Sorry for the late response, but I just picked this game up recently.

Just to provide some background, I'm a long-time Civilization fan, having played Civilization 2 (for the PlayStation), Civ 3 (for the PC), both Civilization:Call to Powers, FreeCiv, and Civilization IV.

Now, while being on the default setting no doubt made things easy in general, I also get the sense that this Civilization game is the easiest of them all when it comes to the military aspect of the game. IIRC, I did manage to gain a Military victory in a couple of the older Civs (I definitely remember doing so in the first Call to Power game), but they were hard slogs, even on lower difficulty levels.

There's two key differences about this game (compared to other Civ games) that make the military aspect easier:

1. AI-controlled civilizations barely expand. At all. In incredibly sharp contrast to most Civ games (where the AI is basically spamming Settlers like nobody's business), the AI for Civ V expands at a snail's pace. I'm currently at 1000 AD as the Egyptians, and none of the other civilizations control more than 4 cities. Fewer enemy cities means conquering entire civilizations becomes way easier, as you only need to take a few cities to completely conquer a civilization.

2. Cities now can defend themselves, with or with out garrisoned/fortified units in them. You'd think that this would make conquering a city harder, and maybe it would be if the AI bothered to make much of a military, but the AI doesn't do this. I find that three strong units (Swordsmen, I tended to use) is enough to take a city in 2 or 3 turns (well, as long as you're in the right era to be using Swordsmen, of course). And this even includes Capitols, that oddly seem to be no more strongly defended than any other city. In most Civ games, once war is declared, the enemy civilization ramps up military production, and by the time you get to their Capitol, you have a massive defense force to contend with. Not here, at least not on default difficulty.

Now, the other aspects of the game (race to build Wonders, tech tree progression), I don't find the AI any easier than other Civ games. In fact, this AI takes Wonder-creation a bit more seriously than it does in many Civ games. But I guess the trade-off for that is that it doesn't bother with military concerns at all.


Now, I'm enjoying the game, but if you like Civ mainly for the military aspect, then I can certainly see this one being dull for you. This game has a lot of neat features, though, with the Advisers thankfully making a return, the return of barbarian encampments, the introduction of City States, Social Policy trees that add an almost RPG-element to this, and the overall look of the game.


As an aside, my all-time favorite Civ game is still Civilization 2 for the Playstation. While a lot of the other Civs have some neat features, I find that the old Civ 2 game has a certain charm to it that over Civ games just haven't managed to capture.

Triple_R wrote on Nov 14^th, 2010 at 2:06pm:


Hey Triple R.  Long time no chat   Thanks for the in depth response. 

Just to clarify so I'm not misunderstood... I don't necessarily think that the new combat system is easier than the old.  I actually think it's far superior.  It's more like what I'm used to from having played strategical combat games.

My gripe is/was that in focusing all of their attention and design on the combat system ... the rest of the game almost feels tacked on.  A lot of the depth and fun of the game seemed (as I say at first blush) to be gone, overshadowed by the combat.  I liked the prior Civ games because they WEREN'T war games ... when I wanted to play war games I played other games.  When i wanted a sandbox to create a huge civilization in, I played Civ.

Having said all that, I've since gone back to Civ 5 and played a few more games.  (I had only played 2 or 3 games when I made my first post, then got bored with it and set it aside)  But I ramped up the difficulty level.  Now I get it.  You're right, it's not any easier than other games.  They made the lower levels far easier.  Ramp it up a few levels and it gets a bit tougher.  Military conquest still seems to be the easiest path to take (for me at any rate), but that just goes to show that the other paths are actually even a bit more challenging than the older games.  I guess I'm revising my initial opinion of the game somewhat.  I'm trying to win a cultural game now, and it actually seems far more challenging juggling the size of your civ with cultural policy purchases etc, than the old build more wonders strategy of prior games.

Queshank

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but my one issue with the Civ games is the time limit..... but then I don't play it to actually win, I just play because I enjoy the process of selecting a site to build and then building up my cities..... in fact usually I just play by myself and don't have any civs to compete against.

Queshank wrote on Dec 6^th, 2010 at 10:55am:


Combat system? How's it different than the old style of fighting?

p.s. Speaking of combat have you been keeping up with the Total War series? I bought Medieval 2 when it came out years ago but couldn't play it because of my computer limitations and I think there's been a few more releases since then.

p.p.s. Probably kind of lame but I just started playing Zoo Tycoon a few days ago and am now addicted to it.

I found Civ 5 to be a massive disappointment.

Perhaps I'll get back to it later, but I just couldn't get into it at all. It's very slow.

I'm almost ashamed at how much I love Civ 4. I find it to be the total package, and it can be enjoyed in so many different ways. A tiny nation, limited by the strength of surrounding nations, can still succeed in religion or economics or technology. A massive nation will often be limited by the cost of a huge empire and begin to lag technologically. Spread your own religion far and wide, and money starts pouring in. Get the right Wonder, and you've achieved a massive edge against the rest of the world. Beat a neighbor to a key technological breakthrough by a few years, and you can exploit that edge in the limited time you have it to increase the empire.

I just found it to be the perfect mix, and variables made large maps an adventure to find out which civilization was doing well across the oceans or (early on) on the other side of the continent. The scenario "Earth (18 Civs)" is just a blast, to try and succeed (in any number of ways) with great civilizations of the world on an earth-like map. I'm a huge fan, and I was always busy trying to manage the empire.

Civ 5 is just dull. It take 1,000 years to build something, and I just kept pressing "Next Turn" a hundred times. The AI is worse, somehow, then the previous editions. Happiness automatically decreases across the entire empire if you expand the size of the empire? When would that be true? Religion is gone. Trading technologies, gone. Slow. Dull. Everything takes longer. Military campaigns take longer, so 4 year wars are virtually impossible when it takes 50 years to move a horse-mounted unit 2 squares, and there can only be one unit at a time in a geographic area roughly the size of Ohio (on large maps). No more stacking = bad thing.

Every unit can just move onto water. That's more simplification from previous editions that makes planning and strategizing less of a requirement (previous editions required you to build something of a navy to move into the seas).

The Social Policies are far too restrictive. A civilization that chooses a certain route 4,000 years ago is still constrained by that same policy?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I did not even finish a single game, despite starting many, because I just got too bored. I was on a relatively high difficulty, and got so bored trying to pursue a peaceful strategy that I just decided to take over a continent. I did that easily. Nothing to it. Then I was like "Should I go across the ocean and take over the other major continent?" Decided against it, and quit, because it's such a pain to launch a military campaign without stacking units, since each individual unit has to be moved individually... And if you try to send a unit a long ways with one command, invariably it will go on some idiotic route.

Instead of managing details of an empire (technologies, building cities up with a variety of improvements, spreading religion and corporate entities), I'm moving 15 units, piece by piece, one tile at a time, and pressing "Next Turn". Once every thousand years, a city will have built something, but that hardly breaks up the monotony.

I'm the sort of "gamer" that has at most 2 games in a queue at any time. I don't play a large variety of games. But when I do, it's usually because I found something I really enjoy, and play it like mad for a while. I have enjoyed the Civ franchise since the 2nd version, when I was introduced. This one, Civ 5, is terrible.

Again, maybe I'm missing something, but for the life of me I can't find out what that might be.