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Rob Zacny

Episode 175: Gods and Kings

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Gormongous, please explain what you mean when you say that Civ 5 is a "different take on the same themes." (In case I sound like an a$$hole again, I am genuinely curious to hear you out on this. I spent 5 minutes on that sentence to try and make is sound less confrontational. I hate the internet.) I ask because I don't think that the change from 4 to 5 is so different than the changes between previous versions. I'm grinding my brain trying to remember the mechanics from 2 and 3, but my recollection is that from 3 to 4 was a very big leap in many, many ways. Civ 5 seems like a much smaller change.

Off the top of my head (not an authoritative source) Civ 3 introduced culture (and cultural borders), Great People, trade routes, and special resources. Pretty major changes.

I don't remember many new features of Civ 4, except religion, and the de-emphasis on pollution management. Maybe better combat resolution? (fewer instances of a phalanx holding out against a Panzer.) Maybe the great people got tweaked? Diplomacy was made more transparent (ties in with Religion). I think of 4 as mostly being a re-balance and polish thing, not a features update.

I concur with the assessment that V was enough of a departure that it cannot be simply judged as a better or worse game. There are things I like from V, there are things I miss from 4. I probably will never like V as much as 4, but that's on me.

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I just listened to this episode today, and I bought the expansion. Maybe it's the buzz of the new, but it seems phenomenal to me. This seems more like what I think Civ5 should have been on release. I am trying to turn a blind eye to any faults. This exapnsion, more than anything else, reminds me of the really good parts of Civ5. It may have all the old faults, but, geez, it makes quite an impression.

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I wish I drank less whiskey so I could remember more stuff, but if I recall:

- Great People were introduced in Civ IV.

- Civics were introduced in Civ IV

- Impassable Borders were introduced in Civ III. Did they grow in Civ III? I don't remember.

I would argue that those two (maybe three) changes were more significant "new" features than anything Civ V has added, other than the 1UPT and the city-states (two new features that have received with almost universal approval). I would also argue that the greatest advance in Civ 5 are the iterative ones: moving happiness from city-level to global, and changing the way that strategic resources work.

Actually, reading what I just wrote and reconsidering it, the "global happiness" move should probably be listed as a "new" feature. I suppose the global happiness, more than anything else, changes the way that Civ 5 plays versus CivIV. It completely changes how and when you expand, which is the fundamental building block of any 4X game. Perhaps I just prefer the more relaxed, considered, and strategic expansion of the new system over the frantic and stressful expansion phase of previous Civ games.

I think I just talked myself into agreeing with you, at least insofar as Civ 5 is different "in kind" from its predecessor. But I still disagree with the point that previous Civ installments were merely iterative. Civ II being the exception, as it was probably the smallest step up, mostly adding improved graphics and multimedia (!!!) advisors. Civ III added a boatload of new features to II, some of which were not always well-received (HOW CAN I BE EXPECTED TO WIN WHEN THERE IS NO IRON ANYWHERE NEAR MY EMPIRE?!??!), and IV added new features to III, none of which I can remember at this time other than civics.

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I wish I drank less whiskey so I could remember more stuff, but if I recall:

- Great People were introduced in Civ IV.

- Civics were introduced in Civ IV

- Impassable Borders were introduced in Civ III. Did they grow in Civ III? I don't remember.

Great People were in Civ 3 - Great Leaders could form armies (super units that combined three like units) or rush Wonders.

And yeah, culturally expanding borders with territory you couldn't cross was in 3, but it was very easily exploited. Rights of Passage were easy to negotiate and you could usually fine a safe spot from which to launch a sneak attack or cram a settlement. There were lots of empires that had Swaziland territories in the middle of them.

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Gah, that was the worst - when an AI crammed settlers into your nooks and crannies.

Doing some research, it seems that the Great Leader in Civ III was randomly gained in battle, while the Great Scientist was spawned when you were the first to research a tech. The former could rush wonders or build armies, like you said, and the Great Scientist could rush wonders or start a science golden age.

Civ IV's great leaders were a LOT different, as Civ IV introduced the various types, the counters in your cities, and tied wonders and specialists to generation of those points. That gave you a ton of control over their production, made specialists a lot more interesting, and generally added to the game. Civ V's great people are a small variation on this mechanic.

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Yep. Civ IV advanced the idea a lot - and I think it's gone a small step back in Civ V, where only really the engineer and scientist are really great. Now the artist is the only one that can spawn golden ages, but the tiny culture bomb he had is gone. The merchant is easy money, but takes some walking to do so.

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I think I just talked myself into agreeing with you, at least insofar as Civ 5 is different "in kind" from its predecessor. But I still disagree with the point that previous Civ installments were merely iterative. Civ II being the exception, as it was probably the smallest step up, mostly adding improved graphics and multimedia (!!!) advisors. Civ III added a boatload of new features to II, some of which were not always well-received (HOW CAN I BE EXPECTED TO WIN WHEN THERE IS NO IRON ANYWHERE NEAR MY EMPIRE?!??!), and IV added new features to III, none of which I can remember at this time other than civics.

I probably didn't articulate my point properly. I didn't mean to say that previous installments in the Civ series added nothing new. If anything, I meant to say that each new version added or expanded features, up to Civ IV. Civ V was the first game in the series where the overwhelming majority of design decisions involved revising established mechanics and how they interacted, rather than attempting to improve upon or nuance them. The only real exception I can think of is the pollution system, which saw heavy revision between Civ III and Civ IV, though you could even argue there that it didn't work as intended, whereas nothing was fundamentally broken in how culture and civics operated as mechanics in Civ IV, but they were the subject of massive changes anyway in Civ V.

So yeah, the first installment that's really different kind. I think we agree, Procyon. I'm just bad at choosing my terminology.

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Great podcast; this is really the first time that I've wanted to try out Civ 5!

And now for the story. This was back in Civ4, and I was playing as the Dutch since they get an improvement that lets them harvest more from water tiles. I was also using one of the mods from Beyond the Sword, which adds some basic religious powers to the game. Once cities have a religion, they can build temples to that religion which give small bonuses. The bonuses are things like more XP on unit creation, a 10% production bonus, or in my case, an extra hammer produced from water tiles. So, the game rolls along, with my Civ taking out the 2 competitors on my continent, and 2 other civs more or less taking over their continents. We get to the nuclear age, at which point my Dutch really begin to shine. Or maybe glow. We launch massive ICBM strikes on the other continents; they retaliate in kind. The land is radioactive and ruined, and sea waters rise and cover the coasts. As the nukes continue to fly, more and more tiles are turned into ocean, and my Dutch cities become ever more productive. One by one, the opposing nations are forced to capitulate as their cities are bombed back into the stone age and they can no longer keep their fields clear of radioactive orange goo. Their emissaries arrive to see the massive Dutch aqua-fortresses, gleaming cities fed by aqua culture (and aqua mining?) and pumping out an endless stream of missiles to subdue the remaining nations.

In conclusion, the Netherlands is a land of contrast. Thank you.

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I probably didn't articulate my point properly . . .

So yeah, the first installment that's really different kind. I think we agree, Procyon. I'm just bad at choosing my terminology.

I'm not articulating my point very well, either. Probably because I'm confused about what my point actually is, as it is a bit of a moving target. For now, it is this: Every Civ (except for Civ 2) has been "different in kind" than its predecessor. Civ5 is no different than the rest. So I think I initially disagreed with you that Civ 5 was "different in kind." Now I agree with you. But I think that's always the case with a new Civ game, and I don't think Civ5 was a bigger change than over its predecessor than, say, Civ 3 or Civ 4.

I suppose this is kind of a goofy argument, and whether an individual likes 4 better than 5 depends on your own personal preferences and pecadilloes. Like I said in my original post, if you enjoy micromanaging your tiles so you can make sure that no overflow food is lost, Civ 2 is still there. I remember trying to do that. It was horrible. Me, I like to relax, turtle up, skirmish a bit, explore, make large-scale strategic decisions, avoid micromanagement, and win peacefully, with maybe one or two dramatic war tossed in to make things interesting. Civ 5 is a lot more fun for a player like me. I like the city-states. I like the 1UPT (it makes defending your territory more fun than confronting a stack of doom.) I like that the various Civs are better differentiated. I especially like the more leisurely pace of expansion, and the use of global happiness as a replacement for the obnoxious old mechanics that put brakes on your growth (city happiness and $$$ and corruption). I can appreciate the frustration people have with the design decisions that restrict your options, in particular the move from changeable civics to permanent policies. But that doesn't strike me as THAT big of a problem. I guess I'm just a bit confused by people who insist that Civ 4 is a better game. To me, Civ 5 is another big step forward. And I hope this isn't the last major expansion we'll see. Civ 4 didn't reach perfection until the BtS expansion, which really made that game super-awesome.

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I'm not articulating my point very well, either. Probably because I'm confused about what my point actually is, as it is a bit of a moving target. For now, it is this: Every Civ (except for Civ 2) has been "different in kind" than its predecessor. Civ5 is no different than the rest. So I think I initially disagreed with you that Civ 5 was "different in kind." Now I agree with you. But I think that's always the case with a new Civ game, and I don't think Civ5 was a bigger change than over its predecessor than, say, Civ 3 or Civ 4.

I suppose this is kind of a goofy argument, and whether an individual likes 4 better than 5 depends on your own personal preferences and pecadilloes. Like I said in my original post, if you enjoy micromanaging your tiles so you can make sure that no overflow food is lost, Civ 2 is still there. I remember trying to do that. It was horrible. Me, I like to relax, turtle up, skirmish a bit, explore, make large-scale strategic decisions, avoid micromanagement, and win peacefully, with maybe one or two dramatic war tossed in to make things interesting. Civ 5 is a lot more fun for a player like me. I like the city-states. I like the 1UPT (it makes defending your territory more fun than confronting a stack of doom.) I like that the various Civs are better differentiated. I especially like the more leisurely pace of expansion, and the use of global happiness as a replacement for the obnoxious old mechanics that put brakes on your growth (city happiness and $$$ and corruption). I can appreciate the frustration people have with the design decisions that restrict your options, in particular the move from changeable civics to permanent policies. But that doesn't strike me as THAT big of a problem. I guess I'm just a bit confused by people who insist that Civ 4 is a better game. To me, Civ 5 is another big step forward. And I hope this isn't the last major expansion we'll see. Civ 4 didn't reach perfection until the BtS expansion, which really made that game super-awesome.

Oh, I'm not saying Civ V is better or worse than any other installment in the series, though it hasn't managed to capture my own heart. My point, lost in all the minutiae, was that certain design choices have made it harder to plot Civ V on the line graph of increasing sophistication that provided the narrative for the franchise's development thus far, which explains in turn the mixed reactions as much as any metric of "quality". In many ways, Civ V is more like a reboot, reimagining mechanics that have remained unchanged at their core since the beginning of the series, and reboots are always divisive, especially among fans.

Anyway, we can let this drop and actually talk about the game itself. I haven't said, but I've been loving the stories.

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We launch massive ICBM strikes on the other continents; they retaliate in kind. The land is radioactive and ruined, and sea waters rise and cover the coasts. As the nukes continue to fly, more and more tiles are turned into ocean, and my Dutch cities become ever more productive

I miss global warming! Too easy to just fire off the nukes in 5 with no consequences.

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In conclusion, the Netherlands is a land of contrast. Thank you.

Brilliant.

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I have a good story for this.

After I purchased Civ 5, I started a game as the Japanese and I got to work. Starting placement was good, and i pretty much had a continent to myself, sharing my space with 2 city states. After several turns of growth, establishing cities and exploration, I finally found a second continent to the east with 3 Civ's on it, India, Germany, and the Songhai. I establish a foothold city close to Germany (i think i developed a bias against them due to there aggressiveness in a Civ4 game i played previously). This does not make them happy, but as i'm considerably more powerful, they only make passive-aggressive taunts.

Several turns later, I find the Native Americans, America, and England. I also find the Mongols. By this time, i think i was harassing allied city states of Germany, and they were getting angry with me. I'm getting annoyed, and i'm itching to see how powerful I've become. Suddenly, Askia of the Songhai decides he wants to declare war on Germany, and asks me if i wish to join him as a war buddy.

I jumped at the chance, and began mobilizing for war. by the time I got to the continent with my armies, Askia had taken 3 German cities. I charge into the battle and take 1 German city. The following turn, Askia Signs a Cease Fire with Germany, and then decides he's going to denounce me! In fact, everyone denounces me in 2 turns!

needless to say, I wasn't happy. I took Germany's next request to sign a peace treaty, and went to work on Askia. I took the 3 cities he took from Germany, and gave them back to their original owner. Then i conquered city after city until Askia had 1 city left on the southernmost tip of a peninsula. I blockaded him there, and left him to waste away.

a few turns later, he tried to expand, so I eliminated him.

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Hey, sorry to break up the Civ stories for a moment (I don't have one of my own, my only real 4X experience is MoM. I know, *shun*). I blog over at therulesonthefield.com, and I think it might have accidentally broken your off-turnening of comments over at Flash of Steel with trackback links. Sorry about that. If you'd rather I didn't, I could try to disable trackbacks for any links to 3MA in the future, although I admit I don't actually know how to do that.

Posting in this thread because you ended the show with that entreaty to bring discussion here instead.

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I think there are two kinds of Civ story those that remind us of history & those that create a fantastical new one.

My own most memorable Civ 5 story was when I formed my own eastern block. Playing as the Russians I expanded across my continent bumping early on into the Germans who constantly threatened me and attempted raids on my borders. This forced me into switching to a military economy and I slowly pushed them back until eventually I rolled into their capital.

I found myself pondering what to do next. Foremost in my mind was that for a long time the German’s had had me on the back foot & had come close to doing my civ considerable harm. So what did I do now, I made damn sure it wouldn't happen again. I took my anti German force and kept on pushing until I ran into the Aztec, American and Iroquois nations. The Aztecs were a spent force protected mainly from their mighty American neighbour by a mountain range with very few passes. The Americans and the Iroquois were at war with each other with the American's in the ascendancy. With one look I decided that I couldn't take the risk that when they were done slaughtering the Iroquois they would turn on me.

I stormed into the Aztec lands crushing them easily, the natural barrier which had for centuries protected them from their enemies to the south was no defence for my northern assault.

My attentions now turned to the war to the south west. The Iroquois were down to their last few cities by now I had to act fast. I rushed through the mountain pass into the Americans territory, city after city fell to me. The American were helpless, years of peace with their weak Aztec neighbours and their war with the Iroquois had left them out of position to deal with my flood or angry Russians.

I kept pushing until I started running into American cities with Iroquois names, I didn’t rest until the American didn't hold a single Iroquois city. Then slowly but surely I began handing city after city to the Iroquois, until I had built a wall of grey on the map between me & a now exhausted American nation.

My safety now assured I began to covert my military might fullyto science. Then a few decades after the final battle of my great war a Russian spaceship sailed into the sky .

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Now I've got my little anecdote out, onto the meat of the discussion!

Fundamentally I don't think Civ has always been a representation of our world not a simulation, and one that presents a very specific view of the world. Its focuses on the idea of what it means to be a civilisation not the nitty grity (that's where paradox has carved out more of a niche it seems).

To me through Civ I-IV that view stayed relatively constant, it was a world of superpowers (depicted from the view point of what was the worlds only superpower). There was no limit to what you could achieve these superpower nations, they were by their very nature capable of anything.

Sometimes a civ could just completely break the system in a radical way, they could even break the world itself with global warming.

In Civ V It just feels to me there are far more checks & balances in place to stop that happening. In addition there is a feels like there is a far greater interdependency on other nations thanks to the introduction of city states and the way resources are now far more limited.

To put it simply in when I play Civ5 I no longer fell I am controlling a superpower.

So I personally don’t think the statement Gormongous made went far enough.

Civ seemed like one of those few franchises where every iteration was received as a qualitative improvement by the majority of the community. Civ V broke that streak by being a different take on the same themes that its predecessor laid out

To me the recurrent theme of Civs I -IV was the growth of superpower civilisation, and while this still is present in Civ V I feel the picture it paints it is a strangely neutered version of a superpowers.

Just look at the stories people are telling. In PatientPylon's story I don't think there can be any doubt that that Dutch civ was a superpower, but the same can't be said for many of the Civ V stories.

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To me the recurrent theme of Civs I -IV was the growth of superpower civilisation, and while this still is present in Civ V I feel the picture it paints it is a strangely neutered version of a superpowers.

That's interesting. I wonder if that's actually a reflection of the changing American (as I presume most of the Firaxis developers to be) view of their own country and what it means to be a superpower in the modern world.

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@Codicier: I agree with you that in the early game a Civ is probably more dependent on others for resources. Luxury resources are needed to keep your civ growing and strategic ones for military might (and later on industrial might). Most Civs are capable of playing a military game and if the player is aggressive they can expand enough to take many of the resources they need. I think in the later game the dependency on other civs is reduced by a large degree, unless you get shafted out of a very important resource, like oil.

I would argue that there are still superpowers who can go it alone. I do think it is harder to dominate militarily on Civ V due to the attack value of cities. It slows down the war. I think 1 unit per tile also breaks my will to keep expanding militarily since it involves a lot more busywork than managing a stack of doom. I don't want to go back to stacks of doom, but I think this system could be refined to take some of the tedium out. I like the concept of organizing into armies with some combined arms and perhaps having different combat phases (arty, ranged, melee), with different units getting use in different phases, bonuses based on the terrain, etc.

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That's interesting. I wonder if that's actually a reflection of the changing American (as I presume most of the Firaxis developers to be) view of their own country and what it means to be a superpower in the modern world.

This is a possibility I've given a fair amount of thought Gwardinen, and i feel if true it in turn says something else important about Civ. But I'm too tired to go into it fully right away (perhaps tomorrow).

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Never mind I've evidently had too much coffee, so lets do this!

The Short Version:

To me looking back original Civ was the product of a time where Americas ascendancy in world affairs seemed unchallenged. After the Berlin wall fell it wasn't just a Superpower it was the only superpower, or to put it another way, America was the only empire that had stood the test of time.

The Long Version:

Here I'm going have to do something I normally hate doing & refer you to a blog post I finished off today but which has been brewing since January of this year. Life, Liberty, and Civilization

I did consider just posting it here direct into the forum but I worried people might feel its a bit TLDR, so I've tried put a quick relevant summary here and leave the link there for anyone who wants a fuller explanation of my reasoning so they can decide for themselves whether I am barking up the wrong tree.

Anyway for better or worse 3MA and the discussion in here got me thinking about it again, and perhaps I can get a bit of useful feedback from you guys might help me improve.

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To me looking back original Civ was the product of a time where Americas ascendancy in world affairs seemed unchallenged. After the Berlin wall fell it wasn't just a Superpower it was the only superpower, or to put it another way, America was the only empire that had stood the test of time.

On a related note, it's always been interesting how different versions of Civ have dealt with the existence of an endgame. I remember reading in an interview how Sid Meier agonized over how to discourage the use of nuclear weapons in a scenario where the world ends at Y2K, which makes it particularly curious that they've stuck by the hard deadline that makes such recklessness possible.

Above all, it invariably leads to this weird situation where, all other metrics failing, the largest and most powerful nation left standing after six thousand years of history is the victor. So that's success, is it? I guess I'm proud to be an American then.

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Above all, it invariably leads to this weird situation where, all other metrics failing, the largest and most powerful nation left standing after six thousand years of history is the victor. So that's success, is it? I guess I'm proud to be an American then.

Yeah, although to actually get the American experience you'd have to suddenly get a large nation with plentiful resources built for you at the beginning of the industrial era with a little over 200 years left to go. I'm not exactly arguing that you should be forced to play civilisations that actually existed at 4000BC (not least because information on that time is so scarce) and then "evolve" into later ones, or something, but it is interesting how earlier Civ games are so into the modern American concept of superpowers that they retroactively apply them to the span of human civilisation. Are there even any "nations" as we would understand it that have existed unbroken for the last three or four thousand, let alone six thousand, years? China maybe? I'm not even sure about that.

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Yeah, although to actually get the American experience you'd have to suddenly get a large nation with plentiful resources built for you at the beginning of the industrial era with a little over 200 years left to go. I'm not exactly arguing that you should be forced to play civilisations that actually existed at 4000BC (not least because information on that time is so scarce) and then "evolve" into later ones, or something, but it is interesting how earlier Civ games are so into the modern American concept of superpowers that they retroactively apply them to the span of human civilisation. Are there even any "nations" as we would understand it that have existed unbroken for the last three or four thousand, let alone six thousand, years? China maybe? I'm not even sure about that.

Didn't Egypt exist from around 2500 BC?

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Didn't Egypt exist from around 2500 AD?

Ah, yeah, of course. For some reason I forgot Egypt was in the game for a moment. Yeah, that's probably the one with the most thoroughly traceable history that far back.

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Ah, yeah, of course. For some reason I forgot Egypt was in the game for a moment. Yeah, that's probably the one with the most thoroughly traceable history that far back.

But then again, Egypt stops being an independent culture and therefore a player in world history shortly after 1000 BC, so it's not a particularly good example there either. China is the closest to the ideal of an eternal and unchanging civilization, but only because its successive governments have been enormously invested in arguing for perfect continuity with the past. No, the entire idea of history-spanning nations is totally bankrupt from an intellectual standpoint, but it feels very authentic, so I guess we give it a pass?

I'm not exactly arguing that you should be forced to play civilisations that actually existed at 4000BC (not least because information on that time is so scarce) and then "evolve" into later ones...

One of the scenarios that came with Beyond the Sword was a (somewhat clumsy) adaptation of the popular mod Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, which did exactly that. To start, you could choose one of the powers from early antiquity like the Babylonians or Egyptians, then as certain circumstances were fulfilled you could jump ship to new civilizations spawned by your actions, carrying your score with you. So you'd start as Assyria, conquer the shit out of the Middle East, reach critical mass, then either jump to newly-spawned Persians invading your empire or try to go against history by defending against them. The Greeks would be spawned by similar conquests out west and you'd again be given the choice of staying or switching.

It was a fascinating idea kind of undermined by the fundamentals of psychology. It's tough to spend the first hundred turns building an ideal society, then be expected to turn tail and wreck it, but the alternative was being trapped in a decaying and increasingly marginalized society. Thematic, maybe even authentic, but as a gameplay concept I was never sold.

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