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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Chamale posted:

I'd love it if the game would actually address that, like letting you make stuff that never existed in the real world if you have an odd combination of techs. My friend joked that when you build a Gatling Gun without Gunpowder, your factory makes a box of bullets that are bouncing around really fast and shooting is a matter of opening the box.

For my Danes who landed on the moon without Combustion, I can only imagine the world's most complicated and powerful torsion launcher sitting outside Copenhagen.

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Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.
I also like that you can build ironclads, carriers, and battleships without ever learning how to sail. gently caress the wind, we make our own wind or we go home :colbert:

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
The tech three in Civ 5 is probably the dumbest in all civs. That and the combat are the things I dont like in Civ 5.

But it handles everything else, such as culture and religion and happiness and trade, in such a better, more interesting way, that I just cant go back to 4 anymore.

EDIT: vvvvvv nah its great. Its kinda hard but works pretty well, and managing it requires using every aspect of the game (diplomacy, buildings, science, exploration, religion)

Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jun 4, 2016

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Civ 5 handles happiness atrociously, what are you talking about?

Kibbles n Shits
Apr 8, 2006

burgerpug.png


Fun Shoe

Elias_Maluco posted:

EDIT: vvvvvv nah its great. Its kinda hard but works pretty well, and managing it requires using every aspect of the game (diplomacy, buildings, science, exploration, religion)


The same can mostly be said for Civ4. Trading for luxuries, researching and building happiness buildings, and using religion are all important ways to raise happiness and thus raise your growth cap. I don't mind Civ5's system that much but it's irritating when an otherwise nice and/or strategically important city site is useless because it lacks a unique luxury. Civ is about building cities, so let me build them damnit.

Jump King
Aug 10, 2011

Tbh I've never got the big outcry about global happiness. To me, the most irritating thing about it is that the AI isn't affected by it.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

MMM Whatchya Say posted:

Tbh I've never got the big outcry about global happiness. To me, the most irritating thing about it is that the AI isn't affected by it.

My main problem was how weirdly it was implemented. You had enough to get about four good-sized cities early on, then you only had about enough to stay static until Ideologies showed up later in the game and then you had virtually infinite happiness.

It'd have been better if there were more numerous smaller bumps throughout the game.

Jump King
Aug 10, 2011

Gort posted:

My main problem was how weirdly it was implemented. You had enough to get about four good-sized cities early on, then you only had about enough to stay static until Ideologies showed up later in the game and then you had virtually infinite happiness.

It'd have been better if there were more numerous smaller bumps throughout the game.

Yeah that's more of the wide vs tall conflict going on. Earlier on in Civ V it was better to build as many cities as possible but now you can only really do 4 or 5 for a while. That's a deep and troublesome conflict in the game is the balancing of wide vs tall which they never really got down well imo.

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
Well, you can have more with enough wonders and resources and luck (to be around enough resources) . And while you can't, it does prevents from easily getting huge and unbeatable, which is a good thing

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
One of the things I really appreciate about Civ4 is how well it balanced civ expansion. Not in the tall vs. wide sense, since you generally wanted to have as many cities as you could support, but more in the sense that being able to support large numbers of cities required carefully managing your economy. If you added new cities before you were economically ready, then the maintenance costs would eat you alive. The early axeman rush could add a new city or two to your empire before you were really ready for them, which meant spending a fair amount of time afterwards weakened as you desperately tried to get your income back and track, and hoping nobody noticed that your cities were guarded by one archer apiece. And so on.

Eiba
Jul 26, 2007


MMM Whatchya Say posted:

Tbh I've never got the big outcry about global happiness. To me, the most irritating thing about it is that the AI isn't affected by it.
I actually like building tall, so the gameplay effects were pretty fun for me. What really bothered me was the nonsensical effects. Like building small city on a faraway continent making my capital riot.

It's easy to dismiss "verisimilitude" points like that as spergy or whatever, but it really made the system feel bad. Other systems felt a lot better- made sense and had beat gameplay effects. That matters to me at least.

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

The problem I have with Civ 5 happiness is that it's a single limiting factor on both height and width, meaning that you could choose one or the other, but not both (and it was heavily weighted towards height, thanks to cities costing 3 happiness each). In Civ4 you had happiness limiting height and maintenance limiting width. There was some interaction between them - you needed more cities to get luxuries, and you needed better cities to pay for maintenance - but for the most part they were separate, and they each had different ways to deal with them.

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
Well, gold could be a factor too, but then after youve set some trade routes, it mostly becomes a non-issue. Than all you have to manage is happiness. Until you get to ideology, cause after that happiness too is a solved problem (unless dissent happens). And then there's hardly anything else to manage except deciding what to build

I think that's part of one of the biggest problems in Civ 5: after the industrial age, the game is most often already decided. If you are ahead, it pretty much won already. If you are behind, you might as well give up.

I usually play to the end (or near) anyway cause I enjoy developing my imaginary nation, but there's hardly any challenge left after 1700-1800 or so

Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jun 4, 2016

Jump King
Aug 10, 2011

Eiba posted:

I actually like building tall, so the gameplay effects were pretty fun for me. What really bothered me was the nonsensical effects. Like building small city on a faraway continent making my capital riot.

It's easy to dismiss "verisimilitude" points like that as spergy or whatever, but it really made the system feel bad. Other systems felt a lot better- made sense and had beat gameplay effects. That matters to me at least.

I like building tall too, so that was fun. Just irritating that it's hard to do stuff like flip ideologies with tourism because of the ai's massive happiness bonuses

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Elias_Maluco posted:

Well, gold could be a factor too, but then after youve set some trade routes, it mostly becomes a non-issue. Than all you have to manage is happiness. Until you get to ideology, cause after that happiness too is a solved problem (unless dissent happens). And then there's hardly anything else to manage except deciding what to build

I think that's part of one of the biggest problems in Civ 5: after the industrial age, the game is most often already decided. If you are ahead, it pretty much won already. If you are behind, you might as well give up.

I usually play to the end (or near) anyway cause I enjoy developing my imaginary nation, but there's hardly any challenge left after 1700-1800 or so

Except that gold, too, was a limiting factor on both height and width, and also weighted in favor of height since bigger cities make more gold.

Away all Goats
Jul 5, 2005

Goose's rebellion

Wait, someone actually liked the way religion was implemented in civ5? Even now after all the expansions and patches it feels like an after thought to me.

Jump King
Aug 10, 2011

Felt better than civ iv's all religions are the same, give you minor bonuses and Buddhism is the best one because you can get it quickly

Maguoob
Dec 26, 2012

Away all Goats posted:

Wait, someone actually liked the way religion was implemented in civ5? Even now after all the expansions and patches it feels like an after thought to me.

I still find it extremely dumb that beliefs are exclusive. Someone took the useful ones? Sell all your shrines and ignore it forever. Especially against the AI that just spams missionaries and blanket the world with them.

Honestly what I want them to do with religion probably wouldn't work very well with how they want Civ to be.

Raserys
Aug 22, 2011

IT'S YA BOY
You definitely should have been able to adopt a state religion, and I think I would prefer the way religions were founded in Civ IV, but I prefer the modular bonuses and name

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
The diplomatic and civic effects of religion were better in Civ4, but the actual effects having a religion and the method of obtaining one were better in Civ5. Hopefully Civ6 merges the two.

Jump King
Aug 10, 2011

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

The diplomatic and civic effects of religion were better in Civ4, but the actual effects having a religion and the method of obtaining one were better in Civ5. Hopefully Civ6 merges the two.

:agreed:

Pakistani Brad Pitt
Nov 28, 2004

Not as taciturn, but still terribly powerful...



Maguoob posted:

I still find it extremely dumb that beliefs are exclusive. Someone took the useful ones? Sell all your shrines and ignore it forever. Especially against the AI that just spams missionaries and blanket the world with them.

I think it was actually a good system that rewarded being the first to get there (not that it was completely fair race to get there). They could have done more work on balancing the choices there so it was a bucket of interesting choices to pick from instead of "I need this one thing or I'm hosed" though.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

MrChupon posted:

I think it was actually a good system that rewarded being the first to get there (not that it was completely fair race to get there). They could have done more work on balancing the choices there so it was a bucket of interesting choices to pick from instead of "I need this one thing or I'm hosed" though.

And also so there weren't ones that were "got a jungle start? Here, have five extra food per turn in your capital." Or "got a desert start? Have all the faith points."

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit
The problem with civ5 religion on higher levels is that the typical response to them is throwing your hands up in the air and going "nope, this ain't happening".

Well, the basic pantheon beliefs are quite accessible, and they're broad and situational and balanced enough that you are likely to get one that suits you, but the actual religion itself? Good luck being able to grab one before most of the religion slots are taken. plus, the religion beliefs are poorly balanced, so much that if all the good ones are taken, there's little point investing the faith to make one yourself. And there's no guarantee that the AI will put together a coherent religion that will give good bonuses.

I'm also not a fan of the faith point mechanic, where you have a separate resource pool, that is not freely convertible from other resources. You either have tile features that give faith and let you utilise religion (aka desert with pantheon, or a natural wonder), or you have to rely on the pathetic trickle of faith from shrines and temples (both of whom cost gold maintenance). Ugh, just let us use hammers to spread religion. I have no idea how Civ6 will fix this issue.

Pakistani Brad Pitt
Nov 28, 2004

Not as taciturn, but still terribly powerful...



I feel like hammers are convertible to religion in the form of religious buildings and wonders?

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire

MrChupon posted:

I feel like hammers are convertible to religion in the form of religious buildings and wonders?

Religious buildings are bought with faith so you have to weigh if the gain of faith per turn outweighs the cost.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit
Shrines and Temples cost a ton of hammers, and convert gold to trickle of a faith. If you want some real faith generation, you need terrain features, or you need to snowball your faith generation using monsteries/pagodas/mosques.

The Human Crouton
Sep 20, 2002

Away all Goats posted:

Wait, someone actually liked the way religion was implemented in civ5? Even now after all the expansions and patches it feels like an after thought to me.

The religion mechanic in Civ 5 is nearly perfect. The problem is that every time an AI citizen farts three missionaries appear.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

The Human Crouton posted:

The religion mechanic in Civ 5 is nearly perfect. The problem is that every time an AI citizen farts three missionaries appear.

The beliefs are atrociously unbalanced. At least one is bugged to the point it does nothing.

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.
I'm not sure what would be my ideal implementation of religion. All I know is I liked the relative simplicity of Civ4's system and the customisation of Civ5's. I didn't like faffing around with missionaries and I think I would have preferred them to work a little more like spies rather than units on the map.

Looks like missionaries are back in Civ6 though so at the very least I hope they'll have made them less faff. Even if they just balanced the beliefs though that would be an immense improvement.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire
All I want is a different mechanic than the missionaries. Spies were made a menu option specifically because they acknowledged spies as a unit in civ 4 were tedious, so why do missionaries exist with the exact same problem?

Ghostlight
Sep 25, 2009

maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me



I hated Civ 5's religion - it was nice having a modular customisation of your civ, but the bonuses being exclusive meant you either creamed it or didn't, and missionaries were a poor band-aid to try and manage the problem of spread not being very dynamic or interesting in the slightest.

I'd prefer the modular bonuses be moved into some other system and religion become more of a diplomatic tool for mid-late game, like upon discovering Theology you can start declaring state religions so you're not choosing between your good religion build or bad computer religion build, but between running a secular society or taking a state religion that gives you bonuses in diplomacy with other civilisations that share it but affects productivity of citizens who aren't of that religion, but you could build the appropriate temples/wonders to encourage people to convert.
I feel like that would stop Religion as a system as feeling so artificially contrived without diminishing it as a good tool for establishing relations or a source of late-game friction.

Rexides
Jul 25, 2011

Religion and ideology/tourism should be rolled into one mechanic that spans the entire game instead of two half-baked rusty buckets of points that barely matter and you just have to micromanage all the same.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"
When you add any kind of customization you're going to get optimization, not differences. Making religions have powerful sets of different benefits as a package would probably work better than just picking and choosing the optimal ones and not playing the game. Having most of the religious benefits feed into the faith mechanic is probably one of the factors making it very binary though because faith is pretty worthless without a strong religion that you're benefitting from.

It's the same reason the custom race designer in moo2 isn't very interesting- it tends to create Creative super races rather than interesting things with real strengths and relevant weaknesses. It's why Stellaris doesn't work.

Deltasquid
Apr 10, 2013

awww...
you guys made me ink!


THUNDERDOME
The problem with the faiths in CiV is that there were a few that were the best in all circumstances, and the others weren't worth sinking all that faith in because you can barely use faith for anything else. If they were properly balanced you'd actually get meaningful decisions.

do you also play Poland every single time because 46 other civs are redundant?

Jump King
Aug 10, 2011

I feel like that, once again, is an implementation issue.

Take tithe out of the founder bonuses and modify the others a bit and it should be alright.

Jastiger
Oct 11, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
Ehh religion made a lot more sense in CIV 4 where it was a diplomatic and civic tool rather than a set of bonus beliefs and buffs based on who got there first. State religions, diplomatic bonuses, and assimilation bonuses make a lot more sense. Also the way the AI treated it made religion more a chore than anything else. THey just poo poo out missionaries and there is next to nothing you can do to stop them from waltzing in and converting your city. NOrmally it doesn't matter, but if you have the desert bonus in the desert and they come in with some stupid bullshit beliefs it just arbitrarily hamstrings you. Combine that with the way the AI works in regard to requests its just a Sisyphean task of beating back their religion and trying to micromanage your own faith generation. Plus if you do it BACK to the AI they see it as cassus belli, despite doing it to you, its dumb.

I'm not sure it should be tied to specific techs like in 4, but it should definitely be something that can be implemented into your government types and diplmatic dealings. You should also be able to squash religion if you want to go secular or embrace it more if you want to take the benefits (and drawbacks) of having one. Things like science penalties past the Renaissance, and with diminishing happiness bonuses as you go forward, but perhaps help with war weariness and cultural growth earlier on. I feel like those things wouldn't be hard to implement and would go far in making it feel like a more robust system vs a separate set of points you have to futz around with.

Byzantine
Sep 1, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 29 hours!
It would be nice if you could enact Civ4's Theocracy, at least.

exmachina
Mar 12, 2006

Look Closer

Jastiger posted:

Ehh religion made a lot more sense in CIV 4 where it was a diplomatic and civic tool rather than a set of bonus beliefs and buffs based on who got there first. State religions, diplomatic bonuses, and assimilation bonuses make a lot more sense. Also the way the AI treated it made religion more a chore than anything else. THey just poo poo out missionaries and there is next to nothing you can do to stop them from waltzing in and converting your city. NOrmally it doesn't matter, but if you have the desert bonus in the desert and they come in with some stupid bullshit beliefs it just arbitrarily hamstrings you. Combine that with the way the AI works in regard to requests its just a Sisyphean task of beating back their religion and trying to micromanage your own faith generation. Plus if you do it BACK to the AI they see it as cassus belli, despite doing it to you, its dumb.

I'm not sure it should be tied to specific techs like in 4, but it should definitely be something that can be implemented into your government types and diplmatic dealings. You should also be able to squash religion if you want to go secular or embrace it more if you want to take the benefits (and drawbacks) of having one. Things like science penalties past the Renaissance, and with diminishing happiness bonuses as you go forward, but perhaps help with war weariness and cultural growth earlier on. I feel like those things wouldn't be hard to implement and would go far in making it feel like a more robust system vs a separate set of points you have to futz around with.

Isn't this solved by parking an Inquisitor in the city?

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TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

exmachina posted:

Isn't this solved by parking an Inquisitor in the city?

This isn't something you should have to do, is the thing.

Well, the really galling thing is the combination of a) the AI has a limitless supply of missionaries and Great Prophets; b) the AI considers it a casus belli if you try to convert their cities; c) the AI will ignore you when you tell them to keep their missionaries outside of your territory (and even will get pissy at you if you tell them to do so); d) the AI does not consider you to have a casus belli if they send missionaries into your territory after being told off!

Basically the entire deck is stacked in favor of the AI being able to run rampant with their religion, making it impossible for the human player to even consider benefiting from a religion past the very early game unless they do one very specific thing (park inquisitors) that was almost certainly patched in after complaints. The proper fix would have been to address all four points above.

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