Resolved: Civilization 4 is Superior to Civilization 5

There are a few things I wish Pro had included, for example the voice talent of Leonard Nemoy. It is hard to express the satisfaction gained from earning hearing the legendary actor who gave us Mr. Spock quote Sun Tsu as the reward for a tech advance: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first, and then seek to win. ” My friend, like many of the rulers who have declared war against me in either of these Civ iterations, you have already lost. You just don’t know it yet. When I first bought Civ 5, I was, like my opponent, terribly disappointed. It technically stays true to many of the core ideas of the Civilization series, but it just feels so different. I had enormous trouble getting things to work the way I wanted to, and my civilization size did feel very small and restricted compared to the globe spanning empires I had grown accustomed to governing. Instead of having all the buildings I wanted and pumping out tons of units, I felt like a warlord rummaging about with a ragtag band of brigands instead of an army. The computer was always declaring war on me without provocation. Happiness problems weren’t restricted to new conquests, so even if I was doing well my whole nation was always miserable. Tile bonuses were less generous. The social policies were so permanent compared to civics flexibility I was used to, for example being able to switch from monarchy to democracy with just a few unproductive turns as the minor penalty. In Civ 5, it felt as if there’s almost no going back. In short, I just didn’t like it. After a few attempts, and maybe 25 hours of play time, I shelved the game and didn’t play at all for what must have been at least a year. It was just as well; the land of Skyrim was in peril, and as the first Dragonborn to appear in ages, I was the only one who could save it. But after my heroics had rescued the Nordic homeland, and perhaps all of Tamriel (many times), something happened: I decided to give Civ 5 one more try. Nearly a thousand hours of gameplay later, I’ve defeated my foes with nearly every leader on every difficulty level and type of game. I’ve learned some things – one of which is that Civ 5 is, by a dominating lead, the best Sid Meier game ever produced (another is that I probably need to explore some other hobbies, like writing). I recommend playing on Epic timescale rather than Normal or Marathon. What I initially mistook for drawbacks are on closer inspection tremendous advances in civilization gameplay. With production more restrictive, you can’t just have all of what you want everywhere. Economic principles of scarcity and opportunity cost become so much more relevant in Civ 5 (especially at higher difficulty levels). In order to win, you have to make tough sacrifices and specialize your cities. Some cities will produce lots of gold, but you’ll never be able to use them to make troops. Other cities will serve as your barracks, but their growth will be diminished because of having to use low/no food hill tiles. You have to skip over certain things that would be nice to have and accept that you will often be able to obtain only what is essential to your strategy – but that is enough. Tough choices make for amazing gameplay. These hard decisions are precisely what it means to engage in strategy. Challenges are what make victory satisfying. I’ll further build my case for Civ 5 being the ultimate achievement of the Civilization series, but for the time being I’m going to directly refute the items raised by Pro. 1) Diplomacy is not “found lacking”, but it is less obvious. Bonuses and penalties to your relationship are more fluid and the underlying calculations are not explicitly provided to the player, but they are spelled out to some degree in the diplomatic overview which also shows which wonders have been completed and what era each civ is currently in. That having been said, backstabs are a huge part of Civ 5, and you are either prepared for them, or you are a fool. The realpolitik of Civ 5 is to trust no one, never lower your defenses, and accept that all alliances are temporary. If you side with the Greeks against the Persians, then as soon as the last Aryan stronghold falls, you can expect the Greeks to be setting their eyes on you just as quickly as the victorious Allies who won World War II began aiming their missiles at one another. In Civ 4, you could count on long cultivated relationships to be predictable and bear fruit often even at the expense of the self-interest of your partner. In Civ 5, however, every leader is in it to win it. Period. If you want “friends”, the most reliable will be rivals who are at least attempting a different primary win condition, and stay out of their way. For example, if you want to be friends with Ghandi, don’t be getting in his way by building culturally important wonders, leaving him no choice but to try to take those by force. The risk to this is obvious – you risk letting him win. It is thus best in this kind of world to trust none, and be firmly loyal to none, but do be careful who you intentionally provoke. 2) If you think you have resource problems, imagine how the Japanese felt. Life isn’t fair, but in Civ 5, there are ways around it. You may be stuck without oil, aluminum, and coal, but even in the worst cases, forming alliances with city states can provide these. Additionally, with enough artillery, AA guns, anti-tank infantry, and patience, you can still advance on an oil rich sultan who arrogantly feels safe behind his mechanized army. Basic artillery is especially key for its ability to take cities and even powerful units like tanks at range, even late game, but if your forces were getting slaughtered as they slowly crawled out in the open, then my guess is that you 1) didn’t have enough AA guns mixed in and 2) didn’t build roads as you go or even pre-emptively (late game) in order to support your supply lines and give the option of retreat. Yes, planes are better, but to succeed, you must build the forces you can, and not just the forces you want. Missiles are another expensive but highly effective solution to a lack of resources. As for the lack of unit types, I have two things to say about this. Firstly, vanilla Civ 5 vs. beyond the sword is apples to oranges, and is not what is on trial here. We are considering the entire Civ 4 collection with the entire Civ 5 collection, are we not? Secondly, the number of units does not seem to correlate with “better”. In chess, arguably the greatest strategy game of all time, there are only 6 unit types. Every total war title generally has a low number of unit types, but this doesn’t take away from its incredible gameplay at all. The same is true for Civ 5, where less is more. The hexes allow for positioning considerations, and add a tremendous improvement in the nature of warfare over the uninteresting massive stack of doom that we inevitably create in Civ 4. Also, the disembark ability for every unit makes naval warfare and amphibious assault so much less tedious than it was previously. 3) Some of the most incredible games I’ve played have been ones where I’ve been stranded in a desert with only an oasis and some mountains (assuming G&K). Get a shrine, then select your pantheon as desert folklore. You’ll have a religion faster than almost anyone else, with a Petra on the way. Another favorite of mine is to settle 3 or 4 cities very quickly as the Chinese, building only paper makers and archers, using those archers to defeat barbarian camps. You should have about 12 or so archers built up by the time you research machinery, and enough gold to upgrade them. Chinese crossbowmen shoot twice, almost doubling their effectiveness, so you can conquer at least 2 or 3 opponents before they even realize what hit them. This also works pretty well using English longbowmen. Right now I’m trying the Huns. A ruins upgraded my warrior to a battering ram, and I used that 1 starting ram by itself to take 4 city states, and also built 3 cities of my own. I’m already an empire and am way ahead by turn 100. You can’t play passive, you must have a clear goal in mind. Sometimes that goal must be securing iron or horses. It is a tremendously cool innovation that strategic resources provide limited goods. Each unit consumes 1 strategic resource, again adding scarcity, trade-offs, and thus more interesting decisions. A unit of oil used for a tank is an oil not used for a bomber – choose wisely. There is actually more diplomacy involved in this, because even if you and your trade partner both have horses, there is still benefit to having more horses, and so it can be worth the gold, or maybe not, adding another layer of meaningful decisions. 4) I touched on this earlier, but although the hexes do admittedly take some getting used to, they add so much tactically to the game that it blows civ 4 out of the water. The days of squares and infinite stacking are over. Now you actually have to think about how to position your units to get them to work in a coordinated fashion, making it a different game, yes, but a far better one. Smaller map sizes and more valuable but less plentiful units help to avoid the tediousness which could come from having to manage the same mechanics on a huge map. All of Pro’s criticisms seem to essentially boil down to the problem of him not knowing how to play Civ 5 very well yet. I’ve been there, and I remember the frustration, especially taking into consideration that I was such a boss at Civ 4, not to mention the savior of Tamriel. How can a messiah like me be humbled into defeat in Civ 5? ?? And yet I was. But once you get over the learning curve, you can appreciate the advantages of the game to a point that going back to Civ 4 just isn’t an option anymore. I have no questions for my opponent at this time, but welcome any that he has for me.