was such a grind with city walls that it was nearly unplayable for me. You had to have huge armies of artillery or else your invasion force is just going to die bashing themselves against the wall of the city. Infuriating. I liked civ II much better.

> There were a few units that could attack a whole stack, but ~20 musketeers in the midgame was practically impossible to defend against aside from having your own stack of ~20 musketeers.

That's real life though. WW2 wasn't decided by who was the best strategist. The allies produced 4 million tanks, the axis 700,000. Game over man.

And there was a hell of a lot more than one unit per tile on the coast of Normandy in June of 44.

That's why diplomacy is so important in civ 4. Manage that right and you don't need to build the 20 musketeer stack, you can leave most of your cities completely undefended. Your neighbor builds the stack and you bribe him to go attack someone else.

You can't place 4-million tanks in one area in the real world.

But you can shove 4-million tanks onto a single square in Civ4. That's the stupid part.

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In the real world (WW2 and older battles anyway), soldiers spread out, trying to out-flank each other and gain terrain advantages. You can't just "stack" your entire army on top of itself. You have to deal with terrain, chokepoints, and movement logistics.

"The battle of the Bulge" was a thing, because terrain and battle-line formations matter in the real world. (Well... at least historically. I'm not sure if it matters as much with today's jet fighters and super-carriers). The USA lost tens of thousands of troops, because holding the line was incredibly important. (And the Germans similarly sacrificed tens of thousands of troops in the hope that they get a breakout offensive)

Except movement-logistics are boring and tedious (see Civ5 / Civ6 endgames). Allow unrealistic stacking but remove any tactical advantage from it (ie: Civ2), so that the game is a bit more fun to play.

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Anyone playing Civ4 will inevitably draw their units together into a singular death-stack. The entire concept of "fronts" is almost completely devoid in Civ4.

> And the Germans similarly sacrificed tens of thousands of troops in the hope that they get a breakout offensive

And if they got a breakout offensive, the allies would have produced another million tanks. In civ terms, the game was over before Poland, if you want to find out why the allies won you have to figure out why the US had all those good production cities cranking out tech and troops when the Germans didn't even have a decent tile with oil.

My point: Civ4's tactical combat simply isn't rich enough to represent things like the Battle of the Bulge, where a breakout offensive could give the Germans a fighting chance for a few more weeks.

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And yes, tactics are ultimately secondary to production. That doesn't change the fact that the Romans had to fight the Gauls while outnumbered in Battle of Alesia or Carthage's Battle of Cannae.

These sorts of events aren't really going to happen in Civ4. The tactical engine and decision making in Civ4 is just too shallow to have something like that ever occur.

So Carthage were going to lose against the superior Roman production eventually. That doesn't make Hannibal's win at the Battle of Cannae any less interesting.

Yeah got it, civ 4 is not a combat simulator, it's an economy and diplomacy simulator.

With 9 classes of units, and ~89 total combat units in the game, I would argue otherwise.

Combat plays a strong role in all Civ games. Not least of which because of barbarians forcing you to defend yourself (which are impossible to diplomacy with).

You're going to be spending a non-negligible amount of time in any Civ game (from 2 through 6) building up a standing army, even if only for defensive purposes. Ideally, that aspect of the game should be fun.

I upgraded my Atari STE to a whopping 1Mb of memory in order to play the first Civ. It's a toss-up between that and Civ IV as to which version I spent the most time on. Civ III was the only one that disappointed me.

I felt the same! Probably the first and last computer game to have music by Josquin Des Prez.

yeah, for me the "late game takes longer" isn't just stuff I have to do on my turns, but the computer simulation of turns starts grinding and grinding so I'm just sitting waiting for them for too long.

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