SubDeity posted...
Actually, I was also referring to adding more Civs that we've seen before (perhaps someday they'll actually include 30 civs out of the box and go from there!), putting in espionage yet again, and other content patch aspects that just serve to remind me that Civ IV still has more of everything.
Really, most civs are only similar in name only. Like, if you tried to claim that Civ 4 England and Civ 5 England played in even remotely the same way I'd basically respond with "wut?". Also, if you have EVER tried to make 30 very distinct factions to play as in a game you'd know: it's freaking close to absolutely impossible to do that and still be even remotely balanced. Civ 4 had the bonus of a major balance element being fixed across all civs: your leader's traits were often as much or even more game defining than your actual civ. (which is elegant, but restricts the design space a lot) The espionage complaint is valid though espionage looks pretty damn different in the expansion too. But I personally never really "got" espionage in BTS, it always felt underpowered for what you had to put into it aside from the fog of war stuff.
As for religion, it has the same problem that Civ V's civics do: It's all bonus-based and there's no sense of coherency to anything, and there's far less ability to change ideologies as civilizations historically have.
Uh. Most nations have actually been really, really, really static until MAYBE the last 100 years. There's a reason in Magna Mundi, an EU3 mod that spans several hundred years of time and attempts to somewhat accurately simulate history, that changing a National Idea after the fact basically IMPLODES your country. Instances where policy has changed signifnicantly outside of the last 100 years or so have been extremely bloody affairs or following extremely bloody ones. If you're a simulationist, there should definitely NOT be a little button that lets you change your policy after a couple years of not doing much.
I find the cohesion in Civ V fine. Most of the good bonuses aside from the starter policies are pretty deep in or strongly synergise, which means you basically have to dump 2-4 points in a tree. Doubly so since they added a bunch of really strong tree finishers so that now there's strong incentive to fill out the rest of the tree even if those bonues aren't that great. Really, the only issue I have with policies is that order was completely broken by patches and needed to be redone.
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