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Some people may play 4x games because they want to practice their accounting skills and their joy of working spreadsheets in a fantasy setting, but empire micro-management is supposed to be a small part of these games. Especially when done right, where a lot of the pointless detail is paved over by AI governors to keep the game pace up a bit.

And regardless of how much you want a 4x to be about people beating each other up or not, the game needs to robustly support that in order for the rest of the game to work correctly. Civ V is a great example of this. Because you're only expected to have 2-4 cities and only maybe take over a couple others, it makes the maps very small. Not really much exploring, especially compared to, say, Civ III, where you could still be finding stuff right up to the point where you get satellites. Likewise, with tiny maps and few cities, you're not really doing much by means of expanding. Especially, in the case of civ V where you have city-states (otherwise a good idea) clogging up all of the negative space on the map. And when you have small maps and heavily-restricted territory, it even interferes with exploitation as you're just not as likely to have the resources to exploit. You can partially make up for this mistake in certain way (like city-state diplomacy in civ V), but you have to do it right just to make up for some of the problem (and if you don't, like Civ IV, then who wins can sometimes be decided by little more than random resource draw).

Even if you don't want to do lots of war, you need a robust war system to force the developers to do the rest of the game correctly. 4x games are supposed to be 4x games, not computer versions of Agricola. If all you're doing is carefully spending each turn going city by city and making tiny tweaks to their workers to make the most efficient empire possible before hitting the next turn button, then I'm sure you'd have fun with a copy of quicken. For people who want more of a game to their game, rather than just white-collar toil...

---

Actually, there already is a game for that - Sim City. Mostly just slider bar movement with a small amount of reaction to the terrain you start with, and the occasional minor disaster thrown in to make it a little spicy without any serious chance your city could be destroyed.

And I like Sim City for what it does, but what it definitely doesn't do is 4x.

 Soladrin wrote:

 toasteroven wrote:

 Soladrin wrote:
Europa Universalis.

Love those games.

Europa Universalis is a game that I love that I have never, ever been able to complete. And I've been playing since the first one. I kind of wish they would have kept the Fantasia scenario in the more recent ones.

For me, the Age of Wonders games have been my favorites for a long while. I'm still sad they don't have playable Frostlings in 3, though.

Yeah, I hardly ever "finish" a game of EU, I just set out on some goal and will work towards that.

Like creating Germany in the year 1650 from The Hansa.

Yeah, that's the only way to go, I think. One of my favorite games was playing EU III as the Byzantines. Instead of trying to save Constantinople, I said "screw this" and invaded north Africa. And succeeded. Steadily worked my way westwards until I had Morocco, and was working towards discovering the new world. Sadly, I never finished that one. But I still like the idea of the Americas being colonized by a bunch of exiled Greeks and Berbers.

Anyone else play call to power2? I loved that little spin off of civ The cool thing about it is it has a little narrative to it where around the modern age pollution will destroy the world and totally change the game as you have to flee to the sea. I would love to see more big game changers like that in 4x games. Like if you had a nuclear war then the tech tree would derail and you would start learning techs like religion atom bomb.

 Ailaros wrote:
empire micro-management

Wait, what? You're accusing Civ of having empire micro-management in a thread where people listed games like Europa Universalis as examples?

nomotog wrote:
Anyone else play call to power2? I loved that little spin off of civ The cool thing about it is it has a little narrative to it where around the modern age pollution will destroy the world and totally change the game as you have to flee to the sea. I would love to see more big game changers like that in 4x games. Like if you had a nuclear war then the tech tree would derail and you would start learning techs like religion atom bomb.

I played call to power, didn’t know there was a 2. I enjoyed the fact that they went into the future, rather then just stopping at the modern age. Other then that, I file it with the rest of the Civ games (which is a good thing)

 Melissia wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
empire micro-management

Wait, what? You're accusing Civ of having empire micro-management in a thread where people listed games like Europa Universalis as examples?

Yeah... I was going to point that out.

I play 4X because I love empire micro, not the opposite. It's the reason I don't like civ games, I don't have enough control.

To Toaster:

I think one of my favorite matches of EU 4 was when I played as Utrecht. Did everything I could to survive burgendy at the start, then focussed everything on the new world. When I had 3 provinces in North america I GTFO'd my capital over there and became Dutchmerica, after the mandatory slaughter of the locals ofcourse..

The streamlined empire micro is the reason why I like civ over EU, amusingly. They're both definitely 4X, though.

Soladrin, that sounds great. Getting one of the one province minors into the new world was always one of my favorite goals.

I think that I like Europa Universalis because of the setting and the sheer number of countries you can play as, and in spite of the micro. I like playing as the smaller countries, partly because I get a bit lost in the big empires. That's also why I've never quite been able to get the hang of Victoria, no matter how much I try.

Now, if I want to play a game with real micro-management, I'll play Aurora. Which I won't, because I've never been able to figure out how to play Aurora.

Sword of the Stars (original + expansions and NOT 2)

Melissia wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
empire micro-management

Wait, what? You're accusing Civ of having empire micro-management in a thread where people listed games like Europa Universalis as examples?

I was accusing Civ V of making a game that weighted so heavily on one of the X's that it wasn't as good at the other three. They made the maps too small and cluttered to do as much exploring as you could, and made gaining more cities, especially by war so detrimental that there isn't much for expanding or exterminating.

They focused the game too much on exploiting the resources of a tiny plot of land over just a couple of cities at the sake of everything else.

Civ V is a weaker 4x game than others, which do all four X's well instead of just one with the rest as more of an afterthought.

While we are here, although not perhaps a true '4x' game in the true spirit of the term, what do people think of Empire: Total War? It's on sale on Steam at the moment, was thinking of getting it.

 Ailaros wrote:

Melissia wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
empire micro-management

Wait, what? You're accusing Civ of having empire micro-management in a thread where people listed games like Europa Universalis as examples?

I was accusing Civ V of making a game that weighted so heavily on one of the X's that it wasn't as good at the other three. They made the maps too small and cluttered to do as much exploring as you could, and made gaining more cities, especially by war so detrimental that there isn't much for expanding or exterminating.

They focused the game too much on exploiting the resources of a tiny plot of land over just a couple of cities at the sake of everything else.

Civ V is a weaker 4x game than others, which do all four X's well instead of just one with the rest as more of an afterthought.

I agree to an extent, I also don't think that the less abstract combat (with ranges for archers etc.) works that well. I thought Civ 5 was pretty poor when it was first released, massively dumbed down with crappy AI, although the expansions have turned into a better game.

I'm still not entirely convinced about everything being lumped under 'happiness' for Civ 5, or 'health' for BE (which is essentially just Civ5 in a new skin - not to take anything away from it)

a) It used to be cool balancing growth with culture and economics, and the wellfair of individual cities (you could have some which were better behaved than others for example in previous games), and b) it's not really realistic!

Think I probably preferred Civ 4 in terms of how much time I spent on it - one minor criticism is that the devs had removed the ability of you to damage the ecosphere as you could do in Civ 2 and 3 through pollution and nukes.

I think CIV 3 blows CIV5 out of the water.

My biggest issue with CIV5 is they got the scale all out of wack.

Tiny maps, tiny armies, huge cities no multiple units on tiles etc.

Then the other issue is how bland exploring (tiny maps) came as a result. The ability for units to turn into boats also made the need for a navy a lot less pressing.

The no stacking of units screwed up not only the scale of open conflict but also the loss of combined arms. In CIV 3 I would attack 3 towns on the AI mainland (they would normally have about 30-80 more cities/towns) and it would take 300 units or more to gain a foothold to press the attack. Marines, transports, navy, aircover, ground forces and paratroopers all are a huge part of it and it all happened on small areas of a truly world wide map.

I think the change of scale of the game really ruined all aspects except the management side of things. I mean, in CIV5 you have religion, more choosy political options and so on. But everything else is so lackluster.

I hate using this as a reason for not liking a game, but it felt dumbed down. 4X games with huge scale and scope are the ones that I think are generally better. Even master of Orion 2 had huge forces and empires that I felt more accurately portrayed just how big everything is and its a somewhat basic game form the 90s.

 Ailaros wrote:
They made the maps too small and cluttered to do as much exploring as you could, and made gaining more cities, especially by war so detrimental that there isn't much for expanding or exterminating.

I'm not sure you played the same game that I did, because I had no problems playing a warmonger and succeeding in Civ5.

I... actually kind of like the fact that units don't stack in Civ V. Civ IV could get so overboard with doomstacks, and it just made the wars an exercise in grinding frustration.

 Chongara wrote:
Probably Space Empires IV. I played a ton of that back in the day. I'm not sure I'd call it the best, you have to do a ton of micromanagement with just about everything. Still if that's your kind of thing it was great fun.

How did I miss this? I still play Space Empires IV every now and then. It's got a level of detail to the universe that I like. To me, one of the things that's missing from a lot of 4x games is the exploration part. And Space Empires IV is filled with strange planets with neat little descriptions, and tremendously varied systems... it makes it fun to discover each one. It scratches the exploration itch far more than games like Endless Space or Galactic Civilizations have.

So it's definitely my kind of thing.

Melissia wrote:

They made the maps too small and cluttered to do as much exploring as you could, and made gaining more cities, especially by war so detrimental that there isn't much for expanding or exterminating.

I'm not sure you played the same game that I did, because I had no problems playing a warmonger and succeeding in Civ5.

It wasn't that you couldn't ever win a domination victory.

It was that you couldn't scramble for open territory like you could in older versions because there just wasn't nearly as much of it, and every city exponentially made it more difficult to have another city. And it's not like you could never conquer a city, but because cities have HUGE defence in civ V (compared no no defence whatsoever in civ III), it meant that any war that takes place in the first three hours of the game could be effectively ignored because a single archer and an upgrade building or two could destroy an entire enemy army. And even if you DID manage to take over a city, you had to deal with the absurd revolt penalty from the conquered city combined with the exponential unhappiness in every other city for no other reason than that you added another city.

You could practice expansion (by war) and extermination, but you had to wait until you built up an economy that could sustain it, which meant that you had to spend hours playing the game before you were given the serious option to play what was supposed to be 50% of the game. Which, given that there wasn't much by exploration, well...

toasteroven wrote:I... actually kind of like the fact that units don't stack in Civ V. Civ IV could get so overboard with doomstacks, and it just made the wars an exercise in grinding frustration.

I also agree with this, and is a real gem for Civ V compared to practically everything else. But this one good thing about the combat system doesn't make up for everything else they did wrong with it. It's sort of like close combat in 40k since 6th edition. They did add a few things that made more sense, but it was compared to a vast pile of stuff they nerfed that ultimately changed the way most people play it for the worse.

Civ V does does do combined arms in a slightly better way, thanks to its demands to actually use space and terrain rather than stacking a bunch of units and letting the strongest fight first in any given situation, but instead of just adding that feature, they added in everything else as well.

So your complaint is that civ is a longer game than some other 4x games?

... again, I'd like to remind you of Europa Universalis and other examples mentioned in this. Civ is... REALLY streamlined compared to a lot of other 4X games and allows for a lot faster action.

Civ can get kind of grindy particularly in around the turn of the century when you have discovered most of the map. You have dozens (to thousands) of choices to make each turn and most of them will have little impact. It's normally the time I start a world war to spice up the game.

Melissia wrote:So your complaint is that civ is a longer game than some other 4x games?

That's not it at all.

The problem is how long you have to play the game until you can start playing the game. If you want to have a game where you're doing a bunch of slider bar management, well, you're only going to be doing it for a couple of cities until you can conquer more, which won't happen for a long time. If you want to have a game where you're expanding your empire, you only get to do it a tiny bit, and then have to wait until you can build up the resources to make permanent city state allies or start a war where real territory will change hands. If you want to exterminate, you've got to spend hours building up a vast surplus of cash and happiness (both of which will evaporate instantly once the campaign begins), and that's before you can start building an army, and that's before you even get a chance to do fighting.

I'd love civ V if it were 80 hours of fun. Instead, you get a game that's 3 hours of accounting work followed by 3 hours of pursuing a strategy to victory.

You can set the pace of the game if you want. Also I barely do any accounting when I play. Your citys will auto manage most of their factors and all you need to worry about is what they are building.

 Ailaros wrote:
The problem is how long you have to play the game until you can start playing the game.

Given loading times, about five minutes. Woudl be better if I had a better processor.

But other 4X games aren't much better.

 Ailaros wrote:
If you want to have a game where you're doing a bunch of slider bar management

I wouldn't be playing Civ5, which doesn't use slider bars?

 Ailaros wrote:
, well, you're only going to be doing it for a couple of cities until you can conquer more, which won't happen for a long time. If you want to have a game where you're expanding your empire, you only get to do it a tiny bit[

Play on larger maps? If the problem is competition, make war with them? Start with less civilizations on the map?

 Ailaros wrote:
If you want to exterminate, you've got to spend hours building up a vast surplus of cash and happiness (both of which will evaporate instantly once the campaign begins), and that's before you can start building an army, and that's before you even get a chance to do fighting.

Not really? You can make war without doing either of those things. Sometimes doing it earlier is more optimal, because in Civ5 you may be playing a civ with an early combat advantage.

 Ailaros wrote:
I'd love civ V if it were 80 hours of fun. Instead, you get a game that's 3 hours of accounting work

I don't recall setting up a flexible budget plan, or adjusting numbers in an activity-based costing mechanism, or assigning debits and credits.

If you're talking about "resource management" as accounting then... maybe the problem is that you don't like 4x games, because resource management is an intrinsic property of the genre. BEcause Civ is extremely streamlined in its resource management-- most 4x games are MORE involved.

There's not a single 4x game in existence that your complaints would not apply to.

I don't think you could get a x4 game as inviting as civ 5. I mean it literally tells you what to build. You just need to make some of the high level stuff like focusing on economy or military, or whatever.

On the other hand, if you went instantly to the version with all the expansions, then you might get floored bases on the sheer number of systems. I think they intentionally ship a incomplete game so people can step into things over time. If you jump to the end it's like a smack in the face.

Heh, I guess I just understood why the EU games really are a good example in this.

Because you want to talk about a slow starting game? Try playing as one of the new world countries in EU III. Unless you got lucky, adjusting a slider or two was pretty much all you could do for the first third of the game's time frame. "Hooray, I can move a little bit further towards centralization! Now to wait another 50 years!" And then the Europeans would arrive and kill you.

Or you could play in Sub-Saharan Africa! And adjust a slider or two for a couple of centuries, until the Europeans arrived and killed you.

Even if you start in Europe, if you aren't playing as one of the big powers, conquest isn't the easiest thing to get going. You have to walk softly and build up a power base for a while before making a move, in my experience.

Compared to that, Civ V moves like a rocket.

I mean, I get that the world isn't as big as it was in older games. But I've played Civ V to the end, and with good sized worlds, I've had unclaimed land on the map. Setting up the game so that there are the right number of players and city states for the map size can work wonders.

(I still love the games, mind you. But they got their flaws, like all games)

 Melissia wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
The problem is how long you have to play the game until you can start playing the game.

Given loading times, about five minutes. Woudl be better if I had a better processor.

But other 4X games aren't much better.

 Ailaros wrote:
If you want to have a game where you're doing a bunch of slider bar management

I wouldn't be playing Civ5, which doesn't use slider bars?

Don't be dense.

Melissia wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
, well, you're only going to be doing it for a couple of cities until you can conquer more, which won't happen for a long time. If you want to have a game where you're expanding your empire, you only get to do it a tiny bit[

Play on larger maps? If the problem is competition, make war with them? Start with less civilizations on the map?

But the game itself doesn't handle that well. The massive penalty for adding more cities means that even if you artificially make more space, you still can't fill it. In older versions of civ, more cities was always better. In civ V this really isn't the case. You explore, expand, and exterminate up to the point your economy can't handle it any more (which is usually immediate), and then spend a great deal of time trying to catch back up with the computers for making the "mistake" of playing the other three X's.

Melissia wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
If you want to exterminate, you've got to spend hours building up a vast surplus of cash and happiness (both of which will evaporate instantly once the campaign begins), and that's before you can start building an army, and that's before you even get a chance to do fighting.

Not really? You can make war without doing either of those things. Sometimes doing it earlier is more optimal, because in Civ5 you may be playing a civ with an early combat advantage.

Maybe if you're playing the game on a really easy mode you can rush. Once you reach prince, you start running into the problem where in order to attack, you need to build military units, which hurts you relative to more economy (and thus science). If both the computer and I start out with 10 musketmen each, in the time it takes to build the 20 more musketmen to be able to actually take over stuff, the computer will have shot ahead and gotten the ability to make riflemen, which they then use to upgrade their old units, and now 30 musketmen are going to lose against 10 riflemen with the city defensive advantage.

This problem only gets worse when you actually manage to take over a city or two, as your economy goes in the toilet, while losing cities in the short term makes things EASIER for the computer, as it's the happiness and money problem in reverse.

Melissia wrote:If you're talking about "resource management" as accounting then... maybe the problem is that you don't like 4x games, because resource management is an intrinsic property of the genre.

If you're talking about resource management as the point of 4x games, then maybe the problem is that you don't like 4x games. You like 1x games where the other 3 X's are a nuisance, instead of a 4x game where resource management is one of several important parts.

4x's, when done well, like in civ III or IV or endless space, have a lot more to offer than what you get out of Sim City.

 Ailaros wrote:
If you're talking about resource management as the point of 4x games

It's one of the 4 Xs, so it is one of the points of the genre. And the Civ games have the other three points, too, again, I haven't had the problems you're complaining about.

But if you're going to claim, in bad faith, that I think that the only point of playing a 4x game is to manage resources.... I don't see much of a reason to continue this conversation.

I'm currently hooked on Amplitude studios Endless series. All three games are so wonderful. Rarely would I ever call games more than games, and consider it art, but these three games has got to be works art if there ever was one. Everything in the game is fashioned in such a way as to be intuitive and yet extremely satisfying when you put stuff together to create a bigger picture.

Used to spend unhealthy amounts of time on Birth of the Federation and Civ2. Alpha Centauri was great too. But I had less time when I got it.

What's the deal with that 'I like 4X more than you' dance you are dancing by the way?

now that armada 3 Call to arms is out... nothing comes close, best RTS/Space RTS game ever made