It would be weird to see a game released these days where the different civs/races/whatevers were identical other than cosmetics. Giving a unique ability/power/whatever to each race or team in a strategy game is almost a given. The tech tree contains almost exactly the same decision making and tradeoffs of just about any other turn based strategy I've played recently. Other than that, Civ 5 has much more complex diplomacy than RoN (and 4 for that matter). In CiV a player who has lost their capital has the whole game to retake it and can even still win without taking it back. In both cases it opens up a blitz the capital type strategy, though that plays out pretty differently in the two games. I'll grant you that eliminating the capital to eliminate the civ is a relatively uncommon quality in these building/war type games that RoN and civ 5 have in common. To me most of the similarities you've mentioned seem pretty superficial or unimportant. everyone starts with roughly the same land and resources and combat is extremely clean. The reason why Rise of Nations still ends up being so much better is because it's a somewhat balanced RTS and doesn't run into any of the problems that civ5's combat and economy has. Choices become more about strategy and less about optimization.
war as a viable option that doesn't require the attacker to have twice the power of the defender is something different from the recent iterations in the series and gives each of your actions much more consequence. The whole "civ5 feels like a RTS" is indicative of why it's much more strategic than civ4 but why people like it less. 1 unit per tile and simultaneous turns is just ugly and has turned into a disaster.
when there was war in civ4, the game still stayed about economy and technology and production because stacks were clean. war is not civ5's strength, but the game gets steered toward that direction far too often. if this was toned down it would provide an experience where RTS games are not superior. Right now the problem is combat in civ5 is too powerful so the games become wargames. civ5 ends up having a lot more depth because of this and because of way more complexity in the economy. in RoN/AoE expansion is always beneficial and there's no maintenance for anything. When I want to play an epic empire building game I play Civ 4.Ĭiv 5 tries to be both of these things at once, and in my opinion doesn't achieve either.Įven if civ was a RTS (and therefore had not so ****** combat), it has disadvantages to expanding via social policy costs and happiness. When I want to play a Civ style war game, I play Rise of Nations. I see Rise of Nations and Civ 5 as being essentially an RTS and a TBS format of the same game. I see Civ 5 as a sort of reverse of this, adding a lot of Age of Empires esc features to the basic core of Civ and I don't belive that it works well this way. What this results in is an RTS which has a lot more depth and variety then before. I have always viewed Rise of Nations as adding a lot of Civ features to the core of Age of Empires. It is both difficult and time consuming to properly manage a large empire which holds millions of citizens and has interests all over the globe, and it is that challenge which I most enjoy about Civ games. I enjoy setting up a government to best run my empire and making sure that my cities have resources they need in order to thrive, and managing my relations with neighbors. It is always necessary to have an army, but not to use it. When I play Civ however military is usually a secondary agenda to me. These features work superbly in Rise of Nations because it is at it's core a war game, I don't play Rise of Nations in order to build a vast empire which will last the ages, I play to crush my enemies and every choice I make be it building and city placement or technology researched is done with a purely military agenda in mind. Unique power for Nations, (Egypt even has the exact same power) Social Policy/Goverment system which is permanent once selected. It's pretty obvious to anyone familiar with Rise of Nations that Civ 5 has borrowed heavily from it's features, examples including :Ĭapital City being only target needed to eliminate a civ, So I'm pretty much just thinking out loud here, sharing some of my thoughts on Civ 5, all comments are welcome.