No More Religion, More Tactics for Civilization V

It's a weak and terrible imitation on so many levels - BUT - it feels like a cross between Civ IV and Civ I. And it is certainly shorter than Civ IV.

Civ IV is one of my favorite games, and I used to have the same problem - games took forever. But, you can drastically speed up games by changing settings and playstyle.

Generally:

1. Less land 2. Less ocean 3. Less civs 4. Less space 5. Higher difficulties

are conducive to a faster game. Yes, higher difficulties, because you'll lose early fairly often, and the games where you don't lose stay very stimulating and exciting. Mid/lower settings mean you'll win more often, but it's slow and boring at the end after you've got a dominating lead. Playing out the endgame becomes rote.

Also, the way you play changes it. Later wars and offensive wars take more time. If you war early and wipe out the nearest Civ or two near you between axes, swords, elephants, and catapults - the pre longbow wars - they go pretty fast, then with the extra space you can build out without fearing war very much for the rest of the game.

Alternatively, defensive wars where you use defensive units and let yourself be attacked go faster.

Finally, smaller, better utilized empires can mean less playtime. In Civ IV you have a big tradeoff with the exponential growth cost of cities. That means you can choose between trying to aim for a 9-12 city late-game before you go on a rampage, or the "as many cities as possible" way. But really, 9-12 very good cities and razing the rest of the enemy cities plays a lot faster. There's a lot of mediocre cities that "break even" on their contributions to research/production of their cost. You can simply not take them at all, just don't found them, or burn them down if you capture them. That said, this is conducive to different buildings, civics, and playstyle. Bureaucracy becomes much more powerful, State Property is weakened. Courthouses go from first priority with a larger empire to a nice "if we've got free time" sort of thing. If you're playing a smaller empire, you have less frontier/border cities, so it's easier to build walls and castles to fight a defensive war if/when you get invaded. Etc, etc.

My Civ IV games used to run 30+ hours. With a different playstyle, I can now usually see if I've got a reasonable chance to win within 2-6 hours, and then I'm looking at maybe 4-5 more hours of pretty exciting endgame if so. And I micromanage my production and wars quite a bit - if you don't mind using the "optimize xyz" options that get things 90% right, you can bang out a pretty good game in 3-4 hours. Compare that to my old way where the game was decided after 10-15 hours, and then you're looking at 10-20 hours of boring "cleanup" where you slog along to victory and... yeah, I like it much better this way.

Edit: A good way to learn to play fast games that teach you a lot is to go Duel-sized map, one random opponent, opponent, Deity difficult, and be one of the Civs with a good early war unit like Persia or Mongolia. Make 1 or 2 cities, hook up horses/copper/iron, and try to take the other side out. It's harder than it sounds, and it'll be a one to two hour game. You'll learn more about higher difficulties, early build priorities for fast wars, and using terrain and prioritizing in combat. The computer has such a production edge that you need to play the tactics very well to slow them down, put choke points in their land so they can't hook up metal for the counter to your unit, and so on. Similarly small map/high difficulties/gear towards winning or losing early makes fun games while teaching specific skills.

The notion of an artillery unit attacking a city all by itself makes no sense, even with the notion of withdrawing. Units need to be grouped, and combat should be executed in multiple phases ( ranged weapons, then melee ). Additionally, if a single marine attacks a tile with 20 marines on it, the 20 marines should take it out with no losses 99.9% of the time. The one on one model makes no sense.

The rules may not be actively enforced, but they still exist and there is always the possibility that someone could wake up to the fact that they now own the copyright, and they could create grief for you. An admittedly unlikely scenario, but still possible.

What is Abandonware? Is it legal?

Wikipedia: "Abandonware is computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder. Alternately, the term is also used for software which is still available, but on which further support and development has been deliberately discontinued."

Since the software is no longer sold or supported, the copyright holders are not directly harmed in any way. This is why abandonware sites are, for the most part, ignored by the law.

The distribution of copyrighted software however is, and will allways be, illegal!

Why not try Freeciv instead? http://freeciv.wikia.com

Although I like chess as well, after a long day, I find it much more relaxing to watch the tank driver take position and blow up a bunch of zergs, than to think about abstract units like a rook.

I must say I don't like most modern strategy games however... I'd much rather play Settlers III than Settlers 7, the original Stronghold over Stronghold 2, or civ 2 over civ 3. Somehow the transition from isometric to full 3D made the game much harder to control for me, and I prefer good drawings to 3D renderings. Japanese games are still very 2D-based though so I play a lot of them. YMMV.

The strategy. It's in the noise. I didn't see it because I didn't know what it was to think strategically.

Writes Clausewitz in his classic On War:

The conduct of war, then, consists in the planning and conduct of fighting. If fighting consisted of a single act, no further subdivision would be needed. However, it consists of a greater or lesser number of single acts, each complete in itself, which . . . are called 'engagements' and which form new entities. This gives rise to the completely different activity of planning and executing these engagements themselves, and of coordinating each of them with the others in order to further the object of the war. One has been called tactics and the other strategy. . . tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war.

Anyone can think tactically. I have six zerglings, you have seven; you'll probably win, but perhaps I can cycle them and dance them around to do the most possible damage. Perhaps I can find the perfect spot for a siege tank on a hill, or which turret to use my battlecruiser's main gun on. From such a perspective, the game seems trivial; whoever brings the better forces to the engagement, provided both parties do the right thing, will almost certainly win.

The game is in bringing the better forces to the engagement. Deciding when and where to engage, what to control, what to build and to bring. To wait 30 seconds and take your eight marines with twelve of my own, rather than six, and then six a little later -- so I win instead of lose. Or to strike quickly so your forces are tied down and cannot interfere with another objective. Or to strike much later with more advanced forces that take no damage.

In any engagement, once both sides see what forces are in play, the outcome is already determined. Some micromanagement and smart tactics can help, but ultimately you must decide on the spot whether to spend the units or retreat. That is not the interesting part. The interesting part is in constructing the engagements to your advantage. To have the better unit matchup, or the advantage of surprise or defense, or to have more power in that particular place at that particular time.

The Excel part everybody does, and everybody gets. Factor that out. Assume everyone mines and builds perfectly. That's where the game actually starts: in turning the engagement to your advantage over what you build and where you fight. All the planning and deception and reacting and struggling that goes into that. Initiative. Massing. Marching. Scouting. That's strategy. That's the allure.

The appeal of strats? Take 20 minutes and watch some masters play . . .

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/4.xml

. . . and with luck, it will be obvious.

This is true, but the art of strategy game design is in bolting the right interface to the right spreadsheet so that the people will actually enjoy applying themselves to the problem. Relatively few people find the math inherently fun. The better games lend weight to judgement with layers of complexity, competing demands, random elements, and multiple victory conditions. On higher difficulty levels, the Civilization games actually cheat, which means by that point not only do you have to be an expert optimizer, you also have to have very good judgement in order to win. And when that becomes stale, there's always other humans.

In the meantime the game is dealing out rewards not only of military victory, but also the joy of "gardening": tending to your cities, your bases, your whatever. This is a big part of the gulf between turn-based and real-time strategy games. Turn-based games can take weeks or even months to play through, which changes the kind of thought you're able to apply to each move and amplifies the reward of seeing your empire grow, while real-time strategy games tend to favor entering a match with a pre-determined strategy and implementing it efficiently. In my experience, people tend to have a strong preference one way or the other, not because the core game is so different, but because they find different things rewarding.

In that sense most strategy games are variations on a theme rather than truly unique. Compare correspondence chess and speed chess to OTB chess--the game is the same, but the experience of playing them is quite different.