In Civ V you never really have any friends ever, they always just backstab you, and they don't backstab you in a smart way they just sorta do it. You can make friends, you can have tensions and enemies, cliques spring up, and when you get backstabbed it makes sense. The AI in Civ IV feels so realistic and good.
Conquering a far away city isn't going to randomly infuriate your capital, if anything they should be pleased with your war success.ĪI behavior. It allows for large empires but naturally limits growth in the early game. In IV you have higher maintenance costs the more cities you have and you can't over expand because it will tank your economy. Global happiness was put in as a new way to stop over expansion and allow "Tall" civs, but it feels artificially constrictive, doesn't make sense thematically on so many levels, and is annoying to micromanage. Cities are connected and you feel like one cohesive country, instead of 5 barely connected cities with weird squiggly octopus borders. Yeah Hex tiles are great, and policies are fun, but countries' borders look and feel better in Civ IV. In IV religion causes so much strife, it forges alliances and friendships, starts holy wars, placates your people. I might get some hate for this, but in Civ V religion just feels like a fun customization/bonus for your Civ, it doesn't have a larger effect on diplomacy and world politics. Next I'll mention some things I felt Civ IV did better than Civ V: These added some great diversity and replayability to different civs, however they were fairly imbalanced. A great fun natural addition to the game, something which only really adds to the game, other than being a bit OP at some times and in some ways, but it's singleplayer so whatever. Gold being a spendable resource is a lot more interesting and feels better than pumping it into research as much as possible. Vastly superior to squares on so many levels, they are nothing but an improvement, both strategically and aesthetically
I'll start by talking about the things Civ V did oh so correctly: Ultimately I prefer Civ IV (don't kill me) but I would like the next Civ game to be a combination of the best of both games. Civ IV represents a perfection of the original game of Civ I (and subsequently Civs II and especially III). I've played all the Civ games in their own time to a considerable extent, and I thought I'd compare Civ IV and Civ V, and see what other people's thoughts are on the two.Ĭiv V is in my mind the biggest change from one civ game to another, it represents an entirely new game in many ways. So I'm a huge civ IV player, having played somewhere in the range of 5 000 hours of it.