Resolved: Civilization 4 is Superior to Civilization 5

When you open the game Civilization IV, you begin to hear music playing through the intro video. This music continues on in the intro screen. The song begins like this: Baba yetu, Yesu uliye Mbinguni yetu, Yesu, amina! Baba yetu, Yesu, uliye Jina lako litukuzwe. This music is Christopher Tin's "Baba Yetu", and it is the Lord's prayer in Swahili. This can be found on the civilization forums and at the following link where this paragraph can be found: "The theme song of Civilization 4, Baba Yetu, is actually "Our Lord's Prayer" spoken in Swahili. If you don't know, the prayer is referenced from Christian Bible Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4." http://sushi-delight.blogspot.com... This awesome opening, and I do not use the term awesome lightly, introduces what is possibly one the best games ever created up to this point in time. However, I digress. The topic for this round is not that CIV4 is the best game ever, but simply superior to the more recent edition CIV5. I will support this by first establishing a criterion for measuring superior. I propose the criterion of Enjoyability. Now there are several reasons why CIV4 is more enjoyable than CIV5: The first is the Diplomacy. Diplomacy is a crucial aspect of any empire strategy game. (See Total War series and Age of Empires.) In CIV4 the diplomacy not only consists of trading everything from gold, to resources to technology, and not only is opened up stage by stage as you research certain technologies, but is also used by the AI to make alliances and make enemies. The AI actively work to form and develop relationships not just with the player, but with the other computer players. This requires the player to manage not only his relations with his/her computer allies and enemies but their allies and enemies as well. This introduces a fourth dimension into the gameplay that is not reproduced in CIV5. For in CIV 4, the AI have clearly defined attitudes towards the human player and the computer players (i.e. +10, -4, or +3 resulting in Pleased, Furious, Neutral, or Friendly, etc...) In CIV5 however, the diplomacy is found lacking. The AI do not use it nearly as much to begin with. Secondly, the decreased number of players found on your average map results in less complex diplomacy reducing the enjoyment of the game, but I will go in-depth into that in just a bit. And finally there are no specified criteria for determining relationships! You can be "friendly" with a computer player you have just met, be backstabbed by him the next turn, and have him declare peace 4 turns later only to see your relations back to friendly! There is NO way to know who your allies are and who your enemies are, an unacceptable feature that reduces the enjoyment of the game for novices trying it out, to experienced players used to carefully managing diplomacy. The second benefit of CIV4 is the units. There are several aspects of the units that increase the enjoyability of the game like the sheer number of units you can amass. I was recently playing a game in CIV5 where I (unusually) was able to win over half the map to my side via conquest. The other half was made up of a loose coalition of 4 nations. At this point I could have taken these nations if it wasn't for the fact that I ran out of units. I lacked aluminum and uranium necessary to create more powerful units and even my coal was running in short supply. None of my opponents would attack me or damage each other enough for me to be able to attack on any front. Even though I had HALF THE MAP there were only a handful of the resources I needed. The second issue is unit stacking. CIV4 allows stacked units so that you can move an ARMY to the enemy city. CIV5 does not allow stacked units so you must be content with slowly moving droves of units across the field to be slaughtered as they approach the enemy city. This feature alone significantly increases the enjoyment of CIV4 and decreases it in CIV5. The final issue under units is the kinds of units themselves. In this respect CIV5 is extraordinarily disappointing. In CIV4: Beyond the sword it seemed like hundreds of new units were added - because they were. From specialized scenario units to common gameplay additions CIV4: Beyond the Sword expanded the mind of its player and severely increased the enjoyment of the CIV4 game. CIV5 was one step backwards from CIV4: Beyond the Sword. While it did introduce new units such as the long swordsman, it failed to provide any significant amount of editions in units or even changes to the current units. So while CIV5 claims to be new a redone it actually was more of a downgrade from Beyond the Sword and hence the enjoyment factor is greatly lessened. The Third issue is resources. Resources are used for two things: creating troops and trading. The trading aspect was a feature of CIV4 carried through to CIV5 with one notable difference: where before you traded 1 of any resource for one of another resource now you can trade 5 of a resource for 1 of another resource. While this feature sounds like a great addition, it is severely abused by the AI and is also at odds with the other use of resources - building units. It turns what was once a fun resource trading scheme to get health and production benefits into a simple resource grab for Iron, Coal, Oil, Aluminum, and Uranium. Where once you simply had to have access to certain resources to continually trade with other players, now, you must have huge pockets of these resources in order to be able to do one trade for 30 turns. The other issue with resources is their limited nature. There is now a limit on how many horse are provided by horses, cows provided by cows, oil provided by oil. Certain oil fields produce more than identical ones in other parts of the world and while that is certainly realistic it screws with trading and resource management. All you need is to be randomly generated a portion of the map with less populous resources and even if you play the game exactly right you can still be miserable because of the limited resources. Even the sheik with all the oil feels like the Americans trying to conserve and become self-dependent. This reduces the enjoyment of the game and is a reason CIV4 is superior to CIV5. The fourth and final reason CIV4 is superior is the map. Here I intend to discuss the hex's vs. squares, the differing environments, overall map sizes. The hex's were a nice idea, but failed miserably. Aside from the fact that they are painfully obvious to your eyes, add weird angles that can screw with strategy, and are much larger in size than the squares, they have no discernible advantage to the previous system! Making them at best an unnecessary change and at worst a scar on the face of Sid Meir's game series. Then you have the differing environments in CIV4 that for some reason do not seem to be as present in CIV5. Even if they have the same different types of plots (which I don't think they do) then the difference between the different plots is significantly reduced. Then you have the size of the maps in CIV5 which are significantly reduced. The size of the biggest map in CIV4 could hold over 20 well formed nations in addition to oceans and lakes etc... The size of the biggest map of CIV5 barely contains 20 small empires in addition to a sizable number of city states. (which even if they are removed only slightly increases the overall average size of an empire). This issue alone results in reduced enjoyment from gameplay as players once able to play as isolated empires or huge nations from the beginning now find that they are struggling to even build an empire a quarter of the size in CIV5. Ultimately, it is clear to me which game is more enjoyable, and hence, superior. CIV4 provides a more interactive and balanced diplomacy; better unit structure, variety, and management; an easier resource management system; and finally a more enjoyable map with squares, differing environments, and bigger maps for better fun! Thank you. At this point I would like to offer my opponent the opportunity to ask me a series of specific questions at the beginning or end of his speech and I will answer accordingly. If my opponent has none than I request he specify that at the beginning or end of his speech. I know that I will be taking advantage of the opportunity to ask questions in my next speech. (I will continue to answer specific questions in later rounds but I would prefer if this "cross-examination" of a sort only applied to the first two rounds.)