Civilization V

[TheGodBen]

I got the humble bundle and while there is a great game hiding in there somewhere, currently it is only good. The AI is designed to start a war no matter what at some point.

It's a game that claims to represent the last 6,000 years of human history, it would be absurd if there wasn't a war at some point. If your criticism is that it's impossible for the player to stay out of conflict for the duration of a game, that's not true, I've done it several times. Just build up a decent military, don't make any declarations of friendship unless absolutely necessary, and keep an eye on the other civs. So long as you're not bordering a crazy warmonger like Montezuma, it should be possible to avoid attacks.

I took the cities between him and Songhai in order to calm them both down I was suddenly a warmonger with everyone else, who then started denouncing me and everyone else and the entire world devolved into a war-torn mess.

I agree that the warmonger system is a little dumb and doesn't take proper account of defensive wars. Personally, I think Civ VI should adopt the diplomacy system of the Europa Universalis games. If you capture a city, you wouldn't automatically annex it, but could choose to keep it when negotiating peace terms. If you don't want a warmonger penalty, let your enemy keep the city and demand gold reparations instead.

 

[Venardhi]

If you look at some of the things that can turn other civs against you the list reads a lot of things that are just the result of you playing the game. "They covet your territory", "they covet wonders you have built", "you are spreading a different religion", "you have chosen a different ideology" "you are competing for favor of a city state", etc. Several times already I have found myself in between two or three civs with all of them slowly turning against me for one reason or another, no matter how much I try to isolate myself and reassure them. If I stay well armed for fear of an attack they ask if I'm planning to attack them, if I don't move my units away from their borders I'm called a liar, if I defeat every enemy that enters my territory we often remain at war indefinitely until I retaliate and capture or destroy some of their cities and stongarm them into a treaty, which assures continued war with them or the other AI civs in future rounds.

I'm not saying war shouldn't be a factor, just that it should be avoidable and there should be more of a conversation had with the AI leading up to it. "Come my friend, Embrace my faith and leave your heathen gods behind, they can only come between us." "Your heretical faith is an affront to my people and they will not stand for it. You must convert or I shall be forced to cut ties with you." "My people cry out for holy war against your lands, submit to our prophets or be destroyed." etc. I just want them to feel more like rival nations and not a random number generator that only ever gets angrier and angrier at me.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

You know, guys, you can also just disable war entirely. That may be cheating, but if you really want a game without war, that's how ya do it.

I like the challenge of raising up a totally peaceful culture in a war-torn world, though. I can usually get quite far into the game without going to war with anyone (or anyone going to war with me), because I build up a technological and cultural powerhouse and just enough military units to keep people from messing with me. If anyone does end up starting shit, I stomp the crap out of them until they beg my forgiveness.

 

[eastman23]

Note: I'm not sure what version you're playing - if you have Gods and Kings, or Brave New World - both expansions introduced some differences to diplomacy, so what I say next may not apply. I have everything up to BNW, so...

If you look at some of the things that can turn other civs against you the list reads a lot of things that are just the result of you playing the game. "They covet your territory", "they covet wonders you have built", "you are spreading a different religion", "you have chosen a different ideology" "you are competing for favor of a city state", etc.

Yeah, I get those in the early game too. The key is to try and make friends with at least one civ. Then they're more willing to overlook some of the minor negative points like the wonder thing or the city state influence. In my current game as Venice, I had neutral status with everyone. Some positive points, some negative points. So I made a few trades of spare resources. But the big turning point was when I liberated an Indonesian settler from the barbarians (+ points). A few turns later, they came to me with a Declaration of Friendship. Which gave me + points with the Netherlands since they were friends. Sure enough, several turns later, the Netherlands came to me with a DoF too. After that happened, the city-state influence and wonders negative points from both of them went away.

Long story short, find a way to make a friend.

(On the flip side, both China and Germany are now friendly to me too, and I have no idea why since they're not friends with anyone else and I haven't done much with them.)

If I stay well armed for fear of an attack they ask if I'm planning to attack them, if I don't move my units away from their borders I'm called a liar,

Yeah... don't keep units on their borders. If they call you out on it and you say that you'll move them away, that pretty much locks you out from war for a long time otherwise you'll get negative points for breaking a promise.

if I defeat every enemy that enters my territory we often remain at war indefinitely until I retaliate and capture or destroy some of their cities and stongarm them into a treaty, which assures continued war with them or the other AI civs in future rounds.

Defeat their units but try to avoid taking their cities. In BNW, the warmongering changed so that it is based on taking cities. More than that, it's relative to the size of the target. So if you take 1 city out of 10, it won't be as bad as taking 1 city out of 1. And you can reduce or eliminate the warmonger penalty by liberating cities that your target civ took from others (city-states, other civs, etc).

At least, that's how I understand it from reading several threads on the subject on CivFanatics.

 

[TheGodBen]

If you look at some of the things that can turn other civs against you the list reads a lot of things that are just the result of you playing the game. "They covet your territory", "they covet wonders you have built", "you are spreading a different religion", "you have chosen a different ideology" "you are competing for favor of a city state", etc.

All of those factors have been the basis of real wars throughout human history and the game is reflecting that. What's more, it's all part of the strategy of the game. Building a city on desirable land, spreading your religion into other civs, and bribing city states are all actions which come with advantages, but are you willing to risk your good relations with your neighbours to do them? This isn't SimCity, you're not operating in a vacuum, balancing your needs with your neighbour's concerns is what Civilization games have always been about.

I'm not saying war shouldn't be a factor, just that it should be avoidable

War is avoidable in most cases, but avoiding war might make your ultimate victory more difficult. Or it might require a sacrifice of gold or resources. It's not always easy to avoid war, but that's as it should be.

 

[Venardhi]

I would be a lot more forgiving of these things if the player had even half of the diplomatic options as the AI seems to.

How often in history has a small country started a war with their far more powerful neighbor because they had nicer buildings than them and a better trade relationship with neighboring city-states? This isn't a simulator. In the real world governments change all the time. If the real world worked like Civ V, most of Europe would still have warmonger penalties from the colonial era and the World Wars and Italy would be isolated and under constant attack because of their expansion and bad relations with the rest of the world 2000 years ago. There is nothing realistic about this game, even ignoring the immortal leaders.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

In case anyone is interested, there's a Humble Sid Meier Bundle on sale right now

Good deal, I went for the above average but below maximum price to get everything save the full DLC for Civ V.

Would have been nice to check the specs on my laptop before downloading though, at least I have the full Civ IV to enjoy.

 

[TheGodBen]

This isn't a simulator.

No, it's not. But the things that drive wedges between the civilisations in the game are the same as those in real life. They could use some tweaking in places, but I don't personally believe that any of them are completely game breaking or in need of removal. The only negative diplomatic modifier that I wholeheartedly disagreed with was the one that punished you if were attempting the same type of victory as an AI civ, but that was removed in G&K.

 

[Levi]

I love playing random skirmishes in this game! Great lazy day time killer! haha

If anyone would like to play a game let me know!
I would be more into playing a large game, me and 1 or 2 others vs maxed out # of AI players. lol

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

I love playing random skirmishes in this game! Great lazy day time killer! haha

I find looking back that I can measure what I was doing with my life by how much I invested myself in the various Civs.

Civ 1-3, a lot, including expansion packs and mods. Civ 4, not quite so much, no expansion packs indulged in, no seeking out mods of any sort. No 5/V, not at all, no spare money to even pick up a newer machine to play it on.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I've played Civ II more than any other version. Must've been hundreds of hours. I played the original a lot, too.

I played quite a bit of III, perhaps about the same as Civ IV. I'm ashamed to say I sat on Civ V for over a year without playing it because I wasn't enamored with the idea of the new combat mechanic, but now I really dig it. I'll probably surpass III and IV at some point.

 

[TheGodBen]

Civilization II, Grand Theft Auto 3, and Minecraft are the three games that altered my perception about what video games are, and I spent a crazy amount of time with all three. Civ2 dominated my game time during my early teen years, I spent many sunny Saturday afternoons indoors, destroying those blasted Carthaginians. I enjoyed Civs 3&4, but they didn't have that same magic for me. In a strange way, as much as I loved Civ2, I was hoping the sequels would be a radical departure and do something different. But they both felt like tame upgrades to me. They were great games in their own right, I put hundreds of hours into both, but they didn't excite me.

Civ5 dared to shake things up and try something new, which resulted in it being a buggy mess containing poorly-implemented features at launch. But it was the first Civilization game that's potential excited me since Civ2. Nobody can claim it's a perfect game with a straight face, not even after 2 expansion packs, and I do favour some of the features from earlier games. But I can say that Civ5 is now my favourite Civ game to actually play (although Civ2 will forever be my sentimental favourite).

 

[Levi]

I played Civ's 2 and 3, but not very much. So I cant relate too much to the previous versions. But I do understand what you mean by every new release seems to just be an upgrade rather then a new game. I am hoping Civ6 will be what we're hoping for!